D E S C E N T

- Dim Aldebaran -

Chapter Six

Somewhere in a hidden memory

images float before my eyes.

"All Souls Night"

Loreena McKennitt

:i:

Juliet came up to the room at nine to announce breakfast. Artemis had been awake since six now; Holly had had a hard time staying with the baby-sat, outright refusing to follow him into the bathroom suite.

As Artemis followed Juliet down, the Butler shot her a rather complicated look, something between 'don't follow' and 'help, please?' There was also a bit of, 'my bedroom is free for the next hour while I'm busy serving a rather complicated formal breakfast, why don't you get some sleep?'

Holly had become quite adept at reading such signals over the years, and complied. Fairies actually require more sleep than humans, due to a metabolism that had to support the unique requisites for magic. She grabbed an hour and a half while Juliet served.

She would have killed a bull troll to see Artemis talking with his parents. Foaly, evidently, had the same desires. She found him blabbering into her comm piece when Juliet woke her up.

"… I can't believe you passed up such an opportunity! You know how critical it could be, seeing him interact with loved ones?"

"Shut up," she said wearily. Seeing Juliet's surprised expression—she hadn't been saying anything—she pointed ruefully at the comm piece and made a face.

Artemis was talking to his father about 'recent behaviors' after being prompted at breakfast to explain the sudden doubling of his Swiss bank account. Trusting him not to do anything too funny while in his father's care, they decided to have another war room chat.

"Does he have a diagnosis yet?" Juliet asked, plopping down on her beanbag. They were in Juliet's room—the only hallway leading from the study was right outside the door. They would hear the Artemii leaving from their tete-a-tete.

Holly turned her comm piece into a conference mode so Juliet could hear the response: "Yes and no."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Juliet demanded. Her voice was tinged with worry, giving her normally bright tones a gray watecolor wash.

"'Yes' in that I know what caused it," Foaly said. They could hear the crunch of carrots over the comm. "'No' in that I don't know exactly what 'it' is."

"So you've gotten us nowhere," Juliet said flatly. Holly could see the shine to those big blue eyes, a shine she had so often seen as a teen. Emotions are always higher, more intense when you were young—it was almost ecstasy when you cried, almost Nirvana with every scream, so sinful, so satisfying.

"Yes and no," the centaur said. Holly could have snapped his neck and called it music right then. "Now that I know the cause and I'm a little more acquainted with our young madman's mind, I can go about curing him."

Holly kneaded her forehead tiredly. "What's the cause?"

"Lots of things."

"Answer, damnit!" Juliet yelled. Holly looked sharply at her. She stared steadily down into her lap, where, like two crinkled pearls, her pale hands clenched into tight fists. Holly had never seen her like that before—but stress does strange things to the mind, to the actions it follows.

Foaly heaved a melodramatic sigh. "No one appreciates me."

"We're not in the mood," Holly said flatly.

She could hear the hurt in Foaly's voice, and almost felt sorry: "Artemis hasn't had a very easy life for a snot-nosed aristocrat. He never developed properly, even for a genius—asides from being a social reject, his parents paid him little attention because of their own little issues. Those would lead to problems as it is. Then, count in his dad dying and his mom going insane within hours each other."

"He didn't seem especially 'hurt' when we saw him," Holly pointed out. Artemis had always kept that impassive mask; at times, it was difficult to believe there was anything beneath its peerless surface.

Juliet shook her head, raising a tear-streaked face. She looked happier now that she had had a good cry. "It hurt him," she said, hiccupping a bit. "I can't tell what he's feeling, but it always hurt him."

Foaly's grin, unseen but certainly there, was infuriating. Holly ignored it for the price of peace. "Stress always zaps the mind of a little of its vigor. Every bit of stress you get is your mind wearing a little thinner for the rest of your life. Now, taking that, and the fact he was head of a rather large criminal empire for several years, the pressure that his father was dead, and absolutely no one to talk to… Really, it's only natural that he wouldn't be 'stable' later on. He'd be loads more prone to anxiety disorders, depression, addictions, etcetera. Now, he had this stress on him in every dealing with us—near death of Butler? Shooting his own father? Come on, stress!"

"So he's insane because he's under stress."

The crunch of carrots. Holly felt a swell of anger. "No, not quite. Stress is what made his mind so susceptible. Now, the cause is the mindwipe."

Her head buzzed. "It's my fault," she whispered, but no one was listening—Foaly was rattling off how the mindwipe had broken his mind, how the trigger of the gold coin was too rough to trigger a full recall, how his mind tried to jam the pieces together, breaking them asunder—she tried to listen but she couldn't: her thoughts spiraled down like Artemis' music, collapsing in on itself like a lark with broken wings.

Juliet mercifully bore her away. "This is all your fault!" she cried out. "He'd be fine if it wasn't for you and your goddamn Council!"

Foaly then said the strangest thing Holly had ever heard him say. "I know."

A silence met this, not even broken by the munching of carrots. What could they say—what could anyone say?

"No, it's not," Holly said at last. "I let it happen. Root let it happen—we all let it happen, not just you—"

"It's my fault," Juliet whispered into her hands. "I'm—I'm his Butler now, I should b able to take care of him, but I haven't been able to do that—"

Foaly broke the silence, whatever mood he had now gone. "Well, all this isn't going to help Mud Whelp, is it? Juliet, did you give him the Prozac?"

She nodded mutely.

"Well, stop giving it to him. The thing about what he has is that it's going to be constantly changing. One moment he might be schizoaffective, the next mania or agoraphobia or something. It's a big mishmash of all sorts of things. I'm hoping everything stays in the first two axes, since then its nothing a good shot of sparks can't cure."

As he paused for a bite of carrot, Holly cut in: "So, do you want me to do the same thing I did for his mother…?"

"Frond, no!" Foaly exclaimed. "I want to bring in a professional. I know a few decent ones from the Brotherhood, not at all like Argon."

"Root's not going to like that."

"Well, Julius can deal with it—oh, D'Arvit!"

There was a skittering of keys, tapatatapatatapata.

"What is it?" Juliet demanded. She could hear footsteps coming down the hall; they had to break it up soon. Artemis was coming.

Interference. Holly couldn't hear his response. "Foaly, what is it?" she asked, jamming the comm piece closer to her ear.

"Tell me later," Juliet said, wiping her face. It was obvious she had been crying, but she had probably been doing it quite a bit lately. It wouldn't be a strange sight in Fowl Manor, and in all likelihood would not be remarked upon.

Holly pressed the comm piece even closer. Her ear protested, but she ignored the opposition. "Foaly, Foaly, can you copy? What do you want us to do?"

There was the unmistakable crackle of a Neutrino, and the thud of a falling body—Juliet's body.

Holly turned around. "You!"

The gun quivered in the hands of the untrained. "How original," Opal said, and giggled. She wore blue jeans and a bubblegum t-shirt; Holly half-expected her to take out an iPod. A decidedly feline smile arced her lips. "Now, don't I say, 'Yes, it's me'?"

Holly was one of the better officers in the LEP, the result of some very good reflexes on her part.

Perhaps it was hopeless to begin with. She fell to the floor as a Neutrino beam hit her full in the chest.

She had never been shot with a Neutrino before.

Now I know, she wondered madly into the spreading darkness.

:i:

Opal smiled at the corpses. It had been little trouble to convince her… father to arrange a business meeting with the Fowl patriarch. The Fowls were developing a monopoly in shipping; the irony of them delivering the very heart of her scheme to Italy was quite attractive to her.

She contemplated the Neutrino in her hands, a marvel of silver and curves. Who would have known that hapless centaur could design something so elegant?

Of course, he was still inferior.

She smiled, and slipped it into her purse. The mission had been planned rather last-minute, but its very simplicity made it effective. It was very difficult to mess up shooting someone's back.

Juliet had tried to call out for help, but if the scars crisscrossing her body told the truth, she had been in a rather nasty accident and thus with slowed reflexes. Holly, of course, had been half a room away when she decided to lunge. It had been easy to shoot her.

Butler, that troll-of-a-Mud-Man, had been taken out with the Neutrino as he chopped carrots in the kitchen. He hadn't been alarmed by the guest's 'daughter' who had walked into the kitchen, answering her every question about the Manor's inhabitants until she shot the pistol. He wouldn't be waking up for quite a while.

Artemis I was in a soundproof conference room with her 'father', and wouldn't be exiting for several hours. Considering its close proximity to the front entryway, she doubted the Fowl patriarch would notice the state of his employees.

That left Mud Mommy. She would be easy, though; she knew how aristocratic women were raised. She doubted that the mistress of Fowl Manor had sought to overcome her upbringing with jujitsu lessons, so she was probably fine.

She had to make sure everyone was out—and out of sight—by the time the men came out of the conference room. Getting Artemis and Holly into the trunk of the car might be a bit of trouble, even with her Moonbelt. If they woke while 'father' was driving away, there would be… problems, and she might have to take her vengeance prematurely.

Foaly had been talking to them, probably via Holly's comm piece. She disabled it quickly, slipping it into her purse. She couldn't keep it long or else he would track her: but she so desperately wanted to talk with that moron. Maybe during the ride to their private yacht; she could tell 'father' she was talking to a friend on the cellphone.

She gagged Juliet and pushed her under the bed. Holly she left by the door. She hated physical work. It was a pity she couldn't bring those idiot twins along, but they'd screw everything up somehow.

Time to find Mud Mommy.

The Manor was huge, but big-eyed teenagers were quite disarming: Butler had kindly told her that Artemis was preparing a piano composition for his father's birthday, and that 'Mistress Fowl' was helping him with it.

She drifted into the grand entryway, pausing on the stairs. The surgery had left her superior fairy hearing unaffected—she could hear it immediately, even through at least one set of closed doors.

Opal had never been a music person, but as she ascended the stairs she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on her steps. Her mind spun as it analyzed the music, finding increasingly complex patterns, and her subconscious practically thrummed as it pointed out algorithm after algorithm expressed in the notes. She doubted anyone had ever appreciated the complexity of his music before. Mud Mommy probably just thought it sounded cool. She wouldn't know Avogadro's number from those of Fibonacci.

The hallway. The door at the end was the source of the music—it sounded as she had always imagined the mesmer to, a choir of angels. He spun a web of silver and knives, for the music was as sharp and piercing as any blade, entrapping her so surely that there was no reason she could ever want to leave, no reason to not want the sweet heartbreak of his music—

She opened the door. She nearly staggered with the sound; how could music be like that, so utterly tangible as if it were a force of nature on its own?

Angeline beamed at her as she entered; perhaps she had grown somewhat immune to the magic of his music. "You must be the daughter," she said, beckoning through a haze of wonder. Opal found herself only slightly annoyed by the term she used, 'daughter'—normally she put the speaker of that hated term on her hit list, once she ruled the world, but now… now she could hardly care.

Artemis played as most piano players do: swaying with the crescendos, following his fingers up and down the keys in the unconscious fashion. He looked almost ghost-like: his pale face all the paler for his white shirt, and his black hair was a dream of midnight, half-ruffled, half-wet.

He finished the piece with a twirl of chords, flying daggers. He let the sound ring out for a moment, then brought his feet off the pedals. "How was that, Mother?"

"Fantastic," Angeline murmured.

He gazed at his mother for a moment, as if in deep thought—but then he turned, and saw her.

"Hello, Opal."

She stood, frozen, unable to act—to think Koboi was rendered paralyzed by a Mud Boy! D'Arvit, there was something with that music—

Angeline pursed her lips, confused. "Didn't Timmy say her name was B—Be—" She smiled apologetically. "Excuse me, but is it Opal?"

Artemis didn't seem inclined to do anything, though the knowledge of who she was was heavy in his eyes.

"It's a pet name," she lied smoothly. Vaguely, she wondered why she didn't take the Neutrino and shoot them both down.

Angeline's eyes twinkled. Opal had the urge to slap her. "That's cute," she said, and stood up from the chair she had been occupying. "Well, I'll leave you two children alone."

"We're hardly children, Mother," Artemis said, smoothing his hair back.

Angeline laughed; it sounded like a magpie to Opal. She left.

Artemis turned to Opal. "I assume you saw the algorithm."

"Yes, very clever Mud Boy," Opal said, baring her teeth. It didn't feel the same to her—damn music. "I assume you got the idea from VGRS."

He smiled at the reference. "Not quite. If I wanted to do that, I'd have a 200-decibal rock concert."

She shrugged, still unnerved. He looked so calm, so accepting—was this the little Mud Whelp who had outwitted her? "You're writing the music so our subconscious will respond," she pointed out. "Taking advantage of what's written in our DNA."

He chuckled openly, and leaned back against the piano. "A poor explanation, but it will suffice. The idea is fascinating, yes?"

Enough. Opal drew out her Neutrino. Artemis nodded, understanding. "I don't suppose an apology would change matters?"

She smiled. This was more like it. "Nope. Try the bribe."

"Gold."

Her grin spread wider. "Try again."

"Three corporations, your choice."

"I could do that in my sleep, Mud Whelp."

He sighed, and looked into his hands. "Assistance, perhaps?"

She pulled the trigger. He spasmed, then relaxed, crumpled over the piano as if he had merely fallen asleep over it.

She walked over, slipping the Neutrino into her purse—and, bending down to whisper into his ear: "In your dreams. I work alone now."

:i:

Root was silent after Foaly explained the details. Then he got mad.

Very mad.

Foaly let the rant pass by him for several minutes before he deemed it safe to interrupt. "Juliet will contact me any minute now," he said. "Opal also took Holly's comm piece: since it is still in motion, I assume she's taking it with her. We can send out a LEPretrieval team to take her out."

"I don't like this," Root growled. He kneaded his forehead in frustration. "I can't believe I let her do this, working aboveground for so long—"

"We can track Opal," Foaly countered. "We can't do that belowground. Mud Men information networks can be tapped more easily than ours. It's better that she made her first move aboveground. We are at the advantage."

Root shook his head. "I can't just send Trouble out there. Not without information. Get me information, and I can send LEPretrieval."

Foaly nodded. Though no situation involving Opal was to be taken lightly, they were quite fortunate: she had made it easier to contain. Since the B'wa Kell incident, many unused chutes were filled in, rendered completely unnavigable, and the remaining tightly monitored. Opal would be hard pressed to sneak back underground to wreak havoc on Foaly and Root, surely the other two people on her hitlist.

Frankly, Foaly was surprised she hadn't gone after them first, leaving the more exposed 'hits' for last. With them out of the way, she could have her world domination and her vengeance too. With the LEP on high alert like this, however…

She had something up her sleeve. Foaly knew it.

He trusted Artemis Fowl to figure it out. Opal couldn't bear to kill them outright—she'd subject them to some little mind games first. Artemis, he was sure, was vastly her superior, and would be able to win even playing by her rules.

It was Artemis himself he was more concerned about. Artemis' instability was entirely unique: he could not be sure what it would lead to. True madness, the madness of the genius mind? Or perhaps something less dramatic—schizophrenia, or one of the mood disorders: bipolar, mania. He thought it most likely he would slip into schizoaffective, but that was mostly on hunch.

Something in particular scared him: Artemis might also be used. Surely Opal could see that—and in the difficult situation she had put herself in, maybe she just couldn't quite see the way out herself…

The thought scared him cold.

He couldn't tell Root, though.

Root would send LEPretrieval down with orders to kill Artemis—he had never had the fondness for the Irish youth Foaly had. Foaly had an inkling of his beautiful mind. Root could only grasp at appearances.

He could wait.

:i:

Sorry. I've been awful at posting the revised chappies. My laptop died last week, and I can only use this computer an hour or so a day. It really sucks. My hard drive is completely wiped, so I have to start from scratch with editing and new chapters and stuff. cries

I'll have the revised versions up by New Years, hopefully. Check my update forum for the whens and whats.

And a big thanks to CoffeeandCherryBrandy, who has done a wonderful job of poking inconsistencies when I get sloppy (especially in that last chapter), and The White Lily, who is the beta to end all betas, even if she hasn't gotten past chapter one yet.