Holly stumbled into the room, covered in granite dust. Her visor had shattered and her gun was crushed under the beam. Her shoulder was bloody from where flying debris had nicked her, and Holly looked altogether abysmal. Still, her next words shocked Artemis even more than her appearance.

"Sh—she tried to kill me."

She tried to kill Holly. She tried to kill Holly. She tried …

Artemis shook himself in annoyance. Mindlessly repeating the same thing over and over again wasn't exactly helping. There were several essential questions that needed to be answered:

One. Why did she try to kill Holly?

Two. How did she manage?

Three. Why was she angry?

Four. How might this happen in the future?

Five. How might this be prevented?

And these boiled down to, really, two questions:

What triggered Minerva?

And what to do next?

Foaly flicked through the files.

Borrowing a page, borrowing a page, borrowing a page from Opal's book …erasing her mistakes…

Hmm, mistakes.

Foaly selected Koboi's crime record.

File #348, category Oak

Date: Day Twenty-first of the Silver Month, year 398475

Subject: Opal Koboi

Report: The subject was reportedly engaging in illegal human-fairy hybrid activities in an attempt at world domination…

Foaly scanned through the document, and then deleted every place where Opal had made a mistake. This was most of the report, since the whole thing was about mistake – it was a crime record. So that couldn't be right. Foaly tried to think from Minerva's perspective. Her idea of a mistake would be somewhere where Koboi did something that led to her eventual downfall.

Hmmm… "illegal", maybe, and "world domination"…

Foaly filtered the rest of the report hopefully. This just might work.

Holly couldn't find the strength to stand any longer, and Artemis seemed too much in shock, or maybe thought, to come help her, so Holly simply collapsed onto the floor. It was a hard, polished wood, but falling onto it was better than trying to sustain herself upright, bloody mess that she was. The loud thwack her skull made when it hit the floor couldn't possibly be healthy, but at least it got Artemis' attention. He blinked, almost as if taking in her condition for the first time, and rushed over to lift her up onto the sofa Minerva had been sitting in only minutes before. Her ankle was not the only thing killing her now, it was her wrist, her neck, her legs, her head… her entire body was being consumed by a searing golden fire of pain.

Then it lessened somewhat, lessened some more, until it was mainly her ankle and wrists that were hurt, as well as her arm – she had landed on it in an unnatural position. There was a cut on her forehead, too, but Holly wasn't exactly trying out for the Miss Haven beauty pageant, and physical injury was an occupational hazard, and she remembered that she had signed a contract accepting those, and Root was there …

All these thoughts were running loosely through her mind until she managed to focus on Artemis' voice.

"Good," he was murmuring. "This is good."

That irked her back to her senses.

"Good?" she managed to croak. "How is this good?"

Artemis folded his hands in a contemplative manner. "It's good because I have answered some questions."

Holly would've slapped him if she wasn't currently immobile. That boy could be so D'Arviting annoying sometimes. Actually, most of the time.

"Holly, Holly, Holly. There is just so much you don't know."

"Well, I would know a lot more if you weren't so aggravatingly secretive, wouldn't I?" she spat, now extremely ticked off. "And even if I didn't, even if I couldn't for the life of me figure out all that genius stuff, it doesn't give you the right to be all haughty and presumptuous while somebody is lying on a couch, was injured, and could've died, because of you!"

Artemis inhaled sharply. "What did you say?"

And now he's offended? He's offended? "You heard me, you arrogant little Mud Boy!"

After a long two hours of repeated trial and error, Foaly managed to gather what Minerva's plan was, somewhat. There was something about making a human-fairy hybrid, although in this case both the humans and fairies were being transformed. Minerva was not aiming for world domination – not right now, at least. She has no accomplices. She has not used her magic anywhere but in Fowl Manor, and perhaps in some other minor preparatory errands. She was not in a coma. She did not have a clone in a coma. In fact, at this point, Foaly wondered whether it was possible to put Minerva in a coma. Her brain—part computer by now, probably – would be able to override any coma-inducing outer force. A computer did not fall into a coma. A computer went into a lockdown.

Artemis was caught off guard. "What did you say?" he blurted in surprise.

This seemed only to irritate Holly further. "You heard me, you arrogant little Mud Boy!"

Artemis turned his head slightly away from the furious elf to gather his thoughts. Holly seemed to be reacting to his claim that there was much she did not know.

The shock was – he had never actually said those words aloud.

Foaly stood and trotted over to the cursed microphone in the corner between a box and a monitor. He glanced at the numbers flashing on its side (106132 … 106131 …), gulped, and brought it over to a desk.

Taking a deep breath, he connected the thin cable into the computer.

He opened up the microphone's programming. If he could just tweak it a little, then launch the potent virus he'd been waiting to test when Minerva tapped into...

"Hard at work, Foaly?"

Foaly started and slammed the computer shut. He cursed himself for this infantile display of nerves and irritably flicked the computer open again. Minerva was still there, not surprisingly, though the computer was supposed to go into auto-protect if treated roughly. This time he could see Minerva on the computer screen (not supposed to be possible), and she was sitting on a large bed that he supposed was in one of the Manor's guest rooms. Her long ebony gown seemed a little dusty - not very Minerva-like. He wanted to analyze it, maybe get a little insight as to what was happening in the Manor, but he knew it would be useless and would only invite a volley of stinging sarcasm from Minerva – not what he needed right now. So he sat back, squared his shoulders, and observed.

"Ouch …" Minerva complained. Foaly could practically hear her pouty lower lip, though on the screen her face remained perfectly composed. "Don't abuse the machinery, Foaly. It's not the one at fault here. And don't try to deceive yourself into thinking that I don't know the exact word you were reading. Don't try to deceive yourself into thinking that I don't know the exact program you are going to use, how you are going to use it, and what the outcome will be. I know, Foaly, and I am impressed. You may just escape – but you'll never take me down in the process. You've figured out that I'm half computer now, but you should know that I'm no ordinary computer with any ordinary programming. I'm half self-controlled supercomputer. Much more advanced than simple artificial intelligence. Anything you can come up with is ancient compared with me. I would worry more about living right now, Foaly, if I were you. You've already used up 5.2879488928341034584203947% of your remaining time trying to create an impossible virus, and then listening to me while I explain exactly how impossible it is."

Foaly snorted, trying to be sarcastic. "You think you can awe me with big numbers?"

"Of course not," Minerva replied, coldly. "I'd just like to inform you that that little calculation took less than 0. of a second for me. That's all.

"Still, despite that juvenile attempt at a barb, Foaly, I must repeat that I am impressed. You just—just—may escape."

That was certainly unexpected. And suspicious. Foaly shook off the chills he suddenly felt and tried to suppress the intuition that something was seriously wrong – that he, and Holly, and Artemis, and everyone else were just lemmings blindly scampering along the barren dirt without any cover, and Minerva was a falcon, taking her time, watching as they played right into her deadly-sharp talons.