You guys - thank you for reading and reviewing this story! :) Much appreciated, it is.

To the beta - we go out for makan someday yeah? (I see whether can belanja kay? ;)

Disclaimer: Eoin Colfer is the Creator and Sole Owner of the Artemis Fowl series. Ho hum, me owns nothing.

Chapter 11: All at Sea

Atlantis maximum security penitentiary

The Atlantis penitentiary was in reality a collection of polymer blocks anchored to the seabed to a depth of over five thousand metres, in an unknown ocean trench somewhere within the Atlantic Ocean. Travel to the penitentiary was restricted to LEP shuttles with the prisoners and their accompanying officers. The most famous face so far to have entered this place was Opal Koboi, but she might just have been knocked off her throne by one human – no, the first human – prisoner in Atlantis.

Artemis sat in his cell watching the two-way telescreen as he contemplated his next plan. Three sides of the cell were blacked out, preventing him from seeing the outside world and his fellow prisoners in the next cells. The single wall that had been left transparent looked out onto the walkway, which extended from the main station to the doors of the cells. The walkway was made of the same toughened polymer as the cells, and functioned as a long, tubular airlock that enabled officers to patrol the penitentiary without coming into contact with the prisoners. A metre-long gap separated the walkway from the cell doors – any officer who needed to enter the cells would have to key in the security code at the corresponding doorway in the airlock. The doorway would then extend itself across the gap and lock into place at the respective door, forming an extension to the main walkway itself.

With security as tight as it was in Atlantis, there were only three possible ways in which a prisoner could leave this place successfully:

a) By pardon

b) By death

c) By external help

The last option didn't look likely to Artemis. Getting to the penitentiary itself required stringent checks from the LEP, and most unauthorized shuttles would find themselves a nasty surprise if they got too close to the place. There were motion sensors in all corners of the facility, with cameras and pre-programmed laser blasters to deter any fairy or sea creature from breaking into the place.

At present, there was nothing for the boy to do but watch Lieutenant Shoal glaring back at him from the telescreen. The sprite had taken a massive dislike to the boy – Artemis wasn't entirely innocent either – and both were determined not to give in to the other. It amused Artemis to no end that he could annoy someone simply by staring blankly.

Fish and strange deep sea creatures came to goggle at him through the transparent wall. Artemis was not sufficiently bored yet to pay them the compliment of goggling back. Time to plot.

'You think you're smart, don't yer?' Shoal said, breaking the silence that had stretched for the past hour and twenty-seven minutes.

'I don't think it, Lieutenant,' said Artemis, chuckling softly. 'I am perfectly aware of it.'

'Listen to the smart mouth on him.' Shoal chewed on something grey – there was a glimpse of a waving tentacle before he slurped it back into his mouth. 'You won't be so cocky when you've been in there for years, my boy.'

'Like the prisoner next door?'

Opal Koboi was in the next cell, as Artemis had found out when the Atlantis major escorted him to his cell. The pixie had glared at him malevolently and turned her back on him, talking to the cardboard seahorses that she had placed in all corners of the small space. She looked almost sane in there, but a ghost of her former self. Her hair was shorn into a bob and there was a thin, papery look to her skin. But the eyes…oh, the eyes. They continued to watch the world – or whichever small part of it that she could see – with such rage and desire.

Artemis wasn't too worried about her.

'What you'll have for lunch, Mud Boy?' said Shoal, spooning some greenish slimy stuff into his permanently pursed mouth. 'Dolphin? Killer whale? Seal?'

'Something a little more…organic would be fine, thank you.'

Shoal laughed, spluttering the green stuff over the screen. 'You'll get organic right here, boy. Ain't nothing else we can give yer!'

'Ah, pardon. I meant vegetables and fruits. No meat, please.'

'I wonder about that, yer know,' said Shoal, scratching his ear with the end of his spoon. 'Are octopuses meat or fruit?'

'The correct term is 'octopi', Lieutenant. No sea creatures for me.'

'Yeah yeah, patronize an old bugger like me. You'll get the same like the rest, my boy.' Shoal grinned, showing his graying teeth and the green slime caught between them. Artemis just managed not to recoil from the telescreen in disgust.

'Scared yer, didn't I?' Shoal got up from his seat and left the telescreen, muttering all the while.

He appeared in the walkway a few minutes later with a tray of bowls. Artemis watched as the sprite stopped before each doorway, keyed in the correct code, and placed the bowl on a shelf. The shelf formed itself into a tube and extended across the gap to a corresponding slot next to the cell door, where it deposited the bowl under the small airtight flap in the wall. Artemis watched as a bowl slid on to the shelf he had noticed beside his own cell door.

Shoal waved at him and moved on to the next cells.

Time to see what horrors the sprite had cooked up for him. Artemis took the bowl with him to the table that had been provided and tore off the foil cover of the bowl. There was a greenish-grey soup inside, with pale grayish noodles. It didn't look appetizing.

A sound near the door made him look up, to see that a plastic cup had been deposited on the shelf. He held it up to his nose and sniffed. Tea? Not likely.

Peeling off the foil cover revealed a greenish grey liquid in the cup. Artemis took a tentative sip of it as Shoal watched from the walkway with a huge grin on his face.

'This tastes,' Artemis remarked to the wall, 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.' But he finished the drink all the same, as he was thirsty. It wasn't Earl Grey, but it was better than suffering from self-induced thirst.

'Like it, Mud Boy?' said Shoal from the telescreen. 'Like the soup?'

'There's nothing to eat it with,' Artemis pointed out. 'Are prisoners here deprived of their right to use suitable cutlery for their meals?'

'Look closer, smart mouth. Check under the cover.'

Artemis did as he was told. There was an item of cutlery under the cover, made of some bendable paper-like material.

'A spork,' he said, with a perfectly straight face. 'I look forward to my meals in the future.'

'We can't give you convicts forks – that'll be dangerous!' Shoal cackled. 'A spork has two functions, see? And it helps save on the budget. We ain't got money to splash on forks for you hopeless cases.'

'Really, Shoal, I doubt anyone has broken out of here with a fork.'

'Oh, you'll try, we know your kind. We can't give you anything sharp, that'll be like handing the catnip to the pixies – recipe for disaster, see?'

'I see,' said Artemis gravely, taking a bite of the noodles. It tasted like noodles. And the soup was just plain old seaweed soup. But he didn't take more – if his plans went as he had thought, he would be out of here by night. And his plans always went the way he wanted them.

Well, usually.

Breakhill Road, Haven City

There was a gorilla in there somewhere. Somewhere in the cage. And Artemis was in danger.

Where is he?

Holly watched herself kneel down beside the boy lying on the floor of the cage. And then she bent over and –

'D'Arvit!' she yelped. Her eyes flew open as she jerked out of sleep.

Right. Take a deep breath. Several deep breaths. Nothing happened. Concentrate. On the gorilla. Yes, the damn gorilla.

She groaned aloud and rolled over in the futon, burying her face in the pillow.

I can still feel it, though. Erm. The sparks. Yes. The magic. Not his li –

'Who am I kidding?' she mumbled.

She had tried to suppress the memory ever since the – er – Incident, but it had a habit of catching her unawares in her dreams. Or when she was idly thinking about something else – something that was definitely not related to The Incident.

But you want to remember, don't you? a sly voice said. Even when you found it difficult to trust him, you still wanted to remember, didn't you?

'I didn't!' she protested. 'I was in my teenage body then!'

Thought precedes action, Holly, the voice continued. Are you sure you didn't mean it at all?

'You shut up.' She sat up, rubbing her face vigorously as though she could rub out the memory. 'It happened, but it's in the past now, so I'm not going to bother about it.'

I doubt it.

She staggered out of bed to the bathroom, cursing under her breath. Trouble had been right – she was too worn out with the events over the past twenty-four hours to think straight. The dream was just because of that – she was too tired. Yes. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was thinking of ways to get Artemis out of Atlantis.

'I told him no more,' she told her reflection in the mirror severely. ''Your elf-kissing days are over'. So there. Nothing more.'

And he's still a child…

But what if – what if – you had remained in that same body when you returned? Would you have acted differently after that? Didn't you hope, just a little bit, that you would stay the same when you came back to the present?

'Shut up.' She glared at her reflection, which stared back at her with red-rimmed eyes and tousled hair.

He won't be a child forever…

'Oh that is sick.' She laughed and splashed her face with warm water. 'We're different species, mmm.'

You could try, couldn't you? And you said yourself: In another time…it could have been possible. Not now, but maybe, just maybe, if you were both willing in the future –

'There is no future.' She leaned her forehead against the cool glass, feeling drops of water trickling down her face and neck. 'I refuse to believe in that.'

And yet you still want it, though you won't admit it, the voice said, reasonably and calmly. Why do you have to be so stubborn, Holly?

'Because I don't want it.' She scrubbed her face with the towel and flung it into the basin. 'And get out of my head.'

She checked the clock on the way back to bed; there were about three hours left before her next shift. She was worn out, and frazzled with everything she had done today. Her thoughts would be clearer when she woke up tomorrow.

I still need to get him out of Atlantis, she thought drowsily as she curled up to sleep. Butler'd kill me if anything happens to Arty.

Thinking about Arty again? The voice was back, sarcastic this time. Really, Holly. You're a disgrace to the LEP.

'Who're you, my fairy godmother?' she slurred, half-asleep.

Consider me…your conscience.

'Oh good. I don't need it.' And then she snuggled deeper under the duvet and started snoring.

A/N: Er. I think I wrote this while I had a cold a month ago.

Credits: 1. Orwell, for the name and idea of the telescreen. 2. The phrase 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea' belongs to Douglas Adams. 3. Chapter title from the song of the same name by Jamie Cullum.

And yes - I'm still batting back and forth on the canon H/A shipping. (Which is odd, because I was a shipper back when TEC was first published!) I find Artemis's young age an issue when it comes to this ship - but I'll really like to know what will happen to the pair once he grows up.

Clickety-click that nice green button and leave your thoughts!