Disclaimer: The characters, much of the dialogue, and sadly, even the plot are not mine; they all belong to Eoin Colfer.

Pages: 211 – 212, 215 – 216

Chapter 14: Every Step of the Way

Holly stalked, invisible, through the crowded, noisy souk like a ghost, her insubstantial form weaving in and out through the throngs of workers and tourists. However, her vibrating frame was still solid enough that if she so much as brushed even one of the unsuspecting Mud Men he was sure to notice. So Holly stayed attentive enough to what she was doing so as not to jostle any of the many pumping arms and shoulders of the workers either bending to dunk the animal skins in the dyes or turning to stack the leathers up to dry in the dying heat of the day as she went about her less-than-meritorious task.

Like probably most teens who found themselves skulking around densely packed work sites, casually tossing remote-dischargeable explosives amidst the work going on, specifically right into the wide, invitingly unguarded vats of liquid dye, Holly felt nervous. Or, more accurately, her stomach was clenched so tight with anxiety she had the distinct sense she was carrying a chunk of granite around inside her.

Holly may have had the edge over most juvenile delinquents considering that, while she was in her act of sabotage, she could make herself invisible – surely the nightmare of any parent or intermediary school disciplinary enforcer if there ever was one – but the typical trouble-making adolescent didn't have the added worry of criminal masterminds and huge, martial arts-expert manservants staking out the place, who would probably not only aim to put a hasty end to her criminal extracurricular activities, but wouldn't hesitate to grab her and stuff her in a car trunk somewhere for the second time in as many days.

Holly dumped an extra helping of the mining blaster buttons, one among many of the resources they had lifted from the Tara lockup, right in front of the window where Butler was situated before she made her way around to the far corner of the courtyard, and let the last few buttons of her supply fall into the liquid of a nearby vat with minuscule plish plish plishes. A moment later Holly backed up to the edge, out of the usual pathway worn out by the constant daily activity of the crowds mulling about, and quickly scanned the teeming environment with a trained soldier's eye to assess the situation.

Stealing explosives, then planting said stolen explosives right in the middle of a Mud Man city in an especially heavy-trafficked area. Had she still been at the academy, Holly would have been so suspended.

Holly stood in the shadows, studying the scene. Snatches of young Artemis and Damon Kronski's conversation drifted across the courtyard to her; from what she could tell, the doctor was really getting under the boy's skin. Ah-temis, hm? What an interesting name.

Holly almost smiled, but stopped, forcing herself to focus. The last thing she needed was something else other than the fact that the equipment she was carrying excepting her one Neutrino was basically nil to make her feel less like an operative performing an important duty in the course of fulfilling her mission than some puerile kid pulling a prank.

To be perfectly honest, now that Holly was standing out here so completely exposed she was finding Artemis's lamentation over there not being a suit or wings in the terminal to be quite a bit less funny now. She had little more than her shield for protection and, despite its name, it felt like a rather flimsy defense at the moment.

Holly's eyes moved constantly over the area, every sense on full alert. If this had been an ordinary mission, she would usually have had Foaly in her ear to rely on, to make certain she steered clear of possible dangers and kept on track in carrying out the mission. Without him, she realized she felt as off-kilter as a video gamer turning off the map feature of a particularly confusing stretch of territory. Holly was finding out the hard way that when one was deprived of her personal all-seeing eye and left feeling virtually blind, confidence tended to suddenly be in proportionally short supply.

Well, maybe it was just as well. Confidence was ignorance, so Foaly had once said. ...In which case, she wasn't feeling very ignorant at the moment, at least in that sense.

Though Foaly wasn't there, at that moment someone did speak to her in very much the same way, like her own personal computer implanted in her brain to analyze and feed her with important information.

"Kronski is opening the cage," said Artemis, his voice clear through the tiny mike they had also taken from the lockup set in her ear. Unlike the communicators from Mulch's pack, this set translated voice patterns, so her friend sounded like himself, and not some machine-zombie hybrid. "Get ready to blow the buttons."

Holly couldn't help but smile slightly. Well, not completely blind.

"All set," she answered. "I'm at the northwest corner if Jayjay tries to run."

"I see you on the filter." A second later, his order came. While not robotic, the tone was still cool, detached – the calming, certain voice of a natural-born commander. "Detonate at will."

Holly moved forward, hauling herself into an empty vat she had identified in an earlier sweep of the area as an adequate hiding place. She briefly turned, peering over the lip at the large man in the camouflage suit.

Holly's eyes flickered to Jayjay. The little lemur was out of the cage and Kronski had a hold of him. Now was the time.

Ducking down so no one would be able to see her, Holly let down her shield so she would have the precision of movement to be able to work the detonator. She spent barely a second navigating the menus, then, in response to the machine's single, emotionless question, 'Detonate?' she punched 'yes.'

Holly was not prepared for the blast of sound that assaulted her already sensitive elven hearing. She could feel the sudden tumult in her entire body. The cracking booms of the explosions, the gush of hot liquid shooting over a dozen feet into the air, the panicked yelling and screams of the workers and merchants – all of it swam together in a wall of noise that reverberated all around her inside the shallow vat.

Holly clamped her hands over her ears, grimacing, and though she felt something prick her fingers through the headscarf, she barely noticed, too occupied trying to block out the overpowering maelstrom of sound outside.

The noise was incredible. No wonder the humans were screaming – this had to be something like trying to wait out a bombing inside a trench in the middle of a war zone. However, Holly heard amidst the cries of fear some shouts of awe as though the chaos was something beautiful, and a few angry curses over what this excitement was doing to the merchants' carefully, beautifully dyed skins.

By now, Holly had pretty much lost track of what was going on outside the vat as far as their operation went. Though Holly had arranged the buttons so it would be Butler's and not her own view that was obstructed, the violence of the storm of flying dye was more than she had expected.

However, the explosions were beginning to die away now. If all was going according to plan, Mulch would have already gotten Jayjay away from Kronski and be well on his way back to their hidden shuttle. If not, there wasn't much she could do unless Artemis contacted her with further directions.

Holly slowly pulled her hands away from her ears, listening to the sound of swearing in more than one language, waiting for Artemis to tell her what had happened and what her next action should be.

Holly's ears were still ringing in the aftermath of the explosions, so it took her a moment to register the tiny, crackling snaps of pain against her auricle. Pulling back the scarf enough to remove the mike, she examined it carefully, and she saw a spark flicker on its surface.

Holly suddenly heard a voice emanating from the bud though and she jammed it back in in time to hear Artemis's voice again. Broken and split in the middle with sounds of white static, the most she could make out of the terse message was "A – ort – A – "

Perhaps she was imagining it, but Holly thought she detected a distinct note of urgency to his tones.

"What was that?" she asked anxiously, then reported, "The noise must have overloaded the circuits. I think my receiver's been damaged."

Holly waited for a response, but she could only hear more static, then several harsh cracks like something being violently broken before all went abruptly quiet.

"Artemis?" said Holly tentatively into the silence. "Artemis, are you there?"

No answer.

A tingling chill like an ice snake slithered down her back, as though swallowing her spine. So much for her all-seeing eye.

Holly pulled out the ear mike and stared at it as though hoping it would suddenly start working again, but it was totally dead. Not so much as a spark.

Holly bit her lip hard, frowning in concentration. Without contact with Artemis, she had no way of knowing if everything had gone as it was supposed to, and she ought to just wait until the coast was clear, or if something had gone wrong and she needed to take immediate action.

Pocketing the bud to see if Artemis could repair it later, Holly tried to think. First of all, she needed to get out of this vat. She would guess she had just enough magic for one more shielded trip back across the souk. Of course, she could get out and just try to appear like an ordinary girl caught out playing where she wasn't supposed to, hoping no one took too close a look at her face, but unfortunately, that would be fairly risky and it would be even more of a problem if either little Artemis or Butler spotted and recognized her.

Better go shielded then. Now was the time to be cautious; no one should know she was here, so all she had to do was wait a bit, then sneak back to their hiding place. She would just give it another minute or so, then –

Holly froze as at that exact moment a shadow fell over the vat. Holly started to turn, ready to play the innocent-little-girl-wandered-off-from-home act, but felt a wave of ice cold horror clench her heart as, out of the corner of her vision, she recognized the outline of the hulking figure above her.

Holly's hand shot for her Neutrino, but she never had a chance. Even if her adolescent body, which had not gone through any of the LEP training that had helped her become the officer she was, had not slowed her down, this Butler was in peak physical condition as he had yet to suffer that near-fatal shot from Jon Spiro's henchman that had robbed him of much of his former almost inhuman physical ability. As good as her reflexes were, Holly didn't think they had ever been a match for Butler's when he was at the top of his game, and certainly not when he had the jump on her.

Before she could bring her weapon around, Holly felt a coarse blanket all around her, and for a moment she couldn't breathe as it pressed up against her face and into her mouth.

Panic seized control of her limbs and she lashed out wildly, kicking every which way she could reach, clawing feverishly at the material as claustrophobia whited out all rational thought. She was like a desperate wild animal, out of control.

But Butler might as well have been made of stone for all the good her efforts did. Calmly, he bound her ankles and wrapped her forearms together behind her back with such efficiency despite her struggles that, even driven mad with terror, a part of her was still sane enough to acknowledge just the slightest bit of admiration. From the beginning, Butler had never failed to impress her with his skill and professionalism.

Next, Butler quickly confiscated her gun, wrenching it so easily from her grasp that Holly had an image of him thinking to himself, Like taking candy from baby. Then, shifting the blanket around in such a way to ensure his captive would be able to breathe, the enormous manservant hefted her casually over his shoulder, like a well-practiced hunter with the carcass of his prize animal, and strode swiftly away without a sound.

Holly's breathing was fast and shallow. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't how things were supposed to go.

Holly forced herself to close her eyes, to think. She tried to remember something from her training with the LEP. There was a simple exercise every officer was told to put to use whenever he found himself in a situation of considerable stress that necessitated unimpeded thought and judgment. Holly concentrated on evening out the expansion and contraction of her lungs, moderating her intake of air. Her mind cleared just a bit.

Artemis, she thought. Artemis will come up with with something.

Yet Holly found she was having trouble summoning much in the way of hope. This was Artemis's study all over again, when Butler had showed up where he wasn't supposed to and drugged them both. For some reason, Artemis always seemed one step behind on this trip, and that was more frightening than anything else so far.

But even if she could have counted on her friend to be in top form for working out his strategies, if she was evaluating the situation fairly Holly had to realize even Artemis may be helpless given this particular development. Her accomplice wasn't with her to pull off a miracle in his irritating way this time, the way he had conjured an ally out of thin air. Even if he somehow convinced Mulch to help again this time, which would be a feat in and of itself, what could they hope to do against a fully-fit, fully-armed Butler?

There has to be some way, she told herself insistently. She hadn't broken them into a high security lockup and gotten them all that equipment using her exclusive knowledge as a LEP officer for nothing. And Artemis was a genius.

But you're forgetting. Butler's working for a genius too.

Holly felt a prickle of sweat slide down her cheek from her temple as the heat from her own body and the evening heat of the setting sun began to build up within the blanket.

No, now was not the time to start falling apart. Holly's closed eyes tightened further, brow furrowing as she channeled her thoughts, taking control.

A moment later, Holly's eyes opened. Her face had smoothed, the lines of worry faded to be replaced by an expression so intense with determination it seemed set in marble.

No, she decided, it didn't matter if Artemis could save her or not. Even if she did look like a child, she was a professional; she did not need him to look after her. Even if Holly did wind up dead or as some kind of twisted lab specimen for little Artemis to poke and prod at his leisure at the end of all this, it wouldn't happen because she went along like some docile sheep to the slaughter, because she had chosen to wait benignly for rescue. Maybe little Artemis would get what he wanted out of her, but she would show him that fairies weren't so easy to conquer and beat into submission as the cute little winged people in his fairy tales.

Whether she was an adult or an adolescent, it didn't matter. As long as there was an Artemis Fowl in the world who continued to engage in his unsavory business ventures, and treated her and everyone else as though their well-being and lives were more than tolerable sacrifices in the course of enacting his grand schemes, Holly for one would always continue to fight him every step of the way.

A/N: Oh, I so wanted to call this chapter 'alien abduction,' but I didn't have the nerve...

Lol, anyway, it's getting a little redundant to say this I know, but this chapter turned out to be a bit of a headache. I looked over it originally and thought it was about ready, but then reading it again I found it sort of bland... I ended up pretty much completely rewriting a lot of the first part.

I still hope to post the next chapter within the next few days, because this chapter and chapter 15 sort of go together, but since this grew out so much longer than I anticipated it may not happen quite that fast, especially if fifteen turns out to need a lot more work than I expect, like with this one. (Not to mention I have at least one exam next week which I really need to get started studying for already, heh.)

Another thing, one of you asked a question I wanted to answer here, since I can't reply the usual way anyway and I imagine a lot of you may be asking the same thing, as I've been a bit on the vague side. About whether this fanfiction is A/H... Well, yes and no. (How's that for clarity? (; ) What I mean is, when I see 'A/H' in a summary, I generally expect that Artemis and Holly are going to get together at some point, which they obviously aren't in this story, since I intend to stay true to what actually happened in TTP as well as consistent with what we have seen as far as TAC (The Atlantis Complex).

However! Even though in the original book the A/H section was pretty much over and done with after Artemis confessed the lie (being only mentioned a bit here and there afterward), the main focus of this fic is the A/H aspect of the story. So in that sense this is very much A/H and it will continue to reflect that, even if it's not apparent in every chapter. I think there's more to work with there than you might think. (;

Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter! I'm so happy to hear anyone's been enjoying what I've written enough to keep reading it, and it means a lot to hear from you. So please feel free to leave your comments/questions/advice/critiques, if you like. (:

Posted 12/1/11