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

Pages: 217 – 220

Chapter 16: Second Wind

To Holly, trapped inside the constrictive dark duffel, it seemed like an age before Butler finally stopped again. For perhaps a minute, he was as still as the architecture around them, and Holly could feel the tense muscle in his side through the material.

Just as Holly was beginning to wonder if Butler was waiting to cross a street or to meet up with his charge or some such thing, Butler started moving again, slipping silently forward. A moment later he took a single, fluid step upward, as one might if they were making to ascend a staircase.

The sense that they were very suddenly in a completely different environment was immediate. Strangely, the first thing Holly noticed was not the sudden faraway mutedness of all the raucous murmuring of the activity of the crowd going about their business, as though Butler had suddenly taken her behind a glass wall, but the smell.

The powerful odors of the souk and the city of Fez were suddenly gone, replaced by a much cleaner scent. An air freshener? Another smell under the cover of the first, more subtle, reached her too. This new smell that mingled in with the other was somehow familiar to Holly, but she could not quite place it.

As Holly tried to remember, Butler set her down carefully and then sat himself down beside the bag. She turned her attention to trying to figure out where she was.

Perhaps she was in one of the newer buildings that stood amid the old in this city, one with all the modern conveniences. It would certainly explain why it was so much cooler here than outside; perhaps this was where Butler had agreed to meet with his master. Of course it would be modern – Artemis Fowl didn't subject himself to heat and disagreeable odors unless absolutely forced to.

However, Holly was distracted again by the nagging scent. She was sure she knew it from somewhere. And she was also sure that behind the fog in her mind blocking the hazy memory, she recalled something vaguely unpleasant about it.

Holly's tired form suddenly went taut, and she felt Butler tense as well, as though to shoot her a silent warning, threatening her to stay still. However, the way her stomach lurched made it hard, and if not for the hot, uncomfortable piece of tape over her mouth preventing her making a sound, Holly probably couldn't have stopped herself from gagging audibly.

At the same time Holly felt a gentle vibration from the floor beneath her and the purring hum of an engine reached her ears. So that meant they must be in a vehicle of some kind.

Confusion spiraled in Holly's head with the nausea that had nothing to do with motion sickness as the wheels started to turn and they took off. This vehicle couldn't belong to little Artemis, the hideous smell made that much obvious.

Whatever else the pure evil little brat did, he didn't use the skins of animals for decoration.

For an instant, Holly flashed back to when she had been taken and held prisoner aboard the stealth ore ship of Opal Koboi, the lunatic pixie who had made a bid for world domination before Holly and Artemis had helped put an end to it. Opal had lavished her ship with every available luxury, including upholstering her seats with animal furs.

"As I told you, I am human now. And that is what humans do, skin animals for their own comfort." So Opal had said.

Holly had been forced to sit on the grisly product of the murders for hours before she and Artemis had finally been brought to the Eleven Wonders theme park, the site on which Opal had meant to see her two enemies slaughtered. The smell of that fur, while faint, had been permanently seared into Holly's memory, and she was almost surprised it had taken her so long to identify it.

Now, Holly was a prisoner again as she had been back then, but this time her kidnapper was Artemis instead of Opal. Despite the circumstances, Holly had felt some measure of peace back then. Even though she had felt sick to think that she might die leaving the world to Opal's mercy without having accomplished a single thing to stop her, Holly had still maintained a strong glow of determination, of hope of finding someway out of the seemingly impossible situation. Beyond that, Holly had also been able to take just a bit of comfort in the fact that she might be seeing her mother and lost commander again shortly.

However, perhaps it was again because of this body, which in part had been deprived of the discipline and the professionalism that allowed her to accept the possibility of death, or perhaps it was because this time she found herself totally alone, but Holly couldn't seem to reach that state of balance and calm, no matter how she reached for it. Like trying to walk across a tightrope without having ever had the training.

Holly was slightly relieved when the sound of voices drifting back to her from the front of the vehicle drew her attention from the swirl of oppressive thoughts that threatened to choke her. Her better-than-average elven hearing allowed Holly to make out some of what was being said.

"Nice seats," said one of the voices conversationally. The words sounded muffled to Holly's ears, partly because of the duffel, and possibly partly because she guessed there was at least one set of seats standing between them, but she could still hear well enough to pick up the slight sarcastic note to the comment.

It was a higher, more child-like voice than she was used to, but Holly was certain that had definitely been little Artemis.

There was apparently no reply, but Holly could hear another voice too from time to time, though it spoke less distinctly. Holly didn't know who the other one might be; her best guess was that he was another one of Artemis's subordinates like Butler, only someone who Holly had never met. Perhaps a certified expert in some particular area of biology, a specialist in the study and dissection of newly discovered species.

While Holly worked to suppress her suddenly all-too-creative imagination, she heard Butler quietly unzip the bag a bit more. Holly didn't know why he did, but she was grateful as she felt the cool, air-conditioned air against her face, and it was enough to clear her head a little.

Holly strained harder to hear the two up front, trying to get more clues as to where she was going and what was happening. In kidnapping scenes in action novels, wasn't there some rule that when the hero was being taken somewhere, they were allowed to glean some information from the villain telling one of his inquisitive lackeys about his plans? But apparently Artemis wasn't inclined to follow the rules of literary structure in inadvertently letting his captive in on secrets she wasn't supposed to know as he had gone silent, the short, one-sided chat already over.

The one other voice that Holly had picked out, an older male near as Holly could tell, still continued to mutter, and it took all of Holly's focus to make out even portions of the disjointed phrases.

"In my hands..." he was saying, a despairing quality to his voice. "Had it right in my... all that money, and for what...? Just to have my lovely prize stolen right from under my nose... Not fair, it's not fair... A hundred thousand euros..."

A feeling like she had just stepped off the edge of an ice cliff swept over Holly. A cold, swooping sensation in her stomach, an electric prickling on the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the beads of sweat that had solidified there. Because she suddenly knew who little Artemis was sitting with up front in this shroud of butchered animals, who this vehicle belonged to, and exactly what little Artemis planned to do with her.

Before long the vehicle rolled smoothly to a stop and the moment it did, Butler silently zipped the duffel back up and she felt him on the move again, as smooth and stealthy as a panther.

As soon as they were out of the cool air of the vehicle, Holly felt the heat building up inside the small space again, sweat breaking out on her forehead. Hadn't the sun gone down yet? She would have been panting if not for the tape over her mouth, which by now was itching and stinging like a swarm of fire ants, so she had to satisfy her desperate need for clearer air by pressing her nose up close to the hole Butler had left for her, breathing deeply.

Luckily, this part of the journey did not last long. Butler must have entered a cooler environment again because Holly soon felt the temperature outside drop back down to a more comfortable level, though the bag remained stiflingly warm as she suspected the jet black material trapped heat as effectively as any greenhouse. The sound of the clicking of shoes on linoleum and the dull echo Holly's keen hearing picked up made her think they had entered some kind of building.

Holly felt queasy with nerves as she suddenly remembered that Nº1 had not yet unraveled the ancient magic that gave fairies nausea when entering a Mud Man dwelling uninvited. However, as the symptoms had not surfaced, she could only assume that the fact that evil-Artemis had apparently been allowed inside extended as an invitation to his kidnap-victim too.

Holly remembered her friend Trouble Kelp had once been captured and forced to stay inside a dwelling he had not been invited into, but that had differed in the fact that the kidnapper had not owned the house or even been invited into it. She would have been in real trouble if this had happened as that had.

Getting violently sick and physically unable to escape the magical source of it had to be one of the worst experiences that could be thrust upon a fairy. Her claustrophobia was already causing her to feel sick enough as it was without Frond punishing her for what she couldn't control too.

Holly closed her eyes, concentrating on just breathing in and out. This place was cooler than being out in direct sunlight, but unlike in the car, Butler did not open the duffel and her brow was still slick with sweat.

Again Butler sat down with Holly in her bag in front of him, going into statue-mode.

After several minutes of complete silence and not so much as a twitch from Butler, Holly began to wish they would start moving again, or that someone would speak. At least something would be happening. But there was nothing outside this tiny place on which she could direct her focus, as though during her time being cut off from the outside world it had ceased to exist altogether.

Holly felt her mind beginning to slip back, the restlessness and whirl of thoughts leaving her teetering on the border of panic once again. She tried with all her power to shut out the sensation of the heavy, abrasive material of the duffel pressing in on her on all sides, the way her legs had begun to feel cramped and sore from being bent inward toward her chest for so long, the maddening restriction of not being able to use her hands or even move them from behind her back, the tape burning against her mouth.

Holly kept her eyes resolutely closed. However, every bit of it still invaded her thoughts, every discomfort a clear, sharp presence in her mind. She felt sicker now than she had been when they were moving, the overwhelming sense of vertigo and nausea somehow much worse than the brief spasms she had been getting repeatedly earlier with the movement of the bag and the shaking of the vehicle floor.

She knew the strategy that they must be using on her, of course. Making the prisoner wait an indefinite period of time to discover her fate, allowing her to imagine all the while what might be in store – it was a classic tactic of interrogators, and one she should have been able to withstand since she was able to recognize it.

But even though she knew it in her head, she could still feel it slowly driving her mad as her treacherous thoughts did exactly what her tormentors no doubt hoped, turning to the possibilities of what was going to happen to her.

Most of it was probably fairly predictable; the leader of the Extinctionists must intend to put her on exhibition as a strange and exotic beast for all the Extinctionists to see, and then they would kill her. But would they torture her for information about the rest of the fairy people before that? Would they cut her open to see how her insides were different from a Mud Man's?

Holly's stomach was twisting in knots and her sweat felt cold against her face. This was how she was going to spend the last few hours of her life, confined, unable to move or speak. She would be helpless to do a single thing but die in the end, trapped in a breathless, closed space so far from the sky, all dreams and hopes for the future cut short. Like her mother.

Don't succumb, Holly ordered herself. She was trained to deal with situations such as this, to not allow these kinds of tricks to get to her.

But of course, Holly hadn't had that training yet. Not in this body.

How much longer can it be? Holly wondered. She had been counting the seconds, the minutes for some time now, so she knew at least twenty minutes had passed with no movement from anyone or anything. But she was certain her count must have been off by a fair margin, that she must have been mentally speaking one number after the next at a rate abnormally slow, because she'd never known twenty minutes to last so long. She did not think she could last another twenty, let alone an hour, or two hours – or an entire day. Sometimes interrogators left their prisoners for days or weeks on end. But surely Kronski would be too impatient for that. Surely.

Tension and exhaustion continuously ate away at her strength. She felt a droplet of sweat run down over her closed eyelid and get caught in her eyelashes. It itched terribly and she wanted to reach up and wipe it away, but Holly's hands were still bound behind her back, straining uselessly against the bonds.

Panic had been bubbling in her stomach for some time now, but now it turned to a wild broil as it rose up, pressing against her tight, military self-discipline, a panic even greater than the one that had threatened to surface when she was in the trunk of the Bentley with Artemis, or when Butler had first captured her in the souk.

What was happening? Why didn't little Artemis just hand her over already? What could they be waiting for?

I have to try to get out, she thought. Right now, or there won't be another chance. She couldn't last another twenty minutes.

Her reason told her now was definitely not the time, with her hands and feet bound, her mouth taped, and Butler sitting right there, not to mention in such a weakened physical state and low on magic. What she needed now was to have patience, to wait until a possible opportunity arose – but she could not stop the overwhelming sense of absolute, almost animal-like terror beginning to rise inside her, to take hold of her.

Once Artemis gave her to Kronski, she knew she would die in some horrible way after being gawked at by humans, having betrayed the existence of her race. The sense of impending doom was like the steady march of an approaching army, unstoppable. Above all else she did not want to shuffle to her death with her head bowed in meek acceptance, without having even tried to fight her way out, and it was that more than anything that pressed her irresistibly, stupidly into action.

Holly suddenly kicked out against the confines of the duffel, as though she could tear apart the fabric walls containing her with brute force alone, breathing hard through her nose as in vain she tried desperately to sit up using only the muscles in her stomach so she could press her head against the zipper to widen the hole.

But of course, her professional side, which would never have made such a mistake, knew it was useless before she'd even started moving. Holly had barely finished twisting onto her back to try to get her forehead against the zipper when something like two heavy iron clamps slammed down on her, one on her abdomen, one on her legs. Her own arms dug into her back as she struggled helplessly against the huge hands, like two four-hundred-pound barbells pinning her to the ground, but the more she fought, the more weight seemed to come down on her, crushing her.

Terror tried to seize her again and for a moment her neck arched back, eyes wild, her mind as blank as that of a caught rabbit, with no thought other than to thrash wildly and fight until she could no more.

Stop, said a very calm voice from somewhere in the back of her mind. Stop struggling. And this time, despite her terrified, inexperienced adolescent body, she listened to rationality. Though it took every bit of willpower she possessed and though she thought she might pass out from lack of air, which only made the instinct to fight that much stronger, Holly forced her body to at least imitate the appearance of calm.

Holly held her breath and waited, desperate with fear and pain, but with determination and sanity once again.

After about a minute of so, Butler's grip relaxed. Though she still felt the weight of his giant, bear-like hands, kept at the ready lest she start struggling again, her lungs were free now at least.

Holly concentrated on breathing again. In, out, in, out. But, as Butler still had one hand on her stomach, effectively covering her entire abdomen with just his palm alone, thinking about her breathing only seemed to draw her attention to yet another restraint.

Calm down, she told herself again. Calm. You can make it through. She kept up the words in a stream of encouragement, using everything she could think of she had ever heard as an officer, both from her own many real-life experiences and from instructional vids she had been shown during classes and training, until all the words began to blur together so that it was only the tone of them that mattered, continuing ever on in measured calm.

If little Artemis was trying to play mind games with her, she was playing right into his hands – would be continuing to play into his hands – if she went into another frenzy. But still her instincts were telling her to fight to the last breath. She tried to ease the tension in her muscles through concentration and force of will, but every flickering thought about what awaited her that passed through her head would only stiffen them again.

Holly felt as though she was consuming all the air in the bag and she tentatively moved her nose up next to the opening as she had before, though afraid of Butler coming down on her again.

Holly wondered briefly why Butler hadn't sedated her already after her multiple attempts to escape. Perhaps he was simply utterly confident he could keep her trapped without resorting to that, and he was probably right. However, this was about as much thought as Holly could squeeze out of her feverish brain.

Holly's eyes remained closed her. Her arms behind her back were so sore, her mouth burned with itching. She needed to think more clearly than this, to get control. She wasn't an animal, or even a ordinary civilian, but a ranked officer of the LEP. She did not have to fall prey to her instincts, that's what Commander Root would tell her. It was a disgrace to her organization and her position to behave this way.

The heat and stale air and tiny space clouded everything, and Holly turned her full attention again to attaining a complete state of calm. Even if she could see no way out at the moment, if she was smart she would use this time as a sort of reprieve to rest a bit, instead of letting herself fall to pieces from this psychological manipulation. Both her mind and body could certainly use a break and she would be in better condition to grab a chance for escape if one presented itself.

Holly concentrated on trying to force her racing, muddled thoughts into a meditative state, to make her brain soothingly blank and empty, or at the very least get herself to think about something other than the situation she was in.

Just imagine you're far away from here, she murmured silently to herself, the tone of her thoughts low, as though trying to gently coax a pet into sleep.

She summoned an image of a wide, clear blue sky, of herself soaring high above the surface of the earth, Foaly's latest wing rig model strapped to her back, arms outstretched like a bird's and a cool breeze against her face. She corralled her thoughts, trying to slip into that place she loved, to not just see it, but feel it, that place completely open on every side of her that allowed her to be free of absolutely everything, just like that last day of the Kraken Watch mission.

But that felt like an age ago now. And so, even though Holly pictured the scene as clearly as she could, wishing to lose herself in the memory, the approach refused to work. Far from being able to temporarily forget about her surroundings, Holly was suddenly filled with a longing for the open sky, making the stiffness in her legs and burning of her bonds only that much more unbearable.

Though Holly had her skittish instincts in check for now, boredom, discomfort, and anxiety still felt as though they were swirling together and congealing in her veins, paralyzing her, trying to eat away at any last vestige of willpower and hope, the smell of her own sweat continuing to fill her nostrils.

Unable to stop herself, Holly's eyes flickered open and upon seeing only darkness, she closed them again. Please, she thought. Please.

Before she could stamp out the wretched, useless plea, a face briefly flashed behind her eyelids, but it was not her mother's face this time, as it had been in the Bentley.

Holly's breathing steadied very slightly. She could not say that what brought on the momentary sense of calm was the belief that her human friend would be able to do something, to pull off the miraculous. In all likelihood, even he had no power here, stuck in the past with so few resources, and relying on him to rescue her would only make it all that much harder when she realized what she had already known, that it was beyond even him.

Perhaps that hopelessness was only a side effect of where she was, part of the panic that came with the claustrophobia that interfered with her rational thought processes. Perhaps it was only a cowardly self-protectiveness that made her so set on the reality that he could do nothing, because so often a crushed hope was worse than no hope at all. But even as that possibility occurred to her, it did not much matter as she still did not feel strong enough to allow her thoughts to turn in that direction, to allow herself to hope.

She thought rather that it was the reminder that she was not utterly alone on this trip that had brought that barest flicker of warmth to her chest. However, by now it was already fading. She needed something else to get her out of this place, even if it was just mentally, even if it only lasted her a little while.

Holly knew what direction her mind most wanted to turn, what thoughts she would dwell on if she had the choice, something that recently could hold her attention even more than thoughts of flying. But she had been staunchly resisting the pull thus far, as she had been since early that morning at least a century ago, since she had sat atop the hood of that stolen car.

How hard she had been trying not to think about it, her connection to her human friend beyond their occasional collusion to accomplish common interests as a team. To minimize the pain of the treachery, it was easier to try think of him as a friend who was more like an acquaintance, who she had interacted with often and so knew well enough to speak easily with, but ultimately little more than a superficial relationship underlying it, the both of them always wary of the other and driven only by shared goals.

She knew what she really wanted was to revert back to how they had been before Hybras. She wanted so much to be only galled and angered as he manipulated and prodded her where he wanted her to go, as she had been when he had held back information during the operation in the Spiro Needle in order to force her to do something he knew very well went against her beliefs at a crucial moment, rather than hurt and betrayed by someone who she had come to trust. A sudden, unexpected blow from behind hurt so much more than a blow she had been prepared for.

Holly had set up a blockade in her mind that would debar any aberrant thoughts of her friend, to allow nothing to leak through beyond what she had ever thought of him before this trip. She must not think like that, she had known, without even needing to put that knowledge into definitive words in her mind. But right now, none of that seemed to matter very much.

The rough material pressed against her face, Butler's enormous, powerful hand was still on her stomach, her insides were writhing and coiling like snakes as she thought of the humiliating and painful end that would soon come to meet her. She made up her mind.

Her eyes still closed, Holly tentatively opened the door to those thoughts yet again, the one she had slammed the wall down on the moment Artemis told her what he had done. She was not giving in or changing her mind, only using the unwelcome feelings and desires of this ridiculous adolescent mind that was responsible for weakening her to draw some thread of comfort and peace where she could.

The door creaked open slowly, bit by bit, and she found herself thinking first of the connection between them. She knew his intelligence made him someone on who she could rely more than anyone else after they had lost three years from the world together, and she realized that since Hybras there was a delusional fantasy playing somewhere in her subconscious, a delusion that he more than anyone would always be waiting for her, even if no one else was, because even if she was no longer needed in her world, to him at least she would always be one of his most important playing pieces...

The strength of the thoughts was stronger than Holly expected. She found herself wanting to delve deeper, to push the gratifying images provided by her memories further than their shared looks of elation when they had returned from Hybras alive with the demons they had saved in tow, the way his thin lips would curl slightly in amusement in that irritating way when he knew he was saying something that would annoy her, the serious look that would come over his face mirrored in her own as they worked together to riddle out the logistics of one of his strategies.

Holly hesitated a moment, however, holding back the thoughts before they could run away with her. She opened her eyes to stare hard at the inside of the duffel. Allowing herself to pursue this avenue of reflection so completely flew in the face of everything she had been so forcibly trying to deny all along. Like deliberately breaking a childhood oath for the first time, or forsaking a pledge of loyalty. There was a wrongness about it, a certain guilt, as though she were taking an illicit drug to ease some kind of pain even while she knew the relief to be temporary at best.

However, as a soldier, it had to be right for her to use whatever resources were available to her, to use whatever means necessary to carry her through. She so needed something on which she could focus, that would help her shut out everything else and bolster her failing mental strength. If her end was to come soon, getting through this right now was all that was of concern to her in the world.

Holly slowly relaxed, letting her eyes fall gently closed, her mind to drift freely on the uplifting breeze of a different kind of open sky. She pushed her imagination further, opening the gate, and almost without even trying her mind began to construct an impossible, yet relieving scenario of rescue.

Holly had never been much one for daydreams. She had always preferred to act and get things done to accomplish her goals rather than sit around making herself crazy by imagining what it would be like to have them fulfilled, even when she had been an adolescent for real. But after all the experiences they had been through, the pictures seemed to fold out vividly of their own accord, as though such a scene had always existed in her mind but had refused to be realized until now.

She could see Artemis contriving some elaborate scheme, a scheme that not only got her out, but fixed the damage done by her exposure to humans other than Butler and little Artemis. The details of the plan remained vague and out of focus, that section being part of Artemis's creativity and so beyond her to invent, but the most important moments were sharp and clear behind her eyes. She could see him stepping in at the last possible minute, as annoyingly melodramatic as ever, as in his conquering of Jon Spiro.

"Oh, so you decided to come for me after all," said her own imaginary voice in an offhand, almost scathing tone. "What an honor. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten I was here."

The imaginary Artemis smiled back slightly, a bit of a mischievous glint in his eye as he replied, "Of course I came. I need you too, after all."

She could have almost laughed at that, that sort of indirect reply to her own statement from back at Rathdown Park. Like he would ever say anything like that, even as a joke.

Yet she could imagine it, somehow. The scene continued, his expression turning slightly awkward as he added as an excuse, as though afraid to be caught saying something too nice, "Yes – I couldn't get back to our time without you, Holly." Yet even so, as he said it she saw him continue to have an almost gentle expression, a face filled with relief that she was all right, even if he would never admit it aloud.

"But this isn't over yet," he would say, switching quickly to business mode as ever. "There is still work to do."

"Okay," she replied firmly, her expression every bit as determined as his. "Then what next?"

Without thinking, Holly breathed a sort of sigh, almost dreamily. The fact that no air came out of her taped mouth suddenly reawakened her to her surroundings and her predicament.

Holly found that Butler had taken his hand off her, and she realized too she could hear the voices of little Artemis and the Extinctionist leader she'd seen at the souk, Doctor Damon Kronski. It was finally happening now then.

Strangely enough, though physically she was still every bit as sore all over and her limbs just as heavy with exhaustion, her mind felt refreshed.

Thoughts as sharp as a blade once again, she stared hard at the tiny hole by the zipper of the bag, and for the first time she really believed Artemis probably would come up with something to get her out. Whether it would work or not with only Mulch as an ally and up against Kronski along with his entire organization was anyone's guess, but they would all do their best and she was more than ready to give Kronski and the demon-Artemis brat from this side of eight years as hard a time as she could manage if she got the chance.

Better watch out, little Ah-temis, she thought, using Kronski's accented mis-pronunciation of Artemis's name she had overheard earlier, testing the range of movement of her arms and legs experimentally once again. Because it looks like your captive just got her second wind.

A/N: Well, this chapter started out at a reasonable length, but just grew and grew as I tried to improve it until it turned into this... Which actually creates other problems (I know angst is kind of the MO of the fanfiction, but I don't like for it to drag on and on like this. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a way I could think of to break it up... And it makes the ending no matter what it is more anticlimactic...)

Lol, but I guess I'll hold back from complaining too much this time since I am done with the last of my exams now, yay.

Anyway, thanks so much for reviewing! Hope to hear from you. (:

Posted 12/19/11