Alex got out of his room easily enough. Despite the obvious threat his sleepwalking presented to his safety, Butler had yet to install the automatic locks on his door that would prevent him from leaving his room after 9 p.m. So for the moment he simply propped a chair under the knob from the outside, which Alex could easily slide away with aid from a yardstick slipped under the door. It was a simple tactic but the bodyguard had yet to catch him, Artemis's supposed "fairy" antics had seen to that.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that Alex had no knowledge of his brother's plan. He'd been told of it of it, of course, but he'd always assumed the older boy was messing with him. A practical joke; Most unlike Artemis.

But he'd decided to put that on the back burner and spend the moment focusing on the short, stout figure making its way to Butler's unconscious form.

Clasping the safe's treasure tightly in his fist, the dwarf turned to retrace his steps. To his utter amazement there was a human entangled in the banisters. Mulch was not one bit surprised that his recyclings had managed to hurl the elephantine Mud Man several yards through the air. Dwarf gas had been known to cause avalanches in the Alps. What did surprise him was the fact that the man had managed to get so close to him in the first place.

"You're good," said Mulch, wagging a finger at the unconscious bodyguard. "But nobody takes a body blow from Mulch Diggums and stays on their feet."

"Most say the same about him."

Commander Root's threats from his earpiece cut off abruptly as Mulch swung around to locate the source of the new voice.

"Phew, surprised me there kid" Mulch said, exhaling the breath he'd been holding. The human in question was hardly a threat on any level. He wasn't much taller than Mulch. And based on the blue cotton shirt he was using rub one of his eyes and the too-long plaid pants, he'd say that the blast had woken the Mud Boy up.

"You're not the first. So how'd you pick the whisper lock? The cellar door, sure, but that thing's tiny." The dark haired boy asked as if talking about the weather.

The latter half of the question caught Mulch by surprise. "How'd you know I came in through the cellar?"

"You just told me," Again, casually. "Plus any other room and the cameras would've caught you."

"Huh," Mulch said, reluctantly impressed. "You're a pretty smart 7-year-old aren't you?"

The hand the Mud Boy was using to rub his eye dropped at his words, and his eyes narrowed in an irritated glare.

"I'm 8 years old; in fact I'll be 9 next week." He said, "Now how'd you get into the safe? No, better question: how'd you even get past the hallway without being spotted?"

Before Mulch could come up with an answer to the questions or one of his own to, hopefully, draw the Mud Boy's attention off him, the human looked past him.

"Never mind," he said, his face falling, "You'd probably better get outta here, I don't think Butler's gonna be in a good mood when he wakes up."

Sure enough the Mud Man was stirring, the whites of his eyes showing beneath fluttering lids.

Root's voice crackled in the dwarf's ears. "Get a move on, Convict, before that Mud Man gets up and rearranges your innards. He took out an entire Retrieval team, you know."

Mulch swallowed, any bravado he had left suddenly deserting him.

"An entire Retrieval team? Maybe I should get back underground… for the good of the mission."

Skipping hurriedly around the groaning bodyguard, Mulch took the steps two at a time. No point in worrying about creaking stairs when you've just sent the intestinal equivalent of Hurricane Hal scurrying around the corridors. But when he spared a moment the look over his shoulder, the pajama-clad Mud Boy had vanished.

The moment Mulch glanced back at Butler to confirm his statement; Alex dived behind a nearby table. He knew the bodyguard would be too busy going after the flatulent creature to notice him, but it was too well past his bedtime for him to risk it.

Once Butler was no longer facing him, Alex scurried further down the hallway, soundless on his nimble almost-9-year-old feet despite how tired he was. He headed roughly in the direction the wine cellar aligned to on the first floor; he was still curious about this Mulch character.

Sure enough, there was the dwarf in question, headed directly under the banister Alex was on, hidden under a cover of darkness from the lights below.

Just as he was about to pass under him and disappear into the cellar, another equally-as-short figure appeared literally from out of nowhere; a female with short auburn hair wearing some sort of jumpsuit.

Mulch addressed her by name. "_ Short."

She did the same, though it was clear the meeting wasn't planned.

Alex knew they weren't speaking English or anything like it for that matter. But something in him instinctively recognized the language and set to work translating it. They talked too fast for him to discern whole sentences, but he did get snippets and fragments.

"Julius… had to do it."

"… lost your magic…"

"… his safe." Mulch held up a strange palm-sized book in his hand. Obviously not human literature but clearly Artemis's.

"… Book! ... playing into his hands…"

Alex barely caught a movement below his view that could only be Mulch opening the cellar door, apparently asking her to come with him.

"…eyeball orders… house." She replied. A bizarre response that made the younger boy wonder if he'd heard- or rather translated- right.

"… magical… rituals…" Mulch said back, there was more at the end but Alex didn't make any sense of it before a series of sharp noises drifted down from further up the hall. A glance confirmed it: Butler was getting up.

Mulch and his apparent friend appeared to have the same idea Alex had earlier: run and hide, though he recognized one final word from Mulch: "Retrieval". The same word he'd said to his earpiece on the landing.

The word seemed to give his companion an idea as her arms and torso faded out. She said something Alex was too distracted to make out and then faded away entirely, her widened grin the last thing to go.

Alex still wasn't sure what was going on, in fact by this point he was 80% sure he was dreaming. But two things were obvious: first, this creature was planning to do something that probably wouldn't end well for whomever she was planning for; the second was a conclusion he almost always reached in out-of-ordinary situations: this was Artemis's doing.