The Foul Team

by freudwithwings

Hired by the LEP as a consultant, Artemis finds himself at the centre of a growing crisis. He was right: human children ARE getting smarter. Webisode 3.02.5: Homecoming is bittersweet, especially at three in the morning. But, like most things, it's easier with friends.

16. 206: Short Circuited (1)

EPISODE 2.06: SHORT CIRCUITED

Foul Team races to censor a musical prodigy only to discover he's got more than a song up his sleeve.

AN: Heads up that we refer to and discuss mental illness as relating to The Atlantis Complex in this episode. If you're worried that there might be a trigger in here for you, feel free to send a message our way to clarify.

-x-

For years, Holly and Mulch had kept a running bet on which of their friends would be the first to create a robot capable of ending the world. This was a surprisingly complicated wager; firstly, they'd had to narrow their definitions of both "robot" and "end of the world" to make sure there was no room for ambiguity about the terms of the bet. Secondly, the fact that there were multiple contenders in this race was alarming in and of itself. Smart money was on either Foaly or Artemis, with the odds fluctuating between the two as bad ideas struck (and were promptly shot down, sometimes literally if needed), though they didn't have a monopoly on the threat. Minerva's brief-lived interest in artificial intelligence as it related to human psychology had been remarkably frightening, and both elf and dwarf dreaded the day No.1 realized that he could experiment with combining magic and technology.

The invention of Icky had seemed to tip the balance irreparably in Foaly's (dis)favor, although Mulch had remained adamant that Foul Team's artificial intern had not yet shown any murderous tendencies despite his short-lived career as a revolutionary. Holly had retorted that it was a matter of time.

So far, though, so good. The world remained more or less intact despite (and arguably because of) the best efforts of their immediate social circle, and the prize pool remained unclaimed.

That is, until Holly opened the door to her apartment. She'd not planned to spend more than two minutes at home, needing to pick up some supplies before heading to the shuttleport to go aboveground and deal with this Dorian character, but her intent was derailed as she found herself face-to-screen with a modified dishwasher-on-wheels that blocked up the entirety of her front hall. For an absurd moment, she was in denial: The new dishwasher had arrived earlier that week and the delivery-gnome had already taken the old one away.

And then she remembered that Artemis had been the one to sign for the delivery, and that he had reassured her over text that the old one "wouldn't be a problem any more." Clearly, they weren't operating under the same functional definition of the word "problem."

"No. Not today, thanks," she said, one hand resting on her neutrino just in case the dishwasher decided to attack and voice steady just in case it could sense fear. Not only had Artemis programmed its interface screen to display a pixelated face, but he had added mechanical arms. Holly was fairly sure there was absolutely no plausible reason any dishwasher should be allowed wheels, arms, and a face.

And then, horror of horrors, it spoke: "AJSDFLSKJAFLKJSDFAOIEWJFAOIWEJF."

D'arvit. Holly drummed her fingers against the barrel of her blaster, mentally revising the murderbot betting odds. "Say that again."

A smarter enemy would have heard the threat in her voice and remained silent. Almost too cheerfully, the machine obliged with her request:

"AJSDFLSKJAFLKJSDFAOIEWJFAOIWEJF?"

There was an implied question this time. Holly considered the situation. Obviously, it had understood her well enough to be sarcastic - she wasn't sure if this was a positive or negative development, but she knew from past experience that Mud Boy would be insufferable for weeks if he returned belowground to find that she had shot one of his projects without definitive proof that it deserved to die.

There was really only one safe response. "Go away."

"ADKLFSDLF," the dishwasher agreed, and rolled backwards down the hall. The pixelated face grinned unblinkingly at her as it went.

She watched until the machine had backed into Artemis's room, the metal arm awkwardly closing the door behind it, and then decided she wasn't quite satisfied yet. She hesitated only a moment before poking her head into the room. The wider space had allowed the dishwasher enough room to turn around, revealing a handwritten note taped to the back of its chassis. Artemis still handwrote Gnommish in spirals; she wasn't sure if it was out of habit or purely an annoyance tactic, forcing her to crane her neck to read the message:

Holly;

This is MoriarTEA. Still in beta, may be glitchy. He's just a baby, so play nice.

-A

"Right," she said, more to herself than anything, "I can work with that. Nap time for baby."

She pulled out of the room just in time, for the dishwasher had heard her words and was starting to turn around again. Holly slammed the door shut, and then fused the handle with her neutrino to ensure the potential murderbot could not get out. Artemis would have to use his laser pen to physically clean out the lock's mechanisms. Good, she thought. Hope it takes him ages to get back in there.

There were going to be words over this later.

-x-

Diggums and Day Private Investigators had been enjoying a break between cases when Mulch received a short but alarmed message from Holly about new information relevant to the murderbot bet. Assuming that Icky was finally making a play for world domination, Mulch had decided to drop by the Foul Team office and watch the ensuing fireworks.

Unfortunately, the office was relatively quiet when he waltzed through the door. The operatives were working efficiently at their desks, Icky was humming to himself as he rocked back and forth in the corner of the room, and Holly was nowhere to be seen. Nor, realized Mulch, was Artemis.

The dwarf wandered towards Dodo's desk. She tensed, one arm half-lifted in case Mulch was hungry for sushi and reached for the fish tank. He pretended not to notice and asked, "Any idea where I can find Holly?"

Caltrop looked up from behind his computer. "Holly went aboveground b-because Artemis built a murderbot."

Mulch punched the air in victory. "Yes! Knew that kid had it in him!"

Slightly alarmed, Dodo shook her head. "No? She went to join him for a Changeling matter."

That was disappointing. Still, Holly's message had mentioned a murderbot and Caltrop had to have heard something about the matter even if he'd mixed up the context. "The murderbot?"

Caltrop shrugged. "She seemed really - glub - annoyed about it? Much more worried about that than - glub - the pop star."

"Ha!" said Mulch. That was very promising. He sent another message to Holly asking for details and then asked as an aside, "So, pop star Changeling - what did they do?"

The water sprite shrugged again. "Wrote a song in Gnommish and - glub - wants to perform it at his c-concert tonight."

"Huh. Is he good?"

As Caltrop's musical exposure lay almost entirely in the niche glub-step genre, he hadn't any idea. "He's one of - glub - those m-musicians that goes around with j-just one name? That means they're b-big, right?"

"Sure. What's the name?"

"Dorian?"

If Mulch's jaw wasn't currently hinged, it would have hit the floor. Even so, it came close. "Dorian!? Holly and Artemis get to meet Dorian and I'm missing it!? And on the same day that Artemis creates a murderbot, too. How come I always get saddled with your messes, but show up too late for the fun days?"

-x-

Artemis did not look like he was having fun when Holly found him on the sidewalk outside the concert venue. He was glaring at one of the "DORIAN LIVE!" posters on the outside of the building, his hand clenched in a fist. Juliet was actually giving him a respectful distance - not too far to protect him should the need arise, but not close enough to suffer through his complaints. Still shielded, Holly drew up beside Artemis before saying in a low voice, "So we're here to stop a pop star from singing?"

"Unfortunately, we actually have a bigger problem than one Gnommish song."

"I'll say," said Holly, still steamed about the encounter in her apartment. "I have had more than enough of your inventions coming back to bite us in the -"

"That makes two of us!" he snapped, before pulling a hand through his hair and breathing out between clenched teeth.

Holly noticed that he was already stressed, and chose to ignore it for the sake of making a point about acceptable and inacceptable usages of worn-out household appliances. "Fowl. Why would you make something like that!"

"Well, I didn't make it like this, obviously! And I was trying to save the planet, even though my mental state was - clouded - at the time."

"Artemis. Since when has saving the planet ever worked out for - wait, mental state? Are you okay?"

"Of course they cluster together in groups of four for best effect," the human continued, sounding extremely put-out and ignoring both her interruption and concern. "That's the easiest way to harness their potential without causing too much interface delay, which would lend itself towards lag in the cross-wiring which could cause a catastrophic failure reaction - I don't know why I didn't think of that - actually, I do know exactly why that didn't occur to me as a potential solution to the problem, and it's incredibly irritating that it was obviously apparent to-"

"You made four of them?!" Holly blanched, wondering where Artemis had attained the other dishwashers, where he was storing them now, and if the so-called glitches in MoriarTEA's programming were the result of such a catastrophic failure.

He fixed her with a stare, cutting off his technical explanation with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I made thousands of them. You know this."

She blinked, trying desperately to ignore the mental image of animatronic dishwashers overrunning the world. "For the love of Frond, we'd better be talking about two different things right now."

"What are you - oh, MoriarTEA?" He lowered his hand. "You met him, then. I trust all was satisfactory?"

"Let's just say that I was going to shoot it, but then I sealed it in your room instead."

The human deflated slightly. "Oh. Did he get your drink order wrong?"

"My what?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Either he was going to offer you tea, or he would peg you as hostile and attempt to drive you from the premises. If the latter, I figured you could handle him."

To her credit, Holly reacted well to learning the robot's mission. "A security system that offers you tea. Only you would - well, maybe - no, not even Foaly would make something like that."

"Need I remind you that Foaly programmed Icky to know multiple human showtunes?"

"...Fair point. But at least Icky's language interface works."

"The language interface wasn't functional?" Artemis frowned, and then shook his head. "Apologies, then. I'll iron that wrinkle out later. No, I was talking about these." He lifted a hand, turning his palm up for her inspection.

She frowned, waved a hand over her helmet's visual interface to activate the visor's zoom function, and scanned his hand. After a second, her helmet automatically located and magnified the objects of interest, bringing four small devices into clear view. They looked like miniature snowflakes, each one uniquely formed within a perfect circle, all covered with a faint reflective coating that glimmered slightly under her scrutiny. They clumped together in the center of his palm, joined by the thinnest of fibres radiating outwards from the center of each one. "Fowl?"

"Yes," he said, not bothering to draw out the charade of that question. "Those would be my nano-wafers. Here. In Russia. With several significant technical upgrades upon my basic design."

She ground her teeth. "Fine, I'll ask. How did this happen?"

"It seems that when Vedette hacked into the files shared between my servers and Foaly's systems, the C-Cube blueprints weren't the only ones that were compromised. The nano-wafers had also been kept in the same subfolder, so I ran a scan when I arrived."

"And you knew to run this scan because….?"

He gestured to the poster and Holly took a closer look. Below the "DORIAN LIVE!" heading was the proclamation that the tour was "ECO-FRIENDLY" and going to "SAVE THE WORLD." She glanced back at Artemis and realized he was now visibly sulking. It wasn't a good look for him.

"D'arvit," she sighed, and shot a pointed look at Artemis that was entirely missed due to the fact that she was still shielded. "Guess we have to go stop a Changeling from ruining the world with his tech. Again."

"Saving the world," corrected Artemis bitterly. "With my tech."

-x-

With Holly around to keep an eye on Artemis, Juliet now felt safe splitting from the two of them to investigate something that had been worrying her. The security didn't seem quite right at the venue: unusually stiff and especially glowery. She didn't like it. The other two could look into the pop star; she would prepare for the bigger problems they'd be dealing with soon enough.

Upon reaching the press entrance, Artemis and Holly were passed by a group of aides - all of whom seemed to be in a desperate hurry to escape the building. For a moment Holly wondered if Juliet were right, but a closer inspection revealed that two of them were actually holding hands over their mouths and making choking gasps.

"Crying?" asked Holly, hand slipping to her weapon as her gaze darted around the hallway in a search for the potential threat.

"Laughing," corrected Artemis, frowning.

He took advantage of their preoccupation to palm a press pass, clipping it to his lapel before approaching the security. Usually, he would make small talk to distract the guard enough to slip past. This time, cover was provided by another man shouting on the phone as he stepped out of the room.

"Don't tell me that," the man was yelling as Artemis slipped past, "I know that. But you try telling him! Think he'll listen any better to you? He's a nightmare! I swear, I am this close to actually quitting this time…"

"We're in the right place, then," observed Holly.

Artemis coughed. "That is the reaction people tend to have around Changelings."

"You would know."

They passed through a short hallway and then another set of double doors into a room that had clearly been set up for a round of press interviews. People scattered around the rim of the room wore expressions ranging from frustration to utter despair. In the centre, surrounded by a number of lights, cameras, and microphones, were two people engaged in the strangest duet Artemis had ever heard.

The older gentleman was currently singing tunelessly and uncertainly: "Your show is getting… known for being… green. Could you elaborate… on what your… new inventions…" He paused to think, "mean?"

Beside him was a teenager with a carefully side-swept haircut, a careless slouch to his spine that Artemis could tell was feigned for the press, and a smile that rivalled the camera flashes for brightness. Clearly Dorian Maslov had been working advertising deals into his publicity tour - on his nose perched thick-framed brand-name glasses with the recognizable Google Glass clipped over his left eye, his feet were encased in a pair of neon-coloured sneakers that had definitely cost too much money, and he wore a hoodie with another logo emblazoned across the chest. He sang back without hesitation, his voice clear and strong:

"My nano-wafers are the bomb! They're powered by the sun. They bio-degrade and don't pollute, and vanish when they're done!"

Clearly pleased with himself, the pop star sank further into his seat and folded his arms with a grin.

"These nano-wafers… then….I guess…..are pretty great creations?"

"I could spend all day telling you about their applications! They generate juice to run my show, and they reflect away the sun's hot glow. So they can help fight climate change -"

This was too much. The interviewer stared at Dorian dully, clearly reluctant to continue playing the rhyming game.

"Come on, you can do it," the pop star said. The interviewer blinked. Dorian rolled his eyes and hissed out of the side of his mouth: "What rhymes with climate change?"

The interviewer struggled. "...You're… deranged?"

"There you go! That'll work!" Dorian spread his arms in triumph, speaking in a normal voice again. "Give this man a hand, guys!" he called to the other members of the press. "What a performer." He beamed. "Who's next? Any volunteers, or should I pick from the crowd?"

Even though Holly was invisible, Artemis knew exactly what face she was making. It was probably similar to the expression on his own face. He sidled up beside one of the other reporters in the room, being careful to keep his head down as Dorian chose his next victim. "He sings every interview, doesn't he?"

She licked her lips nervously. "Every single one. His fanbase eats it up."

"Just when I thought Changelings couldn't get any worse," Holly muttered.

-x-

When the round of interviews were over, a small team of personnel swarmed the pop star in a coordinated effort to herd him towards the desired exit. Dorian was having none of that. He waited just long enough for his trademark side-swept fringe to be fixed into place before spinning around.

"Wait," he sang, pointing, "You. I need to sing to you."

Artemis, observing the organized chaos from the edge of the room, raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Everyone else, shoo!" To emphasize his point, the teenager flapped his hands until the personnel began reluctantly filing out of the room. When the last of them had left the room, Dorian shut the door firmly and fiddled with his phone before returning to his stool.

Thankfully, when he addressed Artemis this time, Dorian spoke normally: "So who are you?"

"Member of the press," began Artemis.

The singer cut him off. "No, you're not. You were barely paying attention to my interview earlier, so you're much too self-absorbed to be on the holding side of the camera. And I'd been curious what a real Gnommish accent would sound like, but now that I've heard you speak I can picture it much more clearly. It's not quite an accent you've got, but I think the fairy tongue does slip in around the vowels a little - is that the language you speak at work, then? You must be very accustomed to it. Also, you are exceptionally pale. Do you live underground, too?"

"So that's what that feels like," Artemis murmured. He could have argued that thirty seconds of the interview had been more than sufficient to get the gist of the entire thing, as well as infer a great deal about Maslov's character. For instance, making assumptions about the personalities of strangers based on the degree of attention they were paying to your current exploits was juvenile to the extreme and no self-respecting genius would be caught dead doing it. Or Artemis could have informed the other Changeling that he had made a concentrated effort to remove any trace of an accent from his voice, and if any regional inflection could be inferred from his speech patterns he was certain that it was purely coincidental. Also, he could have pointed out that exceptionally pale was a lifelong affliction that had nothing to do with his current working conditions. Instead, he straightened his tie and sighed. "In that case, hello. I'm Artemis Fowl. We need to talk about your set list for tonight."

Dorian grinned. "I know who you are, Apollo. Who's your friend?"

"Artemis," he said firmly, even though the pop star was clearly just trying to irritate him. "What friend?"

Dorian nodded towards Artemis's right. "Your friend the pixie. Or is she an elf? It's hard to tell with that helmet over her head."

"D'arvit," said Holly, unshielding. "Well, this is fun and all, but now we're going to have to mindwipe you."

The pop star stumbled back, throwing his hands up in alarm. "Wait! Wait wait wait! You can't do that!" He looked to Artemis for confirmation. "Can they do that?"

"I have it on good authority that they can," he said, and was proud of himself for keeping his grin to a minimum. "Sometimes it even sticks."

Holly rounded on Artemis, snapping. "Do you think you're helping? Do you honestly think you are helping? Is that ever a thought you have had: 'Oh look, there's a situation here. I'm gonna help.' Like the tea thing. Did you think -"

"Occasionally," said Artemis, cutting her off, "yes, I do try to help."

"Like with the nano-wafers," said Dorian, apparently oblivious. "By the way, if this is about royalties, I'm sure we can work something out. I'll even give you extra if you don't erase my memory of this conversation. Because those nano-wafers are awesome. I'm sure you thought you were helping when you designed those!"

A silence greeted his statement. Then Holly couldn't hold her laugh back any longer. At least, it sounded like a laugh - it might have started as a sob. "Let's not talk about what he was thinking back when he built those. Pretty sure nobody wants to know."

Artemis had the sense to look mildly embarrassed. "My intentions were good," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Dorian gave him another once-over. "To be fair, I would have approached you about royalties as soon as I planned on making use of the blueprints, but I honestly didn't think you'd notice. Your plans were such a mess that I got the impression that you were just some eccentric, scatter-brained Irish nutjob."

The word choice was unfortunate.

Holly barked another laugh, and Artemis whipped a glare in her direction.

Far below the Earth's surface on the other end of the LEPFoul communications, Mulch let out a low whistle. "Who's the nut? You're the nut! Who's the nut? You're the -"

Artemis turned his comm off. Stiffly, he said, "I'm better now."

"Just like that?" asked a skeptical Dorian.

"Yes, just like that."

"What, like magic?"

"Not magic," said Artemis, affronted. "Magic was the problem."

"Because it sounds like a magic solution, too. Those blueprints were wacked out. You don't just get better from that. Unless you were on something. Were you on something? No judgement! Just curious."

Artemis gritted his teeth. "I was not 'on something.' I just got better."

Dorian gave Holly a knowing look. "Oh, clever. You let him think he got better after you cured him! Well done. Guess that's how you get that to stick."

"No," said Artemis and Holly in unison. Then, also in unison, they turned to look at each other.

Artemis opened his mouth. Closed it again. Holly raised a hand. Lowered it.

Dorian did not wait to see the outcome of this apparently telepathic conversation. He took two steps back, slipped out the door, and booked it down the hallway. Did fairies have telepathic abilities? he wondered, and made a mental note to further investigate when he was less occupied with running as though both his life and memory depended on it.

-x-

The answer to that question was, of course, that fairies did not have telepathic abilities. Neither did Artemis Fowl, as much as he might enjoy pretending to the contrary. Both he and Holly were, however, acutely aware of the fact that they both were wearing comms. Artemis might have turned his sound off but those below ground could hear every word of a conversation through Holly's helmet.

He lifted an eyebrow, and she shook her head a fraction of an inch. Artemis frowned, watching the elf unblinkingly. She held eye contact for long enough to convey her lack of regret, before conceding and dropping her chin. After a long pause, Artemis tapped his finger to his leg four times. Holly responded with two curt taps of her own. Both interpreted this to mean that any further conversation would be postponed until a more appropriate time.

Arguably, this silent exchange could be construed as a form of telepathy in and of itself - luckily, neither of them intended to make that particular case.

Perhaps it was a good thing Dorian was not there to see it.

-x-

When Artemis flicked the sound back on for his comms, Mulch was still chanting. "Who's the nut? It's yoouuuuu!"

He knew about what she'd done, too, Artemis realized. Mulch has always been able to joke about my Atlantis Complex, because he had it on good authority that there was no permanent damage done. He was unsure how he felt about that. In fact, he was unsure how he felt about any of this situation. It stung, but he was uncomfortably aware that he understood Holly's motivations for the healing - and subsequent deception - all too well. Even when he had come clean to his mother about the existence of the fairies, he had allowed Angeline to believe that he had kept all of the People's ransom gold. He did not need to speak with Holly to know that when she decided to not mention her involvement in his recovery from his Atlantis Complex, it was for his own good.

That didn't make it any easier to swallow. Fully aware of the glass house he was sitting in, Artemis knew he couldn't exactly throw stones. Still, that wouldn't stop him from kicking at the rather large pebble that Holly had dropped through his roof.

From farther in the background, Caltrop's very confused question interrupted Artemis's musing: "Wait. Who's a nut?"

"Haven't you ever read Argon's book?" asked Mulch.

Artemis cleared his throat. "That particular part of the adventure had better not be in Argon's book."

"Wait. You never even read it?"

Despite being shaken by the discoveries of the last few minutes, Artemis covered it well. "After the mess he made reporting on the Manor Siege? Of course not. In that report, he'd literally described me as a 'dangerous creature.' Need I remind you that I was twelve years old at the time? A tad excessive, yes?"

Mulch grinned. "I was there, remember? I read that report too, and thought 'creature' was putting it mildly. For years, I was convinced you were a centuries-old vampire and that was why the bio-bomb didn't kill you. I had it alllll worked out." He beamed before muttering, "And then puberty happened. Threw a nasty wrench into that idea, let me tell you."

"Thank you for that analysis," said Artemis sourly. "I try."

Only Artemis Fowl would attempt to position adolescence as something he had endured for the sole sake of spiting Mulch's worldview.

"True friends," continued Mulch as though he hadn't heard, "are the ones that know puberty happened and don't hold it against you."

"I hold it against him," said Holly, not missing a beat and also covering her own thoughts well. "Anyway, have we given Dorian enough of a head start that he'll have let down his guard yet? Because I'd like to get this wrapped up soon."

"According to the tracker Artemis slipped on him," said Caltrop, "He's about to go on stage."

-x-

The sound of the crowd swelled as Dorian skidded out onto the stage. Still panting slightly, he fumbled one-handedly with his mic system while gesturing behind his back to the band so they would cover while he did so. Normally, he'd get wired up behind stage but things had been even more chaotic back there than usual - probably, Ivan the drummer had started another fight with the stage manager. Plus, Dorian hadn't recognized the blonde chick who'd waved him over to do the wiring. While the road crew did rotate out pretty frequently, Dorian wasn't going to take chances on a day like today. Dorian had simply scooped a spare headset mic up on the way past, perched it on his head, and figured he'd make do.

So now he was out of breath in front of a screaming crowd while his bandmates played the intro to their first song of the tour. Dorian waved, and thousands of fans roared in response. When he turned the mic on, the speakers picked up an odd crackle. Dorian turned it off, blew on the tip a couple of times, accidentally inhaled some of the cloud of nano-wafers that rose into the air, and hoped the tech was as friendly to the digestive system as the wacked-out blueprints had promised it would be. Then he shrugged, decided there was nothing he could do about it now even if it wasn't, and turned the mic back on.

"Welcome!" he shouted, and hopped back and forth to get in the mood of the first song. Luckily, the piece had a pretty extensive instrumental introduction, so Dorian had a chance to catch his breath.

Ba dum tsh!

Confused, Dorian nearly stumbled over the first line of the song. Percussion wasn't supposed to join in until the second half of the verse, no matter how often his drummer had argued for an earlier cue. He made a mental note to fire Ivan and finally follow through on his threat to replace him with a drum machine at the end of the tour.

Then he turned around and realized somebody had beaten him to it.

Ivan Tarroc wouldn't be finishing this show - or even starting it. He lay slumped over the bass drum, the cymbal stand knocked to the ground by a flung-out arm. Dorian took a moment to hope he was just unconscious before it sunk in that he had slightly bigger problems headed his way.

Apparently, the blonde chick had taken it personally that Dorian had refused her help. She was charging straight for him as the brawl spilled out on the stage behind her. Hoping to make this look like an intentional part of the show, Dorian hopped out of her path while singing his next line. He hadn't quite finished before the girl wrapped an arm around his waist and slung him over her shoulder without even breaking stride.

It was almost like she had practise scooping up people who would much rather be monologuing.

Dorian had the sense to turn his mic off again before yelling at her to put him down. He yelled first in English, and then in Russian, and then in Gnommish just in case.

"If I put you down, you die," she grunted in English finally, finding a staircase to bolt down. Dorian's head thunked against her back with every other step, and a large green ornament in her hair cracked against his shoulder with the ones in-between.

"If you don't -" he began, the words choked out of him as she hit flat ground again and took off at a sprint. "If you don't, my show -"

The girl groaned in exasperation and muttered something that could have been "strange things" or could have been "changelings"; neither option made much sense to him, but Dorian figured that it was impressive enough that she had the breath to spare after running like that. "You have bigger problems!"

"No, I don't - the nano-wafers -!"

-x-

Artemis was dealing with the nano-wafers as they spoke, fingers tapping lightly against the keyboard on his phone. He counted himself briefly lucky that, in his paranoia during the process of developing the tech, he'd left himself plenty of back doors in the programming to shut them down if necessary.

"Hey, Juliet?" asked Holly over the comms, shielded and standing guard at the door. "Mind asking the Changeling what possessed him to try selling that tech to the Russian mob?"

-x-

"What - on - earth - possessed you - to try selling that tech - to the Russian mob?"

This time when the ornament hit Dorian in the temple it was with an especially hard slap, almost like the girl had turned her head on purpose. He winced. "Finally out of breath?"

"Not yet," Juliet growled, pushing both hands to the nearest emergency exit door. Alarms started blaring; she paid them no mind.

Dorian tried a different tactic. "Mind putting me down yet? Please?"

Juliet didn't respond to that one.

Something occurred to Dorian. "Wait - the mob? I didn't - I would never - oh. Oh. Ivan. Of course." The pop star swore under his breath in colorful Russian before reaching for his headset in a moment of blind panic. Then he remembered turning it off, realized it'd fallen off his head during the flight anyways, and let his arm fall again with another livid curse.

-x-

Artemis raised an eyebrow at his fellow Changeling's vocabulary, but let it pass without comment. With a final tap of the keys, he initiated the self-destruct sequence of the nano-wafers. All throughout the auditorium puffed little clouds of dust that might have been seen as stage smoke effects had anyone been paying enough attention to notice them. As it was, at least twenty different people had called the cops, and the rest were scrambling to get out of there before those cops arrived.

This posed little problem to Juliet, who had been moving fast enough to avoid any crowd currents. Unfortunately, the members of the mob had been moving just as quickly in the opposite direction. As the building's halls formed a general ring around the main venue, this meant that both groups were bound to meet in the middle.

Coincidentally, this was also the point of best cell reception.

Artemis had just risen to his feet when the door at one end of the hall slammed open to admit Juliet and her loudly complaining burden. Half a second later, members of the Russian mafiya entered through the opposite door. Juliet froze, caught between the desire to keep her favorite (or new least-favorite, she hadn't yet decided) pop star out of harm's way, and the need to protect Artemis. The members of the mafiya, meanwhile, had no such conflict - until suddenly they realized who stood in their path.

Juliet understood exactly what the lead mobster said, because she'd heard the exact same words come out of Dorian's mouth several times already.

Three guns clattered to the floor. Then the bulky man barked an order in Russian, and the last armed man followed suit, looking especially rattled as the weapon dropped from his limp hand.

"Uh, what was that?" asked Dorian, attempting to twist around Juliet's arm to take in the scene. "Did he just say what I think he -?"

"We're so sorry, sir. We didn't realize this went all the way up to you!"

Still shielded at Artemis's side, Holly rubbed her face with her palm. "Does the mob have any reason I don't know about to be calling you 'sir?'"

Artemis didn't even bother responding to her. He was too busy staring down the mafiya with his iciest glare. "I'll forgive the transgression. This time."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"You have six and a half minutes. That will be sufficient time for your people to clear the exits and remove any physical trace of your presence here." He let the threat dangle unspoken in the air, not offering failure as an option.

"Yes, sir," said the mobster again. Then, hastily, he added again, "Thank you, sir." He gave Artemis half a bow and started to back up, nearly tripping over his dog in the process.

In the background, still hanging over Juliet's shoulder, Dorian whimpered. "What… is he?"

Juliet rolled her eyes. "Don't encourage him." Then, finally, she dropped the pop star unceremoniously to the floor.

-x-

During the search for his father a decade before, Artemis had established and maintained multiple safe-houses while working to cover all potential avenues for a rescue mission. Scrambling for cover or accommodations in a crisis situation would not have been an acceptable risk to take and so, of course, he had ensured it would not be necessary. In the years since, he had maintained several of these houses in the more obscure and strategic regions of the world, knowing it would only be a matter of time until at least one of them became useful.

As per usual, his guess had been a good one; Dorian's concert venue was under an hour away from the closest of these.

Juliet had bundled the entire party into an armored car as quickly as possible and now drove like Lucia was on their tail, knowing full well that "six and a half minutes" was exactly how long they had before the mob regrouped somewhere not very far away, counted their guns, and realized they had the advantage after all. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and occasionally she muttered under her breath about how her brother would not be happy about any of this.

While Artemis occupied his time by tapping away at his phone to check the remote security at their destination, Holly had pulled out her own tablet to tell Artemis's algorithm to prepare a mission writeup for LEPfoul. It was almost like nearly dying was something they did on a regular basis, and it freaked Dorian right out. By contrast, he was not nearly so prepared for all chaos to break loose at a moment's notice. Sandwiched in the backseat between Holly and Artemis, he rocked back and forth to a rhythm in his head, tapping his toes anxiously on the carpet as he tried to mentally compose a song about being swept off his feet by a mysterious girl with jade in her hair.

Inspiration wouldn't come. He had the melody, but the words weren't working for him. Relatively little rhymed with 'Juliet' in Gnommish.

"This is not good," he sang softly in the fairy tongue, trying to catch the tune. "That was the Russian mafiya," he continued, temporarily lowering the ice pack from his already-bruising face. "The Russian mafiya was scared of you."

"Yes," said Artemis, not turning to look at him. The elf on his other side was giving Dorian a warning look, as though she heartily disapproved of the reminder that humans were capable of learning her language. Given that she and Artemis had conversed in rapid Gnommish on the way to the car, the pop star felt vaguely offended as he switched back into Russian.

"Why was the mafiya scared of you? Who do you have to kill to get the mafiya scared of you?"

The question was purely rhetorical and Dorian immediately regretted asking it, in song or otherwise. Artemis turned to stare unblinkingly at the pop star, sizing him up before declaring calmly, "My father."

The hair on the back of Dorian's neck stood on end. He had no choice but to let that point digest for a moment before blurting in a more level voice, "Wait a minute! Your dad's still alive!"

"After they watched me kill him in cold blood, yes, he turned up several weeks later relatively unharmed." Artemis grinned. "The Russian mafiya is a superstitious bunch. They've somehow gotten it into their heads that I am one of the undead, and therefore not to be trifled with. Over the years, I've done nothing to dissuade that impression. Knew it would be useful someday."

Dorian whistled in appreciation. "And here I thought you were just crazy."

"Who says I can't be both?" said Artemis, lifting an eyebrow.

Holly pulled a face, not quite looking up from her tablet. "Fowl, play nice. I think Maslov's concussed. Be fair." To Dorian she explained, "Fowl's neither insane nor a vampire. You can calm down."

Dorian blinked. "I'll be honest with you: that's a relief. I do feel better now. And I'm not conc - oh, no. Has anybody spoken with Vedette lately? I'm assuming you found me through her. Is she -"

"Please tell me the mob doesn't know about her involvement."

The pop star shrugged, then put the ice pack back over his forehead. "Ivan knew, so they might. I'd really appreciate it if you could at least check on her."

A short discussion followed, even though everyone already knew the outcome: Juliet would fly back to Italy, while Holly remained with the two comparatively defenceless humans at the safe house.

It was just as well that Holly had agreed to stay: Dorian's concussion was more than hypothetical. As Juliet sped off down the driveway, Holly sat him down and attempted to heal Dorian's injuries. While the head injury and jade-ornament shaped bruising on his face were both easy enough to heal, the residual magic left around Dorian's brain would need at least twenty-four hours to dissipate off before a mind wipe could be safely attempted. The elf had considered explaining to the dazed pop star exactly why it was a bad idea to poke around in human neural pathways that had been recently infused with magic, realized he was already one misstep away from collapsing into hysterical Changeling melodrama (which was at least eight times worse than the typical, garden-variety Changeling melodrama), and decided to leave well enough alone. "Sleep it off, human," she grumbled, and slipped out of the room to get some fresh air.

Artemis didn't need an invitation to follow.

-x-

As soon as Artemis closed the door behind him, Holly jabbed him in the stomach. "About MoriarTEA."

The genius actually cringed. "I said I would fix him. I can do it remotely. He'll be fine by the time we get home. But if you want him gone, I can do that, too."

"Oh." Holly actually felt bad. "No, I was going to apologize for giving you such a hard time back there, so shut up and let me talk. Your project's in development, I shouldn't have made such a big deal out of it. You were trying to help. And I know that I'm on edge. Is it just me, or are these Changeling situations getting bigger? Higher stakes each time."

"It's not just you. I've noticed it, too."

"What happens when we can't stop one?"

Artemis shrugged, the single gesture conveying a range of emotion. "We deal with whatever happens next."

Holly made a face. "Sooner or later, you were bound to come up with a terrible idea. For the record, that one might be the worst plan I've ever heard. Anyway, I was on edge, your robot was in my face, and I snapped. For that, I'm sorry. I guess before you moved in, I never realized how much of being a genius is made up of messy trial-and-error."

"Apology accepted. And I am sorry for taking over your apartment with my experiments. On the car ride over, I made arrangements to rent lab space in Haven," he said. "I'll stop bringing that process of trial-and-error into your living room."

"Really?" asked Holly, before thinking better of it. "No, actually. Don't. You live there too, now. You're allowed to use the space."

"Pardon?"

"It's nice to know you're not locking yourself in your study or lab for six months on end every time you get an idea. Regular contact with other people is good for you. And you're obviously happier for being around friends."

"It's not an imposition. I work faster on my own, anyways."

"And isolating yourself like that was how your Atlantis Complex managed to get to that stage without anybody noticing how sick you were," she reminded him gently. "Mud Boy, when you were in the hospital I overheard two medics in the hallway outside your room talking about how yours was an interesting case - not because it happened to a human, but because we don't let it progress that far without treatment in convicted felons."

He studied her for a moment, face impossible to read. "We're having this talk now, then?"

"Yes. First off, I'm not going to apologize for healing you."

"I wouldn't expect you to," he said mildly. This could be interpreted in a number of ways, but the elf chose not to dwell on it.

"Second, you need to know that I didn't heal your Atlantis Complex all at once," Holly continued, knowing that providing him with the technical details would set him at ease more than anything else she could offer. "That kind of magical manipulation was fine for your mother, but you've been exposed to so much magic over the years that it would have been dangerous for you. I had to do it in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Wasn't going to risk melting your brain."

It was easy for Artemis to fill in the gaps. "So every time I went belowground for a session with Argon -?"

"I gave you a boost," she finished, finally looking up to meet his eyes. "Third, I was planning to tell you once I was sure you'd recovered. Believing you were healing yourself was doing you a lot of good, and I didn't want to risk you slipping back if your worldview got unhinged too soon; the last thing you needed was any reason to be paranoid. I mean, your hallucinations had gone so far as to convince you that actual events were the hallucinations. It was awful. But then - well, you remember how the day of your last therapy session went. There wasn't much point in poking at old wounds after that."

"Actually," said Artemis, "That last day never came back fully. I've got bits and pieces. Dreamlike, mostly. In patches."

"Oh." Holly considered this briefly. "That's probably a good thing."

"On the whole, I tend to agree with you." His tone implied that he had given the matter plenty of consideration.

Holly thought a moment longer, and then swore under her breath. "If I'd known that, I could have claimed to have told you about the healing right after that therapy session. Bypassed this entire mess."

Artemis was actually impressed. "I've been a bad influence on you. A decade ago, I doubt that thought would have occurred to you at all."

"It's been a long ten years," the elf agreed. "For what it's worth, you probably would have thrown a tantrum if you'd learned a decade ago that somebody had gone poking around in your head."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Fairies really don't understand human aging," he complained, though there was no venom in it. "Allow me to point out, again, that I was literally twelve years old. Even if I were a normal child, I could hardly have been expected to have any kind of emotional maturity at that age." He paused for emphasis. "But still, point taken. For what it's worth, if it were any other somebody, I would likely be throwing a temper tantrum now, emotional maturity or no."

Holly finally asked the question that had been plaguing her all day. "It wasn't any other somebody, though. It was me. I fixed you. Are you mad?"

"Mildly," said Artemis, before amending, "But only for the deception. Any distress I'm feeling right now is offset by relief that you did not leave my mental state entirely in the hands of Argon. I really should be thanking you for that." He paused. "And I should be thanking you for giving me back my mind."

"I can't help but notice that you're not actually thanking me, though."

"Not yet. Let me stop being mildly mad first." He softened. "I'll get there, Holly."

She finally relaxed. "You can take all the time you need."

They exhaled in unison. One last thought occurred to Artemis. He spoke quickly, as though he were concerned that if he deliberated, he would lose his nerve. "Was the giant squid real, then? Or did I hallucinate that? Clearly something happened relating to a nut, but was it actually a giant cephalopod?"

Holly's smirk had clearly been honed over the last decade, too. "Wouldn't you like to know."

-x-

The call came almost two hours later, when things had been quiet enough that Holly and Artemis had almost expected something to go wrong anyways. Their instincts were right: It was Minerva, and she needed help with a hostage negotiation.

"And you called us?" asked Artemis, although he really wasn't surprised in the slightest. "Who's the hostage? Your father? Your brother?"

"My boyfriend," answered Minerva. "You remember Saul? The skier?"

Artemis pretended to think. "I seem to remember someone by that name. Didn't you stand me up at the Nobel Prize ceremony to go skiing with him?"

"Don't pretend to still be bitter about that right now," she said sharply. "He's been missing for three days. I thought it might just be bad cell reception at his ski resort in Switzerland but a ransom note just came in. I need your help. And you still owe me for the Jones thing."

Artemis lowered the phone to tell Holly, "We're going to Switzerland to negotiate a hostage release."

"Switzerland?" Holly repeated, before connecting the dots. "...Saul? Why would Minerva call you?"

"In addition to the obvious reasons, maybe because I am a certified hostage negotiator? Hurry up and grab your things."

Holly gestured to the bedroom door behind him. "And what about Dorian? We can't leave him here alone, and we're definitely not taking him with us."

The phone was making noises. Artemis raised it to his ear again. "Yes?"

"We're on a clock with this thing, and I have a plane to catch," Minerva told him. "You are coming, yes?"

Artemis met Holly's eyes. She sighed, "You stay here with Dorian. I'll go help Minerva." When he opened his mouth to protest, she added, "Out of the two of us, who has been a hostage negotiator longer? Oh, that's right. Not you. If I need any advice, I'll give you a call."

He relented with a curt nod, and relayed the information to Minerva before hanging up the phone. "I'll be waiting for your call. Anything to relieve the boredom of babysitting a pop star."

"Babysitting a human genius? That sounds so trying. At least he's not going through puberty."

-x-

The next time Artemis's phone rang was much sooner than expected. After a moment of surprise - Holly shouldn't have even arrived in Switzerland yet, let alone conceded that she needed Artemis's help after all - he realized that it was actually coming from Fowl Manor.

"Artemis," said Myles briskly. "You're proud of me, right?"

Artemis switched immediately into older-brother mode. "Absolutely. Unless you're about to attempt the scorpion experiment again. In that case, I'm not proud at all and you need to put the blowtorch down. ...What are you actually up to?"

"Nothing."

"You wouldn't have called over nothing."

Behind Artemis, the bedroom door creaked open.

"It's not the scorpion thing. I've shelved that one for now. I… just wanted to say that I'm proud of you, too. It doesn't take a genius to know that you've been involved in a lot of secret stuff that's really important, which is really cool and impressive. And I understand why you couldn't tell me about the fairies."

Artemis froze. "Myles, what did you do?"

"So I just wanted to let you know that things might get a little messy, especially in your secret spy world. Just so you could be prepared in advance. Keep your head down and be careful, okay?"

Dorian had rounded the couch and was now staring in horror at Artemis's face. "Wow, you've gone completely white. I didn't think you could get any paler. You… oh god, you're scared. Oh god, is it the mob? No, I'm being ridiculous, you're not scared of the mob. Oh no."

Artemis tried to ignore Dorian. "Myles, listen to me. What are you doing? Whatever it is, you need to stop. You have no idea what you're dealing with. I'm coming home and whatever you're planning, I'll help you make sure that it won't -"

"I wasn't asking for help," Myles interrupted scornfully. "I've already got plenty of help."

"Help from whom?"

"My friend Henri. Who needs me right now so I've gotta go. Be careful and I love you, bye, see you soon!" Click.

Artemis sat listening to the dial tone. Unfortunately, there was no way the name could be a coincidence; not in his world. Henri Becquerel had won the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his role in the discovery of radioactivity while working alongside his doctoral student Marie Curie, and the SI unit of radioactivity had subsequently been named after him.

As had Becquerel Jones.

A unit of radioactivity representing the molecular activity in which one nucleus decays each second. An aperiodic event, an inverse second, a unit of collapse.

He lowered the phone from his face. It was a good thing, too, as the device had begun to emit an especially noxious cloud of gray smoke. After so much time in the LEPfoul offices, Artemis was well-versed in identifying precursors to catastrophic equipment failure; instinct kicked in. He wound his arm back and threw the phone across the room before it had even consciously occurred to him that there was going to be a problem.

It exploded in mid-air, a small and intense fireball pulling the oxygen briefly from the room.

Dorian was eyeing him uneasily; his eyes darted over to the pile of ash on the rug and the flames that had begun to ripple along the bottom edge of the curtains, and then back to Artemis's face. "What the-"

The sound of a second explosion came from the bedroom. "...That would be mine," said Dorian unnecessarily. "I modelled it after the blueprints I found for yours."

Artemis was too busy carefully prying a smouldering communications and tracking chip from his shoe to respond right away. In hindsight, he would consider himself lucky that the entire loafer hadn't burst into flames; as it was, he was too busy removing molten metal from such close proximity to his heel to count this as a victory.

"Um, should we be evacuating the house?" asked Dorian. "Since it's probably gonna burn down any minute now?"

"We're out of time," Artemis agreed, mind racing so loudly he was barely aware of the words leaving his mouth. "We need to return to - I need to go home."

"I'm not sure how much this'll help, since my pilot is probably in police custody right about now," said Dorian, knowing better than to press for an explanation as he bolted for the door, "but I've got a plane? You've got a safehouse in Russia….what are the chances you also know somebody who knows how to fly?"

"Higher than you would expect," Artemis replied, limping two steps behind him with his shoe in his hand. "Let's go."

-x-

To be continued…

-x-

Authors' Note:

So. This one is a bit of a doozy.

Hi! It's Winged! How're you all doing? It's great to see you after so long! Because oops, it's been awhile.

Freud had a serious health scare that kept her from writing for a few months (she's doing okay now, managing things a lot better), and we've both been dealing with some complicated career building. Now Freud's the one sorting through papers all day while I… Well. You know all those intern and marketer jokes we've been making for the past two seasons? Turns out the punchline is that I've just become an actual-factual marketing intern myself. I'm already practicing my Lucia Evasion Maneuvers.

But look! New words! And things are about to get crazy up in -

Hey, it's Freud here, I grabbed the keyboard (stop pouting, Winged, you'll get to finish your note in a second), and speaking of crazy, we need to address how we're choosing to deal with Artemis's Atlantis Complex here. We honestly flip-flopped a couple of times over whether or not to include it in this fic and if we should mention it in this episode; there was a lot of debate back and forth over the past few months. At one point, we even wrote a fic in which the entire thing was an especially vivid drug-induced and Opal-orchestrated hallucination ("I Know What You Squid Last Night," for anybody following along).

We ultimately decided to tackle the issue (and find a better resolution for it) because it's there in canon. It's important. It's relevant to the story we want to tell, and it was dealt with horribly in books seven and eight. This doesn't mean we intend to dwell on this topic in the future in this fic. Please don't worry: this is not going to become a story about the Atlantis Complex. It is, however, a story in which it happened. The illness and healing affects how we write both Holly and Artemis, as well as the dynamic between them. It also impacts the more technical ways in which we deal with Arty's prior exposures to magic, and how that plays out in the episodes to come.

And okay, fine. One of my majors was psychology, and I couldn't in good conscience leave it alone.

My point is, highest recorded IQ in Europe or not, you don't simply decide to think yourself out of a mental illness and then instantly get better. That's not how it works. Not even for Artemis Fowl. I've got a lot of thoughts on this - feel free to PM if you want to discuss further and I'll be more than happy to elaborate - but it boils down to this: recovery is tough.

And mental illness doesn't conveniently go away just because the story needs it to.

(Unless you've got magic. Or magical friends, as the case may be. Thanks, Holly - I don't think anybody could have handled another book full of Orion.) - Freud

- here. Crazy up in here. Is what I was saying. But yes, ditto to everything Freud just said. Really, more authors need a handy psychology major as a friend. Buy them a couple of mojitos and suddenly you're learning more about the human brain than you ever wanted to know. Did you know the hippocampus is shaped like a seahorse? Because I now know that if you pull the hippocampus out of someone's head and dehydrate the thing, it curls up at the ends to look like a seahorse. Weird, right?

Anyway, thank you as always to everyone who's stuck around all through our unexpected hiatuses. Also welcome to all the new readers we've gained during the break! This time, we've waited to get the finale written as well before posting this one so you don't have to wait another year to find out how the season wraps up! (Say whaaat.)

Which means give us a couple of days, and we'll have another episode posted! We hope you enjoy the ride! - Winged