EPISODE 3.01: CANARY IN THE COAL MINE
In which Holly reconsiders her life choices, roving packs of Changelings cause mayhem, and LEPfoul does its best to welcome an interesting diplomatic delegation.
-x-
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"- as the Jones custody case continues to drag on into its third month. Becquerel Jones, the human minor responsible for the discovery of the People, remains in LEP custody despite growing diplomatic pressure to release him to human agencies for trial - though what he would even be tried for, under human law, remains a bit of a mystery. A representative of the LEP has again declined to comment on the situation -"
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"- and the irony, of course, is that the most monumental event over the course of human history is not even human! We don't know much about the fairy folk, but scholars are going over the records that we've been able to access so far and what they're finding is truly, entirely astonishing. The language, for example, seems to be based off early Egyptian hieroglyphs, though the writing is arranged in spiral patterns that strongly resemble -"
"Hold up, hold up, we don't know that! We have to reevaluate everything we think we know about a global history. How do we know that the fairy language isn't what early Egyptian was based off -"
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"- terrorism, I tell you! These people - they have the nerve to call themselves "THE" People! - they're nothing more than terrorists! Let me tell you, if my child were being held in a foreign country by a group of individuals that weren't even the same species, why, let me tell you what I'd do about it! I'd get right out there and -"
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"- spend time outside! It'll be sunny with a high of eighteen degrees Celsius, though we're looking at a low of six with a chance of rain overnight -"
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"- and we are taking our chances every single time we even send any of our people to sit around the same bargaining table! The implications of magic as applied to human warfare, that's what's terrifying. Could you imagine an army that heals itself? Or one that can use mind control to -"
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"- reassure fans once again that any worries about his health are unfounded. Despite recent controversy, embattled pop star Dorian Maslov was spotted recently in St Tropez filming a music video for the lead single off his new album. The album, due out this summer, has been tentatively titled -"
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"- winging it! And that's the problem! We don't know how scared we should be of them! There's no way to know, yet they've been living below our feet all these years! They know everything about us, and we -"
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"- are opening the results, and what have we here? You are NOT the father!"
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"- but the real question is what impact the discovery of magic will have on medical advances! We're already on the cusp of a dozen breakthroughs, and perhaps this is what we need to finally push our civilization beyond -"
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"- our history! Of course they don't trust us! They live for hundreds of years - as far as they're concerned, the last world war was yesterday! We need a PR fiasco with these fairies like we need - "
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"- a fifth residential fire in a Portland suburb, which is now being blamed on the apparent pyrokinetic ability of four-year old Andre Price. As of press time, Price's parents have declined to comment on the -"
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"- sheer, utter, unmitigated and absolute chaos!"
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-x-
With that, the screen dimmed. Cahartez looked up from his tablet with a quiet cough, surveying the Council fairies gathered around him. "And that should be enough late-night human cable networks for you all to get the gist of the situation aboveground. Next order of business: What are we going to do about these roving packs of magical Changelings causing mayhem all over the world?"
-x-
It turned out there was only one pack of magical Changelings doing anything remotely similar to "roving," and they held the firm belief that any mayhem and chaos they caused was all in the name of the greater good. After bumping into a wall when a low-ranking LEP administrator flat-up refused their request to borrow the technology to accurately predict where in the past Artemis Fowl had reappeared (or when, as the case may be), they had been forced to take matters into their own hands.
Humanity, as a species, was not yet capable of understanding time travel. Human scientists, researchers, inventors, physicists, and mathematicians around the world did have a surprising number of the pieces worked out, but they weren't about to communicate that information with each other. Everybody wanted their own Nobel prize.
That was fine. The Changelings had no moral qualms about doing the leg work for them.
It was no wonder that their one group was believed to be many, and it was not accidental: the Changeling team had a tendency of popping up in odd locations across the globe, often too rapidly in sequence for legal travel time to allow. They left no calling cards, and their so-called mischief was always of a different flavour. One Interpol agent, tasked with evaluating cases like theirs in light of potential fairy involvement, had claimed that the styles of the different crimes varied too much to be attributed to a single unit.
(The general consensus amongst the pack was that this Interpol agent was something of an idiot. If Warren Freyne had heard how they talked about him, his feelings would probably have been very hurt.)
To anyone in the know, this discord was clearly because each Changeling in the team had their own idea of how to pull off each job, and any resulting "style" was a happy accident: four masterminds, each with magic and multiple contingency plans, resulted in an infinite number of possibilities for gambit pileup. It was a problem they were working on.
And of course reported sightings of the team were always different. They were very careful to make sure that was the case, as none of them particularly wanted their parents (or publicists - Dorian was on his fifth in as many weeks) figuring out exactly what they were up to. Their numbers seemed to vary depending on how visible Ray felt like being at any given moment in time, and he was an incredible makeup artist.
It had been a long two months, full of trial and error, but all four Changelings were in agreement: they were a great team, and they were starting to get the hang of this.
"Starting" being the operative word.
-x-
Perhaps the first clue that the Changeling team had not yet ironed out all the kinks was that, yet again, things were burning far ahead of schedule.
"Ray! Stop going invisible and startling Vedette!" shouted Maeve, monitoring the situation from her computer in the back of the rented SUV.
"Vedette! Stop setting Ray on fire and put your glasses on!" yelled Dorian into his comm at the exact same instant, automatically harmonizing and timing his syllables to be off-beat with Maeve's as he dove for cover behind a pillar in the middle of the room. At the sound of a click behind him, he whirled around and found himself face-to-face with a scary-looking gun held by an even scarier-looking security guard. "Your arm feels really heavy, friend," he told the man, slipping automatically into the mesmer. He found the magic was easier to harness when he sang, dropping his voice a soothing lullaby.
"You should put it down, put it down, put it down.
I'll finish your rounds, your rounds, your rounds.
Won't tell anybody, don't worry -
give it here, your weapons safe with me."
The rhyme was rough, and the meter far from his best, but it did the trick anyways.
"Because we all want the pop star armed and ready for action," muttered Maeve in response.
If Dorian didn't have to keep eye contact, he would have absolutely rolled his eyes. Instead, he persisted, switching into spoken word now that he had the mesmer link established. "Easy there, buddy. You need to sleep, you look exhausted. Let me have the gun before somebody gets hurt." And then, because he felt obligated, "I'm always ready for action."
The guard wavered, his eyelids half-closing with the sudden need to sleep.
Twenty feet away, Vedette had decided there were more important things than Ray to burn. She retrieved her anti-shield Google glasses from the floor where they'd landed after an unexpected confrontation with a security guard. Then, she chose a clear plastic orb full of chemicals from the bag slung over her shoulder, and bent to examine the vault door in front of her. Holding the orb carefully against her palm, she lit it up with the faintest of sparks and then turned her wrist to press it against the locking mechanism. Iron oxide combined with aluminum powder, along with a few secret ingredients to stabilize and perfect the mix, resulted in a controlled burn that looked and behaved an awful lot like thermite. "I really hope you did actually manage to kill the alarms this time, Maeve," she said with faux cheer, heat turning her cheeks pink and leaving the sleeve of her specially-treated jacket charred. "Because if you didn't, I definitely just set off every single one in the building."
-x-
Halfway around the world, every single alarm was blaring. There was the fire alarm, for starters. The proximity breach alarm. The motion detector. In the distance, Holly could have sworn she heard a Klaxon.
"Okay, that one is completely unnecessary," she muttered into the noise of evacuation. "Has anybody ever thought a Klaxon was a good idea?"
Foaly snorted over the comms. "Didn't Artemis rig a secret compartment in the drawer on his bedside table with one of those? I bet he thought it was hilarious." The question was rhetorical; Foaly had been the one to set it off while scouring the human's possessions for any clue as to his whereabouts in the days after the Reveal. It'd taken the centaur four hours to give up and call Holly for the alarm reset code.
He wasn't proud of that.
"It was hilarious, and I miss him too. Can we focus, please? Baby needs a booster shot."
Holly was not using a slang phrase to describe her mission. Andre Price was four years old and did, indeed, need a booster shot. The serum was one of No. 1's inventions, designed to sap the young Changeling's magic (and, subsequently, his ability to start neighborhood-wide conflagrations). Unfortunately, the young warlock and his mentor, Qwan, had been living on the Moon Colony since the Reveal had occurred and five separate house fires had occurred in the time it took for the serum to travel back down to Earth in one of Foaly's specially-designed transport pods.
Originally, they had commissioned the potion for use on Becquerel Jones; his newfound telekinesis had rapidly become quite the problem, as anybody who attempted to provide food, legal advice, or companionship for the furious teenager could attest. What he lacked in aim and fine telekinetic coordination, he more than made up for with a can-do attitude. Upon catching wind of the LEP's plan, the human agencies monitoring the Jones case had swiftly enacted a string of protocols and threats intended to protect the teenager from coming to harm by fairy hands, any harm he might do to well-intentioned fairy lawyers or prison wardens be damned.
The Changeling magic of Andre Price, however, was still very much a problem. A covert Council meeting had decided that the only thing more politically dangerous than quietly neutralizing his ability (at least until he grew old enough to consciously decide when to use it) would be a failure to do so. Luckily, they just so happened to have an unused booster shot sitting around. The effect wouldn't be permanent, but by the time it wore off Andre would be well into his teenage years (and thus, by Changeling standards, fully capable of making more rational decisions).
And so Holly was aboveground, staring at a scorched hole in the floor of a padded cell in a human government containment facility, and wondering where the baby went.
"Gee, look at that toddler-sized smouldering tunnel. I wonder where the baby went," said Foaly sarcastically.
Holly cautiously peered down the hole, from which a thin stream of smoke flowed. "He breathes fire. You crawl down after him."
"I am safe in my operations booth, and I'm positive there's nothing you can do to jeopardize that this time, seeing as this mission isn't even supposed to be happening," said Foaly with a certain degree of smugness. "So my budget can't be docked because of anything that happens here. You should hurry up. Pretty sure the baby can't actually breathe carbon monoxide."
"Maybe we can lure him out," Holly said, crouching to examine the tunnel. "I didn't bring any food. Do you have a recording of his parent's voices, maybe?"
Foaly rolled his eyes, tapping away. "With all those alarms going off, I doubt he'd hear anything we do. You're there to give a human baby a needle. You should have brought candy or something. Chocolate. At least a sucker?"
"I have it on good authority Changelings hate lollipops," said Holly before giving up and jumping down the hole.
-x-
"You're fine, Ray," said Vedette in the van. She was the only member of their party who held a valid driver's license, and so she was behind the wheel of the escape vehicle. "Shut up and eat your lollipop."
"But you singed me!" he whined, rocking back in his seat. He waved the conciliatory candy at her for emphasis before sulking and popping it back in his mouth. "Dorian made you glasses so you wouldn't do that anymore!"
Dorian, who was strumming absently on his guitar in the back of the van, looked up at the mention of his name. "Even with that minor hiccup, I think this one went really well. Good job, team! Pat yourselves on the back."
"She set me on fire!"
"But aside from that, things went well." Dorian shook his head, tapping on the body of his guitar with the side of his hand. "Maeve? How's the mathy stuff coming?"
Maeve held up the computer she had been working on - a cube-shaped computer courtesy of Vedette, hastily reassembled and held together with duct tape. "We'll have to check with Minerva to be sure, but I think we've got it this time. All of it. So long as Ivan and Juliet come through."
"They'll come through," hummed Dorian, firm in his belief that there was no mission too difficult for the Jade Princess. The extent of his faith in Juliet had been immortalized in song and published as the lead single of his new album also, coincidentally, named Jade Princess. It was currently eating up the airwaves and pop charts; a (secretly-flattered) Juliet professed to hate it, even though the album was always playing in the background of their Skype calls.
Dorian was certain he'd fallen head over heels in love. By this point he'd had ample opportunity to ensure everyone else was certain of it, too. "Say, do you think we'll see her at Minerva's?"
"If we're lucky," sighed Maeve, preparing for another of Dorian's monologues on just how awesome Juliet Butler was. These tended to be lengthy, poetic, and delivered in perfect iambic pentameter.
"If we're unlucky, we'll get to hear you spend the next week and a half whining about not seeing her," added Vedette. "You know she's too old for you, right?"
"Hey, if Fowl can get away with dating an elf…" Dorian began, before being cut off.
"And if we're really, really unlucky, the mob will have killed Juliet! Oh, man, we'd never hear the end of that one."
Everyone turned to stare at Ray. The van swerved.
Ray spread his hands, speaking around the lollipop still sticking out of his mouth. "I was being sarcastic?"
-x-
Holly thanked all the gods that she'd thought to grab one of the human facility's fire extinguishers before jumping in the hole, as it turned out the baby really could breathe carbon monoxide. After following a burnt tunnel for nearly half a mile, Holly had finally found Andre. He was sitting in the middle of the flames, gurgling happily, looking unsettlingly like a cherubic version of the devil himself.
Holly decided that, when this was all over, she was going to seriously reconsider more than a couple of her life choices.
-x-
Caltrop, Head Operative of the LEPfoul in the absence of his two superiors, was choking on his misaligned gill-tubes. Again.
"Whoa, buddy!" exclaimed Sass, leaping over a chair to reach his side. "SOS! The fish master is going under!" She chortled to herself while helping him fix the tubes, patting him on the back for good measure once Caltrop was finally again able to breathe. "There. All better. What happened? Usually you only start choking after something blows up!"
"S-something blew up alr-right," said Caltrop weakly. "The h-h-humans are here!"
"So they arrived in Haven on time then?" asked Dodo, dropping some food pellets into her fish tank. It was the third tank in as many months, but she had not given up on the concept of an office aquarium.
"No," spluttered Caltrop. "I mean, y-yes, they did. But they're h-h-here!"
The importance of his words began to sink in, and the others turned their attention to Caltrop's computer monitor. The security feed for the front of their building was currently pulled up, displaying a group of humans filing inside. Most of them had to duck as they stepped through the doorway.
Warren Freyne, ushering the group from the rear, should have had enough warning to also lower his head. Yet, just like every other morning since he had first arrived in Haven nearly three months ago on special assignment, he smacked his forehead square against the doorframe and bounced back a little. Then he lifted his hand, rubbed the already-bruising spot ruefully, and ducked twice as low as necessary to step inside.
Confidence restored, he led the group of humans off down the hall to the lift. Half a minute later, he was rubbing his forehead once again after smacking it while stepping through the doors.
Former Interpol Agent Warren Freyne had been caught in a customs dispute on the Russian border, intent on investigating the Fowl kid's apparent mob-related shooting at a pop concert in St Petersburg, when the People had been revealed. He'd been hoping Artemis hadn't actually been shot, if only because that would rob him of the ability to bring the Fowl case to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. The discovery that Fowl had evidently 1) stolen Dorian Maslov's plane 2) flown it back to Ireland without proper customs clearance and paperwork and 3) proceeded to vanish off the face (and underside) of the earth again was incredibly inconvenient and threw an awful crimp into Freyne's plans.
It got worse. In the following weeks his superiors had decided that, as Frenye was tied up in investigating the sole human who had apparently sustained fairy contact for close to a decade, he was the obvious choice to send on a diplomatic reconnaissance mission belowground in an attempt to gain a handle on the Changeling situation. One human child entangled in fairy business was a problem - this potential situation was nothing short of a nightmare. Worse, Freyne had made it all the way down to Haven City before realizing that what his superiors had actually done was position him as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They were hopeful nothing too bad would happen to him amongst his new magical colleagues but, if it did, they would happily heed the warning from the safety of their offices on the surface.
In short, he was dispensable. The fairy who had been assigned to chaperone him, a fierce elf with mismatched eyes and cropped auburn hair, had wasted no time in reassuring him of such (and promising that, should he set so much as a toe out of line, he would promptly be dispensed with). Freyne had gulped at the warning, smacked his head against the doorway into the LEPfoul offices for the first time, and informed her that he had no intention of causing any problems.
The sole saving grace of his working relationship with Holly Short, it turned out, was that she didn't seem to like Artemis Fowl much either. Her face soured at any of Freyne's questions about the human, and her fingers invariably shifted to the barrel of her Neutrino to tap rhythms against the sleek metal. Combined with the book he'd read about their shared history, a refreshingly honest volume penned by one J Argon, Freyne was certain he'd found an ally in the hostile elf.
Unfortunately for any plans to bond with her over their mutual dislike for Fowl, Holly Short wasn't around the office much over the next three months. It had seemed like a turn of luck that, upon learning no landlord in the city would even consider housing a human under their roof, Head Operative Chlorella had helpfully suggested he sleep on Captain Short's couch. With no better options, the elf had reluctantly agreed to the proposition as a short-term measure.
Even then, however, her apartment's security system made it hard to hold a casual conversation. The apparently sentient dishwasher guarded him from the minute he entered the apartment every evening to the minute he left in the morning, staring at him unblinkingly with its uncanny LED face. Occasionally the machine would ask whether Freyne would like a drink, but it never actually gave him anything regardless of what he requested. He'd brought up the problem with Holly, who assured him she had no idea what he was talking about before excusing herself from the room. He'd heard her laughter through the wall and assumed he was simply using this advanced fairy technology wrong. In fact, the only response he could ever get from this machine was when he attempted to access the locked door down the hall from Holly's bedroom; the dishwasher had displayed a frowny face and blared a klaxon as though it had just caught him breaking into a bank, and then proceeded to stun him with a buzz baton hidden inside the arm that extended from the body of the machine. Freyne, upon regaining consciousness, had decided not to repeat the experience if only so Holly would not find him drooling on the rug again.
At least Freyne had managed to forge a tentative relationship with each of the other LEPfoul operatives. He felt he had gained a real rapport. So, when he found out the original plan was for an official Council spokesfairy to tour the delegates around Haven for the day, Freyne had brought them all straight to the LEPfoul office to meet the team instead. He was sure everyone there would be just as excited to work with the delegation team as he was. (And if not, he was at least grateful to no longer be the only human in Haven City.)
Sure enough, Caltrop and the other operatives were lined up and waiting to greet everyone by the time Freyne ushered the delegation team inside. There was a general bustle of chaos and introductions before the water-sprite hushed the room in preparation for the welcome speech he had hastily prepared while the delegation team had been making their way upstairs.
"We are s-s-so excited to work - glub - with you," he began, and launched right into describing what an excellent interspecies opportunity the upcoming collaboration would be for everyone. If this were not the LEPfoul offices, he likely would have made an excellent speech.
However, nothing could ever be that easy. Maybe it was merely that Lucia was unhappy to be left out of the introductions. Maybe it was because she thought this gathering was a precursor to another revolutionary event. Or - most likely - Lucia was simply being Lucia. Whatever her reasonings, two sentences into Caltrop's welcome talk, the canary let out a fearsome cry that made the hair rise on the back of every single diplomats' neck. Then, in a flash of yellow feathers, she attacked.
The fairies had scattered into their instinctive evasive maneuvers before realizing that they had abandoned the humans. The only one who had clued in was the youngest member of the human group, who had rolled beneath a desk only moments after witnessing Caltrop do the same. The two of them huddled together in safety, wincing at the screams as Freyne attempted to herd his team back out the door.
"F-fast reflexes," complimented Caltrop as the commotion carried on down the hall, running the human's physical appearance through his mental list of Changelings. He was by far the youngest of the group, and clearly the most intelligent, so it was likely that -
The human nodded unperturbed, as if ducking for cover was only natural. "My name's Augustus Montgomery, by the way," he said, holding his hand out in a self-assured manner. "I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of each other." He paused, before adding, "Well, I know your team has already seen a lot of me. Thank you for the surveillance. I really appreciate it."
Caltrop gulped, the name clicking in his head. "Right! Au - glub - stus. Got it. Pleased t-to meet you?"
-x-
Luckily for Ray, the mob had not killed Juliet. She was already in the waiting room of Minerva's clinic when the Changelings arrived, engaged in a staring contest with the receptionist.
"Oh good, you made it," she said, tossing a piece of tech across the room to Maeve without turning her head. "Mission was, of course, a success. No thanks to Ivan."
Ivan Tarroc, once Dorian's drummer and now his mob contact, was slouched in the chair beside her. He gave everyone a sullen nod and looked back to his phone; Dorian aimed a kick at the drummer's shin as he passed. Evidently he'd decided to continue to hold a grudge, seeing as the drummer had turned out to be only marginally useful after all.
"Do you have an appointment?" asked Sharon the receptionist. She blinked deliberately at Juliet as if to say that she could have won the staring contest if she'd wanted, and then turned to the others.
Dorian shrugged. "Sure?"
"No one goes in without an appointment."
Ray bounced on his toes. "Uh, we do. We're hearing voices. And terrified of squid. All of us. It's a… group therapy session."
Sharon raised both eyebrows slowly before lifting the phone. "Ms. Paradizo," she said into the receiver, "Your friends are here. No, not those ones… the friends with the weird code words." She hung up the phone. "Ms. Paradizo will see you soon. Have a seat." It wasn't a request. The Changelings collectively sat down.
They sat in silence. The waiting room of Minerva's clinic did not feel like the proper place to discuss time travel technology, after all, nor the methods of which each component piece had been attained. Besides, Sharon the receptionist was still watching. If the Changelings had bothered to compare notes, they would have found that every one of them was reminded of the experience of sitting in the principal's office.
Finally, the phone on Sharon's desk buzzed. She looked at it, sighed, and then said reluctantly, "You may go in now."
-x-
Minerva's office was a comfortable size and decorated in a posh style intended to set her generally quite wealthy clients at ease. It had not been designed to hold four Changelings of various heights and energy levels (Ray was bouncing from foot to foot, Vedette wafted smoke from the ends of her hair without seeming to realize it, Dorian managed to hit Ivan in the face twice with his bulky guitar case as he turned around to greet Minerva, and Maeve was absorbed in a game on her phone). Adding in a sullen former drummer who still half-expected the mob to change their mind about forgiving him for the sour tech deal (he and Minerva were making great progress in their sessions about learning to live with justified paranoia) meant it was officially "crowded." The addition of a Butler meant Juliet ended up squeezed against the wall, arms folded over her chest.
"I didn't mean for you all to come," sighed Minerva, but rather than shoo the group back into the hall, she reached under her desk to press a hidden switch.
The back wall slid open.
"A secret lab!" exclaimed Ray into the stunned silence. "Why don't we have one of those?"
Maeve rolled her eyes. "Where would we put it? We don't even have our own van."
Vedette sniffed, crossing the tile. Seeming to finally realize she was literally on fire, the barista waved a hand in front of her face to clear the air - all she practically accomplished was blowing the smoke in Dorian's face. "And we all know that, as much as we like Ray, he's not allowed to even know where my lab is."
"Do you mind watching what you're doing with that? I've got a singing voice I need to protect, thanks," said Dorian, before making a point of deliberately coughing loudly.
Still bickering, the Changelings flowed into Minerva's secret laboratory. The other pieces of technology that they had attained (through methods of varying legality) over the last few months were already waiting on the central work bench, partially assembled. It only took a minute for Maeve to add the last two components to the device, tap a couple of buttons on the interface screen, and nod in satisfaction.
"We just need to tell it exactly what to look for, now," she said, putting the device back on the workbench. "Then it needs to calibrate itself to the right resonance patterns before it can amplify the time-flux signal clearly enough to trace back to an output vortex."
Ivan opened his mouth to comment on the technobabble; Juliet stomped on his foot. "Don't," she muttered, "they do that a lot. Just let it go."
Minerva punched in the formula she'd calculated from the readings Ray had taken back in an alleyway in Dublin, and then peered at the screen. "Hm. This might take some time." She lifted her hands over the device, forming a magical sphere around it that looked like nothing so much as a large purple-hued soap bubble. A moment later, she pulled her hands away and the time stop bubble popped.
On cue, the device chimed.
"Hooray!" chirped Ray.
"Not hooray," corrected Minerva, staring down at the geographical coordinates, her stomach sinking. "Holly needs to know about this."
-x-
Holly was currently arguing with Foaly. "I'm sure the booster worked, too," she told him, "but wouldn't it be better if we kept monitoring the baby? At least for another hour?" She checked the time on her helmet's screen, ran a quick mental calculation, and corrected the request: "Two hours?"
"Oh, I see what you're doing," whinnied Foaly. "You think if you stay above ground long enough, you don't have to chaperone those human diplomats to sit in on that experts panel on Changeling psychology!"
"I'd be more interested in sitting in a room full of stuffy gnomes who have no idea what they're talking about if - oh wait, there isn't anything that could make that interesting. Maybe if Fowl were there, just so I could get pictures of the ensuing fireworks. But as it stands, no. I would absolutely prefer to stay and babysit a Changeling if it means I don't have to go to that panel."
Foaly hurumphed. "Well in that case…"
The notification of an incoming call flashed on Holly's visor. "Hold that thought," she told the centaur, and switched his line off in order to take the call. "Maslov - is this an update on the project I'm not supposed to know about?"
"Holly! Good news! We know where Apollo turned up! Not sure when the time tunnel spat him out, yet - the machine's still having some - ah, I was told to call them 'technical difficulties' but it mostly looks like Maeve hitting things with a hammer and saying rude words in a bunch of different languages while Minerva and Vedette try to keep Ray from guessing what they mean."
"Dorian, focus!" Holly abandoned all pretense of keeping watch on Andre Price, already selecting the command on her wrist keyboard to open her wings. "Where did he go, then?"
"That… would be the bad news." He hummed anxiously under his breath. "You're not going to like it."
She bared her teeth. "Tell me anyways."
He told her. She didn't like it.
-x-
Despite her close involvement with the aftermath of the shuttle crash that had killed Demia Carter, Holly had never actually been inside the tunnels where the girl had died. After transporting the survivors back to Haven, she had been too involved in the relocation of LEPfoul to have any part of the technical clean-up crew. All the same, the layout of the caverns was exactly as Artemis had described - first in a coldly impersonal incident report, and later in greater detail upon recounting an especially vivid nightmare. She remembered back to that second description, midnight in their apartment two weeks after the shuttle crash, the words coming out carefully over playing cards and soothing tea.
"You'd better be alive, Mud Boy," she grumbled to herself, advancing along the stone bridge. "If not, I'm going to be so mad. You have no idea what kind of wrath you just signed yourself up for if you got yourself killed again."
She adjusted the filters on her helmet, waving through the options until she found the one that traced and illuminated any particles of human DNA. "He was here," she announced in a slightly more professional whisper; even with her helmet sealed and soundproof, she was all too aware of the cave's other slumbering occupants. "Alive. Look, here - and here." She looked up, peering along the stone bridge to where it curved out of sight in the distance. "There was some kind of scuffle, but he got up and ran this way."
Back in the shuttle, she heard Chix Verbil click his tongue. The sprite had been conscripted into manning the rescue vehicle on this particular mission by necessity alone; he owed Holly his life several times over, and (unfortunately for Holly) he couldn't think of anywhere better he wanted to be. Evidently, this life-and-death rescue mission struck the sprite as the perfect moment to embark on what he considered to be a much more pressing topic of conversation. "So, what are you and that human, anyways? What would you say that relationship is?"
Holly clenched her jaw, tuning him out as she turned to retrace Artemis's footsteps. "He was injured, look. Limping, and there's blood. Maslov mentioned in his incident report that Fowl had hurt his foot in Russia - and these are definitely his prints, you can see the extra toe." Her nose crinkled in worry, though her voice stayed steady as she hovered along the trail. Her wings moved silently, disturbing the air currents as little as possible, and she hoped with her shield she could be in and out before any trolls even noticed she was there. "Looks like Artemis was trying to run, but not very well. Typical."
"I mean, you saved my life and all that, but then you never called me again! Which I think is a bit of a mixed signal, you know? It's enough to hurt a sprite's feelings, it really is. I thought we had a connection," Chix continued, rocking back in his seat with his fingers curled loosely around the control's joystick. The elf doubted he'd heard a word she said, and continued to narrate her descent into the tunnel for the sake of the record alone.
"His strides are getting shorter, he's slowing down." Holly had reached the husk of the crashed shuttle, a forlorn wreckage. This is where autopilot gets you, every time, she thought, but didn't say. Instead she traced the steps forward the last few paces - saw where Artemis had stumbled and then collapsed, a bright flash of still-crimson human blood visible to the naked eye against a jagged outcropping of metal - a second set of footprints coming from the left -
"So he must have gotten back up eventually, but…." Her helmet pinged with an incoming call; Holly answered it with a twist of her fingers, heart sinking.
"Holly," said Minerva quickly on the other side of the line. "The time calibration is finished, I can tell you when -"
"I know," Holly said, cutting the genius off before she could finish the sentence. "Spare me the technojargon, I'm here in the tunnels right now and looking at proof. His trail is still fresh."
Minerva made a sound of agreement. "Artemis didn't go back in time - he went forward. He just got here."
Holly shone her red light around the wreckage of the shuttle, illuminating a second trail of prints. Rubber-soled shoes, small ones. "Exactly. It looks like somebody else already found him, and they had their own way out."
-x-
For half a minute, Foaly thought the Mud Man striding with false arrogance into his Ops Booth was simply a lost member of the human delegation that had been wandering around Police Plaza in a daze ever since they'd returned from their impromptu visit to the LEPfoul office. Humans did that when they felt out of place, made themselves puffy and obnoxiously self-important. Then he realized that the DNA-coded system wouldn't open for just anybody, spun around in his modified swivel chair, and realized he recognized this particular human despite the unusually dishevelled nature of the man's appearance.
"Artemis!" The centaur threw up both hands, leaped off his chair, and attacked the human with an impulsive hug. It was an awkward moment for them both, but by the time he remembered his professionalism he was already committed to it. After a few seconds, he let go and trotted backwards. "Where have you been? How are you here? You look awful, by the way."
Artemis coughed, adjusting his tattered tie self-consciously. "Yes. I am aware of that. I need your help."
"You don't get out of this that easily! What happened to you?"
Artemis's face hardened. "After. I need to see the control codes for the prison where you're holding Becquerel Jones."
Foaly rolled his eyes at the Mud Boy's orders, but returned to his chair and rolled back in front of the computer to type. "Control codes," he muttered, and flourished a hand. "What about them? Jones isn't escaping, is he?"
He made space for Artemis to stand beside him. While the human bent forward to study the codes, Foaly launched into a lecture: "We've been worried sick, you know. Do you have any idea how many dedicated servers I have looking for you? Three! Three dedicated servers! I'm not even supposed to have one! Do you have any idea what kind of strain that's put on my budget? How did you even get all the way down here without setting off some sort of alarm? Oh - look at that, I just got a ping. Apparently you just walked into my Ops Booth. How about that."
Artemis had turned to stare at him, apparently disconcerted. Foaly whinnied in annoyance. "Yes, we care about you, don't look at me like that and don't make me say it again. For some reason, we were worried! I'm not sure how that happened, and I'll let you know if anybody ever figures it out. Okay? Plot twist: you have friends! Can we have this emotional breakthrough and move on? What do you need to check the prison control codes for, anyway?"
It looked as though Artemis was finally about to tell him just what was going on - and then an incoming call interrupted them.
"Oh look, it's Holly," said Foaly, gesturing to the elf's profile that had popped up on the corner of the screen. "She's out there searching for you right now, you know. So you'd better apologize as soon as you see her again. Just saying." He put his headset on and answered the call. "Guess what, Holly?"
Holly didn't have time for guessing games. "I'm in the troll tunnel and it doesn't look good," she said, talking too fast for Foaly to get a word in. "Artemis didn't go to the past - he went forward, and probably only got here a day or two ago. He's injured and disoriented, Foaly, wherever he is. And another human's tracked him down already, which could be bad. The good news is they're not in here anymore, I think they did both walk out, which means he's probably alive and your tech should be able to pick him up now. Start running your scans again and let me know if anything -"
"Uh, Holly," Foaly tried to interrupt, rolling his chair further from the human and turning his back for privacy. "Funny you should mention -"
"I'm serious, Foaly! Tell me right away if he shows up. And tag him with silver to keep him anchored in the time stream. He might be unstable."
Foaly coughed. "Silver. Right. I'm sure I've got some…" He turned back to his desk and trailed off. "D'arvit."
Artemis Fowl the Second had vanished again. And this time, he'd left a present: The flashing alarms on Foaly's screen as the prison systems registered a prisoner's escape.
Not just any prisoner, either: According to these alarms, Becquerel Jones had escaped from his cell precisely four minutes and forty-four seconds ago.
-x-
Author's Note:
And so begins our third and final season! Posted on The Foul Team's third anniversary, no less! WHAT. Don't mind us, we're just freaking out a little over the fact that our silly little story about Changelings and interns has been going for three whole years. - Winged
(This has been hanging over our heads for three years. Why. Even knowing that we did have a nearly year-long hiatus in the middle of that doesn't help. It's about time we wrapped this thing up already, yeah? - Freud)
(Shhhh. We don't talk about that hiatus. - Winged)
So. Season Three: time to wrap this thing up already! On the surface it'll look a lot like the previous two - seven episodes with some webisodes to round things out, a whole lot of (former) interns, random acts of Lucia, and even more Changelings. Add in more magic, more time travel, interspecies politics, and Warren Freyne's ongoing quest to actually obtain a decent cup of coffee (thwarted now by both Minerva and MoriarTEA), and there you go! It'll be a bit less episodic in nature than the first two, with a larger focus on bringing plot arcs (and people) together to finally finish this story.
(Nearly 30 named characters in this episode, yikes! How did that even happen? - Freud)
And you'll have to wait and see whether we finally answer the biggest question of all: what on (or under) earth is that bird's problem!?
By the way, we also have a joint freudwithwings tumblr now! Same name on the tin, can't miss it. We'll be talking about more general housekeeping stuff over there from now on, if you're interested. Maybe that will keep the length of these A/Ns down? - Winged
(Too late for this one, though. - Freud)