A/N: I am actually posting this story to AO3 as well as FFN. I originally made an account there to reupload Winter of Decay as I was revising it (the version on FFN is similarly revised too), and then uploaded a special (horrifying) Christmas one-shot I wrote purely to disturb a friend of mine. I don't recommend you read it, unless you like spiders and feeling uncomfortable. At some point, I would kind of like to similarly revise Wrath of the Fallen and upload it there too.

In any case, the site is, for want of a better phrase, infinitely superior to FFN, especially when it comes to publishing. The first chapter of this made it to AO3 a few weeks ago, and I meant to upload here too, but was disappointed to find that the tools for creators (which were painfully dated when I wrote my first fic 8 years ago) had undergone precisely zero improvements. The sheer dismay I experienced upon making this discovery delayed my upload schedule considerably. Nonetheless, I always enjoyed interacting from the community here, so I am committed to braving FFN's mid 18th century website design so I can have all my long fics on here.

With that in mind, please don't hesitate to leave a review if you have any thoughts on the story :p

-Kio

Chapter 2

Location Unknown, Present Day

"And did she?"

Artemis frowned, trying to focus. Whatever his abductors had done to him had suppressed the Complex for a while, but already he could feel it starting to prickle the back of his mind.

"What?"

"Xayah," repeated the female interrogator. "Did she come and visit you again?"

Artemis hesitated, but then nodded. "Yes. Eventually."

"What does 'eventually' mean?"

Artemis treated the two-way mirror to his most scathing glare. He was cold, hungry, thirsty, in pain, and no longer entirely lucid. In other words, he was really not in the mood for stupid questions.

"Do you want me to explain eventually in context," he asked. "Or do you require a definition?"

A red light on his handcuffs winked at him and a moment later his entire body was on fire, every nerve screaming out for reprieve as electrical current was pumped through him. He screamed and rolled over, back arched, and then it was over. It had only lasted a few seconds. But a few seconds had been more than enough.

"Be careful," warned the male interrogator. "We're already short on time. We can't afford to bring out Orion."

"Don't worry," replied his colleague. "His Complex is mostly gone. We won't see Orion unless he has a major relapse."

"You're sure?"

"Positive." There was a brief pause. "Hear that, Artemis? I can shock you all I want. So if I were you, I'd stop with the attitude."

Artemis didn't respond. He just lay there, shivering, half aware that his cheeks were wet with tears. He hadn't caught the whole conversation between the interrogators, but he'd heard enough. How did they know so much of his situation? Only those at the Argon clinic would have had access to that information.

"I'm going to ask you again, Mud Boy. What did you mean by 'eventually'?"

Artemis pushed himself up into an upright position and took a few shaking breaths. The cockiness in his expression was gone.

"She came again," he managed. "But not for a while."

"When?"

Artemis blinked, trying to focus. "Later. Months. After Holly came back from the surface."

The male interrogator spat a curse. "He's out of his mind. This is all a waste of time."

"Why did she come?" asked the female interrogator. "What did she want?"

Artemis frowned, trying to call what he could of the memory to the surface. "She wanted me to pass on a message to Holly."

"Xayah was LEP, just like Holly Short. You said it yourself. Why did Xayah go to you, a known criminal, when she could have easily gone to Captain Short herself?"

"I don't know."

"What did she tell you? Was it about Clarke?"

Artemis could feel the Atlantis Complex whispering to him. It was getting harder to maintain his grip on reality.

"It was after Holly came back. She was on a mission, tracking a gun runner, but she… she was hurt. She was almost killed."

"We already know about that mission, we know what happened. We know everything about Holly Short. Forget about her. Focus on Xayah and Clarke. What did Xayah tell you?"

"She was hurt," Artemis repeated, lost in the memory. "Holly was hurt. She almost died…"

Police Plaza, Haven City, Ten Days Ago

Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police was in an unusually good mood. Artemis's Atlantis Complex was well on the way to being cured, she hadn't been called a fair maiden for almost a month, and she'd just been informed that there was a surface mission waiting for her. It had been too long since she'd got to breathe fresh air and she was looking forward to it.

"What do you have for me, Foaly?" she asked, stepping into the situations booth.

The LEP's technical wizard, Foaly, turned to face her, his expression uncharacteristically grave. Instead of replying, he inclined his head towards the booth's other occupant, Trouble Kelp.

"Commander," said Holly with a hasty salute, noticing him for the first time.

Trouble waved it away. "No time for that, Captain. We've got a serious problem topside. I need someone up there ASAP, and you're the best officer available."

Holly acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod, but didn't speak. She knew better than to interrupt Trouble when there was a situation.

"The Talons," continued Trouble. "Heard of them?"

Holly nodded. "Of course, sir."

The Talons were the gang that had expanded into the power vacuum left behind by the B'wa Kell after their failed coup. While Holly had heard many an unpleasant story, as a Recon officer, she had never had to deal with any of their mayhem personally.

"Well," said Trouble. "It seems they've graduated from street thugs causing trouble for an easy payday to the worst news we've had since Artemis Fowl."

Holly opened her mouth to defend her friend, but Foaly cut her off.

"During the night we had a team get into a contact with a group of Talons in a warehouse on the edge of Haven. We lost."

"What do you mean we lost?"

A contact was slang for a shootout. And the LEP didn't lose them, not to criminals. If you tried to resist the LEP, you woke up a few hours later in a cell with a bad headache. It was that simple.

Foaly shrugged. "Well, we didn't win. And we didn't draw. We did the other thing. If that helps clear it up."

Trouble sighed. "Our team was forced to retreat," he clarified. "After sustaining multiple casualties. And we lost someone."

Foaly tapped a few keys and an LEP personnel file appeared on the screen, the letters K.I.A superimposed over the top in red. Killed in action. Foaly scrolled down to a picture of the body, dismissing a graphic content warning. There were two messy entry wounds where something had ripped straight through his LEP uniform and taken a bite out of his chest.

Holly was shocked. "What in Frond's name did that to him?"

Foaly pressed another button and a rotating three-dimensional model of a human rifle bullet appeared on the screen.

"Five-point-five-six millimetre," he said. "Not especially big by Mud Man standards, but it's more than enough to tear open a fairy."

"Frond," breathed Holly.

"Exactly. And it gets worse."

Foaly switched the display to a classified mission report and brought up a series of blurry photographs. They looked like stills from footage of the firefight.

Holly squinted at the pictures. She couldn't make out much. "What am I looking at, Foaly?"

"What the Talons have been smuggling underground." He pressed something and the images sharpened. "Automatic rifles, shoulder fired missiles, grenades. There's also something that looks like some kind of chemical agent. All human made."

"Bad doesn't even begin to do this justice," said Trouble. "One of those rockets could take a chunk out of Police Plaza. We don't know how much weaponry is already underground, but we're locking down all surface travel to try and stop anymore getting in. This needs to be dealt with immediately. Preferably sooner."

"What do you need me to do, sir?"

Foaly entered yet another command and another file flashed up on the screen.

"Ajax Miller," Holly read aloud. "Who's this?"

"He's the Talons' top fairy," replied Trouble. "This son of a bitch just earned himself the number one spot on the LEP's hit list. I've got a blank check from the council to bring him down, and that's exactly what we're going to do."

"Problem is," said Foaly. "We know nothing about him. We don't even know if this is his real name. And we certainly don't know where he is."

Trouble stood up. "Which makes locating him a top priority." He turned to Holly. "There's been a possible sighting of a Talon on Scopes. We need you to check it out."

Scopes was the shop name for the shrouded trackers Foaly had attached to human satellites, allowing the LEP to piggyback them whenever they wanted to. Which meant this fairy was on the surface. Not good.

"Try and gather any intel you can about their smuggling operation," continued Trouble. "But your primary objective is Miller. Find out where the hell he is so we can send in the cavalry."

Holly nodded and turned to go, aware that time was of the essence. A possible sighting on Scopes wasn't a lot to go on, but she would do everything she could. She always did.

"Oh, and Holly?"

Holly turned back to Trouble and raised an expectant eyebrow. "Yes?"

"This is about as high priority an op as there is. Whatever you need, just call."

Holly had ridden a magma flare to the surface. The fairy equivalent of an express elevator, it wasn't something she ever turned down, uncomfortable and occasionally life threatening though it was. Now she hung in the air a few hundred metres above the ground, shielded, her mechanical wings effortlessly bearing her aloft. Like everything else Foaly had issued her with before leaving Haven, they were state of the art.

She gave herself a full thirty seconds to appreciate the beauty of the early morning sky before turning her attention back to the mission.

"Where am I headed, Foaly?" she asked into her helmet mic.

"Sending you the coordinates now," came the reply from deep underground.

A flashing red dot appeared on Holly's heads up display. She grinned and opened up the throttle on her wings. There was just something about flying, something about the space afforded to her by the surface that never failed to put a smile on her face. Miller and his Talons were a problem, but they didn't worry her while she was in the open air. Nothing could.

Her destination was on Irish soil and it wasn't far. She could break a few (a lot of) speed regulations and be there in only a few minutes.

"What exactly am I looking for, Foaly?"

"Well." She could almost hear him rubbing his hands together. "I recently installed new software on Scopes. And this stuff is genius, even by my standards. I call it Transparent."

Holly rolled her eyes. "A truly masterful name. And does it do anything? Something related to the potentially mortal danger I am currently charging into?"

Foaly seemed put out. "It does a great many things, thank you very much. Mostly things that small elfin brains couldn't possibly fathom."

Usually, Holly would have gladly returned the insult with interest, but there were more important things to worry about at the moment. At least one of them ought to remember that.

She coughed loudly. "Ahem. Possible mortal danger, remember?"

"Oh, come off it. There may be a lot at stake, but this could just as well be on a routine recon mission. You fly in, invisible – thanks largely to the genius of yours truly – poke about a bit and hey, Frond's your uncle, we found the bad guys. They won't even know you're there."

Holly sighed. She was almost at her destination and yet to receive any useful information at all. She cleared her throat again.

"Oh, alright. Basically, this technology can pick up tell-tale signs of fairy shielding, so long as they aren't hidden by something like a shimmer suit. LEP operatives and legal tourists are tagged with an infrared strobe that Scopes pick up. Any shield without a strobe shows up as a red flag and we can check it out."

As much as she hated to admit it, Holly couldn't deny that it did sound pretty smart. Useful, too. But Transparent was still a stupid name.

"So, we flagged an illegal fairy, I guess? How does this connect to Miller?"

"That's the clever bit." Foaly paused, as if unhappy with the sentence. "Well, the really clever bit. Obviously everything I do is clever."

"Was there possibly a point you were trying to get to?"

Foaly's sigh was just audible over the mic. "Every fairy has a unique shielding frequency. When I detect a shield, I can get a rough estimate of the frequency and check it against a database of known frequencies. It's not completely accurate, but it can narrow down the shield's owner to only about ten fairies, sometimes less. So, I flagged an illegal fairy that has a twenty percent chance of being a known Talon."

Against her better judgement, Holly was impressed, but was careful to keep it to herself.

"This database…" she began.

"Yes?"

"I didn't know we had one. I've never heard of tracking individual fairies' shield frequencies before."

A pause. "Well, it's kind of funny really. We didn't, but then I thought of all these really clever ideas, so I sort of made one."

Holly whistled. "That must have been a nightmare to clear with the council. I'm surprised you managed to keep all that red tape quiet."

Another pause. "Mhm."

"Foaly?"

"Yes?"

"What does mhm mean?"

"It means," said Foaly. "That I might have, um, managed to avoid all the red tape. Bypassed, if you will."

"Do you mean to tell me that this entire op is predicated on illegally collected intel?"

"I might be trying to tell you something along those lines, yes."

Holly sighed. "Can't wait for that to get out. I was just thinking how lonely my life's been without any Internal Affairs investigations going on."

"Anyway," said Foaly quickly. "There's an out of the way ritual site. Only buildings nearby are a couple of old barns, they seem totally abandoned."

Holly banked into a dive, dropping out of the sky so she could see the cluster of barns. The view that greeted her wasn't an impressive one. "Apart from our possible Talon?"

"Apart from him," confirmed Foaly. "And another shielded fairy we haven't identified. The system flagged them about an hour ago, and we haven't had anything since. For all we know, they could have wanted access to the ritual site and moved on already. But we're hoping they're hiding out in the barns, maybe using it as a stop off for the human goods they're smuggling."

Holly dropped another few hundred metres and hovered, an invisible sentinel surveying the view below. She wasn't convinced. "Those are a lot of assumptions you're making, Foaly. It sounds to me like you're clutching at straws."

Foaly's reply was a little more on edge than she was expecting. "Gee, thanks, I hadn't realised. This is what we have, Holly. The least you can do is check it out."

Holly couldn't deny that he had a point. "Copy that," she said. "I'm going in."

She came to a gentle landing not far from the barns and drew her weapon. In theory, she wouldn't need it, but she always felt safer with a gun in her hand. It was a habit thing.

"Approaching the first structure," she said for Foaly's benefit. She kept her footsteps light; technology and magic rendered her invisible to the naked or mechanical eye alike, but careless noise could give her away as easily as ever. "Lifeforms?"

"I can't tell without scanners on site. Recommend switching to thermal optics."

Holly nodded, even though Foaly couldn't see her, and flicked on her helmet's thermal imaging. The world was suddenly bathed in surreal colours, each denoting a different temperature. She looked back over to the barn she had been approaching.

"Two heat signatures. They look small, possibly fairies. Advise."

"Possible fairies – that's big. I'm patching Trouble in."

Holly heard keys being tapped all the way back in Police Plaza, followed a moment later by a low beep indicating that someone else had been added to the communications channel.

"You're completely invisible, Holly," said Trouble. "See if you can find a window to look through. We need to know if there are Talons in there."

"Copy that, Commander," said Holly. She started to step forward, but then she froze. The messy splurges of heat on the other side of the barn wall were starting to shift. "Standby. I have movement. Looks like they're coming out. Advise."

"Hold your position, Captain. Do not engage. Remember, you're there to gather information. Our primary concern is locating Miller."

Keeping as still as she could, Holly prepared herself. She switched her thermal vision off; it was no use now. She still had her weapon in her hand. Just in case.

Two diminutive figures emerged from the barn. They glanced around, as though suspicious, but their gaze lingered no longer on Holly than on any other scenery. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

"Their faces look like fairies'," she relayed into her helmet mic. "Probably elves. But I can't be sure. Both are wearing hats, presumably to hide their ears."

"What are they doing?" The question came from Trouble.

"Nothing, honestly. I think they're waiting for something."

"Standby, Holly," interrupted Foaly. "Incoming vehicle. Marking on your HUD now. Looks like that's what they're waiting for."

A flashing red light appeared on Holly's visor's heads-up display marked approaching vehicle. She nudged the throttle of her wings, climbing a few metres into the air so she could see over the tall grass all around her. Sure enough, a human-made truck was pulling off the dirt track, clearly heading towards the cluster of barns. And the fairies.

"Report, Holly. What's going on?"

Holly switched back to thermal imaging, just for a moment. "Multiple heat signatures in the vehicle. Human, by the looks of things. It's definitely coming towards us." She snapped a quick picture of the two suspected fairies and sent them to Police Plaza. "Foaly, see what you can make of these two. Trouble, there are humans in that truck. They're going to see those fairies. What do I do?"

"Observe, Holly. Stay put and observe. Do not engage or give away your position."

Holly bit her tongue as she lowered herself back down to the ground. She knew Trouble was right, but she couldn't shake off a feeling that staying put was the wrong call. And her intuition hadn't let her down yet.

The truck pulled up near the two fairies and two heavyset humans got out. Holly noted the shaved heads and cold eyes. Whoever these guys were, they were professionals, and they weren't friendly. Both looked armed. They barely glanced at the fairies, instead walking to the back of the truck and opening it up.

Two more humans jumped out, this time dressed in expensive suits and exuding authority. The leaders of whatever contingent had just arrived. They looked around, and went over to the fairies.

"D'Arvit," muttered Holly. "This is a meeting. This was prearranged." She switched her helmet cam to record. She had a feeling they were going to want to review this footage.

"I've checked the fairies' faces against our records," said Foaly. "One of them is a confirmed Talon. Real nasty piece of work. No idea about the other one."

"Holly," said Trouble. "Record this. Are you in range to get the audio?"

Holly checked. "Yes, sir. And the camera is already rolling."

"Perfect."

Holly was deeply uncomfortable as she aimed her microphone at the meeting. This was wrong. This was so wrong. Fairies and humans. It was the People's worst nightmare. And whoever these humans were, they looked dangerous. She should be mindwiping them, not recording them. Her finger itched on the trigger of her Neutrino.

"Commander," she said. "Recommend you prep a retrieval team. We'll need to mindwipe these humans after this."

"Negative, Holly. We don't know how deep this goes. We can't afford to let them know that we're onto them."

"I could mesmerise them," offered Holly, but she knew what Trouble would say. The same thing Artemis had told her when they'd been tracking Minerva Paradizo.

"That would only tell us what they know. There's no guarantee that that would line up with what we need to know. I'm sorry, but we can't risk it."

Even if she had had a good response to that, Holly wouldn't have been able to use it. At that moment, her directional microphone started picking up dialogue from the meeting, playing it over her helmet speakers in perfect quality.

"Do you have the shipment?" That was from one of the fairies, the one that Foaly hadn't been able to identify. He spoke English.

One of the suited humans - the leader, perhaps - nodded. "The first batch, as requested. The rest is on its way."

"Show us."

The same human nodded again and made a gesture. The two heavyset humans went back to the truck to fetch whatever this shipment was.

"They're all speaking normally," observed Holly. "These Mud Men haven't been mesmerised." She exhaled. "D'Arvit, this is bad."

"It certainly isn't good," agreed Foaly.

The two human thugs returned from the truck, both carrying heavy crates. They set them down in-between the human and fairy delegations and levered them open.

"A sample," said the human leader, gesturing towards the crates. "The rest is still back there. Our engineers assure me that they have reduced the weight and recoil sufficiently to be used readily by your people."

The Talon took a step forward and reached into one of the crates, withdrawing an especially compact human automatic rifle. He hefted it one handed and turned to smile at his comrade.

"Well, I can lift it. That's a good start." He turned back to the human delegation. "You've done well. But it's missing its undermount."

Holly winced. If she remembered correctly, an undermount was an additional weapon fixed under the barrel of a rifle. A shotgun, grenade launcher, or even a flamethrower. None of which boded well for Haven.

The human leader smiled thinly. "These are fresh from the factory. Attachments are transported separately. I can have them retrieved if you wish to inspect them."

"Do it. I need to verify something… particular."

The human leader made a bored gesture and one of the thugs headed back to the truck.

"Commander?" Holly said into her helmet mic. "Are you getting all of this?"

"Loud and clear," came the reply from below ground. "This is even worse than we thought."

"Copy that. I have a bad feeling about this."

Trouble snorted. "Welcome to the club."

"No, I meant…" Holly tailed off. Something didn't feel exactly right, something other than the obvious. But she had a job to do. "Never mind."

Foaly's voice cut into the channel. "We've got more movement. Another two trucks en route. Presumably the rest of the weapons shipment. It's about to get hotter up there, Holly, advise you relocate."

The extra trucks appeared on Holly's HUD as two more red dots, approaching her from behind. She glanced at her surroundings. Even without her shield, she was well hidden crouched in the long grass around the barns. She doubted there was a better spot from which to observe the meeting.

"Negative. We need eyes on this exchange."

There was no objection from below. Whether they liked it or not, Trouble and Foaly knew Holly's safety came second to making this mission a success.

Holly turned her attention back to the meeting in time to see the human thug return with another crate. He levered it open and the two fairies peered in.

"It's all there," the human leader was saying, his voice still being delivered in perfect quality over Holly's helmet speakers. "Additional magazines, optical sights, 40mm undermounted grenade launchers." He paused while the two fairies inspected the crate's contents. "I take it everything is to your satisfaction?"

One of the fairies nodded absentmindedly. "Yes, yes… the optics were constructed to the exact specifications our guy sent over?"

"Of course."

"Perfect."

The Talon pulled a scope and a grenade launcher from the crate and attached them both to the assault rifle he was already holding. He put the rifle to his shoulder testing the feel. He smiled.

"I like it," he said quietly. "You've done well."

Clearly not done enjoying his new toy, the fairy flicked a few switches on the scope and swept his aim around to the barn and then back, as if scanning the scenery for imaginary targets. Holly tensed as his aim passed her, but he only lingered on her hiding spot for a fraction of a second before moving on.

The human leader coughed slightly, and the fairy lowered the gun.

"So?" the human asked, his patience beginning to wear thin. "Everything is in order?"

"Oh, hell yeah. We're good. We're great. But do you know what isn't great?"

Holly frowned, watching him reach into the box and pull something out.

"In fact, do you know what I really hate?" The fairy was shouting now, making no effort to hide his rising anger. The humans tensed, wary of a double cross. "What I really hate is people who just don't know how to mind their own business."

In a fluid movement, he slipped what he had taken from the crate into the barrel of his undermounted grenade launcher and put the rifle stock to his shoulder once more. This time, he was looking straight at Holly.

"People like the LEP."

He squeezed the trigger.

A/N: Yes, I am starting early with bullying Holly in this story. Long term readers of my work will find this fairly unsurprising. Anyway, I thought I would just remind you to leave a review, you know you want to :p

-Kio