Chapter Text
Artemis had glued himself to the monitors, desperately trying to tune out his cousin's chatter.
"You know, if this operation sticks to tradition, then this is about the part where everything goes wrong for the bad guys. The third act." Orion said, using her black-painted nails to illustrate her point, her feet propped up on Artemis's desk. "Gossiping with their hostages, lighting a couple cigarettes, maybe even having a premature glass of wine. Bottom line: they relax. Suddenly, bam! They're kissing the floor with a dozen guns pointed at their backs.
"But hey, that hasn't happened yet and I'm not complaining. We have the same last name, which means everybody's going to assume we're in the same boat. That reminds me: when this goes south, I'm feeding you to the sharks."
Artemis briefly tore his gaze from the monitors to his cousin. The blond girl sitting in his chair met his gaze evenly, her eyes as dark and chilled as his.
He returned to the monitors, trying to refocus his thoughts. No doubt the fairies were reviewing the tapes of their first negotiating session, searching for anything that would give them a way in. Well, it was there all right. All they had to do was look. Buried just deep enough to look accidental.
It was possible that Commander Root would try another ruse. He was a wily one, no doubt about it. One who would not take kindly to being bested by a child. He would bear watching.
Artemis repressed both a scowl and a shiver at the same time. The shiver from the mere thought of Root and the scowl from allowing Orion's words to sink into his thoughts. He inspected the monitors again.
Juliet was still in the kitchen, scrubbing at the sink. Washing the vegetables.
Captain Short was on her bunk. Quiet as the grave. No more bed banging. Perhaps he had been wrong about her. Perhaps there was no plan.
Butler stood at his post outside Holly's cell. Odd. He should have been on his rounds by now. Artemis grabbed a walkie-talkie.
"Butler?"
"Roger, base. Receiving."
"Shouldn't you be on your rounds?"
There was a pause. "I am, Artemis. Patrolling the main landing. Coming up on the safe room. I'm waving at you right now."
Artemis glanced at the landing cameras. Deserted. From every angles. Definitely no waving manservant. He studied the monitors, counting under his breath… There! Every ten seconds, a slight jump. On every screen.
"A loop!" he cried. He would've jumped from his seat if he weren't already standing. "They're feeding us a loop!"
Over the speaker, he could hear Butler's pace accelerate to a run.
"The safe room!"
Artemis's stomach knotted into a queasy ball. Duped! He, Artemis Fowl, had been duped, even though he'd known it was coming. Inconceivable. It was arrogance that had done it. His own blinding arrogance, and now the entire plan could collapse around his ears.
Throughout all this Orion herself remained silent, now Artemis found her standing next to him.
"You're just now noticing that?" She asked, voice teeming with incredulity that may or may not have been genuine. "Some genius."
Artemis stared at her incredulity.
He switched the walkie-talkie to Juliet's band.
"Juliet?"
"Receiving."
"Where are you right now?"
"In the kitchen. Wrecking my nails on this grater."
"Leave it, Juliet. Check on the prisoner."
"But, Artemis, the carrot sticks will dry out!"
"Leave it, Juliet!" shouted Artemis. "Drop everything and check on the prisoner!"
Juliet obediently dropped everything, including the walkie-talkie. She'd sulk for days now.
"You're very bossy." Orion piqued.
Artemis rounded on her. "Why didn't you say anything?!" He half-shouted.
"Didn't think I had to. I mean, come on that's one of the first things I noticed about you."
"No, about the loop!"
"Well, why didn't you ask me?"
Artemis groaned, exasperated. He turned back to the control panel and depressed the master switch on the computerized surveillance system. His only chance of purging the loop was a complete reboot. After several agonizing moments of screen snow, the monitors jumped and settled. Things were not as they had seemed only seconds before.
There was a grotesque thing in the safe room. It had apparently discovered the secret compartment. Not only that but it had managed to open the whisper lock. Amazing. Butler had it covered though. He was sneaking up behind the creature, and any moment now the intruder would find itself nose down in the carpet.
Artemis switched his attention to Holly. The elf was back to bed banging. Slamming the frame down over and over again, as though she could…
It hit Artemis then, like a blast from a water cannon. If Holly had somehow smuggled an acorn in here, then one square centimeter of ground would be enough. If Juliet left that door open…
"Juliet!" he shouted into the walkie-talkie. "Juliet! Don't go in there!"
But it was useless. The girl's walkie-talkie lay buzzing on the kitchen floor, and Artemis could only watch helplessly as Butler's sister strode toward the cell door, muttering about carrots.
Instead, he turned back to his cousin, only to find she was no longer there. He was alone in the room.
Finally .
Ryn spent almost all of her time staring at screen of some sort. So one would think she'd be quite content to watch the sure-to-come drama from one.
Nope.
If anything, it made her want to experience the drama, up close and personal, even more.
As fun as Juliet’s situation would've been, she liked the older girl too much for her good. Besides, her brother was closer.
The bodyguard was currently up against the door to what Artemis called "the safe room", a palm up against the wood. Ryn was about three or four feet behind him, hidden by his concentration.
Butler opened the door, soundless on its overly-oiled hinges. A second or two passed. Then something exploded from the room. It looked to be gas clogged with dark semi-solids—but all Ryn could be certain of was that it smelled terrible.
Butler was flung off his feet, into the air, and slammed into the wall—quite impressive, actually.
What Ryn couldn't have known was that as the man lost consciousness he prayed Artemis hadn't managed to capture the moment on video. He hadn't, not with the monitors currently being rebooted. Unfortunately, that prayer didn't apply to a certain blond girl. Particularly one with a camera on her mobile phone.
Ryn had hit the RECORD button the exact moment the manservant opened the door. It was a good piece of footage, and she knew she'd have to go to great lengths to keep it.
Then she caught a brief glimpse of the short, stout creature responsible for the moment and raced down the stairs, an idea sparking to life in her brain.
Mulch buttoned his back flap, which had been blasted open by the gale emanating from his nether regions. Time to make a run for it. Whatever hope he'd had of escaping undiscovered had been blown. Literally.
Mulch retrieved his earpiece, screwing it firmly into his ear. Well, you never knew, even the LEP might prove useful.
"…And when I get my hands on you convict, you'll wish you stayed down in those mines…"
Mulch sighed. Ah well. Nothing new there then.
Clasping the safe's treasure tightly in his fist, the dwarf turned to retrace his steps. To his utter amazement there was a human entangled in the banisters. It wasn't because his recyclings had hurled the elephantine Mud Man several yards through the air, but the fact that the man had managed to get so close to him in the first place.
"You're good," said Mulch, wagging a finger at the unconscious bodyguard. "But nobody takes a body blow from Mulch Diggums and stays on their feet."
The Mud Man stirred, the whites of his eyes showing beneath fluttering lids.
Root's voice crackled in the dwarf's ears. "Get a move on, Mulch Diggums, before that Mud Man gets up and rearranges your innards. He took out an entire Retrieval team, you know."
Mulch swallowed, his bravado suddenly deserting him.
"An entire Retrieval team? Maybe I should get back underground…for the good of the mission."
Skipping hurriedly around the groaning bodyguard, Mulch took the steps two at a time. No point in worrying about being quiet anymore.
He was about halfway back to the cellar when his left foot suddenly shot out from underneath him, hoisting him into the air.
"I can't believe you didn't see that," said a human standing in a darkened corner of the room, this one a young female—American from her accent—nearly invisible aside from her pale yellow hair.
Mulch silently agreed and pouted over missing the painfully obvious rope trap in his haste to get away. The girl stepped out to approach him; she was short and fairly slim, but dressed in dark, punk-like attire, had three pairs of black stripes in her light hair, and two eyelids caked with matching eye shadow.
"How's it hangin'?" she asked humorously before smirking at the pun.
He was gathering a witty retort when a figure shimmered into focus behind her, a fairy-sized figure launching itself at her back. Still smirking, the girl nimbly twirled out of the way like a ballet dancer, leaving the charging fairy to crash into the wooden floor before her.
She chuckled again—half amusingly and half cruelly—and clapped her hands. "Oh, that was fun, let's do that again." She said, "You're Captain Short, I'm guessing?"
Mulch was surprised to see his arresting officer from the Renaissance Masters smuggling case, whom he recognized even when hanging upside down five feet in the air. Holly got back onto her feet and turned to face the strange human.
"Alright, you got me." She admitted angrily, "now I suppose you want another ton of gold for our release?"
The girl snorted. "I'm not in this for money, that's Artemis's game. In fact, if it were up to me I'd have you both get the heck out of here."
Holly started. Was she really…
"Ah ah ah," the girl exclaimed at her look. "I don't know how fairy laws work, but I'm pretty sure that in order to get permission to leave a house you have to get it from someone who actually lives in the house. I have a packed suitcase and still get lost looking for a bathroom; it's safe to say I don't qualify."
Holly's shoulders slumped in disappointment.
"Wait, if you're not interested in money, why hold me?" Mulch piqued, getting nervous from the series of sharp sounds drifting down from the upper landing. It was either a troll thrashing around in a crystal emporium, or the Mud Man getting up.
The girl raised an eyebrow, returning her attention to him. She opened her mouth to reply when something on the floor caught her eye, something that'd slipped out of Mulch's hand when his foot got snagged.
"Well, what's this?" The girl only half rhetorically asked, picking up the small volume and flipping through the tiny pages.
Holly's eyes widened. A copy of the Book! No wonder they were in such a fix. They were playing into his hands the whole time.
The mysterious girl looked back up at her hostages, "I take it neither of you are going to tell me. But if it's all the same I think I'll hold onto this, it looks like good blackmail material." With that she tucked the Book into the left breast pocket of her vest. The right pocket was already occupied by her phone. Where it was secured by hand-sewn in elastic straps in the exact position for the small camera on its face to be centered on the frayed hole where she'd ripped out the button.
"By the way," she began again, drawing a small switchblade from her jean pocket, "I'm not kidnapping you. I just wanted to give Butler a fair chance." She withdrew the blade and used it to cut Mulch's rope from its counterweight.
The instant he hit the floor, he sprinted to the cellar, the rope soon flying off his large foot. No sooner did he reach it than the giant manservant flew down the steps. Holly disappeared out of the visible spectrum while Ryn simply sidestepped out of his way, flashing the man a mock salute as he passed. She grinned again and moved to follow him when the fairy's disjointed voice drifted from seemingly nowhere.
"Who are you?"
The girl caught the haze, like heat coming off a grill, and looked straight at it.
"You know Artemis Fowl—bossy know-it-all, overdresses 24/7?" She said, "Think of me as his evil twin." And then she turned to the cellar, following the bodyguard.
Ryn hid behind the doorframe, her still-running phone pointed at Butler's crouching frame. She was glad she followed him, this was gonna be good.
Butler looked to be kneeling over a hole in the cellar floor—how it got there, she had no idea. Besides, she was only making that assumption based on the voice that drifted up from it.
"Egg go," it said. The mumbled open-mouthed tone brought back small snippets of memories from home.
Zak trying to talk to someone—anyone—from the dentist's chair, even managing to be somewhat understandable. Dad rushing out into the living room with his toothbrush still in his mouth when someone did something disruptive.
She slammed the door on the flashbacks.
"Not a chance," Butler said. "The only way you're leaving this house is in a body bag."
Ryn refocused on her phone, grateful for Butler's wisecrack. She wondered if the big man was joking, it was a natural assumption, but with him it was impossible to tell. Was she could tell was that Butler was struggling to get the small, hairy figure she'd previously trapped out of his escape tunnel.
"Come on, you little goblin. Out of there." He muttered. Suddenly he froze and fell silent. "Oh…"
Ryn took the expletive as a cue to duck down and conceal herself. Good thing too, because the compacted clay missile that shot from the space Butler's head had previously been would've hit her were she even a few inches higher. She kept her camera pointed to the inside of the room—something she would appreciate later when she viewed the footage of Butler spun around fast enough to give him whiplash.
With that finale, Ryn retracted her camera arm, stopped the recording, and snuck away from the scene before the mammoth bodyguard could notice her presence.