Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Artemis Fowl Characters

Sorry it has been such a long time since I last submitted anything. I hope you like it.

Chapter 17

Unknown

The room was dark. Draped, from every angle by the shadowy folds of blackness characteristic of the room's underground location. There was a hint of movement, and a shadow in one corner detached itself from the others shifting its bulk through the dusty air. The room was filled with a series of rattling clicks that grew with the movement of the figure and died as it settled back into stillness.

There was a heavy sigh followed by that faint clicking noise as the figure reached out and flipped a switch on the panel in front of him. Three monitors sprung to life spaced beside each other at an equal distance. Each monitor showcased an indistinct black and white image run up and down with bars of static. The figure growled low in its throat before angrily slamming his hand against the side of the monitor. The transmission was not usually broken up this badly.

The bands of static jumped and faded before appearing once again worse than before.

The figure sighed deeply and slumped backwards in his seat. It hadn't always been like this. Once upon a time all of his equipment had been state of the art. He could still remember the polished glowing surfaces of those new computers and advanced machines. He missed the way they hummed to him as he worked as if they were his own private symphony, but now he was left, alone in the dark with not but the static from this poorly reconstructed junk to distract him from the monotony of it all.

For the past few years now he had been forced to salvage scraps from the human world like nothing but a common street dog sifting through the scraps and refuse of a darkened alley. Working with substandard equipment and poor technology to create what he needed to further his plans. Even for human technology, this was very poor, the screens had little to no color and the rock interfered with the signals, but he had done his best with what he had, and that was nearly nothing. But, ON the bright side, things wouldn't be like this for much longer. In less than a few weeks he could well be on his way to having his old position back…. His old reputation.

His eyes narrowed and he leaned closer to the monitor squinting against the grainy picture to see a group of two people one fairy and a single centaur entering one of the main caverns leading to his lair.. Commander Kelp was turning out to be relatively useless when it came to capturing them, but it is not as if that mattered much now. He could easily accomplish his aims with or without the commander.

Static flickered across the face of the camera again and he growled. However, there was nothing to see there, they were not nearly close enough for him to begin worrying at the moment, so he turned his attention to the second camera whose image glowed with a light green color. Night vision, a delightful piece of equipment he had found while salvaging. It was an old piece salvaged from the abandoned ruins of a cold and desolate military base long since forgotten.

It was a pity that the boy Artemis had lost all his similar technology, or rather it was a pity for him. The shadow was just fine with this fact. Even with the low-grade field tech Artemis had probably been carrying it would have been much more advanced than all the tech inside this base put together.

But there the boy was, bumbling around in the dark hands outstretched before him feeling for an exit out of the room. He would find none of course, the room was sealed from the outside, and only he had the code to open it. Artemis would be released when was convenient and not a moment sooner. Although, it was better to keep him alive, while he was still needed.

The figure turned away from the screen and stood moving towards the door. The clicking increased with his movements, and the shadow winced. Oh how long had he been tormented by that hatful noise. It was always there always burning in the back of his head driving him to the edge of sanity if he had not already reached it.

He would repay those that had done this to him… he would repay them all in kind.

The one thing that he had learned, as he scavenged from the human world, was that there was nothing one couldn't be willing to sacrifice. There was nothing one couldn't be willing to do to achieve their ends. The problem with the fairy world was that many of them were too cautious about what was right and wrong to get to any real business. Even the most evil figures kept their distance from human-like brutality and anger, of course, in the right circumstances, the humans had it right. There was a message one could send from single minded cruelty. Take Grub for example, the commander must have been absolutely appalled when they had implemented human torture on his little brother, but it served to keep both of the brothers in their places.

And even if Grub did manage to get free he would be of no use to anyone. In fact, the figure, doubted if the fairy would ever recover. If anything he would spend the rest of his life racked with episodes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not a very common disorder in fairies.

But everything he did served a purpose, and humans seemed to be the experts when it came to getting what they wanted by force. A good portion of the time it seemed to work. As crude as they were, they got the job done, and it was time someone from the fairy world took their kind of initiative considering as no one else was brave enough to do so…. The initiative being…. Revenge.

Butler

The further they had gone down in the caves, the darker it had gotten, the tighter it had gotten and the colder it had gotten. There was no good way to describe the lonely, thick, dark, and choking atmosphere as they passed through it. The cavern was disconcerting enough that Butler found his soldier's sense constantly on edge tingling and burning the further down they went. It had become a nearly common sensation during their venture through the caverns. Butler didn't like the feeling, but he could see it as a good thing as well. The feeling of danger meant that they were getting closer to their target. He wasn't relatively sure if that was a good or bad thing yet, but he knew that this was the right thing to do.

Holly and him had since taken to discussing what they would do if they were even able to find this mysterious figure. Holly had been about as sure as he was… which was not at all. Many of the things this stranger did just seemed wrong especially for a centaur. The only person she had ever know who was this mentally unstable and completely Evil was Opal Koboi, but she had been taken care of long ago. And in some ways, this figure was even worse than she had been Opal was still predictable in some ways, she had a temper threat flared so badly one could almost count on that to have been her downfall. With Opal they knew what she wanted, they had a motive, but this new stranger was far more sinister. His motive seemed almost humanistic in character…. Bu what could have caused him to fall so far, what could have angered him into stooping to this level.

The one thing was for sure though, Holly and Butler both wished that Artemis was there right now. Sure they had Foaly, but the centaur didn't particularly thrive when it came to field work. In fact, he had lost a good portion of his heart and didn't seem inclined to help in many ways. It was a lucky break if they could get a few hours rest from him complaining. The obvious lack of food water and rest had weighed on him, and he was about as useful as his lower half would have been in a situation like this. Artemis on the other hand, always seemed calm and clear in these situations, the vast difference between him and Foaly.

If he was here than they would all at least have some insight and or clue into why the stranger might have been acting this way. Butler knew Artemis didn't have a shelf full of psychology books for nothing. In fact butler wouldn't have been surprised if the boy knew more about the human mind than most psychologists themselves, and if they traced his thought process then they would be that much closer to a motive.

The closer they were to a motive, the closer they were to answers and the closer they were to figuring out a way to defeat their opponent, but then again, they didn't have Artemis, they didn't have any ideas about this shady figure and they were lost wandering in the dark hunted by the very people they thought where their friends.

It was a shady game they were playing, and Butler was sure that it was only going to get shadier.

Commander Trouble Kelp

His head throbbed, his eyes stung, and his lips burned with a cracked dryness. The darkness around him was pervasive and suffocating. Even though he couldn't see the walls he could feel them close by pressing in on all sides as if to constrict around him like the coils of a snake.

Things couldn't have gotten any worse, and even now he could still see the way his brother skin bubbled and burned under the edge of that heated knife. He choked a little thinking he could catch sent of the air…. The burning flesh.

What had he gone and gotten himself into. How is it that someone so completely outside of the LEP could have done this? The LEP was always so cautious, this should never have happened. As far as he was concerned no one but those on the inner circle had known about what was going on…. Of course there was that gnome Eli Sool….. but he had been kept under strict quarantine before the trap had even been laid.

In this case no one should have known where to find Grub to kidnap him…. The only way that could have happened is if there was still a leak inside the LEP. Trouble looked up from where his head had been resting on his arms. He hadn't thought of that, in fact, he had been too focused on his little brother to realize that something might be going on here. It was so glaringly obvious it was almost painful.

Someone had tricked the LEP into setting that trap….. it only made sense that someone would want to frame Holly Foaly and Artemis. The three of them had made a lot of enemies one of which just happened to be the late commander Ark Sool. And sure they had kept the gnome in quarantine, but that meant nothing. In fact there might not have ever been a leak at all. The gnome had just been placed there to make the suspicious enough to set the trap, and once Holly and the others had escaped, he had, in the confusion, alerted his boss and Grub had been kidnapped in order to blackmail the LEP into going after them.

Grub was just collateral damage just as he himself was only a pawn. The real problem was that someone was after holly and the others. They were the real targets here, and if Trouble could somehow help them to catch this mysterious attacker than maybe he would be able to save his brother. However, he was going to have to go about this quietly. If the figure in the shadows suspected what he was doing, than Grub might be killed anyway just out of spite.

Trouble groaned and leaned his head back against the dark metal of the van. The question was, where he was even going to start? There were so many options and so many ways that he could get himself caught and his brother killed. It was almost overwhelming.

He forced himself to take a deep breath. The best place to start would be with that gnome Eli Sool. If this man was content with blackmailing him and not giving him information, than he would wager to say that the gnome didn't have all of it either, but he might have something that Trouble didn't.

With that Trouble got to his feet and pushed the door to the back open jumping out into the hectic sprawl of an LEP forward operating base. Trouble scanned through the crowd catching sight of one of the corporals that had been on the main team. He headed for him motioning him over with a gesture.

The corporal stopped what he was doing and turned to meet the commander, who, looked pretty awful all things considered. His hair was sticking up in all sorts of directions and his eyes were bloodshot hung under with heavy bags.

"Sir…." The corpora saluted before grimacing, "Are you… alright."

Trouble sighed at the others tone and ran a hand through his hair in a halfhearted attempt to bring it under control, "Yes corporal… I'm fine, and I'll be even better when the fugitives are brought in…. any luck?"

The Corporal shook his head slowly with a grimace, "No sir. Our teams have been coming up blank ever since our last encounter. We think they have moved further into the caverns, but we haven't found any alternate passageways past the cave-in point. We are having a team of dwarfs go in and dig out a passageway."

Trouble nodded, "Good call corporal. Speaking of witch, do you know where I might be able to find Eli Sool? I need to speak with him."

The corporal looked confused for a moment and then shook his head, "I am afraid I do not know sir. I haven't seen him since the first team was sent in."

"Well thanks for your help anyway, corporal." Trouble said before turning away to curse under his breath. This couldn't be good.

And indeed it wasn't. No one had seen the gnome since around the same time the corporal had suggested….. and Trouble had a feeling that his intuition about what had happened had been right all along.