Chapter One: Innocent until proven guilty.

2105
Fowl Manor, Ireland

Artemis Fowl glowered down at Captain Short. "And so you expect me to help?"

Holly was in no better a mood than Artemis. "Yes! You little Mud worm, yes! It's your fault we're in this mess! Don't you care? This girl is our last chance!"

"How is she your last chance? You don't even know who she is!! She could be dead for all you know. And really even if I DO find her, who says she'll help, and who says she'll even be useful if she does help? I'm not going to have any thing to do with this. Besides, how many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t sell anyone any of Foaly’s precious codes."

"Yeah, sure, Fowl. 'Cause I really believe you. Who else could possibly know enough about Foaly’s system to get a hold of his access codes? Who, for that matter, would even know about Foaly’s system? So either you sold them or you sold information about them."

"Look, Holly, I didn’t sell anybody anything. Now, as stimulating as this conversation is, I have better things to do with my time."

"Fowl! There are Goblins running around New London!"

"Look, Holly, I’ll think about it. Maybe that’ll show you I had nothing to do with it. Though I still don’t understand why-"

"It doesn’t matter. I’ll be back in three days." And, without so much as a ‘thank you for the tea’, Holly let herself out.

**********

Holly used to love flying. She still did, technically; the only thing was that the scenery had changed. The mud people had ruined the Emerald Isle, huge ugly clots of concrete and metal had crawled out over more then eighty percent of the beautiful little Island. Holly spat in disgust.

**********

Hurriedly, Holly took off her Hummingbirds and leapt into her pod. Buckling in and turning on the radio, she was greeted by Foaly.

"Hello, Holly. How are you? Did you get there okay? No run-ins with Italian trolls? Didn’t drink any poisoned tea or anything? What did Fowl say?"

"Fine, yes, no, no. He’ll think about it. "

"Well, I'm fine too, seeing as you asked. Bother Fowl. He knew what would happen if he sold those codes to the Goblins. And look! Happy day, we have Goblins running around aboveground! Everywhere. Like swear toads!"

Holly smiled, though Foaly couldn’t see it with the resolution on the pod screen. "He says he didn’t sell them. Says he doesn’t know anything about it. And you know, after the whole Koboi thing...."

"Of course he 'didn’t' sell them. What else is he going to say? Anyways, I don’t trust this line so I’ll talk to you when you get here."

"Foaly, you don’t trust any line."

Operations Room,
LEP Headquarters, The Haven

Foaly frowned at his reflection in the computer screen. There was more here then Commander Root insisted there was. Root didn’t connect stolen faery access codes, Goblins aboveground and the complete shutting down of Foaly’s system to Artemis Fowl. Of course, after the Koboi thing, there was no reason to.

But who else could it be? The Goblins had downed the Faeries' entire underground world with the press of a single (and probably large and red) button. Although Foaly seriously doubted they knew that.

In fact, he seriously doubted that the Goblins would even have thought of buying those access codes. Goblins weren’t the brightest of creatures. There had to be somebody behind all this. But who would want Goblins running around on the surface? And why? It didn’t appear to be profitable to Fowl, except the money for the codes, and that wouldn’t cover the loses he would probably suffer once the Mud people realised that the Goblins weren’t kids in Hallows Eve costumes. Yay. Cross-species war. Besides, Artemis had matured, Foaly thought that he’d grown out of his ‘I don’t care about the world’ phase. Or at least, so he liked to hope.

The shutting of the Ops’ door cut his train of thought short. Foaly glanced over at Holly, who’d made herself at home on a workbench.

"You sure you want to do this, Holly?"

Holly glanced up at her friend. "Yes. We need that girl."

"Right. And I suppose I shouldn’t bother to suggest someone else go." Foaly swivelled his chair around to face her.

"No. Nobody else can do this. Nobody else can know. You know what would happen if anybody found out that I'm part human! Only Artemis can know."

Technically, Foaly knew he should find Holly’s trust in Artemis over her background ridiculous, but he smiled to himself and thought: What they don’t know can’t hurt them.

"By the way, Foaly, how old is Fowl?"

"Ah..." Foaly clicked a link on the plasma screen. "He’s a hundred and four. Why?"

"Are you sure?" Holly’s eyebrows furrowed.

"Of course I’m sure. When am I ever wrong?" Foaly responded with feigned incredulousness.

"Or modest, for that matter? Anyways, I know this sounds ridiculous, he can't possibly be a hundred and four. More like twenty-four. It’s like he has faery blood in him, or he ages really, really well."

Foaly nodded sagely. "Like Bilbo?"

"Yeah. Like Bilbo."

The two sat in silence for a moment before Holly piped up. "Foaly, do you think he’ll help us?"

"Do you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Gut feeling. No matter how much I want to punch his arrogant little face in, I think he still has a bit of good left. After all, he does grow organic vegetables."

"Well, if you think he’ll help us, then he’ll help us."

"Why?"

"Gut feeling."