damned_institute | [NIGHTSHIFT 35] M31-M40 HALLWAY

The annoyance in Artemis' voice was only further encouragement to Mello. He had plenty of reasons to antagonize him, but most important one was that Artemis wouldn't understand why it was necessary. The sense of control would be meaningless if his victim knew why he needed it...otherwise, he could have just picked on Near.

This was the point where, if he'd been in a gangster movie, he would have cleaned his fingernails with his knife in a casually threatening manner. Unfortunately, Mello had no fingernails to speak of.

"You're not the one who decides how I spend my time," he said. The beam of Mello's flashlight swept the hallway as he looked for bystanders who might interfere. A couple shapes, and a few voices coming from the clinic. If Artemis called for help it was possible that someone would respond, but if Mello was right, the boy was too proud to risk damage to his reputation. "And I don't care what kind of mood you're in."

Artemis' eyes followed the beam as Mello looked for something in the hallway. Bystanders? Or witnesses? Either way, the whole situation was making Artemis extremely uncomfortable. He had no idea as to why Mello was harassing him, and the reason wasn't making itself clear.

The boy decided that it was time to find that missing piece of information. He backed off again and crossed his arms.

"All right, you obviously want something from me, otherwise you would have let me continue on with just the oh-so-clever remark about my life being novelized, and the original jab at using a pet name for me. I'm sure you were up all day thinking about that one. So. What is it? What do you want from me?"

Mello quickly stepped to the side, leaving Artemis with only two options: moving back against the wall or deeper into the corridor, which he knew led to a dead end. He'd noticed during their first conversation that the boy used insults as a defense mechanism, so Mello assumed the situation was making him anxious. Afraid, possibly. He gave a devious smirk as a soft breeze of relief swept some of the worst heat from his mind. Mello wondered how far he could push this.

"I'm not sure what I want," he said truthfully. He wasn't a sadist, so the idea of torturing or even killing Artemis was met with indifference although he'd certainly do it if the situation called for it. Mostly, he wanted Artemis to understand how completely powerless he was. Kidnapping fairies, programming supercomputers, even changing his entire world...all of those things were just words on a page somewhere, created to earn a few bucks in royalties and keep kids occupied during the bus ride to school. Nothing he did had any meaning.

"Do you think that if you died here, you'd die in your novels too?" Mello asked suddenly. Although the words were threatening, they were spoken with genuine curiosity. "Or do you think the writer killed you off right before you showed up?"

Artemis made a noise of surprised disgust. "That is none of your business!" The boy spat. "When are you going to realize that this little game of yours is getting very old, very fast? No, I was not 'killed off' before I came here. It's impossible. I wasn't even in any sort of physical environment where I could have been killed. And secondly, if I die here, I die here. No one reads about it, no one cares except possibly the people back home who never see me again."

That gave the boy pause. He'd never considered that possibility. Would he ever see Holly or Butler again? Or would he die here, fighting for his life and freedom? It was a very real possibility, maybe even an inevitability.

He came back to himself, glaring at Mello. "If your only aim was to bring up the supposed 'fictional' quality of my life, then we're through here." Artemis extended his right hand to push past Mello and away.

"Are you sure it's none of my business?" Mello grinned at the anger in Artemis' tone. "Your life is the business of everyone with a library card or ten bucks to spare."

He exhaled in a quiet sigh, expressing both feigned sympathy and amusement.

"Everyone you think would miss you was a tool for character development," he said. Mello paused with a dark smile, but when he continued there was something sharp and deadly beneath his voice. "Everything you've ever done was a plot device. Every thought in that smart little head of yours occurred to someone else first. Do you understand that? You're not as bright as you think you are. They just manufactured the world around you to be a little bit slower."

When Artemis raised his hand to push him away, Mello lifted his knife. "I'll decide when we're through."

It was dark in the hallway, but not dark enough for Artemis to realize he was being held at knife point. He immediately pulled one of his scalpels out of his left pocket and held it in front of him.

"You're insane," he said, his voice shaking. "You've lost your mind. You realize you're holding me at knife point to--" attempt to "--psychologically strip me?"

Now that Mello was armed and Artemis was both alone and woefully combat-backwards, he was less of a smart alack. The insults and claims that his life was something meant for entertainment, and that all of his plots, schemes and accomplishments were someone else's idea did hurt. But not enough to get himself killed over.

"Plot device or no, the fact remains that I still lived through it. Whether or not someone reads about it is none of my concern--if anything, someone should be paying me royalties."

Schuldig.

"As for the people around me--"

Mello has lost his mind.

"--it is a proven fact that the people one associates with affect decision-making and personality."

He's holding me at knife point in the first male block, a little ways outside the clinic.

"So your argument falls flat in that respect. Also, as far as I know, there is no way to make reality from written words. And my life is certainly stranger than fiction."

I think he's going to kill me.

The fact that he was holding a fourteen year old kid at knifepoint didn't seem to faze Mello in the least. He lifted the flashlight with his other hand, shining the beam into Artemis' face so he couldn't clearly see any of Mello's movements.

"You're still talking about yourself like you're a real person," he said with a sneer. "And you can put away that scalpel before I break your wrist."

He spoke with confidence, although the statement was mostly a bluff. His usual method of disarming someone involved placing a bullet somewhere in their body, but he was sure a knife to the gut would have the same effect. Mello realized with dissociated surprise that he didn't feel any desire to kill Artemis. Anyone could stab someone and leave them choking in a puddle of blood...he'd seen the feat accomplished by complete imbeciles who'd simply gotten lucky with their aim.

"I'm not planning on killing you," he continued, though he didn't lower the knife. "We're just going to talk for a while. You seem like an insightful, eloquent person. I want you to tell me exactly how it feels to know that everything you've done is meaningless."

Unlike Artemis, Mello considered his plots, schemes, and accomplishments perfectly worth getting killed over.

Artemis squinted against the light and raised his right hand to shield his eyes from the light. If he couldn't see Mello, he couldn't dodge attacks until Schuldig arrived.

Mello's 'comforting' statement didn't assuage Artemis at all. Mello was unstable, and 'not planning on killing him' could turn into 'I'll blow your fuckin' brains out' in a heartbeat. Dealing with shady types taught Artemis that much.

"If you want to talk, then put away the light and knife, I'll put away my scalpel, and we'll talk. This seems more like an interrogation. I don't think very well with lights in my face and knives somewhere in the vicinity."

Mello made a quiet hum of thought as if considering the proposal, but the sound turned into a heavy sigh. "I don't think you get it," he said. "I'm holding a knife and telling you what to do. You're holding a scalpel and acting like a cornered rat. Didn't your author ever put you in mortal peril? Answer the damn question."

With the light on Artemis, Mello glanced around the hallway looking for potential witnesses. The clinic was a few doors down, and it wasn't safe to do this in public. A few members of the patient population might take issue with the situation, and the last thing he needed was a good Samaritan screwing this up. "Open the door beside you," he said flatly. "Don't think about calling for help. I can kill you in four seconds." He'd heard no sound from behind the door, but if it turned out that there were others present he'd simply take Artemis hostage.

"Yes," Artemis answered immediately. "Yes my author put me in mortal peril, I've stared down a gun barrel before, jumped out of a train, and was exposed to massive amounts of radiation. And that was just when I was twelve!"

Reasoning wouldn't do any good, he'd have to give Mello what he wanted--whatever that was. He still wasn't sure.

The boy dropped the scalpel onto the ground and held his hands in plain view so that Mello could see he was unarmed. Well, aside from the sword at his hip. The boy turned slowly and opened the door, praying someone would be inside. No one.

Schuldig, I'm begging you. He's taking me into an unoccupied room and demanding I answer questions--he's unstable.

Artemis walked into the center of the room, hands still at either side of his head. He was silent.

"That wasn't the question I meant," Mello said. For someone who'd faced death multiple times, Artemis certainly seemed uncomfortable. He heard the scalpel hit the ground with a sharp clang, mildly surprised that Artemis had obeyed with no further protest. The sense of control was refreshing, but it wasn't exactly what he wanted.

"Let's review the facts," he said. "Your entire life is meaningless. Nothing you've ever done, thought, or felt has any significance beyond the pages of some pulp novel, and anything interesting or special about you was contrived to make your character more appealing to a middle school audience. You've never accomplished anything that wasn't handed to you by your author, and you're not the little genius that you've always thought you were. How does that make you feel?"

Mello closed the door with his foot and leaned against the wall beside it, still gripping the knife and aiming the flashlight at Artemis' face. He noted with odd detachment that his palms were sweating, despite the fact that he'd threatened the lives of dozens of people before.

How does that make me feel? Artemis thought. What is this, a therapy session? What is going on here?

"How does that make me feel?" Artemis repeated, buying himself some time. He had to think of something, anything to say to Mello that would satisfy him. "Worthless. Empty. Shallow."

Lies, lies, lies.

"Knowing that my whole life is nothing but a story fashioned for children has caused me great emotional distress, more than I could go into now. It's slowly eating away at my sanity, even as we speak."

He was laying it on rather thick, perhaps pulling back a bit more...

"But my friends here say that I am a living, breathing person, and that I experienced and worked towards everything I encountered--even if those things were written about in a book."

Well, that's why friends were worthless, Mello thought. They were always either lying or flat-out wrong.

He gritted his teeth, wholly unsatisfied. Artemis seemed more upset by the knife than by the fact that his life was a lie. What the hell was wrong with him? As much as the kid's intelligence angered him, Mello wouldn't deny its existence. Artemis shouldn't be dealing with this as well as it seemed.

"I don't think you understand." He pushed away from the wall and slowly approached. After a second he lowered the light from Artemis' face, but kept the knife at chest height with a grip that was less practiced than he would have liked. "Think about this. Think about who you are. What makes Artemis Fowl the Second so damn important?"

Okay, so that hadn't worked. Mello wanted something else, but Artemis was at a loss concerning what that could be. He'd already admitted that he was having psychological issue with the fact that his life had been detailed for people to read, and Artemis could have sworn that Mello would have reveled in seeing his intellectual rival admit that he felt he was shallow and worthless, but that he was still fighting a losing battle.

Apparently, that theory wasn't correct. He needed more information.

"I'm..." Artemis began. "I'm Artemis Fowl the Second. Fourteen-years-old and still able to outwit both fairy and mankind alike. I have the highest IQ in Europe, I beat the Chess Grandmaster in an online tournament, I write books that universities use world-wide, I replicate famous works of art for amusement and profit--and I did this all before I turned twelve. That is what makes me so important--the fact that I am so dangerous."

Artemis' list of accomplishments almost worked, and for a second a comfortably familiar anger sparked in Mello and he opened his mouth to argue, to point out that clearly, Artemis wasn't outwitting mankind or being dangerous at this particular moment. "You don't-" he started, voice full of its usual arrogance, but the words were cut off with an irritated hiss and he began pacing a slow circle around Artemis.

"That's a pretty long list," he said after a few seconds of silence. This time, his voice was cold. "Do you think it's plausible?"

"Do I think it's plausible? Of course I think it's plausible. If I hadn't thought it was plausible, I wouldn't have done it," Artemis replied, watching Mello's pacing carefully.

"You keep saying that my life is fictional, that I didn't do the things I did--some writer did. But he or she didn't. They wrote the pages, I worked and suffered their words. My life may be fictional to you, but clearly we have different perspectives, as my life is my own and not yours."

As he spoke, his tone seemed to grow more forceful and angry. He believed what he was saying, he realized. He had suffered. He had worked long and hard to become as smart and dangerous as he was. Even if someone was writing his life, it was a brilliant one. One crowded with incident.

But the series of unfortunate events that had come to pass in this building made him think twice about the possibility of an omnipotent writer dictating his life. Something more exciting would have happened by now. He would have escaped from those nurses unscathed. This was no structured novel, no. This was his life. He was in control.

Which meant that there would be no deus ex machina to save him from Mello's wrath. He had to play this smarter than he'd ever been before.

Mello snorted as he came to a stop. The emotion in Artemis' voice felt genuine this time, and he smiled as he briefly flicked the beam of the flashlight to his captive's face. "It's not plausible, Artemis," he said. "You should be smart enough to realize that."

After waiting an instant for the words to settle, he continued walking. If not for his tight frown, he might have looked like a scientist focusing on an infected mouse. "No one is that special," he said, breaking eye contact to glance towards the tile in front of his feet. "In the real world, no one wins at everything. Those aren't your accomplishments. They're the fantasies of whoever wrote you."

Again, he looked back to Artemis. "Even if you lived through it, you were nothing but a puppet. You're just a puppet with a vivid memory who never noticed his strings."

Artemis felt something rising in him. Something that demanded to be let out, that refused to take this abuse any longer. He may have been trying to make it through this unharmed, but he wouldn't be kicked around and insulted.

"A puppet am I? Not special in any way. Everything that I've done so far isn't plausible. All the things I've done have been pre-determined... well, I can think of one thing that isn't." He was silent for a moment.

Then the boy looked up into Mello's face and spat.

"Maybe you've overestimated me, because no smart boy would spit in his captor's face. I'm leaving now." He started to move.

Although Mello's raw intelligence had never quite met his standards, the two things he depended on to keep up with his competition were his instinct and quick reflexes. As such, he moved as soon as Artemis spat, his knife slashing for the boy's throat. Later, he might consider Artemis' rash action a sign of victory, but right now, he just wanted his captive dead.

The beam of light swept across the floor as he stepped forward for balance and force. He wasn't an experienced knife fighter, but it shouldn't be difficult to hit something only a couple feet away. Besides, Artemis hadn't listed combat on his very extensive resume.

Artemis wasn't at all combat-friendly. He was both slow and unable to defend himself properly. The knife went for his throat, but the boy was at least fast enough to throw his arm in front of his vital point.

The knife slashed deeply into his arm and Artemis cried out in pain, clutching the injured limb to his chest.

Don't let him see it... whatever you do.

"What happened to not wanting to kill me, hm?" Artemis gave a hollow laugh. "I see what's going on." The boy looked up at Mello with a triumphant smirk. "You're frustrated. You needed to take out your feelings on something, and I was the first thing you saw. You're violent. You want to feel dominant over something, anything. Unfortunately for you, I've felt more alive here than ever before. Maybe less in-control, but new settings cause character development. I'm even willing to stand up to your terrorism without backup."

"You don't know shit about what's going on," Mello hissed, swinging again before Artemis finished speaking. This time the knife swept empty air, but the first blow had struck something solid. He dropped the flashlight and lunged for the boy, hoping to pin him to the ground. The bulb still provided enough light to make out shadows and movement, and Mello trusted his hearing and instinct to provide the rest.

Most of Artemis' accusations were correct. Mello had long since lost track of how many times he'd been called frustrated or violent, and it was no secret that he always wanted to be first. What he refused to believe was that Artemis claimed to feel alive in this hellhole, even when confronted with evidence that everything he knew about himself was a goddamn lie. Was he a complete imbecile? How badly had Mello overestimated Artemis' intelligence when a simple fact like a lifetime of being manipulated could just be overlooked?

Clearly, the boy was a fucking idiot, but in a few seconds that wouldn't matter. In a few seconds, he'd be slightly more intelligent as a corpse.

Artemis saw his chance when Mello missed him the second time. The boy made a break for the door. He was going to run while he was still sane and, more importantly, alive. It was clear that Schuldig was currently occupied, not listening, or not planning on coming to save him. He was on his own for this one.

He wasn't fast enough, though. Mello tackled him from behind and he fell onto the floor with Mello on top of him. The air left his lungs and he coughed and spluttered.

"H-help...!" He rasped weakly, striking backwards at Mello's face with his elbow.

God... I didn't say goodbye to him...

Oh, so now he wanted help? That always seemed to be how it went...people were perfectly capable of arguing, yelling, spitting, and pretending to be strong up until the moment they knew they were about to die. Then, it was nothing but whimpering and crying and begging for mercy. Mello was glad he'd never been that weak.

With a flash of uncomfortable detachment, he realized that he shared that trait with many others from his world.

He landed on Artemis with a quiet grunt, followed by a louder one when the boy's elbow connected with his cheek. It took less than a second for him to push up to gain leverage, and an instant later, he brought the knife down with the force of his weight behind it.

If Artemis was really too stupid to understand that he didn't exist, he'd just have to learn it the hard way.

The whole scene seemed to move in slow motion. One minute, his elbow had connected with Mello's face and he was twisting around to escape. He looked up and saw Mello above him with the knife in his hand, glinting in the beam of the forgotten flashlight.

His legs were pinned.

His left arm was injured and useless.

Mello was faster than he was.

Schuldig, Farfarello, Sora, Harry, Renji, Captain... Haku... I'm so sorry.

Artemis cried out as the knife sunk into his left breast all the way to the hilt. The boy heard bone snap, and his heart spasmed as it was grazed open. Mostly though, his lung was taking on blood.

I hope you all know how I felt... especially you, Haku. I think I loved you. Please look after him, Zabuza. Don't leave him alone again.

There was no point in trying to heal himself. Mello would just stab him repeatedly. This was only the beginning of his rage, after all.

"Well," Artemis said, blood collecting at the back of his throat. "It seems my author has killed me off," he said sarcastically. "But I think you'll see that the legend has a life of its own. This will come back to haunt you, I swear it on my grave."

The boy gave another harsh laugh, bringing a cough and a splutter of blood. He could almost see Butler, and Holly, and his mother. Reaching out to him. Hallucinations, but beautiful ones.

"Enjoy the sun tomorrow--you won't see it again once they realize you've killed me."

Mello heard the threats, but didn't process them. What he did process was the sucking sound from the wound in the boy's chest and the gurgle in his voice, and for a brief second the words and images from a memorized medical textbook flashed through his mind, something not seen for over a decade. Pneumothorax. Hemoptysis. There were dozens of ways to suffocate.

He knew enough about medicine to know that Artemis was dying, so he pushed himself off of the smaller body. Killing someone with a knife was different from what he was used to and he found that his hands were slick and dark, the fabric of his coat spattered with stains. He leaned back on his hands, one closed and still gripping the knife, and he stared at the redness bubbling from Artemis' chest like boiling water.

Mello felt no remorse over the murder, but that was no surprise. It certainly hadn't been the first. He felt no pleasure either, though it was clearly a victory over an adversary. What he did feel was dull dissatisfaction, and the sense of being very, very far away. This felt like a movie. Or a novel. Or a comic book.

After the afternoon's revelations he'd expected some kind of catharsis, but he should have known that this killing was no different from another. He had control over Artemis' life, but that didn't mean he had control over his own.

A defensive reflex snapped his thoughts to the pragmatic and he shook his head violently. Leaving the body here would be fine. The nurses would remove it in the morning. As for the rest of the night, he had ways to keep himself occupied. Scavenging, stealing, sabotaging. The usual. He didn't mind working alone.

The boy on the floor was still gasping for air when Mello pushed himself to his feet, muscles tight with adrenaline. He thought he saw a flicker of blue light within Artemis' chest, but he dismissed it as reflections of the dropped flashlight. He wiped his hands on his pants and snatched up the light, then took a few steps towards the door.

No reason to stick around.

Edited 2008-09-24 10:23 (UTC)

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