A loud bang pierced through the silent room, instantly waking me up. It sounded as if two metal pans slammed into each other. The banging startled me greatly, forcing my eyes open. I was greeted with an extremely bright light that forced my eyes closed once again. A feeling of burning spread across my eyes as I rubbed them to numb the feeling. Assuming it was my lamp, I reached over to my nightstand where it should be to turn it off.

However, my hand reached nothing but air. I rolled over a bit to get closer when I felt the bed under me disappear. Shortly after I was greeted with the feeling of falling; a short gust of wind breathing across my body before it instantly stopped, as did my falling.

"Ow! Damn It! What in Hades was that!?" I screamed to no one in particular. The fall made my eyes widen in alertness to my environment; and I didn't like the look of it. I wasn't definitely not in the Poseidon cabin. I was in a cramped room with apricot colored walls and a small bunk bed. The bunk beds had no railing to protect one from falling, which I had just done from the top bunk. I'm not sure if you could call those sleeping nightmare's beds, the mattress was extremely thin and felt like cardboard. On the beds were small white sheets, no cover.

While feeling slightly dazed from the fall, I shakily stood up. I finally registered the fact that I wasn't completely dry, which was extremely odd as I was only wet when I wanted to be. The water was at about ankle level. Whatever room I was in had hardwood flooring; the tiling looked like that of a bathroom. That's when I heard the sound of rushing water, like a waterfall crashing into a lake below.

I tracked the sound to a plain white door that was directly across from the bunk beds. I approached and twisted the golden doorknob that rested on the door. It took a lot of effort to get the door open as the water pushed in protest of being able to do so. After a few good pushes I bullied my way inside of the room.

It was even smaller than the room I was just in. It had a small rusty sink with a cracked bath tub inside. Said things were currently overflowing with water, likely the cause of the rooms minor flooding. Shrugging I moved into the room to turn of the faucets off.

I first when to the sink, then the tub, neither having a handle to turn off the water. Panicking slightly I took a deep breath and remembered I had the power to control water.

"Then why are you wet" a nagging voice told me in my head. The voice had a point, I only get wet when I wanted to, I just hadn't thought much on it as of yet. Worried I tried to use my powers on the water.

No response.

My eyes widened in alarm and I dashed to the tub. Sending a quick prayer to my dad I ducked my head in the overflowing tub and inhaled. For the first time in my short, eventful, life the water went in my body. An unfamiliar stinging in my nose occurred as I quickly withdrew away from the water.

I then entered a whooping coughing fit. The water in my nose had traveled down to my throat and was now coming out of my mouth. Is this what it feels like to drown?

After what seemed like an hour, I finally stopped coughing and exited the bathroom back into the slowly flooding main room. The room had no windows and a metal door. I ran to the door and grabbed the metal; it felt frozen under my hands warmth. I twisted, shoved, and pushed the door knob, each yielding the same result. The door would not open.

That's when I noticed it, a small scanner to the right of the door. It looked like one of those hand scanners you see the government use in movies. Right next to it were four buttons: one displaying a multiplication sign, another division, another addiction, the last subtraction. I also noticed the multiplication, addition, and division were red while the subtraction was blue.

At this point I was utterly confused. I never was good at puzzles, but this situation definitely looked impossible to get out of.

Ring Ring; A phone rang.

The sudden sound caused me to jump in surprise. The weird thing was, there was no phone in the room. I looked around and tried to track the sound, but it seemed to be emancipating throughout the entire room. After about a minute of confusion, the ringing finally stopped.

"O' Happy day, good morning players" a cheery feminine voice sounded, replacing the ringing. The voice was young, child like, and full of innocence. Though I chose not to let her voice trick me, she probably wasn't someone to underestimate.

"I see a look of confusion amongst many of your faces. What were you expecting, me to be the some evil mastermind?" she said with a giggle.

Admittedly, I had. Someone had kidnapped me, turned my water powers off, and seemed to have more than one person here. Forgive me, but I was expecting some wise dark mage or something. Not a small girl. The girl continued talking.

"Please, where are my manners? I am Ringmaster, your host for the Decimation Game." The girl said in an overly bubbly voice. Decimation Game, I didn't like the sound of that, the words Decimate and Game really doesn't belong in the same title.

"Yes Sally this is a game" Ringmaster answered.

Sally?

No way, it couldn't be her could it?

Why would she be here? My musings were interrupted Ringmaster's voice.

"Yes, those of you who are Romans should be familiar with the term decimate. No? Well in ancient Rome, they punished cowardliness or mutiny by killing one in every ten soldiers within a cohort. You see this game is quite fond of the number 10. There are ten of you here, I'm ten years old, and the answer to your first puzzle is even ten" the ringmaster said in the same overly happy voice.

I doubted she was ten, even though her voice did sound like it was. The answer to the first door was ten. That'd be helpful if I knew the question.

"Well glad I could give you all a hand. Why don't we add another ten to the equation? You all have ten minutes to get downstairs to the lobby otherwise… well the janitor is going to have a lot of cleaning to do." With that Ringmaster quit talking, leaving me more confused than I was when she started talking.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A mysterious noise began to beep every second, it sounded like the ticking of a time bomb. The noise made my heart race. The strange part was, it sounded like it was coming from me. Confused I took my shirt off and looked at my chest.

I was greeted with two scars crossing each other in an X like patters directly over my chest. The scar was red and irritated, like it was a fresh scar. Not only did I see the scar, but the beeping got significantly louder.

In sudden realization, my body froze. My heart must have missed at least three beats. 'Well the janitors going to have a lot of cleaning to do'. Those words rang inside my head repeatedly. Severe fear spread in my heart, nervousness taking over my mind. A bomb, set to a timer of ten minutes, was inside me.

I had no idea how to get out, no idea where I was, no idea why I was here; but I knew one thing, I'm probably going to die here unless I get out. My breathing increased rapidly as I felt my vision blur with tears.

I tried to think of the positive; at least my last real day alive was spent with Annabeth. The mere thought of having to leave her pained me greatly. We had just survived a massive war; we had just admitted our feelings. What happens? I die two days later.

Those thoughts were too dark for me, and if I was going to die I was at least going to die without a tear in my eye. I moved my hand to wipe away any stray tears when I was welcomed with another fearful sight.

On the palm of my hand, was a branded number 7. It looked to be scarred deep in my skin; inflamed red skin surrounded the seven. I noticed the seven's coloring was odd. Unlike the darker red you'd expect after being burned, it was a bright, vibrant red. The coloring was very similar to the color of three of the buttons I was looking at earlier.

Hmm…

A/N

Yey new story. About Swords and Hearts, I won't be able to update it for a while. For a personal project in school, I chose to write a novel. Keeping up with fanfic and my own personal novel is too much to do. However, I can write some for a novel and change a few things around to fit a more Percy Jackson style. Thank you!