Christopher Manuel Rodriguez awoke to the sound of Ma Gasket shrieking at her sons. He grabbed his watch from beside his bedroll and checked the time. 6:25. His alarm would be going off in five minutes, so no point in trying to go back to sleep. With a sigh, he pushed himself up and put on a black T-shirt and camoflauge pants, the standard uniform for the Titan army. Taking a moment to stretch, he exited his tent.

Chris emerged and spared a glance at the yellow-grassed field littered with tents. Demigods, monsters, and the occasional nature spirit sped around the base, delivering messages or urging friends to hurry up before morning drills. Chris headed into the wide, earthy clearing where drills were held every morning and afternoon, striding towards a bench near the side.

Before he could sit down, a brunet boy with a look of dissatisfaction on his face marched onto the field and blew a whistle. Soldiers flowed onto the field and arranged themselves into neat rows, standing at attention and waiting for the brunette's orders. He led them through warm-up exercises, then sent the exhausted herd to run three miles.

Chris loved nothing better. He stayed mostly with Hermes kids while running because almost nobody could keep up with them, aside from a few children of Nike or Iris.

"I heard Luke's found a way into Camp," one of his brothers said.

"Yeah right," replied a short girl. Maybe a daughter of Iris? She hadn't been there very long, that was for sure. "If he had, we'd be going through it already." Chris agreed silently. Everyone quieted as they began to run up a hill, desperate not to be left behind. By the time they began to speak again, the topic had been dropped.


Ethan Nakamura first heard about Luke's disappearance from Kara, the petite brunette in the sleeping bag next to him. It was the Stoll brothers who told everyone in Cabin Eleven that Luke was working for Kronos, a few days later when the panic over his disappearence had calmed slightly. Three months later, it was Kara again who told him that one of the claimed Hermes kids— Chris something-or-another— had run off to join Luke and the Titan lord. The next summer, it was a frightened scream and a murmur through a crowd of campers than told him Thalia's tree had been poisoned— and what were the chances it wasn't Luke? He got to see with his own eyes, through a mess of bodies and orange shirts, that Thalia had been healed. A few weeks later, Kara delivered one last bit of news, on a piece of paper folded next to his pillow and the gap where her sleeping bag had lain:

Ethan—

I'm not sure if we were friends, but I thought you'd be interested: Kronos isn't evil. He's going to make the world a better place for the demigods who join him. No more being neglected by parents who won't even tell us who they are. I don't know how you can find us, but I'm joining the Titan Army and I think you should too. We'll be equal for once, I know how much justice means to you. Think about it, ok?

Ethan thought about it until Thanksgiving, when another unclaimed demigod vanished. No one really noticed, no one cared that another person had decided camp wasn't good enough. No one ever cared unless it was a kid who had been claimed, in which case his or her siblings cried together in their cabin for weeks. That afternoon, Ethan prayed to Olympus to just let him be claimed, let him have siblings who would cry for him. He had done that a lot since he arrived at camp, more since reading Kara's note. As usual, there was no indication his mother even cared.

The following night, Ethan packed up his duffel and left.


Geyron reminded Alabaster of a stoplight. The rancher had three bodies, joined together at the hips and the shoulders, each wearing its own cowboy-style shirt. One was red, one was yellow, and one was green, which meant that for three days of negotiations Alabaster had been thinking of busy surface streets in while listening to the man wax poetic on the risks of working with Titans.

"I just ain't getting why you expect me to sell to you. See, my biggest customer is Apollo. All those sun cattle, y'know. If I back you and your masters, I'm gonna lose that. So it ain't worth it." Geyron had given variants of this speech at least ten times, always in the same annoying Texan accent.

"I understand. However, any agreement we make will be entirely confidential, so there is no risk of you losing your clientele." And more importantly, the Olympians won't know what monsters we have int store for them, Alabaster added silently.

"But see, I'm gonna need insurance, in case something bad happens. Betraying gods is not light business."

Ah, now the reason for the repeated speech was becoming clearer. "Rest assured, we plan on our account being much larger than Apollo's. Naturally, we will also be paying much more."

"Hmph. And how much, exactly, will you be paying for my services?" Geyron licked his lips greedily.

"The details are still open for negotiation, but I was thinking about a hundred drachmas per head for the smaller stuff, hellhounds and the like, with individual prices set on more dangerous monsters."

"One-fifty, at least! Do you know how hard it is to wrangle with such violent monsters?"

I'm dealing with one right now, aren't I? "One-ten."

"One-forty-five."

"One-fifteen."

"One-forty-two."

"One-fifteen is fairly generous."

"I'm not ducking below one-forty."

"One-fifteen, and I go on a day-long quest of your choosing." Alabaster watched as Geyron considered this latest offer.

"Anything I want?"

"Within consideration of the time limit. And I Iris-message my superiors beforehand and tell them the price we agreed on, so that if I don't come back from my quest you can't back out of the deal." The rancher puzzled over these restrictions, trying to calculate how much it was really worth.

"Make it one-twenty and it's a deal." Alabaster extended his hand and received a bone-crushing handshake.

"Well kid," the monster continued. "Eurytion will escort you to your room, and I'll give you your quest at sunrise. Don't be late."