Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story. Although some of them, either I or other fans have created, and I have all the proper permissions to use them. All Percy Jackson characters and settings belong to Rick Riordan.
Author's Note: Project Ouranous is very loosely based on the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan, and so there will be few mentions of any of his canon characters. The majority of characters in this story were created by either myself or other fans of the series. In this story, the gods do not exist, and the universe the story is set in is quite different than the Percy Jackson universe, but there will still be references to the series every now and then. Enjoy!
The place was almost silent, other than the sound of a pair of high heels clicking down the hallway. The woman walked, looking intently at the notes on her clipboard and chewing on the end of a pen. She flipped the paper over a few times, comparing notes on the front and back, and then nodded to herself, satisfied with what she found.
Eventually she came to a room labeled Lab 008, and knocked quietly on the door, looking back down the hallway she'd come from. When the door opened, it revealed a rather short man with a pair of round glasses on his face, and a lab coat. The woman nodded at him as he opened the door further to let her in, greeting him with a quick, "Ian," and turning her attention back to her notes. She walked further into the room until she approached a window; one that you might see looking in to an interrogation room. Looking up from her clipboard, the woman glanced into the room beyond the glass. "Any change?"
Ian walked up and stood beside her, adjusting his glasses on his face. "None. His vitals are still normal, but he just…sits there. It's like he's gone into a …stasis or something. We've even sent people in there to try to talk to him, but he doesn't respond."
The woman responded only by writing things down on her paper. For a moment, the scratch of her pen was the only sound that could be heard. And then after a minute or two of silence, she asked, "What else have you tried?"
"Well," Ian went over to grab his own clipboard, flipping through the notes that others had made on it, "we've tried shock - didn't even get a flinch out of him at a hundred and twenty volts – stimulation, even had Carl go in to try and physically move him. Nothing."
"Hmm." The woman replied simply, writing more notes. "And have you discovered anything on why he's in this state?" She asked, glancing into the room once more, staring at the figure in the chair as if she could get into his mind and find out what was going on with him.
"Not a whole lot, really. We figure that, after all the...procedures he's been through, his body just went into shock; almost like a hibernation mode, and it's using the very least amount of energy it can to keep him alive."
"So like a coma, then."
"Somewhat, yes, though this is…different. Normally people in comas, they dream, right?" Ian looked to the woman, and after seeing her nod in understanding, he continued, "Well, we've been monitoring his brainwaves, and they're… they're quiet. It's like he's keeping his mind blank on purpose. Like he's… meditating."
"Meditating." The woman repeated, contemplating the possibility. "I guess it's possible, but…why?"
"And that's what none of us can figure out." Ian replied, looking over his notes once more, as if searching for something he might have overlooked before that would answer all their questions.
"Hmm." Was all the woman said. She was rolling all of the possibilities around in her mind, just trying to figure it out. They needed him to recover. Their entire facility, the goal they hoped to achieve, all of it depended on the success of this one boy.
Finally making a decision, the woman looked up from her notes, her face full of determination. Ian looked at her with concern, but all she said was, "I'll go talk to him."
"What? No! That's not your job! We need you in he-"
"I don't care if it's my job or not, Ian. We need him to recover, and if I can help with that, then I won't pass up an opportunity when I see one."
Ian spluttered at her, trying to form words as his face turned red, but he could find no way to make her stay, and so with a sigh, he sat down. "Fine. If there's no swaying you, you can go, but if anything goes wrong – I mean it, anything, - you get out of there. Promise me." The woman said nothing. "Hey, promise me."
She sighed. "I'll get out of there if anything goes wrong." She paused. "Promise."
Ian let out a sigh of half-relief. "Alright. I'll be listening from in here." Ian flicked on a switch, and a red light started flashing next to a speaker.
With an exasperated sigh, the woman opened the door to the room beyond the window, and as she stepped in, she set her clipboard and pen on a small table by the door, pulled up a chair, and sat down quietly in front of the comatose boy.
He was no older than eighteen, at least, with a shock of black, shaggy hair atop his head. Though he was looking down at the floor, the woman new that his eyes were a brilliant green, and he had a little scar right beneath his left eye. She had spent many days looking at this boy in front of her, memorizing his features, and as she sat in front of him now, with all those tubes and wires hooked up to him, he looked almost nothing like the boy he'd been before.
Taking a deep breath, the woman rested her hands on her lap before she said, "Hey, c-can you hear me?" She paused, waiting for some kind of reaction from the boy. She got none. "Okay, well I know you can, even if you don't show it." Another pause; still no response. "Hmm, okay. You know, people here are worried about you. You've been…you've been sleeping for a long time now, and we need you to wake up, okay? There are a lot of people depending on you out here. People who have spent their lives working up to this moment, and so we just need you to wake up and help us finish this off, alright?" She stopped there, looking the boy over carefully.
After a moment she got off of her chair and crouched in front of him, putting a hand very carefully on the boy's shoulder.
Ian's voice through the speakers made the woman turn her head towards the window to shush him before turning her attention back to the boy. With her hand still resting very gently on his shoulder, she leaned in close and, in no louder than a whisper, said, "Wake up."
Suddenly the boy's head snapped up and he moved a hand up, faster than the woman would have thought possible, to grab her wrist in a powerful grip. His emerald green eyes locked with her own, and she saw recognition flash through them. Slowly, in a voice hoarse from misuse, he growled, "…You did this…"
There was an audible pop as all the wires and tubes attached to the boy suddenly disconnected and fell to the floor, and anger filled the boy's expression. He abruptly stood from his chair and lifted the woman with him, throwing her backwards against the wall, then following and holding her in place with his forearm across her neck, cutting off her breathing. In a clearer voice now, his face only inches away from the woman's, he shouted at her, "You did this to me! All of this if your fault!"
There were black spots popping behind her eyes as she struggled for air, and she could faintly hear Ian's voice over the intercom, screaming for backup and for their lab to be locked down before the subject could escape, but none of it really registered in her mind. All she could do was stare into the eyes that glared at her with rage, as the boy who as easily a foot taller than her continued to shout. From the look in his eyes, she could tell he was going to kill her. She almost laughed. Fitting, I guess, that he be the one to do it. He's right. I did this to him. It's my fault.
The woman could tell that she was about to pass out when her thoughts would no longer form, and from there the boy could either continue to choke her until she died, or he would simply break her neck. She knew that he had the strength to do it. As her vision started to fade, she was only able to mouth a few words to the boy before her vision went completely black.
Then suddenly she fell to the floor, and air rushed into her lungs as she coughed and struggled to stay conscious. She faintly heard a loud crash, and as he vision slowly returned to her, she looked to see the door fly off its hinges, and a figure with a shock of black hair flee from the room before everything went black.