Author's Note (Important): This work is based directly off of Rick Riordan's book The Red Pyramid so all credit goes to him. I quite literally have taken to copying the book and adding/deleting to suit the story. Minor changes to pronouns, names, and some added character development and depictions to fit with the gender-bent version are of my own design and are original thoughts. The first chapter is going to be split into two parts. Please review and let me know how you guys feel about this.

1. A Death at the Needle

WE ONLY HAVE A FEW HOURS, so listen carefully.

If you're hearing this story, you're already in danger. Sam and I might be your only chance. Go to the school. Find the locker. I won't tell you which school or which locker, because if you're the right person, you'll find it. You need to trust me. The combination is 33/32/13. By the time you finish listening, you'll know what those numbers mean, though what they mean isn't as important as the package inside it. Just remember the story we're about to tell you isn't complete yet.

How it ends will depend on you.

The most important thing: when you open the package and find what's inside, don't keep it longer than a week. Sure, it'll be tempting. It will grant you nearly unlimited power, but power comes with a price. If you possess it too long, it will consume you, as it almost consumed me. Learn its secrets quickly. Pass it on. Hide it for the next person, the way Sam and I did for you. Your life is about to get a lot more interesting and even more dangerous.

Okay, Sam is telling me to stop stalling and get on with the story. Fine. I guess it started in London, the night our mother blew up the British Museum and the course of my life.

My name is Carla Kane. I'm fourteen and my home is a suitcase. You think I'm kidding? Ha! You clearly don't know me well. Since I was eight years old, my mother and I have traveled the world for her work. I was born in L.A. but my mom's an archaeologist, so her work takes us all over. Mostly we go to Egypt, since that's her specialty, and is starting to become mine as well. Go into a bookstore, find a book about Egypt, there's a pretty good chance it was written by Dr. Julia Kane. You want to know why Egyptians put mummy organs in jars, or that the pyramids were not build by aliens but actually slaves, or what was the deal with scarab beetles? My mom is your man. Figuratively speaking. Of course, there were other reasons my mother moved us around so much, but I didn't know her secret back then. This wasn't some little secret like her eating my candy at night either. This was a world- shaking secret, but she kept it from us for our own protection.

I didn't go to school. My mother tutored me (you can't really call it 'homeschooling' if you have no permanent home). She taught me whatever she thought was most important and interesting, so I learned almost everything about Egyptian mythology and history, basketball stats for the Lakers, and my mother's favorite musicians. I read a lot, too—pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from mom's history books to fantasy novels. I spent a lot of time sitting around in hotels and airports and dig sites in foreign countries where I didn't know anybody. The only books I wouldn't touch were those trashy romance novels and fashion magazines that they always have in waiting rooms. Not even isolation could make me interested in "5 Tips for Achieving the Perfect Summer Body" or "Does He Like You?: Take This Simple 500 Questioner to Find Out!". Partially because I was never interested in those things, and I couldn't imagine the look on my mother's face if she caught me reading Twilight. Not to mention, excluding the male scorpions and spiders I found in various hotels, my interactions with guys were nonexistent.

My mom was always telling me to put the book down and play some basketball. Have you ever tried to start a rousing game of pick-up basketball in Edfu, Egypt? The combination of the lack of people and the fact that I can only understand basic Ancient Egyptian words make in nearly impossible. Besides, most people don't really beg me for the athletic type.

Anyway, my mother trained me early to keep all my possessions in a single suitcase that fits in an airplane's overhead compartment. Other girls would be carrying bag after bag into the airport, presumably filled to the brim with makeup and at least 6 extra outfits for their one weekend away. But I had no use for makeup or sweatpants even if my mother allowed them. My mom packed the same way as I did, except she was allowed an extra workbag for her archaeology tools.

Rule number one: I am not allowed to look in her workbag. That's a rule I never broke until the day of the explosion.

It happened on Christmas Eve. We were in London for visitation day with my younger brother, Samuel. I used to call him Sam or Sammy before we grew apart, but now it feels too casual. See, Mom's only allowed two days a year with him—one in the winter, one in the summer—because our grandparents hate her with a burning passion. After our dad died, his parents had a huge court custody battle with Mom. After five lawyers, three screaming matches, and a near fatal attack with a spoon (I still don't feel safe with my mother holding one), they won the right to keep Samuel with them in England. He was only six, two years younger than myself, and allegedly they couldn't keep us both. I think it was more of an excuse on their part. After all, Samuel looks more like our father while I remind them of our mother, which may explain why they never seemed to like me.

So Samuel was raised as a British schoolkid, and I traveled around with my mom. We only saw Samuel twice a year, which (for the most part) was fine with me. Looking back on it now, I regret not having more time growing up with him, but at the time, we barely knew each other and all we seemed to do during visitation was fight.

[Shut up, Sam. I'm getting to that part but they need to know the set up otherwise they'll just be confused later.]

So anyway, my mom and I had just flown into Heathrow after a couple of delays. It was a drizzly, cold afternoon, just like it was every time we came to London. The whole taxi ride into the city, my mother was tense and nervous. Now, my mom isn't the largest person, but she is so confident and assured of herself, that she seems to tower over others. You wouldn't think anything could make her nervous. She has dark brown skin like mine, brown eyes, which could turn from loving and soft to piercing in a second, and a short, professional haircut. That afternoon she wore her winter dress coat and her best brown dress and black stockings, the one she used for public lectures and court dates. Usually she exudes such confidence that she dominates any room she walks into, but sometimes—like that afternoon—I saw another side to her that I didn't really understand, at least, not at that point. She kept looking over her shoulder like we were in a game of cat and mouse, and we were the mice.

"Mom?" I asked as we exiting the plane. "Is something wrong?"

"No sign of them yet," she muttered, her eyes frantically glancing around the crowded airport. I didn't know what she could have been looking for in the crowd, but it had her spooked. Then she must've realized she'd spoken aloud, because she looked at me startled.

"Nothing, Carla. Everything's fine." She tried to backtrack and she grabbed our bags and began speed walking towards the exit.

This bothered me because my mom's a terrible liar, even with the simplest of things. She couldn't tell someone that they looked nice in an ugly dress without shifting and stumbling over her words. I always knew when she was hiding something, but I also knew no amount of pestering her would get me the truth. She was probably just trying to protect me, though I didn't know what it could possibly be from. There didn't seem anything innately dangerous about the throngs of people pushing through the airport. Most were women and children, with some men carrying Christmas gifts for their sweethearts mixed in. The only dangerous things were the possibility of a mass panic and the cost of concessions.

Sometimes I wondered if she had some dark secret in her past, maybe some old enemy following her like from those spy movies they always seemed to show inflight. But the idea seemed ridiculous. Mom was no Liam Neeson, she was just an archaeologist who occasionally did guest lectures at colleges. And I doubt an angry college student would have been enough to shake my mother like this.

There was other thing that troubled me: Mom was clutching her workbag tightly in her right hand. Usually when she does that, it means that we're serious in danger. There was one time when gunmen stormed into our hotel in Cairo. I heard the shots coming from the lobby, where my mother was, and panicked, running down to check on her. By the time I got there, she was just calmly zipping up her workbag while three unconscious gunmen hung by their shoelaces from the chandelier, 10 feet in the air, their robes falling over their heads so you could see their briefs. Mom blamed the incident on a freak chandelier malfunction, and the police had no other choice but to accept it after it was discovered that the security tapes were eroded.

Another time, we were caught in the middle of a political riot in Paris. My mom found the nearest parked car, pushed me into the backseat, and told me to get as low as I could and stayed there. I pressed myself close against the floorboards and kept my eyes shut tight with my arms protecting my head. I could hear Mom in the driver's seat, rummaging through her bag, and mumbling something to herself that sounded like Egyptian. At the time, I assumed that it was either a type of prayer or perhaps an ancient, long-forgotten string of curse words. I could hear the crowd roaring outside, the sounds of shattering glass and gunshots so loud they vibrated my teeth. A few minutes later, she told me it was safe to get up. As I looked out the window, I realized that every other car on the block had been overturned and set on fire. Our car had been freshly washed and polished, and even had several twenty-euro notes and a croissant tucked under the windshield wipers. I'd come to respect the bag. It was our good luck charm, almost like prayer beads or a rabbit's foot. But when my mom kept it that close, it meant we were going to need all the good luck we could get.

We drove through the city center, heading toward my grandparents' flat. We passed the golden gates of Buckingham Palace and the big stone column in Trafalgar Square. It would have been a beautiful and interesting view, but after years and years of traveling, all columns, gates, and even cities begin to look the same. I could barely recall every place we had been due to the sheer number of them, but the monotony of the people and design made it even harder. Other kids I meet sometimes would say, "Wow, you're so lucky that you get to travel so much." But it's not like we spend our time sightseeing or relaxing. We've stayed in some pretty sketchy places because we don't have much money, and we would hardly ever stay anywhere longer than a few days. Between the constant trips to the airports and checking into seedy hotels at 3 am almost daily, I began to feel like we were fugitives. When I was younger, I would imagine that we were running from the law, but by the time I reached 12, I would have loved to get to know a city well enough to actually make friends or even know the street names.

Most of the time, what my mom does for work isn't dangerous. In fact, if you're not interested in the subjects she teaches, some of them can seem pretty comical. She does lectures on topics like "Can Egyptian Charms Really Curse You?" and "How to Tell the Difference between a Real and Fake Mummy Finger" and a bunch of other stuff most people wouldn't care about. But like I said, there's that other side to her.

She's always extremely cautious, making sure to check every hotel room before she lets me walk in. She'll race into a museum, heels clicking quickly along the linoleum, see some artifacts, jot down a few notes, and rush out again like she's afraid she'll be caught by the security cameras. One time, when I was much younger, we had raced across the Charles de Gaulle airport to catch a last-minute flight, and Mom didn't relax until the plane was off the ground and 1,000 feet in the air. I had asked her point blank what she was running from, and the look on her face was as if I'd just pulled the pin out of a grenade. For a second I was scared she might actually give me the truth.

Then she said, "Carla, it's nothing." As if "nothing" were the most terrifying thing in the world.

After that, I decided it was better not to ask questions. I never questioned my mother's judgement for fear of what would happen if I did. That is, until that fateful day. Part of me still wishes that I had listened to my mother, because if I did, it would have made everything simpler.

My grandparents, the Fausts, live in a housing development near Canary Wharf, right on the banks of the River Thames. The taxi let us off at the curb, and my mom asked the driver to wait so we wouldn't have to try to hail another cab in the semi-isolated development.

We were halfway up the walkway when Mom stopped dead in her tracts. She whipped around, hair flying in her face, and looked across the street behind us.

"What?" I asked.

Then I saw the woman in the trench coat. She was across the street, leaning against a big dead tree. She had an hourglass figure, with smooth skin the color of roasted coffee beans. Her coat and black pinstriped pantsuit looked expensive. She had cornrows and wore a black fedora pulled down low over her dark round glasses. She looked like a mix between a wealthy lawyer and a jazz musician, the kind my mom would always drag me to see in concert.

Even though I couldn't see her eyes behind the glasses, I had the distinct impression she was watching us. She might've been an old friend or colleague of Mom's. No matter where we went, Mom was always running into people she knew. But it did seem strange that she was waiting here, outside my grandparents'. And she didn't look happy. I began to worry that my first impression was right, and the court was back to say we couldn't visit or yell at us for being late. The last thing my mom needed was to deal with more stress today.

"Carla," my mom said, "go on ahead." She wasn't looking at me, instead making constant eye contract with the woman across the street. She stared at her with such focus that she must have thought if she took her eyes of the woman for a second, she would disappear.

"But—" I tried to interject, worriedly looking between my mother and the strange woman. I wouldn't be much help if it came to a fight, but I didn't want to abandon my mother.

"Go get your brother. I'll meet you both back at the taxi."

She crossed the street toward the lady in the trench coat, leaving me with two choices: follow my mom, directly disobeying her orders, and see what was going on, or to do what I was told. After a moment's hesitation, I decided on the slightly less dangerous path. I went to retrieve my brother.

Before I could even knock, Samuel opened the door.

"Late as usual," he said with a roll of his eyes.

He was holding his cat, Cupcake, who'd been a "going away" present from Mom six years before. Cupcake never seemed to get older or bigger, despite the fact that he was almost 10 years old. He had fuzzy yellow-and-black fur like a miniature leopard, alert yellow eyes, and pointy ears that were too tall for his head. A silver Egyptian pendant dangled from his collar. He looked nothing like a cupcake, but Samuel had been about 2 when he named him, so I guess you have to cut him some slack. Not that I would argue with anyone who made fun of him for his pastry named cat.

Samuel hadn't changed much either since last summer, as if England existed in some parallel dimension where time never went forward, and brothers stayed just as annoying.

[He's already glaring at me as I record this, so I'd better be careful how I describe him, or I'm going to get punched.]

You would never guess he's my biological brother. First of all, he'd been living in England so long, he has a heavy British accent. Secondly, he takes after our dad, who was white, so Samuel's skin is much lighter than mine. He has straight caramel-colored hair that draped onto his forehead, not exactly blond or brown, which he usually dyes with streaks of bright colors. That day it had red streaks along the tips, making it look like he had suffered from a head injury. His eyes are the exact same startling shade of blue that our Dad's were. He's only just turned twelve, but after he hit a growth spurt last year, he's exactly as tall as me, which is incredibly annoying. He was chewing gum as usual, dressed for his family day out with Mom and I in ripped jeans, a leather jacket, and combat boots, like he was going to a concert and was hoping to stomp on some peoples heads. He had headphones dangling around his neck just in case we bored him (as we usually seemed to do).

[Okay, so he didn't hit me, so I guess I did an okay job of describing him.]

"Our plane was late," I told him, even though I realized that he didn't care why we were late. It was always the same reasons anyway. A late plane, a delayed take off, a sudden storm: Something seemed to happen every time we came to visit Samuel. He popped a bubble, rubbed Cupcake's head, and tossed the cat inside, who screeched and ran away into the house.

"Gramp, going out!" He yelled as he stepped outside of the door.

From somewhere in the house, Grandpa Faust said something I couldn't make out, though it sounded something like "Don't let them in!" As I said, they really don't like us.

Samuel closed the door and regarded me as if I were a dead mouse his cat had just dragged in and left on his lap. "So… you're back."

"Yep."

"Ok." He sighed, like my presence was the bane of his existence. "Let's get it over with."

And that was it. No "Hi, how you been the last six months? So glad to see you! How's life? Got a boyfriend or girlfriend yet?" Nothing. But ultimately, that was okay with me. When you only see each other twice a year, it's like you're distant cousins who visit on Thanksgiving rather than siblings. We had absolutely nothing in common except our parents. I love books and logic. He likes rock music and sarcasm. Any conversation between us ended in a fight about something the other did and our mother having to break us up. So it was a relatively good that we only saw each other twice a year.

We trudged down the steps towards the taxi. I noticed how he smelled like a combination of old people and minty bubble gum (which is an odd mix to say the least) when he stopped so abruptly, I nearly ran into him.

"Who's that?" he asked.

I'd nearly forgotten about the mysterious woman in the trench coat from before. She and my mom were still standing across the street next to a big tree. It looked like they were in the middle of an intense argument, with each motioning agitatedly with their hands and the sound of raised voices carrying across the street.

"Dunno," I admitted. "She was there when we pulled up."

"She looks kinda familiar." Samuel said frowning and squinting, as if he was trying to summon memories by getting a blurrier look at the woman. "Come on."

Let me know what you think about this concept and the writing. I wanted to keep as much as Rick Riordan's signature style in this as I could while still giving it the gender-bent spin. Review and let me know!