Chapter 1: This Might Be It

I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of battle horns outside my tent.. I was alert immediately and I knew what was going on. We were leaving.

I dressed. I wore standard armour and carried a standard sword. I'd left behind all my personal belongings when I'd joined the Titan's army. That was a small price to pay for vengeance.

Within the hour everyone was ready. I saw around me monsters and demigods dressed for battle. Dracaenae and halfbloods boarded the buses, and hellhounds loped alongside us as we pulled onto the highway.

I was sitting next to my friend Joshua. He was looking serious and was staring at the pattern on the chair in front like it held some great meaning.

"This might be it, Ali." I hated him using that name. My dad used to call me Ali, and he was dead. I was called Alejandra.

I paused before replying. "Yeah, maybe."

We drove for ages. I fell asleep.

...

I woke up to a voice speaking into a megaphone.

"Alright, we're getting off here. We're all Group Six, so we're gonna be going by the Williamsburg Bridge," said a guy about seventeen. He was tall and buff, and he was smiling. I really didn't know why. We were probably all about to die. Great. So let's all smile!

I remember when I joined the army.

"I renounce the gods. I pledge myself in service and spirit to the cause of Kronos."

It felt like years ago, but it had only been last summer. I'd been running from everything and nothing. Living on the streets, on the edge.

I remembered Camp Half Blood. I'd gone there when I was eleven. Crammed into the Hermes cabin because no one knew or cared about my parentage. I still don't know. The gods have forgotten me. And so I fight.

I fight to take revenge for my abandonment. I fight because the gods turned their backs on too many people. I fight because the time has come for a new age.

"Ali, we're getting off the bus." Joshua's voice was gentle in my ear. "We're here." Wherever that was.

...

We mounted these really creepy skeletal horses. We formed ranks and I ended up in the front. Great. All of the monsters went on ahead to the bridge, and we hung around outside some hotel, to wait and see if they needed reinforcements. We had been told that the enemy forces were small, so there was always a chance the dracaenae squadron would just clear the bridge and we'd march straight through Manhattan. But it was only a chance. And chance had never really gone my way.

After like, ten minutes, a dracaenae came running. Between the panting and the hissing, it was hard to tell what it was saying. But we got the picture. Reinforcements were needed at the bridge.

We reached the bridge to see a bunch of kids in armour and Camp Half Blood t-shirts. There were hardly any of them. This was going to be easier than I thought.

And then I saw him. Percy Jackson was driving the dracaenae back.

Oh, man.

We charged. They retreated. Well, except for two of them. Unfortunately, I knew both.

We hacked and slashed, but he was unnaturally good. He slashed the legs off our horses. We figured it was probably a good idea to dismount.

We reached about the middle of the bridge and I found myself facing Percy Jackson. He raised his sword to strike and I knew I couldn't win.

He jabbed me in the forehead with the hilt of his sword. Something red trickled into my field of vision and I crumpled.

...

I woke on one of those canvas camping beds. I was in a tent, completely alone. I had a bandage around my head and there was some stuff on a table near me, so it looked like someone else had been here.

I pushed my way out of the tent and saw where I was.

We had set up camp outside some graffiti-covered warehouse that looked like it was about to fall down. Behind wire-mesh fences were loads of concrete statues. Surrounding the building were hundreds of campfires and tents.

I saw Joshua and a couple of others sitting around the nearest fire and went to join them.

Josh smiled when he saw me. "You're awake."

"Yup,' I replied, and sat down.

We pretty much sat in silence for a while, until I asked how I'd got here. Joshua blushed and hesitated before he spoke.

"We, uh, retreated. A tactical withdrawal."

I realised there was more to it.

"What actually happened? Like, why am I here and not, like, dead on the bridge?"

Joshua didn't reply.

One of the others, a kid whose name escaped me, smiled and answered.

"Josh carried you," he said, grinning. "Oh man, it was hilarious."

I recalled that I was the one who had been bashed and I didn't think it was particularly funny.

Joshua had overcome his shyness and spoke. "Don't laugh! They would've killed her!"

I stopped the argument by asking, "So, what did I miss? We were at the bridge just before sunrise. It's, like, afternoon now."

Joshua paused, then he explained that we'd set up camp here after "the bridge" and that a truce party had gone out to meet the leaders of the enemy. And he told me how mad the group had looked when they had returned. I figured that they hadn't been too happy with how things had turned out.

"Hey, look," Josh said, pointing behind me.

The same guy who had spoken to us on the bus was coming over. With him was a younger kid, maybe fourteen. The kid pointed at me.

"That's her? She's like, fifteen."

"Yeah," the other guy replied. "I dunno why."

They came up to me. The tall guy looked at me. "You Alejandra Sanchez? Coz Nakamura wants to see you if you are."

I stood up, nervous. Why would someone as important as Ethan Nakamura want to talk to me?

Hey guys, that's it for this chapter. More is coming!

Have you read my other fanfics? There are three: Life Goes On, In the Cold and the Dark and We were young. Read them. Let me know what you think and I'll send you a cookie!