"THE END IS NIGH!" the graffiti proclaimed in neon colours. Annabeth sighed. President Farrt had even messed up the pretty murals of Manhattan. Then again, she didn't know why she was surprised - Farrt messed up everything. She turned and walked away, down the streets of New Farrttown - New York, New York, it's supposed to be New York. Percy was waiting for her at the end of the road; she'd stopped briefly to examine the now-desiccated mural. She knew why he hadn't stopped to do the same; it hurt too much for him to examine the now-daily warnings of doom in too much detail.
She knew he missed Rachel. She'd been caught two years ago "harbouring" Leo, Calypso, Hazel and Frank in her dorm room at finishing school and been sentenced to death, the fugitives barely escaping with their lives. In her last, unmonitored conversation with Annabeth, before her termination, she'd made her friend swear on the River Styx to end this. (Preferably by throwing a hairbrush at Farrt, but she wasn't picky.)
Apollo had been pissed off at the loss of his oracle, but he hadn't stirred into action. None of the gods had.
Annabeth had once heard of the cooking experiment where a frog was dropped into a pot of boiling water, and jumped out immediately, but when it was put into warm water and slowly heated to boiling, the frog didn't notice the danger until it was too late. She felt like this was an accurate metaphor describing the political situation: no one had realised quite what it meant when Farrt was elected president, and very few had felt the water heating up.
Now they were close to boiling.
Farrt had been a joke. He was never taken seriously, even when he won. He had a stupid name and a stupid policy and said stupid things.
But no one was laughing anymore. They were too scared to.
Some of Annabeth's friends were in hiding - the rest might be dead for all she knew. But she still had her Percy, thank the gods.
She caught up to him then, and took his hand. They swung their arms in unison. "Happy Birthday, Seaweed Brain," she said softly. He smiled at her, and it had a lot more sadness to it than she would've liked.
"Thanks, Wise Girl," he quipped in response, then they passed by a poster on the wall. Annabeth could only make out a splash of yellow in her peripheral vision, but Percy turned his head to read it and the darkening of his face firmly cemented her decision not to turn hers.
The streets were deserted; it was near curfew, and few dared to antagonise the president by breaking the rules he'd lovingly put in place for their own safety. Annabeth checked her watch; they themselves were risking punishment by cutting it so fine, but their suburban "bungalow" was only a street away, and they could get there in plenty of time.
The roads were congested with cars, despite the curfews. Most of them were parked - on the pavement, in the middle of the road, in garages, anywhere their drivers could find that didn't involve crashing through a wall - but a few had people in them, several of whom gave the couple odd looks before pointedly looking away. Annabeth couldn't tell if it was because they disapproved - if so, fuck them, hypocrites - or because they didn't want to be associated with people who so obviously walked the line between legal and illegal.
Not that Percy and Annabeth looked particularly like renegades. They were very obviously a perfectly no nonsense, young, married couple, thank you very much. Nothing about the image they presented to the mortal public suggested they so much as disagreed with any of Farrt's policies, let alone that they were a pair of demigods who'd saved the world from the domination of malignant forces (twice) and had survived adventures and perils untold.
They were perfectly ordinary, to their neighbours.
The pair turned a street corner and stepped onto their own road. There were fewer propaganda posters here, though still plenty - the only splash of colour in an otherwise drab environment. Annabeth wanted to wince when she saw the one about conscription to the army, mandatory for all able-bodied men past age twenty, younger if the authorities showed a personal interest in you. Jason had already been snapped up and forced to train to join the Elite - the highest level division known to those hostile to the regime as The Killers, who were obliged to accompany Farrt at all times and bodily protect him from assassination attempts.
Annabeth had never seen a Killer in person - Jason hadn't returned in the six months since he'd been taken to train as one - but she'd heard rumours that they were brainwashed until they used their own bodies as shields for the president, with no thought in their heads but loyalty to him, no thought for their own lives or the lives of their loved ones were they to die.
There was nothing but duty, for them.
Annabeth would be forever grateful to the gods that Percy was too unassuming to garner attention from the authorities in that way.
Not that it mattered much, she mused with a frown. It was his twentieth birthday today. His conscription letter was coming, whether they were prepared or not.
They were not prepared. Or rather, she was not prepared. She would never be.
They reached their doorstep a minute before the curfew came. A police car drove by, and had the audacity to stop and watch as Percy fumbled with the key and unlocked the door, only driving on when it was clear that they had every intention of going inside into the warm. August or not, it was cold.
She shot the car a narrow glare as it disappeared around the corner. She hardly heard Percy's hissed, "Careful," but let him take her hand and lead her into the dim entryway.
From the outside, their house was a single-storey bungalow with a small garden and a nice enough door. But the Mist was at work here - operated by Hecate herself - and inside it was a three-floor house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two kitchens. When Rachel had insisted they move in here shortly after Farrt's election four years previous, even giving them the money to do it, Annabeth hadn't understood why they'd need so much space. But her friend had been insistent that they'd need it someday, so they'd accepted.
And now Rachel was dead, and they needed the large house more than ever.
She wordlessly handed Percy her coat to hang up. She could hear voices above them as she climbed the stairs, light footsteps that she'd been able to determine belonged to Thalia sometime during the third month of their confinement, and the crackling of a radio tuned into the more anti-Farrt stations.
"-course he did," she heard Piper mutter, no doubt in response to whatever latest atrocity the man had said. Annabeth emerged from the stairwell to see her friends huddled on the sofas in the living area, listening intently to the few words that could be heard between the interference on the line. Piper glanced up, her braids swinging. "Hello."
"Hi." She slumped onto a sofa herself, and noticed the small, misshapen cupcake on the table. A few of the spare blueberries seemed to have been crammed into it, giving it a bruised tinge. There was a candle speared in the top, along with a scrap of paper wrapped round a cocktail stick that read Happy Birthday, Percy. She glanced up to see Nico watching her; she looked at Thalia and said earnestly, "That's so sweet."
Will, who was sitting on the sofa opposite them, hissed, "Shhh!" with a smile that the current Armageddon had never been quite able to steal from him, and shouted "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" when Percy's form emerged from the stairwell.
Her boyfriend grinned at the sight of the cupcake, and she could tell he was genuinely touched by the gesture. "Awww, thanks, Will."
"We don't have any presents for you, I'm afraid," Thalia added. She'd gone into hiding with the other three when Artemis had retreated from the wild to argue the gods into doing something about the situation with America, sending her Hunters to help protect the demigods in whatever way they could. "But we hope you like it anyway."
Will passed it to Annabeth, who passed it to Percy when he took a seat next to her. "It's perfect." He grinned. "How did you remember I liked blue stuff?"
"Other than the fact that every person who's ever known you knows that?" drawled Piper. "Thalia asked Annabeth."
Nico lifted his head then, and Percy seemed to understand the weight of the look the younger boy was giving him. "Did it come?" he asked cautiously, his fingers splaying themselves on his knees like he was bracing himself for a physical blow.
Nico nodded wordlessly, and passed over an innocent-looking envelope that had been lying innocuously on the table. With hands that shook slightly, Percy opened it, glanced over it, and closed his eyes in defeat.
To Perseus Jackson... you have reached your twentieth birthday... mandatory conscription... expect to see you soon.
Annabeth's stomach plummeted when she glanced at the paper over his shoulder. Percy crumpled it into a ball in his fists.