Chapter 1: My New Flat mate
Lowly Flat
Unknown POV.
Gunshots… Screaming… Blood… Death, those sounds and experiences haunt me to this day, prying at my very soul. Images of my friends, those I lived with, fought with, bonded with, hell even killed with were flashing all around me, as well as their agonized faces the moment a bullet blasted through them. I was a doctor, yes, but out there in the field, I was as useful as a book to a blind man. There were wounds I could have prevented with but a simple bandage, however the moment I treated someone a stray shot would rip through them, killing anyone I tried to help. Everything molded from clear pictures to undesirable blobs as hundreds of faces I could have saved flashed before my eyes. Suddenly, a sharp pain ripped through my leg and I fell to the ground in agony, feeling blood pour out of me just as I screamed
"MEDIC!" I woke, sweating buckets and crying rivers. I looked around frantically, breathing heavily, waiting for someone to come charging in with AK-47's, but nothing happened. The only thing I saw was the dim, damp hellhole that I called a flat, the noisy air-conditioning humming loudly, the shower hose still dripping water and the busy street outside.
"*Sigh, just a dream… it's just a dream." I sighed in relief as I fell back into my bed, my blonde hair spilling out around my head. I exhaled deeply, trying to block out the images, but they just kept coming. Eventually, I couldn't hold it in anymore and I started sobbing. After a few minutes when I found out that I couldn't cry myself to sleep, I sat up, about to go to the loo when I decided that I didn't need to go anymore, so I just stared at the wall for a few minutes. I looked at my clock to see what time I had woken up tonight.
"Bloody hell, 5:00 AM! *Groan, oh god… that's the fifth time tonight" I whined, trying to stand up, however my one leg just couldn't support me and I fell to the ground, landing face first on the ground.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I was literally pounding my fist on the floor, angry that I couldn't even stand straight anymore. So in the end I just lay on the floor and eventually fell asleep… that is, until my alarm blared through the entire flat, making me rise up in anger.
"Great, another sleepless night. Hooray." I said, flipping myself over so I faced the celling. I looked to my right and saw my cane, leaning on my desk, so I flipped over and squirmed towards it, grabbing the cane by its bottom. I used it and the table to pull myself up so I could at least stand, however I did put most of my weight on the cane instead of my leg. I slowly hobbled over to the kitchen (if you could call it that) and took my breakfast, a few biscuits and a cup of coffee. I nibbled on the biscuits a bit before sitting myself on my desk. I pulled out the drawer next to me, retrieving my laptop and opening it to my blog, which by the way was completely empty.
"The Blog of Dr. Annabeth Chase Watson. God what the hell am I gonna put in here."
TIMESKIP!
"How's the blog going Annabeth?" asked my Therapist, looking at me the way he always does, calm and questioning. I hesitated to reply, but I did so that he wouldn't continue to ask me about it.
"Yeah it's… uhh… ok I guess." I replied, but he looked at me skeptically.
"Really, because from what I can see here…" My therapist pulled out his laptop and showed me my empty blog. "You haven't written a word."
"You just wrote 'still has trust issues'." I tried desperately to change the subject, and it worked for a split second.
"And you are reading what I'm writing upside down." He closed the laptop and looked at me sternly. "Annabeth, you're a soldier. It will take time to adjust to civilian life. You've seen things that no woman should ever experience and believe me, writing a blog about what is happening to you now, will seriously help you."
I replied to him with a look of sadness. "Nothing happens to me Dr. Chiron. Absolutely nothing."
POWERLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Conference Room
No POV.
Multiple flashes of cameras and chatting journalists were all centered in one room, all focused on a man and woman. From the neck down, the woman-looked normal, she wore a blue blouse and a long work-dress with women's work shoes. However, her hair was short and spiky, oddly complementing her stormy blue eyes. The man wore a grey polo shirt with black trousers and a black coat. He had olive skin that completely contrasted his black hair. Both the man and the woman were sitting in a table with a gigantic picture of a strange woman in the background.
"The body of Marie Andrews, an accountant found in a sports center two days ago in greater London. Initial investigations suggest this was a suicide. However, the method of which Ms. Andrews killed herself closely resembles the previous suicides of Sir Phillip Manson and John Wilson. In light of this, all three incidents are being treated as linked and the investigation is still ongoing. Detective-Inspector Di Angelo will now be taking questions." Said the woman and immediately every journalist in the room erupted in a fury of raised hands and voices.
"Detective-Inspector, how are these suicides linked?" asked one journalist.
"Well, as Detective Grace stated these suicides all are linked because each of the deaths were caused by the same poison. Uhh, they were all found in places they had absolutely no reason to be, and… umm, they all didn't have any prior indication of…" started Detective-Inspector Di Angelo but a very eager journalist cut him off there.
"But there are no such thing as 'serial suicides'." Said the journalist.
"Well apparently there is because we have a case of one right now. Next question." Said Detective-Inspector Di Angelo.
"These people, is there nothing that links them together?" asked another journalist.
"Well, nothing yet but… we're looking into any links between the three people." Suddenly every phone in the entire room, including the phones of the two detectives rang simultaneously.
"If you've all got texts please ignore…" started Detective Grace.
"But it just says 'incorrect'."
"Yes, just ignore it. Now back to the questions." The journalists apparently followed Detective Grace as they continued to barrage the two investigators with random questions.
After a few minutes… "Alright, if there are no more questions for Detective-Inspector Di Angelo this session has come to an end."
"If these are all suicides, then what are the police investigating?" inquired one journalist at the very back of the crowd.
"Well, the suicides are clearly linked and it is a very unusual situation and we have our best people investigating." Said Detective-Inspector Di Angelo and again, all the phones in the room began to ring as another round of "incorrects" were sent to all the journalists.
"Ignore them. Last question." Shouted Detective Grace.
"Are there any chance that these are all serial killings?" said someone and Detective-Inspector Di Angelo panicked slightly.
"Uh, umm… well, these 'killings' do appear to be suicides, there is a difference. The poisons of each person were clearly self administered and all of them were by lethal injection." Replied Detective-Inspector Di Angelo.
"But what if these are serial killings, how people keep themselves safe?" Once again, the journalist was right on point as Detective-Inspector Di Angelo was struggling to give an answer.
"Well… don't commit suicide." Detective-Inspector Di Angelo mentally slapped himself, for in his panicking state, he said the absolutely worst thing to say at a time like this, and everyone knew it.
"(Curtain Call)." Whispered Detective Grace and Detective-Inspector Di Angelo understood immediately what he should do.
"Clearly this is terrifying news, to know that three of our fellow Londoners died in circumstances such as this, but all everyone must do is exercise sensible precautions and most of all don't panic. We are as safe as we want to be. Thank you for coming." The Detective-Inspector was a second away from standing up and leaving, when another barrage of "Incorrects" flew out all across every journalist's cellphone. However, on Detective-Inspector Di Angelo's phone came a different message.
You know where I am. – PHJ the Detective-Inspector looked uncomfortably at the message before putting in his coat pocket and standing up, leaving the crowd of shouting journalists who were trying to get more out of the Detective-Inspector.
"You need to make him stop Nico, he's making us look like fools." Said Detective Grace as they walked down the halls of the New Scotland Yard police department.
"If you tell me how he does what he does Thalia, then I'll make him stop." Replied
Detective-Inspector Nico Di Angelo as he went to see the only person who could ever make sense of the mysterious killings.
POWERLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regents Park
Annabeth POV.
My doctor (me) said that I needed a walk every day to keep my mind off my leg, so here I was in Regents Park walking down one of the paths from one end to the other until a random voice out of nowhere called to me.
"Annabeth? Annabeth Chase?" asked the voice and I turned around to see a rather thin man approaching me. He was wearing a brown overcoat and a white polo with a rather colorful necktie. "It's me Grover, Grover Underwood. We were at Barts together."
"Grover? You're Grover? I hardly recognized you, you're so…" Let me explain. When I knew Grover, he had an arse wide enough to block out the sun and cause an eclipse. Now he looked thin enough to fit through a toilet paper tube. He grew his brown hair and now had a goatee whereas the last time i saw him he had a bowl cut.
"Yeah, I lost some weight." He said and I shook his hand. A few minutes later we bought each other coffee and sat down on one of the park benches.
"So how are you Annabeth, I heard you were off in Afghanistan getting shot at what happened?" I nearly didn't reply, but my therapist told me that I needed to trust people more so I gave it a go.
"Well, I got shot." I tapped my leg with my cane and Grover looked at me understandingly. "Ahem, well, are you still at Barts then?"
"Yeah, teaching. Bright young things just like we were. God I hate them all." We both chuckled at the little joke, but my laugh immediately disappeared. "What about you? In town till you get yourself fixed up are you?"
"Well I can't really afford London on an army pension now can I." I said with a tinge of bitterness and resent.
"Oh come now, that's not the Annabeth I know." I looked at Robert with a tad angry at what he said.
"Well I'm not the Annabeth Chase you knew." I said and he immediately shut up. There was a moment of awkward silence before anyone (Grover) decided to speak again.
"Couldn't you go over to Mallie's?" asked Grover
"Ha, you wish." I said laughing.
"Well you could get a flatshare." Grover's suggestion sounded like foreign language to me. The last person I had a flatshare with was Grover, and I didn't like having to sleep in someone else's house, especially since I was a girl and that I made his oven explode.
"Hell no. You know what happened when we shared a flat, no thanks." I may have denied Grover's suggestion with malice, but he just laughed.
"Hahaha, you know, you're the second person who said that to me today."
"Second? Who was the first?"
POWERLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
St. Bartholomew's Hospital
No POV.
Inside the many corridors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, through the lingering atmosphere of sickness and death, there was one area that was oddly more active than any other area in the hospital, the morgue.
"What do we have?" asked a man, peering into a body bag.
"Just in. 65 natural causes, all signs point to torture. He was an intern here, nice guy, brought me coffee every morning and tea every afternoon." Said a woman in a lab coat, walking around the body.
"Right then." The man closed the body bag and looked the woman in the eyes. "Rachel, we'll start with the whip."
Minutes later, the woman was standing outside a window along the hallway, cringing as she watched the man continuously whip a human corpse, while on the other hand the man seemed to be enjoying himself as he continually inflicted what would be gruesome wounds.
"Bad day?" asked the woman, Rachel, walking over and examining the body.
"I'll need to know what bruises form in the next 20 minutes. Text me the details and pictures, my client's life depends on it." The man wrote several details in a little red notepad before closing it and putting it back in his pocket.
"L-Listen, I was wondering, m-maybe after all this we can…" Rachel started but a judgmental look from the man stopped her cold.
"You're wearing lipstick. You weren't wearing lipstick before." The man started inching closer to Rachel's face, but she pulled back in discomfort.
"I-er, refreshed it. Can't a woman refresh her makeup." Stuttered Rachel, looking away nervously before the man could say anything else.
"Right, fair point. So what were you saying?" Rachel, mustering up all her courage was able to let loose a few words.
"Yes. Would you like to have some coffee?" Rachel was hopeful that the man would say yes, but her hopes were immediately shot down when the man said:
"Triple Espresso please. I'll be upstairs if you need anything." said the man as he strode away, leaving a very disappointed and sad Rachel.
POWERLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
St. Bart's Laboratory
Annabeth POV.
After I asked about the other person, Robert dragged me to his car and drove me all the way to St. Bart's and led me through the entire complex towards the chemical laboratory. There I saw a man in a black coat hunched over a microscope and jotting down notes as if he were an actual scientist. The moment the door closed he whipped his head to look at me, and I was nearly, if not breath taken on how drop dead gorgeous this man was with his black hair and green eyes.
"Well, not my kind of day." I said, not taking my eyes off the man.
"You haven't seen anything yet." said Grover, holding my shoulder. "Annabeth, this is…"
"Grover I need your phone mine has no service." Said the man interrupting his own introduction.
"Well what's wrong with the landline?" Grover was quite sad he didn't get to do his introduction.
"You know I prefer to text." The man held out his hand, expecting a phone to be placed there.
"Sorry, left it in my coat." The man looked disappointed and returned to studying what was on the microscope until I remembered I had a phone in my pocket.
"Um…here, use mine." I took out my phone and handed it to the man who looked slightly shocked.
"Oh, thank you." The man opened my phone and started typing a bunch of keys.
"Ah, this is an old friend of mine, Annabeth Chase Watson." Said Grover and I waved. I was still wondering who this man was until he said something that surprised me even more than being hit by an RPG. "Afghanistan or Iraq?"
I looked at the man in shock as Grover started smiling like a madman. "Sorry?"
"Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?" he asked again, still not taking his eyes off the phone.
"Wait, how did you…" I started, but the door suddenly opened and a red haired woman in a lab coat came in with a mug.
"Ah Rachel, coffee. Thank you, I felt like I was about to doze off for a second." Said the man as Rachel shyly handed over a hot mug of coffee to the man. "Hey, what happened to the lipstick?"
"It… um, wasn't working for me." she said, blushing heavily.
"Really, I thought it looked great, now your mouth looks too small." The man slowly walked away as he sipped his coffee, leaving Rachel stunned and looking angry at herself.
"What do you feel about the violin?" Asked the man as my face grew more shocked, and Robert grew more excited and happy by the minute.
"What?"
"Oh, I play the violin when I think, sometimes I don't talk for days-on-end, will that bother you? Potential flatmates need to know the worst about each other." he, finally looking up at me. I couldn't help but feel slightly creped out that a complete stranger knew that I served in Afghanistan and that I was looking to share a flat with him. I looked to Grover, but he said he didn't say a word about me to this man.
"Who said anything about flatmates?"
"I did. I told Grover that it must be difficult to find a flatmate for me. And here you are with an old friend just after military service in Afghanistan." The man retrieved an overcoat and scarf from one of the lab shelves as he walked over to me. "Wasn't a difficult leap."
"How the hell did you know about Afghanistan?" I asked.
"Nice little place around central London, together we can probably afford it. We'll meet there 7:00 this evening. Sorry, gotta dash, I seem to have left my whip in the mortuary." The man hurriedly made his way to the door and would have left if I had not stopped him.
"Is that it?"
"Is that what?" he turned towards me confusedly.
"We've only just met and now we're about to share a flat?"
"Yes, is that a problem?" I shook my head and chuckled.
"Yes, we know nothing about each other. I don't know who you are, I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name." I said.
"Well… I know that you're an army doctor who has been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know that you have a sister worried about you but you won't go to her for help because you don't approve of her and she's probably an alcoholic but more likely because she recently walked out on her husband. And I know that your therapist thinks that your limp is psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. That's probably enough to go on with, don't you think." I was utterly gob smacked as the man smirked and turned towards the door.
"Are you stalking me?" I asked, slightly afraid that he was my personal crazed stalker.
"Stalking you? What in god's name are you talking about, we've only just met." He replied stepping outside the door, but not before poking his head back in and saying: "The name is Perseus Holmes Jackson, call me Percy, and the address is 221B Baker St. *Wink, afternoon miss."
As the door shut closed, I looked at Grover who merely smirked at my look of total surprise and personal violation that a man who I never met before had literally just told me all of my personal information, even the things about my sibling.
"Don't worry, he's always like that." Said Grover, attempting to reassure me that I had just stepped into something I shouldn't have gotten into.
POWERLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lowly Flat
Annabeth POV.
As soon as I got home, I limped over to my bed and immediately flopped on it with the events from earlier this afternoon still fresh in my mind. I lay there for a few minutes till I decided to take a look at what Percy sent on my phone.
If brother has green ladder arrest brother. PHJ
When trying to figure out what the text meant didn't really seem possible, I decided to try and search some information about Percy to get a clear picture of who the hell he was and how he could do the things he did. I opened up my laptop and typed "Perseus Holmes Jackson" and pressed the enter key, my eyes widening as millions of solved murders, famous ones, had his name as the first word in every single one.
ENDLINEBREAK~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How did you like that? I hope you did because-
No one want's to read what you write at the end notes, that's just stupid.
Besides, it's useless to write now that our readers have ended here.
Fine, let's end our first fic together.
We are the CrackpotDemigod, and we bid you all farewell and we'll see you, in the next chapter.