Heroes of Olympus - Evolution

First Contact

By P.A Hanson

Prologue

I have been forced by circumstances beyond my control to write this diary. I can only hope if anyone finds this, that they take it seriously, and not just dismiss it as the fantastic ravings of a slightly odd fifteen year old boy. I have no one to talk to. No friends I can trust, and my parents, well, I'll get on to them later.

My name is Alex Tragodia, I live in New York City with my mother and father, both Greek émigrés. I don't want anyone to misunderstand me here, I love my parents and they have loved me back, even with all the trouble I have given them, and for the most part, I was happy and content, but there was always something lurking in the back of my mind, a glimmer of a realisation that something was not right with my life. That glimmer has recently turned into stone cold certainty.

Firstly let me talk about my parents, my father Iason and my mother Iro. They are quite young really, they moved to New York from Ithaca, Greece when they were only eighteen and I came along only a year later. My mother makes pottery and works from our home, a fifth floor apartment in a nice brownstone in Lenox Hill near 5th Avenue and Central Park. God knows how they afforded it, it was just one of many of my many unanswered questions. My dad works for the Port Authority as a harbour pilot and had a miraculous escape from the World Trade Center after the attacks. He says it was a miracle, I disagreed with him for years because I didn't believe in such things, but now I really do believe it might be true. One thing I do know though is that they aren't my parents.

Shocking? Paranoid? Maybe. I've never had the courage to ask them. At first I thought I might be adopted but now I'm not so sure. Why do I say this? Well, firstly, I'm not like them in any way. A perfect teenage answer I know, as all teenagers don't believe they could have possibly come from their parents, but I simply am so different it's beyond belief. They are trusting, diligent and carefree, whereas I'm paranoid, reckless and hyper alert all the time. I do things that confuse them greatly, I make decisions that confound them, but to me they make perfect sense. I see patterns in life and I see how situations will unfold many steps in advance, and it's only recently I have come to the realisation, that this ability is not normal. Unfortunately the same ability that allows me to effectively predict the short term future makes me hyper and edgy. The doctors say I have ADHD, needless to say, I disagree with their diagnosis. I have stunning vision, speed, balance and spatial awareness, better than anyone I have ever met, but my parents have none of this, they are so stunningly ordinary. The clincher is that I have vivid green eyes, and I simply don't look Greek. My parents look classically Greek with dark brown eyes and they must know that I have seen this, but they live in their own little bubble and I don't want to shatter it down around them. I stay out mostly and they say nothing.

What do I do when I'm out? I have no friends so where do I go? Well I like to watch the world around me, and it's not just the comings and goings of New York City, but ever so more than that. For a few months now I have been able to see the world like no one else I have ever met. I call it the Shadow World, for lack of a better name, and it runs in parallel to our world, except only I can see it.

I sit on the roofs of buildings and watch the world go by and I watch as the world completely ignores Ice Giants walking down 5th Avenue, unicorns in Central Park being tended to by goat legged satyrs or fauns (I'm not sure of the difference, I had to look it up). I've seen kids with deadly looking weaponry wander around like they are out of some epic fantasy, and they have to fight off strange creatures at every turn. No one in the real world bats an eyelid. I feel a bit like Harry Potter, but this is no fictional magical world, this is real. The monsters seemed to not notice my presence, for which I was eternally glad, since I had no weaponry until recently, but the acquisition of the weapon may have cost me more than I could have imagined.

So I watch the Shadow World. Then go home to have my dinner with my perfectly normal parents like nothing is different. One aspect of my parents has always fascinated me, their names, Iason and Iro, so I looked them up. One is a mythical hero and another literally comes from the Greek word for hero. I don't know if that means anything, I can't read an answer in to everything, but I get a tingle when I give it some thought, and to me that is usually a sign of something important. Unfortunately I get the same feeling when I consider my surname. Tragodia is the Greek for tragedy so I wonder if my future is to be a tragic hero, I will keep wondering my whole life, however long it turns out to be.

Chapter One

Observe and report

"Hi Harry."

"Alex! My boy!" Harry exclaimed happily. Harry always exclaimed happily. "What can I get you today? I've got the new X-Men comics in!" Harry ran the newspaper stand in the local square, and had done since long before I was born. To me he was older than god and to some looked slightly scary, but through his long white beard he projected friendliness that couldn't be faked. I liked to imagine it was just for me, I knew it wasn't but the thought kept me happy. Harry was one of the few people I liked in the city.

"Just the Post please Harry." I responded cheerily.

"You're growin' up do fast my boy!" He laughed while fetching me a New York Post.

"School assignments, Harry, ain't got time for comics much anymore." I lied.

"Well, that's me out of a job then! Dollar seventy-five please Alex."

I handed over the cash said my goodbyes and proceeded to head for one of my observation posts, putting the paper in my shoulder bag. One of my favourite haunts was the roof of an old brownstone overlooking Central Park. The building had been abandoned for years and was locked and boarded up with no chance of entry through any normal means. This did not stop me though. I walked around the back, climbed on a old dumpster and jumped five feet straight up and grabbed the downpipe. Climbing one floor, I grabbed hold of the fire escape and ascended seven floors and continued to the roof via the down pipe. The flat roof had some old sheds I could use for shelter and in which I had previously stashed supplies, I entered the biggest shed and grabbed my diary, binoculars and a couple of books. One book was an illustrated list of mythical creatures and the other was a book of Greek mythology that belonged to my dad. I pulled up a lawn chair and began to watch and make notes.

11:43pm

The Satyrs are out in force again behind New York Zoo. They appear to be tending to the trees after the recent Hurricane. The trees all have nymphs living in them some of which look very distressed.

12:12pm

A Satyr wearing one of those big Caribbean style woolly hats appears out of seemingly nowhere. He seems important, the other satyrs defer to him. He plays some pipes (reed pipes?) and the trees heal all by themselves! The nymphs seem to like him a lot, they smother him with kisses!

12:34pm

A huge dog appears and comes over and licks the head of the main Satyr. His hat falls off and he has a wild mane of ginger hair surrounding two prominent horns. The dog looks like a hellhound, but I thought they were supposed to be dangerous. The dog (hellhound?) is trailed by a pale young man wearing black, goth like. He seems on friendly terms with the Satyr, but also seems in a hurry. He whispers something to the Satyr, who nods and climbs onto the dog with the pale man. Sweet Lord! The dog vanished into thin air! The Shadow World gets stranger every day!

With the Satyrs work done they all left and gave me very little to see in Shadow World activity. I got the newspaper out and started to read. Page five had what I was looking for.

'Massive Seven Vehicle Pileup on 5th Avenue!' The headline shouted with pictures to back it up.

'Many people had a lucky escape yesterday as an out of control truck rammed through stationary traffic at the corner of 5th Avenue and East 65th Street. The truck, with driver Ernie Wilson, 62 from Albany, suffered a brake failure as it approached the busy junction during rush hour traffic. The truck, its horn blaring, rammed its way through six immobile cars racing through the junction before ending up upturned in Central Park. Witnesses say the actions of the driver saved many lives and are holding Ernie Wilson up as a hero. Five people were taken to hospital with minor injuries.'

I snorted as I chucked the paper down. I'd seen what had really happened.

An Ice Giant, clear as day walked down 5th Avenue and kicked cars out of its way like they were footballs. A young blond man in shining golden armor wielding a huge sword flew (yes flew!) out of nowhere and seemed to fire off (or at least redirect) a bolt of lightning at the Ice Giant. I watched with my mouth agape as the Ice Giant screamed, and charged straight through the traffic at the flying man. For a second I was concerned for the man, the Ice Giant after all was at least 40 ft tall, but I needn't had, for the man, who hadn't even landed, deftly dodged the Giant's blow and sliced his sword through the neck of the monster. The Giant stumbled through a wall and crashed into the park. Then disappeared in flames!

To everyone else apart from me and the blond man it looked like a traffic accident. How could this be? It couldn't be two worlds merged into one the facts didn't quite fit, it was more like just one world hidden from the other, but that theory brought up the fact that it had to be controlled by some intelligence, who knew how to blind people with false visions. It was too much to think about so I continued to observe and report. My logs were getting quite extensive, and I had described many different monsters, creatures and beings, and their apparent abilities, along with a number of young warrior men and women (and boys and girls) who seemingly had superpowers. The man yesterday made me think of Zeus with the lightning, I'd already knew of the Greek connection with the Shadow World, I knew I would have to pursue that avenue further.

I was interrupted in my thoughts by a crashing sound and I looked over the edge of the rooftop to see a mean looking giant making his way down the street. Not as big as the Ice Giant, but a ten foot tall ugly looking thing I had previously tentatively identified as a Laistrygonian. They were the cannibals encountered by Odysseus and ten foot was quite a big one. I could see the battle lines forming in my head, but with whom? I looked around the streets and spied a young warrior girl, no more than fourteen years old strolling up the street. She had some red armor over her shoulders covering an orange t-shirt and jeans, but had a large sword in a scabbard and was carrying a large spear. I could see the potential battles in my head instantly, and none looked good for the girl, but I lacked any knowledge of her abilities. I wanted to warn her but had no way of doing so. I ran for the fire escape.

I slid down the downpipe and missed out the fire escape altogether sliding eight floors all the way to the bottom hitting the dumpster hard and falling painfully to the floor. I ran out of the alley, and I could hear that the fight was already on. I turned the corner to see the girl standing fast with a sword in her hand, but her spear was broken on the floor.

Run! I wanted to say, I couldn't see a scenario where she could win this fight, but I was too far away still and I didn't want the monster to turn on me. I was unarmed and untrained.

"Clarisse!" The girl screamed.

"Clarisse! I Need You!"

Clarisse, whoever she was, didn't show, and the beast ripped a street sign out of the ground and swung it at the girl. I'll give her credit, she was fast, but she wasn't fast enough. The sign struck her sword arm and I could hear it break from my position. The girl screamed piteously. The giant showed no mercy, and sneered happily as it picked up the girl's sword and without pause viciously impaled her in the chest. I stopped cold and nearly threw up. I'd never witnessed a murder before, and the gurgle of the poor girls dying breath made me want to simultaneously pass out and explode with rage. Luckily for me, I chose the second option. The Giant had discarded the bloody sword and was picking at the girls wounds, I crept up to the Giant and even when it should have heard me, it ignored me. I picked up the sword, and the monster did nothing, just gave me a glance and re-focused back onto the poor girl's corpse.

It couldn't see me! It didn't recognise me as a Shadow World being! I wasted no time and stabbed the sword though the beast's back, where it screamed once looked at me accusingly and vanished in a cloud of flames and smoke. I rushed to check on the girl, but I already knew there was nothing I could do. I checked her pulse and noticed the beaded necklace around her neck wondering if it meant anything. On her bloody t-shirt I could make out the words Half –Blood, which made me snort with grim humor considering what we were both covered with.

"Kaitlen?" A strong voice said.

I looked up to see a very tall woman in full battle armor carrying the biggest spear I'd ever seen.

My mind ran the scenarios through it. I was in trouble. I was standing over the girl, covered in her blood, I was carrying the sword that killed her, with her blood still on it, with no sign apart from some random damage that the Laistrygonian had ever existed. From my minds battle prediction I knew I could not hope to defeat this warrior, and from the growing anger I could sense in her she was going to kill me outright and very soon.

"It wasn't-" I stammered

"I am Clarisse La Rue! Daughter of Ares! And by the God of War I will strike you down like the fucking dog you are!" She shouted and the ground trembled with her righteous anger. She pointed her spear at me and the tip crackled with electricity.

I did what any normal person would do. I ran like hell.