AN: Hey guys! I'm sorry I'm a day late with this chapter, something came up last night and I wasn't able to finish editing it to post it. To be honest, I think I'm going to permanently switch to Tuesday + Saturday uploads, rather than Tuesday + Friday. With classes and whatnot, Saturdays will just be easier for me. ANYWAY, here is chapter 2. I'm glad that you guys seemed to enjoy the first chapter. Remember, as always, leave any questions you might have and I'll address them next time.

Alright, that's enough from me. Here's chapter 2. DFTBA!

Chapter 2: The Son of Hades Gives Me the Dirt

The knock on my door came an hour later. I was still awake from my dream, having been unable to fall back asleep. I had docked my phone in the stereo I had on my bedside table and was listening to my music. Music always helped me think, and I had a lot to think about. I was also absentmindedly reading Plato's Republic in the original Greek. As I was going back to camp in the morning, I thought it important to brush up on my Ancient Greek; unlike demigods who had a natural sense of either Greek or Latin (or both sometimes, like with my father), I did not. But I just kept rereading the same page over and over, not taking in anything while my brain moved at the speed of sound, processing the new information I had.

And then the knock arrived. "Shit," I mumbled. I assumed that it was one of my parents, come to chastise me for playing my music too loudly. I silenced the music and said, "Yes?"

"It's me," my brother's muffled voice came from behind the door. "Can I come in?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn't in trouble after all. "Yeah, come in."

The door opened and Matt walked in. As much as I looked like our mom, he looked like Dad. Like me, the only difference was his hair color. He had blond hair, rather than Dad's black. Normally, Matt's hair was sort of long and unmanageable, but only a day ago he'd gotten his hair cut very short.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"Nope," I admitted. "You?"

He shook his head as he came in the door and shut it behind him. I pressed play on my music as Matt sat down on the edge of my bed. "I got up to use the bathroom," he said, "and I saw the lamplight under your door. I've been awake for hours, thinking."

"What about?" I asked, unable to mask the concerned-older-sister quality in my voice.

"Camp."

"Oh."

Matt sighed. "It's just so weird. For the first time ever, you and I aren't… you know."

I did. This was the year where Matt got to go to camp. Like me, he'd been given the choice between Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood. He'd decided he wanted to go to Camp Jupiter. I had fully expected him to join me at Camp Half-Blood. We were very close, after all. So when he had announced his decision to go to Camp Jupiter, I had been taken completely by surprise. And unlike Camp Half-Blood, where you had the choice between being a year-rounder or a summer camper, Camp Jupiter was always year round. I would be seeing my brother a lot less from now on, and that made me sad. Sure, the two camps visited each other, and he'd probably come home for holidays, like my friend Sierra Grace, but it just wasn't the same. The longest he and I had been apart was when I'd been at camp last summer, and that was only a couple of months. Matt was going to be at Camp Jupiter for the better part of the next ten years.

Matt was obviously thinking along the same lines as me, because he said, "I'm going to miss you."

"I'm gonna miss you, too, little bro," I said. "What time are you leaving in the morning?"

"Dad and I are leaving at seven," he said. "I wish we could just take a plane. That would be so much better than a super long road trip. Stupid Zeus…"

I thought I heard thunder rumble off in the distance, but that might've been my imagination. "You've got everything packed?"

Matt rolled his eyes. "Jeez, you're worse than Mom."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Matt insisted.

"It was a valid question," I said defensively. "You're not exactly the king of organization." That was a bit of an understatement. Matt was notoriously unorganized and messy. In his room, he left his clothes strewn all about the floor without regard for his dresser or clothes hamper. It made me wonder how he was possibly going to make it at Camp Jupiter. I was pretty sure, as Romans, they'd be pretty stringent on cleanliness and organization.

"Why did you decide to go to Camp Jupiter?" I asked suddenly. It had been a question I'd had since he'd told us he wanted to go to Camp Jupiter on his birthday back in February but that I'd never managed to bring up with him.

Matt looked thoughtful at that. When he answered, he did so slowly. "Mom and Dad are, without question, the two greatest heroes of the last thousand years. In the demigod world, it's impossible to escape their reputation. And I'm not necessarily complaining so much about that, but… you know, it's a lot to live up to. Especially at Camp Half-Blood. And then last summer you went on a quest and saved a goddess. Not many people can say that they've done that. And I am so proud of you. But still… it adds even more to the expectations I'd face at Camp Half-Blood."

"So you want to escape those expectations?"

Matt shook his head. "Not really. I mean, there's no way to escape Mom and Dad's reputations. But the thing is… At Camp Half-Blood, they really put more focus on being individual heroes. At Camp Jupiter, it's more about being part of a cohesive unit. I won't have to prove myself as an individual; I just have to be part of the team."

I was silent for a few moments. It made sense, but it still hurt a little bit to know that I was part of the reason (sort of) that my brother didn't want to come to Camp Half-Blood. I tried to cover it up with a joke. "And Sierra being at Camp Jupiter doesn't hurt."

Matt blushed. It was a poorly-kept secret that my brother had a crush on Sierra Grace. "Oh, shut up," he said. "Forget what I said about missing you."

I held my hand up to my heart in mock hurt. "Ouch. That got me right here. Right in the feels."

Matt laughed and gave me a shove. We both laughed for a few minutes, but eventually lapsed back into silence. Then, Matt asked the question I'd been worried he'd bring up, "So why are you up?"

I bit my lip. Only a select few people knew the truth about Gaius. Chiron; the Oracle, Gwendolyn; my parents; my friends, Theo and Jocelyn; Sierra; my cabin mates, Katherine and Mike; but not my brother. While I was a firm believer that people needed to know the truth in order to make informed decisions, Chiron had convinced me to keep the truth about Gaius secret. If people knew there was a son of Kronos plotting dangerous things, he'd argued, it would cause panic, and would impede efforts to make sure everyone was well-trained.

Kronos was the worst villain in Greek mythology. Sure, the gods may have face more challenging, more objectively terrifying, enemies – Gaea, the giants, Typhon for a few examples – but none loomed as large in the imagination as the father of the gods. The Lord of Time was the gods' true archenemy – the Joker to their Batman, if you will. During the Second Titan War, he'd come disturbingly close to destroying Olympus. There weren't any campers from that time period still at camp, but the memory of that war and how close the gods had come to destruction were still very salient.

But Kronos was gone. When my parents defeated him, his consciousness was spread so thinly that another comeback was inconceivable. I might have met the largest remnant of his consciousness last summer (I say might because it may or may not have been an illusion), and I could confirm that he had nothing but words anymore. Even so, he'd managed to thoroughly terrify me.

And the idea that he had a son was a possibility so terrifying that it would likely cause mass panic if it became widely known. Chiron's argument had made sense, and so, for now at least, I was keeping tight lipped about the truth, even with my brother. There was no sense in making everyone lose their heads. Gaius had been very quiet the last year, after all. And while that was about to change, it was still pertinent to play things close to the chest for now.

"Bad dream," I finally said to Matt by way of answering why I was up after three in the morning. "Couldn't get back to sleep." Which wasn't technically a lie.

"What was your dream about?" he asked.

"Don't remember," I lied.

Matt looked at me curiously. Usually, I had a very good memory. True, I'd blanked on the identity of Luke Castellan for a few weeks last year (for which I suspected foul play somehow), but other than that, I had a pretty good track record.

"There it is again," Matt said. "I can see it in your face. You've been hiding something from me all year."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Because I know you," Matt answered impatiently, which was pretty much the exact response Sierra had given me to the same question last summer. I guess that was the disadvantage of being so close with my brother: he knew me too well. Keeping a secret from him was a Sisyphean task.

I had been worried about keeping this secret from him. He was scary good at reading me, I knew that. I had almost told him a few times, but each time I held back. And I decided to hold back this time, too.

"Please," I said, "drop it Matt. You're right, okay? I've been keeping a secret from you. But not just from you. I've been keeping this secret from almost everyone. I have very good reason for keeping this thing a secret. And you know how much I hate it when people withhold important information. I wouldn't be keeping this secret if it wasn't so important to do so."

Matt didn't look very happy with my answer. I tried to placate him, but what I ended up saying to do so probably didn't help: "If it comes to it, I will tell you the secret. But, gods' willing, things won't come to that. It'll be really bad if it gets to that point."

Matt stood up suddenly. "Well, I'm gonna go to bed."

"Matt –"

"Goodnight, Elizabeth," he said shortly. "Have fun at camp."

He almost slammed my door behind him. He probably would have if he wasn't worried about waking our parents.

"Great job, Elizabeth," I muttered to myself. "Last time you're going to see your brother in weeks, maybe months, and you manage to piss him off." Moody now myself, I switched off my lamp, turned off my music, and tried to sleep. I lay awake for hours.

The car ride to camp the next day was pretty quiet. It was just me and Mom. I was still in a bad mood from my conversation with Matt, not to mention still processing my dream. And I was exhausted; I'd barely slept last night.

After a while, Mom broke the silence. "Alright, something's up. What's wrong?"

I blew my bangs off my forehead. Matt and I had an argument last night. He's figured out that I'm keeping a secret from him. You know, the Gaius thing. He doesn't like it."

"When was this?"

"A bit after three," I said. There wasn't any point lying. "I had woken up from a dream and couldn't get back to sleep."

Mom nodded slowly. "And you're upset because you and your brother left things on a poor note?"

I nodded.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much, honey," Mom said. "You know how quickly your brother's mood can change. He's probably forgotten all about being mad already."

"Yeah, but that's not the point," I said. "I mean, who knows when we'll see each other again? And the last thing we have between us until then is an argument. And I'm not just worried about that either," I went on, "there's the dream I had too."

"And what did you dream about?"

"Well Athena visited me in my sleep," I explained. I told Mom about my dream. As I talked she seemed to get weary. I'd never thought of either of my parents particularly old. They were both going on forty-two now, but they had a sort of timeless quality to them. They hardly looked any different than the pictures they had from when they were newlyweds. I'd always liked that about them.

But as I told Mom about seeing Luke visit her house all those years ago, she seemed to age before my eyes. I could almost see the streak of grey she'd pointed to when Luke had visited.

Mom sighed unhappily. "For a long time, I blamed myself for the Second Titan War."

"What?" I asked, surprised. "Why?"

"When Luke came to visit me that day, I could've stopped the war," she explained. "At least, that's how I felt at the time. I second guessed myself. I thought if I'd gone with him, I could've changed his mind. Maybe I could have made him good again. Or I had my knife. I could have killed him. He was unarmed."

"That wouldn't have been right," I said.

"I know. Your father said the same thing. And I have forgiven myself since then. Ultimately, I couldn't have stopped the war that day. And anyway, my fate wasn't with Luke. It was with your father."

Before I could stop myself, I asked, "Did you love Luke?" Then I mentally face palmed. What a stupid question to ask. Mom already looked upset. Asking her that was probably just going to make her more upset. And she probably wasn't going to answer anyway.

Mom sighed. And then, to my surprise, she answered. "I thought I did. For a long time I was convinced that I had feelings for Luke, which made it really confusing when I started falling for your dad. And then it looked like he was going to end up dating Rachel for a while –"

"Wait," I said. "Hold up. Dad almost dated Rachel? Like Rachel Dare the old Oracle?"

"Well she wasn't Oracle at the time, but yeah," Mom said. "And so that made my already complicated feelings about him and Luke even more complicated. But eventually I realized that I didn't love Luke, at least not romantically."

I whistled lowly. "Sounds like you had a pretty complicated love life when you were younger."

Mom rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Aphrodite decided that she wanted to 'make things interesting' for me and your dad."

I snorted, then contemplated telling Mom about the second part of my dream; the part about Erin Cross. She seemed to be returning to her normal self, and I was worried that I would upset her again. On the other hand, I wanted a second opinion on the matter. "There was another part of my dream," I said. I told her about Luke meeting Erin and my hunch that Erin was Gaius's mother.

Mom didn't get upset again. On the contrary, when she looked towards me, I could practically see the gears turning in her head. "Now that's very interesting. I wonder what happened to her… At any rate, at least we know the who part now. But there's still the question of how."

I was pretty sure that after giving birth to two kids, Mom knew the biological "how," which meant she was wondering the same thing as me: how had Luke managed to impregnate this woman after merging with Kronos?

"If Gaius is Kronos's son, that means that he must have been conceived after Kronos possessed Luke's body," Mom posited.

I finished her thought. "So even if this Erin woman and Luke had a relationship, how did they manage to hook up after Kronos was controlling Luke?"

"Exactly," Mom said animatedly. "Kronos showed little to no interest in mortals. Some of the Titans did. Prometheus was always interested in humanity, and Atlas thought that mortals made good pets, but Kronos had no interest in pure mortals whatsoever. So to show enough interest in Erin to go and 'hook up' as you said would have been very unlike Kronos."

"Maybe Luke was influencing him?" I suggested. "If he felt enough affection towards Erin, could it be possible that his feelings for her influenced Kronos?"

"Maybe," Mom said. "I had another idea, too. He was fighting Kronos for control of his body, at least sometimes. It could be that he regained control of his body long enough to go and see her. But I have trouble with both of these theories. For your idea, when Kronos was in charge of the body, Luke had no influence except that which allowed Kronos access to his memories, at least as far as I know. And then for the idea that I brought up, about Luke fighting Kronos… Well, the times that I saw Luke take over his body again, his control lasted only a couple of minutes at most. It'd be stretch to think that he was able to regain control long enough to get the idea to go see Erin, actually travel to where she lived, and then… do the deed."

I pondered that. "What do you think, then?"

Mom looked frustrated. "I don't know. I don't have all the variables."

I fully understood her frustration. It was a frustration that I shared. "Hopefully I'll find out more soon," I said. "Athena made it seem like I had more of these dreams coming my way. With any luck, I'll have some answers before too long."

Mom nodded. "Well let me know what you find out. I'd be interested to learn more. And also, please be careful this summer Elizabeth. Gaius is bad news. Your father and I hoped that we'd provided a safe world for you and your brother to grow up in." The look on her face expressed bitter disappointment. I understood why. She and Dad had gone through unimaginable dangers and fought against impossible enemies in the belief that the world would be safer as a result. To find out that there were still insanely dangerous enemies out there, like Gaius… well, it must have made them feel like all their work had been for nothing. I know that's how I'd feel in their shoes.

"Obviously," Mom continued, "We weren't entirely successful. But we have to live with things the way they are. That being said, I still want you to watch out. Please don't take unnecessary risks."

"I'll do my best, Mom," I promised. "But you know, I am a Jackson. Trouble tends to follow us."

Mom snorted. "Ain't that the truth."

We lapsed back into silence. I tried to push thoughts about Gaius from my head, at least for the time being. After all, I'd be at camp soon! I'd get to see my friends again. Jocelyn and Theo, my two best friends at camp, would be there, waiting for me. They had visited me in the City a few times, but I hadn't seen them since my birthday party in April. I was also really excited to see Mike and Katherine, my cabin mates, again. They were like the older siblings I never had. It was a nice feeling. Being the oldest in my family, I had never gotten the experience of being the younger one, and I quite liked it.

Still, my thoughts kept straying back to the son of Kronos. Now more than ever, I wished I knew what he was up to. I knew frustratingly little about him or his plans.

When the car came to a stop, I suddenly realized we were at camp. I hopped out and grabbed my bags. I strapped Marianas, my sword, to my hip.

Mom hopped out, too. "Got everything?" she asked as we began to walk up the hill.

"Yep," I said.

"Try not to lose your knife again this summer."

I grinned. On my quest last summer, I'd had to part with the knife my parents had given me for my seventh birthday. For Christmas, I'd gotten a new knife to replace it. Even though I mostly preferred to use Marianas, it was still good to have a knife. For one, the smaller blade was easier to conceal, which meant it was perfect for keeping on me at school or around New York. And besides, it was always a good idea to have a backup weapon.

"I promise I won't lose this one," I assured her.

When we reached the top of the hill, Mom stopped. I frowned slightly. "You aren't coming to say hi to Chiron?"

She shook her head sadly. "Unfortunately, I have to get back to the City pretty quickly. I've got another meeting about the Dare Enterprises deal." Mom's architectural firm, which was already huge, was in the middle of a hostile takeover of the land developer Dare Enterprises. The CEO of the company was Rachel Dare's father, but they didn't get along, apparently. Last time Rachel had come to visit she had expressed full approval for Mom's company's takeover.

Mom hugged me and kissed my forehead. "Have a good summer, honey. I love you."

"Love you, too, Mom," I said. Then I turned and bounded down the hill.

Camp was pretty much just like I remembered it. The canoe lake glittered in the sun while two triremes fought with each other. Some satyrs and campers were playing volleyball. Down in the arena a couple of campers were having a sword fight, possibly a grudge match. In the strawberry fields Demeter campers, satyrs, and nymphs tended to the plants. Just a normal day at Camp Half-Blood. I smiled. It was good to be back.

"Hey Elizabeth!" a voice called.

I turned. Dan Ocker, son of Hades, had emerged from the woods nearby. I stopped and waited for him to stride over to me. He was about my age with a swath of platinum blond hair and skin pale as death, which I guess made sense. His eyes were icy blue. He was wearing a bronze breastplate over his black t-shirt. A Stygian iron sword was strapped to his left hip and a double sided, one handed Celestial bronze battle axe was strapped to his right.

The son of Hades was nice enough. I hadn't interacted with him a whole lot last summer, but he had come to thank me personally for "clearing his father's name" after I returned from my quest last year. He'd even insisted that he owed me one. While it was entirely unnecessary, I did appreciate the sincerity of the gesture.

"Hey Dan," I said as he got close. "Been out in the woods hunting monsters?"

"Yeah, but I didn't find anything," he said with a shrug. I resumed walking, and Dan walked alongside me. "How was your year?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Not too bad. Pretty uneventful for the most part. You're a year rounder, right? Anything happen here?"

"Eh," Dan said, "business as usual for the most part. The Hunters of Artemis came by over the winter, beat us at capture the flag." I frowned for two reasons. The first: Thalia, Artemis's lieutenant, was a really good family friend, and I always liked to see her. The second: the Hunters were notorious for beating Camp Half-Blood at capture the flag. "Oh yeah, and Alex de Marco left on a quest a couple of days ago."

I raised my eyebrows. Alex was the head counselor of the Zeus cabin and my least favorite person at camp. I was partially glad that he'd be gone and out of my hair, for now, at least. On the other hand, I was almost positive his quest had something to do with Gaius. After all, Athena had just told me that he was becoming active again.

"Who went with Alex on the quest?" I asked.

Dan shook his head. "No one. He went alone."

"What?!"

"Yeah it was the weirdest thing. Apparently he woke up in the middle of the night from a bad dream. I hear he was pretty shaken up. So he went over to Gwendolyn's cave and woke her up. He got a prophecy. He wouldn't tell anyone what it said, but he insisted that he was supposed to go alone. Vanessa was really upset at him. She told him that going alone would get him killed." Vanessa was Alex's full sister. They were really close, not unlike me and Matt. She was a year and a half younger than him, and was basically the second in command of the Zeus cabin. She was just as obnoxious as her brother.

"So does anyone know what his prophecy said?" I asked. "Did anyone check Gwendolyn's shirt?" Gwendolyn always wrote her prophecies on her shirt in sharpie.

Dan snorted. "Please, that shirt is harder to decipher than her prophecies. Besides, it's entirely possible that she didn't even write it down yet. If Alex wanted her to keep it a secret, she'd do it. She nice like that. And Alex did want it kept a secret. He wouldn't even tell Vanessa what it said."

I frowned. "How do you know this much then? If Alex wanted all this to be a secret, why do you know so much about it?"

Dan cocked an eyebrow at me. "Have you forgotten how effective the rumor mill is here?"

I conceded his point. Just then, we reached the Big House. "Well, I better go check in with Chiron."

"Alright," Dan said. "I'll see you later."

"Bye."

Dan walked off down the hill to the cabin area. There were so many cabins that I hadn't even bothered to try and count them all. A lot of them were empty. They were arranged in parallel U shapes. The innermost "U" was for the Olympians minus Hades. Each U was progressively bigger. Uncle Jason was a big reason that there were so many cabins. When he'd first arrived at Camp Half-Blood there had only been 20, apparently. After the giant war, he'd made sure that all of the gods got cabins at Camp Half-Blood and temples at Camp Jupiter. He knew more about the gods than anyone I knew.

I turned back to the porch. It was time to go talk to Chiron. I had a lot to tell him, and a lot of questions.

AN: I hope you enjoyed chapter 2. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you guys on Tuesday!