Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
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He's never been one for the abstract, the clever arrangement of words, and that's why he's so surprised when he awakens and nothing on the tip of his tongue makes any sense.
The sky is caught in a weird middle ground, not dark but not light either. It looks like the whole world has been stuck into a strange twilight zone. It looks like tornado weather, the hazy wash and the weird light coming through the trees and buildings. It looks like a disaster zone, loose strokes and heavy paint and nothing recognizable in the rubble.
Poetry clouds his head. He can't even seem to form a coherent thought. The hard ground swallows his limbs. A vague ache forms in his head and shakes through his whole body. The word earthquake runs through his consciousness but he disregards it. The concrete is cracked.
A bird.
A pigeon pecking crumbs. A startled pigeon ducking and weaving. It takes off.
Dimly he begins to hear sounds, like the continuation of something he'd cut off. Heavy thumps and maybe a couple of screams. Noises of commotion, but not the normal busy sounds of New York. Like the sounds of everyday distorted. Suddenly the clamor connects with the debris and something in his mind seems to click.
Something happened—many things happened—he fell.
Fog still warps the remaining memories in his head, but he sees flashes of things: gold eyes. Tremors. An arrow. Everything has a layer, a veil or a shield of some sort over it. He begins to close his eyes but resists. He should make sense of this.
He thinks he remembers who he is, hazily: a person of logic and wit, governed by whatever he chooses, by the forces he's loyal to. He went to some kind of boarding school away from home. His father was someone important, but he's having trouble recalling who. What, why, where, how. Nothing is distinct.
Slowly, he manages to uncurl his stiff body. Pain ricochets through one leg and he gasps—a sharp quick sound. He's thirsty, he realizes. There's thunder in his head. He stretches each arm, flexes the fingers. Two fingers won't move. He screws up his eyes in concentration.
It takes what seems like hours, but he finally stands. He tries not to put pressure on his right leg. Still, every so often another wave of pain hits it and he has to pause. The world swims—tilting at an angle, shifting like a snow globe until it's almost upside down and bubbles of water struggle to stay near the surface. But the longer he stays standing, things begin to right themselves.
He's standing on the pavement of a city in New York. That was the first thing he remembered. New York. His corner is entirely silent. Bits of wreckage line the sidewalk, though they are more like hunks than bits. In the distance people run frantically, while more fuzzy-looking people chase them or fall to the ground. It's a scene of utter confusion. Michael has no idea what's going on.
Michael.
Something's wrong. He fell into water.
He's gripping furiously onto the building beside him for support. The doorframe is inches from the tips of his fingers. Scrambling to maintain his balance, he stumbles bit by bit inside.
This must have been some sort of convenience store. The shine of plastic wrappings catches his eye, then the cool hum of a fridge turns his head. Sodas, chips, boxes of hair coloring. A greeting card. The space is tiny but clean, although the linoleum floor sends vibrations rocketing painfully through his leg.
Michael. New York.
Frantically he rummages through his pockets, for any clue to what's happening, to who he really is. He finds nothing but a round gold coin. He turns it carefully between his thumb and forefinger, and the fluorescent lights bounce off of its surface. Instantly, the little man who works his brain says, rainbow.
"Rainbow?" he says incredulously. His voice sounds foreign to him. "Wow, thanks for all the help, little man." The little man mutters a protest. Great, now he's really going crazy.
The hum from the row of fridges grows incessant, overwhelming. Spontaneously, he begins limping down one of the aisles, wondering if that little man will reveal something else to him, give him another clue. But all he gets is silence.
In his distraction Michael stumbles into one of the shelves and his arm burns furiously. There's a half-healed cut that slices across his forearm. He hadn't even noticed, and as he stares at it, trying to remember how he got it, something unnatural tingles across his hand and travels up his arm.
Laboriously, he moves back outside. Gas pumps, some mangled or with suspicious-looking giant teeth marks dug into them, face him stoically. To the side is a beat up car wash, complete with the wreckage of what was probably once a black SUV. Motor parts trail along the ground like the guts of some slain animal. It's hard not to be morbid in the midst of all these ruins.
His head still pounds. He's starting to remember just a few hints of those last moments, the moments before he fell. The sound of foundations splintering. A chasm opening up, a stray arrow. But he fell into water, so how did he end up here?
He clenches his fingers that still move so hard he's surprised they don't snap. He is so close, so close to figuring out everything, but it doesn't want to happen.
A cable…the shaking so intense as the ground fragmented beneath him…
And there was a decision…
Michael scans the fighting in the distance and his eyes latch onto a young boy as he stabs a sword (a sword?) into a larger figure with a wavering form. The figure's already fuzzy body begins to shiver, and then it explodes into a hurricane of dust. Blinking fast, he holds a hand above his eyes. That shouldn't make sense, and yet somehow, it does.
Because he has the strangest feeling he's done that before.
The commotion in the distance is becoming clearer, as all the outlines begin to fall into place.