Percy couldn't remember ever being angrier in her life. She stormed into her room, slammed the door, and threw herself on her bed so she could fume in peace. So Jason and Leo thought Nico couldn't be trusted, did they? After he went all the way to Rome, trying to find a way to close the Doors of Death on his own. What did they know about anything? Sure, Nico hadn't exactly been open with his information, and he had explicitly lied to Percy, but there had to have been a good reason. The gods probably made him swear not to tell anyone about the two camps. Percy could just see Hades being all commanding, with a scowl to match the clothes made out of screaming souls, ordering his son "not to meddle with fate." That had to be it. Nico was trustworthy.

He has lied to you before, said an unwanted and irritatingly rational voice in Percy's head. Who's to say you can trust him this time?

"Shut up!" Percy growled, ignoring the fact she had basically just declared herself insane by arguing with a voice in her head. What did the voice know anyways? Stupid know-it-all!

Still, the voice did have a point. Percy couldn't really say why she trusted Nico so much now, when not too long ago she had been trying to strangle him in one of his father's dungeons. Maybe it was because no matter how misguided he got (and following the advice of an evil king-ghost with an obvious revenge problem is pretty misguided), he always made the right choice in the end. Come on, he showed up to the Titan War with an army of zombies and three gods in tow. If that's not worthy of redemption, what is?

Maybe you're just naïve. Maybe the only reason you trust him now is because you're in love with him. He is pretty handsome after all.

"Shut up! That's not why I trust him! His devilish good looks have nothing to do with it!" Percy sighed, realizing that she was losing an argument with herself. That might be a new all-time low.

Percy's internal struggles were interrupted by a knock at the door. She opened it to find Leo, of all people, looking like a kicked puppy.

"What do you want?" Percy tried to ask without sounding too irritated, but it didn't work.

"Look, I just wanted to say sorry. I don't really know Nico, so I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, all right?" Leo's puppy eyes got even bigger. "And I know I don't really know you very well either, but you seem pretty cool, so if you like Nico that much he must be pretty cool, too. Plus he's Hazel's brother, so that makes him pretty awesome…"

As Leo started to ramble about Hazel and why she was awesome, Percy opened and closed her mouth like a fish. Did Leo just imply that she liked Nico, you know, liked him? Did Leo know? How did he know? Did everyone know?

Realizing Leo was still talking, Percy cut him off. "Look, it's fine. Ok? I guess it might seem a little…suspicious that Nico didn't tell anyone about the camps, but I'm sure he had a really good reason. But how about next time you want to question someone's loyalty, you don't do it in front of their baby sister who's worried sick and missing them like crazy? Deal?"

Leo grinned, looking crazier than ever. "Deal. And you know, Jason's sorry, too, if you just…"

"Why don't you go check on Festus? He's got to be in peak condition if we're going to fight giants in Rome." That was all it took to send the son of Hephaestus scampering away. Percy shook her head, wondering if she seemed that spastic to most people. Probably.

As she shut the door and laid back down on her bed, she realized she was bone-tired. She wasn't needed for a few hours, so she should probably try to take a nap. But she couldn't keep herself from dwelling on everything they knew about where Nico was being held.

They had gotten enough information from various nightmares, threats, and divine interventions to learn that two hideous giants with snake feet and a worse fashion sense than Mr. D were holed up in Rome, planning on destroying it while the rest of the world looked on helplessly. More importantly, thought Percy, they were guarding Nico. So now all the crew of the Argo 2 had to do was get to Rome in two days, bust some giant heads, get Nico out of whatever hole he was in, and fly/sail off into the sunset. Oh, and of course Annabeth had her own magical impossible quest assigned to her by her newly schizophrenic mother.

Percy's last thought before she dozed off was: We're all going to die.


She should have known better than to try to take a nap in the afternoon. That was when the worst dreams came. Demigod dreams were occasionally meaningless (like the one Percy had the other night about being Indiana Jones with a flying blue hedgehog for a side-kick), and occasionally they were used as an express service for various mythological beings to send the demigods messages and signs. Those tended to come at night, though, during the hours when people normally slept. Percy should have known better than to fall asleep at two o'clock in the afternoon, because that's when the worst kind of dreams happened: nightmares.

She found herself in a dirt cell and recognized it from her earlier dream as Nico's prison. Sure enough, the son of Hades was sitting in the corner, with his arms crossed leisurely in front of him and a bored look on his face as if he were sitting in the Roman senate listening to Octavian drone on. Percy had to chuckle: Nico was still playing the bad ass even when he was trapped in a pit. She moved in closer and let out a startled gasp. Nico had looked bad in her previous dream, appearing to be on the point of starvation with various cuts and bruises littering his body. His physical condition certainly didn't look better now, but what made Percy gasp was his eyes. Nico's eyes normally burned with a kind of manic fire (which she knew him to be very proud of) but now they looked…dead. All the fire, all the life had left them. It was obvious that Nico had given up hope.

Percy screamed. She yelled his name, tried to slap him and shake him, anything to get his attention. Nico had seen her in a dream once before, he had to see her again! He had to know that they were coming for him, that she was coming for him, that she would do anything, make any sacrifice to get him out of there. As the dream began to fade, and the image of a broken Nico left her eyes, she gave one final cry of despair.

She woke up with the strangled cry dying in her throat. She made two solemn promises to herself: first, she was going to personally destroy whoever was responsible for doing this to Nico, whether they were giants or not. And second, she was never going to take a nap again.