Chapter 4: Yesterday's hero's
As the days passed I started to develop a hatred towards the Hermes cabin. It wasn't my kind of place. It was noisy, crowded and you had to watch your stuff every second. I pretty much slept with Shadow-edge as people had been trying to steal it 24/7. I figured people who liked hanging out with many people and loved being in a group would enjoy the Hermes cabin but I wasn't that kind of person. I enjoyed being alone at times and thought privacy was quite important. And those two needs were impossible in the Hermes cabin. I slept less than a few hours a night but it didn't seem to bother me much. I functioned with three or four hours asleep as if I had been doing that all my life. Maybe I had, I wasn't the one to know. My hate for the Hermes cabin seemed to worsen every day. Eventually I didn't enter that place till gone three AM and once I was out I didn't go back in until that time. I was obviously one for small crowds. It was weird that I had to get to know myself. It was like every day I learned something new about myself which others knew of themselves simply through experience. I felt like an outsider simply because I didn't have my memories. The worst part of it all was that Evie could give them back but she denied me that. I hoped Luke could talk some sense into her but days past and I heard nothing of Evie, Luke or Chiron. I wondered what Chiron had decided on his judgement. I hadn't been locked in a cage yet so I figured I had been given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I was being watched without knowing it. There were enough kids in the Hermes cabin, one of them could be watching my every move. Of course I didn't do anything really interesting. After breakfast in the mess hall I would leave to one of three places. The woods, the beach or the sword arena. Lately my will to go to the woods had depleted though. If I encountered another monster in there. The beach was nice and quiet and watching the waves crash against the beach. Finally the sword arena was simply a way to relieve stress. Cutting up some dummy is a great stress reliever. That and I figured it would turn me into a better fighter.
Today none of these places seemed to suffice. All I really wanted was to leave camp but I figured that it wasn't an option. And even if it was I had no where to go. If I had a home, a family somewhere out there I didn't remember it. So until I found out who I was there was no point in leaving. And even if I had somewhere to go I was safer here. Anywhere outside of camp was dangerous for a demigod although I didn't really understand how that worked. Camp was the place to be apparently. It was supposed to be a summer camp but to me it felt like a prison because I had no where else to go. Camp was my only option now.
I walked away from the Hermes cabin annoyed by the constant noise it produced. I didn't chose a specific path, I wasn't really going anywhere. I walked north east of the second omega of cabins when I spotted another cabin. It was simple and looked a bit crooked. It was obviously made by hand unlike the other cabins. It was special, only because it was so plain among all these unique cabins. It had been painted grey and the closer I came the more imperfections I could see. Nails sticking out or boards not as perfect as they should be. There were four names scratched next to the door frame. The top name was Jake Kopaka. It was slightly bigger than the other three names, was this his cabin? The other three names were: Darius Nikolas, Sophie Brighton and Ashlyn West. I wondered if it was some kind of club house rather than an actual cabin. I wondered who the people were who's names had been inscribed into the front wall. Had they made this cabin? Maybe the answers were inside. Cautiously I walked inside. For a second I was afraid lighting would strike me from the heavens for entering a cabin that wasn't mine. The cabin didn't look as protected as the other cabins but still, I had no idea what would happen.
The cabin seemed abandoned. Everything was perfectly clean as if no one had been in there for a very long time. The beds were made, there was no stuff laying around and it was completely quiet. It was pretty much the opposite of the Hermes cabin. I guess I liked it, it was far better than the Hermes cabin. For a second I wondered, was there any harm in me staying here? I mean if it wasn't occupied who would mind? So I chose the one of the beds at the end of the cabin. I didn't see a problem in doing this. What was I doing wrong? I was just getting some peace and quiet and there obviously wasn't anyone staying at this cabin. I wasn't bothering anyone, I wasn't harming anyone, so what was the problem? Convinced I was doing the right thing I dropped myself on the bed and closed my eyes. It was amazing that I heard no noise around me. I couldn't remember what it was like falling asleep without pulling the covers over my head to block out the noise. In the first moment of serenity I had in a while, I dozed off into a deep sleep.
I couldn't remember my dreams of the nights before. If I didn't know that a person dreamed every night I would have denied that I dreamed at all. But that night I remembered. I was in some kind of building. It looked sort of like a hotel, all these rooms with numbers and letters on their doors. I was standing in front of S37, I didn't remember the room. Everything around me was burning. The roof I was under, the floor that I stood on, everything consumed by flames. I entered the room, inside everything was burning too. The roof had collapsed, wooden beams and bricks were everywhere. The wall of the outside of the building had fallen out, the sun was shining, the weather was nice. How could something like this happen on a nice day? The room, well what was left of it, looked like a typical girls bedroom. There were two beds and the room was simple. It had two beds, two wardrobes and a single cupboard. There were two people living that was for sure. There was a door leading what I suspected to be a bathroom. The room did look like a hotel room, but it wasn't. It was more like a dorm. And I was sure that the reason why I dreamed about this, because I was there. I had a burning mark leading from my shoulder blade down my right arm and lower back. I got it here. Was this my room? I didn't know that. I asked my own mind and in a weird way, it seemed to answer. In front of me, between the rumble of the roof, I saw something. Wasn't she there before? Or didn't I see her before? It didn't matter. It was a girl of about age 11. She had long brown hair and a pretty face. Did I know her? Was I here because of her? The room around me disappeared. The girl was still there though. She was standing now. She looked better than before, no burns, no dust and ash over her face. Most importantly, there was life in her eyes now.
"Michael..." She said. She looked sad, as if I had hurt her in some way. Was I the one that did this? Is this what Evie saw? Did I kill her? That's when I heard another voice, again a girl but not the same one.
"How dare you!" She yelled. I was right awake after getting hit in the face with a pillow. It was Grace, I had no idea what she was doing here but obviously she didn't really like me sleeping there. "You're not supposed to sleep in someone's cabin! Especially not his!" I had no clue what she was on about. What did she mean with 'his'?
"I just had to get out of that damn Hermes cabin, and since this cabin was empty I didn't see a problem." Again she hit me with the pillow. Apparently she didn't agree.
"Everyone who is unclaimed wants to be out of the Hermes cabin. That doesn't give anyone the right to use a different cabin. This is the cabin for children of Prometheus, More importantly its Jake's!" Jake, the name on the front. When I read it didn't ring a bell, now that she said it though it seemed like I heard it before. Of course Jake was a regular name but it was more than that. I couldn't place it, but I knew someone named Jake. Was it the same one?
"Who's Jake?" I asked.
"Ugh! Gods, why do I have to explain everything to him. Jake is one of the greatest heroes of our time!" That sounded really weird. One of the greatest heroes of our time? If I did know a Jake I doubted that it was the same one. I would probably remember meeting such a 'celebrity'.
"What did he do that's so special?" I asked. I sat upright now. I still had my clothes on. For some reason sleeping in Pyjamas or something felt weird. I slept in full clothing every night and it felt...normal. Grace sat down next to me ready to explain.
"Well in the second titan war..." I cut her off as I didn't know what the second titan war was. It sounded somewhat like world war II.
"Second titan war?" I asked simply.
"Big war, can't be bothered to explain. Anyway this titan named Hyperion was defeated and locked up in central park. About two years ago he got out." Grace said. "And as you can imagine he wasn't very amused about being locked up. He tried to find the person who locked him up, a guy named Percy Jackson. He is the greatest hero of our time." Again she used those same words. "Anyway Hyperion gave up on finding Percy and decided to come after all of us. I won't bore you with the details but many of us...didn't survive. He came very close to destroying eveyone
. Jake and three others defeated him and locked him up in Tartarus. Do you know what that is?"
"Yeah its like hell right?" I was pretty sure of that.
"Yeah sorta. Anyway the four of them were, Jake Kopaka, Darius Nikolas, Sophie Brighton and Ashlyn West. The same people that build this cabin. They were good friends, and only one of them is still alive." She said sadly. I figured she knew them well. She seemed more touched about it than others would, or at least I thought so.
"What happened to them?" I asked. I was curious about these people now. I wanted to know all about them. Once I was interested in something I needed to know everything there was to know.
"Well, Darius, or Dean as we all called him. He died fighting Hyperion. Jake was killed a month ago, and Sophie disappeared not long ago." She said sadly. I didn't think they could be great heroes. Two of them got killed and one disappeared so we could pretty much call her dead. At that moment I believed the standard for hero wasn't that high.
"What about the fourth? Uhm...Ashlyn right?" I asked. I knew I was prying, especially since I knew she knew these people.
"Well at the moment she's in Manhattan. That's where most of us go during the year. We go to school and try to live a normal life. For some of us that's too dangerous though, others simply have no where to go but here. Anyway, she took Jake's death pretty badly. She won't talk to any of her all friends, and after Sophie disappeared she went...depressed I guess." Grace seemed more and more depressed the longer she talked about this. We both sat there for a while, I didn't want to ask any more questions. She seemed so happy going the last time I met her, and now she was so sad. I didn't want to make it worse. After a minute or so I saw a single tear travel across her cheek. She wiped it away and looked at me with slight anger. "Now do you get why you're not supposed to be in here?" I nodded. I sat there for a while no knowing what to say to Grace. She was trying to fight more tears that were coming. I felt like there was something I had to say to her but I wasn't much of a comforter.
"Was he a friend of yours?" Instead of helping her I forced her to bring up more bad memories, very well done...I'm such an idiot sometimes.
"He was everyone's friend pretty much. There were very few that didn't get along with him. He was a great guy." Grace said. "One of the people that didn't like him very much is my ex boyfriend if you care to know. What a bonehead." Grace didn't seem very fond of this ex. I was actually surprised that she had an ex. She was fourteen now and she already had an ex boyfriend? Early starter apparently.
"How did that happen?" I asked. I was actually quite interested in this Jake guy. I didn't really know why. Maybe it was because when I heard that name my memory seemed to be triggered in some kind of way. Maybe if she told me more about this guy I would start remembering more.
"Well he was a son of Ares. He was a nice guy if you got to know him but he could be...very aggressive." Given he was the son of the god of war that wasn't very surprising. These days I wonder if George W. Bush was a son of Ares. Physically he didn't look like one but he was awfully fond of starting wars. "The reason he didn't like Jake all too much was because he beat him in a fight. Jake was one hell of a fighter and being the son of Ares he couldn't handle defeat very well. He lightened up after Jake saved my life in the woods. I guess he cared about me if he cared about anything." I wondered why she spoke of this nameless son of Ares in the passed tense. Was he dead too? I decided not to ask. It was better to leave some of her painful memories alone. I wanted to know more about Jake though. None of these things had triggered anything but maybe if I went deeper. "Look, I bet you have many more questions about Jake Kopaka but please don't ask me to bring up those old memories. Jake died not long ago and bringing up these memories now...it's not right." I had to respect Grace's wish. My questions would have to wait. I nodded and got up. Grace did the same. I had found a place for peace and quiet but it wasn't a place I could be. I walked back to the cabins with Grace. We were both quiet, something that wasn't very usual for Grace. Of course being quiet was quite regular for me.
"So which one is the Iris cabin?" I asked trying to get Grace to speak again. Being quiet didn't suit her. And she had been so quiet that I ended up being the one breaking the silence, it was odd really.
"Well can't you guess?" Grace said with a smile on her face. Smiling suited her better than crying. Maybe that was the case with everyone though. "Iris is the goddess of colour and rainbows. You find it." She said. I knew it had to be in the outer omega, the inner were the twelve Olympians and Iris was a minor goddess not one of the twelve. It was an easy cabin to spot. The cabin's design was simple but it was the paint job that made it stand out. It was a mix of bright and happy colours. Exactly what you'd expect. "See, asking was not necessary." Grace said smiling. I nodded as I looked up into the sky. The sun had just passed it's highest point meaning it was about 1 PM. Nearly lunch time. I hadn't been asleep for long. I wondered about the dream I had in the Prometheus cabin. Who was that girl? I didn't remember her but obviously she was important. Why couldn't I remember? It was something that I hadn't really thought about. Why did I have amnesia? I was all cut up but I didn't have any neurological damage. No head wounds or anything. What had caused me to have amnesia? The list of things I couldn't explain just kept on growing. "Angel, are you coming? We're having lunch soon." Grace said. I turned towards her and nodded.
"Yeah, let's go." We walked towards the mess hall together. I wasn't really hungry. Just thinking about that dream ruined my appetite. The thing was...it wasn't the worst one I would have.