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Ch. 7

Hawkeye was dying. Nobody would outright say "He's not going to make it" yet, but I could tell.

He was not dying quickly, nor was there any guarantee that he really would die, but he was in a downright awful state. At the moment, he was sprawled out on a sheet in Zane's tent, looking very pale, and, other than the slight and erratic rise and fall of his chest, very, very dead. The medic that has been assigned to him, an empousa named Tamaria, has absolutely no idea what to do.

"There is no way I know of that we can set his ribs back without damaging his lung even further," she growls in sympathetic frustration, rubbing her temples. "His right lung is deflated and twisted, right into his ribs. If we try to set them back, they'll puncture it even more, and it may become damaged beyond saving. On the other hand, if we don't set the ribs within the next twenty-four hours at the very latest, they'll become difficult to maneuver back into place, and he'll die anyway. He's lost an insane amount of blood; he needs a donation, but being the only male demon known to exist, he's a unique blood type, so that's not an option.

"His right arm has been set and put back into place, but there's so much nerve and ligament damage that he might not be able to move it. . . If that's the case, he'll do better off with no arm at all than a dead one, assuming he lives through this. His heart has suffered some damage too, it has a terribly irregular beat and isn't keeping the blood flow moving at a proper pace.

"If we set his ribs and damage the lung, that will make it bleed which will effect his heart, which will kill him. Even with his naturally enhanced ability to heal, there's still no way to fix one problem without creating another." She turns to look at Zane, Predak, Damian, and me, who are all watching her with a growing sense of despair. Don't these empousa understand the word "optimistic"? Or even "slight chance"?

"I'm sorry," Tamaria says with a sigh, "we'll have to see if his condition changes within the next two to three hours. If not, we'll see what kind of magic we can scrounge up. Dr. Lanier might have some suggestions, him being a son of Apollo. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you other than his survival chances are extremely low at the moment. I'm sorry," she says again.

"Oh, well now, that's the most helpful thing I've heard all day," I say after a second of horrified silence, flashing Tamaria a scalding look. "Really, I thought you people were professionals. Give me a ring when something happens," I say in disgust, limping stiffly past Damian and Predak, both who look at me in silence like I've gone insane, and out of Zane's tent.

It's about five in the morning; two hours since our victory over the Camp Half-Blood strike force. Chase has been returned to her rightful spot on the ground, tied cruelly tight to a lamp post outside Zane's tent. She has fallen into a fitful sleep that borders on a miserable stupor by the time I pass by. Her head droops down onto her chest in both physical and emotional exhaustion, but her bloody, bruised body is tense. Ziral the telekhine pup and his gang are lounging nearby despite the odd hour of the morning, no doubt waiting for her to awake so they can resume throwing matches at her from the day before.

I lurch over to Ziral and slump down on the pavement beside him with a tired sigh. He looks up at me sleepily and rests his chin affectionately on my leg. "You look awful, Christine," he comments.

I smile despite my fatigue. "Yeah, well, war can do that to you," I tell him. "And I'm alive, which is more than can be said for some people. I could look worse."

Ziral knows what I'm thinking about. "Will Hawkeye be okay?" he asks quietly.

"Nobody knows, baby," I reply just as softly. "He's ripped up pretty good. The medics don't think he'll live. That much I know."

"Do you think he'll live?"

I take a while to reply, stroking Ziral on the back. "Well, I've known Hawkeye for a long time, considering the lifestyle I choose to live, where people have a tendency to leave my life just as fast as they arrive in it. Despite how much I hate him, I'll be the first to admit that he's quite the survivor."

"That's not answering my question."

"Yes, Ziral, I think he'll live. How's that?"

"Much better," the pup says contentedly, closing his eyes. "I hope he doesn't die. Then we'll have nobody to yell at us when we torture prisoners or break into the food stores or copy Zane all day. Making trouble is no fun if there's no risk."

I laugh quietly. "That's true, too."

Ziral takes a deep breath, and within several seconds, begins to snore softly. That's a telekhine for you.

I hear a slight movement from behind me. Without looking up, I say, "You know Predak, when you said that you were good at eavesdropping at powerful people, I didn't think that I would ever qualify. I'm still deciding weather to be flattered or kick your butt."

Predak comes and sits on the concrete on the other side of the slumbering Ziral and gives me a crooked smile. "Sorry. It's just that the last time I heard you talk to someone for so long without insulting them, we were working incognito three years ago, trying to get information out of little old ladies. I couldn't resist."

That's a telekhine for you, too. "Jerk."

"Do you really think Hawkeye will make it?" Damian asks, standing above us.

I shrug. "You two have known him longer than I have. I should be asking you that question. Personally, I lied to Ziral. I don't think he'll make it. Nobody can survive wounds like those."

Predak looks at me, aghast, and Damian stiffens.

"But you know," I continue, "Hawkeye is famous for disappointing me. He does it on a daily basis. So if he has any luck at all, this might not be so different."

Damian smiles and sits down beside me, looking caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "Always his fault, huh?"

"Yep," I say. "When in doubt, always blame the guy in charge."

"That would be Zane."

"Fine then, when in doubt, always blame the guy in charge of you. Zane does not hold any sway over me. Hawkeye on the other hand, is a master at manipulation."

"You seem to give in pretty easily," Predak remarks.

"It may seem like that, yeah" I say calmly, laying back on the concrete and closing my eyes. Ziral snuffles in his sleep and curls up closer to my leg. I can feel Damian and Predak on either side of me, still worried about Hawkeye, but more relaxed than they have been in days. We stay just like that for a long, long time.

_____________________________________________________________

"Okay, people, we have a problem," Zane yells at the assembly. It's been five days after the battle. Zane is pacing back and forth on the platform at the center of camp, telling us, for about the third time in the last fifteen seconds, that we have a problem.

"When don't we have a problem?" I ask Io, who's standing beside me at the back of the crowd, with Predak. She smiles but doesn't reply.

"We have a problem!" Zane says again, and an collective sigh goes up from the assembly. "Camp Half-Blood has changed it's strategy for getting newly discovered demigods into the camp!"

Alright, that was a problem.

"Now, instead of bringing them across the border on foot, they have set up a number of portals across the city that act as shortcuts and ways to avoid us, the demigods appearing directly into the camp from whichever portal they pass through. We have located three of these portals since the discovery of the change last night, but assume that there are at least five others, if not more. In the next several weeks, we will be organizing searches to find these other portals, while doing out best to guard the ones that have already been discovered.

"In order to do this, groups of you will be stationed at every portal. You will camp there for several weeks and put a stop to anyone passing in or out of the portal, until we change the guard, when you will return here. The first groups for the three known portals have been chosen, and more groups will be formed upon the discovery of the others.

"As for right now, we have a pair of demigods coming into Portal Two in an estimated half and hour, and we need to get agents out there, so I will take questions later. If I call your name, come to the front here to receive instructions and the location of your portal."

Zane made this whole speech so fast, it was almost hard to understand. He was obviously anxious to get Rebels out into the city to stop this development as soon as possible. I certainly didn't blame him; no one had been expecting something like this.

He began to read off names. "Assigned to Portal One, located on the East side of Central Park, is Io Grates, Damian Vasquez, Mokkan the hellhound, Estella Holt, and Predak the telekhine. Come to the front, please," he yelled quickly.

"Oooh, sorry Christine," Predak whispers sympathetically to me as Io pats my shoulder. I am totally not pleased with the groupings so far as Io and Predak pick their way swiftly to the front of the crowd and gather in front of Zane with Damian, Mokkan (both shoot me a sympathetic glance), and Estella Holt, an empousa we know from Kronos's army.

Zane continues shouting off names at a barely understandable speed. "To Portal Two, located on Pier 81 near the Lincoln Tunnel, we have Katrina the hellhound, Kodiak Trenton, Fiona Alexander, Xelta the dracaenae, and Christine Savage." I groan inwardly. I don't know any of those people besides Katrina.

Pushing my way forcibly through the crowd, I go stand beside Katrina, who is the only one of my bunch so far to reach the platform. She gives an excited Woof! and wags her tail upon my approach, and I smile at her, but with little enthusiasm, feeling the eyes of Predak and the others on my back. She notices and gives me a big doggy grin, like, Oh, whatever! At least we get to see some action, right? They'll probably just be sitting there forever.

"You got that right," I say, rubbing her shoulder. A boy about my age, maybe a bit younger, comes and stands a few feet away from Katrina. I recognize him from our strike mission on Camp Half-Blood, when we had torched the forest. He has a huge pair of jet black bat wings sprouting from his back, between his shoulder blades. I had never bothered to ask who had died that night, but this mutant, Kodiak Trenton I assume, wasn't one of them. He glances sideways at Katrina and me a little hesitantly before nodding a grudging greeting.

We return the nod as a dracaenae slithers up, keeping her distance from everyone. She gives all three of us a less than friendly stare before pointedly turning her back. Katrina and I exchange a look, but are quickly distracted by the arrival of our last guard member, not quite believing our bad luck.

The girl that stalks up to me can't be any older than ten or any higher than four feet, with chocolate colored skin and a bush of black hair, literally. One brown eye seems to be focused, but the other rolls around in her head seemingly of it's own account, and every stained tooth in her mouth has been filed to a jagged point. She has a vacant expression. I wonder briefly if she is a cannibal.

Kodiak Trenton and Katrina look downright scared of her, and even Xelta the dracaenae looks startled at the prospect of spending any length of time with Fiona Alexander. Across from me, Damian, Io, Mokkan, and Predak are fighting down hysterics, but I can't tell if it's from the disgusted look on my face or my obscene luck.

Without warning, Fiona Alexander makes an extremely odd face, her eyes crossing and her jaw dropping open to display filed teeth, tongue lolling out of her mouth, and she makes a strangled sound, like she's trying to sing and cough up a hairball at the same time. Katrina yelps like a puppy and scurries to hide behind Kodiak, who's leaped back about ten feet. Xelta tenses, as if expecting this odd child to attack her at any moment.

As quickly as the expression came to her face, it disappears, and Fiona smiles charmingly at me. Then her eye begins to roll again, and she resumes a vacant look without a word. I simply stare at her.

By now, Damian and Predak are almost howling with laughter, and the Rebels in the crowd are giving me sympathetic looks, as if I have unknowingly signed up for a field trip to Hades. Great.

So, Kodiak is a troubled, antisocial teenager, Xelta is having no part in the teamwork whatsoever, and Fiona is a raving mad lunatic. None of us know each other very well, if at all, and Fiona is scaring the wits out of everyone else ten seconds into the mission. Katrina is peering around Kodiak's wing at Fiona with a look of absolute Who in HADES is that monster?!, and looking very much unlike she'll be functioning well in a fight. Zane seems to be avoiding my accusing glances.

Well, this should be fun.