[ A/N: Very, very minor spoilers for about the first 100 or so pages of The Last Olympian - so minor that you probably won't even notice if you haven't read that far, but be warned.
Alas, something I do not appreciate but feel I should mention is that recently I've found out someone has been plagiarizing my work. Guys, plagiarism is not okay. Ever. I work really hard on these fics, and it really hurts to see someone claiming they did all of this work when in fact they haven't. Please, please do not plagiarize. If you like it, say so. If you want to host it somewhere with credit, just ask. But please do not copy and paste and claim it for your own. It's not, and it's not okay to do that.
Okay. That's all I'll say about that. In the meantime, I will say explicitly that all characters and places from the PJO books are copyright Rick Riordan; all original characters, ideas, and locations are copyright to me (exlibris_tenisu on LJ and Aki-Chan04 here). I have not posted this fic anywhere else. Thanks. :D ]
The Age of Heroes
Chapter 8: Lost and Found
"Be careful," Annabeth said tensely, standing beside the door as I prepared to put her Yankees cap on my head. "This is a school – and that means there are a lot of civilians around. There are a lot of innocent people," she said, "that have no idea what's going on here. We can't get them involved."
She didn't have to tell me twice. I'd been involved in plenty of fights in public places, and it was pretty near impossible to keep people from seeing something. Thankfully, the Mist usually made them see something other than what was really happening. But that didn't mean they couldn't still get hurt. And getting a bunch of college kids killed was not high on my list of things I wanted to do.
Besides. Maybe some of them were on Kronos' side. After all, he had swayed plenty of demigods, including Luke Castellan. At the very least, they could be working for Medea.
"I know," I said, and I pulled the cap onto my head. I wondered if I would feel anything – I mean, I'd never turned invisible before. Annabeth never acted like it hurt, but you never knew...
My arms and legs started feeling tingly, and I looked down to see that they were fading from sight, along with the rest of my body. In a few seconds, there was nothing to see. I looked up at Annabeth; she was still looking in my direction, but her eyes weren't focused on me anymore. She looked like she was looking straight through me at the wall behind my head.
And she probably was. "Annabeth?" I asked, and she nodded, though she was still looking through me.
"It's working. Now go – and come back as soon as you can. I'll see if there's anything in here we can use and then we're going to get out of here."
"Okay," I said, and she ducked to the side as I opened the door and slipped out as quickly as possible, shutting it silently behind me. For a minute I held my breath, afraid that someone might have heard the noise and would come to investigate. But there was nothing. After a short, tense wait, I let out my breath and turned to the right.
I had the map Annabeth had drawn in my pocket, but I realized that if I wanted to look at it I'd have to take off the invisibility cap. I sucked in a breath. Well, I'd just have to hope I had it memorized. I could duck into a corner and check it if I really had to, but I was pretty sure I knew the way back to my room. It had seemed like a blur when Annabeth had grabbed me, but I'd spent a couple of minutes looking at her map before I'd left the relative safety of the storage closet.
Walking when you're invisible is a lot harder than it looks. I mean, it's not impossible but it sure is weird not to be able to see your legs or feet even though you can feel them moving. I hugged the wall and took it as fast as I dared, which wasn't very fast at all. I didn't want to round a corner and slam into anybody. That would probably ruin this whole plan, to say the least.
I passed at least three people in the hall, all of whom seemed completely oblivious to my presence. All the same, every time I heard anyone approaching I pressed myself up against the wall and tried to hold my breath until they were past. Two of the people I passed were regular humans. They looked like college students – messy hair, jeans and t-shirts on under their labcoats, and one even had a stack of papers in his hands. The third was a telekhine; he didn't look particularly angrier than usual, though, so I hoped that meant no one had discovered me missing yet. Still, I waited an extra half a minute after the sea demon had passed before starting off again.
After a few more nerve-wracking minutes, I turned the last corner that had been on Annabeth's map and arrived outside a guarded door. There was a telekhine guard standing with his back to the door, completely oblivious that his prisoner was no longer inside. It was odd, I thought, that there'd been no guard when Annabeth had come to get me. She must have distracted him – and, I realized, I'd likely have to do the same thing to reach Percy.
Taking a (quiet) deep breath, I did an about-face, studying the hall in the direction I'd come from and trying to remember the journey I'd made with Medea to Percy's room. After a minute, I thought I had a good idea of where to start.
This was much slower going. I didn't want to make a wrong turn or get lost, so I crept along as slowly and quietly as I could, replaying the memory over and over in my mind each time I came to a turnoff. I admit, I was actually hoping Percy's door would be guarded – at least then I would know I was in the right place.
And I was right – I turned what must have been the fifth corner, after two more close encounters of the lab assistant kind, and there it was – another telekhine, standing guard outside a nondescript door with a pad for keycard access beside it. I crept down the hall, passing the guard until I was at the other end, opposite the way I'd come.
I wasn't really sure if this was going to work. I mean, it was a long shot – a really long shot. But if it worked, it would be the perfect distraction, and hopefully it would buy me enough time with Percy to convince him he needed to come with me.
Being the son of Hades, I could feel that there had been a lot of death in this building. Nothing as morbid as human death, but there had been a lot of lab animals over the years that had given their lives for science. I could still feel some of them – the most recently dead, only gone a couple of days. Closing my eyes, I crouched down and placed my hand on the floor at the end of the hall, calling to all of the spirits that I could feel in my immediate vicinity.
Come out, I whispered to them, Come out and play. Nothing can hurt you now.
For a long time I didn't hear anything. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach with the effort, and I realized that maybe this wasn't going to work. I would have to think of something else. I had just reached into my pocket and pulled out the wadded up piece of paper that was Annabeth's map when I heard the first of them.
Squeak! Sure enough, at the end of the hall, there was the white, ghostly outline of a rat. It blinked its beady black eyes at me, and I grinned.
Over here! I called; even if it couldn't see me, it could sense me, and it came closer. Come on, I said again, giving it another mental tug. You want to come over here! And go there!
I gave it the urge to run down the hall, past the telekhine at Percy's door. The little rat-ghost sat still for a moment longer; then it wiggled its nose and took off, skittering down the hall and directly over the telekhine's feet.
The demon jumped, looking down sharply. The rat was clearly visible to me, but I knew anyone else – human or otherwise – would probably only see an outline. But an outline was enough. The telekhine grunted with surprise, and took a step forward.
Yes.
Then I heard the rest of them. I grinned as another three rat-ghosts came running from the direction of the first, pelting down the hall after their friend. That decided the telekhine, who left his post and went down the hall after them – whether curious, angry, or hungry, I couldn't tell. Either way, I didn't feel bad – he really couldn't hurt the rats, which were already dead. And besides, he'd just done me a huge favor. He'd left Percy's door completely unguarded.
Thanks! I told the rats, who where having quite a time of playing tag down the next hall, and then I strode up to the door and studied the keypad. Taking the keycard out of my pocket, I swiped the card in the slot and punched in the code Annabeth had given me. I held my breath as the light on the card reader flashed a few times, but then it turned green and the door opened with a soft click.
Quickly, so I wouldn't have time to change my mind or feel any more nervous than I already did, I slipped into the room. I left the door open a miniscule amount, hoping it would stay open without actually looking like it was open. If it shut and the lock re-engaged, we'd be stuck in here and back to where we started. Possibly worse off, I realized, as a number of scenarios went through my head, the least bad being Medea's fury at finding out I had escaped and the worst being stuck in here with a Percy who hated me for what I'd become without any say in the matter at all.
In fact, right now Percy was sitting on the bed right in front of me and staring at me with a blank expression on his face, like he couldn't even –
Of course, I thought, my stomach flip-flopping both with relief and anticipation. I was still wearing the invisibility cap. He couldn't recognize me because he couldn't see me. I pulled the cap off my head, waiting the few breaths that it would take for me to reappear to normal sight.
But once I was visible, my stomach flip-flopped again. Percy frowned, his brows knitting together as he stared at me. His eyes went to the cap in my hand, and I knew he recognized that. "Who are you?" he asked, standing up and turning to face me. I realized with a jolt of unease that we were almost the same height – and that I might actually be taller.
I could tell by the way his fingers flexed that his right hand itched to pull out Riptide, but he didn't appear to have his magical ballpoint-pen-that's-really-a-sword. I wondered how Medea had gotten it away from him – it always reappeared in his pocket when he lost it, a really handy feature that my sword did not come with. But he didn't have it now. Maybe Medea found some way to seal it or something. Thinking that made me miss my own sword, but I didn't know where Medea had hidden that, either. I hoped we'd find it before we left. I could always replace it if I had to, even if that wasn't my first choice.
Right now wasn't the time to worry about that, though. Right now I was honestly much more worried about the look on Percy's face and the way it was making me feel sick. Just like Annabeth, there was virtually no recognition behind his gaze. He didn't know me at all –
But then his face changed, registering something. My heart skipped a beat. And then he said, "You're the boy from earlier. Medea brought you here."
My heart felt like it stopped, sinking somewhere into the vicinity of my shoes, which were much farther away than they used to be.
"Did she send you?" Percy asked. His eyes flicked to the cap in my hand again, and I knew what he wanted to ask.
I answered the unasked question first. "This is Annabeth's," I confirmed, holding it up for him to see. "She lent it to me – she's okay," I added, as he opened his mouth again, probably to ask exactly that. "She's waiting for us. I'm not working for Medea." I was suddenly torn between wanting to get out of here now and explain everything later, and the way I really, really couldn't stand facing Percy like this without letting him know who I was.
He ended up making the decision for me. "What's your name?" he asked, taking a step forward as he studied me. "You look really... familiar, like..." He blinked a few times. My stomach churned as he took another step forward, and I didn't dare to say anything while he worked it out.
"Nico...?" Percy whispered, looking up into my face now that we were nearly toe to toe. I wasn't that much taller than him – maybe an inch or two, not more than that. But it was weird and wrong to be looking at Percy from this angle, to be leaning close and looking down instead of up and my body still felt stretched and too tall and completely wrong. I leaned against the wall beside the door for support. My knees felt wobbly and I wasn't sure if it was a sudden side effect of the serum or not.
He reached up and ran a hand through my hair, like he had to touch me to figure out if I was real or not. The look in his eyes was horrible – it was this kind of betrayed sort of horror that made me want to run and hide, but instead I said, shakily, "Yeah." I swallowed, feeling horrible and awkward and wrong. "Yeah, it's me."
And the next thing I knew, Percy had both hands tangled in my hair and he was kissing me, hard.
Not that I was complaining, really. In fact, I was pretty sure I was kissing him right back. Then Percy pulled back, grinning a little sheepishly. "You look... I mean, not that you didn't look, you know, before, but... I'm just glad to see you."
I blinked, and suddenly felt a blush start creeping up my cheeks. I looked like this and it turned Percy on? My stomach started doing flip-flops – I had been so worried that he'd be disgusted or that he'd hate what I'd become. Now that he obviously didn't, I was feeling a little lightheaded with relief.
"Hey," I murmured, sliding my arms around his waist to keep him close, not wanting more than the few inches we needed to breathe between us. "Maybe we should check to make sure everything still works." I was mostly joking, but I admit that a small part of me wasn't. Part of me wanted to just forget where we were. All that part cared about was that we were alone, and that I could probably overpower Percy and get him on his back on the bed before he even realized it.
... I guess being a teenager isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Take all the hormones you're just barely getting used to as a twelve year-old and crank them up times ten. Maybe times twenty. Was this what Percy felt like most of the time? Did you just get used to it after a while?
Percy laughed low in his throat. "Not here," he said, sounding a little reluctant, himself. Then he looked at me again. "But you... What happened to you? You are Nico, right?" He touched my face again, his fingertips cool against my cheek. "You have to be."
"I am," I repeated. "I swear I am. It was Medea – she did this to me," I said. "She's the one who drugged us and brought us here." I wasn't sure how much Percy knew. "She's working for Kronos." I could feel my features harden as I said, "He's here, Percy."
"What?" Percy whispered, like the titan could hear us talking about him in here. For all I knew, maybe he could – but if that were the case, he probably would have done something about it by now. "How do you know?"
I swallowed. I was going to have to tell him eventually, wasn't I? Sooner was better than later... at least, I hoped so, because if he started to make a scene here and now it wouldn't do either of us any good. I hoped he knew that, too. "Because," I said, "I've seen him." I looked down at Percy, feeling suddenly drained. "It's the reason Medea did this," I spread my arms again to indicate myself. "He knew he wouldn't be able to convince you to join him, so he had her find some way to turn me sixteen and made me an offer he thought I couldn't refuse." And, I added silently, for a short time I had thought I couldn't, either. But now, looking at Percy standing inches away, I knew that I could never have said yes. I'd been afraid he'd hate me because I was older than he was, now. What would he have thought if I'd joined Kronos in the fight against the gods?
I got a pretty good idea of what it would be like, watching Percy's face. He was staring at me, his expression a mixture of anger and horror. I didn't know what to say next – I mean, saying something like, Oh, don't worry, I decided in the end he wasn't a good business partner, probably wasn't what he wanted to hear. I mean, I knew what he wanted to hear, but I just couldn't say it. It wouldn't be the truth.
Sometimes I felt like Percy was the only thing keeping me in this fight, or whatever it was. After all, if I could have my way I would just leave, get away from all of this and spend the rest of my life far away from gods and titans and everything else even remotely inhuman. I'd never asked to be a part of this. But when Bianca had died, it had made me involved. At first I'd wanted revenge; but then I'd fallen for Percy and that had made me want to help. For a minute, when I'd been talking to Kronos, I thought I could have had it both ways – I could have gotten Percy free of all this and had the power to leave the world of the gods in ruins so they could never bother me again. But now I realized that accepting Kronos' offer would only be trading one evil for another.
If I wanted Percy, I had to be a part of his fight. And that meant sometimes turning down what I wanted for myself, because he was willing to be a part of something bigger. And now so was I.
So I waited, and the silence stretched on until finally he said, "You considered it, didn't you." It wasn't so much a question as a statement. And besides, it was true and we both knew it.
I couldn't look at Percy's face anymore; I looked away at the wall. "Yeah," I said. "But just for a minute." I looked back at him, wanting him to know I was sincere. "I mean... He told me he could use my powers to cheat death. And he said he'd give me power in the new world he was forming." I sighed, pushing away from the wall and going over to the bed. I sat down on it, staring at my knees. None of those reasons sounded very enticing anymore, save the one. "For a minute... for a minute I thought it was a good idea."
"Nico... I know you don't like your dad very much, but that's no reason to give up on all the gods," Percy said quietly.
I shrugged; I guessed that was true. I mean, most of them didn't like me for more than one reason. There was the fact that Hades was my father – that he had gotten away with it on a minor technicality. And then there was the fact that I was seeing Percy – that I was sleeping with Percy, and that I had some of his powers budding inside of me. That had made me even less popular than before.
But I also remembered when, only a little more than a week ago, Poseidon had come to us after we'd escaped from the Underworld. He'd said that he was on our side, and that he would do what he could for us. And then there was the fact that Persephone – who I knew for a fact didn't like me very much – had given Percy the means to leave the Underworld even after he'd given Hades his life.
Maybe some of the gods were on our side, but it wasn't most of them. Poseidon was powerful, yes, but he was only one among many. The rest of the gods – and even Kronos – knew how dangerous Percy and I could be. And now I'd been vaulted into the spotlight totally unnaturally, and I didn't like it.
There was such a thing as too much power. But even knowing that...
"What if he was right?" I couldn't help but ask. "What if I could learn to use my powers to cheat death – what if I could save you?"
"Save me?" I heard Percy walk over. He leaned down, one hand on my knee and the other on my chin, tilting it up so that he could lock eyes. And I knew I'd have to tell him what I'd been thinking all along, ever since that night on the beach. I hadn't been lying when I'd said Hades couldn't have him. Every time I looked at Percy, all I could think was that he was mine, and Hades was never going to own him. Not if I had a say in the matter. "Aren't you here to rescue me?" he asked, grinning a little, lopsidedly.
"Yeah," I said quietly, looking up into Percy's face because I didn't have a choice. "But I didn't mean that." And I was pretty sure Percy had known it, too.
The look on hisface told me I was right. "Then what, Nico? What do you think you have to save me from? The prophecy? It looks like you already have – "
"I don't care about the prophecy," I said. "But... Percy, I don't know what's going to happen if..." I swallowed, "when you die. You know, again. Whenever it happens."
His eyes went dark; I knew he understood. He knew how much Hades hated him. We both did. Honestly, my father wasn't all that fond of me at the moment (or, well, ever), either.
"Nico..." Percy's other hand came up to my face, and he put one knee on the bed, leaning closer. I inhaled his scent, sharp and fresh, and I had just started to slide my hands around his back and our lips had barely brushed when it happened.
The door flew open with a slam! "I knew it!" the telekhine cried; apparently he'd come back from his otherworldly-rat encounter, and I mentally slapped myself upside the head. I was supposed to have Percy out of here and safely back to Annabeth by now, but –
Percy jumped back, automatically falling into a defensive crouch, but it wasn't going to do much good. He didn't have a weapon, and just because telekhines were sea demons didn't mean they listened to him.
"I don't know how you escaped, but you're going right back where you came from!" The telekhine lunged for me, and in those few seconds time seemed to slow to almost a crawl as my body clicked onto autopilot, hauling my brain along for the ride.
I don't know what made me do it, but I leaped off the bed, grabbing Percy's arm and pulling him towards the center of the room. With the door open and the telekhine between it and us, there was a dark blot of shadow that fell across the floor, and as it touched us, I closed my eyes and tightened my grip on Percy's arm and thought, as hard as I could, Storage closet! Annabeth! Now!
As we sank back into the shadow and the darkness swallowed us whole, all I could think was that I hoped we wouldn't end up in China.
