They woke early the next morning, packing up quickly and quietly.

They were planning on heading into the city for the morning, first to find food, and then to look for any weird activity. Assuming all went well, in the afternoon, they'd drive up Mount Tam.

Knowing the city best, Annabeth drove them to a cafe she remembered to be open for breakfast. They grabbed coffee and small pastries before commandeering an outdoor table. Jane and Elwood sat on opposite sides of the table, still avoiding each other's gazes. No one spoke, simply absorbing the entire San Francisco scene, analyzing each person to pass them by. A girl about Will's age smiled at him. He didn't look, but he was fairly sure Violet glared at her. He placed an arm around the back of her chair in some sort of attempt to console her.

It was another brilliantly sunny day in California, with a soft breeze blowing, the sky cloudless. Will was discovering that he quite liked this state.

"So, where should we start?" Elwood looked to Annabeth.

"I say we just hit the main streets, right? And then go for the back alleyways." Violet put in.

Annabeth nodded. "I don't have a better idea. Maybe we'll get lucky."

They grabbed their backpacks and headed off at a steady pace up the sidewalk. Will wasn't quite sure what he was looking for, as he was passed by business men and women and college students and beach blondes and surfer dudes. San Francisco was a big city, and everyone he passed looked relatively normal. The only comforting thing was that monsters would automatically be attracted to them, so in theory, if there was big trouble, it would come to them. This was less comforting once Will thought it through.

They walked for several hours before Jane needed to rest again. They found a small furniture store off one of the main streets where they could 'try out' the couches for sale.

No one said much, the heavy weight of failure on their shoulders. Upon arriving in California mostly alive, they'd thought they'd have a chance, at least, of picking up a lead. But now the impossibility of their quest was slapping them in the face, making them realize that they could search every nook and cranny in the city, and Percy could still be on the other side of the world, or just in some tiny town three miles north, and they'd never know.

"We're not going to find him like this." Violet said, sitting down next to Will on a striped couch. Annabeth and Jane grabbed the seats across from them, while Elwood paced slightly nearby. "I say we go to Mount Tam and then head back to camp if we don't find anything."

Annabeth opened her mouth to object, but Violet interrupted her.

"What'd you think was the logical next step from here? We have exactly jackshit to go on. Are we just gonna keep searching through random towns?"

Annabeth's voice was tight, her eyes heard when she spoke again. "We can't give up."

Will stepped in, metaphorically. "Who knows, maybe the others, you know Jason and them, have found something on their journey." He offered sympathetically.

"Maybe." Annabeth said softly. "But...I just..." An incoherent Annabeth was not a happy Annabeth.

"We'll still check out Mount Tam, okay?" Will smiled at her. "Who knows, man, maybe we'll find something."

Annabeth nodded, biting her lip. He'd convinced her.

Violet patted his knee in approval. She never failed to be impressed when he managed to calm someone like that, seeing as it had never been her strong suit.

"I'm sorry, did you say you were looking for someone?" The woman at the check out counter appeared to be in her thirties, with light skin and dyed red hair. She wore a strapless dress and high heeled boots. She must have picked up part of their conversation, not surprising, seeing as the store was almost completely empty other than the teenagers.

Violet raised a skeptical eyebrow at her butting in, but Will smiled at the woman as charmingly as possible, intrigued.

"Yeah," He said. "A guy, about my height with black hair and green eyes. Have you seen him, by any chance?"

Annabeth, Jane, and Elwood all turned to look at her. Her brow furrowed, thinking.

"I don't think I've seen him." She admitted after a moment. "You sure he's in the city?"

"We're not sure." Elwood said. "We just think so."

Annabeth's shoulders dropped, though she was not surprised Percy had not stepped into a furniture store while being kidnapped.

"Well," The woman continued. "I see a lot of people your age by this highway tunnel, out in the suburbs. I don't know why, but they come and go there a lot."

Jane looked at her. "Yeah? Can you tell us where it is?"

She nodded, and Will and Violet got to their feet as she scribbled down directions on the back of an old receipt, then handed it over to Will.

"Thanks." He said with a smile.

"No problem. Hope you find your friend." She looked apologetic. "I guess you should probably call the police or something, if you don't find him."

"I'm not sure they'd be hugely interested in this." Violet replied vaguely.

The woman gave them odd look, but didn't ask questions.

They got up to leave, and she waved. Violet wondered if the woman was just a nice person, a monster waiting to ambush them, or someone who simply thought that they weren't quite right in the head, depending on how much of the conversation she'd heard. It did seem a little odd, Violet thought, from an outsider's point of view. Five teenagers, clearly distraught over their missing friend, but not calling the police or getting any real help. They just had to hope that the woman wouldn't rat them out, as they were technically minors. They had enough to deal with already.

Piling back into the van, Will put the receipt on the dashboard, carefully translating the woman's messy handwriting before each turn. Annabeth seemed to not be able to sit still, smacking the broad side of her knife against her leg rhythmically. She was no doubt torn between excitement at the possibility of a breakthrough and anxiety at the possibility for it all too have been an elaborate set up.

Will wasn't sure it was a trap. In his experience, monsters weren't all that patient, their tendencies more along the lines of "see a demigod, kill a demigod", not "let's set up an clever plot to give the demigods false hope and then kill them."

They drove past the spot she had marked with an x on the receipt, to get a look at it before they pulled over. There was a cliff, with two tunnels carved into it for incoming and oncoming traffic. On one side, there was a holey chain link fence, guarding a neighborhood of paved roads and eucalyptus trees. On the other, their seemed to be an outcropping, and upon closer inspection during the second pass, they saw a door, with two people standing on either side of it.

They parked on the other side of the tunnels, out of sight of the door, and then skulked along the walkway back to the door. They stayed in the shadow of the tunnel, weapons drawn, to get a good look, which was harder than they expected.

It was just a little hazy around the edges, enough to convince them it was protected by the mist. They could see it well enough, though, or enough to make out two figures in full armor and weaponry, standing stalk straight on each side of a small door in the rocky cliff.

"What the hell is it?" Violet asked. "Are those demigods?"

"That's not Greek armor." Annabeth said, squinting her eyes at the two people.

"What do you mean that's not Greek armor?" Jane looked at her like she'd lost her mind.

"I mean, it's not." Annabeth retorted. "It looks...almost...Roman."

Will and Violet exchanged a look. None of this was making any sense whatsoever.

They stared at the armor-clad soldiers a while longer, trying to come to some not crazy conclusion. They weren't having much success.

"Well, shouldn't we go talk to them?" Will said. "Maybe they'll tell us what's going on. And they probably know something about Percy—it seems like too much of a coincidence that we'd find this looking for him."

"Maybe they'll tell us, or maybe they're monsters waiting to kill us." Violet put in.

"They don't look like monsters." Will replied.

"We can't see shit from here. Who fucking knows what they are." She said. "I think it's safer if we go up their ready to fight, not talk."

"I think we should wait here for a while, maybe overnight." Annabeth reasoned. "See what they do, if anything, before we go charging up there."

"That makes sense to me." Jane agreed, and Will nodded.

"What? Hell, no." Violet appealed to Annabeth. "What if they have Percy somewhere up there? What if he's being tortured, on the verge of death? Gods, this has got to be a breakthrough! We can't afford to wait this out. Not for his sake, not for the sake of ourselves. As a demigod, I think it's safe to assume that almost everything we encounter is trying to kill us, one way or another. And I, for one, do not want to be caught off guard when we try to go 'talk' to people who are clearly armed and may or may not be monsters."

"And so we should just go up there with our guns blazing because we think they might be hostile?" Will countered. "This is bad planning, even for you, Violet."

They glared at each other for a moment. It was not surprising, their differing points of view. Will generally saw the good in people; Violet knew how to fight, and therefore was more comfortable in situation where she had the upper hand. They eventually turned to Annabeth, who was the unofficial leader.

Judging by her expression, and much to Will's dismay, Violet seemed to have gotten to her with her comments about Percy's well being.

"I agree." She said to Violet. "We don't have time to waste. I'd like to think these people would help us, but I don't want to take the risk of going up there unprepared."

Will groaned. "All this is going to tell us is that any being about to be attacked by strangers is going to respond with violence. We won't learn anything by killing them."

"We won't kill them." Annabeth said. "We'll just disarm them, and then we'll talk."

"And if they kill us first?"

"It's five to two, Will. They don't have a chance, no matter who they are." Violet told him.

He still shook his head, scowling. The whole idea of assuming that a civil conversation couldn't be had without initial violence was eating at him. He knew Violet liked to be in control of any situation involving weapons, but this was unfamiliar turf, and they hadn't the slightest idea who they were making enemies of.

Jane and Elwood, as the most junior in the group, had been watching the three argue back and forth. They looked as though they might have their own opinions to voice, but Annabeth clearly had her mind made up.

"Okay, weapons at the ready." She declared. "Let's do this."

They crept out from the tunnel, braced for attack as they stepped off the tunnel sidewalk and onto the grass lining the highway. A fifty foot hill lead up to the soldiers, the ground littered with trash thrown from car windows. Will notched an arrow, despite his principles.

They had barely made it a few steps up the hill when the guard on the left moved. Both still until that moment, one turned swiftly on their heel, opened the door, and disappeared inside.

A second later, a platoon of armored bodies filed out of the door. The five teenagers didn't have time to move before two dozen soldiers were charging down the hill.