11. I Get Dumped

"Finn, thank goodness," Nic said with relief. "Chase is freaking out. Please tell him that you and I are friends and that he's just paranoid."

"Well, you see, Nicole, here's the thing," Finn began. "You and I aren't friends, and you should've listened to Jackson when you had the chance. I'm not sure what all he told you, but I'd wager every bit of it was true."

Nic looked like she'd just had her heart ripped out. "Wait, what are you saying?" she asked him.

"I'm saying you were our insurance policy. We knew Jackson would come after you once he realized you were with us. You were the incentive to get his foot in the door, well, you and the Fleece."

"You've got what you wanted," I barked. "I'm here. Now, let her go."

Finn shook his head, "I don't think so."

I reached for my pocket to grab my pen, but Finn was quicker. He drew his pistol and pointed it at Nic. "Not another move," he ordered.

My whole body froze and so did Nic's. Her lip quivered in fear, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Her voice was shaky when she whispered, "Chase…"

"She's mortal," I said. "Celestial bronze won't touch her."

Finn smirked, "Celestial bronze isn't the only ammo we carry. No, we find regular ammo comes in quite handy, too."

He had standard bullets in his gun, bullets that could kill not only half-bloods, but mortals too.

"Come," Finn waved us out of the office. "Barka wants to see you."

We stepped out into the hallway where a green-eyed girl with her black hair up in a ponytail was waiting; it was Mason. "Chase," she greeted me.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Abigail."

A smirk crossed her face when I called her by her first name. "Long time," she said to me.

"Not long enough."

"Follow me," she said, then lead us down the hall with Finn behind us still holding Nic at gunpoint.

Nic grabbed my hand and said, "I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you."

I squeezed her hand for reassurance, "That doesn't matter. I'll get us out of this." How I was going to do that, though, was still up in the air. I had not even a semblance of a plan in my head. I guess I'd have to take page from Dad's book and just improvise.

They walked us downstairs, through the bank lobby, and into the vault, the same vault I saw in my dream. They sat Nic and me down in chairs near a large steel table, and on the table, lay the Golden Fleece. I'm not sure what Nic saw on the table, what the Mist was manipulating the Fleece into, but I know she wasn't seeing a shimmering gold ram's fleece.

In just a moment, Barka walked into the vault, and the huge steel door closed behind him. "Chase Jackson," he said to me. "So good of you to make it all the way down to Florida. That must've been a long trip from Long Island."

"You would know," I sneered. "You made the same trip after you stole the Fleece."

He ran his hand over the Golden Fleece and said, "Ah, yes, the Fleece."

"Why'd you take it?"

"Many reasons: for its healing powers, to weaken the barrier around your camp, to lure you and that Grace girl here," he listed.

"Who?" Nic whispered to me. "You're here with a girl?"

I was expecting her to ask what's the Fleece or you don't go to baseball camp, do you, but instead she asked if I was here with a girl. "She's a friend," I whispered back.

"Where's the other two?" Finn asked about Lexie and Russ.

"I don't know," I said, and I didn't know. Hopefully, they were planning some sort of rescue mission. Surely, by now they'd figured out something went wrong. "What do you want with them anyway?" I asked.

"You know exactly what we want with them," Mason said, and I knew what she meant. They wanted them dead; they wanted all demigods dead.

I narrowed my eyes at Mason, "I bet your father's so proud of you."

She flushed, "My father?"

"Jake Mason, right?" I asked. Chiron and I had put two and two together about her parentage when we were discussing the Rebellion after my quest last summer. "Son of Hephaestus who fought alongside my parents in the Titan War. You'd dishonor a hero like that?"

"My father wasn't a hero!" she snapped. "He was a drunk who never gave a damn about me! He didn't tell me the things I needed to know about this world of gods and monsters; he just went on about how underappreciated he was and how he'd never be remembered and…" she paused and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "It doesn't matter now. He's dead."

I didn't know he was dead, which made me feel bad about what I said to her, but then again, he was a demigod and she wanted all demigods… "Did you-" I started to ask her if she'd killed her own father.

"I did," Barka interrupted. "I killed him."

Whoa. It suddenly hit me just how dangerous the Rebellion was, and for the first time, I really regretted saving Barka's life last year. Had I known things would go this far, I would've thought twice before pulling my enemy from a burning building.

"Chase," I heard Nic whisper my name. "What are you into?"

That question was inevitable, and gods, how was I going to answer it? "Umm…" I muttered.

"Nicole," Barka said. "It'd be in your best interest if you didn't ask anymore questions, and just try your best to ignore us. None of this is any of your concern, and it's very unfortunate that you were dragged into all of this."

"But-" she began to protest.

Barka cut her off. "Don't argue with me," he said in a sterner tone. "Just do as I say."

The guy had a commanding presence, and it shut Nic right up. He was definitely leadership material, and I can see how the Rebellion was so organized under his command; Barka made you want to follow his orders; he made you want to follow him. He was a full-on, modern-day Hitler.

"Barka, just let her go," I said. "You don't need her anymore. I'm here. You got what you wanted."

"What I want is for you to join us," he said. "You're practically one of us, anyway. You could be such an asset. You really could be a great leader within our organization. I just wish you could see that."

"I could never follow you, because I don't believe in your cause. I sympathize with your group's situation, I really do, but I'll never agree that what you're doing is right. I could never, ever kill my own parents or kill my friends. Barka, there's got to be another way to help those with clear sight. Killing isn't the answer," I tried to reason with him.

"I really do wish there was another way," he said, and he sounded sincere. "But there's not. The Rebellion itself is only a small percentage of the population that has clear sight. The sheer number of clear sighted mortals and legacies make it impossible for us to help everyone deal with the horrors they see, so the most effective way to change their lives and their children's lives and their grandchildren's lives is to simply change the world they live in. When we rid the world of demigods and the monsters disappear, we'll all finally be able to live in peace."

Well, he was certainly passionate about his mission, and he was loyal to those like him, but that's what made him dangerous. In his mind, he was right, and he'd stop at nothing to see his mission successfully completed. And his followers were just as passionate. Barka killed Mason's father, and she was still fiercely loyal to him. Either she'd been brainwashed or she truly believed it was the right thing, and I'm pretty sure it was the latter.

"I'm going to stop you," I warned.

He shrugged, "So you say, but when the time comes, you may very well be fighting for our side."

I shook my head, "Never going to happen."

Barka walked over to Nic and ran his hand over her blond hair in a kind of threatening way. "Never say never, Chase," he said. "I can be quite persuasive."

I was about to jump up and strangle the son of a bitch when suddenly, all the lights went out; the storm must've cut out the power. The words Poseidon had said to me earlier rang in my head: the storm will be a distraction. Use it to your advantage, but don't let it distract you.

I heard Finn on his radio, asking the person on the other end about backup generators, which he was informed, had been sabotaged.

"Lexie," I whispered to myself. She and Russ must've realized something was up and were coming to the rescue.

It was pitch black in the vault. I couldn't see anything, but I found Nic's hand and grabbed it. I pulled her out of her chair, fumbled around until I found the steel table and grabbed the Fleece, which transformed into a jacket in my hand. Nic and I scampered over to the other end of the vault, as far away from the voices of Barka, Finn, and Mason as we could get.

"What now?" she whispered.

"Hunker down and cover yourself with this," I whispered as I handed her the jacket. "I've got a feeling things might get explosive."

Nic and I stayed silent and still, and we waited. And waited. And waited. I was expecting Lexie and Russ to burst into to the vault at any second, but they didn't.

"Jackson," I heard Finn's voice echo. "Where are you, Jackson?"

We sat motionless and even tried to quiet our breathing, so that maybe they couldn't find us in the darkness.

"I know you're in here," Finn's voice was closer. "It's only a matter of time before I find you."

I heard his boots against the concrete floor, his steps coming ever closer to us. I thought about drawing my sword, which surprisingly, they hadn't confiscated, likely because a sword is pretty much a useless weapon when the enemy is toting a firearm. The glow from the blade would only give away our location, though, so I decided to only draw my sword as a last resort.

His steps got closer and closer, and he was only a few feet away from us when he stopped at the sound of tapping on the vault door.

"What's that sound?" Mason's voice rang from the other end of the vault.

Tap Tap Tap

"Away from the door!" Barka yelled.

Kaboom

The blast was deafening, and smoke and dust rolled into the vault. The vault door now had a gaping hole in it, and enough light was shining through the crater that I could now see.

"CJ!" Lexie's voice yelled.

I grabbed Nic's hand and helped her up. "Now, we run," I said.

We took off running through the smoke and dust toward the door, and gunshots rang out behind us. I pushed Nic in front of me, so I could shield her from the bullets. I don't know how many times I was hit, several, I'm sure, but I never felt a thing.

When we ran through the door, Lexie and Russ were there waiting. "Let's go!" Lexie ordered, and we followed her out of the bank and into a hurricane.

The wind made me stumble, and the rain was coming down in sheets. "Hannah's here early!" I yelled over the sound of the howling wind and pounding rain.

Lexie looked over her shoulder as we ran toward the street. "She was the perfect diversion, though!" she yelled. "Your grandpa was looking out for you today!"

She was certainly right about that.

We ran across the street and took cover where we had earlier, by the old electronics store. Surprisingly, we weren't pursued. The shock of the hurricane's early arrival, and the fact that all of the guards were now lying unconscious on the bank lawn (no doubt, thanks to Russ) probably had something to do with it.

The members of the Rebellion seemed disoriented and panicked by the blast inside the bank and by the raging storm outside. I watched Barka run out of the bank with many other members of his group. He was barking out orders, and his followers obeyed. They were in retreat-mode. They quickly organized and began an efficient evacuation of the bank and the surrounding buildings like they'd practiced this scenario beforehand. They all began piling into the cars that lined the streets and driving away into the storm, likely to rendezvous at another location.

We needed to get moving ourselves. I was still gripping Nic's hand when I began to lead her away from Lexie and Russ. "I'll be back in a minute, guys," I told them.

I led Nic to the back of the building. I gripped her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Go back to your aunt's house," I told her. "Stay out of sight and answer the door for no one. If you notice anything suspicious, call the cops."

"What about you?" she asked.

"I got what I came here for," I said as I took the Golden Fleece in jacket-form from her hands. "Now, I've got to get back to New York before it's too late."

"Chase, I don't understand what's going on…and I don't think I want to know."

I nodded, "That's probably best. Listen, I'll call you when this all blows over."

She shook her head, "That's probably not a good idea."

My heart sank. "What?"

"It's just…I just don't know who you are anymore," she said. She probably thought I was a teenage James Bond in training, or I was in the middle of some sort of gang war, which was actually more believable than me being the cursed grandson of two Greek gods on a quest to recover the Golden Fleece, because that was just ridiculous. "This is a lot to process," she continued. "I'll…I'll just see you at school this fall, okay?"

"Nic," I pleaded.

"Thanks for saving my life, Chase." She hesitantly kissed my cheek like she thought I might bite her, then she took off running away from me through the driving rain, and she never looked back. I wondered if she'd ever look at me the same way again; I wondered if our friendship would survive this. With my luck, it was doubtful.

"CJ!" Lexie called to me. "CJ, come on! We have to take cover!"

I shook off being dumped by a girl who wasn't even my girlfriend as best I could and ran over to Lexie and Russ.

"We need to find shelter," she said. "The hurricane is right on top of us."

The wind growled, and I heard a loud popping and cracking sound, then I heard a shrill scream. I looked across the street to see Mason and Finn standing near a car. The scream was coming from Mason as she watched a utility pole snap and come toppling toward Finn.

"Jason!" she screamed as the pole fell, then Finn did something that shocked me. He looked up at the pole that was about to crush him, and he raised his hands as if to catch the enormous utility pole. A fierce gust of wind rose from his feet and obeyed the movements of his arms. The wind stopped the falling pole, and when he thrust his arms, it was like he was tossing the pole to the side, which he did. The gust of wind pushed the utility pole, and it landed ten feet away instead of on top of him.

My jaw was hanging somewhere down around my knees, and Lexie's was, too. We must've been thinking the same thing, and what I was thinking, Russ said aloud, "Holy shit, that's Jason Grace's son."

But he couldn't be…could he? Jason didn't have any kids, did he? It made so much sense, though. I now realized the reason he looked so familiar was because he looked like Jason Grace did when he was a teenager. Finn looked like he stepped out of one of those photos of Jason hanging on the cork board in the Big House. And the power over wind he just displayed was a classic Zeus power, a power Jason had. And apparently, Finn's first name was even Jason, likely after his father.

I turned to Lexie who had a look of utter shock and confusion on her face. She was able to manage a few words, words from her quest, "Fallen from Grace."