12

WHAT IN RA'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING?

Nico took a break from trying to wiggle his toes to wince at Anubis's scream. Hey, welcome back. Everything alright with Sadie?

Don't you change the subject! Why didn't you scream for me? demanded Anubis.

Because I didn't need your help. I was able to take care of it on my own, said Nico patiently. Is Sadie okay?

Nearly getting your melanin carved out with lasers is not an acceptable way of dealing with the situation, Nico!

Oh, do we know what melanin is now? Nico wanted to know. He figured Sadie and the others must be okay, or else Anubis wouldn't be wasting so much time yelling at him.

No, we don't, and that's not the point! You could have died, Nico! You could have been driven crazy!

The notes we found said it takes repeated treatments to steal all a demigod's melanin, Nico reminded him. I really wish I knew what that was.

Nico?

Anubis?

When we get out of here, you're grounded.

Nico scoffed. Yeah. Sure.

I'm serious.

Dude, you're not my dad! You can't ground me.

Maybe not, but Percy can.

What? No, he can't!

We'll see about that.

Alright, whatever. Is Sadie okay?

Thankfully, Anubis seemed to have calmed down now that the initial shock of learning how close Nico had come to disaster had worn off. She and the others are fine.

Good. I was worried.

You were worried?

I'm allowed to be worried.

Worry about yourself.

Dude, I already told you, I took care of it. I had everything under control.

Anubis telepathed his disbelief of that remark.

My plan was awesome, said Nico adamantly. You're just jealous you didn't come up with it.

He felt Anubis going through his recent memories, taking more care to absorb the details this time, and felt the god's grudging respect about the way he'd handled the situation. Nico knew that what upset Anubis was mainly that Nico had been in that situation to begin with. And that he hadn't called for Anubis's help. Anubis had to admit, even if it was only to himself, that Nico had handled the situation well. And of course, admitting something to himself meant admitting it to Nico too, since their souls were still fused.

So what happened with Sadie and Carter? asked Nico. And the rest of them?

Anubis quickly filled Nico in on what had happened in Dallas. More than anything, Nico wished he could have been there. He couldn't change the past, he knew, but he could do better for the future. It seemed like the prize fight was right about to start. Ergo, it was time to get out of here.

Time to go, he said to Anubis.

Past time, agreed the god.

These drugs are still messing me up. Can you do anything about them?

Anubis gave a telepathic nod and Nico felt a rushing sensation course through him. Like the time he and Julian had a Red Bull drinking contest. The sluggish feeling that had been plaguing him evaporated.

Cool. Thanks.

Nico? Anubis sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.

Yeah?

I would have come. If you'd telepathed enough to get my attention, I would have come to help you. You know that, right?

Nico's throat felt oddly constricted for some strange reason. Maybe a side effect of the drugs, or whatever Anubis had done to get rid of them. I know, he told Anubis. But the Kanes needed you more.

You handled it well.

Nico beamed . . . even though he was still strapped to his bed. Thanks!

Getting out of his restraints was easy. All he had to do was twist one wrist against the bonds until he'd worn away enough of his skin to draw blood. Then the restraint started fizzling like pop rocks in soda, melting away into nothing. Once he had one hand free, he was able to unstrap his other hand and his feet.

But no sooner had he gotten his feet free than an alarm start blaring.

Intruder alarm? asked Nico.

Probably, Anubis agreed.

Nico shrugged and opened his Duat locker. He pulled out a lighter and balanced dangerously far over the edge of his bunk, so that he could press the flame against the sprinkler nozzle on the ceiling. Percy got here faster than I thought he would.


Jason was very conflicted. Something was obviously going on at the school that night. All his instincts were telling him that Nico had gotten himself in some sort of trouble.

He didn't have any concrete proof . . . just a couple unsettling instances.

First, there had been some sort of disturbance at the school. They'd had a fire drill after lights out. At least they were saying it was a drill. Jason had noticed the commotion and snuck close enough to listen when the fire department showed up. The school's fire alarm system was patched into some security network, so the fire department had been notified immediately. Whenever a drill was supposed to be conducted, the department was supposed to be notified beforehand. The school's dean was insisting that the drill had been scheduled, and that the fire fighters were just incompetent. The fire department was suspicious, and rightfully so, because the dean smelled like smoke and looked a little singed.

Jason had searched for Nico in the commotion but hadn't found him. He knew that Nico had other people he went to check in with at nights, so there was a chance he hadn't even been there . . . but Jason had a bad feeling about this. There was an old Camp Jupiter saying: "Whenever there is trouble, a child of the Elder Three will be there." Everything about Jason's life pretty much proved that old saying true. And everything he knew from other children of the Elder Three, from legends, and history. Heck, the last time a son of Neptune had come to Camp Jupiter, he'd caused the Great San Francisco Earthquake.

It wasn't an impossibility that an unscheduled fire drill, or a minor fire or explosion could occur at a school when there was a son of Pluto attending without the son of Pluto being involved . . . but Jason wouldn't bet on those odds.

He tried to take the proper steps to avoid doing anything brash. He waited at his and Nico's usual meeting place, at the usual time for them to meet. If Nico was responsible, which Jason thought he was, he would check in when he learned what had happened, even though they weren't scheduled to meet until the next night.

When Nico didn't show up, Jason got out his surveillance equipment and tried to look through the window of Nico's room. He felt kind of stalkerish doing that, but his friend's life or sanity could be on the line. When he couldn't find any sign of Nico being in that room, he decided more drastic measures were necessary. And that Heart of Liberty hadn't responded fast enough to their last fire drill. They clearly needed more practice.

He took control of the winds and levitated himself over the fence, entered the school through a first story window, and pulled the closest fire alarm. Then he quickly left the way he came and waited outside the fence for the students to be evacuated again.

The kids were sleepy and irritable, having been woken up twice in one night for unplanned fire drills. Their teachers even more so. Perhaps that was why they weren't overly attentive to their students, even though they were technically in the middle of an emergency situation.

"Excuse me?" asked Jason, when he managed to get close to a group of them while their teacher drifted off to talk to another.

"Wh-what do you want?" yawned one of them.

"Do you know a boy named Nico? Nico di Angelo? He just started at this school."

"Never heard of him. Go away."

"Wait, you know Nico?" asked another kid.

"He's my cousin," answered Jason. Technically it was true. "Do you know him?"

The boy looked at Jason with a troubled expression.

"Did something happen to him?" asked Jason.

"I . . . he . . . it's not . . ."

"Did they take him to the Blue Ward?" asked Jason.

The kid nodded.

"When?"

"Earlier today. This morning."

Since morning. He'd been there since morning. Jason thanked the kid and immediately walked away. Not too far. Just far enough away from prying eyes. Then he lifted himself with the winds again, high enough to keep anyone from seeing him. He dropped down by the same window he'd entered through earlier, and took out the map that Nico had drawn for him on a McDonald's napkin, showing the layout of the ground floor, and how to get to the Blue Ward.

Figuring out the right course of action wasn't easy for this mission. There was nothing in the Camp Jupiter handbook that dealt with breaking into secret compounds where demigods were being driven out of their minds. Jason wasn't even officially here, so he didn't even have any backup. There were a thousand and one ways that he could mess this operation up and get himself captured. But if he did nothing then he knew another one of his friends was going to be driven insane, and Jason refused to let that happen.

Jason decided not to even bother trying to be stealthy as soon as he reached the laser grid. He'd managed to stay out of sight of the security cameras so far by following Nico's directions, but the laser alarm grid was far beyond his means to avoid. He did take a few moments to look over it, but it was clear at a glance that getting to the other side without setting off the alarms was beyond his capabilities. It had taken Nico's son of Pluto powers to get him across, and Jason didn't have anything like that in his own arsenal of powers.

He tested the lasers with one hand to make sure they weren't the kind that could actually burn a person to death. An alarum started blaring the moment his hand went through the beam, but that was the only bad thing that happened.

So Jason broke into a run after that, ignoring the other security cameras and motion sensors that were set up. He kept running until he reached the elevator that Nico had told him about. The one that wouldn't work unless you could pass a retina scan.

He thought he'd been prepared for that, but he misunderstood what Nico had said about it. Jason had assumed he'd be able to get inside the elevator before facing the retina scan, but just wouldn't be able to take it down. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It seemed that he needed to pass the retina scan to even get the doors open.

Jason muttered a curse in Latin and tried to quickly think of a solution. Would it be possible to pry the doors open by hand?

He tried, grabbing one half from where the doors met in the center, and pulled it back toward the wall with all his might. It wobbled and started to give, but then slipped through his fingers. The same thing happened when he tried again, and the third time. Prying them open was possible, it seemed, but he couldn't get a good enough grip with just his fingertips.

"Come on," he muttered to himself. "Think, Jason, think!"

He spent nearly two minutes trying to pry the doors open by hand, but in that time no one came to try to stop him. It seemed that the fire drill was a double edged sword. It removed whatever reinforcements the Blue Ward had within their regular staff, keeping them off the grounds while the firefighters cleared the building, but it also kept anyone who might have access from coming to try to stop Jason. In other words, anyone who he could use to open the doors. He wouldn't even necessarily need to kill them. Using their life as leverage would probably be all he needed for their cooperation.

Leverage!

The inspiration came to Jason and he pulled out his coin, and tossed it in the air. Seconds later, he was holding his spear. He jammed the point into the space between the doors and wrenched it to one side. The spear worked like a lever, prying the doors far enough apart that Jason was able to get his hands in the space. He shoved them open the rest of the way and entered quickly, pulling his spear inside with him. The doors shut behind him, leaving him in relative darkness. It seemed that without the retina scan being completed, the elevator had not been powered on. Only the emergency lights lights were working.

"Of course, it's not going to be easy," he muttered. "Not one single part of it."

But that was okay. This was what Jason had been planning for. He hadn't counted on that struggle getting through the freaking doors, but he'd already had a plan for how to get to the lower levels without needing the elevator to work for him.

The maintenance hatch on the ceiling wasn't difficult to find. Jason used the butt of his spear to open it, then levered his spear through the opening so that it was lying flat across the elevator's roof. He used it like a pull up bar to get himself up onto the elevator's roof, then he replaced the hatch, to hopefully confuse anyone who came after him. Maybe if he was lucky they'd think he gave up and went home. Yeah right. But he could hope. Jason was feeling oddly optimistic as he climbed down the cables to the lower levels.

"I've always wanted to do this," he said to himself, smirking.

He got the doors to the lower level open the same way he'd gotten the elevator doors on the higher level open, then found himself in a long stone corridor. At the end there was a wall with a seam running through the center, like the doors of the elevators, and Jason got the feeling that was the one Nico had been talking about. The door he hadn't been able to get passed.

Jason scowled at it as he moved closer. He wondered if he'd be able to use his spear to pry this one open as well, but somehow didn't think so. It looked like it was made of some smooth stone, like onyx or obsidian, but when he reached it, he realized that wasn't actually the case. He could feel electricity running through currents inside of it. Maybe it would open if he tried blasting it?

He did try prying it open with his spear, just in case, but that didn't work. When his skin touched it he noticed that it lit up in places showing the circuitry underneath.

"Error," said an automated sounding voice. "Incomplete bio-signature."

Whatever that meant.

Jason had just decided to try blasting the door when he heard something that stopped him. A sizzling sound, like bacon in a frying pan, had reached his ears. Seconds later he heard . . . he heard what sounded like curses in an odd mixture of English, Italian, and some other language. Greek maybe? As he watched, a semi-circle pattern became visible on the door. Not lit up by the lights and circuits inside . . . it was actually destroying the lights and circuits inside, and becoming clearer and clearer!

"Stupid magic resistant doors! You are no match for my black blood!" came Nico's triumphant shout.

Then a half moon shaped chunk of the door went flying out, toward Jason. He had to jump aside quickly to keep it from landing on his toes, and from the looks of it, that would have really, really hurt.

Then Nico dove headfirst through the opening, and landed with sort of a somersault on the ground. He seemed to notice out the corner of his eye that he was not alone and spun toward Jason grinning. "Oh hi, Percy . . . er . . . not Percy."


AN: Does the end of this chapter give anyone a sense of déjà vu, lol? Well, at least Jason got out of it without taking an iron bar to the head, but probably only because Sadie wasn't in on the jail-break with Nico this time.

I have read Mark of Athena, btw. (a lot of people have been asking me that) I won't put any spoilers here, so no worries, but I liked it quite a lot. I especially liked the Team Leo part. That was hilarious. Even though it would have been simpler for him just to torch everyone opposing him there . . . though that's more like something the Façade kids would have done. Or the characters in Borderlands. I want to play that game so bad now, but I can tell just by watching clips from it on youtube that my parents will never let me play it in our house. Thankfully, I'll be in college next year, lol . . . and I just got an image in my head of Leo lighting everything around him up and screaming "Burn all the babies!" (A character in Borderlands shouted that, even though there didn't seem to be any babies involved. They were just blowing up a railroad track to rob a train)

It's going to be a long year, waiting for the next book, House of Hades to come out, but Rick Riordan's books are always worth the wait.