In all, fifteen campers chose to join Camp Half-Blood's guard. Leo would have liked to say he was the first camper to volunteer when Clarisse asked for soldiers, but in truth, it had been Nico. He just glanced at Daisy and his hand shot up like a rocket before Leo could even think about raising his own.
They had all agreed- much to Leo's dismay- that the guard's headquarters would be the Ares cabin. There were to be ten campers on watch at all times, four resting, and one keeping watch over the four while they slept. Every four hours, the five in the Ares cabin were rotated.
Right now, Leo stayed in some unknown kid of Ares' stinky bunk, trying to take a nap, but all he could think about was that joining the guard meant abandoning the Argo II. It was nice to get a break, but Leo could feel that the ship was his destiny to build. There was no way he wanted to just leave it behind and throw the duty of bringing the Argo II's complicated design to life on one of his brothers' or sisters' shoulders.
"Worried?" Nico asked him in a whisper from the bunk directly to his left.
Leo didn't feel like answering, but eventually he mumbled, "Yeah. How did you know?"
Nico laughed. "Because you've been flicking your thumb like a lighter for the past half hour. I guess I thought it was a nervous habit."
It was true. Leo had been putting his hand in the thumbs-up position and absent-mindedly letting a flames glow off and on at the tip of his thumb.
"Oh," Leo said, noticing what he had been doing for the first time, "sorry. Was I keeping you awake?"
"Nah," Nico said, "I don't sleep a whole lot at night. I'm backwards like that. So what's eating you?"
Leo sighed. "The Argo II. I know I'm supposed to work on it, but I also feel like I need to defend the camp. I should be building a ship, but there's no way I'm going to leave the security of Camp Half-Blood in the incapable hands of Clarisse."
"Hey, hey," came a voice that at first Leo mistook for Nico's, "watch it guys. That's my girlfriend you're talking about."
"Who is that?" Leo asked at the same time Nico said, "Sorry, Chris. How's lookout going?"
"Swell, Nico. The name's Chris Rodriguez. Son of Hermes and boyfriend of the girl you just knocked."
"Oh," Leo said. He had vague memories of a one-handed boy sitting next to Clarisse at campfires. If Leo hadn't been ADD, he probably would have said something like "sorry," but instead he blurted out, "How did you lose your hand?"
Leo inhaled sharply, as if trying to suck the words back in, but they had already escaped his mouth, and there was no way to take them back. "Sorry," he said, much too late.
"Jeez, kid, got manners?" Chris asked, and Leo knew he'd hit a sore spot.
"Sorry," he repeated like an idiot.
"Or brains?" Nico laughed.
"Whatever, kid. I'll tell you how I lost my hand. Since you're supposedly one of the chosen seven, you should probably know what you'll be up against for the rest of your life, however long it may be."
The way Chris spoke- solemn and ominous- was enough to scare Leo. It was a voice he had heard before occasionally in Annabeth and Clarisse whenever they spoke about the Titan War. He had even heard Jason use that voice before.
"When Lord Kronos died- well, turned to ashes at least- everybody thought all our problems were over. That Percy had saved us all. And he had, no doubt about it. But no one anticipated that his army would just reform. Nobody thought that some gods would still support what Kronos stood for. The celebrations were still going strong a week after Kronos' reign ended. I went to help out a satyr on a scouting mission when I ran into an entire battalion of monsters. My plan was to sneak away before any of them saw me, but as I turned, one of them intercepted me. He took me by surprise and got my hand. But I took more than a hand from him," he said darkly, and Leo knew the monster had been sent straight to Tartarus.
Leo tried to imagine what Chris must have gone through. To be afraid of death for so long and finally find hope, just to have his hand chopped off by a single ugly beast. Leo would have been well beyond angry. He would have been apathetic. He would have let himself die.
"I lost too much blood to run away, but I couldn't call for help in case the other monsters heard me. I don't know why, but it was Lord Hephaestus who saved me. Maybe it was because he knew my father was grieving too much over losing Luke to come to my aid, but Hephaestus gave me a new hand and took me back to camp." Chris held up his prosthetic hand. It was celestial bronze, so it gave off a dull glow in the dark room. The fingers moved just like any natural fingers would, but Leo knew that his father wouldn't have stopped at natural. A hand created by Hephaestus was probably more of a deadly weapon than the sharpest blade Camp Half-Blood could supply.
"Who was Luke?" Leo asked. "Nobody will answer me when I ask about him."
"He was a hero," Nico said at the same time Chris said, "He was a traitor."
"He was both," Chris amended. "I guess I shouldn't judge him too harshly. We were both traitors, and we both changed. It cost me my mind and him his body before we could see the light. The only difference is that there was a god to save me before I died, while there was none for my half-brother. Luke was responsible for both the rise and fall of Kronos."
Leo was still confused by a lot of things, but he guessed that it would take days and several different story tellers to learn the full story of the Titan War, so he just sat in silence.
He wasn't sure when he had drifted into sleep, but then next thing Leo saw was a golden pendant of an eagle, dangling off of a girl's neck. There was a flash of brilliant green eyes... or were they brown? Then the pendant was tucked into a red sweater and Leo's dream shifted off into nothingness.
"Time to wake up, punks!" a loud voice bellowed some time later. Then, just to be sure that Leo was conscious, a fist socked him in the gut.
"Thanks, Clarisse," Leo coughed, not needing to open his eyes to see who had delivered the rude awakening.
"C'mon," Nico said as Leo rubbed his eyes, "let's go defend this stupid camp for our stupid leader."
"Oh, go to Hades," Clarisse said.
"I already have," Nico laughed.
Clarisse dumped a box of granola bars on a table. "Here's breakfast. You can eat it on your way out. Some of us have been working hard and need sleep."
"More like a midnight snack," Daisy said, walking through the door and into the Ares cabin, dressed in full battle armor.
Leo glanced at his watch. 12:03 am. His body was going to get seriously confused by this schedule.
As Leo threw on his armor and grabbed a granola bar he watched three more heroes enter: Travis Stoll, Zach Bradey, and Katie Gardener.
"So... tired," Zach mumbled in an Australian accent. He was among the handful of foreign demigods to come to camp.
"How's the nose, Bradey?" Nico asked.
"Nothing a little ambrosia can't handle. And sleep." He looked longingly at Leo's bunk.
"Yeah. Sleep is good," Katie muttered. She crashed in a chair, not even making the effort to walk to a bed.
"It's only midnight, you guys. We've stayed up later at the campfire," Leo said.
"You weren't out there," Travis said. "It was like we were fighting drowsiness instead of monsters. Can't you feel it? The only place I want to be right now is in bed."
"Where's Chris?" Clarisse asked. For the first time, Leo noticed the absence of the boy he had spoken to earlier. "He was just here, I saw him a minute ago."
Nico and Clarisse made eye contact and Leo knew they were thinking the same thing: not again.
"We have to go looking for him," Leo said.
Zach whimpered and Clarisse nodded.
"He might just be out there already," she said in a not-so-hopeful voice. Even as Clarisse spoke the entire cabin seemed to sigh.
"No," Nico said when Katie Gardener stood up and seemed to fall back down. "You guys should stay here. We'll go out and look for him," he motioned to himself and the others who had just rested.
"You think I'm going to sit here while my boyfriend could be dead, punk?" Clarisse looked outraged.
"He isn't dead, I know that much for sure," he replied.
"That's a real comfort! He isn't dead, but I should just relax until he is? I'm not going to let that happen. Can't you see that sleep has become our enemy? We're all falling over where we stand, Nyssa disappeared in her sleep, and I'll bet you anything Chris was feeling pretty tired after he skipped rest period to keep an eye on you. He's probably sleep walking straight to his death!" Clarisse yelled a lot, but Leo had never heard her shout a valid point before.
"You're right," Leo said. "We've been looking at this all wrong. It isn't a guard we need… it's coffee." On a usual day, hearing that sentence would have been hilarious, but as it was, the other heroes in the cabin nodded solemnly.
"I can get some Coke rationed for everyone," Travis said. Everyone looked at him funny because that sort of thing was against the rules at camp. "What? I know a guy, okay?"
"I'm going to lead a rescue mission to see if we can find him," said Clarisse. "You get us some of that Coke, pronto. And you," she looked at Leo, "find a way to get that ship of yours in the air. The sooner we find Percy the sooner we can get this Great Prophecy started. This has got to be connected somehow, and we can't go without sleep for much longer."
No one made a move. They all just looked at each other, wondering who would be the next to disappear.
"GO!" Clarisse screamed.
Everyone rushed around. Zach and Katie seemed to forget their need for sleep and went to Clarisse, saying something about joining her on the rescue team.
"Got any ideas?" Daisy shouted to Leo over the noise.
"Yeah!" he replied. "First, I want to talk to the Hecate cabin about magic. Then, I want to Iris message Jason and tell him to get moving. Even if I can get this ship off the ground there will be no Great Prophecy without him and Percy!"
Daisy smiled at him and Leo noticed for the first time how pretty her hazel eyes were with her caramel colored hair.
"You'd better get a move on, then," she said.
Leo turned, wondering where the best place to send a message would be.
"And Leo!" Daisy called. Leo spun around and faced her. "Try not to fall asleep. We really can't afford to lose you."
Leo smiled at her. It was good to be needed.
