13
Finding Jason waiting outside the so called impenetrable doors to the Blue Ward was a bit of a surprise. Nico had been expecting it to be Percy storming the complex, coming to find him. Not the guy he just met like a week ago.
"So . . . what brings you here, Jason?" he asked. That was more to make conversation than because he hadn't already guessed.
"I could tell there was trouble afoot and figured you'd be at the center of it," said Jason. "You okay?"
Nico nodded. "Yep. Fine. Hey, I found out what those freaks are doing to demigods -Hey!"
Jason had seized Nico's chin and tilted his face back. His gaze was locked on Nico's eyes. "What happened? What happened to your eyes?" he demanded. "Did they . . ."
Nico batted Jason away. "It's fine. That's part of my story, actually. The Sparknotes version is that they're deliberately driving demigods crazy by using laser eye surgery to remove something called melanin from our eyes and turning them blue. My eyes were exposed to the lasers for a few seconds, but not long enough to cause any lasting damage. I might have lost a little melanin, but it should grow back."
I hope, he added silently. He hadn't considered that there might have been some color change to his eyes, but Jason was looking at him in a very disturbed way.
Then the older boy pulled a small flask from his belt and uncapped it. "Tilt your head back and try to keep your eyes open."
Nico obeyed. He hadn't thought of using nectar as eye-drops, but now that he did, it didn't seem to be a bad idea. But what Jason poured into his eyes wasn't nectar. "What is that?"
"Unicorn draught. Excellent for curing wounds . . . and it seems to be working. Your eyes are black as coffee again."
"As black as my soul," Nico clarified with a smirk. "Thanks."
"No prob. So, you ready to get out of here now, or was there anything you still needed from there?" Jason was clearly ready to help him either way. And though Nico's plan before had been escape, having Jason there as backup now made him reconsider.
If it was Percy, Percy would be dragging him away already by now. But Jason was almost as strong as Percy. Maybe just as strong. And he was willing to storm into the Blue Ward since they were already down there. Maybe they could find an answer for why the demigods working in the Blue Ward were going along with this after all.
This is risky, warned Anubis.
This is half of the reason why I came here, remember? Nico reminded him. Figuring out the method for their madness was only part of the reason. If we don't figure out why they're doing it, we can't know that we've really stopped it, or keep it from happening again.
That was what Percy had done at the end of the Titan War. That was what Nico was going to do now. And if he and Jason got in trouble, well, Percy was on his way to back them up. Possibly with other demigods, but Nico hoped by himself. He wanted to limit Jason's contact with other Greek demigods as much as possible until he sorted out the situation between the Grace siblings.
I can still wind this mission up tonight, Nico told Anubis. I can just do a more thorough job if Jason and I go back in and spend another ten minutes trying to get answers.
Anubis was quiet for a few moments while considering this, then telepathically nodded. Do what you think best then.
"There's one thing I didn't find out for you," Nico told Jason. "And that's why the people here want to do this to demigods. They were using their laser eye surgery thing to break the gods' connection with their children. Our eyes seem to hold what connects us to our parents' power. But some of the people working there are demigods themselves. I never got the chance to ask any of them why they were doing this."
"So you want to try since we're here?" asked Jason.
"If you're cool with trying to find out."
"I am. Anything I need to know before we go in?"
"Oh yeah," Nico told him. "They have this power dampener thing. I don't know exactly what it is, but it nullifies all our demigod powers. You can temporarily shut it off by setting off the sprinkler system, but it doesn't stay off too long. It came back on twice before I made it to the doors, and is probably back on now."
Jason looked both worried and interested. "Something like that seems pretty dangerous. I'd like to take a look at it if we get a chance. Possibly destroy it too."
"I cast my vote for destroying it. That thing's a huge pain."
"Alright. Let's hurry," said Jason. "I'm not sure what will happen if we stay here too long."
"Hurricane Percy, probably," muttered Nico.
"What?"
"Huh? Oh, nothing." He took a few steps away from the hold he'd burned out of the door and then got a running start, to make it easier to dive through it. Jason followed less gracefully, not bothering with any aerial stunts. The hole wasn't very bit, and Jason had pretty broad shoulders, so he had to struggle a little bit to get through. Nico held out his hands to help him. Jason gratefully took them and let Nico pull him through.
"You called me Percy when you first saw me," commented Jason, clearly not ready to let the subject drop. "Then you just mentioned him again. Are you expecting him to come by?"
"Yeah," admitted Nico. "He's my cousin . . . and best friend."
"House of Life?" asked Jason.
"No. Demigod."
"Oh." Jason had been carrying a spear, but he tossed it into the air suddenly, and it became a coin. Then he tossed it again and a sword appeared in his hand. "And he's your cousin? So who's his mother?"
"A very nice human woman," said Nico. He didn't want to blatantly lie to Jason, but wasn't going to start giving out information about Percy's mortal family. "His father is Po – Neptune."
Was it just his imagination or did Jason blanch a bit at that?
"So . . . he's got like earthquake powers and stuff?"
Huh. Nico had never actually seen Percy cause an earthquake. He knew he'd caused a volcanic eruption. Maybe that counted? "He's pretty powerful," he said and decided to leave it at that.
Jason might have asked more questions, but the power dampener chose that moment to come back on. Nico was kind of used to the feeling of pseudo-fatigue it brought on, having felt it drain away his powers four other times already just that day, but Jason clearly hadn't been expecting it. He stumbled and almost fell. Nico had to grab him so he wouldn't.
"Damn," muttered Jason. "I wasn't expecting that."
"Yeah, it sucks," said Nico. He let go of him since Jason seemed capable of standing on his own and pointed two fingers at the closest sprinkler. Hieroglyphics blazed around him as he let his fire spell go off. The dampener instantly went off again.
He'd hoped that Jason would have missed seeing what he did, or at least the hieroglyphics part, but could tell at a glance that wasn't the case.
"So . . . your dad was Pluto and your mom was House of Life?" guessed Jason, obviously trying to make sense of Nico.
"Something like that." And by that Nico meant, 'Not at all like that,' but letting Jason in on the big secret wouldn't be prudent. Annabeth didn't even know yet, and unlike most people, Nico trusted her. The less people that knew he was doing the impossible by hosting Anubis, the better.
Jason laughed. "So their dampener only works on your demigod powers, not your House of Life magic? Ha, these poor fools weren't prepared for you at all."
"Nope." You have no idea.
The two demigods quickly made their way down the hall. Nico pointed out the creepy eye room, where he'd blown up the eye laser machine earlier that evening. It still smelled strongly of smoke and had odd burn patterns all around it, thanks to the fireworks. Then he pointed out the office that he'd gotten notes from earlier, and that he'd stopped in again before proceeding to the exit and burning a chunk out of the doors. He'd taken forty seconds to empty the drawers of the file cases into his Duat locker. He'd stolen their computers' hard drives and all the disks too. All their data now belonged to Nico, but as far as he knew it was all sciency stuff. He hadn't been able to find anything that seemed like a manifesto for why these Blue Ward people were being such jerks to fellow demigods when he was going through the stuff earlier.
They also passed some of the people who worked in the ward that Nico had knocked unconscious. As a last resort, he could always grab one of them before shadow traveling him and Jason out of there, and they could pump them for information, but Nico could tell Jason was interested in the dampener. Honestly, Nico was too. Interested in blowing it up.
"Are there other demigods being held down here?" asked Jason.
"Uh, yeah . . ." Nico tried not to cringe at the memory. "They um . . . I checked on them on my way to the door. They . . . they're not so good. We're not going to be able to get them out of here, Jason."
"What do you mean?"
They'd reached the spot where the corridor split in two directions. One was where Nico knew they were keeping the other demigods they'd done their eye laser thing to. Nico didn't know what lay in the other direction, but if he had to make a guess where the power dampener was, that it was down that way.
"On my way out, I blasted open all the doors to the other demigods' rooms," Nico told Jason, and quickly led him to the first room on the hallway.
There were two demigod occupants to that room. One was strapped down to the bed, like Nico's roommate had been, just lying there like he was catatonic. The other was sitting in the corner, giggling and babbling. When they drew closer, they could hear just how disturbing what he was rambling about was.
" . . . feel my teeth sink into their flesh. Crunch, crunch, crunch, snap, like a ripe apple. Feel the blood run down my chin, down my shirt stain my clothes, and I'm going to get in trouble, I'll have been a bad boy, but I don't care. Must eat, taste it, taste it, taste it, don't cook it. Cooking ruins it. Raw is the way. Bite their face off and gnaw on their skull . . ."
"They're all like that," Nico told Jason, watching as Jason's face changed its expression from pity to horror. "I busted every single door open. There's not one of them sane enough to leave their room or I would have brought them to the exit. But the way they are now . . ."
"They're a danger to themselves and to the people around them," agreed Jason. "I'll make sure Camp Jupiter sends an extraction team for them."
Not if Camp Half-Blood does first, thought Nico, but didn't voice that thought. It wasn't really a contest. As long as these demigods got help, it didn't matter who gave it to them.
Nico and Jason both turned away from the mad demigod in the corner at the same time, without needing words to know it was time to go. Nico liked how they both seemed to be on the same page like that.
Jason followed Nico as he led them down the other corridor. The dampener came back on. This time Jason only stumbled a little bit, but wasn't in any danger of falling. Nico quickly turned the dampener back off by burning the sprinkler system again. He wondered how long he'd be able to exploit that trick. Hopefully, unprogramming that emergency feature would be too complicated for anyone at the complex to manage.
"So," said Nico as they made their way back to the other hall, the one he hadn't been down yet. "How did you get past that elevator? And which alarm did you set off?"
"That stupid laser grid alarm," Jason told him. "I got past every camera and motion sensor thanks to your notes until I got there, but I had no way to get across without setting it off."
"And the elevator?"
"I pried the doors open with my lance, climbed through the maintenance hatch, then slid down the cables."
"Cool," said Nico.
"I know," said Jason. "I've always wanted to do secret agenty stuff like that."
"You could be like that one guy in that one movie," said Nico.
"You mean like Tristan McLean when he played that Israeli spy?" asked Jason.
"Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. You know, the movie where he plays a super secret agent named Jason with no memory?"
Jason didn't look pleased. "I'd rather be like Tristan McLean than Matt Dam- ah!"
Nico hadn't been paying attention as well as he should have been. It was way too easy to feel complacent around Jason, just like it was with Percy. There wasn't much that could stand up against two children of the Big Three, since somehow, their sons seemed to get along so much better than they did. Nico could easily see himself and Jason becoming good friends . . . but that was still no excuse for him and Jason nearly being blind sided by a longsword wielding demigod in a lab coat.
Nico raised his sword and prepared to disarm the enemy, but Jason . . . did . . . something with electricity. There was a hum, and a pop, and a flash of light, then the lab coat demigod was on the floor unconscious.
"Oops," said Jason.
Nico shrugged. "We'll just question the next one."
"Sorry, dude. He caught me by surprise," said Jason, looking a bit embarrassed.
"No, it's cool," Nico assured him.
But after that they made a point to stay more on guard, but they didn't run into anymore enemies in the hallway. The corridor ended on another set of doors like the ones at the Blue Ward's entrance.
"Should I try blasting them?" asked Jason. "Or do you want to do . . . whatever it is you did to the others?"
"I got this," answered Nico. He'd cut one fingertip to burn a hole out of the last set of doors. That cut had stopped bleeding awhile back, but he sliced it open again and traced another, larger, half moon on these doors with his black blood.
"What is that?" asked Jason. "Is that . . . is that your blood?"
"Yeah," said Nico. "Never touch it. It's like necrotic acid. It just burns through stone and glass, and stuff, but it will rot your flesh on contact."
Jason nodded, but didn't look disgusted. Nico was surprised how glad that made him. He got the feeling that he and Jason were going to end up being good friends . . . if they didn't end up killing each other because of the Greek-Roman rivalry thing.
The first layer of blood that he applied to the door burnt about halfway through and left a nice indentation several inches deep. Nico traced that shape again, and waited for his blood to burn the rest of the way through. The dampener turned on once more while they were waiting, so Nico shut it off again. He noticed Jason unhook a black canister from his belt and raised an eyebrow in question.
"Vulcan flashbang," explained Jason. "I'll toss it in before you go diving through. It should disorientate anyone or anything in there enough to keep them from attacking us for at least ten seconds."
"So it's like a stun grenade?" asked Nico.
"Just like a stun grenade."
Nico was liking Jason better and better. The kid had some seriously cool toys.
"The door's almost open. You ready?"
Jason nodded. Nico put a hand against the door and waited until he heard the fizzling sound of his blood burning through stone and circuitry stop. Then he nodded to Jason and gave the door a shove. The piece he'd burned free from the rest slid inward and crashed to the floor. Then Jason hit a button on the flashbang and tossed it through the hole.
Nico closed his eyes as a precaution, and it was a good thing he did. Even with his eyes closed he could still see the light's brilliance. The moment it faded, he dove through. Jason followed right behind him. The bigger teen had an easier time getting through this door, since Nico had deliberately made the opening larger for him.
But still, by the time he made it through, Nico had already sized up the situation. The walls of the room they were in were covered completely with Celestial bronze, the same way that the tech room in the Big House was . . . Except here the walls were clearly hooked to some sort of machine, with all sorts of pipes and wires. The machine itself, which Nico assumed was the dampener, looked like something that would be found in an evil genius's lab, with Tesla coils spiraling out of it, and a big crystal-ball thingie full of light in the center. He wondered what would happen if he smashed it . . . but couldn't spend too much time wondering.
Because Landin was in the room, armed with a pistol and struggling to recover from the effects of the stun grenade. Nico leapt across the room, knocked the gun from his hand, and held his sword so the tip was hovering just in front of the hollow of his throat.
"Hey, Dean Landin," said Nico, "I know I should have some witty line to insert here, but I don't. So we're just going to skip ahead to the interrogation."
"Tristan McLean would have had a witty quote to say," commented Jason.
"Yeah, I know," bemoaned Nico. "Hey, do you have a witty line I could use?"
"What? No, you have to come up with your own banter," said Jason. "It's the rules!"
Landin coughed, and rubbed his eyes, and nearly impaled himself on Nico's sword as he struggled to recover from the effects of the flashbang. "You . . . little delinquent."
"Hmm, I see you need to work on your witty banter too," said Nico, "but sadly we don't have time tonight. Tight schedule, you know? Egyptian apocalypse in progress, crazy cousin en route, and a civil war on the horizon. So yeah, no time for you to practice your villain speak. Now, on to the interrogation!"
AN: Sorry for all the random geekery. I've been rereading too many scenes where Andre and Eden incorporate their penchant for geeking out into their missions and fights, and had to try it out myself. It worked well with my headcannon of Jason being a Tristan McLean fan, and Nico liking the fantasy and adventure genre in general.
But speaking of geekery, I posted two humorous minifics last week that you might like if you enjoyed Nico's and Jason's banter. One, entitled: 'Percy Jackson IS Aquaman,' is about what happens when Nico gets enough leverage over Percy and Thalia to pick their Halloween costumes. The other, 'Fullmetal Leo' doesn't actually have anything to do with the Fullmetal Alchemist series, but is called that because Leo, like Edward Elric, has a robotic arm in the minific . . . because he decided the flesh and blood arm he was born with wasn't cutting it anymore, so he hacked it off and replaced it with a robotic limb that can shoot lasers. But Piper and Jason don't approve. Or maybe they're just jealous.
Next chappie will be up as soon as I can get it written, probably sometime next week. There're actually only a few chapters left in this fic, but I know how the next one in the series starts, so I'll be beginning that one only a week or two after this one's finished.