I'm Officially A Fugitive

If there's anything I love most about being the son of Poseidon is that I can jump six hundred feet in the air into a polluted river and not get crushed by the pressure or be affected by the pollution.

As the river raced toward me at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath of my lungs. Steeples and skyscrapers and bridges tumbled in and out of my vision.

And then: Flaaa-booooom!

A whiteout of bubbles. I sank through the murk slowly now as I landed on the bottom of the river.

It didn't take long for the poison to leave my system once I was in the water, which was a good thing.

I was breathing in this polluted water like it was clean, and the fish didn't even bother to bug me. Once I was sure I would live once I leave the river, I stood up.

Fump-fump-fump. A riverboat's paddlewheel churning above me, swirling the silt around.

Thanks dad, I thought.

I took riptide that I someone was still holding and capped it, returning it to its pen form as a woman's voice—that sounded ma bit like my mother said: Your father would be happy to help you out anytime, Percy.

I frowned as the voice seem to be coming from the water itself.

Then through the gloom, I saw her—a woman the color of the water, a ghost in the current, floating just a few feet form me. She had long billowing hair, and her eyes, barely visible, were green like mine.

"Who are you?" I asked.

A messenger, she replied, I got a message from your father.

My eyes widened. My dad almost never send me a messenger—not to talk to me in person at least.

"What is it?" I asked.

Before you descend to the underworld, you must go to Santa Monica, the lady said. There your father will give you one more gift to help you and your friends on your journey out of the Underworld. Until then, do not trust any gifts from anyone else.

I nodded as she faded away.

I didn't know what to believe, but I grabbed riptide, which fell out of my hands when I hit the river bank, and capped it—returning it to its pen and placed it in my packet and placed it in my pocket. Then I kicked up through the muck and propelled myself to the surface but not to jump out

…

I came ashore next to a floating McDonald's forcing myself wet.

A block away, every emergency vehicle in St. Louis was surrounding the Arch. Police helicopters circled overhead. The crowd of onlookers reminded me of Time Square on New Year's Eve.

A little girl said, "Mama! That boy walked out of the river."

"That's nice, dear," her mother said, craning her neck to watch the ambulances.

A news lady was talking for a camera: "Probably not a terrorist attack, we're told, but it's still very early in the investigation. The damage, as you can see, is very serious. We're trying to get to some of the survivors, to question them about the eyewitness reports of someone falling from the Arch."

At least there are survivors, I thought.

I tried to push through the crowd to see what was going on inside the police line.

"…an adolescent boy," another reporter was saying. "Channel Five has learn that surveillance cameras show an adolescent boy going wild on the observation deck with a fire extinguisher and a baseball bat. Hard to believe, John, but that's what we're hearing. Again, no confirmed fatalities…"

I backed away, trying to keep my head down. I had to go a long way around the police perimeter. Uniformed officers and news reporters were everywhere, and I didn't want to risk manipulating the mist until I find my friends.

Just then, a familiar voice bleated, "Perrrcy!"

I turned and got tackled by Grover's bear hug—or goat hug. He said, "We thought you'd gone to Hades the hard way!"

Annabeth stood behind him looking relieved to see me, but had a mixture of anger. "What happened?"

"That fat lady and her dog turned out to be Echidna and the Chimera," I responded as I told them the story of what happened after they headed down.

"Whoa," said Grover. "We've got to get you to Santa Monica! You can't ignore a summons from your dad."

"You think I don't know that," I responded.

Before Annabeth could respond, we passed another reporter doing a news break, and I almost froze in my tracks when he said, "Percy Jackson. That's right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the boy who may caused the explosion fits the description of a younge man wanted by authorities from his mother's disappearance to the Argo's mast replica crash. And the boy is believed to be traveling west. From our viewers at home, here is a photo of Percy Jackson."

I quickly did a Mist manipulation to make my hair look red and my eyes look blue as well as other transformations to fool the mortals as we got away to the Amtrak.

Somehow, we made it back to the Amtrak, and with a bit more Mist manipulation to make sure mortals knew I was there before we left, we board the train and headed to Denver just before it was heading out of St. Louis.