Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.

Piece of Darkness IV - Initiative

Chapter Twenty-One

Martin Hart: Didn't you tell me one time, at dinner, once, maybe, about… you used to make up stories about the stars?

Rust Cohle: Yeah, that was— that was in Alaska, under the night skies.

Martin: Yeah, you used to lay there and look up at the stars…

Rust: Remember, I never watched a TV until I was 17 so there wasn't much to fuckin' do up there besides walk around and explore.

Martin: And… and look up at the stars and make up stories. Like what?

Rust: I tell you, Marty, I've been up in that room, lookin' out those windows every night here and just thinking, it's just one story. The oldest.

Martin: What's that?

Rust: Light versus dark.

Martin: Well, I know we ain't in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.

Rust: Yeah. You're right about that.

–'True Detective'

"Wise Girl, this is Hawkeye and Cassandra, we're in position, over."

"Roger that, Hawkeye. Yoda is in position on ground level. Me and Kasparov are on the way."

I shared an amused glance with Alice.

"Who picked the nicknames?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not sure. Probably Percy." I adjusted my earpiece, and looked around me. "Well, at least we have a good view of the apocalypse."

Alice and I were atop one of the two wooden towers that stood atop Half-Blood Hill. Both constructions, built by the Hephaestus and Dionysus kids, were four stories tall and quite wobbly. Even without any fear of heights, I felt woozy looking at the ground.

Both towers were designed the same, with three levels for concealed archers, enclosed by wooden panels for protection, and a top level for watching the battle, with no ceiling and only waist-high wooden ledges. I couldn't help thinking that the lookouts deserved better protection from the armies of darkness, but it wasn't like I could do anything about it. Alice and I were on the right-hand tower, and our task was simple: watch everything. Annabeth and Zack were about to take up their positions on the other tower, which stood ten metres to our left.

A loud detonation, down by the road that ran past camp, made me jump. Then Kevin's voice said in my earpiece, "Welcome packages are set. Overwatch, signal me for detonation at any time."

I adjusted my earpiece, still wincing from the explosion. All the cabin counsellors, along with any who Chiron and Annabeth considered "strategic figures", had been given communications headsets. Nothing special, just a basic device with microphone and earphone. The unique characteristic was that every one was brushed with celestial bronze to block any potential interceptions.

"It's so quiet out there," Alice muttered, leaning on the low wooden wall. I was really not happy about our lack of overhead protection. Leo had unconvincingly reassured me that the monsters wouldn't be launching aerial attacks, but Murphy always has his way with me. "So quiet. They must be nearly here."

I nodded. There was a great contrast between the scene in front of us and the scene behind us. Beyond camp borders, all was calm. Night had fallen twenty minutes ago. Darkness was around us, but in this still atmosphere of expectation it was like the darkness at the cinema just before the movie explodes the silence with sound and light. I saw not even a flicker of movement anywhere along the road below, and from this high vantage point, I could see at least a mile in any direction. Flickering lights illuminated the road - not streetlights, but the blazing torches that a few Ares kids had laid out earlier. But still, I saw no signs of Tartarus's forces.

On this side of the border, every able-bodied demigod was mobilised. All our best archers were packed into the towers, stocked with enough arrows to turn Typhon himself into a pincushion. Peleus was fully awake and primed to breathe fire on any who dared threaten his home. Our warriors lurked just below the hill's crest, ready to come down on the invaders like so many ambulatory tons of bricks. Behind the warriors, units of healers were on standby; and behind them, several catapults were loaded and set. Even Chiron was dressed for combat, decked out in ancient armour and armed with a massive sword.

Now, we were just waiting for our enemies to make their first appearance.

"Wise Girl and Kasparov in position," Annabeth said in my ear. I glanced over at her tower in time to see Zack kick shut the access hatch. He waved at me, the gesture truly devoid of sarcasm, before turning to confer with his sister.

Alice drummed her fingers on the ledge. "I hate this waiting. Why are they taking so long? It's not like we're going to decide they're not coming if they delay long enough."

I nodded again. I wasn't talking much. My nerves were wound tighter than an alcoholic's temper. My pure sight was engaged and focussed, and for the first time in my life I was terrified it might fail me. The last thing I needed was my magic gift acting up when the defenders of western civilisation needed me to warn them that the forces of darkness were about to stick a sword up—

Well. You get the picture.

"I wonder how long we're going to be up here," I said, leaning against the ledge in an ineffectual attempt to calm myself. "Hell, maybe we should bring up deckchairs. I bet we'll be here a lot in the next few days. May as well get settled, right?"

"We might defeat Tartarus's forces tonight," Alice murmured. I gave her a sidelong glance, not bothering to say anything, and without looking at me she raised a hand in resignation. "Okay, I know. Not particularly likely."

I sighed. We were all hoping that tonight the gods would dismiss the son of Chaos's attack on Olympus, and then send us reinforcements with which to sweep away the besieging army. But we also knew that just because you're the child of a god doesn't mean you get miracles whenever you need them. All we could do was grit this one out and pray that we retained enough resources to—

It wasn't much, just a flicker of darkness a little blacker than the shadow around it, but it was enough. It appeared and vanished within a second, at the very edge of my vision. I resisted the urge to scream a warning - hysteria is unbecoming in a chief lookout - and just looked around calmly, scanning the road with my pure sight.

The air was darkening, thickening, at the foot of the hill, with some weird power. It was confusing to see, a twisting of light and space, as though the ambient light in that part of the road was being choked out, as something darker took its place.

"Wise Girl, Yoda, I've got something," I snapped, suddenly frantic. "Weird power disturbance coming out of nowhere at the bottom of the hill, I don't know what's happening, there's this energy cloud forming—"

Next to me Alice stood bolt-straight, her aura whipping around her as though blown by a heavy breeze. "It's them," she shouted over me. "It's the monsters, Tartarus is shadow-travelling them in—"

"Stand ready, half-bloods," Chiron's strong voice rang in my ear for the first time since sundown. "Annabeth, give the order when we need to—"

Then that patch of darkness condensed, and suddenly hundreds of monsters were on the road, and without a second's pause they came streaming up the hill towards us at high speed, moments away from ramming the borders. Annabeth's lightning-fast reactions saved us.

"Detonate the welcome packages, now!" she screamed. "Archers, fire. Ground soldiers, move forward in five, fou—"

Alice grabbed my shoulder and hauled us both down just before several explosions tore apart the stillness of the night. The shockwave blew over our heads, shaking the tower around us. I heard shouts of alarm in the levels below. If Alice had moved a second later we would have been thrown off the four-story tall structure.

"Nice catch," I muttered.

"What I'm here for."

We straightened up. The Ares, Demeter and some minor god kids had buried a number of powerful traps around the lower part of the hill, and now some of them had sprung. A row of celestial bronze landmines at the foot of the slope had detonated, taking out whole ranks of dracaena and Laistrygonians. A few metres upslope the Demeter kids' plant bombs were causing chaos, hurling vegetables at the leading monsters with terminal speed, taking heads off telkhines and sending empousa flying into Hyperboreans. Along the edges of the hill smaller traps of Greek fire were wreaking havoc, spreading through the monsters like a brush fire, reducing countless creatures to dust in less time than it took the archers to reload.

In a single stroke, the welcome packages had taken out at least two hundred monsters, and we'd killed the momentum of those that remained. That was the good news. The bad news was that more monsters were still appearing out of the darkness. Around four hundred monsters filled the road and the bottom of the hill, and still they were moving towards us, admittedly with a hell of a lot more caution. The archers were raining down arrows, deterring the monsters' advance, but in the darkness their aim was inconsistent, only every fourth or fifth arrow felling its target.

And now, our guard dragon Peleus shook himself into action, taking a couple of dragging steps forward. You wouldn't normally use the word discreet to describe a dragon, but most of the time he was, dozing or watching in silence from his place by the tree. Now, though, as he reared to his full height and stretched his fang-laden mouth open, it was easy to see why he'd been chosen to guard the Golden Fleece.

"That's just awesome," Percy muttered, drawing an admonition from Annabeth for unnecessary communication. Peleus took in a great huff of a breath, and paused to stare down at the monsters, still charging, as though a bloody great dragon wasn't standing in their way.

Then he lunged his head forward, and spat out a torrent of fire. The flames poured out, seeming like their opposite water even as they filled the air with murderous heat. The front two ranks of monsters were obliterated instantly, not merely turned to dust but to ash, like they were nothing more than driftwood. Many of the creatures behind them were set alight, too, and they started running in circles as they disintegrated.

"Wow," Annabeth said, contradicting herself gloriously. "That's just incredible."

Alice shook her head. "At that rate we won't even need to—" Then she stopped, staring down at Peleus. I didn't get the chance to ask her what was wrong. I didn't need to. An instant later, shadow rippled across Peleus's back, and Jake materialised there, slipping down the dragon's slick skin, but grabbing on to a scale. We watched, horrified, as Peleus bucked in surprise, and as Jake plunged his sword into the dragon, all the way to the hilt.

The dragon raised its head, and let out a piercing roar that shook the hillside, even made the towers tremble. Annabeth started to tell the archers to concentrate fire on Jake but stopped because then we'd firing on Peleus, too, but the demigod wasn't done. He was nearly thrown off as Peleus shook again, but he hung on, and stabbed again, with even greater violence. Peleus screeched, but with less power than before, and already I could see the life fading out of him, evaporating, as the dark power of Jake's blade sucked away the dragon's strength. Wilson clung on for another moment, holding his blade in place, and glanced up at the watchtowers.

For an instant, no longer than the time it takes to gasp, he stared directly into my eyes. And in that moment, I sensed his taunt: see how I can lie low your friends, for all their great power. Nothing can save them, not even you with your pure sight.

Then he dragged his sword out of Peleus's hide, and vanished away on another ripple of shadow.

The whole thing took about thirty seconds.

"Oh my gods," several voices whispered on the radio, as the monsters overcame the fear Peleus's attack had inspired and began to rush towards us again. The dragon, our dragon, slowly collapsed to the ground, making barely another sound as he dissolved into nothingness. His eyes shut, and his claws relaxed as his strength left him. He lay down in the end, stretching onto the ground as though going to sleep.

"Warriors, move forward," Annabeth whispered, as the monsters continued their charge. No-one reacted, and after a second she repeated, in a harsh tone, "Warriors, advance. Proceed over the border but do not move downslope," I glanced over. Zack was pacing around, agitated, but she was stock-still, arms folded as she surveyed the battle. "Archers, maintain fire. Grenadier, do not detonate any more packages, we need them in case we get caught again."

The warriors moved forward as one unified front, weapons raised. They stepped past the towers and over the borders, led by the eldest demigods. There was about fifty of them down there, arranged in ranks of ten. They came to a halt just over the crest of the hill, and stood staring down at the attackers as they approached.

The monsters reached Peleus, but he was almost gone now, fading away as though he had merely been an image formed from mist. There wasn't even any dust as he went. He just disappeared.

I looked at Alice. "How the hell did that happen?"

She glanced at me, then back at the battlefield. "Now we know what we're dealing with."

"Don't mourn him too much," Chiron's voice was steady. "Guardians like Peleus always return, in some form. For now, just worry about each other. We have a long way to go."

My stomach lurched as Peleus's last fragments disappeared, and as I looked down at the half-bloods standing so firmly, facing their enemies without any signs of fear. They held the high ground now, but if they didn't fight with everything they had in the next few minutes, many of them wouldn't turn around and walk back into camp. Their courage as they faced into that fate astounded me. There was no way, in a million years of training, that I would be capable of that.

Percy stood at their head. He took a step forward, raised his sword with both hands, and roared down at the monsters, an incoherent cry of challenge, defiance and fury.

"Do not press forward," Annabeth's voice was harsh. "Maintain the high ground at all costs."

The sharpness in her tone was startling. I glanced at Alice, who was intent on the conflict. Without glancing at me, she muttered, "Annabeth knows Percy, knows the way he fights. His instinct is to rush forward, especially when he's angry, but that would be fatal."

I got that. The demigods had an unassailable advantage, so long as they stayed on top of the hill. Moving down was a literal slippery slope. If they started down, the monsters could easily lead them onto the road, where the odds would be even at best.

And so the front line of monsters came up, up, up, like a layer of rancid chemicals rising to the surface of a lake, and then with a ferocious, nightmarish noise from both sides, they crashed into the half-bloods.

Arrows continued to pour down from both towers, culling any unarmored monsters that were moving too slowly. The ranks of the leading monsters were already thinned by the time they reached the half-bloods, who hacked and slashed with terrifying precision, all of them diving into the fray with fervour so great it was nearly religious. Even Chiron was among them, beheading monsters with a broadsword that looked like it had been dreamt up by an overworked fantasy writer.

The monsters didn't stand a chance.

"We can do this," Alice murmured, nodding metronomically. "We can do it."

Annabeth maintained the stream of orders, but right now there wasn't much for her to do other than remind the half-bloods to stay upslope. The demigods were doing their work with craftsmanlike skill, tearing asunder the monsters who dared threaten this sanctuary, wielding their blades with a pure fury that would surely make even Tartarus flee in terror. Percy, in a single movement, leapt through the air and beheaded a Hyperborean as it loomed over him with a massive ice-pike. A few metres away, Kevin cut down three dracaena in a single whirl, and a daughter of Ares beside him drove her spear through a telkhine's chest and into the leg of a twisted goblin-creature behind it.

There was a horrific beauty to it, if only because it was so smooth, a great machine grinding through countless souls and spirits with perfect precision. It made Peleus's death seem less like the beginning of a horrible defeat and more like a sacrifice made to ensure a brutal victory.

And so sooner had I thought that, and Alice snatched my arm into an iron grip.

"Cyrus," she gasped, the colour draining from her face, her aura lighting up as foresight flooded through her. "Look out - search for something. Jake is about to do something."

"Wha— What? What's he doing?"

"I don't know. Something. Look. Look."

My earlier sense of foreboding had faded away, but now it came flooding back. My heart pounded. I hadn't seen Alice so terrified by a premonition since we were in the Fields of Silence. I stared at her for a second, frozen in alarm, but she shook me, and I refocussed my pure sight.

I scanned the hillside. It was tough to separate the different energy signatures. The half-bloods' auras cast distracting glows over everything, and the monsters were wreathed in squirming shadowy power, Tartarus's dark blessing. The teeming mass of monsters downslope was too dense to make out properly but I still looked, searching for some sign of Tartarus or someone else, perhaps even—

There he was.

At the back of his army, on the far side of the road, obscured by the monsters around him but made visible by his unmistakeable aura, Jake Wilson stood at work, shaping some dark working of power.

I squinted down at him. The son of Erebus was on one knee, his hands cupped as though holding water, his head lowered in concentration. Dark energy wrapped around him in an opaque cocoon, a certain sign that he was about to unleash a serious amount of power. I couldn't make out much else at this distance, but I thought I saw a ball of condensed shadows revolving in his hands.

I asked myself what people usually do with concentrated pieces of energy in battles. It didn't take long to think of the answer.

"Annabeth, we've got a problem," I flicked a switch on my headset to turn off all bands except Annabeth's. No need to panic the demigods with the news that Jake Wilson was preparing his version of a tank shell just yet. "Big problem. Jake's not finished screwing with us."

"What's he doing?" Annabeth replied tightly.

"Look towards the road, towards the back of the army," I said. Alice was on one knee now, regaining composure as her foresight continued to course through her. "Jake's there. You see him?"

There was a long pause, then, "I see him."

"You won't be able to see it, but he's shaping some kind of intense power, and he's going to unleash it any second. I think it'll turn the tide of the battle if we don't stop him, because Alice is getting some seriously bad premonitions here. We need to shut him down, right now, there's no time." I paused, aware that my next comment wouldn't be well-received. "We need to fire the catapults."

"What? No." I didn't look away from Jake, but I could feel Annabeth staring over at me. "Our ammunition is too limited. Using them now would be disastrous in the long run."

"It'll be even more disastrous in the long run if we let Jake unleash that power," I snapped back. Wilson's shadow-bomb was now the size of a large watermelon, and still growing. His aura was churning with dizzying intensity. "There's no time to do anything else. The demigods are too far away to reach him in time. The catapults are our only long-range weapons. We have two, right? Fire the one aimed at the road. Even if it doesn't kill Jake it'll stop his working. We don't have a choice. We lose weaponry or we lose the initiative in the battle, and if we lose it again we won't get it back."

The next couple seconds of radio silence were some of the longest in my life. Sweat trickled down my back. Alice's hand, resting on the ledge, was twitching, almost convulsing.

I drew breath to speak again, but the line fuzzed—

"This is Wise Girl to Wildfire, fire the first catapult. I repeat, fire the first catapult." Annabeth shouted. "Do it now."

"No problem," Leo's voice came in fuzzily. "Get down, overwatch."

I heard a creak of a wooden lever through my earpiece, and I dragged myself and Alice down, a second before a whistling load of bronze cannon, Greek fire and scrap metal shot through the sky, inches from where my head had just been. Then came the impact, an earth-shaking one which rattled the towers and was instantly followed by numerous explosions as the Greek fire detonated. The cries of anger from the monsters and the shouts of triumph from the demigods filled the air in a high-pitched counterpoint to the blast, which echoed on across the hillside as smaller detonations popped and spat.

After a long moment, I straightened up.

The projectile had done even greater damage than the welcome packages. It had obliterated all monsters in a twenty-metre radius of the impact. The leading ranks of attackers found themselves suddenly separated from the remaining troops on the road by a gap which, in the mercurial conditions of a battlefield, must have seemed a hundred miles wide. Most of them beat a panicked retreat, tearing down the hill towards the remaining monsters, their fear giving them improbable speed.

The demigods cut down the slow ones, and a few started to chase after the fleeing creatures, but Annabeth was still on duty. "Do not move downslope. Maintain your position. If the monsters regroup and strike back you'll be caught in no man's land. Get back to the crest."

The overeager half-bloods came back, but the monsters had no plan to strike back. They regrouped at top speed, but continued to hightail it away from the hill. The remaining army split in two and took off in opposite directions along the road.

All this I registered only slightly, as I searched for some sign of Jake, but there was none to be seen. He was just gone. The spot where he'd been standing was now blasted earth, the grass burnt away, leaving only cracked mud. If he'd been standing there at the moment of impact, he would have been instantly vaporised. And we'd fired so fast, surely he hadn't noticed the approaching projectile until it had been too late.

But somehow, despite all logic being arrayed against his survival, I didn't think it was going to be that easy.

Alice was finally upright again. "Good job," she said, smiling faintly. "You just won the battle."

I met her eyes. "Yeah. But at what cost? Peleus is already gone. We had three aces in the hole, and two are already used up. What happens when we need the last one?"

We both looked over at Annabeth. She was gripping onto the ledge as though it was about to disappeared under her. Zack was talking to her, looking cheerful, but she was silent and still. Below us, the cheers rose among the demigods as they celebrated what must have seemed like an easy victory. It was hard to tell from up here, but there didn't appear to be any dead. Chiron walked among them, congratulating the heroes, helping the wounded. As I watched him, he raised a hand to his headset.

My earpiece fuzzed. "This is Yoda," the centaur said, sounding more relaxed than he had in days. "We'll have a review meeting in half an hour. Don't lose focus - Tartarus isn't done with us - but well done."

The line hissed again as he tuned out.

The hillside was a scene of destruction, in some places torn to shreds, covered with the detritus of the monsters, yet the atmosphere was cheerful, almost festive, as the half-bloods decompressed at record speed. I could hear the archers in the towers, most of them Apollo kids, starting to sing rolling victory ballads. Even the darkness of the night seemed less heavy, the possibility of seeing the dawn now viable.

"He's not done with us," Alice echoed, bending down to open the entry hatch. "No way. They'll be back tomorrow night. Tartarus is getting ready to start a heavy metal concert. That was just the soundcheck."

As I descended the watch tower, and then into camp, I was greeted with more enthusiastic goodwill than I'd ever encountered outside of my own imagination. Though I'd kept my warning to Annabeth off the global airwaves, somehow word had gotten around that I'd averted a disaster.

"That was awesome, Cyrus." Percy assailed me the moment I poked my head out of the tower. "You saved our asses with that sight of yours, man."

"You saved our asses, too, son of Poseidon. I could hear your battle-cries from all the way up there."

We headed down the hill, followed by Alice and a few of the archers.

"This reminds me of the time the borders started failing, and we were fighting all kinds of weird monsters every day," Percy went on, excitement and hyperactivity pulsing through him and his aura. The demigods bustled around us, shouting cries of greeting to each other, as though we'd all just met on the shore of a desert island, having miraculously survived a drastic shipwreck.

I felt so dazed, I almost believed I'd just emerged from a shipwreck. The teeming life around me seemed surreal, implausible, after witnessing the destruction that had fallen on our defences like a biblical tsunami. Twenty minutes ago, the night had been a bear trap which had clamped onto our legs, and we'd been trying to force it off before we bled to death. Now, the cool darkness of the night was positively reassuring. The shock of Peleus's death was disappearing as smoothly as he had, and I felt like I could have been returning from an enthusiastic singalong.

The lack of danger around me seemed impossible, and for a second I wondered if it was a trick imposed upon me by my brain, in an attempt to cope with the true nightmarish reality. I couldn't even keep up a conversation, I was so distracted by this impossible transition. I stumbled on through camp, and didn't register my surroundings until I came to a robotic halt at the ping-pong table in the Big House.

I peered around. The counsellors were assembling, a couple still coming in, all of them humming with relief. Somehow, they were all uninjured.

I realised I was standing right next to Chiron.

"That went as well as we could have hoped," the centaur murmured, his tone grim.

"That's good, right?" I was surprised by his expression, which was so dark, one might have thought his tail had just been cut off.

"It's good that we were so lucky," he replied. "I'm just afraid that we've used up our quota of good fortune." He looked around the table. "Good. We're all here. Let's get started."

They began by reviewing our military position, which was good. Only a small number had been injured, and we'd done a lot of damage to Tartarus's forces. The only death had been Peleus's, and in the stark light of hindsight most of us saw that that had been inevitable. The borders were as strong as ever, and there was a possibility that the Hunters of Artemis would arrive to help us before the next attack.

"But there is one piece of bad news," Kevin said. "As you saw, we had to use one of our catapult payloads to force an end to the battle. We've only got one of those missiles left, and we don't have enough materials to make more. We need to be very careful when we use it, because there won't be another one."

Chiron nodded. "Those catapults were always meant to be an emergency measure. I didn't expect such an emergency at this early stage, but that's the way combat works." He frowned. "Jake Wilson has shown us a flaw in our strategy. We need to find a way to strike at the army's back ranks without using the projectiles. Otherwise, Jake will be free to use his powers the same way, and we will be defenceless."

"I have some concealment stones left," said Olivia. The daughter of Hecate had been released from the infirmary in the last half-hour. "We can plant some people on the far side of the road, so they're right behind the monsters. Then at least we'll have options."

"We could do that," Annabeth said, leaning on the ping-pong table, looking exhausted. "I don't like putting people that far from the protection of the camp's borders, but this looks like the only way to keep ahead of Jake."

"Good," Chiron nodded, relaxing a little.

"So what's the next move?" Percy asked, from the end of the table. "What's the plan for tomorrow?"

"We hold our position as it is," Annabeth replied, rubbing her eyes. "Tartarus can't keep this up for ever. Sooner or later he'll start running out of monsters to throw at us. We just need to make sure we don't break under the pressure before then."

"Remember, we must maintain our defence until the gods repel the assault on Olympus," Chiron chimed in. "I heard from Hermes a few minutes ago. Tartarus launched his attack on the Empire State Building at the same time as his attack here. His forces broke into the lobby, and some of them managed to force the elevator up to Olympus, but the gods fought them off easily. Athena believes the son of Chaos will strike again when darkness falls tomorrow. We have time to prepare, but not enough to relax."

The centaur stopped, and looked at a wooden box that lay in front of him on the table. I peered at it, thinking that it seemed familiar, but in my weariness I didn't recognise it.

"I'll get the piece of darkness to the gods within the next six hours," Chiron said. "That should help their defence against Tartarus."

I frowned. "Is that the piece of darkness?" As I spoke, I saw that the box was identical to the one Jack had shown me back in New Mexico, except it had no aura. It was, to my sight, just a normal wooden box.

"Of course it is," Chiron answered, looking at me in surprise. "You've seen it before, haven't you? Alice gave it to me earlier."

The daughter of Apollo nodded. "Yeah. That's it."

I looked from Chiron, to the box, to Alice, and back to the box, feeling confused, as though I was examining a jigsaw puzzle with a crucial piece missing. They were saying that this held the piece of darkness, and there was no reason for them to lie, but I didn't believe them. The artefact had an incredibly intense aura, I'd seen it just yesterday. Auras like that can't be just switched off. I knew Alice wouldn't have taken the item from the box, so why…

It hit me, and my heart broke. My knees went to rubber, and I had to grasp onto the table to stay upright.

We were screwed. So screwed, we hadn't even begun to realise it.

"Could I see that?" I asked, somehow in a calm voice. Chiron handed me the box and said something else, but I wasn't listening. Moving slowly, as though in a trance of horror, I slid open the lid, and looked at what lay inside.

It was just as I'd imagined: a three-inch long rectangle of black rock, perhaps obsidian, like the memory stone Jake Wilson had once shown me. It rested in a wooden cradle, reflecting the dim light, seeming to absorb some of it. But it had no aura, no indication that it was an ancient fragment of enchained power.

Because it wasn't. It was an ordinary bit of rock.

I looked up at the half-bloods, who were talking about something else, something unimportant. Their voices seemed a thousand miles away. We'd been fooled so completely, and it was about to cost us everything, yet no-one had come close to realising it. Percy was talking animatedly, Annabeth and Kevin watching him, while Chiron drummed his fingers on the table and Olivia and Bradley had a whispered discussion; but all of them, they were oblivious, discussing how to climb the mountain when we'd already gone over the edge of the cliff.

I glanced to my left, and found myself staring into Alice's eyes. She stared back, her aura shivering as foresight once again came to her, but this time it was too late. I raised one eyebrow, glanced at the box in my hand, and she nodded at me. She knew, but far too late.

I swallowed, and drew a deep breath. I've delivered a lot of bad news, but this was going to top it all.

But before I could speak, Percy stopped talking, and stared over my shoulder in pure amazement.

"Jack!" he cried. The other demigods followed his gaze, turning to stare, and let out similar exclamations. I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. Feeling distanced from my surroundings, as though a bomb had just gone off, I turned to see Jack's face floating in mid-air, inches away from me.

I just stared for a moment, an odd fear passing through me for a second, accompanied by the deranged idea that my realisation had summoned up Jack, as though he were an errant spirit. Through the patch of cloud, we could see his head, beard and the shotgun barrel resting against his right shoulder. He was scanning us all, his dark eyes unreadable, and as I turned he met my gaze. Instantly he registered the box in my hand and the bleakness in my eyes.

"Ah," he murmured. "Looks like you're figured it out. I didn't think you'd manage it so soon. Well done, I suppose."

Chiron was saying something, but Alice was beside me now, glaring into the son of Hephaestus's face. She looked heartbroken, more deeply wounded than I'd seen her since we'd come back from the Edge of the West.

"What have you done, Jack?" she whispered, her fists clenched. "How could you do this to us? To me?" She paused, shaking her head at him, her aura splitting and storming around her. Then she repeated, in a broken murmur almost too low to hear, "What have you done?"