CHAPTER 24: A REASON TO STAY

ANNABETH

Exhaustion had seeped into my bones. Being captured by SPQR had been hellish, and I'd given in to the belief that no one was coming to save me. Except now, my cuffs had been broken and I was in an elevator with Percy, heading up through SPQR headquarters to kill Gabe Ugliano. I had no idea how I had the strength to stand, but I did—somehow.

Beside me, Percy had a grim, determined look on his face. He'd slid both of his knives out of their hidden sheaths in his sleeves, and he was holding the handles so tightly that his knuckles were almost white. Anyone else might've interpreted his demeanour as a fearful one, but I knew better. I nudged him, giving him a quiet smile. He returned it.

Just then, Percy cocked his head, as though listening. A moment later I realised he was receiving directions over comms. He waited for another moment, then brought a hand up to activate his mic. "Yes, I found Chase. We're heading up to Ugliano's safe room to join the fight." Another moment of listening, then, "Yeah, she's armed. I've given her my gun."

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Thalia," he said. "She told me that all our offence squads have successfully infiltrated the building, thanks to our little diversion in the prison chambers. Will's still captured, but Nico's on it. Also, she said to tell you that she's glad you're safe."

"I'm glad, too," I said softly. Percy grinned, pressing a kiss to my hairline. I pushed him away. "Stop it, I'm all gross."

"Nah, you're not." Suddenly, the elevator ground to a stop. "We're here," Percy murmured. "Brace yourself."

I raised my gun, planting my feet. "You're gonna need to lead the way." The elevator doors ground open with the screech of metal. Outside was a dark hallway, thankfully free of guards. We stepped out.

Up here, the sound of gunfire echoed through the walls. Percy advanced, checking around the corner. "We're clear," he said, waving me forward.

"Where are we going?" I asked, keeping pace with him as we headed through the winding hallways.

"Sector Nine. Before Will got captured, he learned that Gabe is hiding in a safe room there. While Thalia's squads are busy storming the base, we'll break into the safe room. Hopefully, with the element of surprise..." He trailed off. I didn't need him to finish; I knew how much of a long shot this assassination was.

I glanced through the window of a door, then ducked down with a curse. "Shit. There's guards."

"How many?"

"Four," I answered. "Think you can hit the closest one with your knives from this distance?"

Percy peeked through the glass, then nodded. "Sure. You ready?"

"Let's go." We burst through the doors, bullets already flying from my gun. Before they could even react, I felled three of them with gunshots to the torso. Percy unleashed his knives. One missed, but the other embedded itself into the remaining guard's throat. He choked, letting his pistol clatter to the floor.

As we stepped around them, Percy retrieved his knives, then grabbed the guard's dropped gun and removed a couple clips of ammo from his belt. He led us up a set of stairs, keeping to the shadows. "Not far now," he murmured.

It took us around fifteen minutes of jogging through the hallways, checking for guards and taking down the ones in our way before we made it to Sector Nine. Percy's ammo depleted quickly, and soon enough he was back to his knives. I'd never seen Percy like this before—so fierce, so unstoppable. I knew he wasn't invincible, but sometimes it seemed like it.

The sound of gunfire got louder and louder the further we advanced through Sector Nine. We came to a large atrium, but the door to it was locked by a keypad. Through the window, I could see dozens of hazy figures fighting. Some of them I recognised as members of our squads.

Percy turned on his mic to contact Thalia. "What's going on? We're in Sector Nine. There's lots of fighting going on but we can't get through the door to the sector's main atrium." I couldn't hear Percy's reply, but, judging by the ashen quality his face gained, it wasn't good news. He turned on his mic to reply to Thalia. "Okay. We'll try and break through this door. Tell the squads on the other side to try and hold off Ugliano's reinforcements for as long as possible. Annabeth and I will try and slip past the action."

"What did she say?" I pried.

"My stepdad's reinforcements are turning the tide of the fighting. Those squads we can see through the door have found the safe room, but SPQR has them occupied."

I looked through the window. Even from here, there were so many reinforcements that it looked hopeless. "I don't think we can slip by unnoticed. There's too many of them."

"Then we're going to have to fight."

I raised my gun and shot once, twice, three times at the keypad. It sparked as each bullet tore through it, but the light above the door remained stubbornly red. A wave of frustration crashed over me. With a guttural cry, I turned my gun around and raised it above my head, bashing the keypad again and again. Finally, it fell apart. The light above the door flashed green as it swung open.

We stepped through it, exchanging a look as I reloaded my gun. Under the fluorescent light, Percy's eyes were bright and steadfast. Shrugging off my fear like a coat, I set my jaw and raised my weapon. Together, we threw ourselves into the fight.

My conscious mind melted away as I gave into muscle memory. We worked as partners, taking down officer after officer as we cut a path through the action. Around us, bullets flew. Pained shouts echoed through the atrium, belonging both to our own recruits and to SPQR.

Beside me, Percy tore one of his knives out of a SPQR recruit's neck. There was blood splattered all over us. I was heaving for breath. We'd made it to the opposite side of the atrium and ahead of us stood a door. Like the previous one, it had a keypad. "Go break through it!" I yelled at Percy, turning towards two recruits who were both running at me. Percy nodded. I unleashed a hail of bullets into one of them, ducked underneath the returned fire, and shot down the other from my position on the ground.

I bought Percy as much time as I could. Just as I was starting to tire, Percy called my name. "Annabeth! It's open, come on!"

I whirled around and sprinted through the door, hoping that the rest of the SPQR recruits were too preoccupied to have seen us get past them. I glanced around us as we headed through this new, dark hallway. I felt on edge, expecting someone to leap out at us at any moment. Percy raised a hand to his mic to report to Thalia. "We've made it past the atrium and are currently heading through the hallway leading from it. Is this the way to the safe room?" Whatever Thalia said seemed to satisfy him, as he kept leading us forward into the darkness. I moved closer to him, anticipation building up within me like bitter frost.

We approached a corner. Percy held a finger to his lips as he peeked around it. When he leaned back, the breath rushed out of him. "A vault. Juno and three others are guarding it. All of them are heavily armed with submachine guns."

"It must be the safe room," I whispered back. "How are we gonna get inside?"

Percy's grip tightened on his knives. Voice low, he met my eyes. "We need to somehow convince them to open it. I'm guessing Juno has the key card."

I sagged slightly. The recent exertion from fighting and the pain from the injuries Juno had given me were catching up with me. It seemed hopeless, a suicide mission. "So, what do we do?"

Percy shrugged. "Walk right up to them, say we want to negotiate with Ugliano? Maybe they'll take us inside the safe room to him. He'll want to see me, no doubt."

I shook my head. "Too risky. They might just kill us on the spot."

"Got a better idea?"

I didn't. Exhaling slowly to calm my nerves, I placed my gun on the ground. Percy slid one of his knives into the fabric of his gear, concealing it. "What if they pat you down?" I asked.

"That's a chance I'll have to take." Neither of us moved for a moment, taking in one another. With finality, Percy leaned forward and kissed me, lingering and sweet. His lips were chapped, but so were my own. As he pulled away, all I could think was that I wanted us to survive—if only so I'd get to kiss him again.

"God, I love you," I said breathlessly, almost without meaning to.

Percy smiled, eyes softening. "I love you too, Chase. Ready to walk to our deaths?"

"Of course," I answered.

Together, we stepped out, empty hands raised in complete surrender. "Don't shoot!" Percy called.

The guards reacted, stiffening as they raised their guns. "One more step and you're dead!" one yelled.

Juno held up a hand to silence him. "Quiet," she ordered, then turned her head slowly back to us, snake-like. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder as she did so. "Well, look who it is. My favourite student, and..." She inclined her head, considering. "Is that Annabeth Chase? Oh, that's right. You must've escaped with the other prisoners. How sad. I was looking forward to our next playdate."

Beside me, Percy tensed with anger. I shot him a warning look, then slipped my most persuasive smile onto my face. "We're here to negotiate with Ugliano. We have a proposition for him that we think he'll be interested in."

Juno's expression turned ugly. "And what might that be?"

Percy stepped forward, palms still raised in surrender. "Actually, we'd like to speak with my stepfather personally."

Juno's eyes snapped to him, venomous. "I'm surprised you have the gall to ask that, considering what you personally did to my legs." It was then I noticed that her calves were still clad in braces. She raised her submachine gun, aiming it at Percy. "Maybe I should shoot you in the kneecaps in the same way you did it to me. Let you bleed out while your girlfriend watches."

Undeterred, Percy refused to back down. "I don't think Gabe would be happy if you took the pleasure of killing me away from him."

Juno snarled. "He'd get over it."

Percy laughed, a jarringly incongruous sound. "If you think that, you don't know him as well as I do."

Juno's resulting glare was almost tangible. "Then maybe I'll just kill Miss Chase here. He wouldn't mind that, would he now?"

Fear bolted through me. I forced myself to remain calm, to resist the urge to turn around and run. "If you kill me," I said, "my uncle will stop at nothing to destroy SPQR. He'll raise an army against you. He'll raze this base to the ground, and all the others." The lies slid from my tongue easily; I knew Sir wouldn't lift a finger to avenge me. After all, he'd killed my father himself—his own brother, purely in a bid to assume his power.

Juno scoffed. She walked haltingly towards us, shifting her gun so it was trained on me. "Maybe that's true," she said. "But the war against your Organisation has already been started. And hell, if killing you adds some bad blood to the fight?" She shrugged. "Well, that means nothing to me." I braced myself. I hadn't expected my life to end like this, but it looked like it was going to. Juno's finger settled on the trigger, and I heard Percy's breath catch. But before any words left his mouth, Juno tilted her gun up toward the ceiling, away from me. "Still, as much as I would love to kill you, I'm interested in what you have to say to Gabe. And I really, really doubt Percy here will continue to cooperate if I put a bullet in your head right here, right now." She stepped closer to me, voice dropping to a whisper. "Afterwards, though, I'll have my fun." She gestured for her two guards to come forward with a sharp jerk of her head. "Restrain them."

As each guard wrestled our hands behind our backs, I shot Percy a glance. With our hands bound in zip ties, how were we going to overwhelm the guards—and Juno? The possibility of our deaths seemed to loom larger and larger with every passing second.

Juno pulled a key card out of a hidden pocket and swiped in front of the card reader by the vault. With terrible finality, the vault slowly ground open.

A small room was revealed. Its walls were lined with monitors and a table was set up in the very centre. Ugliano was standing beside it, his back turned to us. He was wearing a businessman's suit and was holding a phone up to his ear. He was speaking angrily into it, but at the sound of the vault opening behind him he turned around. Seeing us, he ended the call. A slow smile crossed his face as he registered first Percy's face, then mine. "Oh, Juno. Look what you've dragged in."

I tried not to flinch as the vault screeched shut behind us. My wrists were beginning to ache from the pain of the plastic of my zip ties digging in, but I ignored it. How was I going to get us out of this situation? I started running through plans in my head, but most of them came up short. Just keep him talking—every minute we waste is another minute he spends not killing us. Wrangling my expression into submission, I forced confidence onto my face. "We're here to negotiate."

Interest flickered across Ugliano's face. He walked around the side of his table, never breaking eye contact with me. "And what is it that you want to talk about?" he asked. His beady gaze slid to Percy, his smile widening. "You know, I thought you'd slipped past my clutches once and for all. But somehow...here you are."

Percy looked sickened, afraid. I couldn't even begin to imagine what he was feeling right now. "Why did you do it?" he asked suddenly, and the question was so out of context that I had to baulk. I opened my mouth to stop him from screwing this up, but no words came out. For once, all my elaborate lies were out of reach.

Confusion twisted itself into the curve of Gabe's lip. "Do what, exactly?"

I stared at Percy. He needed to say something before Gabe got bored and decided to shoot both of us. He shook his head, looking tired. "I don't know. All of it," he muttered. "I guess that doesn't matter, now."

"I'm not sure what pathetic attempt at an assassination this is supposed to be, but I think we can all agree that it's over." Gabe appraised him for a moment longer. What he saw in his stepson's expression, I couldn't tell, but it seemed to cause some sort of change in his thinking. "You should join me," he said. "Be my lieutenant. Become what I was always training you to become." Something manic crept into Ugliano's eyes. "Be my son again. You'd have all the power in the world, all the wealth you've ever desired." He paused, then gestured flippantly to me. "I'll even let your girl here live."

Percy's expression was shuttered. Unreadable. His lip trembled, and I wondered for a moment if that was fear on his face. Then I realised it was nothing but cold, hard anger. "I will never join you," Percy spat. "I'd rather be dead."

Gabe stiffened. With a snarl, he backhanded Percy with the impetus of a lightning strike. Percy let out a grunt of pain, caving into himself. "You're so much like your mother," Gabe snapped. I watched in horror as Gabe grabbed Percy by the collar of his shirt, forcing him roughly to his knees. The guard who'd been holding Percy stepped back as Gabe removed a pistol from his belt, clicking off the safety. My breath caught in my throat as he pressed the muzzle of his gun to his stepson's forehead. "You could've been the heir of my empire, Percy," he murmured. "Now look at you."

"No!" I screamed, thrashing helplessly in the guard's iron grip. I felt the skin of my wrists grow slick with blood as my zip ties cut into them as I struggled, but the pain was distant. I had to save him. Without Percy, my universe would freeze over. He was the only thing left that I loved in this fucking hellscape of a world, and damn it all if I'd let him die.

With all the force I could muster, I planted a solid kick in the groin of the guard behind me. He doubled over with a wheeze, his grip on me loosening. Save Percy was the only thought left in my mind. Within a heartbeat I flew at Gabe, knocking him off balance with a hard shove, hands still tied behind me. His gun clattered onto the floor. Percy rose to his feet, spitting blood from Gabe's slap. In one easy, practiced manoeuvre, he broke his zip ties. Without missing a beat, he pulled the concealed knife from his sleeve and spun, slashing the throat of the guard behind him. A second later, he cut through my own ties.

Ducking a hail of bullets from the remaining guard, I side-stepped while he reloaded and landed a well-placed kick to the back of his knees. As he crumpled, I wrenched the submachine gun from his hands. Squeezing the trigger, I shot him, dead, to the floor.

Juno cursed viciously, training her gun on me. But before she could even react, I leapt up onto the table and vaulted off, knocking Juno to the floor with a flying kick. Her gun slipped out of her hand as she coughed, winded. I knelt on her chest, pressing the air out of her lungs. Raw, unadulterated fear flashed over Juno's face. "Don't," she rasped.

I smiled grimly. "Next time, think twice about who you knock around in the interrogation room." I fired once into her chest, then again.

Stepping back quickly, I turned around in time to see Percy lunge at Gabe, bare-handed. He looked fierce, vengeful, barely human as he latched his hands around Gabe's neck, driving his knee brutally up into his stomach. Gabe's hands scrabbled helplessly at Percy's vice grip around his neck as Percy slammed him against the wall, thumbs still digging into his windpipe. Already, Gabe's lips were tinged blue. "For years, you chased me. Haunted me. I spent half my life sleeping in gutters because of you," Percy hissed, voice hoarse. "I could never escape. Why couldn't you just fucking leave me alone?"

I could do nothing but watch in a disconnected haze as Gabe reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a small, glinting blade. A warning rose to my lips as I reached out desperately, unable to stop what I knew was about to happen. Everything seemed to fall into slow motion as Gabe pushed the knife into Percy's gut, a cruel grin tugging at his mouth even as he gagged for air. "Percy, get back! Please!" I shouted, raising my gun. I couldn't fire; I might hit Percy. What if he dies what if he dies what if he—

Pain contorted Percy's features, but, if anything, his strangling grip around Gabe's throat seemed to tighten. "You killed her," he said detachedly, quietly. "You deserve this." In that instant, I watched the life slip away from Gabe's eyes. He slumped, hand falling away from the blade he'd been twisting into Percy's gut.

I ran forward, dropping my gun. Percy collapsed, shaking. He seemed able to do nothing but stare downward at the knife handle sticking out of him. "He's dead, right?" he asked, quietly.

My heart shattered for him. "Yeah, he is." I fell to my knees beside him, letting him lean on me. "God," I mumbled, desperately applying pressure around the blade's entry point. My vision was swimming. His blood was seeping out between my fingers, crimson and hot. "You're not allowed to die," I told him. "Got it?"

"I won't. I won't," he said, but his eyelids were going heavy. All I could think was that there'd be nothing left for me to live for if those green eyes closed. He'd given me so much: his affection, his kindness, a reason to stay. I kissed him fervently, hoping that it might somehow tether him to his body. Percy looked at me then, an absent smile on his beautiful face. "I love you, Annabeth," he murmured, voice barely audible.

I was crying now, almost deliriously. "I love you too, okay? Try and stay awake." Careful to keep constant pressure on his wound, I removed his comm set and placed it in my own ear. Turning on the mic, I tried to steady my voice. "Ugliano is dead," I reported. "Percy's in critical condition. We need urgent assistance."

Blessedly, Thalia's voice crackled over comms a second later. "Our squads are outside the safe room now, trying to break in—just keep him alive for a few more minutes. We have successfully overrun the base. The rest of the gangs that Ugliano allied with seem to be backing off." A pause. "I'm really glad you're okay, Chase."

A sob built up in my throat. "Just come and save him."

thanks for reading, especially to all my lovely reviewers! your thoughts mean the world to me and inspire me to keep writing. this is, unbelievably, the penultimate chapter! next chapter will be the epilogue :)