CHAPTER XIX

AL

Al was already a thief the first time she had run into the Ramirez-Arellanos.

She hadn't remembered them earlier, but it had suddenly just clicked that these two sisters were those two sisters, whom she had seen late one June evening in an old garage in the middle of New York. She remembered them now, the older sister with her proud, fierce gaze, probably around sixteen years old, bandage around her forehead, crusted with dried blood, and the smaller younger sister, probably a few months younger than her, around eleven, but with the same defiance in her eyes. They had been arguing about something in rapid Spanish, too low for her to hear as she watched from the corner. The older sister had been driving a car, which she brought to the garage. Al knew that more often than not cars which came to the garage rarely ever got collected by their owners; instead they tended to be repainted, cleaned, given new numbers and sold. The owner made way more profit selling stolen cars than he did by his legal repairing business.

It was also the reason she worked there. She got payed more, and god knows she needed the money. If she turned a blind eye to what was going on, and helped to make the cars as good as new, well then, she didn't really care.

She had been in a hurry to leave; she had a younger sister to get home to, if the place where she lived could be called a home. The siblings were quite interesting, though. The wound on the older girl's face couldn't have been made with a knife, or a dagger or a blade. Maybe a sword… but that was ridiculous.

One thing that she loved was observing people, trying to figure out little details about them, a trick her father taught her.

Remember this, kid. Everyone has a story, no matter how mundane it might be. It shows in little ways, even in the way they drink their coffee. But no one notices it. Everyone is too damn busy drinking their own coffee.

So it was good that Al wasn't overly fond of coffee.

She ran an eye over the two of them. They were both lean and tired, like they hadn't had proper food for days. A sailor's rasp. Weird, that. Scars peeking out in some places. Abuse? Mugging? Callused hands. Not writing calluses. Work calluses, like laborers had. Burn marks on palms, like a rope that had passed too quickly between them, peeling the skin off. Sailors on a ship? Tense stances, like they were expecting someone to jump out and fight them. Dark circles for sleepless nights. Younger sister had a face full of guilt. On the run from some crime, perhaps?

She suddenly realized that the older sister was looking right at her. Her eyes were black as obsidian and piercing as a sword, like she was stabbing her with her eyes. Dangerous.

Ronald Haden, or Paulo DaCosta, or whatever you wanted to call him, was not like ordinary dads. He didn't teach her math, or how to play ball, or take her on treks. He was slightly low in the ethics section, if his profession was anything to go by. But he taught her something else, which was the greatest gift he could have given her. Survival. It was the only reason she was still on her feet after all that had happened. He'd taught her how to handle spotlight, how to melt into the shadows, how to bargain and how to stand firm, to know the difference between genius and fraud, between eccentricity and foolishness, between con and mark.

And Strange Sister Number One was no mark.

She turned around and ran into the alley.

Al rested her head against the glass window of the Amtrak. Truth be told, the encounter with Melinoe had hit her hard. Any mention of her sister was always accompanied with guilt and regret that she didn't really want to deal with.

She could still hear her naïve twelve-year old self trying to reassure her sister. Look, I know this is messed up. But I'll figure it out. It will all be fine. Trust me. And she had trusted her, only to be buried in the cold earth a few months later. Because she couldn't control her temper. Because they fought. Because she stormed away. Because gang violence in that area was so common that no one cared a seven-year old was the collateral damage in a robbery gone wrong. Because, apparently, if you didn't exist on paper, you didn't exist at all. They were just like the strays that ran around on the roads, right? Why did they fight? Why did she have to turn away? Why were all her words full of half-truths and lies?

She tried to control the tide of grief rising within her. No, no, no. I'm not dealing with this now.

Then again, when had she ever dealt with it? It was just so much easier to be the person with the microscope, peering into other people's lives than to actually try and understand her own. To be the showman on the stage, forever charming the audience, without giving even a peek into the secrets in their cloak.

She pushed the thoughts away. Let the dead past bury its dead. It made her feel better to engage in random banter with Reyna. Annoying her was definitely a plus. There seemed to be an invisible line where amused exasperation changed into genuine anger, which was not to be crossed. They spent the rest of the ride playing Blackjack, and at the end of it Reyna was completely pissed off. To be fair, Al had only cheated twice, but Reyna should know better than allowing her to shuffle, and she couldn't resist getting a hat trick.

Reyna threw her cards down. "Impossible!"

Al grinned. "You're just bad at it."

Reyna scoffed. "Pirates gamble every damn day. I've been betting since I was eleven."

Al gave her a two-fingered salute. "Aye, Aye, Ravager Ramirez!"

Reyna rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "It's Ramirez-Arellano."

Al rubbed her palms. "Dread Pirate Ramirez-Arellano!"

Reyna pretended to consider it. "That works."

Al placed her cards down, facing up to show her hand to be blackjack. "I win. And you owe me twenty denarii in total."

Reyna glared at her, and Al tried for the most innocent smile she could give. She was seventy percent sure she was about to be gutted by a certain daughter of Bellona. Just then the announcement system came to life and the Amtrak slowly came to a stop. They had reached New York.

Reyna fingered her javelin. Al still wasn't sure how she managed to carry that thing into the train without anyone noticing. "Let's go to Olympus, joker. if you survive, we'll see about the jellybeans."

"Woah. Like w-o-a-h." Al stared in disbelief at the sight in front of her. Floor number six hundred (seriously, that was insane) was mind blowing. They were standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below me was Manhattan, from the height of an airplane. In front of them, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. Al's eyes followed the stairway to its end, where her brain just could not accept what she saw.

From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a mountain, its summit covered with snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multileveled palaces-a city of mansions-all with white-columned porticos, gilded terraces, and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand fires. In the early-morning darkness, torches and fires made the mountainside palaces glow twenty different colors, from blood red to indigo. Roads wound crazily up to the peak, where the largest palace gleamed against the snow. Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes. She could make out an open-air market filled with colorful tents, a stone amphitheater built on one side of the mountain, a hippodrome and a coliseum on the other. It was an Ancient Roman city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, and clean, and colorful, the way Rome or Carthage or something (she was really bad at history) must've looked twenty-five hundred years ago.

"The tip of a mountain hanging over New York City like a billion-ton asteroid? How could something like that be anchored above the Empire State Building, in plain sight of millions of people, and not get noticed?" Al turned to Reyna. Reyna shrugged. "You won't believe how effective the Mist can be." She said as she walked on the narrow path. "Percy said that once his classmates saw a hellhound and thought it was a poodle." Al didn't even have the wits to make a comment on that.

Her trip through Olympus was a daze. They passed some giggling wood nymphs who threw olives at them from their garden, much to Reyna's annoyance. Hawkers in the market offered to sell them ambrosia-on-a-stick, and a new shield, and a genuine glitter-weave replica of the Golden Fleece, as seen on Hephaestus-TV (apparently that was a real thing). Everybody seemed in a festive mood. They climbed the main road, toward the big palace at the peak. Music drifted up from many windows, the soft sounds of lyres and reed pipes. Towering at the peak of the mountain was the greatest palace of all, the glowing white hall of the gods. Twelve enormous thrones made a U around a central hearth, in which an enormous fire crackled. Three figures were waiting for them there.

The first was Goatskin Lady Juno. The second was probably Jupiter, and the third was a grey-eyed woman dressed in some ancient Greek or Roman style. "Athena," mumbled Reyna under her breath. "They are in their Greek form."

Al nodded. They could have been Norse for all she knew. Jupiter was slightly scary. The very atmosphere around him seemed to be charged with ozone, like lightning would burst out of him at any moment like a Greek Thor. She wondered whether the real Thor looked anything like Chris Hemsworth. Was there even a real Thor? She mentally slapped herself. Focus.

Athena was pretty scary too. Her grey eyes bored right into her, like they were shredding her apart to see into her soul. Was that what people felt like when she spouted random facts about them with a glance?

Goatskin Juno wasn't in goatskin anymore, but she still watched them with her dark eyes. This was pretty awkward. They were just watching them walk. It was like being called on a stage, except she had no idea what the hell was going on, and the audience could incinerate her at will. She resisted the urge to bring out a coin and ask whether anyone wanted a magic trick. Or maybe she could run away screaming. She hadn't felt stage fright since she was six, but this definitely took the cake.

"Daughter of Bellona." Juno no, Hera, looked at Reyna. "Do you have it?"

Reyna nodded and took the sword from Al. "Yes, my Lady." She stepped forward to hand it to the goddess.

Wow, they even talk like some crazy old king's court.

Hera made no move to take the sword. Instead, she turned to look at Al. "Granddaughter of Hermes." Reyna turned slightly to give her a smirk. Al resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her. The three Olympians didn't look amused. "Daughter of the Void."

Al blinked. "Daughter of the what, now?" Even Reyna looked confused.

Athena stood up from the throne. "Follow me, Riley Allison." Al gave a start of surprise. Almost no one knew her full name. "There are many things that we must discuss."

Al's head was reeling by the time they left Olympus. The elevator was almost a comfort in its mundanity. Reyna looked lost in her own thoughts.

She had a hard time dealing with the fact that the myths were real, and this was starting to become more and more ridiculous with each passing moment. Sure, when she was younger, she'd wanted to be a superhero, but she was seven. This wasn't what she'd imagined, and the skeptical outlook of her recent years made her believe that she was stuck in a very, very weird dream. Maybe she was having an Alice in Wonderland experience, and someone would wake her up.

For someone who decides the fate of the world, you don't seem to be much. Athena had surveyed her like a complicated blueprint. But I know better than any other Olympian that appearances are deceptive. Remember, child, I have my eye on you. You are only alive because we don't know about the other champion. Otherwise, you would have been put down long ago. You are too big a liability.

Al swallowed. Gee, thanks.

Athena didn't seem to be deterred. This is nothing personal. I wanted to do the same to Perseus Jackson and Thalia Grace. You will go to Camp Jupiter with the Praetor, and complete the prophecy. Do not mess this up. If I find that you are on the wrong side of this fight, I will not hesitate to destroy you. She'd then handed the sword to Al (how did she get it from Reyna without her seeing in the first place?) and coolly walked out of the room, like threatening demigods was just another thing on her everyday checklist.

"You look like you're going to be sick." Reyna commented. "If you throw up on my shoes, I won't forgive you. Ever."

Al didn't even feel like bantering with her. She tried to push her panic over Athena's words down. She grabbed at the first coherent non-Olympian thought she had. "Does Loki look like Tom Hiddleston?"

She mentally smacked herself in the head. Seriously, was that what was going through her brain?

Reyna rolled her eyes and shook her head. "You're impossible."

"So says the psycho purple ninja owing me twenty denarii." Al tried for a grin.

The elevator doors opened to show a man waiting outside. He was middle-aged man with an athletic figure, slim and fit like a jogger, with curly black hair, blue eyes, elfish features, and a sly grin. He was wearing nylon running shorts and New York City Marathon T-shirt. He had a cell phone in his hand, and… did his shoes have wings?

"Praetor." He glanced at Reyna. "You can wait outside. I would like a word with my granddaughter here."

Al almost choked. Reyna nodded, like it was perfectly normal for middle aged men in jogging outfits to call teenagers their granddaughter. Al almost felt a bit lost when she left.

Mercury no, Hermes turned towards her. Despite her nervousness, she could see some of her mother's features in his face: the curly black hair, the twinkle in his eye, the sly smile, like he was hiding a secret. He smiled softly. "You look exactly like your mother, the last I saw her." There seemed to be regret in his voice. "I assume she is dead."

Al nodded numbly. Hermes flicked his cell phone, and it turned into a caduceus, two snakes binding themselves around it. Al took a step back. She didn't hate snakes, but she liked to keep them at a safe distance, preferably behind a glass wall or any other barrier where they wouldn't be able to reach her.

Don't be afraid, dear. One of the snakes hissed. I'm Martha, and that is George. We don't hurt mortals.

Unless they're rats. The other snake said. We love rats.

"Your snakes are called George and Martha?"

Hermes chuckled. "They help me in my job." His face grew serious. "I'm assuming Athena had her little chat with you."

Al nodded. "She was very… upfront."

"You mean she told you that she wanted to kill you." The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. "Your mother and your stepfather are all that have kept you alive. I never approved of Hecate's boy, but" he shrugged. "Maybe he wasn't so bad after all."

Hearing someone call her dad 'boy' was probably one of the weirdest statements she'd heard, and she'd heard some ridiculous things in her time as an assistant to her father's psychic business.

Hermes seemed to read her mind. "You must give up your skepticism, child. You have a hard path in front of you, and-" he cut himself off before he could say anymore.

"And what?" Al demanded. "What's going to happen?"

Hermes placed a hand on her shoulder, and she resisted the urge to shake it off and step back. "When the time comes, I hope you make the right choice." His eyes bored into her. "I failed my son." His voice faltered for a moment. "I could not protect my daughter. I want to see you happy."

Al shifted nervously. She wasn't used to showing affection or being shown affection, and the fact that her immortal grandfather seemed so concerned about her wellbeing made her uncomfortable. "Umm… thanks?"

Hermes looked almost amused at her response. "Just like your mother. You should leave now, before Zeus gets mad at me for talking too much. Catch." He tossed her a wad of cash. "Here. You'll need it."

The sky rumbled all of a sudden. "All right, all right, I get it!" Hermes yelled at the sky. He turned to her. "Go. Hopefully, we won't be enemies in the field of battle."

Goodbye, Al. Martha hissed in her head. We'll see you again.

Bring us rats. George said. Preferably before the end of the world. No pressure, though.

George! Martha chided. The kid has enough on her plate.

Does she have enough rats on her plate?

"Stop it, you two." Hermes rolled his eyes. "Or I'll turn you back into cellphone mode."

But that is so cramped!

Shut up, you oaf!

Al laughed. "Goodbye, George and Martha. Thank you, Lord Hermes."

Don't forget the rats!

Al leaned back into the seat of the train. For once, she was actually going to sit back and think.

A lot of things that used to bother her earlier were slowly making sense. Some of her dad's tricks had been downright impossible, but they made sense if he could actually do magic. The constant movement from one place to another also made sense now. She had a feeling that her dad had used the Mist for a lot of his tricks. She remembered asking him once how he made people believe that he could do magic. People see what they think they will see. That is the secret. Was that Mist manipulation?

Al shook her head. This was boring. She grinned and pulled out the little packet of jellybeans she'd bought at the station. They'd just managed to get on in time, but Al was nothing if not evil. She smirked at the Praetor in front of her and popped a handful into her mouth, licking the sugar coating the tips of her fingers. Reyna looked like she was trying to decide whether to laugh or to glare. She settled for the latter.

Al gave her best I-am-so-innocent smile and hoped that she wouldn't end up with a dagger in her gut. Truth be told, she liked the Praetor, and even considered her a friend. Al didn't trust anyone easily, but she'd trusted the Praetor. Her father's advice kept ringing in her head. Be careful what you tell people. A friend today could be an enemy tomorrow. She'd followed that piece of throughout her life, and it had never disappointed her, especially with her brief stint in one of the gangs of Hell's Kitchen.

But Reyna had earned her respect. Early on, she'd learnt that respect and admiration were two different things. Admiration was what you had for a magician or a circus performer doing their job flawlessly, charming the audience with their skill. Respect was what you had for a person you knew you could only hope to become. She'd known that Reyna was hiding dark secrets way before Reyna told her about her patricide. Once, she'd asked her father how he managed to get even the harshest people to lower their guard. Her father had given her a sly smile. That's simple. You lower your own. Humans are just smart apes. They'll mimic what they see. The trick had worked like a charm. But instead of the usual elation she felt after figuring out a puzzle or a person, she'd come to respect the Roman. Reyna was utterly and completely loyal to Rome and her friends, as Roman as anyone could get, a person who kept their word with their honor. Al may not have those virtues, but she could respect them. Maybe, just maybe, Camp Jupiter wouldn't be so bad.

She leaned back and closed her eyes, lulled to sleep by her thoughts and the motion of the train.

Just because she was now officially part of the demigod world, that didn't mean she wanted to have their prophetic dreams and stuff.

Al didn't really have dreams. At least, she didn't remember them afterwards. But she was pretty sure she was going to remember this one.

She felt like she had been suspended in space, like a piece of paper in an ocean. She felt awake, but she couldn't really see anything, pitch darkness surrounding her. It was as though her senses had shut down completely, no sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, nothing but thought.

We finally meet. Al nearly had a heart attack. The voice had come from nowhere inside her head. She couldn't have said whether it was low or high, baritone or tenor, it was just there, like her brain had processed sound her ears could not hear. My apologies. I did not wish to startle you.

What the hell? Who are you? Her voice didn't work, so she tried to project her thoughts. Hello? Is this comm one way?

The voice chuckled. You don't need to shout. I can understand you just as well if you simply think of what you'd say to me.

Okay, Al thought. Who are you?

Considering that we met only once, I'm not disappointed you can't recognize your own father.

Okayyyy. Al thought. I'm guessing that was around the same time as the ah encounter you had with mom just before Amy was born. That's not really important, though. I have a hell lot of questions.

I can imagine.

What am I, exactly? A demigod? Do I fight for Chaos or Cosmos?

Whatever you wish to be. I would not call you a demigod. Perhaps a demi-primordial. And as for the last question, that is for you to figure out.

Wow, Al thought. I am whatever I wish to be. Nice pep talk. And figure out, like it's a crossword? Can't you just tell me? Might make it easier.

That is not for me to choose. I can only guide you, warn you, like I helped my son. But the choice is your own. You are not heads or tails, you are the coin. You write your own destiny… and the world's.

So, no pressure. Al thought. Okay, any tips?

Silence.

Hello? Hey? Anyone there?

More silence.

Typical, Al thought. Are you ignoring me, or-

She felt a sudden jolt as the train came to a halt, waking her from her dreams. She blinked, taking a moment to remember where she was. The train was lit brightly in fluorescent lights, but she couldn't shake off the cold feeling in her gut. She was supposed to make a choice, but she didn't know what choice. On a sudden instinct, she slipped her hand into her pocket.

She brought out a coin, slightly larger and a tiny bit heavier than an ordinary coin. One side was engraved with eight arrows projecting outwards from the center, perfectly symmetrical along each line. The other side was minted with a circle, within which four half-circles made a flower-like diagram of sorts.

You are not heads or tails, you are the coin.

I actually managed to finish writing an entire fic! The last chapter will be an epilogue of sorts. The two symbols Al sees on the coin are of Chaos and Cosmos. I've never been to Rome or Greece and only know what Rick taught me (beyond the fact that Romans are more stabby stabby and Greeks are slashy slashy (that was the tweet, right?)) so all my research is based on whatever I could find on Google. I don't even know if those symbols are Greek or Roman or Chinese or whatever. Any criticism is welcome, as long as it is constructive. I intend to make events to move faster in the second part, but for now, this is it. I hope it's good enough! :-)