It was the hottest winter New York City had ever known. The middle of December felt as hot as an ordinary day in spring. I plodded across the streets towards Madison Square Garden for an appointment. A once-beautiful blue warbler, a type of migratory bird that passes through New York City in the spring, lay dead on the pavement at my feet. The visitor had been trampled by hundreds of tiny black ants that desecrated its body, entering tiny orifices like the eyes and beak, and removing flesh and feathers from its still warm head. An ugly brown cockroach, racing from the sewers, entered the fray. It chased away the ants, and chewed for itself the finest section of the warbler's breast.
Ahead of me, two fierce dogs barked at each other. One, a Golden Retriever, was large and had fur like the colour of the rays of the sun and a bark that could be heard across the street. His bitter foe, a black Labrador, was smaller, and quieter, but snapped his fangs with malicious intent. The Golden Retriever, strangely enough, wore no collar unlike the Labrador, and so mocked the smaller dog as the latter's owner yanked it back. The golden purebred raked his paw across the Labrador's eyes, and the black beast ripped free of his handler's grip and sank his teeth into his foe's front leg.
Walking along the 8th Avenue, I looked at myself in the mirrors of the stores lining the street. My appearance is dreadful. I'm as lean and skinny as I was when I was sixteen, with wrinkles on my face and weariness in my sea green eyes. I pass by mirror after mirror, the same green eyes, green eyes, blue eyes, green eyes.
Hold on a second. Blue eyes?
I thought I might have imagined it, so I walk backwards and watch my reflection closely. The same wrinkles. The same eyebrows. The same unsmiling lips. But for a second I had thought I saw someone different in the mirror. As if my own reflection was not me. It was only a glimpse. But a blue eyed man with blonde hair and a beautifully symmetrical face smiled back cruelly at me for that second. Or so I had imagined.
As I stared, another figure approached me from behind, growing larger at speed, its face as indistinct as the faces that a myopic sees. I turned. Pedestrians walked to and fro. No one approached this man scared at the sight of his own reflection.
Minutes later I came to the entrance of Madison Square Garden. From afar I could see the promotional banner that bore the faces of hard, angry men longing to do battle. The towering mirror planes of the Garden seemed like a fortress, imposing, impenetrable. Its sentries were a crowd of hundreds, like ants decimating a corpse, queueing for their turn to enter. Within they would find a spectacle of war, a champion of fistfighting meeting a champion of all forms of fighting, and the singular victor who emerged forth. I stare carefully at the faces around me, searching for black hair, black eyes, and round cheeks.
As I waltz my way to the front of the queue, bumping away angry spectators, I notice a short woman with long, flowing black hair that dipped to the middle of her back, wearing a parka. I know it's her as soon as I see the parka. Only a foreigner would consider sixty degrees Fahrenheit parka temperature. I tap her shoulders, and she turns. The first thing I notice are her eyes, the shape of teardrops, widening in recognition. She is young, even though age can be hard to tell with Asians, with no lines across her attractive smiling cheeks. Her head is shaped like a ball, and her chin is heart-shaped. She gives me a pleasant smile.
"Thank you for coming." The black haired Chinese woman says, solemnly.
"I am ready." I answered.
"You knew him, didn't you?" The petite woman gives me an inquisitive look.
"I knew a Jason Grace." I paused to consider my next words. "He was a boy to whom men would kneel."
"Tonight, are you prepared to stand?"
"I am ready."
"Very good. Let's go." And with that, we entered Madison Square Garden.
Tonight is fight night. But the real battle will not be in the ring. Once the boxers go to war, our mission begins. As soon as we show our tickets and are let through by security, we can hear the trumpets of war, calling for massacre. Black banners. Deep throated chanting. Suited men smiling as they take photos with skinheads.
"Our enemies are everywhere." She says softly, so that only I can hear.
"We have an ally in the ring tonight." I answer.
The chatter is dominated by talks of killing, domination, punishment, humiliation. Grace will do this to him. Grace will do that to him. Otherwise there is an appraising mood towards the government's deregulation of industry, anti-immigrant raids, and crackdowns on socialism. This winter, the president will crown his champion in glory, next winter, the champion will raise his president to re-election. Victory is a certainty. Victory in this winter, and the next, and every winter until the burning Earth summons no more winter chills during December months.
The two of us identify three key locations. One, the ring and our seats inside them. Two, the dressing room occupied by Jason Grace and his retinue. Three, the dressing room occupied by that of Grace's opponent. Our ally. Tight security keeps the dressing rooms out of bounds for members of the public. No ordinary human can pass through.
I, however, am Percy Jackson. I am a Greek demigod, son of Poseidon the sea god, and son to my mother Sally Jackson. I've got a few tricks.
Searching the backpack slung over my shoulder, I offer a tattered, dirty, old New York Yankees' cap to my companion. She raises her eyebrows.
"There are no basketball games here tonight, Percy."
"The Yankees are a baseball team, Eirawen! Never mind that. Put it on now." I lower my voice and lean towards her, shielding her from view with my body. Eirawen looks a little uncomfortable at my vicinity. "Wearing this will turn you invisible."
"I see." She nods and takes the cap. "And what about you?"
I close my eyes, and let the magic of the Mist do the talking. The Mist is a veil over mortal eyes. It saves them from seeing monsters of myth in their true, hideous forms. The Mist's power makes Cyclops and snake women and giant demonic hounds look like normal men, women, and dogs. Only those infused with immortal blood like myself, and a select few mortals, can see past this veil. I can also manipulate the Mist to change my appearance. When I'm ready, I open my eyes and look at Eirawen once more.
"What do you see?" I ask.
Eirawen widens her dark brown, teardrop-shaped eyes.
"You're a security guard! And you have a beard!"
Why in Poseidon's name do I have a beard? Whatever. I take Eirawen's hand, and confidently walk across the lounge towards the barricade protecting the Knicks' dressing room. Past the barricade of metal barriers manned by security guards is a route with many turns that leads to the dressing room of the New York Knicks. That's where Jason Grace is residing, right now. A similar barricade safeguards the dressing room of the New York Rangers, inhabited by the man who calls himself Krasnaya.
I turn to my side. Nothing but thin air. The sensation of a warm hand in my right hand remains. Good. She's wearing the cap.
The security guards look at me curiously, but approve of the fake ID that I conjured through the Mist, and let me through. In reality, I handed them my ATM card. If that had been confiscated, I didn't have a plan to convince my bank to give me a new one.
The further we get from the barricade, the quieter everything is. I trod on the matted carpet alone, but hear two sets of footsteps. I can hear her breathe, feel her warm hand clutching mine, smell her perfume. The image of the dead blue warbler, with a hundred ants desecrating its body, came unbeckoned like a premonition.
The Knicks' locker room itself is two nondescript, wooden doors. The wood is light brown, smooth, elegant, and cold to the touch. Feeling the wood in my hand, I am reminded of the coffins that Camp Half-Blood uses to bury demigods who have fallen in battle. How many of those have I seen? Charles Beckendorf, Silena Beauregard, Michael Yew. Each a sacrifice for the Olympians' continued glory, each cold and quiet in their sleek forever homes.
"I'm going in." I whisper to Eirawen. Her hand, now cold despite the lacklustre winter, grips firmly onto mine. Approval. I open both doors.
As soon as we come in, we are swamped by noise and light and people. A few eyes turn towards me. Only me. They cannot see Eirawen. I give a friendly smile, and their curiosity is satisfied. With my right hand firmly gripping the warmth, I swallow my fear and walk into the fascist crowd as if I belonged. I take a seat in the first vacant locker seat I see that's closest to the door. The seat is broad, and I only take up half of it, leaving the other half for the still-invisible Eirawen to sit.
The lair of the fascists is crowded. The Knicks locker room is a circular interior shape, with only one exit and entrance, the one we just came through. Directly opposite the entrance is the banner of the mixed martial arts champion who has come to challenge the boxing champion. It's an image of a golden lightning bolt surrounded by a blue circle, upon a white background. Some of the other seats are vacant, the others are occupied uniformly by muscular, handsome, young white men. About a dozen or more people form a circle around the centre of the room, cheering as a half-naked, muscular man in the middle performs Superman punches and flying knees against a padholder. Every strike he lands is met with oohs and aahs.
The President's champion ends his exercise with a spinning back elbow against the pads. Crack. It is loud enough to make me wince for the padholder's hands. He is no ordinary fighter. I thought. He allows a coach to remove his gloves and his retinue to sing their worship as he rests. There are too many people here. Too many for what we have come here to do.
His eyes turn. Away from his hands, being taped by a coach, and towards me. He is not seeing Percy Jackson. I'm in disguise.
"What are you holding on to," the enemy says softly but audibly, "Percy Jackson?"
I release Eirawen's still-invisible hand immediately. Shoo! Run! I pretend not to have heard a word, and continue to loiter around the edges of the circle of worshippers. A skinhead eyes me suspiciously.
"What did you let go of, Percy Jackson?" The enemy says loudly, above the din of the chamber. Silence. A solitary, accusing index finger faces me. Every face in the room is now looking towards me.
"I'm not holding on to anything." I say quickly. "I haven't let go of anything."
"You were holding on to hope. And you just let go of her." Grace gives me with a refined, dignified smile. He knows. I thought. That can't be possible. How does he know? The worshippers face me, and for the first time I realise their hands are not empty. One man in a red cap with the words, "Make America Great Again!" has a semi-automatic assault rifle. Beside him, is a giant who must be at least six foot four, and is wearing body armour from head to toe like the ones riot police wear. Just beside Grace is a heavily tattooed skinhead with a large knife as long as my forearm. Almost everyone in the room has at least one gun on them. Bullet straps and ammunition pouches are discarded haphazardly around the room.
"I thought this was supposed to be a fight." I said hesitatingly.
"Strange. We were thinking the same thing." Jason Grace replies. He raises his right palm as if taking a vow. "Wehrmacht!"
"Pledge your life to our leader, the spear of the West, the saviour of the master race, the son of Jupiter, Jason Grace!" roars one of them, a bearded man wearing a red bandana with a black cross against a white circle on in its centre. The rest of the worshippers raise their right arms in that dreaded, diagonal, stiff arm salute. The salute of the ancient Romans that I'd never seen done even in Camp Jupiter.
"Hail to the Chief! Hail to the Chief!" They cry in unison. Their guns continue to beat the ground. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. "Hail to the Chief!"
"Pledge your life!" the man in the bandana yells at me, pointing his stiff arm at my face, "If you're not a traitor, you'll eradicate the Communists tonight!"
A traitor. Eradicate the Communists. These words sounded familiar. Perhaps I had said them myself once, or many times, many years ago. Who had I said these words to, who I was speaking of, I cannot recall. Words of anger are familiar to everyone. The rage of adolescence that is supposed to leave a fully matured adult can inhabit a person for the rest of his days. I've spent a lifetime angry at the powers that be. It's taken me just as long to understand where to direct that anger towards, and for the savage retinue of Grace, it would take them even longer. Maybe they would never understand.
"I'm betraying no one. I'm pledging my life to no one." I growl. "And no god owns my life!"
No one except the woman I love.
The fascists raise their guns. Over a dozen barrels stare at me. An index finger wraps around each trigger. There are rifles and the retarded everywhere I turn. Even the son of Poseidon can't survive this much lead in his body.
"Hold."
At the moment that I'm prepared to die, the guns lower, and Jason Grace makes his way through his brethren towards me. He is taller than I remembered, easily six foot three by now, and maybe more. By far the largest man in the welterweight division. He was muscular and veiny, but lanky. In every pound of flesh was muscle and nerves serving one single purpose: to kill a man.
"Why do you struggle, Percy?" The voice spoke, sweet as honey, yet brimming with bloodlust. "Your leader has everything under control. All you have to do is follow instructions."
"What instructions?" I snap.
"Just give up this mission. I've never broken the law. I'm only doing what I was told. You should, too." He wraps his arm around my shoulder, as he did when we were still comrades-in-arms.
More lies. Faked innocence. Flaunted anguish. Disguised destruction and endless pleas for pity. All hallmarks of a fascist. I know what happens if I fall for it. I know that he will demand endless sacrifice from my person, treating me as a slave while calling me a comrade, and punish me with cruelty even as he indoctrinates me to thank him for his mercy.
I know, because I am the son of Poseidon. I have been falling for these lies since the day I was born.
"The comrade I had is dead. Jason Grace fell in battle ten years ago. And you are a mockery of his memory." I reply. Grace, his lips curled in an eerily benevolent grin, gripped the handle of the door and pushed it open.
"I invite you to watch the fight. The spear of the West never loses a battle. Only my enemies fall tonight." He's letting us go? But Grace blocked the gap between myself and safety with his own body. Eirawen had no chance to slip through. "You will let go, and submit yourself to me."
"There won't be a fight. There will only be a beating, and it will be you who suffers it." I answered. "I will rise to my feet, and Krasnaya will bring you to your knees!"
Grace moves like a blur. First I see his right arm wrap itself around the back of my head, then I am vaguely aware of a bone-crushing grip on my right wrist. I witness a glimpse of his back turning towards me, then I am hurled upwards towards the ceiling as if I were the projectile of a catapult, and find myself on my back against the floor. Thud. A second later, my back erupts in fiery pain. I raise my head to look at the door slamming shut in my face.
Right beside me is an old, tattered New York Yankees cap.
I do my best to maintain long, comfortable strides. I still look like a burly security guard with a beard. But the investigation has been compromised. Eirawen is in mortal danger. I cannot take on several score men with armour and bullets and knives and the son of Jupiter, all at once, all alone. So I find myself at the locker room of the New York Rangers. The same smooth wood as the Knicks' locker room door. Doubt briefly crosses my mind. But no, I haven't gone back the way I just came. I'm sure of it. I knock, and push open the unlocked door.
The Rangers' locker room is lightless, to a point where shade and shadow are indistinct. The room is also shaped like an oval in contrast to the Knicks' locker room, and much larger. It could fit twice or thrice the people that the latter did. It's also eerily silent. Have I intruded upon a mausoleum? Whereas the fascists enjoy a cacophony of noise, the Communist prefers to listen to the silence. I wonder he hears here, inside the quietest of places. Perhaps the dead would know best.
The man who calls himself Krasnaya sits in the centre of the oval room. He is so still when meditating that I first mistook him for a statue. I can only tell it's him because there is no one else inside, except myself. His face is turned away. His whole body is wrapped in black, to the point that I cannot tell shirt from skin.
"Welcome, Percy Jackson." said the Communist, without looking towards me. He speaks with a melodramatic baritone that's about two octaves higher than the voice that bellows in the ring. He is unmoving. Still.
"I have bad news, Krasnaya." I answered.
"I am not Krasnaya." The man says. He rises, and approaches. He comes close enough to the lighted hallway that his mouth and jawline become visible, even though his eyes and hair remain dark as night. The man offers me a half-smile with tattered lips that bleed every fight. "Yet."
"Then who are you?"
"I am the man outside the ring."
"And who is Krasnaya?"
"He is the monster inside the ring."
"And where are you when Krasnaya is in the ring?" I ask.
"Ah, that." The Communist gives me a mellow smile. "I'm enjoying the best view. The first person view."
"Krasnaya, the fascists brought guns and knives. They intend to kill you tonight. If not in the ring, then as soon as you leave it."
The Communist avoids my gaze, troubled. He stares at his hands, all covered with layer upon layer of white hand wraps. Then he stands, walks to a full-body mirror wrapped in darkness, and examines his shadowy figure as if he were a soul residing in a body that was not his own. The Communist looks at a red banner, crimson like the colour of fresh human blood, resting in one of the closets closest to the light, the one which he always proudly carried with him to war. And finally, he closes his eyes, as if he were looking for a place of inspiration that he would be blinded to by being able to see. One long moment passes. Suddenly his eyes open, and he turns to face me.
"Mortal men do not survive gunshots and knife stabbings." He says.
"And neither will you." I agree.
"But Krasnaya is no mortal man. If I stay inside the ring, if I let him stay inside of me, he will remain invincible. Forever unbeaten." He says, without the slightest look of doubt on his face.
And here I was, thinking that Jason Grace and his fascists were the crazy ones. Everything is going wrong. Eirawen is missing. My cover is blown. The Communists are walking into a slaughterhouse. The Fascists are operating the slaughterhouse. I haven't discovered a single thing about that which I'd come here to investigate.
We expected this. Eirawen and I assumed the worst, from the beginning. Our plan A was to isolate and confront Jason Grace before the fight. Failing that, our plan B was to wait until the fight began, when all eyes would gaze upon the events within the ring and not those outside it. The truth can be found from evidence, even without concession from the suspect, even without witness testimony.
"Buy me time." I order, placing my hands on his shoulders. "Don't knock him out before the tenth round, but do knock him out by the twelfth. It must not come to a decision. And don't lose!"
"A knockout after the tenth it is." He nods at me with determination and trust. "And what will you do?"
A good question, I thought. But Eirawen saw this coming. She assumed our plan would unravel. The only question was how to use this failure to advance our mission. And that's up to me.
"I'm going to ensure that they don't fire a single bullet at you." I answer. "You will leave that ring alive. Not as Krasnaya. But as who you are right now."
"Alone?" He asked. "You're trying to do this all on your own?"
He doesn't know about Eirawen's involvement, I remembered. She asked me not to tell him. They were not acquainted, she said, so if she died her death wouldn't affect him. It struck me then as the only thing in our plan that didn't quite make sense. Perhaps there were other reasons.
"No. Krasnaya is on my side " I answer. He grins at me, then takes a step back into the darkness. His eyes close. He is sitting again, with his legs comfortably seated on a cushion on the floor instead of any of the locker seats. He nodded gently at my words, but said nothing. This is it. I thought. Krasnaya comes.
The hair on my forearm begins to tingle. The locker room feels warmer. A long moment passes. And then another. And another. I wait. The Communist's eyes open.
"Slay him." I say. He stares at me with the wide, haunted eyes of a demon's that is dreaming. There is malice etched in his visage. The man I had spoken to a moment ago is gone. This is Krasnaya.
"You ask. I deliver." His voice has an unearthly depth to it, like the howls of the unborn demons within the primordial soup of Chaos, the first and greatest Protogenos.
"Blood spills upon a white flag, and calls me forth. I bring justice to the proletariat. I bring ruin to the bourgeoisie. My right hand is a hammer and my left hand is a sickle. I am Krasnaya!"
I am born at the last days of the human race. I grew up watching seven billion human beings walk into the gilded and prosperous path. They sought to behave themselves before the gods, and behoove these deities to protect and nourish them. Our miserable pleas have been met with curses, as the equilibrium of fire and ice in this melting, burning world is disturbed decisively to the bowels of inferno. As the global temperatures rise, as the Earth and its people both grow poorer, and the angry Mother Nature lashes out against her parasitic children, I have chosen to rise above pleading for mercy. I chose to reestablish peace between the Earth and its inhabitants, before the mother and her children mutually annihilated each other.
The children of this planet have been led astray. We demigods have been led astray. Our rulers, our gods, they are not worthy of praise and worship. I've found out the truth. They have led us into this conflict with Gaia because it seals the bondage between us and them. Subsist by destroying Gaia, or die. The cut of their whip is gentle when they place a sword against your throat.
Our leaders are leading us into the chasm. Any who do not march forward are shot. The chasm is Tartarus. There is only ever escalating despair within. I choose to walk away from the chasm. And I am not the first.
Time and again, across the long march of history, the despotic rule of gods and kings have been imperiled. Famine. Volcano eruptions. Floods. Slave rebellions. This world of fire and ice brings fluctuating periods of calm and crisis. But as endless as the crimes of these higher powers may be, their rule over the lives and bodies of common mortals is unending. It is a dictatorship that continues to this day. Men braver than me, far more intelligent than me, with far greater organisation and backing than me, have all fallen at the feet of the gods. Their memory is tarnished, their names a mere bogeyman for mothers to scare their young children with.
Eirawen and I thought that there had to be a reason as to why. It wasn't that things had to get worse before they got better, or that it simply wasn't the right time for revolutionary change. There were times in history that the gods overcame all odds to retain their power, and there were times when the gods conceded nothing when they had overwhelming momentum on their side. We thought that the gods had one extra advantage to unravel the plans of rebellious mortals. They had the overwhelming advantage of brute force, that was true, and brutishness assists in all struggles. They, and the deluded mortals who allied with them, seemingly never made a miscalculation. Not a strategic error. Not a break in alliance. Like watching the Golden State Warriors, rebellion is simply swept aside like leaves in the wind. And there was their true advantage. They could make a mistake, and get away with it.
Because they've already experienced this before.
Eirawen's theory goes like this. Amongst the countless different worlds and timelines of the multiverse, both the gods and us mortals only experience one universe and one timeline at any time. They're playing the same game of chess as we are. The rules are stacked in their favour to begin with, but if we were smart, we could still beat them despite the handicaps. Their true advantage lies in them remembering where they have made mistakes in one game, then transferring their memories of this game to that of themselves in another timeline where they are simultaneously playing the same game. Crucially, the Olympians in the second universe receive the knowledge of the imminent future, and hence are able to preemptively correct mistakes and errors. And these universes do not coexist all at the same time. For every universe that the Olympians choose to abandon, they can freeze in place the sequence of events like a fossilised animal frozen in stone, never allowing their mistakes to haunt them.
Each circumstance of rebellion, each tactical and strategic move. They know what to do not just from experience of past events. They have lived this lifetime of my rebellion, and crushed me underneath as they did so many others. Transferring their memories across timelines is the ultimate weapon of the gods. We came here to prove this theory true. And if it were true, we wanted to adopt this weapon for our own uses. To pass on the lessons we have learnt from this world into the next. To save Gaia, our planet, from the inferno.
The first step is to force a mistake on the part of the gods. Those neo-Nazis came here with the express intention of killing Krasnaya. Their preparation speaks to that. Which means that not killing Krasnaya is a fatal mistake for the gods. If I succeed there, then there lies an opportunity to witness the world and its timeline being reset.
The second step is to steal that gift of memory from the immortals. Eirawen theorised that this gift could be handed down from the divine to mankind. Just as Prometheus brought fire from Olympus to human hands, so will I bring memory from Olympus to human minds. Her belief was that a select few mortals and demigods had already been granted this gift. And one of them was Jason Grace. If we proved that Jason knew of events that did not happen in this timeline, then that proved the gift of memory, the theory that this gift could be passed down to a mortal, and the multiverse theory true. More accurately, we needed proof that he is acting to prevent a future that he is certain will inevitably happen. For who knows what the future holds, except a time traveller?
This is what we're here for. Krasnaya versus Grace is the pivot upon which the future changes. The Nazis' preparation speaks to that. It must change in our favour.
I timed my departure from the Rangers' locker room with the ring walk from both main event fighters. Wearing Annabeth's cap of invisibility, I remained unseen as I sneaked my way back to the Knicks' locker room. Even so, I stayed clear of anyone wearing a uniform. I did not know where Jason's power ended. When I returned to the spot where I had been cast out of just half an hour ago, I arrived unseen.
I lay my palm on the metal handle of the wooden door, then recoil as a shock of electricity runs through my body. He's still here? But I'd just watched the ring walk from afar! No, it's a lingering aftertaste of the son of Jupiter's power.
I gently push on the door. Finding surprising resistance, I shove it open. Thump. Something's fallen on the other side. Whatever it is, it's obscuring the hinges, only allowing me to slip through a small crack of the barely opened door, where darkness waits. I put my foot into the black, and fumble for a light switch in my blindness. The slanting curvature of a button makes my fingers tingle. I press.
Eirawen's sprawled body lies face-up behind the entrance.
It takes me a second before I realise that she is not breathing. I rush to her side. Her eyes are open, wide as it was when I gave her this cap I now wear. She looks fearful, terrified even. Her skin is singed. She smells of smoke. But there isn't a bruise or cut visible on her body. I try to start her heartbeat, blow air into her mouth. She remains still. I search her parka, and find what I'm looking for in a barely visible pocket. A voice recorder. Both of us have one, to record our last moments in case we perished. My fingers tremble as I begin to play hers.
The voice recorder plays a cacophony of noises, with distinct oohs and aahs. This must have been back when we first entered the locker room. I keep my ears peeled.
"What are you holding on to, Percy Jackson?" the recording asks. "What did you let go of, Percy Jackson?" My teeth chatter and my hands tremble. My heartbeat is erratic. I try to hear the words that come next, yet ignore their gravity.
"You were holding on to hope. And you just let go of her."
I should have never let go of Eirawen. But I did. And now she is dead.
The recording chatters on, and I half-heartedly hear it while examining the murder scene. It's empty and pristine. No traces of guns and knives and Nazis. Every locker seat is clean and tidy, every inch of carpet free of litter. It's too clean to be a murder scene. I pick up my attention when I hear myself being thrown outside the door. There is chatter and exclamations of surprise as Eirawen is clearly discovered.
"Be silent." That voice was Jason's. "There is a visitor in my presence."
"She's an assassin!" cried a male voice I did not recognise. "Execute her!"
"She looks like she has something to say." Jason's voice again.
"And I'd like to say it in private." For the first time, I could hear Eirawen's quiet voice. There is more uproar and argument amongst the fascists, but Jason yells, and the sound of a door opening and feet walking is clear. Silence ensues, and I check to ensure that the recording isn't broken.
"Why are you so certain you'll lose tonight?" Eirawen's voice again, coming just as the fourth or fifth round began.
"Mmm? Am I?" His voice is pleasant, making it all the more insidious.
"Those guns. Those bullets. They're all real, right? Who are they for?"
"Those bullets go into the skulls of Communists. Like you. Like your friend."
"Percy and I aren't Communists. Krasnaya isn't my friend. But you're admitting that you can't be sure of besting him in a boxing match?"
"Woman, I can see through your tricks. You suspect me to be a time traveller - am I right?" Grace growls. There is a distinct silence before Eirawen responds.
"Yes. Yes, I do." Her voice is shaken.
"Well, you're right. I've fought that filthy Communist before. Many times before. If this were the mixed martial arts I'd take him down and batter his face bloody, but this is boxing. I've fought him for more than fifty rounds and I still can't see a pattern to his magic. He is six feet away when I'm punching and he is all over me when I'm not. I've never even finished twelve rounds with him. He can't be beaten in a fistfight, much less killed. And he needs to die."
"How many times have you seen this fight? How many lives have you lived?" Eirawen presses.
"If you're talking about the worlds and timelines I can remember…I stopped counting at twenty."
"What's your secret? How are you travelling through time? Or is it something you can't say?" More questions, all from Eirawen's voice.
"Oh, I could tell you." Grace says. "You need to spill your blood in the shape of a circle. Place your bloodied palm in the middle. Meditate on an image of yourself, at some point in your life, in the very second that you want that second version of you to receive your memories. Then your memories will be sent."
"That's all?" Eirawen's voice again. "You don't have to be a demigod or anything?"
"Oh no, it is not. Transferring your memories across timelines demands punishment. Just as Prometheus was chained and cursed to have his liver eaten by vultures every day for all eternity, so will you be punished. And guess who your tormentor will be."
"Not the gods?"
"No. The power to turn déjà vu into a vision of the future, or 'time travel' as you like to call it, requires your memories to cross an immeasurable distance. Travelling across solar systems, galaxies, universes. Travelling against space and time and gravity to reach your other self. In the space between you and the other you there is Chaos himself. The First. The Creator. The oldest of the Protogenoi will annihilate your memories when you try to bring them through time. Then he will annihilate this world. All of it. Gaia and Ouranos and Pontus and the Titans and the Olympians and the demigods. And especially you."
"If that's the case, then why are your memories of other timelines getting through?"
"I don't know. Maybe Chaos likes me." Grace's voice sounds sinister. "Maybe I have divine blood that's superior to yours."
An unmistakable crackle of lightning plays from the recorder. Eirawen screams. There are sounds of a mad scramble for the door. Then nothing. Ten seconds pass before thunder roars, though I cannot tell if it came from outside or from the voice recorder.
And the grave is silent as I close its wooden doors on the body of a friend.
It takes me only a minute to reach the main arena itself. In that time, a break is gone, and a new round starts. I check the numbers of neon lights on the big screens. Eleventh round. There's only one break left in this fight. As soon as the boxers advance upon each other, the crowd is baying for blood. Jason. Jason. Jason. They cry. The fascist champion greets their wails with aggressive body shots, lowering his head as he hurls his body forward at the Communist fighter.
Krasnaya cracks his chin skywards with a left uppercut. Jason. Jason. Jason. The spear of the West hurls a right cross at the same instant as the Communist leaning back, striking thin air. The latter's move was so precisely timed, it was as if he knew what Grace would do before the man himself would do it.
The fascist charges in, bobbing and weaving without pattern or reason, then eats a hurricane of hooks from the Communist. Suddenly the shorter man is right behind his foe, and Jason Grace's beautiful face is bloodied. Grace is losing. I realised. Just as he promised.
The crowd isn't chanting his name out of excitement. They're chanting out of despair.
The round's story repeats the same pattern. Grace plods forward behind a high guard, trying to use head movement to close the distance for a body shot with his dreaded right hook. Krasnaya, taking two steps with each punch he threw, would slam in a repeated left uppercut-right hook combination when the spear of the West stepped forward behind the high guard, and find Grace's back when he fired a punch. My eyes turn towards the ringside. Nazi apparel and munitions were being brazenly exhibited by the dozen or so fascists I had met in Eirawen's grave. Practically all of these men were in combat gear, armed from top to toe in steel helmets that covered their entire face, Kevlar armour for their torsos and groin, ammunition pouches and more armour around their thighs, shin guards, and heavy boots. They carried rifles, red rectangular shields made of iron embroidered with black swastikas that resembled the ancient Roman legionnaire shields, and fastened pistols and daggers to their belts.
More than sufficient to kill a Communist. I thought. Except for Krasnaya in a ring.
A cry from the crowd draws my attention back to the fight inside the ring. Grace is on his back, Krasnaya towering above him. A knockdown. The referee roars one, two, three but at the count of four, the bell rings for the end of the round. I rush to Krasnaya's corner. He is surrounded by coaches and cutmen.
"Who are those rifles for?" One of them is asking. The head coach, pouring water on Krasnaya's face, answers, "Focus on winning the fight!"
The Communist rises to his feet despite the break being far from over. He stares at me, then points with his left glove. My eyes follow his extended arm to the ranks of armoured fascists, then back to the southpaw boxer. He now has his left glove at his heart, as if he were trying to point at himself.
"Yes!" I yell over the din. "It's for you! Those rifles are for you!"
The head coach shoots me an angry look, and pours more water on his fighter. "Focus on winning the fight!" He shouts.
"I am." Growls the voice of the abyss.
The twelfth begins, and Krasnaya lands his left cross twice in the opening five seconds. He dances as the son of Jupiter timidly refuses to trade punches or step forward, then lands a single or double jab before hammering his straight left hand to the head and body.
"Keep hitting him, Krasnaya!" I shout. "They'll kill you if you let him get away!"
The battery becomes a bloody spectacle as the Fascist's bobbing and weaving becomes discordant with the rhythm of Krasnaya's punches, and the jarring disharmony results in a clash of fists and face instead of repeated slipping by a margin of inches. He's lost his rhythm, I thought. It's only a matter of time before he loses his life.
"It's over! It's over!" cried the referee in response to a white towel thrown into the ring from Grace's corner, now surrounded by ranks upon ranks of rifle-bearing Nazis with swastika embroidery all over their camouflage uniforms. The referee wraps his arms around Krasnaya's torso to yank him off Grace, but the incensed Communist breaks free and continues his relentless barrage on the cowering white champion. Grace peeks at his corner from behind his high guard, as Krasnaya hammers away at his body and head with hard, thumping shots.
"Help me!" He screams, before being cut off as Krasnaya lands what must have been at least the hundredth left cross against his face.
The Nazis swarm into the ring, just as we had foreseen. And one by one, Krasnaya slaughters them with his gloved fists. He is a dancing, darting demon. One second he slams a right jab into one man's temple, the next second he throws two or three left hands, and is right behind the man. In such tight quarters, with a casualty to protect, even guns and knives are worthless against the master boxer.
Grace can't be allowed to get away! I thought, but I'm not the only one with those thoughts. The son of Jupiter wrestles away from the grips of his underlings, frustrating their attempts to have him flee. "I'll kill him with my own hands!" He cried. "Out of my way!"
I duck underneath the second rope and step into the ring. Already, there are four, five armoured Nazis sprawled on the ring floor, either unconscious or dead. Most of those still standing are huddled together in a corner, their glorious leader in the centre of the pack, fighting for their lives against the leaping, swinging crimson demon. One of them sees me, and breaks rank to charge. With the majority of my weight on my rear right leg, I turn my hips and hurl the hardest right hook I can muster into the Nazi's right temple. The helmeted head rocks back, but the Nazi still manages to tackle and pin me against the ropes. The two of us wrestle, and I find myself pinned against the floor. I try to push his head off me with my right hand, which seems to have sprouted another set of knuckles from the way it flops waywardly in its centre.
With my other hand I reach for a handgun, lying almost within arm's length beside the corpse of its original owner, but a heavy boot stomps on my left hand. Crunch. I can't feel anything below my wrist in both hands. Someone pins my head against the floor. The rest of my body bears the weight of three or four men and their armour, so heavy that I can feel my spine and ribs creaking. Looking up, I see the wide, black barrel of a rifle staring back at me.
Everywhere I turned, there were only boots and rifle barrels. So many of them that I could not tell where one man ended and another began. Far more than the group we had discovered in their lair. The security guards! I realised. They were working together all along! No wonder there were about twenty more people in the ring than I had first counted.
Where is Krasnaya? I wondered. His red shoes were nowhere to be seen. The trail of boots and blood led to a concentration of angry voices on my left. I raised my head, straining my neck against the weight of the man against me. Jason Grace, humiliated and arrogant, had pinned Krasnaya against the ropes with a bodylock. They were barely visible, surrounded by uniformed bodies and walking suits of armour. With a howl of rage, the son of the sky god lifts his mortal enemy into the air, and smashes him against the floor. Somehow, the boxer manages to bury the mixed martial artist's head between his arm and his torso, and squeezes tightly on his neck. He gets his legs wrapped around Jason's torso, and the guillotine choke is on. The fascist soldiers, sensing their champion in danger, raise their weapons.
Krasnaya's head is surrounded by rifle barrels. He looks like a sun of blood surrounded by rays of steel. The colour of his skin is red, the colour of his eyes are red, and the colour of his hair is red. And soon, the colour of the ring floor itself would be red too. "Fire!" Someone yells.
Thunder bellows from the jubilant skies above, as Zeus announces his victorious son. Boom. Boom. Boom. Over and over the king of the gods roars in approval of his victory, until the Communist's head is red and fleshless.
And then, a sudden silence.
It takes me a minute to realise that Krasnaya's corpse is still stiff and taut, his choke still unrelenting. Grace is limp. Unmoving. His worshippers pray for his resurrection with unspoken words. The flesh of the Communist loosens at last, and the fascist lays still on the ground, his face slumped awkwardly.
One of the two bodies stands erect. One of the two bodies remains motionless. With my face still being pressed against the floor, only able to see from the corner of my vision, I cannot distinguish who stood and who stays.
Grace lives and Krasnaya dies, I tell myself. It cannot be any other way. But why the silence? Where is the sound of the victorious rejoicing? Feeling a slackened pressure of the hand pressing me down, I raise my head once more. No one has their gun pointed at me any longer. Every rifle's barrel is directed towards the standing man, his black hair washed in blood.
The Communist walks through the ranks of his enemies alive. He turns to face me, and a horrific mess of ripped flesh and shattered bone stares back. His eyeballs no longer exist. I cannot tell where his nose began and his mouth ended. His shattered skull exposes pink, gooey brain matter. Krasnaya raised his left hand in victory as he stands over the corpse of the gods' chosen.
Krasnaya is invincible in the ring, I remembered.
He silently steps out of the ring, followed by the mesmerised eyes of his killers. I stare into the face hiding behind the helmet of one of them, and to my amusement, see only horror. They could fire again, couldn't they? It wouldn't make a difference, would it?
"He's done it! Gunshots! Stabbings!" I laughed and coughed out blood at the same time. "Krasnaya lives!"
I continued to laugh even as the walking corpse fell to his knees and then collapsed on what remained of his face. I laughed as the Nazis tried in vain to resuscitate Jason Grace, just as I had tried in vain to resuscitate Eirawen. I laughed as three gunshots rang through the air, and my blood ran free along the ring floor.
Thunder bellows from the weeping skies above, as Zeus mourns his fallen son. Boom. Boom. Boom. It is like the sound of a ceremonial cannon, fired to celebrate victory. The lightning bolt and the trident and the grave and all the celestial powers of Olympus have been thwarted!
"For you Annabeth, my love." I whisper. "Our vengeance…is complete."
This is it. A forced error. The Communist walks beyond his grave, the boxing ring. Grace, the great fascist champion, dead before the gods. Dead once before, dead yet again. He will not be allowed to make this fatal error in the new timeline that the gods are constructing for us. All memory shall be wiped, and all knowledge of this world monopolised only by the Olympians.
Except me. I alone will remember. I scoop blood from my own gut, and draw a circle on the ground that's just wide enough for my hand to fit in. With my bloody palm inside the crimson circle, I dream of a time, years ago, when I still had a chance to save the world.
The world around me flashes, then fades like a dream fading before the dawn.
AN: Thank you for reading. No matter whoever you are, wherever you come from, why ever you are reading this, I'm deeply touched that someone has found my creation worth an investment of their time to read.
I'd like to reassure the reader that what you've seen so far is just one of forty-two chapters, which will average around 6,000 words a chapter. It's a very lengthy novel that I have every intention to see through to its completion. Percy Jackson & The Communists is not a fan fiction written half-heartedly. I have evolved my ideas for years, and only now am putting them into a tale instead of mere planning phases. I will update irregularly, and go on hiatus often. But I will complete this story no matter what it takes. That is a certainty.
I won't make this a waste of your time. I want to write the best story ever written, the greatest tale of its time and of all time. I want to witness the peak of the storytelling mountains, and look down on all other literary works as less skilfully written tales. Please review, and let me know how far or near I am to that goal.