Virginia Tech, 0416 Local, 29 August 2021

The two vehicles came to a stop without headlights outside the computer science and information technologies building. Four pairs of eyes studied the outside of the unnaturally dark building. "Fuck this," muttered Percy and he stepped from the vehicle. A Glock G45 pistol hung on his right thigh and a Daniel Defense .300 Blackout assault rifle with integrated suppressor was held across his chest by a sling.

Frank Zhang, Michael Kahale, and Reyna Ramirez-Arellano formed on him. "Third floor, south-west clear. Move." He took off at a trot and the others fell in behind him.

Virginia Tech, 0419 Local, 29 August 2021

An alarm buzzed on Kelli's phone. She looked at the screen. "We have company, time to move." Luke Castellan nodded and the two of them made for a door opposite of the one that the unknown team was entering through.

"Get outside. We'll wait for them to leave and ambush. Don't care who they are but shooters don't show up for no reason. We drop them when they leave." An evil grin came across Kelli's face and she licked the tip of the razor sharp ceramic nail she wore on left hand.

"Copy that."

Virginia Tech, 0423 Local, 29 August 2021

The door to the computer lab was open. No lights, other than the emergency lighting, filled the darkness. Still yet, that was too much light to utilize night vision. The four CIA personnel moved in unison down the rows of computer terminals.

"I've got a body," Kahale whispered into a throat mic.

"Check it."

"Dead. Knife wound. Blood's warm."

"Copy, move." They reached the end of the room. "Motherfucker," hissed Percy. "Back to the vehicles. We've got nothing. Griz, Tonto, tag and bag here first." Percy and Reyna immediately began to leave for their vehicle.

"How the fuck are we still the boots?" grumbled Frank. The term was a hold over from their military days. "The Boot" was always the most junior and usually naïve soldier or Marine. Someone with no deployment time and therefore inexperienced.

"Cause Percy lets no one else in." Frank nodded in agreement.

Percy and Reyna were halfway between the computer science building when the first round punched into Reyna's plate carrier. "Contact, contact, contact!" Percy was shouting into his mic. Reyna was on her back, struggling to breathe. Another round struck Reyna's vest. She cried out. Percy could see where the rounds were coming from.

"Leave me!" Reyna shouted then groaned as the shout removed what little air she was able to bring into her lungs. A single muzzle flash appeared and he fired a burst of .300 Blackout toward it. In answer a muzzle flash from a position twenty feet away from the first appeared. A round found its way into his thigh as his hand wrapped around the tab on the back of Reyna's vest and he began to drag her behind cover.

"Fuck me!" he yelled out as he dropped to one leg. He looked down. The wound was not a threatening one, but that did not stop it from hurting like a bitch. "They're in the treeline," he said over the mic. Acknowledgements came from the two shooters sprinting from inside the building. Percy spun around the vehicles tire well and fired off more rounds towards the trees. Gunfire sprayed the Explorer in response.

"Mr. Jackson!" an American voice yelled out. "Hopefully this woman doesn't end up like your wife!" The world from Percy's mind. The voice beyond his line of sight was still speaking. "Though, if she's on her back, looking up at me when I'm done with her, it will be the same."

Percy stood. His teeth ground together to the point where they hurt as much as the wound in his leg. He began walking in the open toward the treeline. The muzzle flashes from the dark shrubbery resulted in rounds that peppered the air and pavement around him. They never touched him. He continued forward and fingered the trigger as rapidly as he could while maintaining accuracy.

His rounds ripped into the trees and the fire from the treeline ceased. More rounds began to enter the trees from Griz and Tonto's arrival. By the time they reached the treeline the only evidence of the attacker were brass casings.

"Fuck," muttered Percy and he turned and began to run back to the vehicles. Frank knelt and scooped up a handful of casings in a gloved hand. He stuffed them in a cargo pocket and ran to catch up with Tonto and the others. Percy was assisting Reyna into the first of the two Explorers and tires squealed as he took off. They had been on the road for two minutes when at first the lights came on and then Frank and Michael's phones went off. 'Whatever son of a bitch was in the trees made comments about Percy's wife. Do you know what that meant?' Neither did.

Langley, VA, 0958 Local, 29 August 2021

"You fucking bitch!" screamed Percy Jackson as he entered the CIA Ops Center. His finger was aimed at the target of his outburst. The Director of National Intelligence turned slowly toward the field man with a bandage around his thigh. Blood was leaking from the wound. Annabeth's gray eyes jumped between her mother and her latest fuck. Her mother appeared calm, Percy appeared like he might draw the pistol on his thigh.

"All the motherfuckers I killed hunting down the Sons of Khan, all on your orders as director, and I still didn't kill the son of a bitch who did that to my wife. And you assured me I had." He glared at her and stormed out before she could respond. Percy's team did not leave though and all three were surrounding DNI. Three very rough operators were surrounding her mother and at this point, Annabeth's curiosity was too high to say anything. Reyna was leaning against a table and trying to keep pressure off of her chest. The situation report, sitrep, sent by Frank earlier had said that Reyna had taken two rounds to her vest and Percy one to the thigh.

"Percy's wife, Rachel, was too much of a bitch for this to be his reaction. The man in the treeline said "hopefully this woman doesn't end up like your wife." Director Parthenos, what the hell is going on?" The DNI looked at them and said nothing.

"Goddamnit, Mom!" Everyone spun at Annabeth's outburst. "The Angel of Death," she looked at Samirah al-Abbas, "Just looked like someone's who's broke. Why?" Annabeth's voice was harsher than she intended, but honestly she did not care.

The taciturn brunette turned to the five people staring at her. It had been years since anyone had stood up to her. It had been many more since someone frightened her and an angry Percy Jackson was a person that did. The five people in front of her were the only way to abate Percy's anger. She spoke slowly, emotionlessly.

"Percy Jackson before any of you met him was a different individual. His first wife was the standard Marine Corps enlisted marriage. She was attracted to the muscles and he to the sex. Marriage and divorce in less than thirty months. There was a second marriage." The team looked shocked. None of them knew what the gray eyed and dark-haired woman was talking about.

"It was 2012 when they met and got married. Three years later, about a year before you joined his team, Mr. Zhang, he was hunting for a group calling themselves the Sons of Khan. They were a multinational and staunchly atheistic group determined to raise Central Asia's status in the world by lowering everyone else. Their penetration of numerous governments would have been unchallenged. But when they found out they were being tracked by the CIA and specifically Percy, they targeted someone else.

"Calypso Jackson was a trauma surgeon. The Sons hired an assassin known as the Minotaur. He had supposedly been a Soviet sleeper agent cut loose when the USSR collapsed. He was hired with a very specific mission, break Percy Jackson. The things done to his wife, before and after death…" For the first time in the presence of strangers, Athena's voice failed her. "I can't bring myself to describe them." She stopped and took a deep breath before continuing.

"Marcus Aurelius said, "The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy." Percy ignored the stoic's guidance. He requested to go after them and as Director of Central Intelligence, I allowed it. I watched him become Malak al-Mawt. The trail of bodies that became the dismantling of the Sons of Khan, is something of unwritten history. I later assigned Mr. Zhang to Percy's team because of rather strict moral code. And at that point, the number of bodies had risen to a level that I was afraid in unleashing him, I had allowed him to become worse than the ones he was chasing."

Reyna looked at the woman and tasted bile in his mouth. She created what I saw.

Helmand Province, 1358 Local, 14 August 2015

"You can't force him to talk." Percy had a look in his eyes that said otherwise. "No, no, no. You can't be about to do what I think you are. I won't let you."

"Let me?" He reached out with his left and hand formed a fist. "He is planning something horrible to do to your Marines." He ground his knuckles into the bullet wound. Muammar was writhing under the pain. "I'll do what I have to do." Reyna felt sick hearing his justification for torturing the man who had been shot.

"Habibi," the calmness, the wise uncle-ness, in his voice was more revolting than the violence he was inflicting on Muammar Al-Abbas. "I'm going to remove the tape. You give me what I need. Where are the captured Americans?" He ripped the tape from the Egyptian import's mouth. Muammar responded by spitting in his face. Percy did not rage against the insult. He calmly wiped the spittle from his left cheek and reattached the tape.

His face still passive he cocked back his shoulder and drove his left fist into the wound left by the 9mm Glock. Muammar writhed against bonds holding him. She watched Percy draw back his fist and strike the spot again. Defiance still shown in Muammar's eyes despite the darkening of his trousers and the urine dripping to the floor underneath him. She looked at Percy. It almost looked like he had known this would happen.

"A true believer, eh, habibi?" Percy was talking to Muammar again. "True believers would endure anything for the Jihad, wouldn't you?" The flames of defiance flashed across Muammar's eyes again. "But would even a true believer, watch that same pain be inflicted on his family." Even Reyna's eyes flashed toward Percy. She did not know this was coming. He reached for his tablet and turned the screen toward Muammar. The Jordanian recoiled at the image. It was not until Percy placed it on the table next to him that Reyna saw the image. Three figures with dark bags over their heads were surrounded by sweaty, dark-bearded men in a dark cell. The men were wearing plain khaki uniforms with a patch on their sleeves. An eagle gripped a serpent in a blue circle and a gold crown stood atop it. One of the figures moved. Fucking hell, it's a video, thought Reyna.

"How do you think the Mukhabarat reacted last week when I told them the planner for attacks against the Coalition in Afghanistan lived in Amman with his wife and kids, habibi?" Reyna could not tell if Muammar had heard the rest of Percy's statement or if, like her, he had become transfixed on the fifth word of the question. Mukhabarat, the secret intelligence services of the Middle East. Saddam's Iraqi version and the Egyptians of Mubarak were of course the most famous, but the patch on the uniform had betrayed these men's allegiance to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The first of the hoods was removed on the video. A terrified looking Arab woman of nearly forty swept the room frantically with her eyes. The right side of her face was bruised and blood oozed from a cut along her eyebrow. Her hands were tied behind her back and a cloth was jammed into her mouth to keep her from speaking. Muammar's reaction was instantaneous. With a power she had not seen he began to rage against his bonds. Percy, almost lazily, swung his right first in Muammar's face. The blow, while not calming him, at least settled Muammar. Percy began speaking again. His voice was still calm and level, he again sounded like an old friend speaking to his habibi. He was the wise uncle speaking to a nephew. He was Muammar's confidant. It made Reyna ill. She felt the bile rise in her throat, but kept it down.

"Habibi," Percy was addressing Muammar. Muammar it appeared though had been even more transfixed by the revelation that his wife was in the custody of the Middle East's most professional and westward leaning, outside of the Israelis, intelligence service. The Jordanians might not be as brutal as their Egyptian, Syrian, or Iraqi brethren, but he knew they would not follow the same rules as the Americans. Mukhabarat, it even sounds terrifying, and it isn't my family being held. "Salma is a lovely woman, Muammar. And your daughters, absolutely beautiful. Sixteen and thirteen, I believe, so much life to lose out on." The other two hoods were removed. Two teenage girls with wonderfully green eyes and dark hair looked frightfully around their surroundings.

"Habibi, we would let nothing happen to them. But, my Mukhabarat brethren are less inclined and they are the ones with your family unfortunately. You have a choice, habibi, you betray the Jihad and many of your brethren will die and I will get my people," a pause, "or," another pause, "you watch your family die." The Jordanian behind Salma Al-Abbas drew the pistol from his belt. It's a live feed both ways, thought Reyna. The bile was rising again in Reyna's throat. Am I about to see this? The Jordanian aimed the pistol at the back of Salma's dark head. Percy held his hand out to the side, parallel to the ground. The Jordanian did not pull the trigger. Percy reached forward and placed a hand on the tape over Muammar's mouth. "Do you wish to talk now, habibi?" He removed the tape.

Muammar was shaking with rage. Internally he was having to choose between his religion and his family. "Fuck. You. Habibi." Percy nodded slowly as he replaced the tape.

"No," whispered Reyna. Percy looked up at her, his lips pursed in a slight sadness. His eyes did not match the expression though, the eyes flashed with the fire and warning Don't say a word. The Jordanian on the screen thumbed back the hammer to the pistol.

"La. Shwyt, shwyt." The Jordanian nodded solemnly and holstered the pistol. Reyna felt the bile rising again. She could not speak Arabic, but knew there was no way the command could be good for Muammar Al-Abbas's family. It was that lack of knowledge that prevented her from knowing Percy had just ordered the Jordanians to conduct their execution "Slowly, slowly," piecemeal even. The Jordanian secret servant pulled a loop of nylon rope from behind him. He put it around Salma's neck. And slowly he began to tighten it. She turned away from the screen and coughed. The burn in the back of her throat told her how close to being sick she currently was.

"Shwyt, shwyt, habibi." Repeated Percy. On the screen Salma's face was beginning to turn purple, as ropes were placed around the throats of the two girls. Muammar was screaming into the tape over his mouth as Salma attempted to kick and claw her way without effect away from her killer. Her eyes were bulging from their sockets. The girls' ropes had not been tightened, but Reyna knew in the pit of her stomach that Percy would make them kill the girls one at a time. Tears began to stream down Muammar's cheeks. His body was shaking in sobs. His wife's was shaking from lack of oxygen. Percy held out his hand. The Jordanian did not loosen the rope, but neither did he continue to tighten it. Percy reached forward and pulled the tape from Muammar's mouth.

"Allah forgive me. It's Maslahat." Reyna stopped breathing. Her Marines were there. Her eyes widened.

"How many, habibi?" Percy slapped Muammar across the face with the answer. It was not a slap to cause pain, it was the same from many Arabs to their unruly relative, "Focus habibi, focus."

"Twelve." Percy slapped him again. "Fifteen." Percy stood and looked down on the broken man. As always he sounded like the man's caring uncle when he spoke.

"I do not know if Allah will forgive you, habibi, but at least you're not asking for your daughters'." The rope around Salma's neck was removed, the telltales of rope burn and bruising were left behind. Next to her the girls' ropes were removed as well. Reyna let out the breath she had been holding and watched Percy put the tape across Muammar's mouth again and the bag over his head.

He turned to the microphone on his tablet and spoke to the Jordanians. Reyna never knew what he said to them. Had she known, the bile she had been keeping down would have escaped. "Keep them, we may need to motivate him again. And bring in the degenerates, I know you have people that care nothing about their age, high or low."

Colonel Ibraham Tariq spoke from off-screen. "We are not those men, Percy, once upon a time, neither were you." He ended the call. Have I sunk so low? Thought Percy remorsefully.

Percy Keane left the room and stopped on the landing, Reyna followed. He pulled out his government phone and tapped the screen a number of times before raising it to his ear.

"We have the target. Captured soldiers are at Maslahat… I'd take his word for it." He severed the connection, but dialed another number before she could speak.

"Boss, Muammar Al-Abbas is taped to a chair here with me... Recommend no prosecution… Copy that ma'am." The second call ended. Percy looked over at Reyna and then walked into the room again. He drew the Glock and fired a round through Muammar's forehead.

"Recovery team will be here in fifteen minutes." The two of them were seated on the wooden stools that served as kitchen chairs on the first floor of the building Reyna was calling the torture house in her mind. She had an untouched bottle of water he had offered her in front of her. He was finishing a second beer. The Greek fire eyes caught her dark ones.

Langley, VA, 1028 Local, 29 August 2021

Only years later would Reyna learn that the family being threatened by Percy and the Jordanians was a second family. That his first wife had run from an increasing extremist husband with their daughter. The daughter who stood in front of her. The daughter that Reyna had never admitted to that she had watched her father die.

A/N: Clearly Percy has a dark streak in this. As is mentioned I decided that Athena, more due to her strategically logical decision to have an asset willing to do whatever necessary than anything else, "created" this. Yes I killed off Calypso without really having her here at all, but frankly it allowed me to develop the backstory for Percy's darkness and alleviated the need to force a Leo and her storyline. Next chapter will return more closely to the problem at hand. This one mostly shows the background.