Michael
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Bianca kept close to Zoe the next morning. A strange sensation bubbled up in my chest. I couldn't tell what it was.

Thalia was acting odd, too. She kept blinking, like the morning sunlight hurt her eyes. When I asked her about it, she just waved me off.

"Maybe they just don't like mornings," Killian offered after Thalia stalked towards the other two girls. "Must be a girl thing."

"Remember who you're talking to."

"Oh! Right. I always forget until you start talking. It's hard to tell."

"You're telling me." I shook my head. "Come on, let's follow them."

A feeling of dread followed our party as we entered the junkyard. Piles of metal objects glinted in the moonlight: broken heads of bronze horses, metal legs from human statues, smashed chariots, tons of shields and swords and other weapons, along with more modern stuff, like cars that gleamed gold and silver, refrigerators, washing machines, and computer monitors.

"Whoa," Killian said. "That stuff... some of it looks like real gold."

"It is," Thalia said grimly. "Don't touch anything. Please."

"Okay, but if I trip over something-"

"Watch your step."

"Many things are here for a reason," Zoe said. "Anything thrown away in this junkyard must stay in this yard. It is defective. Or cursed."

We started picking our way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever, and if it hadn't been for the rising sun, we would've gotten lost. All the hills pretty much looked the same.

I'd like to say we left the stuff alone, but there was too much cool junk not to check out some of it. I found an electric guitar shaped like Apollo's lyre that was so sweet I had to pick it up. Killian found a broken tree made out of metal. It had been chopped to pieces, but some of the branches still had golden birds in them, and they whirred around when Killian picked them up, trying to flap their wings.

Finally, we saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mile ahead of us, the lights of a highway stretching through the desert. But between us and the road...

"What is that?" I gasped.

Ahead of us was a hill much bigger and longer than the others. It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. At one end of the mesa was a row of ten thick metal columns, wedged tightly together.

Bianca paled. "They look like—"

"Toes," Killian said.

I nodded. "Really, really large toes."

Zoe and Thalia exchanged nervous looks.

"Let's go around," Thalia said. "Far around."

"But the road is right over there," I protested. "Quicker to climb over."

Ping.

Thalia hefted her spear and Zoe drew her bow, but then I realized it was only Killian. He had thrown a piece of scrap metal at the toes and hit one, making a deep echo, as if the column were hollow.

"Why did you do that?" Zoe demanded.

Killian cringed. "I don't know. I, uh, don't like fake feet?"

"Come on." Thalia looked at me. "Around."

I didn't argue. The toes were starting to freak me out, too. I mean, who sculpts ten-feet tall metal toes and sticks them in a junkyard?

After several minutes of walking, we finally stepped onto the highway, an abandoned but well-lit stretch of black asphalt.

"We made it out," Zoe said. "Thank the gods."

But apparently the gods didn't want to be thanked. At that moment, I heard a sound like a thousand trash compactors crushing metal.

I whirled around. Behind us, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and I realized why they looked like toes. They were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall—a skyscraper with legs and arms. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. He looked down at us, and his face was deformed. The left side was partially melted off. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.

"Talos!" Zoe gasped.

"Who—who's Talos?" I stuttered.

"One of Hephaestus's creations," Thalia said. "But that can't be the original. It's too small. A prototype, maybe. A defective model."

The metal giant didn't like the word defective.

He moved one hand to his sword belt and drew his weapon. The sound of it coming out of its sheath was horrible, metal screeching against metal. The blade was a hundred feet long, easy. It looked rusty and dull, but I didn't figure that mattered. Getting hit with that thing would be like getting hit with a battleship.

"Someone took something," Zoe said. "Who took something?"

She stared accusingly at me.

"Why the fuck would it be me?" I demanded. "That place was fucking freaky."

"Uh," Killian said, but it sounded more like a squeak. We all whirled on him. In his hand was a pink glass hairpin that looked like a hairpin. "Sorry?"

"Sorry?" Zoe roared, but didn't get any time to rip into him because the giant defective Talos took one step toward us, closing half the distance and making the ground shake.

"Run!" Thalia yelled.

Great advice, except that it was hopeless. At a leisurely stroll, this thing could outdistance us easily.

We split up. Thalia drew her shield and held it up as she ran down the highway. The giant swung his sword and took out a row of power lines, which exploded in sparks and scattered across Thalia's path.

Zoe's arrows whistled toward the creature's face but shattered harmlessly against the metal. Killian bounded up a mountain of metal like a satyr.

Bianca and I ended up next to each other, hiding behind a broken chariot.

"It's happening again," she whispered under her breath. Her face was whiter than paper. "It's all the same."

"What's all the same?" I asked, but didn't get to hear her answer.

I heard a massive creaking noise, and a shadow blotted out the sky.

"¡Mueves!" I tore down the hill, Bianca right behind me, as the giant's foot smashed a crater in the ground where we'd been hiding.

"Hey, Talos!" Killian yelled, but the monster raised his sword, looking down at Bianca and me.

Killian threw something-a pipe, maybe- and it hit Talos with little more than a tink. It seemed to do the trick as Talos whirled around, creaking and grinding. Killian had bought us a few seconds.

It stabbed its sword into a junk hill, missing Killian by a few feet, but scrap metal made an avalanche over him, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

"No!" Thalia yelled. She pointed her spear, and a blue arc of lightning shot out, hitting the monster in his rusty knee, which buckled. The giant collapsed, but immediately started to rise again. It was hard to tell if it could feel anything. There weren't any emotions in its half melted face, but I got the sense that it was about as ticked off as a twenty-story-tall metal warrior could be.

He raised his foot to stomp and I saw that his sole was treaded like the bottom of a sneaker. There was a hole in his heel, like a large manhole, and there were red words painted around it, which I deciphered only after the foot came down: FOR MAINTENANCE ONLY.

"Crazy-idea time," I said.

Bianca looked at me nervously. "Anything."

I told her about the maintenance hatch. "There may be a way to control the thing. Switches or something. I'm going to get inside."

"How? You'll have to stand under its foot! You'll be crushed."

"Distract it," I said. "I'll just have to time it right."

Bianca's jaw tightened. "No. I'll go."

"You can't. You're new at this! You'll die."

"It's my destiny," she said. "This is what happened last time, and it is what will happen this time. If...if anything happens, tell Nico I'm sorry."

"Bianca, no!"

But she wasn't waiting for me. She charged at the monster's left foot.

Thalia had its attention for the moment. She'd learned that the giant was big but slow. If you could stay close to it and not get smashed, you could run around it and stay alive. At least, it was working so far.

Bianca got right next to the giant's foot, trying to balance herself on the metal scraps that swayed and shifted with his weight.

Zoe screamed, "What are you doing?"

"Get it to raise its foot!" she said.

Zoe's face was one of horror, but she shot an arrow toward the monster's face and it flew straight into one nostril. The giant straightened and shook its head.

"Hey, Junk Boy!" I yelled. "Down here."

I ran up to its big toe and stabbed it with a quickly-formed ice sword. The blade cut a gash in the bronze.

Unfortunately, my plan worked. Talos looked down at me and raised his foot to squash me like a bug. I didn't see what Bianca was doing. I had to turn and run. The foot came down about two inches behind me and I was knocked into the air. I hit something hard and sat up, dazed. I'd been thrown into an Olympus-Air refrigerator.

The monster was about to finish me off, but Killian somehow dug himself out of the junk pile. He threw balls of fire frantically. The monster turned. Killian should've run, but he must've been too exhausted from the effort. He took two steps, fell, and didn't get back up.

"Killian!" Thalia and I both ran toward him, but I knew we'd be too late.

The monster raised his sword to smash Killian. Then he froze.

Talos cocked his head to one side, like he was hearing strange new music. He started moving his arms and legs in weird ways, doing the Funky Chicken. Then he made a fist and punched himself in the face.

"Go, Bianca!" I yelled.

Thalia looked horrified. "She is inside?"

The monster staggered around, and I realized we were still in danger. Thalia and I grabbed Killian and ran with him toward the highway. Zoe was already ahead of us. She yelled, "How will Bianca get out?"

The giant hit itself in the head again and dropped his sword. A shudder ran through his whole body and he staggered toward the power lines.

"Look out!" I yelled, but it was too late.

The giant's ankle snared the lines, and blue flickers of electricity shot up his body. I hoped the inside was insulated. I had no idea what was going on in there. The giant careened back into the junkyard, and his right hand fell off, landing in the scrap metal with a horrible CLANG!

His left arm came loose, too. He was falling apart at the joints.

Talos began to run.

"Wait!" Zoe yelled. We ran after him, but there was no way we could keep up. Pieces of the robot kept falling off, getting in our way.

"No!" I screamed. My heart was in my chest. I couldn't see anything but Talos falling apart.

This is what Percy meant, I thought. Avoid the junkyard, he said. Don't lose her.

I wasn't going to lose her now that I found her again!

In a burst of energy, I screamed with everything I had. The temperature dropped. Frost crawled up my arms and legs. Creaks and screeches echoed across the barren land.

Then, everything was quiet.

I opened my eyes to see a winter version of the junkyard. Everything was frozen over. Metal was split apart by the power of the ice.

Talos was frozen in time as he fell apart. His now frozen head had fallen off and was being held up by ice twenty some off feet above the ground.

Zoe and Thalia were screaming Bianca's name. They climbed inside the hollow pieces of Talos, slipping on ice. Killian helped me over to the wreckage. That burst of power had taken everything I had in me.

I glanced up at Talos. He should thaw in no time, but I wasn't sure. That fact that my ice wasn't melting in the hot sun, which was already making me sweat...or was that just me? Was I...was I overheating?

I let myself breath for a moment. Mist swirled in front of me. I let myself relax.

My eyes shot open. She's...

"Michael?" Killian said carefully as I pushed myself to my feet. I stumbled over scraps of metal. "Michael, wait! You're going to hurt yourself!"

"Don't stop me," I growled.

"What is he doing?" Zoe asked from above. I heard her drop down next to Killian.

"I don't know. He was sitting here, but then he suddenly stood up and started walking away."

"Michael," Thalia called.

"Don't!" I snapped. I kicked aside some bits of bronze. "Just...don't."

She's still...

I saw a small pile of bronze scraps. I fell to my knees in front of it and started pushing them away.

She's still...

Zoe kneeled next to me. She laid a hand on my arm. "Michael, I'm sorry. She's..." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm afraid she's-"

I grabbed her hand, stopping her in her tracks. I guided it to an open area in the pile of rubble, where you could see nothing but the ground. I pressed her hand to the opening and her eyes flew open.

"She's here!" she exclaimed. "She's here!"

She helped me push aside the rest of the rubble. We couldn't see her body-it was invisible. A power of hers?

What we could see was a pool of blood, but Zoe could tell it wasn't from a puncture wound.

"It's her left arm," she said, feeling around the wound. "It's-It's gone. But!" She felt around before placing two fingers where I assumed Bianca's neck was. "She's alive! Thank Artemis, she's alive. Killian! Come here! Immediately!"

Killian stumbled over, nearly tripping himself as he hurried. He looked green at the sight of blood but got down next to Zoe.

"Heat up thy hands," Zoe told him, grabbing them. "I know this will feel sickening, but please-please, do not let go. Michael's ice slowed the bleeding, but we need to stop it completely without giving her frostbite."

I grabbed a small bronze trash can-type thing and put it in front of him.

"Here," I said. "For you to throw up into."

He nodded his thanks.

He closed his eyes as Zoe guided his hands to Bianca's missing arm. He grimaced when they were placed against the blood. He tried to hold it in, but, as I predicted, he leaned into the can and retched.

"Heat, Killian," Zoe urged. "Heat."

His hands began to glow orange. Zoe screwed up her face in pain but she didn't remove her hands from his. Steam rose up and the ugly smell of burning flesh filled our noses, but Zoe didn't let Killian let up until a few minutes had passed.

Every second was agonizing. Zoe said Bianca was alive, but for how much longer? When could we get her medical attention and not this improvised hodgepodge? Will she be grateful we saved her? Or will she resent us for making her live with one arm?

Finally, Zoe pulled Killian's hands away. He grabbed the can I was holding and threw up another time, turning away from us. Zoe felt around again and placed two fingers. We held our breath.

Zoe sighed. "She's still alive. We'll have to get her wound seen to as soon as we can. We've stopped the bleeding, but cauterizing a wound can leave it more susceptible to bacteria."

Thalia laughed in relief. "Thank the gods. I thought..." She didn't finish.

I looked up as she placed her hand on my shoulder. "How did you know where she was?"

"I...I don't know," I admitted. "I just...I was trying to calm my body after doing this." I gestured to all the ice. "Then I felt...I don't know what I felt. Her? The ice on her body? All I know is that I knew she was over here, even if we couldn't see her."

"I'm just happy you found her before it was too late," Thalia said.

"Yeah," Killian croaked. "Me too."

Zoe rubbed his back. "You were very brave, Killian. I cannot thank you enough for what you just did."

"Just don't make me do that again anytime soon."

Zoe smiled. "I will try my best."

"Uh, guys?" My vision began to swim. "Is it...Does anyone else see green?"

I fell forward and everything went black.