— Code Blue —

Since the old Lombardi Building had been waylaid by the Avengers, we were forced to move into the backup building that resided in an area just outside the city. It had the same design, the same floor plan, and had been built for the exact reason that it was used. The backup was there as an insurance policy just in case something happened to the original.

I knew that Jason was going to have a heart attack when I presented him with what I had just found out.

"We have a problem," I began, and he turned around in his swivel chair.

"Let me guess. You caused it?"

It took everything in me not to punch him in the face. The only thing holding me back was my memory of the gun he kept in his desk drawer.

"No, I'm just at a loss as to how to fix it. The entire building is on the border of anarchy because of the lightning."

Red lightning bolts had begun to appear on the wrists of the men working in the Lombardi Building, and we had yet to figure out why.

"If there was lightning, I would know about it. It either comes from me or… you-know-who."

I did know who.

"If we don't get this under control right now, some people are going to die. They're going to die and leave their blood on your hands," I chastised him, trying to bring him a reality check that was entirely too late. Nothing I could say was going to change his careless and ignorant mindset, but I owed it to myself and to everyone else to try. He listened to me more than anyone else, and rightfully so.

"It'll blow over. They'll figure it out."

"No, Jason, they won't. Your thick skull acts as an intelligence shield because nothing with credence ever gets through it. Listen to me. While you're sitting up here, throwing foam balls against the walls of your secluded corner office, Kane Thorin is downstairs tied upside down and about to get his throat slit. But since the problem will blow over, I'll go sit in my office and play with things on my desk since it doesn't matter."

I stared him defiantly in the eyes, daring him to say something idiotic. He swallowed heavily, trying to avert his eyes from mine. He stayed silent, doing nothing for a few painful moments.

When he looked up and met my eyes, his eyes were a furious, stormy gray.

"Why?" he asked, which was his version of an intelligent question.

"Because he doesn't have the red lightning. He has something different. From what I've heard, it's something blue."

Lombardi took a deep breath and stood from his chair, striding past me and down the hallway.

"What do they mean?"

"I don't know," I answered, opening the door to the stairwell.

"Just take the elevator," he commanded, glaring at me like I was an idiot.

"Stairs are faster unless you're just too lazy."

He rolled his eyes and accompanied me down the stairs. When I flung open the door leading to the room where Kane was being attacked, the room was in utter chaos. I didn't know why they were acting this way toward him when none of them knew what the markings symbolized. There had been an immediate unexplained hostility as soon as someone noticed the difference.

I had covered the mark forming on my wrist because it would've gotten me killed. It was an anomaly from everyone else's.

I had the lightning bolt, but only half of it. The other half was a blue wave. Above the lightning half, there was a gold crown, but not over the wave half. I didn't know what that meant and it scared me.

"How do we stop it?" Lombardi asked me, and I shrugged.

"All you, boss man."

I sauntered away, going back upstairs to my office. I did something I told myself I'd never do.

I dialed the number in my phone; the number I wasn't supposed to have using the phone I was supposed to get rid of.

There were a few rings that I heard before a silence.

"H- hello?"

The voice on the other end was the one I was looking for.

"Hey, um… Buck, James, whatever you want me to call you."

"Percy… he can kill us both for this."

"I know. Listen, please. I started an… uprising in a room downstairs, and then I locked Lombardi in it. You don't have a lot of time to get over here before he notices that something is wrong. Hurry."

I hung up, not giving him a chance to question me. I sat back, worrying about whether or not he would show.

He was a reliable man, so he did show eventually.

"What do you need?"

"Everyone in the building is against Thorin because of the mark on his wrist. They're going to kill him," I divulged. He visibly straightened at the mention of the marks.

"The marks. What are they?" he asked, and I scoffed.

"As if you know what they mean. But the majority have a red lightning bolt. The only problem is that Thorin has a blue wave, and they were plotting to hang him upside down from a balcony and slit his throat."

His face paled, but the reason was unbeknownst to me. It could have been from my depiction of the marks or my description of the plot against Thorin, I wasn't sure.

"Okay. So what do you want from me?"

I sucked in a deep breath, glancing around the office nervously. It took a lot of guts to do what I was about to do, and any sane person would flip their lid if I asked them what I was about to ask my brother.

"Get on our side. You know you're going to lose if you go against us, so why fight it? I'm your brother. I know you've got a foot on both sides of the line, but sooner rather than later you're going to have to choose. You can't fake working here forever, because I can see right through you and have you killed anytime I want."

His expression remained unreadable, impossible to decipher. He glared at me, looking at me like I had just tried to stab his dog. He shook his head and looked down to the floor, then back up to me.

"I can't. I can't leave them," he replied, which was the answer I knew that I'd get. Regardless, it made me want to punch him in the face.

"Then you side with them and hurt someone that matters to you, just like you've always done."

The line was intended to cut deep, and by the slight change in his face, I judged that it did.

"You keep believing that," he fired back. "I'll be watching the news because it can't be long until it all catches up with you."

He stood and walked out of my office, leaving me alone in the thoughts of what I had just done. It was something I had to do, because if I didn't then I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that I hadn't tried to get him to understand our perspective.

His last words unsettled me, leaving me unnerved to the point where I checked the news every ten minutes to look for myself.

I was paranoid.

I stayed on the upper floors of the building for the rest of the day, not daring to venture to the lower floors where the fights and blow-ups had been happening. I would have gotten caught in the middle of one at any given time, starting for no particular reason at all.

I thought more on what I had said to Bucky, and I began to wonder if I had gone about it the correct way. There was a feeling in the back of my mind that I had said something wrong or approached it terribly, but I wasn't going to call him and play the scared little brother card to get his sympathy. I wasn't going to call him at all, in fact, so I was going to leave him to do whatever he wanted to with what I had told him.

I was annoyed with his emotionless face. It came to mind for the rest of the day, leaving me unable to focus on anything that I should have been. I couldn't tell if I had gotten through to him or if I had just made him outright angry. He had a certain stoic expression that let you know he wasn't impressed, and that look was the one that haunted me for the rest of the day.

In my office cabinet, I found bottles of permanent red and gold ink. I took one of the vintage fountain pens from my desk, courtesy of Lombardi, and dipped the tip in the bottle of ink. I covered the wave, doing my best to outline the other half of the lightning bolt as symmetrically as I could. Once it was finished, I drew the other half of the crown and took the baby powder from the cabinet intended for creating fake tattoos, then covered the newly fabricated half of the lightning bolt on my wrist. I applied hairspray to it, using what I had in my bathroom because I was meticulous about my hair.

After rinsing the hairspray and baby powder, the drawing became semipermanent; it would last about a month or so, long enough for whatever was going on to blow over and become obsolete.

I got a phone call from Chiron, but I watched my phone ring and go to voicemail. The sound of his voice reminded me of a time when I could sit around the campfire and sing songs without any other responsibilities.

Those were the good old days.

But I had changed, and that wasn't an option anymore.

Lombardi stormed into my office, small sparks of lightning coming from his hands.

"What do you have?" he demanded, and I didn't know what he was talking about.

"A lot of blood on my hands, black Jordans, a corner office? What are you talking about?"

"Your wrist, idiot," he reprimanded me and yanked his sleeve up to reveal his wrist. He had a whole red bolt, but no crown. "Show me."

I uncovered my wrist, revealing the tattoo to Lombardi.

"Why do you get a crown?" he questioned, and I gave him a shrug filled with the most attitude I could muster.

"I don't even know what these are for!"

He held his hands up and walked backward out of my office. "Fine. Chill."

I opened the Code Blue project folder on my computer and looked through it to see if there was anything that could get me out of that building.

Surprisingly, there was a new mission awaiting me.

A text came through on my phone, and when I saw who sent it I almost ignored it. I looked into it, though, out of arising problems in the building.

Not out of weakness.

Bucky's first text would have been easily ignored:

Don't go on that mission.

It was the one that followed that made my blood run cold.

Please, Percy, they'll kill you. They'll rip you limb from limb, literally, and make sure you survive to feel it all. If you want to live, you'll tell Lombardi that you won't take that mission.

I didn't care if I lived or died.

In my mind, it would've been a cool way to go out, defending what was right and what I believed in.

I sounded like Bucky. I was working on it.

I ignored his text completely. I knew that I had no other choices, because since my mom and Paul-

I didn't dare to take myself down that rabbit trail. They had died and I had needed a way to deal with it, so I chose the violent route that involved murder, sociopaths, racketeering, and laundering.

It was going great.

I had made so many new acquaintances, there wasn't a single person that detested me, and I never thought twice about going back to what I had before.

Sarcasm intended.

Every day, I knew that I had made the wrong choice. Especially after Bucky showed up in his perfectly pressed, tailored, and starched suit that made him look like the King of the World.

It wasn't fair. He was given immediate seniority, nearly in charge of Lombardi at that point. I guess what happened so many years ago was still important, even if he was working counterproductively under everyone else's noses. It wasn't fair that he could work his way in so quickly and immediately take advantage of people. He was my brother and I couldn't change that, but I at least wanted him to figure out that I could turn him in at any moment and ruin him.

I knew about the war that was creeping ever-closer, which didn't calm my nerves any. I knew that the collection of idiots in the Lombardi Building could never win a war against the Avengers, and that was if the other side didn't have any help. They would have help, though, which hindered our chances even further.

All of a sudden, a crazed man burst through my doors.

"Jackson, we've got a problem. They're trying to kill Lombardi."

"Who?" I asked, immediately rising from my chair to meet him halfway across my office.

"The riot groups downstairs," he clarified, and I nodded.

"Show me."

He led me down a couple of long corridors that I didn't recognize, but I didn't think anything of it since I hadn't worked in the building as long as everyone else had. One final turn and he pushed a metal door open, leading into a small storage closet. The closet was empty except for a few rusted metal shelves that probably hadn't been used in decades.

"Where's Lombardi?" I questioned, and his eyes took on an eerie sea-green glow.

"Percy," he muttered, but the voice wasn't his. It seemed like someone had recorded their voice and played it through the man's mouth. "Why are you doing this?"

I didn't recognize the voice at first, and it scared me.

And then it dawned on me.

Poseidon.

The sea-green eyes, the voice. It all made sense.

"Dad? What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out what you're doing. You don't know the destruction that you'll cause if you stay on the path you're on. I've seen it, and I don't think you would want to."

I considered that for a moment, slightly curious as to what he was alluding to.

I told myself that I didn't know what he was talking about, but, in truth, I knew exactly what destruction I'd cause by staying on my warpath.

After my mom and Paul got blown to unrecognizable pieces in what used to be my house, something snapped inside me that was ugly. It was darker than a shadow, dark like a night sky with the stars hidden behind clouds.

"I don't care. I could kill everyone on this entire planet and it wouldn't change what happened, but it doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to stop. Nothing you can do will change me at this point, so don't waste your breath."

That was a stupid thing to say.

Immortals have unlimited breaths.

With that comment, Poseidon disappeared, leaving no trace of Thorin or himself.

Served him right.

I stormed into the basement, where Lombardi had to have been and scanned every room for any sign of a mutiny. I flung open the last pair of double doors on the bottom floor and found an absolute terror of a scene unfolding before my eyes. Conference tables and chairs were strewn about, suit jackets nearly resurfacing the entirety of the floor.

Amidst the chaos, something caught my eye; Lombardi, hanging upside down from the railing of the balcony. The symmetry of the atrium and the way the light shone on the floor made the entire scene more macabre. Lombardi swung like a pendulum, the light patterns catching on his black and white suit. The gold designs on the domed ceiling of the atrium fit the crazed scene perfectly, making the room feel like the perfect setting for an old-fashioned murder.

"What happened here?" I asked Thorin, and the look in his eyes was a worried one.

"They heard that he was going to try to stop them from killing me, so they shifted their attention over to him."

Lombardi's expression was filled with sheer terror; his eyes were wide, searching the room for any way out. His arms were fastened firmly against his body by a rope tied around his midsection, and his feet were tied together at the ankles to hang him from the upper-level railing.

"JACKSON!" he screamed, his face turning even redder than it had been. Thorin and I looked at each other, unsure of how to react. We would be severely outnumbered; there were nearly two hundred men here, rioting and trying to kill our boss.

At that moment, I knew what I had to do.

There was only one option, and I had to be the one to do it since I would be the one directly affected.

"Hold my jacket," I told Thorin, taking Riptide from my pocket and uncapping it. Thorin's expression was one of confusion and surprise.

I sprinted into the madness, shoving bodies out of my path as I barreled through. A glance at the alcove in the circular room that held a painting told me that I could use it as a foothold to slice the rope holding Lombardi a few feet off the ground.

I vaulted myself off the ledge, jumping up and nearly throwing my hand at the rope. My only hope was that Riptide was strong enough to slice through the half-inch thick rope.

As I hoped, the rope severed cleanly and effectively deposited Lombardi onto the carpeted floor. He was still bound around the ankles and midsection, so he wasn't able to move even if he wanted to.

"Jackson, thank the gods for you. Slice these ropes, will you?"

"I don't think I can do that."

He looked confused, glancing between my eyes and Riptide.

"Why not? What are you going to do instead?"

"I'm going to kill you."

As the terror set into his eyes, his demeanor instantly changed. A thin sheen of sweat broke across his forehead, his eyes looking everywhere but my face.

"You can't do that. I can fire you for insubordination."

"Please. From the floor?"

I held the sword rigidly above his throat, the tip pressing into his skin and leaving an indentation when I pulled it back.

"Don't do this, Jackson. You're better than this."

I laughed, licking my lips and gazing back down at him.

"You're right. I am better. But, for now, I've decided that I need you out of the way to be better. This is where it ends, Grace."

I spit venom into his name, reminding him of where he came from and who he had been.

I brought the sword down on Lombardi's throat, his blood splattering onto my custom cufflinks. They had been a mandatory component of my outfit; one of Lombardi's odd stipulations for his employees.

I held Riptide out from my body, careful to keep the blood from dripping onto any of my clothes. In a hallway bathroom, I rinsed Lombardi's blood down into the sink drain. I turned the sword over, rinsing it clean up to its hilt until the water transitioned from a pink hue to clear.

I capped Riptide, clipping it onto the waistband of my black pants and adjusting my suit jacket over it.

I planted my hands on either side of the sink, looking up at myself in the mirror.

"Well," I said to myself. "That's enough of that."

I'm currently crying myself to sleep because of how irregular my posting schedule is. It's a disaster, I know, and I'm sorry. I'm trying to do better. Summer basketball workouts have started and destroyed my writing motivation.

On another note, I like how this story is turning out and hope others do too!