The sky was beginning to clear up as we leapfrogged our way from street to street. I was pretty sure Nemesis took care of our law enforcement problem, but just to be safe, we hid from patrol cars as they passed and tried our best to look inconspicuous. Which, I admit, was a little difficult considering Tyson was holding a life-size replica of my stepfather like it were a paperweight. The sun was poking through the clouds on the horizon now, long shadows being cast by the skyscrapers around us. If Tyson was getting tired from carrying the statue around the city, he didn't show it, though I could see him become apprehensive whenever sirens wailed by.
He shifted beside me as we hid behind a stack of mattresses, waiting for a few pedestrians to pass. "Are we in trouble?" he whispered.
"No, I don't think so. That was the goddess Nemesis back there. She took care of it for us."
I wasn't sure if Tyson understood anything that just happened. I tried to explain to him that my stepdad had overreacted and called the police when I got to the apartment, but it was a little difficult leaving out the part where I'd turned him to stone and that the statue he was holding actually used to be a person. I didn't know why I was so hesitant to tell him the truth. Maybe I was afraid of what he'd think of me if he knew.
He just stared at me as I stumbled over my words, and I started to wonder if that big eye of his could see right through me.
We were both startled by the sound of a garbage can getting knocked over behind us at the end of the alleyway. I turned, half expecting to see those jerkbag teenagers who were picking on Tyson again, or maybe a pair of cops on our trail, but what I saw instead nearly made me jump out of my skin.
It was a creature with the head of a woman. She had coppery skin and glowing yellow eyes, slitted like a cat's. The rest of her body was coated in thick, golden fur. Slowly, she stalked forward on all fours, her claws scraping dissonantly against the asphalt. We must have looked tasty, because as she eyed us up, she licked her lips and smiled, revealing two long, sharp fangs. Beside me, Tyson whimpered and took a step back.
"Sphinx from 72nd Street," he mumbled. "Big bully."
I cursed under my breath. My stunt with the teenagers must have attracted it. Turns out going back the way we came hadn't been one of my smarter ideas. The monster strutted forward, but made no immediate signs of aggression. Rather than preparing to pounce, it held its head high, its tail waving in the air behind it.
"Perrrrseus Jackson," the sphinx purred. I wasn't sure how it knew my name, but then again, I'd read the sphinx was supposed to be super smart, so I wouldn't have been surprised if it was up-to-date with current events. "Getting into a bit of trouble now, are we? Playing hooky on camp, bullying those poor mortals. Naughty, naughty. Detention for an eternity, I think."
I don't think the sphinx had any idea just how triggering the d-word was to me. I thought about whipping out Riptide and running her through just to shut her up, but then I remembered I had one of the most powerful weapons in the world right inside the cardboard box I was holding. I set it down and went about opening up its flaps. The sphinx just laughed mockingly at me.
"That will not work on me, Son of Poseidon," she said, as if sensing my intentions. "I was carved from stone back in Ancient Egypt, and my sculptors were far more talented than any the world has seen since. Medusa herself could never hope to create anything as beautiful as I. Certainly not that thing." She nodded her head towards my stone-cold stepfather, still hefted over Tyson's shoulder. I was kind of inclined to agree with her.
"How modest of you," I muttered, standing back up.
The sphinx's eyes lit up. "I'm flattered," she said, batting her eyelashes. "But I digress. If you wish to be rid of me, you must first solve my riddle. This one here," she began, pointing at Tyson with a long, curved claw, "has already taken my quiz and failed. Perhaps you are smarter."
Tyson shrunk in on himself. I wondered just how many monsters the guy had to deal with living out on the streets, and the thought made my blood boil. He didn't deserve this. I had to protect him. "Riddle is hard," he said. "Eat you if you get it wrong."
"Class is in session!" the creature announced.
Tyson and I gave each other looks, my hand instinctively reaching into my pocket for my sword-pen. Why did monsters always impersonate teachers?
The sphinx cleared its throat. "Raise your hand if you know the answer! Ahem, what walks on four legs in the morn—"
My hand shot up. Was she serious? This was, like, the oldest riddle in the book. The sphinx's question trailed off, and she looked at me speechlessly.
"Um, Perseus?" she called on me.
"Man. Man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a cane as a third leg when they get old. The answer is man."
The sphinx's eyes widened, and Tyson gaped at me as if I were the most intelligent person he'd ever met.
"How?" the monster wailed. "I didn't even finish the riddle!"
"It was easy," I told her. "You've been telling that same riddle ever since Ancient Greece. I learned about it in my Latin class. Everyone knows the answer to that one by now." I winced. "Except... maybe not Tyson."
The creature stamped her foot. "Urgh! A thousand curses upon Oedipus! Why did he have to tell everybody? It spoils the fun!"
She swatted angrily at the fallen trash can, leaving huge gashes in the metal and spilling junk everywhere. I started to back away, not wanting to get caught in the monster's temper tantrum.
"So… we can go now, right?" I asked. "I solved your riddle."
"No!" she snarled, her features morphing into a scowl. Now she seemed aggressive. She stalked forward slowly, her head low to the ground and lips pulled back into a snarl. "You cheated! But, I am merciful. I won't give you an F if you can answer another question. What is the capital of Georgia?"
My eyebrows furrowed. This was a lot different from her previous question. That riddle was supposed to make you think. This was just random trivia. Either you knew it or you didn't. I tried to remember back to my 4th grade US States class. Georgia. Peaches. Hot. The place the devil went down to.
"Um, Atlanta?" I guessed.
The sphinx's smile widened. "Wrong!" she sang happily. "It's Tbilisi! I was talking about the country Georgia. You failed, so now I get to eat you!"
I had never even heard of a 'tub-a-lee-see', much less knew where it was. I wanted to yell at the sphinx and tell her that her question was stupid and unfair, but I figured she'd probably rather listen to her stomach than me. She pounced at us hungrily.
Riptide was already in my hand. I dove to the side and slashed at the sphinx, but she must have been telling the truth when she said her skin was made of stone. Where I had been expecting a large gash to open up in her side was instead a thin, pale scratch. It didn't even seem to faze her. Tyson managed to jump back in time to avoid the sphinx's claws, but her attention was now focused on him.
I thought I was about to witness my new friend get turned into mince meat, but then he wound the statue of my stepfather around his shoulder like a baseball bat and swung it straight into the sphinx's face, screaming, "BAD KITTY!". She wailed as she was launched a dozen feet into the air and crash landed at the end of the alley.
"Nice one, Tyson!" I said, giving him a thumbs up. He beamed at me.
I was hoping the monster had been taken care of, but the sphinx was back on her feet in seconds.
"My nose!" she cried, her voice nasally. "My nose!"
She had her head to the ground, paws covering her face and eyes frantically searching the ground around her. When she stood back up, I saw that indeed, there was a jagged area on her face where her nose had broken off. She looked almost exactly like the Great Sphinx of Giza that I'd seen in pretty much every history textbook. I quickly scanned the area and found the missing chunk of stone near Tyson's feet. I stooped down and picked it up, casually tossing it into the air and catching it.
"You want your nose back?" I called to the monster.
She stopped her search and turned to me, her eyes zeroing in on the stone I held above my head. She made a strangled noise like "Mmgh!" which I assumed was an affirmative. I gave a pointed look to Tyson, and he seemed to read me.
"Then go long!"
I pitched the nose directly at Tyson, and the Cyclops pulled back on the statue and swung once more, sending the rock flying directly over the apartment building across from us. An out-of-the-park homerun. The sphinx went howling after it.
I let out a sigh of relief and turned to Tyson, who seemed unscathed. I was about to congratulate ourselves for getting out of that fight without a scratch on us, but that wasn't entirely true. The statue of Gabe was starting to crumble. His left arm had been broken off when Tyson slammed it into the sphinx, and cracks were now starting to spread throughout the rest of the body.
"Uh oh," Tyson said.
Before my eyes, the petrified remnants of my stepfather fell to pieces from Tyson's grasp. No, no, no! I needed that statue as proof that I completed my task. Without it, I would… I would have to kill another mortal before the night was over. And I just couldn't do that.
I lunged forward as quickly as I could and managed to catch a bowling-ball sized piece of stone before it could shatter against the ground. I turned it over in my hands and nearly dropped it again when I was met with Gabe's ugly, terrified face.
"Sorry, sorry!" Tyson said, scrambling to pick up the pieces.
I sat on the ground, staring at the stone I held in my hands. Kronos had asked me to bring him a head. He'd never said anything about a full body. "It's okay, big guy. This is all I need."
I gave the head back to Tyson, picked up the other head in the cardboard box, slung my bag around my shoulders, and then we continued on our way.
The stone head was a lot easier to conceal than the stone statue, so we were able to walk out amongst the pedestrians without attracting too much attention. We didn't run into any more cops or monsters the rest of the way to the bay. I thought I was going to have to will the currents to move Tyson through the water, but it turns out he was just as strong a swimmer as me, even with an arm wrapped around Gabe's head. I didn't have to worry about my bag or the cardboard box getting wet thanks to my powers over water.
From there, it was smooth sailing back to the Princess Andromeda. Thankfully, the ship was in the exact same place it was when I left it. Maybe Luke wanted to give me the full twenty four hours before he set out to kill me.
Since I was teleported to the main deck the first time I boarded the ship, I didn't get to see the masthead until now. It was a three-story tall figure of a woman, sculpted to appear chained to the bow of the ship. She was young and beautiful, wearing a white chiton, but her expression was one of absolute terror, not unlike the look permanently etched onto my stepfather's face.
It didn't register in my mind until then that the Princess Andromeda was named after the Ancient Greek princess who had been chained up to be sacrificed to my father. He had sent a sea monster to devour her, but she had been saved by my namesake, Perseus, using the very same weapon on the monster that I now held in a box in my hands: Medusa's head.
I'm not exactly sure what Andromeda did to warrant my father sending a sea monster after her, but I thought it was fitting that I was swimming towards her now, like I was going to save her from the gods once again.
A voice inside my head startled me. "You live there?"
I glanced around, confused, but the only person near me was Tyson, and I knew our voices wouldn't carry underwater.
"What is wrong?" the voice came again. Ok, it was definitely Tyson's voice.
"Did you just speak to me telepathically?" I thought.
"No, I talked to you inside your head. What is tele—telephone-ally?"
"Um, never mind. And yes, I live here. You do now, too."
The ship grew as we got closer, and Tyson marveled at the white hull, brightly lit balconies, and porthole windows. "Pretty," he said. "Like a sea-city."
It was dark by the time we made it to the ship. Getting up the ladder was a little tricky with the box in my hand, but months of practice on the climbing wall at camp paid off and I reached the main deck in no time.
The sky was clear, and a half-moon illuminated the horizon off the port side of the ship. Off the starboard end, I could see the sky in the distance shining with the collective light of New York City. A myriad of stars dotted the blackness above us, and the Milky Way stretched from one end of my vision to the other. Being from the city, it wasn't often I got to see sights like this, and they took my breath away every time I did.
Tyson lumbered up the ladder behind me, the head still firmly tucked underneath his arm. I placed my own cargo down and stuck a hand out to help him up, very nearly plummeting back into the ocean when he grasped it. I pulled with all my might until we both collapsed on the solid floor, panting from the effort of such a long swim.
Except for the calming sounds of the sea and my own labored breathing, the ship was quiet. The holographic guests were nowhere to be found. The only other person on the ship right now would be Luke, and I figured he'd be passed out at this hour.
"Wow," Tyson said as he sat up, his jaw dropping down to his chest. A grin broke across my face as the Cyclops turned in a full circle, admiring the ship as if in a trance. I couldn't blame him; I'd probably had the same dumb expression on my face the day before when Luke first brought me here.
But that grin fell away when my eyes landed on the chunk of stone lying next to him. I remembered with a grimace that my task wasn't completed yet.
I tried to tell myself that the hardest part was over with. Gabe was dead and gone, and now all I had to do was pick up his head, bring it before Kronos' sarcophagus, and then my mini-quest would be completed. But there was something I was dreading, a feeling even worse than the trepidation I felt when I knocked on my stepfather's door.
Tyson hadn't seen what I'd done to Gabe. He didn't know I was a murderer, working to bring down the gods and destroy our father. He had called me a good person earlier, and I didn't want him to be wrong.
But I couldn't hide it forever. I took a deep breath, knowing this conversation needed to be had now. In fact, it probably should have happened as soon as we left my apartment, but the sphinx hadn't allowed for that.
"Hey, Tyson?"
"Yes?" he asked, marveling at the 15-story cabin high rise in front of us.
"There's something I need to tell you," I began awkwardly. "I haven't really been straight with you. I'm not… I'm not as good of a person as you think I am."
His enormous eye fixed on me, wide, innocuous. "What you mean?" he asked.
Why was this so hard to explain? Why did I care about what this… monster thought about me? Was it because he was my half brother? Or was it because when I looked into his eye, all I saw was innocence? Dejectedly, I pointed to the head sitting next to him. "That statue you've been toting around all day—well, it isn't really a statue…"
Tyson blinked. Or winked, rather. I didn't think he was catching on.
"...It's my stepfather. I turned him to stone using Medusa's head," I told him.
Tyson continued to stare blankly. "Yes," he said.
I did a double take and met his gaze, trying to swallow back my surprise. I'd already begun formulating a list of reasons why I did what I did, to try to break it to him in a way he'd understand and wouldn't hate me for. I wasn't expecting that kind of response. Yes? Like, he knew? And he didn't care? Or rather, it was more probable that he just didn't understand completely.
"... as in, I killed him," I explained further. "He's dead now."
Tyson nodded. "Yes," he said again. "Bad man gone. Hurt people, like nasty sphinx. Irene told me. Er, Ne-mah-sis."
Nemesis. I'd nearly forgotten that the two of them had been chatting outside the apartment together while I'd done the deed. Had she told Tyson about what a monster Gabe was?
"Turned him to stone. Not a bad thing," he asserted, and at that moment, I could feel tears springing to my eyes. Cyclopes weren't exactly known for their emotional intelligence, but for some reason, I found myself trusting Tyson's moral compass. And if he wasn't horrified by what I'd done, well, then maybe I had done the right thing after all.
I turned away and stared out at the sea, not wanting him to see me getting emotional. I also wasn't sure how he'd take what I wanted to tell him next.
But I told him anyways.
I told him that I was working for Kronos, and that together, demigods and titans would bring down the gods once and for all. I told him the gods were just like Gabe, always hurting others and neglecting their families, and that the world was better off without them. That we were better off without them.
Tyson was silent for a long time. Eventually, I turned away from the sea and let my gaze rest on him. He wouldn't look at me. He stared at the wooden planks below our feet, and in his downcast eye I could see a myriad of emotions swirling around. I couldn't tell which was winning. Anger, pain, betrayal, longing, denial, reluctance. In the end, it seemed sadness won out. A large, singular tear fell from the center of his eye and fell onto his tattered flannel shirt.
My heart reached out for him. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I said softly. He regarded me with an expression I couldn't read. "If you don't want to stay here, I get it. You can sleep in that bed I promised you, and I'll take you back to New York first thing in the morning."
"No," Tyson asserted. "I stay."
For the second time that night, Tyson surprised me. "You'll—you want to stay?" I asked. "And help fight the gods?"
Tyson's face hardened, his large eye narrowing. He shouldered his way past me and set his hands down on the guard rail, gripping it hard and glaring out at the sea.
Stunned, I stared after him. "Big guy?" I asked uncertainly.
"Daddy is mean," he said. "He… He left me. He left me all by myself, and he never listened to my prayers. I…" His hands tightened around the railing, causing the metal to groan and bend outward. "I will help you. We will crush him!" he roared furiously.
The strength of his voice took me aback, and I realized that as young as he was, Tyson would make a fearsome enemy. Unsure of what to do, I approached him awkwardly and placed a hand on his shoulder, and before I knew it I was enveloped in a bone-crushing hug that expelled all the air from my lungs. I could feel the wetness from Tyson's face soak into my shirt and immediately evaporate.
"I will join you, brother," he said into my shoulder.
"Unf!" I managed to choke out.
Seeming to have noticed my face was the wrong color, Tyson immediately let go. I sat down hard on the ground, gasping for breath.
"Sorry, sorry!"
As my vision began to come back, my eyes fixed on the stone head that had been nearly forgotten next to the ladder. It was rolling back and forth in time to the rocking of the waves. I stumbled over and grabbed it before it could fall overboard.
I let out a sigh of relief. Aside from nearly suffocating, that conversation had gone much better than I'd imagined it would.
"Alright, big guy. Time for you to meet the boss."
Aw, I love writing Tyson. He's so softhearted, but he really wants to impress Percy. It's interesting seeing what Tyson would do for him, even going so far as to turn his back on Poseidon.