A light dawned in Cisco's eyes and he started forward, taking a seat behind one of their monitors. "What if he didn't have to?"

"What?" Hazel asked.

"If I could make something I can latch onto and send it into the Speed Force," Cisco explained, "then I can pull them both back out."

The demigods, myself included, nodded, unwilling to voice our doubts. What if there was no one left to get out?

Joe stopped his mad pacing. "How are you going to get it into the speedforce though? I thought only speedsters could get into it."

"As far as we know, yes," Cisco answered. "That's why we're going to call one."

Caitlin seemed to realize who he was talking about. "You wanna call Jay over here?"

"Exactly."

Twenty minutes later, we were standing in the presence of yet another speedster. Apparently, there was just an endless supply of them.

"Seriously," Jason remarked, "how do you keep coming up with these people? Seems pretty convenient to me."

"Yeah, well, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth," Caitlin sighed. "He's here to help."

"Absolutely," Jay agreed. "Anything I can do."

Cisco handed him a device. That was another thing they seemed to have in endless supply: extremely useful and specific gadgets. "Alright, put this on." Jay did so. "Barry and Wally are trapped somewhere in the Speed Force. We need you to go in and lead them back. This is like our fishing line. It'll let us pull you back when you're ready."

Jay raised an eyebrow. "How do I let you know when I'm ready?"

"Push this button," Cisco said, gesturing to a sizable red button on top of the device.

"Oh. That makes sense."

"Okay, bye!" I said cheerfully.

Jay waved solemnly and jumped right into the swirling vortex that was waiting for him.

"That was fast," Frank muttered. "We didn't even get to introduce ourselves."

Joe rubbed a hand over his face. "This had better work."

"It will," Iris reassured him, putting a hand on his arm. "It has to."

Hazel frowned. "Do we have any idea how long this will take? It should be faster than Barry's mission, right?"

"We don't know," Caitlin confessed. "Time passes differently in the Speed Force, but we still don't know what happened to Barry. For all we know, it could take twice as long."

"We shouldn't focus on that right now," Iris interjected briskly. She tucked her hair behind her ear and crossed her arms. "There's nothing else we can do for now; we just have to hope for the best. Right now, let's focus on Savitar."

"Do we really want to focus on Savitar?" Julian muttered. Iris glared at him. "I mean, he's Barry," Julian continued. "There's no way it could be anyone else, is there?"

"We should give you guys some time alone," Annabeth cut in. "Come on guys. Let's go get some food."

We left Team Flash behind to get some lunch. While we ate, I explained the full situation to my friends. After that, we just ate in silence. We were all preoccupied with one thing or another, but most of it came down to Team Flash's situation. We knew what it was like to face odds that seemed insurmountable and had a lot of sympathy for them.

That was when the chaos began.

Someone blew past Leo's chair, jostling Leo's shoulder as they went.

"Sorry!" they called over their shoulder.

Leo shrugged. "No problem, Jason."

"What?" Jason asked.

We all swiveled to look at Jason, who was still seated at our table and then back to the kid that had run past us.

"No frickin' way," I breathed. "It's your doppelganger."

Sure enough, Jason's double was running deeper into the mall, getting farther and farther away from the food court we were seated in.

We all craned to look at Jason's doppelganger, but were unable to catch a good look, as we were knocked to the floor a moment later.

Nico sat up, muttering, "What the Hades…?"

It was only then that we saw the Nemean Lion bounding down the hallways after Jason's doppelganger.

We glanced at each other briefly, and took after the beast as one. Everyone drew their weapons and prepared for a fight.

"Did it follow us here?" Piper asked out loud as we were running.

"No way," Annabeth answered. "There's no way."

"Anyone else notice how it was literally on top of us and it completely ignored us?" Frank asked. "What was that about?"

We fought to keep the lion in our sights, chasing it through the crowded hallways. As we did so, I noticed something strange.

I tapped Annabeth's arm and pointed at the people we were passing. "Look."

She narrowed her eyes at them for a moment before noticing the same thing. "They look like they're being influenced by the Mist." She frowned at me. "That shouldn't be possible. The gods don't exist here."

"Or," I started, "just not our gods."

The eight of us came to a grinding halt as the Nemean Lion cornered its prey. Jason's doppelganger was evading the lion's jaws with elaborate flips and turns, clearly aided by some kind of power.

Now that we finally got a good look at him, there was absolutely no doubt it was Jason's doppelganger.

"This is weird," Jason muttered, eyes fixed on the doppelganger.

"Yeah, no kidding," Hazel agreed.

Piper shifted Katoptris in her grasp. "Come on, Let's help him finish this thing."

As we moved into position, I shouted, "The mouth is vulnerable!"

"And not much else," Annabeth added.

Jason's doppelganger was clearly beginning to tire by the time we had gotten over our surprise enough to step in, but we were a powerful team when all of us worked together.

Jason, Nico, and Hazel immediately moved to distracting the lion, easily fending off the big cat's claws with their swords. Piper and Frank went so far as to climb on the thing's back, with Frank transforming into a bobcat and hooking his claws into the lion's fur.

Jason's doppelganger seemed completely taken aback. He was seated on the tile floor, gaping up at us as we fought.

As Annabeth and I joined the fray, the lion began storming around the room wildly, trying to get rid of the nuisances. Out of the corner of my mind, I saw Leo drag the doppelganger out of the beast's path.

Piper stabbed it in the eye and gracefully dismounted, if you can call leaping off the back of a giant lion dismounting. The lion roared angrily, opening its mouth good and wide. We all took advantage of it, throwing our weapons directly into the beast's maw. Leo blasted it with fire from his position, and the lion finally disintegrated into golden dust.

The rest of us joined Leo by Jason's doppelganger and looked down at him.

"Thanks for that," the doppelganger said as he stood. "My sword bounced off the thing a ways back." When he finally looked up, his eyes locked on Jason and his face paled. "Who the hell are you guys?"

I laughed. "Kind of a long story."

Jason's doppelganger - or Jace, as he insisted we call him - ran a hand through his hair. "You're from another dimension?" He laughed incredulously. "I guess that's no crazier than everything else I've seen."

"Exactly," Jason agreed.

The two locked eyes and stared at each other, each one still weirded out by the other's presence.

Frank sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "If it's just the Romans on this earth, where do you guys hole up?"

Jace frowned. "Hole up?"

"Yeah," Leo said. "Where's home base? New Rome?"

"New Rome? There's no such thing. I've mostly been on the streets with a small group of other demigods. That's what most of us do. We've run into a couple other groups over the years, but no one really trusts each other."

Nico raised his eyebrows. "None of you have a trainer? Or a camp, or anything?"

Jace shook his head. "I mean, we have Lupa, but she basically just trains us and cuts us loose. That's it."

We told him about Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter, and his face took on a wistful expression.

"I wish we had something like that," he sighed, "but I don't think it's going to happen. We're all too wary of one another."

Piper looked up. "We could help you build one."

The rest of our group stared at her.

"We could," she insisted. "We may not have done it before, but if nothing else we'll annoy the gods until they help us do it."

Jace's expression became very hopeful.

"It wouldn't be perfect at first," Piper continued, warming up to the idea. "I doubt people would suddenly flock in, but it would make this world better for younger generations."

I thought about it. These demigods definitely deserved to have a place where they felt safe. And the eight of us could help them; plus it would give us time to work on controlling our powers.

On the other hand, what about Barry and Team Flash? We couldn't just take off and leave them behind...could we?

Annabeth seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "We can't promise anything right this second. Is there some way we can contact you?"

Jace gave us an address we could meet him at when we made a decision.

As he was doing so, my phone began to buzz in my pocket. While the others were talking, I picked it up and answered.

"Hello?"

"Percy?" It was Cisco.

"Hey, what's up? We're almost done here, but you're not gonna believe-"

"How soon can you get back here?" It was only then I realized how freaked he sounded.

"Pretty soon. Why?"

"Something's coming through the breach. We don't know if it's Barry or something else."

I nodded. "Okay. We're on our way." I hung up. "Guys?" They turned to look at me. "We need to go. Right now." I offered my hand to Jace for a handshake. "See you around man."

The others said goodbye, and we hightailed it back to STAR Labs.