Disclaimer: I do not own Rick Riordan, the Percy Jackson books, characters, series, movies, or anything else you may recognize.
Chapter Twenty
Let's Google It
"Yeah, you're all I never knew I needed
And the heart – sometimes it's unclear why it's beating
And, love, if your wings are broken
We can brave through those emotions, too
'Cause I'm gonna stand by you."
"Stand By You" by Rachel Platten
"Google?" Annabeth asked in confusion.
"Trust me, Annie, I know what I'm doing," I told her as I pulled open the doors and walked inside the brightly-colored building. The entire lobby was covered in bright blue, red and yellow, giving it the look of an overenthusiastic pre-school. A lady sat behind the front desk, a phone held up between her shoulder and her ear as she talked to the person on the other end. She saw me and her face lit up with a smile, waving when she saw me.
"Can I put you on hold?" she asked the person on the phone. "Excellent, thank you kindly." She hung up the phone and directed her attention back to us. "Hi there, welcome to Google Atlanta. How can I help you today?"
"I need to see someone," I said, grabbing a piece of note paper from the desk and a pen. I wrote down a single name and handed it to the receptionist. "Here, she should be expecting us."
The lady looked at the piece of paper and her eyes widened a little. She picked up the phone and dialed a long number. "Mhmm…mhmm…yes, two blond young ladies…mhmm…yes…okay, I will let them know." She hung up the phone. "She will see you."
Annabeth gave me a weird look as the receptionist stood and led us down the orange hallways, taking turn after turn. It felt like hours passed as we made our way through the building, taking a few elevator rides along the way, but we finally made it. "You can go right in."
I nudged the door open and a lady sat behind the desk, typing away madly at her computer. I motioned to Annabeth to sit down as I did. The lady had dark hair, darker than then the night, hastily pulled back and held in place with a pencil, and bright blue eyes hidden beneath glasses. The lady continued her work as if we weren't even there, typing things out, quickly writing things down on scratch pieces of paper, and putting pins on the giant map behind her desk. There were already hundreds of pins on the map accompanied by little post-it notes.
"Lady Ichnaea, may we speak with you?" I asked.
The goddess of tracking, Annabeth thought to me. Now I get what you're doing. Thank you.
I nodded and smiled at her, reaching over and giving her hand a squeeze.
"Of course," Ichnaea said, stopping what she was doing and turning to look at us. "Although, I think I already know why you're here, Annabeth Chase and Andromeda le Fay."
I tried not to cringe at the use of my full name.
"Do you know where we're supposed to go?" Annabeth asked.
Ichnaea clucked a little. "Miss Chase, you know that's not my area of expertise. I am a tracker – I can't tell people where to go."
"What about…what about a map?" I asked, looking at the large one on the wall for inspiration. "If you could help us locate a map to the Mark of Athena, then –"
"I like the way you think, Miss le Fay," Ichnaea said, immediately turning her screen to face us. "I've pulled up a map to show you where you can find your map. Hehe! That is just so funny. A map to find a map – how great!" She laughed a little to herself before continuing on. "As you can see, I've zoomed in on Charleston. Many important parts of past civil wars have occurred there."
Civil wars happened in both the mortal world and our world, but in ours, it was always the Greeks against the Romans, as I had recently learned. It made sense that something important to this particular quest would be there.
"Thank you so much, Lay Ichnaea," Annabeth said. "I already have designs in my head for a statue in your honor at Camp Half-Blood."
"Ooh! Make sure I have a map – oh wait, a globe! A globe would look even better!" she said excitedly. Annabeth walked out and I was just about to follow when Ichnaea grabbed my arm. "Annabeth will need this. Don't tell her about it until the time is right, but it's a recommendation letter."
"Why would she –"
"Just trust me. She'll need one."
"Okay. Thank you again for your help."
"I'm not finished yet. You need to go to your grandparent's house. There is something from your mother in the attic that you need to find. It is absolutely imperative that you find it or all will be lost," Ichnaea said.
"What is it?"
"You'll know when you find it," she answered vaguely.
Of course. Couldn't one god or goddess give us a straight answer just once?
"The few of us left with our minds intact are counting on you and the others. Don't let us down."
That was something incredible coming from a goddess, no matter how minor or major she was. "We'll try."
Annabeth and I somehow managed to make our way out of the Google building on our own, and headed back to the ship. "What did Ichnaea say to you when I left?"
"That we need to stop at my grandparents'. Apparently there's something in the attic there that I need to find or – and I quote – 'all will be lost'," I told her/
"What could be at your grandparents' house? They're mortals," Annabeth said.
"Mom wasn't though. And apparently she's the one who left this thing, whatever it is, there for me," I said, watching as the tiny dot that was our ship grew larger and larger as we got closer. "It's weird thinking about her. She always seems to come up, even though she's not here anymore and I've never even met her."
"I know," Annabeth said. "I think she'd be really proud of you."
"I hope you would be, but then again, she gave me this cursed name knowing full well would could happen, so who knows if mother really knows best," I said.
Annabeth gave me a look. "Does that mean you remember?"
I shook my head. "Nope. And I do not want to. Ever."
"Andee, you need to – oh crap. We'll talk about this later. Right now, we need to run," Annabeth said, looking up to the sky. I followed her eye-line and saw a black dot on the horizon. The Romans were approaching.
We started sprinting back to the ship where the others were already waiting. Percy and Frank were covered head-to-toe in tar, and Leo and who I assumed was Hazel were sweating profusely in front of a pile of Celestial bronze.
"You guys noticed the spot as well?" Frank asked.
"No, we decided we could use some more exercise so we sprinted back for fun," I said with a sarcastic look before turning to Leo. "How fast can you get Festus up and running?"
"An hour, at most." Leo was starting to grin like a crazy person – he was definitely in his element.
"Then we should meet in the mess hall in one hour," I told the rest of them. "We all need to get on the same page for this quest."
An hour passed while I kept a close eye on our approaching Roman friends. We were still a very comfortable distance from them, so I wasn't worried at the moment. I was the first person in the mess hall and sat at the head of the table with my dinner sitting in front of me. Annabeth was next, sitting on my left. The others seemed to all come in at the same time and that's when it became awkward.
Percy and Jason both decided they were going to sit next to me.
Yup.
So after sparks flew from Jason's hands, the two stood in front of the chair, glaring at each other before Jason shouldered Percy out of the way and sat in the chair to my right. Percy looked like he was going to do something – pull the chair out from under him, fight him, maybe – but instead, walked around and sat next to Annabeth. Annabeth immediately leaned over and started whispering to him furiously, to which he kept shaking his head.
"Thank you," I whispered to Jason.
"I don't like him."
"I can tell."
Once Leo walked in and announced that we were in the air, dinner appeared for the rest of the crew and we started comparing notes on what happened to all of us. Frank and Percy had run into some tar monsters – fun – but other than that, had an uneventful time. Leo and Hazel, on the other hand, had met quite a few people. One of them was Nemesis who among many other cryptic things told them that 'true success requires sacrifice' and that Nico would die in six days if we didn't reach him first. Oh, and Rome – as in the Rome, the one in Italy that we were currently heading towards – would be destroyed at the same time.
"Wait, what the hell happened to Nico?" I asked. I knew I should be more concerned about Rome being destroyed, but Nico and Nico and he took priority above all else.
Hazel let out a heaving sigh and I could tell it was taking her a lot of effort not to cry. Hazel, by the way, was a total sweetheart. She was the youngest of our group, fifteen and the same age as Nico, and like the cutest little thing. She was short like me (not as short, but only a couple of inches taller), had beautiful dark skin, cinnamon colored hair and gold eyes.
"Nico decided to try to find the Doors of Death from inside the Underworld, and I haven't heard from him since. And then Nemesis confirmed that he only has a few days left to live."
The mood in the room dropped. Nico was in danger and we had had no idea. Well, those of us at Camp Half-Blood had no idea. Nico came and went from camp all the time without anyone really noticing, so how could we have known he was gone? Well, the Romans did and that made me feel awful in a way I don't think I'd ever felt before.
Leo started into his story of how they also met Narcissus and his fan girls, but everyone was still pretty upset. I looked at my chicken and pasta in front of me and felt sick. I did, however, notice that Percy was eating a piece of pie that was completely blue – crust and filling. That was a little weird, but also kind of endearing.
Hmm.
"So where to now?" Leo asked.
"We need to go to Charleston," I said.
"Why Charleston?" Percy asked. "That's oddly specific."
I chanced a glance at Annabeth, who sighed frustratedly. "Tell them. I can't."
"Wisdom's daughter walks alone,
The Mark of Athena burns through Rome.
Twins snuff out the angel's breath,
Who holds the key to the endless death/
Giant's bane stands gold and pale,
Won through pain from a woven jail," I repeated from memory. I don't know how many times in the past few months I've spent night after night analyzing the prophecy trying to figure out what it meant, knowing it was useless. Annabeth and I had come up with a few theories regardless, but there was no way to be sure.
"Wait, twins?" Piper asked before telling us that in some of the visions she had seen in her knife, there was one of two giants – twin giants. Otis and Ephialtes.
So we had some information to go on. Not a lot, but it was more than we had a few minutes ago, so that was good.
"So wait – why Charleston? I'm still not following," Frank said.
"While we were in Atlanta, Ichnaea – the minor goddess of tracking – told us where we would find a map to the Mark of Athena," Annabeth said.
"It makes sense," Jason said. "Reyna and I went on a quest there to forage for some Imperial gold weapons and I can think of a couple places where it might be – Fort Sumter and the Battery. There was…there was an issue with the Battery, though."
"What do you mean?" Percy asked.
"There was a spirit roaming around, but when we tried to approach her she'd run…I mean, glide?...glide away. Reyna got the feeling that she needed to talk to her by herself and when she came back, she was really shaken up. Things were different between us after that," Jason said, and both him and Piper looked uncomfortable.
"Girl's day!" I shouted with a grin, throwing my hands into the air. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I ignored them. "So Annabeth, Piper, Hazel and I will go to the Battery, and the boys can go to Fort Sumter. It's perfect!"
The meeting and dinner ended shortly after, and exhausted, almost everyone headed to their cabins. Annabeth was giving Leo a reprieve in the control room so that after everything that had happened, he could finally get some rest.
I could feel someone trailing behind me and as I reached my door, I turned to see Percy.
"Hey."
"Hi."
"So…what's going on?" Percy asked.
"Just trying to save the world and everyone in it, you know, everyday stuff," I said. "Why?"
"Do you seriously not remember me?" he asked quietly.
"No," I said bluntly. "Honestly, I really don't have any idea who you are, and quite frankly, I think it would be best if it stayed that way."
I opened my door (which, who decided to put our rooms beside each other's?) and shut it behind me, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart in my chest.
