So, turns out I'm not as fast of a writer as I thought, and there's WAY more story here that I originally believed. Still have the story mapped out; it's just taking more words than anticipated. This was started as part of AU on tumblr, and I'm excited to keep going with it! Thanks to typey for the beta, any remaining mistakes are my own.
Once they had gotten the five hurt halfbloods across the border and into the camp, they were they flagged down a bunch of the other Apollo kids who took them to the big house for treatment. Pete said help would primarily be food and water in their condition, and Myka's own stomach rumbled in response. She looked around in surprise at the camp around her, taking in the movements and activities of the other campers. Was it actually already dinner time? Where had the day gone?
But she knew. It was easy for her to lose track of time, this week especially, when she was lost in the crushing feelings of guilt and inadequacy, when she wallowed for hours as she waited for her friends to come back and wanted the one who wouldn't.
It was the conflicting emotions that got to her. She was such a solitary person, but she was always so happy whenever the camp filled back up with full hustle and bustle of all the heroes, running around, playing capture the flag, sword fighting, having chariot races, learning about monsters…
There was an adjustment period, going from being one of the only kids at camp to one of many, but Pete wouldn't let her pull away, and he dragged her towards the dining pavilion. The tables were once set up by cabin, but since all the minor gods' children had started coming to camp, there was just not enough room and everyone just sat where they wanted.
When they got there, Pete waved at Leena, the oracle, and Myka smiled despite the lingering feelings of sadness. Leena always had a way of making things better.
"Is it true?" Leena asked as soon as they sat down. "They're saying that those half-bloods you helped across the border had been tortured."
And just like Pete did, Leena knew how to get Myka out of her funk: asking questions. Myka's need to understand the situation was just too strong to let herself stay mired in dark thoughts, and she turned to Pete. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?"
"You were pretty ragged when I first met you," he said off-handedly. Myka could feel the cold that she had only just pushed away start to find its way back into her veins, and she paled. "Hey, I'm sorry," Pete said, scooting closer to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. "It's just –"
He looked to Leena helplessly and she responded seriously. "Monsters don't torture, they kill. So if it wasn't a monster, then…"
She trailed off and didn't have a chance to continue, because their current activities director, Artie, came into the dining hall. As mythical creatures went, the satyr wasn't very intimidating or awe inspiring, but he had safely brought almost all of the campers to the camp without incident. There were young satyrs in schools across the country looking for potential half-bloods, but it was always Artie who went to get them, brought them in safely, and then helped train them to become heroes.
He also had become more of a father figure to Myka in the past few years than her dad ever was, and even though she had seen him only this morning, when she saw his eyes scan over the pavilion until they found hers, she felt some of her gloom lift, and she smiled.
"Another summer has come!" he cried out and everyone cheered, despite the tension in the room and the questions that everyone wanted answered. "I am happy to see you have all returned for another season of training. New things to note: the forest has been restocked with a few monsters for training, so don't go in unless you're ready to do battle, and the library has had a full overhauling over the winter with many more audio books and Greek translations available. Now, for regular business…"
"That was your project, wasn't it?" Leena whispered to her while Artie gave out camp schedules and assigned the unclaimed kids to the Hermes cabin, and Myka ducked her head, shyly. The brains of the demi-gods worked differently; it's why most of them had ADHD and were dyslexic. They were hard-wired for battle and reading Greek.
"Once I could find the similarities between ancient Greek and modern, it was easy to learn to speak the language and then I got in touch with some booksellers in Greece to get all the classics sent over. I've set up a partnership too for translating works and –"
Pete waved her off playfully. "We get it, kid of the goddess of wisdom, you're smart."
She punched his arm. "Kid of the god of poetry, shouldn't you at least be literate?"
He was about to retort when Artie came and stood next to them, staring at the over his glasses, but Myka still caught the smile in his eyes. He cleared his throat, then, and the entire room of ADHD campers stilled. "As you know, we had five half-bloods come to us today in serious medical need. We still don't know what caused this, but I'd like to thank those who helped them across the camp boundary." He placed his hand on Myka's shoulder, and she felt a blush rise in her chest. "I'll keep you updated as we learn more. In the meantime, get settled in, tomorrow will be –"
But he was cut off by Leena rising from her seat, her eyes growing glassy and a weird green aura becoming visible around her. They had all seen her do this before, but that didn't mean that they weren't all silent as the raspy and ancient voice of the oracle spoke from within her. Green mist was billowing around her feet, and when she opened her mouth, emerald smoke accompanied the words.
Wearer of seven and owner of four,
Together shall journey back to their source,
To lead them to the unclaimed son,
And see the beacon for enemies undone.
Pete was ready and caught Leena as she collapsed into his arms, and he set her carefully on a nearby bench until she woke up on her own. All eyes snapped back to Artie, who looked uncomfortable. "Well, I suppose we should adjourn to the campfire?"
The Apollo kids led the customary sing-a-long and festivities, though the fire that normally leapt through the campers' excitement stayed low and dull. In fact, it seemed that only Pete, who was leading the s'more making, was truly excited.
Myka, though, sat with the rest of the Athena cabin as her family analyzed and discussed the latest prophesy. "Wearer and owner of what?" one exclaimed, but the pieces were already falling into place inside her head.
"Beads," she murmured, almost afraid to say it out loud, because then it might be true. But, the rest of her cabin nodded. She knew she was right.
"Who's been here for seven years, though?" another asked, and they looked around. Even the oldest campers weren't supposed to be getting their seventh bead until the end of summer, which left…
All twelve heads turned to her, and she wished that she could sink down through the bench and disappear, but instead even more heads turned her way. "Hey, that's right!" another voice said, getting more attention, and stopping the singing all together. "You wear Sam's necklace. You have seven."
It wasn't that Myka didn't want to be granted a quest. In fact, she yearned for it. Living at the camp year round made her anxious to go out and experience the world, test her training against what was actually out there, but…
But it was the rest of the prophesy that stilled her. Together shall journey back to their source. There was nothing that she wanted less than to go back and visit where she grew up… but prophesies were tricky. Maybe it wasn't her home, maybe it the source of something else?
She noticed that everyone had grown quiet again, and she looked at Artie, who seemed to be waiting for her permission to start. She nodded once, and he began. He repeated the words that Leena had spoken earlier, and while everyone's eyes were on Artie, Leena came and sat beside her, gently placing a hand on her arm. "I know what you're worried about," she whispered softly. "And it will be okay."
"Another prophesy?" Myka asked hopefully.
Leena shook her head. "No. But I know you. You're strong. You and Pete will succeed."
"Pete?" she questioned quietly, but then she realized that all eyes were back on her.
Artie repeated his command. "Myka, child of Athena, will you please stand?" She did so carefully, hating the attention, but with Leena beside her, she also felt warmth inside that she didn't have before. "You are the only one currently at camp to wear seven beads. Do you accept the quest?"
She looked around at the rest of the campers. She didn't have a lot of friends, but she was generally well liked people seemed to respect her, but she was overwhelmed by the amount of support she saw reflected back at her. "I do."
Artie then requested that all the campers who currently held exactly four beads on their necklaces to stand, and all eyes turned to the person that they all knew she would pick. "Peter, child of Apollo," she said solemnly, reciting the words that they had all learned to say. "Will you join me on the quest?"
"Heck, yeah!" he exclaimed, and everyone laughed at his enthusiasm, and when he punched the air, everyone cheered.
Everyone except Artie, whose fingers had been brought to his lips in what looked like contemplative thought, but Myka lost track of him once the celebrations truly began.
Myka and Pete were sent to bed due to their early-morning departure, but Myka couldn't sleep. Her brain buzzed with all the possible unknowns for this mission, and there were so many. Even though it had never been expressed, it had to be about whatever happened to those five campers, right?
After staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours, she carefully got up, put on her shoes and grabbed a sweater, and crept out of her cabin. But where was she going to go?
She had made it only a few steps to the big house before she heard another door close, and Pete was soon behind her. "I got a vibe," was all he said. She had long ago accepted that a son of the god of prophesies might have certain gifts, but that didn't mean that she still didn't find them annoying at times.
Tonight it was soothing.
It didn't take long before they made their way into the infirmary and they found Argus, the camp's security. As soon as Myka and Pete approached, she saw his lips curl upward in a smile and then every one of his hundred eyes blinked at the same time, very slowly, with just enough time for the two of them to creep into the room.
"What are you looking for?" Pete whispered as soon as they got into the room with the sleeping campers, and he looked at Myka expectantly.
"I don't know, but there has to be more to their story, right? See what you can get from their charts."
Between her eidetic memory and his healing skills, they were able to make sense of the unfamiliar words and jargon, and how they were still suffering. For the most part, they were just dehydrated and malnourished. A bunch of them suffered injuries that they would normally see on the campers after they had seen battle. But some of them seemed to already have too many.
"This one has a lot of needle marks on her arm," Pete said, running is fingers over them. "They're scarred over, like they've healed, but they're definitely there."
"Like… drug use?"
Pete squinted. "More like they had blood drawn." He moved his hands over the arm and forehead of the girl he was looking at, and when he finished she looked more relaxed, like she was in a more restful sleep.
Myka looked at the arms of the boy that she was looking at, but there weren't any needle marks; instead, there were faint lines across his upper arms, almost like burn marks. "I just don't get it. What happened to them? What were they trying to get away from? What's the institution?" She shook her head. "There has to be an explanation for this."
"Indeed there is, Miss Bering." The voice that answered wasn't entirely unexpected, but it made them jump anyway.
"Whoa, Mrs. F," Pete exclaimed, forgetting to be quiet, and getting hit in the arm as Myka shushed him.
The god studied them carefully. "Meet me in the recreation room. I'll be there in three minutes," she finally said, and Pete and Myka hurried out of there.
Myka's stomach felt like it was in a giant knot, but Pete once again knew how to distract her. "Why do even call her Mrs. F? Her name is Eirene."
Myka rolled her eyes at him, knowing exactly what he was trying to do, but answered anyway. "She's the minor god of peace," she replied, not even having to think about it. "But names hold power, so she likes to go by the Germanic version. Frederic means 'peaceful ruler'."
"Indeed it does, Miss Bering," the goddess replied, suddenly appearing in the room with them. "And I hope I serve the camp well. After the apathy of its previous patron –" She stopped herself, and got back to the task at hand.
"As you may know, it has only been recently that the minor gods have had representation at this camp, and it was not always the case that the children of the gods had to be claimed by their godly parents by the time they were thirteen. Indeed, many mortals had no knowledge of their children's true parentage, and those children had been forced to fight for themselves in a world that they didn't understand."
"So you're saying that this unclaimed son thing is from before the gods had to claim their children?" Pete asked.
"That is for you to decide. Gods cannot interfere in heroes' quests; I can only give you the context required for this particular prophesy."
It was quiet for a moment and Myka studied Pete, who was giving her an odd look. "Pete?" she finally prompted. "Do you have a vibe?"
"Only that… there's something else, something that Mrs. F isn't telling us that's worrying her."
Mrs. Frederic pursed her lips, and gave a brief nod. "There's something that has intrigued me about Miss Bering." She paused and Myka and Pete leaned forward, entranced by her words. "I have heard the accounts of your journey from your father's house in Colorado to when you met Mr. Lattimer in Ohio. Normally, that concentration of monsters only occurs when there are several demigods traveling together, or one of them is a child of the Big Three."
Myka and Pete exchanged a look – she meant the children of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but there were very few children born to them in the past 70 years. Was there another reason that the monsters were after her? Was that the reason that Artie never encouraged her to reach out to her dad, or go to one of the boarding schools in New York that some of the other campers went to, or even told her that she shouldn't accept Pete's mom's invitation for her to stay with them for the school year? Was she kept at camp on purpose?
And, if any of those things were true, did that mean that she was putting Pete in danger by bringing him on this quest?
Pete shook his head like he had followed her thoughts exactly. "You are not getting rid of me that easily."
She shoved him in the arm and cracked a smile, and when they turned back to Mrs. Frederic, she was gone.
The next morning was hard. Myka had barely gotten any sleep after they went back to their cabins, and when she did sleep, her dreams were haunted.
Demigod children seldom had entirely normal dreams. It wasn't just the Oracle or the Apollo cabin that could get prophesies, and it was that kind of dreams that troubled Myka that night. It was like the dream was waiting for her, and she immediately got pulled into a room with very high ceilings, what looked like sheet plastic walls, and ten beds surrounded by medical equipment. They were all empty, though, except for one.
It wasn't like Myka was watching a television or movie, or even like one of the Iris messages that Pete sent her periodically – she was able to walk around, though she knew no one would be able to see her. She approached the one occupied bed and found a girl, about eleven years old, strapped in. Her arms were fixed up beside her and leather straps held down her entire body. Her mouth was gagged. It looked like something Myka would have seen on some sort of old horror movie.
And the girl was tiny. She already had a thin frame but it looked like she must have been fed only the absolute minimum, and her muscles had atrophied from being stationary for so long. She didn't look like she'd be able to stand, never mind fight, and Myka wondered why she even needed to be strapped down.
Myka heard a rustling behind her and she turned to see tall, slender man coming in through the plastic sheeting. She was able to catch sight of rows of boxes and shelving units behind him, but as soon as he entered the makeshift room whatever clues she might have been able to gather on their location were gone.
"Claudia," the man said slowly and quietly, and the girl's eyes snapped open, bouncing around the room quickly to the beds, and almost looking relieved when she saw they were empty. But then her eyes focused on the man. "Yes, your little friends managed to get away." He paused, and Myka made note, now, that he had an English accent, but she didn't have the experience to figure out what region it might be. "And that means," he continued, "that you are all that's left for me to test."
Myka shuddered on the girl's behalf; the girl she now knew was the one who had been left behind. The man seemed calm, disciplined, even, and the way that he measured his words made him sound all the more dangerous.
The girl in the bed struggled against her bonds, and Myka could see the fear in her eyes as he moved towards what looked like a crash cart, complete with electrodes. "We'll have to move in the morning," the almost cooed at her. "I suspect your friends will have made it to camp by now, and they'll be sending someone on a quest to come find you."
He spat out the word quest with bitterness and hate, and Myka was startled to realize he truly knew what he was talking about. He must have gotten a lot of information from the escaped campers. Myka watched as he picked up a notebook that had a familiar logo on it; he appeared to be going over some numbers or calculations. "Yes," he said, seemingly talking to himself. "I think that will do nicely."
He then set down the notebook - where had she seen that logo before? - and walked over to the machine. Myka saw sparks of electricity jump between the two electrode wands he lifted in the air, and the fear in the girl's eyes grow. He had done this before.
And when the wands touched her temple, there was a moment before Claudia's eyes snapped closed and her body started thrashing that they locked gazes and Myka knew that Claudia could see her. "Help me," Claudia moaned when the current had stopped coursing through her brain, and she lay, twitching, on the thin mattress, still managing to find Myka's eyes. "Save me, please."
"There's no one here to help you, little girl." He said, packing away the device. "And we'll be gone within the hour." He turned quickly and exited the room.
"I'm coming for you, Claudia," Myka said to her, hoping her message was getting through, even as she could feel the dream pulling away from her, and awareness penetrating her unconscious state. "Stay strong, I'm coming for you."
She awoke to one of her cabin mates shaking her slightly, and he telling her that it was time, that Pete, Artie, and Leena were waiting for her. The quest was about to begin. And though she didn't know where they would end up, there was one thing she knew for certain.
The man she saw in the dream was the man they were looking for. It was MacPherson.