Darn, I guess I'm unlucky. :/ But hey, I kept my promise. :D

WHAT? NO, GET AWAY, DOG. PLEASE. UGGGH.

My dog is sitting on me. D: WHY DO YOU DO THIS DO ME YOU MANGY MUTT?

Okay, well. Anyway. This chapter brings us our first look into camp in a long time. A couple questions will be answered, and a lot more will be raised. :D I feel like this one raises the stakes a lot more. We finally realize what we're truly in for, and that things certainly aren't over yet. I'm proud of this one, kind of, even if it is a bit of a filler. :) Ooh, and remember when we met Malcolm in Desperation and barely anyone remembered him? xD Well, for some of you, there will be a few more campers like that today. xD

DISCLAIMER: After reading the preview chapter for The Mark of Athena (and being upset that it was practically a recap of book one and the end of book two, but being happy we FINALLY get some APOV in there), I noticed that Annabeth was not nearly as off her rocker as I hoped she'd have become. I guess that means Scholastic is against the general idea. xD But then again, Chris Rodriguez went insane in the first series ... 8D But he wasn't a main character. xDD So I don't think Scholastic would give me the rights. Oh, well. D: But I'll think of a way. 8DD

~THE KIDNAPPED HERO TRILOGY 3: FRAGMENTATION~

V: Infiltration

{NIGHT EIGHT}

I dreamed I was standing in Camp Half-Blood.

Chiron was before me, speaking with Connor Stoll, whose normally bright and mischievous features were contorted in apparent worry and distress. It wasn't a sign I liked. Chiron was in full centaur form, and Connor's camp shirt had smudges of dirt across it.

"Where did you see this?" Chiron was asking.

"In the woods, but –"

"Oh, well, what makes you think it was anything out of the ordinary, then?"

Connor said with a slightly shaky voice: "It was dragging a camper by the leg."

Chiron stood straighter in alarm. "What?"

"Yeah, it was holding his ankle and dragging him through the woods. I was far away, so I couldn't tell who it was, but it was a boy. He looked tall, but it was a bad angle."

Chiron nodded. "Was he fighting back?"

"No," Connor told the director with a small shake of the head. "He almost looked unconscious." I noticed Connor's hand tighten into a fist briefly before relaxing again at his side.

Chiron noticed it, too. "There's something you're not telling me. You seem tense, worried."

"Well, yeah, what else am I supposed to feel like, with Echidna on the loose?" the camper burst.

"I'm aware of the fear all the campers share, Connor, but remember that she hasn't come for us yet. Our boundaries have remained secure. You know that. And you seem to be more scared than you're attempting to let on; I can tell there's another detail you've left out."

Connor swallowed hard. "The thing is, Chiron … I thought he looked like –"

"Hey, Chiron!" Katie Gardner approached quickly, tailed by Clarisse La Rue. "Have you seen my sister, Miranda? I can't find her anywhere."

"Chris is gone, too," Clarisse added roughly.

Katie nodded and explained, "I looked everywhere, and when I realized Clarisse's boyfriend is missing, too, I thought we should come to you." Clarisse grunted as if she'd had other plans, but otherwise stayed quiet.

Chiron tried to remain stolid and calm, but I could sense his hold breaking. "I'll assemble all the campers in the dining hall. Our friends may be in danger."

The dream shifted. The setting was a simple field of slightly tall grass and weeds with no end in sight; the breeze caused it to look like a wave of plants.

Among the blades of greenery were monsters that sent a jolt down my dream self's spine.

There were creatures I recognized, including a massive dragon of some sort, the Nemean lion, a few hellhounds, and Scylla from the Sea of Monsters, being rolled along by another monster on a cart that could have come straight from a Walmart unloading dock. Others were monsters I'd never seen before, such as a gigantic eagle and an equally disproportionate fox. There were even more, more than I wanted to count. It looked like a parade, except they were most likely all marching to murder us. A parade of death.

Looking at the fox more closely, I realized it was the same thing I had seen before blacking out at the school when Annabeth came. So I had been right, I realized.

"Echidna has been successful so far!" the fox shouted from the head of the parade. "Now we shall join our mother and aid her in her quest!" Various cries of enthusiasm came up from the party.

I awoke then, the image burned into my head, and I finally knew what we were truly up against.

Grover was already awake, to my surprise, and he was preparing our supplies for the ride. He paused when he noticed I was up. "Oh, hey, Percy! Shoot, I didn't wake you, did I?"

I shook my head. "Even if you had, it'd be a good thing. I'd had enough of that dream."

He turned to me, eyes now wide. "You had a dream? Did you see the camp?"

"Shhh," I whispered and nodded slightly to my left, where Annabeth still slept. His ears reddened slightly and he sat on my bed so we could talk more quietly.

"Yes," I told him, and I could see his excitement build. It withered into dismay and then fear as I told him what I'd seen.

"Do you think –" He gasped. "Do you think Echidna's going around … uh …."

"…Killing campers?" I finished. I'd grown more comfortable than ever using the word during the experience. Grover gulped and nodded. "I don't know," I confessed. "It's possible, but this seems too … subtle. She told me she'd just go commando and kill everyone she saw right away until they got her, but that's not what she's doing. I feel like she changed her plan entirely, or she lied before. And then there's the other thing I saw."

"What?" Grover asked, scared of what it could be. By the time I'd described every monster I'd seen and could remember, he looked like he was about to fall off the bed.

"That eagle is the Caucasian eagle, Ethon," he informed me shakily, "and the fox sounds like … oh, gods. It sounds like the Teumessian fox."

I stared in horror. "Isn't that the thing that –"

"It went around the Greek city Thebes, terrorizing everyone there and causing everyone to freak out. Amphitryon was tasked with capturing it, but the thing is the fox's power is to never be caught. Nothing can ever catch it."

When Grover saw my face, he nodded grimly and continued: "So Amphitryon realizes, 'Hey, we've got this dog Laelaps, and it has the power to catch anything it goes after. That oughta do it.' So he lets the dog loose and sends it after the fox. But in a battle between something that catches everything and something that can't be caught, who wins?"

"…Nobody?" I guessed.

"Exactly," Grover confirmed. "Zeus realizes there's this mass contradiction here, and he has no idea what's going to happen. So he just turns both monsters to stone and that's the end of it."

I chuckled a bit. "Well, that's one way to solve it."

"The monsters were destined to stay stoned forever." Grover was about to continue but then realized the utter awkwardness of what he had just said, and he shook his head vigorously. "You know what I meant," he said spitefully as I laughed at his mistake.

"Anyway, Zeus turned them into stone so they could never escape."

"So, wait …." I looked at him with confusion. "How'd the fox escape?"

"That's the thing. I have no idea. It should be impossible, unless Zeus himself released it."

I shook my head. "There is way more going on here than we thought, isn't there?"

Grover nodded. "I'll bet. Now, all the monsters you mentioned – the fox, Ethon, the Sphinx, the Nemean lion, the hellhounds, all the others – they're all descendants of Echidna. Either her children or her grandchildren."

"You think she called in her kids for reinforcements?"

"Not exactly – what would they reinforce? Why else would she have all her kids come to the camp?"

It suddenly dawned on me what Grover meant. "She's building a monster baby army."

He nodded, confirming my fear. I looked over at Annabeth, still fast asleep. She seemed to be having a nightmare; she was shifting in her sleep more, and every once and a while a sound would escape. I knew whatever insanity had taken over her wasn't gone yet. There was more control now, but it was still there. She probably felt it every second, forcing herself to fight it now that she had gained the willpower to do so.

I began to wonder if this craziness wasn't natural, and if some outside creature or god had had anything to do with it. I found it hard to believe that Annabeth would lose it so easily.

I stood and walked to her bed; Grover got up awkwardly and went back to gathering our things. Annabeth's hair was strewn over her face and the pillow from her tosses and turns. I gently sat next to her on the bed and looked down at her. Her beautiful face was stricken with turbulent fears and worries. I brushed her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear with two fingers, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to kiss her. However, she awoke then, and her gray eyes opened.

"Hey, Wise Girl," I greeted her. "Glad you could join us."

She looked up in surprise and smiled at me, but I could tell she was distracted; I guessed her dream was fresh in her mind.

"Did you sleep well?" I asked.

She sat up. "Yeah, it was okay."

Even I could tell it was a lie.

I turned so I was sitting next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders; she leaned into me gratefully and rested her head on my chest.

As I held her more closely and put my other arm around her protectively, I knew I couldn't be without her like that again. I would stop Echidna and make her pay.

I'd make sure of it.

{DAY NINE}

Grover and I filled in Annabeth on my dream once we were safely back in the car. I was reluctant to share the details of the monster army, but Grover was right; Annabeth needed to know.

"I guess that's why we didn't get attacked at the hotel, or during the day yesterday," Annabeth noted. "We usually get stomped everywhere we go."

I nodded thoughtfully; there did seem to be a relative lack of near death experiences since I'd escaped. This brought me to another thought. "Do you think it's weird that Echidna is letting us get away? She probably knows we're together and that I'm out. Why hasn't she sent someone to stop us from returning?"

"I think she wants us to make it back to camp," Grover commented from the front seat. I hadn't wanted to drive again, so he and Annabeth took the front and I settled for the backseat. "Knowing her, she probably wants us to watch our friends be attacked."

"I wouldn't be surprised," I added. "So what do we do?"

"Is there much of a choice?" Annabeth asked. "We get back to camp, talk to Chiron, and see what's going on and how we can help. And with this massive monster army on the way, they're going to need all the help they can get."

"We can't stop tonight," I decided. "We have to just keep driving until we get there – we don't have time to waste."

"Dude, I am not driving nonstop for that long," Grover protested.

"We'll take turns driving," Annabeth offered. "One of us will drive, one will stay awake to help with the map or anything else, and one will sleep in the back. We can trade off whenever we stop for gas or something."

Grover and I agreed, and we finally drove for Camp Half-Blood with at least some sort of a plan.

{NIGHT NINE}

When Grover had driven for as long as he felt he could with me as his helper, I switched to the driver's seat at our next stop for gas as Grover went to sleep in the back. When I finally had to stop for gas again late that night, it came to be Annabeth's turn to drive. She seemed to be ready, and Grover agreed to keep a close eye on her, so I finally got my turn to rest.

My dream was short and consisted of a single scene, yet I was glad for this. I don't think I could have taken another one.

Clarisse was screaming at Chiron. "Let me get a prophecy!"

"This isn't your fight, Clarisse. Perhaps Percy will consult the Oracle upon his return, but for now –"

"Why can't I just go to Rachel? Percy might not be coming back!"

I made myself a mental reminder to thank Clarisse for her faith in me.

The argument continued for a solid few minutes, mainly because Clarisse just wouldn't give up. In the end, Chiron won, and, disgruntled, Clarisse left.

"Wait!" Chiron called after her. "No one is allowed to leave the dining hall right now!"

"I'm just getting something from my cabin!" she replied obnoxiously.

Chiron grunted and followed her.

She approached her cabin just as he caught up to her. She turned around to look at him. "I can't just get something from my cabin?"

The centaur sighed and nodded for her to enter.

"Thank you," she said sarcastically, and turned again to open the door.

As soon as she did, a muffled scream resounded from inside.

Both centaur and demigod looked up in confusion to see Chris, his mouth gagged with duct tape, his arms bound to his side with rope, and his ankles tied together.

There was a metal hook sticking out from the ceiling, from which about twenty standard rubber bands hung at once; the other ends of the rubber bands were all wrapped through the ropes around his arms. Chris screamed loudly through the tape as he hung from the ceiling like a human chandelier.

This scene didn't last long, however. A second passed before the rubber bands, stretched to their limits, snapped, one first with the rest following quickly, and Chris fell straight from the ceiling to the floor facedown.

He hit with a thud. Clarisse yelped and ran to him.

I looked on in shock. Those rubber bands couldn't have supported a person (especially one as big as Chris Rodriguez) for more than five to ten seconds max.

…Which meant that he had been placed there almost immediately before they had opened the door.

Chiron apparently realized this at the same moment I did, and he bolted to the back of the cabin, searching for a secret exit of some sort. He found one; he pushed against the back wall at various places and before long, a sizable portion of the wall fell backwards onto the ground.

The edges of the wood looked burnt from the outside. It had been cut out like a door.

Chiron raced out through the hole and into the trees beyond. He searched in all directions, running back and forth through the woods.

"Show yourself!" he demanded.

But no one was there.

He was alone.

I think that was one of the most interesting ways I've ever harmed one character while simultaneously threatening the rest of the characters. That includes anything I've ever written. xDD

Hah, well, maybe not. I wrote some weird stuff in elementary school. Seriously. In first grade, I wrote a story about how I woke up one day the size of a germ, and I got out of bed and fell all the way to the floor, and the drop almost killed me. Then I walked all the way across my room (which some reason doesn't take much time at all, which is inconsistent with the long drop thing) and climbed onto a clock for some reason which had fallen onto my floor for some reason. I had fun spinning around on the second hand for a little while. And then (don't ask me how), the clock levitated back up onto its hook on the wall. And then fell back down again. And I fell all the way back to the floor from all the way up there, and I died.

I wrote that in first grade. Even then, I was a psychopath.

See you later, peeps, if any of you are still reading this thing. xD (Which reminds me - a big thanks to Splashfire for reviewing my last chapter. You were the only one, buddy. xDD)