Note: Had trouble with the first part of this chapter :/ sorry for the wait.

RUMORS AND REVENGE

MESSAGE CANNOT BE SENT

Percy stared at his phone screen, irritated. Sighing, he tried again. Third time's the charm, right?

To: Annabeth

Picked your notes up. Don't really get them.

Need help. Where are you?

"Percy," an exasperated voice called. "Are you going to help with this or not?"

"Huh?" Percy mumbled, pressing send. He glanced up to see an annoyed Malcolm glaring at him. "Oh sorry."

"Don't bother trying to help now," the bookworm told his lab partner as he cleaned a beaker. He scanned to room to see everyone else was done and chatting already. "I'd hate to force you to tear your eyes away from your phone for two seconds."

Sighing, Percy stuffed his phone into his pants pocket and moved over to the sink to help. "Sorry, Malcolm. I just can't get in touch with Annabeth and I really don't get these notes she left me."

Malcolm swallowed nervously before saying anything. Percy and Annabeth were the hot topic lately. Ever since the Masquerade ball, rumors had been burning through the school like wildfire. Malcolm didn't believe half of them, of course. Because really, Percy busting down a door barricaded by twenty tables to knock Luke into unconsciousness and save damsel-in-distress Annabeth was a bit too much. Nevertheless, he didn't want to get caught in between the crossfire.

So, treading lightly, he shrugged, "maybe her phone's off?"

"That's not it," Percy insisted as he dried off glassware. "I'm just not getting any signal."

"Can't it wait?" Malcolm asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"I guess…," Percy said. "I mean I did just swipe them from the library on my way back from the bathroom."

Malcolm put their beakers and test tubes away as Percy finished up. "Well, they say patience is a virtue."

Percy shrugged and frowned. "I dunno, it just gives me a bad feel—"

The words caught in his mouth as the lights flickered off with an ominous crackle.

The rest of the room fell into a hushed silence, waiting for anything else to happen.

"All right, listen up kiddos," a sarcastic voice drawled over the PA system. "Looks like our power's been cut. Stay put and don't run around like a bunch of headless chickens."

"A really bad feeling, Malcolm," Percy said, shifting from foot to foot restlessly.

"Don't worry, the school's got a generator," the bookworm told his friend. The knowledge did nothing to calm the teen and Malcolm sighed. "Look, why don't I help you with your English homework instead?"

Percy frowned, that wasn't exactly what he was worried about. He didn't really give a damn about what he got in English. Annabeth did though, so she wouldn't just ditch a tutoring session like that. But it's not like he could say he was worried about her, so Percy gave in and dug an annotated book out of his bag.

He deposited it on their wiped-down lab table with a thud and frowned. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing with that."

The pages rustled as Malcolm breezed through them, eyes scanning over soliloquies and prose. He stopped abruptly, as if something odd had caught his eye. "Percy, does Annabeth normally annotate your books?"

"No," Percy replied, wondering why, all of a sudden, Malcolm seemed so serious. "Normally we do it separately then compare so she can tell me how wrong I am."

"I see," Malcolm mumbled to himself.

Percy watched his friend flip through the pages more frantically than before. "Why? Did she do something?"

"Not really," he said, staring intently at the page he'd stopped at. "It's more of how she annotated."

"You mean those weird scribbles all over the randomly highlighted stuff?"

"The scribbles are called shorthand," Malcolm informed him, holding the open book out for Percy to see. "And the highlighting is just how we bookworms make notes. No one besides us can really make any sense of it, so it's weird that she'd leave this with you."

"So what's it mean anyway?"

"Well most of it is just normal annotations," the bookworm started, brow scrunching as he flipped to a specific page. "But here's where it gets weird."

Malcolm pointed at a clump of text where only certain words had been highlighted.

If not, why then this parting was well made.

"And below it, in shorthand, it says: our Cassius has done the opposite," Malcolm explained. He turned to another page and bit his lip. "Here's another one."

Such men are dangerous.

"And the shorthand here says: our Cassius acts his part," he said excitedly, as if he'd just broken a secret code.

Quite frankly, Percy just thought he was spouting jibber jabber. "Malcolm, you're forgetting that I was failing English before Annabeth. You'll have to run that by me again."

Malcolm sighed and started to explain. "Every time a shorthand message starts with 'our Cassius', it refers to an action. The rest of the message tells you exactly what 'our Cassius' did by referring to the highlighted text."

"Okay…," Percy nodded, pretending he completely understood. "So what's it actually saying?"

"Well the first one means that 'our Cassius' must have left on bad terms," Malcolm told him. "The second is more straightforward. 'Our Cassius' must be a dangerous guy."

"So Annabeth's trying to tell me to watch out for someone named Cassius?"

"It can't be as literal as that…Cassius in the play was someone who betrayed Caesar. She must mean someone who's turned on her."

Percy's heart started to race, a sickening feeling coiling in his gut. "Does it say anything else?"

Malcolm flicked through the pages one last time. "There's a third one near the end of act 3 scene 2, but the shorthand's different."

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

Normally, it took Percy a while to understand anything remotely Shakespearian. But something in his head had clicked and suddenly, he understood. Just to make sure, he asked, "what's the shorthand say?"

"It doesn't refer to anything 'our Cassius' does," Malcolm said. "Just that 'our Cassius is still who he was'. It doesn't even make any reference to the text."

"Okay, thanks Malcolm," Percy said as he slung his backpack on.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"I didn't really understand whatever you just said," Percy confessed. "But I do know that something's wrong with Annabeth, because a secret message is just plain weird even for her. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out who her Cassius is."

"So you're ditching school to go find her?"

"Well who else is going to?"

And with that, Percy turned on his heel and strode out the door.

Malcolm watched him leave, noting the urgency in his step. Maybe some of the rumors were true after all.

~O~o~O~o~O~

Ethan Nakamura trudged through the hallways of his beloved Lord Cronus Institution with an air of irritation. He used to be the Headmaster's go-to guy, the top of the social pyramid around here. But thanks to that damned new kid, things had been going downhill.

He used to be the one calling the shots! Now he's stuck escorting Castellan's bastard girlfriend around the school.

She didn't say a word and followed meekly as they navigated deeper into the school. Ethan scoffed at her attitude. Soft, just like all half-bloods were. They weren't prepared to do what he had done to get where he was. They had it easy. Mommy or daddy would find them, take them, and enroll them into that damned school. The half-bloods were set for life, just because they'd been lucky to be born to parents that remotely cared.

Ethan had been born a failure. Growing up in an orphanage, he knew rejection. He knew it well. No one wanted a boy who was blind in one eye and always brooding with the other. No one except Headmaster Titanus.

Ethan had never been favored growing up. Despite the adoption, the Headmaster had treated him as he did everybody else, with an iron fist. Ethan had clawed his way up from the bottom on his own strength and had made this school his home.

Until Luke Castellan came along.

The Headmaster treated him like a godsend, just because Castellan has a half-blood and they needed a spy.

Ethan kept to his musings even as they reached their destination: an old storage room in the lower levels. He shoved the quiet blond half-blood in, sending a jeering smile as she looks back with narrowed grey eyes.

The automatic door locked itself with a quiet click.

Free of his menial task, Ethan found himself left to his own devices. Which was just as well, he had something to do, something that would get him back on top of the food chain.

Lifting his baggy school hoodie, he felt at his waist to make sure it was still there.

A true smile graced his lips as the gun's smooth handle, his fingers grazing over the safety.

This would show them. This would show them all.