Now don't get used to this. I'm warning you, not all updates will be this fast. But there was an abnormally long wait between books so I might as well make up for it at least a little bit, right?
That being said, ready to get into the real deal? Thanks to those of you who reviewed yesterday! And welcome to everyone who favorited/followed! Glad to have you all along for the ride! There won't be any more Atlas chapters, I promise. That was just the prologue. The rest will be people we know and love :D
Such as...
You are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down / Strike a match and I'll burn you to the ground
"Annabeth, come in. What's your position?"
Annabeth Chase squinted her eyes against the glaring evening sunlight as she turned her gaze northwest for the briefest of seconds. "Cross street Corsi Avenue, about a hundred meters out," she told the radio in her ear between rapid, even breaths. "Just a few minutes until we reach the area."
"Roger that," Reyna's voice responded. "We'll be ready."
Annabeth didn't respond—she was too busy leaping over the cascading wares of the street vendor's cart which the man she was pursuing had just knocked over in an attempt to throw her off his trail. Grinding her teeth, she dodged around the cursing vendor and the onlookers who'd stopped to inspect the commotion and locked her eyes on her target, weaving through the foot traffic at the highest speed she could manage.
Ahead of her, she saw her quarry look over his shoulder as he fled, surely checking to see if she was still on his trail. When he saw her, he suddenly turned toward the nearest alley and Annabeth clicked her tongue anxiously. Ignoring the obvious risk to her operation, she pulled her .45 from its holster beneath her dusted denim jacket and fired just ahead and to the right. The suppressor attached to the end of the barrel did a good job of masking the sound of gunfire, and as the bullet swept in front of the man ahead of her and struck the sun-hardened clay of the nearest building he skidded sideways and changed his mind about the alley, instead continuing to hurry down the sparsely-occupied street.
Annabeth followed after him with a short breath of relief. She couldn't have him running down the wrong side street. That would ruin their well-laid plan.
Annabeth kept her gun in hand, though she was sure to conceal it as best she could from anyone she happened to dart past in her chase. The last thing she needed was someone calling the cops on her. She had a job to do, after all.
The man tried again at the very next alley he came to, but this time Annabeth let him take it and followed him with a satisfied smirk. So far, so good. When she turned the corner herself, she fired two bullets over his head for good measure, just to let him know she was still there and hot on his trail. He ducked the too-high shots instinctively and swerved around a dumpster, yanking the freestanding trash can beside it over so it rolled across the alley, spilling its contents over the ground. Annabeth darted around the moving obstacle as the man suddenly produced an automatic out of nowhere and aimed it wildly over his shoulder. She skidded to a slower run and threw herself behind the dumpster to avoid the bullets headed her way, cringing at the loud sound of unsuppressed gunfire. By the time she ducked out from behind the dumpster, the man was already climbing the ladder of the fire escape snaking the length of the brick building to their left.
Heart skipping a beat in anticipation, Annabeth hurried after him. She stowed her gun back in her jacket and grabbed the metal ladder with both hands, pulling herself onto it and climbing as quickly as she could. When she reached the top, she had to dodge more gunfire as her target raced up the rickety stairs. Reflexes on high alert, she took the steps two at a time and craned her neck to see the man leap through an open window a few stories above her.
"Fourth floor," she panted into her radio, quickly counting the windows lining the side of the building. "Sixth from the front."
"Got it," came Reyna's reply.
When Annabeth reached the same window she vaulted through it and reclaimed her weapon, scanning the empty and rather decrepit apartment room to see if her quarry was hiding somewhere within it. She heard rapid footsteps receding down the hallway and cocked her gun, setting off at a run. The second she entered the hallway she heard suppressed gunfire to her left and looked to see the man she'd been chasing duck and stumble before hurling himself against the door nearest him and breaking it open. He disappeared inside the apartment beyond in search of sanctuary.
Not that he'd find it. "Hold it!" Annabeth heard Reyna's voice shout—this time not from her radio, but from the room to which her target had escaped. She rushed down the hall and came to a staggering halt in the doorway he'd busted through to see him stepping backward into the middle of a room equally as worn-down as the one they'd recently exited, handgun outstretched toward the bedroom doorway in which Reyna Ramírez-Arellano was standing resolutely with a glare on her face and an MP5 in both gloved hands.
The man's eyes darted toward the window, outside which another fire escape trailed the northern side of the building, but before he could make a move toward it someone appeared on the other side, sliding up the dusty and streaked glass to sit casually on the window sill.
"Ah, ah, ah," Piper McLean chided with a sweet smile, twirling a machine pistol in her fingers. "End of the line."
"I told you, Agent Simmons," Annabeth said from the doorway. The man whipped toward her and aimed his gun, but the barrel of Annabeth's .45 was already pointed at his face. "All we need is a little information. Just calm down and tell us—where's Atlas going?"
Agent Simmons scowled. He kept his gun aimed at Annabeth, though his eyes darted back and forth between all three women. "So you're the ones who've been following Atlas's team, picking 'em off one by one."
Behind him, Piper rolled her eyes. "Only 'cause they made things difficult."
"Look," Simmons went on flatly, "I don't know who you chicks are, but you're freakin' insane if you think any one of us is gonna squeal to the likes of you."
"Oh, you're gonna squeal, alright," Reyna said coldly. She tightened her grip on her rifle and lifted the barrel a fraction of an inch. "Or scream. Whichever comes first."
Annabeth didn't react visibly, though inside she mentally pleaded with Reyna to take it easy. She knew the martial artist was getting more and more desperate and anxious with each link in the chain they were following on their cross-country chase of the CIA's Deputy Director and his strike team, and though she sympathized she didn't want any rash actions to get them in serious trouble. She had to trust that Reyna realized that their need for information was too great to risk on vengeful action.
Over six weeks had passed since the three of them had set off after Duke Atlas and his personal escort. They'd first received word in early February that Atlas was on the move, with an important hostage—whom Annabeth and the others assumed had to be Leo Valdez, Reyna's boyfriend and the freelance arms dealer with a vendetta against Ezekiel Grace who'd been instrumental in their attack against the crime lord two months ago—in custody. After that, it had taken a bit of careful persuasion for Annabeth to convince her fiancé, the new central division head of criminal organization Olympus, to agree to any sort of rescue mission. In the end, they'd decided that a small team would have the safest chance of moving swiftly after Atlas and potentially catching him off guard. Annabeth herself was the most familiar with the Deputy Director, thanks to her own experience on the force, and Reyna was, unsurprisingly, the next immediate volunteer. Piper had joined on soon after to complete the squad.
Things were slow at first, but once they were able to pick up Atlas's trail, they did everything in their power to ensure that they didn't lose it. They came very close to catching him in Houston, Texas six days ago, only to lose him at the last second. Now here they were in Sedona, Arizona, staring down an agent they'd been following who they knew for a fact had recently been in contact with Atlas's team.
Annabeth huffed in mild annoyance and blew a dark brown corkscrew of hair from her line of vision. She'd dyed her blonde hair a few days into their expedition in an attempt to help conceal her identity, given that the entire CIA probably had her description memorized given her status as a wanted defector, and still to this day she didn't like the change. It had been Piper's idea. A good one, Annabeth had to admit, and not without merit—after all, the agent right in front of her still couldn't tell who she was. But still, it felt wrong somehow.
"We're not asking for much," Annabeth reasoned with Agent Simmons. "We know you met with someone from Atlas's team. All we want to know is where they're headed next. Give us a city, that's all."
The agent looked visibly unnerved at his situation, but to his credit he held his ground. "They'll catch you before you get anything out of me."
Annabeth ground her teeth in frustration. Why couldn't this ever just be easy?
"I hate to say it, guys," Piper chimed in as she leaned out the window and looked down toward the ground, "but he might be right. We got incoming." She looked back to Annabeth. "Police squad checking the area. And I'm betting they're gonna wonder what we're doing in a closed-down apartment building. I mean, we don't exactly look like squatters."
"Looks like time's up," Reyna noted, finger poised on the trigger of her rifle.
Annabeth furrowed her brow. After a series of quick thoughts and an exchange of significant glances with Reyna, she fired a bullet just over the man's shoulder, causing him to flinch in surprise and break his aim. Reyna rushed immediately toward him and used her left leg to force his outstretched arms downward, and as he fired his gun into the moth-eaten carpet she rammed an elbow against the back of his neck. He dropped to his knees, fingers going lax and weapon leaving his hands, and Reyna kicked him onto his back.
"Sorry," Annabeth said as she knelt beside him, "but I'm gonna need to use your phone."
She saw his eyes widen as she quickly inspected his pockets for the device, but he made no move to protest seeing as the barrel of Reyna's rifle was touching his sternum. She found it in the inside of his jacket and switched it on to see three new text messages, all from unsaved numbers. She pulled up his conversation history and quickly scanned all of his recent messages.
"Time to book it, ladies," Piper warned them, climbing to her feet just outside the window. "They're in the building."
Annabeth looked up. Already she could hear movement below her and voices calling muffled orders. To Agent Simmons, she said with a short sigh, "You got lucky. Thanks for the help." She gave him a sarcastic smile as she jumped to her feet, but the second Reyna moved her gun the agent made a grab for Annabeth and pulled her legs out from under her. As she fell, she heard rapid gunfire and for a moment her heart stopped in fear. But by the time her shoulder hit the ground and she rolled to safety, she realized that the shots hadn't been aimed at her at all.
"Not so lucky after all," Reyna mused as she rested her rifle against her shoulder, staring down at the unmoving body of the agent. She helped Annabeth back to her feet before the two of them rushed after Piper without looking back.
"Did you get anything?" Piper asked Annabeth once they'd descended the fire escape and exited the north alley, carefully evading the policemen near the building entrance on the main road and blending into the growing crowd of curious pedestrians.
"Good thing for us he wasn't diligent enough to delete his messages," Annabeth replied with a light smirk. Despite the Arizona spring heat, she tightened her jacket around herself to conceal the shape of her gun beneath it. "There's a rendezvous between Atlas and another team in Las Vegas on Friday night, at the Temple Grande Casino."
"Awesome, I've always wanted to go to Vegas," Piper replied. "Sounds like fun." She removed her gloves and stuffed them in the pocket of her jeans. "Another score for the Ballistic Brunettes."
Reyna rolled her eyes as Annabeth groaned and muttered, "I told you we are not calling ourselves that."
"Oh, come on," Piper complained dramatically. "We've been kicking ass and taking names all across the country! This is like, the stuff of legends. We need a name so they can tell stories about us. Duh."
"This is supposed to be a secret operation," Reyna pointed out. "We don't exactly want people telling stories about it."
"Speak for yourself," Piper replied with a grin.
Annabeth aimed a finger at her. "I thought you were tired of fame."
"Well, yeah, when I was only famous 'cause of my dad. But being famous 'cause of me—that's entirely different."
Annabeth gave an amused chuckle and shook her head. "One thing at a time, superstar."
They fell into a companionable yet somehow tense silence as they made their way at a fast walk down the twilit Sedona street. Despite the fact that they were now free of danger, the adrenaline in Annabeth's veins had yet to cease its furious flow, and she had to keep flexing her fingers to give her tingling muscles something to do. It was difficult for her to remain still when she had a clear goal; she'd been that way for as long as she could remember. In school, as a CIA assassin, even during her year off in London—and especially after, when she'd set her crosshairs on the late codename Zeus. She'd hoped that after ridding herself of Ezekiel Grace, she would get a chance to relax a bit. But when Atlas had ruined that operation and captured a friend of hers, that hope had been swept down the drain. And now here she was, back on the job.
Not that she regretted it too much, of course. She was just as determined as anyone to catch Atlas and get Leo back, and after that to join Olympus in their standoff against the agency she used to belong to. She supposed that, more than anything, she was just missing home. She hadn't seen her fiancé in over six weeks, after all.
"Annabeth?" Piper interrupted from beside her, and she glanced up to see the younger woman frowning at her. "You okay? You look kind of spacey all of a sudden."
"Yeah," Annabeth replied, shaking herself out of her thoughts. "I was just thinking that… Well, you're right about one thing."
Piper arched an eyebrow inquisitively.
Annabeth smiled. "Vegas does sound like fun."
So that's what Annabeth's been up to. We'll catch up with Percy next chapter, then it's a kind of steady back-and-forth for a while.
Drop me a review if you feel so inclined, and I'll see you all again soon! Maybe not tomorrow, but soon ;D
Later days!
-oMM