Chapter 1

The wind howled in every crevice and corner of the car. It's stark coldness burned against the falling tears on her cheeks. Everything was so loud and bright and hurt so much. The gentle breeze from earlier in the day had turned savage and bitter. The blue skies and shining sun dissipated into a black void. Rolling clouds of gray littered the sky in sorrow. Everything felt wrong.

Annabeth felt herself pressing harder on the gas, urging the car to move faster faster. Her sobs were drowned out from the fierceness of the wind. She didn't know what she was doing, where she was going, just that she had to leave. She had to go fast. Everything felt like a blur, a smudge on the horizon. Nothing made sense, it was all a buzz in her head.

Words spun and wrapped themselves around and around each other. The events of the night warped into images like a fun mirror. Everything got magnified, misshapen, amplified to the point she couldn't understand a single thing.

She knew she was speeding. She knew the speed limit was forty-five. She knew no one used this road. She knew it'd be clear as her crystal earrings, that it was desolate except for her swerving car. She knew she had to slow down. The speedometer already read 75.

But she couldn't. She felt the undeniable lust to go faster and farther. Her thoughts scrambled together in nonsense, but one thing stood out: faster. That was the only thing that made sense; to go faster would get her away from everything. She couldn't remember why she was running, she couldn't remember much at all.

There had been a party. All her friends were there; it was for their graduation next week. They took shots and danced to pop songs that were already becoming annoying and drank really crappy beer. Jason held on to Piper like she was the last living soul on the planet. She told him how she couldn't wait to hear his valedictorian speech. Travis and Katie were playing a drunken game of pool and giggling like they did back in middle school. Hazel and Frank chatted on a tattered blue couch with punch in their hands. And Percy... Percy, where had he been?

She couldn't think. The alcohol oozed its way through her veins and capillaries, infecting each part of her body. Her brain spun in its enticing dance. It melted inside of her, it left her feeling woozy and not in control of herself. It was the whisper that told her to go faster.

And she did. She jammed the gas pedal to the ground. She pushed her foot into it with the force of a mountain and let out a sob worthy of a tsunami. She forced the car beyond its limits.

80

90

100

Her speed increased and increased. The fate of the car was totally out of her control now. She could barely keep it going straight on the rickety and unpaved road.

She'd been down the road countless times before. It was after all, where she lived. The road was mostly dirt and rocks, out in the quiet of the country. The revving of her car engine was probably the loudest thing within 20 miles. Her mother picked the house, she needed to be away from the noise and bustle of the city for her study. Annabeth had always loved the fresh, crisp air and the starry clear nights. She loved the flourishing green trees in the spring and summer and the blanket of bright snow in the winter. She loved the deep colors of the fall leaves and the crunch they gave when she stepped on them.

This night was nothing like those. There was no clear starry skies or lovely trees. The fresh air had turned sour and disgusting. The quiet felt like a death sentence, as if it lurked with the malice of a devil.

She couldn't stand it. The roar of the engine was her only comfort. The car whizzed past everything and anything. It went faster.

She knew what was coming up, but she couldn't process the actual meaning of it. She knew about the dead end and the fence of trees just before the steep cliff. Yet she couldn't get herself to slow down and stop. She knew this was a one way road. She knew what she was doing, but she couldn't stop herself.

The night had been horrible. The alcohol had been horrible. The people had been horrible. Everything had been horrible, horrible.

She felt a tug at the back of her mind. It told her she needed to stop. It told her it was only the alcohol that made her think like this. That she knew how she got when she drank. She knew how unstable she was when she was drunk. It told her to stop the car.

And Annabeth listened.

Some sane part of her listened. A part that felt like a welcoming wave of the ocean. She stopped the car as she let out one more sob. She felt the hot tears fall on the backs of her cracked, dry hands. And she stopped. The line of trees was twenty feet away. Her neck hurt from the whiplash of the sudden stop. The seat belt had dung into her chest and that hurt too. But she stopped the car.

She turned the car off with a twist of the keys. Everything went pitch black. The headlights no longer provided her with a beacon of artificial light. She sighed to herself and let her tears wash her into sleep. What had happened at the party?

Ω

Bright golden light seeped through into her eyelids. It warmed her skin with the kindness of an angel. The morning was alight with the glow of honey before she even made the attempt to open her eyes. Her insides felt serene and her thoughts felt sorted. Annabeth felt in peace with herself and everything. She felt so calm and protected in a bubble of good as if nothing bad could ever harm her.

"Miss Chase, it's time to wake up." A small girl's voice said to the sleeping beauty.

The voice startled Annabeth. The serenity she felt just moments before vanished in the blink of an eye, shattered with the delicateness of glass. Her blood chilled with icy fear and her muscles stiffened involuntarily. In a flash her gray eyes were open and alert, her body up and ready to run.

Instead of an attacker she saw in front of her was a little girl. More specifically, it was a seven-year-old version of Annabeth. Annabeth was too shocked to stifle the gasp that flew from her lips in the combination of surprise and horror. How did this little girl wear her face? Where was she? What happened to the car?

A billion different questions darted around in Annabeth's brain at the speed of light. Her head felt over energized. The beginnings of panic spiked in her stomach, crawling its way to the top of her throat. She felt her breath starting to hitch, for her breathing to become short and rapid. She felt the race of her heart beating like an overenthusiastic drum.

It felt as though she were in a dream. Time seemed to travel like liquid. Things seemed to pass quickly and slow all at once. Annabeth scanned the area she was at. It didn't make sense. Nothing looked like anything. There were no colors yet there were shapes and places. There was no sun yet a brilliance of rays fell to her skin. No solid matter graced the area yet there she stood as if cement were beneath her black boots.

Annabeth felt a smooth hand touch her arm gently, like one would pet a frightened animal.

"It's okay, Annabeth. You're okay." Seven-year-old Annabeth told her.

Her eyes were filled with earnest and Annabeth thought that maybe things were okay. But then again... maybe not.

"Wh-Where am I?" Annabeth stumbled and tripped on her words at the quaking of her voice. None of this was logical, this place (if it was a place), went against her thought process. She had no clue how she got here, where 'here' was, or what she was doing here. The whole situation was bizarre and she prayed to any listening god or deity that it was all just a dream.

Seven-year-old Annabeth looked at her. She looked so much more innocent then. Her mess of curls was pulled into a rough pony tail and her gray eyes were calculating, but not so col. Perhaps this version of herself was before she ran away.

"This isn't a physical place. You are not a physical thing. We are not anywhere. I don't even exist." Seven-year-old Annabeth said in a cool and informative voice. Usually such a tone would reassure Annabeth that this was all just fine. In this case, not so much.

"I don't understand." Annabeth felt her body taking a defensive position. Her arms crossed her chest and she squared her shoulders. She felt threatened by not understanding what her younger self meant and that she had not even the slightest clue of what was going on. However her initial panic had faded away, holding such a feeling didn't even seem like a capability in this place.

"We are not of being anymore. We don't exist in the physical world. This place is not a place. It is a state of being. A state of ethereal being."

Annabeth was starting to understand, but she didn't want to. She knew in her heart was going on, but she denied it with every ounce of might and stubbornness that was in her body. She wouldn't believe any of it. This was all just a dream. She was simply just Alice in Wonderland. She'd wake up in her car at the end of the road and laugh at how odd her dream had been.

"It's not a dream." Seven-year-old Annabeth stared Annabeth directly in the eyes. Gray on gray had never been such an intense combination. Both of their eyes swirled and brewed like the storm that had sprang in last night. Waves of charcoal and steel crossed both.

"What do you mean?" She tried to ignore the small shake of fear that crept its way into her voice. Annabeth was not scared. This was a dream, a terrible and confusing dream.

"Annabeth. You're dead."

Chapter 2

Annabeth's face drained to the paleness of a worn, white bed sheet. She wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible. This place wasn't possible. The girl in front of her was a figment of her imagination. None of this was real. It was all too surreal to be real. That girl's voice, the one who wore her face lied to her. Annabeth was not dead because she stopped the car. She stopped the car before reaching the twisting trees and sharp, jagged cliff.

Younger Annabeth looked at her. She wore a look of disapproval. Annabeth knew that look. She used that look all the time. It was pointed and slightly annoyed. She only ever used it when someone was ignorant enough to blatantly ignore a fact. Younger Annabeth should not be using that look on her. Not when it was used to prove the point that Annabeth was dead.

She had to think logically. She wasn't thinking, only panicking. First she'd have to take her pulse. As long as she had a pulse she was alive. There was no disputing that. A pulse equaled life.

Younger Annabeth seemed to know what Annabeth was thinking and put a smug, satisfied smirk on her face. The little girl was too confident for what Annabeth was about to do. Annabeth was about to prove her wrong and Annabeth knew herself, the last thing she would do is smirk in the face of being proven wrong. She was too proud to do that. That smirk was saved only for victory.

Her hands were shaking like an earthquake. She hated that. She tried to still them, to make the queasiness leave her stomach and the tremor her hand. She snuck a quick, daring glance away from her hand that she was concentrating so hard on to her younger self. Younger Annabeth quirked an eyebrow up in challenge. Annabeth felt a blaze of shame that a version of her younger self could scare her so much, make her question so many things. How that little girl wasn't even real and this was all a terrible dream.

Her hands made her way to her neck and her fingers pressed to the carotid artery. Her skin was colder than ice or winter. It didn't feel like an absence of heat, but more like her skin could never hold heat. Her skin felt as if it were dead.

She tried to relax her shoulders and take a deep breath. Her mind focused on finding a pulse or any other sign she was alive. Her fingers pressed coolly on her neck. She waited for the small thump that showed her heart was beating. There was nothing. There was no pulse.

Her steel gray eyes widened in realization. She stumbled backwards in shock and cowardly fear. Tears flowed down her cold, cold white cheeks in streams like rivers. They were all wrong. They weren't hot like tears should be and Annabeth could only faintly feel them rushing down.

"Why? How?" Annabeth whispered hoarsely, her voice caught in her throat.

"You died, Annabeth."

"No! I-I stopped the car." She felt her world crash down on her like a sudden clap of thunder. She felt like the wicked witch when water was thrown on her as if all her sanity was melting away. Panic and terror rose like a hot air balloon inside of her.

"No, Annabeth, you didn't. You never got to your road. You never stopped the car before getting to the cliff or trees. You never felt the need to go faster."

"But I did! I stopped it and went to sleep and this is just a sick and twisted dream." Annabeth was throwing a tantrum like a child. She knew she stopped the car. She just knew it.

"Annabeth, look at me." There was a fierceness in Younger Annabeth's voice that she just couldn't ignore.

Annabeth felt hopeless and lost and scared and confused. She felt overwhelmed beyond reasoning. That fierceness attracted her like a moth to a light. It held grounding instead of the disarray inside of her. She had to look at Younger Annabeth even if she didn't want to.

"You did not reach your road. You were driving home from a party. You crashed only a minute or two into driving. No one else was hurt besides you. You are dead. Accept the fact." Younger Annabeth's voice was clear like crystal water rushing in a summer's creek.

Annabeth swallowed the growing lump in her throat. It was like trying to swallow nails with rotten milk- impossible.

"H-How did I crash?" Annabeth managed to squeak out. She hated herself for acting this weak. For acting like a scared five-year-old.

"Oh, wouldn't you just love to know? Be careful what you wish for." A devious smirk flashed across her face, a slithering red snake on summer skin.

Annabeth braced herself for the response.