A/N: I'm a bad person. I'm not studying for my Bio exam. I'm writing FanFiction. But Bio is terrible. Also, I found my least favorite word: oligonucleotide. If you don't know what that is, well, I don't either. It's science-y. But anyway, to the story.

When Reyna awoke, the sun was streaming through the glass sliding doors. The sounds of traffic didn't penetrate the room, but she could see cars jammed in gridlock a story below. Hylla was still asleep on the other bed with her back to her, chest rising and falling visibly.

Reyna stood and crossed over to the large double windows. She had been so tired last night and so exhilarated yesterday that she hadn't paid much attention at all to the actual city. The very top Washington Monument peaked out from above the building across the street. None of the buildings were very tall, not like the pictures Reyna had seen of New York. The streets didn't look like either Circe's Island or San Juan.

She wondered what they would do now that they were in America. Both she and Hylla spoken fluent English, but they had never been in a fully English-speaking country before. They had certainly never been stranded in one. She looked out at the sun-washed street and felt a pang of loss. She wanted to be back in Puerto Rico. She wanted to see Gomez and Juan, to tell them that she had been on an actual pirate ship and actually escaped.

But Hylla would never go back to Puerto Rico. And Reyna knew that she would end up going wherever Hylla went. Because she was the younger sister.

The familiar hatred rose up in her throat but she swallowed it back down. Things had changed. Maybe Hylla would listen now. Maybe she, Reyna, would get a say.

The little electronic clock on the bedside table said it was past ten in the morning. Reyna had never slept to ten in the morning before. She was fairly certain she was taller now, too, although if what Hylla said was true it had been four months since she had had any means of checking, like ruler, or a mirror…

A mirror! Reyna hadn't seen herself in months. She had taken a quick shower last night but the bathroom mirror had been so fogged up she hadn't seen more than the ghost of herself, and hadn't felt any desire to behold her appearance at the time. Now she vaulted over an inconveniently placed ottoman and rushed to the bathroom, fumbling for the light switch and slamming the door.

She blinked. The person in the mirror blinked, too.

She had known that she would look different. One did not spend four months on a ship, malnourished and dehydrated, without drastic phenotypical (A/N: damn it, Bio is taking over my life!) consequences. But the girl she saw now was nearly an entirely different girl than the one who had been forced into makeup every day, and galaxies off from the girl who had left San Juan at age ten.

She was literally a different person, and one who she knew nothing about.

Her face was thin, unhealthily so but not alarmingly. Nevertheless, her cheekbones and nose stuck out angularly but not, she thought, crudely. Her hair was in need of a trim and the skin on her forehead was peeling a little from days and days under the sun at sea. She knew that she was thin, but the wide nightgown hid it, other than her arms. They hadn't burned—Reyna usually didn't—but had tanned to a darker color. It pleased Reyna. She had become far too pale during her stay at Circe's. She had looked white, and she hadn't wanted to have anything in common with Circe or Miss Becca.

Her eyebrows were thin, angled lines, perfectly symmetrical and streamlined. The injuries she had received aboard the pirate ship, intentional and unintentional on the pirates' part, had faded to nothing more than thin silver lines. She was not hideous. That was good. As much as she hated the idea that beauty was a trump card, it was.

She looked like Hylla.

Reyna frowned at the mirror. She looked almost exactly like Hylla, except that she slightly visibly younger. Exactly. Like. Hylla. She wasn't even allowed her own face.

Speak of the devil. Hylla stumbled through the door, looking bleary eyes and exhausted. "Get out, will you?" She asked, yawning. Reyna didn't even argue. She just left and let Hylla slam the door in her face.

Reyna was fully dressed and running a brush through her hair before Hylla came out of the bathroom, looking fully refreshed. She took one look at her younger sister and said, "Your hair's all dead."

"Thanks," Reyna muttered, tugging the brush through the black mass again. It was almost down to her waist now.

"Just the ends," Hylla said, tugging at a bit of it. "Try putting it in a braid. That'll make it look better."

She waited for Reyna to start struggling with it before she continued speaking. "I've got a plan."

"Do I get any say in this plan?" Reyna asked.

"Maybe."

"Let's hear it."

"We go west. To Washington State."

"Where in Washington?"

Hylla shrugged. "Seattle."

Reyna paused. She was fairly certain that she had never heard of Seattle. She hadn't heard of Washington state, either, but assumed it was on the other side of the country. In the west. Where her dream had said to go. "Why Seattle?"

"We'll be safe there," Hylla said, picking up the room service menu.

"But why not, like, L.A., or San Francisco?" Those places Reyna had heard of.

"Because I said so."

"that's not a reason!" Reyna protested, sitting upright. "I thought we were going to talk—"

"I never said that."

"Well, why do you get to choose?"

"Do you have any idea where Seattle is?" Hylla asked. Reyna didn't reply, unwilling to admit that she didn't have a clue. "That's why. I called a travel agency last night, they have a plane leaving at one today. Which means we should better get moving. What do you want for breakfast?" She offered Reyna the menu.

"Why don't you choose, surely you know better than me."

"Better than I."

"Shut. Up."

Two hours later they were sitting in the airport terminal, watching those lucky enough to be in Zone 1 and Zone 2 board. Reyna tapped her feet again the thin carpet. It was so weird to have shoes again. It was so weird to be on land again, actually, never mind the shoes. She much preferred it to the rocking of the pirate ship, but she still felt woozy sometimes. Like the world should be rocking and she was subconsciously correcting for it, but it was in fact stationary. Hylla didn't seem to be having the same problem. She stared patiently at the passengers, staring coldly at an elderly couple who slowly tottered down the retractable ramp.

"Why can't we just stay here?"

Reyna wouldn't actually dream of staying in the east, not after her vision last night, but she wanted to know Hylla's reasoning.

"None of your business," seemed to be her default answer now.

"It is, actually. I'm apparently along for the ride." Reyna tried not to be pushy or invasive, but Hylla didn't respond any differently. The younger girl gave up and leaned back against the faux leather seat, disappointed. "Is it because the East is Greek territory?"

Hylla turned to look at her so fast it was like a time-lapse video; one millisecond she wasn't looking at Reyna, the next she was. "How did you guess that?" She asked suspiciously.

Well, there was Reyna's answer. She was done here. "None of your business."

Hylla snorted and stood as a crackly voice came over the PA system, announcing something that was either "Zone 3", "cones leave" or German. "Are you coming, or are you going to stay with the Greeks?"
Reyna dutifully followed. A passport was not required to travel within the States, and if they needed some form of identification, Hylla waved her hand and the Mist created the illusion. The flight attendant waved them on with a chirp of, "Have a nice flight, Miss Ramírez-Arellano."

"I'm going to change that name," Reyna decided as she and Hylla took their adjacent seats.

"Why?" Hylla asked curiously.

Reyna truly considered before she answered. Because it was unwieldy and long. Because her father had always told her to be a good soldier and a proud Ramírez-Arellano. But mostly, because it was a name that belong to someone who she wasn't anymore. She told Hylla the last bit. Hylla snorted scornfully. "Very poetic."

"Why do I speak to you."

The plane taxied down the runway, getting ready for takeoff. The whirring of the engines grew louder. The plane began to pick up speed.

Reyna realized a rather important question a little too late. "Why are we flying?" She asked loudly, not caring who heard her. "Isn't this Jupiter's domain?"

"She said to fly," Hylla replied, gripping the armrests tightly and looking a little pale, staring straight ahead.

"Who said to fly?" Reyna asked, glancing out the window. Her stomach gave a fantastic lurch and suddenly the ground dropped away.

"You wouldn't understand," Hylla said through gritted teeth. She looked a little terrified. Reyna had to laugh. Maybe she was braver than Hylla at something. Flying, or at least the first twenty seconds of it, didn't bother her at all.

"Are you going to be like that for all five hours?" Reyna asked innocently.

Hylla shot her a dirty look. "You'll take that back if we go plummeting out of the sky."

There was something very foreboding about how she said it. The smile vanished from Reyna's face. They were intruding in the territory of the king of the Olympians. More than ever now, this wasn't a game.