Hey, guys. Harper here.

I know you've probably guessed it's me by now — if you've had any experience with my cabin, that is. Because if you have . . .

Well, we'll be getting into that soon enough.

But first, a warning.

Their story — I don't know if I can call it our story — is one of a . . . should we say, complex nature. It'll be entirely too easy to mistake the things my cabin does for inherent evil, or severe anger problems, or just some crap that could be treated with medication or therapy.

It can't, take my word for it. If you've ever been in the same place, you understand . . . not that therapy and medication don't work great for some people. I know they do.

But the hour groweth late, as they say, and I don't know how much time I have.

Thing is, I'll be dying soon.

No, I'm not being dramatic, and I'm not planning to kill myself — although gods know I've thought about it.

Thing is, I'm a traitor.

To my camp, to my friends, to my family, and especially to my little brother, Will. But we'll get to him later . . . I think you guys are already more familiar with him than I could ever be.

I left him alone — and not just him, or I wouldn't be so scared for my life, but all of them. Lee, Michael, Gracie, Maddox, A.J., Phoenix, and all those summer campers — Kingsley, Ayesha, Miyoko, Hope . . .

Wow. The funny part is, I can't even remember if there are more or not. Isn't that pathetic? Forgetting who's in your own family. Some days, I don't even know if all of them are real, or just some figment of my imagination . . . some weird fever dream. I didn't used to think that, not when I'd just left and the memories of all of them were still fresh in my mind, but then I thought it, and now I can't stop thinking it, over and over, until I'm not even sure what's real anymore.

I take it back. It's not funny at all.

Now, don't think I don't hear you — So what, Harper? Yeah, you ran away from your family, but I can hardly see how that entails your death. True, in most circumstances you'd be right, but I've seen my cabinmates quite literally try to hurt each other with arrows, knives, and razors. They get angry, see, and then they don't think strait . . .

But they always hate themselves the next morning. That's our cabin's biggest problem; we always hate ourselves the next morning.

I'm no exception.

The day after I left Camp Half-Blood, when I first woke up in the rebel encampment (rebel encampment; what a joke, as if we're brave warriors who fled their homes in search of refuge) and I looked up and realized that it was one of Hecate's kids above me, not my adorable little brother, I started crying so hard I physically couldn't breathe.

Silently, of course — no one cries in the Titan army. Or at least, that's what they'd have you believe.

But the boy above me — Alabaster, I later learned — isn't that bad. Considering all the bunkmates I could get stuck with every time, he's not so bad. Even if I don't remember his last name.

Whatever happens to him, I hope he makes it through the war.

That's why I think — well, I know, really, — that I don't have much time left. The war is in a little more than a week.

And my cabinmates hold grudges like you wouldn't believe.

They're not letting me get out of this one.

Ironically enough, I do want to live. It's not a sentence generally heard from a child of Apollo, not while they're being honest. But I'm saying it to you now, and I hope you remember.

I know I will.

And I'm in one of the aforementioned rebel camps now, on a mission to do — well, I'm not exactly sure what. Something about placing monsters where the heroes (they always use the term "heroes" like a slur; I don't know if I agree with them or not) are most likely to see as a safe place on one of their own missions, I don't really know.

And now I'm writing this in an old journal I managed to keep hold of throughout my time at Camp Half-Blood. It's an ugly thing, small, black, shredded, pages warped and yellowed. I'm using an old, broken stub of a pencil I found on the ground near the tent I share with Alabaster — terrible foresight, I know, to bring the journal and the memory of the files but not a pencil.

Call me a distracted musician.

Everything in our tent, including the tent itself, is freezing cold and soaking wet, as am I. Mud is soaking up through holes in the bottom of the canvas. We don't have sleeping bags, or blankets, or pillows, or much of anything, really. Nothing to shield us from the sharp rocks that jab us every time we move.

The wind is howling, and freezing rain is battering the tent. It seems like the world itself is trying to end it, which, to be fair, it pretty much is.

I'm soaked and shivering. My clothes haven't been dry in days, and I haven't seen the inside of a shower in over a week. My hair is knotted past the point of no return, and my eyes, where they were once brown, are now more of a washed-out blue than anything.

I'm recording these files entirely from memory. I know, I know, but my mind is like a camera — if I see something, I take a picture. Click. And it stays.

Sometimes it's a blessing, sometimes it's a curse, but right now, it's not either of those. It just is.

And I know I can record these files because I remember all of them. I've read them more times than I can count, over and over. Enough times for somebody who doesn't have a photographic memory to memorize them. I'll try as hard as I can to keep them in chronological order, but I might get messed up.

So I can only do my best, but I promise my best will be pretty accurate.

Gods know these files are.

It's not wise in any way to record them, but right now, I couldn't care less.

Somebody deserves to know who we are. Who we were. What we went through and why we did the things we did.

Just on the off chance somebody reads this.

But I'm signing off for tonight. It's hard to write when the earth and sky themselves are determined to rip up your tent and send you sprawling, broken and bloody, on the ground.

Also, Alabaster snores like you wouldn't believe.

Signing off for now,

Harper

P.S. — Sorry, but I don't need anyone knowing my last name. Then, you'll never have to tell them you read this.