Chapter One:
Nico groaned softly, blinking as the sharp light pierced his eyes. Why the fuck did he have to have a migraine right now? He really needed to remember to bring ambrosia next time he shadow traveled.
"So," a voice started, rousing Nico from his dreariness. "You're awake. Now you're going to tell me exactly how and why you teleported into my office."
He had done what? Nico glanced at the man standing across from him. He was bald and wore an eyepatch over one eye. He had a trench coat on and stood in the shadows, pointing the oppressive light into his eyes. Despite the annoying light being blasted into his face, Nico couldn't help but roll his eyes. The man was dressed in all black, wore an eyepatch and had a gun hidden in his pocket. He somehow managed to come off edgier than him. And this guy didn't even have any skull rings.
"Are you some kind of Hydra assassin?" The man said. "Are you some new breed of super soldier?"
How did Nico get here again? The man claimed that he appeared in his office. But he didn't remember shadow traveling into any office buildings recently.
Well, maybe not intentionally. He had been scouting out some kind of monster camp and stumbled upon some Hellhounds that were less than happy to see him. Nico shadow traveled away, but they, being children of Nyx, followed. It took Nico almost an hour of shadow traveling and fighting to kill all of them, and by then he had been exhausted and lost. So when he spotted some kind building off in the distance, he teleported to it. And there he met Mr. Trench Coat, who hadn't liked his sudden hello, shot him with a taser and called for backup. And then everything went black.
Well shit. That was dumb of him. Nico was no stranger with getting shocked, thanks to Thalia, but it still stung. Nico cursed silently to himself. Of course he had to go get himself captured. Great. His dad was going to be so mad.
"I asked you a question," the man growled. "If you have any sense of self-preservation, you will answer my questions."
Nico couldn't help but roll his eyes, wincing as the light glared into his pupils. This mortal was nothing compared to anything he'd fought before. He'd survived Tartarus, for the gods sake. What was some one eyed Dwayne Johnson going to do to him? Besides, as soon as he recovered his strength, he'd just leave. Not like this mortal could actually keep him here. But still. Did he have to shine the light directly in his eyes?
"Who are you?" The man asked. "Who do you work for? Where did you come from?"
Nico ignored the man's questions and glanced around the room. It was essentially the same kind of interrogation cell you'd find in those cheesy cop shows. And yes, Will had managed to sit him down to watch one. The watching hadn't lasted long, but still, Nico had seen enough. It was all white, no windows and a metal door. The tile beneath him was cool. Wait. Had they taken his shoes? Nico curled his toes on the ground, feeling the smooth tiles under his feet. Damn. They had. Now that he was a little more awake, he could feel the manacles on his ankles, chaining him to his chair. A quick flex of his wrists found that his arms were also handcuffed behind his back. Man, were chairs always this uncomfortable? The metal was digging into his butt. It was grating. It felt like his ass went numb. How long had he been unconscious? What time was it? Hopefully it wasn't too late. He was supposed to call Will tomorrow, and he'd hate to keep Will waiting. He always got anxious whenever Nico was late. He hated making his boyfriend worry. He was probably going to strap him into an infirmary bed when he got back and never let him go. Gods, Will could be a force of nature when he wanted.
The man slammed his fist on the table, drawing Nico's attention. "You think you're some kind of tough guy? I've broken agents a lot older than you kid. I need answers, and if you're not going to give them to me, I have ways of making you talk."
Nico just stared at him. Was this guy for real? Was this supposed to be intimidating? Nico had fought giants, werewolves and empousa. Not even the almost imperceptible sway could-
Wait a second.
"You're going to tell me what you-"
"Are we on a boat?" Nico interrupted.
The man blinked at him before scowling. "No. We're in my office, the same one you broke into. How were you able to bypass my security like that?"
Nico just laughed, relaxing back in his chair. "Oh man, you have no idea who I am, do you?"
The man scowled. "Why don't we rectify that. What is your name?"
Nico just shook his head with a small smirk. Looks like he wouldn't have to break out after all.
A storm was brewing in the Atlantic. Dark clouds gathered in the horizon, and the ominous boom of thunder rumbled over the deck of the Helicarrier. SHIELD agents scrambled to tie down planes on the deck before sprinting inside, taking cover from the fat raindrops that started to fall. Within minutes, the entire deck was drenched. Massive waves crashed into the Helicarrier, spraying the hull with salty seawater. The straps that held the planes down snapped one by one, and the waves dragged them from their resting places and into the depths below. No one saw though, the thick rainfall obscuring any vision more than a few feet from the cameras. Which is why no one noticed when a 40 foot wave crashed on the deck, and left a single man behind.
Nick Fury was, well, furious. This boy in front of him made a show of yawning, smacking his lips. He dismissed the early stages of interrogation, and after his little outburst about boats, he refused to speak. The little shit even relaxed. Like Fury wasn't even there. Like he wasn't even a prisoner.
The boy was young, maybe 16 or 17 years old. He was thin and pale, with long black hair and dark brown eyes. Standing at 5' 4" and appearing sickly and underfed, the boy didn't look like much. But despite the fact he was brushing off his interrogation techniques, the most infuriating part about this boy was his lack of identity. His fingerprints matched no one in any database SHIELD could access, no facial recognition programs had picked him up anywhere on the planet ever, and his bloodwork raised more questions than it answered. He carried no identification, no pictures, no trace of where he had come from. The most likely answer to this was that he was some kind of metahuman raised by birth by Hydra or some other organization as a living weapon.
Nick Fury grit his teeth. "Listen to me. Either you give me some answers right fucking now or I start prying answers out of you the hard way."
The boy clearly could hear him. The micro reactions on his face told Fury that the boy was not only listening, but amused and annoyed by his questioning. It was infuriating. Plus, that outburst about being on a boat. What was that about? The interrogation rooms on the Helicarrier were designed to confuse the senses and make it impossible to identify where the prisoner was. How had this boy known he was in the ocean? Unless he had suspected he'd be taken to the Helicarrier. But in that case, why had he called it a boat? The Helicarrier was much more than a simple boat, and if he knew that, he most likely A) wouldn't reveal he knew where he was and B) not call it a boat. What was so significant about being on the water to him?
Fury was tempted to reach out and throttle the kid. Shake him up a little. But he couldn't yet. Not until he got something to go off of. He had gotten a reaction when he mentioned Hydra, but it wasn't what he expected. It was one of familiarity and confusion. Like he was aware of the group but wasn't sure how they factored into the conversation. It was strange. Anyone who knew anything about Hydra would know why he'd ask about them. So if not Hydra, who could this boy belong to? Fury was tempted to bring Agent Romanoff in to see if she recognized him from the Red Room, but that was unlikely.
"Dammit boy, you will give me some answers!" Fury shouted, swiping his hand across the table, sending a glass of water flying only to shatter against the wall. The boy merely raised an eyebrow, unimpressed with the display of violence. Worse still, Fury could find no trace of deceit in his features. No dilation of the pupils, no slight hitching of his breath, no tightening of any facial muscles. He was truly unperturbed by the outburst. That was concerning.
This was not going as planned. This kind of approach wouldn't work. He'd need some other way to pull the information out of him. But short of torture, Nick wasn't going to get anything out of the boy.
But that didn't mean someone else couldn't. He had played bad cop. Maybe if he sent someone else in as good cop? If worst comes to worst, he'd get Romanoff in here to pull the information out of him.
Before he could even contemplate who else he'd send into this infuriating shit's cell, a guard burst through the door. "Sir! You need to come see this."
"Not now, agent!" Fury screamed.
"We have an intruder, sir!" The agent responded.
Fury froze. An intruder? Impossible. How could anyone get onto the Helicarrier?
Then he noticed the boy perk up.
"You!" Fury shouted. "Stay in the room. Make sure he stays here."
"Sir yes sir!" The guard said, snapping to attention. Fury strode out of the room. The two guards outside of the room straightened as he left. Fury stormed down the hall, swiping his keycard to leave the detention center and trudging down the hall. He swiped into the stairwell and climbed the stairs three at a time. A few floors up he entered the security hallway, the guard saluting as Fury stormed into the surveillance room.
"Who the fuck is on my Helicarrier?" Fury demanded.
"Sir! We don't know sir!" The guard replied.
"How the hell did he get here?" Fury demanded as he scoured the many screens for the intruder.
"We don't know sir!" The same guard replied. "20 minutes ago, a large thunderstorm overtook the Helicarrier, obscuring our vision of the deck. It is our assumption he used the storm as cover to get on the deck and enter through the main entrance. From there he started making his way towards the bridge."
"Haven't you slammed the damn doors in his face?" Fury demanded.
"We tried sir! But the doors seem to have a mind of their own. They're opening even when we put them on Security Breach Gamma-024C!" The guard cried.
"Who's fucking security badge is he using?" Fury wondered.
"He's not sir," the guard replied.
"Where the fuck are the securities teams!?" Fury demanded.
"The few security guards he's found were incapacitated nearly immediately," the guard said. "We're trying to organize a response team now."
Fury swore as he finally found the intruder. He was a man, anywhere between 6' and 6'6". That's about all Fury could tell. The screens seemed to blur whenever the figure passed by. He seemed to have dark colored hair, but whether it was black or some shade of brown, Fury couldn't tell. He was walking with a confident, purposeful yet unhurried stride. Smug bastard.
"Why the hell haven't you fixed the cameras! I needed facial recognition yesterday!" Fury screamed.
"It's not the cameras sir! We think it's him," the guard replied.
"Well whatever he's doing, put a stop to it! I need to know who the hell broke onto my Helicarrier!" Fury roared.
Percy whistled to himself as he strode down the long metal corridors. Hazel would be having a field day if she had come instead of him. She'd be going all Magneto on these fuckers. They stole her brother. Hazel might be the epitome of sweetness and innocence, but she was hella defensive of her brother.
Speaking of, he wondered what Nico did to get taken on a fucking warship in the middle of the ocean. Knowing him, he probably offered McDonalds to the wrong Italian mobster. Damn kid and his McDonalds.
Percy waltzed on through as the heavy steel doors slid open for him. Hilariously, it seemed that his Father's domain of sea vessels applied to battleships. With nothing but a thought, any door in front of him was opened, and any door behind him was locked, and no fancy keycard could open it again. Plus, Percy was privy to all the information the battleship held. Which was a new thing he never had before. But then again, none of the boats he'd been on had their own computer networks. Anyways, it was really convenient for finding Nico. Maybe he'd ask Leo for a boat with all the pdfs of all the reading he had to do for his classes to see if he could learn them like that.
"Freeze!" Some snazzy looking guy with a gun screamed. Percy just waved his hand, and the guard fell unconscious. He'd be back up in a couple minutes. Percy had just constricted the blood in his brain. Instant results and no permanent damage. It was the best skill he'd ever picked up.
Usually he didn't control a person's blood. It felt like a violation of privacy. But these guys took Nico. He wasn't exactly in a good mood. He needed to be in and out as soon as possible. They were the government, so they weren't exactly bad guys, but they still took his baby cousin. That was unacceptable.
It had taken him a while to even touch blood as an extension of his abilities. It had all started with poison. After returning from Tartarus and the encounter with Akhlys, Percy had refused to even consider using poison as a weapon. It had disturbed him too much. Made him feel like a monster. But Will and the other trauma counselors had convinced him to try it as some kind of "exposure therapy". Eventually, they managed to convince him that the skill was just another tool in his toolbox. And when Leo suggested bloodbending, well, no one took it well. Except for Will. He presented it as a form of healing. Percy had originally been vehemently against it. But when Annabeth agreed with Will, he figured he'd give it a shot. Under the careful eyes of Annabeth, Chiron and the Apollo cabin, Will had taught Percy how to use a person's blood to stop bleeding, force blood clotting, stop and even reverse blood loss, and even forcibly pump a person's blood through their veins. And of course, they insisted he learn all about human anatomy. At least that was mostly pictures. Then it was just a matter of small pushes, pinches, pricks and constrictions in specific areas to put someone down for the count. And mortal blood was a lot easier to command than demigod blood.
Percy walked into the bridge, only to be met by a handful of people with their guns pointed at him. Percy yelped as he jumped back to avoid the onslaught of bullets that tore through the air where he had just been standing.
"What the hell happened to asking me to surrender, huh?" Percy snapped, before thrusting his hand out. All of the people were shoved back by the blood in their very bodies. All of them lost their grips on their guns as they were tossed back twenty feet. Percy tsked to himself.
"Gotta pay more attention Percy. Can't have yourself getting shot because you were sloppy."
Percy walked over to the main control center thing. How was someone supposed to use this? They'd have to turn to look at all the different screens and buttons. Seemed exhausting.
Finally he found what he was looking for. He picked up the little microphone and tapped it a couple times, willing the sound to come out of every speaker on the ship.
"Testing, testing, is this thing on?" Percy asked into the microphone. "Now I don't know who any of you are, or whatever you're doing, but you made one big mistake. You took my baby cousin. So I'll be taking him back. And then, well, I'm gonna break your prison. You've all got twenty minutes before I sink this ship. I strongly suggest everyone here get on a lifeboat unless you want to join this thing at the bottom of the ocean. This has been your captain speaking, good day to you all."
With that, Percy stuck the microphone in his pocket, never know when you'll need it, and headed off to grab Nico. Not even a minute later, the evacuation alarm started blaring. Percy smiled to himself. Good. They took his threat seriously.
Percy ran into a couple more guards, a few by themselves but mostly in groups of five to ten. All of them were defeated with a simple gesture from Percy. It took him like fifteen minutes to walk from the bridge to where Nico was being held. Maybe he should've given them longer to evacuate. There were two guards outside Nico's cell, both of them knocked unconscious before they could raise their guns on him. Percy willed the door open, just to be met with the sight of another guard aiming his gun at him. Percy raced across the room, grabbing the gunman's wrist even as a loud bang rang out in the room. Percy crushed the guard's wrist and pulled the gun out of his hand, crushing it in his fist.
"You shot me!" Percy cried incredulously. "I can't believe you shot me! Jackass."
Annabeth was going to be so mad at him for getting shot. Percy grabbed the guard by the shirt and threw him out the door. He looked over at Nico. "Can you believe it? The guy shot me!"
Nico just rolled his eyes at him. "Yeah yeah, you big baby. Thalia shoots you way worse than that all the time."
"Wow," Percy droned as he walked around the table. "I come all the way here to save you, and I get hurt during my brave and heroic rescue. And this is the thanks I get? No sympathy."
Nico just rolled his eyes as Percy snapped the metal chains keeping him locked to the chair. "If you're going to keep complaining about getting shot, leave me here next time. I'll get out on my own. It'll be better than listening to you bitch and moan."
"You know what? Maybe I will. Don't come crying to me next time you get yourself kidnapped, di Angelo," Percy snarked. "But till then, come on. Let's get out of here."
Percy grabbed Nico and led him out towards the deck. As they were trudging through the hallways, now bereft of life, Percy smacked his head.
"Hold on a sec, Nico," Percy said. He pulled out the microphone from his pocket. "Hello? Can everyone hear me? Hi. I've got my cousin and we're leaving now. You've got about five minutes to get off this boat now. If you're not gone by then, well, I warned you. Thanks for the stay at Hotel Battleship, let's never do this again."
With that, Percy tossed the microphone to the floor and stomped on it. The rest of their walk was entirely uninterrupted. Percy hauled Nico onto the deck and out into the pouring rain. Together, they jumped off the side and into the roiling sea below. Percy led them about a hundred feet from the vessel before stopping and turning back to it. Percy raised his hand and pushed. A wall of water almost 200 feet tall crashed into the ship, capsizing it and dragging it to the bottom of the sea. A shame. If those guys hadn't taken his little cousin, he would've been tempted to keep the boat for himself. Oh well. He could always get another. Until then, he turned and willed him and Nico back towards Camp Half-Blood, the sharp crack of thunder overhead the only evidence he had been there.