Percy had never really considered a building as something 'living'.
It wasn't that his lack of thought made it true, but it just wasn't something he had really considered. Mortal logic would tell him not to bother. Of course something made of cement and stone wasn't alive. The divine side of Percy knew a little bit better, though. There were all sorts of things that shouldn't be alive that went on living anyway.
Buildings weren't even that much of an exception. Aphrodite's manor was alive, in a way. The paintings changed, the walls sometimes moved, and the air beat with the love deity's very essence. Othrys, too, had possessed a certain energy. It was an insidious, dark, and horribly ancient sort of life, but life nonetheless.
Percy had to shake off that thought before his mind was drawn back to the dais and an endless, shifting void. It was an interesting phenomenon, though. Perhaps it was the will, the strength of the owner that gave such a place its unique presence. Aphrodite's lessons on divinity certainly gave credence to that hypothesis.
Is that what happened here? Percy couldn't help but wonder. What had befallen the masters of this place? What sort of fate did they find? Because, the instant he stepped foot inside, Percy knew one thing.
The Lotus Casino was dead.
It didn't take a doctor to make such a pronouncement. The place was almost just as much of a corpse as Kampê's fried, headless carcass had been.
Before the flash of Aphrodite's teleportation had even faded, pebbles of shattered glass were crackling under Percy's shoes. The explosion of light and sound flung what seemed like a hundred years worth of dust into the air. The cloud was so thick Percy felt it crust his eyelashes when he blinked.
Strangely, the grains seemed to slide right off his skin rather than stick like normal. He was clean again in a matter of seconds.
"Aw, man!" A not-so-lucky voice bleated from a few feet to Percy's left. "I just had my hooves shined, dude." The sky bearer didn't even have to turn to see Grover holding his horns in either hand, looking down at his legs in abject sadness. Gray coated the satyr's fur up to the knee. "I'm gonna have to take, like, four showers after this."
"Should have worn pants like I told you to." Annabeth chipped in from the satyr's opposite side. The dust swirling around her shoes was almost the same color as her eyes, if a few shades duller. "You should just wear pants in general, actually. Shorts are hardly protective." She punctuated the advice by patting the despondent half-human on the shoulder.
Grover only grumbled, crossing his arms with a pout. "You know it's hard to find ones that fit over my hooves."
Annabeth shrugged. "You'll manage."
Percy huffed, amused. Apparently his mother's parental streak had rubbed off on the blond a bit. Must have been during one the dozen hugs they exchanged throughout the previous day. The sky bearer had to content himself with the single tight embrace he had received before he left for the evening.
"A step in the right direction," Aphrodite had said after Annabeth had walked away, heading towards the communal dinner that Percy only felt a bit guilty about avoiding. "Sally works quickly, does she not?"
He had only been able to agree.
The demigod's new softness towards the young Olympian wasn't to say the daughter of Athena was without teeth for their little excursion the next morning. Shafts of filtered light glinted dangerously off the celestial bronze dagger clenched in Annabeth's hand. Percy was also certain he caught glimpses of some sort of protective chainmail underneath her orange shirt whenever the woman moved.
By contrast, Grover hadn't come armed. That seemed entirely like him. It wasn't as if Percy couldn't pick up the slack - indeed, if either of them needed to lift a finger in their own defense the young god would consider that a personal failure. If that meant the heartless decimation of a monster or two, so be it.
I've let enough people down. Percy clenched a fist. Not anymore. To that end, the son of Poseidon turned his finely-tuned senses to sorting through the absolute mess the trio had just dropped into. And what a mess it was.
The Olympian and company had appeared right past the main entrance of the casino. Impeccable aim by Aphrodite, truly. There were almost a half dozen pairs of doors along the long front wall to Percy's back, and that wasn't including the large revolving cylinder set right into the center. There wasn't a single window on any of the portals that wasn't covered in nailed-on boards. Dry Nevada heat whispered through the gaps in the wood, already balmy even at only a bit past nine in the morning.
"Welcoming," Percy mused. His voice seemed to simultaneously bounce off the walls and fall flat against the thick layer of grime on every surface.
"That's one way to put it, man." Grover had resorted to wiping what dust he could off of his shoulders and face. Percy helped him out with a brush of teal wind, and received a warm smile in response. "Thanks."
"No problem." The detritus tasted like ash against the sky bearer's aura. There was no shortage of suitably dirty places to deposit what he picked off the satyr's clothing.
"Gods!" Annabeth's exclamation came out almost awed by the sheer scale of the wreckage. Her head was rubber-banding across the space, a curious glint to her gaze. "This place is a wreck." She wasn't wrong.
Once, the Lotus Casino's forty-foot ceilings and massive, winding staircases might have given an air of easy opulence. As far as mortal constructions went, it certainly aired on the impressive side. In the casino's prime, the view from between the mirrored staircase must have seemed like a window into everything Las Vegas had to offer. A literal archway to endless, decadent enjoyment.
Percy could almost taste the explosion of light and sound that would have careered between the casino's polished walls, flowing over the packed crowd between the machines. Even now he could picture row upon row of flashing slots, busy blackjack tables, and every other gambling vice imaginable stretching for a hundred feet or more before even hitting another structural feature. A fountain, in this case, polished to a shine and spewing crystal-clear water dozens of feet into the air.
Now, though, the casino was nothing but rotten.
Not a single element of the vivid fantasy remained. The once plush carpet was eaten through, its psychedelic pattern offset by great splotches of off-white and a disturbing brackish green. Each patch stunk strong enough to smell from anywhere, even with a mortal nose. To Percy, you might as well have shoved the mold right into his nostrils. It was the worst thing he could remember having ever smelled.
"Be careful." Annabeth's mind seemed to be on a similar train. The demigod was crouching near one discolored patch. "Well, I guess just me and Grover. Anyway." She shot them a look over her shoulder. "Disturbing the mold could launch dangerous spores into the air. Try to breathe lightly." The blond's voice was so factual that Percy had no doubt he could have asked which exact strains she was concerned about.
"Good thing we have a god of wind here, right?" Despite his apparent lack of fear, Grover still made it a point to edge away from the closest off-color section of carpet. He went to pull the neckline of his orange camp shirt over his nose, muffling his next words. "I value my lungs, dude."
"I'll keep anything off you," Percy answered firmly. "Don't worry."
He was the god here, after all. The bastion. It was time to act like it. A quick defensive swirl of air around his companion's heads would do the job easily enough.
Grover dropped his shirt, oohing and awing at the faint teal streaks Percy's aura summoned. Annabeth flinched, but tried to hide it. The son of Poseidon forcibly tamped down the color, but not the force, turning his eyes back to the rest of the space.
"Thanks!" The satyr chirped, beaming. "That's awesome."
Percy couldn't quite mask his following smile. It felt . . . good. Nice to be so useful. It made it easy to ignore how awkward it was to basically be intimately feeling up the hair of both his companions.
Of all the casino's features, the fountain Percy had spotted previously was perhaps the most decrepit. The thing's deep sunken base was empty, and no liquid shot from the top of the flume. The same was true from the stone heads that ringed the central column - instead, the dry marble faces were the color of dry, cracked skin. Every piece of visible metal piping was rusted through, including most disturbingly in the empty eyes of the carved busts. Long tails of red-slick leaked from the open sockets like trails of bloody tears.
The creeping darkness of the building's deeper interior made the grotesque image all the more poignant. Far overhead, broken light fixtures spewed cables like opened chest cavities. Were it not for the gaps between the window boards, Percy figured that mortal eyes would have had a hard time seeing much of anything.
To his sight, though, it was obvious where all the broken glass had come from. The sky bearer counted more rows far above that were missing lights than still contained them.
There were no visible signs of recent activity anywhere. The rows upon rows of broken-down slot machines loomed in a silent vigil, like a great army had frozen in parade rest. A great circular greeting desk lay unmanned off to one side. Over half a dozen open elevator doors squatted crooked along the opposite wall, their interiors black and foreboding.
"This is the place?" Percy murmured. He couldn't help sounding a bit skeptical. "Aphy never said it was like . . . this." He wasn't sure why he spoke so softly, but even talking at a normal volume seemed wrong.
The sky bearer looked to Grover, who had started to edge his own path along the floor. The satyr shrugged.
"I bet she didn't know." Whenever Grover took an exploratory step, the fracturing glass beneath his hooves sounded loud as a gunshot. He winced but kept moving. "The Titans controlled basically everything west of the Rockies for most of the war. No one has probably been out here until, well, us. I guess." Grover's voice had dipped into a stiff place as he finished speaking. "I know I didn't want to come back."
"Seconded." Annabeth's tone was a bubbling mixture of tension and self-deprecation. Her shoulders were so tight it was a wonder she could still turn her head. "But we still should have anyway. I can't believe I didn't think of it before."
"No one did." Grover rebutted, shooting the blond demigod a sympathetic look. "And we're here now. That's what matters." Percy had already been present for the daughter of Athena's first self-bashing session the previous evening. If the scruffy half-human's expression was any indication, there had definitely been at least one more he had missed.
"Right." Percy nodded. He wasn't sure his words would have any effect, but couldn't hurt to try.
"Sure." Annabeth's clipped tone left no room for further discussion. She didn't turn around. Grover just sighed and kept up his slow exploration towards the other side of the room.
Percy understood the satyr's caution. Even though it was unequivocally his idea for Aphrodite to stay behind - I have to do this on my own, he'd said, right before a completely stress-filled and sleepless night in her bed - the son of Poseidon couldn't deny he was missing her presence. The hair on the back of his neck had yet to fall from standing straight up. There were ghosts whispering in the corners of his ears, their voices just barely too faint to make out.
A second paranoid check of his surroundings revealed nothing, once again. Indeed, the Lotus Casino redefined the definition of 'empty'. There was certainly nothing living nearby Percy could sense.
That was a cold comfort. It was as if even the air around him stood still in time, not even daring to breathe lest it disturb the dead. I guess Hades pointing us here fits, then.
"This doesn't make any sense."
Annabeth's voice echoed hauntingly in the chamber. When Percy turned, the demigod had moved past the sagging spiral staircases, peering underneath the closest slot machine. She seemed unbothered by the grime coating the knees of her jeans, and the inquisitive shine to her steel eyes was the brightest thing in the room. Save for Percy's ever-present sparkle, anyway.
"I know it's been a few years, but . . ." A light tap on the metal siding with her dagger had four tiny, furry bodies exploding from the gutted interior before vanishing into the labyrinth of machines. "This place looks like it's been abandoned for decades." The rats scurrying claws seemed extra loud in the oppressive, heavy silence. Annabeth straightened, sitting back on her heels and chewing her bottom lip. "More, even. See the way all of the metal fixtures have rusted through?" The blond gestured with the top of her weapon. "Damage like that doesn't just happen this fast."
"Time was weird the first time around, wasn't it?" Percy posed. That's what their story had said, anyway. "Maybe it never stopped."
It had taken the sky bearer most of the night to come to terms with the picture Grover and Annabeth had painted of the casino, but more so of what they said he was like as a teen. Young, bright. Energetic.
The stories were equally fantastical. A stolen Master Bolt, lost children of Hades. It was like listening to an impossible tale about a complete stranger, each twist and turn completely unfamiliar. Had he not seen the truth of it in their nostalgic expressions, he might not have believed them about what the quests had entailed.
Percy turned back to the room to distract himself. It was easier to treat the past like that, merely a story instead of the reality it was. The young god used a few fingers of wind like makeshift brooms, sweeping aside dirt and decay as he stepped towards the front desk. There was nothing to be found behind the wooden circle but toppled brochure stands.
"Or . . ." Grover wrung his hands together. He had stopped near Annabeth, though he seemed more likely to try and apologize to the rats than scare them away like she had. "Maybe good ol' Kronos didn't appreciate another group of time manipulators on his turf." The grim implication of that statement was obvious to them all.
"That seems like him." Percy's voice came out dark. Edged, like Annabeth's dagger. The tile floor shuddered beneath his shoes.
"It seems more likely he came to the same conclusion we did, just years earlier. Or, Hades at least expected him too." Annabeth was inspecting another machine, this one still mostly intact. Nothing happened when she tested one of the buttons, not that any of them expected anything. "Nico should have come of age before the war was over. He didn't. That only leaves a few options." Annabeth shrugged, stiffly. "If Hades had hid him here all this time, right under his father's nose, then making the place look abandoned might be only the first layer of the camouflage."
"Or making it actually abandoned." Percy left the crumbling remains of the front desk to step nearer to the demigod as she started moving down the center row of unlit machines. "That would work better." He didn't have to spell out what that meant his uncle would have done to the Lotophagi that once ran the casino.
"It would." Annabeth sounded both grudgingly impressed and a bit unnerved.
The state of the casino didn't bode well. Percy hoped his uncle hadn't killed the Lotus Eaters. He hated that he couldn't be sure, though. He hated even more that a detached part of him saw the logic behind such an action.
If the Lotophagi had refused to vacate when Hades came knocking with Nico in tow and a world-ending prophecy to avoid, there wouldn't have been another real option. Do the ends justify the means, though? Percy wasn't sure he would ever have an answer to that particular question.
"It could explain some of the accelerated aging," Annabeth continued, absently. Nothing else was said on the matter.
Percy kept his aura tendrils extended as they moved through the bottom floor. Annabeth led the way, flicking on a small flashlight she dug from her back pocket. The object was shaped strangely, lumpy in a way that spoke of an origin in the Hephaestus cabin rather than a mortal hardware store. The swinging beam provided little respite as they tread deeper into the casino's black belly.
Percy wasn't bothered by the darkness. Like slithering teal snakes he felt across the carpet, up the walls, slipped between the gaps in the slot machines. There were other rooms to either side of the main atrium, he discovered, impressive spaces in their own right filled with all manners of abandoned entertainment.
A dance floor. A climbing gym. A lounge with a massive bar, and even an indoor water park with a dozen slides. Each was dead as the last.
Percy found nothing but rats and cockroaches, still air and stagnant water. There was something, though, something about the complete lack of anything that tugged at the base of his spine. It was purposefully unnatural. Architecturally unnerving.
"We were right." Percy's soft declaration still had Grover nearly jumping out of his hooves. "He's here." It felt correct.
"I think so, too." Annabeth spoke with deadly certainty. Her steel eyes were gleaming. "But if Hades hid him here from Kronos for years, I'm not sure we'll be able to find him." She threw Percy a chagrined glance. The hilt of her knife tapped uneasily into one of her thighs as she walked. "Not even with you, Percy. No offense."
"None taken," Percy shrugged. "But something tells me we will." He could feel the textbook Jackson crease deepening between his eyebrows. "I think, of everyone, Hades is actually the happiest that we're here." The sky bearer could almost see his uncle's silhouette standing in the black, shadowy corners, a smug smirk above his trimmed beard.
"I hate that." Percy watched as Grover actually full-body shivered. He could empathize. "I like Nico, dude, but his dad has always given me the creeps."
"I'm pretty sure that's the idea," Annabeth dead-panned. She didn't disagree, though.
The fountain was even larger than Percy expected, once the trio made it through the great hall of slot machines. It wouldn't have looked that out of place on one of Olympus' lower tiers. Annabeth stepped up to inspect the dry pool around the base, while Grover walked a bit away and crouched down.
Percy observed, curious. The satyr, for all intents and purposes, was just staring at an empty patch of flooring. A second later, Percy sensed it.
It was at first just the barest brush of pine across the young god's nose, the smell of the forest condensed into its purest form. One of soil, and greenery, and life untamed. Deep verdant green misted from his skin, something close to Demeter's presence and yet wholly different. Before long, though, a good section of the empty-space hummed with Grover's magic.
It wasn't like Percy's own teal, so thick you could have almost touched it with your bare hands. Grover's was a wispy thing. Tenuous, in a way that made the sky bearer suspect it only coalesced with a combination of thought and active effort.
Whatever the case, within less than half a minute a near half-dozen rats tip-tapped their way out from between the slot-machines. Their little wet noses twitched rapidly, beady eyes locked onto Grover's form. When he waved a hand gently in their direction, the little furry rodents nervously padded forward to smell at his fingers. Their coats were as dark as soot, matted with dust and grime.
"Hey there." The satyr's voice was warm and gentle. It was as if he was talking to skittish children, rather than rodents. "I need some help from you guys, if that's alright." Percy was then treated to the strange and bewildering sight of six rats chittering over each other while Grover nodded along, smiling all the while.
"That's handy," the sky bearer huffed, spinning his engagement ring slowly with his thumb. Could I do that? He didn't see why not, if only in a few specific scenarios. Percy had half glossed over it at the time but his declaration had included dominion over several animals, too.
"You got anything, Grover?" Annabeth had apparently jumped down into the fountain's deep moat when Percy wasn't paying attention, because when he turned his head she was already half-way through the process of climbing back out. The demigod caught his questioning look. "If I was going to hide a button, the bottom of a fountain would be a nice spot," Annabeth shrugged. "Especially if the water was still running."
"No dice?" He assumed. When Percy glanced back over, Grover and his new furry friends were still engrossed in a deep conversation. Presumably.
"No dice." Annabeth flipped her hair, sliding her dagger into a sheath strapped to her arm. "Guess we'll have to keep looking." The woman seemed torn on whether or not it was in good taste to be excited about that particular notion, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. Just Athena things, Percy guessed. "Grover?" The woman shot the question to their satyr companion.
Grover was in the middle of winding down the rat's chatter. "No worries, dudes." The satyr had both hands held out, a placating gesture that didn't look promising. The rodents scurried back out of sight as the half-human stood. "That was weird." Grover shook his head, the last vestiges of nature-green fading away.
"Weird, how?" Annabeth questioned, lips pursed. The satyr clip-clopped back over, his hooves louder against the cloudy tile surrounding the fountain.
"They weren't really making any sense, man." Grover was obviously put-out, eyebrows scrunched together like a long furry caterpillar. "It was almost like they were all still pups, despite being fully grown. Words all jumbled together, that sorta thing." He waved his arms about in a messy pattern to illustrate. The effect was mostly lost since Annabeth's flashlight was currently pointed somewhere near his knees.
"None of 'em could remember anything other than living here. Apparently, no animal inside the casino can- and that's something, too." Grover sharply cut into his own train of thought, almost stumbling over his words. "There aren't that many species around. No bats or raccoons or half the other sorts of larger creatures that make ecosystems like this work." The satyr's voice flickered into something almost intellectual at the end. "Just bugs, mostly. That's what the rats have been eating."
"I believe that," Percy snorted. The place was practically crawling with insects. Literally - in some places the floor looked almost alive.
"Could be Hades doing, too." Annabeth picked at her lip with her fingernails, eyes distant as her brain almost audibly churned away. "Rapidly aged animals to complete the illusion, but only those that could be procured with ease." She folded her arms, swinging the beam of her flashlight around wildly. "How long do rats live? Three, four years, maybe? That lines up with the timeline."
The sky bearer found it hard not to be impressed by the sheer speed of Annabeth's deductions. As much as he didn't like her interference, Percy could see why Athena was so invested in her daughter's future. That didn't mean he forgave the goddess harsh words, though. Or her generally awful parenting style.
Thankfully, Annabeth seemed to have avoided most of her mother's more antisocial traits. Rather, she and Grover were almost standing shoulder to shoulder, now. Percy didn't think either realized they had done so.
"Couldn't Hades have just asked for help getting other animals?" Grover rubbed a hand through his scruffy goatee. "Every god has at least a couple, yeah?"
Annabeth shot the satyr a deadpan expression. "Do you think Hades would really want the other gods knowing where he put his demigod son? His brothers or wife, especially?"
Percy hid a grimace, pushing back images of striking lightning and the faint scent of burnt ozone. Annabeth's incredulous tone made it clear she wasn't really expecting an answer. Grover gave one anyway.
"Percy's here," the satyr pointed out. Literally, in this case, by jerking a thumb in the young Olympian's direction. Annabeth blinked, opened her mouth, and then shut it again.
"That's what worries me, honestly," Percy threw in his two cents. He debated talking more about his last interaction with his uncle, but settled on an abridged explanation given the circumstances. "Ever since I came back, he's been . . . friendly. Sorta. Supportive more than anything, I guess." Both the satyr and the demigod were giving him equally confused expressions. "It was just as weird as it sounds," he agreed.
"Man, I do not envy you, dude," Grover stated, bluntly.
"Me neither." The young god huffed out a weak chuckle, running a hand through his ashy hair. A few nervous teal sparkles spat into the air as he scratched at his scalp, wind fluttering the hems of his clothes.
"It's too late to worry about that now." Annabeth eyed the little green stars of divine power as they faded away. She cleared her throat and shook her head, as if physically moving her brain onto the previously derailed track. "Either way, the evidence backs up my theory. It would explain all of the bugs, too," She mused. "There aren't enough predators around to keep the population in check."
The blond demigod cast a disgusted look towards the darkened corners of the room, where the sky bearer's eyes could clearly make out the undulating legions of roaches and other insects. It was worse because he could hear them, also. A hundred thousand pairs of tiny clawed legs, all skittering atop one another.
It was gross.
"That's a great point, actually!" Grover brightened, then dimmed again just as rapidly. "It means I'm probably not going to be much help then, guys." He scratched the back of his neck. "Bugs, uh . . ." The satyr shuffled in place. "They aren't very good at conversation, if you get me."
"Small brains." If anyone else said it, it might have sounded like a joke. Annabeth's face was completely serious, though.
The satyr nodded in response. "Really small."
"Smaller than yours?" The demigod teased, smacking the satyr gently on one shoulder. Grover only guffawed a bright laugh, one that bled the tension from his shoulders like a steam release valve. Annabeth's smirk was victorious.
Percy, suddenly, felt like he was watching the conversation from the outside looking in. The duo had fallen into such an easy flow, fallen into it so quickly, that the young god almost didn't dare to interrupt. He might have been the third voice to complete the triangle, once. Now, he couldn't shake the feeling he didn't quite belong.
"It's still good to know." Grover and Annabeth both seemed to start, as if Percy speaking up somehow surprised them. Their heads swung to him almost in unison. "Thanks, Grover." The sky bearer ignored the uneasy bubbling in his gut and settled for a friendly grin.
"We'll just have to look around the old fashioned way." Annabeth actually returned his smile a bit. The demigod rolled her shoulders, as if limbering up for the search. "I don't think splitting up would be a good idea, but-"
"We can." The blond woman's nose wrinkled in a touch of annoyance, but she just waved Percy on to continue. He did so with an apologetic smile. "I don't sense anything dangerous in the building. No monsters, for sure."
"You can do that?" Grover breathed. He winced when Annabeth's flashlight swung back around to beam right into his face. "Beth! Blind!"
"Sorry." The blond flushed pink and pointed the light at their shoes. Percy coughed to disguise a chuckle. He was lucky his divine eyes remained unaffected by such things.
"Yeah, I can," He answered instead. Seeing the wheels begin to turn behind Annabeth's steel gaze once again, the sky bearer hurried to clarify. "I've saturated almost the whole bottom floor with my aura. It's like- well . . . it's hard to explain."
The daughter of Athena wilted a bit as Percy's poor explanation came to a pitiful end. But really, how was he supposed to convey the fact that he was only in one place but also everywhere, in every direction, all at once, all of the time? Percy had tried with his mother, just to have his incomprehensible rambling shut down with a kind smile. Only Aphrodite really seemed to get it.
"Sorry," Percy apologized, almost reaching out to pat Annabeth on one despondent shoulder but thinking better of it. "Even if you get in trouble, I can be there almost instantly to help. And if you talk, I'll hear you no matter where you are."
"Dude." The young god should have been used to the awed look that he received from Grover, having seen it a thousand times the previous day. It still rubbed Percy the wrong way, just a tad. "I wish we had you back ages ago! Do you know how easy things would have been?" The satyr sounded on the verge of laughing.
"I was occupied." Percy's flat answer was supposed to be a joke. When Grover's chuckle choked in his throat and Annabeth took a hasty step away, he realized it hadn't sounded that way. Great one.
"We'll just need to watch out for traps." The daughter of Athena was quick to move the conversation along. It was clearly for everyone's benefit. "Who knows what Hades set up." Her face was pinched. "Here."
Annabeth reached into her pocket and pulled out a second flashlight, which she handed to Grover. He flicked it on while holding it the wrong way, nearly blinding himself again in the process. The satyr's hiss of pain echoed through the empty space, the sound lost quickly into the darkness.
"I assume you don't need one?" Annabeth ignored Grover's struggle, speaking back at Percy without solidly making eye-contact.
"Nope. I'm just impressed you actually brought two of those." He answered, truthfully. Off to the side Grover finally wrestled the flashlight into submission, grumbling something about traitorous technology under his breath.
Annabeth flushed, but hid her reaction by spinning around. "A daughter of Athena is always prepared," she sniffed, almost snootily. "I'll take this side. Grover, can you take the opposite? Percy can handle the rest, he'll probably be the fastest." She only sounded a bit frustrated by that last part. A quick and practiced motion had her knife in her hand once again, blade gleaming.
"Works for me, ma'am." Grover saluted with his free hand, smiling his crooked and endearing smile. "I'll shout if I find anything. You'll hear me, don't worry." He laughed a bit, curly hair bouncing around his horns. "I'm pretty loud when I wanna be."
"I know." Annabeth snorted over her shoulder, already stalking off in the direction of the indoor water park.
"Oh!" Percy's examination stopped her momentarily, as did a quick tug on the back of her shirt with a tendril of wind. The sky bearer ran a hand through his hair, sheepish as she turned with a raised eyebrow. "Just, uh, don't go upstairs. The floor up there doesn't seem especially . . . stable." That was a much nicer way of saying that the sky bearer could feel air flowing straight through the ceiling in a way that belied far too many holes to be safe. "Besides, I have a feeling what we're looking for isn't up there anyway."
Percy didn't even try to explain that last part. It was the same gut feeling as before. It pulled on the teal flame in his core, whispering just enough to be heard. Not there, the little voice pleaded. Closer here. It was impossible not to trust it.
"Uh huh." Annabeth said slowly. After a second's consideration, she seemed to come to some conclusion. "Sure. No upstairs."
"It's not the first time we'll trust one of Percy's 'feelings'," Grover interjected with a touch of amusement. He folded his arms. "Just like the good ol' days."
"If that's what you want to call them, G-man." Annabeth shook her head as she started her way across to the other side of the fountain. Not even her feigned disinterest could hide the wisps of nostalgia in her tone. A few steps later and she rounded the corner, the thin beam of her flashlight bobbing in the shadow as she walked away.
"Good luck!" The demigod's parting call rebounded a dozen times or more off the walls. It sounded almost like a challenge.
Both Percy and Grover watched her go. After a few seconds, the satyr turned back to peer up at the young god. Percy met his gaze.
"She's getting better." Grover's voice came out as soft as the empathetic shade to his expression. "She just needs time." The satyr reached out, placing a couple of fingers on Percy's arm before withdrawing.
The son of Poseidon blew out a long breath. Was my worrying that obvious? The scruffy half-human's little smile said as much.
"Thanks, Grover," Percy finally answered. He couldn't quite match the satyr's smile, but he tried.
"You used to call me G-man, too, y'know." Grover chuckled. His warm brown eyes were unexpectedly piercing. "No need to be so serious all the time, right? Not even on quests." Before Percy could respond, the insightful half-human had spun around and started his own meandering gait in the opposite direction. "See ya' soon!" He punctuated the goodbye with a little cheerful wave over his shoulder.
And then, Percy was alone.
It wasn't the first time this had happened. Thank the gods for that, at least. That dubious honor was taken by Percy's fight with Kampê, in that single moment when Aphrodite's protection had shattered and he had been left paralyzed by fear. If not for that experience the sky bearer wasn't sure he would have handled it so well, there in the heart of a building's rotting carcass. Surrounded by bugs and decay.
As horrible as that had been, and it had been horrible, Percy was nothing if not a quick study. Both Aphrodite and his mother said as much. So, rather than standing there like a pile of useless divine bricks, the young god took a deep breath.
I got this, Percy nodded to himself. The self-talk felt more true than it had in a while. The steadying feeling of Riptide in his pocket and the locket around his neck certainly helped, the vows against the young god's heart a reminder that Aphrodite was really truly far away. Mission, start. Or something.
The first order of business was a bit of backtracking. Not that it was Annabeth's fault, but the trio had only walked through the center most lane of the great hall of slot machines. There were a half dozen or so more tracks to search through, on the off chance Hades had decided to hide a switch or something similar inside one of the hundreds of unpowered husks. Needle in a haystack, and all that.
Percy contented himself at first with just moving between the machines, saturating them with his aura as he passed. It was slow going at first, before he got the hang of it. The whole thing felt a bit like the young god was prying each machine's metal walls apart from the inside out, exposing their complicated, wired insides to his view without ever touching anything physically.
He wasn't sure what he was looking for, exactly, but that nagging pull in his gut remained silent for one entire row. And then a second. Percy did a quick check on his companions.
Annabeth was searching around what was probably once the deep end of an indoor wave pool. The cracked tile walls were taller than her head in three directions, patterned with colors that were once probably blue and white but were now only various shades of off-color gray. She picked at a few of the more loose chunks of porcelain with her fingernails, careful to not cut herself on their sharp edges. The daughter of Athena was particularly committed to the idea of something being hidden underwater, it seemed.
Grover was having an equal amount of success. The scruffy satyr was in the midst of peering behind the bar Percy had noticed earlier. The sky bearer watched as he pulled on each bottle on the shelves one by one, as if he was looking for some sort of hidden lever out of a spy movie. The satyr wilted a little bit every time he failed. When the half-human noticed the young god's attention, probably due to his increased attunement to divine forces, Percy received a toothy smile.
The son of Poseidon returned back to his own relatively monotonous task. A third row passed with nothing of note, except a few nests of particularly fierce rats that hissed angrily as his wind disturbed their make-shift homes. The ever-present horde of bugs skittered out of his way, lest they be trampled underfoot. He ignored them.
Eventually, the sky bearer discovered that it was easier to peer into each machine with a bit of physical contact. He settled for running his fingers along the walls of the slots on either side as he passed, using the touch as a beacon for his aura. It doubled his speed, not that he found anything.
It was at least interesting to watch the dust run up along his skin but never stick. Instead, the stuff only sloughed away to either side rather than crawl up Percy's wrist as it should have done. He didn't even really feel it. It was more like he knew the dirt was there, but only in a distant intellectual sense.
The last of the rows went by in only a few minutes. As the pad of Percy's fingers passed along the broken slots, five completely clean trails were left in their wake. His aura glowed green against the painted metal sidings even after he passed. The young god's shoes did something similar to the carpet, literally evaporating the discolored mold as he stepped on it. A perk of godhood, the son of Poseidon supposed.
Percy turned his mind back to his companions once again. Grover was searching through the restaurant section in front of the bar, overturning tables and looking under chairs. Annabeth had crawled half-way up one of the waterslides. The daughter of Athena was using her knife like a climber's pick, puncturing holes in the plastic as she went.
They seem to be doing alright.
Percy considered tackling the lobby next. The instant he stepped out between the staircases, his body turned right back around. Too far! The voice in his gut protested.
Percy listened. The subtle pull ended up leading the young Olympian right back through the hall of slots, settling only when he stepped close to the central fountain once again. When he even considered picking another direction, the tugging behind his navel picked right back up again.
"Alright. Fine," Percy groused to himself. He settled on the raised lip of the fountain moat's edge, swinging his legs over the side to face the central flume. Dirt and detritus fled even before his seat hit the stone, leaving a perfectly sanitary lap-sized patch. "Stay here, I get it." He rolled his eyes.
The sky bearer's grumblings went unanswered. The ever-present breeze around his form whistled through the spigot holes in the carved busts that rung the central spout. The rusted metal fixtures hummed, the low and groaning notes combining together into a haunting song. It made Percy distinctly uneasy.
Something is here. The young god eyed the fountain again. Maybe Annabeth had the right idea, but he couldn't shake the notion that there was something they were missing. Some piece to the puzzle, the key to this specific lock.
"Okay, Percy. Let's think about this." He breathed out a long exhale, tapping his heels against the moat's wall. It wasn't often he willingly put all of his brain power towards something like this. He was instantly reminded why. In this case, the effort was a necessary evil.
Percy started from the beginning, all the way back to his conversation with Hades on Olympus. The lord of the dead wanted them here, right? He wanted Percy here, specifically. That was important.
The sky bearer could still feel Hades' presence in the dark, empty chamber. Much like Apollo's gaze when in the sunlight, Percy's uncle peered out of the shadow. His gaze rose up from the floor, pressed against the soles of the young god's feet and the bottom of his aura. It was just the barest hint of attention, but even that was enough to make Percy doubly certain.
There was no way Nico wasn't here.
"But how to find him?" Percy mused aloud, still kicking his legs. A brief once-over of the fountain with his aura revealed nothing that Annabeth wouldn't have already pointed out. He blew out a loud exhale, the excess energy sending dust swirling in about a dozen-foot radius. "What am I missing?"
The young god turned back to his thoughts. The engagement ring on his finger spun idly, sped along by his left thumb. Grover and Annabeth's words turned over in Percy's mind. A few ideas were stickier than the rest - conjured animals, specific species only, a purposeful deception. One that was good enough to fool Kronos, but not good enough to fool Percy.
That was the part the young god couldn't quite wrap his head around. He wasn't stupid, by any means, but he also wasn't Kronos. The most powerful of the titans, smart and cunning by equal measure, ancient beyond a mortal's capacity to imagine. It wasn't as if he was going to stumble onto something the titan had missed.
Right?
But Percy didn't think he was being set up to fail. The tugging in his gut disagreed with the idea at a base level. If Hades actually wanted Percy to find his son, as they all suspected, that must have meant there was something he could do that Kronos' couldn't have. Some ability or skill or piece of knowledge unique to the newest Olympian . . . but who was to say it had to be built into the camouflage from the start? That idea had Percy up and off of his seat, pacing restlessly in front of the fountain.
"Hades didn't know when the war would end. He couldn't have." The words felt so right the instant they came out the sky bearer knew it was the truth. Percy didn't even register that he was speaking to himself aloud, a thick furrow between his brows. "So maybe there wasn't a way to find Nico, at first." His steps picked up steam alongside his words. "Maybe . . . maybe it's been added. Recently."
And oh, wasn't that the perfect explanation? Annabeth had said rats lived for a few years, but Grover mentioned that the animals still spoke like pups. Why would that be the case? If Hades put them here years ago, during the war, they wouldn't just be adults by now.
They'd be dead.
That meant at least some of the rats were new. And if some of the rats were new, then there was no reason there couldn't be other new creatures too. And if Hades wanted to hide an animal for Percy's eyes only in the heart of an abandoned building, full of all sorts of rotting fabrics and curtains and bedsheets, what could he have picked? What one creature wouldn't have looked even a bit out of place at all, no matter how many different gods scanned the structure with their auras? There was only one option.
"A moth."
Percy breathed the answer out loud. It was so smart he couldn't help but be impressed. There were insects everywhere - he had been right about the needle in the haystack! Not a button on one of the slot machines, but a bug inside a building already crawling with them.
Percy spun around, eyes cutting effortlessly into the most shadowed corners of the room. Nothing. Not a single flutter of white wings, only flies and other clear-membrane insects. Grover had been right more than he knew when he talked about how weird the ecosystem was. The complete lack of the most common airborne fabric-eater in the world was made all the more jarring by the fact that there was literally at least a hundred of everything else.
Percy could feel himself smiling, his stomach swelling with a feeling not unlike a hound locking onto a faint scent trail. He was getting closer.
But Hades was tricky. The young god's previous discovery proved as much. Just because Percy couldn't see a moth didn't mean there wasn't one. He just wasn't looking in the right place. And then, suddenly, Percy knew why his uncle had insisted Grover and Annabeth come along.
The son of Poseidon actually laughed aloud. "You sneaky bastard!" Distantly, a dark and pleased chuckle echoed through the foundations of the building before fading away.
It was so simple, but so perfect. Every member of Percy's trio had a part to play in this orchestra, with Hades as the conductor. Annabeth to investigate the fountain - because of course she would, she was a daughter of Athena - and Grover to showcase his animal-speak. That rats weren't there for camouflage, they were there for the satyr!
The whole thing was all so intricately planned that Percy couldn't help but marvel. The god of the dead had been observing the duo back when they were still a trio, back before the young Olympian had been trapped under the burden and everything changed. How much of a stretch was it to predict their first course of action when faced with a type of quest they had already done?
The two mortals showed the way. Grover and Annabeth had practically dropped the answer right in Percy's lap. Now, it was up to him to put it all together.
"Alright." Percy ran a hand through his hair. "Here it goes."
His first course of action was to crouch down in front of the fountain. The young god bounced a bit on the balls of his feet until he found a comfortable enough position. It probably wasn't necessary, but mimicking what Grover had done made visualizing the rest of the process easier. Had Percy seen himself from another point of view, he would have noticed his glowing blue-green eyes practically boring a hole into the stone water feature.
The next step was a bit tricker. By now Percy had plenty of experience moving his aura around. Shrinking it, growing it, thickening or thinning it out. But what the satyr had showcased was something different.
Grover hadn't just grabbed the rats in fists of magic and deposited them where he wanted. He had enticed them to him. The satyr had put out some cheese, metaphorically, and let the rodents do the rest. That was something Percy didn't really know how to do, especially for something like a moth.
But he was willing to learn.
Percy's first few attempts went rather poorly, even he could admit. Attempting to slowly spread his energy across the floor did little more than run the texture of the cracked tiles across Percy's spiritual fingers. A bit of a more forceful approach had the air around him vibrating dangerously. That would much more deter a small flying insect than attract one, evidenced by how all of the actually visible bugs in the room gave his teal glow a rather healthy distance.
After a few fruitless minutes Percy considered calling Grover over to teach him how it was done. A deep, stubborn part of him stayed his tongue. He could do this. He would.
The young god wasn't sure how long he stayed there, crouched in the darkness. It could have been at little as fifteen minutes, or maybe as long as an hour or more. Around him, his teal aura contorted into every shape and size imaginable - a cube with sharp, glowing edges; a flat circle, fuzzy in the center; a tall cylinder, reaching high enough to brush tendrils of creeping fog along the ceiling. The trails of mist dripped through the air like miniature waterfalls, dissipating still over a dozen feet overhead.
Eventually, he settled into a half-meditative state. It was almost like being back at the bottom of Aphrodite's pool, without the pleasant watery part. The teal flame of Percy's domains flickered in and out of view, its licking fire pushed about by his will.
And just as much as he pulled at it, so too did it pull at him. The back and forth continued until the son of Poseidon had settled his aura into a thin, velvety sheen. The shining layer of energy hummed a specific, inaudible note through the air.
"I know you are here." The words whispered out of Percy's mouth, vibrating across the teal spider's web he had created. "Answer me."
Like a wave across the surface, the sky bearer watched each syllable travel atop his aura. Green rippled over the tile, then down into the empty bath beneath the fountain's central flume. Percy's words crawled up along the thing's face, and then in between every single gap in the stone.
Deeper and deeper and deeper it went. Percy felt the words bounce through an impossibly complex network of pipes and air pockets and broken stone, so far inside that he might as well have been inside the very heart of the building itself. And there, just on the other end of the web, something caught on the line. The young god smiled.
"Got you."
It took ages. Coaxing the little creature out from the depths of the fountain was only the latest layer in Hades' impressive camouflage scheme. It was like corralling a hyperactive toddler inside a maze of mirrors - the tiny winged insect flitted about with no regard for direction, only enticed along the correct path by Percy's whispered words of confirmation. A chorus of "Yes, that way," and "Follow me." None of them proved as effective, though, as the single line of "Come to me. I am your Lord."
And then, finally, it was done.
The thing was shockingly tiny as it fluttered its way out of one of the eye-socket spigots. A common clothes moth, with twitching wings the color of ash and a thin body no bigger than the pad of Percy's thumb. The sky bearer watched the insects' wandering journey across the space until it settled delicately in his outstretched palm.
It was all Percy could do to stare at it, amazed that what he had done had actually worked. He knew his mouth was hanging open. Aphrodite would have teased him for hours about his gobsmacked expression.
There had only been one, down there. Only one surrounded by hundreds of eggs both born and unborn, nearly buried by the carcasses of all those who died waiting for the young Olympian to arrive. A tomb and a birthing place all at once. Percy swallowed heavily.
It wasn't even that the moth was especially cute, or anything. Its looks were drab by design, with a twig-like shape and thin segmented legs that looked gangly without a butterfly's impressive coloration. The moth's small antenna twitched restlessly, up and down and all around as if testing the air for any possible threat as it crawled across his palm.
It was so . . . so fragile. Fragile and weird and a bit of a misfit, the ugly duckling to the butterfly's elegant goose. Overlooked, undervalued. A scavenger rather than a hunter. And yet, nothing less than a survivor, too.
Percy loved it.
"Hello," he tried, softly as he possibly could. The sky bearer's breath fluttered the thing's tiny wings.
The moth only paused, briefly, before continuing its exploration up towards his knuckles. Percy was actually forced to turn his hand over to make sure the insect didn't unceremoniously fall off.
In the end, the sky bearer didn't receive much in response except for a brush of general feeling. A greeting, maybe, with a bit of a question sprinkled in. It was more intent than anything concrete. The moth seemed generally pleased with perching on him, though, its antennae quaking in what felt like it could have been contentment.
Not very good at conversation indeed, Percy snorted. He couldn't stop smiling, though. For a long minute it was just the Olympian and the moth, each regarding the other as much as their individual senses would allow.
"Uh, Percy?"
Grover's questioning bleat almost had the sky bearer shooting to his feet. The fragile web of aura he had created to lure out the moth snapped, a cascading failure of the glowing structure that rippled from the center out. The insect on the back of his hand fluttered, uneasy, but settled after Percy clutched his arm to his chest.
The sky bearer stood as smoothly as he could, turning to find the satyr not even looking at him. Instead, Grover had his hands on the edge of the fountain's deep basin walls, where Percy had sat previously. The half human was completely entranced by what his flashlight was illuminating deep at the base of the fountain's moat.
"Did you do this, dude?" When Grover turned his head around, his cheeks and beard were streaked with dust. He didn't seem to notice. "I didn't even hear anything!" The satyr's brown eyes were dancing, alight with something adventurous.
"What do you mean?" Percy kept his passenger's perch as stable as he could as he stepped over. The young god paused as soon as his eyes cleared the lip. "Oh."
Grover huffed. "Yeah." The noise was amused. "Annabeth is gonna freak."
"Freak about what?" Percy wasn't even surprised when the daughter of Athena appeared from the darkness on the other side of the fountain. Her and Grover must have been operating on the same internal check-in clock. "Did something happen?"
The demigod was in a similar state to the satyr, both rumpled and ruffled. Annabeth's normally striking blond hair was tangled, mussed with whatever had been gathering on the inside of the long-abandoned water slides. It was obvious she had tried to wipe her knife on her jeans a couple of times. The effort had left wide streaks of brown across the fronts of either of her thighs.
Percy just pointed down into the bed of the fountain. Grover snickered. Annabeth eyed them suspiciously, but peered over. A stunned second later, she threw her hands up in the air.
"I knew it!" The woman angrily blew a few strands of hair off her cheeks. She sheathed her knife with deadly intent. "It was here! It's the most tactically sound option, taking advantage of the principle of- oh would you stop laughing!" She barked, face flushing red.
Grover shook his head from Percy's side, a hand held over his smile. His cheeks were puffed out, but occasional giggles still escaped. "Sorry," the satyr gasped, not looking sorry at all.
"You were right," Percy tried to placate, nudging the satyr with an elbow. "It just needed a bit of a special touch."
The sky bearer held out one palm, and watched as the little moth fluttered up towards the ceiling. He sent a little nudge of a fond farewell after it, the room glowing teal for a brief moment. Its task was completed.
Annabeth's sharp steel eyes caught sight of the insect immediately, tracking it all the way into the shadow in one far corner. When her gaze turned to Percy, it was ravenous and a bit intimidating.
"A moth?" The demigod's incredulous question made her sound remarkably like her mother.
"It was put there for me." Percy admitted. He ran through his previous thought process as quickly as he could - by the time he was finished, Annabeth had her hands over her face. Grover had puffed up with what the sky bearer assumed was pride.
"Great job, dude! That's some serious brain work, right there." Percy graciously accepted the satyr's congratulatory punch to the shoulder. "You're making us look bad." Despite the words, it was impossible to find any disappointment in Grover's sincere smile.
"Ugh." Annabeth groaned from the opposite side of the fountain. "I'm never second guessing myself again." She ran both hands up her forehead and through her hair, forcibly tugging out the worst of the tangles. "But yeah. Good job." Her praise was undercut by the pout that had grown across her lips.
"Well, guess we know what to do!" Grover clapped his hands together. His fluffy hair bounced with the sharp motion. "Nowhere to go but down, dudes."
"Right," Percy nodded. "I'll go first." Before either mortal could protest, the young god had already thrown himself over the edge and was dropping down the base of the fountain.
When Annabeth had completed the same motion earlier, she had dropped only a few feet. Percy, instead, fell a bit longer than that. When his feet landed heavily, the son of Poseidon was greeted not by a flat, plain circle of stone. Instead, he stood on the third step of a descending spiral staircase.
The steps were a strange oblong shape. Each was just a bit too long to comfortably take one at a time but a bit too short to feel comfortable underneath both of Percy's feet. The sky bearer's aura counted a bit more than three dozen, all fanning out like a flower's petal before descending down and around the central cylinder. The staircase's stone surfaces were almost flawlessly smooth. That made sense, given they had actually been at the bottom of the fountain until just a minute ago.
"Fascinating." Annabeth landed on the step above Percy's, her legs buckling dangerously. The demigod's steel eyes flickered about even as she righted herself, taking in every detail with ravenous hunger. "There must have been some sort of triggering mechanism inside the fountain. Magical, most certainly." Annabeth knelt to run her fingers along the seam between the steps, as if testing for a nonexistent gap. The woman's tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth rather endearingly.
"Or movement, perhaps?" She thought aloud. Percy opened his mouth, but got steamrolled right over. "Tithanos is the Greek god of insects, but no one has seen him since the camps combined. It's possible his physical form has faded, due to a lack of a real Roman counterpart. He hasn't even had a registered demigod child for over four hundred years-"
"Make sure to breathe, Beth." Grover barely even bent his knees as he impacted the uppermost step with loud, clopping hooves. The satyr casually brushed some of the loose dirt particles out of his hair with a hand, like the drop hadn't even registered. "Rescuing Nico first, then hypothesizing later, yeah?"
"Oh." Annabeth shook her head, cheeks dusting with pink when she noticed Percy still watching her. "Right. Um." She fingered the hilt of her knife. "Lead the way, then, seaweed head."
"You sure?" The snark was across Percy's lips before he could stop it. So was his smile. "We could stop here for a bit, if you want to. Let you do your thing." Grover snickered. For a single moment, Percy wondered if this was what it had felt like for the younger him that stood in this place over half a decade ago.
"Not you too," Annabeth complained, face scrunching up and her ears still blushing dark. "I forgot how much I hated having both of you ganging up on me." She shoved his shoulder with her free hand, looking away. "Shut up and start walking. Ass." Her own lips had turned up in the corners by the end.
Percy only inclined his head, and turned back around. Step by step, the trio descended beneath the fountain's base. After only a few seconds, they were swallowed up by the bowels of the casino. The room above, empty once again, returned to the dominion of the dark and the insects.
At first, Annabeth did her best to try and point her flashlight over Percy's shoulder. It quickly became clear that her effort, though well intentioned, was wasted. The spiral staircase was so tight that the young god's aura made plenty of light to navigate by. They were soon bathed in nothing but flowing, gentle teal.
Not that there was much to see with Percy's ever-present glow. Compared to the ruined splendor of the structure above-ground, the tight stone cylinder was rather boring, with its smooth finish walls and drab gray color. Grover began to wring his hands nervously. Annabeth had gone back to chewing on her bottom lip.
The air around Percy grew cold unnaturally quickly. He could feel his aura being compressed, squeezed up and down the spiraling tube like a pressure cooker. He didn't particularly appreciate being so restricted, nor the sensation of Hades' attention growing stronger by the second.
Thankfully, the walk only lasted a flight or two. The first thing Percy noticed as he stepped out was that the exit point was strangely shaped, a perfect carved cube with a tall opening at one end that led sideways into a shadowy hallway. It was almost like the area had been hollowed out using the corridor as a starting point.
The only real difference between the two contrasting entry points was the antique-looking electric lamps strung up along the thinner corridor's ceiling. They were the kind you might see in an old war movie, with wide green shades above rounded bulbs. None were on, though they weren't particularly damaged, either. Just dusty. Thick rubber cables connected the lights, held in place with metal hooks embedded into the stone.
Or, rather, into the concrete. Outside of the stairway's exit, the material of the walls and floor most definitely changed. Yet another piece of evidence for the 'staircase being added in post' theory.
"No way," Annabeth took advantage of the wider space to step past Percy, right into the hallway. Her flashlight lit up the underside of one of the lamps. "I didn't realize- I mean of course it would be, but it never occurred to me." Her mouth was hanging open a little bit when Grover finally popped out of the bottom of the spiral. "It makes so much sense now." She sounded awed, almost joyous.
"What does?" Percy stepped up beside her, peering at the hanging bulb she was illuminating. It looked . . . half familiar. Aphrodite's memories weren't that helpful to place a possible time frame, but the thing was definitely older than a few decades at the least.
"Yeah I'm a bit lost." Grover scampered over, eager to not be left behind. "Looks like just more of the same." His horned head swung side to side with his own flashlight beam, looking down towards either end of the T-junction corridor.
Percy doubted he could make out much, all things considered. The satyr probably couldn't see it, but there was only one way to really go. The left side of the hallway extended for a good few yards as Percy probed it out with his aura. On the right, there was nothing but a collapsed-in section of rubble.
"You'll see." Annabeth's smile was almost manic, her eyes alight with an internal fire. "Follow me." Her words came out so completely confident that when she power-walked deeper down the corridor, the two males left behind could only follow.
Percy noticed the other end of the hallway first. That was partially due to the color, a splash of a bright red door that practically leapt into his divine retinas. Although, calling the thing a 'door' was doing it a real disservice. The thing was made of thick, polished steel, taking up the entire corridor from wall to wall. Each of the four hinges was thicker around than one of Annabeth's fists.
The most eye-catching part, though, was what was painted onto the thick coating of neon red - a black circle inside a larger yellow circle, the center surrounded by three fanning rectangles. Percy breathed out a harsh exhale. He knew that symbol.
"Think about it." Annabeth practically pranced up to the heavy-set door, her free hand clutched to her chest. When she spun around, her flashlight beam landed on Grover's chin. She was still grinning. "When did Hades hide his kids here the first time?"
"Before the war?" The satyr hedged, stepping up beside the sky bearer and shielding his eyes with a hand. "The war that caused the pact of the Big Three?" His expression didn't seem any less confused.
"Yes!" The blond crowed. "Not just a war, Grover. The war!" She stepped towards them, putting her hands on Grover's shoulders and shaking him back and forth. "World War Two, Grover! Of course the casino would have a place like this."
"A place like what?" Grover made the mistake of asking.
"A nuclear bunker!" The daughter of Athena cried. She let the half-human go, only to turn to Percy with her hands clawed like she was about to rattle him too. She stepped back only at the last moment.
"That's what the symbol on the door is," The sky bearer pointed out, a bit unhelpfully.
"Yes!" Annabeth snapped her fingers at him. "Exactly. Bunkers were literally mandated by law in the seventies for some building types!" The demigod started pacing, probably to burn off some of the energy that seemed to be bursting from her pores. "The lotus-eaters weren't stupid. Of course they would build one! Vegas was on the Soviet's list of targets in this part of the country, and the U.S. was already doing nuclear testing less than a hundred miles from here."
Annabeth looked on the verge of tearing her own hair out. In excitement, this time. The blond's furious back-and-forth only ended up going a couple of steps in either direction, given the small hallway. Percy and Grover watched, heads following like they were tennis spectators.
"If Hades even gave half a thought as to the safety of his kids, he probably would have supported the bunkers construction. Maybe he even helped. He's all about the stuff that happens underground!" After a moment Annabeth put a hand on her forehead, the picture of someone going through an epiphany. "Where else would you put something precious to you than in the most protected room for probably miles around?" When she faced her two companions again, her skin was almost dripping with the influence of her mother's blood.
"As fascinating as that is, Annabeth-" Percy hated to cut her off, but his aura had just finished penetrating through the six inches of steel to the other side of the bunker door. "-there's someone alive in there." The sky bearer watched her face fall slack in a single instant.
Grover sighed in heavy relief at Percy's side. "Nico?" The satyr's tone almost cracked, it was so chock-full of hope.
"Feels that way," Percy murmured.
And it did. Either that, or Hades had spent significant time rubbing himself over every surface in the room beyond - that included the single breathing occupant right in the center. The small figure, who couldn't have been much taller than the diminutive Lacy, smelt of ash and death. It was the unmistakable mark of the Underworld.
"Thank the gods." The satyr slumped in on himself.
"For once, I agree." To her credit, Annabeth almost managed to mask her disappointment at not being able to spend more time explaining U.S. cold-war construction policy. She turned back around, eyes gleaming. "Guess this is it." The blond took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. "Let's get him back, then."
It didn't take long for the demigod to ferret out how to work the spinning circular handle set to one side of the bright red door. Percy figured he could have probably opened it with a couple well-placed punches if he wanted, but that seemed excessively violent. Annabeth proved him right. Only a single sharp tug, and the seal was broken.
It was almost anticlimactic. There was no rush of decompressed air, no whoosh of dust. No shouts from inside, no blaring alarm. The light's didn't even come on. The three massive hinges barely whispered as the daughter of Athena heaved the steel portal open.
The sight that greeted Percy then would stay with him for a long time.
The inside of the bunker was frozen, like a perfectly preserved time capsule right out of the mid-century. More of those wide-brimmed lamps hung from the ceiling, and there were stacks of angled-leg chairs stacked up against the far wall. This must have been the place where as many guests as could fit would gather to survive the initial blast, given the sheer number of piled seats.
There had clearly been an attempt to paint over the concrete walls. Some of the more uneven spots were plastered over with faded vintage poster prints of scenic outdoor views, with words proclaiming cheesy phrases like 'there is always hope' in thick, chunky fonts. Whoever had picked out the carpet was probably going for 'comforting beige'. Percy's teal glow painted the normally unobtrusive tan a strange off-color brown.
None of that particularly mattered, though, compared to what was going on directly in the center of the room. Crunch. Before the door was even open more than a half-inch Percy heard it the first time. Crunch. Then again a few seconds later, when Annabeth had wrestled the gap wide enough for them all to slip though.
Crunch. It was like it was on a timer. A grinding of teeth on teeth. Crunch. As soon as Percy stepped inside, he knew why.
For all of the discarded furniture piled in the corners of the room, there were only two pieces that really mattered. A low table, and the old vintage television set that sat on top of it. The television was of the blocky kind, with a square view-port surrounded by a bubble of cloudy glass. It was old enough to still have a set of radio-style dials on one side.
The screen of the television was on. For some reason, that unnerved Percy more than anything else. Nothing was playing. Only static filled the screen, the visual white noise painting the area in front of the television in a cone of ghostly, pale white.
Crunch.
That was an equally apt description of the boy sitting cross-legged in front of the television. Ghostly and pale both, even when viewed from behind. His skin seemed to glow unhealthily the moment Annabeth's flashlight beam met his form, as if his pigments weren't attuned to anything but the pitch blackness of the bunker.
His hair certainly wasn't, a shockingly dark mess that hung long enough to brush the middle of his back. The light washing from the television struggled to penetrate the shaggy curls. The teen wasn't wearing much more than a pair of dark jeans and a shirt with a stylized skull on the back, but both articles of clothing seemed to hang off his frame. He was boney, all gangly limbs and sharp joints.
Crunch.
Any humorous irony Percy might have found at that turn of phrase was undercut by how his thin collarbones seemed to jut out from his far-too-skinny chest.
The worst was Nico's face. The sky bearer could see it all through his aura alone - the teen was built angular, with striking cheekbones and a hooked nose that was clearly inherited from his father. His features were sunken in, though, thin skin stretched across too much space.
On either side of his nose a pair of dark eyes reflected back a perfect image of the television static. They were wide and unseeing. Barely even blinking.
One hand lifted up to Nico's mouth. His lips were pale, too, when they slowly opened halfway. Percy barely caught a glimpse of a small object passing through the boy's teeth before his jaw clamped down in a single motion. Only one bite.
Crunch.
Nico swallowed. The hand reached back down to his lap, where for the first time the sky bearer noticed the circular plate balanced on his thighs. The hand came back up. The teen's fist clenched around something small and glowing, faint pink light spilling through the gaps in his wiry fingers. Nico's mouth slowly opened halfway once again-
"Nico! Don't eat that!"
Annabeth surged into the room, her shoes slapping across the thin carpet as she rushed to the boy's side. Grover wasn't far behind, his own flashlight bobbing violently across the posters plastered to the back wall. Percy hung back, something uneasy unspooling in the base of his gut.
The daughter of Athena practically tackled the son of Hades off of his seat. The impact of her embrace rocked Nico to one side. A fluttery, fluorescent object dropped free from his hand.
Percy's aura cataloged the entire shape in an instant. Vaguely flowery and thin as spun sugar, at least before it shattered in spectacular fashion against the floor. The glowing pink shards tinkled like tiny bells as they scattered across the carpet, so clearly magical that the sky bearer could feel it tingling the bottom of his tongue even from a yard or more away.
And then, in the demigod's lap, in between blinks, another lotus flower bloomed into existence.
"Grover! Get that out of here." Annabeth snapped, both of her hands wrapped around Nico's bony torso. The son of Hades still hadn't blinked, his facial muscles completely slack where it pressed into her shoulder. If Percy couldn't feel the air moving through his lungs, he wouldn't have known the teen was even breathing.
"Holy Hera, Beth." Grover looked like he might be sick. The satyr snatched the plate away from Nico's lap with quick hands - for half a second Percy thought he might throw it against the far wall. "I can't believe Hades would do this. To his own son!" For the first time the young god had ever seen, the half-human's face dropped into an angry scowl. The plate found an unceremonious home dumped onto the table next to the television. "He would know better, right? Right?!"
Annabeth stuttered out a coarse laugh. "You can't be sure of that, Grover." The satyr turned his back on the lotus, but did not respond. "Maybe, as long as he's alive, he didn't care. You remember what Zeus did to Thals."
"Or maybe there was no other option," Grover sniffed. The protest sounded weak to all of them.
Percy remained silent. The young god made himself useful by feeling about the rest of the bunker with his aura. Just as he had suspected, there was nothing to be found. There was a sparse kitchenette, a bare bathroom, and an equally empty barracks-style bunk room deep in the back.
"We're clear," he announced. Percy wasn't sure when Riptide had made its way into his hand, but the blue plastic pen felt heavier than it should have in his palm.
Annabeth managed a relieved sigh, before pulling back to examine Nico at arms length. The teen's head lolled limply around on his neck. It took the woman placing one of her palms on Nico's cheek to steady his head enough for the two to make eye contact. Grover was wringing his hands, standing a bit off to the side with wide eyes.
"Nico?" Annabeth swallowed, heavy. Percy could see her eyes pinging between Nico's own, searching deeply for something. Anything. "It's me, Annabeth. Are you . . ."
The sky bearer wasn't sure exactly what the demigod was asking. Are you still in there? Are you still with us? Maybe a combination of the two. The tension in the air was so thick it could have been cut with even the dullest of butter knives.
There was no answer for a second. Then Nico's mouth opened, and he spoke.
"Annabeth?"
The demigod's voice was raspy. Scratchy. Painful, most certainly, and barely there enough to make out. It was almost like you could hear the dust being shaken from the teen's long unused vocal chords. For the first time, though. Percy spotted a hint of life in his gaze.
"Yeah, Nico." The daughter of Athena almost collapsed on the spot. She clutched Nico's shirt hard enough Percy could count the vertebrae in the boy's spine through the back of it. "It's me. We're here to save you." The corners of her eyes were wet.
"Hello, little architect."
Annabeth blinked. "What?"
Nico's head lolled back, back onto his shoulder and then all the way over. It just kept going, until the teen's entire body was hanging up only by Annabeth's grip on his shirt. His face ended up pointed nearly entirely backwards. Grover stepped forward, but he could only flap his hands uselessly as Nico's spine continued to bend. Eventually those two dark, sunken eyes met Percy's gaze.
Time around them froze. Annabeth, Grover, even the disturbed dust floating through the air. Percy couldn't look away.
"So we meet again, little dream."
The sky bearer had been wrong. It hadn't been life he had spotted in Nico's gaze. It had been stars. Endless galaxies, a sliver of the fabric of the universe itself contained in his blown-wide pupils. Even now, the spirals upon spirals rotated endlessly, just like the ones his wind had carved through the dust Nico's father had summoned to showcase Percy's power on Olympus only a few weeks ago.
"We have but a moment, while his soul remains in the space between. Forgive my lack of practice. It's been so long since I've delved this deeply into one of my dreams."
A spike of pain exploded across the back of Percy's mind - he knew that voice. He knew it, and yet somehow didn't remember it at the same time. Why couldn't he remember?
"Perhaps it was my mistake, little dream. Perhaps it was my gift that was found wanting in the end."
"Who are you?" Percy could barely get enough air into his lungs to speak. And yet, the instant the question was out of his mouth, he knew that he already knew the answer. It was just the memory of a dream, a memory of a dream within a dream within a memory.
Even then, it stole his breath away.
Nico's face smiled. And that's all it was - his face. Not the boy, just the muscles of his lips and eyes pulled around like a marionette's strings.
"An addendum, then. You are not playing chess, little dream." The voice wasn't even coming from between his teeth. It was just there, everywhere all at once. "There is more than one queen to this game. More than one queen, and yet only one prince." Nico's face was still smiling. "Do you understand?"
"Yes. Maybe." The words were painful, bubbling up from his throat. Riptide's plastic form was biting deeply into the skin between his knuckles. "I thought I did." Now that he could remember, he wasn't so sure. The young god's entire body felt compressed from all sides, squeezed like a tube of toothpaste.
"Hmm." The stars in Nico's eyes were beginning to dim. "Perhaps this, then. No sleep is endless, little dream. Not even mine." Just as the last of the twinkling lights flickered away, the thing that wasn't Nico spoke for the last time. "The earth is stirring around you. My eldest daughter wakens. Can you not feel it?"
Percy could. He didn't know how.
"You must ask yourself this, little dream-" Nico's face fell limp once again, just as the very final words whispered out. "-What will you do, when she comes knocking?"
And then Nico passed out.