Present…

"She did not." Phil laughed incredulously.

Marcus smiled at the memory. "She did indeed."

Phil shook his head, shoulders still shaking a bit from his laughter. "Knowing Chastity as I do, I guess I shouldn't be surprised but that's a bit much even for her."

Marcus continued on, trying to use some of the techniques Phil had been showing him throughout the day. Not that he'd ever admit it out loud, but he was enjoying himself. It reminded him of the times when he and Aaron would sneak to the Camp woods and explore, before… Well… Before. Marcus shook the thought from his head, forcing himself to think of the happier moments. He remembered again the end of the story he had started to tell Phillip, leaving out the bit about his nickname for Chastity. "Our little secret". That's what they had agreed to call it. After all, he didn't want the rest of camp to get the wrong idea, and for once Chastity had agreed, content to ignore the nickname until he brought it up. I wonder why she does… He mused.

After hours of hiking, Marcus and Phillip had reached the summit of Mount Marcy, though they had found nothing to lead them to wherever Annabeth's abandoned workshop might be. Taking a deep breath, Marcus surveyed the scene before him. He never tired of this, being close to his fathers domain. He knew that to mortals the air felt thinner here, but to him it was as if he had never left sea level. Taking in the view before him, he marveled at the world he saw. A sea of green back down the mountain, with the rockier sections adding to the beauty rather than detracting from it.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He heard Phil say softly from behind him.

"It is." He said simply.

"I remember when it was all like this…" Marcus turned, and caught the far away look Phillip had in his eyes. A look that said while he was looking on today, his mind was in the past. Shaking his head, Phil seemed to bring his mind back to the present as well. "Of course, it wasn't completely untamed by the time I rolled around. Just… more so. More wild. You would have liked it." Phil finished, throwing a smile at Marcus. "So. What's the plan?"

Bringing himself back to their task at hand, Marcus had to admit he had no idea. He knew that this was the area the workshop was rumored to have been in. But there weren't any hints the way they had come up. Maybe avoiding the trails was a bad call.

"The plan is, we go back down." Marcus said with a shrug. "This time, we take a trail. Annabeth would have had to easily go down the mountains for supplies. By all rights we probably should have taken one of the trails on the way up."

"It was a good call to avoid the well traveled areas." Phillip responded. "We have no way of knowing if we're the only ones after this thing. Especially with the N.O.s always seeming to be one step ahead of us…"

Marcus sighed. Phil was right. He knew he had made the right call but still… All this up and down is wasting time. He's right, the N.O.s have been a step ahead of us each and every… Marcus froze. They had been ahead of them each time. Almost like… They knew what we were doing. Marcus let his eyes wander the scene before him while his mind raced. How could they have always been just one step ahead? Always there right before his group was? Unless… Somebody's been feeding them info…

The thought chilled him to his core. He glanced at Phil quickly before looking away again. No. If there was one half-blood besides Maddie and Chastity he could trust, it would be Phil. A man out of time, he had no ties to anything in this era, let alone any one. Jason and Joel were also probably above suspicion… He'd seen half-bloods lie before, and the way they had reacted to everything that had happened so far… If we do have a traitor, it isn't them. Not that that narrowed his suspects down much.

Marcus found his eyes constantly drifting to one particular trail. Something about it seemed… different. Off. He forced himself to focus, to blot out the rest of what he was thinking. He could feel something was different… Then he caught it. The wind. It's wrong. That was the only way he knew to describe it. The air currents in the mountain the whole way up had been stronger than he was used to, sure, but he had still felt them to be normal. Natural. But something down that trail was messing with them… Not enough that a mortal would notice. Hell, most half-bloods probably wouldn't notice it either. Marcus felt himself grin. He was the son of Aeolus. The air was his element. If something was off, even slightly, he would know.

"This way." Marcus said, starting down the path he had chosen. He had no idea where this was heading, but he knew one thing. There was only one thing that could possibly affect an element the way he was feeling.

A heavy concentration of Mist… I found you.

"Remnants of Marcy Dam."

Marcus kept moving, though Phillip stopped to read the sign half hidden by vegetation. It seemed that whatever Dam used to be here, it had long since been demolished, leading to this area being completely abandoned over the years. As was usually the way with nature, it had reclaimed what man had abandoned. If he tried, Marcus could still make out the remains of the human engineering that had once held the water at bay, but now the river flowed strong and free. The years had changed its course, leaving what he assumed to have once been a spit of land between two rivers to be a small plateau, with a small drop below it.

"Phil." Marcus said with a small smile. "Do you see what I see?"

Phil took a long look at the plateau Marcus indicated, before a small smile lit up his face, for he had seen what Marcus had seen. The Mist was indeed strong here. Strong enough to turn most mortals and even some half-bloods away, possibly explaining how a site that used to be so important had been left to become overgrown. And right in front of them was the cause of it.

"Annabeth's Workshop." Phil said. "I thought it'd be… grander."

Marcus almost felt himself agreeing. The building in front of them was small, barely the size of the Big House back at Camp. Definitely not the grand masterpiece of engineering he had expected from the Daughter of Athena from legends. On second thought… He had seen her home with Percy Jackson in New Rome. The simple, yet elegant design, everything with a purpose. And he saw the same design concept here. While the hints at grand beauty were there, it never overtook the function of the building itself. I see her style here.

"This is the place." Marcus said, leaving the trail and heading towards the ravine gap that was all that stood between him and the workshop. Now… how to get across…

"Rope bridge?" Phil said, almost flippantly. "I could fire an arrow across with a rope attached-"

"Too flimsy." Marcus shook his head. "Besides, even if it wasn't, those walls look like Celestial Bronze. Probably part of what's focusing the Mist around here. Your arrow would probably just bounce off."

Phil was about to open his mouth to respond when a crashing sound was carried to them across the ravine. Startled, they both looked towards the workshop in time to see an entire wall blown out right in front of their eyes. Marcus felt his stomach drop at the sight of his Camp's history being destroyed right before his eyes. It dropped even further when he saw three Red Shirts walk through the rubble.

"Well, well, well. Lookie here." Came a voice out of the dust and debris still settling in the air. "Looks like Aaron was right. We weren't the only ones on this hot tip after all."

"Said that last time." Came a short, clipped reply.

"Well duh. It's called a callback Isaac. Now they know what they're in for."

As the dust settled, Marcus groaned inwardly. Standing in the ruins of the wall they had just destroyed was Billy, Isaac, and Hunter. Hunter… Hey Gods, why do you hate me so much?

"Slip into the trees." Marcus muttered out of the corner of his mouth, trying to be as subtle as possible. "We'll need the advantage."

Phil looked like he was about to argue before Billy cut in again. "Never did thank you for last time Marcus. Letting us live and all that." He sneered. As he continued, his voice started to take on an ugly tone. "Bossman wasn't too happy we got our asses kicked that easily. Said we should've pushed you more. Made you angrier. Almost like he didn't care what could've happened to us!"

"Stop talking." Isaac said simply. Now that his eyes were drawn to him, he noticed that Isaac no longer carried the Rubix cube weapon he had used in their last fight. Instead he was using… A bow?

"You got that right." Hunter scoffed. Marcus' attention snapped to him, just as he took his battleax off his shoulder. Interestingly, he seemed to be wearing a Yankees sports jacket over his red N.O. shirt. What the hell….? "Good to see you again Marcus. Heard you been giving Aaron the run around. Just like old times huh?"

Marcus slid his thumb into his pants pocket, trying to seem casual as he slipped it through the chain of his watch, ready to flick it out at a moment's notice. "Well, you know me. Never one to go down easy."

"You can say that again." Billy said again, strutting right to the edge of the small ravine gap and drawing a line across his throat with his dagger. "This won't be like last time, airhead. This time, you'll be the one crashing hard."

Marcus simply raised an eyebrow in response. Isaac sighed before joining Billy near the ravine edge. "Try hard." He said, nudging Billy aside with his bow.

Without warning, Phil broke from him, heading back into the trees in what Marcus considered a fairly convincing act of retreat. Make them think I'm alone.. Good idea.

Hunter's laughter rang across the ravine to Marcus as he joined his two N.O. allies. "Well look at that. Seems like your friend knew what was best for him and left you to fend for yourself. So what do you think Marcus? You gonna run away too? Run back to your camp with your tail between your legs again?" Hunter's eyes bore into Marcus' own. "Or will you make the same mistake little Joey did?"

In answer, Marcus pulled his pocket watch from his pocket, purposefully slowly, spinning it by it's chain. Make them guess which form it'll take… keep them on guard.

"I was hoping you'd do that." Hunter said with a wolflike grin. Before anyone else could make another move, Hunter dove forward into the ravine. Marcus was about to leap across to take the fight to the other two when Hunter slowly rose in the air in front of him, the Yankees sports jacket he wore fluttering in the breeze, from the back of which were now a pair of celestial bronze wings, lightning arcing from feather to feather.

Fuck.