POV Percy:
I'd like to tell you that I had a deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, my own death, and laughed in the face of death.
The truth , I had only two thoughts in my head: Aaaaggghhhhh! I was also thinking of the girl next to me, who was closing her eyes, probably waiting for me to find a solution.
The river raced towards me at the speed of a truck. The wind whipped the breath from my lungs. Steeples, skyscrapers and bridges followed one another in my vision.
And then... Flaaa-boooom!
A whiteout of bubbles.
I sank through the murk, sure that I was about to end up embedded in a hundred feet of mud and lost forever.
But the impact with the water hadn't hurt. I was falling slowly now, bubbles trickling through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A catfish the size of my stepfather lurched away into the gloom.
Clouds of silt and disgusting garbage - beer bottles, old shoes, plastic bags - swirled up around me.
At that point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a pancake. I had not been barbecued. I couldn't even feel Chimera's poison boiling in my veins anymore. I was alive, which was good.
Second realization: I wasn't wet. I mean, I could feel the coolness of the water. I could see where the fire on my clothes had been quenched. But when I touched my shirt, it was perfectly dry.
I looked at the garbage floating in front of me and grabbed an old cigarette lighter.
No way, I thought.
I flicked the lighter. It sparked. A small flame appeared, right there at the bottom of the Mississippi.
I grabbed a soggy hamburger wrapper out of the current and immediately the paper turned dry. I lit it with no problem. As soon as I let it go, the flames sputtered out. The wrapper turned back into a slimy rag. Weird.
But the strangest thought occurred to me only last: I was breathing. I was underwater and breathing normally.
I stood up, my thighs in the mud. My legs felt shaky. My hands trembled. I should have been dead. The fact that I wasn't seemed like... a miracle. I imagined a woman's voice, a voice that sounded a little like my mother's: Percy, what do you say?
" Um... thanks." Underwater, I sounded like I did recordings, like a much older kid. "Thanks you... Father."
No response. Just the dark drift of garbage downriver, the enormous catfish gliding by, the flash of sunset on the water's surface far above, turning everything the color of butterscotch.
Why had Poseidon saved me? The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt. So I'd gotten lucky a few times before. Against a thing like the Chimera, I had never stood a chance. Those poor people in the Arch were probably toast. I couldn't protect them. I was no hero. Maybe I should just stay down here with the catfish, join the bottom-feeders.
No, I had to find Kassi, I'd taken her down with me and she couldn't breathe underwater if I didn't bring her to the surface right now she'd drown.
Fump-fump-fump. A riverboat's churned above me, swirling the silt around.
There, not five feet in front of me, was my sword, its gleaming bronze hilt sticking up in the mud.
I heard that woman's voice again: Percy, take the sword. Your father believes in you. This time, I knew the voice wasn't in my head. I wasn't imagining it. Her words seemed to come from everywhere, rippling through the water like a dolphin's sonar.
"Where are you? I called aloud.
Then, through the gloom, I saw her - a woman the color of water, a ghost in the current, floating just above the sword. She had long, billowing hair and her eyes, barely visible, were green like mine.
A lump formed in my throat. I said, "Mom?"
"No, child, only a messenger, but your mother's fate is not as hopeless as you think. Go to the beach in Santa Monica."
"What?"
"It's your father's will. Before you descend into the underworld, you must go to Santa Monica. Please, Percy, I cannot stay long. The river here is too foul for my presence."
"But..." I was sure this woman was my mother, or a vision of her, anyway. "Who... how did you..."
There was so much I wanted to ask, the words jammed in my throat.
"I can't stay, brave one," the woman said. She reached out and I felt the current brush my face like a caress."You must go to Santa Monica! And...Percy, do not trust the gifts...
His voice faded.
"Gifts?" I asked. "What gifts? Wait!"
She made one more attempt to speak, but the sound was gone. Her image melted away. If it was my mother, I had lost her again.
I felt like drowning. Only problem: I was immune to drowning.
Your father believes in you, she had said.
She'd also called me brave... unless she was talking to the catfish.
I waded over to the Riptide and grabbed it by the hilt. I looked around and saw her at the bottom of the water, Kassi was floating, her long hair hiding a good part of her face, I approached her and took her in my arms.
Instantly, she dried up and spat out the water in her lungs, which became one with the river water.
Maybe the Chimera was still up there with her big snake mother, waiting to finish me off. At the very least, the mortal police would be arriving, trying to figure out who had blown a hole in the Ark. If they found me, they'd have some questions.
I capped my sword, stuck the ballpoint pen in my pocket. "Thank you, Father," I said again to the dark water.
Then I leapt into the muck and swam to the surface while holding my friend.
I came ashore next to a floating McDonald's then hoisted Kassi up on her two legs but she was still passed out so I was holding her up.
A block away, every emergency vehicle in St. Louis was surrounding the arch. Police helicopters circled overhead. The crowd of onlookers reminded me of Times Square on New Year's Eve.
A little girl said, " Mama! That boy walked out of the river".
"That's nice, dear," her mother replied, leaning over to watch the ambulances.
"But did you see, he's holding a girl and he's dry!"
"That's nice, dear."
A news lady was talked for the camera, " Probably not a terrorist attack, but it's still very early in the investigation. The damage, as you can see, is very serious. We're trying to get to some of the survivors to question them about the eyewitnesses report of two people falling from the Arch".
Survivors. I felt a surge of relief. Maybe the park ranger and that family made it out safely. I hoped Annabeth and Grover were okay.
I tried to push through the crowd to see what was going on inside the police line.
"...two teenagers," another reporter was saying. "Channel Five has learned that surveillance cameras show two teenagers going wild on the on the observation deck, somehow setting off this freak explosion. Hard to believe, John, but that's what we're hearing. Again, no confirmed fatalities..."
I backed away, trying to keep my head down. I had to go a long way around the police perimeter. Uniformed officers and news reporters were everywhere.
I'd almost given up hope of finding Annabeth and Grover when a familiar voice bleated, "Perrr-cy! Kaaa-ssi!"
I turned and got tackled by Grover's bear hug—or goat hug. He said to me, "We thought you'd left for Hades the hard way!"
He said to me, "We thought you'd both gone to Hades the hard way!"
Annabeth stood behind him, trying to look angry, but even she seemed relieved to see me relieved to see us."We can't leave you two alone for five minutes! What's happened? And is she okay?"
"I sort of fell over and don't worry she just fainted."
"Percy! Six hundred and thirty feet?"
Behind us, a cop yelled, "Gangway!" The crowd parted, and a couple of paramedics hustled out, rolling a woman on a stretcher. I recognized her immediately as the mother of the little boy who'd been on the observation was saying "And then this huge dog, this huge fire-breathing Chihuahua..."
"Okay, ma'am," the paramedic said. " Just calm down. Your family is fine. The medication is starting to kick in."
"I'm not crazy! Those kids jumped out of the hole and the monster disappeared." Then she saw me. "There they are! That's the boy and the girl!
I turned quickly and dragged Annabeth and Grover behind me. We disappeared into the the meantime, Kassi managed to wake up and stood on her own two legs.
"What happened? Am I dead?" she asked.
"No," I replied. "But get some rest, you just got your mind back."
"What's going on?" asked Annabeth. "Was she talking about the Chihuahua on the elevator?
I told them the story of the chimera, Echidna, my high-dive act,and the underwater lady's message
"Whoa," said Grover. "We've got to get you to Santa Monica!You can't ignore a summons from your dad."
Before Annabeth could respond, we passed another reporter doing a news story, and I almost froze in my tracks when he said, "Percy Jackson and Kassandra Knight. That's right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the teenagers who may have caused the explosion fit the description of the children wanted by authorities for a serious New Jersey bus accident three days ago. And they're believed to be traveling west. For our viewers, here's a photo of Percy Jackson and Kassandra Knight".
We ducked around thenews van and slipped into an alley.
"'First things first,' I said to Grover. "We've got to get out of town!"
Somehow we made it back to the Amtrak station without getting spotted. We got on board the train just before it pulled out for Denver. The train trunled west as darkness fell, the police lights still pulsing against the St. Louis skyline behind us