ATLOP: Trial by Fire

I Settle My Tab

They asked me about my knife (I told them how it worked), she helped me practice different styles with the veil (I decided it was growing on me), Grover tried to get me to talk about undersea culture (the turbulence got really bad then so we changed the subject), and Annabeth got me to do some word puzzles with her. She was really good at them (once we needled Grover into reading them out loud to us).

I didn't relax until we touched down safely at La Guardia though.

I rubbed my wrist, the faint curl of burning water was still wrapped there, though fainter than before. Was it still there because of Ares? Or something else? It was the oath, right?

The local press was waiting for us outside security, but we managed to evade them thanks to Annabeth who lured them away using her Yankees cap by shouting "They're over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!" and then rejoined us at baggage claim.

We debated at the taxi stand. I wanted them to go to Khiron and tell him what happened and also be as far away from me telling the Gods what happened as possible. I didn't want them to be caught in the crossfire.

They disagreed.

In the end, we agreed that they would come with me to the Empire State building, but would wait at the bottom, just to be safe.

We hopped in a taxi and using our handy dandy Lotus Hotel cards (or mine that was), we got to Manhattan.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

The three of us stared up at the Empire State building. I wasn't sure how I ever missed the power here, it was buzzing over my skin.

I hadn't slept in at least twenty-four hours, but at least I'd changed clothes at the airport (so had Annabeth and Grover), so we didn't look like disasters unlike right after that mess of a fight.

We went up to the guard at the front desk, "Six-hundredth floor, please."

He was reading a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front. I wasn't much into fantasy (I wasn't much into any language other than Halmaheran or Ancient Greek or maybe Latin. Dyslexia was murder on normal reading) but it must've been good because he took a while to look up.

"No such floor, kiddo."

"Let me," Grover said.

He pulled out a card (his camp card?), showing it to the guard.

"Percy here needs to speak with Lord Zeus, it's about the quest Lord Zeus sent him on you see. If you would let him up, that would be great. And we wouldn't have to tell Lord Zeus about how you stopped the kid he hired for a quest from completing the quest!" Grover gave him a bright smile as the guard faltered.

"Right," he said. "Uh, here." He moved to his feet, fumbled for just a moment for a key card, then passed it to me. "Insert this in the security slot. Make sure nobody else is in the elevator with you."

Grover switched backpacks with me and promised to wait there before they both wished me luck.

I moved slowly into the elevator. I double checked it was an empty one and as soon as the doors closed I slipped the key into the slot. The card vanished into it and a new button appeared on the console, a red one that said 600.

I wondered if there were any floors between the top of the building and the bottom of Mt. Olympus...

I pressed it and waited, and waited, and waited.

Chris Brown played. " Too much light in this window, don't wake me up... "

Finally, ding . The doors slid open.