𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐄𝐈𝐋¹ || 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘 𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐎𝐍

𝐋𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐕𝐈𝐈

✦ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐎𝐋𝐘𝐌𝐏𝐔𝐒 ✦

PERCY LOVES NEW YORK. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you and nobody even looks at you funny. Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large, loud, very friendly truck.

Percy took the risk of using his mom's cell phone to call Aurora for the second time. He had called her once from the tunnel but only reached her voicemail. The raven-haired boy had surprisingly good reception, seeing as he was at the mythological center of the world and all, but he didn't want to see what his mom's roaming charges were going to be.

This time, Aurora picked up.

"Hey," Percy said, "You get my message?"

"Percy, what took you so long to call? Your message said almost nothing! We've been worried sick!"

"I'll fill you in later," Percy said, though how he was going to do that he had no idea. "Where are you?"

"We're on our way like you asked, almost to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. But, Perce, what are you planning? Annie is losing her shit. We've left the Camp virtually undefended and there's no way the gods–"

"Trust me," Percy said, "I'll see you there"

Percy hung up— he knew very well that his girlfriend was going to come after him for that.

His hands were trembling. He wasn't sure if it was a leftover reaction from his dip in the Styx or anticipation of what he was about to do. If this didn't work, being invulnerable wasn't going to save him from getting blasted to bits. It was late afternoon when the taxi dropped him at the Empire State Building.

Mrs. O'Leary bounded up and down Fifth Avenue, licking cabs and sniffing hotdog carts. Nobody seemed to notice her, although people did swerve away and look confused when she came close.

Percy whistled her to heel as three white vans pulled up to the curb. They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood. He'd never seen all three vans in the same place at once, though he knew they shuttled their fresh produce into the city.

The first van was driven by Argus, their many-eyed security chief. The other two were driven by harpies, which are basically demonic human/chicken hybrids with bad attitudes. They used the harpies mostly for cleaning Camp, but they did pretty well in midtown traffic, too.

The doors slid open. A bunch of campers climbed out, some of them looking a little green from the long drive.

Percy was glad so many had come: Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Jake Mason, Katie Gardner, Aurora, and Annabeth, along with most of their siblings.