invisible string | f. zhang

xlii. bob says hello

"Reyna, you're too modest. Flying halfway across the world by yourself to answer Annabeth's plea, because you knew it was our best chance for peace? That's pretty freaking heroic."

Reyna shrugs. "Says the demigod who fell into Tartarus and found his way back."

"He had help," Annabeth says.

"Oh, obviously," Reyna says. "Without you, I doubt Percy could find his way out of a paper bag."

"True," Annabeth agrees.

"Hey!" Percy complains.

The others begin laughing.

"So, the twenty-million-peso question," Leo says. "We got this slightly used forty-foot-tall statue of Athena. What do we do with it?"

"As fine as it looks on this hill, I didn't come all this way to admire it. According to Annabeth, it must be returned to Camp Half-Blood by a Roman leader. Do I understand correctly?"

Annabeth nods. "I had a dream down in . . . you know, Tartarus. I was on Half-Blood Hill, and Athena's voice said, I must stand here. The Roman must bring me."

Maribelle glances over at the statue, no way they'd be able to transport that.

"It makes sense," Nico says,  "The statue is a powerful symbol. A Roman returning it to the Greeks . . . that could heal the historic rift, maybe even heal the gods of their split personalities."

Coach Hedge swallows his strawberry along with half the screwdriver. "Now, hold on. I like peace as much as the next satyr —"

"You hate peace," Leo interrupts.

"The point is, Valdez, we're only — what, a few days from Athens? We got an army of giants waiting for us there. We went to all the trouble of saving this statue—"

"I went to most of the trouble," Annabeth reminds him.

"— because that prophecy called it the giants' bane," the coach continues. "So why aren't we taking it to Athens with us? It's obviously our secret weapon."

He eyes the Athena Parthenos. "It looks like a ballistic missile to me. Maybe if Valdez strapped some engines to it —"

Piper clears her throat. "Uh, great idea, Coach, but a lot of us have had dreams and visions of Gaea rising at Camp Half-Blood . . ." She unsheathes her dagger Katoptris and set it on her plate. At the moment, the blade showed nothing except sky. "Since we got back to the ship, I've been seeing some bad stuff in the knife. The Roman legion is almost within striking distance of Camp Half-Blood. They're gathering reinforcements: spirits, eagles, wolves."

"Octavian," Reyna growls. "I told him to wait."

"When we take over command," Frank suggests, "Our first order of business should be to load Octavian into the nearest catapult and fire him as far away as possible."

"Agreed," Reyna says. "But for now—"

"He's intent on war," Annabeth says. "He'll have it, unless we stop him."

"Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. I saw images of a possible future — the camp in flames, Roman and Greek demigods lying dead. And Gaea . . ."

Maribelle pushes her sandwich away, holding onto Frank a little tighter. She thinks about the god Tartarus in physical form.

You might as well try to kill the earth, Tartarus had said.

If Gaea was that powerful, and she had an army of giants at her side . . .

"So Reyna takes the statue," Percy says. "And we continue on to Athens."