The Child of Many Worlds

Chapter 11:

Thankfully she came up soon after, lounging in the chair along side me. To anyone else she would have looked completely at ease, but I knew better. She was still tense and wary, the voice had unnerved her and coupled with the events of the last few weeks I knew she needed something to focus on, even if it wasn't something good.

"Hey, Nat."

"What is it Percy?"

"So I told you about the voice, right." She nodded, confirming her knowledge. "Well I was actually able to make out a little of what it said, it was like a bad phone connection but I heard it say something about Fateless." She looked thoughtful and then stiffened.

Her voice didn't shake or give any noticeable sign of discomfort, but there was something almost imperceptible in her tone that let me know something was wrong. "Percy, I had forgotten about it with all of the confusion about Loki, but the Norns didn't just announce your parentage, they also gave you a tittle, it was Fateless. I don't know what it means but considering the goddesses that control fate and now an unseen voice have mentioned it, it's probably pretty important."

I had to agree with her, from the few interactions I'd had with the mythological world, every action seemed to have a purpose or hidden agenda. The problem was whether or not that agenda would impact me.

As much as I wanted to continue our conversation, we were rapidly approaching the harbor and needed to be ready to dock. We stood returning to our respective posts, Natasha to the helm to steer and I portside to watch for any hidden obstacles. Thankfully we were able to dock without any trouble and we registered our boat for a prolonged stay, under alisases of course.

We leisurely strolled around the harbor, taking an impromptu tour of the amazing boats, at my insistence. I hadn't seen it before Poseidon officially claimed me as his grandchild, but now I could see every stat imaginable about each and every boat. Without even needing to think I knew how to sail them and due to some experimenting on our trip I could psychically manipulate the ships, meaning I could sail most ships, no matter the size by myself.

Eventually Natasha forced me to leave my own private heaven by hailing a taxi and threatening me with the bill. I left pretty quickly after that. The ride to the apartment was entirely uneventful, the driver forced us to listen to terrible music, the seats were oddly sticky and it smelled strongly of puke. So like I said, a normal taxi ride.

When we did reach the apartment, despite New York traffic doing everything it could to stop us, we paid the driver and hopped out. We greeted the kind old doorman and decided to go up the stairs rather than have to deal with elevator music that would make what we had listened to in the taxi sound like Beethoven. I checked to make sure no one else was in the looming stairwell and turned off the public cameras, before I motioned to Natasha that we could go. With a matching grins we grabbed the railing and started our customary parkour race up the eighty flights of stairs to my floor. Since it had first happened around three months ago we tied, before Natasha had always beat me, but now I was able to go head to head with her.

With exhilarated and slightly breathless expressions we walked to the stairwell's door. I inserted a small metal key into a seemingly normal keyhole, however this door was not ordinary. They key was made of a unique alloy and there were only three of them in existence, owned by my mom, Natasha and me. When the key was inserted it activated a hidden hand scanner on the door handle and an iris scanner, which were once again only programed to recognize the three of us.

How did I afford all of this you may ask? Well the program I made, Frozen Ocean, I refined it and sold it for quite a pretty penny when I was around seven. The company I sold it to wanted me to work for them, but I made sure they never even saw my face, let alone actually meet me. Instead of just spending the money and running out a few years later, I decided to make my own company. Less than a year later my company ,Ripple, was a fortune five hundred Tech company and was the top competitor of Stark industries. Which ironically was the company that bought my program. I knew Tony Stark was furious about our ability to create tech just as good or better than him and it didn't help that no one could find out who I was. That's right, I was good enough to have never been spotted by the media, the only people in the company who actually knew what I looked like were the top five executives and of them only my vice president knew my name.