What If

The Past

A month and a half ago, I was supposed to meet Percy for coffee to celebrate the end of high school. But he didn't show. I waited for him for a while because it wasn't unusual for him to be late to a date. It was only after an hour of sitting by myself that I started to worry about him. I risked calling him on my cell, but it just went straight to voicemail. Hello, I'm probably available right now but cannot, for the life of me, find my phone. Please leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I find it. I had to chuckle at Percy's answering machine message when I heard it, though it wasn't enough to distract how worried I was. I went into Manhattan to his house and asked Sally if she'd seen him, but she said no. I tried not to worry her since she was pregnant with Percy's sister Estelle, but it was hard to calm her down after that. I decided the best thing to do was go to Camp and see if he was there. Him and I were going to head there after our coffee anyways, so I had hoped he just forgot about the coffee part and went straight to Camp. But when I arrived, Chiron had come up to me and asked where Percy was.

I started to really panic then. I explained to Chiron that I didn't know where he was, and that he was supposed to meet me and never showed. A couple days went by, and still no one had heard from him. I even went so far as to pray to Poseidon for some kind of sign as to where his son could be, but I got nothing.

It was only until a week later, when I was sitting on Percy's bed in the middle of the night, that I saw his saltwater fountain glowing in the corner. It usually glowed a little bit, but this was different. It was bright and the light filled the entire room, like it was trying to get my attention. This had happened to Percy once before, years ago when Percy had gotten a couple Iris messages from the ghost of Bianca Di Angelo when she was trying to show him what her brother was up to. I walked over, saw one drachma sitting in the bottom of the pool, tossed it into the water spray, and waited for something to happen. After a moment of nothing, an image shimmered into view, and I had to hold back my gasp so no one on the other end would hear me.

It was Percy, sitting tied to a chair in a dark room, with a figure walking menacingly around him. He was staring at his feet and his mouth was trembling from exertion. His face was bloody and bruised, and I could see blood soaking through his shirt and pants. He had a terrible black eye and there were slashes all over his body, like someone had used him as a training dummy. There was blood dripping onto the floor everywhere I looked, like his entire body had been used as target practice. His ankles were tied to the legs of the chair, and I could see that the rope was so tight it was digging into his ankles. I imagined the same thing was happening to his wrists behind the chair. A figure was talking to Percy, and its voice was deep with a strange accent I was sure I had heard before.

"Just tell us how to get there, and I'll let you go," the voice said.

Percy slowly shook his head, his hair swaying back and forth. "Like I said before, I won't tell you anything." A fist came out of nowhere and slammed into Percy's jaw, making his head whip to the side with the force of the punch. He let out a small groan and spit on the floor. "You can torture me all you like, but you and I both know that I'm not going to talk, and you'll kill me whether I tell you anything or not." There was a chuckle from the darkness, and I could see his captor wiping the blood off his knuckles.

"This is true," the man said, "but it will be less painful for you to tell me what I want to know, rather than continue on like this until your heart gives out." Percy shut his eyes and shook his head again.

"I'm not going to sell out my friends just so you can murder them all," Percy said softly. It was then that I understood: this person wanted my Seaweed Brain to let slip how to get into Camp Half-Blood. Probably Camp Jupiter too. It has always been a secret to our enemies where the weak spots of the Camps were, and monsters and villains were always dying to sneak inside and pick off the demigods.