New York is awesome. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, get in a van, 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.
What wasn't so awesome, though, was sitting next to Annabeth. Especially since nobody seemed willing to get Y/N out of this situation—Ethan said he needed to concentrate on the road and Percy looked very interested by a speck on the front passenger seat window.
"Y/N, what's gotten into you?" Annabeth said. "Going down in the Underworld without telling anyone! If it had only been Percy, I would've understood—but you too . . . !" Percy gestured as if he wanted to say something, but he seemed to think best about it and got back to studying the speck. "Didn't you think about how worried I'd be?"
Y/N noticed Ethan glancing at the rearview mirror. He looked at him like Please, help me, I'll do whatever you want. But Ethan focused back on the road.
Y/N swallowed. "I couldn't let Percy and Nico go alone," he tried. "Imagine what would've happened without me there. Who knows what would've happened to Percy—"
"You should have stopped them! Not go with them," Annabeth said. "Gods, Y/N, do you even realize what could've happened if Nico hadn't come and freed you and Percy? Ethan and I, we wouldn't have been able to do anything."
"We were doing really good before you got there," Y/N grouched.
Annabeth raised her eyebrows. "Y/N, a hellhound almost ate your head! One more second and you died. Lucky for you Ethan was there."
It was late afternoon when Ethan stopped the van at the Empire State Building. Mrs. O'Leary bounded up and down Fifth Avenue, licking cabs and sniffing hot dog carts. Nobody seemed to notice her, although people did swerve away and look confused when she came close.
Y/N whistled for her to heel.
"What exactly are we doing here?" he asked. "Aren't we supposed to get back to camp? We have to tell them about what Hades said."
"Well, if you hadn't been so busy talking with Annabeth," Ethan said, "you'd have noticed Percy calling Chiron."
Talking, huh? Annabeth had scolded him as if he were a kid, that was what it was.
Three white vans pulled up to the curb. They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood. They usually shuttled out fresh produce into the city.
The first van was driven by Argus, the many-eyed security chief. The other two were driven by harpies (basically demonic human/chicken hybrids with bad attitudes). They used the harpies mostly for cleaning the 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. Many had come: Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Michael Yew, Jake Mason, and Katie Gardner, along with most of their siblings. Chiron came out of the van last. His horse half was compacted into his magic wheelchair, so he used the handicap lift. The Ares cabin wasn't here. Clarisse was a stubborn idiot. End of the story.
Y/N did a head count: forty campers in all.
Not many to fight a war, but it was still the largest group of half-bloods he'd ever seen gathered in one place outside camp. Everyone looked nervous, and he understood why. They were probably sending out so much demigod aura that every monster in the northeastern United States knew they were here.
As he looked at their faces—all these campers he'd known for so many years—a nagging voice whispered in his mind: One of them is a spy.
He remembered Kronos's evil smile. You can't count on friends. They will always let you down.
One of the Athena kids came up to Annabeth and gave her Daedalus's computer, which was inside a bag she slung over her shoulder—ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.
Percy turned to the group. "Thanks for coming, everybody. Chiron, after you."
Their old mentor shook his head. "I came to wish you luck, my boy. But I make it a point never to visit Olympus unless I am summoned."
"But you're our leader."
Chiron smiled. "I am your trainer, your teacher. That is not the same as being your leader. I will go gather what allies I can. It may not be too late to convince my brother centaurs to help. Meanwhile, you called the campers here, Percy. You are the leader."
Percy seemed about to protest. Instead, he took a deep breath. "Okay. Like I told Chiron on the phone, something bad is going to happen tonight. Some kind of trap. We've got to get an audience with Zeus and convince him to defend the city. Remember, we can't take no for an answer."
Y/N asked Argus to watch Mrs. O'Leary, which neither of them looked happy about.
Then he looked at the sky. He knew that beyond those clouds was Mount Olympus.
"Let's go," he said.
A security guard was sitting behind the desk in the lobby, reading a big black book with a flower on the cover. He glanced up when they all filed in with their weapons and armor clanking. "School group? We're about to close up."
"No," Percy said. "Six-hundredth floor."
The security guard checked them out. His eyes were pale blue and his head was completely bald. Y/N couldn't tell if he was human or not, but he seemed to notice their weapons, so he mustn't have been fooled by the Mist.
"There is no six-hundredth floor, kid." He said it as if it were a required line he didn't believe. "Move along."
Y/N leaned across the desk. Slowly so the guard could see everything, he took off his ring, held it before the guard's eyes, and put it on the desk.
He saw the security guard staring at the peacock engraved in the metal. The guy moistened his lips and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Then he hit a buzzer and the security gate swung open. "Please, I'm only doing my job."
Y/N patted his shoulder. "Of course. And you're doing just fine. I'll tell my mother about it. No need to have us going through the metal detectors."
"Yes, sir," the security guard agreed. "Elevator on the right."
"I know the way," Y/N said.
He tossed the guard a golden drachma and they marched through.
"I love it when you do that," Ethan said.
They decided it would take two trips to get everybody up in the elevator. Y/N went with the first group. Different elevator music was playing since his last visit—that old disco song "Stayin' Alive." A terrifying image flashed through his mind of Apollo in bell-bottom pants and a slinky silk shirt.
He was glad when the elevator doors finally dinged open. In front of them, a path of floating stones led through the clouds up to Mount Olympus, hovering six thousand feet over Manhattan.
He'd seen Olympus several times, but it still took his breath away. The mansions glittered gold and white against the sides of the mountain. Gardens bloomed on a hundred terraces. Scented smoke rose from braziers that lined the winding streets. And right at the top of the snow-capped crest rose the main palace of the gods. It looked as majestic as ever, but something seemed wrong. Then he realized the mountain was silent—no music, no voices, no laughter.
Annabeth studied him. "Are you okay?"
He frowned. "Yeah. Why?"
"You look . . . different," she decided. "You look more—" She stopped, as if she'd realized she was about to say too much.
"I look more what?" he asked curiously.
Annabeth looked away. "Forget what I just said."
He grinned. It was funny, to see Annabeth embarrassed—though he didn't know why she was.
The elevator doors opened again, and the second group of half-bloods joined them.
"Come on," Percy said.
They made their way across the sky bridge into the streets of Olympus. The shops were closed. The parks were empty. A couple of Muses sat on a bench strumming flaming lyres, but their hearts didn't seem to be into it. A lone Cyclops swept the street with an uprooted oak tree. A minor godling spotted them from a balcony and ducked inside, closing his shutters.
They passed under a big marble archway with statues of Zeus and Hera on either side. Annabeth made a face at the queen of the gods.
"Hate her," she muttered. Then she quickly added, "No offense. I know she's your mother, but still."
He tried not to smile. "Has she been cursing you or something?" Last year, Annabeth had gotten on Hera's bad side, but Annabeth hadn't really talked about it since.
"Just little stuff so far," she said. "She sends cows after me."
Y/N barely managed not to burst out. "Cows? In San Francisco?"
"Oh, yeah. Usually I don't see them, but the cows leave me little presents all over the place—in our backyard, on the sidewalk, in the school hallways. I have to be careful where I step."
Y/N was trying to figure out how a cow could go inside a school without anyone noticing when Pollux pointed toward the horizon and cried, "Look! What is that?"
They all froze. Blue lights were streaking across the evening sky toward Olympus like tiny comets. They seemed to be coming from all over the city, heading straight toward the mountain. As they got close, they fizzled out. They watched them for several minutes and the lights didn't seem to do any damage, but still it was strange.
"Like infrared scopes," Michael Yew muttered. "We're being targeted."
"Let's get to the palace," Percy said.
No one was guarding the hall of the gods. The gold-and-silver doors stood wide open. Their footsteps echoed as they walked into the throne room.
"Room" didn't really cover it. The place was the size of Madison Square Garden. High above, the blue ceiling glittered with constellations. Twelve giant empty thrones stood in a U around a hearth. In one corner, a house-size globe of water hovered in the air, and inside swam an old friend, half-cow, half-serpent.
My Lord! Bessie said happily, turning in a circle.
"Hey, girl!" Despite all the serious stuff going on, Y/N waved and smiled.
Two years ago they'd spent a lot of time trying to save Bessie—some called her the Ophiotaurus, which was a mistake; Bessie was a cow, not a bull—from the Titans, and he'd gotten kind of fond of her. She seemed to like him, too.
"I hope they're treating you okay?" he said.
Yes, my Lord, Bessie said. It is far better than the ocean here. The water is clean.
They walked toward the thrones, and a woman's voice said, "Hello again, Y/N L/N. I told you I would see you again here. You and your friends are welcome."
Hestia stood by the hearth, poking the flames with a stick. She wore the same kind of simple brown dress as she had done before, but she was a grown woman now.
He nodded. "Lady Hestia."
He'd meant to be just respectful—and probably he should've bowed. Behind him the others did bow.
Hestia regarded him with her red glowing eyes. She put a finger to her lips, thoughtful. Then she looked at Percy. "I see you went through with your plan. You bear the curse of Achilles."
The other campers started muttering among themselves: What did she say? What about Achilles?
"You must be careful," Hestia warned Percy. "You gained much on your journey. But you are still blind to the most important truth. Perhaps a glimpse is in order."
Annabeth nudged Y/N. "Um . . . what is she talking about?"
"'Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding,'" Y/N quoted.
"Don't play it mysterious."
"Back at Ms. Castellan's place," he explained, "that's what Hestia told Percy, Nico, and me."
Percy was staring into Hestia's eyes. Suddenly his knees buckled, but Y/N grabbed him. "Percy, you really need to stop doing things like that."
"Did—did you see that?" Percy asked.
"I saw you almost smashing your face on the marble, yeah," he said.
He glanced at Hestia, but the goddess's face was expressionless. He remembered something she'd told them in the woods: If you are to understand your enemy Luke, you must understand his family. What had she shown Percy?
"How long was I out?" Percy muttered.
"You weren't out at all," he told Percy. "You just looked at Hestia for like one second and collapsed."
Percy seemed disoriented one more second, then he got a hold of himself.
"Um, Lady Hestia," he said, "we've come on urgent business. We need to see—"
"We know what you need," a man's voice said.
A god shimmered into existence next to Hestia. He looked about twenty-five, with curly salt-and-pepper hair and elfish features. He wore a military pilot's flight suit, with tiny bird wings fluttering on his helmet and his black leather boots. In the crook of his arm was a long staff entwined with two living serpents.
"I will leave you now," Hestia said. She bowed to the aviator and disappeared into smoke. Easy to understand why she was so anxious to go. Hermes, the God of Messengers, did not look happy.
"Hello." Hermes's brow furrowed, and Y/N wondered if he somehow knew about the vision Percy had just had.
Percy bowed awkwardly. "Lord Hermes."
Then one of the snakes around the long staff spoke, and Y/N heard its voice directly inside his head: Oh, sure. Don't say hi to us. We're just reptiles.
George, the other snake scolded. Be polite.
"Hello, George," Percy said. "Hey, Martha."
Y/N frowned, before remembering that Percy had met Hermes two years ago. Probably had he met both George and Martha the snakes at the same time.
Did you bring us a rat? George asked.
George, stop it, Martha said. He's busy!
Too busy for rats? George said. That's just sad.
"Um, Hermes," Percy said. "We need to talk to Zeus. It's important."
Hermes's eyes were steely cold. "I am his messenger. May I take a message?"
Behind Y/N, the other demigods shifted restlessly. This wasn't going as planned.
"Guys," he said. "Why don't you do a sweep of the city? Check the defenses. See who's left in Olympus. Meet Annabeth, Ethan, Percy, and me back here in thirty minutes."
Silena frowned. "But—"
"That's a good idea," Annabeth said. "Connor and Travis, you two lead."
The Stolls seemed to like that—getting handed an important responsibility right in front of their dad. They usually never led anything except toilet paper raids. "We're on it!" Travis said. They herded the others out of the throne room, leaving Y/N, Annabeth, Ethan, and Percy with Hermes.
"My Lord," Annabeth said. "Kronos is going to attack New York. You must suspect that. My mother must have foreseen it."
"Your mother," Hermes grumbled. He scratched his back with his caduceus, and George and Martha muttered, Ow, ow, ow. "Don't get me started on your mother, young lady. She's the reason I'm here at all. Zeus didn't want any of us to leave the front line. But your mother kept pestering him nonstop, 'It's a trap, it's a diversion, blah, blah, blah.' She wanted to come herself, but Zeus was not going to let his number one strategist leave his side while we're battling Typhon. And so naturally he sent me to talk to you."
"But it is a trap!" Annabeth insisted. "Is Zeus blind?"
Thunder rolled through the sky.
"I'd watch the comments, girl," Hermes warned. "Zeus is not blind or deaf. He has not left Olympus completely undefended."
"But there are these blue lights—"
"Yes, yes. I saw them. Some mischief by that insufferable goddess of magic, Hecate, I'd wager, but you may have noticed they aren't doing any damage. Olympus has strong magical wards. Besides, Aeolus, the King of the Winds, has sent his most powerful minions to guard the citadel. No one save the gods can approach Olympus from the air. They would be knocked out of the sky."
Ethan raised his hand. "Um . . . what about that materializing/teleporting thing you guys do?"
"That's a form of air travel too, Ethan Moore. Very fast, but the wind gods are faster. No, if Kronos wants Olympus, he'll have to march through the entire city with his army and take the elevators! Can you see him doing this?"
Hermes made it sound pretty ridiculous—hordes of monsters going up in the elevator twenty at a time, listening to "Stayin' Alive."
"Maybe just a few of you could come back," Percy suggested.
Hermes shook his head impatiently. "Percy Jackson, you don't understand. Typhon is our greatest enemy."
"I thought that was Kronos."
The god's eyes glowed. "No, Percy. In the old days, Olympus was almost overthrown by Typhon. He is the husband of Echidna—"
"Remember when I fought her at the Arch?" Y/N whispered at Ethan. "Not nice."
"—and the father of all monsters. We can never forget how close he came to destroying us all; how he humiliated us! We were more powerful back in the old days. Now we can expect no help from Poseidon because he's fighting his own war. Hades sits in his realm and does nothing, and Demeter and Persephone follow his lead. It will take all our remaining power to oppose the storm giant. We can't divide our forces, nor wait until he gets to New York. We have to battle him now. And we're making progress."
"Progress?" Percy said doubtfully.
"He nearly destroyed St. Louis," Ethan added.
"Yes," Hermes admitted. "But he destroyed only half of Kentucky. He's slowing down. Losing power."
Y/N felt like Hermes was trying to convince himself.
In the corner, Bessie mooed sadly.
"Please, Hermes," Annabeth said. "You said my mother wanted to come. Did she give you any messages for us?"
"Messages," Hermes muttered. "'It'll be a great job,' they told me. 'Not much work. Lots of worshippers.' Hmph. Nobody cares what I have to say. It's always about other people's messages."
Rodents, George mused. I'm in it for the rodents.
Shhh, Martha scolded. We care about what Hermes has to say. Don't we, George?
Oh, absolutely. Can we go back to the battle now? I want to do laser mode again. That's fun.
"Quiet, both of you," Hermes grumbled.
The god looked at Annabeth, who was doing her big-pleading-gray-eyes thing.
"Bah," Hermes said. "Your mother said to warn you that you are on your own. You must hold Manhattan without the help of the gods. As if I didn't know that. Why they pay her to be the wisdom goddess, I'm not sure."
"Anything else?" Annabeth asked.
"She said you should try plan twenty-three. She said you would know what that meant."
Annabeth's face paled. Obviously she knew what it meant, and she didn't like it. "Go on."
"Last thing." Hermes looked at Percy. "She said to tell Percy: 'Remember the rivers.'"
"Thank you, Hermes," Annabeth said. "And I . . . I wanted to say . . . I'm sorry about Luke."
The god's expression hardened as if he'd turned to marble. "You should've left that subject alone."
Annabeth stepped back nervously. "Sorry?"
"SORRY doesn't cut it!"
George and Martha curled around the caduceus, which shimmered and changed into something that looked suspiciously like a high-voltage cattle prod.
"You should've saved him when you had the chance," Hermes growled at Annabeth. "You're the only one who could have."
Y/N stepped between them. "Hey! Leave Annabeth—"
"Don't defend her, L/N!" Hermes turned the cattle prod toward him. "She knows exactly what I'm talking about."
Y/N barely kept himself from punching the god in the jaw. "Luke put himself where he is alone!" he yelled. "He did it, not Annabeth. You have no right to threaten her like that. You know what? If you want to blame someone, blame yourself! Maybe if you hadn't abandoned Luke and his mom, things would've been different!"
Hermes raised his cattle prod. He began to grow until he was ten feet tall.
But as he prepared to strike, George and Martha leaned in close and whispered something in his ear.
Hermes clenched his teeth. He lowered the cattle prod, and it turned back to a staff.
"Y/N L/N," he said, "because your mother is who she is, I must spare you. But you will never speak to me like that again. You have no idea how much I have sacrificed, how much—"
His voice broke, and he shrank back to human size. "My son, my greatest pride . . . my poor May. . . ."
He sounded so devasted. . . . One minute ago, he was ready to vaporize them. Now, he looked like he needed a hug.
"Look, Lord Hermes," Percy said. "I'm sorry, but I need to know. What happened to May? She said something about Luke's fate, and her eyes—"
Hermes glared at Percy, though the look on his face wasn't really anger. It was pain. Deep, incredible pain.
"I will leave you now," he said tightly. "I have a war to fight."
He began to shine. Y/N turned away and made sure Annabeth did the same, because she was still frozen in shock.
Hermes glowed with the light of a supernova. Then he was gone.
Annabeth sat at the foot of her mother's throne and cried. Y/N went to sit next to her and hugged her silently.
First time he spoke to Hermes, and Hermes acted this way. He must've felt guilty about Luke. He was looking for someone to blame. Y/N could understand that—but it didn't allow him to do anything. Annabeth was innocent. She had done nothing to deserve this.
Hermes wanted Y/N never to speak to him in that tone again? Fine. But if Hermes ever threatened Annabeth again, he would punch the god in the face hard.
Finally, Annabeth wiped her eyes. She stared at the hearth as if it were her own funeral pyre.
"You're okay?" Y/N asked.
She didn't answer. "My mom mentioned—"
"Plan twenty-three."
She rummaged in her pack and pulled out Daedalus's laptop. The blue Delta symbol glowed on the top when she booted it up. She opened a few files and started to read.
"Here it is," she said. "Gods, we have a lot of work to do."
"One of Daedalus's inventions?"
"A lot of inventions—dangerous ones. If my mother wants me to use this plan, she must think things are very bad." She looked at Percy. "What about her message to you: 'Remember the rivers'? What does that mean?"
Percy shook his head. As usual, he had no clue what the gods were telling him. Neither did Y/N. Which rivers was Percy supposed to remember? The Styx? The Mississippi?
Just then the Stoll brothers ran into the throne room.
"You need to see this," Connor said. "Now."
The blue lights in the sky had stopped, so at first Y/N didn't understand what the problem was.
The other campers had gathered in a small park at the edge of the mountain. They were clustered at the guardrail, looking down at Manhattan. The railing was lined with those tourist binoculars, where you could deposit one golden drachma and see the city. Campers were using every single one.
Y/N looked down at the city. He could see almost everything from here—the East River and the Hudson River carving the shape of Manhattan, the grid of streets, the lights of skyscrapers, the dark stretch of Central Park in the north. Everything looked normal, but something was wrong. He felt it in his bones before he realized what it was.
"I don't . . . hear anything," Annabeth said.
That was the problem.
Even from this height, they should've heard the noise of the city—millions of people bustling around, thousands of cars and machines—the hum of a huge metropolis. Even in the dead of night, New York is never silent.
But it was now.
"What did they do?" Percy's voice was tight and angry. "What did they do to my city?"
Y/N transformed into an eagle and took a look.
In the streets below, traffic had stopped. Pedestrians were lying on the sidewalks, or curled up in doorways. There was no sign of violence, no wrecks, nothing like that. It was as if all the people in New York had simply decided to stop whatever they were doing and pass out.
"Are they dead?" Silena asked in astonishment.
Ice coated Y/N's stomach. He turned back to human shape and gripped the guardrail hard to avoid falling. A line from the prophecy rang in his ears: And see the world in endless sleep. He remembered Grover's story about meeting the god Morpheus in Central Park. You're lucky I'm saving my energy for the main event. How hadn't he made the connection earlier?
"Not dead," he said. "Morpheus has put the entire island of Manhattan to sleep."
How hadn't he realized earlier that what he saw in his dreams each night was about to happen?
"The invasion has started," Ethan said.
A/N: Next chapter, the battle of Manhattan begins!