Annabeth took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and slipped into the elevator. She waited for about 30 seconds, and when nothing happened, she slid the security card she had swiped from one of the cleaning ladies on duty into the slot and tapped the button for the Avenger's upper gym level.
The doors slid closed and she forced herself to keep her eyes open. She carefully studied the pattern of the elevator carpet as it slid up, thankful for the ACDC blaring in the tiny space.
It was loud enough to shut her thoughts off and repress any memories that threatened to resurface. The last thing she wanted was to have a flashback. The terror sliding its cold fingers up her spine was bad enough, add that to the nerves she was facing sneaking into the most secure facility on the planet, and any normal person would be having a flat-out panic attack.
That said, she was pretty close to one.
She was just glad JARVIS hadn't noticed her. She was wearing her invisibility Yankee's cap, which would be enough if the security was just mortals. But the AI was a whole other story altogether; she had been thinking about ways to make it split vision, so that half of JARVIS's feed was regular, and the other half was infrared.
One of the other interns had seen her project and insisted that it was genius; it was a whole lot harder to put together than it sounded. The other intern said that they needed to tell Tony ASAP.
But Annabeth refused, saying she wanted to figure out how to get it into overlay first.
Thank the gods that she had, or she would have been toast right now.
But Tony Stark was a genius; there was no way in Hades that he hadn't already come up with something like that for JARVIS. There was no way a simple invisibility cap could get her through the complex undetected.
And if the Avengers were there for a meeting or something...
She didn't even want to think about what might happen if that were the case.
What was she supposed to say, "Oh, sorry, I had a dream that my dead boyfriend was passed out next to your swimming pool, so I put on my invisibility baseball cap and came to check it out? Don't mind me, I'll be out of your hair in no time!"
Yeah, no.
That was never going to work.
Ding!
Annabeth jumped slightly as the elevator landed, the doors opened, and nothing happened.
Huh...maybe it will work.
The moment she stepped through the door something flashed red.
Crap. Lasers...
An alarm blared, reverberating throughout the whole complex. Annabeth panicked and ran for it, darting through corridors and into the first unlocked doorway she stumbled upon. She hesitated only a second before darting in and looking around. It was a bedroom. Massive, empty, and seemingly unlived in.
The bed was unmade and half of the sheets were in a tangle on the floor, but other than that, the room looked altogether un-homey. She ran for the closet and locked herself in, ducking behind a rack of boy's hoodies before remembering that she was invisible.
The alarm was mixed with shouts now, and Annabeth shrunk back. Invisible or not, it wasn't fun being hunted.
How was this possible? She knew every inch of this building's security backward. How would they have kept something as major as a laser grid hidden? It would have shown up in the energy readings she took! Unless...
Unless they just added it for an extra security level because something bad happened...someone broke in...or something.
Which meant that Percy might just be there.
Shut up, Wise Girl. She berated herself. He's dead. He's not here. Better to not hope than to be disappointed.
After what felt like an eternity she flipped off her cap for a second and glanced at her watch. 10:43 p.m. She had been in there for nearly four hours!
No...how is that possible?
Suddenly she realized she could no longer hear the sounds of the search outside.
Well, I've waited this long. I might as well wait a little longer.
She could search at night. In reality, the laser grid might have been a blessing in disguise. She never would have been able to relax enough to find anything during the daytime, where the chances of being discovered were exponentially greater. But at night...most everyone would be in bed. She could wait until the early hours of the morning, then do a quick once-over of the whole complex.
She wanted so desperately to find her Seaweed Brain that her chest hurt just thinking about it.
She needed him.
But the longer she sat there, the more sure she became that he really was dead.
She had been to his funeral, hadn't she? And anyway, this was ridiculous. If Percy were alive, the first place he would go would be home. To his mom. The second would be to her, and then to camp. Never would he ever consider going to the Avengers complex.
Maybe the kid she saw in her dream wasn't even Percy...he had looked so skinny and pale and...
No, that was just her paranoia talking.
It was Percy. It had been a sickly-looking version of him, sure, but it was still him. Or anyway, it was the ghost of him.
Annabeth glanced at her watch again. 11:21 p.m. She had time for a little nap. She'd head out in an hour or two.
She slipped out of the closet, looking longingly at the bed. She shook herself and grabbed one of the blankets instead.
Back in the closet she snuggled up in the blanket behind a rack of clothing and drifted off to sleep. As she dozed off she noticed that the blanket had a salty, fresh scent to it. Like the ocean, sparkling in the sunlight.
Like Percy.
She sighed and dreams took her.
A/N: I know, this is a little shorter, but we're building to the climax, don't worry, it won't stay this boring!!
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I'm trying really hard to keep writing so that you guys can have a chapter every other day but...it's getting tough. We'll get there! We will push through this! 👻
TTYL peeps!