A/N Ok this chapter is kind of short, but the next few are gonna be sooo intense and I just can't wait to get to them! We're almost halfway through the story so bear with me!!!
Percy POV
“She hasn’t come out of her room since last night when you brought her home. I couldn’t get her to tell me why she even left in the first place.” Thalia told me, “I’m a little worried, Percy. She looked kind of crazy.” To be honest, I was surprised none of us had gone too crazy so far. I mean, dead people are walking around eating us. That isn’t exactly something you just get used to.
“I’m gonna go see her.” I said. Thalia wished me luck and headed downstairs to take her turn on guard duty.
Annabeth’s door was cracked open, and every now and then I could see her moving inside. I knocked lightly on the door, but she didn’t answer. I heard muttering coming from the other side, so I just pushed open the door.
“Annabeth?” She was standing with her back to me, looking down at the kitchen table.
“Will this…? No that can’t be… why didn’t it… oh crap…” She just kept on muttering to herself, not even hearing me.
“Annabeth?” I said a little bit louder.
“Oh no that won’t work… I wonder if this would do it…no, no, no…” I watched for a second as her hands shook above the table. A tiny vial among about thirty slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a crash. It was empty, but Annabeth looked down at it like it was her heart she’d just broken.
That’s when she went completely over the edge. Annabeth started to scream and cry and rock back and forth on the floor.
“Annabeth!” I shouted, and went down to her side. I don’t think she even saw me. She just huddled into my chest and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She shivered and put her head down on her knees.
“I can’t do this anymore. I just… I couldn’t do it. I thought I could, but I couldn’t, and now there’s nothing that I can…”
“What are you talking about?” I interrupted her babbling. She looked up at me with red eyes and a tear streaked face.
“The cure, Percy. I thought I finished it and I went out to test it and it just… it just didn’t work. The kid attacked me, and the sound brought all the others…” Oh… that explains things. She buried her head again.
“Shh, shh, it’s ok.” I whispered, stroking her hair.
“We’re all gonna die. We’ll run out of food or those things will get us. I can’t do anything about it, and now we’re all just gonna die.” She cried.
“I won’t let you die, Annabeth. I won’t let any more of us die.” I assured her, even though I couldn’t even assure myself of that, “We’ll be ok. We’ll find a way to fix things, I promise. Just calm down.” She stopped whimpering, but she didn’t stop shivering.
“I’m so sorry.” She said in a shaky voice, “I wasn’t ready to let go and it almost got me killed. You saved me, and I punished you for it. I’m so sorry, Percy. I’m so, so sorry.” She said into my shirt.
“It’s ok, Annabeth. It’s over now.” I bent my head and rested my lips on her hair.
“I love you Percy.” She sniffled.
“I love you too.”
“It’s about time you two made up! We were gonna host an intervention soon.” Leo teased us. We were all seated around Grover and Juniper’s living room eating dinner. Annabeth sat by my side, acting perfectly natural. It was almost like she didn’t have a meltdown a few hours ago. Frank had told me they’d heard her screams, but figured they shouldn’t check it out. Leo kept grinning at us, so I figured someone must have come down, seen us, and left.
“Oh aren’t you hilarious, Leo.” Annabeth said drily.
“In fact, I am.” She rolled her eyes and looked out the window, “The sun’s setting. Hazel, Leo, it’s our turn to guard.” Hazel wiped her mouth and stood up.
“Right behind you.” Annabeth leaned over and kissed me.
“See you later.” I smiled at her as she followed Hazel out. Leo trailed behind them trying to tie his shoelace in mid air. When they were gone, it was just me, Grover, and Nico. Frank and Jason were still downstairs doing guard. They wouldn’t be up for a few minutes. Piper must be down there entertaining Jason, Thalia was training, and Juniper was putting Daisy to bed.
“Guys, can I talk to you in my room for a second?” I asked. The two of them followed me down the hall.
“What’s up?” Nico asked as I closed the door. I took a deep breath.
“Listen, I want to go on a raid tomorrow.” I said. Grover opened his mouth to object, but I shushed him, “Trust me G-Man, you’ll want to be there for this one. I can promise you that where we’re going is completely safe.” He pursed his lips.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Nico asked.
“My old apartment. There’s something I want to pick up.”
“Where did you tell them we were going?” Nico asked again as we picked our way through an old alley.
“I said we were headed up to the roof to check the blockades, and then we were going for a swim.” This was one raid I didn’t want the others to know about just yet.
“Just a few more blocks,” Grover remembered.
“Your leg healed pretty nice.” Nico said, trying to make small talk.
“Yeah, it did. It’s kind of amazing the things Juniper can do with a couple of herbs. It’s like she’s one with the trees or something.” He joked.
“I wouldn’t doubt that.” Nico replied with a smile.
“Guys, we’re here.” I said. The three of us stood on the sidewalk, looking up at my old building. We’d pretty much cleared out this area, so we didn’t usually get many zombies. Every now and then a pack would come along, like the ones that attacked Annabeth, and the ones that decided to jump through our roof. That had been a huge pack! But anyways, that’s off topic.
I remembered back to when we had stood in this exact spot every day after school. The three of us liked to hang out with my mom since Nico’s house wasn’t all that… er, hospitable, and Grover’s mom liked to eat all natural junk. My mom baked cookies, therefore I won.
“Are you going to tell us why we’re here yet?” They asked. I shook my head.
“You’ll see.” We walked through the closed door and walked up the stairs.
When me, Grover, Nico, and the Stolls had been traveling around, we all contemplated coming back to my old apartment to hide. I’d voted against it. It would be too hard. Eventually we circled back and found the Plaza, deserted.
For a little while, I would come back here and visit. Sometimes Grover came with me, sometimes Nico did, sometimes it was just me. It took a little while, but eventually we got the entire building cleared out and set up blocks around it. We decided that if we ever needed to move, this was the place to come.
My old apartment looked the same as it did when I left last time. No matter how hard I scrubbed, those bloodstains wouldn’t leave the carpet.
“Come on, to my mom’s room.” We walked back to the bigger bedroom at the end of the hall. When we walked in, I had to bite my tongue to keep from tearing up a little bit. My mom’s pajamas were still on the bed, and Paul’s shoes were still by the door. Nico and Grover watched me while I walked to my mom’s nightstand.
“Before the Stolls buried them, I took these from my parents.” I said, my back still turned, “I just… I wanted to have something from them.” They nodded. I turned around, the box in my hand.
“Perce, is that what I think it is?” Grover gasped. I nodded, and opened the velvet ring box to reveal my mom’s wedding ring beside Paul’s.
“Does this mean that you’re going to…?” Nico asked. I grinned, and I nodded.
“Yes.” I said.
“Not to be a party pooper, but are you sure about this?” Grover asked, “I mean hey, I’m all for marriage, but the two of you just got back together. You don’t want to scare her off again.”
“I know, I know.” I said, shoving the box in my pocket, “But I was thinking about it earlier. Annabeth means everything to me. Even after that issue on the bus I still cared about her. And I know she loves me back.”
“Well duh, we can all see that.” Nico said.
“Exactly. I don’t want to wait around for too long. Who knows if we’ll even be around next week? I won’t ask her today, or tomorrow, but I’m gonna ask her.” Grover smiled and clapped my back.
“Congrats, Percy.” Nico grinned.
“Good luck buddy.” I smiled at them.
“Thanks guys.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” I said, “Listen, Annabeth’s pretty headstrong.” Nico laughed.
“Hell yeah she is!”
“And if something were to happen to me… I have no idea what she’d do.” Grover nodded in understanding, “I just wanted to ask you guys to keep her safe. I might not always be around to do that, and I want to know that there will be someone there to keep her from doing anything rash.”
“We got your back, dude.” Nico promised, “So long as you do the same for Thalia.”
“Are you gonna ask her out or not!?” Grover burst. Nico winked.
“All in good time.”
Thalia POV
“Annabeth, will you please stop pestering me about him?” I whined. She just kept on asking and asking and asking about when me and Death Breath were gonna tell everyone we were together.
“No, no I won’t. I just can’t see why the two of you don’t tell the others already. You love him, he loves you…”
“If you start singing I will punch you.” I warned.
“Thalia just let it out! It can’t be fun just sneaking around all the time.”
“Actually, it’s a lot of fun.” She rolled her eyes.
“You’re hopeless.”
“That I am.”
“Thalia!”
“Annabeth!” She groaned and banged her head on a nearby wall.
“Hey, hey, hey, watch the walls! I don’t want to have to waste any wood repairing holes.” Leo complained as he entered the suite, “So what are we talking about?” He asked.
“Girl stuff that you don’t want to know about.” He blushed.
“Right, got it. I’ll be out of your hair in a second. But first…” He walked towards the counter and dropped a heap of metal junk on it.
“What is that?” I asked. Leo smiled proudly and gestured towards it like the women in cocktail dresses on game shows.
“This, ladies, is an old radio, like cops used to use to communicate. It’s an old one though, it still has rabbit ears! I’m gonna hook it up and see if I can pick up anything.” He said and started messing with knobs and wires and stuff.
“Why do you need to do that in here?” Annabeth asked.
“I was lonely in the other room.” Leo pouted. I didn’t really like being alone either. Who knows how Annabeth has been able to do it so much lately.
“Ok, take your time. Thalia, we will discuss this later.” She promised. I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes like the mature adult I am.
We spent about a half an hour playing Go Fish while Leo cleaned up the radio. Eventually, a crackling sound came from it.
“I got it working!” Leo shouted, “Now to see if there’s anyone else out there…” He started twisting random knobs and pressing random buttons, “Hey, can you guys help me with these antennas?” He asked and pointed to the two wire sticks coming out of the top. Me and Annabeth sat down on either side of Leo and held the antennas as he instructed.
“This right?” I asked. Leo nodded and bit his tongue in concentration. The static started to cut in and out, and sound came from the machine.
“There’s someone on here!” He exclaimed excitedly, “Can you hear us?” He asked, speaking into the microphone. A fuzzy voice came through, a male voice.
“I don’t know who’s out there.” It said, “But my name is Malcolm Chase.” I gasped. Malcolm! Annabeth completely froze and locked eyes with the radio, “I think that I’ve figured out the cure.” Malcolm said, “Whoever’s listening, you need—Camp—Island sound—Hurry!” His voice started to cut out. The final sound that came through was a blood chilling scream.