Percy
He knew he shouldn't be ashamed of something as stupid and common as rehabilitation, but his record of how long he withstood the air from outside was incredible.
It wasn't a secret that Percy was one of the strongest in Chaos' army. But any doubts were crushed by his five-year reign as a resistor of the drug.
The gods and their tools, and it hadn't been long since they resorted to something as cruel and desperate as a biological weapon.
As low as it was, it had severely slowed down their war effort.
Percy had been doing everything he could to fight in the war down on the surface. But he came up here constantly, trying to make sure that he breathed as much fresh air as possible. He had left the Brazil compound and gone to Coda to retrieve a stolen weapon. Turns out, Coda was a hotspot for the drug.
Now he floated weightlessly at the outer station rehabilitation center.
Percy counted up another number as his head passed the ceiling above him. Bored and sick of counting, he decided to work on his precision.
He stretched his hand out to the bar and pulled himself effortlessly to the side. He reached into his bag and pulled out a few nuts and bolts. Percy pushed himself back with a flick of his wrist and he was spinning again.
He held the bolt in the palm of his hand, then willed it to float, it obliged, but the bones in his fingers scraped painfully against each other.
He willed the metal nut to fly within his fingers in a weaving fashion. As Percy spun around, he found himself having to compensate and move the nut with him as well. His hand jerked back with a painful twist and the nut flew slowly away to the door.
About twenty feet away from him he noticed it stop, then quickly fall in a sharp right to the floor. The door nearby slid open. Charlie walked in with his uniform half on and kicked the bolt across the room.
"I thought I'd find you here." He said with a disappointed voice. "If you really wanted to break the rules, you should've gone somewhere else."
Percy grunted. "First place you looked?"
"Uh-huh." Charlie walked forward and grabbed onto the ladder Percy had set out to get into the middle of the room, he climbed as high as he could without getting sucked into the vortex.
"Come down." He sighed as he watched Percy spin a little quicker.
"Fix the gravity." He shot back, oddly wanting to be sassy.
"I've tried. But Outer Station is just a big bubble. All the gravity circulates around this room, I can't direct it to the floor, then pockets just appear everywhere."
"Figures." He responded numbly. He grabbed a safety railing near him and stared at the bolt on the floor.
Charlie picked it up. "What, did rehabilitation hurt your ego?"
Percy didn't clarify.
"Please, I know you want to help Gamma right now, but we all have to do this. I have done it so many times it's insane. You thinking you're weak, for giving in once... Is insulting to me."
"Okay..." He pulled himself onto the ladder and Charlie helped him flip onto the ground.
The gravity was as uncomfortable as a plane taking off, his stomach lurched into his throat and he fell to the ground.
"I guess I just got used to it." he mumbled, depressed and on the floor.
"I know. Five years... It's one heck of a streak."
"I stopped worrying about it, I think." Percy blinked, still unwilling to stand.
"Memory gaps?"
"Yeah," Percy grunted as he jolted off the floor, ripping off the rather comfortable bandage. "I remember flight training in Barbados, terrible idea, by the way, and I remember something in Hawaii... But I can't remember anything."
"It's all right Omega, they're normal. Your head will clear up soon."
****
Percy was definitely ready to leave the station. He was tired of the constant fear of the vacuum that awaited him outside the always creaking metal walls. He was tired of tracking down flaws zero gravity spots just to feel like he was in water. He was tired of the actual water that would get shut off after five minutes in the shower.
And he was so done with his loss of concentration. Everything seemed lost to him. He wasn't ever sure of where he was. He knew when he was sitting, he knew when he was standing. He could walk and talk to Alpha, also known as his friend Charlie, and be perfectly aware of his surroundings.
But he often wondered why he was so appealed to the idea of weightlessness. He hated space. He hated that he had to fly on a plane, then a jet, then a rocket just to get here.
He found it hard to believe that he'd come here so much before, it just didn't sound like him. But then again, he wasn't himself.
To win this war... To realign the universe with Chaos, he created an order of soldiers to defend and take back the rebel planet, Earth. In doing so, they had discovered this place was infested with descendants of mother Gaea.
Gods, Chaos called them. None of the other planets had them. Certainly not any of the ones Percy had been to. But Chaos had the feeling that this place was important. His memory didn't go as far back as his lifespan, but that was only because of the break of this planet, it had made him woozy, out of control.
... The gods of this world created a toxin, fatal only to something as powerful as Chaos, and he had to leave it. He relied on his Riders, Peacekeepers from this world that want to sustain the true order, to fix the world and stop the rebels. So at least all people from Earth weren't bad.
But as children of Chaos, the drug started to get to them. He created and antidote, called sustenance, to retaliate against the toxin in the air. It made them stronger, more resilient, more upbeat and active, and it enhanced their powers.
Percy already had some pretty wicked powers over the water, causing storms and whatnot, but it extended to his earthquake abilities, something that had been far less severe. Percy soon could control the earth, moving rocks and mountains in big portions as a group. He felt the same essence of the earth inside the iron and other metals of this world, and he learned to move that around.
But he couldn't get down the precision it took. The enhanced abilities were out of control, move here, go there, but he couldn't control every particle like he could the water.
Water replenished him. But earth and metal snapped his strength, his body would fight back in the most uncomfortable ways, his joints freezing up until he couldn't move. Sometimes his nose would bleed. But Chaos had made it very clear that he needed to learn how to use these abilities.
Percy reminded himself every day about what happened to him. Indigo was stolen by the Dark Elites, an evil and traitorous group at the heart of the rebellion. When their home base was invaded, and Indigo found, Leo and Percy had gone down to retrieve it. But the exposure to the air inside the most concentrated toxic areas on the planet had beaten him.
He was worn out, his strength had been sucked out along with his sanity. He started to get confused and weary. He thought about attacking Leo.
Thankfully, he was able to get Indigo to Chaos before he went all paranoid and actually attacked people. At least he thought. He felt a rush of embarrassment at a faint memory of him fighting back.
He'd have to ask Charlie whether or not they forced him here.
Usually, whenever he felt woozy and would come up here, the clean air on Outer Station refreshed him. He would give training sessions to the rehabilitated, that way they could be able to fight when they got back. A concept that had made sense until now.
Now he was doing it. Since he had been affected by the drug, he had felt depressed and almost soleless. Sustenance was supposed to help, but because he hadn't ever done rehabilitation before, he wasn't responding to it as well as others. He didn't have the experience it required to bounce back quickly.
But he had seen first-timers struggle with this before. They would be confused, and all it took was one word to jog their memories.
Are you sure I've been fighting this whole time?
Yes.
Oh, right. Now I remember.
But Percy's memories weren't coming back. And none of the first-time reconditioned showed signs of depression. He wasn't even sure he showed signs of it. He just felt empty. All of his emotions dulled back. He felt only the slightest bit of confusion, and he knew it should've been a lot stronger.
Leo had been fixed and sent back down to watch a group of POWs from a couple weeks ago. And he had been here, the entire time. He wondered if he could take a couple weeks on the surface like that.
Of course he could. He was being an idiot. He'd gone five years that wasn't about to change. He'd have another good run. This war was going to be over before he had to go in again.
After the ropes course and the track, he headed towards combat. He and Alpha stepped onto the mat together. Percy blocked his first punch and then another. He didn't throw his own. And Charlie slammed his head onto the mat.
Percy numbly wandered back into his cabin and flopped on his bunk. Charlie came in an hour later and climbed onto the top bed.
"I don't know what's wrong with you, but snap out of it. You can't..."
The top of the bunk glowed a dim orange and blue until he couldn't see it any longer. The waves turned golden and then blue. White and gold foam splashed up from the waves crashing in front of him.
Percy looked at his hands, they were covered in mud and dirt. Brown and red streaks covered his arms, he was rubbing dirt into his jeans. He scooped up another handful of water, splashed the remaining blue, and caked his pants in dust.
He looked up at a young boy with brown hair and pale hazel eyes. he was using the water from the small stream to wash the dirt off his hands. He rubbed hard at a stain on his shirt.
"Knock it off," Percy demanded. "You need to blend in."
"I'm not..." He shook his head and scrubbed harder.
"Jack!" He screamed at him. "It's just dirt!"
"Not on you. Y-you are covered in blood."
"And you should be too. You have to fight, it's why you're here."
Jack threw a rock at his leg. "I am here for war, I fight with the guns, those assault rifles, not this! I'm never going to use survival training. Not with a tank and a gun."
"Is that why you're here? To play war? Tell awesome yolo stories by the campfire, avoid every bullet that hits you? If you're going tosurvive you might break a nail or two."
He shook his head. "No."
"No what?" Percy jumped up.
Jack just shook his head again.
"I'm leaving you here," Percy said, tucking the makeshift knife behind his belt. "I'm not going to drag you all around this god-forsaken island just to get back to base."
"What?" Jack yelled angrily. "You can't do that. We're a team!"
They weren't. Percy saved him from a monster on that island and dragged his whiney mouth across miles just to do all the fighting. And Percy needed to get back to base. He had come all this way, watched Annabeth get hurt, and he wasn't about to blow his cover because some nineteen-year-old gamer wanted to play soldier.
He had to survive long enough to...
Percy opened his eyes, the bunk staring down at him. He had a plan, something important, but he couldn't remember it.
"I'm sorry, Charlie... This is a more complicated process than I thought it would be."
"It's alright man. I've done it enough to know how to recover. Maybe you're suffering from the drugs long term effects. No one's lasted long enough for us to know what that is."
"Right. I..." He faltered. "I never know what to say. I never know what to do."
"Anything I can do?" Charlie worried.
"Get me out of here."
"Perce-"
"No. I honestly think I need to go back. I've been rehabilitated. And I've always worked best in realistic situations. I just... I didn't want to fight you earlier. I need to be out where I need to be. This just feels stupid."
"I'll see what I can do. But... No. They might let it slide."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Valdez is having troubles with the roman prisoners on the surface."
****
When Charlie woke him up the next day, they had a mission.
"Where?" He coughed, reaching for his water.
"Off world."
"We are off world, Charlie."
"No, away from here. Chaos is sending us to some aquatic planet somewhere else. Some more traitors."
Percy raised his eyebrows. "Dark? Please no."
"I'm afraid so. Turns out it was more Elites than we thought. Three revealed themselves this time." Charlie pulled out his desk chair and sat down.
"Three?" Percy swore. "How many of them are hiding? I thought we'd got them all."
"Apparently we haven't. They found something, an artifact of Chaos', or maybe even their own, either way, we had it and now they've taken it."
"Is it a weapon?" Percy asked, packing a bag, eager to leave.
"Didn't say. Just artifact."
"Well, maybe its how this started. Somehow."
"How it started?" Charlie wondered, fettling with is sandy-tan jacket.
"Yeah." Percy pulled on his own, it had an omega on the right arm, the last letter of the alphabet for the Greeks. The Greeks were a group of people from this world. And now their only threat. "I mean, we don't know how this world broke of from Chaos' alliance, and Chaos has been so out of shape for this war, he doesn't remember how."
"Well, I look forward to the day he remembers. But it doesn't matter how it started, it did."
"Right." Percy slung his tan bag over his shoulder and exited with Charlie. "I just wonder. As long as it gets me off this station... I don't care."
"I doubt it." He smirked at him.
Percy checked is ID. It was a small metal plate the size of an Earth American drivers license. It had what they call, a touch screen, so he could see their messages.
"Charlie," He questioned.
"What?"
"Why don't I have clearance for the airfield?"
"Because we haven't been approved for the mission." Charlie slapped his card against the door to the cargo bay. "But I have permission to do repairs."
Percy laughed. "All right! Anyone that doesn't want to get sucked into space best get going!"
The area around themstarted to clear, and Riders started to run back into the station.
"That worked." Charlie said and grabbed his shoulder. "Best be going." He mocked is phrasing.
Percy grunted. He was starting to feel like himself again, but the Riders had a dialect of sorts. It was sloppier, more careless, and more of something else he couldn't give a name. He didn't want to say alive... but alive.
Sustinense was starting to make him feel more like himself again. More alive and willing to fight.
Charlie closed the gangplank to a long distance Rider ship and hopped in the pilot seat. Percy winced as he sat down in front of the demanding controls next to him. "I hate flying."
"Well," Charlie reassured him. "Space isn't Barbados."
He numbly laughed and strapped in. He pushed the red button by his screen. "Scanning for life... Alright, the bay is clear. We can go."
Percy hit some buttons and pulled some levers to the bay while Charlie retracted the landing gear.
"How are we getting there?" He asked.
The jet pulled away from the bay at gut wrenching speed. "Chaos has a gate open to the planet. It's starting to break away just like Earth did, so he's been keeping it under watch. Spending most of his time there."
"Okay." He mumbled. "Just thinking. If this artifact can send Chaos away... Loosen his grip on his planets, and they're taking it off world, to another planet, would that spread the rebellion?"
Charlie eased them through Chaos' silver blue gate, standing in the middle of space in a thready, glowing ring. "If that were true, wouldn't Chaos approve the mission?"
"You tell me. Did you propose it to him?"
"No, Speed was necessary. But he'll listen to you. Just say you finished but got word of this before we could reinstate you, he'll trust you if you say you approved the mission."
"Okay. Yeah, I'll add in our suspicions about the artifact... Maybe not, lets see the state of the planet first."
Percy smiled as the approached the great big blue sphere in front of him. He was near water again.