Project: Olympus [PREVIEW ONLY]

Chapter 1

Mark scrolled through his newsfeed. Honestly it was boring at this point. All a bunch of political people shouting at each other and threats of nuclear warfare every week.

This person did that.

That person did this.

Look, tea to lose weight!

Killings here.

Terrorism there.

This was a real dumpster fire. Jeez.

Mark debated shutting off his laptop and surfing netflix for the foreseeable future, but decided against it. The quarantine nonsense had been awful, days of the same thing without break and no change. He barely recalled half of it.

On a whim, he decided to check to see if any of his friends were online. He sighed as he pulled up Discord, flicking through his various servers and group chats to catch up on what he had missed in between last night and this morning. Nothing much stood out to him, mostly just his friends taking turns meme dumping at two in the morning. Probably why almost none of them were online; they were sleeping off a night of internet surfing.

He glanced at his friends list, and relaxed with a smile at another green dot next to his friend's name. He started a voice call, making sure his headphones were plugged in. His friend, Preston Hellion, better known online as CryptidCreature03, picked up on the second ring.

"My man! You haven't gone to bed yet? It's like ten in the morning!" Preston's accented voice crackled in his ear. He had been in America long enough to use American slang, but he stubbornly clung to his English accent."Glad I'm not the only one."

"No, I have a decent sleep schedule, and you are a gremlin who hasn't slept since the dark ages." Mark corrected with a roll of his eyes, suppressing a grin even through Preston couldn't see his face.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it." Preston said with a chuckle. There was rapid clicking in the background.

"What'cha playing?" Mark asked, opening up Reddit and beginning to scroll down the rabbit hole of depressed souls. And influencers. Those were common too.

"Eh, nothing important. Hey! You didn't by chance see the new photo that surfaced yesterday?" Preston said eagerly, the clicking of his mouse slowing for a second. As his username suggested, Preston was a strong believer of inhuman creatures. Cryptids, Monsters, call them whatever, Preston loved it.

"No, but you're going to tell me about it, aren't you?" He sighed, changing to Tumblr to see if he could find anything even remotely interesting. He honestly didn't mind his best friend's hobby of looking for those creatures. It was hard to get annoyed with how energetic he was about it in the first place.

"Yup! So I've thought there was something bigger, a higher up of some sort, covering up the cryptid sightings and monster photos we see everywhere. This practically confirms it!" Preston's rapid mouse clicking turned to typing. Mark changed tabs as he got a notification from Discord.

He waited patiently for the photo to load in, expecting some grainy black and white shadowy blur that's been called a monster this time.

This was definitely not that. Mark's eyes widened as he studied it. It was grainy and severely undersaturated, looking like a frame from a security camera. It showed a woman, maybe a little older than Mark, in a black uniform kneeling in some rubble. Her hair was short, shaved on the sides with the top left longer and brushed over stylishly. Her bluey grey eyes had a backlit look to them, as if they would glow in the dark. But the most startling thing was the wings.