Thunderstorm ➪ʜᴀᴢᴇʟ Lᴇᴠᴇsǫᴜᴇ [𝟷]

𝗫 𝗜 𝗜

𝖳𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝗆𝖺𝗇𝖺𝗀𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗀𝖾𝗍 𝖩𝖺𝗌𝗈𝗇 onto the dragon and into the sky before he even stirred. They'd barely reached cruising altitude, though, when his eyes snapped open. "Cyclops!"

"Whoa, sleepyhead." Piper sat behind him on the bronze dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced. Leo sat in front, driving. Bronte was just in front of him, and she twisted to give him a quick look over. He seemed to be pretty aware and awake, so hopefully he didn't have any permanent damage.

They flew peacefully through the winter sky as if nothing had happened.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammered. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo said. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

Jason's head throbbed. He remembered the factory, then walking down the catwalk, then a creature looming over him—a face with one eye, a massive fist—and everything went black. "How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper said. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo said quickly.

Piper laughed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

And she did—how Bronte had sacrificed herself to let Leo have more time; how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory.

Piper hesitated a little, but she eventually told him about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, just like Jason.

"I'm not alone, then," he said. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Bronte said, "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know . . . but something Hera said. I was having a dream..." He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage, about the earth stirring and exchanges and trials. Bronte inhaled cold winter air and tried not to worry.

"An exchange?" Piper asked. "What does that mean?"

Jason shook his head. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper said hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

Leo cleared his throat. "About that . . . she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

Jason wasn't sure he'd heard that right. "Did you say . . . Porta-Potty?"

Leo told them about the big face in the factory yard. "I don't know if she's completely unkillable," he said, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Pfft, right, I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge.'"

"I heard her voice, too, but I didn't see her. My dream-" she paused. Was that really helpful? Did she want her quest mates to know that at any moment she could lose control and kill them all? No, not really. "There was a giant. He was trying to convince me to give up, too."

"They're trying to divide us." Piper sounded tense, even more so than Bronte had expected. There was something else, something she wasn't saying.

"What's wrong?" Jason asked.