The Unknown (A Percy Jackson Fanfiction)

27. The Fury Express

Hi...yeah, I really suck at updating, don't I?

It's been roughly a month since I last posted so...uh, sorry? *sheepish smile* Exams and life are the worst. 

Nico (Unedited)

By the morning, everyone had packed and was ready to leave.

Their departure was relatively quiet, being the crack of dawn, but the night before had been filled with encouragement and celebrations. New Rome had been alive with light and colour and people, raising their toasts in goblets at dinnertime and cheering, beating their weapons against the floor.

Nico hadn't appreciated the attention. It felt foreign and almost threatening to him, but a tiny part of him filled with pride when the Romans shouted his name. He allowed himself to smile occasionally though he mainly kept his expression neutral. Reyna, as always, remained stoic and mostly silent, her eyes staring into her hot chocolate, obviously troubled by some thought.

Thalia, on the other hand, had made several new friends (and the occasional enemy or two). Word had spread fast that she was a daughter of Zeus, and she received much more attention than Reyna and Nico put together. Not that Nico minded, of course, but he couldn't help but roll his eyes at how the younger Romans stared up at her with awe.

The said demigod had then elbowed Nico's side not-so-gently. Her silver circlet glittered in the flickering tights of the torches. "Cheer up, coz." Her electric blue eyes were surprisingly sombre despite the tone of her voice. "Celebrate now and die tomorrow."

Nico's thoughts had gone to their quest and the troubled feeling in his gut that had hinted that something wasn't as it seemed. "There are worst things than death." He warned. Tartarus, for example. His stomach twisted.

Reyna had looked up from her hot chocolate with her intense dark eyes, ignoring a Roman from the second cohort raising a toast to her, and fixed them on Nico's. Somehow she always knew what he was thinking-ever since she used her daughter-of-Bellona powers on him a few months back, during the war with Gaea.

The night had gone on the same way as it had before. A few guys from the first cohort sent Nico glares, and a girl from the third cohort had come up to him, batting her eyelashes and twirling her auburn hair. Needless to say, he had quickly and (in a fumbling, blushing manner) turned down her attempts at flirting. She had left, pouting and sour, leaving Nico to anxiously scan the crowds for Will. He had yet to seen, along with Annabeth and Jason who had all but disappeared.

Nico, Reyna and Thalia retired early for the night. Nico himself had found it difficult to sleep, tossing and turning, slipping into uneasy dreams filled with Will's face and Melinoe's mixed together, and a plummeting feeling in his stomach that had sent him jolting upright many times in the night. He woke more exhausted than he had been before he slept.

The company had left New Rome and headed toward the surface through the same tunnel that the Greek demigods had stumbled upon a few days before.

The old New Rome was as deserted as before, the crumbled buildings standing in solitude, the winding cobblestone streets and the Field of Mars now reduced to a barren landscape that stretched far away into the distance. Rubble crunched under Nico's feet and he could hear the whispers of the Romans whom died in the attack, clutching at him with pale hands. He glimpsed several shapes stumbling between the buildings. Thalia took out the Infected that were in range with her arrows, her face a mask of passiveness.

They left through the Caldecott Tunnel, plunging into comfortable darkness before emerging onto the highway. The dawn was grey and turned the queues of vacant vehicles into mere shadows and the Infected into animated darkness, weaving in and out of sight.