The Jacksons (completed): Book 2 - Percy Jackson Fanfiction

~ Chapter Thirteen: NERO

Chapter Thirteen

NERO

Adam took me out of my room. The fresher, sweeter air felt wonderful against my battered skin. We stepped out into a pitch-black corridor and started going. It was a long walk to wherever we were going, so we had time to chat.

"Don't be upset when you see Esme," Adam's voice warned. "It'll heal, in a week or so. She fell pretty hard. Even her force field couldn't stop steel piercing through her cheek."

"You what?" I cried. "She's been hurt?"

"It looks worse than it is," Adam backtracked hurriedly. "Just a cut along her chin. She'll be left with a thin pink-white scar."

A small blue light shone from a tiny pocket torch Adam had produced from his pocket. He shone the glow on the inside of his arm. A long pointed line ran jaggedly across his tanned skin. He switched the light off immediately.

"Bornes heal easily," he told me as we continued to walk. How he knew where he was going in the dark, I don't know - but he did. We didn't make a wrong turn anywhere.

"So, the scar..."

Even though I barely knew him, I knew Adam would be smirking in the gloom. "Ran into some hydras on my way here. Vicious buggers, tried to kill me. Got a deep cut on my stomach, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to see that scar. Cuts across my lower abdomen, et cetera. Point I'm trying to make is, we can only get one or two scars - excluding me, I guess. That makes us a lot harder to kill."

"Seriously?"

I assumed he'd nodded, because he then said quickly, "Oops, you can't see, can you? Anyway, there's this thing called the mark of Achilles that demigods can get. You know Achilles?"

"Sort of."

"Basically, he was bathed in the River Styx by his mother, who held him by the ankle, yah de dah de dah. When he went into battle, he was only indestructible. But because his mother didn't dip his ankle in, it meant he could be killed there and there only. He was shot in the ankle by an arrow. It was his strength that made his weakness, and his weakness that killed him."

"Worse ways to go," I muttered.

"You're missing the point, Nero. We are like Achilles. It's just about knowing where your weaknesses are. For me..." He paused. "For me, my weaknesses are people I care about."

"Isn't that everyone's weakness?"

"Believe it or not, no. Look at Joey - wait, you haven't met him." Adam groaned. "This'll be tricky to explain.

"We are all like plain black dots. All of those plain black dots have to be linked in a lifetime. Imagine a load of plain black dots where you're the centre. Everyone else is linked to you in some way or another. You are linked to your family, but you're also linked to this place and other Bornes. You're then linked to your friends, which links you to their families through them. You're linked to our friends through us, and our families too. Your linked to our friends' friends, and our families' friends. You're linked to your father's friends, and their friends, and all their families. Do you see that, in one way, or another, your plain black dot is not the centre anymore. You're just one plain black dot in a million. In a billion.

"Except your dot isn't a plain black dot like the rest of the population. You see, half of those plain black dots are actually demigods, so now imagine half of those dots are plain red dots. Those plain black dots and plain red dots are merged and living amongst each other. In one civilisation. Are you following?"

"I think so," I said.

Adam continued, "Those plain red dots are the offspring of a god and a human. Three-point-five billion of the population are demigods. So out of all those seven billion plain black dots you're linked to, half of them are actually now plain red dots. So you're linked to a good half and a bad half. The red are the bad half, because they're in this world. Our world.