Child of Time

Chapter Thirty: The Tortured Thief

o n e y e a r l a t e r

LUKE

It's been about six months since I talked to Percy. In the past year I've only talked to him three times, but then six months ago all connection stopped. The bead he gave me turned a dark red colour. I wasn't sure what that meant but I knew it was nothing good.

"Luke." I was snapped from my thoughts by Annabeth. "You spaced out again."

"Of course I spaced out again."

Annabeth sighed. "Is this about Perseus again? He's probably just busy with battle planning."

I ended up telling Annabeth about meeting up with Percy. Well, more like she noticed something different and forced me to tell her.

"You don't get it. I feel like something bad happened."

"He's probably fine." I knew that even she was a bit worried. This feeling only grew the longer the day progressed.

"There's been a lot of lightning today." Alabaster commented, looking up at the sky.

"You're right. There's never this much." Ethan observes the sky with a frown. "Do you think someone pissed off Zeus?"

"Most likely." Annabeth relies. "Why else would we have this much lightning striking all over the place."

I stared up at the sky. It illuminated every few seconds as lightning spread across the sky.

As we all walked towards the dining pavilion, whispers could already be heard. People were talking about the sudden lightning storm and commenting that they wouldn't want to be the other guy.

I sighed as we sacrificed some of our food and sat back down.

Suddenly, it seemed to have gotten darker, like the shadows were all being tugged to one spot. As the shadows dissipated, a young boy with dark hair stepped out. His face showed no emotion and his dark eyes were cold.

"Nico?!" Practically all the Hermes cabin shouted at the same time.

"Dude, we thought you were like, dead or something." Someone had shouted.

Nico ignores them and instead walks straight for us. "Is Perseus here?"

"Percy? No. I haven't talked to him in... months. Why?"

Nico cursed and ran a hand through his hair. "This is bad. This is really bad." He muttered and stared up at the sky. He frowned as he saw all the lightning before his eyes went wide. "Perseus, you freakin' idiot."

"Woah, woah, woah, what happened?"

Nico looked back at me, ignoring all the whispers and questions on why he was looking for the one who kidnapped him.

"Perseus went missing three—four months ago. He was always talking about having to do something but didn't tell any of us anything. I was hoping he was talking about finally getting his shit together and coming here."

"Okay, do you have another idea for where he may be?"

Nico nodded. "Perseus' birthday is in two months." I nodded in agreement, not sure why we needed to know this. "Kronos had said something about the war ending or something on Perseus' sixteenth birthday. With all this lightning, I'm thinking that Perseus went up to Olympus like an idiot and got himself caught."

"Why would be get himself caught? Wouldn't he have tried to hurry to finish up this war?"

Nico thought about it before his eyes flickered back to me. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. Except, Perseus was also talking about how Zeus made him do stuff for him. He wouldn't tell us what he had to do but he always came back all injured and he was also so mad. He'd lash out when we tried to ask him about it."