JASON ROSE FROM HIS DEATHBED so he could drown with the rest of the crew.
The ship was tilting so violently he had to climb the floor to get out of sickbay. The hull creaked. The engine groaned like a dying water buffalo. Cutting through the roar of the wind, the goddess Nike screamed from the stables: ‘YOU CAN DO BETTER, STORM! GIVE ME A HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT!’
Jason climbed the stairs to the middle deck. His legs shook. His head spun. The ship pitched to port, knocking him against the opposite wall.
Hazel stumbled out of her cabin, hugging her stomach. ‘I hate the ocean!’
When she saw him, her eyes widened. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’
‘I’m going up there!’ he insisted. ‘I can help!’
Hazel looked like she wanted to argue. Then the ship tilted to starboard and she staggered towards the bathroom, her hand over her mouth.
Jason fought his way to the stairs. He hadn’t been out of bed in a day and a half, ever since the girls got back from Sparta and he’d unexpectedly collapsed. His muscles rebelled at the effort. His gut felt like Michael Varus was standing behind him, repeatedly stabbing him and yelling, Die like a Roman! Die like a Roman!
Jason forced down the pain. He was tired of people taking care of him, whispering how worried they were. He was tired of dreaming about being a shish kebab. He’d spent enough time nursing the wound in his gut. Either it would kill him or it wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to wait around for the wound to decide. He had to help his friends.
Somehow he made it above deck.
What he saw there made him almost as nauseous as Hazel. A wave the size of a skyscraper crashed over the forward deck, washing the front crossbows and half the port railing out to sea. The sails were ripped to shreds. Lightning flashed all around, hitting the sea like spotlights. Horizontal rain blasted Jason’s face. The clouds were so dark he honestly couldn’t tell if it was day or night.
The crew was doing what they could … which wasn’t much.
Leo had lashed himself to the console with a bungee cord harness. That might have seemed like a good idea when he rigged it up, but every time a wave hit he was washed away, then smacked back into his control board like a human paddleball.
Piper and Annabeth were trying to save the rigging. Since Sparta they’d become quite a team – able to work together without even talking, which was just as well, since they couldn’t have heard each other over the storm.
Frank – at least Jason assumed it was Frank – had turned into a gorilla. He was swinging upside down off the starboard rail, using his massive strength and his flexible feet to hang on while he untangled some broken oars. Apparently the crew was trying to get the ship airborne, but, even if they managed to take off, Jason wasn’t sure the sky would be any safer.
Even Festus the figurehead was trying to help. He spewed fire at the rain, though that didn’t seem to discourage the storm.
Only Percy was having any luck. He stood by the centre mast, his hands extended like he was on a tightrope. Every time the ship tilted, he pushed in the opposite direction and the hull stabilized. He summoned giant fists of water from the ocean to slam into the larger waves before they could reach the deck, so it looked like the ocean was hitting itself repeatedly in the face.
With the storm as bad as it was, Jason realized the ship would’ve already capsized or been smashed to bits if Percy wasn’t on the job.
Jason staggered towards the mast. Leo yelled something – probably Go downstairs! – but Jason only waved back. He made it to Percy’s side and grabbed his shoulder.
Percy nodded like ’sup. He didn’t look shocked, or demand that Jason go back to sickbay, which Jason appreciated.
Percy could stay dry if he concentrated, but obviously he had bigger things to worry about right now. His dark hair was plastered to his face. His clothes were soaked and ripped.
He shouted something in Jason’s ear, but Jason could only make out a few words: ‘THING … DOWN … STOP IT!’
Percy pointed over the side.
‘Something is causing the storm?’ Jason asked.
Percy grinned and tapped his ears. Clearly, he couldn’t hear a word. He made a gesture with his hand like diving overboard. Then he tapped Jason on the chest.
‘You want me to go?’ Jason felt kind of honoured. Everybody else had been treating him like a glass vase, but Percy … well, he seemed to figure that if Jason was on deck he was ready for action.
‘Happy to!’ Jason shouted. ‘But I can’t breathe underwater!’
Percy shrugged. Sorry, can’t hear you.
Then Percy ran to the starboard rail, pushed another massive wave away from the ship and jumped overboard.
Jason glanced at Piper and Annabeth. They both clung to the rigging, staring at him in shock. Piper’s expression said, Are you out of your mind?
He gave her an okay sign, partly to assure her that he would be fine (which he wasn’t sure about), partly to agree that he was in fact crazy (which he was sure about).
He staggered to the railing and looked up at the storm.
Winds raged. Clouds churned. Jason sensed an entire army of venti swirling above him, too angry and agitated to take physical form, but hungry for destruction.
He raised his arm and summoned a lasso of wind. Jason had learned long ago that the best way to control a crowd of bullies was to pick the meanest, biggest kid and force him into submission. Then the others would fall in line. He lashed out with his wind rope, searching for strongest, most ornery ventus in the storm.
He lassoed a nasty patch of storm cloud and pulled it in. ‘You’re serving me today.’
Howling in protest, the ventus encircled him. The storm above the ship seemed to lessen just a bit, as if the other venti were thinking, Oh, crud. That guy means business.
Jason levitated off the deck, encased in his own miniature tornado. Spinning like a corkscrew, he plunged into the water.
Jason assumed things would be calmer underwater.
Not so much.
Of course, that could’ve been due to his mode of travel. Riding a cyclone to the bottom of the ocean definitely gave him some unexpected turbulence. He dropped and swerved with no apparent logic, his ears popping, his stomach pressed against his ribs.
Finally he drifted to a stop next to Percy, who stood on a ledge jutting over a deeper abyss.
‘Hey,’ Percy said.
Jason could hear him perfectly, though he wasn’t sure how. ‘What’s going on?’
In his ventus air cocoon, his own voice sounded like he was talking through a vacuum cleaner.
Percy pointed into the void. ‘Wait for it.’
Three seconds later, a shaft of green light swept through the darkness like a spotlight, then disappeared.
‘Something’s down there,’ Percy said, ‘stirring up this storm.’ He turned and sized up Jason’s tornado. ‘Nice outfit. Can you hold it together if we go deeper?’
‘I have no idea how I’m doing this,’ Jason said.
‘Okay,’ Percy said. ‘Well, just don’t get knocked unconscious.’
‘Shut up, Jackson.’
Percy grinned. ‘Let’s see what’s down there.’
They sank so deep that Jason couldn’t see anything except Percy swimming next to him in the dim light of their gold and bronze blades.
Every so often the green searchlight shot upward. Percy swam straight towards it. Jason’s ventus crackled and roared, straining to escape. The smell of ozone made him lightheaded, but he kept his shell of air intact.
At last, the darkness lessened below them. Soft white luminous patches, like schools of jellyfish, floated before Jason’s eyes. As he approached the seafloor, he realized the patches were glowing fields of algae surrounding the ruins of a palace. Silt swirled through empty courtyards with abalone floors. Barnacle-covered Greek columns marched into the gloom. In the centre of the complex rose a citadel larger than Grand Central Station, its walls encrusted with pearls, its domed golden roof cracked open like an egg.
‘Atlantis?’ Jason asked.
‘That’s a myth,’ Percy said.
‘Uh … don’t we deal in myths?’
‘No, I mean it’s a made-up myth. Not, like, an actual true myth.’
‘So this is why Annabeth is the brains of the operation, then?’
‘Shut up, Grace.’
They floated through the broken dome and down into shadows.
‘This place seems familiar.’ Percy’s voice became edgy. ‘Almost like I’ve been here –’
The green spotlight flashed directly below them, blinding Jason.
He dropped like a stone, touching down on the smooth marble floor. When his vision cleared, he saw that they weren’t alone.
Standing before them was a twenty-foot-tall woman in a flowing green dress, cinched at the waist with a belt of abalone shells. Her skin was as luminous white as the fields of algae. Her hair swayed and glowed like jellyfish tendrils.
Her face was beautiful but unearthly – her eyes too bright, her features too delicate, her smile too cold, as if she’d been studying human smiles and hadn’t quite mastered the art.
Her hands rested on a disc of polished green metal about six feet in diameter, sitting on a bronze tripod. It reminded Jason of a steel drum he’d once seen a street performer play at the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
The woman turned the metal disc like a steering wheel. A shaft of green light shot upward, churning the water, shaking the walls of the old palace. Shards from the domed ceiling broke and tumbled down in slow motion.
‘You’re making the storm,’ Jason said.
‘Indeed I am.’ The woman’s voice was melodic – yet it had a strange resonance, as if it extended past the human range of hearing. Pressure built between Jason’s eyes. His sinuses felt like they might explode.
‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ Percy said. ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’
The woman turned towards him. ‘Why, I am your sister, Perseus Jackson. And I wanted to meet you before you die.’
