Thalia was disbelieving when she heard the frankly nonsensical words spew from Percy and Annabeth's mouths.

"He said what?" She asked for what was maybe the fifth time, tone laced with unadulterated disapproval.

"To meet him in the alcove tonight!" Annabeth pressed once again, her wide, grey eyes staring up at Thalia with no intent of relenting present.

"Asinine." Thalia told her, looking into her eyes and noticing, with a slight pang, they were beginning to look like the rest of theirs, like they were too big for the thinning face that surrounded them.

"What?" Percy asked in that cracked voice of his, nothing if not, for lack of a better term, thoroughly pissed off.

"You heard me." Thalia steeled her voice.

"Maybe I did," he responded, manner of speech mimicking hers very intentionally in its coldness "But I didn't' understand what I heard." He breathed slowly before blinking at the same pace.

"The idea of trusting this weird stranger guy, a soldier of Olympus, no less, is nothing but asinine." She clarified, voice slow and mocking. Her dark eyebrows were furrowed, low atop bright eyes.

"Please," Annabeth begged, eyes widening more, voice getting quiet. It was nothing more than a pitiful plea and actually managed to make Thalia feel somewhat bad for her part in the altercation that she had no qualms in participating in previously.

"Look," As if possessed suddenly, Thalia felt her hand move to encircle Annabeth's arm in as comforting of a way as she could manage "I don't think we can trust him. Besides, the guard today isn't that slacker we usually pass without incident, it's old-lady Themis' night and she won't let us pass her by. I know where you're coming from, I want to get out of this place just as much as you do-" Thalia told them, but stopped abruptly when she saw the look Percy wore like a mask. That expression consumed his face. It was chilling, challenging, a wordless statement that made her feel as though, despite the fact that she had been speaking from a place of pure honesty, she were a dirty, cheating liar who had been discovered.

She shivered and swallowed all the other words that wished to leave her mouth in a spiel she dubbed meaningless at that moment.

"Let." The word was harsh, it didn't waver like everything else Percy spoke, cracking dryly "Us." he narrowed his sharp eyes at Thalia, almost wielding them like a weapon "Go." he finished, clenching his fists. Thalia thought she could feel herself warming slightly, just enough to be uncomfortable, but was unsure whether it was just paranoia. She was embarrassed at the prospect of being scared of the kid.

"No."

"Thalia," his voice was softer but his eyes were just as hard. "I have nothing to lose right now, but I'm starving," Thalia wished he wasn't, but she couldn't overlook the razor-sharp bones that his yellowing-skin stretched over "and I think I'm dying." Annabeth gulped but Thalia saw what he meant. The starvation was contributing to that 'I've been sitting in this grave in anticipation for a while' look, but his hands and knees were shaking violently, his breath almost violently loud.

"She'll kill you." Thalia warned, resistance beginning to crack, a hairline fracture spreading across it.

"She'll only speed up the inevitable." he shrugged, so nonchalant it was unbelievable.

Then Frank snapped.

"Stop! Stop! Stop it! You aren't going to die, and you need to stop talking about death like you would going to the shops!"

Percy actually laughed, a sound that was barely such and made him sound like he was choking. "I wish I could go to the shops! It'd mean I was out of this hell hole."

"Right," Frank sighed "Bad example."

"So," Hazel began, wanting to talk about anything but death, ideally some sort of productivity "What are we going to do?"

Before Thalia could say a word, right as she opened her chapped mouth, Percy spoke quickly, as loudly a his voice would allow.

"We put it to a vote!"

"Before we vote," Nico said "Give us a more detailed rundown of what happened."

Percy sighed so Annabeth took over the conversation.

"The soldier that came over wasn't like the rest of them, he was short, walked with a limp and-" She hesitated and Percy sighed again, looking at her as if to say 'really' "and he wasn't scared of Percy. He asked our names - not our numbers, our names - and told us to meet him at the alcove tonight before talking to us about what happens here, making notes on a little scrap of paper as discreetly as he could. He never seemed untrustworthy, never seemed like the rest of them." While she was honest, Annabeth wouldn't lie; she was definitely telling them things she wouldn't have otherwise because of how desperate she was to trust him, to leave with him.

She didn't dare look at them as they talked in hushed mumbles, some voices excited, close to euphoric, other downtrodden, a dark cloud hovering over the conversation.

Hazel hated being that dark cloud, but the topic of conversation made her feel cold. She was lost. Of course she didn't want to be stuck in Elysium for any longer, but she had nowhere to go. She was lost, alone, Nico was lost, alone. She didn't understand Percy's excitement, everyone knew he was no better off than them.

So, instead of sitting there and talking everyone down like the dark loud she was dreading being, she forced herself to ask the question she didn't want to.

"What then?"
It was like the ground beneath their feet had fallen in an instant, crumbling without warning and bringing them all down,quickly, rapidly, but, most of all, without any modicum of control.

Hazel watched Annabeth's eyes dim, the youthful brightness that had filled them left, taken out in one fell swoop by the words Hazel had meant to be innocent. Hazel could feel the sudden, encompassing dullness that appeared where lights had once shone like a blade plunged deep into her sternum.

Her breath faltered, hitched, and, for once, she could hear it above the rattle from Percy's throat.

But percy's face remained schooled, his bright eyes the same, his set features in place.

H stared at Hazel, eyes boring into hers as she gulped, suddenly sore throat burning "We ask him. They must want us free for a reason."

Thalia looked at Percy then. "You don't trust him?" A single eyebrow travelled up her pale forehead.

"No," Thalia was still a bit surprised by his apparent nonchalance "But we need to get out of here - once we're free we can do so much more than we can in here. If things go wrong - if they aren't who they promise, then we can run; we have more power than they do. If they are who they say, if they want something within reason, we might be able to get something more off of them."
"And if they don't get us free?"

"I'll take the blame."

"If they don't get us free, there will be a lot more than blame to take."

"Let's hope it doesn't come down to that - I'm leaving even if no one else is." And, like that, his hands were rested on the door, eyes visible like torches in the slowly settling darkness. It was old beneath his fingers, almost biting as he felt the chill begin to creep up his arms.

Annabeth gulped as her eyes erratically flitted from one face to the next, pushing back the frightening, blood-soaked images that surfaced over top as she felt her heart begin to pound on her ribcage as though it were a drum. She blinked them away and swallowed down any of her doubts, replacing the face of the boy she had never met with the scar that leaked gold and the eyes that could not decide whether they were a cold blue or a hardened gold that made her want to shrink back into herself, with an image of her family, her father's goofy, smiling face, her stepmother's sterner one, but still smiling, twin babies cradled in her arms.

Annabeth remembered hating helen, her stepmother. She didn't anymore, she couldn't bring herself to when all she had to do to make her seem like nothing less than a saint was think of Hera for the briefest of moments. She wanted to see them again, even if she knew that wasn't possible, not yet.

"I'm going too." She declared in as bold of a voice as she could manage.

She firmly slammed her hand down besides a startled Percys. The banging noise was louder than she anticipated. She grit her teeth, closed her eyes tightly, breathed in deeply and listened. When she determined there were no hurried footsteps pounding on clean floors, intend on coming to criticise them, to punish all of them for the adrenaline running through her veins like water down a flooded river.

She started when a large hand gently placed itself on top of hers, muffled footsteps making a sort of gentle thud behind her. Her eyes travelled upwards, meeting dark, smiling eyes that accompanied a wide, toothy grin she would recognise anywhere. It was the same grin that made her feel warm in spite of the creeping cold from the harsh surface she had hastily slammed.

One by one, slowly but surely, they joined, until Hazel, Nico and Thalia were the only ones who continued to hesitate, hanging back with hands, twitching, aching to reach forwards but still held by sides stubbornly.

One minute passed.

Then two.

After the third Hazel's eyes moved from the floor to her friends. More specifically to frank. His own hand, the one not over Annabeth's, was twitching minutely, reaching out to her. His smile hadn't faded, but it had gone from wam to pleading.

Hazel's feet moved before her brain could tell them not to.

Nico wasn't about to let her go without him. As she grabbed Frank's other hand, he took hers and looked at Thalia.

Thalia was shaking a little, eyes softer than they were meant to be. Those weren't Thalia's eyes, they were the eyes of a small, lost child, alone in the world that was far too big to accommodate for her. Jason was looking at his sister but he wasn't seeing his sister. He blinked, looking at the young eyes that were beginning to leak tears.

"Thals," he said, meekly, quietly. He could hear everyone breathing in the silence of the room.

And, like that, her mask broke and she stepped, almost leapt, forwards. Her hand and his met and she resigned herself to following their plan, even if she couldn't bring herself to trust the promise that soldier had made.

The alcove was honestly too small for them, so it was a wonder how they managed to clamber inside when there was a young man sitting in their already. He was sweating, curly hair dampened, plastered down onto his pale forehead. He twitched his nose nervously as he watched them pile in, that orange band as unmistakable as the animated eyes of sea-green and stormy grey he had made the arrangement with.

He breathed in as the last child sat down. Then he spoke.

"You're coming?" It sounded like a question when he spoke the words but it wasn't one, not really.

"What's your plan?" Asked a girl with bright blue eyes, as hard and sharp as steel, but framed by red puffiness, as though she had been crying not long before. He took her in in the dim lighting but didn't say a word.

He breathed deeply again, a sort of bleat accompanying his exhalation. It appeared as though, especially when combined with his ever-moving, constantly-fumbling fingers he was suspended in a constant state of nervousness.

"The plan is to get you out-"
"Obviously," A cynical voice spoke up. He looked at the boy who spoke for a split second, a great contrast between the white of his sun-starved skin and the dark, abyss-like black of his wide eyes and messy hair.

"There's someone waiting on the outside with a truck, his name is Chiron and he is here to help, but we need to get there first. I'm sorry to say, but this is our first major operation, our only plan is to charge onwards until we get caught and then fight our way out of that."

"Why did we not just leave ourselves then?"

"Do you know the passwords for the restricted software of Olympus Industries? I've got all the doors ready to open and Themis was told via Email her shift had been delayed a day for the training of a new employee."

He smiled as the flow of words stopped, a sort of awkward expression that didn't fit his freckle-covered face. His nose twitched again, irritated by a few of the hairs from his wispy goatee that had gone haywire and turned on him.

The group lapsed into silence, the awkward type that smothered with its palpability.

It was broken a moment later by a sharp noise that echoed around the space. Percy clapped his hands together twice, his palms stinging with the power put behind the collision of appendages.

"We're wasting ti-" he broke out coughing, cursing the soft crimson stains on dry, calloused palms he stopped to see.

"We're wasting time just sitting here," he tried again "Can we get going?"

Thalia looked at him, making out the outline of his body through the darkness that shrouded them. He wasn't looking at them, rather at the wall that the soldier had his back pressed against. His eyes, as visible as ever, were absent, staring beyond it as though he were looking into the Hell he had emerged from not too long before.

So they left. In the darkened hallways, they followed the soldier who remained nameless to all but Percy and Annabeth.

They didn't get far.

They were stopped by a group of three figures, silhouetted in the darkness, the central one hunched with narrow shoulders, the two on either side large and imposing.

The one on the left growled as the one on the right yelled in a booming, thunderous voice "Halt!"