First of all, I hope you all are staying safe out there. Please take care of yourselves! Anyway here is the next chapter.

Disclaimer, I do not own either franchise, both belong to their respective owners.

Max-Chapter 2

I woke up with a splitting headache. It felt as if I had been hit by a freight train. Darkness surrounded me; it was even more than my night vision could handle. Something slimy was wrapped around my body. So gross. Where was Percy? I wriggled around trying to free myself from my bindings. As I moved, blue luminous algae flared to life. I was in a sea cave, tied up by seaweed, and who knows what the heck had dragged me here.

Fang would laugh if he saw me like this. Jerk.

It took longer to break free of my seaweed wrap than I'd care to admit. Whoever had tied me up had no intentions of letting me escape. The cave was narrow, probably just big enough to drive a Chevy Malibu through. Fish bones and shredded dorsal fins littered the floor. Really gross. Even worse, I saw a few half-eaten human corpses floating farther in the cave. I silently prayed that I could go in the opposite direction to escape.

I was about to turn tail and avoid the dead bodies, but I realized that the bodies were in lab coats. Yeah, as in the White Coats; I knew that the boats logo looked familiar. We'd managed to avoid them for a good length of time. Yet, even dead, they were the bane of my existence. With a shudder, I resigned myself to checking the pockets of the coats. There could be something important. I've learned from years of experience; any intel is good intel when it comes to White Coats.

Slowly I reached into the first one's pockets. I did my best not to disturb them too much as I didn't feel like dealing with all the extra grossness that came with this task. Don't focus on them. I chanted in my mind and searched the second one. Nothing more than a key card and a weathered name tag could be found between the two of them. I gave a small gag before stuffing my finds in my pockets. It was time I left this dump.

Hopefully finding Percy wouldn't be too hard.

As I searched for the exit of the cave, I worried that whatever had attacked me was going after him too. Not that he was incapable of self-defense. In fact, he was probably more skilled than I gave him credit for when we first met. Regardless, he was my friend and it was my job to look out for him. Especially since I was the one who dragged him out here in the first place, I had to make sure he got home.

There were two lives depending on it.

The cave started to narrow the farther down I swam, the current pushing against me gave me hope that I was heading towards an exit. I would occasionally bump into the sharp walls and get tangled in some of the plant life resting on the floor of the cave. I was annoyed when the water would take on a metallic smell because of my blood. Though, I suppose I should have been grateful to be breathing at all.

It was a relief to see light flooding in ahead of me. At least, until I felt the world go into chaos. I heard a ghostly whine and then something crash into a rocky wall. A thunder-like explosion ripped through the water around me. I was thrashed about before everything finally settled. What the heck was going on?

Whatever it was, it was probably Percy's fault.

I scrambled to get out of the cave and into the open water. The cave that I was in was close to the boat. Close enough that I could see the bottom of the hull hovering over my head like the sword of Damocles. If the grinding sound was an indication of anything, the boat was not done sinking. I silently prayed that my land speed was just as good underwater and swam as fast as I could to get out from beneath the boat. The metal whined as it was twisted by the rocky cliffs in the ocean.

Just as I made it out from the boat's bottom, a torrent of water pushed at my back and sent me tumbling head over heels away from the wreck. It came to a final thud where the rock walls became too narrow for it to fit through. All the containers that had been on the boat were collected into a toxic heap. Some of the doors had been twisted open and the gross content was being spewed into the water.

I wondered where Percy was. Hopefully not crushed under the shipping crates. I swam towards the deck, the water surrounding it was even more sickly looking than it had been before. My skin was practically burning. The water tasted bad. Like I had been swishing a garbage and gunpowder flavored mouthwash.

"Max!" I heard Percy shout. He was behind me, swimming at the top of the cliff. Probably trying not to get into the thick of the ick.

I was flooded (get it?) with relief when I saw Percy was alright. I suppose the son of Poseidon shouldn't have much to fear in the ocean. My relief was short lived when I heard a chittering sound coming from the cluster of shipping containers. I rolled in time to avoid being grabbed by a fish-girl hybrid. Her large eyes slit as she glared at me. She had a row of sharp teeth filling her mouth and blue fins and scales all over her body.

If the dead scientist in the cave weren't a sign of white coat activity, the tracking tag imbedded in her ear sure was. She gave another series of angry chirps, gnashing her teeth at me like an angry piranha.

"Max is not food." Percy swam at breakneck speed to push the girl away from me. I saw her face soften a fraction at the sight of him. The fish girl gave a whine. "No."

Of course, Percy could understand the senseless noises coming from her mouth. The girl looked like she wanted to argue with him. She gave me an annoyed glance, as if I had interrupted something important with my presence.

"Listen," Percy told her. "Let me help you. You don't have to live like an animal. There's a place…."

"Screee!" the fish girl shook her head wildly and dove off.

A sad look came to Percy's face as the bubbles marking her escape slowly dissipated. He was good, sometimes too good for his own sake. Not everyone wanted to be saved. He made an air bubble and we just sat for a moment to decompress. So much for a peaceful training session.

It was eerie how still the ocean was without any fish around. The boat sat in shambles beneath us. Toxic coils curled around our bubble like crude oil.

"Are you okay?" Percy asked me. His eyes wandered to the cuts littering my arms.

"We need to check the ship." I told him as I wiped drenched hair from my face. "It belongs to white coats which means, they're up to something shady. Though, being underwater, I'm not sure if anything survived."

"I can make anything I touch dry, even underwater."

I looked up at him in disbelief, still tasting the bitter water dripping from my lips. He let out an apologetic chuckle and gave me a gentle tap of his finger. The water fell from my body and through the bottom of the air bubble. A part of me felt like punching him for letting me be drenched in the gross water for so long.

"That would have been a nice talent to put to use sooner." I grumbled. Though it was a rather easy ability to forget. "Let's just grab what we think is important from the ship and head back."

Percy ordered the bubble to take us to the cabin of the boat. The force from the ship wrecking into the side of the valley caused the door to open. It waved gently with the water current-as if beckoning for us to come into its darkness. You won't die in here, I promise. Percy slid out of the air pocket and back into the water. I tried to follow but the wall of the bubble wouldn't let me through.

"You wait here while I check it out." He told me as he peaked his head into the cabin.

I crossed my arms. "I'm coming too, Fish bait."

"We don't know what's in there." The teen reminded me.

"We definitely know what's out here, and I don't have the same charm as you when it comes to aquatic life." I told him before adding, "Besides, who's the one with a lifetime of White Coat experience?"

"You." Percy murmured like a child being scolded.

"Exactly, so make a head sized one of these and let's get a move on." I gestured to the bubble. "I would like to be able to talk to you."

"Maybe I shouldn't." He smirked. "You have gills after all. Talking isn't a necessity."

I showed him with my favorite finger what I thought of that idea.

Percy didn't argue any further and gave me my own personal bubble for my head. While it sucked having my body once again drenched in the gross water, I was proud that I won. The son of Poseidon took lead, fearlessly descending into the pitch blackness like a trooper. Though, I'm sure a ghost ship is one of the least scary things this kid has had to face.

"Try not to kick me." I warned when his foot bounced off my magical bubble of air.

"Try not to swim too close to me." He teased, knowing full well I could hardly make out his form in the dark.

And then suddenly, it wasn't dark. A soft, light blue glow filled the area surrounding us. More specifically around Percy. It seemed to be coming from his skin. I blinked at the sudden brightness, at the fact Percy wasn't surprised this was going on. He swam onward, ducking his head into the first open room. Briefly showing the shadows of a desk and some skewed office supplies.

"I wonder what happened." Percy murmured as I swam onward. Knowing the white coats, the real juicy information was a bit farther back.

"Maybe they ticked your dad off and he sunk it." I joked. When I looked at Percy over my shoulder, he did not look humored by the idea. More like he was worried that was the answer. "Percy, don't waste your time feeling sorry for these people. After what they did to us, to you, to all the other lives that have been ruined by them, they've had a lot of karma coming their way."

"Yeah…" Percy agreed, not sounding too committed to the idea. "But some of them had families, right? Kids who didn't have a choice in who their parents were. All they're going to know is that someone didn't come home."

He had a point. After all, if I tried to put myself in the position of a kid whose parent didn't experiment on them-a kid with blissful ignorance, maybe I would be sad and confused. Would I have the moral standing I do now if I didn't grow up the way I did? Who would I be if I had the chance to be Max Martinez? Who would Percy be if he were not the son of a sea god?

It felt like hours that we continued to search the boat, still trying to find where all of the science-y knowledge was being kept.

We felt around for doorways, rummaging through drawers and grabbing anything that felt important. It was slow going and sickening as we came near the parts of the boat that had been more populated. Percy looked disgusted as he had to dive under a glossy skinned corpse. The glow around him flickered to a slightly green color. Most of the White coats were dressed up in their lab gear, they had probably been in full swing of their sadistic routine before the ship had been sunk.

Unfortunately for me, I had enough experience with seeing dead bodies to know, they hadn't been dead long. It had to of been a quick demise too, one of the scientists held a dead phone in his hand. Percy gently pried it from his stiff fingers and pressed the on button. The devise flared to life, as if it had not been waterlogged. A string of text messages and missed phone call notifications filled the eerie space with noise.

"You goanna make a call?" I joked, but when I saw messages that said From Mom and From Dad, I understood a bit of the disturbing sorrow that Percy did.

Percy flinched and let the phone go, it gave an electric buzz, a spark flaring to life before the water snuffed it out. "Can't, monsters will come for me."

"Right, that magical beacon that seems to alert monsters to your location if you make a cell phone call." I nodded as I pushed the phone out of my path. "Do you think monsters run Verizon?"

The demigod shrugged, "Wouldn't be the first chain business that I have found being run by monsters."

We continued forward, still avoiding bodies and searching the rooms as we went. Eventually we stumbled upon a room loaded with files and paperwork. The force of the ship's sinking and secondary crash had knocked some of the file drawers loose. Their contests were floating around like store brand fish flakes. There were many photographs of people, all ranging in age, ethnicity, and genders. Many seemed like candid shots, or something you would pull off of their social media pages.

Percy frowned and grabbed a picture of a teen girl; she was probably no more than 13. It looked like the White Coats had also been resorting to stealing school photos. In the dim blue light that came from Percy's skin, I could see that the girl had pin straight blond hair and piercing eyes. For a scary moment, I thought it was Annabeth, but the date at the bottom of the photo told me otherwise.

Written at the bottom was a name Athena?

"I…I don't really like what this is suggesting." Percy told me. "Beyond the obvious similarities this girl has to the Athena children…the fact her name is on the bottom…Oh gods, I'm really hoping that…."

I felt like I was being hit in the gut too, "We don't know why they have pictures or files on these people, let's not jump to any conclusions, Percy. There are plenty of people who name their daughters Athena."

He grabbed another picture of a man, probably in his mid-forties, unlike the girl's picture this one was taken at a distance. The man was tall, bulky, and working diligently at a forge, from what I could tell manipulating metal into a sword. I really didn't want to jump on the line of thought that Percy was having, but there was really no reason the White Coats would have any interest in random people.

They all liked to start their experiments from scratch.

All except for one….

"We need more evidence, before we can say what they want with all of these people." I urged.

Percy snatched up one of the papers with writing on it. The page dried and the ink, while a bit faded was legible. He thrust it towards me. "You're a faster reader than I am."

"Hiroshi Mako twenty-eight years old. Identified as a person of interest by our inside sources. Our intel gathered has proved to be remarkably similar to other persons of interest. Like the others, Hiroshi was raised by a single parent. As stated in Batchelder's notes, like "Percy" this boy grew up with learn-"

"Stop!" Percy tore the letter from my sight and let it float listlessly among its brethren. "I don't think there is any way they don't know about demigods."

The demigod punched one of the file cabinet doors, it gave a pained squeak as the force made the whole ship shudder. The door had dented like a soda can. I could see my friend's face pinch up into a look of self-loathing. Percy seemed to take the weight for everything, even if he wasn't at blame. It was a wonder he never cracked from the pressure. Though I suppose, he wasn't the only one with that curse.

The longer we sat in that room, with countless pictures of innocent people floating about, the worse I was feeling. We just needed to get out of the ship, but not without something more substantial than the random crap we had been collecting. My eyes rested on a computer on the opposite end of the room. Obviously waterlogged. It would be useless if it weren't for the fact Percy could make it work again.

"Hey," I called to Percy as I swam over to the computer with an industrial grade tower right next to it. "Maybe we can take some of this equipment with us."

"Wouldn't they have that encrypted?"

"Yeah, but Nudge is a master hacker." I reminded him. "She could probably crack this baby and give us everything that's on it."

Percy looked a bit skeptical about lugging the computer equipment back to Camp Half-Blood, but he grabbed the tower and its cords. I followed up with the monitor and silently hoped that they had not found some way to magically delete everything off of these things. I just wanted to get off this ship, and Percy needed to.

"We better go," Percy told me. "It's probably getting late. We can come back later to see if we can find anything else that could be useful."

I would have asked him if we could find this exact spot again, but soon realized that would have been a dumb question. Of course, Percy would probably be able to tell me latitude and longitude where we were and how close we were to the equator. Perfect bearing at sea. I reminded myself. The two of us carefully traced our path back to the exit of the cabin. Despite being used to the soft glow that came from Percy's skin, my eyes were totally overwhelmed with the brightness outside of the ship.

I almost had not noticed the spear aimed directly at my head.