Prologue

Annabeth couldn't breathe. Her vision blurred. Her ears rang. She was wheezing, but not as hard as she used to. Her lungs were stronger now from all these years, along with the rest of her. Physically and mentally. Her heart pounded a mile a minute in her chest as her sore, aching feet pounded the dirty ground at the same speed. She was closer to slipping in and out of consciousness than she liked to admit. She was covered in a mixture of blood and sweat and dirt. It fell into her eyes along with a stray, frizzy tangled blonde curl. She tried to push it away with the back of her hand, but the dirt from her hand just made it worse.

She knew exactly what was chasing her, and she knew exactly what would happen if she stopped running.

Yet she was grinning like crazy. Maybe she was crazy. She waited for that day to come. Maybe it had.

She didn't look back. That's the one thing she never did. That was the one thing she was told to never do.

Just don't, look back, Annie, Thalia had whispered.

Don't look back.

Chapter One: Home Sweet Home

Alright so this story is very boring so far. I put in too much crappy detail and all that. My writing gets boring. But I promise this is just the beginning and I have way more planned out for this. It gets more interesting, with plenty of Percabeth later on. Please just give it a chance. Pretty pretty please!

Annabeth was proud of her fort. She had found the perfect spot for it. There were plenty of places to hide in the Wasteland, an area right on the edge of what used to be New York. The Wasteland was an entire destroyed half of New York. The other half in shiny perfect condition was going to be the empire,

The sky wasn't blue in the Wasteland. It was constantly gloomy, dull and gray, an unhealthy cloud of gas and pollution hanging in the ground. Speaking of pollution, the ground there wasn't living earth anymore. It was dust, ash, and trash. It was a wasteland, a junkyard, still torn from the war that happened there years before.

Lots and lots of places to hide. Which of course made it too obvious of a place for Annabeth, but where else did she have to go? She had at first hoped maybe she'd run into someone else, someone like her, but no such luck. She abandoned the hope years ago when she was twelve after Thalia died and left her on her own.

It was built under rubble, a makeshift shed in an old collapsed sewer. Annabeth crawled under a pile of trash, two old dismembered cars, and heaps of metal the size of a school bus. The entrance was convenient when she was twelve, but now she was bigger. She located the hole in the ground covered by a sheet of metal and dropped down into the sewer below.

She trekked through the trash floating in the little bit of water still left on the echoing cold ground. The water was from the last time it had rained, a rare occasion and Annabeth's favorite day this year. It was September, getting colder now. It had rained in April. At least it didn't snow in the Wasteland. Annabeth didn't have to worry about that, but in got unbelievably cold, especially when you live in the sewers. That's what happens when you mess with the environment. Annabeth would give anything for global warming right now.

She shivered already as she flopped down onto an empty crate that she used as her seating and tossed her newest catch to the side. A bag of apples. To her, it was the best thing ever, the best she'd done in weeks. It was all she could manage anyway. Stealing from the Empire wasn't easy, but Annabeth would rather die than live under their control, like those no brained slaves of theirs.

If there was one thing Annabeth was really good at it was staring. She'd perfected her stare by keeping her eyes locked on the graffiti directly across from her spot on the sewer wall. She could stare daggers at someone just as well as she could expertly stab someone with the real dagger sheathed on her belt. She read the words every day. Somehow they gave her motivation.

They called themselves the Gods, the only assurance Annabeth had that she wasn't the only one out there. They were a rebel alliance group. No one was sure how many of them there were. They were never seen, never caught. They were ghosts. The only trace they ever left was the wreckage of their attacks on the Empire and their mark, just like their mark that Annabeth stared at now. She wasn't sure what kind of attack was led there, probably some kind of bombing, which was what the Gods usually did.

The Empire refused to give the Gods their attention. They referred to them as the rats. Just a pest, an annoyance, but those with hope saw the Gods' real deadliness. They were more powerful than the Empire would ever admit.

Annabeth's cold gray eyes scoured over the words one more time before grabbing an apple from her bad. She inhaled it quickly and grabbed her blanket, neatly folded aside. She was too tired and exhausted to care how dirty she was or still hungry and snuggled down into her makeshift bed of straw, yawning loudly.

Annabeth woke up to nothing except the quiet drip of water. Nothing new. She rolled out of bed and tossed on her raggedy but still soft jacket. Today was the day.

Today was her nineteenth birthday.

There was no way she could've forgotten, because of the tally marks she scratched into the wall every day. She still kept up with those. The first years were done by Luke's hand, then Thalia's hand, then hers for the past seven years. She didn't really need to. Whenever she snuck into Manhattan, which was the capital center of the empire, blending in by pretending to be one of the citizens slaving around under the Empire, she saw the time and date displayed on the screen of every giant skyscraper, along with brainwashing ads and things she refused to look at or listen to.

It was her birthday, and she was going to treat herself. On a particular day in last June, she had found a building. An old abandoned library on the edge of Manhattan. It was a huge stone building, boarded up with wood and parts of the building crumbled. It wasn't guarded or anything, even though it was one of the only original remaining buildings in Manhattan, besides the Empire state building. Even that had been turned into Kronos's personal home. Kronos, the man who was the Darth Vader of this new Empire.

Under the cover of night, Annabeth was going ahead to sneak in, take her pick of all the books she could find, shove them in her backpack, and hurry back. At first she hadn't been sure whether she should go at day or night. Day she could blend in with crowds more easily and be less obvious, but once she started leaving the city and traipsing into rubble filled areas of New York, the parts that were bombed in the war, she realized that would look suspicious. It would be hard to sneak around in such an empty place in broad daylight. She would just have to go under night's cover of darkness and take her chances sneaking through the city.

Annabeth climbed to the surface and squinted at the bits of sunlight managing to make it through the gray hanging in the air. Weird. She didn't feel older. Maybe today she'd rob a hotdog stand. There was no real plan for the meantime. She'd just decided to get some fresh air or somewhat fresh air.

She spotted a strange dot in the sky. It didn't stand out from the gray. Actually, it blended in perfectly. The Empire's top notch technology kept it camouflaged perfectly. Luke had taught her to spot them. A slightly moving blur in the sky gave it away.

It was also Luke who had found her with Thalia in that ally. Her house had been bombed on the other side of New York. It was part of the rubble from the war. Her family had been killed. Thalia and Luke's families had been killed too. Annabeth was only seven, and the three had become family. Thalia was only a teenager, Luke a bit older. They'd learned how to survive. Then worse days came, and even worse after that.

Annabeth didn't think about the blood. She missed Thalia and Luke, but she refused to think about the blood. Denial was her best coping mechanism. The emotion from seven years ago was still building up in her. She was a ticking time bomb that would explode into a mess of tears, but in this world, she didn't have time for emotions.

Annabeth frowned at the dot. An Empire chopper. They usually didn't come out to the Wasteland. The only reason she could think of for them being there was some sort of security scare in the Empire, which was bad for Annabeth today. If that was the case Manhattan would be on lockdown and under tight watch. She'd never make it anywhere without being caught.

The chopper got closer and closer until it was dangerously close. Annabeth sighed and ducked back under the wreckage over the sewer entrance. The city was on tight lockdown, so now Annabeth had to be too. She'd been running from the Empire and its hardheaded soldiers called Screamers, and for a good reason, for so long she knew the drill.

I know it sucks. I didn't go over it, so feel free to point out any mistakes, (haha thanks for pointing at me while I typed that, sis, real sweet of yah).