The Path Of Glory (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

15. Water Beds Heaven

It was Annabeth who got the idea to get them to Los Angeles.

She loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized them up. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles...uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat a little straighter. Easy to say she liked the "Your Highness" thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

As Y/N watched the desert passing by at breakneck speed and the city behind gradually disappearing, he suddenly felt exhausted. Leaning against the door and folding his legs to sit a little more comfortably, he fell asleep.

Same dream. He had forgotten it while they were at the Lotus Casino, but it was coming back.

First change, this time there was not the same old lady at the beginning. But there was always this icy landscape and this long fall, this desperate race with the ground that was slipping away a few inches behind his feet until he had to jump, hoping to reach the other side. Then the sky and the earth. It was on a small hill, and he didn't know how, but he felt like he was being crushed between the two.

Something more appeared; a city lay before his eyes. And there was a problem.

He should have heard the noise of the city—people bustling around, cars and machines—the hum of a metropolis.

But it was dead quiet.

In the street, traffic had stopped. Pedestrians were lying on the sidewalks, or curled up in doorways. There was no sign of violence, no wrecks, nothing like that. It was as if all the people in this city had simply decided to stop whatever they were doing and pass out.

The whole city seemed asleep.

Someone shook him, and he woke with a jerk, feeling as if he was falling in his own bed.

"Hey, wake up. We're there," Annabeth said.

The beach in Santa Monica, at sunset, simply was a postcard. Only it smelled worse, with the garbage spread along the sand. Actually it was not a postcard.

Ethan, Percy and Grover had already gotten out of the cab and were walking toward the sea.

Y/N got out, following Annabeth, and asked, "Where do we go from here?"

"The sea," Annabeth told him.

"Shouldn't we try to find the Underworld? I think the entrance was the DOA Studios, something like that."

"DOA Recording Studios."

"Then...why the sea?"

She sighed. "Percy had a dream."