Chapter Twenty-Seven:
All Aboard a Monstrous Ship.
— I raised a stone to end his pain. What
caused the wound? How large the teeth?
I saw new eyes were watching me !
To wake up to screams was horrifying.
There were a lot of weird occurrences that happened after being at camp for five years. However, being extremely rudely awoken by screams was one of the few things Annabeth Chase had yet to experience. Given the fact that the new activities director was a horrid prisoner of the Underworld, it was safe to expect the unexpected when it came to him and anything he decided to do. And with the Stymphalian Birds that had decided to attack the previous morning, no one knew what the next monster would be. At first, she figured it was the camp's newly fashioned Border Patrol fighting off (and getting ruthlessly injured by) incoming monsters, but then she tuned in a little more and realized just how familiar the voice behind the scream sounded. She knew that constantly cracking voice — the sound of a boy whose voice was clearly going through puberty.
"Percy!" she shot up from her bed with a choked gasp. She was quick to change out of her pajamas, there was no way she was going to be out there caught in her sleeping attire. She was quick to untie her bonnet, dropping it on her bed before throwing on the nearest clothes she could find through the dark that she could verify were hers in the mix of her siblings'. "Shit!" she cursed as quietly as possible, having tripped over the dresser near her bed.
It seemed she wasn't the only one to hear his screams. Colette joined her. The sight made her eyebrows furrow. The blonde was fully dressed and armed with her backpack on, while Annabeth looked less than put together. Her braids were still intact, but her clothes were entirely mismatched and she swore she had on Malcolm's shoes based on the way her foot slide through the soul of the shoe whenever she walked. Not a word was shared, but they marched side by side — twin soldiers on a hunt. The girls were joined by Tyson, much to Annabeth's dismay. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of him, but she could feel her expression smoothen out (read: Soften, Annabeth could hear Colette argue with her) at the sight of his concern.
By the time the three found Percy, he was staring at the waves, almost frozen in shock.
"What's going on?" Annabeth inquired. "I heard you calling for help!"
"Me, too!" Tyson added. "Heard you yell, 'Bad things are attacking!'"
"I ain't call you guys," Percy wrinkled his eyebrows, "I'm fine."
"The Messenger," Colette finally spoke up, her eyes were locked with Percy's, and an understanding seemed to pass through their eyes. Annabeth could never express how frustrated she got whenever she saw that. All she wanted was for her best friend to talk to her like they did before, to be able to share looks of communication again. She hated not knowing, and it seemed like she wasn't in the know for the first time. "Dad told me the Messenger would make a false alarm to get our attention: Your screams. I heard it, too, but I knew better — Dad said you were fine, just the Thief trying to be funny."
"What the—" Annabeth went to ask more questions, but then she saw the three yellow duffel bags at Percy's feet before her eyes trailed up from the ground to the thermos and bottle of vitamins in his hands.
"—listen," Percy interrupted her. "We don't got a lotta' of time." He went on to tell them all his conversation with Hermes. By the time he was done, the screeching sounded in the distance — Patrol Harpies picked up their scent.
