~ ☼ ~

I didn't know what to do. I could either panic and fall apart, or I could run.

You know what I chose.

I broke out into a run, blindly heading southwards, towards the general direction of the Empire State Building. But, like I said Hemmings had taken me all the way to Sheep Meadow, which isn't exactly right at the border of Central Park, so I had to run through the park to get there. I got exhausted pretty quickly, but I kept running. I didn't know what else to do. Adrenaline was pumping through me. Adrenaline and, I found, tears.

If I was still awake, then the other half bloods had to be awake, too. But I was terrified nonetheless for them. Terrified that we were now on our own. I didn't understand how 40 kids had become Manhattan's last defenders. All I freaking wanted was to -

Well, I didn't really want anything. I had been pulled into Camp whether I wanted it or not.

Suddenly, I stopped.

"Apollo!" I yelled. "Apollo, you freaking coward, come here!"

I thought it might be enough. Apollo had appeared in one of my dreams last summer, telling me not to help Lucas and Kiera get the sword of Peleus for the Titan Army. Of course, I hadn't realized last summer that's what he was saying. I just thought he was being annoying.

"Apollo!" I repeated, a little more desperately. There was hardly any wind left in my lungs, and I felt them burn painfully. "I thought maybe if I insulted you, you'd come down, but dang, not even that will make you pay attention to your kids?"

It was pointless. I felt like an idiot. He was probably busy fighting the titans right now - I certainly hoped that's what he was doing - and thinking about how annoying one of his 600 daughters was.

Frick. Tears came to my eyes again.

"AJ?"

I looked up, hurting my neck with how quickly I turned. There was... there was Riley.

She was on the other side of the street, walking my way, but she got quicker once we might eye contact. A grin broke out on her face, and sweet relief came through me. We met each other in the middle of the street, amongst stopped cars and sleeping New Yorkers laying in the crosswalk. I thought I might cry when we finally hugged.

"Holy crap," I said. "Riley, what are you doing here?"

"I-" she looked incredulous as she pulled away. "What are you doing here?"

My face went hot.

"Um," I started. "I fell off of Olympus, Hemmings caught me, and brought me here. It's a long story."

Riley's eyes went wide, but before she could yelp at my literally falling off of Olympus, I added, quickly, "You weren't up there! Where were you!"

She sighed, taking a hand to her face. "I - I left. After Hermes appeared, and we were just sent off on another mission, I thought - I thought maybe since Hermes had appeared, I might be able to get Apollo to appear, too."

I felt sick.

"Where did you go?"

"I went to his temple on Olympus," she said, "And I prayed to him. I put my ambrosia in the brazier, even though it wasn't lit, and prayed for him to give me back my powers."

"And did it work?"

Riley bit her lip.

"He appeared after a few minutes."

I didn't know what to say. This shocked me; my question was more rhetorical than anything.

"He... came to Olympus?" I repeated. "In the middle of the battle."

She nodded. "He- he came to ask about Alec."

I blinked.

"Yeah," she said. "He appeared and charmed me for a minute, then said - then asked me where Alec was. I told him I had no idea, probably outside with everyone else. And then he - he patted me on the shoulder and left to go find him."

The breath left my chest. I watched Riley's eyes grow slightly teary, reflecting the light shining out of the apartments around us. I wanted to cry, too, as she said, "I followed him out, and when I got out there, I found everyone freaking out, because Manhattan was under attack. Morpheus put a sleeping spell on everyone-" she gestured to the stopped cars all around us - "And obviously, once Apollo saw all the campers, he left immediately. But Alec saw him, and saw me. He ran up to me, and told me I had to bring Apollo back, because you'd freaking fallen off of Olympus. And I was like - I can't bring him back! He only came to see you!"

Suddenly, she zipped her mouth shut, as if she didn't want to remember it. She looked pained. I wanted to move forward and grab her hand, but there was a tension between us once she'd brought up me falling off of Olympus, like she was mad at me for it.

"Anyway. While Percy sent everybody off in different directions, Alec and I had this huge fight. We left. I have no idea where everyone went, but nobody noticed us splitting off."

My face was cold.

"And I-"

Now she paused again. I watched as she looked even more aside, then slowly raised her arms to cross them. She didn't want to continue.

"You what?" I asked.

"I- I just started walking," she murmured. "It sounds stupid. But I was mad. I thought - I thought maybe I could just follow my mood and it'd take me where I was supposed to go, and if not? I'd fight a few monsters on the way."

She indicated to the bow and quiver slung across her back. There was blood, I realized with a start, on her finger tips and the tips of the arrows. I wondered how many monsters she'd fought.

"How long has it been?" I asked.

She frowned. "I don't know. A couple hours. Maybe longer."

Frick! A couple hours I'd missed fighting - a couple hours since Alec had thought I'd died.

"Nothing else seemed to matter," she added, after a moment. "Not if you were dead."

"Oh, Riley," I said, heat coming to my face.

We looked at each other, then I gave up. With tears in my eyes, I quickly moved forward and hugged her again, and this time, she hugged me so tight I thought I might break my back again. She smelled like sweat, blood, and monster dust, but for a moment, she felt like the greatest person on Planet Earth.

"I have to tell you everything," I said, pulling away. I explained Hemmings and Meri's plot, but as I got to the end of it, I realized what this meant. We'd both just ran, and happened to find each other. And if Riley hadn't followed her heart earlier, I might've panicked just now - might've been out for the count.

"Riley," I said, slowly, as she gaped at my story. "I needed to see you. You showed up just in time."

She moved her jaw, trying to find words again. "I- no. That's-"

"Yes," I said, a smile coming to my face. I took her hands in mine and squeezed them - then decided, instead, to shake her by the shoulders, making her giggle a little.

"Yes, Riley," I said. "You followed your heart and your gut and you found me. That's proof."

She stared at me for a moment, her surprise turning, slowly, to a grin. Then she shook it off, though I knew it'd sunk in at least a little bit.

"I don't think so," she said.

"Come on," I said, feeling a little giddy, even though my best friend was out there somewhere thinking I was dead. "Let's go."

When I took her hand and dragged her back down towards Midtown, she was smiling still.

~ ☼ ~

I wish I could tell you we knew where we were going, but the truth was that, with no map or people to ask, Riley and I had no idea what direction to take. It was even more confusing given that it was dark out.

So we just picked out way past dead cars and passed out people, the scene getting increasingly apocalyptic the more time we spent with it. At first, it was just the shock of it, but now it was the horror. A homeless-looking kid was laying by themselves, a businessman passed out a few feet away. it was the small and the mighty both felled. All of New York quieted at once.

If you know New York, you know that's saying something.

We kept running into monsters, too - usually one at a time, minor things like dracaena and empousae. The more I saw them, with Riley's endless arrows - though she wasn't a perfect shot - and Liakada glowing warm in my hand, the more I became used to fighting them. But I didn't forget about the blood on Riley's hand, or the pain in my back, or the fact that both dracaena and empousae held trauma for me. My mood grew worse, and anxiety began to pick at me like a scab.

Alec thinks you're dead, the voice in my head said. Alec might be dead himself.

After the third fight, I felt like I might burst. We'd been walking for so long and hardly made any progress. Riley had guessed we should head back towards the ESB, and I was trying hard to trust her, but knowing that camp had probably spread out since then was making it a challenge.

"Hey," Riley said, noticing. She wrinkled her nose as we stepped over a spilled cup of coffee, still laying in a woman's hand. "Uh... how are you?"

I snorted. "Just peachy, Riles, thanks for asking."

"I mean, emotionally," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's been a... rough summer."

It's been a rough life, I retorted in my head.

Though that wasn't entirely fair. After all, before Camp, I was pretty fine. I was financially set, had loving parents, and didn't have any hidden traumas or disabilities or anything. But I had always been miserable anyway, apathetic and weak and anti-social. I'd always made problems up for myself.

"Hey, either tell me what's going on, or don't make yourself sad," Riley said, squeezing my hand. "Don't live in your head."

I looked at her for a moment, really looked at her. Her brown skin and coily hair, pulled up in a ponytail. Two little stud earrings were in her ears, and she wore cute dark-wash Denim instead of the ugly striped shorts straight from Hot Topic I had on. She was the opposite of me, so pretty and boho, and with that Kentucky accent sweetening all of her words, she became even cooler.

"AJ!" Riley exclaimed. "Girl, did you even hear what I just said?"

My neck went. "Yes. Yes, sorry. I'm just... I won't make myself sad."

Riley seemed disappointed that this was what I'd chosen, but I ignored it. Instead, I looked around. I couldn't believe we hadn't been attacked yet, but then, who cared about two random Daughters of Apollo?

At least Riley was with me in that.

We were passing through a bunch of subsidized housing buildings now, tall brick things with tiny windows. I couldn't imagine living there, but maybe it'd be better to be in the city then in Highland Falls. As we passed through them, though, I realized we were approaching the river. I didn't like this, because 1. This was far from the Empire State Building and 2. There was something about being on the waterfront...

A highway by the East River was far from a Lake Michigan marina. But still, it made me think of Lake Shore Drive - of finding Peleus waiting with Kiera and Lucas' caskets. Their unfulfilled goals hit me like a truck, and I panicked, searching for something to distract me. A sign pointing southwards, towards the Williamsburg Bridge.

"Alec and I went to Williamsburg," I said, even though we'd already told her about our adventure with the yogurt god. "Have you ever been there?"

Riley was checking around for monsters, but answered me anyway. "To Brooklyn?"

I nodded.

"No," she said. "I've never really done anything here. You know that. I just go to camp then go home."

"Well, I don't know," I said, shrugging. "Maybe you got it in at some point on your way back to Kentucky."

"Nah, if Dad was going to stop somewhere, it'd probably be somewhere music oriented." She rolled her eyes again. "Ugh. Like father like father."

Despite it all, I snickered. Riley's dad was musician who combined jazz and folk. They lived in a cabin somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I'd always thought it was both fascinating and a little uncanny that she had two biological fathers. At least Apollo wasn't homophobic!

"Maybe, after all of this," I said, "We can all go there together. All of Cabin 7, or at least the older kids. We'll do a tour of Brooklyn as our last hurrah, and Alec can be our guide. Like a senior trip."

Riley smiled. "I love that."

But she didn't say anything else, despite how easily it would be to add more ideas to mine. I knew it was stupid, but I felt a little uncomfortable anyway, wondering if she would even want us all to hang out together, just us, outside of the cabin. Her, Alec, a bunch of obnoxious musical kids, and me.

Suddenly, we made it to the highway, packed bumper-to-bumper with cars. This was the last bastion before the river, and here we had a clear view indeed of the Williamsville Bridge. But when I looked at it, instead of finding the silhouettes of idle cars, I saw explosions and movement. There was a huge battle literally in the process of happening.

"Oh my Gods!" Riley exclaimed.

She immediately began to run in the direction of the bridge, but it was hard with all the cars in the way. I followed her, my mind reeling.

"What do you think it is?" I asked.

But Riley's eyes were on the battle. She hopped over a car and shouted, "I think I see the Minotaur!"

I couldn't see that, but against the indigo early, early morning sky, I saw silhouettes swinging swords, flying arrows and -

And fire. Little plumes of fire, everywhere.

Riley stopped just as I did. I ran into her, nearly throwing us both over the side of the highway. But she caught herself, gasping.

"AJ, that's -" she started to breathe heavily. "That's - that's what I saw in my vision. Oh my gods, AJ, that's where Cabin 7 is - not Alec, but I think- I think it was Michael-"

And then, just as she said that, looking confident but horrified-

The bridge collapsed.

It was like slow motion. A giant flood of water. The crumbling of the Williamsburg Bridge, falling one piece at a time. Then it was gone, swallowed by the dark East River.

Michael Yew with it.

The Bee Gees. Archery. Standing up to bullies. Losing somebody before I could fully love them, all over again.

All over again.

I didn't even realize it when I began to scream.

~ ☼ ~

A/N: RIP Michael :(