[post mortem]

With her friends by her side, Tessa stormed into the infirmary, her urgent footsteps like thunder. Despite her haste, she felt like she was running through molasses-like memories of when Chase Ferguson had first stumbled to her feet all those months ago.

And now, he was awake.

The Apollo campers working in the infirmary cleared out of the way as Tessa, Mark, Kaden, Reese, and Amelie barreled towards the locked room. It seemed as if they couldn't get the door open fast enough, but it swung open, revealing a bamboozled-looking Flynn.

"Flynn," Tessa exhaled in relief. "Can we come in?"

The son of Apollo nodded curtly, but suspicion glistened in his eyes as he glanced down the hall. "Yes. But hurry!"

The demigods filed in, and Flynn shut the door behind them.

For a moment, Tessa was disoriented. Her nerves and all the questions she wanted to have answered seemed to short-circuit her brain, and she couldn't focus. Everything seemed like a storm inside her mind, until her gaze fell upon Chase's cot.

And for the first time in a long time, Chase Ferguson was not lying as stiff as a board on top of it, unconscious and unresponsive. His heart rate was not a practically non-existent blip on a sad, illuminated screen. He did not seem like a corpse being brought back to life.

Now, Chase sat on the edge of his cot, elbows on his knees. His dark hair was ruffled, his muscles taut beneath the simple cotton clothes he was wearing. He seemed...normal.

"Chase?" Flynn asked, his voice soothing. "How are you feeling?"

The son of Nike looked up, and Tessa resisted the urge to take a step back in fright. His eyes were bloodshot, like he hadn't slept in days. There were no signs of the scars and bruises that had once dotted his skin, only a haunted, porcelain-like ruin of the boy he had once been.

Tessa wondered if this was what it was like to see a ghost.

"Tired," Chase's voice was ragged. "Thirsty. So thirsty."

Tessa walked over to Chase's bedside table, feeling rather than seeing Chase watch her as she went. She poured him a glass of water, and handed it to him. Slowly, Chase plucked it from her grasp.

He downed the first glass, the second glass, the third, until the pitcher of water was empty, and Amelie ran out to fill it back up again.

"Thank you," Chase said, avoiding Tessa's gaze.

"Of course," Tessa nodded. She tried snagging Chase's attention, but it was like no matter what she did, he wouldn't look her in the eye.

Kaden walked towards her and Chase, a puzzled look on his face. "It's good to see you awake, Chase. Do you mind if we run a few quick tests?"

Chase shrugged slowly, like the movement took up most of his energy reserves. "I guess."

Tessa walked back over to where Mark and Reese were standing in bewilderment. She cast a quick look at Chase, noting how when Kaden pulled up his sleeve to draw blood, there were no signs of the injuries he had endured.

"How'd he heal so quickly?" She muttered, careful to keep her voice low.

"That's probably what Kaden and Flynn are trying to figure out," Reese nodded to where his brother and his best friend were working, drawing different samples from Chase's frail frame.

Mark blew out a long sigh, and Tessa knew just what he was thinking. His decision to allow Chase into the front lines still haunted him with every mention of the son of Nike, whether he cared to admit it or not.

"I want to believe this is a miracle," Mark decided at last, his eyes locked on Chase. "But something tells me that we aren't this lucky."

Tessa forced down a wry laugh upon seeing Flynn walk towards them, a grim look on his face and a clipboard in his hands. He ushered them closer to the door, just out of Chase's earshot. When Tessa, Mark, and Reese all began to ask questions at the same time, Flynn merely put his hands up and said, "I don't know."

"Don't know what?" Mark insisted.

"How he just woke up." Flynn answered. "It was so natural that it was almost unnatural. I was checking his files and the next thing I knew, he was just...awake."

Tessa glanced over at Chase, noting his movements. He was sluggish, and the way he held himself was as if he was anticipating another attack.

"I asked him a few questions, and all he could get out at the time was that he'd been dreaming," Flynn flipped through the papers on his clipboard.

"Dreaming?" Reese drew his eyebrows together. "But I thought people in comas couldn't dream."

Flynn met Tessa's eyes, and she recalled him saying that Chase's unconscious symptoms were similar to hers when she'd been under the Curses' spell. She'd dreamt then, or at least had visited her memories.

"He wasn't in a coma," Tessa muttered, looking to Reese. "He was under a spell."

Mark made a face. "What spell?"

Tessa shook her head, turning back to Flynn. "What did he say he was dreaming of?"

Flynn consulted his papers, flipping to one scrawled with his slanted handwriting. "A city in ruins, bodies of dead demigods," He shrugged. "Chaos, in general."

"What city?" Reese and Mark both asked in unison, giving each other a skeptical look. Tessa knit her eyebrows together in confusion, but brushed it off.

"New York," Flynn drawled, his eyes flicking between Reese and Mark. "Why?"

"Tessa?"

Tessa turned, facing Kaden as he walked towards them. He wore the same tired, unreadable look as Flynn did.

"Yeah?" Tessa asked.

"Chase wants to talk to you," Kaden said.

Tessa glanced behind Kaden to where Chase was sitting, slouched over and fiddling with his fingers. He didn't look up to meet her gaze, but Tessa could feel something luring her closer. Maybe it was her necessity for answers, maybe it was something else, but she obeyed Kaden's word and headed towards Chase.

"Hi, Chase," Tessa tried lowering her head to get him to look at her, but to no avail. "You wanted to talk to me?"

Chase nodded slowly, and Tessa sat beside him on the edge of his cot. For a while, Chase didn't speak. He merely took deep breaths at different intervals, like he was trying to form the words but couldn't.

"You died once," Chase finally said at last, and Tessa snapped to attention. "What was it like?"

Tessa blinked, watching Chase in both shock and intrigue. Her death had been a momentary thing, back when she was sixteen and on her quest to defeat Deimos, the god of panic. He'd stabbed her through the heart, just as her dreams had warned, but she'd been allowed a second chance at life to help save her friends and her camp.

Tessa couldn't remember a lot about when she'd died—she'd been dead, after all. But she had stood on the banks of the Styx, watching as the shadows and the smoke and the lost souls milled about the other shore, and felt their misery. It leeched into her soul and took hold, like grappling hooks. Even when she'd returned to life, she couldn't shake that lingering feeling of sorrow, as if one of those ghosts had followed her back above.

"It felt..." Tessa tried to find the right words, suppressing a shiver. "Daunting. Like no matter how much I knew about dying, or how prepared I tried to be, there is no enemy more terrifying than death."

Chase gave the shortest of nods, turning his head towards Tessa ever so slightly. "Did you want to die?"

"No," Tessa said. "Dying meant giving up. Abandoning my friends when they needed me. I couldn't just do that."

"I think I was dead," Chase muttered. "Not in a coma, not under a spell. I think I was dead, and I was standing in Hell."

Tessa furrowed her brow. She glanced up to where Flynn, Kaden, Reese, Mark, and Amelie were all watching intently. She nodded to the door, and begrudgingly, they moved towards it.

When it was only her and Chase left in the room, Tessa asked, "What did you see?"

Chase's eyes locked on some point on the horizon, lost in the haze of memory. "I saw...everything. I saw battlefields, city streets, camp filled with the dead and dying. The sky was red and black. There was screaming, so much screaming."

Chase's breathing hitched, and a flare of worry went through Tessa's heart. If Chase slipped into a panic attack now—

"I saw a storm. The storm. It was Typhon."

Every nerve in Tessa's body, every sense she possessed, averted itself towards Chase. "What?"

"He was there, in the clouds. I was frozen, I couldn't move. I just remember seeing him, and then that's when the other dreams would start."

"The other dreams? The ones of the New York?"

Chase nodded slowly, turning his head to meet Tessa's gaze. She had to bite back a gasp. His eyes were bloodshot and weary, robbed of their normally iridescent sheen. He looked haunted, like he might actually have died as he said he did.

"Chase, do you remember what happened before you blacked out?" Tessa asked carefully.

Chase narrowed his eyes, trying to remember. "I remember...the pain. It was unlike anything I'd felt before. It was like fire."

"Who was hurting you?" Tessa asked.

"The man," Chase shook his head slowly. "I don't remember his face. I couldn't see it through the blood in my eyes."

Tessa quirked a brow. She knew Chase was a very sarcastic person, but this? It just sounded awful.

"Is there anything else you can remember?" Tessa continued, but Chase shook his head.

"I keep hearing their screams," Chase whispered, tears filling his eyes.

"Whose screams?"

"Everyone's," Chase took a ragged breath. "The girl who'd exposed me, Kiara. I can hear her still. I can hear the screams of the dead. Luke, your brother. Sierra, the archer."

"How did you know she's dead?" Tessa asked, but Chase didn't appear to have heard her. He was lost in his daze of death, tears threatening to spill over his eyes.

"I can hear your screams too, Tessa. I just don't know if they're from what's happened before," Chase averted his shattered eyes to Tessa, and she suddenly felt very small and weak. "Or what's yet to come."

~~

Tessa drummed her fingers against the slick rock she was sitting on, the repetitive motion stilling her nerves. The sound of the waves crashing softly against the sand lulled her into a pensive state, punctuating each question and thought bubbling to the surface of the depths that were her mind.

I can hear your screams too, Tessa...

Inhaling slowly, Tessa forced Chase's haunting words from her mind. She couldn't afford to lose herself in decoding his words when there was war to prepare for. But how could she ignore the prophetic things he was saying? Dreams for demigods were rarely ever just dreams, she knew from experience. And if he had seen Armageddon, who was she to dismiss it as the ramblings of a frightened boy?

The next thing Tessa knew, she was standing ankle-deep in the tide as it rolled in. The chill of the water spurred her focus, revitalizing her energy reserves. Her power thrummed through her veins like electric currents, awakening her.

"Dad, if you're listening, I need help." Tessa looked out to the horizon, so dark that she couldn't discern where the sky ended, and the ocean began. "Who is Menoetious? Who killed Sierra and gave me the flash-drive? Where are these items that the Romans think we stole?"

To Tessa's chagrin, the sea didn't answer. She frowned, debating whether or not she should kick the water at her feet.

"Ah, no, you've resorted to talking to yourself. We're doomed."

Tessa spun around to find Mark standing atop the end of the sandy pathway leading to the beach. The son of Iris, hands stuffed in the pockets of his skinny jeans, smiled at Tessa but it didn't reach his dark almond eyes.

"Who knows," Tessa began, emerging from the sea. "Talking to myself might reveal the grand battle strategy we're all waiting for."

"Can't make a strategy if you don't know what you're up against." Mark chided, crossing over to the rock Tessa had been sitting on. "Unless Menoetious, Typhon, this mysterious man, and every other monster and villain we've faced are on the same side."

Tessa sighed, hopping up beside Mark. "If only good and evil were as binary as the stories made it seem."

Mark chuckled wryly, leaning back on his hands as he beheld the indigo curtain of velvet that became of the sky and sea. However, the laughter seemed to fade from his face, and worry took its place.

"When I was in the Regiment, it was like I was having an out-of-body experience. There was some part of me that was awake during all of it, kind of like going under amnesia for an operation. I could see and hear and say everything that Orion had made me do under his spell, but I didn't know why." Mark began out of nowhere, and Tessa turned to face her best friend, unsure of where this was coming from.

"Until it started to take over me, and I couldn't fight it anymore. I found myself believing everything he wanted me to believe, and doing everything he wanted me to do because I wanted to believe it and do it. It was like I'd truly changed."

"Mark...where's this coming from?" Tessa asked. Mark rarely spoke about his experiences in the Regiment. They'd been so traumatic for him that when they did come up, it was in the look in his eyes, not the words on his tongue.

Mark took a shaky breath, blowing it out before he spoke again. "I think that you're right. Good and evil isn't binary. People are good because they choose to be good, and people are evil because they choose to be evil. People can change, but not always out of their own will. Sometimes, they're forced one way or the other. And breaking out of that dichotomy can be catastrophic."

For a moment, the only sound came from the crashing waves. Then, Tessa found the semblance of that darkness that had once haunted her, and it hissed when she shed light upon it.

"When the General was attacking us, I found it so hard to believe that she was me and I was her, just on two different universes. I always thought of her as a monster wearing my face for a mask. But it wasn't until we were standing face to face on Christmas Eve that I realized that we were the same person." Tessa began. "I realized that there wasn't much stopping me from becoming her. If I lost what she had, what was the different between us?"

"You're a hero, Tessa," Mark reminded her. "She used her powers for evil. You use yours for good."

"But what if I decided that being a hero was too much?" Tessa met Mark's gaze full-on. "If I decided that fighting this war was pointless? Power is only dangerous if the person using it wants it to be."

Mark pressed his lips into a thin line. "I think our identities as demigods are finally catching up to us." He exhaled.

Tessa dragged a frustrated hand through her hair. "I just hate this so much. Every other challenge we've been up against, we knew exactly what it was: Deimos, Orion, the General, Aether. Now, there are so many variables to keep track of that making a plan, having that confidence...it just seems unlikely."

"We'll figure it out," Mark assured. "We always do, somehow."

Tessa closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She imagined it wiping away her worries and her fears, literally clearing her head so she could think straight.

"Rainier's gala is when, tomorrow? Day after?" Tessa asked.

"Day after," Mark confirmed. "Do you have a plan?"

Tessa made a face. "A semblance of one. The only question is if it'll work." She glanced at Mark, trying to keep her face neutral. "Think you can get Adhara to help us out?"

Mark hesitated, and Tessa tried not to laugh. "Possibly."

"Good. Because we'll need her help."

"When don't we?" Mark heaved a sigh, getting to his feet. "I'll see what I can do."

"You're the best, Mark." Tessa sang, but Mark only waved a hand at her in mock dismissal and started for the pathway. However, he stopped in his tracks, looking back at Tessa.

"Oh, hey, what did Chase tell you?" He asked.

I can hear your screams too, Tessa...

Tessa managed a weak smile. "He asked me if when I died, I wanted to stay dead."

Mark's eyebrows shot up. "Well, did you?"

Tessa pretended to hesitate, and laughed when Mark gawked in bewilderment. "Of course not!"

"Okay, for a second there, I thought you told him yes," Mark laughed. "Good night, Tessa."

"Night, Mark."

The son of Iris disappeared down the pathway, and alone again, Tessa averted her gaze back to the obsidian horizon, so dark it swallowed all of the stars. But she knew that they were still there, even without the light of the moon to help illuminate them. Somewhere beyond the shadows and the clouds, the light was still there.

All Tessa had to do was keep that in mind. Because from here on out, things would only get darker.