Now, this was pretty hard to write. It wasn't that I didn't want to write it, but because in the Son of Neptune, much of the story was based off of the fact that Percy's Percy. I really had to think out of the box for this one. However, I'm really proud of this, so if you can, read SoN while you read this. I hope you enjoy the parallels!

As you can probably tell from the title, this is an AU where Reyna and Annabeth are switched, not Percy and Jason.

I Annabeth
THE GORGONS WERE starting to annoy Annabeth.

They should've died three days ago when she trapped them in the woods. They should've died two days ago when she sicced a group of police dogs on them. They definitely should've died this morning when she stabbed them each in the chest in Tilden Park.

No matter how many times Annabeth watched them crumble to powder, they just kept reforming. No matter how hard she tried to get rid of them, they kept coming back. At least she could outrun them.

She reached the top of the hill and caught her breath. How long since she'd last killed them? Maybe around two hours. They never seemed to stay dead longer than that.

The past few days, she'd barely slept. She'd done what she could to get food. Lying and begging for a quick meal from unsuspecting mothers, intimidation techniques, stealing extra supplies, flirting with waiters and cashiers, even crying to create sympathy, which was a new personal low. Luckily, she'd managed to keep her clothes and self clean enough to be able to walk into a restaurant without being kicked out.

She'd only managed to survive this long because the monsters weren't able to kill her either. By the time they found her, she had already left again. Her knife always met them before their teeth met her. Evasive maneuvers and stalling served her well. So did the Yankee's hat that turned her invisible and made her determined to get to New York somehow. But Annabeth couldn't keep going for much longer. Soon she'd collapse from exhaustion, and evasion techniques wouldn't be able to help her then.

Where to run?

She scanned her surroundings. Under different circumstances, she might've enjoyed the view. To her left, golden hills rolled inland, dotted with lakes, woods, and a few herds of cows. She shivered. She had an unnatural hatred of those creatures. To her right, the flatlands of Berkeley and Oakland marched west—a vast checkerboard of neighborhoods, with several million people who probably did not want their morning interrupted by a pair of monsters and a teenage girl.

Farther west, San Francisco Bay glittered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog had swallowed most of San Francisco, leaving just the tops of skyscrapers and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sadness filled her heart. She felt close to this city for some reason. And the bay reminded her of Percy—the only person she could remember from her past. Her memories of him were frustratingly vague. The wolf told her that she would be able to find Percy and her memory—if she completed her quest.

Should she try to go to the bay?

It was tempting. She could almost feel Percy's presence baiting her just over the horizon. Water always brought memories of Percy. Salt water was the best. She'd discovered that when she'd had a memory of her first real kiss with Percy near the Carquinez Strait. If she could get to the bay, she could find out more about her past. Maybe she could even find out where Percy was. But she'd have to cross the entire city, two miles she didn't have time to spend on.

She also hesitated for something else. The wolf goddess Lupa had taught her to sharpen her senses and trust her instincts pointing her south though her head told to go to New York and find the person that had given her the Yankee's hat. Her instincts were telling her that she was close to her destination—almost right under her feet. There was nothing on the hilltop, but maybe...

The wind changed. Annabeth caught the sour reptilian scent that she had been on high alert for since she first time the snake haired women had tried to kill her. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods—snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing.

Gorgons.

Again, she wished that their noses weren't so good. They'd always said that they could find her because she was a demigod—the half-blood child of a Roman god. She had tried staying invisible, moving her scent around, and splashing through creeks to throw them off, but the monsters had more of a radar rather than a good sense of smell.

She pulled on her hat and looked for an escape route. It was to steep to go down. The slope plummeted eighty feet, straight to the roof of an apartment complex built into the hillside. Fifty feet below that, a highway emerged from the hill's base and wound its way toward Berkeley.

There wasn't any other way off. She was cornered.

She gazed at the highway filled with cars moving towards San Francisco.

What she wouldn't give to be miles down that road, regaining more pieces of her fractured memory. She needed Percy dearly in this tunnel of confusion she's been wandering.

Tunnel... the highway must cut through the hill. There must be a tunnel... right under her feet.

Her internal radar went nuts. She had to check out that tunnel. She needed to get to the highway—quickly.

Annabeth's eyes widened and looked around again. There had to be something she could use to get off this hill.

She checked her bag. She'd grabbed supplies from Napa Bargain Mart: a couple maps, water bottles, duct tape, a lighter, a light blanket, a teddy bear (don't judge her; she was alone and it was comforting), and a Swiss Army knife. She'd also made some smoke and stink bombs; when she learned how to make them, she didn't know.

So she could use one of the bombs as a distraction and run in the way she came. That is, she hoped she could. But just in case... she pulled out her knife from its sheath.

I might write a part two to this at some point, but I haven't written in a while, and looking at this, it looks good enough to publish as it is. Tell me if you'd like more to this?

Published 12/27/17.