CHAPTER TWELVE:
BUMPY SKIES

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ANNAIS WASN'T AFRAID OF heights, but after falling hundreds of feet through the air, that just might change. The endless sky was a hazy pink in the early dawn but she was unable to truly appreciate the sight with death a mere second away. The shadows were fading fast as the sun began to rise and she was struggling to draw them to her in the chaos. Wind roaring through her hair like the failing whines of an airplane engine, her friends and her siblings screaming in her ears. Festus had already crashed below them, his heavy body creating a giant crater in the roof of a warehouse followed by a thick cloud of dark smoke.

It wasn't long before they would be next.

A body shot past her — Leo. He was screeching as loud as his lungs would let him, fingers frantically scraping at the air like the clouds would somehow cushion his fall, all the while Mel was clinging to his back, reminding Annais of a terrified koala. She tried in vain to reach for them, her brow pinched with determination as darkness gathered at the corner of her eyes, but she couldn't focus enough. Annais had never been in a situation where she had to shadow travel in mid-air let alone trying to bring five other people along with her. She wasn't even sure it was possible, but she didn't know what else to do when the impact would surely kill them. She shut her eyes tight, her chest squeezing, before a voice rang through the echo in her ears.

"Annais!" Jason Grace shouted before a body haphazardly crashed into her own. His muscled arm was quick to curl around her waist. "Are you alright?"

She nodded, glancing at his other side where Piper clung to him with shaking limbs. She had Ezra curled around her leg — the tether between them was barely hanging on by a thread — and Jason was struggling to fly with three people stuck to his side like glue. Still, he seemed nothing if not determined, the wind swirling around their feet and slowing their descent enough for Annais to speak.

"We need to get Leo and Mel," she shouted into Jason's ear. "Can you hold us all up?"

He didn't look convinced but he nodded anyway. Then, with a squeeze of Annais' hip, he declared to the three girls, "It's gonna get rough, so hold on."

Rough, in the end, turned out to be a massive understatement. Annais almost preferred the feeling of free-falling through the air — now they were zooming to the ground at break-neck speed with a boy unable to maintain control. A scream tore through her lips, her throat burning, but the sound was quickly torn away from her and lost in the wind. She was almost tempted to let go but Jason's grip only got tighter as they slammed into Leo and Mel, the former cursing them out while the other sobbed pitifully.

"Stop fighting," Jason hissed, his face flushing from the strain of maintaining a weak air cushion beneath them. "It's me."

"My dragon," Leo cried, ignoring Jason as he wriggled around in protest. Annais had grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, his words barely audible through his splutters for air. "Y-You gotta save Festus!"

"Are you stupid?" Ezra yelled, her cheeks wet from the rare sight of her tears. "We're not dying for a fucking dragon!"

She barely got the words out before Jason let out a gasp and they suddenly dropped like stones. There was no way he could hold up six people, he was strong but not that strong. Annais shut her eyes again, desperate. She was the only other person who could possibly save them and she wasn't trying hard enough.

Please, she cried into the void. Please dad, if you're listening, help me.

There was a moment where time seemed to slow to a complete stop, and then the air was wheezing from her lungs like someone had punched her in the gut. Annais opened her eyes, dark clouds gathering around her at a quickening speed. She grabbed hold of Leo as he threatened to slip away again, allowing Mel to curve around Annais' spare side as she noticed the shadows.

"Let me go," she shouted to Jason as he managed to hold them up for another handful of seconds. "Jason, you need to let me go."

"What?" he gaped at her. "Are you out of your mind?"

But she refused to give him a choice this time. She grabbed his wrist, twisting it at an angle that wouldn't hurt him but would be enough to make him uncomfortable. He instinctively released her and panic washed over his features followed by agony.

The last thing Annais heard before she, Leo and Mel disappeared into the shadows was his terrified scream.

Then, Annais could no longer hear, see or feel anything at all.

Just darkness.

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ANNAIS WASN'T SURE HOW long she was out for before Ezra slapped her across the face. To be fair, she might've deserved it after some of the things she said, but that didn't stop the anger that followed Annais gaining consciousness.

"Was that really necessary?" she hissed, followed by a groan as the blinding lights of the warehouse struck her eyes.

Ezra was standing above her with a sly smirk, her offending hand still outstretched. "It worked, didn't it?"

Annais just scoffed, forcing her body to move no matter how much it hurt. Turned out shadow travelling with two people was a lot harder than her father made it out to be. Every bone in her body seemed to burn in protest as she rolled onto her side, her pain quickly fading from the forefront of her mind once she spotted Jason crouched beside Piper. He helped her drink from a half-crushed canteen of water.

"Are you okay?" she gasped, rushing over to the girl's side and kneeling next to Jason. Apart from a few scrapes and bruises on his arms and dirt speckled through his soft blonde hair, he seemed alright. Exhausted, but otherwise okay.

Piper, on the hand, had clearly seen better days. Although her face was pale and her ankle was braced by a makeshift splint, she mustered up her strongest smile and a nod at Annais' question. "Never better."

Once Annais had checked the others, she allowed herself to give a sigh of relief. They were a bit worse for wear — Mel's ankle was sprained and Leo was also covered in cuts and bruises, but they were alive. She allowed herself to sit and rest for a minute, her heart pounding unevenly and her vision blurring. She could sleep for a lifetime and it still wouldn't be enough, but she ignored Jason when he tried to hand her a square of squashed ambrosia. She didn't need it. There would be other dangerous situations they had to face and they couldn't afford to have nothing to protect themselves then. Annais wouldn't forgive herself for wasting it.

"So," she cleared her throat, five pairs of eyes snapping towards her as she broke the silence. "What happened to the dragon? Do we know where we landed?"

Leo's face shuddered at the mention of Festus. "I don't know with Festus. He just jerked sideways like he hit an invisible wall and started to fall." Annais frowned, going to comment but pausing. It didn't make any sense. Leo took her silence as a sign to continue, pointing over to the strange logo on a nearby wall. "As far as where we are..."

A large red eye with the stencilled words MONOCLE MOTORS, ASSEMBLY PLANT 1 stared back at them.

"Closed car plant," Leo summed up. "I'm guessing we crash-landed in Detroit."

From their surroundings, it would seem so, but something about that red eye said otherwise. Annais couldn't stop staring at it, an uneasy feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. Eventually, she passed it off as nausea from the dizziness and turned away. But she couldn't help feeling watched now, like there were monsters in the shadows.

"How far is that from Chicago?" Piper asked, mustering up enough strength to sit up.

Jason moved to help her, passing her the canteen when she reached for it. "Maybe three-fourths of the way from Quebec? The thing is, without the dragon, we're stuck travelling overland."

Immediately, the Mins began to protest. They knew first-hand that prophecies were never wrong. If they were told not to travel on land, they needed to do everything in their power to get back up in the sky.

"They're right," Piper voiced her agreement. "Besides, I don't know if I can walk. And five people — Jason, we already know you can't fly that many across the country by yourself. And we can't make Annais do whatever she did back there, it's pretty clear it takes all her energy."

"Leo, are you sure the dragon didn't malfunction?" Jason asked. "I mean, Festus is old, and—"

"And I might not have repaired him right?" Leo scowled, a muscle ticking in his jaw as a wave of anger washed over him.

"No one said that," Mel quickly intervened, though she went ignored as Jason stuttered out his defence.

"It's just — maybe you could fix it?"

As quickly as Leo's anger came, it disappeared. His shoulders slumped in defeat at Jason's question, and not even Mel's hand intertwining with his could evoke a smile on his face.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I'd have to find where he landed, if he's even in one piece."

"It's my fault," Piper said suddenly, her eyes ridden with regret. Annais frowned at her. What had happened that would make Piper blame herself? They were in the sky at the time, it wasn't as if Piper had any control over Festus or whatever knocked them down.

"Piper, don't be ridiculous," Ezra scoffed, though her tone was uncharacteristically soft as she moved to sit cross-legged beside her. "We were all asleep when Festus tapped out. You couldn't have done anything."

"Yeah, you're just shaken up," Leo agreed, reaching out to pat her uninjured leg when she opened her mouth to protest. "You're in pain. Just rest."

They were silent again. Seconds stretched into minutes as exhaustion threatened to consume them. Annais' eyes slowly slipped shut as her body started to crash. She remembered the first time Nico had shadow travelled. He slept for days on end, cooped up in the Hades cabin with Hea and Annais force-feeding his body soft foods. She was surprised Ezra had even managed to wake her up let alone that she hadn't passed out again. She could feel it coming, though, the overwhelming urge to rest. Annais allowed her head to drop onto Jason's shoulder, a sigh slipping past her lips when Leo slowly stood up.

"I'm gonna scout around for Festus," he said. "I think he fell outside the warehouse somewhere. If I can find him, maybe I can figure out what happened and fix him."

"No way," Mel immediately protested.

"It's too dangerous," Jason added, trying not to move around when he noticed the strange flutter of Annais' eyelids. He didn't know how to say it, but letting her go had scared him more than he'd like to admit. She was the one constant since he woke up on that bus. What would he do without her? "You shouldn't go by yourself."

"I got duct tape and breath mints, I'll be fine," Leo dismissed their concern with a laugh, though the sound was a little too quick and panicked to be believable. "You guys just don't run off without me."

"It's not happening," Mel shook her head, slowly clambering to her feet and wincing at the weight she had to put on her ankle. "If you're going, I'm going."

"Mel, you're hurt."

"I don't care, Leo. I'm not letting you go on your own."

Leo let out a frustrated sigh but didn't fight. With a hesitant nod, he reached for Mel's hand while pulling a flashlight out of his toolbelt. Then, with one last glance at the other four, they ducked down the stairs and into the darkness below. Annais wanted to call Mel back, protect her from the strange feeling she couldn't shake. But before she could, she caught sight of the red eye again, a shiver running down her spine that Jason unfortunately noticed.

"You need to eat some of this," he insisted, holding out the ambrosia package again.

"No," she huffed. "I'm fine."

Jason sighed. "Annais, come on. Please."

Reluctantly, she met his eyes. He was holding the plastic bag out to her, his expression hard and stern. He didn't understand, and frankly neither did she. Annais knew logically that the ambrosia would help her, but she couldn't help feeling like a burden by taking it. Still, she also couldn't say no with the way that Jason kept biting down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. Somehow, that was worse than the guilt.

"Just one piece," she conceded.

He nodded eagerly, opening the bag and taking out a square. It tasted like freshly baked cookies, an aroma of warm Summer afternoons spent in her mother's back garden. Annais was only four when they left that behind, and yet she could remember every detail, every scent and every flavour. The ambrosia sharpened her senses just enough for her to see straight. She lifted her head from Jason's shoulder, allowing him to check on Piper again.

"You look better," he noted once he was sure the splint was still properly in place.

Piper's cheeks flushed a rosy shade of pink. "You did a good job. Where'd you learn first aid?"

"Same answer as always," he shrugged. "I don't know."

"But you're starting to get your memories back, aren't you?" she pressed. "Like that prophecy in Latin back at camp, or that dream about the wolf."

"It's fuzzy, like déjà vu," he sighed. "Have you ever forgotten a word or a name and you know it should be on the tip of your tongue, but it isn't?"

"No," Ezra shook her head, making Jason sigh. Normally, he wouldn't care for the girl's comments, but he didn't have the energy to entertain them just yet.

"It's like that, only with my whole life."

There was so much pain coating every word — pain and frustration. Everything was just out of reach, so close yet so far, torturing him with hope and then shifting away before he could find the answers. Annais wasn't sure what she would do if she couldn't remember her loved ones; Melanie, Hea, even Ezra. Seeing their faces and knowing they meant something but having no explanation would be awful. She reached out without thinking, squeezing his hand once before letting go. He smiled, staring down at his palm for a moment, curling his fingers around the air.

"That photo in your pocket," said Piper. She'd noticed the way Jason looked at Annais but she didn't want to think about it then. Instead, she mentioned the first thing she could think of. "Is that someone from your past?"

Jason frowned, pulling back at the question. Annais couldn't tell if he was upset by its intrusive nature or if he just hadn't expected it, but Piper was quick to apologise anyway.

"No, it's okay," he sighed, glancing at the Min girls nervously. "Her name's Thalia. She's my sister."

Ezra's breath hitched. "Thalia?"

Annais wasn't sure how the girl hadn't figured it out sooner, especially since she claimed to be so observant. It was obvious, to her at least, from the moment that Jason's last name was revealed. She hadn't known how to bring it up until now, if it was even her place to ask him... "I figured she would be when we heard your last name's Grace. It's not exactly common for two children of the same Godly parent to have the same surname."

"I don't remember any details, I'm not even sure how I know—"

"You just do," Annais finished for him, smiling when he nodded in relief. "That's something, at least. You might not know everything, but when this is over, I can take you to Thalia if you want."

Jason's smile stretched from ear-to-ear. "I'd like that."

They stared at each other for a beat of silence, Jason with his megawatt smile and Annais with an unusual fluttering sensation coiling in her stomach. She didn't get that feeling often but Jason seemed to bring it out of her almost effortlessly. She didn't understand it, but Piper did.

"Annabeth told me she became a Hunter of Artemis, right?" she prompted.

"I get the feeling I'm supposed to find her," said Jason. "Hera left me that memory for a reason, it's got something to do with this quest. But... I also have the feeling it could be dangerous. I'm not sure I want to find out the truth. Is that crazy?"

"No," Ezra sighed. "But there's nothing safe about this quest, Grace. Sometimes, you have to do things even if they get you into trouble."

Annais scowled, feeling weird about the way Ezra worded that. Sometimes, you have to do things even if they get you into trouble. Even if they hurt you or the people around you. Ezra's face was blank, and yet it spoke a thousand words to those who knew her best.

"Guys," Piper murmured, her voice low and unsteady. "Speaking of the truth, I need to tell you something. Something about my dad..."

Annais frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

She didn't get the chance to respond. Below them, metal clashed against metal in a sudden screech, like a door slamming shut or swords colliding. The sound echoed, and then silence. Ezra was up on her feet in an instant, swaying from the rush of blood through her body but not hesitating to reach for her dagger. Annais followed, her sword raised, waitting for the darkness to part and reveal something. Anything.

"What was that?" Piper breathed out, eyes wide.

Jason joined Annais, peering over the railing just a few feet away. "Leo? Mel?"

There was no answer. The silence seemed deafening now as Jason backed away from the edge, forcing Annais along with him until the two were crouching on either side of Piper's shaking frame.

"I don't like this."

"Neither do I," Annais agreed with him. "It's too quiet."

Silence again as they listened. Then, a screech came from somewhere downstairs. It almost sounded like a scream.

"Should we go look?"

Piper nodded frantically. "They could be in trouble. You have to check!"

"We can't leave you alone," Jason protested, though he also didn't look pleased at the thought of leaving Leo and Mel defenceless.

"I'll be fine," she insisted, drawing her dagger — which Annais had learned was Katoptris — in a weak attempt to seem confident. "Anyone gets close, I'll skewer them."

Annais and Jason hesitated. A sensation like bugs crawling across her skin had her shuddering and stepping closer to the blonde boy. She despised feeling so exposed.

"Fine, but Ezra can stay with you."

"What?" the girl in question exclaimed. "Not this again."

"Yes, this again, and don't even try to ignore me this time," Annais snapped. "We need to split up, and I'm not leaving Jason."

There was an odd moment where Annais' voice cracked and Ezra arched her eyebrows with a smug smirk. Even Jason seemed confused at how persistent she was being, but Annais refused to meet his eyes as she turned towards the metal staircase. Out of everyone present, it was strange to realise that he was the only one she trusted to watch her back.

"If we're not back in five minutes, Piper—"

"Panic?"

"Oh, please," Ezra scoffed, dropping down beside the girl despite clearly not wanting to. "I'll kill anyone before they even get up the stairs."

Annais didn't doubt it for a second. Still, she hesitated one last time, watching as Ezra found a broken bit of stone to sharpen the edge of her dagger with, all the while Piper sipped from her canteen. Once she was sure the stubborn girl would stick to her word, she followed Jason. He'd set off downstairs not long after Ezra gave in, his sword at his side, knuckles white from their grip on the handle. It was so quiet that Annais could hear his faint pants as he breathed in and out. She reached for his arm as she drew near, and the brush of her palm against his skin scared the wits out of him.

"For the love of Jupiter!" he hissed, making her chuckle softly. "Did you have to scare me like that?"

Sobering quickly, Annais whispered an apology, and the two focused again on scanning the darkness. "You see anything?"

He shook his head, a single piece of hair falling before his eyes from the movement. The corner of Annais' mouth quirked up as he turned around to look at her, not even noticing the offending strand. It was cute, kind of — that is, if Annais thought of Jason in that way. Which she didn't. This was objectively speaking, of course.

"Nothing. Maybe it wasn't anything. Just a machine, or Leo and Mel messing around."

"I don't know," she said. "I have a bad feeling we've walked right into a trap."

Jason didn't know what to say to that. With a frown and a furtive glance around them, he placed a hand on her lower back and ushered her further away from the stairs, the red eye staring daggers at them. Annais couldn't help turning back to it, again and again, watching it like she was waiting for something to happen. Her head felt foggy, kind of how Jason had described earlier. The answer was on the tip of her tongue, and yet she just couldn't find the words to explain everything that was wrong with the eye.

"Jason," she whispered as muffled sounds picked up below them. "Jason, I really think we should leave." Silence. Frowning, Annais turned away from the wall, her breath hitching when she found the room to be empty. "Jason?"

"I'm at the stairs," he called back. There was another staircase across the room, this one leading to the floor below them where Leo and Mel should've been. "You can come down. It's all clear."

Annais paused, replaying his words with a tentative frown. Something wasn't right. He sounded... cold, not like the Jason she had gotten used to with his soft eyes and voice like warm honey. This Jason sounded angry, distant, like not even Annais could bring a smile to his face. She wasn't an idiot, something was wrong, and yet she followed him anyway.

What a mistake that was.

The stairs — now wooden instead of metal — creaked and groaned underneath her boots. She took them two at a time, the darkness stretching for miles with Jason nowhere in sight. "Jason?"

"I'm right here," he laughed. "Turn around."

One word — no, two.

The red eye finally made sense when Annais spun around and met the end of a bat swinging at her head, her vision going black from the pain resonating through her skull.

Fucking cyclopes.