***

"Do you know how to make holy water?"

Annabeth sent him a sharp look, daring him to say the punch line. They had been sitting in the cell way too long, and her Seaweed Brain was getting bored. He smirked mischeviously.

"You boil the hell out of it."

Annabeth groaned and threw a pillow over her ears. "I swear to gods Jackson, stop it with the jokes." If she had a quarter for every pun she had heard in the past five minutes... well, she'd have a lot of quarters.

"There's nothing better to do," he grumbled, flopping onto the white comforter of the bed. He picked at the Velcro of the wrist brace, wiggling his fingers. He was almost positive the fracture itself had healed already, but without nectar or ambrosia, the movement still sent an aching pain through his hand.

Annabeth watched him from the chair she sat at across the room. "Does it still hurt?" She nodded at his wrist.

Percy shrugged and rolled over so he was staring at the ceiling, throwing his good hand behind his head to prop it up. His girlfriend sighed at his stubbornness and squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying not to let her frustration build. Her mind wandered to all the summer homework she had to finish before senior year; not to mention the seventy thousand monuments and temples she still needed to design and overview for Olympus. All of which she couldn't do while trapped in a cell. Why she was thinking about this, while the biggest problem resting on their shoulders was being accused of terrorism and having their captors becoming increasingly suspicious of their lineage? Who knew. She obviously had her priorities set.

"Annabeth," Percy said sharply. She opened her eyes- which she didn't even realize she had closed- to see him giving her a concerned look.

His eyebrows popped up questioningly, with just a hint of panic in his eyes. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she responded a little too quickly.
That's when she realized he had probably thought she was having some kind of flashback- her stomach dropped when he started to get up from the bed.

"Percy, seriously. I was just freaking out about all the stuff I have to do when we get out of here," she gestured for him to sit back down.

His expression was doubtful, but he never got a chance to argue. Behind him, an Iris message materialized, the bright colors almost blinding in harsh contrast to their monochrome surroundings. Annabeth jumped up from her seat, holding her hand out to block the light before grinning when Chiron's hardworn face appeared.

Finally.

Jackson shifted on the bed so he could see their old mentor. While the familiar face was nice, a shot of anxiety ran through him. What about the cameras in the room? If there was anything he wanted to avoid, it was exposing camp. It was bad enough his reputation dragged Annabeth down with him everywhere they went (exhibit a: their situation right now). He didn't need the rest of his friends getting injured or captured because of him.

Relief flooded over the centaur's face. "Percy, Annabeth. It's good to see that you are well."

Percy smirked, momentarily forgetting his dilemma. "More like good to see that we're alive, right? It took you long enough to check in."

Chiron gave a pained smile. Indeed, the demigod was merely joking, but this fact still didn't prevent a jolt of guilt to shoot through him. "More or less. What has happened? Where are you?" He was mildly concerned that it looked like a hotel room. If he and Jackson's family had panicked because the two decided to go on a spontaneous rendezvous without telling anyone...

"A government jail cell." Annabeth responded flatly.

All of the thoughts in Chiron's heads dissipated. Questions fluttered around in his head, but Jackson cut him off before he had a chance to speak them.

"Don't worry though, it's pretty comfy. They've only shot me twice."

"What?" Chiron said tightly.

"I broke an airplane too!" Percy announced with an enthused grin, eyeing the security camera watching them. "And my wrist, so that's cool too." Annabeth smacked him in the arm, effectively shutting him up in order for her to take control over the narrative and slow their mentor's heart rate.

The blonde began to explain the situation before Percy poked her, pointing at the camera blinking continuously, perched in the top corner of the room. Her grey eyes narrowed in thought. On one hand, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents already knew everything she'd tell Chiron... although they definitely didn't want to alert them of a possible rescue party, or camp.

But there's no reward without a little risk.

"They call themselves S.H.I.E.L.D.," Annabeth turned back to face the shimmering mist screen, figuring the most the government team could configure was that they had a reason to be on guard. "This guy named Coulson is the director, apparently."

"Annabeth-" Percy protested, glancing nervously at the security camera. She shot him a sharp look, but he didn't back down. He glanced at the door anxiously. "The more we keep this up the more they're going to question it. If they see it-" 

"I know what I'm doing." Annabeth suppressed a roll of her eyes.

"I just don't think it's a good idea."

The rational part of her knew that she should consider his words, but the hit to her pride she just took ignited her anger like lighter fluid to a fire- and along with that, her stubbornness.

"They picked us up at the beach and drove us an hour or two out to some kind of cargo jet," she announced, glaring at Percy as she did so, challenging him to stop her. She was unsure where the sudden anger against him came from, but it blew up before she had a chance to evaluate it. Hopefully the fallout wouldn't be lethal. "I don't know where we are now, other than we're three or four hours out from there by jet. It's an underground base."

Percy's eyes flashed with some emotion she didn't recognize as his eyebrows furrowed together, the creases on his forehead becoming more defined. He looked betrayed. She whipped back to face Chiron to avoid it, who was nodding thoughtfully, pretending to not notice the painstakingly obvious tension in the room.

Chiron sighed. "S.H.I.E.L.D.?" he asked, his heart sinking as he did so. He had heard of them. Luckily, demigods typically have been able to stay under their radar for larger issues... but now. Gods.

As if they were summoned, the loud clank that signified the opening of the heavy metal door greeted the demigods. Chiron was barely given a chance to react before Percy sprung up and slashed a hand through the mist, nearly tripping and falling in the process. Daisy, accompanied by two other agents and a timid Lincoln in the back filed into the cell uniformly, but the messy haired teen refused to turn around. His chest clenched as he hopelessly watched the vapor slowly dissolve , until there was nothing left to stare at but the honeycombed white walls. He expected himself to be hit with anger, frustration at the least, but the feeling never came. He felt blank.

"What, so you guys have magic Skype now too?" Daisy quipped, one eyebrow raised. She looked between Jackson's back and the unreadable expression on his blonde girlfriend's face. She had barely gotten a glimpse of what had actually happened, just that they were talking to someone who obviously wasn't in the room with them at the moment. Unless there was another teleporting blind Inhuman that was evil...

Heck, it could even be the same one. Gordon. Did anyone ever really die in this world of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Coulson didn't, at the least. Not to mention that she should be too. Dead, that is.

"Alright, ignore that question," she rolled her eyes when neither gave an attempt to respond. She was a bit confused to the unwavering tension between the two in the room. Last time she saw them, they were more than happy to be together. Heck, they separated them twice, and twice there was mass chaos. Had more happened than what Coulson informed her of the elevator incident? The agent was also disappointed in the lack of Jackson's quick retorts. It wasn't often she has someone to banter with, and she had been looking forward to it. 

She shrugged it off as mere teenage angst and swallowed. "Anyone up for explaining why your DNA is only half-human?"

Percy took his time turning around, his face void of expression. His jaw clenched repeatedly; he glanced at his girlfriend for a second before returning to the unwavering focus on a spot on the wall behind Daisy- he made it quite obvious he wasn't willing to comment.  Annabeth's head bolted up however, and her reply came fast. She laughed, first, surprising the agents. They would've expected more of a panic. "So now you're accusing us of being alien, like you?"

Daisy smirked, nearly laughing at the confused expression that briefly crossed over Jackson's face. He had been unconscious during that short discussion. "Sorry to inform you, Annabeth, but it's not just an accusation when we have physical evidence -science -backing us up. And whatever makes up the other half of your DNA strand, according to Lincoln here, isn't inhuman." 

The curly blonde squinted in concentration. "Lincoln?" she questioned doubtfully,  scanning over the tall blonde standing uncomfortably behind the rest of the agents. His short, cropped haircut reminded her of Jason's, although his face had a much softer look to it than her Roman comrade. He offered her a pained smile, as if he were the one who was currently being interrogated by uppity agents inside of a jail cell and ignored by his own ally. 

It annoyed her. 

"Lincoln's a doctor. Let's just say he's..." Daisy paused to send Lincoln a knowing look before continuing, "experienced with working with inhuman. Which you are not. And he would know."

She opened her mouth to respond, but under the scrutinizing glares of the agents in front of her and the silence from Percy, she failed to think of an acceptable, believable comeback. Her mouth shut, and a surge of discomfort ran through her as she realized her pride had landed them into a situation they certainly didn't want to be in... again. She found herself looking at Percy for help.

He didn't move. In fact, it was almost frighting how still he was. With his significant and often annoying ADHD, he was always bouncing on the balls of his feet or at least tapping his fingers against his leg. Now... nothing. 

Annabeth must have really pissed him off.

Daisy continued to look at the demigods for a reaction, but both remained frozen where they were. 

"That's alright. You have about ten minutes to come up with a good story, because we're going on a quick walk. Agent Davidson and James here will escort you," Daisy nodded. The two agents in question strode forward, taking their places behind the two demigods.

Lincoln watched the interaction with a sort of morbid fascination. When he had been told that the suspected terrorists were only seventeen, he was surprised, but he supposed the true shock of the fact that they were just teens came from actually seeing them. It felt so... wrong. These kids were in high school. Seniors, probably. He remembered when he was a senior... sure, he was inhuman, but he still had a relatively normal childhood. His parents were kind of messed up, considering, but all he really had to worry about at that age was whether or not he was going to be able to get into med school after they handed him his diploma, not to mention finding a date to prom as the quiet nerd.

It was sad.

Annabeth shot daggers at the burly man who wrapped a hand around her bicep. "A walk where?" she growled, the venom behind her words elevating the volatility of the room.

Daisy tsked as she motioned for the demigod's escorts to follow her with their prisoners in tow. The unfamiliar blonde man standing next to her looked uncomfortable when she gestured for him to start walking. "Ah, see, you didn't answer my question. So I won't answer yours."

The half-blood rolled her eyes and unwillingly marched along with the group, wherever they were going.

///

After walking up several flights of stairs, to which she was grateful that they took time in doing without any additional questions, their group began to splinter off. Agent James and Daisy broke off with Percy when they reached the right floor.

"That's it?" Daisy questioned incredulously when neither of them made a move to protest the separation. "You're not even going to argue about us splitting you up?"

Annabeth refused to meet Percy's eyes, anger at him substituting her mortification at her lack of sense in refusing to end the Iris message when he suggested she should. She didn't want to come to terms with the fact that she'd been wrong: especially when that mistake could cost them the secrecy of the camp. 

Percy, however, seemed to have recovered from his mood earlier and bristled. From the agents' observations, however, he now seemed exhausted. His once glaringly sea green eyes were now dull, his lips drawn into a frown, much different from the snarky, confident teen they had seen earlier. "Where are you taking her?" he demanded, his voice surprisingly confident for the internal dread he was feeling, much unknown to any of the others. Guilt hit Annabeth like a bullet train, again. She was the one in the wrong, yet he still was fighting for her.

She was mortified. How could she have acted so childish? Percy wasn't her enemy: they were a team. She felt her shoulders slump, and developed a sudden interest in the floor tiling.

Daisy smiled, relieved to see at least some reaction out of her favorite captee.  "Lab," she announced. "We have some data we want to run through."

And so Annabeth went.  The lab was beautiful: it certainly rivaled that of any she'd seen. The funds and technology underlying every part of the room were incredible; she was surprised to see how quiet it was. Beeping of monitors and whirring of printers were really the only noises besides the shuffling of the occasional person walking by. She wondered what the Hephaestus kids would think of it; Leo surely would go nuts with the programming and machinery. She frowned at the thought of her friend as she followed Daisy past a plethora of weaponry lying haphazardly on a large wooden table pushed against a short wall, those not unlike the one May had used to shoot her boyfriend. Her mind snapped back to Percy. 

Worry coursed through her. She wished she had asked where they were taking Percy when she had the chance. He hadn't seemed the most stable when they led him away; granted that was mostly her fault, but the stress of the situation and the lack of sleep he suffered surely were factors as well. 

Guilt, sadness, worry. She was an emotional mess. 

Annabeth had only a few seconds to compose herself before the posse stopped in front of an unorganized setup. Data flashed across the screen in bright green, contrasting against the black background in typical hacker mode style; illustrated diagrams scrolled down the left side, while an error message in red trumped over the rest of the screen. A high-tech microscope lay to the side, with several slides stained red scattered around. Annabeth assumed that the images pictured had to be high-resolution depictions of her and Percy's blood. 

Delightful.

Bobbi, who had been sitting at the desk, sighed in relief when the group stopped by her. She leaned back in her chair and grimaced. "Thank god," she mumbled before squinting at Annabeth. "Annabeth, right?"

The curly blonde nodded, interested to see where this was going. She stood still as Daisy and Lincoln circled around Bobbi's position so that they were all facing her; she assumed it was an attempt to intimidate her. 

It was cute how they tried. 

"According to your grades, Annabeth, it seems you would have a pretty basic understanding of the cells, genomes, DNA, yes?" She didn't wait for an answer before continuing. "It's not difficult to understand, really. Pyrimidines pair up with purines and vice versa? Chromosomes? Cell structure?"

No, it wasn't. Not when she spurted off vocabulary a seventh grader would know. 

Daisy laughed at her annoyed expression.

It was then she launched into a full lecture on how the normal human DNA/cells should  look, before transitioning to Daisy's. She pulled up a file, comparing the two images of a scan of a random normal agent's biology before the other that looked distinctly different. The demigod raised an eyebrow in question, confused at her purpose.

"This is Daisy's," Bobbi explained. "Daisy, as you know, is inhuman."

"You know, you guys keep saying 'inhuman'," Annabeth snapped, "But I still don't know what the Hades- I mean, hell you mean." She winced at the slip-up.

The short-bob snorted, sharing a quick knowing look with Bobbi. "Allow me to enlighten you. My DNA? Half-normal person, like Bobbi or Agent James, and half alien."

"Half-alien." the half-blood dead panned. 

"Ever heard of Norse mythology? Or Thor? Have you been living on this earth?" Daisy asked. "This really shouldn't be that new. Blue people came down, new race, powered people."

Um, it certainly was new. Blue people? What the Hades was that supposed to mean?

"Which is why we assumed that you and Percy must have been inhuman," Agent Morse went on to explain. She pointed out the distinct differences between human and inhuman DNA and cells on the screen, which were clear. They fascinated Annabeth as a student, but scared her at the same time. This wasn't going in the direction that she hoped.

"Now here's where we run into a problem," Bobbi articulated, clicking her tongue as she slid the two images onto a different monitor to make room for a live image of the sample currently under the microscope she had set up. "All of the research that we've done on inhumans in the past year has made us decently experienced in the nature of identifying one by their biology. And if you look here, at your your blood, it looks nothing like either of the other two samples. So what we want to know, is why?"

Annabeth shifted on her feet as evryone's eyes bore into her. This was an uncomfortable topic that she had never had to bluff about before. She swallowed and shrugged. "We're special," was her elegant reply. 

Daisy tapped her fingers on the end of the desk and hummed. "Mack asked you some questions on the way back from the beach. One of them was about your mother? Can you repeat what you told him?"

Surely she was kidding? There was no way they suddenly arrived at this conclusion already.

"How am I supposed to remember? I don't even know who my mom is."

"Hint: you said she was a Greek goddess."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that was a joke. You guys understand the concept of jokes, right?" Adrenaline coursed through her veins. This was not happening. There was no way that they could assume something so grand from just a small change in DNA- mythology was supposed to be just mythology to these people: how might they have guessed to the right answer? 

Bobbi turned back around to face her monitor. "Let me show you something else, Annabeth," she said as she clicked around a database in search of a specific file. The tall agent finally found it, entering in a password before an image was displayed on the screen. She shifted it so that it sat next to her own data.

At first, Annabeth saw no tangible correlation between the two. But that was before Bobbi used the mouse to rotate the model so that- to her horror- it looked eerily similar to hers. 

She prayed it was Percy's.

"This is DNA we gathered from an Asgardian friend of ours during their visit on Earth."

"Asgardians?"

Agent James took the opportunity to speak. He had not been able to follow the scholarly conversation up to this point: he was just the body guard. His brown eyes lit up with excitement at something he recognized. "Thor, Loki, Odin: Norse gods. From Norse mythology." The other two agents glanced at him and suppressed laughter. 

"Norse mythology," Daisy repeated, a underlying tone of amusement in her words. "Meaning, Athena? Jackson's sword? Fitz did some detailed reports on Riptide, you know. Anaklusmos has a pretty interesting history in Greek mythology."

"Those are some pretty drastic conclusions."

"Monsters, gods, Hades, Hera. All of that terminology? You don't get that from just being a Greek enthusiast."

"We haven't-"

"Look at your boyfriend's complexion! He's obviously of Greek descent! And his scars? What are those from? Why did he heal so quickly from the I.C.E.R. wound?"

Annabeth was shell-shocked,speechless. Unconsciously, she had slowly begun to back away from the scene, sensing the group's growing impatience. She searched her head for any halfway decent rebuttals, but came up empty. Her mouth went dry at the mention of Percy's scarring; they must have seen the thick white marks when he switched shirts. The memories poked at her wavering resolve.

"Annabeth, come clean. You two are not human. You're something more."

A shiver ran through the teen, visible to the group. "Stop," Lincoln called out to Daisy, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. He didn't like the situation. Here they were, interrogating a teenager. Annabeth's strong posture and determined face were deceiving, but he'd seen it upon himself to know that fear still ran free behind the mask. 

"Daisy, can I talk to you?" he blurted out suddenly. In an uncharacteristically bold move, he grabbed her hand and led her towards the back of the lab, somewhere where the blonde girl wouldn't be able to hear. If he was going to be here as a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., he wanted to do something. But he most certainly was not going to help in the torturing and interrogation of high schoolers.

If they expected him to? He was leaving.

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