Invisible ― Jason Grace

i. second date in hell

AS FAR AS SECOND DATES WENT, Jason was pretty sure there couldn't be anything worse than plunging into the deepest pits of the Underworld with your girlfriend of two days.

Then again, maybe he was just a tad biased.

He'd long since lost track of how long he and Camilla had been falling—hours? A day? It felt like forever.

They'd been holding hands ever since they dropped into the chasm. Now, he pulled Camilla close, hugging her tight as they tumbled through absolute darkness.

Wind whistled in Jason's ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. For what felt like the thousandth time, he tried to take control of the air around them, but it was as if this air refused to obey him.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this utterly useless. Here he was, a son of Jupiter who could fly, and he couldn't do anything to stop his and Camilla's plummet into Tartarus.

He still couldn't quite wrap his mind around what led them here. It had all happened so fast—one second, he was setting Piper down on the deck of the Argo II, the next, he heard Camilla screaming for the rest of the crew to hurry. The second he'd noticed the crumbling floor, he'd dove down to get her, but the floor had fallen apart too quickly to keep her from falling.

It was a miracle he'd caught her, but it seemed that was the only miracle they'd get.

He could feel Camilla's heart thundering in her chest, the beat so hard and frantic he could feel it in his own.

Ever since he'd gotten his memories back from Juno, ever since he'd remembered the infectious smile that had made him fall so hard in the first place, he'd dreamt of finally getting a chance to be with Camilla. He'd regretted being so afraid of telling her how he felt, he'd been pissed Juno had stolen him away from Camp Jupiter, away from her.

All he'd dreamed about while Leo and his siblings worked tirelessly on the ship was seeing Camilla again—finally getting to tell her how he felt, praying to all the love gods he could think of that she felt the same and he wasn't deluding himself with the hope.

He'd gotten his wish—he'd finally gotten up the nerve to kiss her, to ask her to be his girlfriend.

And three days later, they were falling into literal Hell together.

He wasn't sure even the gods could devise a fate so cruel and twisted.

He tried desperately to think of a plan to save them. He'd never been the best at strategy—back at Camp Jupiter, that had been Reyna's specialty, and on the Argo II, they had Annabeth to make the plans. But he needed something. He knew enough about physics to know that if they reached the bottom of the pit at terminal velocity... well, it would be pretty damn terminal.

He was considering the idea of trying to fashion some sort of parachute out of their shirts when something about their surroundings changed. The darkness took on a gray-red tinge. He realized he could see Camilla's curls as he hugged her. The whistling in his ears turned into more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with a smell like rotten eggs.

Suddenly, the chute they'd been falling through opened into a vast cavern. Maybe half a mile below them, Jason could vaguely see the bottom. For a moment, he was too stunned to even think properly. The entire island of Manhattan could have fit inside this cavern—and he couldn't even see all of it.

Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape—at least what he could see of it—was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To Jason's left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps leading deeper into the abyss.