VIDEO GAMES! (p. jackson) (#1)

- ten

act i, chapter x
december 19, 2018
hoover dam, nevada—san francisco, ca

THALIA WAS NOT HANDLING THIS WELL.

"Tell me when it's over," she said, her eyes squeezed shut. The statues were holding onto them, so there was no way they would fall, but Thalia gripped the angel's arm like it was the only thing between life and death.

"Everything's fine," Rose promised.

"Are we super high?"

She looked down. Below them, a range of snowy mountains was zipping bye. Percy stretched out his leg and kicked snow off of one of the peaks.

"No," Percy said. "Not at all."

"We are in the Sierras!" Zoë yelled. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we will be in San Francisco in no time."

"Hey hey, Frisco!" said Rose's angel. "You, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the mechanics monument again! They know how to party!"

"Oh man," said the other angel, Chuck. "I am so there!"

"you guys have been to san francisco?" rose asked.

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" said her angel. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—"

"Hank!" said Chuck. "They're kids, man."

"Oh, right," Hank said. "My bad."

They sped up. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they were zipping over farmland and towns and highways.

Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoë had gotten out her bow and was firing at random billboards. Every time she spotted a Target department store, she would peg the stores sign with a few bullseyes.

Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole time. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying.

"You did good back there," Rose told her. "Zeus listened."

"Maybe," she said. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room? Percy said you guys were cornered."

She told Thalia about Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who had been able to see through the Mist.

"Some mortals are like that," Thalia said. "Nobody knows why."

"Well," rose said, "Rachel was annoying, but I'm glad I didn't vaporize her."

"Must be nice to be a regular mortal," Thalia said. She said it as if she'd given it a lot of thought.

"Where do you guys want to land?" Hank asked.

Rose looked down and said, "Holy shit."

She'd only been to San Francisco once, last summer when Annabeth had invited her over to help watch her stepbrothers while her dad and stepmom spent a month in Boston. It was one of the most beautiful cities Rose had ever seen: kind of like a smaller, cleaner Manhattan, if Manhattan was surrounded by green hills and fog. She could see a small city nestled in the Oakland Hills.

"There," Zoë said, pointing. "By the Embarcadero Building."

"Good thinking," Chuck said. "Hank and I can blend in with the pigeons."

They all stared at him.

"Kidding," he said. "Can't statues have a sense of humor?"

As it turned out, there wasn't much of a need to blend in. It was early morning and not many people were They they freaked out a homeless guy when they landed on the dock, who screamed when he saw the angels. He took off running, yelling something about metal aliens from Mars.