Prisoners

THIRTEEN

"I'm not supposed to leave my cell," I reminded Percy as we jogged down the hall to Leo's hiding spot.

"Since when have you had a regard for rules?" he asked, flashing me a smile.

I rolled my eyes as we turned the corner and stopped in front of the -- laundromat?

Percy laughed at my expression. "Yeah, this is the only place that they don't have cameras, so Leo set up here to disable them in the first place, spy on the meeting with Dionysus, and review the surveillance of the murder to see who actually did it." He quickly stuck his thumb inside  a little scanner on the lock. A flash of light, then a beep, and the door opened with a click.

"Wow," I muttered as I glimpsed the back of an eighty-inch screen along with several laptops and speakers. Leo was sitting in front of the TV on an old couch, an X-Box controller in hand and an expression of either severe concentration or constipation on his face. I was about to congratulate him on his set-up when I heard the sounds of gunfire and grenades.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I said, coming around to look at the screen.

Leo was playing an intense game of Call of Duty.

Percy smirked. "Still haven't got past that part, have you?"

Leo grunted in reply. "I can't -- fucking -- rescue -- the fucking hostage!"

He ended his sentence with a round of gunfire that killed all enemies in the vicinity and shattered a few windows to boot.

"You're out of ammo," I pointed out.

"I know that," Leo snarled, not realizing who I was.

Percy walked over and turned off the X-Box, ignoring Leo's scream (yes, scream) of protest and indignation.

"I was almost to the next checkpoint! I hadn't saved it yet!"

"Leo, this is Annabeth. I don't know if you two have met?" Percy said jokingly.

Leo rubbed his eyes and looked up at me. "Oh, hey Annie. Nice of you to stop in."

"Have you gotten any work done?" Percy asked, exasperated.

"Well, I set this entire thing up, didn't I?" Leo answered, a forlorn expression on his face as he looked at the blank screen.

"Yeah, but did you actually blind the cameras and check the surveillance footage like I told you to?" Percy said, exasperated.

Leo looked insulted. "Of course I did. You'd have about fifty guards on you right now if I didn't."

Percy sighed. "Well, Annabeth could've used her knife on them, anyway."

I looked up at him. "First of all, I would be marked down for more murders that I actually did commit. Second of all, I don't even have my knife. So screw that."

Leo snorted. "All those death threats weren't serious, then?"

"I would never hurt my friends," I retorted.

"I'm your friend?" Percy asked hopefully.

"Well, as much as I hate to say it, Jackson, I guess you are." I looked around the room, ignoring Percy punching the air in victory. "So... you guys done this before or something? This is the real deal. I'm actually impressed."

"Two complements and counting. You're feeling nice today, aren't you, Annie?" Leo said, finally putting down the controller and sitting down in a ratty desk chair in front of a table of laptops and wires.

"So... that's where you've looped the feed?"

"Yeah. That's the actual surveillance" -- Leo pointed to the screen on the left that was filled with tiny squares, each of them a different picture -- "and that's the loop." He gestured to the other screen, tiny pictures of empty places.

"And these are the surveillance of last night?" I asked, pointing to a screen playing over and over the murder of Lacy. It still made me slightly sick to look at.

Leo nodded. "Some bastard shut down all the cameras except for this one, so you can't see any other angle."

"So you can't see her face," I said.

"Whoever set this up was smart," Leo said.

"And good with technology," Percy put in, settling down on the couch and putting his hands behind his head.

"I thought you guys left," I said, sitting down next to Percy. He looked pleased.

"Well, everyone else did," Leo said. "We, Jason, and the Stoll brothers stayed."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't known that they cared about us enough to stay. "Where are they, then?"

"Jason's trying to get Piper and Thalia, the Stolls are looking for Katie. And Miranda," he added, a small grin lighting up his face.

They must have known something that I didn't. I opened my mouth to ask another question when there was a muffled scream and a banging sound coming from outside the laundromat. Leo rushed to check who it was on the surveillance, and Percy and I scrambled behind the couch.

The door swung open, and Thalia and Piper fell in, gagged and bound. The writhed on the floor as Jason stepped over them.

"They wouldn't come," he explained. "I had to do something."

I rolled my eyes. "Nice one, Grace," I said sarcastically, bending down to look at Thalia. I untied her mouth and her hands and helped her up.

Thalia glared at Jason. "Brother or not, that was uncalled for, you piece of shit."

I turned to Piper, pulling the gag down around her neck and untying her hands. Piper blew her hair out of her face and gave Jason the dirtiest look I'd ever seen her make.

"What the fuck?!" Piper exclaimed, sitting up and glaring at Jason once again. "Are you trying to kidnap us or something?!"

"No, I just needed to bring you here," Jason said, looking a little scared. "But you weren't cooperating."

"Well, that's because you just dragged us out of our cells --"

"I didn't have breakfast," Thalia muttered.

"Exactly! Thalia's hungover and hasn't had breakfast. You should know better than to try to kidnap us then!"

Jason shrugged. "I didn't know that."

Piper sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "So what are we going to do now?"

Leo grinned. "Escape." Evidently his words did not have the dramatic effect he wanted them to. Piper, Thalia, and I rolled our eyes and Percy sighed.

"But we've escaped like a million times before," Thalia said. 

"That's not the point," Leo said. "I have to erase your names from the system, make sure that it thinks you guys never existed. Then I have to temporarily blind the cameras, you have to pack, and then we're all going through a secret exit I discovered today."

"The third washing machine," we girls muttered at the same time.

"You -- you know about that?" Leo asked, deflating slightly.

"We've known about it for about four years," I told him. Leo pouted like a spoiled child. I rolled my eyes and turned to the group.

"Alright. Leo, you get on your techie stuff, we'll go pack, and then we'll all meet back here. Deal?"

"What about the Stolls?" Percy asked.

Leo glanced at one of his laptops. "They're coming."

"Okay, let's go," Thalia said, heading for the door.

I looked back at Leo. "Those laptops are stolen, aren't they?"

"Would you feel better if I told you they weren't?" he said, grinning.

"Nah." I turned around and opened the door.

A/N: thanks for commenting; it really inspired me to update today.