Olympia : The Game

Chapter 11

Percy woke up to a beam of sunlight burning against his face. Percy groaned as he got up. He was in the Rebellion HQ, where he decided to spend the night. Thalia arrived last night unannounced, saying Nico invited her. Percy just shrugged at it.

After getting ready, he went outside of the room to see Nico and Piper arguing at the lobby. "–no idea what he's like." Piper said as Percy went closer towards them. "Even if that was the right location, how do you know it's not an ambush? Or a fake location? Or a setup to get you framed?

"I'm telling you, this is our only chance." Nico argued. "We haven't had a solid lead like this. Plus, Silena tracked him down. Name one person who is better at this stuff other than Silena."

Piper was silent for a while before Percy cleared his throat. "Morning,"

"Morning," Piper smiled. "Aren't you up early?" Percy noticed that Nico was glaring at him.

"I'm gonna have breakfast," Nico grumbled. "See you later." Then he walked away towards the cafeteria.

Piper sighed. "Sorry about that. He's just . . ."

"Mad at me." Percy finished. "Look, sorry about last night. I was being kind of a huge dick." Percy said at Piper, but she just smiled.

"I understand. Beckendorf as well." Piper said.

He just smiled gratefully. "So, what were you guys talking about?"

Piper scratched the back of her head. "Silena, our tech gal, has discovered what can possibly be the Hacker's true location."

"Then, what are we waiting for? We should go there now."

"Believe me, I would love to." Piper muttered. "But it's too dangerous. We don't know if it's a setup. We don't know if we'll get ambushed. We don't even know if the location's real."

"Can't we just bait him out?" Percy said. "Offer me as bait and when he gets here, catch him."

"There's no way."

Percy gritted his teeth. "You can't stop me from doing this."

"No, I mean, there's no way to actually catch him if he arrives there." Piper explained.

"What do you mean?"

"There's a reason why we call him 'the Hacker'." She said. "He hacks into the Iris devices to  project himself into your vision, the same way a World Boss is projected by Olympia. In other words, he can hurt you through the game and what not, but you can't hurt him. When you saw him back at the skate park, that was Olympia projecting him through your Iris Vision. He's not really there."

Percy was in disbelief. This was the adversary that they were dealing with? "There must be some way to get to him."

"If we can get through to how he's projecting himself, we may be able to track down where he is."

"So, how did Silena managed to track him down in the first place?"

"She reused the footage from your encounter with him and tried to track it back to it's original source." Piper said. "But the source always switched places. The one time the source stopped moving entirely was just now."

"So, are we going to go after it?"

"We? Maybe. You? No."

"Why?"

"You need to be in the showcase," Piper said. "Which happens to be tomorrow."

"But I want to help,"

"You can help," A voice said behind Percy from up the stairs. "By going to the showcase." Percy turned around and who he saw made his blood boil.