Death Girl || Leo Valdez (RTB)

WE BECOME KNOWN FUGITIVES

13. WE BECOME KNOWN FUGITIVES

"Great."

I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, etcetera.

The truth? My only though was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

"Typical." Artemis mumbled.

Or maybe that was just Summer. She clung to me tightly, and screamed as if she were going to die.

"When you're a child of Hades, and your afraid your two Uncles will kill you when you're in their domain, and landing on the ground isn't an option, tell me how you feel."

The river raced towards us at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath from my lungs. Steeples and skyscrapers and bridge tumbled in and out of my vision.

And then: Fla-boooom!

A whiteout of bubbles. Summer and I sank through the murk, sure that we were about to end up embedded in a hundred feet of mud and lost forever.

"Thank you for putting that thought in my head." Summer snapped.

But my impact with the water hadn't hurt. I was falling slowly now, bubbles trickling up through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A catfish the size of my stepfather lurched away into the gloom. Clouds of silt bags—swirled up all around me and Summer.

At this point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a pancake, nor hadn't Summer. I had not been barbecued. I couldn't even feel the Chimera poison boiling in my veins anymore. I was alive, which was good.

"That's good."

"What about Summer?"

Second realization: I wasn't wet. I mean, I could feel the coolness of the water. I could see where the fire on my clothes had been quenched. But when I touched my own shirt, it felt perfectly dry.

Third I realized, Summer was not breathing.

"Fan-fucking-tastic!"

Bubbles where coming out of her mouth, and it felt as if the current was trying to suck her away from me. I pulled her closer. I had to make sure she made it out of this water alive. Not only for my own selfish purposes, but so she could live the rest of her life. For Poseidon sake she was only eight!

"Awe you cared," Summer mumbled, a hint of disgust on her face.

I looked around at the garbage floating by and snatched an old cigarette lighter.

No way, I thought.

I flicked the lighter. It sparked. A tiny flame appeared, right there at the bottom of the Mississippi.

"That's actually really cool."

I grabbed a soggy hamburger wrapper out of the current and immediately the paper turned dry. I lit it with no problem. As soon as I let it go, the flames sputtered out. The wrapper turned back into a slime yeah. Weird.

But the strangest thought occurred to me only last: I was breathing. I was underwater, and I was breathing normally.

"Yay for you." Summer muttered.

I stood up, thigh-deep in mud. My legs felt shaky. My hands trembled, though I held Summer so she was out of the mud. I should've been dead. The fact that I wasn't seemed like......well, a miracle. I imagined a woman's voice, a voice that sounded a bit like my mother: Percy, what do you say?