SANITY; heroes of olympus

05.8

[act five; chapter eight     -     may we meet again]

Andy was not enjoying being swatted through the sky by Zeus, the king of the gods. Frankly, she would rather she never experience it again.

Her body ached and screamed, and her mind ravaged. She was gripping onto anything and everything that she could, finding herself braced against Percy, Frank, or Jason—they were all closest to her height or the same height as her, which meant she wouldn't topple over if she leaned against them (it happened one time when she leaned against Hazel).

The last they saw of Zeus, he was a hundred feet tall, holding the Argo II by its prow. He boomed, "HOLD ON!"

Then he tossed the ship up and spiked it overhand like a volleyball.

If Andy hadn't been strapped to the mast with one of Leo's twenty-point safety harnesses, she would have disintegrated or taken a trip in the sky. As it was, her stomach tried to stay behind in Greece and all the air was sucked out of her lungs.

The sky turned black. The ship rattled and creaked. The deck cracked like thin ice under her legs and, with a sonic boom, the Argo II hurtled out of the clouds.

When she opened her eyes again, Annabeth was there, her hands working at the buckles that kept her sturdy and tied to the mast. The blonde pulled her forward, an arm around Andy's waist.

They pushed through the hatch that led to the top deck just behind Hazel, Frank, and Eden, the others right behind them.

"Go!" Leo yelled. "Go, go, go!"

For once, Leo's tone was deadly serious.

They'd talked through their evacuation plan, but that slap across the world had made Andy's mind even more sluggish than it already was. Judging from the others' expressions, they weren't in much better shape.