created →jason grace

forty-two

{Lina}

LINA COULD FEEL THE NERVES rolling off Leo and her face scrunched as she glanced at him. He had just made them walk through the forest without a word or joke coming from the boy and now their group was crowding around a bunker, that had seemingly been there in the forest the entire time.

For a minute the group just stood outside before Leo turned back a nervous smile spread across his face. "Here we go."

Lina watched as his hand caught fire, she would never get over how amazing that was, and place his hand against the door. She had forgotten that not everyone in their group had known about Leo's ability as Nyssa and Jake both made noises of surprise.

And as the two of them sputtered questions at the boy, the stone doors swung open and everyone grew quiet. Lina could also only peer inside, her jaw dropping as her eyes tried to take everything in.

"Welcome to Bunker Nine," Leo's voice rang out confidently. "C'mon in."

Lina and the rest of the group stepped inside as they toured around the bunker. Lina could not tear her eyes from the sketches, plans, and machines scattered around the desks and walls, a feeling of dread welled in her stomach as her eyes skimmed over everything.

A jolt of pain went through her head and it felt like memories wanted to surface, she was so close to grabbing them each time but they always seemed out of reach.

"Guys, look at this!" Nyssa's shout broke through her thoughts.

She was standing at a table not too far from Lina, flipping through a sketchbook. They looked like diagrams, although Lina didn't know what they were for exactly.

"I've never seen anything like these," Nyssa continued. "There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus's workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all."

"Who built this place?" Jake asked. "And why?"

The pit in Lina's stomach grew as she moved taking a place beside Leo.

"It's a wartime command center," he spoke. "The camp was attacked once, wasn't it?"

"The Titan War?" Piper's head tilted as she asked.

"No, if we had this during the war...." Lina didn't finish her thought.

Nyssa shook her head, before she continued where Lina left off. "Besides, that map looks really old. The date..... does that say 1864?"

They all turned to Chiron.

The centaur's tail swished and Lina could see the pain in his eyes. "The camp has been attacked many times," he admitted. "That map is from the last Civil War."

Lina's eyes widened after Chiron spoke. She obviously had learned about the Civil War, but that map, and the way Chiron had spoken she couldn't help but freeze as her thoughts raced.

"Civil War..." Piper said. "You mean the American Civil War, like a hundred and fifty years ago?"

"Yes and no," Chiron said. "The two conflicts—mortal and demigod—mirrored each other as they usually do in Western history. Look at any civil war or revolution from the fall of Rome onward, and it marks a time when demigods also fought one another. But that Civil War was particularly horrible. For American mortals, it is still their bloodiest conflict of all time—worse than their casualties in the two World Wars. For demigods, it was equally devastating. Even back then, this valley was Camp Half-Blood. There was a horrible battle in these woods, even attacks on peace talks, with terrible losses on both sides."