NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

fifty five: the last frontier.

AFTER FINALLY LIVING her princess life ( Jason wasn't asleep, though, which was a shame ), Brooklyn was forcibly woken up, and she immediately turned to cough something out of her system. When she opened her eyes, though, her vision was mostly obscured by muck, which she gingerly tried to get out of her vision, but it didn't work that well, mostly because she couldn't move her hands all that much.

"You were down there so long!" Frank cried. Well, at least her ears still worked. "I didn't think — oh, gods, don't ever do something like that again!"

He wrapped Hazel in a bear hug.

"Can't — breathe," she choked out.

"Sorry!" Frank went back to toweling and fussing over them. Finally he got them to the side of the road, where they sat and shivered and spit up mud clods.

Brooklyn felt like she was in another world, scrubbing the mud off of her as Hazel explained about the muskeg, and the vision she'd seen while she was under. She told them about Gaea's offer of a fake life, and the goddess' claim that she'd captured her brother Nico.

Percy rubbed his shoulders. His lips were blue. "You — you saved us, Hazel. We'll figure out what happened to Nico, I promise."

"Yeah," Brooklyn admitted, though it was very hard for her to do so. "Thanks."

Hazel squinted at the sun, which was now high in the sky. "Does it seem like Gaea let us go too easily?"

Percy plucked a mud clod from Brooklyn's hair. She pouted at him, but she flicked some off of his hair as well. "Maybe she still wants us as pawns. Maybe she was just saying things to mess with your mind."

"She knew what to say," Hazel agreed. "She knew how to get to me."

Frank put his jacket around her shoulders. "This is a real life. You know that, right? We're not going to let you die again."

Brooklyn glanced at the rising sun and realized time was running out. She thought about Hylla, the Amazon Queen back in Seattle. Hylla would have dueled Otrera two nights in a row by now, assuming she had survived. She was counting on Brooklyn to release Death.

"We should get going." Hazel shakily stood up. "We're losing time."

Brooklyn gazed down the road, staggering to her feet. Her body was shivering from the cold, but she'd manage for now. "Any hotels or something where we could clean off? I mean . . . hotels that accept mud people? I fuckin' love hotels."

"Burning them down," Percy muttered.

"God, I would love to set something on fire," she wrapped her arms around herself. "But I think my hands are too shaky to. And, also, I don't want to stain my lighter with mud, so."

"I'm not sure," Hazel admitted, staring down at the town. "I might know a place we can freshen up," she then said.

* * *

They got into town, and Brooklyn stared longingly at the Seward Hotel, which was big, white, and two stories tall. She would've wanted the building to be taller, but it was her type of building. Sadly, Hazel vetoed them going there because she didn't want them to traipse into the lobby covered in mud, and they were all minors. Which was a complete shame.

Instead, they turned toward the shoreline. They walked up to an old warehouse leaning over the water on barnacle-encrusted piers. The roof sagged. The walls were perforated with holes like buckshot. The door was boarded-up, and a hand-painted sign read: ROOMS — STORAGE — AVAILABLE.

"Come on," Hazel said.

"Uh, you sure it's safe?" Frank asked.

Hazel found an open window and climbed inside. The rest of them followed. The room hadn't been used in a long time. Their feet kicked up dust that swirled in the buckshot beams of sunlight. Mouldering cardboard boxes were stacked along the walls. Their faded labels read: Greeting Cards, Assorted Seasonal. Why several hundred boxes of season's greetings had wound up crumbling to dust in a warehouse in Alaska, Brooklyn had no fucking clue.