The Repeated History of the Heroes

The Truth

         "I don't wanna leave," Andy said, it was the last night of summer.

         Zoe rolled her eyes, leaning farther into his side, "I'm pretty sure your dad would have heart attack if you didn't go back to school."

        "He would die, right then and there."  He looked down at her, the camp fire reflecting beautifully in his amethyst eyes.  "You could always go to school?"

      She laughed, "Yeah, absolutely not.  That sounds so terrible."

      "But I would be there."  His arm was draped across her shoulder, she didn't respond- instead she reached up and laced her fingers in between his.  He sighed, his breath tickling her forehead.  The air was crisp, the smell of smoke would be coating her skin the next morning, but it didn't matter.  Nothing really mattered when she was with him.

       "Zoe," Issac snapped, "What are you doing?"

       She looked down, her marker was uncapped and hovering above the paper.  She crossed out the last two bullet points on their list, "Neither of those are options."

       "Okay, so we have one idea."

       "Mhmm," it was pitiful, "And not enough people to follow through with it."  She capped the marker, "It doesn't make any sense, I mean they have cells but not that many and they weren't that big."  She set it down, the noise vibrated through the room.  Mid July at Camp Half Blood was never this quiet, even with the door shut in the war council room.  "We'll need to get an update on our numbers, too."

       He nodded, "I did the math, we've been losing roughly one and a half campers a night.  So basically two, and if we don't act soon there will be less than fifteen of us by the thirtieth." 

     She ran a hand through her hair, "We're so fucked."

    "Don't say that,"

    "Paris isn't here, we have no blind optimism anymore."  She had a headache and she hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before.  They brainstormed until two in the morning, the only idea they had was full assault.  Only they had forty demigods left as of yesterday and she had no idea how many of them had disappeared last night.  If she would've known all of this would happen at the end of last summer maybe she would've spent more time preparing for the worst, instead she focused on Andy.  He was worth it.  Now he was gone.  It wasn't just him, during the winter several demigods had disappeared.  Their friends had stopped hearing from them, she'd assumed they'd joined the titan army.  Though some of the names shocked her, Olive, the head counselor for the Hephaestus cabin disappeared in the middle of the night.  She'd always thought Olive was loyal, it didn't add up.  Then as more and more campers started disappearing in the night without a single trace she had to admit it.  

    It had to be Kronos and he couldn't be recruiting them, that didn't make sense.  He was kidnapping them and she was going to have to go back to those gods forsaken tunnels and save her friends.  Issac shook his head at her, "She's been gone for less than a week."

    "Five days, that's basically a week."  Along with the disappearances Paris and Nathan were both gone.  Nathan was first, it wasn't even the second week of June.  She didn't think about it, it made her physically sick.  Then in the beginning of July Andy vanished too, she wasn't sure she'd processed it yet.  Paris was the one person keeping everyone sane and then she was gone too, their friends were getting picked off one by one.  A part of her wondered if she'd be next.  

    "She's tough," Issac said, more to himself than to her.

    "So was I," she mumbled, instinctively feeling the raised skin on her stomach.  She barely even felt her own fingers above the raised pink line, she dropped her hand to the ping pong table, running her fingers over the rubbery surface.  "I'm sure she's fine," she hoped Paris wasn't nearly as easy as she had been to take down.