Vita Mortis

Chapter 16

~PERSEUS~

"It just occurred to me that I should probably add you to my security system so if anything happens, you can access everything," I said to Nico as we walked to my cabin.

He nodded. "What was in all the luggage Azrael was carrying here?" he asked. "And what security system? This is a cabin. The doors don't even have locks."

"You'll see what was in the luggage in a second, and I may have updated the cabin when I renovated," I explained, opening the door to Cabin 3. Seraphina walked into the spacious living room, having changed from her dress into leggings and an oversized hoodie. I sighed, "Sera, what have I told you about stealing my hoodies?" She giggled, a hand hidden behind her back.

"Not to?" she answered.

"And what did you just do?"

"Steal your hoodie," she smiled again. "Look what I found!" She whipped her hidden hand out, showing me a bag of marshmallows. "I'm making s'mores!"

"Where'd Az go? I thought he would keep you from overeating sugar," I asked.

"Oh, he's downstairs, looking over his precious babies," Sera drawled teasingly, plucking a Marshmallow out of the bag and blowing on it. Fire came out of her mouth and toasted the marshmallow perfectly. She didn't even wait to cool before she popped it in her mouth and grinned again.

"Downstairs?" questioned Nico. He was still trying to comprehend the mood change from the toxic, battle-hardened Seraphina to this child blissfully enjoying marshmallows in front of him. Seph seemed to be hiding a smile.

"That's the renovation I was talking about, Nico. Follow me." I led Nico and Seph to the halfway point, where I turned to an empty wall and laid my hand on it. A fingerprint-scanning screen appeared and scanned my hand, opening a secret door. I opened the door, revealing a spiral of stairs. I led everyone down the stairs, revealing another entrance, this one with a retinal scan. I let the camera scan my eye, and the door unlocked. I opened the door to see Az bent over a table of guns, probably finding new ways to improve them. He'd already unpacked all the bags that he'd brought in as well as the bags I'd vapor traveled from the quinjet, all of the guns they'd brought over from the arsenal at home hung on the walls or lined up on tables. I led Nico to a corner with a huge table covered in computers and other high-tech stuff. I opened a drawer, revealing another fingerprint-scanning device, and added his fingerprint and retinal scan to the system.

"Now you can access this glorified basement whenever you want," I smiled. Seph looked around and squealed, running towards the aerial silks hanging from the ceiling in another corner. She quickly climbed up, making a hammock-like nest.

"Can I live here?" I heard her muffled voice from within the silks. Nico and I burst out laughing.

"Hey, Percy, can you check the scope on this thing? I think it's off," asked Az, looking up from his table and tossing me an SR-25 sniper rifle. I caught it and peered through the scope, aiming at the targets in the target range across the room, about 200 feet away.

"Yeah, it's off to the right by a few degrees," I confirmed, tossing it back to him. He caught it and immediately started making adjustments to the scope. I turned back to Nico. "So, what do you think about the basement?" He smiled, nodding.

"This is awesome. Wait- is that a cello? He pointed to my cello, sitting against the wall about 20 feet away. "You play?" He turned to me incredulously. I nodded.

"Well, seeing as we're going to be working together for this war and we're probably gonna have to pull all our allies together, whether they're tied to our assassin identities or our demigod identities, we're going to have to be transparent with each other," I proposed, changing the subject. Nico nodded.

"Speaking of allies," added Sera, appearing through the door, the bag of marshmallows nowhere to be seen, "Riley Bardot agreed to get as many people as she could on her side to help us in the war."

"Wait a minute," interrupted Seph from her aerial silk nest. Her head poked out from behind the cloth, 'Riley Bardot, as in Riley from the Black Syndicate?" I nodded.

"What's the Black Syndicate?" Asked Nico. Seph chuckled dryly.

"Only the most feared underground crime organization in the world. I'm surprised you never heard of it. Everyone with a background in illegal activity knows what it is, and most good criminals are allied with them. Hell, I've done a few jobs for them. But I'm surprised Percy's got one of the leaders as his contact," explained Seph. She raised an eyebrow, looking to me for an explanation.

"Well, I met her on a mission. We both had the same target and decided to help each other, and we became friends," I answered, keeping it as vague as possible. Nico didn't need to know that the mission took place in a bar or that Riley and I were not only sent to kill the target but to torture him for information and then kill him.

"Wait, I just realized I don't know your names," announced Sera. She looked at Seph and Nico expectedly.

"I'm Persephone di Angelo," Sera quirked an eyebrow at her last name. Seph continued, 'But you might know me as the original Winter Soldier."

"And I'm Nico di Angelo," added Nico. Az's head snapped up, and Sera stared with huge eyes. He noticed their shock. "What?"

"You're Nico di Angelo? As in Agent Shadow?" asked Az. Nico nodded. Sera smirked at her brother.

"Seems someone owes me twenty drachma," she grinned. Az groaned, fishing the money out of his pocket and handing it to her.

"You guys bet on me?" asked Nico. "What were the terms?"

Sera ignored him, rubbing her win in Az's face, "See? I told you he was hotter than Logan!"

"Wait, what?" Nico stuttered for an answer. His face turned firetruck-red. Seph burst out laughing from her nest, climbing out of the silks and dropping the 30 feet to the floor gracefully. "Who's Logan?" I blushed.

"Do you want to answer that question?" Az's eyes rolled to me with a smile. He turned back to his beloved weapons. Nico stared at me.

"W-well, um. Logan's my... ex," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. Nico gaped at me. Seph sniffed the air and walked away, finding the mini-bar and pulling out a vodka. Taking a swig, she spoke.

"What's his last name?" she took another swig and added, "This is good vodka."

I took a deep breath, preparing myself for their reactions. "Stone. Logan Stone," I answered. Nico gaped even more, and Seph stopped drinking from the bottle of vodka, staring at me. Sera snickered at my predicament, and Az, bless his mature soul, shook his head and continued working.

"You... dated a mafia boss?" Nico asked.

"Well, at the time, he was the mafia prince, not the boss," I added. "But yeah, I dated him.""

"Why'd you break up?" asked Seph, walking back over with her newly acquired vodka. "Did he not have enough money?" She joked.

"Nah, the two of us combined have way too much money, but we broke up because we realized we weren't dating because we genuinely loved each other. We were only together because we were each other's break from the world, and we helped each other cope. We basically just liked the idea of each other," I shrugged. "We ended up breaking up mutually and remaining friends, but it's been kind of awkward, and I haven't talked to him in two years."

"So... that entire time I had a crush on you when I was like, 12, and I didn't know what to do because you were straight and this entire time you weren't?" he asked, disbelief in his voice.

"I'm pansexual, so yeah. I'm a good actor. Nobody should be able to find any flaws in Camp Half-Blood's perfect little leader, Nico. There's a lot more to me that I've hidden because people look up to me, and I don't want 8-year-old demigods looking up to someone and finding out that he used to be a paid assassin." 

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1391 Words

How do you think the rest of camp will react when they find out Percy's pan? Like, we all know everyone there had a crush on him at some point.