Time and Earth: A Doctor Who and PJO Crossover (Bk 1)

Chapter 17: The Flesh

Chapter 17: The Flesh

Really, the only things needed for an Iris call was vapour and a drachma. I had the latter, and I figured there'd be a source of vapour somewhere on the TARDIS.

I'd been searching for a source since I'd boarded, and it was starting to look fruitless, until we'd visited the TARDIS pool one day. From there, it had been a matter of working out how to make a continuous stream of vapour, long enough to have a substantial conversation.

And alone in an eternal machine with the boy who hated my guts, there was no one else I wanted more than my friends. The Festus video wasn't going to cut it this time.

Urgency pounded in my steps, clenching my fists and making my tear ducts tremble. When I reached my room, I swapped my black shirt for my Camp Half Blood one, creased from my frequent tumbling in it. The homely rustle of its cotton on my skin was like drinking ambrosia.

For the first time in months, I tied on my clay bead necklace. Three beads was all I'd gotten for surviving, and it had seemed like a fair price until the Battle of New York, until that Tartarus dream.

I grabbed a handful of drachmas and my device, bolting towards the TARDIS pool.

Entering the place was like entering the heart of a wave. The ceiling was a deeper blue than the water, the latter a brighter blue than most highlighters, the former a dark shade with streaks of white to appear like a horribly painted sky. The walls were made of metal, curved to give the room a circular shape.

Admittedly, the place could've been better styled, but you took what you could get.

I skimmed around the thin edges of the pool, clutching my drachmas and utensils for dear sanity. Percy and Annabeth may have gone on several quests together, but I was sure there hadn't been this much arguing, even when they were twelve.

I knelt on the side of the pool.

Even now, in the presence of so much calming blue, my heart pounded with a brilliant scarlet glow. Ever fibre in me throbbed with anger.

I was ready to go home. I wanted regularity, security. And even though I'd never admit it, I wanted my friends more than anything.

Annabeth and her motherly scolding, Will and his jokes, Leo and his...I struggled to put a finger on exactly what I missed about him.

At the mere thought of the son of Hephaestus, my heart began to cool down, my breathing softened, as if he was standing beside me. Kick some alien butt for me, he'd said. Now, I wished his last words to me were a little more inspirational than that, but we took what we could get.

In the midst of my contemplation, my hands worked fast, doing jobs they'd learned so thoroughly over these nine months. Nine months of pure mental torture. My brain was built for far more natural, less defined things than machinery. I could watch and appreciate such work, but only because I knew I could never be as talented.

When it was done, I allowed the water from the pool to enter my contraption, and within a second a fan of water vapour erupted in front of me like a mirror. I twirled the drachma, as shiny and new as an unclaimed demigod, and threw it into the mist.

"Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me Will Solace in Camp Half-Blood."

I hoped that he was there, that he was alive. I had no idea how much time had passed on Earth, which Will that Iris would show me. I hadn't done a test run of this before, and I realised with cold clarity that the clashing of worlds might prove disastrous, or impossible.