The Harvest Trials

Chapter IV

Percy

I didn't sleep last night. I don't think anyone in our cell did. Leo was the only one that actually tried to sleep, but I'm pretty sure he was just faking.

I was staring at the wall, trying to rid my mind of the scene from last night. I kept seeing the little boy, a bullet between his eyes. His mother screaming. I saw him in the shadows on the wall, saw the blood in the stains on the hard floor.

It couldn't have been 5:30 in the morning when a dozen agents came to retrieve us. With two agents per person, they dragged us down hallway after hallway until we reached a huge wide open room, more like a cavern.

There were hundreds of demigods in there. Teenagers from the camps and families from New Rome. It was chaos. Nearly everyone was trying to get out, rushing the doors, attacking the remaining guards, whatever they could. We were the last group to enter the room.

An odd silence fell as the guards withdrew from the room and everyone looked our way. But I wasn't really paying attention to them. My eyes sought out a certain blonde. Then I saw her there, already running towards me and my cell mates, a few other familiar faces trailing her.

Annabeth ran to me, wrapping me in a hug when she got to me. Her left hand was wrapped in a thick white cloth and I was reminded of the interrogation. Frank, Hazel, and Reyna were with her and I watched as Jason and Nico approached from the opposite direction.

"How's everyone doing?" I asked worriedly. Frank still looked shellshocked. "What even happened? What are we doing here? How-how did they find us?"

I opened my mouth to confess but Annabeth interrupted. "More importantly, what do they want with us?"

I turned around and noticed that Leo was straining to look over heads, scanning the whole area. "Has anyone seen Callie?" He asked, worry seeping into his voice. We all shook our heads while Jason got a thoughtful look on his face.

He held up a hand and then dashed back into the crowds. We lost sight of him immediately. "Jase!" Piper yelled, but he was already gone.

Lou Ellen bit her fingernails nervously. "This shit is messed up," she muttered.

Jason returned five minutes later with Calypso and Rachel in tow.

I was having kind of an out of body experience. I was there with my friends and we were trying to figure things out, but I wasn't there.

It was like my conscience was floating around the cavernous room. Sounds buffeted me from all sides. Screaming, crying, shrieking. Parents trying to find there kids, half-bloods trying to find their friends. All of them trying to make sense of their new reality. All of them displaced and disturbed and harassed, their worlds turned upside down, in a matter of days.

All of that was my fault. If I'd just been more careful in the wrecked city, or if I'd kept my mouth shut during the interrogation. If I'd done something to protect my people then maybe we wouldn't be here. Already there were deaths, and no doubt more to come.

Annabeth tugged on my arm. I blinked a couple times, trying to reorient myself. Hazel was looking at me with wide eyes, pleading with me. She'd asked me a question, I realized.

"Huh?" I asked. "Percy," she said, looking around in despair, "what do we do?"

A crackling sound came from the ceiling and laughter echoed from muffled speakers. It wasn't joyful laughter, no, not at all. It was the laughter of a madman. The laughter of James Everette.

"Well hello, everyone. Getting settled I see," he chuckled to himself, surveying the scene from some safe place through hidden cameras.

"I'm assuming you know why I've gathered you all."

He paused and the hundreds of us just stood silent, waiting, for there wasn't much we could do.

Finally, he sighed audibly, resigned to the fact that we didn't know and understand his evil plans. "The world is in a sorry state," he said. "A year ago, some mysterious natural disaster wiped out more than half of Earth's resources, the very resources us humans need to survive.

"Water. Plants. Animals. Electricity. And much more. Our current supply only dwindles, and the human population is dying by the thousands. We need to find a way to survive and we need to find it now. My organization is the only one to come up with a solution."

I was hanging on to every word, each one further convincing me that Everette was insane. Nevertheless, I needed to know why. Why he felt it necessary to invade and destroy everything we've ever known.

"I built an organization by the name of HARVEST. It stands for Human Administered Recovery Vitalizing Earth's Supply of the Taken. We had been following a few of you on the news, checking mysterious things with our knowledge on your kind. You see, we'd captured one of you in the past.

"He was an Apollo kid he claimed. Told us what you were. What your abilities were. But he died before he could tell us where to find you. At the time we didn't know about the leader one, the...Perseus. He might just be our most valuable asset."

A chill went through my spine when he said that. Anyone who knew where I was standing turned to look at me. I ignored their worried glances and continued my search for the speakers.

"We haven't yet figured out how, but we are working to harvest your natural abilities. The world depends on it. I want you to keep that in mind when the going gets tough. Everything we do here is for a reason. The world depends you."

I felt sick. He was going to harvest us? What kind of sick bastard would harvest people to get the resources they needed. There are other ways to survive.

"We will be testing the full extents of your powers today to see how valuable you are and how we can use you. Testing will begin shortly. This process will take some time, so make yourselves comfortable. Once finished with your session, you will be escorted to your new cell. That will be all."

My hands started to sweat and I wiped them on my jeans. The room started to spin and I couldn't see straight. My breathing quickened and I realized with a sick certainty that I was having a panic attack.

Wheezing now, Annabeth noticed. Tears sprouted in the corners of my eyes as Annabeth helped me sit down. Piper kneeled in front of me, Jason next to her, both looking on in concern.

"Breathe." Annabeth whispered, rubbing my back. "Breathe." Eventually I gathered my wits and just sat there with my head in my hands.

"Hey it's okay, we'll always protect you," Annabeth said. I shook my head. "It's my job to protect you, not the other way around."

"No," Annabeth argued, "We protect each other."

And thus testing began.