Rick Riordan
The Last Olympian - 05
widened. "Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles. Hestia said the same thing. Did you . . . did
you bathe in the River Styx?"
"Don't change the subject."
"Percy! Did you or not?"
"Um . . . maybe a little."
I told her the story about Hades and Nico, and how I'd defeated an army of the dead. I left
out the vision of her pulling me out of the river. I still didn't quite understand that part, and just
thinking about it made me embarrassed.
She shook her head in disbelief. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?"
"I had no choice," I said. "It's the only way I can stand up to Luke."
"You mean . . . di immortales, of course! That's why Luke didn't die. He went to the Styx and
. . . Oh no, Luke. What were you thinking?"
"So now you're worried about Luke again," I grumbled.
She stared at me like I'd just dropped from space. "What?"
"Forget it," I muttered. I wondered what Hermes had meant about Annabeth not saving Luke
when she'd had the chance. Clearly, she wasn't telling me something. But at the moment I wasn't in
the mood to ask. The last thing I wanted to hear about was more of her history with Luke.
"The point is he didn't die in the Styx," I said. "Neither did I. Now I have to face him. We have
to defend Olympus."
Annabeth was still studying my face, like she was trying to see differences since my swim in
the Styx. "I guess you're right. My mom mentioned—"
"Plan twenty-three."
She rummaged in her pack and pulled out Daedalus's laptop. The blue Delta symbol glowed
on the top when she booted it up. She opened a few files and started to read.
"Here it is," she said. "Gods, we have a lot of work to do."
"One of Daedalus's inventions?"
"A lot of inventions . . . dangerous ones. If my mother wants me to use this plan, she must
think things are very bad." She looked at me. "What about her message to you: 'Remember the
rivers'? What does that mean?"
I shook my head. As usual, I had no clue what the gods were telling me. Which rivers was I
supposed to remember? The Styx? The Mississippi?
Just then the Stoll brothers ran in to the throne room.
"You need to see this," Connor said. "Now."
The blue lights in the sky had stopped, so at first I didn't understand what the problem was.
The other campers had gathered in a small park at the edge of the mountain. They were
clustered at the guardrail, looking down at Manhattan. The railing was lined with those tourist
binoculars, where you could deposit one golden drachma and see the city. Campers were using
every single one.
I looked down at the city. I could see almost everything from here—the East River and the
Hudson River carving the shape of Manhattan, the grid of streets, the lights of skyscrapers, the dark
stretch of Central Park in the north. Everything looked normal, but something was wrong. I felt it in
my bones before I realized what it was.
"I don't . . . hear anything," Annabeth said.
That was the problem.
Even from this height, I should've heard the noise of the city—millions of people bustling
around, thousands of cars and machines—the hum of a huge metropolis. You don't think about it
when you live in New York, but it's always there. Even in the dead of night, New York is never silent.
But it was now.
I felt like my best friend had suddenly dropped dead.
"What did they do?" My voice sounded tight and angry. "What did they do to my city?"
I pushed Michael Yew away from the binoculars and took a look.
In the streets below, traffic had stopped. Pedestrians were lying on the sidewalks, or curled
up in doorways. There was no sign of violence, no wrecks, nothing like that. It was as if all the
people in New York had simply decided to stop whatever they were doing and pass out.
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