“Please don’t call Jason that,” Percy sputtered. He felt his cheeks warm, though it felt more like his face was on fire, rather than just red. The A.I. smirked, instead of saying anything. Of course. It was the kind of reaction that, frankly, Percy half-expected from an A.I. that had Jason’s name all over it.

Percy tried his best to ignore the shimmering holographic avatar of Scipio, but it was a bit difficult. He looked around, eyes adjusting to the dim light. He wondered where his clothes were—if he even had any at this point. The search, ultimately, proved to be fruitless. “Scipio,” said Percy, relenting with a sigh, “Where can I find clothes?”

There was a soft ding that filtered in through the speakers in the room, and a holographic projection outlined the doors of a closet that Percy felt stupid for missing. The doors swung open on their own, revealing an array of standard-issue jumpsuits—ones with Scipio’s emblem on the shoulder. “Thank you, Scipio,” said Percy, gingerly pushing himself off of the bed and onto the floor.

Annabeth’s hand rubbed the small of Percy’s back in slow circles that he supposed were meant to be comforting to him. However, they were less than effective. Percy couldn’t feel her touch, nor so much as the slightest wafting of cool air against his bare skin.

Percy still hadn’t pulled on the top half of the new jumpsuit, but it didn’t seem to matter all that much at the moment. Annabeth had come, just like he’d asked her to, except she had in none of the ways that mattered to him. At least at the moment.

Percy needed a shoulder to lean on, and as far as he was aware, it was impossible to lean on the shoulder of a holographic avatar—no matter how realistic it seemed to be. Underneath the glittering silvery-ness, at least.

The platitudes that Annabeth’s silvery avatar offered Percy did not comfort him in the slightest. His heart was still galloping at a mile a minute, and nothing he tried could get it to slow down. He felt slightly light-headed from all the emotional turbulence that was going on inside of him, and he was starting to think he was losing his mind.

Percy was fairly sure that Adonis’ interior was just too good to be true. It had to be too pretty to be physically possible. That was the only way that it made sense, not to mention the fact that the interior of the ship seemed a lot larger than it had any right to be, from the outside.

Annabeth kept trying to convince him that Adonis just looked smaller on the outside because of its strange geometry, but Percy wasn’t entirely sure he bought that explanation.

Whatever the case, Percy followed Annabeth’s avatar, openly gawking at the sleek design of the ship’s interior. The hallways were organic and easy on the eyes. There were very few harsh edges, and even the intersections between corridors made it seem like every hall gently curved into the other. Nothing about the ship was precise and clinical, unlike most other starships that served C-Vita Lyrae. Percy almost felt as though he were walking through a modern art installation instead of a starship.

Jason descended the ramp slowly, warily, just in case there were people waiting in ambush to shoot him the moment he left his ship. There wasn’t anyone. In fact, the hangar was always as it was, empty and deathly quiet.

Jason walked up to the airlock that connected his personal hangar to the transparent, reinforced dome that encircled his entire property. Jason watched, with building apprehension, as Tempest connected to the infrared security system that he had had implemented within the house and on the grounds.

“Sir,” said Tempest, the crude eyes projected on the visor of the robot blinking, “There seem to be no hostiles in the vicinity. Visual and infrared scans have exposed no signs of life on the grounds. However, I believe that Octavian is waiting for you in front of the main entrance. He seems to be in a rather compr—”

“So,” said Percy, as Annabeth flitted through game menus to get round two of their Endless Galaxy showdown under way, “when are you going to tell me about what you know of the cluster-fuck with Zeus and what it has to do with me?”

As much as Percy would have loved to play Endless Galaxy, a wonderful bullet hell game done in the style of the old classics, he did want to get to the bottom of his involvement in the Zeus debacle. Besides, Annabeth had totally destroyed him in the first round, anyway, and he was more than a little bit sour at that.

Endless Galaxy was the one video game that Percy had put any time and effort into which he had actually turned out pretty proficient in. Regardless, all those hours of figuring out and memorizing the patterns of every fucking boss in the damn game were for naught. Annabeth had had a good three quadrillion points more than he had at the end of their half-hour long session.