Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Maria Hill stopped outside of the interrogation room to compose herself. Interrogations were always her favorite part of the day, the satisfaction of solving the mystery or unlocking a new one was always something to revel in. But today, she had an especially interesting subject. Perseus Jackson. An interesting name, with an even more interesting story. A story that she had been tasked with finding the details of.
Calm and confident, Maria entered the room. Jackson was sitting with his back slumped, hands straining ever so slightly against the cuffs that held him to the table. His sea-green eyes darted around the room warily, and then to Maria, who he assessed with a single glance. His dark hair was messy and uncombed, and he was good looking in a California surfer guy sort of way. He was also young. Much younger than the people Maria was used to interrogating, but this wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened since she joined SHIELD.
“Hello Perseus.” She said. A simple sentence, with a thousand meanings hidden behind it.
“Yeah, Hi, it's Percy actually.” He answered quickly and defiantly, but there was something distracted about it, as if his mind was millions of miles away.
Maria took her seat across from the boy and focused her stare on him, hoping to make him squirm a little bit. He didn’t so much as blink. Just returned her stare, something between a smile and a smirk dancing on his lips.
Interesting. He wanted to play, and if that was the case, Maria was sure that she could win the game.
“All right, Percy. I’m just going to ask you a few questions, is that all right?
“You say it as if I have a choice.”
“It’s always good to at least try for politeness, but if that’s not how you want to do it then we’ll jump right in.” She kept her cool composure, but she was confused by this boy already, and he had hardly spoken two sentences. Even so, even the toughest eggs could be cracked. “So, I already know a few things about you. I know that you live with your mother, Sally Jackson, your step-father, Paul Blofis, and your little sister, Estelle Blofis-Jackson.”
“I thought you were going to ask questions.” He retorted, leaning casually on his elbows.
Maria continued on, unfazed, “What I don’t know, Percy, is who your father is. You see, this is quite rare, as I have my ways of getting such information. I don’t suppose you could tell me why I couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“Well I would say it’s because he isn’t too keen on being found.” He wasn’t lying, she could see it in his eyes, but he wasn’t telling the full truth either.
“Have you ever met him?”
“Yes.”
“When you were a baby?”
“Among other times.” Again with the half truths.
“Can you tell me about it?”
He smirked, “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. Trust me, uh… I don’t think I know your name.”
The baiting tactic. He was trying to control the questions, divert them away from himself. It wouldn’t work on Maria, she had trained for too long to be fooled. Besides, the father wasn’t the only thing she wanted to know.

Chapter Text

“You’re not in the position to be asking questions.” Maria said. This boy, Perseus Jackson, was proving to be more difficult than she had predicted, and she was eager to learn his secrets. “How about we come back to the topic of your father and start on something else, hmm?” She jotted down a few notes on her paper before flipping it over to the blank side.
“There’s more?” He was genuinely surprised, which meant his father must be the main point of interest, the only thing he had thought she wanted to know. She would have to circle back to that later.
“Of course there’s more, your file was an extremely interesting read.” And it was true. This boy had done more lawfully questionable things in his seventeen years than most people did in a lifetime.
For once the boy was silent, resigned to his fate it seemed.
“Let’s see… you have ADHD and dyslexia, is that right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” His brow was scrunched in annoyance.
“Nothing, nothing, I’m just establishing the basics.” She smirked, it was getting a little too easy to ruffle the kid’s feathers.
“You were kicked out of seven schools in seven years, that's got to be some kind of record.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I was trying really hard at that.” Sarcasm. He was covering something up.
“I see. And, when you were twelve you and your mother were in a car accident and were missing for a few weeks afterwards?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you were the prime suspect?”
A pause, he was thinking, choosing his words very carefully before he finally spoke, “Do you really think that I would try to kill my mom?” It sounded like he was daring Maria to say that she did.
“I’m just trying to see all sides of the story.”
“I was found to not be guilty.”
“Yes I know that too. You and two of your friends were kidnapped and taken all the way across the country. Must have been a very hard experience for you.”
“Yeah, scarred for life, I’ll never be the same.” The sarcasm was practically oozing at this point.
“You know, Percy, if you don’t cooperate we do have other, shall we say, less friendly ways of getting what we want.”
“You think I’m scared of you?” His face displayed that the very concept was almost laughable.
“Percy you do understand that we have some of your friends in our custody as well, don’t you?”
“Wha-what?” He visibly paled.
Maria smirked, now she was getting somewhere, “Yes, we have Annabeth Chase and a few others. She was kidnapped with you, wasn’t she?”
“I- yeah she was.”
“Another agent is interviewing her as we speak, and if your stories don’t match we’ll have a few problems. And, if you don’t cooperate we can always take it out on her.”
“She can hold her own.” He said it firmly, but it looked like he was waging a mental battle with himself.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Smirking, Maria jotted down a note to look into Jackson and Chase’s relationship later. “The thing is when you were twelve wasn’t the only time you disappeared. Quite recently actually, you vanished off of the face of the earth and then reappeared out of the blue eight months later.”
He winced, “That was, um, that wasn’t my fault.”
“Then who’s fault was it?”
He was silent, his hands fidgeting nervously.
“No answer? I’ll add it to the list. Now, I have one more question for today and would deeply appreciate it if you could answer clearly and honestly. Every summer for the last five years, your mother’s spending has decreased dramatically from what it was throughout the rest of the year, this indicates that you were not at home during the summer. Where were you?”
“Summer camp.” He answered quickly, with absolutely no hesitation.
“Where?” He hadn’t been lying, but still it seemed like such a common answer from such an uncommon boy to be the full truth.
“Long Island, New York.” He was telling the truth again, that showed that he thought he had nothing to lose.
One final question, if it didn’t get her anywhere then she’d leave and come back later, “What do you do at this summer camp?”
“Oh you know, summer camp things,” He said, nonchalantly, “We have a climbing wall, a bunch of different cabins, and every Friday we play capture the flag.” He grinned as if he were sharing a joke with someone invisible.
Was it possible that the summer camp was just a dead end? Maybe it was just normal, and she should be focusing on other things. Then again, maybe not. Either way, she had enough to work with that she could assemble a report to Fury and come back later to finish up.
Maria stood up, her chair scraping against the floor loudly as she did. Jackson looked up, surprised she was leaving so soon, but didn’t say anything.
Once she was out of the room, Maria allowed her composure to slip and smiled to herself. This was why interrogations were her favorite, questions always had answers, you just had to be clever enough to find them.

Chapter Text

Two days. That’s how long Annabeth had been stuck here. At least, it seemed that way. It was hard to tell in the little cell with no windows, and as far as she could tell meals were being delivered on completely random time tables.
She had tried escaping once and all it had gotten her was her spare dagger taken away. Now, she was completely weaponless and left with nothing but her greatest tool. Her mind. They couldn’t take that away, and so she spent the long hours analyzing, planning, and waiting for an opportunity to arise. A few times, she had tried reaching out to other demigods in her dreams, but she had never been any good at dream telepathy. Dreams were just too fluid, too incomprehensible.

She missed Percy and the others, and wondered if they were worried about her. She had been in San Francisco with her dad for Spring Break, far away from camp. The day she had been taken she was supposed to get together with Frank and Hazel for lunch, so that must have been when they noticed she was gone. Maybe they were out looking for her right now.

She was startled out of her thoughts when the door opened noisily. A woman in a skin tight black suit with a bird-like logo on it walked in. Annabeth raked her eyes over the woman with the observance of someone who had been trained to notice the finest of details. The woman had bright red hair with perfect curls that swayed when she moved. She appeared to be observing Annabeth in much the same way that Annabeth was observing her.

The red-head didn’t appear to be armed, and normally Annabeth wouldn’t have hesitated to take the opportunity to escape, but there was something about this woman that warned her that it wouldn’t be a very good idea. So, she stayed seated on the springy cot that served as a bed and waited for the woman to make the first move.

“Hello Miss Chase.” The red head spoke as if this was the most exciting thing she could imagine doing. “I’m Agent Romanoff. You and I are going to have a little chat.”

Annabeth stayed silent, if that was what Agent Romanoff wanted, then she was going to be very disappointed, because there was no way that Annabeth was going to say anything that even gave her even a hint about the half-blood community.

“Playing the silent game, are we? I think you’ll find out very quickly that it won't work out very well for you.”

Silence. Maybe Romanoff would give up and leave if she could just stay silent.

The agent sighed, “You know I have other ways to make you a bit more talkative.”

But would she actually resort to using other ways? Annabeth wasn’t even a little bit afraid of this woman, after everything she had been through this didn’t even make the top ten. But, if this organization had managed to kidnap her, then these people likely knew everything they could find out about her and her family, which meant they could easily capture them and use them to their advantage. As much as Annabeth disliked with step-mother and step-brothers, she didn’t want to see them hurt.
And so she said, “You can ask your question, but I can’t guarantee you an answer.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“A bit of both.”

“So you work for someone? Someone who won’t let you tell? Someone you're afraid of?”

“No, yes, and heck no.” Maybe she had been afraid of the gods once upon a time, but now she was pretty sure she could overthrow them if she wanted to. Not that she did, she wasn’t like- she winced on the inside, silently reprimanding herself for thinking about him. She didn’t need that old pain now, what she needed was to gain information and get out of here.

“So you don’t work for someone, and the people that you don’t work for won’t let you tell me?” Romanoff leaned against the cell wall like this was the most normal thing in the world for her.

“I said it once, I don’t think you need me to say it again.”

Romanoff raised her hands as if to surrender, “I was just clarifying,” her tone was annoyingly patronizing, “You don’t have to be quite so bitter about it.”

“I can be plenty bitter with you guys kidnapping me and stuffing me in this stupid cell for two days.”

“You ran away when you were seven?” Romanoff sounded almost bored, but her question effectively changed the subject.

“Yes.”
“You were seven, and you survived alone for let's see, it was five years until you came back home again?”

“No.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I wasn’t alone.” Even as she said it, Annabeth tried to block all the memories that were resurfacing. Standing in an alleyway, white fingers clenching a hammer, Luke gently handing her the knife. Thalia telling wild stories while the three of them sit around a blazing campfire eating marshmallows Luke had stolen from a nearby grocery store. Standing at the crest of Half-Blood Hill, Luke holding her tightly as Thalia ran into the hordes of monsters, and as if in slow motion, fell to the ground. In the throne room of Olympus, Luke regaining his mind, telling her he was sorry as she watches the life drain out of his eyes.

Annabeth scrunched her eyes closed, tried to clear her mind, to shake off the desperate weight of the painful memories.

Agent Romanoff watched her, and as if she sensed her deepest thoughts, said softly, “It’s always easier when you're not alone.” and then a bit louder, “I like you Chase, and I hope that next time you’ll be a bit more cooperative. For now, it's my lunch break and I will see you next time. Maybe a few more days stuck here will loosen your tongue. Bye.”

Annabeth watched as the agent exited the cell, closing it smoothly and firmly behind her. She wondered why she had been asked so few questions, it seemed like a waste of time. But maybe that was their strategy, learn a little bit over and over until it turned into something big.

For now, Annabeth would strategize, think up her next move. She was the underdog in this situation, but there would be a way out. There always was.

Chapter Text

-Two days earlier-

It was midday in San Francisco and the sun shone bright over the peaks of the hills. The fresh spring air was crisp and clear, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Hazel walked hand in hand with Frank, and she couldn’t have been happier.

The war was over, Greeks and Romans had united, and life was settling into something of a normal routine. It was Spring Break (not the legion had any breaks) and they were going to meet Annabeth for lunch at a cute little sandwich shop she had found.

San Francisco was a marvel to Hazel, she had grown up in the low, flat city of New Orleans, and the brief time she had spent in Alaska had been filled with mountainous terrain. But this city was a sea of rolling hills, the buildings and people rolling with it. Cars zoomed up and down as if on a roller coaster track. The buildings and streets were as colorful and diverse as the people who lived there.

When they made it to the sandwich shop, they grabbed a table, placed their orders, and settled down to wait for Annabeth to show up, as she was running a little late.

“So,” Frank said, a bit awkwardly, “What do you wanna’ talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Praetor Zhang.” He still wasn’t comfortable with his new title, and Hazel loved to tease him about it any chance she got.

“Oh, come on, Centurion Levesque!” They both laughed, even though they did this almost every day.

They talked like that for a long time, Hazel didn’t even know how long. Just going back and forth with the comfortable banter that close friends share.

About an hour had gone by when they realized that Annabeth hadn’t shown up yet. Neither of them had a phone, so they couldn’t text her to see where she was, so they waited for a little while longer. After another twenty or so minutes they had gotten really worried. Anything could have happened, and they wouldn’t have known.

So, they started walking to Annabeth’s dad’s house, hoping that she might be there.

They had just made it to Lombard Street when three people wearing all black started making their way towards the pair. On a normal day, this would have been a cause for worry, but on a day like today, with all the uncertainty, it was probably time to draw their weapons. Except for a slight problem. The only weapon they had with them was Hazel’s extra small imperial gold dagger, which she had shoved in her boot just in case.

She slowly reached down and grabbed the dagger from her boot. The people in black continued to advance, but they did so in a way that would only be obvious to an eye that had been trained in tactical advancing techniques. They were obviously trained professionals. Or monsters. Most likely both.

One of them stepped forward, something held in their outstretched hand. It was a gun. A dart gun, but still a gun. Hazel took a deep breath, and before they could fire she threw her dagger straight at them. For a moment, Hazel celebrated internally, she had never been great at throwing knives, but this one was flying perfectly, straight for the heart. And then her moment of elation ended. The knife had flown through the monster’s body. Which meant it wasn’t a monster, it was a mortal.

That was the last thought that went through her mind before the dart hit her, and her world faded to black.

-Present day-

“Almost got it…” Hazel gritted her teeth as she worked the plastic fork that had been brought with their last meal into the lock of her cell. After almost two days of being stuck here, the people that had captured them had finally decided that Hazel and Frank weren’t worth guarding 24/7, which meant that they could finally escape.

“You do know I could just transform, right?” Frank asked sheepishly, as if he didn’t want to contradict her.

“I know, but they probably have security cameras in here, and if they come back to check them later we need to appear like we’re just normal teens.”

“I think we’re way past that point, and what about the mist? Won’t that, I dunno, obscure their vision or whatever?”

“Honestly, I have no idea, but we don’t want to give them any more evidence against us.”

“And trying to escape will prove we’re innocent, how?”

Hazel sighed, he had a point. But, even so, they needed to get out. There was no way that Reyna hadn’t noticed they were missing by now, and the last thing they needed was the entire legion storming this place and giving away the secret of the demigod community.

With one last furious push of the plastic fork, the lock popped open.

“There.” Hazel rubbed her sore hands together, “We’re free.”

They spent the next half an hour exploring the long labyrinth of corridors. Hazel was surprised that they hadn’t ran into anybody yet, maybe no one knew that they had escaped, but that just seemed like wishful thinking.

After a while, they found themselves on a large balcony, looking down at three people talking just loud enough for them to hear.

One of them was a dark skinned man who looked to be in his fifties. An eyepatch covered his left eye. “Agent Hill, what is the overview of your assignment today?” He asked.

Agent Hill, a tall woman with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail said, “I interrogated Perseus Jackson, Sir.”

Hazel stifled a gasp, and saw Frank stiffen next to her.

“He was very uncooperative,” Agent Hill continued, “the only information I gained is that his father is a point of interest, and that he does have some sort of relationship with the girl Agent Romanoff interrogated.” She gestured toward the red haired woman next to her, presumably Agent Romanoff.

“All right then, uncooperative teens, what else is new?” Eyepatch sighed, “Your turn, Agent Romanoff.”

“I interrogated Annabeth Chase and got nothing. Absolutely nothing. The girl is good, like, professional good. She’s definitely been trained, but the question is where.”

That explained why Annabeth hadn’t shown up for lunch, she had been taken by these people as well.

The three started walking towards the staircase that led up to the balcony, causing Hazel and Frank to scramble through the nearest doorway to avoid being seen.

They spent a little longer exploring, trying to find Percy and Annabeth, now that they knew they were here. They had ducked into a small room to avoid a passing agent, when Hazel turned around and had to stifle a scream.

Leo Valdez. He should have been dead, but there he was, very clearly alive. Nico had told her how Leo’s death had felt different, and Hazel had agreed, but that still didn’t prepare her to see him sitting there.

“Hey guys,” He said, grinning impishly, “You miss me?”

Chapter Text

Leo was having an awesome day. It had started with him and Calypso, sitting in a café in Tokyo as he tried to figure out where the heck he could find celestial bronze and she marveled over the complexity of a coffee pot. It was about a month after the war with Gaea had ended, and they were reunited at last!

Now, cafes in Tokyo were cool and all, but what came next just about blew the top off the awesome scale.

Leo was kidnapped by a government agency. Now, this might not seem like a good thing, but it was really cool. It was almost exactly like a spy movie, complete with the black costumes, walkie-talkies, and really big guns.

They handcuffed him and put a bag over his head (I mean really people can’t you think of something a little less cliché?) and proceeded to take him to who knows where.

Eventually it was just him and his two little escorts (he was pretty sure they were interns) who were taking him to ‘solitary confinement’, which sounded kind of boring, so he took that as his cue to leave.

It took him under a minute to put both the interns out of commission (leaving them with some pretty nasty burns) and disable the whole place's security system through the nearest fire alarm, because he was that awesome.

From there, it just got better. He had the good luck to run into Hazel and Frank! (He would’ve preferred Piper and Jason, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.) They still didn’t know he was alive, and the looks on their faces were priceless when they saw him and he said,

“Hey guys, you miss me?”

Hazel was perfectly still, squinting her eyes as if to make sure he was real. Frank had on his best ‘wow I'm in shock face’ but his posture made it look like he was going to run over and either hug or strangle Leo.

It felt like ages had passed when Hazel blurted out, “I knew you weren't dead!”

“You did!?” Frank exclaimed.

Leo grinned, “It’s because of your death radar thing isn’t it?”

“Death radar thing?” she looked affronted.

Frank interjected before Leo could say anything back, “The cure worked then, didn’t it?”

“Well I certainly hope so, considering I'm standing here right now!”

“Did you find Calypso?” Hazel asked with a teasing smile.

“That is entirely off topic!” Frank seemed kind of exasperated as he said, “Right now we have bigger problems. Leo, do you know a way out of this place?”

“Nope! I was kinda’ hoping that you did. And yes, Hazel, I did find Calypso.” He said the last part with a smile, but internally winced thinking about how she would think he had abandoned her again.

“Well, I-” Hazel was cut off when the sound of footsteps echoed through the hallway. “Quick, hide!”

After that it was a mad dash to get behind one of the large boxes or under one of the tarps that littered the room’s floor. Frank just went and turned into a mouse. Completely unfair, in Leo’s opinion.

Of course, there was always a chance that whoever it was would just pass them by, but he wasn’t optimistic. And apparently, he shouldn’t have been, because a moment later a woman dressed in black entered the room. She had fiery red hair and the look on her face made Leo think she must have killed five men before breakfast. She glanced around the room, and Leo held his breath, trying not to make any sound.

He was crouching in a very uncomfortable position behind a box that had ‘explosives’ written on it in big, red letters. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a tarp move ever so slightly as Hazel shifted position. Frank the mouse was nowhere to be seen.

Red-head took another glance around the room, and Leo would almost swear on the Styx that she looked straight at him, but as she didn’t do anything, he must have been imagining things.

Red-head pulled a walkie-talkie off her belt and said into it, “Agent Romanoff to Agent Hill, over.”

A garbled response that Leo couldn’t quite make out issued from the speaker.

Agent Romanoff spoke into the device once again, “Please bring Subject ACF to room 212, over.”

She proceeded to sit down, crossing her legs and effectively blocking the doorway, as she cast a coy smile around the room. She definitely knew they were there, and she was probably baiting them, but Leo had no doubt that the three of them together could take down a single mortal.

Apparently, Hazel had had the same thought, because she charged out from under her tarp, clutching a broken board in her hands. Leo watched with anticipation, there was no way the agent could dodge, and a blow like that would send her unconscious for a few minutes at least, but as the board was coming down, Romanoff reached up with lightning fast reflexes, caught the board, and twisted.

Hazel’s wrist twisted with it, and an audible pop was heard as it came out of its socket.

Leo caught his breath, this lady was good, really good. It was time for him to join the fight, and the rules against showing mortals magic could go to Tartarus.

He stood up, and Romanoff switched her attention from binding Hazel, to her new threat. Leo grinned at her, and lit it up. Every bit of his body covered in white hot flames, (and trying really hard to not burn through his clothes) Leo advanced.

Romanoff’s eyes registered shock for about two seconds before hardening back into an emotionless mask. She reached down and grabbed the board from where Hazel lay, struggling against her bonds and in pain, on the ground.

Crap. Leo’s plan had been to shock her so much she didn’t even fight back, and he didn’t think he could do the same fancy move with the board that she had.

As these worries raced through his mind, a full sized mountain lion charged past him and knocked Agent Romanoff against the wall, where she slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Leo almost laughed with relief as Frank changed back into human form and went to free Hazel, who was still bound on the ground. Now, Leo wouldn’t have to find out what would’ve happened if he had tried to fight. He distinguished his fire.

Hazel sat up, wincing and trying not to look at her mangled wrist, and asked, “I don’t suppose either of you have any ambrosia?”

“Nope, sorry.” Leo said as Frank shook his head.

“Whatever. I’ll be fine.” Hazel responded, but she didn’t look fine, as her face was pale and sweaty.

But, it wasn’t Leo’s place to tell her that, especially considering the fact that he knew she had been through much worse. The girl had died and was still fighting, so he supposed she was strong enough to keep going with a dislocated wrist.

The three of them made their way into the hallway and had mere seconds to get their bearings before they registered a figure sprinting down the hall toward them.

Frank and Leo got into fighting stances, while Hazel did her best to look like she could knock the lights out of someone with her non-dominant hand.

The figure was a few yards away from them when they stumbled to a stop and exclaimed, “Frank, Hazel! You’re here too? Oh my gods… Leo?!”

It was Annabeth, her blonde hair dirty and tangled, she looked as if she hadn’t slept for a few days, and she had a bruise blooming along her collarbone, but other than that she looked fine. Well, a bit astonished at finding out that her dead friend was not quite so dead, but that was all. And it was then that it hit Leo, Subject ACF, Subject Annabeth Chase! But then what did the ‘F’ stand for? Fabulous, female, fantastic, fearsome? Probably female, but all of the above applied to Annabeth.

Annabeth grinned and said in one breath, “The cure worked, I’m so happy you’re alive, and how dare you not tell us your plan, but now’s not the time for reunions. I’ve got at least three agents on my tail, and we’ve got to move!” She sprinted off, not waiting for the others to follow.

When they did catch up to her, Leo asked, heaving for breath and still running, “Do you even know where you’re going?”

“Um… not really. Just look for any conveniently placed doors marked exit.”

Leo smiled, “Sounds like a plan.”

It wasn’t much, but he was used to that. All the adventures they had gone on had at least two things in common. One; they had no clue what they were doing, and two; they figured out the solution eventually. And Leo had every reason to believe that the pattern would hold true this time.

Chapter Text

When Natasha gained consciousness, the room was silent. She kept her eyes closed, her breath steady and even, trying to gain her bearings. Her whole body ached, and her head was pounding, but with the control that only someone with years of experience would have, she maintained the appearance of being asleep as she assessed her surroundings.

Even without opening her eyes, Natasha knew she was alone. Even without opening her eyes, Natasha knew that the room door was wide open, and that the prisoners had gotten away.

She knew this without a doubt, but how they had gotten away was a much more complicated question. She remembered the dark skinned girl, Hazel Levesque, attempting to attack, and being defeated easily. She remembered the Latino boy, Leo Valdez, approaching her, his body covered in flames. She remembered the heat from them, and their realistic quality that told her it was not an illusion. She remembered glimpsing a boy at the edge of her vision, and then a mountain lion bearing down on her. She remembered the impact and shooting pain of hitting the wall, and she remembered fighting for consciousness as her body betrayed her and the world slipped away.

These children were definitely some kind of enhanced. How else could they have all escaped, and how else could a couple of teens have beaten her in a fight? It was the only possible answer.

Natasha opened her eyes. The room was the same as it had been, but, as she had predicted, was devoid of people with the door wide open.

She eased herself off the ground, ignoring the various aches and pains riddling her body, and moved to look through the doorway. No one was in sight. She turned to the right, started walking down the hall at a quick clip, plucked her walky-talky off her belt, and held down the button that patched her through to Maria.

“Agent Romanoff to Agent Hill, over.” Maria had been supposed to bring Annabeth Chase to the room as leverage against the prisoners, but now that they were gone there was no need.

“Agent Hill here, please make it quick, over.” Maria’s voice crackled through the speaker, but even with the static, Natasha could tell she was out of breath.

“Chase is no longer needed, over.”

“Yeah, it’s a little late for that. Over.”

Natasha frowned, that didn’t sound good. “What’s going on on your end?” No need for the use of words like ‘over’ now, they both knew when the other was speaking.

“Chase got away from me. You said she had training in subterfuge and espionage, but she definitely has training in combat.”

“What sort of combat?”

“Mostly defensive, kind of reminiscent of Greek martial arts. Also, she stole my knife, and knows how to use it.”

Natasha cursed under her breath, “Well the ones I had pinned got away.”

“Which ones were those?”

“Valdez, Levesque, and Zhang. Just a warning, at least two of them are enhanced. Valdez is pyrokinetic, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure that Zhang’s a shape-shifter.”

For a moment, there was just static, then Maria’s voice came through again and said, “Hold on, I’m almost at your location.”

Even as she said it, Natasha could hear footsteps echoing down the corridor in front of her. In the next second, Maria appeared from around the corner, her dark ponytail messy, and a long cut trickling blood down her arm. A quick glance told Natasha that the cut wasn’t serious, but it was from a SHIELD issue knife, almost certainly the one that Chase had stolen.

Natasha took a few short, brisk steps forward as Maria slowed to a stop. Without waiting for her to catch her breath, Natasha said, “Do we know which prisoners are still contained?”

Maria took a sharp inhale of air before responding, “We can’t be certain because the whole alarm system is down, but I believe that Jackson, Grace, and McLean are still behind bars. Someone should probably check on that though.”

“I’ll do that. You go after the others, and be careful.”

“When am I not?” Maria smirked and raised her tranquilizer gun cockily before running off.

Natasha sighed and ran in the opposite direction.

McLean and Grace were closer than Jackson was, so that was where she would be going first. She didn’t know much about either of them, but she did know that McLean was the daughter of some famous actor (she wasn’t big on American pop culture). But, even if they seemed harmless, there was a chance that they were enhanced like the others, and if so, she needed to be cautious.

Natasha slowed to a stop at the end of the hallway that turned around a corner into McLean and Grace’s cell block. Swiftly and silently, she pulled out her tranquilizer gun and began to do a quick maintenance check, just to be sure nothing had been knocked out of place when she had hit the wall. Once she was sure that everything was in working order, Natasha rounded the corner and made herself visible to the two prisoners.

McLean was asleep on a little cot in the corner, her brown braids cascading over her face. Grace was sitting rigidly against the wall, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.

When Natasha walked in, he rose to his feet, his blue eyes sparking with defiance and strength as he stared her down and asked, “What do you want?”

“Nothing much,” Natasha answered, already preparing to turn on her heel and get to Jackson’s cell now that she knew these two were still here.

Grace stared at her a little longer, then went back to his position against the wall, acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Natasha turned and started in the direction of Jackson’s cell, but she only made it a few steps before she heard a feminine voice say, “Stop.”

And somehow, inexplicably, she did stop. Natasha Romanoff, who only took orders if they were in her best interest, stopped when a mere prisoner told her to.

“Turn around,” the voice said, its very essence rippling through Natasha in waves, and once again, she could not resist it.

She turned around, and saw who had spoken. McLean was awake, and sitting up on her cot with watchful eyes, eyes that kept changing color like a kaleidoscope. She was the one who had spoken, the one whose voice Natasha simply had to obey, even though she didn’t understand why.

“Unlock our door, please.” Everything in Natasha’s being fought against the order, but once again, she found herself doing exactly what McLean had said.

She moved to the wall on her left, typed in the lock override code, and watched helplessly as the two teens exited their cell. It was a strange feeling, being helpless. Not that Natasha had never been helpless before, but this was different. Her own body was betraying her, following the orders of the enemy. For the longest time, the only thing that Natasha could trust was herself, but now she couldn’t even do that.

“Stay there,” McLean looked unsure of herself, but her voice still held its power over Natasha, and so she stayed rooted where she stood.

The two teens had a hushed conversation that Natasha couldn’t quite make out, and then McLean turned back to her.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she sounded truly regretful, but when someone said something like that, the thing that followed was not likely to be good. And Natasha was right, because what followed was McLean saying, in an eerily powerful voice, “Knock yourself out.”

The force of the words hit Natasha like a baseball bat, and she found herself obeying. It took a single blow from her own, extremely skilled hand for her to find herself sinking into unconsciousness for the second time in the past thirty minutes.

Chapter Text

Agent Phil Coulson had seen a lot of things in his time working at SHIELD, many of them crazy and seemingly impossible, but seven supposedly enhanced teens taking down his top agents? That was new.

Maria Hill had radioed him and filled him in on the situation, and it was pretty bad. Two confirmed enhanced individuals were loose in the compound, along with at least two unconfirmed. On top of that, Natasha Romanoff wasn’t answering her radio, and the security system was still completely shut down.

Coulson didn’t know much more about enhancements then what he had learned while researching the super soldier serum, and SHIELD as whole still didn’t quite understand how they worked. Leading SHIELD biochemist, Jemma Simmons, had done some research on the science behind these ‘mutations’, but there wasn’t much for her to study, leaving her work unfinished, and SHIELD almost completely in the dark about these anomalies.

It was the uncertainty that worried Coulson, because for all he knew one of these kids could glance at him and he’d die as if he’d seen Medusa! And adding in the fact that these kids had beaten Agent Romanoff in a fight, and that he knew virtually nothing about them, it might actually be possible.

Although he was worried, Coulson still had a job to do, so he was on his way to make sure that Perseus Jackson was still locked up, and hopefully locate Romanoff while he was at it.

Unless he had escaped, Jackson would still be in the interrogation room from when Agent Hill had interrogated him earlier that day, so that was where Coulson was headed.

When he reached the hallway that housed the interrogation room, he saw something that made his blood run cold.

The door to the room, the strong, metal door that was meant to keep powerful beings at bay, looked like someone had taken a sword to it and cut it off its hinges as if it were made of butter.

Jackson had escaped, and he was most certainly a powerful enemy.

Coulson spun on his heel and practically ran to find someone, anyone who could get the security system running again. They had to find these kids and contain them, as he now saw just how extremely dangerous they were.

He had made it down three separate hallways when he heard the noise. A rhythmic, pounding, rushing noise. The noise that one would expect to see when looking at a waterfall, or the noise that preceded a great flood about to drown everything in its path.

Almost mechanically, Coulson turned and started running, but he was no match for the wall of water behind him. He was thrust up, up into its flow, thrashing and turning, trying to get a hold on something, anything, that could anchor him. But, in the end, the elements always won out, and his mind succumbed to the darkness of unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

Years after, the incident became known as the Great Teen Disaster of 2011. It was infamous at SHIELD, and as the years passed the rumors and exaggerations grew, until almost no one except those who had witnessed it knew the true story.

Some said that it had been an elaborate hit job, from an organization that trained teen super-soldiers. Others said that Director Fury and other higher level agents had made up the whole thing in order to cover up something much more dangerous. The truth however, was something that no one at SHIELD ever found out.

It was a puzzle that esteemed agents such as Natasha Romanoff, Maria Hill, and Phil Coulson only knew the bare minimum of facts about. They knew that seven teens had entered the SHIELD compound in order to be interrogated and investigated, and that all seven had escaped within three days of their capture. They knew that in their escape, these teens did not cause any lasting damage to SHIELD personnel, and no fatalities were suffered. They also knew that at least four of them were enhanced in some way, shape, or form.

SHIELD did attempt to go after them again, but didn’t make it very far. When they tried to access the files containing information about the teens (both digital and paper), they found that everything was gone, with notes left behind saying,

‘Sorry, but I’m pretty sure this is an invasion of my privacy -Supreme Commander of the Argo II, Leo.’

As for the teens, they made it back home with many interesting stories to tell. Hazel and Frank returned to Camp Jupiter (thankfully before Reyna led the entire legion on a worldwide manhunt for them), Percy, Annabeth, and Piper went back to their worried parents, Leo reunited with Calypso, and Jason went back to his school.

Just as the stories of their escape had warped and grown at SHIELD, they did the same at Camp Halfblood and Camp Jupiter, and it became something of a running joke. If Percy missed a day at camp one Summer, someone might ask him if he was kidnapped by some super secret spy, because no one was sure if it had actually happened, except for the seven of course.

A year after the incident, the Chitauri attacked New York and the Avengers gained the Greek demigod’s respect by defending it. This only renewed the rumors though, as Percy and Leo couldn’t help but brag about how they had defeated the now famous Black Widow. Although, it was truly Frank and Piper who had done it.

Three years after the incident, SHIELD fell to Hydra, and two years after that Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, disobeyed the Sokovia Accords, and was on the run from the law. These two events firmly abolished most of the rumors that had circulated throughout SHIELD, and those who were present for the incident had more pressing things to worry about.

Therefore, the secret of the seven teens who escaped from one of the most highly guarded government facilities in the world, was slowly forgotten. It continued to fade until it was only a myth, a story about the seven heroes of Olympus, to be told around a magically colored campfire, or on a long night shift guarding the legion’s barracks.