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Michael’s body was the last to be found. Annabeth, Grover, and I had come down from Olympus, and the rest of the campers had started the long, hard process of getting ready to go back to camp. We couldn’t hope to begin repairing all the damage the battle had caused, not to mention the statues being off their pedestals and wandering around the city, but we did what we could.
After we had loaded up all of our equipment and weapons into the van for Argus to head back to camp with, I turned and surveyed the line of covered bodies on the ground. “Is that all of them?”
Will Solace shook his head. “There’s five we couldn’t recover, and one...” he trailed off and stared at the ground, like he could look into Hades if he just tried hard enough.
“Michael’s missing,” Kayla finished for him, her gaze boring into me.
Michael. I nodded, remembering the sunrise before yesterday when Michael shouted at me to break the bridge. I had, at the price of Michael’s life. “I’ll go find him.”
Annabeth reached for me with her unbandaged arm. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” This was a task I had to do truly alone.
The East River was cleaner than the last time I’d dived into it. I could see through the water to the mud at the bottom. I willed myself to sink until I was standing on the bottom, and then I stood and tried to sense Michael Yew.
I’d done a version of this lots of times before, helping various sea animals and creatures out of nets and traps. The difference was that they were always alive when I got there. Trying to find a dead body in the water was something I’d never done. I probably always could, but it wasn’t something I’d had to do before. People had died for the prophecy – died for me – but not like this.
I closed my eyes, recalling Michael’s last words to me. The bridge! It’s already weak! He hadn’t tried to run either, just held his bow and nodded encouragement at me. He’d sacrificed himself to cover my retreat.
A retreat I’d interrupted. The guilt felt worse than any of the bruises I’d received over the last three days. The Apollo cabin had already been pulling back when I arrived, and I’d insisted they push forward again. How many more yards had they had to run back over the bridge when Kronos arrived? Yards they had already taken and given up and then taken again? I groaned to myself. Annabeth would have told me it was stupid, Michael tried to tell me, and I ignored both of them because I wanted my glory. I’d wanted to fight and prove I could go toe-to-toe with anything the monsters could throw at me. I had been overconfident and arrogant and it had cost me.
What really killed me was my own arrogance. Achilles had tried to warn me, but I hadn’t listened, thinking I would never succumb to the same weaknesses as a three-thousand year old story. And I hadn’t, not really. I’d succumbed to my own weakness, my own fatal flaw. I’d thought that if I took on the curse then I could save everyone; not just my mother or Annabeth, but everyone. That’s why I’d pushed the Apollo kids towards their deaths, why I’d ruptured the bridge while Michael was still perched on its cables. That was why I had insisted they didn’t have to run away – because I had thought I could protect them all.
Except, I couldn’t. Not really. I might have been a kid of the Big Three, and have the curse of Achilles, but in the end people still died on my watch. I had wanted to burn down a world for my friends and save them all. My world. My future. I would watch everything about myself burn and crumble before I’d ever throw one of my friends away. That’s why I’d taken the prophecy onto my own shoulders instead of giving it to Nico. That’s why I’d agreed to swim in the Styx. That’s why I’d been so convinced I could destroy the monsters on the bridge and save everyone. And Michael had died anyway.
Standing on the mud at the bottom of the East River, I wanted to kick something, make myself hurt in some way that would compare to the pain I saw in Will and Kayla’s eyes. But not only was there nothing to kick, it probably wouldn’t hurt anyway since I was invulnerable. Instead, I choked down the acid in my throat and closed my eyes, reaching out with all my senses to try and find Michael.
If I couldn’t protect him on the bridge, I could at least try and bring him home to Camp Half-Blood and his siblings.
The fish and a few minor nature spirits were chattering around me, but I pushed past them. I had no idea what I was looking for – did a body sound like something? Feel like something in the water? Currents moved past me, and I tried to sense what they were moving around: rocks, hunks of metal, chunks of asphalt from the bridge.
There. Just beyond a large piece of concrete, pinned beneath the rebar, was something smaller and softer than the rock and metal. I willed the currents to carry me over as quickly as possible, quicker than any mortal swimmer.
I stopped just under the Williamsburg Bridge when I saw blond hair waving in the water. There, exactly where I’d thought, was Michael. He was trapped under a massive piece of the bridge that had probably crushed him.
“Why didn’t you run?” I muttered, words lost in the water. He hadn’t even tried to get away. Then I remembered, his ownerless, arrowless bow lying on the bridge. I felt cold, colder than the river water coursing past me. “What did you see that I didn’t?” Beneath the concrete, his eyes were closed. Had he seen something, some attacker, while I was concentrating on ripping the metal and asphalt apart? Had he known he was going to die, like Zoe had the winter before last when she chose to accept the quest knowing Atlas would kill her?
I stood there for another moment, staring at Michael’s face and then I swallowed hard and braced myself to move the cement that had crushed his body. It had to weigh at least a ton, but I was able to move it off Michael easily. Underneath, most of the blood had been washed away, but I could still see his injuries.
I picked him up, holding him close. I could never make it up to his siblings, but the least I could do was bring his body home.
“Thanks Percy,” Will said, meeting my eyes over the row of shrouds.
“No, don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m the reason he’s – they’re all here.”
Kayla stepped up beside her brother, dressed all in black. “You’re the reason more of us aren’t laying there.” Her words were blunt, smacking into me like arrows in a target.
I didn’t respond, staring at the dead demigods. Later, we would celebrate our victory and their sacrifice, but right now all I felt was shame. Achilles had warned me. His curse had amplified my flaws, and Michael Yew had been the price.