Chapter Text
Breathe. Aim. Shoot.
Nico breathes. The float where his target is standing is still far away. He needs to make it to his position just in the nick of time, take his shot, and disappear before that float’s shadow has left the building. He hears Reyna counting in his ear, but he’s not really paying attention. It’s just instinct at this point.
“Oh, come on,” Reyna mutters, which catches Nico’s attention. “I thought we told Bryce to stay back.”
Nico spares a glance around the crowd that he’s in. It doesn’t really surprise Nico that he’s here, though—he’s never listened to their plans. Why start now?
He can’t see the Punisher anywhere (Nico has always found that alias a bit ridiculous, but he can’t really speak when considering his own alias. He should’ve had Reyna choose something for him). Hopefully he’ll stay out of the way. Hopefully he won’t mess up their plan.
It might be the only opportunity for them to get this close to the Olympian council. They can’t let it go to waste.
He makes his way out of the crowd, having been caught up in it as he tried to view the spectacle that the Olympians had planned. Now, he knows that was a mistake, seeing as he needs to get to the top of a building within two minutes.
He knows an alleyway that’s nearby, because even though there are plenty of shadows here, letting the crowd that’s full of Renegades and prodigies know that the Ghost King is present would only cause trouble. He’s nearly there when some blond guy—taller than him, wearing a familiar uniform with the stylized R on his chest—bumps into him.
“Sorry—” he immediately says, pausing his rush to look back at Nico. “—Hey, are you leaving?”
Nico wishes he could convey his annoyance, his frustration, and honestly his hatred of him—the Renegade uniform is all he needs to know.
But no. He just grimaces. A natural expression for someone who was just run into, and someone who may— “Need to find a bathroom.”
“Ah, sorry,” the blond says again, donning an easy smile. “Hey, have I met you before?”
Instinctually, Nico shakes his head. Not as Nico di Angelo, at least. Nico doesn’t doubt that he’s seen him on news reports as the Ghost King.
He takes a step back, wondering if this is going to be the thing to sabotage their plans for the past decade—no, Nico needs to get out of there. Now.
But at least the blond doesn’t seem to bother holding him hostage in conversation for any longer, because he just tilts his head, squinting at Nico as if trying to gauge why he seems to recognize him. Nevertheless, Nico only needs to take another step back and look awkward enough that the blond waves casually and turns back around.
He sprints to the alleyway as soon as he can, hoping that the urgency of an emergency bathroom break will make his rush unsuspicious enough. Right as he’s about to turn around the corner, he spares a glance backward, checking to see if the blond is watching him.
He isn’t. Instead, he’s lingering at the back of the crowd, looking up at one of the floats, and raising his hand just as a spotlight covers one of the council members and the crowd goes wild with cheers.
Huh. Light manipulation . Not the most useful power, but certainly showy enough for a parade—no wonder the Olympians would want to keep him around.
“Nico?” Reyna’s voice rings through his earpiece. Shit . Without another thought, or a response to Reyna, he pulls his mask over his face and falls into the shadow of the alleyway and reappears on his designated building. Annabeth had left to take down the security cameras earlier, just for safety, but there could never be too many precautions when protecting a secret identity.
The Ghost King is the only wild card that the Anarchists have.
Aside from the fact that the Renegades still think they’re dormant—biding their time in an old abandoned subway system, completely content in their failure as the rest of the city celebrates their “Day of Triumph” with pathetically cartoonish displays of their heroes defeating the villains .
As if.
He arrives on the building just in time. The gun is quickly pulled out of his jacket, lined up with precision—he aims.
The head of the council—the tyrant of Olympus city, in Nico’s opinion—stands on his float, proud and confident.
And, for Nico’s great fortune, vulnerable . The prodigy that’s known for being impenetrable, undefeatable, is simply standing on his platform out in the open. No armor. No guards. No defense, just a poorly designed replica of what a lightning bolt would look like in his hands were he able to actually hold them, and not just shoot them off in the direction of his enemies. Nico bets it’s made of cardboard and some metallic paint.
(It probably isn’t, actually, seeing as they have all the materials in the world in the Renegades’ headquarters, while Nico and Annabeth are left trying to make the most out of garbage, but it makes Nico just a bit happy to think that it is.)
“3…2…” Reyna’s voice comes through his earpiece, and Nico focuses again. He just needs to pull the trigger. Sure, killing Zeus won’t cause the entire downfall of the Renegades and the Olympian council, but it’d sure as hell be a nice start. Just one step closer—and on the day of their great celebration, nonetheless.
“One,” Nico whispers.
His hand shakes on the trigger, and Nico isn’t sure whether it’s because of rage or fear, but his eyes focus on the float—he just needs to shoot , goddamnit—
The float moves forward. He shoots. He flinches at the sound, falling back onto the cement of the rooftop and scrambling away from the edge.
The bullet lands in a brick on a building across the street.
-
“How did it go wrong?” Reyna sighs as she leans against the tunnel wall. Nico refuses to look at her.
Everything had gone into chaos after the missed shot—and not the good kind of chaos.
Sure enough, Bryce had arrived earlier, and decided that it was his own mission to remind everyone of the Anarchists—not that any of them really considered Bryce a real anarchist. He had been late to the game, too bloodthirsty, and, in Nico’s humble opinion, definitely had a few screws loose. He had arrived just as the Anarchists were losing their fight, but his brain didn’t seem to accept that.
He had landed on one of the giant balloons—one that was meant to be Percy, actually, except for some reason, they made his entire face green (it usually isn’t, unless he’s accidentally made a mess in his lab) and they forgot about the white streak in his hair—and tried to blow it up.
It worked, sort of, in that a few people fell over the edge. One of the Renegades—the one that could fly—had managed to catch them all, though, so that was no use. Instead, he was left with the option of either blowing up an empty float and killing himself with it, or letting himself get arrested.
Nico had half been betting on the former, but it turned out that Bryce did hold some semblance of logic. His tunnel is now vacant. Thalia had done them all the favor of throwing out his things, except for a few chemicals that Percy wanted to hold on to.
Either way, Nico had managed to escape—he always does, courtesy of his power—and so had everyone else who was a part of the plan. Bryce had not.
Good riddance, honestly.
“I didn’t aim right,” Nico tells her, deciding that such a mistake would be easier to admit to than suggesting that he’s still terrified of the sound of a gunshot. He should have thrown away his pride and asked for someone else to take the job of making the shot, but he was most convenient with his shadow travel, and he was finally ready to fucking prove himself.
Reyna snorts. “Sure. If you weren’t up for it, you could’ve told us. Annabeth would’ve done it.”
Annabeth would have. With her invisibility, it also would’ve been easy for her to get onto the building and escape without being seen. But there were too many risks with that, Nico knows, and the best choice would have been for him to kill Zeus, shadow travel away, and leave any possible evidence of the Anarchists’ involvement out of range. The Wraith is a known Anarchist—they all would have been locked up as soon as they realized the gun that had shot Zeus was from an invisible person.
Annabeth would have done it, but Nico was the only one who could .
“Annabeth wouldn’t have been able to get away on time,” Nico shakes his head, getting up from the blanket that made up his bed—he would’ve been able to steal a mattress, too, and maybe even a whole bed, but that would’ve made the Renegades who visited occasionally suspicious. Either way, Nico isn’t bound to the Anarchists. He could find a more comfortable life any time he liked.
But he can hold a grudge. So, he stays. It’s not like he actually needs a place to sleep .
“Well then.” Nico looks up to see Reyna tilt her head, examining Nico closely as if he’s going to admit to having messed up—even though, technically, he already did. “Back to the drawing board, I guess.”
And so it goes; over and over again, for the ten years that he’s lived with the Anarchists, they plot, and they plan, and they fail. It’s enough to make anyone go mad, so he supposes he can’t really blame Bryce too heavily in that regard.
It’s hard to find a point to it sometimes, because he never chose this life. Every prodigy has an option on what to do with it, and their motivations will always fuel their decisions—Reyna and her sense of righteousness; Annabeth and how her family cut her out because of her powers; Percy and his loyalty to Annabeth; Thalia and her spite when her father attempted to make her switch sides.
One thing is the same between them—they all had a life before the Anarchists. Whether better or worse (most definitely worse), they chose this life.
Nico didn’t. His family was murdered, and he was taken in by a group of villains in an old cathedral before they were promptly defeated and left to rot underground. But he does have one single, driving motivation: the Renegades could have saved him, could have saved them —and they didn’t.
And Nico doesn’t let go of grudges easily.
Reyna watches him for another minute before standing up, just as a loud banging noise echoes through the tunnels, accompanied by an unpleasant voice shouting for the Anarchists to show themselves.
Reyna immediately stiffens, and Nico spares a glance toward the end of the tunnel before pressing himself against the wall. He tilts his head in the direction of the voice and, without explanation, lets himself fall into the shadow—that’s the good thing about the tunnels; he’s never left without an opportunity to escape.
He doesn’t leave the subway station completely (or, Anarchist Headquarters according to Percy, who had given it the name to try and make it seem less miserable than it clearly was), but instead lands behind a pile of junk at the front of one of the tunnels. Luckily, he guessed correctly on where the Renegades were, and so he ends up with an alright view of what’s happening.
There’s a squad of four people standing in the entrance. It’s still dark out, which Nico doesn’t usually take notice of—for someone who doesn’t need to sleep, he mostly just finds it inconvenient that the daytime provides less shadows for him to travel through.
One of them is clearly in charge, standing in front of the others, with light blond hair and pale skin, his arms crossed across his chest as his foot taps impatiently on the ground. He scoffs, then has the person next to him do something—it isn’t clear to Nico at first, but a second later, the ground of the subway station is shaking, small bits of debris falling from the ceiling.
“We’re coming!” shouts Annabeth, until she appears from inside one of the tunnels, annoyedly brushing debris out of her hair. “Gods, we heard you the first time!”
“Oh, really?” The Renegade scoffs, “Then you would’ve come out. We don’t have time for this, really—where are the others?”
“Here,” comes another voice from behind Annabeth, and Percy walks slowly behind her, exaggeratedly yawning and stretching his arms. “Do we really need to do this so early in the morning?”
“Agreed,” Reyna adds from where she’s standing—more like hiding—behind one of the shadows of the furthest tunnels, where she and Nico had been talking. Of course, the darkest tunnel is Nico’s. He wasn’t blessed with night vision, unfortunately, but he’s gotten incredibly used to it over the years of wandering around at night.
The only one who hasn’t spoken is Thalia—but she’s clearly visible, sitting on an old couch that the Renegades had so graciously not removed when they first moved—or rather, were relocated—to the subway station. Her legs are kicked up on the arms, and she doesn’t appear to have even looked at the intruders. Instead, she stares at the roof, sending small sparks into the air from her fingertips.
The Renegade clears his throat and sniffs. He sounds congested. “Right, well—I am The Augur , and—” Nico hears Percy stifle a chuckle, though he thinks that he would’ve done that no matter what alias the Renegade gave them.
The Augur doesn’t seem to notice. “—you may have heard that today there was an interruption to our Day of Triumph parade—”
“Oh, ew,” Annabeth rolls her eyes, “Did you just come here to gloat? We don’t really like hearing about that stuff down here.”
The Augur glares at her. “It must’ve escaped your notice that one of you was at the parade. Bryce Lawrence—or, The Punisher — was arrested earlier today.”
“For what?” Reyna asks obliviously.
The Augur lifts up his nose, sniffing even though he’s clearly proud to have information that they don’t know—or, rather, that he thinks they don’t know. Obviously they do. They were there .
“Attempted assassination of an Olympian,” the Augur answers, “as well as third degree arson and illegal explosives.”
“Hate to break it to you, but explosives are kinda his whole thing,” Percy points out. “But yeah, the others make sense. What does that have to do with you coming in at—whatever o’clock it is right now?”
“4:21,” The Augur says, scoffing again as if it’s ridiculous for them not to know what time it is (that being said, they literally don’t have a clock, so how are they expected to know?). “The Punisher was an Anarchist . You all are Anarchists. I think you should tell us what you were planning, or you may just find yourself in some more trouble—”
“Woah, we didn’t help with that,” Annabeth lies through her teeth. She’s scarily good at it. “Bryce is a bit too… explosive for all our tastes.”
“Yeah,” Percy nods. “And anyway, why would we want to assassinate people? I mean, have you seen this place? We’re living a life of luxury, obviously.”
Annabeth elbows him in the stomach.
“We don’t associate with Bryce,” Reyna adds, stepping fully out of the tunnel. “And we have no idea what he was planning.” That, at least, is the truth.
The Augur narrows his eyes, and then, from behind him, the others seem to be preparing themselves for a fight as well. Good gods, Nico’s sick of this already. It happens every few months, a routine check by the Renegades to make sure that the Anarchists aren’t getting up to any villainous deeds and to display their power in ways that usually just ends up with the Anarchists having a lot to clean up.
If they were really the “good guys,” then Nico would expect them to be actually good . Instead, they’re just as spiteful and greedy as the villains, but they have a badge on their chest to say otherwise.
“I don’t think you’re telling the truth,” the Augur scowls, and takes a few steps toward Annabeth—the closest of them all. He tilts his head toward them, and immediately after, the ground shakes again. One of the other Renegades, the same one as before, has his hand lifted in that direction. Another tilt of the Augur’s head, and the second Renegade takes a step forward. A sharp shard of ice shoots out of the ground next to Annabeth, missing her by just an inch.
She quickly takes a few steps backward before disappearing from visibility. Percy’s gaze has been hardened to stone, and Nico even sees Thalia tilt her head slightly up, peeking at the sudden violence.
“This is a violation of your sentence!” the Augur shouts angrily, whipping his head around to try and spot Annabeth—to no use, of course. “Reveal yourself, immediately! You’re under arre—”
“I think she was well within her rights to avoid an attack,” comes another voice. Nico nearly pulls himself into his shadow again out of surprise, but luckily, the mysterious newcomer is out of Nico’s line of sight. Nico still hasn’t been seen.
“Who are you?” the Augur asks. Nico lifts his head slightly, trying to see what’s happening. He sees that even Thalia has sat up, looking warily at the new person—someone in complete armor hiding their face, manipulating their voice—someone else who clearly doesn’t want their identity known.
“Eclipse,” the armored prodigy—Renegade?—responds. His voice is slightly muffled, and has clearly been made deeper to either sound more intimidating or to mask his own voice, or both. “I was sent by the council. You’re wanted to report back already.”
So he is a Renegade. A secret Renegade? Is he actually a real person, or some kind of manufactured prodigy that the Olympians have been working on? The Augur clearly doesn’t know him, judging by his suspicious glances shared with the other Renegades, but maybe Eclipse has just been a well kept secret.
A bit of an odd alias, though. He hasn’t shown any power yet—and honestly, if his only ability is the armor, then Nico will be a bit disappointed. He’d enjoy seeing someone beat the shit out of—or at the very least, embarrass—the Augur and his team. Or any Renegade, really. Even if it’s the work of another Renegade.
“There is no Renegade by the name of Eclipse,” the Augur states, clearly cautious. Nico wonders what his own power is, seeing as he’s made no move to act this entire time, just having his cronies work for him. “Who are you, really?”
Eclipse shrugs nonchalantly, which doesn’t really work that well with the heavy armor. Still, he gets the point across: If you don’t know already, it was clearly for a reason. You’re not as important as you think you are.
The Augur checks something on his wrist, and then scowls in Eclipse’s direction, and then at the rest of them. It looks a bit ridiculous, anyway, but he seems to fear disappointing the council more than he wants to antagonize the Anarchists. “And I suppose you’re meant to arrest the Wraith, right? You saw she just used her power when—”
“—When she was threatened by you two? Yes, I did see that,” Eclipse says firmly. “I didn’t see her use it to attack you. It was self-defense. Now, return your report to the Council—and I’ll be making sure they know what I saw tonight.”
Nico honestly can’t tell whether he’s bluffing. Either way, it’s enough to get the Renegades to make their way out of the subway station. Nico half expects Eclipse to immediately turn on them, bring the entire ceiling down, and kill them all; the other half of him expects Eclipse to just leave with no explanation. If he actually works for the council, he assumes that’s what he’d do.
He doesn’t do either. Instead, he looks at them all individually—including Annabeth, who reappears just a few feet away from where she had been standing earlier, with an inquisitive look on her face. Nico sees Percy let out a small sigh of relief.
“And who are you, really?” It’s the first time Thalia has spoken all night, and in general, she usually keeps her words to herself unless it’s for an argument with Percy, or planning with Annabeth and Reyna. She never spoke a word to Bryce when he lived here, and Nico has only gotten a handful himself. He tries not to take it too personally—clearly, she just isn’t a fan of newcomers.
Eclipse turns to face her. His armor is pure black, and yet there seems to be light seeping out of the cracks— like a literal eclipse , Nico notes, except it would be stupid to name yourself after just the aesthetic. There must be some actual power there, right?
“Eclipse,” he responds again, his helmet moving just slightly so that Nico can tell he’s looking Thalia up and down. “I work with the Olympian council.”
“And you defended us, why?” Thalia snarks. “Not very Olympian of you.”
Nico can’t read his expression, because it’s really just a helmet. Still, he tries to imagine some sort of emotion behind his next words—frustration? Anger?
“The Olympians bring justice,” Eclipse says. Denial, then. He doesn’t sound angry at all. “That was an abuse of power.”
Reyna scoffs. “Justice. Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.”
There’s a moment of silence where Nico thinks Eclipse is about to say something back, some sort of retort about how they’re all villains and evil—Nico’s heard it a million times. He’d still like to say that in a time where there were no laws , they could not be criminals . It’s crazy that Olympus City still thinks of them as such irredeemable villains, when really, during the Age of Anarchy, everyone just did what they had to do to survive.
“Did you really have no correlation to the Punisher’s attack?” Eclipse says instead, manipulating his voice as if he’s trying to force more authority into it. It doesn’t really work that well.
“Yes,” Percy answers, his glare still present. “We never liked that guy. He’s gone crazy. We have nothing to do with him.”
There’s a pause as all of the Anarchists look to Eclipse, waiting to see if he’ll accept their answer, or keep pushing like the others.
He seems to take the first option. His head lowers a bit, almost like he’s just sad to not have found an answer, and then he nods before exiting through the main stairs, the same way as the other Renegades had come and gone.
Because that’s their prison. They can really leave whenever they like, but they’re not really free. They never will be. The Anarchists are infamous, their reputations torn to shreds as the Olympians took power and declared the city free of all evil. They would stand for ages on top of their city, full of pride in the way that yes , the Anarchists have no power. They can be left in a subway station with an open exit, not even sent to jail, and they’ll never leave.
Not for long. Nico’s more determined than ever after the failed attempt, after the blatant abuse of authority, that the Olympians need to be taken down.
If only he knew how.
***
It’s been a long day for Will, and it’s only seven in the morning.
He hadn’t got any sleep, but that isn’t as rare of an occurrence for him these days—not since he’s been working on his latest project; and even before then, he had always found busywork to do somewhere around his house or the Renegades Headquarters.
There had been an attack the night before. At a parade . Will hadn’t realized that the Anarchists were so bold.
He had to see it for himself. And so, at the first opportunity, after all of the evacuations, taking care of the casualties—just injuries, thank gods, and the arrest of the Punisher—as well as making sure there weren’t any stray bombs that could threaten the civilians’ safety—he slipped away from the investigations and found himself at the entrance to the subway station that the Anarchists had been locked up in.
Really, they aren’t locked up. Will guesses that he always assumed that they were, seeing as they were the most villainous villains of the Age of Anarchy, but as he made his way down, he realized that there’s absolutely nothing keeping them from just fleeing the city. He wondered why they hadn’t.
Either way, he needed another lead on Bryce Lawrence—Zeus wasn’t going to give him an investigative role, no matter how much Will asked, and so asking the other Anarchists seemed like his best bet. He had been prepared for them to attack. He had been prepared to test out his other powers, the ones that he kept secret because quite honestly, it scared him what they could do, but if he were to ever use them, he’d rather it be on people who basically destroyed Olympus City years before.
He hadn’t expected to walk in on other Renegades attacking the Anarchists .
As far as he could tell—though he had only been watching for a few minutes—Octavian’s team had been entirely unprovoked. What they had done was a simple abuse of power, and Will couldn’t just stand by.
He hadn’t planned on making himself known to the Renegades until he got a proper lead on Bryce Lawrence’s motivations, just enough to make him seem worthy of leading an interrogation. Really, what Will wanted to know was simple—had it been the Punisher’s bombs that left the burn marks on his father’s dead body?
It hadn’t been a suspicion of his until the attack, but as soon as the thought crossed his brain, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to let it go. His father’s death had been a mystery that lingered in the back of his mind ever since it happened, and some days he still can’t understand how the Renegades had let it slip by for so long. How did a prodigy with the power to see the future not see his own death?
His grandfather had always said that the power of prophecy was a tricky thing. Then again, Zeus wasn’t the conversational type, and Will figured that he just wasn’t comfortable talking about how his son died. People died every day during the Age of Anarchy, yes, but Apollo should have known .
Will had done his research on how his dad’s powers had worked—Zeus is right on that, the fact that prophecies are tricky, and the power to see the future usually still can’t prevent fate (which is clearly the case with the Augur , or Octavian, who Will has only known to misinterpret all of his visions)—and the only idea that Will could think of was that some other prodigy power must have blocked it out.
Who else could have been that powerful but an Anarchist? It made sense in Will’s head.
But then, he had arrived at the subway station, made his presence known, and found out that it was all a dead end. Either the Anarchists had lied to him (which Will didn’t really blame them for, if they did, seeing as he had just barged in and claimed he was associated with the Renegades—it’s a half-truth, yes, but Will had lied as well) or the Punisher had really been working solo.
Either way, he’s back to square one. And now, after a few hours of staring at his ceiling and trying to connect the dots, he has to report to Renegades Headquarters and probably take care of a bunch of busy work—preparation for the upcoming Renegades trials—before going on the usual mundane patrol with his team.
-
“—could’ve really hurt people, though,” Jason sighs, shaking his head. “Don’t know why we didn’t have more people on watch.”
“It was a parade,” Lou Ellen shrugs. “Who’d expect an attack then ?”
Will stays silent, knowing the answer. None of them did, but they should have .
It still doesn’t make sense to him, not really, and from what he overheard Zeus telling the other council members—they’re boiling it down to just insanity. Too much time without power, and the Punisher clearly went mad. As if he wasn’t already.
Will knows that can’t be the whole story, but he’s been told explicitly to stay out of it.
“At least you were there,” Will tilts his head, smiling at Jason. The ability to fly—now that’s a power that any prodigy can value. Will’s lucky to have gotten him on his team, though he supposes that it had been his choice in the first place. Jason had been offered his own team, being Zeus’ son (is it weird that one of Will’s best friends is also technically his uncle? Yes. They’ve both come to the unspoken conclusion of pretending they’re cousins.), but had left the leadership position after a few months of patrols. His team of Renegades had all been reassigned, and Jason had chosen to join Will.
Will has always felt a bit inferior when compared to Jason—both of them are related to Zeus (or Jupiter, if you’re referring to his Olympian alias), but Jason has the actually useful skill. Jason is the actual son of Zeus, not the son of Zeus’ forgotten, dead, superhero. With so few of the original Olympians, the prodigies that had ended the Age of Anarchy, still living in Olympus, Will supposes that they’re the closest thing Olympus City has to royalty.
There used to be twelve. After Hades had overthrown the original government, sick of prodigies being pushed into the shadows, chaos had taken over. Gangs formed. Prodigy or non-prodigy, it was everyone for themselves. Will guesses that Hades hadn’t quite thought that far ahead—hence his own team of prodigies being known as the Anarchists .
From the rubble of what had once been a decent, though admittedly oppressive, city, came the Olympians. A group of twelve prodigies who sought to end anarchy by ending Hades. And they succeeded.
By the time that the Age of Anarchy was over, and Hades had been killed, and the Anarchists had been brought to justice (which Will now knows isn’t all that secure), there had been one casualty of the Olympians—Will’s father, Apollo.
Most of the others had eventually scattered. Will’s aunt, Artemis, who he recalls being slightly present in his early years, the other half of a whole with Apollo, had been the first to leave. Will can’t find it in himself to blame her, even if it left him in the custody of Zeus and his wife, Hera.
Poseidon had lost his son in the fight, and found it easier to leave as well. The other council members didn’t have children, but some decided that forming a council simply wasn’t for them. The Olympians remaining made up the Olympian council: Zeus, Hera, Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Ares. Occasionally, Hermes still drops by, mainly just to deliver some sort of political message from another city or transport new Renegades recruits.
The council had rebuilt Olympus from the ground up. They created a new legal system, instituted themselves as the government, got rid of the Anarchists and other criminals, and most importantly—created the Renegades. A group of prodigies, with new ones recruited each year at the annual Renegade trials, who worked to defend Olympus city, as the Olympians used to do.
At least, that’s the story that’s told on the Day of Triumph. Being a part of the Renegades, Will has found, isn’t all as glamorous as it’s made out to be. The council meetings, Will has heard, end up in arguments and powers thrown at each other more often than not. And the Anarchists, Will has discovered, are not gone at all.
When covering the actual details of the Age of Anarchy—that’s when the story falters. No one truly explains the gory bits, the ones that Will had witnessed despite Apollo’s protection. He had only been nine, yes, but he remembers it.
Nevertheless, a decade has passed, peace has reigned triumphant, and Will is mostly the forgotten son of the Olympian who died. Was killed. By an Anarchist? Will doesn’t know.
Jason is the much greater prodigy to parade around, with the way he carries himself through the wind, going around and saving everyone. He may not be the leader of their team, but Will knows that he’s the most recognizable of them—after all, Will’s entire job is to create the spotlights above everyone else.
Apparently, that’s all that Zeus thinks he’s capable of. That, and a bit of minor healing—the powers he had been given at birth practically fated him to live a life in the shadow of whoever he’s shining a light on. He wonders if that’s what caused Hades to rise up in the first place.
Will isn’t sympathetic to the Anarchists. He hates them, actually, with all of Zeus’ vaguely implied accusations of them killing his dad. All he’s ever wanted, though, was to know . How did it happen? If it had happened the way Zeus thinks, how could they possibly still be there? Sitting in an abandoned subway station with an easily accessed entrance and exit? How could one of them escape, blow up a float, and then get off with a simple arrest? How could Zeus not be shaking in rage at the thought of one of those Anarchists killing his eldest son?
Will would be. If someone had killed—well, he doesn’t have children, but anyone that he’s close to, anyone that he cares about—he swears he’d kill them. Maybe that pent-up range was what led him to discover the full range of his powers in the first place, and what caused him to keep them to himself, hiding behind the alias Solace (yes, he’s aware that it’s also his last name; he wasn’t a very creative seven-year-old when he first chose it) and the assumption that all he could do was bring comfort and light.
Besides, he doubts that the other side of his powers are things that Zeus would want to know. He seems to get anxious about powers that pose real threats—powers that could directly cause harm . He usually sends them off to other locations across the world, despite the fact that there’s still plenty of crime occurring in Olympus City.
So, instead of sharing the details of his powers, he created a new secret identity. It wasn’t hard to find armor that had been rejected by the council, and he had helped out in the Weapons and Artifacts Department enough with Leo and Piper to know the general idea of how to fix things up. That, and the fact that his room was the basement of Zeus’ house, and that his grandfather never visited in the first place, made it easy to figure out the rest of the Eclipse disguise.
He had discovered those powers when tracking down the newest criminal, an elusive prodigy by the name of the Ghost King , who seemed to be able to travel through shadows and control them to a certain extent. It had been a stray thought— shadows can’t exist without light, right? What if he could control them, too?
He hadn’t quite been able to, not in the way that he saw the Ghost King manipulate them into weapons as shown on the footage—and he certainly hadn’t been able to figure out how, when one of the Renegades was struck by the shadow, they simply fell unconscious. The healers hadn’t found any lasting effects other than a bit of a headache, but still—the power seemed relatively harmless; it just made him tricky to find.
Either way, Will had found that though he couldn’t really control the shadows as the Ghost King had done—which made sense, seeing as no two prodigies had exactly the same power—he had found more control over the light, which, in turn, moved the shadows. His shadows had no magical sleepy power like the Ghost King’s, but he discovered that with the right amount of force, a light beam that he usually used just for spotlights and story-telling could shatter a mirror. And knock over a pile of pillows. And break his TV.
He probably shouldn’t have experimented that much.
Then, he had fallen deeper down the rabbit hole—if he could find a way to control the reverse of light, did that mean he could find a way to do the opposite of healing?
That’s harder to test, seeing as Will’s not a person who goes around wishing sickness on others. Quite the opposite, actually. But if Octavian had fallen ill with a little cold earlier in the week, then Will supposed that it could work to a more powerful extent as well.
And so, with those two theories confirmed— Eclipse had been born.
“Wonder what he was planning, though,” Jason says. He brushes off the compliment. He always does that. “I mean, who would’ve thought the Anarchists would still be active? After ten years?”
Will shakes his head, disappointed. “I dunno. That’s what I was thinking too, and I was wondering—”
“—Hey, guys, did you hear the rumor?”
Will’s head whips around to see Cecil behind him, holding a half eaten sandwich and tilting back and forth energetically. Will raises an eyebrow. “Did you drink my coffee again?”
“What? Pfft, no.” Cecil rolls his eyes. He’s now bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Will just sighs.
“What rumor?” Lou Ellen asks, ignoring the thievery. Despite knowing full well that Will drinks way more caffeine than a normal person should intake, and that Cecil will have the jitters all day if he drinks it—he always does it anyway.
Cecil shoves another bite of his sandwich in his mouth before answering. “Right, well, I overheard Michael—Kahale, not Yew—and he was talking about this top secret mission thing he did with Octavian. Apparently, they got sent to go check on the Anarchists, but there was some super secret council project there, too—and then , he was interrupted by Clarisse, who told him that they were idiots, because Octavian’s now in some major trouble for apparently listening to this ‘project’, because the council’s saying that no ‘project’ existed, and then Michael got super angry, and then Michael—Yew this time—showed up, and you know how he and Clarisse are always arguing, and so Yew took Kahale’s side just to argue with Clarisse, but then Lee told him to back down, but Clarisse decided to punch Micha—Kahale, and—”
“Hold up, when did this happen?” Will interrupts Cecil’s ranting. He’s feeling both incredibly anxious and lucky. Even though Cecil is a talented prodigy, Will is extremely grateful for his friend being on his team because of this—he’s also a major gossip, and is able to tell Will pretty much anything that’s going on. “This morning? It’s, like, seven.”
Cecil nods. “Happened in the snack room.”
“Damn,” Jason mutters, “Should ask Father about that.”
“Would he answer?” Lou Ellen asks.
Jason shrugs. “Only one way to find out. Did Clarisse win, though?”
Cecil scoffs. “‘Course. ‘Specially once Mich— Yew found out that Kahale was defending Octavian, and y’know he hates Octavian even more than Clarisse. Off topic, but you might see Kahale in the infirmary, Will.”
Will sighs, pinching his nose. “Great. Thanks for reminding me I have a shift today.”
“Just today, though.” Lou Ellen claps him on the shoulder, and he can hear the grin on his voice. “Then, you get to sit through the incredible, fantastic, most anticipated day of the year—!” She lowers her voice to imitate a sports announcer— “Renegade Trials!”
***
“No.” The answer leaves Nico’s mouth only a second after Annabeth’s suggestion. He almost wants to laugh at how ridiculous it is, but that would require his brain to acknowledge it, and quite honestly, he doesn’t want to.
Annabeth sighs. “We’re not gonna force you, of course, but—well, it’d be a lead. It’d be something . For the past decade all we’ve had is a bunch of nothing.”
“Well, we did have that one plan that got Bryce arrested,” Percy points out. “And the one where you tried to infiltrate them invisibly."
“Exactly,” Annabeth nods. “Nothing.”
“ What makes you think that I’d be a convincing Renegade?” Nico scoffs. “I mean, honestly, I can’t act to save my life. I think I’d throw up being surrounded by so many of them.”
“You’re being sarcastic.”
“Duh. But I do hate them.”
Annabeth shakes her head, pointing at the in-depth plan that she has written out on a piece of paper. The plan says: NICO UNDERCOVER AS RENEGADE. RENEGADE TRIALS FRI. COLLECT DATA + INFILTRATE.
Clearly, she had thought this all through.
“I’m just saying that this may be our only chance. We’re lacking knowledge. That’s the key; it’s the reason we can never get anywhere close to the Olympians.”
“That, and that I didn’t aim right,” Nico says. Annabeth brushes it off.
“I think it could work,” Reyna muses cautiously. She’s standing next to Nico, leaning against the wall, arms crossed across her chest. Nico feels slightly betrayed. Out of all of the Anarchists—Reyna is definitely the one he feels closest to. If he weren’t terrified of admitting it, he’d say she’s almost like an older sister to him.
But that would be going too deep. It would be a conflict of interest. And Nico’s already lost one big sister—he doesn’t need another.
“They would know me, wouldn’t they?” Nico starts his onslaught of questions. “They know the Ghost King. They know my powers.”
“They don’t know that you don’t sleep,” Annabeth answers quickly. “That could be your power.”
“Who the hell wants a Renegade whose only power is to not sleep?”
“I’m not saying that you have to be one of the patrolling Renegades,” Annabeth says, “You could do paperwork for all I care. Filing citizen complaints. All we need is to get you into the Headquarters. From there, it’s all up to you.”
“I could just shadow travel there.”
“And then what happens if you land in front of a security camera?” Annabeth questions. “Or worse, you show up in a room where someone happens to be. They have tight security. They managed to catch an invisible person—”
“Okay, well how were we to know that they had a Renegade specifically tasked with watching out for you?”
“Well, seeing as they didn’t send us to prison, I didn’t have the highest opinion of them,” Annabeth mutters.
“They’re clearly more prepared than we think.” Percy steps forward, placing a hand on Annabeth’s shoulder. “But even though they’re clearly on watch for you—I’m sure that they’ve already put security measures in place for shadow traveling—they don’t know who you are. They don’t know Nico di Angelo. They don’t know you as…well, whatever other alias you come up with. I haven’t thought of anything yet.”
Nico narrows his eyes. “They know exactly who I am. They just think I’m dead.” Because they wanted me dead goes unspoken.
Nico hadn’t been killed. He knows that some prodigies gain their powers through incredibly traumatic and near-death situations—Percy, Thalia, and Reyna were that way, though Nico doesn’t know the stories—but he had been born with his. The shadows hadn’t been meant to be a weapon, and Nico doesn’t think he’ll ever fully think of them that way—all they could do was put someone to sleep and transport him out of harm’s way. They’re defensive.
But he had discovered a new form of those shadows on the night his family had been killed. For as long as Nico knew, it had been him, his mother, and his sister. His mother had praised the Renegades. She had told them in the midst of chaos and destruction that were anything to happen—the Renegades would come.
Instead, a killer came knocking on their door, and all Nico saw was a flash of light. Bianca had screamed, pulling him out of the hallway, away from the body of his mother that had fallen across the floor. There had been muttering. And then someone had walked into the house.
Nico had waited for the Renegades. Bianca had shoved him into a corner before the bullet hit her, told him to travel away, but he couldn’t have left his sister. Even after she was killed.
It was only the pure rage that he felt when seeing the blood seep from Bianca’s neck that made the shadows move. But they hadn’t enveloped him, or taken him somewhere safe—Nico doubted that anywhere was—they were closing in on the man with the gun.
Nico knows now that the guy with the gun was irrelevant. Despite the fact that Nico will never be able to get the sound of the gunshot out of his head, the man had just been a pawn in a larger game—what Nico really despises is the flash of light. A light that Nico would one day recognize as lightning.
It’s easy to see who was outside that door that night. The Olympians—the ones who were meant to protect — did nothing but the opposite.
After Nico’s shadows finished twisting around the man, putting him to sleep at the first touch, Nico was consumed by it. It wasn’t enough. It never would be. He needed revenge—and it started with those shadows tightening around the man’s neck, suffocating him until he fell over in the middle of his living room.
Revenge at the age of eight wasn’t enough. Nico’s grudge is vengeance. Nico won’t let it go until the day that Zeus and all of the other Olympians are dead. The Renegades can go, too.
“Not with a secret identity, they don’t!” Percy grins. “They don’t know what you look like, and they don’t know your power. Everything else can be built. We’ll have you a story fabricated, an identity created, burn those fingers—”
“Wait, what the fuck?”
“—and you’ll be just fine!”
Nico pauses. It seems like a lot of work for something that could end disastrously.
But then again, isn’t that what all of their plans are? What makes this one any different?
If Nico’s annoyance and disgust of the Renegades is the only real price he has to pay—that, and apparently his fingerprints—for revenge, then he’d say it’s worth it.
“What does Thalia think of it?” Nico asks hesitantly. He’s already mentally agreed.
“She thinks that the plan should have been brought up with her first.” Thalia’s voice comes from the hallway—or rather, one of the tunnels. It nearly makes Nico jump. “But that it might work. Heavy emphasis on might .”
Annabeth smiles at her. “Those look like good odds to me.”