Clockwork

45

"Mr. Clockwork?" Eighteen asked. Her fever had finally gone down shortly after Nineteen's death, and Percy feared that it was only momentary peace before she or Four joined him. They had moved the children into Hestia's palace, a more grounded place but also further from Olympus. It had only been hours before that he and Jasmine were dug out of the rubble, his armor shielding both of them from serious injuries. A few scrapes from the debris were nothing compared to what it could've been.

"Yes?" Percy spared a glance at the daughter of Demeter. Percy rarely visited her since her room was always filled with huntresses, but he did visit her every once in a while. He learned that the little girl didn't like to talk and preferred to simply show Percy how cool her powers were until the random sleep spells started, causing her to sleep most of the time. Her talking worried him. Percy had heard that sick people's behavior could sometimes change when they were about to die.

"Did Nineteen die?" The little girl asked, no clear alarm in her voice.

"Yes, he did," Percy said, looking back down at the little girl. She was staring up at the ceiling. Her green eyes had been getting dark, and they were getting dark still, almost turning a dark gray. He cringed at his own voice. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't make it sound more reassuring or less blunt.

"Mama says I'm going to die, too. She says the trees in my eyes are dying," Eighteen said, her voice sounding like her mind was far away. Given how she showed no qualms about dying, Percy wondered if she actually grasped what dying was. Even if she did, Percy was concerned as to what she and Demeter were talking about. Who tells a little kid they were going to die?

"Mr. Clockwork, where am I gonna go when I die? Is it gonna be scary?"

"You're gonna go to the underworld, I suppose it could be scary."

"Oh, I thought I was gonna go to the red room," She said quietly.

"The what?"
"It was the room where they made us stronger. They said we would always go home when we died, and the red room was home."

The amplifying rooms Percy saw at the building when Adrien was still alive. But why call it the red room? "Really? What was the red room like?" Percy asked. He wasn't sure how long the little girl would be willing to talk, but he tried his chances anyway. Her concentration on the ceiling broke for a split second almost as if she found it difficult to remember. "It was hot. And dry. And we never had much food. I don't remember that much of it," she said, sounding frustrated. Percy was going to ask something else but out of the corner of his eye, he saw vines creeping down the sides of the wall. "Have you learned anything new with your powers?" He asked instead, and her eyes lit up as she raised her hands and showed him her newest learned trick., the vines curling back into the corners of the room until Percy couldn't see them anymore.

After a while, he was shooed away by one of the Apollo kids to let her sleep. He left the palace to return to the empty workshop yet again, having decided that Kenneth should stay drowned a little longer and was being kept imprisoned in Poseidon's palace.

Finally, he slept and had a familiar dream of Nineteen.

Nineteen, his hands bloody, his piercing brown eyes looking up pleadingly at Percy. His hands were leaking blood, but this time instead of being empty, he held Percy's broken helmet, clutching the broken chunk of metal close to him.

He repeated the same words he had when Percy brought him to camp. "Can't I just stay with you? I-I'll behave a-and I won't tell anyone that you're a transformer!" His brown eyes were filled to the brim with tears. "I don't wanna be here!" He said rubbing his eyes with a bloody hand, covering his small face in blood. The cuts bled even more. "It's scary here."