Thalia's POV

     "I can't believe you talked me into this." I muttered as we walked along a trail in the woods.

     The trail was dark and I kept stumbling on rocks and roots concealed by the shadows cast from the trees against the half moon. I shuddered and pulled my sweatshirt closer to me as the cold winter wind whipped at my face. There wasn't any snow out, but it was cold either way.

     "Why? You scaaaared?" Leo asked, his mischievous smirk visibly even in the night.

     "Not of the Asylum, about the cops guarding the place. Do you really want to be escorted to your house by a cop?" I asked.

     "No worries, I hacked into the police files. They have a huge amber alert mystery going on so guards were forced to leave the Asylum to help search for the kid. I don't know what he looks like though, no info on that. The case was supposed to be hidden from the public for some reason." Leo assured me in the worst way possible.

     "Are you sure it's a good idea to hack into police files Leo?" Piper asked from behind us.

     Everyone was coming along on this little 'trip,' Leo, Jason, Piper, Hazel, Frank, Annabeth, Bianca and Nico. "Never mind that we're almost there. There is a back door that's always unlocked, as well as a window on the left side of one of the cells." Nico told us, slowing his pace a bit.

     "You've been here before?" Bianca asked him.

     "Never inside, I just knew Leo was going to want to check this place out. Police or not, there are only about three to scope the entire area. It would be easy to sneak around." Nico assured her.

     "This is a bad idea guys..." Hazel said nervously.

     "You can chicken out, but you'll have to take the twenty minute hike through the dark on your own." I told her.

      "I think I'll stick with you guys." She decided quickly. I laughed a little bit, then realized we were at the edge of the woods.  About twenty feet in front of us was the dark shadow of the two story Asylum, looming overhead. just a few feet outside, surrounding the perimeter was a barbed wire fence. In the moonlight the rust stood out, looking like dried blood.

     "Follow me." Nico commanded in a quieter tone than before. He led us diagonally to a part of the fence.

     As we got closer I realized that there was a gap in the fence, bent backwards enough for all of us to fit. Nico looked around, then got down on his knees and crawled through. The frozen grass crunched slightly as he crawled through. He stood up on the other side, looking around once more. He might be younger, but he was almost as smart as Annabeth-The smartest person in our group-so he skipped a few grades.

     The others followed through the gap in the fence, leaving just me. I crawled through the fence, the now wet grass soaking my jeans and making my even colder. I stood up on the others side and followed the rest, who were now silently walking towards a pair of doors. Nico stopped in front of them, the rest of us two feet behind. He pushed on the door on the left and it opened with a loud, high pitched squeak. I cringed at the sound and followed them inside.

     It was a long hallway, with door after door about ten feet apart on either sides. There was another set of doors after the stretch of about ten doors on each side. The place smelled of mildew and rust. I wrinkled my nose at the stench. "Gross." Frank muttered, wrinkling his nose as well.

     "The rest of the doors inside are unlocked, if some info I gathered online is correct. I think this is one of the four wings of cells, if I'm correct." Leo told us, his voice echoing slightly.

     "This is awesome." Nico muttered, looking around the place.

     "This is where you're going to live when you get older Death Breath!" Leo exclaimed. Nico scowled at him while Bianca stifled a laugh behind her hands.

     Nico shook his head at her, smiling slightly. He went over to the first door and I followed. It was made of thick metals, small metal bars above the top of the door. Nico looked over to the side of a the door where a metal clipboard hung, a piece of paper attached to it. They were both covered with a thick layer of dust that made it look over a hundred years old. Nico wiped some of it away and got his face closer to it, squinting his eyes. I was so tempted to yell really loud, but I'm a nice person. So I didn't.

     "Amber.... Killingson." Nico read aloud. "She was put in here because she murdered over one hundred people because she thought they were demons. All were males with black hair and dark brown eyes, mostly from Maine."

     "That's dark." Leo said.

     "Yeah. I wonder-" Nico was cut of by a muffled but loud sound of something scraping against the floor above us. All of our eyes widened and we paled a tiny bit. We all looked at one another to ensure it wasn't a prank. Everyone looked horrified.

     "We should get out of here guys..." Hazel whispered.

     "No way, I'm finding out what that was." Leo argued.

     "I'm with and against Leo.." I agreed.

     "Hazel, you can wait with someone outside if you want." Nico offered kindly.

     "Bianca and Frank?" She asked hopefully.

     "Of course little sis." Bianca smiled warmly at her.

    "Of course. No way I'm dying at eighteen." Frank agreed. They led Hazel outside, leaving Jason, Piper, Leo, Nico and I.

     "Let's go. I hope it's a thug I get to beat up!" Leo exclaimed a bit too enthusiastically.

     "Leo, be more quiet." I hissed through clenched teeth, listening for any other indication of movement. There was the sound of something moving around right above us, then stopped, no more sound.

     "Lets go." Nico whispered, heading towards the double doors. We moved as silently as possible as not to alert whatever it was upstairs that we're here.

    We opened the double doors at the end of the hall which surprisingly opened easily. There were three more hallways and a large lobby in the center, stairs going up in a spiral.  the dirty checkered marble floor was cracked and disgusting, a broken desk covered in graffiti sat in the corner of the room, as well as a chair with wheels tipped onto its side. "Creepy." Jason whispered, speaking for the first time since we began walking.

     We didn't  answer, instead headed for the stairs. We looked up to the second floor, listening. Nothing. I, being the first person, hesitantly put my right foot on the first step, bouncing it to see if it was stable. It held pretty well for an almost hundred year old stairway. I continued up the stairs, steps occasionally creaking behind me from the others.

     We got to the top and looked down the hallway from which the noise was coming from earlier. Nothing. "If it was right above us, it would be at the last room." Nico whispered.

     At the end of the hallway was a door that was slightly ajar. I strained my hearing and could have sworn I heard crying. "Do you hear that?" I whispered, putting a finger to my lips. Everyone froze, listening.

     "Crying..." Leo whispered, looking scared. Everyone did, and I'm sure I did as well.

     "Should we turn back?" Jason asked.

     "No." Nico and I whispered at once. I looked at them and nodded.

     I began to slowly walk down the long hallway. Each step I took the crying got louder. I looked back when I was twenty feet from the door and saw everyone was right behind me. I creeped forward until I was ten feet from the door. The crying was really loud now and I was scared of what I was going to find. I didn't believe in ghosts, but if they were real... I shook my head, shaking the thoughts away. From the sound of it the person crying was male, but he didn't quite have a deep thirty year old man voice, he sounded more twenty.

     I got right in front of the door, so close I could reach out and touch it. The crying was louder then ever. I looked back at the others and raised my hand and made a knocking motion on the air. Nico furrowed his brows in concentration, then nodded.

     I turned back around, taking a deep, quiet breath. I held my hand in front of the door, my heart pounding in my throat. Everything seemed to go in slow motion as I rapped twice on the door. The crying stopped instantly, then I could here motion inside. I didn't know what to do so I shoved the door open and yelled "Wait!"

     What I saw shocked me. There was a teenager, no older that eighteen standing there. He had torn blue jeans and a dirty dark grey t-shirt, covered in holes and what looked like dried blood, but I wasn't to sure. He had tangled greasy raven black hair and swampy green eyes. He had pale skin, paler than Nico, pale enough so that you could see almost every skin in his body. He was so skinny you could pretty much see every bone in his body. Under and around his eyes were puffy and red from his crying. At his feet, which were bare, there was a single backpack and a torn, dirty what used to be white sheet. He backed away, tripping over a stack of broken, moldy wood planks. He landing on his back, hitting his head against the wall. He hissed in pain but got up, stumbling. He grabbed his backpack from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder.

     I was so still so shocked at his age I didn't do anything until after what he did next. He stumbled over to an open window and jumped out, FROM THE SECOND FLOOR. I shook my head and ran in, the rest following. I looked out the window but couldn't find him anywhere. I looked around frantically when I heard a high pitched girly scream. We all booked it, running down the stairs. I was last, my feet pounding against the stairs. A few steps from the bottom a stair snapped, but I managed to keep going. Leo turned but I shoved him forward, telling him without words to keep running. He got the message and continued to run.

     We shoved the doors to the hallway open and then the ones to outside, where we saw a group of figures huddled around the gate. We ran over, panting. "What happened?" I asked frantically. "Was it that kid?"

     "A kid... He just jumped from the second floor window and crawled up the barbed wire fence. He jumped down but scraped his back pretty badly, but ran into the woods non the less..." Bianca explained shakily. "Hazel was the first one to see it and screamed..."

     "So we didn't hallucinate? There really was a teenager in there?" I asked shakily.

     "I... I think so. That was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life." Nico admitted, drawing his black sweatshirt closer to him.

     "He had summer clothes on, and no shoes or socks. It looks like he's homeless, and been so for quite a while." I stated.

     "Agreed." Jason said.

     "If we see him on the way back we need to get him to one of our houses. Who has the nicest parents?" I asked. Everyone pointed to me and Jason immediately.

     "Okay then. If we find him he's coming with us." I concluded, clapping my hands together.

      We made it to the neighborhood where we all lived with no sign of the mysterious kid. "Well, I have to get home. It's my curfew. We'll talk about that kid tomorrow at school, yes? Bye!" Leo called, running off to his house.

     The rest of us said our goodbye's and went our separate ways, except for Bianca, Nico and Hazel, who was a stepsister to Nico and Bianca, and then Jason and I went to our houses. "Mom! We're home!" I called as I walked into the house, shutting the door behind me.

     "You're not late Thalia? And you were hanging out with Jason? Are you feeling alright?" My mom asked in a teasing manner, poking her head out from the kitchen door.

     "Haha, very funny. I'm not ALWAYS a bad ki- Aw who am I kidding. I'm a rebel and Jason's a goody goody." I smirked, ruffling Jason's hair. He shoved my hands away with a small smile as my mom laughed.

     "Well, I just finished making some spaghetti for dinner. You can come get some if you want." She told us, re-entering the kitchen.

     Jason and I ate, then we both went to my room to talk about you know what. "What are we going to do? I think we should go back after school, in broad daylight, then go the same time as we went tonight to see if he's always there or only during the night." I told Jason as he sat down on my bed next to me.

     "But he may not return once we found him." Jason told me.

      "Hmm... Good point, but it's worth a shot. We'll talk about it with the others tomorrow at school, okay? Now get out of my bedroom. You're going to contaminate it with... Niceness. A disgusting thing. So shoo!" Jason laughed and left my room.

     "Night Thals!" He called.

     "Night Jase!" I called back as he shut my door. I got into bed and shut of the lamp in my room, falling asleep with that kid on my mind. One thing that bothered me most; what was his name?

Authors Note

How do you like it? Yay or Nay? Okay, wait, nay reminds me of something! Nya! Kai is back in Starlight! If you know what I'm talking about I love you! But not Kai. I honestly hate him, I just love his Nya. I hate what he did to Aphmau, and now he's tryin to take Travis' girl! What in Irene Kai! Then again he doesn't know they are 'dating...' Oh well! I'm rambling! I hope you enjoyed the story!