Woooh!! Are you guys ready to punch me for another cliff hanger?!!

Percy was not a fan of the whole let's-give-a-piggyback-ride-to-the-almost-zombie-girl idea. But Hawtstufz9 was too busy to do it himself, so the responsibility rested on Percy's shoulders. Literally.

"Uh, so why can't you be the one to do this?" Percy asked quietly, as they shuffled through the city. The unnerving silence had fallen upon them again, just waiting until a hapless zombie found them and started the undead hurricane again. Percy doubted that if they got caught this time, there would be any way they would survive.

xClassicx's head bumped against his shoulder again her white floating text was mixed with his, but he could see her health bar steadily dropping. It was already halfway gone and they were only a couple streets down.

Percy shouldn't have really been worrying about the zombie girl on his back though, considering Hawtstufz9 was limping beside him, his health bar in the red. He looked fine enough, until he made the mistake of turning and letting Percy see where a zombie had carved out his side with it's nails.

The boy paid that no mind. He had a stupid grin on his face, giving him a mad scientist look to throw into the mix of suntanned, scrawny, and christmas elf. He'd pulled open his menu again, revealing the same chaotic mess of white text he had before. This time he looked like he knew a bit better about what he was doing. His hands flew across the air swiping and typing and copypasting things in an order that only he knew.

"Because I'm busy." He replied, using one hand to type a series of numbers and letters and his other to pull up the map of the city. All the while his eyes darted around the street corners and suburban landscape, searching for any sign of a threat. Percy was quite impressed with this kid. He had to be at least a year younger than him, but he'd already adapted fully into this murder game.

"Uh yeah, about that," Percy shifted xClassicx on his shoulders trying not to picture her suddenly jumping to life and digging her teeth into his neck to give him a matching bite mark, "What exactly are you doing?"

Hawtstufz9 rubbed his chin, "Well I was trying to hack my way out of the system, but having no luck, I'm trying to find the access code for the zombies and delete them from the game."

"What?"

The smaller boy sighed, and made a face at the floating text, "I'm already in the game mainframe. If I can find the code for how the zombies were made then I can delete the string and it will delete the zombies from the game entirely. Then we won't have to worry about that as we await our deaths via sword wielding assassin."

Right, Percy remembered. He was a hacker. Just like the Titans, who'd taken control of the AOH tournament and turned it into the Hunger Games.

"Wait, if you're in the mainframe, you can delete and create anything right?" Percy asked, "So you can recall my bracelets or delete Kronos?"

Hawtstufz9 snorted, "You're funny, Riptide," He said, "but don't quit your day job, okay? If I could delete Kronos, I would've done it three weeks ago, man. The coding for each player has been extremely warped. I don't even think I have a way to even get to the core coding. The walls around us are just too good. If I ever meet the jackass who made them...." He trailed off punching another button on his invisible keyboard. "Now, if there was some way for me to exploit a gap in the code, then I might have some small chance at turning off the headsets from inside and activating the auto logout. But the chance that Olympus didn't code this perfectly from the start is like zero, especially if they knew I was going to be in this tournament.

"As for those sick bracelets man, I didn't catch the code before it slipped to the trash bin. If I had I would totally bring that back. Damn, I knew I should've started memorising the code for ambrosia!"

"What now?" Percy's voice came out louder than he expected, echoing off the buildings around them. But the younger boy wasn't paying attention. He'd frozen, mid step. Staring behind them, with wide eyes. Percy could feel the fear coming off him in waves.

The sound was faint, but when Percy heard it he couldn't move either. It was footsteps, lagged ones, but that didn't change anything.

Percy couldn't breathe. He slipped his hand towards his sword, trying not to drop the unconscious girl on his back, but with a sick feeling Percy realized that the only way for him to be able to fight, would be to put her down.

Would the zombies attack her, even if she was already bitten?

Percy could just imagine the zombies surrounding her again, just tearing her apart. Blood flying everywhere. Her clothes in tatters. Her eyes staring at the sky and not seeing anything because she was dead in the game and real life.

"Take her," He said.

The other boy looked at him as if he'd grown another head.

"Take her and go!" Percy said again, "I'll cover you guys."

"Riptide...."

Percy didn't wait for him to finish his thought. He shoved the younger girl into his arms and turned back to the street. He unsheathed his blade letting the bronze color light up the night.

"It's obvious you can't wield a dagger, and I don't fancy get killed because of that!"

Hawtstufz9 opened and closed his mouth but even his brain couldn't seem to find a argument to Percy's logic. Evidently, he was truly not a the owner of that dagger. Percy couldn't help but wonder exactly how he'd and Piper Mclean had planned on winning.

"Go!" Percy hissed at him, swinging his blade in a circle and readying himself for whatever was coming at them. Percy repeated the word in his head like a chant, Go, Go, Go! It would be easier for him to fight if their was no one else around. No one for Percy to accidentally kill. xClassicx was already proof of his skills in that department.

Of course, he was a solo player. Nothing could change that. He didn't work well with others around. Maybe he just cared too much about these complete strangers.

Hawtstufz9's footsteps were sloppy and uneven, but that barely slowed him down. Percy could hear him moving fast down the street. Until they stopped short. The short elfish boy muttered curses at the world and Percy heard him come back.

"Fuck it," Hawtstufz9 snapped, "I can't just leave you here. If you die then I'm dying too."

"I don't plan on dying." Percy gritted his teeth. The unmistakable hum of a camera buzzed nearby like an annoying fly. The last cue of that what was coming was a fight.

"Good," The other boy said, rearranging xClassicx on his back and wielding his dagger in his other hand, "Because I'm too young and beautiful to die."

Percy was tense far more than he should be. He remembered when he loved being in the game, fighting with his sword because it gave him power that he didn't have in reality. How dare the Titans take his dream and make it a nightmare. The unmistakeable sound of a Diiing! sound out in the abandoned road, nearly scaring Percy out of his pants.

The orange light drew his head to his menu.

"My name is Leo." Hawtstufz9 said faintly. In the moonlight, he seemed to have some type of halo around himself. His curly brown hair was slick with sweat, and his eyes seemed holding back...tears? His voice was watery. "Let's not die, Riptide." Hawtstu-- Leo, said, "Because then I'd feel really sucky about you knowing my name and me never knowing yours!"

Leo.

Percy glanced briefly back at his menu and the new friend request that was patiently waiting for a response.

For some reason Percy felt warm clicking the accept button. It was so foreign looking and seeing that he now had two friends. Wait till Grover saw. He'd probably make a joke out of it.

"What, are you replacing me, you little jackass?! Give me my headset so I can go friend a bunch of strangers too!!"

The thought made Percy smile a bit. It vanished when he saw exactly what had been following them.

Percy guessed it could've been worse. It could've been a swarm of zombies so big it covered half the city. It could've been Zombies that look like his family, like Tyson or his mom (Percy didn't think he'd have a problem driving his sword into Gabe's head). IT could have been a pack of those wild midnight black furred dogs that had been following him back in the forest and the river.

But it wasn't.

Even in the darkness it was all too clear to Percy. Everything seemed to slow down. Percy couldn't seem to swallow. His throat was too dry. The camera twisted and jerked looking between all of them.

Looking to get the last pictures of them before their deaths.

Percy wondered briefly if Leo had any family in the real world. A mom? A dad? Sibling? Someone who would be freaking out as much as his mom and best friend were probably doing right now. What a sense of false hope he'd sent out. Percy revealing he was alive and fighting only to come face to face with the very thing that he swore he was going to kill.

Kronos appeared out of the shadows lazily, as if killing them had no real value in it.

Percy tighten the grip on his sword. This was it. Boss level max. All he had to do was kill this person in the mask. Despite that, Percy's hands were shaking.

It happened almost faster than he could blink. The motion so swift, so fluid, that it looked as if his arm had never even moved. The whistled of the knife so quick, so fast that Percy's blood ran cold.

Almost faster than he could blink he knocked the poisoned bronze dagger out of the air inches from lodging in Leo's chest. It clattered on the ground and for a second no one dared move.

Leo broke the silence with a whimper, "I'm guessing it's too late to run."

Under his mask, Percy was sure Kronos was grinning.