CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

Finding Hope, Part 1

Sam was alone as he fell from the sky and into a gray world. The city and people below, the horizon, and even the sun were bathed in its different shades.

He was falling, falling, falling—zooming past gray clouds while screaming at the top of his lungs for fear of crashing onto solid earth at breakneck speed. Luckily for him, it was a relatively short fall. He landed feet-first onto a wide cobblestone path surrounded on both sides by tall pines.

“What in Hades is going on?”

The crowd of gray-toned people milling around the road paid him no attention. As if they couldn’t see the huffing, wide-eyed hero with the sweat-coated face who’d magically fallen into their midst as if he’d been shot out of the sky.

“Where…” Sam took a deep breath and forced his anxiety down before his gaze took in the sights around him. “…Wait, I know this place.”

Behind him, past a stone bridge that crossed over the Hudson River, Sam could see the towering spires of the Manhattan skyline draped in the gray shades of this dream-like world. While ahead of him stood several temples nestled around the top of the island’s low hill. Twelve in all, and each one of varying size and trappings.

“This is Olympian Isle… But why—”

His gaze drifted up.

“Oh.”

At the end of the path rose a temple whose familiar front side—a typical Greek style with a large portico supported by several thick columns—had been alabaster-white back in the real world but was now coated in the darkest of grays. The feather banners that hung from the roof had also lost the festive green and purple shades that Sam remembered from past visits.

“Styx… don’t tell me…”

If landing closest to this temple hadn’t been enough of a clue, then the mournful, child-like screams emanating from inside its walls were certainly enough to get Sam to dash toward it.

“Excuse me!” Sam yelled. “Coming through!”

No one paid him any heed though. The gray-toned people simply avoided Sam as he barreled up the steps leading to the temple’s front doors.

“I’m coming, Serena!”

Sam swung Onus at the closed double doors, smashing them into hundreds of gray splinters that barely hindered his rush into the temple’s interior. Only, as soon as he stepped inside, the outer temple he’d been familiar with long ago disappeared. It was as if the walls, floors, and high ceiling had been formed of varying shades of gray fog and the memory that held this place together had been brushed away by the dreamer’s mind.

“What the…”

The surrounding fog reshaped itself, and Sam suddenly found himself standing in the middle of a brightly-lit hallway with a high arched ceiling. There were doors on either side of him. One of them, the one that was two doors down to the right of where he idled, was open. From this opening came the muffled cries of a little girl.

Sam ran to this open door with each step filled with trepidation for what he might discover beyond it. With his heart pounding like a drum solo at a rock concert, Sam took a peek into the tiny room beyond and found himself staring at a young Serena who looked just like the girl she’d been on that day they faked her death. She was lying on a small bed at the far end of the room while sobbing into her pillow.

“Mommy… Daddy… Sam,” she whispered. “Why did you leave me?”

Hearing her speak the words that drove his guilt was like a knife stabbing into Sam’s chest.

“Is this… is this Serena’s memory?”

There came no reply though. Not from the system that was supposed to support Sam in times like this one.

“Triple-A?”

Still no response.

“Styx… just when I need it.”

Sam felt a prickle on his back. He was about to turn around to see what had caused it, but cold air suddenly seeped into him as a ghostly figure passed through his body to enter his sister’s room.

“Holy moly,” Sam gasped.

It hadn’t hurt much, but it did feel weird. Almost like an extra-mild case of phantom touch but non-lethal like actual phantom touch could be.

“Stop your crying, girl,” the ghostly apparition chided. “There’s no need to feel sad. You have been chosen to a higher calling.”

It was a woman dressed in the trappings of a priestess of Hera, but she was no one Sam recognized. Also, while Mother Malta had a motherly aura to her presence, this new priestess had the bearing of a disciplinarian. Or a zealot. She was probably both, Sam guessed, considering the propaganda spilling from her lips.

Serena looked up from her pillow, and even though tears were streaming down her face, she still managed to send an icy glare at the priestess.

“I want to go home,” Serena grumbled.

The priestess just glared back at her.

“Please… I want to go home,” Serena begged.

“But you are home,” the priestess answered.

“This isn’t home!” Serena screamed.

Noticing that her emotions were all over the place, Sam wasn’t too surprised when the room began to shake. The lights flickered too, signaling the beginning of what experts called a poltergeist event.

Sam knew all about poltergeist events because he’d wanted to cause one when he was younger. Why? Well, a child born of blessed parents could sometimes manifest latent psychokinetic abilities in their early years during a moment of heightened emotions. Such children often proved to be highly talented and were gifted by the gods with amazing powers to match their high potential.

“Of course, she’d be the one to have a poltergeist event.” A smirk rose on Sam’s lips while he watched Serena terrify the priestess with her waking powers. “She was always the special one…”

“Child! Stop this!” the priestess yelled.

The shaking only got more violent as Serena’s untapped potential continued to expand out of her. Meanwhile, the priestess’ smug look had quickly withered away. Replaced by a stare of growing fear for the little girl who could shake the world with a single scream.

“Um, this will be bad if she keeps losing control,” Sam realized.

He moved to enter the room, but the priestess stepped toward Serena first and shook the girl by the shoulders.

“Stop this now or you’ll get another turn at the wheel tonight!” the priestess yelled over the sound of cracking stone.

The shaking stopped abruptly. The air stilled. The only sound left to hear was Serena’s soft whimpering. Her face was pale with fright.

“Whatever this wheel is, it’s a pretty effective threat,” Sam deduced.

As soon as his feet crossed the threshold of her bedroom, the scene disappeared into puffs of gray fog. Smoky tendrils swirled around him once more to reshape themselves into a new memory.

The stone room he arrived in was brightly lit. Spotlights were trained on the chair in the center of the room. Sitting on this chair with her arms and legs tied to it by thick leather straps was Serena. Only, this new Serena looked at least a year or two older than the Serena from the previous memory.

“What is this?” Sam asked.

There were two blue medical patches on each side of Serena’s brow. The thick wires attached to these patches coiled around her body and disappeared somewhere behind the chair which was where Sam could hear the soft hum of a machine.

“What are they doing to her?”

Four priestesses surrounded his sister, each one standing in one of the four cardinal directions. They each carried a golden bell which they rang together just before moving clockwise around Serena’s chair. Once they switched places in north, south, east, and west, they would utter a word. Each different, with each one seemingly random to Sam’s ears.

“Apatheia,” one priestess said.

“Ataraxia,” another priestess whispered.

“Episteme,” the third priestess uttered.

“Eudaimonia,” was the fourth word.

Sam’s ancient Greek was rusty, although he managed a rough translation of these four phrases which were repeated over and over again like a mantra. “To be unclouded, to be tranquil, to understand, to be happy…”

Although these words didn’t seem wicked to Sam’s ears, his sister cried in pain from every utterance of them. It was almost like she was being constantly zapped with a jolt of electricity every time the priestesses chanted.

“This is the wheel,” Sam realized, frowning as he did. “Hephaestus’ flaming beard… they’re conditioning her.”

He couldn’t bear to watch this vision for long. Soon enough, he was flinging Onus at their heads while screaming curses at them.

“Get away from her you flea-bitten harpies!”

As soon as Onus swung down on the head of the priestess closest to him, she vanished in a puff of gray fog along with the surroundings. Although the vision of this wicked memory disappeared from his sight, he could still hear his sister screaming in the distance.

“Why am I seeing all this?” Sam asked in frustration.

There would be no answer though. Just as there would be many more harsh memories to fall into. Sam would witness his sister’s growth from child to pre-teen to teenager through the many tortures and trials she had to undergo—from being forced to watch a dozen screens tuned to the horrors of war and suffering to walking over a bed of coals or dunked into an icy lake naked—and he wept and wrung his fists at the heavens.

Sam now understood why Serena would turn to villainy instead of heroism despite her pedigree. How could she be a hero when there was no one around to save her when she needed saving?

Finally, Sam witnessed the moment Serena was first given the relic that would earn her the moniker of Pandora the 8th.

A teenage Serena looking just a little younger than the one in Ares’ Sacred Grove was standing in front of the empty throne of a grand hall filled with the trappings of the Queen of the Olympian pantheon. Mother Malta was there too, idling on the bottom steps of the gilded golden throne.

“Uncap the pithos, and meet your destiny,” Mother Malta said as her acolytes brought the ancient relic before Serena.

There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation from Serena. As if the fight had already been burned out of her. She picked up the relic and uncapped the jar that was Pandora’s Box for the very first time. Then dark, cloying miasma spilled out of it, enveloping Serena in its black folds while she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Stop!” Sam yelled, falling to his knees in anguish. “Please, I’ve seen enough…”

“Have you?” someone asked.

Sam looked up. In front of him stood the Serena of his childhood. However, while the world around them was blurred in coiling gray mist, this vision of Serena was bathed in white. Even her skin was the alabaster white of a museum statue.

Serena placed her hands on her hips, and with a wide smile filled with the warmth of a new day’s sun, she said, “You took your sweet time getting here… I’ve been waiting forever!”