Chapter 1


"they taped over your mouth, scribbled out the truth with their lies, your little spies"

- crushcrushcrush, paramore


So, like. Annabeth is kind of excited.

She knows that technically, excited is the last emotion she should be feeling at the moment. She's being sent across the country to make sure she doesn't die. That's pretty terrifying. But it's been six months since the accident, and she doesn't think Chiron has let her step outside once – and now she's going all the way to New York to go to school and live in a house and do proper, normal stuff all by herself.

That's pretty exciting. Sue her for feeling thrilled.

"All right," Chiron says. "Before you leave, let's do a quick rundown. When you land, what are you doing?"

Annabeth is far too impatient for this. "Catching a cab."

"To?"

"46B Southerland Road."

"Schedule?"

"Go to the house. Unpack. Call Marino High School."

"To make confirm what?"

"That I've been enrolled and that I'm attending it the next day."

"Who are you?"

"Lois Watermann. Good at Maths, average at everything else. Okay at sports. Hates Science. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Hook nose. Parents are at a conference in Alabama."

"What is your main aim?"

"To fit in. Be unordinary."

"What are you not going to do?"

"Stick out. Go snooping around in business that isn't mine."

That bit kills her. She's a spy and she's not allowed to do even the tiniest bit of sleuthing? She did sneak an acid lipstick into one of her plimsolls, however. Maybe she'll be able to just, you know. Rearrange the rules a tad. Chiron doesn't have to know anything.

"Good." Chiron gives her a warm, fatherly look. "You stay safe, Annabeth, you hear me? Keep out of trouble."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll see you soon, Annabeth."

"You too, Chiron."

And that's it.


Well. Kind of.

The apartment she's staying in is beautiful. It's a little small, which isn't a problem in the slightest. It's been sparsely but prettily furnished, with a couch in the living room, a few pots, a box of cereal and some microwaveable fajitas in the kitchen cupboards and a bed-frameless mattress in the middle of one of the two bedrooms. Annabeth notices grumpily that it's in the smallest bedroom, but there's a dangly light fitting hanging right over the door that she reckons will be obliterated if she tried to manoeuvre the mattress so she just leaves it.

It's nice. She likes it.

She unpacks her suitcase and then hauls her makeup kit to the bathroom. Time to start her transformation from Annabeth Chase to Lois Watermann.

Like. Don't get her wrong. She loves disguises. She thinks they're jolly good – but she absolutely hates disguises that have to last for a long time. Because more often than not, she can't just resort to wigs.

"Man up, Chase," she tells herself in the mirror, picking up a bottle of hair dye. She glares at herself. "It is hair. You will grow your blonde hair back. Don't be such a drama queen." She nods at herself firmly. "You have much more important things to worry about than your hair. Like– like making friends. And fitting in. And algebra homework. Your hair is not a top priority so you will shut up right this instant."

It's not the first time she's dyed her hair. It's been ginger before, and then dark blonde, and then black, and then ginger again, and multiple shades of brown. However, that's always been temporary hair dye that fades within a few weeks. She's never had to do it the point where it'll stay in until it grows out.

She scrubs it in with a pair of plastic gloves, and when she's leaving it to sit she spends the entire half an hour staring at herself in the mirror considering the pros and cons of straightening her hair every day to make herself look less like herself. She decides against it, because she's tried it before and when she went back to being Annabeth her hair couldn't decide whether to curl or stay straight and formed something awful-looking in between the two for the next several weeks.

Curls are cool, anyway.

She washes out the dye and avoids looking at herself in the mirror as it dries. She puts one of the fajitas in the microwave and eats it, and then she arranges her clothes into piles and assigns them certain drawers. She calls the school, deepening her voice and pretending it's her mother. They tell her she starts tomorrow. She writes CL on her shoulder in Biro so she won't forget to put her brown contact lenses in the next day. Then, when the clock hits 10:56, she curls up on the mattress and pushes her nose into her pillow.

This is how it feels to be independent.

It's fun, don't get her wrong. But she feels a bit lonely, in a new room in a new state with new hair ready to start a new school.

She tells herself she's being ridiculous and falls asleep.


School is interesting, to say the least.

Annabeth has watched movies, obviously. She watched almost every teen movie she could and did as much research as her alarm would let her on what schools would be like. To remain inconspicuous, she decided on a pair of jeans and a random purple T-shirt. She arrives at school fifteen minutes early, and wanders blindly until she finds the office, where she receives her schedule and a map of the school.

"But you won't be needing that," the lady at the desk says cheerfully. "We've got Brandon showing you around for today."

Annabeth blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Brandon Lawrence," the lady repeats, as if by saying his full name it will make things clearer. "He's a lovely boy, don't you worry. Very sweet – also very handsome. He'll show you around Marino."

Sure enough, a few moments later a boy with a thatch of slicked-down blonde hair and piercing blue eyes comes in. There's something eerily familiar about him that makes Annabeth's stomach twist, but she forces a smile and accepts his handshake when he offers it.

"Louise Watermann, right?" he asks.

Annabeth's eye twitches. "Lois, actually."

"My bad." He gives her a radiant smile that almost blinds Annabeth, and she blinks, a little stunned. His teeth are extremely white. It's a little off-putting, actually. "Come on, I'll give you a tour. Miss Marsh gave me first and second period off, so I can show you around."

Oh, joy. She's going to spend two hours with him. Hurrah.

However, not all hope seems to be lost, because when they round the corner, Annabeth pretending to pay attention to whatever Brandon is rattling on about, they smack straight into a girl holding a pile of Maths textbooks.

"Hey, Brandon!" she chirps.

Brandon squints at her, as if he can't remember who she is. Annabeth wants to laugh. "Um, hey... Daisy?"

The girl scowls at him. "Hazel."

"Close."

"Yeah, not really." She turns on Annabeth, beaming. "Oh, you must be the new girl! I'm Hazel, it's nice to meet you."

"Lois. Um, you too."

Hazel looks much, much nicer than Brandon. Annabeth didn't get the time to Study Brandon properly, because she feels a little intimidated if she looks at him too long, but with Hazel, standing there with her gold eyes and chocolate skin and dimpled smile, it's easy. Single mother. Absent a lot, though. If she were around she wouldn't let Hazel walk out wearing what she's wearing (a crimson velvet jacket and a dark purple skirt. It's cute, if not slightly old-fashioned, but the colours don't match at all). Her mother also works as something eccentric. She can't tell properly – it's something between a fortuneteller and a tarot card dealer – but Hazel definitely inherited some of the traits. She's got a bunch of symbols Annabeth recognizes as good luck sigils stitched over the breast of her jacket, not the mention the top of what looks like a bag of herbs peeking out the top of her pocket.

She looks utterly wonderful. Annabeth wants her to be her tour guide, not stupid Brandon.

It's as if Hazel can read her thoughts. She studies them for a few seconds before saying, "Here, Brandon, I'll show Lois around."

Brandon looks irritated. "That's okay, I can do it."

"No, really." Hazel beams at her, and then links their arms together. Annabeth's never been one for affection so she stares at their linked arms, confused, while Hazel gives Brandon a big smile. "I can do it. Tell Mr Solomon and Mr Moore that I'll be absent from their classes, please."

"No, hey–"

But before Brandon can complain any further, Hazel drags Annabeth away from him down the corridor. When they are out of earshot, Hazel bursts into giggles. "That was so scary!" she hisses. "I was so afraid he was going to rip my head off."

"I would have protected you."

"That's very sweet, except I doubt you could have fought off Brandon Lawrence. He's the captain of the football team, if he hasn't already told you. He's got biceps bigger than his future."

Annabeth holds back a snigger. If only Hazel knew that one time she brought down six fully-grown men with nothing but a baseball and a piece of uncooked spaghetti then she might have to rethink her statement. Brandon Lawrence is no match for her.

Unfortunately, she can't say that. You know. Fitting in and all that jazz.

Hazel shows her around. Annabeth was right, Hazel is much more interesting than Brandon. She vaguely shows her where certain blocks and classrooms are, but then she gives Annabeth a little grin that makes Annabeth's veins tingle. "Now I'm going to show you the ropes," she says. "You know. The Unspoken Rules Of High School?"

Frankly, Annabeth doesn't know, because she's never been to a high school long enough to learn these 'rules', but, like. She's watched Mean Girls and High School Musical and Bratz. She knows what they are.

"So," Hazel says, leading her down the corridors. "We haven't really got cliques, as such, because unfortunately this isn't a movie, but don't fear, we've got our fair share of mean kids. But they're not all cheerleaders, so." She pulls Annabeth to one of the doors and points at some of the students through the small window. "That girl over there with the long black hair? That's Drew. She is a cheerleader and she's a total menace. I'd suggest you steer clear of her. She also knows how to flirt, too, and because of that she's got about half the school population at her feet. It's not necessarily a choice, though. She wraps them around her finger, get them to tell/send her all sorts of discriminating things about themselves and then uses it to get them to do stuff for herself. She's evil but she's smart.

"You've met Brandon. He's also your stereotypical jock. Moved her not that long ago, actually – I think that's why he was originally your tour guide, because he 'gets' you, or something like that. He's a butt. Enough said.

"Then we have Silena, but she's wonderful. She's always really nice to me. She's also a cheerleader and she's dating Beckendorf – he looks like a rugby player but he's actually really, really good at woodshop, you wouldn't believe half the stuff he makes – and she's best friends with Clarisse La Rue." Hazel points to a beefy girl with a brown, ropy ponytail and a bandanna. "Clarisse is the school bully. She's like Drew but tougher and not bothered to start a collection of boys' nudes to use as blackmail. If you say one word against her or Silena she'll punch you in the nose. She's the only girl on the rugby team. She will break you in half."

Hazel stabs her finger against the glass towards a stocky Chinese boy. "That's Frank Zhang," she says. Annabeth isn't sure, but she's pretty sure she's blushing. "He's – he's also really nice. Don't be swayed by his size. He's – he's like a gentle giant."

Annabeth can't help it. "Do you like him?"

Hazel goes positively scarlet. "No!"

She does. It's cute.

Annabeth peers through the window. Something – or rather someone – catches her eye and she frowns. "Who's that?" she asks, pointing.

Hazel looks and then she lets a little smile slid on her lips. "That's Percy," she says. "He's a total sweetheart. He's also kind of quiet – he only has two friends, Jason and Grover. Grover is your average Go Green nerd, and Jason is the school's golden boy. No one's really sure how they became friends, but Jason's fiercely protective of both him and Grover."

Annabeth ponders over this information. The cogs in her mind start spinning. "Does he have a girlfriend?"

Hazel laughs. "I wouldn't try. He doesn't speak to anyone but Grover and Jason."

"No– I wasn't– " Annabeth huffs. Like. He's cute and all, but she's not interested like that. But she can't exactly tell Hazel why she needed that information. Hazel would think she had gone positively bananas if she told her that she was trying to Study him. She's too far away to do it properly, but she needs information to grasp at least a vague understanding of him.

On second thoughts, that does sound a little crush-y. Oh well.

Hazel gives her a warm smile. "It's okay. I was kidding."

"Yeah."

Annabeth gives him one last look, before allowing Hazel to drag her away.

Yeah, he's cute. Like. Really cute.


There's a list of reasons as to why Annabeth had to move away. A few of them she knows. The majority she doesn't.

Six months ago, Annabeth had gone undercover in a bakery as 'practice'. Chiron was always putting her in positions like that – sending her to shops or carnivals or schools as someone else to teach her how to regain a character. Everything was planned out perfectly. She had an earpiece in, in which one of her friends, a boy called Dakota, spoke to her through, and she had been training since she could walk. There was no possible way she could have gotten hurt.

–except the thing is, yes, there was, because not ten minutes after she had walked into the bakery a bomb under the counter went off.

It was on the news. A one-off terrorist attack. But it wasn't, of course it wasn't, because it was no coincidence that Annabeth, a teenage spy working for the FBI with so much information in her hands that if she wanted she could bring the world down, was there at the time it went off. One person died. Twelve were seriously injured – Annabeth one of them. She had been blasted through the shop window – two thick sheets of double-glazed glass – and was crushed beneath a table. She had broken three of her ribs, shattered the whole of her left arm and had speared her lung with one of the table legs that went straight through her stomach.

She lived. She was okay.

Except she wasn't really, because two weeks later the train Annabeth was meant to be catching, the one she had accidentally missed because she had spent too long at the barriers digging through her bag trying to find her ticket, had a freak accident and fell off the railings. No one survived.

The police said it was ice on the tracks. Chiron sent out a group of students from the Society to look at the crime scene, and they said that the tracks had been slicked with oil and car grease to the point where they couldn't even stand.

Annabeth had a psychopath on her tail and she had a pretty good idea at who it was. So, to keep her safe, Chiron sent her to New York with a new name and a new identity to keep her safe.

It's a scary thing, the spy world. If only she knew just how scary it was going to really get.


A/N: I promise the chapters aren't going to normally be this boring I suck at writing openings (as you can tell).

Anyway, hello! Welcome to my story. It's my first story under this account, so I hope you enjoy, although it's not my first story for fanfiction or pjo (my other account was utterly hideous ew I hope it stays forgotten). I haven't used this website in a while so excuse me if the layout is a bit weird for the first few chapters, I just need to navigate my way around a little.

Speaking of chapters, yes, this is going to be a multi-chapter fic (woo). I'm going to aim to update minimum twice a week, maybe even three if I can, but I've got GCSEs coming up so that many vary a little (I'll let you know when I'm fully submerged in them, so you can expect updates to be a little all over the place). Also YES, this is a Percabeth story, but the Percabeth may not be for a few chapters. As you can see with the genres, it's Mystery and Romance, so as well as percabeth you've also got a lovely little subplot to look forward to, so, you know, #staytuned.

Anyway, that's all I have for now, so I hope you're all doing well and that you all have a lovely week. Tell me what you think, and I'll see you soon!