Chapter 4

Percy was being chased by something, something large and definitely not human. He didn't know where he was at, but he knew he was in the mountains. The slope he was running up was super steep, and he kept losing his footing.

Everytime he looked behind him, he couldn't see what was chasing him, but by the gods he could hear it. The pounding of heavy feet on the mountain side, the loud, heavy breathing that was gradually getting closer, trees snapping, echoing up the steep mountain. With the moon shining through the trees, Percy gripped his sword tighter and turned around, trying his best to get to the mountain peak before the unnatural creature that was chasing him could.

He made it to a clearing and slowed, taking a deep breath to replenish the oxygen spent from his lungs. Slowly glancing behind him, he saw the shadow of a large, four legged beast, almost as tall as the pine trees it was destroying on its rampage towards the man. The speed it was moving was unnatural, almost mystical. Percy gulped, and turned around, attempting to sprint the last half mile up the mountain before the beast could devour him whole.

Deep down, though, he knew he wasn't going to make it. He couldn't even remember why he was trying to make it up the mountain, but something told him he would be safe up there. He gasped for air and grabbed his cramping sides, realizing for the first time that he was bleeding, but he didn't have time to inspect the wound. He had to make it to the peak.

Maybe I'll make it, he naively thought to himself, before a large shadow blocked the moonlight, casting darkness over the surrounding areas. Quickly looking up, he saw the large, shadowy beast descend towards him, too dark to make out any features.

Gulping, Percy valiantly gripped his sword in hand and took up a stance, determined to go down fighting.

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Percy woke up in a sweat, forgetting momentarily where he was. After looking out the open window, he saw the moon reflected off the surface of the lake outside, he remembered. He was at Slade's compound, and tonight was the night he was going to infiltrate the League of Assassins.

Percy willed himself dry, trying not to think about the weird dream he had just experienced. Rose told him that maybe it was his missing memories replaying from his subconscious. He wasn't so sure he believed it. Yeah, they seemed and felt so real, as if he had actually experienced the events in his dreams. At the same time, it seemed that some of the fantastical elements of his dream just couldn't be possible. However, he tried not to dwell on them too much as he got ready to shower.

He had been with Slade, Rose and Cheshire for a couple months now, and he had spent nearly every minute of those months getting ready to infiltrate Nanda Parbat, learning everything that was known about the super secretive organization.

He kept his shower quick, and when he got out he again willed himself dry, something that he was still shocked that he could do. After putting on his clothes, he made sure his watch was on and working; he was going to need it.

He made his way to the hangar, where Slade was already waiting for him.

"You ready kid?" Slade asked him as the door to the jet lowered for them to board.

"As ready as I'll ever be I guess," Percy replied as they both made their way onto the aircraft.

"Alright, let's get this bird up and running, then we'll go over the plan."

"Right, the plan," Percy muttered. He really hated the plan, and no matter what concerns he voiced, they were always shot down.

"Don't worry kid, what do you think the last five months have been about?" Slade replied, putting his mask on and turning around in his pilot's chair, flipping switches and hitting buttons. Before long, the hangar doors opened and the aircraft crept towards the exit, before taking off faster then what probably should've been possible for a man made aircraft.

The last five months had been nothing but brutal training and mind torturing info dumps for Percy. He was pretty sure he never had to focus that hard on anything in his entire life. Every day, he felt like his brain was going to explode, and he's honestly surprised it didn't.

"Mostly not getting killed," Percy said as he tapped his watch, his nanosuit springing to life. The tiny bots quickly covered his body, leaving only his head exposed.

"Partially true," Slade mused from the control panel as they made their way to maximum altitude. "However, you know our objective."

"Yeah, I still don't know why you're interested in it. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

"Ah, that does not matter at the moment. According to my intel, Ra's Al Ghul's newest assassin shouldn't be back for a while. He's supposedly in Italy."

"Yeah, about that," Percy interrupted. "How exactly do you know that?"

"One of my contacts over in Venice has been tailing him for the past two days. We can't seem to figure out where he is going." Slade flipped autopilot into gear and stood up. "That doesn't matter right now. You are going to infiltrate Nanda Parbat, steal a sample, and be back in a couple days. Remember the rendezvous point?"

"Yeah, pretty hard to forget after it was drilled into my head over and over again." Percy laid back on the bench and closed his eyes. "Do you actually think I could do this?"

Slade sat down on the bench opposite of him and clasped both hands together, under his chin. "Kid, I know you can do this. I've fought some of the best assassins on the planet, and I'm not going to lie, each one of them is great in certain aspects. However, there are maybe only three or four people on the planet who have as great of battle instincts as you, and only one of them that I know of is a part of the League of Assassins. That's Ra's Al Ghul."

Percy took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He had done a few jobs with Slade over these last five months, but nothing to this scale. Every job so far, none of his opponents had been particularly skilled, but this was different. This was hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the deadliest men and women on the planet. He wasn't sure what he was going to do if he got caught, which is why the plan absolutely hinged on them not getting caught.

"I hope you're right to put your faith in me," Percy mumbled under his breath.

"I'm usually right about these things," Slade mused, leaning back and closing his one eye. "Now get some sleep, we're five hours out."

Percy couldn't tell if the man was actually asleep or not, but he didn't move another muscle for a long while after. Sighing, he rubbed his fingers from the edge of his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, the nanobots leaving his fingers and forming his domino mask. Screens formed over his eyes, and from the outside it gave his eyes an ethereal, ghostly blue glow.

Good morning, Percy. All systems are fully operational.

Cool, he thought to himself. At least his suit was working. He felt like his brain was working hard enough just trying not to melt into mush. He thought over everything he was taught over the last five months, and he hated to admit it, but it was shockingly little. There really wasn't that much information on the League, most deserters were usually killed and those who weren't typically weren't part of the League's inner sanctum and were not privy to their secrets.

Of course, there were still valuable tidbits of information, because without it this mission wouldn't even exist. That said, Percy was hard pressed to find a valid reason for them to even go through with this, and he was starting to feel like there was a personal vendetta at play here.

"I hate being a pawn," Percy mumbled before a sharp pain rang out behind his eyes, most likely a painful memory. Slade had taught him some breathing exercises that basically made it feel as if there was no pain, and to control every aspect of your body. He closed his eyes and controlled his breathing, expanding his lungs, trying to feel the blood circulating throughout his body. It wasn't hard, the more he practiced breathing, the more he realized that there was water everywhere in and around his body. He focused on his breathing, trying to disperse the pain to where it was hardly noticeable. Slowly but surely, the pain subsided. Focusing on breathing, he realized he hadn't even paid attention to the memory, but he wasn't really worried about it.

He sighed and asked for Athena to pull up a holographic map for him to study. Nanda Parbat was in the middle of the Himalayas, and they had to drop him off several miles out. Normally, several miles wouldn't be a problem, but hiking through the snowy Himalayas was a different task altogether. It was going to take several days to try and travel the mountains undetected, and even then, that wasn't the hardest part. Actually finding and getting inside the complex was a different story. They didn't actually have the exact location, just rough estimates based on information received from interrogations, or so he heard.

All the mountains in the Himalayas were massive, and he was starting to have serious doubts about his ability to even traverse the harsh, cold terrain. Rose told him stories of hikers who had died so high up there that rescue parties couldn't even reach the bodies, so there they still are, perfectly preserved, frozen.

He got up and reached for the bag Slade had packed him, grabbing it and sitting back down on the bench. Unzipping it, he looked through its contents, inspecting every item. There were a couple of high calorie MRE's, 12 bottles of water, stuff to make a fire, a mylar blanket that would also help keep undetected from drones looking for a heat signature, and a flare gun. He had everything he needed, yet he still felt underequipped.

Sighing, he zipped up the bag and put it at his feet. All he was left alone with was his thoughts, and they weren't exactly helping. "This is going to be a long flight," he muttered to himself as he leaned back and closed his eyes.

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A few hours later, they were in India over the Himalayas. Percy looked out the window and was shocked to see how high the mountain peaks really were.

"Get ready, we're approaching the LZ in 10," Slade said as he walked up to the control panel and took the aircraft out of autopilot. "Don't forget to go camouflage, we don't want you getting shot just yet."

Percy glared at the man. "Very funny, Slade," he deadpanned. Rolling his eyes, he picked up his bag and slung it over his back. "Athena, Arctic Stealth Mode please." His suit complied, the black and blue color fading into a ripple of white the color of snow. It still blew his mind every time it did that. "Cool," he muttered to himself.

"Remember, you are going to head east until you find the cave at the base of the mountains," Slade said as he put the jet into stealth mode and eased towards Percy's landing zone. "We don't exactly know what's up here, so keep your head on the swivel and watch your six."

The cargo door on the back of the jet started lowering, and Percy took a deep breath. "Slade, it's not too late to call this off," he called back to the man.

Chuckling, the man set the jet to hover and looked back at the young assassin. "You've been trained by the best: me. No matter what happens, remember your training." He turned back around, finally over the mountain they needed. "Remember, don't start a fire unless you find a cave, and only after you scouted the interior to make sure it's really empty."

"Right," Percy called back.

"Okay, you ready?" He asked. Percy nodded his head and walked over to the edge of the lowered cargo door. "Alright, contact us when the job is done, we'll be close by. Good luck kid."

Percy looked down at the peak of the mountain and gulped. No matter how many times he practiced this, it still freaked him out. "Here I go," he muttered before leaping off the jet and heading towards the mountain peak. The velocity he was traveling at was insane, but he had been practicing his control over water and it was almost perfect now, so much so that he could practically feel the water molecules all around him. As he quickly approached the peak, he willed the latent water vapor in the air to form around him, and through sheer willpower, his fall slowed to a crawl as he felt the weird sensation of an almost mist-like substance all around him. Within minutes, his feet touched the peak of the mountain, and he willed the water around him to disperse.

From the base of his neck, more nanobots sprang to life and covered his head, forming his mask, only instead of the usual black with blue-green glowing eyes, this time it was white. His belt, typically blue, was just as white as the rest of them. Even his sword that was engraved over his heart and belt were the same color. He didn't know why, but he always felt weird dressed in this color from head to toe.

"Alright Athena, which way is east?"

45 degrees to your right is east, Athena replied in his head.

Percy looked directly to his right and frowned. Mountains bigger than the mind could possibly imagine stretched out as far as the eye could see. In fact, he realized that if he looked closely enough, he could actually see the curve of the earth spread out all around him. He looked down and realized that even though he trained for this, this was going to be a lot harder than he anticipated. Sighing, he started his long decent down the first mountain, cursing under his breath as he did.

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Several hours later, night was quickly approaching and he had just started his ascent up the next mountain. His legs were killing him and he was starting to get exhausted, but determined, he told himself to keep going. He didn't care how much he was hurting, he was going to try and cover as much ground as possible. At one point, he asked Athena to retract the suit from his legs and spread water all around his limbs, the water providing his muscles sweet relief from the aching pain of climbing and descending, climbing and descending. At one point, his mind went blank and time seemed to freely flow all around him. He had no idea how much time had passed or even how many mountains he climbed. He would just ask Athena to keep him on his heading and he kept on going, pushing himself past his limit, to a point where any mortal should have surely died if they were doing what he was.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but after not sleeping for what he was sure was several days, he finally found a cave. He knew he probably should make sure the cave was clear, and he probably should've built a fire after, but his suit was keeping him warm and didn't alert him to any hostiles in the area, so without so much as a thought in his mind, he climbed behind a rock, curled up into a ball, and passed out from exhaustion.

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Percy woke up with a start and shot straight to his feet, his pen already in hand and mid-transformation into his blade. Frantically looking around, he realized he was still in the cave he fell asleep in, but something just felt…. Off. "Athena, how long was I out?" He whispered to himself.

19 hours, Percy, she responded.

"What! And you didn't wake me?" Percy asked, not able to shake the feeling that something was wrong.

I tried, but your body was so exhausted that no matter what signal I sent into your body you didn't wake up, I had to overload your senses so your battle instincts would kick in.

He took a deep breath and lowered his sword. "You did this to me?"

Indeed. You were unresponsive, and your heart rate was slowly decreasing. You haven't eaten, and your vitals are dropping. I needed to get your adrenaline running, and it is. Now, it would be of great interest to you to eat.

Cursing under his breath, he slung off his bag and sat down, taking out one of the MRE's he had packed. It was nothing special, a chicken burrito bowl, but he already started feeling better physically. Something was still off though.

"Did you perform a sweep and see if anyone was in the area?" He asked her.

Of course. Besides some local wildlife, there is no one in the immediate area.

He sat in silence for a while, trying to gauge what exactly it was he was feeling. "Say, if you were a secret league of highly trained assassins that has managed to stay off of world governments radar, you would need to have some way to cloak yourself, right?"

Presumably, yes.

"Exactly," Percy said. "Technology is pretty advanced from what I have seen, so if they still haven't been found, are you even sure you would be able to sense them?" The AI didn't respond immediately, which confirmed Percy's fears. They had absolutely no way of knowing if they were currently being watched. He put the rest of his food away, gripped his sword and stood up. "I don't know why, but I think we're close." He looked towards the entrance of the cave, and then behind him. "How far down does this cavern go?"

This cavern leads to a larger tunnel system that runs underneath and through several of the surrounding mountains in the area.

He didn't think he had ever wanted to punch a virtual assistant until this very moment. He finally realized why he had felt so off, why something seemed like it was wrong. "Well, I guess we need to go deeper into the mountain," he sighed. He shouldered his bag, walking deeper into caverns, his sword at the ready beside him. He finally realized what it was that he had been feeling, why he felt so off. It was no wonder that his AI didn't detect it. He was feeling thousands of peoples Killing Intent, and he was at the mouth of Nanda Parbat. He had accidentally found the League of Assassins.

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"Well, I guess we need to go deeper into the mountain," someone sighed. The assassin dove back into the shadows as quickly as possible as to not be seen. Someone had found Nanda Parbat, and Ra's AL Ghul's newest top assassin, The Shadow, was going to be the one to bring his head to his master.