"You're still being too predictable," Delta chided.
He leaned back into his chair, toying with his commander pin—a green trident fastened right under his collar. "Power, Percy, requires the ability to play with appearances. You have to be able to wear different masks; you need to keep a bag full of deceptive tricks on you at all times. Without it, you'll never make it far in this world. Again. You're a traveler entering one of Atlantis' bordering cities."
I'm two weeks into my training. I haven't gotten the wonderful chance for any real field experience yet, seeing as Delta said I needed to pass all of my preliminary tests. Well, that's not entirely fair—the other day, I got sent out to take care of a feral stingray that was harassing moviegoers by the Atlantis Cinema, but I wouldn't really call that a mission. In fact, I resent that particular stingray, because the owner of the cinema was so grateful for my assistance, he'd insisted I sit and watch a movie, courtesy of the cinema, for saving his establishment.
The problem? The movie was my life being played on screen. Specifically, the period after I'd killed Ms. Dodds and before my Dad told me I could come down to Atlantis. I felt like retreating into my chair the whole time. I'll admit, my fight with Ares does seem pretty cool, now since I wasn't in, like, mortal danger and stuff, but the existence of this movie begged too many questions.
The most pressing, obviously being how they even get so much of this on film in the first place. I had my question answered when the credits rolled, and the postcredits scene was Hades waving at the camera. "Hey, Perce," He'd said, a teasing grin on his face. "I recorded this, for you know, safety reasons. You're alive, though! So now, I'm going to sell it to Atlantis. Toodles!"
Prick. I grumbled about that the whole way back to the barracks, and get this! Delta was so mad I took advantage of my fame that he made me run laps all night. I'm not exaggerating. With the boost I got from being underwater, I could quite literally run all night—Delta was well aware of this fact. Being a part of the espionage division of Atlantis was, as you'd expect, a lot of work and an even larger amount of red tape.
They had a really specific way of doing things down here, and the fact that I was the Son of Poseidon could only get me so far. Every agent of the fourth, as we were called, was expected to show a level of proficiency in four major categories: combat, intelligence, speed, and mental fortitude. Each agent-in-training was given a week to prepare for their eventual examinations in these categories.
After that week passed, Delta himself would personally make sure to test each cadet thoroughly. He wanted every soldier vetted, tested, and clean to the point where they could, as he put it, "drop into enemy territory, sit at their dinner table, and have them offering you seconds before they realized you weren't one of them."
The combat examination involved rapid-fire fights of increasing difficulty with different members of the fourth. I mopped the floor with most of them, but when I got to Delta himself, he stopped the test, claiming he'd tested me enough when I first got to Atlantis. The intelligence portion was covered by my exam and speed?
I'm a child of Poseidon underwater. Come on now. Mental fortitude was a bit tougher, just because all of the tests were so random—I had no chance to accurately prepare for any of them. There were all kinds of weird situations in which I basically was instructed to keep a straight face and make no outward reaction.
One of the times, an old man was brought in, coughing violently, and I had to watch as he eventually passed out. Another time, I was forced to stand silently as a woman begged for help before she turned and tried to kill me. That time, I was told to dispatch of her as quickly and painlessly as possible. The worst one, by far, was when they brought in a naiad and had her try to seduce me. The worst part was how into it she got—something made me feel like she wasn't really acting too much at all. Delta had to tell her the test was over four times.
Eventually, he had to get two agents to quite literally pry her off of me.
When it was all said and done, thanks to [Gamer's Mind], I passed all the tests with flying colors. Set a record, in fact. Delta decided that wasn't enough and took it upon himself to teach me some of his personal tricks—what he called "lessons of the trade." These lessons weren't just about fighting—they were about surviving. He'd taken it upon himself to drill me with everything I needed to know to navigate the shadowy world of espionage, and it was… exhausting. Physically, mentally, even emotionally.
I thought I'd been prepared for anything after my first quest, but Delta was a whole different kind of teacher. He didn't just show me how to fight—he taught me how to disappear into a crowd, how to lie with a straight face—well, technically, we were still working on that one—and how to use someone's assumptions against them. "A good spy," he'd said, pacing around me during one of our sessions, "is like water. Fluid. Adaptable. You take the shape of whatever vessel you're poured into. Be too rigid, and you'll crack under pressure. Too loose, and you'll slip through the cracks yourself."
He was right, of course. He always was, annoyingly enough. I couldn't get away with half-assing anything around him; he had a way of seeing through me like glass. But the strangest part? I didn't hate it. Normally, I didn't do too well with that kind of constant pressure—it was one of the main reasons I had to move around schools so much when I was younger. I guess somewhere between the grueling tests and his relentless critiques, unlike most of my teachers from before, Delta had started to feel like a mentor. A really intense, borderline scary mentor, but a mentor nonetheless.
He was grounded, real, and unapologetically direct. He didn't hold my hand or sugarcoat things. If I screwed up, he let me know in no uncertain terms, but when I got something right, there was a subtle nod, a flicker of approval in his otherwise guarded expression. And, to his credit, he wasn't a hypocrite.
Everything he taught, he'd clearly mastered himself. Watching him fight was like watching art in motion—every strike, every feint, every counter was precise and deliberate. I'd spent a few weeks training with some of the best fighters at Camp Half-Blood— and I'd even been trained by the alleged greatest swordsman the camp had ever seen—but Delta's style was something else entirely. It wasn't just skill; it was control. Even outside of combat, his methods were meticulous.
When he taught me how to tail someone without being noticed, he didn't just lecture me about theory. He'd have me follow him through Atlantis's labyrinthine streets for hours, doubling back and leading me through markets, alleys, and rooftops until my legs felt like jelly. When he finally turned to face me, usually with a smirk, I'd find myself both annoyed and begrudgingly impressed.
Being a soldier in this particular branch of the Atlantean military boasted a weird ranking system. Rather than use titles like commander and general and so on, the fourth rated their soldiers based on color. No, not in a racist way. I mean, some dolphin warriors did get called bottlenosed bitch but I'd like to think that was lighthearted humor on the part of the soldiers.
Any newly minted soldier would start with white coloring on the brim of their armor, and that color would change over the course of their time in service. Different colors meant all kinds of things—the time spent in service, combat skill, and specializations. I was to be given a black brim, like Delta. You might think it's a little unfair, but I actually earned it, too.
The only thing I needed to do before I got to display it was finish all of my specialization tests from Delta and complete one mission. Something about eligibility, I think I was told. Now, the real-world experience, we talked about, but the tests? As luck would have it, out of all of the crazy, harebrained plots he cooked up, the peculiar situations he put me through, and the downright embarrassing scenarios I was forced to endure, I passed all of the tests except one: lying.
Yeah.
Lying.