OLYMPUS REBORN — BOOK ONE: ZEUS REINCARNATED AS A TEENAGER
Volume: Two — Monsters on the Road
The town was called Sable Creek.
We stopped because Demi said she wanted a real breakfast and Ares needed gas and honestly I wasn't going to argue because I'd been eating gas station food for so long I'd started forgetting what a plate looked like.
It was a good town. The kind that still had a proper main street with a hardware store and a bakery and a diner that smelled like coffee and bacon from half a block away. The kind of town that felt like it had been the same for sixty years and was completely fine with that.
We ate at the diner. Real food. Hot plates. A waitress named Carol who refilled our coffees without being asked and called Ares "honey" twice, which he endured with a dignity that honestly impressed me.
Demi had the full breakfast. She ate every single thing on the plate with the focused efficiency of someone fueling a machine, which is accurate.
Ares had three of whatever the daily special was. Nobody commented.
I had eggs and toast and two coffees and felt, for the first time since Ohio, like an almost-normal person doing an almost-normal thing.
We spent the day there.
Not on purpose. It just — happened.
After breakfast Demi found a used bookstore two doors down and disappeared into it for two hours. Ares walked the perimeter of the town three times, which was his version of sightseeing, and came back having apparently helped someone fix a broken fence post because that's the kind of thing that happens when you put a god of war in a small town with nothing to fight.
I sat in the town square and let the sun hit my face and reached for the compass needle and it said north and I thought a few more hours won't matter and for once I believed it.
There was a park. A real one, with actual grass, and I sat on a bench and did nothing for forty-five minutes. Just existed. Just breathed.
I can't remember the last time I did that.
By evening Demi had found the town's inn and declared we were staying.
"We can't afford to—" I started.
"It has individual rooms," she said. "With beds. Actual beds. And a bathroom with hot water." She looked at me with the expression of someone who had been sleeping in a car for two weeks and was done discussing this. "We're staying."
Ares was already carrying his jacket inside.
The inn was small and clean and run by an older man named George who gave us keys attached to actual wooden key fobs like it was 1987 and seemed genuinely pleased to have guests. My room had a window that looked out at the street and a bed with real pillows and I sat on the edge of it and my bones literally thanked me.
From down the hall I heard Demi's shower start running and then heard what I'm fairly certain was her saying oh thank god which was both relatable and slightly funny given the context.
I took my own shower.
Put on clean clothes from the bottom of my bag.
Slept in a real bed for the first time in thirteen days.
It was the best sleep I'd had since September.
The next morning I came down for breakfast at eight AM.
George was at the front desk. He looked up when I appeared on the stairs and his face did the specific thing faces do when someone walks in for the first time.
"Good morning," he said. "Checking in?"
I stopped on the bottom step.
"We checked in last night," I said. "Room four. Jason. There were three of us."
George looked at his register. His brow furrowed in the genuine confusion of someone confronting a gap between their memory and reality. "I don't have anyone checked in from last night," he said. "I'm sorry, I think there might have been a mix-up—"
I reached into my pocket for the key fob.
Nothing.
I checked the other pocket. My jacket. Nothing.
Huh.
I must have left it upstairs.
"I'm sorry," George said. "I'm not sure what happened. But of course we have availability today if you'd like to—"
"We already have rooms," I said. "We checked in last night."
"I don't have a record of that," George said, genuinely apologetic. "But it's no trouble at all. Let me get you sorted."
I stood there for a moment.
Something was off. I couldn't name it yet. George wasn't lying — I'd have felt it, the same way I felt Walt's fractured current or the Keres's patient hunger. He was just — confused. In the specific way of someone who genuinely had no memory to access.
"I'll sort it out later," I said. "Can I get a coffee?"
"Of course," George said, already reaching for a mug.
I sat at the small table by the window and looked out at the street and drank my coffee and tried to figure out what was making the back of my neck prickle.
The main street of Sable Creek was waking up.
The hardware store owner unlocking his door. The bakery putting out its chalkboard sign. A woman walking a small brown dog on a blue lead.
Normal. Fine.
Except.
I had seen this yesterday morning when we pulled into town. I was almost certain I'd seen this woman — same dog, same blue lead, same direction, same unhurried pace.
But that happened every morning in small towns. Same routines. Same routes. Nothing strange about that.
I finished my coffee and went to find the others.
Demi was coming down the stairs as I reached the bottom.
"George doesn't remember checking us in," I said.
"I know." She had her notebook. "My room key wasn't on the nightstand where I left it. I assumed I'd misplaced it." She paused. "But it's on the hook behind George's desk. Number three. Exactly where it was when he gave it to us."
I looked back at the desk. She was right. All three keys were on the hooks.
"I probably knocked it off the nightstand in my sleep," I said.
"Probably," Demi said. Her voice was doing the careful neutral thing it did when she wasn't ready to say what she was actually thinking.
We went outside.
The town felt — fine.
That was the problem. It felt completely, perfectly fine. The kind of fine that a Tuesday morning in a small coastal California town should feel. The bakery smelled like fresh bread. Kids were heading to school. The diner had its door propped open and Carol's voice drifted out as she called an order back to the kitchen.
We walked to the diner for breakfast since we'd already paid for rooms we apparently no longer had.
Carol greeted us at the door.
"Good morning! Just the two of you?"
"Three," I said. "Ares is coming."
"Wonderful. Sit anywhere you like."
We sat at the same table as yesterday.
Carol handed us menus.
The same menus.
I looked at mine. The laminated card with the hand-drawn border and the photo of Pearl's original diner from 1962 in the top corner. Yesterday I'd read it front to back waiting for the food to arrive.
I knew exactly what was on it. Every item. Every price.
I turned it over.
"Demi," I said quietly.
"Yes," she said.
"Does anything feel strange to you?"
She set her menu down. Looked around the diner slowly. At the tables. At the other customers. At Carol refilling someone's coffee at the counter.
"That man in the green jacket," she said. "Third table. He's reading the sports section."
"And?"
"He was reading the sports section when we came in yesterday. Same page. Same position. I noticed because he had it folded the exact same way my father used to fold his newspaper."
I looked at the man. Green jacket. Sports section. Folded in thirds.
The woman at the counter was having what sounded like the beginning of a phone call. Short sentences. The opening of a conversation.
I had the sudden, specific memory of hearing the exact same opening sentences yesterday morning when we'd walked past.
"Something's wrong with this town," I said.
"Yes," Demi said. "I think so too."
Carol appeared at our table with her notepad. "What can I get you two?"
"Coffee," I said. "And some time."
She smiled and went to get the coffee.
Ares came through the door, saw our faces, and sat down without a word.
"Something's wrong," I said.
He looked around the diner with his war-god read of any situation. Ten seconds.
"The couple by the window," he said. "They're having the same argument they were having yesterday when we walked past outside. Same words. Same gestures." He paused. "I remember because the woman threw her spoon and I thought it was going to escalate."
"Did it?"
"No. She picked the spoon back up and they both laughed." He looked at the couple. "They're about thirty seconds from the spoon."
We watched.
The woman threw the spoon.
Picked it up.
They both laughed.
The three of us sat with that for a moment.
"We need to walk the town," Demi said. She was already opening her notebook. "Carefully. Look for more patterns. And look for anyone who isn't — " she paused "— in the pattern."
"Someone who remembers," I said.
"If we accumulated through the reset," she said, "something else might have too."