My name was not always Percy Jackson.
Once, I was something else—someone else. Not the son of Poseidon, not the so-called most powerful demigod of my generation, not the boy fated to save Olympus. Before the sea claimed me, before the gods twisted my life into their favorite soap opera, I carried a name the world buried under fire, ash, and silence.
I remember that name like a scar you can't rub out: A.D.A.M.-N.01.
But before I was their weapon, before the labs and the needles and the training yards that stank of blood and fear, I lived on Earth. Or rather, a version of it—one you wouldn't recognize anymore. It used to be full of light, full of distractions that made life feel permanent. People argued about sports teams, chased the latest gadgets, drowned themselves in shows and news cycles. We thought we were invincible.
Then came the man who proved us wrong.
Our president. That bastard. The kind of leader who wore a smile for the cameras but carried a knife for everyone else. He believed himself untouchable, righteous, a man ordained to rule. And the worst part? He made the world believe it too. He played god on a stage built of lies.
Until he pissed off the wrong people.
And then the sky burned.
The first city to go was Shanghai. Then Paris. New York followed a week later. One by one, the great monuments of civilization crumbled into radioactive dust. That was the spark of the Third World War. A war that didn't just scar countries, it scarred the planet itself.
I remember the sky first. Always gray. Always heavy, like the world itself couldn't breathe anymore. People wore masks not just for the fallout, but because disease spread like wildfire in the ruins. Riots were daily life. Governments collapsed. Borders meant nothing when whole continents were bleeding.
Nowhere was safe.
And in the middle of that chaos, they began experimenting.
The brass called it Project A.D.A.M. — "Advanced Defense and Assault Model." It sounded clean, clinical, like something out of a science lab brochure. But what it really meant was this: they were building weapons out of people. Soldiers who wouldn't disobey, who wouldn't question orders, who could survive where normal men dropped dead.
Yeah. That's where I come in. I was the first. A.D.A.M.-N.01. The "N" stood for "Neo," like some kind of shiny new prototype they could show off to the rest of the world. A living poster boy for the future of war.
Except I wasn't anyone special before that. I wasn't some star athlete or genius engineer. I was just… me. A nobody trying to survive in a city that was already half-dead. My parents were gone before the bombs fell—disease, starvation, doesn't really matter anymore. I scavenged scraps, ran with street gangs when I had to, fought in back alleys for food. I didn't volunteer for the project. I got dragged into it, one more stray they could feed into the machine.
The training was hell. Imagine being broken down piece by piece until even your bones don't feel like your own anymore. They pumped me full of chemicals, rewrote my DNA with something that burned like liquid fire, strapped me into machines that stretched my body past its limits. I screamed until my throat bled. Sometimes I blacked out for days, waking up to find new scars, new implants, new orders drilled into my skull.
"Again," the instructors barked as I crawled across blood-stained floors.
"Faster," as shock batons lit up my spine.
"Stronger," as they forced me to lift until muscle tore, then pumped me with serums to stitch it back together so they could tear it again.
They wanted a weapon, not a person. And slowly, that's what I became.
But here's the thing: I wasn't the greatest soldier ever made. Not even close. They made plenty after me, improved on every flaw I had. If I broke down under stress, they fixed it in version two. If my reflexes lagged by half a second, they shaved it off in version three. I was the blueprint, not the masterpiece. Disposable once the line was perfected.
I made friends with some of the other experiments—kids, really, barely old enough to remember what ice cream tasted like. There was a boy named Ramos, who used to hum lullabies under his breath when the lights went out. A girl named Yara, who had fire in her eyes no amount of shock therapy could dim. We weren't supposed to talk, but in whispers we did. Whispered about food, about the world before, about escaping.
One night, Yara leaned close to me in the barracks and whispered, "They'll kill us when they're done. You know that, right?"
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That the brass needed us too much. But deep down, I knew. She was right.
The missions started soon after. Dirty work, things too ugly to put regular soldiers through. Clearing out ruins full of starving families labeled "insurgents." Hunting survivors who refused to join the new regime. Assassinations that got covered up in the news with words like "necessary strike."
I obeyed because that's what they built me for. My body moved before my mind caught up. But each mission carved something out of me. Piece by piece, the human parts got replaced with silence.
Still, sometimes… I hesitated.
Once, they sent me into a collapsed subway in Berlin, told me to clear it of hostiles. I found children there. Not soldiers. Just kids, huddled together with their mother. My rifle trembled in my hands.
The comm crackled: "Target them. No witnesses."
I didn't. I fired above their heads and told them to run.
I thought maybe I'd gotten away with it. Maybe the brass wouldn't notice one family slipping through the cracks. But the next week, Ramos was gone. No explanation. Just gone. His bunk stripped, his number erased from the roster.
That was my warning. They didn't need reasons to erase us.
And when they finally decided I wasn't useful anymore, they didn't come to me with thanks for my service. They sent a kill team. My own squad.
"Orders are orders, soldier," my commander muttered as we circled each other in the ruins of what used to be Madrid. The city wasn't just destroyed—it was a hollow carcass of glass, concrete, and smoke. Buildings that had touched the clouds now lay like broken teeth in the dirt. Fires still smoldered in alleys, sending sharp acrid smoke curling into the gray sky. His rifle was steady, but his eyes betrayed hesitation—or maybe fear.
"Soldier," I spat back, my voice sharp enough to cut through the wind whistling over the shattered rooftops. "That's all we are to you? That's all we'll ever be? Obedient tools? We are still human!"
He didn't answer. Never did. He never had, not once in all the missions, all the orders, all the blood. And that's when the world taught me the cruelest lesson a soldier could learn: loyalty is meaningless when your purpose expires. He fired.
The first bullet tore through my shoulder, and the world tipped sideways. Pain exploded, white-hot and blinding. I fell to my knees, scraping across jagged concrete. I tasted iron—my own blood mingling with the ash beneath me. My fingers clawed for purchase, but the debris beneath my hands gave me nothing. I rolled, barely avoiding the second shot that thudded into the wall behind me.
I staggered to my feet, pulling the rifle I'd trained with for years into position. Reflex, muscle memory, everything they had drilled into me screamed to survive. I aimed, I fired—too slow, too calculated. He ducked behind a collapsed support beam, bullets ripping the air around me.
The world had been reduced to survival, to firing first and asking questions never. I could see it all then—the cities that burned, the children who screamed, the people I failed to save because we were too few, too broken. I was a weapon. That's all I had ever been. And now, the people who built me had come to bury me.
I lunged, screaming with a rage that had nothing to do with hope and everything to do with bitter, burning betrayal. I hit him, shoulder-first, knocking him off balance, sending his rifle clattering across the rubble. My hands found his collar, shaking him, trying to force the truth into his veins.
"Why?" I yelled, my voice raw. "Why destroy what you made? We were supposed to be unstoppable! We were supposed to—"
The world blinked. A single shot rang out. I stumbled back, the force tearing through my chest. My knees hit the concrete again, and the air left my lungs in a final, desperate gasp. I could taste smoke, ash, and blood, all mixed with the bitter tang of betrayal.
I sank to the ground, the sky above nothing but gray ash. My vision blurred. Shadows of Madrid's ruins merged with memories: Ramos humming in the barracks, Yara's fire in her eyes, the chemical burns, the endless drills, the screams. Every friend lost. Every mission I survived only to be thrown away.
"Orders… are orders," I whispered, more to myself than to anyone else. The words felt like knives twisting in my gut. And he—my commander, the man who had made me—stood above me, rifle raised again. But I couldn't move. Couldn't fight. Couldn't care anymore.
I thought about the world I'd failed to save, the children I'd let die, the cities I couldn't protect. I thought about being human, about the fragile, stubborn spark that clung to life even when the world wanted it snuffed out. I thought about how little it had mattered.
And then, everything went black.
That's the thing about being a weapon: once you outlive your purpose, they don't put you in a museum. They bury you in a ditch, build a shinier model, and the world forgets you ever existed.
So, yeah. Before I was Percy Jackson, I was A.D.A.M.-N.01. A failed prototype of a soldier in a world that had already burned. A ghost the history books would never remember, because some truths were too ugly, too dangerous to survive. I had been made to obey, to fight, to kill—but never to live beyond my usefulness.
And maybe… maybe that's why the gods found me. Why fate decided that this wasn't the end. Because if there's one thing I learned in that life, one hard, bitter truth that clung to me as the darkness claimed my vision, it's this: monsters don't always have claws or fangs. Sometimes, they wear medals. Sometimes, they stand on podiums and call themselves leaders.
<---->
When I woke up, I wasn't on a battlefield. I stood on a floating marble platform, surrounded by an otherworldly scene. Ahead of me were three thrones, each occupied by a being that shifted between human and something far more powerful. Their glowing forms radiated both divine energy and an ominous presence. They had halos and horns, their appearances blending beauty and terror.
The being on the left was a woman cloaked in purple flames. Her horns arched gracefully above her head, and her split halo resembled an all-seeing eye. She exuded a sense of regal power and danger.
In the center sat a figure wrapped in deep blue light, like the night sky. His gaze was piercing and wise but carried an undercurrent of menace. His horns curled like a ram's, and his shattered halo floated around him like Saturn's rings.
To the right was a shadowy figure, exuding raw power mixed with calculated intelligence. His form shifted between human and something tentacled, his movements hypnotic. His horns swept backward before rising sharply, and his spiked halo encircled his neck like a dark crown.
As I stepped forward, fear gripped me. My heart pounded, each beat echoing in the silence. Before I could fully process what was happening, a loud roar broke through the stillness. From the void, a massive golden dragon emerged, its scales shimmering with celestial light. As it descended, it transformed into a woman of breathtaking beauty. Her golden skin glowed, her four spiraling horns and crown-like halo marking her as someone far beyond mortal comprehension.
"Welcome, young one, to the Celestial Realm," she said, her voice a perfect blend of authority and grace. "I am Ravanna, the Mother of Creation. These are my children: Chaos, Order, and Abyss—the watchers and guardians of my domain."