Chapter 3: Linear B and Monster Displacement Patterns

The monster displacement data had started as a spreadsheet.

Annabeth had built it in late April, when the third unusually large hellhound pack crossed into Connecticut without apparent provocation. She'd labeled columns: date, species, estimated size, vector of movement, weather, lunar phase, proximity to ley lines, proximity to known Olympian sites, proximity to the nearest hellmouth. She'd added conditional formatting so outliers appeared in red. She liked the conditional formatting. It imposed a visual grammar on chaos, which was the closest thing to comfort she'd found that didn't require talking to anyone.

By June the spreadsheet was forty-seven rows long and approximately sixty percent red.