Golden | pjo

I'M GETTING TIRED OF THIS CHEERLEADER

The metal door was half-hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. I didn't see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed us where to look, and I recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.

"It hasn't been used in a long time," Annabeth said.

"I tried to open it once," Rachel said, "just out of curiosity. It's rusted shut."

"No." Annabeth stepped forward. "It just needs the touch of a half-blood."

Sure enough, as soon as Annabeth put her hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.

"Wow." Rachel looked calm, but I couldn't tell if she was pretending or not. She'd changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-colored jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face. "So... after you?"

"Technically-" I started. She was our guide, she would have to lead us.

"You're the guide," Annabeth said with mock politeness. "Lead on."

I was going to try and put it nicer than that but that works.

The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark I couldn't see further than a foot in front of us, but Annabeth, Percy, and I had restocked on flashlights. The longest I had managed to hold the glow was for 15 minutes, definitely not long enough to use as a light source in the Labyrinth. As soon as we switched on the flashlights, Rachel yelped.

A skeleton was grinning at us. It wasn't human. It was huge, for one thing – at least eight feet tall. It had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent a shiver down my back was the single black eye socket in the center of its skull.

"A Cyclops," Annabeth said. "It's very old. It's not... anybody we know."

It wasn't Tyson, she meant. But that didn't make me feel much better. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, I didn't want to meet.

Rachel swallowed. "You have a friend who's a Cyclops?"

"Tyson," Percy said. "My half-brother."

"Your half-brother?"

"Hopefully we'll find him down here," Percy said. "And Grover. He's a satyr."

"And Nico," I added. I wasn't going to let Kronos corrupt him.

"Oh." Her voice was small. "Well then, we'd better keep moving."

She stepped under the skeleton's left arm and kept walking. Annabeth, Percy, and I exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. We followed Rachel deeper into the maze.

After fifty feet we came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was earth and tree roots.

Percy pointed left. "That looks like the tunnel Tyson and Grover took."

Annabeth frowned. "Yeah, but the architecture to the right – those old stones – that's more likely to lead to an ancient part of the maze, towards Daedalus's workshop."

"We need to go straight," Rachel said.

Annabeth and Percy both looked at her as I stared down the tunnel ahead. The other two had just seemed like distractions but whatever was ahead didn't feel welcoming either.

"That's the least likely choice," Annabeth said.

"You don't see it?" Rachel asked. "Look at the floor."