VIDEO GAMES! (p. jackson) (#1)

- seven

THEY MADE IT A HUNDRED FEET BEFORE THEY WERE HOPELESSLY LOST.

The tunnel looked nothing like the one Rose and Percy had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes ever ten feet. Percy shined a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but they couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness. Rose thought she heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.

She hoped it was just the wind.

Annabeth tried her best to guide them. She had this idea that they should stick to the left wall.

"If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."

Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. They found themselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how they'd gotten there.

"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.

"Just turn around," Annabeth said.

They each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of them could decide which way led back to camp.

"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?"

Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as Rose could tell, they were identical. "That way."

"How do you know?" Percy asked.

"Deductive reasoning."

"So... you're guessing."

"Just come on," she said.

The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl.

Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"

"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Rose told him.

"It's been longer than that," Grover insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"

They kept shuffling forward. Just when Rose was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish them, it opened into a huge room. Percy shined his light around the walls and said, "Whoa."

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but she could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. Aphrodite clutched a glass of wine. Apollo looked to be playing some sort of instrument— it was hard to see through the dirt, but it was probably a lyre. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. Rose had seen the gods. Apollo was not that pale, and Hermes's nose wasn't that big.

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn't held water in a long time.

"What is this place?" Percy muttered. "It looks—"

"Roman," Rose said. "Those mosaics are probably about two thousand years old."

"But how can they be Roman?"

Rose shrugged. "We could be in Rome. Who knows. But the Labyrinth is a patchwork— always expanding and adding pieces."

"You make it sound like it's alive."

A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of them.

"Let's not talk about it being alive," Grover whimpered. "Please?"

"Alright," Annabeth said. "Forward."

"Down the hall with the bad sounds?" Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.

"The architecture is getting older," Annabeth insisted. "That's a good sign. Daedalus's workshop would be in the oldest part."

Soon the maze was toying with them—they went fifty feet and the tunnel turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray-painted with graffiti. A neon tagger sign read MOZ RULZ.

"I'm thinking this is not roman," Percy said helpfully.

Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath them changed from cement to mud to bricks and back again. There was no sense to any of it. They stumbled into a wince cellar—a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks—like they were walking through somebody's basement, only there was no exit above them, just more tunnels leading on.

Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and Rose could hear voices above them and the creaking of footsteps, as if they were walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, they couldn't get to them. They were stuck down here with no way out.

Then they found their first skeleton.

He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to him.

"A milkman," Annabeth said.

"What?" Percy asked.

"They used to deliver milk."

"Yeah, I know what they are, but... that was when my mom was little, like a million years ago. What's he doing here?"

Rose frowned. "Isn't your mom like... forty?"

"She's thirty-seven."

"Some people wander in by mistake," Annabeth said. "Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans sent people in here as human sacrifices."

Grover gulped. "He's been down here a long time."

He pointed to the skeleton's bottles, which were coated with white dust. The skeleton's fingers were clawing at the brick wall, like he had died trying to get out.

"Only bones," Tyson said. "Don't worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead."

"The milkman doesn't bother me," Grover said. "It's the smell. Monsters. Can't you smell it?"

Tyson nodded. "Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that. Monsters and dead milk people."

"Oh, good," Grover whimpered. "I thought maybe I was wrong."

"We have to get deeper into the maze," Annabeth said. "There has to be a way to the center."

She led them to the right, then the left, through a corridor of stainless steel like some kind of air shaft, and they arrived back in the Roman tile room with the fountain.

This time, they weren't alone.