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

- nine

THE GOOD NEWS: THE LEFT TUNNEL HAD NO TRICKS.

The bad news: it was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yards, they ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked their path. Behind them, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something—definitely not human—was on their tail.

"Tyson," Percy said, "can you—"

"Yes!" He slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. Dust trickled from the stone ceiling.

"Hurry!" Grover said. "Don't bring the roof down, but hurry!"

The boulder finally gave way with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and they dashed through behind it.

"Close the entrance!" Rose yelled.

They all got on the other side of the boulder and pushed. Whatever was chasing them wailed in frustration as they heaved the rock back into placed and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Percy said.

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.

They turned. They were in a twenty-foot-square cement room and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. They'd tunneled straight into a cell.

"What they hell?" Annabeth tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Through the bars they could see rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard—at least three stories of metal doors and metal catwalks.

"A prison," Percy said. "Maybe tyson can break—"

"Shh," said Grover. "Listen."

Somewhere above them, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something that Rose couldn't make out. The words were strange, like rocks in a tumbler.

"What's that language?" Percy whispered.

Tyson's eye widened. "Can't be."

"What?" Rose asked.

He grabbed two bars on their cell door and bent them wide enough for even a full-sized Cyclops to slip through.

"Wait!" Grover called.

But Tyson wasn't about to wait. They ran after him. The prison was dark, only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above.

"Are we in Alcatraz?" Rose asked as they jogged.

Annabeth nodded. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

"Freeze," Grover warned.

But Tyson kept going. Grover grabbed his arm and pulled him back with all his strength.

"Stop, Tyson!" he whispered. "Can't you see it?"

Rose looked where he was pointing, and her stomach churned. On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than anything she'd ever seen before.

It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon—at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Her legs looked like they were tangled in vines, but then Rose realized they were sprouting snakes, hundreds of vipers darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes, like Medusa's. Weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals—a vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures. Rose got the feeling she was looking at something half formed, a monster so old it was from the beginning of time, before shapes had been fully defined.