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"tied down while stripped of life"
ARIADNE HAD SUMMED UP THE STORY WHILE THEY WERE ON DECK. Coach Hedge was adamant on hearing it, while the brunette tugged at her tied up curls and Percy attempted to stop her small pacing session.
"So Annabeth was kidnapped on a motor scooter," Piper summed up, "by Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn."
"No, not kidnapped, exactly," Ariadne said. "Look, I've got this feeling in my gut..." She took a deep breath, leaning into Percy's chest as he stopped her pacing. "She's—she's gone. Maybe it was a bad idea to let her—"
"You had to," Percy said. "Annabeth is tough and smart. She'll be fine."
"Maybe you're right. Anyway, Gregory—I mean Tiberinus—said we had less time to rescue Nico than we thought. Hazel and the guys aren't back yet?"
Piper check the time on the helm control. She hadn't realized how it was getting. "It's two in the afternoon. We said three o'clock for a rendezvous."
"At the latest," Jason said.
Ariadne nodded at Piper's dagger. "Tiberinus said you could find Nico's location with that."
"I've tried," she said. "The dagger doesn't show what I want to see. I'm fact, it hardly ever does."
"Please," Percy said. "Try again."
He pleaded with those sea-green eyes, like a cute baby seal that needed help.
"Fine," she sighed, and drew her dagger.
"While you're at it," said Coach Hedge, "see if you can get the latest baseball scores. Italians don't cover baseball worth beans."
"Shh." Piper studied the bronze blade. The light shimmered. She saw a loft apartment filled with Roman demigods. A dozen of them stop around a dining table as Octavian talked and pointed to a big map. Reyna paced next to the windows, gazing down at Central Park.
"That's not good," Jason muttered. "They've already set up a forward base in Manhattan."
"And that map shows Long Island," Percy said.
"They're scouting the territory," Jason guessed. "Discussing invasion routes."
Light rippled across the blade. She saw ruins—a few crumbling walls, a single column, a stone floor covered with moss and dead vines—all clustered on a grassy hillside dotted with pine trees.
"I was just there," Ariadne said. "That's in the old Forum."
The view zoomed in. On one side of the stone floor, a set of stairs had been excavated, leading down to a modern iron gate with a padlock. The blade's image zoomed straight through the doorway, down a spiral stairwell, and into a dark, cylindrical chamber like the inside of a grain silo.
