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chapter sixty-two. ☄︎. *. ⋆
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WE MADE THE DECISION to go left, because Grover and Tyson agreed that they both heard "something big and in a hurry" coming from the right. So it was a unanimous choice to take a left.
The good news: the left tunnel was straight with no side exits, twists, or turns. The bad news: it was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yards, we ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked our path. Behind us, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something—definitely not human—was on our 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 we dashed through behind it.
"Close the entrance!" I said quickly. We all got on the other side of the boulder and pushed. Whatever was chasing us wailed in frustration as we heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.
"We trapped it," I whispered.
"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.
I turned. We were in a twenty-foot-square cement room, and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. We'd tunneled straight into a cell.
"What in Hades?" I tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Through the bars we 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 us, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something that I 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?" I asked.
He grabbed two bars on our cell door and bent them wide enough for even a Cyclops to slip through. Percy, Grover, and I looked to each other in a panic, then scrambled after our Cyclops friend. If Tyson was freaked out, that probably meant bad, bad news.
As we followed Tyson through the dank and dingy prison, I slowly began to piece together the memory of an old field trip I'd taken in elementary school. The more I looked around, the more I remembered it.
