The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 48

"Adriana!" Rosaline yelled. "Stop!" But when she realized this wasn't going to work, she grabbed my hand and yanked me through the door.

We emerged into the main hallway. It was packed full of Chaos soldiers, which, usually, used to be a good thing, since it gave you peace of mind to be next to so many allies, but right now, they were indirectly hiding Adriana from us.

She had disappeared. We had no idea where she went, so we had to split up. Rosaline went left, and I went right.

This was bit of a relief to me, because I was going further into eh Chaos base, rather than closer to the exit. There was no way Adriana would be where I was searching. Still, for the sake of being through, I pushed through the soldiers as fast as I could. It merely sped my pace up to a speed walk, but it was more than nothing.

Unfortunately, though, shoving through a crowd wasn't the best way to make friends.

Most of the soldiers shouted at me in annoyance, or downright glared at me. I tried to state my motive as, "I'm in a very serious emergency. If you don't want to get pushed, just move out of the way."

However, nobody seemed convinced. Instead, they became somewhat angry at the second sentence but didn't want to waste their time and went on their way.

Unfortunately, there were people in the base who would take their anger physically on me. An angry muscular man that was a solid two feet taller than me grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and hoisted me in the air like I was a bag of potato chips. By now, the hall had widened significantly. There was still a lot of traffic, but there was enough room for one to stand to the side and not impede the movements of others.

This was exactly where I was cornered by the man. I had no one to save me now. It was all up to me.

He wasn't squeezing my windpipe—yet—so I was free to talk. "What do you want?" I asked him gruffly.

He smirked at me like he knew he had all the power in this situation. "What emergency do you have that gives you the right to ruin other people's day?"

Coming from the person who was trying to threaten me.

I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. With my limited range of motion, I turned.

Adriana was shoving her way toward the cafeteria. However, she wasn't doing it in the violent way I was doing it. It made her pace significantly slower, but nobody got mad at her.

I pointed towards her. "I'm chasing a bad guy."

But by the time the man turned that way, Adriana slipped through into the cafeteria. When he turned back to me, he seemed even more convinced that he had caught a troublemaker. "Why, in the name of Lord Chaos, would there be a bad guy in this base packed full of Chaos soldiers?"

"You remember the lockdown?"

"Yes." He didn't seem to want to know more information.

But I pressed on. "That was because of a bad guy."

"Then why isn't there another lockdown in place right now?"

"Because there's a stupid guy holding me by the neck!" I exclaimed.

In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best way to get out of this situation unharmed. The man turned on me, really angry now. He began squeezing my windpipe, and the precious flow of oxygen to my brain immediately stopped. "How dare you!" he roared. "You're going to die now!"

"Wait!" I squeaked out. I did my best to pry his hands off my neck, but it just wasn't working. "I'm sorry!"

"Save it! I'm done listening." With that, the man doubled his force on my neck. Now I felt like I was a tube of toothpaste, and any second now, my head was going to go one way and my body the other. Dark spots formed in my vision as my body ran out of air.