SAFE . . . reyna ramirez-arellano

68 - horrible fashion sense

AFTER BARELY SURVIVING the nymphaeum, Briar wanted to go back to the surface. She wanted to be dry and sit in the warm sunshine for a long time with Reyna, and maybe the rest of the crew.

Unfortunately, Annabeth, Frank, Hazel, and Leo were missing in action. The rest of them still had to save Nico di Angelo, assuming the guy wasn't already dead. Piper was on the other side of the world. And there was that little matter of the giants destroying Rome, waking Gaea, and taking over the world.

Percy took the lead as they crawled down the drainage pipe. After thirty feet, it opened into a wider tunnel. To their left, somewhere in the distance, Briar heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. They went that way, mostly because the sounds of machines always meant certain death.

Several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. Percy held up his hand and peeked around the corner. His body stiffened in surprise.

"What is it?" Briar whispered.

Percy gestured for them to come forward and take a look.

She sidled up next to him and her breath stopped when she saw what they were getting into.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns. It looked like the same parking-garage-type area Briar had seen in her knife, but now much more crowded with stuff.

The creaking and rumbling came from huge gears and pulley systems that raised and lowered sections of the floor for no apparent reason. Water flowed through open trenches ( oh, great, more water ), powering waterwheels that turned some of the machines. Other machines were connected to huge hamster wheels with hellhounds inside.

Suspended from the ceiling were cages of live animals — a lion, several zebras, a whole pack of hyenas, and even an eight-headed hydra. Ancient-looking bronze and leather conveyor belts trundled along with stacks of weapons and armor.

Leo would love it, Briar thought. The whole room was like one massive, scary, unreliable machine.

About twenty feet inside the doorway, a life-size wooden cutout of a gladiator popped up from the floor. It clicked and whirred along a conveyor belt, got hooked on a rope, and ascended through a slot in the roof.

Jason murmured, "What the heck?"

They stepped inside. Briar scanned the room. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but one good aspect of being an ADHD demigod was that she was comfortable with chaos. About a hundred yards away, she spotted a raised dais with two empty oversized praetor chairs. Standing between them was a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

"Look." Percy pointed it out to them.

Reyna frowned. "That's too easy."

"Of course," Briar said, slipping her hand into Reyna's.

"But we have no choice," Jason said. "We've got to save Nico."

"Yeah." Percy started across the room, picking his way around conveyor belts and moving platforms.

The hellhounds in the hamster wheels paid them no attention. They were too busy running and panting, their red eyes glowing like headlights. The animals in the other cages gave them bored looks, as if to say, I'd kill you, but it would take too much energy.

Briar tried to watch out for traps, but everything here looked like a trap. They jumped over a water trench and ducked under a row of caged wolves. They had made it about halfway to the bronze jar when the ceiling opened over them. A platform lowered. Standing on it like an actor, with one hand raised and his head high, was the purple-haired giant Ephialtes.