Eleutheromania

25)

I WAS TIRED OF WATER. Not getting tired, no I have trauma when it comes to water.

After barely surviving the nymphaeum, I wanted to go back to the surface. I wanted to be dry and sit in the warm sunshine for a long time. This is the second time I almost drowned to death.

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

Seriously, these monsters and gods were thousands of years old. Couldn't they take a few decades off and let me live my life? Apparently not.

Percy took the lead as we crawled down the drainage pipe. After thirty feet, it opened into a wider tunnel. To our left, somewhere in the distance, I heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. I had absolutely no desire to find out what was making that sound, so I figured that must be the way to go.

Several hundred feet later, we reached a turn in the tunnel. I held up my hand, signaling Jason, Piper and Percy to wait. I peeked around the corner feeling Percy lean over my shoulder to see as well.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns.

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. I couldn't help thinking of Mrs. O'Leary, and how much she would hate being trapped inside one of those.

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, sort of like the Amazons' warehouse in Seattle, except this place was obviously much older and not as well organized.

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

"What is it?" Piper whispered.

I wasn't even sure how to answer. I didn't see the giants, so I gestured for my friends to come forward and take a look.

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?"

We stepped inside and I 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 I was comfortable with chaos. About a hundred yards away, I spotted a raised dais with two empty oversized praetor chairs. Standing between them was a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

"Look." I pointed it out to my friends.

Piper frowned. "That's too easy."

"Of course," Percy said.

"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 us 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.