Reconnected [Book 3]

15 - Not fucking friendly

Leo deserved a dunce cap.

If he'd been thinking straight, he would've switched the ship's detection system from radar to sonar as soon as they left Charleston Harbor. That's what he had forgotten. He'd designed the hull to resonate every few seconds, sending waves through the Mist and alerting Festus to any nearby monsters, but it only worked in one mode at a time: water or air.

He'd been so rattled by the Romans, then the storm, then Hazel, that he had completely forgotten. Now, a monster was right underneath them.

The ship tilted to starboard. Hazel gripped the rigging. Hedge yelled, "Valdez, which button blows up monsters? Take the helm!"

Leo climbed the tilting deck and managed to grab the port rail. He started clambering sideways toward the helm, but when he saw the monster surface, he forgot how to move.

The thing was the length of their ship. In the moonlight, it looked like a cross between a giant shrimp and a cockroach, with a pink chitinous shell, a flat crayfish tail, and millipede-type legs undulating hypnotically as the monster scraped against the hull of the Argo II.

Its head surfaced last—the slimy pink face of an enormous catfish with glassy dead eyes, a gaping toothless maw, and a forest of tentacles sprouting from each nostril, making the bushiest nose beard Leo had ever had the displeasure to behold.

Leo remembered special Friday night dinners he and his mom used to share at a local seafood restaurant in Houston. They would eat shrimp and catfish. The idea now made him want to throw up.

"Come on, Valdez!" Hedge yelled. "Take the wheel so I can get my baseball bat!"

"A bat's not going to help," Leo said, but he made his way toward the helm.

Behind him, the rest of his friends stumbled up the stairs. Even Adelia who looked,in the nicest way possible, like she had been hit by a bus.

Percy yelled, "What's going— Gah! Shrimpzilla!"

Adelia let out a yell, not a shriek since Leo didn't think she would ever shriek, "What in the holy Hephaestus?"

Frank ran to Hazel's side. She was clutching the rigging, still dazed from her flashback, but she gestured that she was all right.

The monster rammed the ship again. The hull groaned. Annabeth, Piper, and Jason tumbled to starboard and almost rolled overboard.

"How did it get so close?" Annabeth shouted, pulling herself up on one of the rail shields.

"I don't know!" Hedge snarled. He looked around for his bat, which had rolled across the quarterdeck.

"I'm stupid!" Leo scolded himself. "Stupid, stupid! I forgot the sonar!"

Adelia held a dagger to him, "YOU FORGOT?"

The ship tilted farther to starboard. Either the monster was trying to give them a hug, or it was about to capsize them. And it may have been the only thing that saved his life from a very angry Adelia. You know when its just you and your sibling in your house and its all nice and happy until you say or do something stupid and then you';re being chased around the kitchen with a knife? Or being tackled to the ground? That fear that shoots through you is currently what flooded Leo's veins.

"Sonar?" Hedge demanded. "Pan's pipes, Valdez! Maybe if you hadn't been staring into Hazel's eyes, holding hands for so long—"

"What?" Frank yelped.

"It wasn't like that!" Hazel protested.

"It doesn't matter!" Piper said. "Jason, can you call some lightning?"