ONE LAST TIME . . . heroes of olympus

68

LISTEN, KAT LOVED water and all, but she was getting sick of it. Literally, since they were crawling down a drainage pipe. She wanted to barf, but heroes don't barf or whatever.

Finally, after thirty feet, it opened into a wider tunnel. Thank the gods. Kat was really tired of averting her gaze because Percy's ass was in front of her. She's taken, respectfully.

To their left, somewhere in the distance, Kat heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. It was so loud. She wrinkled her nose. Ugh. Enhanced senses. Where were noise cancelling headphones when you needed them?

Naturally, Percy went that way, so Kat was dragged along with him.

Several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. Percy held up his hand, signaling them to wait. He peeked around the corner.

Kat rolled her eyes. "Trust a man to think that he can lead everything."

"I'm a man," Jason pointed out.

"You're living proof of her point," Piper snickered.

"You told us that you loved us ten minutes ago," countered Jason.

Kat smirked. "Yeah, malyshka, what's up with that?"

Piper's cheeks and ears turned red, then she promptly turned and tapped Percy's shoulder. "What's going on?"

He gestured them forward. Kat sent Jason a victorious smirk before moving over to look because she's a nosy ass bitch.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns and a shit ton of 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 ( because that's what they needed ), 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, Kat 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?"

"Mood," commented Kat.

They stepped inside. Kat scanned the room. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but she's always thrived in chaos, like, come on, look at her.

"Look." Percy pointed to a raised platform with some fucking big chairs, along with, conveniently, a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

Piper frowned. "That's too easy."

"Duh," commented Kat helpfully.

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

"Uh huh." Kat was about to speed through the room, when Percy pulled her back. "What?"

"There could be traps," he said.

"I'm literally James Bond," she rolled her eyes. "You think I don't know how to dismantle traps and leap through lasers?"

She turned and started across the room lithely, picking her 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.