𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇 [Jason Grace]

47

𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫. He was glad they were leaving the nymphaeum behind.

After barely surviving, he wanted to go back to the surface. He wanted to be dry and sit in the warm sunshine for a long time with his friends, maybe take their ship and fly away. He liked the clear skies and knowing that wind currents were all around him. He did not like the underground.

Unfortunately, he didn't know where his friends were. And if he wanted to take them and fly out of there, he needed to gather everyone up. And they 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 demigods live their lives?

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, Jason heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. He had absolutely no desire to find out what was making that sound, so he figured that must be the way to go.

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

"What is it?" Piper whispered.

Percy just gestured for them to look.

The corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns. It looked like a parking-garage-type area. 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, Jason 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. He scanned the room. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion. About a hundred yards away, he spotted a raised dais with two empty oversized praetor chairs. Standing between them was a bronze jar big enough to hold a person.

"Look." He pointed it out to his 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 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.

Jason tried to watch out for traps, but everything here looked like a trap.

He really wished Hazel were here so she could help with her underground skills (and of course so she could be reunited with her brother).