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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, Rory heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling.
Percy stopped abruptly and Rory nearly crashed into his butt.
He peaked over his shoulder to look at her. "I have absolutely no desire to find out what was making that sound," he said.
Rory smiled cheekily. "So that must be the way to go."
Several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. Percy held up his hand, signaling Rory, Jason, and Piper to wait. He peeked around the corner.
Rory, however, did not heed his advice and squeezed up next to him to look around the bend too.
Percy frowned at her. "Why?"
She ignored him.
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, powering water wheels that turned some of the machines. Other machines were connected to huge hamster wheels with hellhounds inside. Rory 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.
Leo would love it, Rory thought. The whole room was like one massive, scary, unreliable machine.
"What is it?" Piper whispered.
Percy and Rory looked at each other, not sure how to answer. They didn't see the giants, so Percy gestured for Piper and Jason 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?"
They stepped inside. There were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but one good aspect of being an ADHD demigod was that Rory 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.
Rory repeatedly slapped Percy in the chest to get his attention. "Look." She pointed it out to her friends.
