Maiden Grim | A Pjo Fanfic

Ch. 28: Tyson Leads A Jailbreak

The good news: the left tunnel was straight with no side exits, twists or turns. The bad news; it was a dead end. After sprinting a hundred yards, they ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked their path. Behind them, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something—definitely not human—was on their tail.

"Tyson," Percy said, "can you—"

"Yes!" He slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. Dust trickled from the stone ceiling.

"Hurry!" Grover said. "Don't bring the roof down, but hurry!"

The boulder finally gave way with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and they dashed through behind it.

"Close the entrance!" Annabeth said.

They all got on the other side of the boulder and pushed. Whatever was chasing them wailed in frustration as they heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Percy said.

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.

Isra turned. They were in a twenty-foot-square cement room and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. They'd tunneled straight into a cell.

Annabeth and her accidently locked eyes. Her lip twitched. She flicked her gaze away a little too quickly. Isra lifted her sunglasses onto her head and walked up to the bars. Behind them she could see rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard—at least three stories off metal doors and metal catwalks.

Goosebumps prickled across her arms.

"Something big is here," Isra said. Something ancient.

"What do you mean?" Percy asked.

"Shhh," Grover said, "listen."

Somewhere above them, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something that Isra couldn't make out. The words were strange, like rocks in a tumbler. Isra knew a lot of languages, ancient and modern, but this one was foreign even to her.

"What is that language?" Isra murmured. "It's definitely not Ancient Greek."

Tyson's eye widened. "Can't be."

"What?" she asked.

He grabbed two bars on our cell door and bent them wide enough for even a Cyclops to slip through.

"Wait!" Grover called.

But Tyson wasn't about to wait. They ran after him. The prison was dark, only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above.

"I know this place," Annabeth told them. "This is Alcatraz."

"You mean that island is near San Francisco?" Percy said.

She nodded. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

Overwhelming sulfur slammed into her, watering up her eyes.

Suddenly, Isra came to a halt. She spread her arms out, stopping Percy and Annabeth in their tracks.

"Don't move," she hissed.

Grover yanked Tyson back and whispered hurriedly, "Stop, Tyson! Can't you see it?"

Isra was already looking at where he was pointing. On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than anything she'd ever seen before.

It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon—at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Hundreds of vipers sprouted from her scaled legs, hissing and darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes. But weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals—vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures.