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Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but Marlowe convinced her it was too dangerous. Either they all went together, or nobody went.
"Nobody!" Tyson voted. "Please?"
But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. The four stopped at their cabins long enough to gather their stuff. They figured whatever happened, they would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo.
Marlowe made sure she has the vitamins from Hermes at the top of her bag. She didn't want Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told her not to worry about it. Tyson could carry three full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as she could carry a backpack.
They sneaked through the corridors, following the ship's YOU ARE HERE signs toward the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. They hid whenever someone passed by, but most of the people they saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.
As they came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, "Hide!" and shoved them into a supply closet.
Marlowe heard a couple of guys coming down the hall.
"You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?" one of them said.
The other laughed. "Yeah, it's awesome."
Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed Marlowe's arm hard. Marlowe's jaw clenched at the familiar sound of the guy's voice.
"I hear they got two more coming," the familiar voice said. "They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man—no contest!"
The voices faded down the corridor.
"That was Chris Rodriguez!" Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible. "You remember—from Cabin Eleven."
"What's another half-blood doing here?" Percy asked.
"He's with Luke," Marlowe whispered, then stood up, ready to take off again.
They kept going down the corridor. Marlowe didn't need maps anymore to know she was getting close to Luke. She sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.
"Percy." Annabeth stopped suddenly. "Look."
She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade—a mall full of shops—but that's not what had caught Annabeth's attention.
A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen Laistrygonian giants like the ones who'd attacked Percy with dodge balls, two hellhounds, and a few even stranger creatures—humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs.
The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in Marlowe's throat when she realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As they watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled. Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.
