The New Trinity -- Percy Jackson Batman Crossover -- The Olympian Heroes Book 4

20. Annabeth

Just after dawn, the quest group met at Zeus’s Fist. I’d packed my
knapsack—thermos with nectar, baggie of ambrosia, bedroll, rope, clothes, flashlights, and lots of extra batteries, disks and batarangs as well as a grapple. I had my Yankee's cap in one pocket and my gloves in the other.
It was a clear morning. The fog had burned off and the sky was blue.
Campers would be having their lessons today, flying pegasi and practicing archery and scaling the lava wall. Meanwhile, we could be heading underground.
Juniper and Grover stood apart from the group. Juniper had been crying
again, but she was trying to keep it together for Grover’s sake. She kept
fussing with his clothes, straightening his rasta cap and brushing goat fur off his shirt. Since we had no idea what we would encounter, he was dressed as a human, with the cap to hide his horns, and jeans, fake feet, and sneakers to hide his goat legs.
Chiron, Quintus, and Mrs. O’Leary stood with the other campers who’d
come to wish us well, but there was too much activity for it to feel like a
happy send-off. A couple of tents had been set up by the rocks for guard
duty. Beckendorf and his siblings were working on a line of defensive spikes and trenches. Chiron had decided we needed to guard the Labyrinth exit at all times, just in case.
I looked up from my pack when Percy and Tyson approached.
"Percy you look awful" I said
“He killed the water fountain last night,” Tyson confided.
“What?” I asked killed the water fountain?
Before he could explain, Chiron trotted over. “Well, it appears you are ready!”
He tried to sound upbeat, but I could tell he was anxious.
“Hey-uh- Chiron, can I ask you a favor while I’m gone?” Percy asked knotting his hands together
“Of course, my boy.”
“Be right back, guys.”
I watched them walk off and out of earshot and frowned... something was wrong.
"Hey Tyson what did you mean kill the water fountain?" I asked still watching Percy
"It was broken" he said "Percy broke it"
I frowned again. Percy had a dream last night I was sure of it.
"What's taking them so long?" I muttered slowly walking over to them.
“Percy, you ready?”
He nodded but I knew he wasn't. I don't think any of us were.
Quintus waved goodbye
“Take care,” Chiron told us. “And good hunting.”
“You too”
We walked over to the rocks, where Tyson and Grover were waiting. I
stared at the crack between the boulders—the entrance that was about to swallow us.
“Well,” Grover said nervously, “good-bye sunshine.”
"Hello rocks" Tyson said brightly

We made it a hundred feet before we were hopelessly lost. The tunnel looked nothing like the one Percy and I had stumbled into before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes ever ten feet. I shined a light through one of the portholes
out of curiosity, but I couldn’t see anything. It opened into infinite darkness.
I thought I heard voices on the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.
I tried my best to guide us, deciding we should keep to ones side so we could get out.
“If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it" I said “we should
be able to find our way out again by reversing course.”
Unfortunately, as soon as I said that, the left wall disappeared. We
found ourselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels
leading out, and no idea how we’d gotten there.
“Um, which way did we come in?” Grover said nervously.
“Just turn around,” I said hesitantly
We each turned toward a different tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us
could decide which way led back to camp.
“Left walls are mean,” Tyson said. “Which way now?”
I swept my flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. As far as I could tell, they were identical. “That way,” I said.
“How do you know?” Percy asked asked.
“Deductive reasoning.”
“So…you’re guessing"
“no..." I was definitely guessing "just come on"
The tunnel I'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray
cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon we were hunching over.
Tyson was forced to crawl.
Grover’s hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. “I can’t
stand it anymore,” he whispered. “Are we there yet?”
“We’ve been down here maybe five minutes,” I reminded him
“It’s been longer than that,” Grover insisted. “And why would Pan be
down here? This is the opposite of the wild!”
We kept shuffling forward. Just when I was sure the tunnel would get so
narrow it would squish us, it opened into a huge room. I shined my light
around the walls and said, “Whoa.”
The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but I could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The drieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Percy's dad, Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. My mom, along with I was guessing Demeter? Sat off by looms weaving. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren’t very accurate...to the Greeks I should say. It looked Roman.
In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn’t held water in a long time.
“What is this place?” Percy muttered. “It looks—”
“Roman,” I said “Those mosaics are about two thousand years old.”
“But how can they be Roman?” Percy asked touching the wall
“The Labyrinth is a patchwork,” I answered “I told you, it’s always
expanding, adding pieces. It’s the only work of architecture that grows by
itself.”
“You make it sound like it’s alive.”
A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of us.
“Let’s not talk about it being alive,” Grover whimpered. “Please?”
“All right,” I said  “Forward.”
“Down the hall with the bad sounds?” Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.
“Yeah,” I answered taking a step forward “The architecture is getting older. That’s a good sign. Daedalus’s workshop would be in the oldest part.”
At least I hoped it would. But soon the maze was toying with us, we went fifty feet and the tunnel turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray-painted with graffiti. A neon tagger sign read
MOZ RULZ.
“I’m thinking this is not Roman,” Percy said helpfully.
I took a deep breath "wow thanks!" then forged ahead. Though I doubted Percy appreciated my sarcasm right now. It's fine I wasn't appreciating his.
Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath us changed from cement to mud to bricks and back again. There was no sense to any of it. We stumbled into a wince cellar—a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks—like we were walking through somebody’s basement, only there was no exit above us, just more tunnels leading on. Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and I could hear voices above us and the creaking of footsteps, as if we were walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, we couldn’t get to them.
We were stuck down here with no way out. Then we found our first skeleton.
He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden
crate of glass bottles sat next to him.
“A milkman" I murmured
“What?” Percy asked
“They used to deliver milk. C'mon seaweed brain you're not that clueless"
“Yeah, I know what they are, but…that was when like dinosaurs roamed, like a million years ago. What’s he doing here?”
“Some people wander in by mistake,” I said. “Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans
sent people in here as human sacrifices.” I don't think they appreciated that bit of history
Grover gulped. “He’s been down here a long time.” He pointed to the
skeleton’s bottles, which were coated with white dust. The skeleton’s fingers were clawing at the brick wall, like he had died trying to get out.
“Only bones,” Tyson said. “Don’t worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead.”
“The milkman doesn’t bother me,” Grover said. “It’s the smell. Monsters. Can’t you smell it?”
Tyson nodded. “Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that.
Monsters and dead milk people.”
“Oh, good,” Grover whimpered. “I thought maybe I was wrong.”
“We have to get deeper into the maze,” I said more to myself “There has to be a way to the center.”
I led us to the right, then the left, through a corridor of stainless steel
like some kind of air shaft, and we arrived back in the Roman tile room with the fountain. I cursed but in the dim flashlight I could tell we weren’t alone.
What I noticed first were his faces. Both of them. They jutted out from
either side of his head, staring over his shoulders, so his head was much
wider than it should’ve been, kind of like a hammerhead shark’s looking
straight at him, all I saw were two overlapping ears and mirror-image
sideburns.
He was dressed like a New York City doorman: a long black overcoat,
shiny shoes, and a black top-hat that somehow managed to stay on his
double-wide head.
“Well, Annabeth?” said his left face. “Hurry up!”
“Don’t mind him,” said the right face. “He’s terribly rude. Right this way,
miss.”
My jaw dropped. “Uh…I don’t…”
Tyson frowned. “That funny man has two faces.”
“The funny man has ears, you know!” the left face scolded. “Now come
along, miss.”
“No, no,” the right face said. “This way, miss. Talk to me, please.”
The two-faced man regarded me as best he could out of the corners of his eyes. It was impossible to look at him straight on without focusing on one side or the other. And suddenly I realized that’s what he was asking—he wanted me to choose. Behind him were two exits, blocked by wooden doors with huge iron locks. They hadn’t been there our first time through the room. The two-faced doorman held a silver key, which he kept passing from his left hand to his right hand. I wondered if this was a different room completely, but the frieze of the gods looked exactly the same.
Behind us, the doorway we’d come through had disappeared, replaced by more mosaics. We wouldn’t be going back the way we came.
“The exits are closed,” I said what was his name?
“Duh!” the man’s left face said.
“Where do they lead?” I asked Janus!
“One probably leads the way you wish to go,” the right face said
encouragingly. “The other leads to certain death.”
“I—I know who you are,” I said feeling a little more sure of myself
“Oh, you’re a smart one!” The left face sneered. “But do you know which
way to choose? I don’t have all day.”
“Why are you trying to confuse me?” I asked twisting the beads on my necklace.
The right face smiled. “You’re in charge now, my dear. All the decisions are on your shoulders. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I-"
“We know you, Annabeth,” the left face said. “We know what you
wrestle with every day. We know your indecision. You will have to make your choice sooner or later. And the choice may kill you.”
I froze staring at them.
"W-what are you talking about-" I started
A brilliant light flooded the room.
Janus raised his hands to either side of his head to cover his eyes. When
the light died, a woman was standing at the fountain. She was tall and graceful with long hair the color of chocolate, braided in plaits with gold ribbons. She wore a simple white dress, but when she moved, the fabric shimmered with colors like oil on water.
“Janus" she asked “are we causing trouble again?”
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Thanks for reading! I plan on updating again soon in the meantime go check out The Royal Thief. Vote and comment to let me know what you think! Constructive criticism is always welcome for any of my books!