Children of the Underworld

Chapter 3

Percy explained to the others what had happened with Setne, out of Leo's hearing, leaving out the stupid jerk's remarks to Leo, but the others seemed to know he was omitting something.

"Did Setne do something to Leo?" asked Annabeth, glancing back at the younger teen with some concern. "He seems a little too subdued."

"He said some nasty stuff to him," said Percy, unwilling to lie to Annabeth again, but unable to tell her the whole truth. He couldn't do that to Leo. "Some of it hit a little too close to home for him, I think. He didn't actually get physically near him."

"I know," said Annabeth. "You may not like him, but you'd never stand by and let someone get hurt if you could help it."

"Leo's okay," said Percy. "I don't dislike him."

Leo continued working in silence for the next hour, pulling a number of tools seemingly out of thin air. After closer examination, Percy saw that he was actually producing them from his tool belt. He cracked open the cell phones and dismantled them, setting the screens aside and eventually lining them up together on top of the waffle iron cover.

By the time he was finished, the waffle iron resembled a closed laptop with a three panel screen where the top of the cover would normally be.

"Alright," Leo said finally. "Here's what we've got. This device, which I've decided to call the Soulocator, should be able to find Nico's soul, assuming that what I believe happened is correct. See, the huge chunk of cubic zirconium was acting as a catalyst and creating a vacuum for all demigod powers by actually siphoning -"

"English, Leo," said Sadie. "No one understands what you're trying to say."

Leo's gaze darkened a little. "That's nothing new. Ok . . . the machine was literally sucking the souls of any demigod within range toward it. It wasn't strong enough to sever the bond between the souls and their bodies, but it was strong enough to siphon off their powers. But at close range, when it overloaded, it was strong enough, but only with direct contact. It displaced Nico's soul, but because of the, uh, you know, frequencies and stuff, Nico's soul would have been rechanneled into a material of similar makeup as the crystal. So, into stone, I mean. Some sort of crystalline structure, not necessarily a diamond or cubic zirconium. If he'd had any jewelry with stones, that would have been the first place I looked, but since he doesn't we should go to the place where he lost his soul and use this there to . . . what?"

Everyone's expressions had changed when Leo started talking about stones, and Percy realized they'd all come to the same conclusion.

"What did I say? What did I do this time?" demanded Leo.

"Nothing. It's not you," said Percy.

"We just realized something," said Sadie. Their group all looked at each other. They came to an unspoken decision.

"Nico wasn't wearing any stone jewelry, but he did have a stone on him," said Percy.

Leo looked from face to face. Then he handed the Soulocator to Sadie. "Here.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"It's user-friendly. You don't need me to operate it. My part in this seems done, so if -"

"But there's still getting Nico's soul back into his body," said Carter. "You're not going to help us with that?"

"You want me to try and extract a soul from a stone?" demanded Leo.

"Well, yeah."

"With no idea what I'm doing, or how to anchor it back into his body, with no precedent to draw from and only theory to guide me?"