DON'T BLAME ME! (p. jackson) (#2) (ON HOLD)

- twenty seven

ROSE WAS TIRED.

she wanted to be dry and sit in the warm sunshine for a while— preferably with her friends.

unfortunately, she didn't know where annabeth was. frank, hazel, and leo were missing in action. she still had to save nico di angelo, assuming the guy wasn't already dead. and there was that little matter of the giants destroying rome, waking gaea, and taking over the world.

seriously, these monsters and gods were thousands of years old. couldn't they take a few decades off and let rose live her life?

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, rose heard rumbling and creaking, like a huge machine needed oiling. she had absolutely no desire to find out what was making that sound, so she figured that must be the way to go.

several hundred feet later, they reached a turn in the tunnel. percy held up his hand, signaling for rose, jason, and piper to wait. he peeked around the corner.

"what is it?" piper whispered.

percy gestured for his friends 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.

the corridor opened into a vast room with twenty-foot ceilings and rows of support columns. It looked like the same parking-garage-type area rose had seen in her dreams, but now much more crowded with stuff.

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 (oh, great, more water), powering waterwheels that turned some of the machines. other machines were connected to huge hamster wheels with hellhounds inside. rose 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, rose thought. the whole room was like one massive, scary, unreliable machine.

jason murmured, "what the hell?"

they stepped inside. rose scanned the room. there were several thousand things to look at, most of them in motion, but one good aspect of being an adhd demigod was that rose 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.

"look." she pointed it out to her friends.

piper frowned. "that's too easy."

"of course," percy said.

"but we have no choice," jason said. "we've got to save nico."

"yeah." percy started across the room, picking his way around conveyor belts and moving platforms.

the hellhounds in the hamster wheels paid them no attention. they were too busy running and panting, their red eyes glowing like headlights. the animals in the other cages gave them bored looks, as if to say, i'd kill you, but it would take too much energy.

rose tried to watch out for traps, but everything here looked like a trap. she remembered how many times she'd almost died in the labyrinth a few years ago. she really wished hazel were here so she could help with her underground skills (and of course, so she could be reunited with nico).