𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬'𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 • 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘺 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯

Kampê

A/n: Help. I was writing "Grayson" and I wrote "Gary". I'm so fucking sleep-deprived.

Y/n's Pov:

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

"Close the entrance!" I said.

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

"We trapped it," Percy sighed.

"Or trapped ourselves," Grover said.

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

Great.

~

"What in Hades?" Annabeth tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Through the bars, we could see rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard—at least three stories of metal doors and metal catwalks.

"A prison," Percy said. "Maybe Tyson can break—"

"Shh," said Grover. "Listen."

Somewhere above us, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something that I couldn't make out. The words were strange, like rocks in a tumbler.

"What's that language?" Percy whispered.

Grover, Annabeth, and Percy turned to Grayson and me.

"Not Spanish," I said. "Or Ancient Greek."

"It's not French either," said Grayson. "Or any other Latin-root language."

"Latin-root?" asked Percy.

"Languages that had Latin as their origin language," I explained. "Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese."

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

"What?" Percy asked.

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

"Well, that was easy peasy lemon squeezy," I deadpanned.

"What?" asked Grayson.

"Wait!" Grover called.

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

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

"You mean that island is near San Francisco?"

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

It didn't seem possible that we could've popped out of the Labyrinth on the other side of the country, but Annabeth had been living in San Francisco all year, keeping an eye on Mount Tamalpais just across the bay. She probably knew what she was talking about.