NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

twenty six: the river.

BROOKLYN LOVED THE feeling of flying in the air. Despite narrowly missing a tree, glancing off a boulder, and spinning a three-sixty, she was letting out screams of excitement as she and Percy shot toward the highway. She heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale's coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but she didn't have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below her like the prow of a battleship. Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight . . .

She felt a tug in her gut and she followed it, her and Percy sailing through the air as a wind pushed them sideways, the snack platter skittering across the roof and sailed through the air.

As they fell toward the highway, the tug in her gut appeared again, and she gritted her teeth as another gust of wind blew them to one side — just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn't a soft landing, but it was better than asphalt. At least Percy broke her fall, Brooklyn on top of him while his back was on the ground.

"Thanks for breaking my fall," she scrambled off of him, helping him up.

"Thanks for keeping us alive with that air gust," he groaned as he got to his feet.

Brooklyn glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colorful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than she and Percy but with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must've been good for climbing. She figured they had maybe five minutes before the gorgons reached them.

Next to her, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighborhood of winding streets, cozy houses, and tall eucalyptus trees. The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things — like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays — but the chain-link was full of big holes. Brooklyn could easily slip through into the neighborhood, and Percy probably could, too. Maybe they could find a car and drive away. She had stolen several cars over the past few days ( weeks? Whatever, she wasn't keeping track ) including a police cruiser. She'd meant to return them, but they never seemed to last very long.

She glanced east. Just as she'd figured, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at her like eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker.

It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That's probably what mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all. But they couldn't see through the Mist. Brooklyn knew the door was more than that.

Two kids in armor flanked the entrance. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts, and white athletic shoes. The guard on the right looked like a girl, though it was hard to tell for sure with all the armor. The one on the left was a stocky guy with a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held long wooden staffs with iron spear tips, like old-fashioned harpoons.

Brooklyn's internal radar was pinging like crazy. After so many horrible days, she'd finally reached her goal. Her instincts told her that if she could make it inside that door, she might find safety for the first time since the wolves had sent she and Percy south.

So why did she feel such dread?

Farther up the hill, the gorgons were scrambling over the roof of the apartment complex. Three minutes away — maybe less.

Part of her wanted to run to the door in the hill. She'd have to cross to the median of the highway, but then it would be a short sprint. She could make it before the gorgons reached him.