Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Rick Riordan.

Chapter 6 Part 2

Percy's POV

"Well," Bacchus said. "That was fun. You have my permission to continue your voyage."

"Your permission?" I snarled.

"Yes." Bacchus raised an eyebrow. "Although your voyage may be a little harder than you expect, son of Neptune."

"Poseidon," I corrected him automatically. "What do you mean about my voyage?"

"You might try the parking lot behind lot behind the Emmanuel Building," Bacchus said. "Best place to break through. Now, good-bye, my friends. And, ah, good luck with that other little matter."

The god vaporized in a cloud of mist that smelled faintly of grape juice. Jason ran to meet Piper and Nico.

Coach Hedge trotted up to me, with Hazel, Frank, and Leo close behind. "Was that Dionysus?" Hedge asked. "I love that guy!"

"You're alive!D" I said to the others. "The giants said you were captured. What happened?"

Leo shrugged. "Oh, just another brilliant plan by Leo Valdez. You'd be amazed what you can do with an Archimedes sphere, a girl who can sense stuff ground, and a weasel."

"I was the weasel," Frank said glumly.

"Basically," Leo explained, "I activated a hydraulic screw with the Archimedes device-which is going to be awesome once I install it in the ship, by the way. Hazel sensed the easiest path to drill to the surface. We made a tunnel big enough for a weasel, and Frank climbed up with a simple transmitter that I slapped together. After that, it was just a matter of hacking into Coach Hedge's favorite satellite channels and telling him to bring the ship around to rescue us. After he got us, finding you was easy, thanks to that godly light show at the Colosseum."

I understood about ten percent of Leo's story, but he decided it was enough since he had a more pressing question. "Where's Annabeth?"

Leo winced. "Yeah, about that . . . she's still in trouble, we think. Hurt, broken leg, maybe-at least according to this vision Gaea showed us. Rescuing her is our next stop."

Two second before, I had been ready to collapse. Now another surge of adrenaline coursed through his body.m He wanted to strangle Leo and demand why the Argo II hadn't sailed off to rescue Annabeth first, but he thought that might sound a little ungrateful.

"Tell me about the vision," he said. "Tell me everything."

The floor shook. The wooden planks began to disappear, spilling sand into the pits of the hypogeum below.

"Let's talk on board," Hazel suggested. "We'd better take off while we still can."

We sailed out of the Colosseum and veered south over the rooftops of Rome.

All around the Piazza del Colosseo, traffic had come to a standstill. A crowd of mortals had gathered, probably wondering about the strange lights and sounds that had come from the ruins. As far as I could see, none of the giants' spectacular plans for destruction had come off successfully. The city looked the same as before. No one seemed to notice the huge Greek trireme rising into the sky.

We gathered around the helm. Jason bandaged Piper's sprained shoulder while Hazel sat at the stern, feeding Nico ambrosia. The son of Hades had to lean in whenever he spoke.

Frank and Leo recounted what had happened in the room with the Archimedes spheres, and the visions Gaea had shown them in the bronze mirror. We quickly decided that our best lead of finding Annabeth was the cryptic advice Bacchus had provided: the Emmanuel Building, whatever that was. Frank started typing at the helm's computer while Leo tapped furiously at his controls, muttering, "Emmanuel Building. Emmanuel Building." Coach Hedge tried to help by wrestling with an upside-down street map of Rome.

I knelt down to Jason and Piper. "How's the shoulder?"

Piper smiled. "It'll heal. Both of you did great."

Jason elbowed me. "Not a bad team, you and me."

"Better than jousting in Kansas cornfield," I agreed.

"There it is!" Leo cried, pointing to his monitor. "Frank, you're amazing! I'm setting course."

Frank hunched his shoulders. "I just read the name off the screen. Some Chinese tourist marked it on Google Maps."

Leo grinned at the others. "He reads Chinese."

"Just a tiny bit," Frank said.

"How cool is that?"

"Guys," Hazel broke in. "I hate to interrupt your admiration session, but you should hear this."

She helped Nico to his feet. He'd always been pale, but now his skin looked like powdered milk. His dark sunken eyes reminded me of photos he'd seen of liberated prisoners-of-war, which I guessed Nico basically was.

"Thank you," Nico rasped. His eyes darted nervously around the group. "I'd given up hope."

The past week or so, I had imagined a lot of scathing things I would say to Nico when we met again, but the guy looked so frail and sad, I couldn't muster much anger.

"You knew about the two camps all along," I said. "You could have told me who I was the first day I arrived at Camp Jupiter, but you didn't."

Nico slumped against the helm. "Percy, I;m sorry. I discovered Camp Jupiter last year. My dad led me there, though I wasn't sure why. He told me the gods had hapt the camps separate for centuries and that I couldn't tell anyone. This time wasn't right. But he said it would be important for me to know . . ." He doubled over in a fit of coughing.

Hazel held his shoulders until he could stand again.

"I-I thought Dad meant because of Hazel," Nico continued. "I'd need a safe place to take her. But now . . . I think he wanted me to know about both camps so I'd understand how important your quest was, and so I'd search for the Doors of Death."

The air turned electric-literally, as Jason started throwing off sparks.

"Did you find the doors?" I asked.

Nico nodded. "I was a fool. I thought I could go anywhere in the Underworld, but I walked right into Gaea's trap. I might as well have tried running from a black hole."

"Um . . ." Frank chewed his lip. "What kind of black hole are you talking about?"

Nico started to speak, but whatever he needed to say must have been too terrifying. He turned to Hazel.

She put her hand on her brother's arm. "Nico told me that the Doors of Death have two sides-one in the mortal world, one in the Underworld. The mortal side of the portal is in Greece. It's heavily guarded by Gaea's forces. That's where they brought Nico back into the upper world. Then they transported him to Rome."

Piper must've been nervous, because her cornucopia spit out a cheeseburger. "Where exactly in Greece is this doorway?"

Nico took a rattling breath. "The House of Hades. It's an underground temple in Epirus. I can mark it on a map, but-but the mortal side of the porta isn't the problem. In the Underworld, the Doors of Death are in . . . in . . ."

A cold pair of hands did the itsy-bitsy spider down my back.

A block hole. An inescapable part of the Underworld where even Nico di Angelo couldn't go. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I'd been to the very edge of that place. I still had nightmares about it.

"Tartarus," I guessed. "The deepest part of the Underworld."

Nico nodded. "They pulled into the pit, Percy. The things I saw down there . . ." His voice broke.

Hazel pursed her lips. "No mortal has ever been to Tartarus," she explained. "At least, no one has ever gone in and returned alive. It's maximum-security prison of Hades, where the old Titans and the other enemies of the gods are bound. It's where all the monsters go when they die on the earth. It's . . . well, no one knows exactly what it's like."

Her eyes drifted to her brother. The rest of her thought didn't need to be spoken: No one except Nico.

Hazel handed him his black sword.

Nico landed on it like it was an old man's cane. "Now I understand why Hades hasn't been able to close the doors," he said. "Even the gods don't go into Tartarus. Even the god of death, Thanatos himself, wouldn't go near that place."

Leo glanced over from the wheel.m"So let me guess. We'll have to go there."

Nico shook his head. "It's impossible. I'm the son of Hades, and even I barely survived. Gaea's forces overwhelmed me instantly. They're so powerful down there . . . no demigod would stand a chance. I almost went insane."

Nico's eyes looked like shattered glass. I wondered sadly if something inside him had broken permanently.

"Then we'll sail for Epirus," I said. "We'll just close the gates on this side."

"I wish it were that easy," Nico said. "The doors would have to be controlled on both sides to be closed. It's like a double seal. Maybe, just maybe, all seven of you working together could defeat Gaea's forces on the mortal side, at the House of Hades. But unless you had a team fighting simultaneously on the Tartarus side, a team powerful enough to defeat a legion of monsters in their home territory-"

"There has to be a way," Jason said.

Nobody volunteered any brilliant ideas.

I thought my stomach was sinking. Then I realized the entire ship was descending toward a big building like a palace.

Annabeth. Nico's news was so horrible I had momentarily forgotten she was still in danger, which made me feel incredibly guilty.

"We'll figure out the Tartarus problem later," I said. "Is that the Emmanuel Building?"

Leo nodded. "Bacchus said something about the parking lot in back? Well, there it is. What now?"

I remembered my dream of the dark chamber, the evil buzzing voice of the monster called Her Ladyship. I remembered how shaken Annabeth had looked when she'd come back from Fort Sumter after her encounter with the spiders. I had begun to suspect what might be down in that shrine . . . literally, the mother of all spiders. If I was right, Annabeth had been trapped down there alone with that creature for hours, her leg broken . . . At this point, I didn't care if her quest was supposed to be solo or not.

"We have to get her out," I said.

"Well, yeah," Leo agree. "But, uh . . ."

I looked like he wanted to say, What if we're too late?

Wisely, I changed tack. "There's a parking lot in the way."

I looked at Coach Hedge. "Bacchus said something about breaking through. Coach, you still have ammo for those ballistae?"

The satyr grinned like a wild goat. "I thought you'd never ask."

Piper's POV

Wow, that was a lot of information. This is really scaring me. I also know that I have to tell the gang of my mermaid secret.

But how will I tell them? They'll probably feel betrayed. They'll probably never forgive me.

But Jason and Percy forgave you, said a voice in my head.

I don't know what to do.

When everyone scattered, Jason pulled me aside.

"When are you going to tell them?" He asks me.

"What are you talking about?" I asked sarcastically, hoping he would walk away.

"Come on, Piper. Don't act stupid," He said.

"I don't know, Jason. What if they never forgive me?" I asked.

He looked at me with a bit of pity. "They will," he promised me. He leaned down and kissed my forehead.

"We should probably go," I say.

"Yeah," he wrapped his arm around my waist and we joined the others.