XVII

Leo

Jason was the first to break the silence.

"Seriously?" he asked. "Do you honestly think that Carter is the 'secret weapon' that's going to help us defeat the giants?"

"Yep." Percy replied. "I'll admit, I've, um… met him before."

"Really?" Jason leaned in closer. So did everyone else. "What do you think he can do?"

Percy shut his mouth. He wasn't about to say anything.

"Fine." Jason sighed. "We're just going to have to trust what Percy is saying is true. We really need to go. We've only got a couple days left, and besides, he is the only thing we've found all day. Let's just go."

And so, Leo found himself trailing behind the group as they walked back to the Argo II, right next to Carter, the new kid.

He looked relatively the same age, and he most definitely was not mortal, but something about him seemed different from anyone he'd ever met.

"Hey." Leo said. Immediately, he felt Carter's defenses going up.

So he was not going to get much out of this conversation.

"So," Leo began. "What do you usually do?" When Carter didn't answer, he let it drop, and his thoughts began to wander.

What was that Carter boy? Leo had already begun to suspect that he was a demigod, but why Percy hadn't just told them that, he had no idea. He was giving off practically no clues about what he did apart from school, if he even went there.

He didn't even realize how long he'd been lost in thought until Carter shook his shoulder. "Hey, what's that you're making?"

Leo looked at his hands. In them was a tiny wire replica of the raft he'd built with Calypso to get him off the island. He tucked it into his pocket, feeling his face burning. "It's, um, nothing."

Carter didn't even seem to notice his embarrassment. He was staring into the sky, as if thinking about something. Leo didn't have the courage to ask him, so he started to twiddle his fingers as the rest of the way to the ship.

He didn't even notice the hull of the Argo II until he slammed headfirst into it. He'd been so deep in thought -which was totally unlike him, by the way- that he'd gone into a daze.

Calypso had definitely changed his personality. A lot.

When he got onto the deck, he suddenly felt a large rumble in the ground.

Percy fell down on his head, and cursed. "What the heck was that?" he yelled.

Leo looked over the railings. "Hey, guys," he yelled. "I think we've got company!"

It was pretty lucky that Leo had decided to park on top of a hill, or they would have never seen the two giants running towards them through the city, crushing houses and museums, and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Even from the distance they were at, Leo could hear them yelling, "DIE!", Coach Hedge style.

"Who's that on the right?" Jason pointed at the giant who was not Agrios.

"That's probably Thoon." Annabeth explained. "He was one of the ancestors of the Fates. In the war-"

"Let's just go!" Percy yelled. Leo ran to the controls, pulled some levers, pushed some buttons, shook some gaming controls and they were off.

"To Mount Olympus!" Percy yelled.

Leo typed in some coordinates on his guidance console, and set the ship to semi-turbo- no use wasting fuel. He wasn't going to tell anyone, but the ship was actually running out of gas. At best, they had another two days' worth of regular driving. Luckily, they would probably be at Mount Olympus by then.

As they hurtled across the city, people looked up from the streets, cheering and whooping. Some children started to cry.

"What do people think we are?" Leo muttered to himself. "Fighter jets?

Nobody even noticed when the giants tried to grab the ship with their bare hands, flattening a couple houses and possibly killing a couple hundred people in the process.

As the ship neared the mountains, the giants started to slow down. "You idiots!" Agrios yelled, his voice growing smaller by the minute. "You'll just get killed!"

"What did he mean by that?" Annabeth asked.

As they entered a valley, a giant rock flew straight into the ship's mast. "Not them again!" Hazel yelled.

Annabeth smacked her forehead. "I'm an idiot! Numia live on mountains. Greece has tons of mountains!" Another boulder flew into the hull, possibly breaking a lot of precious, priceless equipment.

"Oh, dang!" Carter yelled as a giant boulder nearly hit him square in the face.

Wisps of low-lying clouds covered the hills the Numia were on, but every now and then a giant piece of rock would come flying at the ship. Then their problems multiplied.

Behind them, the loud bellowing of two blood-hungry giants came, amplified by the terrain, yelling nasty words.

"Oh, crap." Carted muttered.

And with that, a couple hundred boulders came straight at the Argo II, all at once. The hull was completely ripped apart, the controls exploded, and the ship was sent careening into the ground.

As the ship fell, Leo yelled, "JUMP!" he grabbed a random piece of sail fabric, and jumped. Everyone else followed suit.

As he floated down to the ground, Leo saw the smoke and flames coming from the ship, which was spinning around and around, and when it crashed into the ground, a giant shockwave pushed all of them underneath a rocky overhang.

The giants' voices still kept closer. Leo's body ached from the fall, but he knew that if the giants were close enough, they'd spot them.

The giant footsteps got louder and louder, and so did their voices. "Everyone, in there!" He yelled, pointing at a cave at the back of the cavern. They all piled in, everyone pushing to get as deep into the cave as possible.

"They must be around here somewhere." A deep voice boomed.

"Didn't you see the parachutes? They're probably underneath that rocky overhang." Another voice replied. Everyone scurried backwards into the cave. As the giants kneeled down to take a look at the area, Leo turned around and flattened himself against the wall, closing his eyes.

"Nothing here." The voice boomed. Only when Leo couldn't hear anything did he reopen his eyes and look out of the cave entrance… only there was no cave entrance. Torches now lit the way on the walls, casting dim shadows along the now stone-hard walls. As the others opened their eyes, and saw where they were, they all gasped. Leo looked up and saw a skeleton hanging from some cobwebs, suspended from the ceiling.

"Guys," Carter asked. "Do you know where we are?"

"Percy and Annabeth's eyes suddenly flashed with recognition. "Yep." They said grimly. "We're in the Labyrinth."