Chapter 9

The door opened into a tight chamber aligned with more pipes. The air was damp and cold, probably because of the continuous water dripping down from the ceiling. We could hear the rumbling of the train as it took off, and the footsteps of the people walking outside the concealed chamber. They had no idea that we were in here, or what else was in here. And neither did we.

Annabeth and I walked side by side, our eyes peeled open for anything suspicious. The occasional rat scurried in between the pipes, or a bug scuttled down the walls. When a spider came close to Annabeth she shrieked and grabbed my hand.

"What is it?" I asked her. Then I looked at the spider. "Oh, you're afraid…"

"Don't judge me," Annabeth panted, shaking her hand out of mine.

"I'm not," I replied. "It's okay."

She was blushing furiously as we continued on, the chamber seeming to get dimmer and dimmer as we did. I realized this was because most of the tiny lightbulbs on the ceiling were broken, providing even less light than they already had.

"Where do you think Gabe Ugliano is?" I wondered aloud, still quietly, fearing that he might hear us if he was somewhere close by.

The tension was extreme, because Annabeth and I both knew that at any moment we could find a secret door or something that led to the man we had been looking for. I just wanted this to end. We were so close…

And then, suddenly, all the lights went out. I jumped, and Annabeth shrieked, "Percy? Percy, what -"

"Oh, he can't help you," said a cold and eerie voice. I recognized it right away, but before I could say anything a beefy hand clasped over my mouth and dragged me into something even bigger. The smell of cigarette smoke and beer encased me, and I once again confirmed who we were dealing with. It was Gabe Ugliano.

"Let him go!" Annabeth yelled, but she was too late; the criminal whacked me on the head with something hard and I fell to the floor, moaning. I looked up in a daze to see poor Annabeth trying to tackle the man, but she, too, soon fell in a heap at our kidnapper's feet.

I woke up on the floor again, but it was much colder and the air smelled mustier. My joints still felt stiff and sluggish, and when I tried to move, I felt my hands tied behind my back and my ankles bound together.

Still, I managed to sit up, looking around the dark chamber. I couldn't see a thing, so I tried to listen for something - I heard a faint breathing coming from the other end of the room.

"Hello?" I croaked, my voice sounding like I had just tried to swallow a frog. "Is anyone there?"

"P-Percy?" a familiar voice replied, sounding just as tired. "Are you there?"

I had never been happier to hear Annabeth's voice. "Yeah, Annabeth, I am. Are you okay?"

"Well, other than being tied together, I think so… What about you?"

"I'm fine. Where are we? The last thing I remember was…"

"Getting hit on the head?"

"Yeah." Then I decided something. "Wait there, Annabeth, I'm going to find you."

And so I did, foraging through the darkness for any sign of warmth. Finally, I found it, and tried to hold onto Annabeth as best as I could. I could almost feel her smiling slightly in the dark. "At least we're not alone," I told her.

I should have known this moment would end, because soon another, unfortunately familiar voice growled, "It's not just the two of you."

A candle flicked on, showing our captor, Gabe Ugliano. Without his cloak, he was even uglier - the light caught his shiny bald head (which wasn't completely bald, actually, I could now see a few hairs) and his scrunched-up, scowling face. He wore a greasy gray shirt that barely covered his bulging beer belly, and disheveled brown pants. Overall, it was the look of a nasty criminal… and a nasty murderer.

"Well, it looks like you failed again, didn't you, kid?" Gabe Ugliano sneered at me. "Some F.B.I. agent."

"And you're some criminal, catching two teenagers," I shot back. "Is that how low you've stooped? Can't even rob an adult, let alone capture him, so you have to take it out on his daughter?"

"Yeah," Annabeth caught on, giving me an appreciative look. "You have to admit, we were pretty close to finding you, closer than you were to robbing my father. What do you even want from us?"

"From you, it's obvious, I want money," Gabe Ugliano replied.

"Well, I don't carry money around in my pocket, I'm not that stupid."

Gabe Ugliano bent down so that he was level with Annabeth's face. "You think you're so smart, girl," he whispered coldly, "But you don't realize that I can play you to my advantage. You've got weak spots, and I'm going to use them."

Annabeth glared back at him, as confident as she could muster, her gray eyes flickering with anger. "Try me."

"And you," Gabe Ugliano growled, turning to me and obviously fuming with hate, "I'm so sick of you."

"Because you can't get rid of me?"

"Oh, are you trying to sass me, kid?"

I managed a faint smile. "That's right."

"You'll be sorry." He leaned closer to me, just like he did with Annabeth, and I got a waft of alcohol-smelling breath. "What even is your name, kid?"

I didn't see the danger in telling him. "Percy. Percy Jackson."

Gabe Ugliano grinned the ugliest grin I had ever seen.

"Just as I had thought," he murmured. "Yes, you're him, and now I have even more reason to hate you."

"What?" I asked, wondering what else I could have possibly done, "What did I do?"

"Oh, you haven't figured it out yet?" Gabe Ugliano cackled. "Well, let me tell you: I killed your mother."

That was it. I couldn't even move. Annabeth stared at our captor in horror, then back at me, a tear glistening in her eye. For one second, I was emotional, because I felt like I just wanted to break down and cry, but the next, I was angry. Really angry.

"IT WAS YOU!" I yelled. "You ruined my life! If it wasn't for you, you disgusting old thing, I wouldn't have had the job of capturing you! I never would have joined the F.B.I., and -"

"You never would have met your pretty girl," Gabe Ugliano interrupted.

I glanced at Annabeth. She was completely tear-soaked. Right then, I felt the urge to hug her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right, but this was about me. And I knew that everything was not going to be alright, if we were stuck here…

That's when I realized it. Annabeth had become something more to me; not just a friend. We hadn't known each other for long, but we had already been through so much together, and now I realized how much I really cared for her. She was the closest person that I knew next to my mother, and my mother was gone, killed by this selfish criminal…

I glared daggers at him. "You don't have the right to speak her name, or my mother's. You just -"

"Unfortunately, punk, you can't tell me what to do. You belong to me now, and there's nothing you can do about it." Gabe Ugliano rubbed his hands together. "Lucky for me, I have some things planned. Oh, this is going to be fun."

Yeah, so, I knew some of you were predicting that Gabe Ugliano killed Percy's mother, and he did! Also, I added the 'Persassy' moment in there just for fun ;) - Key