The Battle of the Labyrinth

be made of bricks.
    I lifted Riptide. The faint glow of the blade was just enough to illuminate Annabeth’s frightened face and the mossy stone walls on either side of us.
    “Wh-where are we?” Annabeth said.
    “Safe from scorpions, anyway.” I tried to sound calm, but I was freaking out. The crack between the boulders couldn’t have led into a cave. I would’ve known if there was a cave here; I was sure of it. It was like the ground had opened up and swallowed us. All I could think of was the fissure in the dining room pavilion, where those skeletons had been consumed last summer. I wondered if the same thing had happened to us.
    I lifted my sword again for light.
    “It’s a long room,” I muttered.
    Annabeth gripped my arm. “It’s not a room. It’s a corridor.”
    She was right. The darkness felt . . . emptier in front of us. There was a warm breeze, like in subway tunnels, only it felt older, more dangerous somehow.
    I started forward, but Annabeth stopped me. “Don’t take another step,” she warned. “We need to find the exit.”
    She sounded really scared now.
    “It’s okay,” I promised. “It’s right—”
    I looked up and realized I couldn’t see where we’d fallen in. The ceiling was solid stone. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions.
    Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different circumstances I would’ve been embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of.
    “Two steps back,” she advised.
    We stepped backward together like we were in a minefield.
    “Okay,” she said. “Help me examine the walls.”
    “What for?”
    “The mark of Daedalus,” she said, as if that was supposed to make sense.
    “Uh, okay. What kind of—”
    “Got it!” she said with relief. She set her hand on the wall and pressed against a tiny fissure, which began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared: L, the Ancient Greek Delta.
    The roof slid open and we saw night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should’ve been. Metal ladder rungs appeared in the side of the wall, leading up, and I could hear people yelling our names.
    “Percy! Annabeth!” Tyson’s voice bellowed the loudest, but others were calling out too.
    I looked nervously at Annabeth. Then we began to climb.
    We made our way around the rocks and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches.
    “Where have you two been?” Clarisse demanded. “We’ve been looking forever.”
    “But we were only gone a few minutes,” I said.
    Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover.
    “Percy!” Tyson said. “You are okay?”
    “We’re fine,” I said. “We fell in a hole.”
    The others looked at me skeptically, then at Annabeth.
    “Honest!” I said. “There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute.”
    “You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said. “The game is over.”
    “Yeah,” Grover muttered. “We would’ve won, but a Cyclops sat on me.”
    “Was an accident!” Tyson protested, and then he sneezed.
    Clarisse was wearing the gold laurels, but she didn’t even brag about winning them, which wasn’t like her. “A hole?” she said suspiciously.
    Annabeth took a deep breath. She looked around at the other campers. “Chiron . . . maybe we should talk about this at the Big House.”
    Clarisse gasped. “You found it, didn’t you?”
    Annabeth bit her lip. “I—Yeah. Yeah, we did.”
    A bunch of campers started asking questions, looking about as confused as I was, but Chiron raised his hand for silence. “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place.” He stared at the boulders as if he’d just noticed how dangerous they were. “All of you, back to your cabins. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past!”
    There was a lot of mumbling and complaints, but the campers drifted off, talking among themselves and giving me suspicious looks.
    “This explains a lot,” Clarisse said. “It explains what Luke is after.”
    “Wait a second,” I said. “What do you mean? What did we find?”
    Annabeth turned toward me, her eyes dark with worry. “An entrance to the Labyrinth. An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp.”

FOUR

ANNABETH BREAKS THE RULES
    Chiron had insisted we talk about it in the morning, which was kind of like, Hey, your life’s in mortal danger. Sleep tight! It was hard to