The Battle of the Labyrinth

with Luke? What did they do to him?”
    I told her what I’d seen in the coffin, the way the last piece of Kronos’s spirit had entered Luke’s body when Ethan Nakamura pledged his service.
    “No,” Annabeth said. “That’s can’t be true. He couldn’t—”
    “He gave himself over to Kronos,” I said. “I’m sorry, Annabeth. But Luke is gone.”
    “No!” she insisted. “You saw when Rachel hit him.”
    I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. “You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.”
    Rachel looked embarrassed. “It was the only thing I had.”
    “But you saw ,” Annabeth insisted. “When it hit him, just for a second, he was dazed. He came back to his senses.”
    “So maybe Kronos wasn’t completely settled in the body, or whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t mean Luke was in control.”
    “You want him to be evil, is that it?” Annabeth yelled. “You didn’t know him before, Percy. I did!”
    “What is it with you?” I snapped. “Why do you keep defending him?”
    “Whoa, you two,” Rachel said. “Knock it off.”
    Annabeth turned on her. “Stay out of it, mortal girl! If it wasn’t for you . . .”
    Whatever she was going to say, her voice broke. She put her head down again and sobbed miserably. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. I still felt stunned, like Kronos’s time-slow effect had affected my brain. I just couldn’t comprehend what I’d seen. Kronos was alive. He was armed. And the end of the world was probably close at hand.
    “We have to keep moving,” Nico said. “He’ll send monsters after us.”
    Nobody was in any shape to run, but Nico was right. I hauled myself up and helped Rachel to her feet.
    “You did good back there,” I told her.
    She managed a weak smile. “Yeah, well. I didn’t want you to die.” She blushed. “I mean . . . just because, you know. You owe me too many favors. How am I going to collect if you die?”
    I knelt next to Annabeth. “Hey, I’m sorry. We need to move.”
    “I know,” she said. “I’m . . . I’m all right.”
    She was clearly not all right. But she got to her feet, and we started straggling through the Labyrinth again.
    “Back to New York,” I said. “Rachel, can you—”
    I froze. A few feet in front of us, my flashlight beam fixed on a trampled clump of red fabric lying on the ground. It was a Rasta cap: the one Grover always wore.
    My hands shook as I picked up the cap. It looked like it had been stepped on by a huge muddy boot. After all that I’d gone through today, I couldn’t stand the thought that something might’ve happened to Grover, too.
    Then I noticed something else. The cave floor was mushy and wet from the water dripping off the stalactites. There were large footprints like Tyson’s, and smaller ones— goat hooves—leading off to the left.
    “We have to follow them,” I said. “They went that way. It must have been recently.”
    “What about Camp Half-Blood?” Nico said. “There’s no time.”
    “We have to find them,” Annabeth insisted. “They’re our friends.”
    She picked up Grover’s smashed cap and forged ahead.
    I followed, bracing myself for the worst. The tunnel was treacherous. It sloped at weird angles and was slimy with moisture. Half the time we were slipping and sliding rather than walking.
    Finally we got to the bottom of a slope and found ourselves in a large cave with huge stalagmite columns. Through the center of the room ran an underground river, and Tyson was sitting by the banks, cradling Grover in his lap. Grover’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.
    “Tyson!” I yelled.
    “Percy! Come quick!”
    We ran over to him. Grover wasn’t dead, thank the gods, but his whole body trembled like he was freezing to death.
    “What happened?” I asked.
    “So many things,” Tyson murmured. “Large snake. Large dogs. Men with swords. But then . . . we got close to here. Grover was excited. He ran. Then we reached this room, and he fell. Like this.”
    “Did he say anything?” I asked.
    “He said, ‘We’re close.’ Then he hit his head on rocks.”
    I knelt next to him. The only other time I’d seen Grover pass out was in New Mexico, when he’d felt the presence of Pan.
    I shined my flashlight around the cavern. The rocks glittered. At the far end was the entrance to another cave, flanked by gigantic columns of crystal that looked like diamonds. And beyond that entrance . . .
    “Grover,” I said.