The good news: the left tunnel was straight with no side exits, twists, or turns. The bad news: it was a dead end, obviously. After sprinting a hundred yards, we ran into an enormous boulder that completely blocked our path. Behind us, the sounds of dragging footsteps and heavy breathing echoed down the corridor. Something—definitely not human—was on our tail.

"Ty," I said, "can you—"

"Yes!" He slammed his shoulder against the rock so hard the whole tunnel shook. Dust trickled from the stone ceiling.

"Hurry!" Grover said. "Don't bring the roof down, but hurry!"

I connected myself to the shadows and brought my arms up, stabilizing said roof. I never liked using the shadows because it took way too much energy, probably something to do with Jade. The boulder finally gave way with a horrible grinding noise. Tyson pushed it into a small room and we dashed through behind it.

"Close the entrance!" Annabeth said.

We all got on the other side and pushed. Whatever was chasing us wailed in frustration as we heaved the rock back into place and sealed the corridor.

"We trapped it," Percy said.

"No really?" I mumbled.

Percy turned to me with a glare. "Don't be all sassy to me, Kiera. Not my fault we're here."

Annabeth winced. "Kinda is."

"Oh, you're  one to talk." I said.

The pair of soulmates whirled on me and I waved them off.

Grover looked around the room and said, "Or trapped ourselves."

I turned. We were in a twenty-foot-square cement room, and the opposite wall was covered with metal bars. We'd tunneled straight into a cell.

————————☁︎ ✯  ☾ ✯ ☁︎————————

"What the hell?" Annabeth tugged on the bars. They didn't budge. Through the bars we could see rows of cells in a ring around a dark courtyard—at least three stories of metal doors and metal catwalks.

"A prison," Percy said.

Huh, I touched a bar. "I never thought they'd catch us, if I'm being honest."

"Shh," said Grover. "Listen."

Somewhere above us, deep sobbing echoed through the building. There was another sound, too—a raspy voice muttering something I couldn't make out. The words were strange, like rocks in a tumbler. It sounded familiar, like a language I forgot but used to know.

"What's that language?" I murmured.

Tyson's eye widened. "Can't be."

"Huh?" Percy asked.

Tyson grabbed two bars on our cell door and bent them wide enough for even a Cyclops to slip through.

"Wait!" Grover called.

But Tyson wasn't about to wait. We ran after him. The prison was dark, only a few dim fluorescent lights flickering above.

"I know this place," Annabeth told us. "This is Alcatraz."

"You mean that island near San Francisco?"

I clapped my hands quietly. "Oh! You know that only two successful jail breaks were ever led here?"

They stared at me.

"What? I'm a history geek."

Annabeth sighed. "Didn't take you for the history buff. Anyways, my school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

It didn't seem possible we could've popped out of the Labyrinth on the other side of the country, but Annie had been living in San Francisco all year, keeping an eye on Mount Tamalpais just across the bay. She probably knew what she was talking about.

"Freeze," Grover warned.

But Tyson kept going. Grover grabbed his arm and pulled him back with all his strength. "Stop, Tyson!" He whispered "can't you see it?"

I looked where he was pointing and my stomach did something like a fucking backflip. On the second floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than anything I'd ever seen before.

It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon—at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. her legs looked like they were tangled in vines, but then I realized they were sprouting snakes, like Medusa's. Weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met dragon, her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing heads of animals—a wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she was wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures. I got the feeling I was looking at something I had faced in my very first life, one of the beginning demigods.

"It's her," Tyson whimpered.

"Get down!" Grover said.

We crouched in the shadows, but the monster wasn't paying us any attention. It seemed to be talking to someone inside a cell on the second floor. That's where the sobbing was coming from. The dragon woman said something in her weird rumbling language.

"What's she saying?" Percy muttered. "What's that language?"

"The tongue of the old times," Tyson shivered. "What Mother Creation spoke to Earth and. . .her other children. Before the gods."

Mother Creation?  I was chilled to the bone by just the name.

"Ty, do you understand it?" I asked and put a hand on his back. "Can you translate?"

Tyson closed his eyes and began to speak in a horrible, raspy woman's voice. "You will work for the master or suffer."

Annabeth shuddered. "I hate it when he does that."

Like all Cyclopes, Tyson had the superhuman hearing and uncanny ability to mimic voices.

"I will not serve," Tyson said in a deep, wounded voice. 

He switched to the monster: "then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares." Tyson faltered when he said that name. I never heard him break character when he was mimicking someone, but he let out a strangled gulp. Then he continued in the monsters voice: "If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this till I return."

The dragon lady tromped toward the stairwell, vipers hissing around her legs like grass skirts. She spread wings that I hadn't noticed before—huge bat wings she kept folded against her dragon  back. She leaped off the catwalk and soared across the courtyard. We crouched lower and I let myself blend into the shadows. Then she disappeared around the corner.

"H-h-horrible," Grover said. "I've never smelled any monster that strong."

"Cyclopes' worst nightmare," Tyson murmured. "Kampê."

The memories came back to me, when the Titans ruled, they imprisoned Gaia and Ouranos's earlier children—the Cyclopes and the Hekatonheires, the Hundred-Handed Ones.

"Who?" Percy asked.

"Kampê was the jailer for the Hundred-Handed Ones and Cyclopes. When Zeus killed her and freed Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed Ones, that was the end of it for her." I said. "And now Kampê is back."

"Bad," Tyson summed up.

"So who's in that cell?" Percy asked. "You said a name—"

"Briares!" Tyson perked up. "He is a Hundred-Handed One. They are as tall as the sky and break mountains!"

I looked up at the cells above us, wondering how something as tall as the sky could fit in a tiny cell, and why he was crying.

"I guess we should check it out," Annabeth said. "Before Kampê comes back."

————————☁︎ ✯  ☾ ✯ ☁︎————————

As we approached the cell, the weeping got louder. When I saw what it was, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. He was human sized and his skin was very pale, the color of milk. He wore a loincloth like a big diaper. His feet seemed too big for his body, with cracked dirty toenails, eight toes on each foot. But the top half of his body was the odd part. He made Janus look normal. His chest sprouted more arms than I could count, in rows, all around his body. The arms looked like normal arms, but there were so many of them, all tangled together, he looked like Sporky, but multiply his arms by fifty. Several of his hands were covering his face as he sobbed.

"Either the sky isn't as tall as it used to be," I muttered, "or he's short as shit."

Tyson didn't pay any attention. He fell to his knees.

"Briares!" He called.

The sobbing stopped.

"Great Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson said. "Help us!"

Briares looked up. His face was long and sad, with a crooked nose and bad teeth. He had deep brown eyes—I mean completely brown with no whites or black pupils, like eyes formed out of clay. 

Woah, Mr. Potato Head x Sporky?

"Run while you can, Cyclops," Briares said miserably. "I cannot even help myself."

"You are a Hundred-Handed One!" Tyson insisted. "You can do anything!"

Percy and I side-eyed each other and I mentally threatened myself to not let a single giggle out.

Briares wiped his nose with five or six hands. Several others were fighting with little pieces of metal and wood from a broken bed, the way Tyson always played with spare parts. It was amazing to watch. Suddenly, I was jerked somewhere else.

 ⊹

It reminded me of Briares and Tyson, the way he would play with little scraps at random, finish it, and start on something else. I stared at his hands and Leo seemed to notice, because his eyes met mine and I felt my face burn up.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Old habit."

I smiled.

 ⊹

"—Put on your brace face!" Tyson said.

Immediately Briares's face turned into something else. Same brown eyes, but otherwise totally different features. He had an upturned nose, arched eyebrows, and a weird smile, like he was trying to act brave. But then his face turned back to what it was before.

"No good," he said. "My scared face keeps coming back!"

"How did you do that?" Percy asked.

I finally realized I had zoned out and missed something important.

Annabeth elbowed him "Don't be rude. The Hundred-Handed Ones have fifty different faces."

"Must make it hard to get a yearbook picture," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

Percy seemed to notice something was up and he put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it once.

Tyson was still entranced. "It will be okay, Briares! We will help you! Can I have your autograph?"

Briares sniffled. "Do you have one underdog pens?"

"Guys," I interrupted. "We gotta go. Kampê will be back sooner or later. Break the bars."

"Yes!" Tyson said, smiling proudly. "Briares can do it. He is very strong. Stronger than Cyclopes, even! Watch!"

Briares whimpered. A dozen of his hands started playing patty-cake, but none of them made any attempt to break the bars.

"If he's so strong," Percy said, "why is he stuck in jail?"

Annabeth ribbed him again, "He's terrified," she whispered. "Kampê imprisoned him in Tartarus for thousands of years. How would you feel?"

Briares covered his face again.

"Briares?" Tyson asked. "What. . .what is wrong? Show us your great strength!"

I felt disappointment wafting off of my baby brother. "Ty. . .I think you'd better break the bars."

Tyson's smile melted slowly.

"I will break the bars," he repeated. He grabbed the cell door and ripped it off the hinges like it was wet clay.

"Come on, Briares," Annabeth said. "Let's get you out of here."

She held out her hand. For a second, Briares's face morphed to a hopeful expression. Several of his arms reached out, but twice as many slapped them away.

"I cannot," he said. "She will punish me."

"It's all right," Annabeth promised. "You fought the Titans before, and you won, remember?"

"I remember the war." Briares's face morphed again—furrowed brow and a pouting mouth. His brooding face, I guess. "Lightning shook the world, as bright lights flooded monsters. We threw many rocks. The Titans and the monsters almost won. She was there—" he pointed at me "—I saw her fighting, strong. Strong, now they are getting strong again. Kampê said so."

"Don't listen to her," I said. "Come on!"

I was starting to get irritated with Briares. We were trying to save him, offering him safety and all that shit, but he wouldn't take it. He didn't move. We didn't have much time before Kampê returned. But I couldn't just leave him here. Tyson would cry for weeks.

Percy seemed to sense my irritation because he blurted out something totally Percy-like. "One game of rock, paper, scissors. If I win, you come with us. If I lose, we'll leave you in jail."

Annabeth looked at him like he was crazy, but I knew his plan. The one he used all the time on me. I had a trick, too.

"Hm. . .I don't like ones." He muttered.

I stepped up. "I'll do a round, too. Simple as that, you also have a chance to redeem yourself."

Briares's face turned into doubtful. "I always win rock, paper, scissors."

"Then let's do it!" Percy pounded his fist in his palm three times.

Briares did the same with all one hundred hands, which sounded like an army marching three steps forward. He came up with a whole avalanche of rocks, a classroom set of scissors, and enough paper to make a fleet of airplanes.

"I told you," he said sadly. "I always—" his face morphed to confusion. "What is that you made?"

"A bomb." Percy told him, showing his fist but his thumb up like the wick. "A bomb beats just about anything."

Briares turned to me and held his fists on his palms. "Fine. Me against you."

We did the same three hits, and this time, I made my favorite trick. Briares had his army of items, plus a singular bomb.

"What is that—" his face turned into anger.

I showed him my finger gun. "A glock."

"That's not fair!" Briares wailed. "A bomb would surely beat a gun!"

I clicked my tongue. "See, that's not how it works in Kiera Land."

"I don't like Kiera Land." He pouted.

"Now, lets go. Kampê Is gonna blame you for ripping off the bars if you stay. Now come on!"

Briares sniffled. "Demigods are cheaters." But he slowly got to his feet and followed us out of the cell.

I started to feel hopeful. All we had to do was get down and find the Labyrinth entrance. But then Tyson froze.

On the ground right below, Kampê was snarling at us.

"Son of a bitch." I growled.

————————☁︎ ✯  ☾ ✯ ☁︎————————

"The other way," Percy said.

We bolted down the catwalk. This time Briares was happy to follow us. In fact he sprinted out front, a hundred arms waving in panic.

Behind us, I heard the sound of giant wings as Kampê took to the air. She hissed and growled in her ancient language, but I didn't need a translation to know she was planning to kill us.

We scrambled down the stairs, through a corridor, and past a guard's station—out into another block of prison cells.

"Left," Annabeth said. "I remember this from the tour."

We burst outside and found ourselves in the prison yard, ringed by security towers and barbed wire. After being inside so long, the daylight blinded me. Tourists were walking around, taking pictures. The wind whipped cold off the bay. In the south, San Francisco gleamed all white and beautiful, but in the north, over Mount Tamalpais, huge storm clouds swirled. The whole sky seemed like a black top spinning from the mountain where Atlas was imprisoned, where the Titan palace of Mount Othrys was rising anew. It was hard to believe they couldn't see the storm, but they didn't give any hint that anything was wrong.

"It's even worse," Annabeth said, gazing to the north. "The storms have been bad all year, but that—"

"Keep moving," Briares wailed. "She is behind us!"

We ran to the far end of the yard, as far from the cell block as possible.

"Kampê's too big to get through the doors," Percy said.

Then the wall exploded.

I slowly turned my head to him. "You were saying?"

Tourists screamed as Kampê appeared from the dust and rubble, her winds spread out as wide as the yard. She was holding two swords—long bronze scimitars that glowed with a weird greenish aura, boiling wisps of vapor that smelled sour and hot even across the yard.

"Poison!" Grover yelped. "Don't let those things touch you or. . ."

"We'll die?" Percy guessed.

"Well. . .after you shrivel slowly to dust, yes."

"Let's avoid the swords," Percy decided.

"Briares, fight!" Tyson urged. "Grow to full size!"

Instead, Briares looked like he was trying to shrink even smaller. He appeared to be wearing his absolutely terrified face. 

Kampê thundered toward us on her dragon legs, hundreds of snakes slithering around her body.

For a second I thought about drawing Nightfall and facing her, but my heart crawled into my throat. Then Percy said what I was thinking: "run."

That was the end of the debate. There was no fighting this thing. We ran through the jail yard and out the gates of the prison, the monster right behind us. Mortals screamed and ran. Emergency sirens began to blare.

The best weapon decision for the fight, without a doubt, would be Nightfall since it is Stygian Iron and cannot be destroyed. But only I could touch it, since only children of the Underworld could use it. Meaning I would have to stay and fight. 

We hit the wharf just as a tour boat was unloading. The new group of visitors froze as they saw us charging toward them.

"The boat?" Grover asked.

"Too slow," Tyson said. "Back into the maze. Only chance."

"We need a diversion," Annabeth said.

Tyson ripped a metal lamppost out of the ground. "I will distract Kampê. You run ahead."

"I'll help you," Percy and I said in union.

"No," Tyson said. "You go. Poison will hurt Cyclopes. A lot of pain. But it won't kill."

"Are you sure?"

"Go, brother. Go, sister. I will meet you inside."

I hated the idea. I'd almost lost Tyson once before, and I didn't want to ever risk that again. But there was no time to argue and I had no better idea. Annabeth, Grover, Percy and I each took on of Briares's hands and dragged him toward the concession stands while Tyson bellowed, lowered his pole, and charged Kampê like a jousting knight.

She'd been glaring at Briares, but Tyson got her attention as soon as he nailed her in the chest with the pole, pushing her back into the wall. She shrieked and slashed with her swords, slicing the pole to shreds. Poison dripped in pools all around her, sizzling into the cement.

Tyson jumped back as Kampê's lashed and hissed, and the vipers around her legs darted their tongues in every direction. A lion popped out of the weird half-formed faces around her waist and roared.

As we sprinted for the cellblocks, the last thing I saw was Tyson picking up a Dippin' Dots stand and throwing it at Kampê. Ice cream and poison exploded everywhere, all the little snakes in Kampê's hair dotted with tutti-fruit. We dashed back into the jail yard.

"Can't make it," Briares huffed.

"My littlest brother is risking his life to help you!" I yelled at him. "You will  make it. I swear to the gods, if you give up, I will drag you to hell with me!"

As we reached the door of the cell lock, I heard an angry roar. I glanced back and saw Tyson running toward us at full speed, Kampê right behind him. She was plastered in ice cream and T-shirts. One of the bear heads on her waist was now wearing sunglasses.

"Hurry!" Annabeth said, as if I needed to be reminded.

We finally found the cell where we came in, but the back wall was completely smooth—no sign of a boulder or anything.

"Look for the mark!" Annabeth said.

"There!" Grover touched a tiny scratch, and it became a Greek Δ. The mark of Daedalus glowed blue, and the stone grinded open.

Too slowly. Tyson was coming through the cellblock, Kampê's swords lashing out behind him, slicing indiscriminately through cell bars and stone walls.

I pushed Briares inside the maze, then Annabeth, then Grover and Percy.

"You can do it!" I told Tyson. But I knew he couldn't. Kampê was gaining. She raised her swords. I needed a