The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5)(86)

He and his friends backed up while Hygeia and her snake underwent a violent religious experience.

‘What did you do?’ Piper demanded.

‘Idiot mode,’ Leo said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Back at camp,’ Jason explained, ‘Chiron had this ancient gaming system in the rec room. Leo and I used to play it sometimes. You’d compete against, like, computer-controlled opponents, coms –’

‘– and they had three difficulty options,’ Leo said. ‘Easy, medium and hard.’

‘I’ve played video games before,’ Piper said. ‘So what did you do?’

‘Well … I got bored with those settings.’ Leo shrugged. ‘So I invented a fourth difficulty level: idiot mode. It makes the coms so stupid it’s funny. They always choose exactly the wrong thing to do.’

Piper stared at the statue and snake, both of which were writhing and starting to smoke. ‘Are you sure you set them to idiot mode?’

‘We’ll know in a minute.’

‘What if you set them to extreme difficulty?’

‘Then we’ll know that, too.’

The snake stopped shuddering. It coiled up and looked around as if bewildered.

Hygeia froze. A puff of smoke drifted from her right ear. She looked down at Leo. ‘You must die! Hello! You must die!’

She raised her cup and poured acid over her face. Then she turned and marched face-first into the nearest wall. The snake reared up and slammed its head repeatedly into the floor.

‘Okay,’ Jason said. ‘I think we have achieved idiot mode.’

‘Hello! Die!’ Hygeia backed away from the wall and face-slammed it again.

‘Let’s go.’ Leo ran for the metal door next to the dais. He grabbed the handle. It was still locked, but Leo sensed the mechanisms inside – wires running up the frame, connected to …

He stared at the two blinking signs above the door.

‘Jason,’ he said, ‘give me a boost.’

Another gust of wind levitated him upward. Leo went to work with his pliers, reprogramming the signs until the top one flashed:

THE DOCTOR IS:

IN DA HOUSE.



The bottom sign changed to read:

NOW SERVING:

ALL DA LADIES LUV LEO!



The metal door swung open, and Leo settled to the floor.

‘See, the wait wasn’t so bad!’ Leo grinned at his friends. ‘The doctor will see us now.’





XXXVI


Leo


AT THE END OF THE HALL stood a walnut door with a bronze plaque:

ASCLEPIUS

MD, DMD, DME, DC, DVS, FAAN, OMG, EMT, TTYL, FRCP, ME, IOU, OD, OT, PHARMD, BAMF, RN, PHD, INC., SMH



There may have been more acronyms in the list, but by that point Leo’s brain had exploded.

Piper knocked. ‘Dr Asclepius?’

The door flew open. The man inside had a kindly smile, crinkles around his eyes, short salt-and-pepper hair and a well-trimmed beard. He wore a white lab coat over a business suit and a stethoscope around his neck – your stereotypical doctor outfit, except for one thing: Asclepius held a polished black staff with a live green python coiled around it.

Leo wasn’t happy to see another snake. The python regarded him with pale yellow eyes, and Leo had a feeling it was not set to idiot mode.

‘Hello!’ said Asclepius.

‘Doctor.’ Piper’s smile was so warm it would’ve melted a Boread. ‘We’d be so grateful for your help. We need the physician’s cure.’

Leo wasn’t even her target, but Piper’s charmspeak washed over him irresistibly. He would’ve done anything to help her get that cure. He would’ve gone to medical school, got twelve doctorate degrees and bought a large green python on a stick.

Asclepius put his hand over his heart. ‘Oh, my dear, I would be delighted to help.’

Piper’s smile wavered. ‘You would? I mean, of course you would.’

‘Come in! Come in!’ Asclepius ushered them into his office.

The guy was so nice that Leo figured his office would be full of torture devices, but it looked like … well, a doctor’s office: a big maple desk, bookshelves stuffed with medical books, and some of those plastic organ models Leo loved to play with as a kid. He remembered getting in trouble one time because he had turned a cross-section kidney and some skeleton legs into a kidney monster and scared the nurse.

Life was simpler back then.

Asclepius took the big comfy doctor’s chair and laid his staff and serpent across his desk. ‘Please, sit!’

Jason and Piper took the two chairs on the patients’ side. Leo had to remain standing, which was fine with him. He didn’t want to be eye-level with the snake.

‘So.’ Asclepius leaned back. ‘I can’t tell you how nice it is to actually talk with patients. The last few thousand years, the paperwork has got out of control. Rush, rush, rush. Fill in forms. Deal with red tape. Not to mention the giant alabaster guardian who kills everyone in the waiting room. It takes all the fun out of medicine!’

‘Yeah,’ Leo said. ‘Hygeia is kind of a downer.’

Asclepius grinned. ‘My real daughter Hygeia isn’t like that, I assure you. She’s quite nice. At any rate, you did well reprogramming the statue. You have a surgeon’s hands.’