The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(34)

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Some sort of powerful guardian, obviously. Our most recent prophecy stanza mentioned a lion, snake-entwined.” I filled Rachel in on our literally eye-popping ride with the Gray Sisters.

Nico scowled at the blueprints, as if he might intimidate them into giving up their secrets. “So, whatever the guardian is, Nero trusts it with his life. Meg, I thought you said Luguselwa was this huge, mighty warrior?”

“She is.”

“So why can’t she take out this guardian and destroy the fasces herself?” he asked. “Why does she need…you know, you guys to get yourself captured?”

Nico phrased the question diplomatically, but I heard what he meant. If Lu couldn’t take out this guardian, how could I, Lester Papadopoulos, the Not So Huge or Mighty?

“Dunno,” Meg said. “But there must be a reason.”

Like Lu would rather see us get killed, I thought, but I knew better than to say that.

“Let’s assume Lu is right,” Nico said. “You get captured and put in this cell. She lets you out. You kill the guardian, destroy the fasces, weaken Nero, hooray. Even then, and I’m sorry to be a Debbie Downer—”

“I am calling you Debbie Downer from now on,” Will said gleefully.

“Shut up, Solace. Even then, you’ve got half a tower and Nero’s whole army of security guards between you and his throne room, right?”

“We’ve dealt with whole armies before,” Meg said.

Nico laughed, which I didn’t know he was capable of. “Okay. I like the confidence. But wasn’t there that little detail about Nero’s panic switch? If he feels threatened, he can blow up New York at the push of a button. How do you stop that?”

“Oh…” Rachel muttered a curse not appropriate for priestesses. “That must be what these are for.”

Her hands trembling, she flipped to another page of the blueprints.

“I asked my dad’s senior architect about them,” she said. “He couldn’t figure them out. Said there’s no way the blueprints could be right. Sixty feet underground, surrounded by triple retaining walls. Giant vats, like the building has its own reservoir or water-treatment facility. It’s connected to the city’s sewer mains, but the separate electrical grid, the generators, these pumps…It’s like the whole system is designed to blast water outward and flood the city.”

“Except not with water,” Will said. “With Greek fire.”

“Debbie Downer,” Nico muttered.

I stared at the schematics, trying to imagine how such a system could have been built. During our last battle in the Bay Area, Meg and I had seen more Greek fire than had existed in the whole history of the Byzantine Empire. Nero had more. Exponentially more. It seemed impossible, but the emperor had had hundreds of years to plan, and almost infinite resources. Leave it to Nero to spend most of his money on a self-destruct system.

“He’ll burn up, too,” I marveled. “All his family and guards, and his precious tower.”

“Maybe not,” Rachel said. “The building is designed for self-containment. Thermal insulation, closed air circulation, reinforced heat-resistant materials. Even the windows are special blast-proof panes. Nero could burn the city down around him, and his tower would be the only thing left standing.”

Meg crumpled her empty Yoo-hoo box. “Sounds like him.”

Will studied the plans. “I’m not an expert on reading these things, but where are the access points to the vats?”

“There’s only one,” Rachel said. “Sealed off, automated, heavily guarded, and under constant surveillance. Even if you could break or sneak through, you wouldn’t have enough time to disable the generators before Nero pushed his panic button.”

“Unless,” Nico said, “you tunneled your way into those reservoirs from underneath. You could sabotage his whole delivery system without Nero ever knowing.”

“Aaand we’re back to that terrible idea,” Will said.

“They’re the best tunnelers in the world,” Nico insisted. “They could get through all that concrete and steel and Celestial bronze with no one even noticing. This is our part of the plan, Will. While Apollo and Meg are getting themselves captured, keeping Nero distracted, we go underground and take out his doomsday weapon.”

“Hold on, Nico,” I said. “It’s high time you explained who these cave-runners are.”

The son of Hades fixed his dark eyes on me as if I were another layer of concrete to dig through. “A few months ago, I made contact with the troglodytes.”

I choked on a laugh. Nico’s claim was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard since Mars swore to me that Elvis Presley was alive on, well, Mars.

“Troglodytes are a myth,” I said.

Nico frowned. “A god is telling a demigod that something is a myth?”

“Oh, you know what I mean! They aren’t real. That trashy author Aelian made them up to sell more copies of his books back in ancient Rome. A race of subterranean humanoids who eat lizards and fight bulls? Please. I’ve never seen them. Not once in my millennia of life.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Nico said, “that troglodytes might go out of their way to hide from a sun god? They hate the light.”