The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus #3)(105)

She forced herself to keep going. She had no choice. If the Athena Parthenos was really down here, it could decide the fate of the war. More importantly, it could help her mom. Athena needed her.

At the bottom of the steps she reached an old wooden door with an iron pull ring. Above the ring was a metal plate with a keyhole. Annabeth started considering ways to pick the lock, but as soon as she touched the pull ring, a fiery shape burned in the middle of the door: the silhouette of Athena’s owl. Smoke plumed from the keyhole. The door swung inward.

Annabeth looked up one last time. At the top of the stairwell, the sky was a square of brilliant blue. Mortals would be enjoying the warm afternoon. Couples would be holding hands at the cafés. Tourists would be bustling through the shops and museums. Regular Romans would be going about their daily business, probably not considering the thousands of years of history under their feet, and definitely unaware of the spirits, gods, and monsters that still dwelt here, or the fact that their city might be destroyed today unless a certain group of demigods succeeded in stopping the giants.

Annabeth stepped through the doorway.

She found herself in a basement that was an architectural cyborg. Ancient brick walls were crisscrossed with modern electrical cables and plumbing. The ceiling was held up with a combination of steel scaffolding and old granite Roman columns.

The front half of the basement was stacked with crates. Out of curiosity, Annabeth opened a few. Some were packed with multicolored spools of string—like for kites or arts and crafts projects. Other crates were full of cheap plastic gladiator swords. Maybe at one point this had been a storage area for a tourist shop.

In the back of the basement, the floor had been excavated, revealing another set of steps—these of white stone—leading still deeper underground.

Annabeth crept to the edge. Even with the glow cast by her dagger, it was too dark to see below. She rested her hand on the wall and found a light switch.

She flipped it. Glaring white fluorescent bulbs illuminated the stairs. Below, she saw a mosaic floor decorated with deer and fauns—maybe a room from an Ancient Roman villa, just stashed away under this modern basement along with the crates of string and plastic swords.

She climbed down. The room was about twenty feet square. The walls had once been brightly painted, but most of the frescoes had peeled or faded. The only exit was a hole dug in one corner of the floor where the mosaic had been pulled up. Annabeth crouched next to the opening. It dropped straight down into a larger cavern, but Annabeth couldn’t see the bottom.

She heard running water maybe thirty or forty feet below. The air didn’t smell like a sewer—just old and musty, and slightly sweet, like moldering flowers. Perhaps it was an old water line from the aqueducts. There was no way down.

“I’m not jumping,” she muttered to herself.

As if in reply, something glowed in the darkness. The Mark of Athena blazed to life at the bottom of the cavern, revealing glistening brickwork along a subterranean canal forty feet below. The fiery owl seemed to be taunting her: Well, this is the way, kid. So you’d better figure something out.

Annabeth considered her options. Too dangerous to jump. No ladders or ropes. She thought about borrowing some metal scaffolding from above to use as a fire pole, but it was all bolted in place. Besides, she didn’t want to cause the building to collapse on top of her.

Frustration crawled through her like an army of termites. She had spent her life watching other demigods gain amazing powers. Percy could control water. If he were here, he could raise the water level and simply float down. Hazel, from what she had said, could find her way underground with flawless accuracy and even create or change the course of tunnels. She could easily make a new path. Leo would pull just the right tools from his belt and build something to do the job. Frank could turn into a bird. Jason could simply control the wind and float down. Even Piper with her charmspeak…she could have convinced Tiberinus and Rhea Silvia to be a little more helpful.

What did Annabeth have? A bronze dagger that did nothing special, and a cursed silver coin. She had her backpack with Daedalus’s laptop, a water bottle, a few pieces of ambrosia for emergencies, and a box of matches—probably useless, but her dad had drilled into her head that she should always have a way to make fire.

She had no amazing powers. Even her one true magic item, her New York Yankees cap of invisibility, had stopped working, and was still back in her cabin on the Argo II.

You’ve got your intelligence, a voice said. Annabeth wondered if Athena was speaking to her, but that was probably just wishful thinking.

Intelligence…like Athena’s favorite hero, Odysseus. He’d won the Trojan War with cleverness, not strength. He had overcome all sorts of monsters and hardships with his quick wits. That’s what Athena valued.

Wisdom’s daughter walks alone.

That didn’t mean just without other people, Annabeth realized. It meant without any special powers.

Okay…so how to get down there safely and make sure she had a way to get out again if necessary?

She climbed back to the basement and stared at the open crates. Kite string and plastic swords. The idea that came to her was so ridiculous, she almost had to laugh; but it was better than nothing.

She set to work. Her hands seemed to know exactly what to do. Sometimes that happened, like when she was helping Leo with the ship’s machinery or drawing architectural plans on the computer. She’d never made anything out of kite string and plastic swords, but it seemed easy, natural. Within minutes she’d used a dozen balls of string and a crateful of swords to create a makeshift rope ladder—a braided line, woven for strength yet not too thick, with swords tied at two-foot intervals to serve as hand- and footholds.