Changing the Future

Chapter 23

A sailor burst up from the hold, his clothes smoldering. His beard was on fire, but unlike Hephaestus, the fire would burn up his body. "Boiler room overheating, ma'am! She's going to blow!"

"Well, get down there and fix it!"

"Can't!" the sailor yelled. "We're vaporizing in the heat."

Clarisse pounded the side of the casemate. "All I need is a few more minutes! Just enough to get into range!"

"We're going too fast," the captain said grimly. "Prepare yourself for death."

"No!" Tyson bellowed. "I can fix it."

Clarisse looked at him incredulously. "You?"

"He's a Cyclops," Annabeth said. "He's immune to fire. And he knows mechanics."

"Go!" yelled Clarisse.

"Tyson, no!" Percy grabbed his arm, a frantic look in his eyes. "It's too dangerous!"

He patted Percy's hand. "Only way, brother. I will fix it. Be right back."

"Yeah, I'm going to go down there, too," I said, following behind Tyson and the smoldering sailor back down to the boiler room. The ship lurched again, tossing me into the wall, but I righted myself and ran into the boiler room.

The boiler room was a total war zone.

Fire was coming from all the vents, having already vaporized the majority of the Confederates that had been down here trying to keep the ship intact. Smoke filled the air, making it hard to breathe, but I picked up a rag and tied it around my mouth and nose as a filter.

Tyson hunched over the ancient engine, opening the control panel and beginning to realign all types of gears and wires. I grabbed some of the tools from the fallen soldiers and got onto my knees next to Tyson, the two of us working in perfect unison as we tried to delay the ship from falling apart.

Another jolt caused the entire ship to shake, but at least Tyson and I had managed to keep us from getting pulled even closer to Charybdis' razor sharp teeth. Then I heard someone shout, "Scylla!" above deck.

"Not good," Tyson murmured, tightening the bronze rings around the pistons, increasing the amount of strength they could give off. "Too old, too much damage."

Suddenly, the rest of the metal in the room began to glow a dangerous shade of red, indicating that we had long since passed this metal's heat capacity. I barely had time to yell, "Tyson!" leaping towards him and wrapping my arms tightly around his large chest before the engine room exploded.

My ears rang as the ship blew up around us, large chunks of metal cutting into my flesh. Within seconds, sea water was flooding our collapsed room, pouring in after the walls burst apart like a box that had just been torn open.

In my arms, Tyson had fallen unconscious, bleeding heavily from a nasty cut on his forehead. One of the gears from the engine must've cut him, I thought, cursing to myself as my head finally submerged into the pitch black water.

Honestly, I don't know how the hell I'm still alive. That shockwave should've killed us like anybody else, because being fireproof doesn't mean you're shockwave proof. My head was pounding, feeling like someone was playing whack-a-mole with me as the mole. I couldn't hear anything other than my pulse roaring in my ears, as if someone had shoved cotton balls in my head.

The debris surrounding us made it impossible for me to get my bearings, the sunlight nowhere in sight. I had to disentangle the two of us from some rigging from the ship, which had prevented me from being able to use my legs to swim.