"ARE YOU WEARING LIPSTICK?"
Naomi glared at Thalia, cheeks warm. "Shut up."
"What did she want with you two?" Bianca asked.
Naomi and Percy looked at each other, then looked away just as quickly.
"Oh, uh, not sure," Percy said, clearly lying. "She said to be careful in her husband's junkyard. She said not to pick anything."
Zoë narrowed her eyes, looking from him to Naomi. "The goddess of love would not make a special trip to tell thee that. Be careful. Aphrodite has led many heroes astray."
"For once, I agree with Zoë," Thalia said. "You can't trust Aphrodite."
"So, how do we get out of here?" Naomi asked, anxious to change the subject.
"That way," Zoë said. "That is west."
"How can you tell?" Percy asked.
Zoë rolled her eyes. "Ursa Major is in the north," she said, "which means that must west."
She pointed west, then at the northern constellation, which was hard to make out because there were so many other stars.
"Oh, yeah," Percy said. "The bear thing."
Zoë looked offended. "Show some respect. It was a fine bear. A worthy opponent."
"You act like it was real."
"Guys," Grover broke in. "Look!"
They'd reached the crest of a junk mountain. Piles of metal objects glinted in the moonlight: broken heads of bronze horses, metal legs from human statues, smashed chariots, tons of shields and swords and other weapons, along with more modern stuff, like cars that gleamed gold and silver, refrigerators, washing machines, and computer monitors.
"Whoa," Bianca said.
"That stuff... some of it looks like real gold."
"It is," Thalia said grimly. "Like Percy said, don't touch anything. This is the junkyard of the gods."
"Junk?" Grover picked up a beautiful crown made of gold, silver, and jewels. It was broken on one side, as if it had been split by an axe. "You call this junk?"
He bit off a point and began to chew. "It's delicious!"
Thalia swatted the crown out of his hands. "I'm serious!"
"Look!" Bianca said. She raced down the hill, tripping over bronze coils and golden plates. She picked up a bow that glowed silver in moonlight. "A Hunter's bow!"
She yelped in surprise as the bow began to shrink, and became a hair clip shaped like a crescent moon. "It's just like Percy and Naomi's swords!"
Zoë's face was grim. "Leave it, Bianca."
"But—"
"It is here for a reason. Anything thrown away in this junkyard must stay in this yard. It is defective. Or cursed."
Bianca reluctantly set the hair clip down.
"I don't like this place," Thalia said. She gripped the shaft of her spear.
"You think we're going to get attacked by killer refrigerators?" Percy asked.
She gave him a hard look. "Zoë is right, Percy. Things get thrown away here for a reason. Now come on, let's get across the yard."
"That's the second time you've agreed with Zoë," Percy muttered, but Thalia ignored him.
They started picking their way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever, and if it hadn't been for Ursa Major, they would've got lost. All the hills looked the same.
Naomi trailed behind the group, an unexplainable dread forming in her stomach, like an apple growing on the branch of a tree. She had a bad feeling something was going to happen—something awful.
After a while, they saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mild ahead of them, the lights of a highway stretching through the desert. But between them and the road...
"What is that?" Bianca gasped.
Ahead of them was a hill much bigger and longer than the others. It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. At one end of the mesa was a row of ten thick metal columns, wedged tightly together.
Bianca frowned. "They look like—"
"Toes," Grover said.
Bianca nodded. "Really, really large toes."
Zoë and Thalia exchanged nervous looks.
"Let's go around," Thalia said. "Far around."
"But the road is right over there," Percy protested. "Quicker to climb over."
Ping.
Thalia hefted her spear and Zoë drew her bow, but then Naomi realized it was only Grover. He had thrown a piece of scrap metal at the toes and hit one, making a deep echo, as if the column were hollow.
"Why did you do that?" Zoë demanded.
Grover cringed. "I don't know. I, uh, don't like fake feet?"
"Come on." Thalia looked pointedly at Percy. "Around."
Percy didn't argue this time.
After several minutes of walking, they finally stepped onto the highway, an abandoned but well-lit stretch of black tarmac.
"We made it out," Zoë said. "Thank the gods."
But apparently the gods didn't want to be thanked. At that moment, Naomi heard a sound like a thousand trash compactors crushing metal.
They turned. Behind them, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and Naomi realized why they looked like toes—it was because they were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall—a skyscraper with limbs. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight, looking down at them with a deformed face. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.
"Talos!" Zoë gasped.
"Who's Talos?" Naomi asked, staring up at the giant in horror.
"One of Hephaestus's creations," Thalia said. "But that can't be the original. It's too small. A prototype, maybe. A defective model."
The metal giant didn't seem to like the word defective.
He moved one hand to his sword belt and drew his weapon. The sound of it coming out of its sheath was horrible, metal screeching against metal. The blade was a hundred feet long, easy. It looked rusty and dull, but Naomi knew it would still do some serious damage.
"Someone took something," Zoë said. "Who took something?"
She stared accusingly at Percy.
He shook his head. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a thief."
The giant defective Talos took one step toward them, closing half the distance and making the ground shake.
"Run!" Grover yelped.
Great advice, except that it was hopeless. At a leisurely stroll, this thing could outdistance them easily.
They split up, the way they'd done with the Nemean Lion. Thalia drew her shield and held it up as she ran down the highway. The giant swung his sword and took out a row of power lines, which exploded in sparks and scattered across Thalia's path.
Zoë's arrows whistled toward the creature's face but it shattered harmlessly against the metal. Grover brayed like a baby goat and went climbing up a mountain of metal.
Bianca, Percy, and Naomi ended up together, hiding behind a broken chariot.
"You took something," Percy said to Bianca. "That bow."
"No!" she said, but her voice was quivering.
"Give it back!" Percy said. "Throw it down!"
"I... I didn't take the bow! Besides, it's too late."
"What did you take?"
Before she could answer, Naomi heard a massive creaking noise, and a shadow blotted out the sky.
"Move!" Percy tore down the hill, Naomi and Bianca right behind him, as the giant's foot smashed a crater in the ground where they'd been hiding.
"Hey, Talos!" Grover yelled, but the monster raised his sword, looking down at Bianca, Percy, and Naomi.
Grover played a quick melody on his pipes. Over at the highway, the downed power lines began to dance. One of the poles with power lines still attached flew toward Talos's back leg and wrapped around his calf. The lines sparked and sent a jolt of electricity up the giant's backside.
Talos whirled around, creaking and sparking. Grover had bought them a few seconds.
"Come on!" Percy shouted.
But Bianca didn't move. From her pocket, she brought out a small metal figurine, a statue of a god. "It... it was for Nico. It was the only statue he didn't have."
"How can you think of Mythomagic at a time like this?" Percy said.
There were tears in her eyes.
"Just throw it down," Naomi said. "Maybe the giant will leave us alone."
Bianca dropped it reluctantly, but nothing happened.
The giant kept coming after Grover. It stabbed its sword into a junk hill, missing Grover by a meter or so, but scrap metal made an avalanche over him, and then Naomi couldn't see him anymore.
"No!" Thalia yelled. She pointed her spear, and a blue arc of lightning shot out, hitting the monster in his rusty knee, which buckled. The giant collapsed, but immediately started to rise again. It was hard to tell if it could feel anything. There weren't any emotions in its half-melted face, but Naomi got the sense that it was about as ticked off as a twenty-story-tall metal warrior could be.
He raised his foot to stomp.
"Crazy-idea time," Percy announced.
Bianca looked at him nervously. "Anything."
Percy told them about the maintenance hatch at the bottom of Talos's foot. "There may be a way to control the thing. Switches or something. I'm going to get inside."
"Are you crazy?" Naomi demanded, even though it was kind of a rhetorical question. "You'll have to stand under its foot! You'll get squished like a bug!"
"Distract it," Percy said. "I'll just have to time it right."
Bianca's jaw tightened. "No. I'll go."
"That's an even worse idea," Naomi said. "You're too new at this, you'll get hurt."
"It's my fault the monster came after us," Bianca said. "It's my responsibility. Here." She picked up the little god statue and pressed it into Naomi's hand. "If anything happens, give that to Nico. Tell him... tell him I'm sorry."
"Bianca, no!" Percy shouted.
"Don't!" Naomi cried.
But Bianca didn't listen. She charged at the monster's left foot.
Thalia had its attention for the moment. She'd learned that the giant was big but slow. If you could stay close to it and not get smashed, you could run around it and stay alive. At least, it was working so far.
Bianca got right next to the giant's foot, trying to balance herself on the metal scraps that swayed and shifted with his weight.
Zoë yelled, "What are you doing?"
"Get it to raise its foot!" Bianca said.
Zoë shot an arrow toward the monster's face and it flew straight into one nostril. The giant straightened and shook its head.
"Hey, Junk Boy!" Percy yelled. "Down here!"
He ran up to its big toe and stabbed it with Riptide. The magic blade cut a gash in the bronze.
Unfortunately, his plan worked. Talos looked down at him and raised his foot to step on him. Naomi watched in horror as Percy ran, the foot coming down right behind him and sending out a current of air that knocked Percy into an Olympus-Air refrigerator.
Naomi sprinted toward him as Talos moved to finish him off. Grover somehow dug himself out of the junk pile and played his pipes frantically. Another power line pole whacked against Talos's thigh. The monster turned.
Grover turned to run, but he must've been too exhausted from the effort of so much magic. He took two steps and fell, and it didn't look like he'd be getting up anytime soon.
Naomi turned on her heel, running toward him, but she knew she wouldn't make it.
The monster raised his sword to smash Grover.
Then he froze.
Talos cocked his head to one side, like he was hearing strange new music. He started moving his arms and legs in weird ways, doing the Funky Chicken. Then he made a fist and punched himself in the face.
"Go, Bianca!" Percy yelled in amazement.
Zoë looked horrified. "She is inside?"
The monster staggered around—they weren't out of the woods yet. Thalia and Percy grabbed Grover and ran with him toward the highway, Naomi bringing up the rear as she kept a close eye on the giant. Zoë was already ahead of them. She yelled, "How will Bianca get out?"
The giant hit itself in the head again and dropped his sword. A shudder ran through his whole body and he staggered toward the power lines.
"Look out!" Naomi screamed, but it was too late.
The giant's ankle snared the lines, and blue flickers of electricity shot up his body. He careened back into the junkyard, and his right hand fell off, landing in the scrap metal with a horrible CLANG!
His left arm came loose, too. He was falling apart at the joins.
Talos began to run.
"Wait!" Zoë yelled. They ran after him, but there was no way they could keep up. Pieces of the robot kept falling off, getting in their way.
The giant crumbled from the top down: his head, pieces of his chest, and finally his torso and legs collapsed.
Naomi's stomach dropped so heavily that she stumbled.
No.
"Bianca!" Percy called, the others echoing the shout.
Everyone but Naomi —because she knew. She wasn't sure how, but she knew—
"She's gone."
Her voice was barely audible, but Percy heard it. He turned, looking at her, his expression confused. "What?"
Everyone else's eyes settled on her, but she was numb to the anxiety she normally would have felt. As loudly as she could manage—barely above a whisper—she repeated, "She's gone."
Thalia shook her head. "No, she's—we'll find her. The inside's probably insulated, she's—"
"How do you know, Naomi?" Zoë asked, her expression almost blank, save for the steadily growing shine in her dark eyes.
"I felt it," Naomi whispered. "I—I know she's dead."
Zoë closed her eyes. Her shoulders dropped, and she sat down.
And she wept.
Percy shook his head. "No, that's—there's no way. We'll—we'll keep searching. We'll find her."
"No, we won't," Grover said miserably. "Naomi's right. It happened just as it was supposed to."
"What are you talking about?" Percy demanded.
"The prophecy," Grover croaked. "One shall be lost in the land without rain."
Naomi sat down silently. She felt numb—like some part of her had been taken out, leaving a strange emptiness she wasn't sure could ever be filled. She hadn't even known Bianca that well, or that long. But there was a new void in the pit of her stomach, and she doubted she'd ever fully adjust to its presence.
For the first time in her life, she closed her eyes and sent a prayer to the one god who probably didn't want to hear anything from her, and hoped beyond hope that he'd listen, just this once.
Give her peace, Lord Hades, she prayed, the ache in her throat almost too much to handle. Please. Guide her to Elysium.
❊
...rip :'(