A few years ago, Percy and she had gone on a quest in Daedalus’s labyrinth-a secret network of tunnels and rooms, heavily enchanted and trapped, which ran under all the cities of America. A sudden thought chilled her even more than the water. She guessed that the pipes were drains, part of the ancient Roman plumbing system, though it was amazing to her that a tunnel like this had survived, crowded underground with all the other centuries’ worth of pipes, basements, and sewers. Every few yards, ceramic pipes jutted from the walls. The shallow channel ran down the middle of a brickwork tunnel. Freezing water soaked into her running shoes. She missed the brickwork edge and landed in the canal, but it turned out to be only a few inches deep. Chiron had just smiled, like he knew this day would come. She’d complained loudly and often that rope climbing would never help her defeat a monster. Chapter 34 As Annabeth hung in the air, descending hand over hand with the ladder swinging wildly, she thanked Chiron for all those years of training on the climbing course at Camp Half-Blood. She secured one end of her ladder to the nearest piece of scaffolding, lowered the rope into the cavern, and shinnied down. She headed back to the hole in the mosaic floor. She wasn’t sure why, but they were one more resource, and not too heavy. First, she stuffed her backpack with the leftover spools of string. The ladder wouldn’t win any design awards, but it might get her to the bottom of the cavern safely. The plastic swords bent under her, but they provided some extra bulk to the knots in the cord, so at least she could keep a better grip. As a test, she tied one end around a support column and leaned on the rope with all her weight.
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