I walked on, frustrated. If I was really in California then there was no way I could find my way back to the city. My best bet was to find a phone and call Dad to come and get me. Boy, would I like to see his face if I told him I was in Berkeley Hills, California.
Suddenly, I came to two tunnel entrances. In the middle of them, there was a big cement door, gutting from the hillside. I started walking towards it. Maybe that's where I came out from. When I came closer, I saw two kids in armour in front of the entrance, guarding it. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts, and white athletic shoes. Hey, maybe they could confirm I was in Berkeley Hills, though I was pretty sure now that somehow I was.
The girl on the left had reddish-brown hair spilling out of her helmet in a braid. She reminded me of an overgrown ferret. The boy on the right was a tall, buff blonde dude who definitely looked like he was in the wrong part of California.
As I approached them, the boy narrowed his eyes but he lowered his sword and let me in. He signalled to the girl who sighed and started to lead me into the tunnel silently.
The tunnel cut through solid rock, about the width and height of a school hallway. At first, it looked like a typical maintenance tunnel, with electric cables, warning signs, and fuse boxes on the walls, lightbulbs in wire cages along the ceiling. As I walked deeper into the hillside, the cement floor changed to tiled mosaic. The lights changed to reed torches, which burned but didn't smoke. A few hundred yards ahead, I saw a glimpse of daylight.
I kept walking until I reached the end of the tunnel. My jaw dropped open. The scenery was normal enough for Northern California-hills and plains and stretches of forests with a small river cutting across the perimeter but there was something else about it. Something older.
Then I noticed the architecture. In the center of the valley there was a small city of white marble buildings and red-tiled roofs. Some had huge pillars with golden gates and gardens, while others had domes like ancient museums. There were fountains and flowers everywhere and a huge Roman style coliseum shone in the sunlight next to a long oval arena.
The strangest part of the valley was that just across the river there seemed to be some sort of military camp. It was about a quarter mile square, with earthen ramparts on all four sides, the tops lined with sharpened spikes. Outside the walls ran a dry moat, that also had spikes. Wooden watchtowers rose at each corner, manned by people with oversized, mounted crossbows. Inside, there were dozens of kids, carrying weapons, polishing armor. I heard the clank of hammers somewhere and smelled meat cooking over a fire.
I reached the river. The current was fast but it didn't look too deep. I looked across to the other side, took my shoes of and stepped in.
It was much colder than I thought and the current was much stronger. I slowly started to walked across gingerly. I had nearly reached the other side when I slipped and fell in the ice cold river. Ferret-Girl offered me a hand.
"You really need to be more careful,"she said,"if we were being chased a monster could've used that opportunity to attack you."
I looked at her. "Monsters?"
She frowned. "Haven't you seen them before?"
I opened my mouth to say no but the words stuck in my mouth as visions flashed in my head of the strange things I'd seen. Like when I was in the park with Percy and a strange man in a bowler hat came and asked for directions but under his hat there was only one glowing eye. No one believed us except Sally though thinking back, Dad did pale.
Ferret-Girl gave a satisfied nod. "Come,"she said,"let's see if you're worthy of this camp."
Author's note
Ok. So I lied about the longer chapters and writing once a week. This is also getting really hard to write because Reyna is not at Camp Jupiter yet so I'm not really sure on how to do things.
Can you guess who Ferret-Girl is?