Page 38 of The Wild Zone

The kitchen was so much worse than an evil laboratory. The layout mirrored the dining pavilion above—a circular space supported by columns—but down here everything was rough-hewn black volcanic rock. Between the columns, giant kitchen vents were set in the walls, sucking the noxious gas and heat out of the room just enough to make it not deadly. On one side of the kitchen was a half circle of steel food prep tables, stovetops, and ovens. The other side was dominated by sink basins the size of bathtubs, each one filled with a glowing, bubbling red substance.

I edged closer to the nearest sink. The heat emanating from it made my face feel like crispy chicken skin. “Are you serious right now? Is that lava?”

“Don’t get any closer without gear,” Benny advised. He appeared next to us, wearing a silvery hazmat suit. “Safety first. Outfits are over there.”

His voice was muffled behind his fireproof hood, his eyes hidden by a red-tinted visor. I was glad he’d said something, because if I’d just turned around and found him standing there, I might’ve leaped backward into the lava sink.

Zuri and I suited up. Safety first apparently meant that instead of burning to death in lava, we would slowly suffocate inside sweltering fireproof clothing. I held up my hands, which were now covered in thick gloves like the kind police officers used to train K-9 dogs.

“How are we supposed to hold sponges with these?” I asked.

Zuri grinned and grabbed a dirty dish. “Very carefully.”

I didn’t register that she wasn’t wearing a hood until she plunged the dish and her gloved hand into the lava.

“Wait!” I yelped. “What about your hood?”

“Eh.” Zuri withdrew her hand from the lava. The dirty plate was now so sparkly clean you could eat off it, which was good, since that was what people were going to do. “I can’t breathe in that thing, so I’ll just be careful. I should be fine as long as lava doesn’t splash in my eyes, burn a hole straight through to my brain, and leave me running around screaming words I can’t fully form because the lava burned out my left frontal lobe.”

I stared at her and swallowed hard. “Thanks. That’s good nightmare fuel for the week.”

“Two weeks,” Benny said. He set down his own stack of plates next to the sink on my right. “You think they use lava just to torture KP kids, or because it kills 99.9 percent of germs?”

“Why not both?” I grumbled, and then started dipping and scrubbing my dirty dishes with a fistful of steel wool.

As terrifying as it was, I had to admit there was something satisfying about watching crusty mashed potatoes catch fire and disintegrate. The work went quickly, too. One dip in the lava was really all it took per plate. Each sink had a hose with a sprayer nozzle, so I suppose it could’ve gone even faster, but I didn’t feel ready to graduate to lava spraying.

It was kind of weird standing there between Benny and Zuri, quietly doing our chores in our silver alien coveralls. I wondered if I should start some small talk—just to keep from zoning out and making a fatal lava mistake—but Benny beat me to it.

“So, Katie…” he said. “How are things in the Ares cabin?”

“GREAT!” I practically shouted.

Zuri snorted. “Very believable. So, nobody’s found any sign of Grant?”

I thought about what Silas had told me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to break it to the other newbies that I’d confessed to him about our trip in the Wild Zone—especially not while they had easy access to lava sprayers.

“No,” I said. “The searches apparently came up empty. Clarisse has most everyone believing that Grant just decided to leave Camp Half-Blood, but I don’t think he ever left the forest.”

“He didn’t,” Zuri said.

“You sound sure,” Harper chimed in from the doorway.

We turned to look at him, and I threw up in my mouth a little. Harper’s upper body glistened wetly like he’d just emerged from a refreshing dip in the ocean, but wherever moisture dripped onto the floor, pools of bubbly yellow goo appeared, speckled with chunks of food. Apparently, his Aphrodite-granted allure only extended so far.

“What in the Underworld happened to you?” Benny asked.

Harper shrugged. “Lex got a little greedy and gobbled a whole sack of chicken bones. Poor thing got one caught in his throat and, well…” He gestured to his soaked self.

“Lex?” I repeated.

“The scolex,” Harper said. “That’s what the big white worm is.”

Zuri wrinkled her nose. “So you’re covered in…”

“Scolex puke,” Harper said matter-of-factly. “It looks grosser than it feels.”

“I’ll take your word on that.” Benny pulled off his hood. “There are towels in the closet on the right. Unless you want to take a bath in the lava.”