Freedom Star

Chapter 19

If Jon had been in any position to anticipate anything, which, being unconscious, he wasn't, he would not have anticipated waking up. But whatever he had hit, while not exactly pillow-soft, hadn't been rock-hard, either.

Hard enough. He came to groggily, and when he moved his muscles let him know in no uncertain terms they weren't impressed with his decision. But he had to get out of there, he knew that even though he still didn't really remember why, or his own name, for that matter, and so he kind of drunkenly raised up—

And promptly fell over again as the surface beneath his feet slid away, raising a cloud of dust that made him cough, which made him hurt. The pain cleared his head a little. "What the—" He felt beneath his feet; raised a handful of the stuff to his mouth; tasted. "Wheat?"

He looked up, but though there had to be a hole up there he had fallen through, he could see nothing. For a moment he wondered if he were blind, but then figured it out—the wheat had shifted when he landed on it. He'd probably slid downslope away from the hole. Not that it would do him any good even if he could see it. The ceiling was probably miles out of his reach, but just to be sure, he reached his hand up—

—and promptly banged his knuckles against wooden beams. "Ow!" He jerked his hand down and sucked on the knuckles, tasting blood. "Stupid place to store grain, in a warehouse in the middle of the city," he muttered, then in all honesty had to point out to himself that if the grain hadn't been stored there, he might have landed on, say, steel beams or barrels of nails or just good old concrete.

He sat there, sucking his knuckles, until suddenly, almost like a light switch going on—though it remained as dark as space all around him—he remembered exactly how he had come to fall into this grain pit. "Kira!"

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain this time, and began fighting his way over the grain, half-crawling, half-swimming. No use looking for a door. There might not even be one, just a chute at the bottom leading to an auger. He had to find the hole he'd fallen through. With the ceiling as low as it was he could get out easily and then—what had happened to Kira? How long had he been unconscious? Why hadn't she come looking for him?

For that matter, why hadn't the streetsweepers come looking for him? He was afraid he knew the answer to that: Kira, if they'd caught her, would have told them he got away somehow, lied to protect him. He had to rescue her...

But he couldn't find the hole, couldn't find it, and still couldn't find it. He wallowed through the wheat for what seemed like days, raising clouds of choking dust—and then, out of nowhere, there it was, a trap door only a metre square or so, not the loading chute he'd been expecting but just some kind of inspection door someone had carelessly left open. If Jon's mouth hadn't already been dry as a desert with all the grain dust in the air it would have dried to a cinder then, because his luck in clearing the sides of that tiny hole in his fall was almost unbelievable.

Still, it had been his way in, and now it was his way out. In only a few minutes he stood in dim light on the next floor up, among grain-cleaning equipment that looked like it hadn't been operated in years. Then he frowned. Where was the light coming from? There hadn't been any down here when he'd fallen—

He looked up, then, up and up, four stories up to the door in the roof he and Kira had come in, past chutes and ladders and machinery. The door stood open; they'd closed it behind them. Either Kira had left—

—or someone had come in after her.

And then, from outside the building, he heard the roar of the streetsweeper starting up; and, almost at once, moving away. It took him what seemed like days, though it was probably only minutes, to find a door that would let him out of the grain warehouse. By that time, the streetsweeper was gone—and so was Kira.