Chapter Four
Omesh
Omesh pulled the bent grill back into place as well as he could from the inside, then crawled farther in, stopping after the first bend to slump against the wall of the duct. If they knew where he’d gone he’d just made a very bad mistake, worse than leaving the atrium for the narrower hallways had been. But if they didn’t, if they kept on hunting him in the hallways, he might have bought himself a little time. He concentrated on slowing his breathing, ignoring the sharp stabs under his rib cage that had been there since he’d run up all those staircases, and listened.
The old man was still jabbering away to himself in what sounded to Omesh’s ears to be a made-up language. He had been alone in this stretch of hallway, and Omesh suspected that was less from the apparent
