Chapter 9 - The Coal Chute
The pipe was ice cold, choked with fifty years of black coal dust and dried grease.
Julian dragged himself forward using his elbows, his knees scraping against the jagged rivets lining the iron tube. It was so narrow his chest couldn't fully expand; every breath was a short, agonizing struggle.
Behind him, inside the vault, he heard Sterling's heavy boots crunching over the broken glass jars.
"Julian?" Sterling’s voice sounded right at the entrance of the pipe. "You really are a persistent little bastard, aren't you?"
A hand reached into the dark opening of the pipe, its long, gloved fingers snapping open and shut inches from Julian's left boot.
Julian kicked back blindly with his right heel, hitting something soft with a solid THUD.
Sterling grunted in pain, his grip slipping from the pipe edge.
Julian used the momentum to shove himself forward, plunging down a steep thirty-degree slope in the pipe. He slid twenty feet through complete darkness before shooting out of the vent opening and slamming hard into a mountain of wet coal dust in the sub-basement.
He rolled down the pile, coughing black dust, his flashlight flying from his hand and smashing against the far wall, leaving him in total pitch darkness.
The air down here was different. It didn't smell of lye or bleach. It smelled of wet river mud, ozone, and fresh night air.
Three feet to his left, a small cell phone screen glowed in the dark.
Sitting on a wooden crate beside the coal pile was a girl no older than seventeen, wrapped in a torn hospital blanket, her face covered in black smudges and dried blood. Her right ankle was bound in a heavy steel iron shackle, the chain running into a dark drainage hole in the floor.
She looked at Julian, her dark eyes hollow, exhausted, but burning with a fierce, quiet intelligence.
She held up a small, rusted hacksaw in her thin hand.
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"You took your time," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp. "I'm Maya. Now help me cut this chain before he realizes the chute leads down here."
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