#4 Lost

This was so unutterably humiliating.

Near scowled to himself as he stumbled around yet another corner and found nothing more than a long, white corridor, exactly the same as the last.

Oh, his kingdom for a sign. Or a map. A map would be good, he was very good at map-reading, he could apply visual information to the real world with ease. Not like Mello, who had become frustrated with the task and torn his own map in half not ten minutes after Roger had set them the task of finding hidden objects in the house…

Near shook his head. Damn internal tangents.

Had he been down this one already?

Why hadn't the SPK thought to tell him roughly how to get back down to the main room? More to the point, why had they put his bedroom so far away?

All right, concentrate, he'd been down three corridors already, all identical, and he was sure he hadn't gone down any stairs, so logically this was the last hallway of this floor and he'd come to some stairs soon.

Unless there was a slight slant and he'd gone down a floor.

Where was the elevator? There was one last night, wasn't there?

Or had he been so jetlagged and exhausted that he'd imagined it?

He opened one of the doors experimentally and found a broom cupboard.

There ought to be nice, clear signs all over everything. Then this sort of thing wouldn't happen. Children wouldn't get lost in huge buildings and-

He was not lost. Near clarified in his head. He just didn't know his precise location within the building. He was not lost.

Frustrated, he opened another door.

Who the hell needed so many broom cupboards on one floor? How dirty did this place get? Why would you even have a broom up here, a vacuum would work much better!

Sighing, he slid down against one of the walls, resting his legs a moment while he considered his options.

Well, he could keep going and mindlessly opening doors, shout for help, or try and make his way back to bed.

Why hadn't anyone come to wake him up?

Oh yes, because he told them he was jetlagged and wanted to sleep in. Damn it all to blood-spewing gut-rotting hell.

Still, it had to be almost midday by now, his stomach was grumbling about not having anything in it. So someone should have come to fetch him.

If Mello could see this, he would have laughed. Poor little Near-lamb, lost in his own building, and no-one's even noticed yet.

Stupid, stupid building.

Near's head lifted as he heard something, nor far around the corner he just turned.

And suddenly his mind whisperd that maybe no-one came to get him because someone got them first.

He struggled to his feet and started to run. Thank god his socks muffled the sound of his footsteps on the thick carpet.

But it was following him, oh god, someone was in this endless circle of corridors with him and he had no way of defending himself and why, why had he ever agreed to help the Americans with this stupid endeavour to catch Kira? Why hadn't he stayed behind and let Mello get on with it?

Oh god, it was gaining, he couldn't run forever and he couldn't hide in one of these pointless broom closets and-

He fell, and grazed his knee.

And not a moment later Gevanni was standing over him, head on one side, enquiring as to why he was running, and didn't he realise the elevator was built into the wall of his bedroom, this was the cleaner's floor he'd wandered into.

Near merely snarled that he had not been lost, and Gevanni was not to tell anyone about this.