Escapology by Warom Ren

Author:Warom, Ren [Warom, Ren]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2016-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

Journey to the Centre of the Hive

Shock groans, burrowing his face under the pillow to escape the insistent knock of sunlight on his eyelids. He’d stay there all day if he could, cocooned, but it occurs to him that he’s slept and very soundly too from the drool slicked across his cheek, the thick goo of his head. Wasn’t there something he needed to do? Some countdown ticking away?

Memory hits like a siren, alarms ringing, adrenal kick on overload, sending him ricocheting upward, his pillow flying into the mesh of his cage with a dull clang. Similar clangs echo through his skull.

“Uuurrrgh.” Is all Shock can manage initially as, in accompaniment to waking, the re-fried brain meats sensation of the drone signal asserts itself, alongside weird, sticky, not otherwise specified nausea. A mixture of too hungry and hungover as hell. Shock hopes the block is still working. It all depends on how much of his forty-eight hours he’s slept away.

“What’s the time?” he slurs out, glaring through his cage at the five other occupants of the room, all sat in their own cages, slurping either tea, bowls of steaming noodles or soup. Could be breakfast, lunch or dinner for all he knows. The smell makes his stomach moan.

Apart from Shock, no one in this room, hell, no one in this building is below the age of ninety, and his roommates are all well over their first century. Mr Yoichi, 153 years old with a squint and a halo of white hair fine as dandelion seeds, points a trembling finger at Shock.

“Use your drive, boy.”

“Please, old Uncle, my head is pounding. If I access my drive it may explode. Consider the mess.”

Mr Yoichi makes a big deal of reaching back into his cage and fetching this ancient pocket watch he claims was passed down to him from his father, because of course men of his age can’t be expected to use a fucking accurate neuro-drive for time.

“It wants twenty minutes to ten.”

Shock takes a moment or two to process as it was supposed to be twenty to something a lot earlier. Panic hits like a faceful of concrete, sending him scrambling out of his cage and across to the bathroom.

“You overslept, you fucking idiot,” he tells his stupid face in the mirror.

It stares back at him, looking as bad as he feels and pale from sleep. Too much fucking sleep. He can’t believe it’s almost ten o’clock. Ten o’cock-up.

Racing out into grey skies, he wants to head straight for his Slip shop of choice, but Slipping this deep on an empty stomach is asking for trouble, so he stops off at Some Dim for a steamer of siu bao and a coffee. No, two coffees. Make that three. Frankly he needs to dive head first into the giant coffee urn behind the serving station. Syrupy sleep combined with this hideous signal tar hangs a gloopy weight from various muscle groups, and has him feeling, bizarrely, like a mixture of chewy and snappy toffee, what with the whole panic thing and no bumps to take the edge off.

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