Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.
If I ever find bedbugs, I’ll catch them and put them in my jars. What do bedbugs look like, anyway?
I have no idea. It’s just a silly rhyme for bedtimes. Go to sleep, Jin!
The words had used to make him feel warm, but now they made him feel cold. He hated cold.
Satisfied that he’d made all safe, and that the intriguing off-worlder could not now abandon him, Jin returned to the parapet, swung over, and started down the rungs. If he hurried, he would still get to the back door of Ayako’s Cafe before all the good scraps were thrown out at closing time.
Chapter Two
When Armsman Roic woke for the second time—or maybe it was the third—the opaque drug-mush in his head had cleared to a thin throbbing haze. He felt for his wristcom and found it, unsurprisingly, gone. Groaning, he turned on his musty mattress thrown on the floor of this… place, and opened his eyes to plain daylight and his first clear view of his prison.
It was bare of furnishings. Some kind of old hotel room, he decided after a minute from the shape, stains, outlets, corroded-looking sprinkler overhead, and cheap light above the only door. His mattress lay in what might once have been a clothes niche, opposite a small working bathroom with the door removed. A chain bolted around his ankle led in turn to a bolt on the wall. The links were long enough to let him use the facilities, he remembered that from the blurry night, but not to reach the outer door.