Page 178 of King’s Ransom

The initial hardening happens quite quickly.

Modern industrial concrete begins to harden about six hours after pouring.

Till then it’s still semi-liquid: this is why a person can make footprints or write love notes in a newly poured sidewalk.

After about six hours, it begins to crust and solidify.

This is the moment the liquid is actually becoming a solid—a moment of ‘alchemy’ one might say—and the weakest point in the whole transformation.

(After about twenty-four hours, you can walk on it. After two days, you could drive a truck on it. In the end, it takes about four weeks for concrete to cure to acceptable strength.)

My mind zeroed in on that six-hour mark.

That was my chance.

During the very first stages of the concrete’s transformation, when it crusted from liquid to solid, it would be at its weakest, its most porous, filled with air bubbles.

That would be when I might be able to chip away at it and create a tunnel through which I could escape.

But it would be a short window of opportunity.

I couldn’t do it too early—you can’t tunnel through sludge.

I couldn’t wait too long, either—if the concrete slab around my box got too hard, I wouldn’t be able to chip away at it.

I’d also be racing against another ticking clock: steadily running out of oxygen.

I had to time it just right, but hell, the mere possibility of escape energised me.

If I was gonna die, I was gonna die trying to get out of this.

I got to work.

OVERHEAD VIEW

SIDE VIEW

I was now on the clock.

Four hours had passed.

I wanted to start my tunnelling through the newly poured slab at around the six-hour mark.

But first I had to break through one of the side concrete walls of my box.

I looked at the long right-side wall: I recalled that it was the side closest to the dirt trench on the outside of the construction site.

I would try to break through it and then dig an escape tunnel to the trench’s wall.

But my box’s concrete walls were already cured. They were as hard as rock. It would take me half a day just to chip through one of them.

I’d have to speed up that process.

I also needed a chisel of some kind.

In the dim glow of Roman Oberov’s lighter, I ferreted around my little space.

I searched the Oberovs’ pockets, looking for anything sharp, like a knife or something, but they’d been disarmed by the Unperson and his people.