The Rig

by Joe Ducie

  ‘Warden’ll want to know about this, Marcus,’ Officer Hall said, on the stairs behind Brand.

  Brand nodded. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Drake. ‘With me to the infirmary.’

  ‘What about the knife?’ Drake asked.

  ‘There was no knife, Mr Drake.’

  ‘One of his gang must’ve taken –’

  Brand grabbed him by the collar and pushed their faces together. ‘I swear, Drake, in front of God and all these witnesses, that if you don’t follow me to the infirmary right now I will snap your bleeding neck!’

  Hot spittle sprayed Drake in the face. Worse, he believed every word the mad guard had spat.

  The stairs cleared behind Brand as he turned on his heel and stomped away, expecting Drake to follow. Taking a tight rein on his anger, lest he find himself on the receiving end of one of the trigger-happy guards, or worse, Drake knelt down next to Tristan and scooped the small boy up into his arms.

  Expecting a strain, Drake almost dropped him in surprise. Tristan weighed next to nothing. He was skin and bones beneath his jumpsuit. He mumbled incoherently below his breath as Drake carried him up the stairs, unconscious but alive, and watched by at least six dozen pairs of quiet eyes.

  The climb up the cellblock was slow and the stairs narrow, but Drake didn’t let his burden fall, nor did he stop for rest. He was certain that Michael Tristan, the Rig’s most unassuming and unintimidating resident, had just saved his life.

  8

  Nurse Irene

  The infirmary, Drake learnt that morning, was on the roof of the centre platform. A two-storey building, similar to the classroom on top of the boys’ platform, was built next to what looked like an open space, surrounded by tiered seating. If he was anywhere else in the world, Drake would have thought he was looking at a small, concrete sports field.

  The reception desk inside the infirmary was unattended.

  ‘Sit and wait,’ Brand ordered, and cast a sneer at Tristan in Drake’s arms.

  Brand stepped through a set of white double doors and left Drake in a waiting room recognisable from doctors’ practices the world over. A row of neat, cushioned chairs lined the wall next to a small table of old magazines. Large indoor plants sat in the corners and a wall of posters recommended flu shots, regular exercise and a healthy diet.

  Drake’s arm stung. He didn’t sit and was tempted to follow Brand. Tristan may have been too small for even the featherweight division, but carrying him up ten flights of stairs and across platforms had created a knot of tension between Drake’s shoulders. He wanted to put him down, but was left waiting alone for two minutes before Brand swung back through the doors and gestured him through.

  The room beyond the waiting area looked far more like an infirmary. Rows of hospital beds lined the far wall, next to windows that let in a flood of sunlight. Medicine cabinets hung from the walls and trolleys of bandages, medical equipment and computers stood at the ready.

  A tall, dark-skinned man with a pepper-white beard, dressed in a lab coat and glasses, smiled at Drake.

  ‘Hello, young man. I’m Doctor Elias. Why don’t you put him down on the bed over here? Gently now.’

  Drake grunted with relief and sat back on the next bed over once Tristan was down. He rolled his shoulders to work out the knot and watched Doctor Elias lift Tristan’s eyelids and shine a penlight into his eyes. ‘Hmm … did you have to shoot him, Brand?’

  ‘Kid had a weapon and was using it, Doc,’ Brand said.

  Doctor Elias carefully removed the dart in Tristan’s shoulder and popped it in a silver pan. ‘He’ll be out for a good hour or more, I expect. But he’s breathing normally. We’ll keep him overnight tonight and make sure he doesn’t have a reaction to the dart.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Brand said. He reached for the set of coloured cards around his neck and swiped one over Tristan’s tracker. The red out-of-bounds warning screen faded to blue. ‘You, too, I guess.’

  Drake presented his arm and was granted Free movement.

  ‘Now let’s have a look at that scratch,’ Doctor Elias said. He was a large man, with broad shoulders and arms the width of tree trunks. Drake felt tiny, as Tristan must have felt around almost everyone, as the doctor took a hold of his arm in his massive hands. ‘Hmm. Nasty.’

  Drake thought the doctor almost sounded pleased with his latest wound.

  ‘An excellent opportunity for some of the apprentices to learn, don’t you think, Nurse Rose?’ Doctor Elias said.

  Drake looked over his shoulder and saw a tall, thin woman wearing purple hospital scrubs. She must have been about a hundred years old. Her grey hair framed a wrinkled face composed of tiny, narrow eyes, a hooked nose and pursed lips. The sour-faced woman nodded. ‘What d’you say, Brand? Pull a few of my girls out of lessons?’ She had the voice of a lifelong smoker thrown in a blender.

  Brand rolled his eyes and walked away, reaching for his radio.

  ‘Does it hurt, young man?’ Nurse Rose asked.

  ‘No, it tickles.’

  ‘Well, let’s get some antiseptic on it,’ Doctor Elias said. ‘The apprentices shouldn’t be too long and we’ll have it cleaned up.’

  Drake thought of Grey’s strange glowing knife. He looked over at Brand, talking into his receiver. There was no knife, Mr Drake. What had he said to Doctor Elias before he and Tristan had been allowed into the infirmary? Why hadn’t the doctor asked how the cut had happened?

  As he dabbed the wound with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic, Elias mumbled to himself. ‘Oh yes, quite nasty.’ He chuckled. ‘Impressively nasty.’

  Drake held his arm as steady as he could and said nothing.

  ‘Excellent.’ Doctor Elias stood once he was finished with the antiseptic. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ve some work to attend to.’

  Ten minutes later a guard Drake had never seen before – an older man with a skinhead and freckles – escorted a group of three young girls into the infirmary. A blonde, brunette and a redhead. Drake almost smiled. They were young, no more than eighteen, if that, and dressed in the red jumpsuits of the female inmate population.

  ‘Right, girls,’ Nurse Rose said, hands on her hips. ‘Come and have a look at this and tell me what you’d do with it.’

  Feeling like he’d been put in a display case, the girls gathered around his bed and looked him up and down. Drake ran a hand back through his short, fuzzy hair. Nearly three weeks on the Rig had forced his shaved head to sprout dark brown.

  ‘Well?’ Nurse Rose said. ‘You’ve been listening and learning about this for the past three months. What would you do with him?’

  One of the girls, the petite redhead whose hair was actually closer to auburn in the light, smirked. ‘Not much. I don’t think he’d be able to handle it.’

  Drake laughed and was thankful his dark skin helped hide the blood rising in his cheeks. He remembered seeing this girl before, on his first night, sitting with Strawberry Blonde in the cafeteria.

  ‘Irene, behave yourself!’ the nurse snapped. ‘Susan, Gemma?’

  ‘Dab it with antiseptic?’ Gemma said, unsure.

  ‘Right, that’s been done. What next?’

  ‘Um … does it need stitching?’ she asked.

  ‘Good. That slice towards his elbow is still bleeding. The rest of the wound was cauterised during the accident –’

  ‘Wasn’t a bloody accident …’ Drake muttered.

  ‘– but he’ll need stitches on that section. A nice row of fifteen, most likely. Any of you willing to learn?’ Gemma and Susan sniffed and stepped back, looking at Drake’s wound with disgust. ‘What about you, girlie?’

  ‘You better not squeal or cry, kid,’ Irene said.

  ‘Drake. My name is Will Drake.’

  Irene tilted her head and her blue eyes widened. ‘Harry Houdini himself? We’d heard on the north they’d moved you here.’

  ‘Enough chit chat,’ Nurse Rose said. She had Drake place his arm on a rest as she swivelled around his bed on a stool, a s
et of sewing needles, thread and bandages resting in a dish on her lap. ‘I’ll get you started, Irene – pop these gloves on, dear – and then we’ll have you prod him once or twice. Pull over that stool and watch closely. You two,’ she pointed at Gemma and Susan, ‘entertain yourselves. I don’t know why I bother with you girls sometimes …’

  All in all, it took the nurse – and the apprentice, Irene – fifteen minutes to stitch and treat Drake’s arm. He sat back and left them to it, thankful for the soothing burn cream they applied once the stitches were in. Every few minutes he’d look up and catch Irene staring at him. She held his eyes for an awkward amount of time, as if weighing and assessing him. Drake didn’t quite know what to make of it.

  ‘Now, Irene, wrap the wound in this gauze bandage. You’ll have to come back every day for the next week or so, young man, to have the bandage changed,’ Nurse Rose said. ‘We’ll give you two pills for the pain that should help you sleep tonight. I’ll go see to that.’ She wheeled away on her stool, leaving Drake alone with Irene. Gemma and Susan were busy chatting and leaning against the window.

  ‘So what happened then?’ Irene asked. She brushed a loose strand of her hair away from her light green eyes.

  ‘Knife.’

  Irene raised an eyebrow. ‘Was it on fire?’

  Drake snorted. ‘It was, actually, yeah.’

  ‘Well, stranger things have happened around this place …’

  That piqued Drake’s interest. ‘Such as?’

  Irene stared at him again, biting her lip. She took a deep breath and seemed to come to a decision. ‘Are you a good guy, Drake? Have you … been in the elevator on the eastern platform?’ Her voice was lower than a whisper.

  ‘I … no, I haven’t.’

  With a dismissive sigh, Irene stood and turned to leave. Drake reached forwards and gently grasped her arm, just above her tracker. Her pale skin was soft and dashed with freckles. ‘Where’s the elevator go? I work Tubes on that platform and haven’t –’

  Irene’s arm spun in his grip and she grasped his wrist hard, casting a quick look across the room at Nurse Rose pottering around the medicine cabinets. ‘Tubes? Listen to me carefully. There’s a door near the base of the platform. A rusted old door that leads down a corridor full of old drilling equipment. Have you seen it?’

  Drake knew what she was talking about. ‘Old rusted door, but locked with a new silver chain?’

  Irene’s eyes blazed. ‘Yes! Can you get through it?’

  ‘A lot of the pipes we clean go under and over it. Never been that far through, though. Most of the blocks –’

  ‘But you could, if you wanted?’

  Drake shrugged. ‘What’s so important?’

  Irene dug her fingernails into his wrist. ‘I’ll be waiting. On every fifth day at midnight. The fifth, the tenth, the fifteenth, and so on, you understand?’ Drake could only nod. ‘If you can get there, and get me through that door, I’ll show you something incredible.’

  ‘I –’ Drake began.

  ‘I’m trusting you, Will Drake,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Please just –’

  ‘Two pills,’ Nurse Rose said, swivelling back around on her stool. She held one of those passport-sized computer tablets in one hand and a tiny plastic cup with the pills in the other. ‘A little stronger than your average painkillers, but then that burn will start to sting, young man.’

  Irene let his wrist go and stepped away.

  ‘How’s it feel now?’ Nurse Rose asked.

  ‘Better, I guess. Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. This little accident of yours will be costly.’ The nurse made a few swipes on the tablet. Drake’s tracker beeped. He was now negative nearly seven hundred and fifty credits. As he knew all too well, healthcare wasn’t cheap, especially where the Alliance was concerned.

  The skinhead guard, who had been sitting and chatting with Brand at the reception desk, called over, ‘Are we done here, Rose? Can I take this lot back to class?’

  ‘All done, Harry. Irene, make sure you scrub your hands thoroughly in the sink over there before you leave.’

  ‘Yes, Nurse Rose,’ Irene said, and cast Drake a quick, desperate look over her shoulder as she moved away.

  Drake watched her go as the old nurse cleaned up the mess and disposed of the medical waste. Irene washed her hands, as instructed, and left with the other two girls. She did not look back again.

  What was that all about? he wondered. Something incredible? Drake couldn’t even begin to fathom just how he was supposed to reach the eastern platform at midnight, let alone without the tracker monitoring his every move. Does Irene know how to remove them? His mind spun with new possibilities and he glared at the device strapped to his wrist with renewed purpose. You’re coming off, he thought.

  Tristan sat up with a cry, startling Drake out of his thoughts, and fell back with a whimper. He pressed a hand against his forehead and moaned. ‘Bloody hell, what happened? Drake?’

  ‘Hey, buddy.’

  ‘I … Oh, God, I shocked him, didn’t I?’

  Drake snorted. ‘You shocked all of us, I reckon. Particularly Brand. He shot you with a stunning dart.’

  Tristan tried to sit up again and failed. ‘I feel terrible …’

  ‘Not as bad as you’re gonna feel when I’ve had a word, lad,’ Officer Brand said, storming over from reception. He slowly drew his baton and held the red trigger. Electricity thrummed through the weapon. ‘Now, let’s have a review of the rules, shall we?’

  For the next ten minutes, Brand proceeded to shout and curse at Tristan until he was red in the face and almost bouncing on the spot. Tristan, his head already killing him, sank further and further back into the bed, as if the mattress could swallow him whole. What little colour left in his face drained away, leaving him on the verge of tears.

  ‘This has gone to the warden, you understand?’ Brand said, calming down and pausing for breath. ‘There’ll be a review, lad. Personally, I’ll be pushing for a re-evaluation of your sentence. What you did was utterly unacceptable and you’re just lucky no one was killed!’

  ‘And that’s why,’ Drake said, wagging his finger, ‘you don’t mess with another man’s baton.’

  Brand turned his gaze on him and whispered, ‘One more word, Drake. Please, just say one more word.’

  Drake gave Brand a smile full of nothing but contempt. ‘Daffodils,’ he said.

  9

  Happy New Year

  As Drake’s first few weeks on the Rig bled into his first month, the morning of December 15th dawned with thick, black storm clouds rolling in over the horizon. Despite his stolen whispers with Irene in the infirmary, he had made no progess with a plan to escape, let alone get his tracker off. He woke every morning to a sense of defeat and frustration that had to be pushed aside, if he was going to have any hope of making it off the Rig before he turned twenty.

  By mid-morning on the fifteenth, the skies over the Rig were dark and impenetrable. Thunder rumbled and flashes of electric-blue light danced among the clouds, accompanied by a biting wind that lashed the skin and rocked the Rig. Waves three metres high – and getting higher – slammed against the tiny collection of platforms standing alone in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

  This time Drake knew it wasn’t his imagination. The floor beneath his feet was swaying back and forth. If he stared across at another platform, at a fixed point, he could just see the sway.

  ‘This normal?’ he asked Tristan, as they left the classroom atop the boys’ platform, heading for lunch. The first drops of rain splattered against the concrete – a drizzle that pre-empted the downpour.

  Tristan nodded. ‘It’s happened before. One day the wind was so bad half the blokes got seasick.’ He stretched the word out until it became something horrible, a groan of the long-suffering. ‘Cellblock stank for days after that.’

  ‘Looking a bit flushed, Drake!’ Mario said, chewing on a toothpick. ‘Tubes will be a mess to
morrow, mi amigo!’ He threw his arm around Tristan’s shoulders and wrestled him around by his neck. ‘What about you, four-eyes? We could use a runt like you in the small pipes!’

  Tristan struggled unsuccessfully against Mario’s grip. The rain was falling harder now, cold drops the size of two-pound coins splashing Drake’s arms.

  ‘Let him go,’ Drake said, and pointed to the edge of the platform just three metres away. A fence at shoulder height was the only protection, save the guards stationed along the perimeter, between the inmates and a swift fall into the sea far below. ‘Or we’ll be seeing just how well you can swim.’

  Mario’s smile faded a bit. He let Tristan go. ‘Alright, just joking with the gringo, Drake. You know me. Everyone messes with little Mikey here, don’t they, Mike?’

  Tristan hunched his shoulders and pushed his glasses straight on his face.

  ‘Not any more,’ Drake said. He inwardly sighed – it was trouble like this that had gotten his friend, Aaron, killed at Cedarwood. Drake hadn’t made much in the way of friends since then. ‘Or they’re messing with me, too. Got it?’

  Mario tried for a smile. ‘Yeah, Drake. Sure I got it. Only playing anyway.’ He darted away, keeping Drake between himself and the edge of the platform.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Tristan said quietly, as they resumed the walk to lunch.

  ‘What happens if the Rig has to be evacuated?’ Drake asked, as a particularly violent gust of wind made the platform ache and moan.

  ‘There are evacuation crafts below some of the platforms. At least, that’s what I was told … I’ve never actually seen them.’

  ‘There’d have to be something, wouldn’t there? I mean we’re on a goddamn oil rig in the middle of nowhere.’

  Tristan made a face, masking a brief worry. ‘Yeah, there’s the lifeboats, that’s what I heard.’

  Later that night, after lights out, the storm broke in earnest against the Rig. Confined to their cell, Drake and Tristan rode out the worst of it as best they could. The entire platform was shaking as waves of tremendous power and height crashed against the pillars that kept the Rig afloat. The rain fell so fast and thick outside their window that Drake couldn’t even see the orange lights that lit up the Rig at night, alerting ships to its presence.