The Rig

by Joe Ducie

  ‘I’m sure you’ll give it your best,’ Storm said seriously. He clearly didn’t think they stood a chance.

  With four games left of the season, Grey’s team only had to win once more to secure victory for the winter league – but it wasn’t about winning, never had been, and Drake suspected the warden knew that. No, the rigball games were about power – power and dominance. Grey had both, from his size and cruelty alone, but this way everyone on the Rig never forgot it. When they saw him pounding Tommy’s team into the concrete, saw the blood spilt …

  What Drake didn’t know was why Grey was so special. Why the warden, and Brand, and a handful of the other guards – Hall and Stein, to name just two – treated him not as another prisoner but almost as if they were on even footing here. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. He wondered if Doctor Lambros would be able to tell him anything more in their next meeting, two days from now on Friday. Drake had been looking forward to the meeting all week long. Doctor Lambros was the only adult within a hundred miles who treated him with even an ounce of respect.

  ‘Now, to business,’ Warden Storm said. ‘This Monday the Rig will be playing host to the executive board of the Alliance. I don’t have to tell you all to be on your best behaviour.’ The warden’s gaze lingered on Drake for a long moment. ‘Lucien Whitmore himself will be here, boys. Yes, yes, the head honcho. He’s coming to inspect how we do things here on the Rig, how smoothly this facility runs and how well you’re all doing under our supervision.’

  Whitmore … The man who controlled the Alliance. He was coming to the Rig. Drake knew little about the multibillionaire, beyond the clips he saw on TV of him at charity events, giving press conferences, or travelling to the hotspots around the world where Crystal Force, the private military arm of the Alliance, operated. He was a young man, for someone in his position, Drake had always thought. He recalled some story from a year or two ago about how Whitmore had taken over Alliance Systems after his father had retired, or something.

  ‘You are all, in your own unconventional way, employees of the Alliance,’ Warden Storm continued. ‘Lucien Whitmore is your boss, your employer, as much as he is mine. This is your workplace, and you want the Rig to make a good impression, yes?’

  Tommy nodded enthusiastically. Drake had to relax his fists.

  ‘Good boys.’ The warden tipped his hat back and gestured to one of the supply sheds connected to the Processing building, just across the platform. ‘In those sheds you’ll find pavilion tents and trestle tables that need assembling. Over the next few days the Seahawk here will be busy, ferrying caterers and Mr Whitmore’s personal security staff from the mainland to the Rig. Weather reports show clear skies all weekend, so Officer Brand and I have decided there’s no time like the present to begin preparations. He’ll be supervising you boys for the next few days.’

  Oh … great.

  Almost anything beat Tubes, although after the best part of four months, Drake had grown somewhat used to the muck and the stench crawling around the insides of the eastern platform. However, an afternoon spent in the sun was a rare treat, even with Brand barking orders and snide comments. Drake had found that he liked working with his hands, keeping things running in Tubes, and now constructing the tents and tables in the courtyard out the front of Processing.

  If not for the fact that he was working for the Alliance, he could almost have enjoyed the work.

  As evening fell over the next night, Drake flipped through Tristan’s tech magazines as he assembled, disassembled and reassembled the magnetic key, keeping his tracker arm flat on the bed so Tristan could run the combinations along the seam of the device. So far, they’d had no luck, although Drake had thought he felt something in the tracker vibrating at one point last night.

  They were already up to a seven-magnet key, which meant a possible one hundred and twenty-eight combinations. Tristan muttered to himself as he worked, keeping track of the polarity of the magnets in his head, never skipping a combination or growing frustrated. Drake marvelled at first, at how Tristan could keep all those numbers swirling around in his mind, but soon grew bored. He’d hoped, however unlikely, that his cellmate would crack the tracker on the first night.

  The key worked on the ninety-seventh combination.

  Drake was on the verge of falling asleep when he felt the tracker vibrating and the bolt release. The device fell away from his wrist, but given the months it had been strapped to him, he could still feel it as if it were still attached.

  At first neither he nor Tristan could process what had just happened. The tracker was life on the Rig – the small, five-centimetre display governed everything. Every hour of their schedule twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Drake’s now lay face down on Tristan’s mattress, looking nothing more than what it was. A tiny, not so powerful computer locked inside a plastic band.

  Drake sucked in a harsh breath at the same moment as Tristan let out a long, slow sigh.

  ‘Is it …?’ Drake swallowed. ‘Is it still working?’

  Tristan carefully picked up Drake’s tracker and turned it over so they could see the display.

  It was 2355, five minutes to midnight, and Drake owed the Alliance nearly thirteen hundred credits.

  ‘Well,’ Tristan said, and chuckled. ‘That was easy.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Drake wasn’t sure he trusted his voice just yet. He rubbed at his wrist where the tracker had sat. The skin was tender – and hairy. ‘Um, thanks.’

  ‘Told you it’d work.’ Tristan cast a quick glance at the cell door and the thin window, as if he expected Brand or Warden Storm to be glancing back at him. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now we put it back on.’

  ‘What?’

  It was Drake’s turn to chuckle. ‘You think I’m escaping tonight? Blimey, mate, unless you can throw some magnets at that door and every security camera between here and the chopper – which I can’t fly, by the way – I’m not going anywhere.’

  Tristan blinked, then nodded. ‘Right. Of course.’

  Drake slipped the tracker back over his wrist and snapped the lock closed again. He felt the bolt latch and the device was as secure on his arm as it had ever been. ‘Let me see if I can work the key and get it off again.’

  Tristan handed him the row of eight magnets, about ten centimetres long and wrapped in copper wire coiled around the battery stolen from the rigball racquet. Drake pressed it against the seam of his tracker.

  Nothing happened. His heart leapt into his throat.

  ‘Turn it around,’ Tristan said.

  Drake did, and felt the magnets vibrate suddenly. The tracker snapped open again as the bolt released and fell from his wrist.

  ‘This evens the playing field somewhat,’ he mused, and clapped Tristan on the shoulder.

  The tracker went back on his wrist a third time, but it no longer felt like a leash. The device felt like an ally now, a way to turn the Rig’s own system against itself. A fit of honest laughter burst from Drake and Tristan caught it. They sat rocking back and forth on the bottom bunk, holding their sides and trying to stifle the gasps and cries. Tears ran down Drake’s cheeks and he thought he might die if he didn’t stop to take a breath some time soon.

  Ten minutes later, still chuckling softly, Drake was up on his own bunk. Tristan’s magnificent key was stuffed down the side of his bed in a hole he’d torn in the mattress. Thinking thoughts of escape, Drake folded his pillow in half and turned to face the wall. For the first time since he’d arrived on the Rig, sleep was swift and true.

  The next day, as Drake strolled up to the top of the western platform for his meeting with Doctor Lambros, he did so with a smile on his face. All day long the tracker had felt like nothing more than a bracelet – an expensive, fancy bracelet to be sure – but one he could remove whenever he saw fit.

  Entering the classroom complex after lunch, Drake headed along the white-walled corridor and up the spiral stairs to Doctor Lambros’ office on the second floor. He k
nocked on the frosted glass.

  ‘Enter,’ a deep, male voice said from within.

  Drake frowned and let himself in. The first thing he noticed was the sealed cardboard boxes sitting in front of the empty bookshelves. The leather sofa had been pushed back and Doctor Lambros’ pictures, her qualifications, were stacked haphazardly on one of the cushions.

  A thin, pale man wearing a turtleneck sweater sat behind Doctor Lambros’ fine desk, looking down his nose at Drake over a pair of half-moon spectacles. He put down a fancy fountain pen. ‘William Drake?’

  ‘Yes,’ Drake said. He didn’t step into the office. ‘Who are you?’

  The man pointed at the seat in front of the desk. What had once been a comfortable, high-backed leather chair was now a plastic foldout. ‘Sit down, William. Let’s get this over with.’

  Drake bristled. ‘Get what over with? Where’s Doctor Lambros?’

  ‘Doctor Acacia Lambros is no longer aboard this facility or employed by the Alliance,’ he said. ‘She left two days ago to pursue other opportunities. I’m her replacement. Doctor Farrington.’

  Drake glanced at the empty bookshelves and at the stacks of photo frames on the sofa. The frame on top of the pile, Doctor Lambros’ undergraduate degree, had a web of cracks running through the glass. ‘She just left?’

  ‘Did I stutter? Take a seat, Mr Drake.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I will.’

  Farrington shrugged and returned to his paperwork. The sound of his fountain pen scratching across the page was like nails on a chalkboard. ‘Then get back to work and close the door on your way out.’

  Later that day, at dinner, Drake sat in silence at his usual table with Tristan and worried. Something felt very wrong about Doctor Lambros’ abrupt departure. He kept playing the brief two minutes he’d spent in her office that afternoon over in his mind. The glass in the cracked frame bothered him, as did the arrival of Doctor Farrington. The man had looked like a skeleton wearing a thin skin suit behind that desk.

  She didn’t just leave, did she? Maybe she had left, and Drake had misjudged her character. Perhaps he was just another file to her, another number in a long list of numbers – a kid who couldn’t do anything right, and had been sent to prison for his crimes.

  Care for a strawberry bonbon, Will?

  Drake slammed his fist into the table, startling Tristan, and took a deep breath.

  He did not believe for a moment that she had gone to ‘pursue other opportunities’ as Farrington put it. Two days ago? Drake had seen the Seahawk flying in and out these last few days, busy with preparations for Lucien Whitmore’s arrival, and he had not seen Doctor Lambros leave. She would’ve said goodbye!

  Drake’s worry for the doctor was matched only by worry for his own neck. If she had started asking questions, based on Drake’s suspicions about Grey and the locked doors on the eastern platform, then had she confronted Brand and Storm? Had Doctor Lambros mentioned his name? What if Irene’s name had come up somehow?

  Worst of all, had Drake’s concerns gotten Doctor Lambros hurt? Did Drake think the warden and his number one guard were capable of hurting one of their own? She never liked Brand, whispered a voice in his head. You saw that your first day here. But why? To hide what was happening on the eastern platform? Drake swallowed. He had no proof of anything, but he believed he’d come to the right conclusion all the same.

  ‘You okay, Will?’ Tristan asked.

  Drake shook his head.

  The hairs on the back of his neck tingled and stood to attention – someone had just walked over his grave. Taking slow, measured spoonfuls of lentil soup, Drake looked over to the swinging cafeteria doors and saw Marcus Brand standing there, staring straight at him from across the hall.

  Brand held his gaze, cocking his thumb and forefinger like a gun, and shot Drake another of his all-too-friendly grins.

  13

  Beneath the Deep Blue Sea

  The southern platform was abuzz with activity the morning of Monday the tenth of March. Lucien Whitmore would be arriving at some point in the afternoon and Drake knew Warden Storm was keen to impress.

  As such, inmates were directed that under no circumstances were they to stray from their assigned duties that day. The guards issued strict and stringent warnings at breakfast that anyone caught doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing would be dealt with severely.

  ‘If any of you sneeze without asking permission first …’ Brand warned, standing at the head of the cafeteria, flanked by four masked guards on either side, ‘by God, my little lawbreakers, there will be hell to pay.’

  Drake spooned his porridge into his mouth and ignored most of the bluster. He was more convinced than ever that something was amiss on the Rig. Doctor Lambros’ abrupt departure – disappearance – had dissuaded Drake of any lingering doubts. Tonight, he’d sneak away before lights out, leaving his tracker in 36C, and see what he could find. If he could make it as far as the eastern platform, perhaps Irene would be waiting.

  I’ll be waiting. On every fifth day at midnight. The fifth, the tenth, the fifteenth, and so on, you understand?

  Irene Finlay, one of the inmates that Doctor Lambros had not been permitted to see during her counselling sessions. Would she be there? What about her tracker? A flutter of unease and nervousness clawed at Drake’s gut, but he forced another mouthful of thick porridge down his throat. He’d need his strength tonight. It had been some months since he’d met Irene at the infirmary, and seen the insistence in her eyes about getting behind those rusted and locked doors, but Drake wanted to know more. He’d use the heating ducts or the overflow in the lower levels of Tubes, if he had to, but he was going through those doors – whether or not Irene was waiting for him.

  Drake finished his breakfast and checked the time on his tracker – now nothing more than just a disguise. Coming up for 0900 and almost time to head for the exercise area. Then lessons, followed by lunch, then work in Tubes and dinner. The Rig ran like clockwork, and Drake intended to use that system to his advantage, and no one – not Storm or Brand or even Lucien Whitmore himself – would stop him.

  It was the longest day Drake had spent on the Rig so far. The minutes crawled towards dusk, and his time in Tubes had never gone so slow. Drake tried to keep from staring at his tracker every two minutes, but he was anxious about tonight. So much could go wrong, but he had to know what was happening here.

  Drake forced himself to eat the fish curry for dinner, if only to try and settle his nerves. After dinner, during the two hours of free time before lights out, he and Tristan headed back to their cell to prepare.

  ‘Okay,’ Drake said, retrieving the magnetic key from within his mattress. ‘You sure you’re okay with this?’

  ‘For the last time, yes,’ Tristan said, exasperated. ‘If anyone notices, I’ll just tell them I had no idea you weren’t in your bunk.’

  ‘Good, I suppose.’ Drake collected a few other items from around the room. Specifically, a thin bar of steel with a narrow, flat head – a makeshift screwdriver without the handle that he’d nicked off one of the machines down in Tubes that afternoon – and a black felt-tip marker he’d borrowed from the art supplies in the common room. It was 2030. Only an hour before the cell doors would automatically lock for the night. Drake’s plan called for them to be in the bathroom on the ninth tier of the cellblock by no later than nine.

  At quarter to the hour, Drake removed his tracker and stashed it under his pillow. He didn’t know how closely the security cameras were monitored, given how effective the trackers were when they couldn’t be removed, but this was, perhaps, the most risky part of the plan – moving up through the cellblock without his tracker. If anyone in Control was paying particularly close attention to the cameras that night, they’d see two William Drakes. One as a GPS dot in his cell and another moving about freely.

  A risk I’ll have to take.

  ‘Ready?’

  Tristan nodded, then shrugged.

  ‘L
et’s go, then.’

  Feeling almost naked out on the tiers without his tracker, Drake hunched his shoulders and tried to act normal as he and Tristan ascended the platform towards the washroom on the ninth level. From there, Drake knew, the vents ran under the corridor to the centre platform – he’d studied them enough over the last few months – and represented his best chance of reaching the eastern platform.

  No one intercepted them, no alarm bells rang. Drake and Tristan entered the washroom without being accosted, trying to suppress nervous grins.

  ‘Made it –’ Tristan began.

  Drake cleared his throat and pointed across the washroom. One of the stalls was occupied.

  Tristan nodded and they made themselves busy, standing around the urinals until whoever was in the stall cleared out. Drake couldn’t help but stare in the mirror, up to the metal vent in the ceiling positioned just over the row of sinks.

  A flush of water came from the occupied stall and Emir emerged. He grunted in Drake’s direction, scrubbed his hands, and left.

  ‘Right, then. You need to keep an eye out while I unscrew this thing.’

  Tristan stepped back outside the washroom and Drake hauled himself up onto the sink underneath the vent. The sink wobbled but took his weight, though he had to bend his neck to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. He retrieved the makeshift screwdriver from his pocket and began working on the screws holding the vent cover in place. Warm air blew into his face from the outlet, which was a good sign that the vent was connected to the heating system. The heat vents ran straight to the boiler tanks on the eastern platform, or as near as Drake could tell.

  The cover was held in place with crosshead screws, and after some wiggling Drake managed to loosen the first one – just as Tristan stepped back into the bathroom.

  Drake leapt down from the sink and dashed into one of the stalls. He heard the door swing open, footsteps outside in the washroom, several pairs, and then the tinkle of urine against porcelain.

  ‘All clear,’ Tristan said a minute later and headed back outside on watch.