by Joe Ducie
Drake hauled himself back up onto the sink and worked the screws loose, one at a time, slipping them into his pocket. The vent was only about half a metre wide, and Drake knew that this would be a tight fit, if he could scramble up into it at all.
The vent outlet didn’t fall away, which was exactly what Drake hoped would happen. The cover was wedged in tight, which meant that with some help from Tristan, they’d be able to replace the cover over the vent once he was inside without replacing the screws. No one would notice some missing screws, but there would be questions if the entire cover was removed.
Drake slipped his hands between the vent slats and pulled gently. The cover fell away, showering him in specks of plaster and plumes of dust. Coughing, but smiling, Drake pushed the cover back over the vent. It held steady.
He stepped down from the sink again and out of the washroom, four tiny screws jingling in his pocket. Tristan was leaning against the railing of the tier, looking down over the exercise area nine floors below.
‘We’re good,’ Drake said, casting a glance up and down their level. ‘Quickly now, while no one’s coming.’
Drake and Tristan stepped back into the bathroom and moved fast, having rehearsed this part of the plan several times in their cell last night. Back up on the sink, Drake removed the vent cover and handed it down to Tristan. Then, wasting no time, he reached up into the vent and scrambled for purchase.
Drake had picked this vent, and not the ones on the levels above or below, for a particular reason. This one only rose vertically into the ceiling for about ten centimetres before it curved horizontally. Standing on his tiptoes, on the edge of the wobbly sink, Drake could just reach the horizontal pathway with his hands. There was no way he could pull himself up, however, and that’s where Tristan came in again.
Placing the vent cover on the floor, Tristan linked his hands under Drake’s foot and heaved him up as high as he could. Standing at five feet and change, that wasn’t very high, but it was enough for Drake to get his head and shoulders up into the vent. He sneezed as dust tickled his nose, but managed to get his elbows over the curve and onto flat metal. From there, Drake wiggled his way into the tight vent, and was surprised to find it widened by another fifteen centimetres or so once he was up and in. He couldn’t turn around, not when the vent was this narrow, but he’d be able to crawl forwards.
‘It look okay?’ Tristan called from below.
‘Just get the cover back on and get out of here!’ Drake replied, trying to keep his voice low.
‘Right.’
Drake heard scrambling from the washroom below, as Tristan pulled himself up onto the sink with the vent cover. A moment later, after some grumbling and squeaking, Tristan said, ‘It’s on. Are you good?’
‘I’m good. Just remember to be here in the morning.’
‘Got it. Be careful, Will.’
Drake heard him step down from the sink, the washroom door opened and closed, and then he was alone in the ceiling.
Dim slivers of light from the washroom below lit up the vent for about three metres ahead. Beyond that, he could make out nothing. He had ten hours or so, between now and when the cell doors would open in the morning. In another fifteen minutes it would be lights out, and no turning back.
There’s already no turning back, whispered the voice in his head. Come on, this is the exciting part!
Drake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he began to crawl forwards into the dark, making as little noise as possible. Tubes had more than prepared him for shuffling through narrow spaces. If anything, this vent was a treat, being devoid of muck and slime from the sea.
He rounded a curve in the vent and the darkness began to recede. Up ahead he could see more outlet vents and mesh coverings, which allowed pale light to stream in and highlight the path. After another ten metres or so, Drake came to his first crossroad. The vent veered away to the left, moving slightly down, or up and to the right.
After a moment’s indecision, playing over the layout of the Rig in his mind, Drake thought that down and to the left might lead him to the transparent corridor that connected the western platform to the centre. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the felt-tip pen. As he turned left, he drew an arrow on the roof of the vent just above his head, pointing back the way he had come. Underneath this arrow, he scrawled the number ‘1’.
The vent widened again, so much so that Drake could turn around if he wanted, but only on his stomach. Moving past one of the overflow vents, Drake looked down and saw some of the inmates fooling around in the common room below, in the last few minutes before lights out. He was less than three metres above their heads, but they had no idea he was there.
I’m on the right track.
Up ahead the path once again split in two directions, and Drake took the right route this time, marking the vent over his head with another arrow leading back and the number ‘2’. For the next half an hour or so Drake navigated the vents, trying to visualise the layout in his mind and head as far east as he could. At one point he was up and over the tiered cellblock, looking down at a drop of over fifty metres to the exercise area far below. At the next point he’d somehow gotten turned around and found one of his arrows, number ‘7’, leading back the way he’d come.
At times the vents grew warmer, but never uncomfortably so, and once he had to spin onto his back and pull himself up through a Z-shaped bend. His jumpsuit was, at this point, covered in dust. It beat the grime and worse from down in Tubes.
Eventually Drake got to where he wanted to be.
The vent narrowed again, and he had to pull his arms ahead of himself, stretched out from head to toe, and shuffle forwards as best he could as he left the eastern platform. A mesh panel on the side of the vent showed him the underside of the clear walkway between platforms, and if he pressed his face against it, he could see the cold ocean far below.
Elated, Drake crossed, unseen and undetected, from the western platform to the centre – well and truly out of bounds.
In time he found himself over the cafeteria, after navigating a maze of familiar corridors from overhead. The dining hall was quiet and the lights dim. Strange to see all these places empty, Drake thought. Strange to be off the Rig’s stringent schedule at all. The path diverged just ahead, straight on or down towards the left and the heart of the centre platform. In the rough blueprints he’d been keeping in his head, Drake guessed the guards’ quarters were down that way. Probably best avoided.
Sticking primarily to vents that moved ahead or seemed to hug the outer shell of the platform, Drake crawled onwards into the night. He estimated he’d been in the vents for just over an hour when he heard muffled voices from below. Drake took a slow, deep breath and held it in. A nearby outlet vent gave him a view of Hall and Stein, two of the Rig’s most hated guards after Brand, marching along a corridor Drake wasn’t sure he recognised.
‘Yeah, they’re going down tonight,’ Stein said. ‘Warden has them all eating prime rib and caviar on the south platform now, but they’re going tonight.’
‘Does Doc Elias know …’ Hall trailed away, out of Drake’s hearing range.
Giving it a few minutes before he moved again, Drake shuffled forwards. The next vent led down and to the right. He made his mark in black felt-tip and journeyed on. He felt a cool breeze blowing from this way and thought it might be the corridor to the eastern platform, but unless his sense of direction had failed him completely, it was more likely to be the crossing from centre to south.
Thinking on it for a moment, Drake convinced himself that yes, it was the wrong corridor, and continued on past the turn. If I head straight as far as I can now, and then head left, that should put me in line with the eastern corridor.
Ten minutes later, the vents did just that, and Drake made the crossing from the centre to the eastern platform. He suppressed gleeful chuckles as he moved silent and unseen through the night, over fifty metres above the Arctic Ocean. No prison, he thought. No prison can
hold me.
Drake crawled into the eastern platform and it felt, in a way, like coming home. He was a few levels too high, but once he found his way down to the heart of the platform, he’d start to recognise certain walkways and pipes from Tubes. As he’d noted during his first visit here, most of the eastern platform was exposed to the outside elements, and the vents grew a lot colder as he descended downwards towards the ocean.
I’m probably not in the heating vents after all, Drake thought. These vents are all too open for hot air to travel any real distance from the boilers. More likely these are for ventilation, or something. The why of the vents didn’t matter, so much as the destination – and Drake had come further tonight than he’d dared hope on his first expedition about the Rig without his tracker.
He discovered a few minutes later that the vents ran parallel with the upper levels of Tubes – the nicer pipes, that Tommy’s lot always got to clean – and knowing where he was, Drake began searching for a way out of the vent. Access panels were every six metres or so, he knew, the next few levels down, but the configuration of the vents was different here. Instead of trending downwards, Drake crawled over a drop of about six metres that certainly would’ve put him on the next level down, but he’d have no way back if the vent did something stupid, like dead end.
Eventually he came to a section of disused and old drilling equipment, visible through a mesh screen in the side of the vent. Listening carefully for a few minutes, Drake decided he was alone and pressed his weight against the screen as hard as he could. The mesh warped outwards, creating a thin gap of about ten centimetres to the outside.
‘Come on …’ he groaned, and put his shoulder into it. The screws gave way on the left side and the screen, with surprisingly little noise, flew open. Drake almost tumbled from the vent, but caught himself with a gasp.
He lowered himself down, covered in dust, onto the mid-levels of the eastern platform.
Wasting no time, Drake clung to the shadows as much as he could and made his way down through the cool night air, towards the rusted doors with the shiny padlock. He encountered no one and nothing on his way, and crouched down behind some pipes just opposite the door, about five metres away and out of sight in case any guards happened along.
Drake looked down at his tracker to check the time, but of course it wasn’t there. He chuckled softly to himself and continued to wait. He can’t have been up in the vents more than two hours, which put the time somewhere close to eleven, if not just after. Too early for Irene, if she was coming.
He settled in for a bit of a wait, shoving his hands into his pockets to keep them warm against the biting wind rolling in off the ocean.
I’ll give her ninety minutes. If she doesn’t show by then, I’m having a look through that door by myself.
With nothing but time to kill, Drake began wondering why he was waiting for Irene at all. He didn’t know for sure she’d even come, and he certainly didn’t need her – or anyone’s – help when it came to escaping. Got that tracker off by yourself, did you? Drake shook his head and chalked it up to curiosity. Perhaps there was something she could do to help.
No more than an hour later, Drake found himself almost dozing and shivering from the arctic wind. He yawned – and the dark walkway away to his left, lit only by intermittent flashes from the orange beacons strung along the edge of the platform, yawned with him.
He strained his ears and listened. Had he heard anything at all? A guard?
A minute later and he heard the creak again. This time he was sure of it.
Irene Finlay, sleeves rolled up on her red jumpsuit and her hair tied back in a ponytail, stepped into the circle of light from the bulb above the rusted doors. She jiggled the shiny padlock, perhaps hoping it was unlocked, and cursed. Casting a quick look at her surroundings, she dug a thin metal bar from within her jumpsuit and jammed it into the lock.
Drake watched her for a moment, wondering whether or not to give away his position. Is she alone?
Deciding that she was, he stood up and cleared his throat. ‘Nice night for a stroll, don’t you think?’
Irene jumped out of her skin and dropped her lockpick. ‘You’re here,’ she said, her eyes wide and amazed. She ran over to him and seized his wrist. ‘You’re actually here! How on earth –?’
‘How’d you get your tracker off?’ Drake asked.
Irene was silent for a moment and let his wrist fall. ‘How’d you get yours off?’
‘Magnets.’
‘Magnets? Really?’
‘Yeah. Now tell me how you did it.’
Irene considered, then shook her head. ‘Not magnets. I’ll tell you later, once you get me through this door.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you won’t believe what’s on the other side. Now come on, we’ve got to be quick – they come this way all the time at night.’
Drake didn’t have to be told who ‘they’ were. From Irene’s tone alone, he knew she meant the Rig’s demented staff. Still, he took a moment longer to assess his current situation. Could he trust this girl he’d only met once before? Was it even about trust? No, not really, because more than anything right then Drake wanted to know what was really going on aboard the Rig.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Follow me back this way. There’s a tube that leads to an overflow, a level above us, and I’m pretty sure it overflows through whatever is beyond this door.’
‘A tube?’ Irene whispered, jogging in Drake’s wake.
Drake chuckled. ‘Yeah – a little less cushy than the vent you just crawled out of. Hope you don’t mind getting a bit dirty, Irene.’
Drake led her through the familiar maze of dialled machinery and old drilling equipment. Back in Tubes, he was in his element, and quickly grabbed the metre wrench the crew used to pry the thick pipes open and set to work.
‘Help me, would you? This usually takes two.’
Together they unscrewed the bolt securing the cap and Drake heaved the iron lid away, revealing the dark insides of the mucky pipe. Irene gagged and covered her mouth.
‘Oh that’s foul …’ she said. ‘You want me to go in there?’
‘Hey, this is actually pretty clean. You’re welcome, by the way.’
‘I think I might be sick.’
Drake shrugged as he unclipped a torch from the nozzle on one of the furled hoses he’d packed away just over six hours ago. Funny to be here at night. ‘I do it ten times a day. Look, this was the first pipe I ever cleaned when I arrived here near on four months ago. We’ll have to crawl for the first bit, but then it widens and you can crouch on your feet.’
‘But it stinks.’
‘That’s life on the Rig, Miss Finlay.’
Irene sighed. ‘Suppose you think that sounded clever. Well, you go first, but if this doesn’t go where you say it does …’
Drake pictured in his head the layout of the eastern platform, of the levels and the pipes, and nodded to himself. If there was one thing he knew about this platform, it was the pipes. ‘I can’t see it going anywhere else. We’ll come out above whatever’s beyond those rusty doors. Now follow me.’
A few centimetres of cold, filthy water sat on the bottom of the pipe, and despite his words a moment ago, Drake still grimaced as he lowered himself into it. He shuffled forwards, minding his head, and was pleased when he looked back and saw Irene lowering herself into the pipe.
She gasped. ‘Oh God, is this what I think it is?’
‘Mostly,’ Drake said. ‘But also probably a lot worse. Come on, it gets better ahead.’
He flicked on the torch and began to crawl through the pipe. Irene followed and gagged in his wake.
The pipe somehow seemed more menacing at night, but as Drake had promised, the cylinder began to widen, and before long he was up on his feet, taking quick strides into the bottom of the channel as it curved down to the right. Near the blockage grates he waited for Irene to catch up, and then pointed down the overflow chute Mario had shown him o
n his first day. The chute extended on and down to the left. A small circle of flashing orange light could be seen in the distance.
‘I’ve never been down there,’ Drake admitted and tapped his head. ‘But if my maths is right, then we should be right on top of where you want to go.’
Irene shoved him aside and took the lead. ‘Then try and keep up with me, Will Drake.’
He grinned. ‘By all means.’
The overflow pipe did just what it promised – overflowed, right above the choppy, dark waters of the ocean below. Drake’s maths had been off, after all.
‘Well, this is no good,’ Irene muttered.
The pipe was wide enough that they could squeeze together side by side, wet and covered in muck, and gaze up at the night sky. Spray from the ocean struck them in the face, cold and salty. Damn … but it has to be close.
‘Follow me,’ Drake said. He reached up and clung to the rim of the pipe overhead, pulled himself up and out – briefly over the ocean – and found what he was looking for. ‘Irene, we’re here.’
Atop the pipe, an opening in the twisted metal and endless network of walkways led back into the heart of the platform, and to a view of a familiar set of rusted doors – the reverse side of those doors.
Irene scrambled up behind Drake and they entered what looked like a dilapidated old junkyard.
Hunks of old machinery, broken down and scavenged for parts long ago, littered the space. A high ceiling split the levels of the platform and Drake knew if he could see through that ceiling he’d glimpse the boiler tanks, the heating system, and away to the left the pipe he and Irene had uncapped.
‘Bloody hell,’ Irene said. ‘You were actually right.’
‘No need to sound so surprised.’
‘Shut up and follow me, Will.’
Drake sighed and did as he was told. He followed Irene through the piles of junk to a cleared corridor that led from the locked doors to what looked like …
‘Is that the elevator you told me about?’ Drake asked. ‘It’s big.’
‘It sure is.’ Irene dashed across the junkyard and gazed up at the wide elevator car, at the system of pulleys and counterweights on top of it, bolted to the ceiling. She pressed her thumb against the call button half a dozen times, bouncing on the spot in excitement.