The Rig

by Joe Ducie

  A tiny trickle of blood ran down from her nose, over her lips, and had dried on her chin. Little spots had fallen onto the collar of her white blouse. If not for the blood and the colour of her skin, Drake could have pretended she was sleeping.

  He was looking at a corpse.

  Doctor Acacia Lambros was dead. Vicious bruising covered her neck like a purple scarf.

  Drake, Irene, and Tristan stood silent for a long moment. They were all thinking the same thing – they were looking at murder.

  For the second time inside twenty-four hours, Drake’s entire outlook on the world had changed. He knew the people running the Rig were mean, even cruel, but this was something else. Evil, his mind whispered, and for lack of a better word, Drake agreed. What was happening here was evil.

  And has to be stopped.

  Experiments on inmates. Murdering people to keep them quiet. Did the Alliance, did Lucien Whitmore, know what was happening here? Not the gritty details, not all of them, but he knows. Of course he did.

  ‘I liked her.’ Drake took a deep breath and wished he hadn’t. The smell from the crate was none too fresh. ‘God, how can they do this?’

  Drake recalled lying in his bunk some nights ago, unable to sleep and thinking about the difference between justice and vengeance. Looking at poor Doctor Lambros, her life snuffed out long before her time, he thought again on where the line was drawn. Justice … or vengeance?

  Right then, Drake felt like a touch of both.

  With nothing else for it, he resealed the crate and sighed. They could do nothing to help Acacia Lambros now. But one day … Drake swore. He would see whoever did this punished. Although he had no proof, his mind kept picturing Brand, his hands around her neck as he choked the life out of her. Had he done it down here? Or up in her office?

  That broken picture frame from the wall behind her desk …

  ‘Are you okay?’ Irene asked gently.

  Drake nodded. ‘Well, at least we know what we’re up against now. Really up against. Once and for all, the kind of people we’re dealing with here.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Tristan said. ‘I don’t want to look in the rest of these crates, and there’s nothing more we can do down here.’

  Drake agreed. He’d been hoping for something, something to help him escape, but short of absorbing a mineral that would turn him insane or trying to pilot a submersible drilling craft, he’d come up empty.

  They walked back around the tank and climbed up the stairs onto the steel walkway, feeling defeated.

  ‘What the –?’ a gruff voice snapped.

  Drake, Irene, and Tristan froze – like a trio of deer caught in headlights.

  Standing on the walkway over the tank was a familiar face. Officer Hall, armed and in full body armour, stared at them in shock. Hall made a sound somewhere between a startled cry and a grunt of surprise and reached for his radio.

  ‘Was it you?’ Drake spat, and ran at Hall as the guard swung his rifle up to fire. ‘Did you kill her?’

  Drake tackled Hall and they wrestled on the walkway over the shark tank. The guard hit the railing, his rifle fell from his hands, and the momentum of Drake’s tackle carried them both up and over the railing.

  They fell into the tank trading blows, Hall gripping Drake’s hair and Drake with a hand around the guard’s neck. Drake struck the water and felt a thousand tiny needles pierce his lungs. He let go of Hall and gasped, shock ripping through his every nerve. The water was ice cold.

  Something large and heavy brushed past his leg.

  Drake licked the salt water from his lips. Hard shots of fear slid down his throat, as something else slammed into his leg. Hall was spluttering in the water away to his left, under the walkway. The guard’s eyes were wide, bulging out of his head. A fin broke the surface of the tank between Drake and Hall, and the two humans far out of their depth locked eyes for a terrible moment.

  Hall turned and swam for the tank’s edge as another fin surfaced, along with about two metres of dark, grey skin. A single, black eye – speckled with red stars, like a lump of burning coal – stared at Drake, and a jaw of razor-sharp teeth opened wide.

  He turned and swam, knowing he couldn’t make the edge before –

  A pair of hands seized Drake by his sodden collar. He looked up and saw Tristan dangling almost upside down, bent at the waist over the walkway’s edge, with Irene clutching his legs. Together, they hauled Drake up and out of the water and back under the railing just as a red-eyed shark cut through the space between him and Hall.

  The guard didn’t even have time to scream before he was pulled under the frothing water.

  Dripping wet, shivering and breathing hard, Drake chanced a look back over the railing and saw nothing but dark, churning water turning a slow shade of crimson. He looked away, sick to his stomach. That could’ve been me …

  ‘The shark got him,’ Tristan breathed. ‘Oh God, he’s dead. The shark, the shark, the shark –’

  Irene clapped her hand over his mouth and whispered fiercely, ‘Shut up! All that made a hell of a lot of noise. We have to move and get out of here. Someone will be coming.’

  Drake agreed, and Tristan, as pale as a ghost, could do nothing but follow. Before he left the walkway over the tank, Drake picked up Hall’s fallen rifle and slung the weapon’s strap over his shoulder. He didn’t know much about using the damn thing, but he thought point and shoot would work just fine, if they encountered anyone else.

  Is it loaded with knockout darts or actual bullets?

  For a second, he didn’t care. The monsters down here were not the sharks or the boy locked away in a cage. No, the monsters down here had killed Doctor Lambros, had driven the animals and Carl Anderson insane. How many other bodies have they disposed of, deep below the ocean, never to be seen again?

  But he did care, really. Drake knew he was not a killer. If he’d had the chance, he would’ve tried to pull Hall from the shark tank.

  ‘I think we’ve seen enough tonight,’ Irene said. ‘We should try and get back up to the Rig.’

  ‘They’re going to notice he’s missing,’ Drake said, speaking almost to himself as they ran past crates, along walkways, heading down under the labs again. ‘Not right away, but they’ll notice Hall’s missing. Then what?’

  I have to get off the Rig.

  17

  Escape

  Once again, Drake and Irene made it back up and out of the Crystal-X facility without being discovered. Tristan followed almost numbly in their wake, keeping his thoughts to himself. His eyes were wide and terrified as they sat bathed in torchlight in the old control room on the eastern platform.

  Drake spun slowly on his swivel chair, Hall’s rifle resting on his lap. He’d been fiddling with it for the last five minutes and had figured out how to eject the magazine – a clip of twelve stunning darts. Non-lethal, he remembered Brand saying. More’s the pity.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Irene asked.

  Drake slammed the magazine back into the rifle. He played with the safety tab on the side of the weapon, and then put it down on the desk of old monitors out of his hands, in case he accidentally shot himself or his allies.

  Tristan sighed and wrapped his arms around himself. ‘I can’t spend the next five years here, not now, I … I won’t be able to look any of them in the eye. They’ll know I know.’

  Drake had stripped down to his boxer shorts. His jumpsuit was still soaked through from the dip in the shark tank. He tried hard to suppress cool shivers, but he was freezing. The lens of the torch was warm and he kept pressing his fingers against the plastic.

  ‘Short of swimming, I have no idea how we could escape the Rig,’ Irene said, casting a quick glance at Drake. ‘You’re supposed to be good at this, Will. What have you got?’

  ‘A canoe made of soap and shenanigans …’ he muttered, staring into the bright light of the torch. He thought of Doctor Lambros alone in the dark down below with nothing but bloodthirsty sharks for company. Some
one, somewhere, will be missing her … A husband? A child?

  ‘Which means nothing,’ Tristan said, sighing into his hands. ‘He’s got nothing, Irene.’

  ‘Well,’ Irene bit her lip, ‘what if we could get word out about what they’re doing here? We need a phone or access to a computer in the control tower or …’ She trailed away, shaking her head.

  ‘Who would believe it? Who would we tell? It’s all Alliance-owned out there. They control the media. They control everything, even governments.’ Tristan laughed bitterly. ‘And what would we say?’

  ‘I’m just thinking aloud here,’ Irene snapped. ‘We can’t just sit –’

  ‘Face it, Irene,’ Tristan replied, colour rising in his cheeks. ‘We’re stuck here, and we just better hope we can make it through the rest of our sentences without –’

  ‘This place will get us killed!’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, you little –’

  Drake stood up and stretched his limbs, which had become stiff from the cold. Irene and Tristan turned to look at him, and he smiled sadly. ‘Have I ever told you,’ he said, ‘what I did to get sent to prison in the first place?’

  Neither of his companions said anything. They looked at each other, shrugged, and shook their heads.

  ‘Well, I don’t like talking about it … bit of a long story.’ Drake shivered. ‘But, given that you’re so sure the Alliance can’t be beaten, Tristan, I might as well share my long story.’

  ‘Will, I –’

  ‘Shut up and listen. I’m only going to say this once.’ Drake sat back down and crossed his arms over his bare chest. He could feel his heart beating, warm and true, against the cold. Taking a deep breath, he began, ‘You remember a few years ago, that “miracle pill” that could practically cure most types of leukaemia?’

  Tristan and Irene shared another glance. The looks on their faces suggested they were wondering if he had gone mad, and what pills had to do with the price of anything.

  Still, Tristan nodded and clicked his fingers. ‘Yeah. Something … Det …? Detrol …?’

  Drake nodded. ‘Close, mate. Detrolazyne-V.’

  ‘What about it?’ Irene asked.

  ‘My mother is sick. Very sick.’ Drake shrugged, as if to say ‘you can’t change the weather’. ‘About two years ago, she was dying. It’s just been me and her since I was little, and there was no way we could afford that pill. You know the National Health Service in Britain collapsed seven years back, in 2018, and became privatised. I was only seven when it happened, didn’t understand what that meant at the time, but I’ll give you three guesses who bought it.’

  ‘Alliance Systems, of course,’ Tristan said, and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Bastards,’ Irene muttered.

  ‘Right,’ Drake said. ‘Since then healthcare in the UK, much like the prisons, I guess, has been a numbers game. My mum and I just didn’t add up to the Alliance. She was diagnosed on the NHS, and once the Alliance took over she couldn’t get insurance – pre-existing conditions aren’t covered, you know. Not unless you got money, and we never did. Anyway, the doctors couldn’t make her better. Just comfortable. Her sickness had advanced so far that she had maybe, at best, three months.’

  Irene pulled Drake’s hand from his crossed arms and gave it a squeeze. ‘And with the medicine? The … Detrolazyne?’

  ‘Years.’ Drake stressed the word. ‘In some cases, with bone-marrow transplants, even complete remission.’

  Tristan shared a glance with Irene. ‘So you stole it.’

  ‘So I stole it, yes, and burned down four Alliance warehouses getting away. Heh, my first escape. So you see, mate, the Alliance can be beat. If you’re willing to take a few risks.’ Drake sniffed. ‘At least, that’s an easy way of looking at it. I didn’t just torch a few buildings. I also put a policeman in the hospital. They caught up with me near Trafalgar Square on the way home and I punched him. It sometimes only takes one punch … He hit his head on the kerb. Lucky he didn’t die. I … I really wish that hadn’t happened.’

  ‘You were just trying to help your mum,’ Tristan said. ‘I mean, well …’

  ‘How many wrongs make a right, mate?’

  Irene scoffed. ‘The Alliance wrongs good people every day, like your mother. Or … or turns good people into bad people.’ She wasn’t talking about Drake, and he knew it.

  ‘The Alliance is scum,’ Drake spat, slamming his fist into his palm. ‘You know what I saw in that warehouse? Shelves full of Detrolazyne! Miles and miles of these little white boxes that could save my mother’s life. Hell, I only needed one box.’

  ‘Is she … did she get better?’ Irene asked.

  ‘She was too sick to see me sentenced in London and sent to Trennimax a few weeks later. But the night I stole the drugs, she was bedridden at home, hooked up to all these medicine bags and painkillers, so I gave her the pills and moved her next door. I don’t know if she even knew what was happening. Nanna Vera lived there, next door. She’s not my real grandmother, but she looked after me growing up when Mum was at work. She hid her when the police came knocking for me later that night. I went rather quietly, given the mess I’d caused.’

  ‘But your mum, Will,’ Tristan said. ‘What happened?’

  Drake took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘She got better. The pills did the trick.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ Irene hugged him hard, sending them both spinning on the swivel chair.

  ‘Yes, I bought her time.’ Drake gently pulled Irene’s arms off him and smiled sadly. ‘I was sentenced to two years in Trennimax. Five months into that, she sent me a letter.’

  Irene slumped. ‘Oh no …’

  ‘Yeah, the cancer was back.’ Drake sighed. ‘One course, one box of the pills wasn’t enough to crush it completely. She told me a year, maybe eighteen months, if she was lucky. That was fourteen months ago. I haven’t heard from her since. Whether she sent me letters or not, I haven’t been getting them.’

  ‘You think the Alliance has been destroying them?’ Tristan asked.

  ‘Maybe. Who knows for sure? No outside contact allowed on the Rig, you know that. I tried calling once while I was on the run from Cedarwood, but no one answered. Perhaps my mum died … but I don’t think so. I think the Alliance is cruel enough to tell me if she died. And cruel enough to withhold any letters she sent me if still alive. I’ve gotta look at it that way, I guess.’

  Tristan nodded. ‘Where the Alliance is concerned, that’s probably the best way to look at it.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve been escaping,’ Irene said. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but her eyes looked awful shiny. ‘You’re trying to get back to London, to your mother, and what? Steal more pills?’

  ‘Got it in one, Miss Finlay.’ Drake gazed through the porthole window of their hideaway, out at the clear night sky and the bright stars. The storm clouds had fled, cascading now over the horizon. ‘And I’ve got four months, maybe, to do just that or it won’t matter any more. I …’

  Drake’s voice caught and he took a moment not to let it show. The ocean was a dark, unfathomable blanket, and as much a cage as the Rig itself. How I hate it. If – no, when – he made it off this platform, Drake would happily never see such endless water again.

  He cleared his throat and turned to face Irene and Tristan.

  ‘I don’t want my mother to die alone and afraid,’ he said. ‘The Alliance has taken a lot from me, from the whole world, but it does not get to have that!’

  18

  Blink

  Three days after Drake had uncovered the Rig’s secrets, three days since he’d found Doctor Lambros and plunged into a tank of mutated sharks, Drake was back on the southern platform under the late-afternoon sun, dismantling the tents and tables that had served as a dining hall for Lucien Whitmore and his henchmen.

  Henchmen’s the right word … They had all expressed wonder and amazement at what the Crystal-
X mineral could do, deep below the ocean’s surface, but Drake had seen not one of them express remorse or even a glimpse of sadness at what had become of poor Carl Anderson. Some had shown fear, and in Whitmore’s case, a horrific curiosity, but none of them had cared.

  Why would they? he thought. They’re the Alliance. They murder and steal. In a prison full of the worst juvenile offenders in the world, not even the jailers were innocent. Drake felt a cold anger and a bitter frustration.

  The Titan was back again, offloading supplies onto the Rig via the tall, yellow crane on its stern. The mighty ship buzzed with activity along the deck. Dozens of men in hardhats and orange overalls were at work around the cargo hold. The hold was open, revealing the inside of the ship. Drake had a sneaking suspicion he knew just what was being loaded onto the Titan that afternoon.

  ‘Drake, eyes on the tent!’

  Tommy directed Drake and the crew as they disassembled the makeshift dining area. They folded up the tarp of the pavilion and unscrewed the bolts in the scaffold that had held it all together, as the sun sank towards the west and an orange deep enough to almost be called red bled across the sky, scattered with thin, grey stratus clouds.

  ‘Good for the game this Saturday?’ Mario asked, as they loaded the tarp onto a small, hand-operated Transpallet forklift. ‘We’ll beat them this week, for sure.’

  Drake stared at Mario for a moment before he realised what he was talking about. His head was full of so many things that he’d forgotten about rigball. It was the fifth game of the season this Saturday, and as of last Saturday it had become quite impossible for Tommy’s team to win the league, given that they’d lost every game in the last month.

  And now I know why – Grey’s been taking the Crystal-X. His whole gang may have been in on it which, as far as Drake could tell, meant they may have been holding back in the rigball games. Images from the video display Doctor Elias had shown Whitmore danced through his head. Video of impossible things.

  ‘Blimey, Mario, what makes you so damned optimistic all the time?’

  Mario’s smile faded. ‘You’ve had a face like a smacked arse all week, Drake. What’s your problem?’