by Joe Ducie
‘Nothing,’ Drake said. Everything. ‘This place just gets me down sometimes, yeah.’
‘Well suck it up, mi amigo, and save it for the game on Saturday.’
Drake nodded. He and Tristan hadn’t ventured out through the vents these last few nights to meet with Irene. For one, after crawling back to the washroom after the shark attack adventure, Drake had been awake and on his feet for almost two straight days. He needed a good night’s rest, if he was going to be any use at all. For another, he didn’t want to get too attached to either Tristan or Irene. When the time came to escape, he’d be going alone. As he had always done since the fire at Cedarwood.
Across the platform, along a bridge the inmates never used that connected the southern platform to the eastern platform, Drake saw his suspicions about the Titan’s open cargo hold confirmed. Two trolleys, stacked high with the same Alliance-marked crates he’d seen down in Doctor Elias’ mad scientist laboratory, were being wheeled under armed guard towards the supply crane.
Brand stood in front of the two trolleys, directing the movement of the electric-blue Crystal-X. The amount of mineral in the crates must have been significant, because the trolleys were being pushed by two masked guards each. Probably just the first load of many tonight.
Nothing had been said of Hall’s disappearance, but the guards had been on edge the last few days, and more heavy-handed than usual, cracking down on even the littlest of broken rules.
As Drake lifted folding chairs off the forklift and stacked them against the wall of Processing, he watched the procession of crates move past him and the crew. The first trolley groaned under the weight, and he noticed with a start that the seal on the rear crate was broken. Drips of water seeped through the crack, pooling on the trolley and leaking over onto the platform.
‘What are you lot looking at?’ Brand snapped. ‘Get back to work!’
‘Eh, Officer Brand,’ Drake began, wheeling the forklift back from the storage shed. He’d seen what the mineral did when exposed to the air. If one of the crates was leaking … ‘That crate –’
‘Drake, by God, lad, keep your eyes on your own damn –’
Just as the guards pushing the crates circled the Seahawk, the rear wheel on the front trolley snapped and gave way. The trolley wobbled and the broken wheel dug into the concrete, which prevented it from going over onto its side completely. The load of crates, fastened and secured, shifted but didn’t fall.
However the sporadic drips from the bottom crate became a steady trickle – and Brand noticed.
‘Christ!’ he roared, and turned on his heel to run. ‘Move away, all of you! It’s going to blow!’
As the guards scattered, Drake, acting purely on instinct, turned the forklift around and dashed across the platform, running past the Seahawk and towards the broken trolley.
What are you doing? his mind screamed at him.
‘Drake!’ Brand growled. ‘You stupid son of a –’
Drake wheeled the forklift around and got one of the prongs under the broken trolley. Sweat ran down his back and his stomach was doing somersaults. He’d seen what a small amount of the mineral, enough to fill just the head of a pin, did when exposed to the air. Given that Brand had told Whitmore that this shipment would be hundreds of kilograms of Crystal-X, Drake couldn’t even imagine how large the explosion would be.
Enough to destroy the Rig, surely.
Can’t outrun the blast, Brand, he thought.
At any other time, Drake would have almost welcomed the explosion. Now more than ever he hated this place and the terrible secrets rotting at its core. The prison was a festering sore, a diseased limb, and the only thing left for it was amputation. But not now – not while he and hundreds of others stood at the epicentre of what was about to be a monumental explosion.
He pumped the large handle as fast as he dared, raising the dual prongs of the forklift and the trolley into the air. The trickle of water slowed to a drip again, as the trolley fell level on the forklift’s prongs, but Drake was taking no chances. If the crate was leaking at all that meant the mineral could be exposed to the air any second.
Drake pushed the forklift as hard as he could and the trolley began to move. His arms strained against the weight and his shoes almost slipped along the slick concrete of the platform. He grunted from the exertion but, finally, the wheels began to turn. Once he got it moving, the forklift picked up speed, even with the heavy load.
Soon he was almost jogging, muscles screaming, and teeth bared in a snarl of pure, raw effort.
Drake pushed the forklift towards the edge of the platform, under the swinging crane from the Titan overhead, and past the boxes of stores that had just been offloaded, as precious water continued to leak from the mineral crate. About two metres from the precipice Drake let the forklift go and fell to his knees, gasping from the strain. The speed he’d managed to reach kept the forklift rolling right over the edge of the platform, out into the open air and plummeting towards the dark, choppy waters below.
The crates fell.
Crawling on his hands and knees, Drake pulled himself to the edge and gazed over – just as the mineral exploded. A blinding flash of light lit up the Rig at dusk as if it were midday as a torrent of roaring flame burst up and over the edge of the southern platform. A wave of tremendous heat blew Drake back, sending him rolling across the platform like a ragdoll. He struck the rear wheel of the Seahawk and came to an abrupt stop.
The fountain of bright flame receded as the crates sank, but for a brief moment it licked at the entire frame of the southern platform. Although he couldn’t see it, Drake imagined an orb of almost unquenchable white-hot fire sinking below the waves, lighting up the dark depths and perhaps burning for hours.
Fire that burns underwater … Drake actually laughed – the first time in days. He looked himself over and patted his arms and legs, making sure he was still in one piece. His skin felt a touch burnt, like he’d been out in the sun too long, but other than that –
Brand pulled him up by his collar. The look on his face was blind fury.
‘Marcus, you let him go!’ A shadow fell over Drake and Brand under the blades of the Seahawk. ‘Why did you do that, Mr Drake?’ Warden Storm asked. He peered at Drake from under the brim of his Stetson, his expression just short of thunderous.
Drake licked his lips and swallowed. ‘Brand … Officer Brand … he said that it was going to explode. I didn’t want to explode with it, sir.’
‘Come with me,’ Storm said.
Brand grabbed him by the scruff of his collar again and dragged him through Processing, into Control, and up the stairs to the warden’s office, following in the large man’s wake. His tracker beeped to let him know he was out of bounds. Drake felt his eyebrows as they rose up through the tower, seeing if they were still there. He could smell burning feathers. That gout of flame had singed the hair off his arms.
‘Take a seat, Mr Drake,’ Storm said. ‘That will be all, Officer Brand.’
‘Sir? He –’
‘Leave us, Marcus.’
Brand hesitated by the door. The warden stared at him over a pair of dark spectacles for a long moment. The door clicked shut behind him.
Drake and Warden Storm had a staring contest of their own after that. Sensing a great amount of danger in that stare, Drake tried not to fidget. He couldn’t tell just how much trouble he was in. Storm’s face was a mask of barely contained fury.
But fury at me? At Brand? Or because I sent his precious mineral back to the bottom of the sea?
Eventually, Storm looked away and reached beneath his desk. Drake heard a door open down there and the clink of glass bottles. Storm emerged from down the side of his desk and offered Drake a glistening bottle of Coca-Cola.
After four months at sea, with nothing but desalinated water and tepid apple juice, the sight of the sugary drink was, well, like water to a man dying of thirst.
‘Take it.’
Drake almost reached out for the
soda. ‘No, thank you.’
Storm chuckled, a sound that made Drake think of skulls rattling on the ocean floor. ‘Today, Mr Drake, you have earned this treat. I doubt any of your fellow inmates, or even most of my guards, realise what you just did. You saved the Rig and the lives of everyone on site.’
Drake shrugged and, after a moment, accepted the Coke. He twisted off the cap and took a delicious sip. The fizzy bubbles rushed down his throat. First sip was always the best.
‘Why did that crate explode?’ he asked, feigning ignorance.
‘Ah, well, it was carrying canisters of natural gas, I’m afraid.’ The warden sighed. ‘For cooking, you know. If you hadn’t done what you did, we would not be having this conversation right now.’
Liar. Drake nodded along, as if that made sense, and took another sip of soda. Had this man tried to feed poor Doctor Lambros similar false tales?
The warden turned to his computer and tapped away at the keyboard. He hummed to himself and loosened his neck tie.
‘I was warned about you, William,’ the warden said. ‘A special case. You were incarcerated in three facilities in the last eighteen months, and in each instance you managed to embarrass the Alliance. You were in Trennimax, in France. At the time the world’s foremost secure juvenile facility. The Rig, as you know, holds that honour now. It took you just six weeks to escape through what was supposed to be a tunnel sealed during the Second World War. You unsealed it. One of the guards foolishly alerted you to its existence.’ Storm laughed. ‘You may already know that my staff is much less forthcoming.’
Drake said nothing. He placed his half-drunk bottle of soda on the edge of the warden’s desk.
‘Cedarwood was next, and you rigged a cart with wheels and used the train line down the mountain. Then Harronway, and no one knows how you did that. Care to share now?’
‘Front door. Unlocked.’
Storm sighed. ‘No it wasn’t. But security is what it is, I guess. We can have the fanciest padlocks, the most up-to-date trackers, like the one you’re wearing there. We can surround you with hundreds of miles of cold, dark ocean, but someone like you, rightly, sees all that as just tools of the system. And you don’t play the system itself, William. No, no. You play its owner. You play the man.’
Storm gave Drake a predatory smile, as if he were about to sink his teeth into Drake’s neck.
‘Every escape, every single one, has been successful for one key reason. You read people, don’t you? You don’t beat the locks, or the trackers, or the ocean. I imagine you’ve already found a way around some of my locks and maybe even my trackers, haven’t you? No, don’t tell me, it does not matter. Because you will never find a way through my people. Or, ultimately, through me. I know you, William Drake, I know you better than you know yourself. Would you like some advice? Do your time. Four years, seven months and twenty-five days from now you will leave the Rig a free man, into a world vastly changed for the better by the Alliance. You will have learnt a trade, a means to survive back in Britain as an honest, productive member of society. See this, my beautiful Rig, not as another prison sentence but as an opportunity.’
Drake ran a hand back through his hair and frowned. He’d heard that line before, somewhere. Oh yes … from Doctor Lambros.
‘Well, son? What have you got to say?’ Storm chortled, his massive belly heaving up and down like the endless swell of the sea. ‘Perhaps tell me what you read on my face just now.’
Drake licked his lips. ‘You … you believe that escape is impossible.’
‘Few things in this world are impossible, but so long as I’m captain of this ship, then yes, escape from the Rig is one of the few. Still planning on swimming back to the mainland?’
‘No,’ Drake said, and suppressed a shudder. ‘I believe you about the sharks.’
‘Good lad. Don’t waste the opportunity the Alliance has given you here.’
Drake let his shoulders slump, just a little. Humble. Defeated. ‘Thanks for the soda.’
Storm narrowed his eyes and glared at Drake, as if he were trying to read his mind. ‘Very well. I’ll have Brand allow you the rest of the afternoon as free movement, give you a chance to rest and clean up before dinner.’
Drake heard the note of dismissal in the warden’s voice. He stood and turned to leave.
‘Mr Drake, thank you again for what you did today.’
‘You’re welcome, Warden Storm,’ he replied, without turning back around. He worried the warden would see the smile he was trying to hide.
You’re welcome, you murdering bastard. He may not have done the deed himself, but he was as guilty as whoever had. As Drake left the warden’s office, he felt a shiver of honest excitement and suppressed a small chuckle. After a four-month long staring contest, the Alliance had just blinked. The Rig had shown its hand and been found bluffing. Play the man, indeed …
The murky beginnings of an escape plan began to form in Drake’s head.
19
Calm Before the Storm
I’ll need the rifle … that screwdriver … a torch, most likely.
For a brief moment in Storm’s office, Drake had seen all the loose threads in his mind come together in an intricate, near-perfect pattern of escape. He saw all that he had learnt about the Rig over the last four months, from the Titan to the rotation of the guards, as a spiderweb of points that could, if he was strong and held true – if he stood against the Alliance once more – lead to freedom.
But it’ll be life or death, he thought, sitting in his bunk and staring at the ceiling that night after the explosion on the southern platform and his fizzy drink in Storm’s office. More than ever … but I’ll be on my own.
Tristan snored quietly below.
As he played with the rough outline of the escape plan in his head, Drake’s brow settled into a frown. The more he thought about it, the more he realised the chances of getting away unnoticed were less than zero. It’s a damned near certainty. But then the spiderweb has threads for that, too, doesn’t it? Drake thought on the rifle again, on the Titan and her fleet of speedboats, and on Warden Storm and the Seahawk. His frown became a satisfied smile.
‘Play the man,’ he muttered and rolled over to sleep.
Rigball on Saturday was another crushing defeat at the hands of Grey and his gang of mineral-enhanced goons. At least Drake now knew why he couldn’t knock the players down, or how they moved so fast. Working with Mario, he almost managed to score, but ended up with his nose scraped across the concrete for his trouble and Grey’s gigantic knee pressed between his shoulder blades.
For a day or two later, if he looked down he could see a small scab on the end of his nose. It was tender to the touch.
Drake was enjoying a minor scrap of celebrity amongst the inmate population. Tommy and the lads had spread the story of how Drake had saved the Rig from a gas explosion, and even the guards seemed to give him a bit more leeway, given that he was in Warden Storm’s good graces. The only guard that didn’t change, of course, was Brand. If anything, Drake’s quick thinking on the southern platform had soured the ex-Crystal Force soldier even further against Drake.
‘That one wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire,’ Tristan remarked, scooping cold green beans onto his plate in the cafeteria Sunday lunchtime.
‘Think he’d be thankful I saved his life,’ Drake muttered, wishing he hadn’t. He was all but certain Marcus Brand had killed Doctor Lambros.
Knowing what he knew now, Drake committed as many hours of the day he could to plotting his escape. It came down to two options, really. The Titan or the Seahawk. The ship or the chopper. He had a few rough ideas on how to make it work, but they were all risky – far riskier than any of his previous escapes. Indeed, compared to what he had in mind, his previous escapes were like finding the back door unlocked and sneaking out when no one was looking.
Drake began exploring the Rig at night, mostly on his own, but every other night Tristan and Irene, or one of the two, would tag along
with him. He couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse not to bring them along, and if he was being honest, he was growing to enjoy their company.
Irene was funny and kind. More importantly, she had been exploring the Rig at night months before Drake had gotten his tracker off. He still didn’t know why she was sentenced to the Rig, but that didn’t matter as much as her knowledge of the vents and platforms. Tristan was the same kind of smart and useful. He had a keen sense of direction in his head and could navigate the vents and the warren of pipes and tubes on the eastern platform as if he were reading from a map.
They spent a lot of time in the old control room, talking by torchlight and even playing small games. Irene swiped a pack of cards from the girls’ common room and taught them how to play poker. Drake was a natural but Tristan had a terrible poker face. He couldn’t help but smile when a good hand came his way.
Every time they met, for the first two weeks after uncovering what lay beneath the Rig, they spoke of escape, of course. But neither Tristan nor Irene had anything much to contribute, and Drake didn’t share the rough outline of his plan with them, his glimpse of a pattern he could exploit. He didn’t know if it was workable at all, yet, and some of the aspects relied far too much on dumb luck falling his way.
No, when the time came, he would be escaping on his own – that much of the plan was certain – but he couldn’t very well tell Irene or Tristan that.
Still, almost against his will, Drake found himself enjoying the time they spent together, particularly in the old control room hideaway, playing games and talking nonsense. He could almost pretend he wasn’t in the bowels of a murderous prison built on a meteorite that, as Doctor Elias had said, was highly volatile and somewhat alive.
As March began to close in on April, and Drake began to close in on five months aboard the Rig, he found himself thinking that there was only so much exploration of the platforms he and his companions could do. He knew there was no magical vent stretching back to the mainland – although, given what was under the Rig, he wouldn’t be too surprised if he did find one.