The Rig

by Joe Ducie

  He thought about how far he’d come in the last six months. How much he’d changed from the quiet, distrustful boy who had first landed on the Rig’s helipad at twilight. Irene and Tristan had been the cause of that change, no doubt about it. Drake didn’t believe there was a lot he could do to make up for Aaron’s death in Cedarwood, during that flawed escape attempt where he’d decided that other people only slowed him down, and that friends were a burden he didn’t need, but this felt like a start. A step in the right direction, as Doctor Lambros would have put it, and it had only taken half a year in the world’s most insane prison to show him that.

  After all, Drake thought, what’s freedom worth if I’ve no one to share it with?

  Limping along as fast as he could, Drake left a steady trail of blood in his wake, and headed up towards the deck – and his friends.

  The wrenching sound of the ship tearing itself apart was becoming far more adamant as he ascended. The crew had long since abandoned the innards of the Titan, no doubt evacuating to life rafts. A great, aching groan and shocking, constant vibration almost knocked Drake aside. The ship was listing to the right as it took on water from the bow. He had to stop halfway up the main galley, as the pain in his ankle reached a stunning crescendo. He pulled up the cuff of his jumpsuit and saw tiny blue lights dancing beneath his skin. The sight of it made him dizzy – or maybe that was the blood loss from the gunshot – and he looked away.

  A few moments later, the pain abated and Drake tentatively put his full weight back on the ankle. His foot didn’t even twinge – the bone had healed itself. Having no time, and perhaps feeling unwilling to contemplate just what Crystal-X was doing to his body, Drake continued his ascent away from escape and towards his friends. Too much exposure had driven Anderson mad … And he’d only been fed a teaspoon of the stuff compared to the ocean Drake had swallowed.

  Stop thinking about that! You’re still you – you’re still sane.

  He gritted his teeth and steeled his resolve.

  Even if it was the last thing he did in his short life, he would not let Tristan and Irene die alone.

  As Drake emerged on deck into a sky blurring from true night towards dawn, the Titan groaned through to its very core and the bow end began to sink fast. ‘Irene! Tristan!’

  If they were shackled to the front of the ship, they were dead – drowned already. So Drake did all he could do, and turned the other way, up towards the stern which now almost brushed up against the southern platform of the Rig.

  He saw dozens of lifeboats in the water, streaming away from the sinking ship, and winches lowering even more from the platforms of the Rig. All of the inmates had been evacuated as well, it seemed.

  ‘Irene!’ he shouted against the noise of the Titan’s hull tearing at the seams. ‘Tristan!’

  Blue light had pooled in the hole in his shoulder now, sealing the wound, fusing the flesh back together. A minute later, as sheer relief flooded through Drake faster than the Arctic Ocean through the ship, he found his friends handcuffed to the base of the crane.

  ‘Howdy,’ he said.

  Irene and Tristan stared at him as if they were seeing a ghost, even as the stern of the Titan began to rise up out of the ocean. The ship was heading towards vertical as the bow took on more than it could hold and began to disappear below the water. Casting a quick look over himself, Drake had to admit he was in a bit of a state. His jumpsuit was dark green, soaked with blood and water. Tiny cuts on his arms were healing right before his eyes.

  ‘You’re alive!’ Irene said.

  Without thinking, Drake grabbed the chain of the handcuffs tying them to the base of the crane and melted the links. Irene and Tristan separated, wearing a cuff apiece.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Tristan reached for Drake’s hand, holding onto Irene with his other as she stumbled back against the crane.

  ‘I kind of blew up the ship.’

  ‘You … you blew up the ship?’

  ‘And a bit of the Rig earlier, but you missed that.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’ Irene asked. She looked at Drake warily. ‘Your eyes are glowing, by the way.’

  Drake swallowed hard. ‘Red?’

  ‘Blue. Bright, sapphire blue.’

  Drake didn’t have the time or the desire to think too much on that. The stern of the ship was clear of the water now and still climbing. Soon the Titan would be vertical, bobbing in the water like a cork. Only the ship wouldn’t stay afloat for long.

  ‘Time to go, yes?’ Drake hadn’t the first clue how they were going to escape this one.

  ‘Quick, we’ll jump into the water –’

  ‘And get pulled under when the ship goes down!’

  Drake looked around for anything – a lifeboat, a pair of water wings. Nothing. He clung to the crane’s base, with Irene and Tristan, and noted with a distracted amusement that they were high up above the southern platform of the Rig, just about ten metres away. If the ship fell against the platform …

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ Drake said, and cupped Irene’s cheek with his free hand. ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘It was worth a shot,’ Tristan said. Through all the chaos, he’d managed to keep his glasses on. Drops of seawater dripped down the lenses.

  ‘More than worth it,’ Irene said. ‘I –’

  Drake gasped. ‘Follow me! For your lives, follow me!’

  The boom of the crane was swinging back and forth through the air, and it was this that Drake began to climb towards, pulling himself on his knees up and around to the ladder that led to the crane’s operator box. He crawled along the crane’s ladder, which was now almost horizontal above the water, as the ship bobbed, on the precipice of sinking forever.

  Drake looked back. Soaked and terrified, Irene and Tristan followed in his wake.

  This is going to be close …

  Hanging vertical in the ocean, the water had finally burst through enough levels of the Titan to drag the ship under. Clinging to the top of the crane, Drake and his friends climbed out onto the loose, swaying boom just as it swung over the edge of the Rig’s southern platform.

  As the ship fell the crane swung back, but not quick enough to avoid striking the roof of the platform with an earth-shattering bang.

  Drake, Irene, and Tristan were thrown forwards by the impact. The crane struck the Rig and the tiny figures clinging to it rolled with the collision and hit the helipad hard, just missing the blades of the Seahawk.

  Dazed by the crash, Drake struggled to move – his leg was caught and bleeding in the twisted steel of the ruined crane. As the cargo ship began its final descent below the waves, the crane groaned and began to shift, dragging back across the edge of the platform.

  Drake was pulled clear of the wreckage by Irene and Tristan before he could be dragged with it. They linked their hands under his arms and pulled him away. The crane dug a deep furrow in the helipad, tossing up concrete and tearing through the platform as the Titan drowned. Tens of thousands of gallons of foamy seawater was burnt to steam by the Crystal-X still aflame in the Titan’s heart, wreathing the great ship in a cloud of haze as the stern sank into the cold, dark waters of the Arctic Ocean, like the eastern platform before it.

  Breathing hard, having narrowly escaped death more times than he could count in the last ten minutes, Drake looked up at his friends, standing above him under a sky of burnt orange dawn, and burst out laughing. ‘Okay, whose idea was the cargo ship?’

  28

  Aftermath

  ‘Will, oh dear, your poor leg …’

  Irene had a nasty cut across her forehead and Tristan’s glasses had snapped in the fall, but they both seemed relatively unharmed by the narrow escape from the Titan. Drake glanced down at his leg and almost passed out.

  A sharp splint of white bone had broken through his shin, and strips of skin hung torn and bloody around the wound. His leg had been snapped in half. Blood gushed down his leg and soaked through his sock, pooling in his shoe and seeping on
to the helipad.

  He felt a numb sort of pain, like a dull ache. ‘Well, that’s a mess.’

  Drake concentrated on the break, focusing the energy he could feel coursing through his veins. The blue magic was harder to grab this time, but it was there, waiting. He sensed a dam of energy, just out of his grasp. But he had overdone it – too much too soon in the last half hour – and all he could do was wade in the shallows of his newfound power.

  Still, he concentrated, and luminescent smoke pooled around the broken bone, bright light pulsed through his leg, just under the skin. The strain was almost too much, and Drake faltered. The light dulled, the bone was still broken.

  Irene, her hands aglow, placed them just above and below the bone. A surge of fresh energy shuddered through Drake and he and his friends watched, amazed, as the bone disappeared back into his leg and the skin knitted itself back together.

  Tristan offered Drake his hand, and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Are my eyes still glowing?’ Drake asked his cellmate.

  ‘A little bit …’

  Irene gasped. ‘Where’s the eastern platform?’

  ‘Anderson decided he didn’t want it there any more.’ Drake stared at the broken pillars and twisted lower levels of steel and pipes, some of them aflame. The rest of the platform would have settled far below, amidst the glowing rock of the Crystal-X meteorite.

  ‘Did he now?’ Tristan peered over the edge, down into the depths which had claimed the Titan, and out to sea at the dozens of lifeboats bobbing together, thick with inmates, guards, technicians, and the Titan’s crew. Hundreds of people stared back at him. He waved. A few waved back. ‘Good work, Carl …’

  ‘Well, there goes our best chance of escape,’ Irene said. ‘We’re back on the Rig.’

  Drake took a few steps with Irene’s help. His leg still twinged when he put weight on it. ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ he said. ‘That boat was never the escape plan.’

  ‘No? Then what?’

  Drake stood under his own steam and closed his eyes. He rubbed his eyelids and, when he opened them, the ethereal sapphire-blue light was gone. ‘Follow me along the web,’ he said grimly.

  Drake strolled with purpose into Processing and through the corridors that led up to the control tower. The evacuation siren had stopped but the red emergency lights were still aglow and spinning, splashing the walls with blood. All the doors of the Rig had released, all access was in effect. He climbed the stairs up through Control and ran into no resistance.

  At the top of the tower, Drake found empty work-stations and the Rig’s monitoring systems flashing red and abandoned. Chairs had been toppled in the mad rush to evacuate, the floor scattered with paper and mugs of early morning coffee.

  ‘What are you looking for, Will?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Not what – who.’ Drake stepped across the tower and knocked twice, sharply, on the frosted glass of Warden Storm’s office door.

  ‘Come on in, Mr Drake,’ the man called.

  Irene and Tristan gasped.

  ‘He’s still here!’ Tristan grabbed Drake’s arm. ‘You can’t –’

  ‘Of course he’s still here.’ Drake could only muster a wintry smile as he opened the door. He was so tired, but they were only a few more strands on the web to follow. ‘This is his precious rig, as you told me yourself, didn’t you, Warden?’

  ‘Defiant to the last, hmm?’ Storm said, seated behind his large, opulent desk with his arms crossed. ‘Take a seat, Mr Drake.’

  ‘Will …’ Irene began.

  ‘Watch the door for me, will you? While I arrange our passage back to St. John’s. Maple syrup for lunch, just trust me.’ He took a seat in front of the warden’s desk with a weary sigh. ‘Good morning, Storm.’

  ‘This was you, wasn’t it?’ Storm snarled, and slammed his hand against the desk, sending a stack of paperwork to the floor. ‘All of this – the loss of the eastern platform, the Titan – was your doing.’

  ‘I played a part, yeah, but honestly, I think the Alliance had this coming.’

  The warden leaned back in his chair. His suit jacket fell open and Drake saw the man had a long, silver-barrelled revolver holstered at his waist. ‘The Alliance is sending rescue ships from the mainland as we speak.’

  ‘Everyone’s being evacuated, I take it?’

  ‘The Rig is no longer stable. She will not be housing any criminals for the foreseeable future.’ The warden sniffed. ‘But I doubt the Alliance will give up this venture so easily.’

  ‘You mean because of the Crystal-X?’

  Storm gasped. ‘How could you possibly …? No, you know what, son, it doesn’t surprise me that you know.’ His hand edged a touch closer to the gun at his waist. ‘Doesn’t surprise me one bit.’

  ‘How could you do what you do here?’ Drake asked. ‘Experimenting on the inmates, turning them into … driving them insane. If anyone deserves to be locked up, it’s you.’

  ‘Ha! You’ve no idea what we’re doing here, Drake, what advances the Alliance is making. The applications in medical science alone –’

  ‘Doctor Elias gave me the same speech, down in the Crystal-X facility only a few short hours ago. I didn’t buy it then, I won’t buy it now. So don’t give me that “greater good” crap, because it’s not worth it – not what I saw, and not ever!’ Drake found he was almost shouting. ‘You should have left the mineral at the bottom of the sea, because it’s not worth it if one person has to die.’

  ‘You –’

  ‘But more than one person has died, and not just tonight, haven’t they?’

  Drake held up his left hand and concentrated. He wasn’t sure the light would come – already his power felt like a dream, something impossible, but the energy was still there. Electric-blue fire erupted from his palm and enveloped his hand.

  Storm wheeled back in his chair with a cry of surprise, striking the cabinet behind him, and reached for the gun on his hip.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Drake whispered. ‘Take it out slowly and slide it across the desk.’

  The warden scowled and made no move for his gun.

  ‘Listen carefully, Storm. Because I’m done playing with you – play the man, remember? I absorbed enough Crystal-X on that cargo ship to send your precious Rig burning into the ocean. I could snap your neck as easily as snapping my fingers.’ He paused and bared his teeth. ‘Or as easily as you and Brand snapped poor Doctor Lambros’. Oh yes, I know about that.’

  Drake fired a bolt of electric-blue energy, a cord of hard-light, over the warden’s head. The bolt smashed through his medals and commendations from the Air Force and left a hole the size of a football in the wall. A cool, salty morning breeze blew in through the warden’s new window.

  Storm did as he was told and handed over the gun. He kept his face carefully composed. ‘What do you want, Drake?’

  A slow, careful smile spread across Drake’s face as he slipped the revolver into his pocket. ‘Two things. One, you’re going to help me and my friends escape this godforsaken prison. You’re going to fly us out of here.’ He nodded to the flaming wall and the framed picture of Storm piloting choppers in Afghanistan, hanging askew and burning.

  The warden clenched his fists. ‘And your other demand?’

  ‘Give me all the soda you’ve got in that fridge.’

  29

  Storm Front

  Only an hour later, as dawn took a proper hold on the morning, Officer Stein – the last guard alive who had known about Crystal-X – escorted Drake, Irene and Tristan to the helipad on the southern platform.

  Stein led the way with Drake behind her. He held the warden’s revolver in his left hand, partially raised, and his right shone with ethereal light, energy ready to be summoned with a single thought. The revolver felt more reassuring – Drake wasn’t sure just how much longer he could hold onto the power.

  Warden Storm was waiting for them, already in the chopper and starting up the engines. He gave a curt nod and threw his thumb over his
shoulder, gesturing for them to board.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you lot again,’ Stein spat. Her hand twitched towards the baton at her waist.

  Tristan and Irene laughed. Drake gave her a long, hard stare and was last to step up into the passenger hold of the Seahawk. The blades started spinning and the wind forced Stein back off the helipad.

  As Storm took off and headed out over the open water, Drake stood in the hold with Tristan and Irene at either side, one hand holding the rail above his head, and watched the Rig fade over the horizon. The collection of tiny lifeboats, full of tiny people, watched the helicopter depart. He recalled his first glimpse of the Rig from the hold of this chopper six months ago, and thinking that the interconnected, diamond-shaped platforms had resembled a giant, dilapidated demon of smoke and steel.

  He had found demons here, that much was certain, and nightmares enough to last a lifetime. Murder, treachery and greed. As if his friends had heard his thoughts, Irene slipped her arms around his chest in a gentle embrace, and Tristan clapped him on the shoulder. The Rig, a living monstrosity, had not been able to crush all the good from the world.

  Demons, most definitely, but also angels.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Drake said, and turned away from the blinking lights. He handed the revolver to Irene. ‘Hold this for me, would you.’

  Irene seemed surprised by the weight of the thing and quickly handed it to Tristan. The small, scrawny boy – and one of Drake’s only two friends in the world – held the gun at arm’s length and pointed it at the floor, swallowing hard.

  Drake sighed. He had been awake for over twenty-four hours – beaten, broken, shot and burned – and there were miles to go before he could sleep. He retrieved the warden’s last bottle of soda from his pocket, twisted the cap off and sat down to enjoy a well-earned rest.

  Two hours later they flew into a storm, heading towards the west and away from the daylight in the east, outpacing the dawn. He looked out to sea, at the course ahead. Vast, mighty storm clouds obscured the sky, and not five minutes later freezing rain, thunder and lightning threw the chopper around. Warden Storm, flying true to his name, persevered.