The Rig (4 page)

Greg and Neil – Drake didn't know which was which – smirked and crossed their arms. Mario sighed. ‘Tommy wouldn't like that, buddy. No, sir, not one bit. He once forced me down this very pipe and locked me in the dark for an hour because I refused.'

Outnumbered and alone, Drake sighed and stepped into the pipe. He dragged the hose in behind him and, after seeing no other way, got down on his hands and knees and headed left down the narrow tunnel into darkness and filth. He flicked the torch to life on top of his hose to guide the way.

Crawling through the pipe, Drake slipped and slid on what could have been grease and a decade of dirt, but he smelt the real mess before he saw it. An unholy stink of rotten fish, of refuse, and worse. Drake gagged into his collar. The stench forced tears from his eyes. He heard laughter from the crew behind him and kept crawling forwards with the pressure hose nestled under his arm.

The space narrowed and Drake, never claustrophobic in his life, felt the weight of a thousand tons of steel pressing down on him from above. He took a moment to reflect on just what his life had become, crawling through the bowels of a floating prison hundreds of miles from civilisation and home.
I'll escape from here. Whatever it takes, I'll escape.

The light at the end of the hose showed the pipe curving down and to the right just ahead, but the space also widened to twice its current size. Drake pressed on and managed to crawl up and onto his knees, keeping his head low. At the bottom of the pipe was the blockage – a mess of brown sludge congealed against a rusted grate that led God knows where.

‘Nice …' Even through the mask, he could taste nothing but foul air. The larger pipe extended on past the grate, and down to the left. A small circle of light could be seen in the distance down that way. Curious, Drake made to head towards the light, but a voice from behind made him pause.

‘Yeah, that's the block,' Mario said, his voice muffled by his mask. Sludge and grime clung to his hair and clothes. Drake supposed he looked the same himself. ‘So what's taking so long? Fire the hose and let's get out of this muck.'

‘What's down that way?' Drake asked. He pointed the hose at the blockage and flipped the lever on the nozzle. A rumble of bubbling water caused the hose to whip like a snake in his hands, but he held strong.

‘Overflow,' Mario said. ‘Only if it's really bad do we end up down there, like after a storm or something.'

Water burst from the hose in a high-pressure stream that blasted away the blockage. Mario helped guide the hose up and down in a wide sweeping motion, forcing the congealed muck through the grate. In no time at all, the way was clear.

‘Good enough job,' Mario said, and slapped Drake on the shoulder. ‘Come on – we got about ten more pipes to go down here. Then the seawater pipes two floors up need scrubbing and greasing.'

Great
, Drake thought. His gaze lingered on that circle of light down the overflow pipe for a moment, then he turned and followed Mario back the way they had come.

The next four hours dragged by in a haze of crawling, gagging and hosing. Mario stayed with Drake for the next few pipes, just to make sure he understood how to spray water at a blockage, then disappeared off to the ‘cleaner' pipes with the rest of the crew. Despite his best efforts, Drake was covered from head to toe in some of the worst grime the Rig had to offer. He was thankful for the gloves, the goggles and the mask, if nothing else.

At
1745
, according to his tracker, Tommy ordered the hoses shut down and spooled away. He was spotless after the day's work, and the grin he gave Drake as he pulled himself out of the last pipe made Drake want to punch his teeth in. But he was too tired, too dirty and too rundown for that.

After the climb back up the eastern platform, Drake followed the crew to a table near the corridor that led to the centre platform. Sets of clean green jumpsuits, socks, and shoes – and a towel – were stacked on the table. Drake collected a set and spent the next twenty minutes before dinner blasting himself under the hot water in an identical washroom to the one he'd used that morning. He emerged with the smell and taste of Tubes still clinging to the back of his throat, but he felt better. Sore, but better.

Beep!

Dinner: 1830–1930

Drake said little to Tristan at dinner that night, sitting at the same table as they had at lunch, mechanically shovelling food into his mouth one bite at a time. Tristan gave him a sympathetic look and concentrated on his own meal. Close to seven-thirty and the dozens of trackers across the cafeteria beeped as one, updating the inmates yet again. Drake glanced at the screen. He was fast learning to hate the high-tech shackle.

Free time: 1930–2130

‘So what do we do with our free time, Tristan?'

‘I usually just read in my room, but there is a common area on the far side of our platform. Some TV, board games, table soccer and snooker. A small library with a collection of old rigball games.' He tapped his tracker. ‘Vending machines, too. You can swipe your credits for candy, or juice. Or delicious Alliance-brand potato chips.'

‘I don't think I'm good for credits.' After a day on the Rig, Drake owed the Alliance
$-259
. ‘Any fizzy drinks in those vending machines?'

Tristan shook his head. ‘The Alliance doesn't manufacture soda, so we don't get it.'

Drake pushed his tray away and leaned back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two guards, a man and a woman without face masks, walking down between the tables towards him.

‘You're Drake, right?' the woman said. She held a black tablet computer about the size of a passport. The Alliance Systems silver crown was emblazoned on the back. Even beneath her armour, Drake could see that her body was thick with cords of muscle. Below her blonde hairline she had lines across her forehead that gave her a permanent scowl. ‘Need to sort you a bunk in one of the cells. Let's have a look at what's free. Anywhere in particular you want him, Hall?'

Officer Hall, who had slapped Drake's tracker on him the night before, shrugged. ‘Bit of a troublemaker, this one, but he's going nowhere unless he cuts his hand off.' Hall snorted.

‘I've got a spare bunk in thirty-six C, Officer Hall,' Tristan said. ‘Ever since Anderson got sick and was sent back to the mainland.'

Hall smiled grimly. ‘Sure. Why not? Let's put the two special cases together, Stein.'

He took the tablet from Stein, pressed the screen a few times, and reached for the blue card among the coloured set on the chain around his neck. Drake raised his tracker. The device made that familiar beep as the card was swiped across the display.

‘All sorted. Thirty-six C, Drake. You'll find a towel, toothbrush and other toiletries under the sink. Lights out is nine-thirty on the dot. Your new penthouse suite will automatically lock at that time. Be in bed by then, or I will personally stick my foot up your ass and fine you fifty credits. Clear?'

‘Crystal.'

Hall gave him a funny look, like he'd made a joke, and shook his head, muttering to himself as he moved away with Stein.

‘Why'd he call you a special case?' Drake asked, once they were gone.

‘Don't worry about it.' Tristan waved the question away. ‘I heard all about you at work today, though. You're kind of famous around here. Made the news and everything during your last escape. Did you really use a laundry cart at Cedarwood?'

‘No, no. I lassoed some reindeer and flew a magic sleigh to freedom.'

‘How'd you get out of Harronway?'

‘Front door was unlocked.'

‘No, really?'

Drake tilted his head and offered Tristan a sly grin. ‘Don't worry about it.'

‘I guess that's fair. So, want to go to the common room, then? Have a look round?'

Drake thought about it. He needed to know as much as he could about the Rig, all its many ins and outs, if he was going to have any hope of escape. But he was knackered. The day had been long and tomorrow would be just the same.

He shook his head. ‘No, if it's all the same to you, can you show me where to find my bed?'

Tristan grinned. ‘Sure thing, roomie.'

‘Don't call me that.'

Drake led the way to the western platform, confident in at least that much after his first day on the Rig. Back in the multi-tiered cellblock, overlooking the exercise area, Tristan took the lead down to the third floor and across the right side of even-numbered cells. A few other boys were about – Mario gave Drake a smirk and a high-five on his way past – but the cellblock was mostly empty.

‘Your home away from home,' Tristan said. A plaque on the white-plaster wall read:
36C
. ‘I've been using the bottom bunk. My last cellmate, Carl Anderson, had the top, but he got sick and sent back to civilisation.'

‘Sick?'

Tristan tapped his forehead. ‘In here. Starting waking up in the middle of the night, screaming about monsters.' He grimaced. ‘It … wasn't pleasant.'

Drake stepped into his cell. He'd caught a quick glimpse earlier in the day, before lessons. The Rig's accommodation was small but clean.
Better than some
, Drake thought. The cells were narrow, painted white. A set of bunk beds were bolted to the left wall, and a toilet-sink combination to the right. The door made up most of the third wall and the fourth was a barred window of thick glass, overlooking the turbulent sea.

‘Do you think it was the air up on the top bunk drove him mad?' he asked.

Tristan shrugged. ‘As you can see, it's not much. Lovely views of endless ocean while you take care of business, though. There's a curtain for privacy, and some drawers under the sink there, if you buy a book or something with your credits.'

With the grand tour over, Tristan left him to it, slipping into his bunk and picking up a magazine that lay on his pillow. Drake's body ached from the day's work, so much so that he could barely face the climb up the short ladder to his bunk.
Just get it over with
.

He washed his face under the cool water from the sink and noticed a whole bunch of dead bees against the bottom of the window.
What are bees doing all the way out here?

Too tired to give it much thought, Drake kicked off his shoes and climbed up into bed. With not so much as a goodnight to the boy in the bunk below, Drake was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

7

The Titan

The next day followed much the same pattern as the first, as did the day after that and the week that followed.

Drake learnt within a week that life on the Rig was bound solely and always to the rigid device strapped to his wrist. He couldn't step more than half a metre outside of a designated area, at any time of the day, without the tracker buzzing and flashing red, imposing a five-credit fine for every offence.

‘You going for the record, or something?' Tristan asked one night, catching a glimpse of the display as he brushed his teeth before bed. As Drake clocked his first week on the Rig, his credits stood at
$-437
. That included the hundred or so he'd actually
earned
working in Tubes.

Still, Drake continued to push his limit, looking for blind spots or holes in the security net. In his not unimpressive experience, any prison was like a block of Swiss cheese – it stank and was full of holes. Ten days into his five-year sentence, it grated on Drake that he had yet to find even one flaw in Warden Storm's design. While it only took a distance of half a metre outside the designated area on the centre platform to set the tracker off, that net could be pushed to three metres on the eastern platform, during his work in Tubes. He guessed that was due to the fact that the work area was quite large – it had to be, some of the pipes were pretty long – and the GPS net was a shade more lenient.

He had realised on his fourth night that he could, technically, be locked out of his cell at night, but only at a distance of half a metre from the door to 36C. Any further would set the alarm buzzing.

Whether a blessing or not, Drake did not have another encounter with Alan Grey and his gang of meatheads following the fight on day one. He saw the thugs briefly, from across the cafeteria, Sunday night at dinner – roast beef, a rare treat. The rest of the time found Grey and his followers, at least to Drake, conspicuously absent.

‘Advanced lessons,' Tristan said, when asked where they'd gone. ‘I don't know much about it. They were picked by Warden Storm.'

Drake's small, bespectacled cellmate had fast become one of his main sources of information concerning the workings of the Rig and its people.

He met with Doctor Lambros eleven days after arriving on the Rig, the first time he had seen her since she stitched his hand. Drake had picked those stitches out on his eighth night, the wound all but healed. He thanked her again and she offered him some gummi sweets, which he accepted with a grin.

‘I see you've managed to avoid hitting anyone.' Doctor Lambros beamed. ‘This is good, Will. I'm glad you seem to be fitting in here.' She glanced at a report on her desk. ‘Although you seem to be testing the boundaries of your tracker quite often. Sinking into quite a bit of debt, aren't you?'

‘Alliance credits just aren't worth that much to me,' he admitted. Although he knew better, Drake found himself liking this small woman more and more.

‘You do know you need a positive balance of at least two hundred credits at the end of your time here before you'll be released, right?'

Drake frowned. ‘No, I didn't know that.'

‘The Rig isn't like those old, rundown government or state facilities, Will. The Alliance, rightfully, expects you to work, to build your character and gain responsibility, and once your time is up, pay your way back to St. John's.'

Drake's liking for the good doctor varied, depending on his mood.

Of Warden Storm Drake saw nothing. The man, as far as he could tell, did not deign to lower himself into the cellblock or the centre platform at meal times. When Drake thought of him, he imagined the warden growing fat at the heart of the control tower, watching the cameras and laughing at Drake's growing frustration with the tracker.

Although he had to admit, if he'd been leashed like this at Harronway – maybe even Trennimax – escape would have been damn near impossible. The tracker would not have made much difference at Cedarwood, as his escape there had been at breakneck speed down Kleine Scheidegg to Grindelwald. Drake still had nightmares about that rickety laundry cart swerving at sixty miles an hour down the snow-covered tracks.

The devil's own luck
, he thought.

His count of the guards had settled between twenty-five and thirty active officers on the Rig at any one time. The face masks still made it impossible to be certain, so Drake had taken to watching how the guards held their weapons, how they walked, whether the stunning baton was hung for their left or right hand. The fact that they all carried semi-automatic rifles,
all the time
, still made Drake nervous. He'd never known prison guards stationed among the general population of inmates to be so heavily armed. They reminded him more of soldiers than guards.

Well, Brand is a soldier.

All it would take was one inmate, or a group working together, to tackle a guard and swipe his weapon. Then what? Drake didn't want to think on it, but given his current situation, he found it hard to think of much else whenever he saw a guard.

On his twelfth day on the Rig, Drake learnt of something that sent the escape gears in his head spinning. The helicopter wasn't the only transport that came to the Rig. After lunch that day, the Tubes crew were granted a small reprieve from their mucky work – for ninety minutes during the four-hour work period, at least. The hose refuelling the Seahawk had ruptured on the helipad and the crew was sent in to mop up the spill.

‘Well, what's all this, then?' Drake asked Mario as they stepped out of Processing, in the shadow of the control tower, on the southern platform.

‘All what?' Mario, while not overly friendly when Tommy was around, still spared Drake a bit of hassle.

‘That ship.'

‘Eh?'

‘That massive bloody ship over there!'

Drake pointed to what was perhaps the largest vessel he had ever seen up close. A massive cargo ship about the length of a football field, burnt orange under the sun, bearing the silver-crowned crest of Alliance Systems along its hull. Large, white letters below the crest identified the ship as the
TITAN
.

‘Oh yeah, that shows up every two weeks or so. Drops off food and supplies, I guess.' Mario rubbed the back of his neck, blinking in the sun. He was more at home in a dark, dank pipe than in the world above. ‘What, you think we just throw a line off the Rig's edge and catch dinner every night? For a smart guy, Drake, you're not that smart.'

‘Keep it up and I'll lock you in the crap pipe, Mario.'

Mario snorted and flipped Drake off.

Dozens of workers swarmed across the
Titan
's deck, removing straps from piles of crates and containers stacked ten metres high. A large yellow crane built into the stern of the ship descended to collect the cargo and swing it up and around onto the Rig, where Warden Storm, Brand and a group of twelve guards accepted delivery. The crane also collected a bunch of small shipping containers, resting on sleek hydraulic forklifts, and loaded them aboard the ship. Brand ensured each container was firmly attached before the crane took it away.

Working under the sun for a change was invigorating, especially out in the open air. The weather was chilly, and storm clouds threatened the horizon, but Drake rolled up his sleeves and got to work with the rest of the crew cleaning up the fuel spill.

Officers Hall and Stein monitored the crew and directed the clean-up. Drake threw down sawdust on the helipad while Mario and Greg scrubbed with heavy, wire-bristled brushes. Tommy and his lads scooped up the gooey, fuel-soaked dust into waiting barrels, as the large crane on the ship offloaded more Alliance-stamped crates.

Drake kept an eye on the
Titan
as much as he could without arousing suspicion. He watched the
Titan
for close to an hour. Near the end of the clean-up, large panels swung open at sea level in the ship's hull and a fleet of three matte-black speedboats emerged from within the behemoth.

Each smaller boat was manned by a crew of men who drove in circles around the mighty ship, churning up the dark water.
Inspecting for damage?
Drake wondered. The boats then vanished under the Rig, but Drake could hear the motors whirring below.

Soon the unexpected break from Tubes was over, and with two hours left of the work day, Drake found himself knee-deep in muck on the eastern platform before dinner. At least Mario had some good news at the end of the shift. Tubes crews operated on each platform, with the eastern being the worst, and rotated every two weeks. Tommy's crew switched to the western platform the next day, the boys' platform, working below the exercise area. The female inmates took care of the northern and centre, while the southern point of the diamond apparently didn't need workers.

Restless and unable to sleep in his bunk that night, Drake heard the crane on the
Titan
swinging through the night. When dawn broke, he watched the mighty ship sail away, her cargo hold stuffed with whatever Storm and Brand had loaded onboard. Drake watched until the ship had become a small dot on the broad horizon.

As the patterns of daily life became routine, Drake allowed himself to loosen up. He began to think the fight with Grey forgotten, the guards, while certainly armed, more like the soft touches in his other prisons, and the Rig as someplace familiar. Two and a half weeks to the day since he arrived on the diamond-shaped platform, Drake was reminded just how far from normal things were.

‘I mean you don't care, do you?' Tristan asked, standing next to Drake on one of the treadmills in the exercise area. Tristan walked at a steady place. Drake was running his eighth mile, burning through pent-up energy and daydreaming about Flanders Road football fields back home.

‘Not really, no.' He had been on the Rig for eighteen days, and made little to no progress on his escape. Noting guard counts, shift patterns, supply runs and the Rig's layout was all good and well, but he felt like a hamster in an exercise wheel – running nowhere fast.

‘You're negative nearly six hundred credits now.'

‘What are they gonna do?' Drake asked, between deep breaths. ‘Send me to jail?'

‘You need credits to get off, you know, at the end of the five years.'

Drake snorted. He liked Tristan, but the kid could be grating sometimes. Drake thought himself, at fifteen, older and wiser than his cellmate, but had learnt the other night that Tristan was nearly seventeen. His size and demeanour made him seem a lot younger.

‘When I go it won't be on their terms, mate.'

‘Oh yeah, the escape. How's that working out for ya?'

‘Swam halfway to the mainland last night before a cramp forced me to turn back.'

‘So that wasn't you snoring above me at two in the morning, then?'

Breathing hard, Drake slammed his fist on the treadmill's cool-down mode and began a slow jog. ‘A clever decoy made of
papier
-
mâché
and toothpaste.'

‘Genius. How'd they ever catch you after your last escapes?'

Drake sighed. ‘They knew which way I'd run …'

‘Oh no. Look who's back.' Tristan nodded towards the stairs behind Drake.

Drake stopped the treadmill and wiped the sweat from his face with a handtowel. He glanced over and cursed. Alan Grey, Mohawk, and his gang of toughs were descending into the exercise area. Officer Brand walked behind them and leaned casually against the handrail at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Advanced lessons, wasn't it?' Drake said. His breathing was returning to normal after the run. ‘Gone for two weeks. Doesn't that seem odd to you?'

Tristan shrugged. ‘I try and stay off their radar. You should, too, given what happened last time.'

Drake thought about wandering over and asking Grey just where he'd been, but Tristan was right. He'd likely get his head caved in. Last time he'd caught Grey and his gang unawares – they'd underestimated him – this time they'd swarm him and tear him apart. That's what Drake would've done, if their roles were reversed.

‘Right.'

Drake spent the next quarter hour doing a few sets of curls with the free weights. He could feel Grey's eyes on him, from time to time. At
1000
his tracker beeped and advised of lessons for the next two hours. Drake was up to lesson fifty in the maths department, and found the problems had failed to get any harder. He spent most of the time in class organising what he knew of the Rig in his head.

‘Come on, then,' Tristan said.

Drake threw his towel over his shoulder and, feeling good after the workout, followed Tristan over to the stairs out of the exercise area. Brand still leaned on guard against the railing, facing away from them and chatting into his radio.

Drake felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, an innate sense of danger, and turned just as Grey moved in on him. The large, pig-faced bully held a long, sharp knife in his fist. The knife shone a bright white, as if it were ablaze.
What?
Drake's mind registered the strange weapon just after his instincts kicked in.

Grey struck at him with the glowing knife in a vicious lunge. Drake swung his left arm up to deflect the strike. The knife caught on his sleeve and cut through his skin as if it were tissue paper.

‘
Ah!
'

Sizzling pain burnt down his arm and a spray of blood spattered the rubber matting of the exercise area. Grey snarled and advanced on him.

‘Should've just taken your beating,' he spat.

Drake pushed back on Grey's shoulders and the knife swung between them, cutting his green jumpsuit open across his stomach and missing his flesh by the width of a playing card.

Grey swatted him away and Drake stumbled back. Only a handful of seconds had passed since the attack began. Drake saw Tristan, out of the corner of his eye. His cellmate reached over and swiped the baton hanging loose in its holster around Brand's waist. The guard spun with a cry and reached for Tristan, but the little lad was too quick.