The Rig (3 page)

‘Officer Brand tells me you hurt your hand in an altercation in the exercise area this morning. What caused the fight, Will?'

Drake sat up a little straighter in the chair. ‘Oh, you know, an overabundance of world-class rehabilitation.'

Doctor Lambros laughed. ‘We'll work on that attitude in the weeks to come. Do you know I can make recommendations to the Alliance about sentence reduction if you show signs of improvement?'

‘I didn't know that, but I don't think the Alliance likes me that much.'

‘Fighting, however, is not a sign of improvement.'

Drake frowned. ‘I didn't start the fight. One of the idiots I flew in with wanted a little payback, is all.'

‘Payback for what?'

‘I … smacked him last night.'

Doctor Lambros sighed. ‘I see.'

Drake rubbed the back of his hand and felt he had disappointed the woman across the desk. He had only known her for a quarter of an hour, but he liked her, and so said nothing to fill the silence.

Doctor Lambros tapped a manila folder resting on her desk, next to the computer. ‘I read your file –'

‘I thought as much.'

‘– and there are several notes in there about other altercations. A particularly disturbing note about an incident in Cedarwood, in which one of the boys lost his life.'

A memory of a cold morning in the facility high up in the Alps, Cedarwood, flashed through his mind. He saw the smoke and the flames, and heard the screams. One of many flawed escape attempts. He pushed those thoughts away. ‘Am I supposed to just let them hit me, then?'

Doctor Lambros raised her palms towards the ceiling. ‘No, but a little forethought could avoid such incidents altogether. I know you're a smart boy, Will, and yet you find yourself here – looking at five years before you'll even see land again.'

Drake scowled. ‘I won't be here that long.'

‘Ah, yes. Your tendency towards escape, but I'm afraid there is no way off the Rig.' She tapped a fountain pen against the edge of her desk. ‘How did you escape Harronway, incidentally?'

‘I walked out the front door.'

‘No, you didn't. You couldn't have. Tell me, do you think you deserve to be here?'

‘No.'

‘Really?' Doctor Lambros smiled again. Drake wasn't so sure he liked her any more. ‘You were sentenced eighteen months ago in London for aggravated assault and a string of other offences. Theft and arson, to name just two. Those aren't light offences, Will, no matter your age.'

‘If I hadn't done what I did then my mum would've died.'

Drake thought back to that day in London – his sentencing. His mother had been too sick to attend. The judge had barely looked at him before sending him to juvenile detention for two years. From there he had disappeared into the Alliance Systems network, pulled from his hometown, his school and friends, and sent to Trennimax in France, then Cedarwood in the Alps, and then Harronway in Ireland after that. A busy year, all things said and done.

Drake ran a hand back over his head. He'd always kept his dark hair short, but on the run in Ireland two weeks ago he'd shaved it clean off, to mask his appearance.
I'll need to be cleverer next time
, he thought.
Because time is running out.

Doctor Lambros tapped her pen against her knee. ‘Yes, you lived with your mother in London, correct? It says here your parents are separated. Not a lot of info on your family life. Father is African-American, mother origin-ally from Poland. No siblings.'

‘And I haven't seen much of dear old dad in a decade,' Drake muttered.

‘You didn't see another choice, did you? When you committed your crimes. But what you did hurt a lot of people and caused a lot of damage. You need help, Will, and we can provide that here. Put you to work, to counselling, and keep you busy. You'll know a trade by the time you leave us.'

Drake said nothing and let out a long, slow breath.

‘Well, it has been nice meeting you, at any rate.' Doctor Lambros stood. ‘I don't want to have to repair you again, you hear? We'll speak again next week, once you're more settled – and once you've seen that there really is no way off the Rig. Try and put all thoughts of escape out of your mind, okay? Promise me now?'

‘I promise,' Drake lied.

Doctor Lambros walked him over to the door and opened it. Brand leaned casually against the wall of the corridor. ‘He any trouble, Doc?'

‘Not one bit,' she said.

For the first time since meeting her, Drake saw Doctor Lambros lose her smile. She crossed her arms under her breasts and stared at Brand with an expression that, while not hostile, was not friendly. Drake suspected the good doctor did not care for Officer Marcus Brand.

‘Good at escaping, this one,' Brand said. Drake thought he was enjoying the doctor's discomfort. He slapped Drake on the shoulder and pulled him out into the hallway. ‘Not so good at running.'

‘Take care, Will. I will see you soon.'

Doctor Lambros disappeared back into her office and Brand shoved Drake forwards a step. ‘Come on, lad. Back to school.'

6

Tubes

Drake spent the next hour or so tapping away at the touch-screen computer in the classroom. He couldn't move on to the next lesson without completing the first, but they didn't seem to get progressively harder. He wondered if the majority of the other inmates actually found the lessons at all challenging. Tristan certainly didn't, as he scribbled his answers on lined paper. All in all he found it a monumental waste of time – but what else, at this point, did he have but time to waste?

At
1215
, according to his tracker, the device beeped and displayed a new message:

Lunch: 1230–1330

Drake's stomach grumbled at the thought of food. Soggy cereal had been all he'd eaten today, and after the poor night's sleep and the fight in the exercise area, he was running on fumes and heading towards empty. After less than twenty-four hours on the Rig, it seemed that keeping his strength up would be vital for survival and, once he knew how, escape.

Sticking with Tristan, as the scrawny kid was proving useful in finding his way around and filling in the gaps in his knowledge, he followed the rest of the inmates back down into the western platform. From there it was a jaunt across to a series of walkways stretching back around the outer rim of the platform. Drake hadn't been this way before, but once they were out over the ocean again, he realised they were heading for the centre platform.

‘Lunch is served in the core, huh?'

Tristan nodded. ‘Yeah. There's a large cafeteria, split right down the middle with the girls from the northern platform.'

‘We eat with the girls?' Drake raised an eyebrow. ‘That doesn't seem too clever, given some of the blokes in here.'

‘Well, not with them, technically. There's a fence keeping us separate, but you could talk to them, I suppose.'

‘I take it you never have.'

Tristan ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. ‘What have I got to say?' he muttered.

The cafeteria was another of those large open spaces in the centre of its platform, much like the exercise area. Drake could smell frying food before he saw the place. Two guards manned the entrance and Drake tried to work out if he'd seen them before or if they were new. Unfortunately, the uniforms were all
uniform
, and the face masks made it impossible to tell them apart. He tentatively put his guard count at fifteen, probably more.

Are they all ex-members of Crystal Force? Like Brand?

Stepping into the cafeteria, Drake found it to be much like Tristan's description. Rows of tables were bolted to the floor and the space – like the washroom – was very clean. Beneath the scents of lunch was the tang of chemical cleaner. The kitchen was away to the left of the entrance, built along the entire far wall and through into the other half of the cafeteria, which separated the girls from the boys through use of a chain-link fence.

His tracker beeped as he crossed the precipice and the credit count changed again.
$-254 AC.

‘Four bucks for lunch then.'

‘As soon as you walk in, yeah. Holidays are coming up soon,' Tristan said, with an honest grin. ‘The price doubles but we get proper pudding and roast potatoes.'

All of the inmates were lining up, a sea of green against the silver countertops holding stacks of general lunch fare, waiting to be served. The staff behind the counter were inmates themselves, being monitored by two guards at either end of the bench.

Drake and Tristan fell into line and grabbed trays that held a plate and cutlery made of some thick plastic that would be next to impossible to snap. As they shuffled forwards in the line, Drake got to see what was on offer. The fried food he had smelt was hot chips, with a fair helping of tomato sauce. The kitchen workers spooned a dollop of mixed vegetables, mashed together, and what looked like lentil soup in a plastic bowl onto their plates. The last worker in line placed a banana and an apple to the side of the tray.

As they reached the far end of the counter, plates full, Drake had his first glimpse of the female population of the Rig. They were lining up much like the boys, dressed in red jumpsuits instead of the green. The barrier separating the two halves of the cafeteria kept them physically apart, but groups of boys and girls were chatting quite happily at the tables either side of the barrier, as if it didn't exist.

‘Can we just sit anywhere?' Drake asked.

‘Best avoid some of the tables near the back by the fence. Grey and his gang usually hang around there. I sit on my own, mostly, in the middle over here.'

Tristan moved away as if he didn't care if Drake followed or not.
Most likely doesn't
.

‘Hey, Drake, right? Drake?' Drake looked over his shoulder and saw Strawberry Blonde sitting just on the other side of the divide. She offered him a nervous smile. ‘Thanks for what you did last night. Smacking that guy. He was a jerk.'

Her eyes were still puffy, but she was sitting at a table with three other girls. One of them, her red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail above sharp green eyes, gave him a wink.

‘Don't worry about it,' Drake said.

‘Oh, okay. What happened to your nose?'

‘Ran into a wall.'

The other girls giggled, but the one with the red – or more like auburn – hair gave him a knowing smile and returned to her lunch.

Not knowing anyone else – anyone friendly or at least indifferent – Drake sat with Tristan in the middle of the cafeteria and they ate their lunch in silence. He kept his head down and eyes alert for any sign of Grey, but the pack leader was nowhere to be seen. Still, Drake didn't let himself relax. There would be a reckoning for what had happened that morning. Doctor Lambros may have been a qualified psychologist, but Drake thought that expecting the inmates not to fight was like jumping into the ocean and expecting not to get wet. More than a touch naive. He and Grey, and that punk Mohawk, were not done with each other yet.

‘This isn't half bad, actually,' Drake said, scraping the last of his lentil soup from the bottom of the bowl.

‘Pretty bland, don't you think?'

‘Maybe, but you're probably just used to all this fine cuisine. I was eating scraps while on the run. What's dinner like?'

‘Much the same – more vegetables, and every other night is beef or chicken, with fish in between.' Tristan waved his tracker through the air. ‘Costs five credits.'

Drake nodded. In the heart of the centre platform there were no windows overlooking the ocean, but he imagined there were plenty of fish around nevertheless.

‘So work after lunch, you said?'

Tristan took a bite of his apple. ‘That's right. Sucks you're in Tubes.'

‘How bad could it be?'

Tristan made a face as if the apple were rotten. ‘Crawling around in the dark, through the muck the Rig sucks up, clearing out pipes and vents. It's usually a punishment detail. Did you insult Warden Storm, or something?'

‘I told him I wouldn't be staying here long. Gonna swim back to Newfoundland.'

Tristan laughed. ‘Going to escape, then?'

‘Thinking about it, yeah.'

‘Aren't we all. You do know we're in the middle of the ocean, right? The temperature of the water alone would probably kill you, never mind the swim.'

Drake shoved his tray aside. He had devoured everything, even the core of the apple. ‘Well, it's a work in progress.'

‘Best of luck to you then, Drake,' Tristan snorted. ‘You're going to need it.'

‘So what's your job, then?'

‘Ah, I'm on a pretty good thing there. I just do the laundry. Bottom of this platform, just below the staff quarters.' He showed Drake his hands. The skin around his fingernails was dry and flaky. ‘Although the detergent does mess with my skin.'

‘Sounds better than Tubes …' Drake muttered.

At
1330
his tracker beeped yet again and the message on the five-centimetre screen changed.

Work: 1400–1800

Assignment: Tubes, Eastern Platform

‘Eastern platform,' Drake said. ‘How do I get there?'

Tristan groaned. ‘Oh, man, they must really hate you.'

‘What? Why?'

‘I've never done it myself, but I've heard a few stories from the others … Eastern Tubes is not only the sea pipes, the old crude pipes, but the Rig's … sewerage.'

Drake looked down at his tracker, and back up at Tristan. ‘How lovely.'

Tristan pointed out a group of inmates heading out of the lunch hall. ‘That lot are working Tubes. See their slumped shoulders, the constant scowl? Follow them and you'll find your way.'

‘Right.'

Resigning himself to the task ahead, Drake took off after the boys Tristan had pointed out. He fell in with the back of the group, moving through another of those clear plastic corridors built over the water. This one connected the centre platform to the eastern. A slight breeze knocked the corridor, making it sway back and forth a little. Drake, at first alarmed, relaxed when the movement didn't seem to bother anyone else.

One of the older lads, his face covered in a scraggly beard, eyed Drake up and down. ‘You workin' Tubes or what?' he asked. His accent was a thick drawl, hard to place, and his dark skin put him from perhaps somewhere in the Middle East.

‘Yeah,' Drake replied.

Beard's eyes lit up. ‘Oh look out, lads, we got a fresher. Looks like you're not cleaning crap pipes today, Mario.'

A tiny, olive-skinned boy at the heart of the pack glanced at Drake and punched the air. ‘Ha! Thanks, Tommy.'

‘What are you talking about?' Drake asked.

The guy with the beard, Tommy, pressed his fingers into Drake's chest. ‘Freshers start at the bottom in Tubes.' He gave a great, bellowing guffaw. ‘And when I say bottom, I mean bottom!'

The other five lads, and Mario, laughed. Drake recognised Tommy as the leader of this little cadre. ‘If it's all the same to you, mate –'

‘It is all the same to me,
mate,
so you can bugger off if you think it's going to be any other way.'

‘I –'

‘Unless the next words out of your bleedin' mouth are “Thank you, Tommy”, we'll beat seven shades of snot out of you once we're inside. Guards don't come down the back of Tubes. Offends their sensibilities, it does.'

Drake gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. He said nothing as they stepped onto the eastern platform through a set of guarded steel doors. Tommy took his silence for agreement and proceeded to put little Mario in a headlock and rub his hair with his fist.

‘Ger'off, Tom!' Mario cried, as the rest of the crew egged him on.

‘Knock it off!' a guard barked.

Drake followed the Tubes crew down through the eastern platform. The first thing he noticed about this side of the Rig was that the upper levels were all open and exposed. The metal walkways and machinery that must have been used when the Rig was drilling for oil were all still in place. The eastern platform had not been altered into prisoner housing, or offices, or eating areas. It was as-built, as much as Drake could tell. He was no expert on oil rigs, but this – not what he'd seen so far – was how he expected them to look.

The wind was chilly and as the crew moved down the platform towards the water, ocean spray stung Drake in the face. They headed deeper into the platform, away from the edge and the spray, and the network of old drill equipment and machinery, some of which hummed softly, or rattled noisily on old motors. Drake pondered a set of old, rusted steel doors – locked with a shiny new chain – before they descended undercover into the eastern platform's interior. The crew entered a building that thrummed and groaned with great gusts of air and the sound of water churning through a complex network. Drake got his first look at the ducts and tubes that gave Tubes its name.

Yellow, blue, orange and red pipes all converged in the centre of a large room, about thirty metres across. The pipes shot up through the eastern platform, converging and diverging so many times that Drake found it hard to follow any particular one for too long.

‘Right,' Tommy said. ‘Jim, Argyle and Wu with me through levels eight to twelve. Mario, Greg, Neil and the fresher, one to seven. Grab your hoses, lads.'

Large spools of thick hose about the width of Drake's arm were resting on the floor near the doorway. They were long and heavy, not connected to any water source, and took two of the crew to lift. Drake shared the hose with Mario as they descended down a level, below the main junction to a set of older-looking, rust-coated pipes.

‘Plug the hose in here,' Mario said, staring at Drake to make sure he was paying attention. He stood in front of a large panel of levers, switches, and needle gauges. ‘Prime the line here, so it's ready to spray, and set the pressure on the dial here. Higher the dial, higher the pressure. Got it?'

‘Got it,' Drake said.

The other two boys on Drake's smaller crew – Greg and Neil – were using a large wrench to remove the cover of the nearest pipe. The release was well oiled, despite the general spottiness on the pipe, and gave way easily.

‘Here's your gear,' Mario said, and threw Drake a pair of thick leather gloves, worn and frayed, a heavy-duty plastic breathing mask, and a pair of swimming goggles. ‘Trust me, suit up. You'll be glad you did.'

Drake put it on and Mario shoved the hose into his hands. A small flashlight had been mounted just above the nozzle.

‘Right then, in you go.'

‘What? That's all the training?'

Mario gave him a thumbs-up. ‘In the tube, head left, there'll be a blockage about fifteen metres in when the pipe widens. Always is on this one. You'll see it.'

Drake wandered over to the uncovered pipe and stared inside. The channel was narrow and slick with some unspeakable grime. At best he'd have to crawl on his hands and knees. ‘And if I refuse?'