The Rig (9 page)

Tommy's team, and Drake, had lost.

11

Magnets

‘Good afternoon, Will,' Doctor Lambros said. Beams of bright sunlight shone through the blinds behind her desk, illuminating the room. ‘You're looking a little rough around the edges today. How'd you get that cut on your cheek?'

Drake took a seat in Lambros' office, inhaling the smell of her old books and polished mahogany desk. ‘Rigball,' he said, and stroked the scab under his eye. Work in Tubes the last few days had been torture – he'd gotten a lot more bruises and scrapes during the game than he'd realised.

At least Tommy and the lads didn't blame him for failing to stop Grey during the dying seconds. None of them could say, as Drake flipped through the air and cracked his helmet in half, that he hadn't tried.

Doctor Lambros shook her head. ‘Such a violent sport. I've told the warden that it does no good, just gives you boys an excuse to batter each other, but he's of a mind that it's teambuilding.'

‘I didn't see you at the game.'

‘Why would I want to see it?' She leant forwards in her chair and removed her glasses. ‘Really, Will, do I strike you as the type to enjoy blood sport?'

She honestly did not. To Drake, Doctor Lambros had become the only person on the Rig, save perhaps Tristan, that he thought he might trust. And he wasn't sure about Tristan – he was a nice enough person, but weak. He thought he
belonged
here, and that was something that would never sit right with Drake. No one belonged in this place, so far removed from the real world and … and
oversight
. The Alliance could do whatever they wanted out here, away from prying eyes. The guards – Brand, at least – were ex-private military and had no trouble beating the inmates. If Drake thought he had to spend close to five more years here then he might just try the swim.

‘What's on your mind this week, Will?' the doctor asked. ‘You're closing in on three months now. I'm pleased to see you've taken a lot of steps in the right direction. We can probably look at pushing our meetings back to once a month now.'

Drake was surprised to find he felt a sliver of disappointment. He quite liked these meetings, and not just because he got out of work for an hour or two. He had wondered – when not thinking of escape – what it was about the small psychologist that put him almost at ease. It had come to him last night, as he lay awake into the early hours of the morning. Doctor Acacia Lambros reminded him of his mother. The way she spoke, the way she smiled.

‘If you think so,' he said.

‘I remember our first meeting. You were full of fire and anger about being sent here to the Rig. It's good to see you've settled into the routine, somewhat. No more thoughts of a daring escape? You can't fly out of here, you know. And no more fighting?'

Drake looked down at his left arm, at the crooked pink scar tissue that contrasted glaringly against his dark skin. He'd yet to pay Grey back for that. ‘No, just rigball.'

‘Which amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?'

‘I –' Drake considered, then nodded. ‘I'd say that's a pretty fair assessment, actually.'

‘He sees the light!' Doctor Lambros clapped. ‘Now, talk to me about what's on your mind?'

‘Alan Grey,' he said, and was surprised he said anything at all. Apart from Tristan and a few of the Tubes crew, Drake hadn't voiced his concerns about Grey and his gang to anyone.

‘You know I can't talk about any other inmates, Will,' she said, but there was an edge to her voice.

Drake leant back in his chair. He was willing to bet any hope of escape from the Rig that Alan Grey
wasn't
one of the good doctor's clients. In fact, he'd take that bet a step further and wager none of Grey's gang attended these sessions either. Which left him wondering …

‘They don't come to see you, do they?' Drake asked. ‘Why not? Does Irene, from the girls' platform, come? She's a redhead.'

‘Irene Finlay? How did you meet her?'

Again, Drake could read the look on her face. No, Irene –
Finlay –
did not have scheduled meetings – and that bothered Doctor Lambros.

Drake licked his lips and decided to share a concern he'd had since learning of Grey's ‘advanced lessons', or whatever he was doing.

‘I think they're up to something. I think whatever they're up to is happening through a locked door on the eastern platform.' Drake took a deep breath and thought of Irene. She had trusted him in the infirmary, when she probably shouldn't have. ‘I mean I don't see him for weeks at a time. Where is he?'

Doctor Lambros shrugged. ‘Perhaps I'll have a chat with the warden and see if I can't find out a little bit more about it. Honestly though, Will, I think you're worrying over nothing.'

Drake snorted. ‘He tried to kill me not so long ago. I'd rather know where the bastard is and what he's up to.'

‘Please don't curse in my office,' Doctor Lambros chided and offered him a brown paper bag. ‘Care for a strawberry bonbon, Will?'

The rest of February fell into much the same routine to which Drake had grown accustomed. Life on the Rig ticked idly by, governed for the inmates solely by the trackers. Having stopped pushing his luck with the boundaries so much, Drake had actually managed to bring his debt to the Alliance down somewhat. He sat at
$-1356
which, while not on the runway and heading towards a gate, had come down a few hundred credits from the upper stratosphere. Tristan even took pity on him and bought him a candy bar from the common room one night.

‘You won't clear that debt inside a year,' he said, and threw Drake a Snickers as he lazed on his bunk during free time. ‘So make this last.' Tristan had been enjoying a few relatively uneventful months since he'd swiped Brand's baton and word had got round that Drake didn't like anyone messing with his roommate.

Drake stared at the chocolate for a moment, unsure just what to say. He mumbled thanks and returned to staring at the ceiling, a rather incomplete map of the Rig's vent system dancing through his head.

‘When you going to tell me about your plan to get this tracker off?' Drake asked a few minutes later, around a mouthful of peanuts and caramel.

Tristan chuckled. ‘Trust me, I'm working on it. My rough assessment of a week should've been closer to a month.'

Two more Saturdays came and went, as did two more games of rigball. Tommy's team, having enjoyed a near-tie on the first match, were trounced both times by Grey and his thugs. They did better the second game, as Grey was out sick and his team played a man down, but the sheer size and ferocity of those left, while not making up for a player of Grey's immense size, still afforded them victory.

Tommy was impressed with Drake's playing, however, and promoted him on the Tubes crew to, as he put it, ‘No more than three crap tubes a shift'. A high honour, indeed.

Near the end of the month, the
Titan
returned to resupply the Rig. Drake watched the freight ship from his cell, still amazed at its length and how something so heavy could stay afloat. Those tiny speedboats emerged from the hull, just like before, and inspected the ship and the pillars of the Rig's platforms for damage. He watched them offload on the southern platform, using the tall crane on the ship's stern. As before, a whole bunch of Alliance-stamped crates and small shipping containers were also loaded onto the
Titan
.
Waste?
Drake wondered.
What else?
Strange that both Warden Storm and Doctor Elias oversaw the loading, as the sun set to the west and darkness cast a blanket of shadow over the Rig.

By the next morning the
Titan
was gone, and February became March.

Down on the eastern platform clearing pipes, Drake thought the weather had a little less bite to it. The seasons were changing and the icy conditions were becoming more favourable. He expected the Rig was chilly year round, given its location in the middle of the bloody Arctic Ocean, but a few degrees warmer made all the difference to his frozen fingers and toes after he emerged sodden and stinking from a pipe.

Still, staring out at the ocean from his window in 36C that night, his forehead pressed against the tough Perspex, Drake couldn't help but find it harder than usual to temper his frustration. The Alliance had sent him to the Rig because it had a perfect record – it was inescapable – and nothing he had done so far had gone any length towards tarnishing that record. Would he see his sixteenth birthday here? His seventeenth? Or, all said and done, his twentieth? He was nearly four months, a third of a year, on the Rig, and no closer to escape. With little else to do, he stood thinking these thoughts for close to an hour until Tristan returned, trying hard to suppress a smile.

‘I've got it,' he said, keeping his voice an excited whisper. ‘What I was looking for.'

Drake stepped away from the window. ‘What's that now?'

‘Come sit over here and keep your voice down.'

Curious, Drake did as instructed. He was lost for a moment, then his eyes widened. ‘You mean for getting this off?' He tapped his tracker. ‘Tristan,
how
?'

‘You see that narrow hole on the side of the tracker? Like a keyhole without the curves? That's how we trip the system, even without the proper key.'

Drake considered the keyhole and then nodded. ‘Okay … I tried working it with a pen lid with no luck. So how does it work?'

‘It's a hole for an electromagnetic key,' Tristan said, speaking almost to himself. ‘I've seen them before. Knowing that tells me a lot about how the trackers work.'

Drake stared into the hole. It didn't look like anything special to him. ‘And how do you know that?'

Tristan smiled a touch sadly. ‘From my past misdeeds. Sometimes, to break into a network, you actually have to be in the building. About two and a half years ago, I was trying to get into an insurance company's files – all that personal data is worth a fortune online – but it was on a completely self-contained drive within the building. I had to break in and use a terminal onsite. Getting the security cameras to loop safe footage was easy, but the back door was sealed with an electromagnetic lock at night. Physical security, you know, ugh.'

‘Electromagnetic?'

‘Yeah. Think of it kind of like a really strong clamp. It's not, but that'll do. They're impossible to force manually with anything less than a tank, or about fifteen hundred pounds of pressure.'

‘So how did you break it?'

Tristan shook his head. ‘That's just it – you can't break them.' He dug around in his pocket and produced a handful of tiny magnets, some stuck together and others repelled. Half were circular, some were semi-circles, a bunch were shiny and cube shaped. The rest were thin bars about the length of a fingernail. ‘But you can confuse them.'

‘Confuse them?'

Tristan dug around in his other pocket and produced another handful of small fridge magnets in the shape of bananas and strawberries, and two floppy pictures of St. John's – the nearest port to the Rig – with magnetic backing. ‘It'll be trial and error, and we'll have to be careful or we could blow the power to the entire tracker, which will bring the guards, but if I can confuse the magnets in the lock within your tracker … then it may just pop open.'

Drake felt a surge of excitement. ‘You actually know what you're talking about, don't you?'

Tristan sighed. ‘That's why I'm in prison.'

‘Okay, sorry. So tell me how it works – how all of this,' he gestured to the various magnets on the bed, ‘will do the trick?'

‘It may not,' Tristan admitted. ‘But I'd be very surprised if it doesn't. As I said, the trick will be doing it carefully enough that we don't disrupt the power to the entire tracker. You'll disappear from the monitoring display up in Control if that happens, and then I imagine all manner of alarms will sound. Not conducive to sneaking about and escape, is it?'

‘No.'

Tristan played with the magnets, sorting what repelled from what didn't. He made two large piles and every so often slipped a bunch of different magnets into a third, smaller pile. The cube-shaped magnets dominated this pile.

‘What's so special about these ones?' Drake picked up one of the cubes. The magnet was heavier than he thought it would be. He tossed it at the bed frame and it stuck fast with a resounding chime.

‘Nickel-plated neodymium,' Tristan said, as if that explained everything. He finished sorting and looked up at Drake. ‘You know, the strongest type of permanent magnet they make? Head actuators on hard disks? Never mind. I pulled these out of the back of the lifter and compressor in the laundry tonight. Took me a week to loosen the panel without being spotted. These piles came from the common room. I swiped these thin ones from cabinet latches, and the half-circles from the extractor fan above the toilet.'

Drake looked up at the ceiling. ‘The extractor fan?'

‘Yeah. Don't use the extractor fan.'

He laughed. ‘You think they'll do the trick?'

‘Properly aligned with the magnets in the tracker, that thing will fly off your arm.' Tristan frowned and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. ‘But again, we're going for subtlety here.'

The casual confidence in his voice was at odds with the quiet, shuffling boy Drake had met nearly four long months ago. For the first time, he was seeing Michael Tristan in his element. The kid was smart – spooky smart – and he knew it.

‘Okay, the magnets are a start,' Tristan said. ‘But we'll be needing some other materials. A small power source, like a watch battery – it doesn't need to be strong – and some copper coil wire. With that, I can create a key, I suppose, that should unlock the tracker.'

Drake didn't have any idea where he'd be able to swipe a power source – yet – but his mind flicked to the defunct machinery at the bottom of the eastern platform, in Tubes, through the worst of the muck. Or maybe one of the vending machines in the common room?
No, they'd notice that
. Who wore a watch? Doctor Lambros did. He didn't want to steal from her. Probably the eastern platform, then. Loose wires and, possibly, more magnets, abounded down there. He swallowed.
Ugh … no one said this would be easy
.