The Rig (6 page)

9

Happy New Year

As Drake's first few weeks on the Rig bled into his first month, the morning of December 15th dawned with thick, black storm clouds rolling in over the horizon. Despite his stolen whispers with Irene in the infirmary, he had made no progess with a plan to escape, let alone get his tracker off. He woke every morning to a sense of defeat and frustration that had to be pushed aside, if he was going to have any hope of making it off the Rig before he turned twenty.

By mid-morning on the fifteenth, the skies over the Rig were dark and impenetrable. Thunder rumbled and flashes of electric-blue light danced among the clouds, accompanied by a biting wind that lashed the skin and rocked the Rig. Waves three metres high – and getting higher – slammed against the tiny collection of platforms standing alone in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

This time Drake knew it wasn't his imagination. The floor beneath his feet was swaying back and forth. If he stared across at another platform, at a fixed point, he could just see the sway.

‘This normal?' he asked Tristan, as they left the classroom atop the boys' platform, heading for lunch. The first drops of rain splattered against the concrete – a drizzle that pre-empted the downpour.

Tristan nodded. ‘It's happened before. One day the wind was so bad half the blokes got
seasick
.' He stretched the word out until it became something horrible, a groan of the long-suffering. ‘Cellblock stank for days after that.'

‘Looking a bit flushed, Drake!' Mario said, chewing on a toothpick. ‘Tubes will be a mess tomorrow,
mi amigo
!' He threw his arm around Tristan's shoulders and wrestled him around by his neck. ‘What about you, four-eyes? We could use a runt like you in the small pipes!'

Tristan struggled unsuccessfully against Mario's grip. The rain was falling harder now, cold drops the size of two-pound coins splashing Drake's arms.

‘Let him go,' Drake said, and pointed to the edge of the platform just three metres away. A fence at shoulder height was the only protection, save the guards stationed along the perimeter, between the inmates and a swift fall into the sea far below. ‘Or we'll be seeing just how well you can swim.'

Mario's smile faded a bit. He let Tristan go. ‘Alright, just joking with the gringo, Drake. You know me. Everyone messes with little Mikey here, don't they, Mike?'

Tristan hunched his shoulders and pushed his glasses straight on his face.

‘Not any more,' Drake said. He inwardly sighed – it was trouble like this that had gotten his friend, Aaron, killed at Cedarwood. Drake hadn't made much in the way of friends since then. ‘Or they're messing with me, too. Got it?'

Mario tried for a smile. ‘Yeah, Drake. Sure I got it. Only playing anyway.' He darted away, keeping Drake between himself and the edge of the platform.

‘You didn't have to do that,' Tristan said quietly, as they resumed the walk to lunch.

‘What happens if the Rig has to be evacuated?' Drake asked, as a particularly violent gust of wind made the platform ache and moan.

‘There are evacuation crafts below some of the platforms. At least, that's what I was told … I've never actually seen them.'

‘There'd have to be something, wouldn't there? I mean we're on a goddamn oil rig in the middle of nowhere.'

Tristan made a face, masking a brief worry. ‘Yeah, there's the lifeboats, that's what I heard.'

Later that night, after lights out, the storm broke in earnest against the Rig. Confined to their cell, Drake and Tristan rode out the worst of it as best they could. The entire platform was shaking as waves of tremendous power and height crashed against the pillars that kept the Rig afloat. The rain fell so fast and thick outside their window that Drake couldn't even see the orange lights that lit up the Rig at night, alerting ships to its presence.

Tristan had been right about the seasickness. Drake's cellmate was up and retching over the toilet every five minutes, holding his stomach and groaning. At this point he was just throwing up water and little else. Drake felt woozy, as well, so he concentrated on the task at hand. He'd nicked a pen lid from the classroom that morning and was working the pointed end into the keyhole on his tracker.

After a month on the Rig, Drake had come to the realisation that the tracker problem would have to be solved before he had any hope of escape.
Or meeting that Irene girl …
The massive amounts of fines he had gained exploring the boundaries of the device had convinced him of that. So far he'd tried the lock against a paperclip found in the common room, a prong on the plastic sporks they used for meals, and now the ballpoint pen lid.

Nada.

Drake was no expert on lock picking – in fact, he had no idea what he was doing. But it was better than nothing, and made him feel like some progress was being made. He was confident that if he could get the device off, a plan of escape would present itself. The tracker had already been activated
before
it was snapped around his wrist in Processing a month ago, which led Drake to the shaky conclusion that, perhaps, he could remove it without setting off any alarms. It couldn't sense whether or not it was attached to his wrist. If he could get the device off, he could move unimpeded – even make it seem to whoever was monitoring the devices that he was somewhere else entirely. In the month he'd been here, that seemed like the greatest flaw in the Rig's security. The cruel and heavy-handed staff relied too much on the leashes strapped to the inmates. Drake had never once seen a guard actually poke their head into the cell at night.

Drake worked the pen lid back and forth in the narrow, rectangular lock, listening close for clicks and feeling for resistance. The point of the lid was about three centimetres long, and it slipped into the hole all the way to the cap. The more Drake fiddled with it, the more warped and stretched the plastic lid became. After half an hour of fruitless ‘lock picking', Drake tossed the lid aside, afraid of breaking the point off in the tracker and ruining any future attempts.

He rolled over to face the wall and tried to sleep – but sleep was long in coming. Images of the Rig's delicate spine snapping and plunging into the freezing water plagued him until a grey and lifeless dawn broke through the rain.

The weather cleared up after the storm into a brisk but sunny week.

As Mario had promised, Tubes was a nightmare. The Rig had soaked up –
God knows how
– mounds of seaweed and sand. The working day was extended for the crews through free time and beyond lights out to get the pipes cleared and keep the mighty prison running. For the first time since he arrived, Drake saw the technicians from the control tower out and about making repairs and checking the dials and readouts on dozens of machines. He stumbled into his cell, escorted by a guard, around midnight for three nights in a row.

On the fourth day since the storm, he was afforded a brief reprieve from the work, as his latest session with Doctor Lambros had rolled around. Drake had been looking forward to a change of pace, and she provided just that. At the very least, it was an opportunity to stop looking over his shoulder for Alan Grey or worrying about all the guards with rifles and batons.

‘Good afternoon, Will,' the psychologist said. She removed her wireframe glasses and smiled. ‘How are you this week? Bit of a scare with that storm, wasn't it?'

‘Yeah, I only just managed to keep my dinner down. Is the Rig supposed to sway like that?'

Doctor Lambros nodded. ‘Oh yes. I've been here nearly eighteen months and we've had a few wild nights, I can tell you.'

‘What happens if we have to evacuate?' Tristan hadn't been so sure, and Drake was honestly curious. If he could force an evacuation somehow … Easier to escape when he wasn't a hundred or more miles out at sea.

‘There are lifeboats under this and the northern platform. In that very unlikely event, you'd proceed through the outer shell and one of the winches would lower you down – along with ten or so others – into one of the rafts. You weren't told all this when you arrived?'

‘No.'

‘Oh, well, now you know. I'm sure someone just overlooked that in your induction.'

Drake weighed the idea, then nodded slowly. His induction had been a bowl of cold soup and five minutes of butting heads with Warden Storm. He was certain something more was going on at the Rig. Something secret. He thought of Irene, the urgency in her eyes, and of Grey's ‘advanced lessons'.

‘So what should we talk about today?' Doctor Lambros asked. ‘You've been here nearly five weeks now. One month down!' She made that sound almost like a good thing.

‘Only fifty-nine to go …' Drake muttered, and made a little puffing sound between his pursed lips. During lunch, Brand had delivered the news that his work schedule would continue – Tubes for another month, on Warden Storm's order. ‘You know, you may be the only friendly person in this place.'

‘Have you been making friends?' the doctor asked. She made a few quick notes on the pad before her. Her desk was always cluttered, but even more so today. Drake liked that. He liked her, now that he thought about it, and the wall of qualifications behind her desk.

‘Friends …' Drake mused. ‘No, no friends.'

‘My report says you got into a bit of trouble a few weeks back – another fight with Alan Grey. What have I told you about fighting? Michael Tristan stole a guard's weapon in the assault. I hear rumours it was to protect you.'

‘I didn't ask him to watch my back. Little bastard took a beating for it, too. If Grey catches up with him …'

Doctor Lambros
tsk
ed. ‘Please don't curse in my office, Will. And what he did sounds like a friend to me, if you were being attacked. A touch brazen perhaps, but loyalty like that – in this place – can be dangerous, you know.'

‘I don't have any friends,' Drake insisted, and thumped his fist against the arm of the leather chair. ‘Last friend I had …'

‘Yes? Go on?' She smiled warmly.

‘Last friend I had … I got him killed,' Drake said flatly. He took a deep breath.
May as well get it all out.
‘He was my cellmate at Cedarwood. His name was Aaron. You said something about it the first time we met, with the fire in the laundry.'

‘It's all in your file, yes. They also say you tried to pull him out, that it was an accident.'

Drake shook his head. ‘Does it say the only reason he was there is because we were stealing tools to escape? I sent him. My fault.'

‘No, it doesn't say that. But the fire was caused by faulty wiring, yes?'

Drake nodded. ‘That's what they said.'

‘You can't blame yourself for wanting out of these places, Will,' Doctor Lambros said and put her pen down. ‘Get back to the real world – to video games, the internet, sports, junk food,
girls
– but you do understand your behaviour isn't conducive to those things, to functioning within society. That's why you're here, because, right now, here is the best place for you.'

‘You think I'm escaping for … for what? Cheeseburgers and internet porn?' Drake gave her a wintry, humourless smile. ‘That's pathetic.'

‘Why do you want to escape?'

He waved the question away and rubbed at his eyes. To say he was tired was an understatement. ‘You've got your reports and your files – figure it out, Doctor Lambros.'

Christmas Day came and went with very little fanfare on the Rig, despite the extra-special food Tristan had promised the night of Drake's arrival. Roast potatoes and a sticky-date pudding for lunch. A few of the boys, somehow, received care packages from their homes dotted about the globe. Outgoing mail was restricted on the Rig, an Alliance rule, but apparently exceptions could be made.

There was no work break, either. Drake's tracker beeped, as he'd known it would, for his shift on the Tubes crew. Tommy, Mario, and the lads had been back on the eastern platform for just under a week. Drake had long since tired of the drudgery, but having no say in the matter – and not wanting to make any more enemies than he already had – he kept doing the work.

A cold, near-freezing breeze whistled through the eastern platform that afternoon. Drake's hand nearly froze to the hose as he swept the tubes clean on the fifth level. Having been at it a month, he'd suggested to Tommy a week back that they request an extra hose and split the teams into three. Drake and Mario, Greg and Neil, and get the work done twice as fast. Tommy had told him to piss off, but the hose was there the next day. Greg and Neil hadn't been too pleased, as the amount of pipes Drake had to clean had been cut in half – work they now had to do, but, as always, Mario seemed to enjoy it.

They were all done by five and Drake emerged from his tube with his stomach grumbling. Thoughts of food on Christmas Day made him think of his mother and the feasts she used to spend days preparing for in advance. He spent a few minutes wondering, among other things, whether or not she was enjoying Christmas dinner with Nanna Vera next door on Tilbury Road, back home in East London.

Stuffed turkey from Arnie's butchers down the road, and then blackberry pie and ice cream for dessert.

‘Drake, with me,' Tommy said, pulling him from what were fast becoming sad, hungry thoughts. ‘You got one last job for the day.'

Drake followed Tommy down a level, along the exposed outer rim of the eastern platform, past the rusted door with the new chain that so intrigued apprentice-nurse Irene, and back around to a massive collection of what looked like boilers and tanks, all connected via a network of vents and small gas pipes.

‘What's this then?' Drake asked. The slick grime from the day's work was drying in his short hair. Seeing as how he had no means of shaving his head, he wanted to wash the muck out before it became permanent.