The Rig Read Online Free Page B

screen of lessons popped up, numbered one through to two hundred. Every lesson save the first was greyed out, so with no better place to start, he selected the first option. Half a dozen problems appeared on the screen. The first read:
    Q: 6x2
    A: a) 10 b) 11 c) 12 d) 13
    Multiplication problems – and ridiculously easy ones at that. Drake selected the right answers and flew through the first page. A fresh set of simple problems appeared on the screen.
    He looked to Tristan but the bespectacled boy had already started his lessons. He had removed a pad of paper and a pencil from the drawer in the side of the desk and was writing his answers down instead of using the touch-screen interface.
    Tristan looked bored, and a quick glance at his screen showed similar, mundane problems. Drake glanced around the room. Of the one hundred available desks, he estimated about ninety were in use. Most of the inmates sat lazily in their chairs, idly pressing the screens and chatting to the people around them. A few made eye contact and sneered. Mohawk sat by himself across the room, apparently having been abandoned by his old mate Alan Grey.
    Drake’s gaze swept the room, but Grey and his gang of cronies were nowhere to be seen.
    â€˜Grey and his thugs aren’t here?’ he said, making it a question.
    Tristan shrugged. ‘Advanced lessons.’
    â€˜Those morons? They can’t have three brain cells between them.’
    Tristan shook his head and solved the next problem with ease and a sigh. Again, he wrote his answers down on paper instead of using the screen. Drake was going to ask him about the paper when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
    He looked up. It was Officer Brand.
    â€˜With me, Balboa.’ He laughed. ‘The doctor will see you now.’
    Drake stood up. ‘Doctor?’ He glanced at Tristan, who was doing his best to feign no interest.
    â€˜Just come on. Doc Lambros’ office is upstairs. I don’t want you bleeding all over my nice clean floors.’
    The blood from his split knuckle had slowed but not stopped. Crimson drops seeped through the wad of paper towels covering the mess. Drake nodded and followed Brand out into the hall.
    â€˜Hold up your tracker. There’s a good lad.’ He swiped a green pass over the tracker, about the size of a credit card, from the collection of coloured tags around his neck. ‘Save you any more fines, huh? You’re racking those up quite spectacularly already. Follow me.’
    Free movement
, the screen read. Drake wondered what the blue, red, and yellow tags might do, and how he could acquire a set of his own.
    Brand took off down the corridor, further into the complex, at a steady clip. A spiral staircase at the end of the corridor led up to the second floor. As they climbed, Brand asked, ‘Found a way to escape yet?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ Drake said, gazing out of the window at the distant horizon. No ships, no land, no nothing. ‘How long have you been here?’
    â€˜This shift block? Three weeks. On the Rig itself, five years.’ Brand grasped Drake’s shoulder and pulled him to a stop outside a frosted-glass door. ‘I cycle off back to the mainland every eight weeks for a fortnight. We use the chopper – and
only
the chopper – so don’t think you’re getting off that way. Ha.’ He rapped on the door.
    â€˜Please come on in,’ a female voice chimed from inside the office.
    â€˜In you go – and behave yourself. I’ll be just outside and will quite happily give you a wallop to match that nose if you cause any trouble.’
    â€˜Right.’ Drake let himself in and shut the door in Brand’s face.
    â€˜Hello, there,’ said a woman seated behind a large mahogany desk, cluttered with files and paperwork. She stood and walked around the desk into the heart of the room. ‘I’m Doctor Acacia Lambros. You must be William.’
    Doctor Lambros was a