He must have drifted off at some point, despite the hardness of the floor, because he wakes up to stabbing pains in his stomach and the blurry impression of a face bending over him.

His first thought is that it hadn't taken them long, and then to wonder how they were going to do it: if they would use one of those machines he'd heard of, that sent agonising bolts of electricity through your body with the touch of a switch, or if they'd go the old fashioned route, pull his fingernails from their beds and break his kneecaps. Whatever happens, he resolves, shutting his eyes tightly, he would die before telling them anything. He'd have to; he had nothing to tell.

When the expected cold pincer of the drone doesn't touch his skin, he peels open one eye and chances another look upward.

"Are you gonna sit up and get out of here or what?" a voice demands: low, rough around the edges, still with a jovial bite. He blinks hard and meets the eyes, the round eyes with a wicked sparkle. Then he sits up, all horrific thoughts of torture fleeing from his mind at the sight of the black-clad figure.

"How - how?" he just stutters out. The door behind him remains closed, not the slightest chink of light creeping through from the corridor outside; the only light source is the weak beam attached to the hat the outlaw wears. It's impossible; it can't be happening. And yet the hand that reaches down to clutch his is real, warm and solid, as is the arm that slides around his shoulder.

"Explanations later. Gotta get moving. You okay?" Completely robbed of both words and senses Kyung can only nod, watching the other take a length of rope from his pocket and loop it around Kyung's waist, holding the other end tightly. "Hope you don't mind - don't want to lose you." They move swiftly a few steps to the opposite wall, where the waste chute is, and Kyung watches in disbelief as he takes a short, thin blade from his pocket and wiggles it into the crack between the metal panel at the stone wall. The whole thing slides forward, more smoothly than he would have expected, and he's staring down the chute itself, a three foot by three foot square of grimy rusted metal which extends to the left and disappears into darkness. "Just stay close. In you go."

His head spinning, all he can do is follow the intructions and clamber into the entrance. The other follows, yanks the panel back into place, and in the weak light of the beam Kyung can see the black scarf around his face shift as he smiles. "Go on. Straight forward, I'll tell you when you turn. And keep quiet, this chute goes right past the guard's room."

They crawl for what seems like hours but is probably only thirty minutes or so. Kyung's back and knees are screaming in agony from the cramped chute and he wonders how the other - who must be at least twice his size from the brief look he got back in the cell - is coping. The air is thin and foul, makes his head spin, and although he wants to come up with some kind of explanation for this sudden miraculous rescue he can't think beyond the aching of his stomach. He's on the verge of blacking out when he finally hears a harsh whisper from behind him: "Jump. There's a mat." He topples himself forward and hits the ground. The padding isn't enough to stop all the air being knocked out of him, and black circles spin in front of his eyes. He only barely sees the black-clad figure leap in front of him and land on his feet.

"How," he says again softly, and then there's a commotion and maybe a familiar voice or two but he's not sure because the room sort of swells and then closes in on him and his vision darkens.

"What," he says faintly, "the hell is going on?"

He's upright again, devouring a bowl of something hot and comforting - if he were less hungry he'd take more notice of the fact that it's also delicious, and has things in it which are recognisable as real, fresh vegetables and tender meat - and sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. The pain in his ankle has almost receded - the first thing the outlaw had done when he came to was hold up a small piece of metal, dripping with blood, and grin at him. The tag has been taken out and he is officially outside of the law. The thought makes him giddy with delight and sick with nerves at the same time. 

The outlaw himself is opposite him, his scarf lying to one side, also gulping down his dinner and watching Kyung with an expression that seems on the verge of laughter. More bafflingly still, there are two more people with them - two people Kyung never expected to see again.

One is Sejoon, eyebrows crinkled in merriment at Kyung's confusion, thankfully in one piece but for a few bruises and some bandages around the fingertips of one hand. The other - and it is this that makes Kyung really think he might have died back in that cell and be in some kind of limbo because he thought he was long gone, dead, or at least never getting back from where he went - is Jihoon. His younger friend is taller than he remembers, broader too, and his childish face has a maturity in it that makes Kyung just a little uncomfortable because it seems so incongruent with the babyish features, but it's him: healthy, smiling, cheeky as ever. Whatever Jaehyo had seen two years back was gone; only a shadow remained in the hooded corners of his eyes and the determined set of his mouth.

"I guess you're pretty confused, huh?" the outlaw says, scraping up the last of his meal and the spoon. He sets the bowl off to one side and leans back against the wall, folding his hands over his stomach with a satisfied noise. Now he can see him up close, Kyung is amazed he's been able to move around without detection: the guy is big, broad and muscular, and his stentorian voice carries through the long low room. Something in his face is familiar, now it's completely visible, something in the lines of his jaw and cheekbones, but it's the mouth that really baffles him: wide and constantly grinning. How he can be so pleased with everything despite his status as a criminal is beyond Kyung.

"Why did you mark me?" Kyung says straight away, just to see if the smile drops away. It does, but only a little; it fades into something more sympathetic, almost - but not quite - apologetic.

"It was the only way to get you down here. I can't sneak people out of the work spaces, there's way too many cameras about. Those isolation cells are just about the only places in this ing city without cameras everywhere. No point, you see, it's pitch black anyway and there's no way out. Well," he brushes the knuckles of one hand against his chest proudly, "not for most people."

"Why - " Kyung begins, and then stops, putting his bowl down and shaking his head. His temples are starting to ache and he rubs at them gently, trying to order his thoughts. There's too many questions bouncing around his mind, so he brushes them to one side and goes straight to the point. "Can you just tell me what's going on, please? From the beginning. I'm so ing confused."

"How'd you think I feel?" Sejoon chuckles. "Spend all day getting told I'm crazy, then get arrested, then have the same hallucination appear in my cell and get me out of there. It's been a mad couple of days."

The outlaw draws one leg up, rests his elbow on it, looks Kyung up and down thoughtfully. "From the beginning..., well, we have to go back a long ing time then. Pretty much to when you were born."

"When I was born?" Kyung says, aghast, and the bigger man hushes him gently with a laugh.

"Don't worry, this isn't some chosen one bull. It just happened to be around that time that someone else was born, and he's kind of the reason we're all here now." He pauses, runs a hand over his chin thoughtfully. "I'm still putting a lot of the pieces together myself, to be honest. Let's start with my name. It's Taewoon - well, it is now, but it used to be something else. It used to be Jiseok."

Kyung feels his mouth drop open, and he can't stop it. "Woo Jiseok?"

Taewoon looks regretful, waves his hands like he's greeting them all. "That's the one."

"That can't be - Woo Jiseok died, there was a national day of mourning, he - you can't be serious!"

For the first time the smile leaves Taewoon's face completely, and he rolls up one black sleeve and holds his wrist out. Sure enough, the official stamp of level five is there, red and blazing on his wrist. Kyung feels lightheaded. "I never died. I ran away. I had to - you've no idea what it was like, I..." For a moment he looks like he's struggling with something, then gives up and shrugs. "I know you guys think the golden level is nothing but milk and honey, but the truth is a lot different. Sure, I was provided for, but I was being trained to head up this cesspit of a city. And I was never really okay with the things that went on here, especially in the lower levels. They make a mistake piling all the kids into the same classroom. I got to ten, eleven, and I noticed my friends being taken away. They wouldn't come back, and no one would tell me why. One day I managed to get away after school and I got down into the lower levels - that was when I discovered the waste chutes. The things I saw..." His face now looks utterly grim, jaw tightened. "Kids my own age working until they dropped - kids I knew, I was in the same class as Jungwoo, you know?"

Something flickers in Kyung's mind then, some clue of what might be coming, but he stays quiet and continues to listen.

"After that I looked for every opportunity to - I don't know, complain, try to change things. It got too much for the family, of course, and eventually my father gave me the hard line and said that if I didn't carry things on the way he expected, I could forget about succeeding him. I knew what that meant. I ran like hell that very night."

The cheery demeanour has utterly dropped away, and the other three boys around him are holding their breath as he cuts his gaze to the floor. Even while he feels a shiver run down his spine, Kyung feels compelled to speak. He's so close to understanding but there are still a hundred questions pestering him - and more than that, beneath the exhaustion and nervousness there's a prick of anger. In front of him sits someone who had the power to change everything just a few years away from him, and he had thrown it up, chosen a lawless life and dragged them all into lawlessness with him - and why? He tries to keep the irritation out of his voice but his nostrils flare as he speaks. "Wouldn't it have been better to wait until you took over? You could have changed something then."

Taewoon regards him levelly, with the faintest hint of sorrow in his eyes. "I know what you're thinking - you think I took the cowardly route. Believe me, if I'd stayed I never would have been able to change anything. Don't you ever think there must be a reason that things stay the way they are? Do you think that if everyone in the top levels knew how their lifestyles were sustained, you'd all still be living as slaves?"

Kyung doesn't have an answer for that, but he glances over at Sejoon - that's always been one of his favourite points of contention, the sort of conspiratory thinking that had Jungwoo so furious with him, and he looks fascinated to finally be hearing his own theories sustained. "I heard something about a patch," he says, thick eyebrows raising, leaning towards Taewoon in his eagerness. "Some kind of control device?"

"That's pretty much what it is," Taewoon nods, and his face twists with disgust. "Just about all the top levels have one - performs different functions depending on if they're militia or nobility but the general idea is the same. Keeps them all safely focused on what's important - their own comfort. Keeps all those niggling nasty questions safely out of their heads. The only ones in the top levels who don't have them are the Controller and his family - my family. I'm not stupid enough to think he wouldn't have been above patching me if I kept stepping out of line. He just realised he should have done it sooner. He didn't make that mistake again."

"What do you mean?"

There's a long pause while Taewoon breathes steadily in and out, and although Sejoon had asked the question it's Kyung he directs the answer at, as if he's expecting him to understand as soon as he speaks. "I mean that the second in line to succeed him is now safely under his control. My younger brother."

Just like that all the puzzle pieces slot into place, and Kyung understands why he's there, why Taewoon looks so strangely familiar - maybe other things as well, like why he'd been spared the gruelling misery of level zero and been given some sort of hope of a better life in the kitchens. "," he says quietly, while the older man's eyes bore into his own so deeply apologetically. "Jiho."

A memory comes back to him of the glorious dome of the classroom, and himself, Yukwon and a third boy: round shouldered, bright eyed and plumper in the cheeks than either of them were. They never questioned the unquestionable air of being well cared for that he had, just as he never questioned their patched clothes and grimy faces; no one mentioned these things in class, because there they were all supposed to be equals, up to a point. And at that time he hadn't been an heir, only the younger brother, and he had been boisterous and spirited, always the first to come up with a prank or start a fight. They had been a little gang, the three of them, but Jiho had particularly attached himself to Kyung's side for reasons he could never quite fathom. He remembers his tenth birthday, the day before he had been taken from his home, and the fuss Jiho had made of him all day, driven in part by the knowledge that his own birthday was only months away. Yukwon was already gone by that stage, and he knew deep down that he would probably be the next to go but he hadn't said anything, preferring to enjoy the day while things were bright, and he had friends.

For the first time since they sat down, Jihoon speaks, clearing his throat first although his tone is still thick around the edges. "He - he was so upset when you didn't come back to class." Of course, Kyung thinks, Jihoon had only been a year below them. From his earlier thoughts he now can't understand how Jiho could have failed to rebel in the same way Taewoon had.

"The only thing they would do for kids we were close to was make sure they had some chance of survival. Nothing else - too much family to deal with, you know?" Taewoon leans back again, sighs heavily and rubs at his eyes. "I could have had him onside just because of you, Kyung, but our father was already being so careful to keep us apart." And it was only months later, Kyung realises, that Taewoon must have made his escape; that was when the news reports came out. After that Jiho would have been the official heir and, if Taewoon's right, no longer capable of rebelling. "I managed to see him once, a few years back. He didn't even know who I was. I only just got out of there before he set the guards on me. They've got him totally under control now."

Kyung's head is reeling, but he shuts his eyes and picks carefully through the information, and he thinks he can begin to see what Taewoon is getting at. "You needed me to try to get through to him."

There's an air of finality in the way Taewoon crosses his ankles one over the other and raises his hands. "That's about it. He's been programmed not to recognise me, but you might still have a chance - they can't wipe him out completely, you see, they need him to remember enough that he'll be able to take over. You've got a better chance of getting near him as well, the safest way would be to break straight into his bedroom, and you're small enough to manage it. Once you do, and if he doesn't raise the alarm straight away, you can disable the patch and then hopefully persuade him to help us out."

"And what do you need his help for?" But Kyung can already guess the answer, and his guess is confirmed in the way Taewoon's eyebrows drop and his mouth turns deadly grim.

"In bringing this whole corrupt hole to a standstill."

Taewoon gives them all a while to digest this information, wandering off into the shadows at the edge of the room to do something with some pieces of metal that scrape over one another jarringly. Pleased as Kyung is to see Sejoon, it's Jihoon he has to turn to first. He still can't quite believe it's really him, and how unusually quiet he's been this whole time serves to make him even more like a ghost. The younger boy looks almost embarrassed at Kyung's disbelieving eyes fixed upon him. He scoots forward, extends one hand shakily.

"It's really me, Kyungie, I'm alright."

He knows he shouldn't ask - everything in Jihoon's face is begging him not to ask - but the question richochets out of him like a sneeze. "What happened to you? What the hell did they do?" 

He remembers him being taken away - the inspection, the white-coated men at the end of the canteen staring them all down with piercing eyes while they sweated under scrutiny and their smiles became almost frantic; he remembers them striding forward and pointing at Jihoon, trembling at the end of the line, and the fake cheeriness with which they told him he'd been chosen. He remembers seeing him being led away, looking back over his shoulder at them like they could do anything to save him, while the remaining inspector told them to start smiling again - told them he'd gone somewhere much better, had won the chance of a more beautiful life, and it could happen to them one day if they just stopped looking so miserable. Every official word on the subject told them that this was true - it was supposed to be their dearest wish, that one day they would be noticed and their liveliness and youth would raise them up from the slums. Every real life account told firmly against it. Everyone knew what really happened to most of those lucky boys and girls who were selected and led away. And what Jaehyo had seen a few months later only served to confirm it.

Jihoon shudders away, dips his head. "I don't want to talk about that," he says softly.

Making an immense effort to keep his voice gentle, to keep the roaring anger he feels from being directed at his younger friend, Kyung leans forward to take his hand again. "It's true, isn't it? All the rumours."

"Yes." Pressing his lips hard together Jihoon hangs his head so low that Kyung can't see his face, and for a moment they remain silent: one ashamed, the other aghast. He's amazed that it is Jihoon who breaks the silence first, that he raises his head again with a determined optimism burning up in his eyes, squeezes Kyung's hand. "But I didn't spend too long there, Taewoon got me out pretty quickly. And I've been here for the last year or so, helping him - we've got this incredible plan Kyung, you haven't even heard the half of it, you're going to be so excited."

Kyung looks back at him with wonder but he has no choice but to accept the torch of positivity Jihoon is desperately offering over to him. "I'll do anything I can to help," he says, and Sejoon, clearly understanding that it's okay for him to speak now, nods with a nearly insane look of enthusiasm.

"I can't wait. I've always known this place was corrupt from the top down, I want to hear about everything."

"We're really going to do it, you know," Jihoon says. "We're really going to make things better. All the other staff, as well, we'll get them out of there."

"That's what I was thinking," Taewoon says, suddenly approaching again with his grin firmly back in place. "But I was thinking, probably sooner rather than later." He checks the time again on the clock glowing from the wall. "It's nearly six hundred - the guards will find that you're both missing soon enough, and when they do they'll go straight to your old teams. Unless we want them all thrown in one isolation cell together, we'd better get down there and spring them."

"You said you couldn't get people out of the digs," Kyung says, but he's already scrambling to his feet. Impossibly Taewoon manages to grin even wider and swings his right hand up; something huge, heavy and black is encasing most of his arm.

"I said I couldn't sneak people out of there."

As insane as the plan he explains is, Kyung has to admit it's got a lot of style. There will be no doubt about his presence this time: they're going to drop right into the canteen just before the night shift leave. "Hopefully the cameras will still be out of action," Taewoon says, "but if not we can fix that easily enough," and he tosses them over a few tins of bright red spray paint with a wicked look. "We get the night shift boys on their way out - Jihoon, you can lead them back here, but get the tags off as soon as possible - and the rest of us will wait for the day shift. They shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes, and we can hold the guards off until then, if any turn up. They'll only be coming from the one direction, after all; the second door leads straight to digs, and you know there's never any guards round there."

Terrifying as it sounds, and intimidating as the steel gun Taewoon straps to his arm is, Kyung can't help but be excited. There's a good chance they'll all be killed in the attempt - Taewoon makes no effort to hide that from them - but he'd rather a hundred times die trying to save his friends, showing defiance to the guards and sending down as many of them as he can before their shots find a mark, than alone and terrified in an isolation cell, never knowing if anything he had believed was true, or if things would ever change. Although he shakes as they make their way back through the waste chutes, the heavy beating of his heart sends strong surges of blood around his body that make him buzz, ready for action.

They take extra pains to be silent as they approach the canteen; Taewoon checks the clock on his belt and shows it to them: five minutes until six hundred. The night shift should just be shedding their aprons and preparing to walk out of the door now, and he leans forward with his small blade at the ready to jerry open the front panel when they see his shoulders freeze.

The seconds drag by as they wait for him to move, or say something, and then they hear him swallow hard and the blade drops in his hand. "," he mutters, and then a little louder, "."

None of them can risk speaking loudly enough to ask him, so Kyung - right behind him and small enough to squeeze slightly around his shoulder - strains to peer through the slats of the panel himself. His heart stops completely at that moment as he looks at five utterly unfamiliar faces behind the service counter.

Taewoon holds one hand up, indicating that they should wait, while Kyung cranes back over his shoulder and shakes his head frantically at the other two: not there, they're not there. The door of the canteen shuts heavily behind the strangers, and they sit cramped up in the waste chute, waiting, hearts hardly beating. It seems pointless to even hope, pointless for Sejoon to be silently moving his lips in a prayer: when the day shift arrive, they are equally unfamiliar. Even the newcomer Yuwhan has been replaced. If it weren't for the smashed glass of the logo high on the wall, and the general unmistakability of a room he's spent half his life in, Kyung would have thought they'd come to the wrong canteen.

Jerking his thumb over his shoulder, Taewoon elbows Kyung back and hurries them along - not all the way back to his hide out but to an intersection of the chutes, where a dizzyingly long drop and a searing heat rising up announces the presence of a furnace deep below them. "Not there," Taewoon reiterates, keeping his voice low and barely audible over the roaring of the underground fires.

Sejoon is pale; Kyung feels dizzy. Only Jihoon remains calm, keeping his eyes fixed on the older man intently. "Then - ?" Whatever he's asking, only the two of them know. Taewoon nods, his face utterly grim, and then Jihoon scrabbles to clutch at Kyung's hand without looking at him and his throat convulses like he's going to be sick. Setting his lips resolutely Taewoon motions for them to continue.

No one says a word until they plummet back down the chute into the hideout, at which point the first thing they hear is a defeaning clank as Taewoon throws his weapon across the room and screams an obscenity. Jihoon stumbles after him, hands fluttering to calm him although he looks terrified himself.

"If they're not there, where are they?" Sejoon says. "If they're - if they're in isolation it's okay, isn't it? We can get them out of there, it might be more difficult but - "

Kyung digs his fingers into his side to shut him up. It's easily understood from the fury and terror they're watching that the situation is far more desperate than that. "Think about it," he says softly, as Taewoon throws a kick at the opposite wall and curses again. "If they'd been arrested - the whole team, all at the same time - they'd have closed the canteen, they'd be questioning people. If it's still open then they haven't been arrested. They've been replaced."

Sejoon's face goes first white then green while he processes this. Replacement means one of two things. Either they've been obliterated already, wiped out of existence both phyiscally and officially - or they've been promoted to the upper levels. "Promotion," he says weakly, "It has to be. Which means - "

"Which means they'll be waiting for us. They know already what we're planning. ," Taewoon screams again, "Two years - two years of planning down the ing chute!"

"It's not necessarily - it might not be as bad as that," Jihoon pleads with him. "Maybe they're just on level four or something?"

"Like are they, Jihoonie." He almost laughs then, an ugly twisted sound, and without warning he rounds on Kyung and Sejoon, still sitting on the crash mat below the exit chute. "Why do you think your teams stayed together so long? Why you weren't constantly being moved around?"

Kyung feels his heart sink again even through the haze of fear at seeing Taewoon come so unhinged. The answer is ready in his mouth, a thought that's occurred to him plenty of times in the past. "We looked good together."

"Exactly. The perfect excuse to bump them all up to level five - especially without you two," he adds carelessly, ignoring the hurt wince from both of them. "Something about how recent events brought it to their attention, they couldn't believe they'd overlooked them so long - it'd be ideal. They'll be under the lasers already, getting patched up - and they'll be especially programmed to recognise the errant members of their team. ." He turns, slams his hand against the metal of the chute above their head and they scramble away behind his back. Jihoon gestures them over, chewing on his bottom lip.

"We'll figure something out," he says placatingly. "We can still use the plan, we just have to - to augment it a little bit."

A long silence holds while Taewoon breathes heavily - then his shoulders jerk back upright and he sweeps his gaze across the room. A light hits his eyes which Kyung doesn't particularly like; it's calculating and cold, utterly removed from the merriment he'd seen there before.

"Augment," he repeats, and his stare lands right on Kyung, making him squirm backwards reflexively. "Jihoonie, you might just have something there." In a few steps he's crossed the room and he's looming over Kyung, his eyes freezing him in place far more than his height. He reaches down, takes hold of his chin and turns his face up to the meagre light. Kyung has the feeling that he's being assessed, very precisely, very objectively. It takes all of his effort to hold still and not shudder as Taewoon turns his face left, right, tracks the lines of his cheekbones and jaw with narrowed eyes. "You could walk right in there," he murmurs, and Kyung feels a chill run down his body. "You could walk right under their noses."

Jihoon joins him at his side, looking between the two of them as if trying to figure out what Taewoon is searching for in Kyung's face, and then it seems that he understands and his eyes widen. "No - Taewoon, no, you can't - "

"Jihoon. Go up to level five," Taewoon cuts in briskly. "Don't go out on the floor, just go to the service rooms, see if you can spot the rest of the staff. You two stay here." He lets go of Kyung then, something in the way he draws back his hand that suggests he's snapping something, and not without some effort. "I'll be gone for an hour or so."

"Where - " Kyung begins, but he's already turned his back. He strides to the chute without another word and his head, then shoulders disappear into it. Within seconds there's no more sign of him than the distant clanging as he clambers back up the shaft. Kyung turns his gaze instead to Jihoon, standing wringing his hands and looking on the verge of tears. He doesn't blame him. The switch from grinning optimism to this brutal and icy decisiveness has him utterly thrown, frightened to the point of nausea. He hates how much his voice quavers when he speaks. "Jihoon, what's he going to do to me?"

"I - I'm not sure." The younger boy looks after the disappeared outlaw, rocks on the balls of his feet, clearly struggling with something. "Look, it's probably better if you don't know - it'd only scare you. I've got to go check up on level five - I'll let you know what I find."

"Jihoon, wait," Kyung pleads. It's no use; he's obviously decided where to throw his lot in, and although there is far less resolution in his own disappearance it is just as final. The room seems suddenly too big, too dim, too silent. Sejoon presses up by his side and takes his elbow in a comforting grip. "I thought we could trust him," Kyung whispers. He doesn't know why he's whispering now, only that their surroundings which seemed so cosy and safe now seem like nothing more than another cell, and the feeling he thought he'd escaped - that of being constantly watched - has returned and is cutting into him with ever more painful mockery. He is outside the law, but he still isn't free, and now, it seems, less protected than ever.

Sejoon rubs up and down his arm in a futile attempt to soothe him and stretches his legs out in front of him. "Let's just get some sleep," he says, the forced cheeriness of his voice hitting a horrible dischord against their bleak surroundings. "I'm sure they'll explain soon enough." He doesn't sound any more convinced than Kyung is.