The poster on the wall says, "Smile! You don't know who is watching!"

Kyung rolls his eyes at it and turns away, necking the rest of his energy drink with a wince. It's as foul as ever, sour and suspiciously thick, but he won't make it through the night shift without it. He crunches the can, dumps it in a waste chute and picks his apron off the hook. The sound of tramping feet is already audible through the corridors; he'll be late if he doesn't hurry.

Skidding in a puddle of spilled cooking grease as he hurries, he breathes a sigh of relief, slipping into his place in line just as the clock hits eighteen hundred and begins to shriek. Dutifully he plasters the smile on his face, catching Yukwon's eye and communicating his true feelings with a flicker of his eyebrows. Smiling comes a lot more easily to Yukwon but even he, after a restless morning, is already assuming that frozen up look that becomes common among the wait staff.

The double doors of the canteen fly open and a line of men file in, each one blank faced, stern jawed, straight backed. They barely look at the men behind the counter as they pass by, keeping their hungry eyes fixed on the greyish mess being dropped onto their trays. Before long the room is full, a hundred silent black-clothed backs, a hundred dirty hands moving in unison, a hundred mouths gulping down the gristly meal without comment. No one speaks; no one ever speaks. Their smiles are as pointless as always.

Kyung pushes the spoon around in the industrial sized tins of mess that stand in a neat line in front of him. To his left Yukwon is massaging his jaw delicately with two fingers, the corners of his mouth twitching; to his right Jaehyo's rubbing at his leg. Standing for so long is hell on his injury but Kyung can't really feel sorry for him; he'd warned the taller boy not to step out of line that day, and he only had himself to blame for the punishment. Still, it makes him shiver to remember the way the pneumatic arm of the docker had punched him back into place with such brutal efficiency. He'd not seen one of them strike out like that before. Jaehyo manages to glare at him even while he's still smiling, and Kyung's suddenly glad that their gritted teeth makes speech impossible. He's not getting into trouble on Jaehyo's account.

The first despatch of men finish up their dinner swiftly and march out the way they came: one snaking line of perfectly orchestrated feet and hands dropping trays at the end of the service counter with a series of tinny clunks that make his head ache. Minhyuk carries them away in batches of ten, his face already red and damp from the dishwasher. Minhyuk's lucky that his job role doesn't require a constant smile; Kyung thinks his face would probably crack.

A precise fifteen minutes after the first arrival, the doors fly open again and all of them behind the counter straighten up, take their spoons in hand and brighten their smiles. And that's how it continues, hour upon hour, until the black-clothed backs begin to blur into one and Kyung's not sure if he's still smiling because his face has gone almost completely numb.

"I swear it looked even grosser than usual today," Yukwon says, flicking a lump of gristly mess off his apron and wrinkling his nose with distaste. "You know, I always wonder what this actually tastes like, but whenever I've got the chance to try it..."

"I wouldn't," Taeil says, pressing both hands into his eyes and leaning back against the wall. "I make the stuff, you don't even want to know what goes into it."

"Can't be worse than the crap we get fed," Jaehyo says gloomily. He's barely on his feet at this stage, having to hold onto Minhyuk's shoulder for support while Kyung unties his apron for him. His eyebrows draw together in a wince as he tests his weight on his bad leg. "If this isn't better tomorrow I don't know what I'll do."

Kyung bites back the urge to say that he tried to warn him - that kind of comment is never helpful - and instead hangs Jaehyo's apron up and nudges him gently. "Let's see." With another wince the tall boy bends down and hikes up the loose leg of his trouser to reveal the bruise on his calf: a perfect circle, deep purple around the outside fading into angry red and noxious yellow. The area is swollen and looks impossibly tender. Kyung makes his own hand into a fist and holds it up to compare, in breath through his teeth.

"Ouch."

"Those dockers are vicious," Minhyuk says. There's a bite of anger in his voice which Kyung knows is nothing to do with Jaehyo's bruise. "They never give you any warning."

"You're not supposed to break the rules," Yukwon says wearily.

"They should give you a warning first."

He supports Jaehyo as they stumble back to digs; Taeil weaves his way ahead, fingers dragging along the walls like he's half-asleep and finding his way by touch. Yukwon drops back next to Kyung, still rubbing his aching jaw. The corridor is cramped, barely big enough for them to walk side by side, and the steady dripping of waste run off from the upper levels fills the whole area with a dank, musty stench. They're used to it by now, and it barely registers, but sometimes when they're especially tired and Kyung feels like the nerves that hold him together have been scraped raw by the endless clanging of metal on metal, he notices it all over again and wonders what he wouldn't do just for a taste of fresh air.

"I sometimes wonder if we'll ever breathe properly again," Yukwon says gloomily, echoing his thoughts. Kyung doesn't reply, shoots him a sharp glare. Even here, in this forgotten and uncared for space, there's always a chance that someone will be listening. Even an infraction as minor as Jaehyo's could be enough to draw someone's attention.

Six hundred begins to strike as Taeil leads them into the low little bunk room; the day shift boys are lined up to file out as soon as they file in, greeting them with sleepy nods and muttered hellos. "How's the mess looking today?" Jongkook says, rubbing his pointed nose as if he can already smell it.

"Foul, as ever," Taeil says. "Enjoy." Led by their own cook they straggle out, each one pulling back his shoulders and preparing to plaster on the essential smile, all traces of which have utterly vanished from the faces of the night shift workers. The door clicks shut behind them, and they're back in their own world: dingy tiled walls, grimy tiled floor, the sagging bunks stacked up on either side and the ventilation shaft weakly huffing lukewarm air into their faces. It's all so ugly, and Kyung thinks the same thing he thinks every single morning: how has he managed to survive so long here?

He remembers, very distantly, things being different - never that different, since by accident of birth he was always destined for these unpleasant conditions, but different enough that he wouldn't mind going back, given the choice. He had grown up with most of these boys; he remembers the high glass dome of their classroom and the way the sky always hung over their heads as they worked, yellowy-blue, breathing down like a God. His parents were always kind, and although he can't recall their faces he can remember his father's voice. He was always soft and insistent, forever telling him that wherever he ended up it wasn't his fault, that maybe when he was older things would be different and there would be more chances for people like them. 

"Whatever happens to you," his mother had added one day, urgently, squeezing his shoulders and looking hard into his uncomprehending face, "you'll always be our son and we'll always love you." He hadn't understood the dampness around her eyes at the time. It had been only days later that the officials came for him, marched him out of the family home just like his sister before him.

In a way he was lucky. He could have been transferred down to level zero, to join the invisibles; he was small, and not too strong, and people like him usually weren't chosen for steady labour, just thrown into Waste Retrieval or one of the mining operations and worked for as long as they could be before their bodies gave in. But his looks had just saved him. Instead he'd been taken not too far from where he'd grown up, and found Yukwon already there, familiar lazy eyes and warm smile, mopping the floor of the canteen. That had been ten years ago, and despite all the upheavals that the lower orders tended to undergo, and the one person they had lost, they were almost exactly the same team they had always been: himself; Yukwon; Minhyuk, the quiet boy who had been transferred to their staff from an assembly line somewhere when someone noticed his beautifully structured face; Jaehyo, who'd always been kind to them despite being a year older and had blossomed out of his awkward, gangly adolescence; and Taeil, who was something of a mystery to all of them, being neither tall nor strikingly handsome, but who could do miraculous things with the leftovers that came to them under the laughable title of 'groceries'.

Kyung has always thought their luck springs from their faces. Like the boys from the day shift, who had also been a consistent team for a good time now, something about their faces plays well together, coheres; they look right standing in a line together and that's important. His doe-eyed boyishness strikes the right chord against Yukwon's razor sharp jawline and feline eyes; Taeil's short and mousy and cute while Jaehyo is tall, elegant, chiselled. But he always thinks they look better out of work, without those painful forced smiles, lying around their tiny room in various states of disarray. If there's such a thing as the real them - if such a thing exists after so long in one grinding routine which aims at nothing less than a complete erasure of their personalities - then this is when it can be seen.

From where he's sprawled on the floor, long legs propped up against the lowest bunk, Jaehyo drums his fingers on his stomach and lets out a long sigh. "I'm so hungry." It's his usual complaint, and no one pays it much heed. With a wry smile Taeil tosses the stubby end of a wrinkled carrot at his head before he turns back to the hob.

"Dinner won't be long."

"I don't know how you can have any appetite after looking at that mess all day," Yukwon grumbles. He's flipping through a trashy paperback, something he picked up from the junk room; Kyung can just about read the title from across the room: Through the Vents: One Man's Story of Success. "Books like this are such a cheap trick," he continues, waving it to emphasise his point. "Like anyone really believes some dude from level one can end up in the golden zone."

"Sungmin believes it," Minhyuk says, and although his voice implies mockery there's not a hint of it in his face, only a dark sort of grimness.

"Yeah, how's he planning this coup then?"

Minhyuk shrugs, halfway through prising his boots off. "Same as ever, I guess. Someone's gonna spot him at work, say, oh boy, that kid's too good looking to be slopping up mess, and hey ing presto." He hauls his boot off with a grunt. 

"As if. There hasn't been an inspection in months."

"Stupid little bastard."

"He should watch it," Kyung says. "The only place you end up if that happens is down the dirty path."

"He's a kid," Minhyuk says shortly. There's silence in the little room for a second while they all think about the same thing, the one time they ever saw that much desired event happen and how Jaehyo had seen him months later: destroyed, hollow, barely even human any more. A collective shiver runs around them, and Yukwon attempts a smile, cutting through the gloomy atmosphere.

"Apparently this guy managed it by coming up with an innovative idea for the vent system. Plucked up his courage and took it to his district steward and they were all, oh man you are a genius let me give you a level five promo right now."

"Can't have been that innovative," Jaehyo grunts, turning onto his front and fanning himself with one hand. "They still don't work."

"Don't sit right next to the hob then." Taeil nudges him with one foot, stirring away vigorously. "It's not gonna make dinner come any quicker if you sit there salivating."

Dinner does come pretty quickly though, and despite the strange oily texture of it, it's hot and it tastes good to the five starving guys. They wolf it down as silently as the men they serve every day and without much more talking they tumble into their bunks. They don't all fall asleep at the same time; Yukwon keeps his lamp on to read a little more of his ty book (even if it's ty Kyung can appreciate the need to escape to some other place, just for a little while; sometimes the general grime and drudgery makes him feel like his brain is dissolving) and Minhyuk sits at the end of his bed, cleaning their boots, which he's done every night that Kyung can remember without ever being asked. It's his quiet way of showing his affection, just like how Taeil cooks for all of them and Jaehyo wakes them up in the morning, gently, before the shrieking alarm can rip through their dreams. 

Kyung lies back and lets his mind wander. When it's dark and almost silent he can close his eyes and nearly pretend that he's not there at all, that he'll wake in the morning and see something other than greasy tiled walls and the exhausted faces of his friends. He can imagine a window at his side with a view out onto rolling green fields and warm sunlight, the pulsing sky above him, and he'll open it and drink in the cold clean air. The vent shaft cranks and hums from the ceiling; Taeil's soft snores start up from the bunk above him. The last thing he sees - as always, probably the earliest memory he has because it's everywhere, prominent and watchful, branded into the mind's eye of every single being who inhabits this labyrinthine structure - is the glowing red logo on the back of the door, the large letter W with the blinking dot in the centre that reminds him that however lonely he may feel, none of them are ever alone.

They wake; they go to work; they stand and smile for twelve hours; they come home; they eat; they sleep.

This happens in a never-ending cycle, day after day, month after month, and it's all any of them really know or can remember at this stage but it doesn't stop them from imagining. They have to imagine; it's the only thing that keeps their hearts alive in this crushing treadmill of an existence, the fact that they can still picture a day when things might be different, new - better. Without these flights of fancy they would wither and die. Some days Kyung can't quite bring the images to life and it frightens him. He can feel the sharp edges of his mind going dull and rusty, and he wonders if it's only a matter of time before he becomes dull and whited out like an overexposed photograph, like the older men they see sweeping the corridors, emptying out the waste chutes, no longer any use to anyone because the roses have gone from their cheeks, the sparkle from their eyes. Dreams keep them young; dreams keep them safe.

They all have their own variations, more or less extravagant. Minhyuk is cautious, wishes only for a simple, clean life, one where he can bathe every day and wear new clothes, and eat fresh food, but the look of serenity that slips over his face when he talks about it changes him completely. Yukwon's eyes glow as he spins tales of the woman he'll marry someday: her slender figure, her bright smile, her quick and witty mind, and, "two children - a boy and a girl - and a proper home, a real family, and no one - no one would take my children away from me." Taeil hungers for freedom, talks about travelling great distances, visiting new places, "anywhere that isn't this horrible city, I'm so bored of walls and corridors." Jaehyo mentions food, and girls, but - perhaps surprisingly - it's mostly about his parents, how he wants to see them again and take care of them as they grow old. "This society hates old people so much," he says with a distressed knot in his eyebrows. "I worry for them." Kyung, in turn, tells them about the fresh air he craves and the intellectual stimulation he wants, imagining rooms full of books that he could spend all day losing himself in without ever worrying that he might know something someone doesn't want him to know. But he has another dream, still dearer than this, and it's one he never dares mention.

They are never alone, not really. They may joke, grumble here and there, but only in the privacy of their own room, and even there it's tacitly understood that anyone could listen in if they had half a mind. The dot on the glowing red logo doesn't just see, it hears, and so Kyung never voices his thoughts about it, his dream of one day being on the other side of that camera. He wants to know who's watching. He wants to know the conductor of this dreadful symphony, of which they are only one tiny repetitive beat. He wants to understand the mind behind this towering, terrifying, all-consuming creation in which they live. And he wants to tear it apart.

There isn't a crime more dangerous than sedition. To all outward appearances Kyung is orthodox, to the point that the others roll their eyes from time to time when he pokes them and reminds them to smile, or refuses to engage with their complaints at work. Really, he knows it's only a few easy steps from there to the heresy he carries in his mind. He can't take the risk. Because unlike Yukwon's dreams of family, or Jaehyo's depressingly futile wish of ever seeing his parents again, he thinks there's a chance - just a fleeting, tiny chance - that his dream will one day come true.

They're standing in line waiting for the medic drone to give them the monthly once-over when Kyung sees a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

At first he's not sure what he's seen, if it was anything at all or just a mirage caused by steam rising from the water pipes and his own exhausted mind - they've just come from their night shift and he's swaying on his feet, starving hungry and barely upright. Then he sees it again, a deft whisk of skin and cloth just picked out in the reddish light cast by the drones' examining rays and reflecting dully off the pipes. From up ahead he hears a little whine from Yukwon as the cold light of the ray brushes over his stomach. He shuts his eyes hard, opens them again, and there's a face - indistinct, the features half-covered by a swathe of black cloth, only the eyes staring down, glowing eerily in the reflected light.

His heart thudding, he tears his gaze away, looks straight ahead at Jaehyo's slumped over back. He could raise the alarm - he should raise the alarm - but he knows that whoever the person up there is, he's doing something that Kyung himself would give a week's worth of rations to do. No one would slip around and hide like that if they weren't outside of the law - no one would be able to. The chips in their ankle would soon alert the security drones and bring them back into line. Kyung has seen an outlaw, and his stomach churns with a mixture of fear and fascination as he moves up the line. When he chances another look under his eyelashes the spot on the pipes is deserted once again. He tries to calm himself and prays the drones don't notice anything amiss in his heart rate.

They're even more exhausted than usual when they get back to their dorm, Taeil slumping against the wall as he stirs the dinner around and Minhyuk falling straight onto his bed without bothering to take his shoes off first. Kyung taps his fingers against his thighs as he tries to figure out a way to bring the slurred conversation around to where he wants it, but Yukwon's fretting about a dark patch that showed up on the scans on the left side of his chest, and an opening doesn't appear.

That doesn't matter though. He can wait, and he does, through another two or three days while the image of those intense eyes floats through his head.

There had been something so alive about that gaze, even at that distance and through the shadows - something dancing, merry, as if the person was so vitally aware of their own freedom, revelling in it. And Kyung can understand why. Outlaws are almost underheard of in their society; it's near on impossible to hide from the endless cameras, the tags that just about everyone is implanted with at birth, the constant surveillance even from your own friends and co-workers because there are always those who will try to gain a little extra for themselves by bargaining away someone else. 

But outlaws do exist - he knows they do, and not only because he's seen one now. It's one of the most famous legends of the lower districts, it has been passed around in hushed voices since Kyung was a teenager and just becoming aware of those furious wrenches in his chest that pulled every time he remembered where he was and how trapped he was. No one could say how much truth there was in the story, and there are plenty of different versions, but it is true that someone had escaped the system. If rumour hadn't been enough, there had been news reports; Kyung can just about remember them hollering through the loudspeakers about a renegade worker, a missing person, should not be approached but should be reported if sighted, and anyone failing to do so would be subject to the strictest punishment themselves. He had looked between his friends and acknowledged the excitement that buzzed about the room with the knowledge that someone had escaped. If one person could do it, there was a chance for all of them. Maybe that hope was why he still remembers the reports, even though according to official word they never existed, and no one had ever got away.

That's why, with his appearance of perfect orthodoxy, it would be far too dangerous to bring the story up without warning or reason. It takes a few days but he's learnt how to wait patiently, so much so that when Minhyuk casually mentions having heard footsteps behind the wall of the storage unit during their shift, he says absolutely nothing and only looks vaguely interested.

"Maybe it was the famous renegade," Yukwon snickers, and Kyung breathes a silent sigh of relief. They do remember then; it's not only him.

"Get this, Sejoon reckons he saw him the other day." Shaking his head, Jaehyo makes a gesture with his finger which suggests he thinks the cook of the day shift is not entirely stable. "He swore blind to me that he saw him at the back of the canteen during lunch service."

"What would he be doing lurking in the canteen?" Kyung laughs. The outburst of noise releases some of the tension that seizes up his stomach on hearing this. "If he's gonna raid lunch service anywhere you think he'd do it on level three at least."

"Apparently he was just standing there. Just standing staring down at the counter. Sejoon reckons he saw him one minute and when he looked back he was gone. No one else saw anything." Jaehyo makes the gesture again and shrugs while Kyung laughs some more, but his throat has already gone dry and his hands damp. Sejoon could be a little strange, certainly, but he believes his story.

Or rather, he wants, desperately, to believe it. Because if it is true then the renegade was lurking around their area - possibly at that very moment. Perhaps he had even chosen them for some reason. Perhaps Kyung is one step closer to realising his dream of escape.