There's no slumped forms when the day shift boys return this time. There's clenched fists and furious grimaces and - only four of them. As they pile in Kyung shoots up from the bottom bunk where he's pulling on his shoes so quickly that he smacks his head on the bed above.

"They took him," Jongkook chokes out, gagging on his own rage. "Sejoon, they took him - in the middle of service, they came in and dragged him off - "

"I told him," Sungjong is repeating, his voice getting higher with each sentence until it starts cracking. "I told him - I told him not to talk about it, I told him - oh ," and his shoulders start convulsing. Sungmin's looking around wildly as if figuring out what the nearest thing he can punch is, his fists already tight and ready.

"Wait, wait." Taeil urges them into some sort of silence; without their own cook there he's the one they'll most readily defer to, and his presence is steady and somewhat soothing. "Took him? You mean - ?"

"The security drones," Jungwoo says. Out of all of them he's the only one who doesn't look angry, his expression a sort of dull resignation as if he'd known this was going to happen. And he probably did, Kyung thinks; Jungwoo's smart and practical, and he's seen him more than once try to quiet Sejoon's more frenzied outbursts about their working conditions. "It was all that talk about seeing - you know."

Jaehyo goes dead white and looks like he's going to vomit, although it probably hadn't been his comments that had alerted the listening ears to Sejoon's breach of protocol. He sinks down onto his bunk, dropping his head into his hands. ". , we were just - last night, we were talking about the same thing."

"You weren't saying you'd seen him though, were you?" Jungkook demands. "You weren't running around talking about how he was ing watching, how he was right there in the room - the crazy bastard, how could he not expect this?"

"I told him," Sungjong repeats, eyes fixed on some distant and horrific point.

Jungwoo closes his eyes for a long second and breathes out hard, his smooth face setting into some kind of resolution. "There's nothing we can do," he says eventually. "He's not going to come back."

Taeil nods, shoots a look around the room at his own team to remind them that they're still due on shift soon, and slowly they begin dragging themselves upright, shaking the shock out of their bodies. "Be careful," he says, briefly pressing Jungwoo's hands in his own. "You know the next guy to come along could be a plant. They'll be looking harder at the rest of you."

"I know." Jungwoo's tone suggests that he's going to take it as personal responsibility to make sure that none of them put a toe out of line again. "And you guys be careful too."

Kyung's heart thuds nauseatingly as they leave; he flashes a sympathetic look at Sungjong which he's sure the other boy doesn't see. He can hardly see anything himself as he follows an uncharacteristically silent line towards the canteen. Harmless rumours are one thing; for such a sudden arrest to be made suggests there was far more to Sejoon's story than they had thought at first. He thinks of the dark figure he saw, crouched high on the water pipe, gazing down at him with a mocking merriment, and he shudders. Infuriating as it is he locks the memory away deep down inside himself. The fear weighs heavy on his shoulders and for the first time he feels like everything he keeps hidden away is there, visible in his face, a clear sign for the nameless watchers to take him away.

Their shift is twice as tense and painful as normal; he's never been gladder to shuck his apron and trudge back to digs. No one says a word - they haven't spoken in twelve hours, everyone clearly feeling the same terror that he does, the worry that one wrong word could have them marked as the next one to be dragged away. When they get back there's a new guy heading up the queue of the day shift: cropped dark hair, eyes that crinkle pleasantly when he greets them, introducing himself as Yuwhan. There's enough concern in his expression for his sullen staff to make him seem like a pleasant enough person, but no one trusts him. They can't afford to. Taeil shakes his hand, jaw tight, and says nothing until they're gone, Jungkook wheeling round for just long enough to pull a comic expression of despair.

"," Jaehyo says, his shaking voice the first thing to break the overwhelming silence, and even then Kyung's sure it's just because it's becoming too oppressive to stand. ", what now?"

"We eat," Taeil says, grimly determined, beginning to gather the scraps out of the rations bin. "We eat and carry on. There's nothing else we can do."

He's right, but even though Sejoon's not part of their team his absence can't help but weigh heavily on them. The thought that the authority they believed themselves so safe from is only a step away steals their appetites completely, even though today's leftovers are fresher than usual and their meal is almost tasty. The glowing red W on the door watches over them, and Kyung catches his friends throw glances at it from time to time, like they're worried - just like he's worried - that its powers have begun to extend beyond hearing and seeing, that it can penetrate into their very minds and read the secret thoughts of dissent they all harbour.

Later, as he's lying in bed staring blankly at the inside of his eyelids and willing himself to drop off, he hears Yukwon's hushed voice.

"If they took him - that means that what he was saying was true." It's not directed at him so Kyung turns in his bunk to hear a little better, hears Minhyuk grunt in response and a squeak as he prods the underside of Yukwon's bunk.

"Sh. Don't."

There's a cut off sound like a choked sob. Kyung wants so badly to speak, to say something reassuring, but there's nothing to say - no reassurement could be possible. Even if it were true, there is little any of them can do about it now.

They know something's not right before they enter the canteen the next day. The doors are open - it's a strict rule that each chef must lock them securely before leaving for handover, and there's no way a new member of the team would have neglected such an important duty. With his key hanging uselessly from his hand, Taeil fixes them all with a sharp glare over his shoulder: don't speak, don't make a single sound - and creeps forward to peer around the edge of the door. From behind him Kyung sees his hands slacken with shock and urges Yukwon forward, wanting to know what's going on.

"Enter in single file. Line up against the wall," a nasal voice shouts out. Taeil's hands tighten back up, wanting to screw themselves into fists; he nods them forward and there's a collective inhale as they enter the canteen.

It's not the sight of the black clad security officers gathered around the opposite wall that shocks them. It's the sight of the wall itself: defaced with dripping red paint, a tremendous W slashed across it almost from one end to the other, a sloppy and screeching mockery of the formalised lines of the logo they all know so well. The logo itself - sharply delineated in contrast, glowing from above the service station - has been smashed. The winking red dot in the centre is still and dead; the smooth red surface is shattered. Kyung looks from one to the other and his heart tumbles into his boots.

Shock stills their feet for a moment, so that they only shake themseves and begin backing up as instructed when one of the guards peels off and marches over. His mechanised arm with the cruel eye of the gun-barrel pointing directly at them reminds them just how disposable they really are. The guard barely looks at them, his eyes remaining instead on the opposite wall and the mocking graffiti. Taeil sends a look down the line to warn them to be careful, but he doesn't need to bother. Sejoon's disappearance is still at the forefront of their minds.

The guard starts with Taeil, nudges him in the chest with his gun arm until Taeil puts his hands up at his shoulders. "You're chef of this team? You lock the doors last night?"

"Yes," Taeil replies calmly.

"Sure you locked them properly?"

"If they hadn't been locked, you wouldn't have had to force your way in here," he points out. It's a clever observation - the locks on both sets of doors are hanging open, clearly blasted by the guard's weapons, not picked by skillful fingers - but the guard doesn't appreciate subtle thinking, clearly. He jabs the barrel up under Taeil's chin and gives him a warning look.

"Just answer the questions shorty. You know anything about the other team? Think they might have left them open?"

"I doubt it. Yuwhan's just joined the day staff, he wouldn't do anything so stupid straight off the bat." The fact that he's replacing someone who had been arrested without warning goes without saying.

"You give your keys to him last night? Got them back this morning?" Taeil displays the bunch in his hand which Yuwhan had passed over only minutes before.

The guard stares him down levelly. Behind his heavy helmet and black visor his face is all but inscrutable, but the small strip of skin showing displays a thin mouth twisted in disbelief. He turns and walks up and down the row of boys, not looking at any of them. Kyung's stomach starts to ache as the splattered lines of the graffiti blur in and out in front of his eyes. The clock is beginning to strike eighteen fifteen, but there's been no sign of the lines of workers so far. They had almost certainly been diverted to another canteen, and that just makes him worry more. The guards were clearly planning to keep them there for as long as it took.

Then again, he tries to console himself, what did they know? They had only just turned up - they could prove it, the tags in their ankles tracked every movement and a quick look at the databanks would show the guards had reached the canteen before they had. The room had been deserted for ten minutes, maybe more, as the shifts swapped over; they couldn't possibly know what had happened here. The only possible answer was that Yuwhan really had left the doors open - for what insane reason, he couldn't imagine - but if that was the case then it was the day shift that were in trouble, not them.

He straightens out his back a little, tries to breathe normally as the guard makes a turn at the end of the line and comes back towards him. Yukwon's shivering beside him; to his right Minhyuk has his eyes fixed dully on the floor, looking nothing more than bored with the proceedings but Kyung knows that's just his way of dealing with fear.

"So none of you know anything, and none of you were here," the guard says slowly. "Is that right? No one's got anything to say about this?" He indicates the letter painted all across the opposite wall. Without knowing quite how to respond they express their ignorance in a variety of ways, heads shaking and mumbled denials, Jaehyo piping out a bright if shaky, 'no sir' only to redden hastily.

The mouth below the impenetrable visor twists in another direction, less scepticism and more sadism. "Our sources," he says slowly, "indicate differently."

Kyung can feel the drop in temperature as he and all of his friends go cold simultaneously. By now they must all have worked out whose work this defacement was, and even if they had no information about him - no knowledge of where he might be (even Kyung's secret sighting told him nothing more than that he had been nearby at some point) or who he might be - they all knew that in the event of disturbances like this, the authorities were only too willing to seize you based on the smallest assumption. Sejoon's case proved that. There were cellars full of data workers and assembly line monkeys all dying for a chance to get into the upper levels, because even standing behind a service counter in an ugly apron you had at least some chance of being noticed; kitchen staff like them were not irreplacable by any means. Especially not those who were known to swap seditious stories about outlaws, who consorted with people who claimed to have seen them.

Taeil, at least, makes the effort to bargain with them, although hearing him sell one of their friends out in such cold terms is sickening. "We heard about what Park Sejoon had been saying. We didn't believe him. He's always been crazy - a dissenter too." Kyung sneaks a glance along, can't help but be impressed by how smoothly Taeil can tell such ugly lies to protect them.

"Shut up," the guard growls. "We are referring to the culprit of this vile act himself."

The fear on their faces hardens into confusion. From a few steps away, the guard watches them with a touch of amusement hovering about his mouth, as if he's pleased to see the effect he's having. Then a horribly familiar high pitched noise becomes audible: a scraping, whistling noise, one long quavering endless note which scrapes against their nerves. The guard's smile becomes wider; he steps to one side and the drone becomes visible: a tall and slender spire of black studded with evil-looking metal points, the doors for its various armatures quivering as it glides across the floor. The glowing camera atop its crest revolves slowly.

The drones are designed, perfectly, to spike fear into the heart of every worker in the city. They move slowly enough, but everyone knows there is no hope of running from them. Even so, the five boys back up harder against the wall; Yukwon clutches at Kyung's wrist unconsciously and he can feel the other boy's pulse through his palm as fast and brutal as his own.

"If you want to come forward now," the guard says, "you'll make this a lot easier on yourself."

They can't, of course - they don't know who he's referring to, and it's as much of a shock for them to watch the drone approach and wonder who it's coming for - if not for all of them. It's a shock for all of them, but not for Kyung. When the pneumatic arm flies out and the pincer claw clicks around his neck he feels only a dull thud of inevitability.

Yukwon's hand tightens around his wrist and tries to pull him back; he really wishes he wouldn't, it just makes the metal bite harder into his throat. "No," he chokes out, "no, he's - he's orthodox, he's the least - you can't!"

"We have information that suggests otherwise," the guard says grimly. The drone makes a low whistling sound as it tries to move backward; with a click one of the metal-tipped spines on its side punches forward and stabs into Yukwon's stomach. He shrieks, lets go and falls back. Kyung's glad he can't see the rest of his friends. Their looks of hopelessness would only make this worse. "Walk," the guard orders. 

He follows the drone out of the canteen, breathing carefully like he's always been told to so it doesn't think he's trying to pull away. He passes the splash of red, feels his stomach contract in anger. He should have raised the alarm after all. An outlaw was an outlaw; you couldn't expect them to have any sense of honour, or respect for other people. He had been an easy scapegoat, he supposes, staring up like that and making it so obvious that he wouldn't tell, that he only craved the freedom the other figure embodied. Well, he was free - free of the kitchen, free of the stinking digs, and in not too long, free of his whole monotonous existence.

It's hard that it should end this way, but Kyung knows he should have learnt his lesson a long time ago.

He wakes in a freezing cold stone room, his mouth parched and a distant thudding in his head. The tranquilisers pumped through his system leave him woozy, and he doesn't try to stand upright just yet, letting the panic that sets in ebb away as he remembers everything that's happened in the last few hours.

It was the walk to the containment cells that was the worst, trudging behind the drone with its ear-splitting whine and knowing that everyone who passed knew exactly where he was going. He'd seen people being dragged off himself, that terrible claw fixed around their necks and ready to crush if they tried to run away. Some were slumped, accepting of their fate; some struggled as much as they were able, pleading pointlessly with the insensible machine that they didn't do it, they were innocent. Some walked with their heads held high, meeting the eyes of those they passed with a mute challenge, and that was the example he tried to emulate. Despite his fears, he knew that they couldn't really see into his head, and whatever they thought he was guilty of, they had no way of proving it.

That was what he thought, anyway, until the door closed on the interrogation room and the man who sat down opposite him - tall, broad shouldered, only his cold eyes showing above the mask that hid half his face - silently pressed a button and played a piece of CCTV footage. He recognised the eyes staring into the camera, their dancing merriment, but the voice was unfamiliar even as it condemned him.

"The renegade himself put the mark on you, as you see," the interrogator said, pausing the video so that the mocking eyes remained fixed on Kyung. "You heard him yourself: 'Park Kyung knows where I am'. What do you have to say to that?"

He swallowed hard, keeping his hands steady only through an immense effort of will. Any single show of nerves could be enough to condemn him. "It's a lie," he said firmly. "I have no idea who he is or where he might be."

"And what do you say to this?" A second piece of footage played then: Kyung saw himself standing in line in front of the medic bots, saw his eyes flicker up to that spot on the wall. He hadn't known the cameras' range of vision went that high - stupid, he cursed himself, wasn't he always the one warning his friends that they could be seen anywhere? The black-clad figure crouched on the pipes and he saw something he hadn't seen the first time: a gesture, aimed down at him, which looked like the renegade was acknowledging him. He saw himself bite his lip, turn away and remain silent as the figure slipped out of view. The man paused the video, throwing up one hand as if to indicate that his continued show of ignorance was useless. "You admit that you saw him on that day?"

"Yes." It would have been stupid to deny it.

"And you admit that you should have raised the alarm, and failed to do so?"

"Yes."

The atmosphere in the room tightened another few degrees; Kyung felt his chest get tight as the interrogator leaned in across the table. "The renegade seems to have some attachment to your district. This is the third time he's chosen to make contact with your staff group. Can you tell me why that is?"

His voice became almost plaintive then, exhaustion and fear knocking at his bones and tangling his thoughts. "I don't know. I swear I don't know."

"Funny. That's what Park Sejoon claimed. Yet you all seem to hold a deep interest in the habits of this criminal." He cringed as the man played a recording, recognising his friend's voices: not one but five different occasions when they'd talked about the renegade, and even though his voice was always the one warning them off the topic, even he could hear the spark of interest in his tone, the reluctance with which he told them to drop it. "Why is that?"

He shrugged, tried to breath evenly; discussing the renegade was frowned upon, he reminded himself, but not a crime, and none of them had said they wanted to join him, help him - it was nothing beyond interest. "I - I suppose it's a topic of interest for most people in level one. The idea that someone can escape."

"He did not escape," the man said; under the mask Kyung could detect a dry smile. "Official word is that no one has ever escaped. You are not supposed to remember. You are not supposed to speak of it. So I will ask again. Why are you so interested?" When Kyung remained mute he leaned back in his chair, working the tips of his long fingers together. "I don't want to go through the trouble of dragging your other staff members in here and asking them the same question. He picked you out in particular; you must have some idea of why."

Kyung felt like his head might crack open. A million theories were whirling round his head, all implausible, but the most dominant thought was, why him? "I don't know," he said again, his voice breaking a little with desperation. "I really don't know - maybe because I saw him and didn't say anything? Maybe he thought I was on his side? I don't know, I don't even know how he knows my name."

The cold eyes grew still icier, and the man's posture stilled in a deadly way, like the drones right before they er-punched you back into your place. "I see. Perhaps a few days in the isolation cells will jog your memory then."

The drone that had been waiting in the corner of the room moved forward, took him around the neck again, and despite the fear crawling up his insides Kyung couldn't help but feel some relief - if a very confused sort - at getting away so easily. He walked without resistance to the cells, submitted without complaint to the examination and logging procedure, and then he was inside the cell, a sharp pin-prick entering the back of his neck, and a sort of yawning void opened up in the floor that he stumbled into quickly and quietly.

Now, sitting on the stone floor, he pulls his knees into his chest and allows the shivers that have been building in his stomach to wrack his body. Isolation is certainly preferable to the interrogation methods he's heard so many horror stories about, but it sets up a different kind of fear in him. Without even trying he knows no one would hear him shout. The walls are inches thick, solid stone, and he's right down in the belly of the city, the fumes from the furnaces wafting up through the tiny air vent. The room is cramped, barely largely enough to allow him to lay down flat - poor Sejoon, he thinks, if he's still alive his back must be hurting terribly by now - and utterly empty but for the waste chute against the wall. They could forget about him completely and no one would ever know until they found his bones, maybe years later.

As ugly and uncomfortable as it was, he thinks of his digs with a painful wash of affection. Just yesterday he had wanted to be out of there so badly; now he can't think of anything he'd like more than to be back there, watching Jaehyo stumble into things in his half asleep state and Taeil wrestle with his fraying bootlaces, ready to follow them out for another twelve hours of slopping mess. Only the tag in his ankle, an ever-present lump under the skin which has been with him so long he forgets it's there, provides some comfort. Pressing his fingers against it, he reminds himself that he is still a member of a society - that there are links leading to and from him in the people he's known, and that even if he crumbles into dust in this tiny room, he will not be forgotten about. They wouldn't forget Sejoon; they had not forgotten Jihoon, even years after he'd been taken from them. 

He curls up on the stone floor and lets his eyes wander, but the thought of his window and the fresh air and blue sky has never been further away.