Somehow, despite the hardness of the floor and his stomach-churning panic, Kyung falls asleep quickly, the stress and activity of the previous few hours hitting him as effectively as an anaesthetic. He's bewildered when he wakes up. The lights in the room have gone off and the blackness is overwhelming, pierced only by the red glow of the clock. It's nearing nine hundred hours, and neither Taewoon nor Jihoon seem to have returned.

Sejoon is snoring contentedly next to him, and he doesn't feel like company just yet, so he sits up - bones aching - and feels along the floor until he finds the wall. He sits back against it, gathers his knees into his chest and tries to figure out what woke him up. He had been dreaming, he thinks, which is unusual because dreams have always been rare for him. His days are usually so monotonous that there's little for his unconscious mind to occupy itself with. He remembers vaguely a shadowy figure approaching him, and being unable to move, or perhaps it was only that his muscles had seized up from lying on the floor. There had been sharp points of pain entering his body at the joints, and someone laughing in the background, and then a hazy golden light spreading through the room that dazzled him and drove every thought from his mind until all he could think about was how beautiful it was, how he wanted it to envelop him.

Shivering, Kyung folds his arms around his knees and rests his head on them. His neck and spine are still pounding from exhaustion and cramps, and he feels again what he felt back in the cell, overwhelmed with nostalgia for his cramped little dormitory and the warmth and noise of the four boys around him. But his position now is even more hopeless than it was back then. He's completely outside that society now, the tag ripped from his ankle and his name firmly on the list of fugitives, and the four boys won't be there either - they've gone somewhere, possibly never to return. Everything is irretrievably changed and he feels sick at heart, sick with the knowledge that he could have prevented all of this, he could have kept them all safe if he had just stuck to the rules. They've been told since childhood that the rules are there for their own protection, and now he begins to understand why. As pleasant as Taewoon seems, as intoxicating as the thought of his freedom and rebellion was, he's just another person willing to use them for his own ends.

A distant thudding begins to sound from the opposite wall, echoing in the empty room. A moment later Jihoon drops out of the chute and lands, legs and arms akimbo and a dazed look on his face. He sits up and even in the darkness Kyung can see the tears on his face.

"Jihoonie," he calls out. The other boy scrambles to his feet, wiping furiously at his cheeks, and fumbles on the wall; the weak bulb begins to glow again and he staggers over to drop down next to Kyung. His expression is blanked out and hopeless.

"You should wake Sejoon up," he mutters. "You both need to hear this." Kyung crawls forward and shakes the sleeping boy until he begins to grumble and sit up, groggily rubbing his eyes. Neither of them press Jihoon for information; it's obvious enough from the sight of him that he has no good news to tell. It's merely a question of how bad the bad news will be.

"You did see them, then," Kyung begins, stating the obvious to make it easier. Jihoon nods, glances at both of them without meeting their eyes.

"Taewoon was right - they're up on level five in one of the service rooms. They're - they're completely assimilated, all of them," and when their eyebrows trace shapes of confusion he twitches. The unease radiating from him is palpable. "That means they've been completely worked in as level five workers - I mean - it's hard to explain."

Something in the way his mouth twists and his eyes crumple at the edges sparks comprehension in Kyung. Gently, giving him time to pull away if he wants, he takes Jihoon's hand and laces their fingers together. Jihoon had been at level five himself, in some way. He knows first hand the things that go on there, and Kyung has a feeling that the control patches are not even the half of it. The younger boy takes a deep breath; his hand is tight and damp against Kyung's but it seems to lend him some strength. "When you go up to the top levels, you can't just go as you are, obviously. They want the good looking kids on the lower levels to begin with. To reach the top you have to be perfect, and if you're not they - they make you perfect. Not just the way you look, either." A shudder wrenches at his body, visceral horror at what he's seen. "I - I can't explain without you seeing it. It's like they're clones. They move exactly the same way, they speak exactly the same. There's nothing of them left. Just empty faces, empty eyes. Mannequins. Nothing else."

Abruptly he hides his face against Kyung's shoulder and hot tears soak through his shirt. Bewildered, he can't do much more than slip his arm around the other boy and try to soothe him, looking at Sejoon over the top of Jihoon's head. He looks as confused and scared as Kyung feels. Neither of them can imagine their friends like that, but the closest they can get is more than disturbing enough. "But it's just the control patches," Sejoon says near desperately. "They'd go back to normal once we got rid of those, right?"

"It's not that!" Jihoon wails, and Kyung realises he's not clutching onto him for the sake of his own comfort. His arms are tight around him; it is a gesture of defence. "I'm sorry," he says, his voice muffled with his own tears and Kyung's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

Even as Kyung feels the ice solidify in his stomach, the metal chute shakes for the second time and the large dark figure drops from the bottom, gets to his feet, a massive shadowy presence which approaches all too swiftly. "Jihoon," he says sharply, and Jihoon just holds on tighter.

"I won't let you," he chokes. Kyung looks up at the grim face, recognises in the coldness of the eyes the need for haste and objectivity. This is no time to be emotional, to mourn what has been or will be lost. Once again, he has one opportunity to change things, and since there is no going back he would be a fool to refuse to go forward. It takes some work prising himself out of Jihoon's hold but he manages it eventually, and he sees just a hint of the smile return to Taewoon's face as he stands before him and holds his head high.

"I'll do whatever you need," he says. As much as he doesn't want to trust this outlaw, he's robbed of all other choices now.

"We'll get you back in one piece," Taewoon replies. It's a hollow promise, but Kyung appreciates the gesture.

He'd like to eat another meal before they go but Taewoon says it's not safe since he'll be going under anaesthetic, so he climbs after him with his empty stomach gurgling with nerves and Jihoon's sobbing still ringing in his ears. The younger boy had been near violent in his attempts to stop them from leaving but Kyung had stood his ground, adopting the icy demeanour that Taewoon employs so neatly. He tries to convince himself, as they crawl along the chute, that it's not such a bad way to go after all, if Taewoon can't manage to get him back. He'll be happy, he supposes, since he won't really remember anything else, and he'll be safe and well fed, back with his old friends. The dark question lurking at the back of his mind of what happens to the workers of level five if they fail to satisfy, if they lose their youthful sparkle, is one he ignores utterly. In a few hours he won't even remember ever having such a thought.

He runs over his instructions one more time to calm himself. If all goes to plan, he'll only have to spend a few hours - half the day at most - in that wiped out state. "We can bet on the regularity of this place," Taewoon had said. "The controller always goes to dinner at eighteen hundred, just like everyone else. I'll switch the patch off a few minutes after. You'll have to keep your composure, follow the lead of the other boys - muscle memory should be some help." In the background a still tearful Jihoon had nodded his agreement, rubbing at the back of his neck with a horror stricken expression. "It's up to you to get near enough to Jiho and get him to recognise you. You'll have half an hour - after that I'll have to switch it back on, or the security sensors will catch you when you leave the room. What happens next depends on him. I'll give you another half hour to get clear of the room and switch you off again." He looked levelly at Kyung, pretending not to see that his hands were shaking with fear. "I won't lie, this is really high risk. If Jiho doesn't recognise you, or you can't get a message to him, get out - go hide out in the chutes until you're switched off again. If you get caught by the guards there won't be much I can do, although I'll post Sejoon down to watch the cells if you don't come back. But this is the only way we've got of getting to Jiho and having a chance of saving the rest of your team."

"And you're sure you can switch it on and off?"

There was a hideous, sickening moment where Taewoon bit hard into his lip, but to his credit he didn't break eye contact. "I'm nearly a hundred percent sure that I can. But something could go wrong. We can't rule it out."

There hadn't been much Kyung could do other than to nod. It seemed like a suicide mission but some small, crazy part of him thought it might just work, if only because of the memories, just now returning, of his childhood with Jiho. "I wish you were my real brother," Jiho had once said to him, and standing in front of his real brother Kyung almost musters a smile.

"You're being phenomenally brave," Taewoon says suddenly; the shock of his voice makes Kyung start enough to smack his head on the top of the chute.

"Thanks," he says with an impressive lack of sarcasm. "But I don't really have much of a choice."

"Of course you do." Without warning Taewoon stops where he is, and Kyung pulls to a halt just shy of his shoulder. There's no light in the chute, so he can't see the face that turns towards him, but the voice is enough: hushed but fiercely sincere. "After everything I've seen, I'd never make someone do something they didn't want to. If you said you couldn't go through with it, I'd let you go. You could stay in my hide out the rest of your life if you wanted. I'd find some other way to bring things down." Kyung thinks he sees, in the shadows, a slight shift of the shoulders that suggests shame. "I could never do it myself."

"It's a good thing I'm here then," he says, and there's a grim note of humour in his voice. Taewoon snorts and they continue in silence. Despite the fate awaiting him, Kyung can't stop thinking now about the boy at the centre of all of this, the boy he'd known as a child. He's starting to remember - because years of hunger and hard work drain the good memories from you so easily, and he'd made other friends since then, friends who had been with him during the hardest times of his life - just how close they were, and how strange it will be to see him again with their statuses now so utterly removed. His biggest regret, with what lies ahead, is that the first time he meets Jiho again he might not be himself; he might not even recognise him. Then again if he pitched up as he is now, dirty and skinny and ten years older, he doubts Jiho would connect him with the kid he'd passed notes to in class and come to crying when he scraped his knees. Even then Kyung had been older, wiser, if only because of his upbringing. Now Jiho is the heir to the entire city, controlled by the person who gives him his status, probably entirely unaware of what's going on outside his beautiful world. And soon enough, Kyung will be just the same.

The chute pops out this time in a room that is so dazzlingly white he has to blink a few times before he can see anything. When the spots stop swirling in his vision he sees endless walls of mirrors and shining countertops; florescent lights explode from the ceiling and everything - high-backed chairs, jars and bottles, scissors and brushes and scalpels - ranged with surgical precision along the surfaces. The few people in the room stop their urgent conversation and snap their attention to where he and Taewoon have emerged. Taewoon stumbles to his feet, rubbing his eyes, irritation crossing his brow.

"Damnit, why is it always so bright in here?"

"The bright light of beauty, Woo," one of the men says. He separates from the others and crosses the room, offering down a hand to help Kyung to his feet. His eyes are narrow and scan him head to foot with the same impartial gaze that had scared him so much in Taewoon. It's doubly terrifying coming from this person. He looks almost harmless, willowy and graceful with a natural curve to his mouth that makes him look like he's always smiling, but his eyes are utterly ruthless. "This is the one then?"

Kyung's grateful for the protective way in which Taewoon throws an arm around his shoulders; it probably looks casual to the onlookers but there's a reassuring tightness in his muscles. "Yep. What do you reckon?"

The man steps a few paces back and scrutinises Kyung again. He's never felt quite so small and grubby. "He's a bit scrawny," the man says sceptically. "Not much I can do about that, but the face I can definitely work with." Just like Taewoon had he lifts Kyung's chin with two fingers and turns his head from left to right, but this time the other hand comes up, pressing down on the bones beneath his skin, testing the skin around his eyes. "Wow. What the hell are they feeding you in the slums?"

Kyung jerks away from his touch with a hot rush of anger. "Barely anything." The man doesn't seem shocked, just gives a cool laugh and brushes a hand over his hair.

"Don't worry. I can fix all of this damage. I can make everything better." He bends down a little, fixes his eyes on Kyung with a look he can't pull away from. Through the fear of losing himself he can see everything he could attain reflected in the man's dark eyes, all the beauty and ease of posture - the rightness that will allow him to walk undetected through the highest levels of society. Taewoon gives a little growl and pulls him back slightly; lost in that gaze he stumbles.

"Don't get creepy, Mino. Just do your job." Mino straightens up, a hint of displeasure crossing his smooth face, but it's gone with a haughty sniff.

"Don't order me around, renegade. You know you can trust me." He gestures with a long arm to one of the chairs sitting in front of the endless mirrors. "Come and sit down then, and let's see what we can do." It crosses Kyung's mind briefly, as he follows the elegant man to his seat, that he hasn't bothered to ask his name. He supposes it hardly matters to him. 

He hasn't seen his own face in so long - they have no real need for mirrors in the digs - that it stuns him to realise what other people have been looking at this whole time. He is scrawny, and filthy too, the dirt of the kitchens seeming to have embedded itself in his pores; the constant smiling has kept the lines from his face but in this new setting he looks wary, his eyes darkened and suspicious. His hair is a tangled mess, and Mino goes there first, ruffling it from one side to the other. "A new colour, you think?" he murmurs to one of the men accompanying him. Then he turns back to Kyung, feeling him begin to twitch under his hands. "Just relax. Let me do my job. I'll give you something for the nerves, okay?"

Taewoon kneels at his other side, catches his eyes in the mirror. His eyebrows are drawn down unhappily and Kyung knows it's not just because of the way he looks. "It's not too late to say no, okay? I won't be angry."

Kyung looks at his own thin face, then back at Taewoon, serious and solid. No matter what he's thought before, there's something in his face - maybe it's only the echoes of his brother - that Kyung can't help but trust. He reminds himself why they're doing this, and what this sacrifice could mean: for himself and Taewoon; for his friends moving mechanically through the rooms of level five; for every person slaving their lives away in the lower levels. He grits his teeth, shakes his head.

"It's okay. I'll do it." He looks up to Mino, who's standing behind him biting into his lower lip, and manages a smile. For the first time he sees what he's been presenting to the workers he served everyday, and he's faintly impressed by it. "Go on. Make me beautiful."

"I'll give you the tranq," Taewoon says. He presses Kyung's hand before he makes the injection, giving him one moment more of himself.

As soon as the cold liquid slides out of the needle and into his veins, he sinks back into the embrace of the chair, all the breath rushing out of him in one long soft sigh, and from then on everything becomes a blur, glowing prettily around the edges. Taewoon disappears into the background somewhere and only these tall angelic-looking men are left, buzzing around him with gentle voices and quick hands. He loses track of time completely; at some point someone holds water to his mouth and tells him to drink; minutes later, or it could be hours, he's aware of being flat on his back with a blinding light glaring into his face, and it's too bright so he shuts his eyes, and there's a confused jumble of pain, strange buzzing noises in his ears and a high-pitched whine that reminds him of the drones. He tries to struggle upwards, finds he can't, sinks back down and lets himself drift in this weird cushioned world where colours play in front of his eyes.

He blinks back into existence with indistinct faces looming over him. His eyes hurt when he tries to force them open wider, and a cold hand soothes his forehead.

"Just stay still," Mino says, his voice fading in and out. "We're all done but you need to rest a little while."

"Can I - see?" he manages to say; his throat is burningly dry. Someone offers water again which spills down his chin, and Taewoon bends down close enough that he can see his eyes, round and reassuring.

"Not right now. There's too much bruising but - but you look great, really. Listen," and he swallows, a touch of guilt in his words. "We're going to patch you up now, okay? We can't waste time - the sooner we get through with it, the sooner we can get you back."

"It's better that way," Mino agrees. "If you see yourself before you're patched you might start to freak out." His thumb rubs over Kyung's brow lightly. "I promise it won't hurt."

They move him onto his front, brush the hair away from the back of his neck - and he's right, it doesn't hurt at all. He's barely even aware of the pins going through his skin, and when they switch it on all he feels - or rather, sees - is a golden light moving up through his head, and every harsh thought and dark memory simply melts away, wiped clean as the mirrors that surround him.

The rooms he moves through are high and airy, and the roof is a sweep of glistening immaculate glass; the sky above pulses down clear and yellow-blue, the sun a hazy halo somewhere off in the distance. Every step is like walking on air; every breath sends a new fresh wave down his body and everything is so clear - his mind, his vision, the way forward - it's all so clear. His spine is straight, his skin feels like it's been cleaned and refitted, he can feel the brush of his hair against his ears and the soft cloth on his skin. Every sensation is magnified but blurred somehow: intense but undefinable and it's beautiful - everything is so beautiful, beautiful.

He doesn't need to worry about smiling. It's impossible not to smile. He smiles at everyone, everything he passes and they smile back: eyes wide, teeth perfect, elegant and effortless. He doesn't need to worry about where he's going either; he knows exactly where he's going, what his job is, why he's there. He doesn't need to think. His mind hardly moves from its serene resting place. Something else directs his movements, a dependable whisper at the back of his head that moves his muscles with barely any effort from himself.

He enters the hall - the high hall, sparkling with incandescent light, echoing with a musical hum, rich colours bleeding from every wall - enters without hesitation and slips into line at the long table behind a tall boy with dark hair who vaguely makes him think of something, but it's so far away that he doesn't even bother, drops the thought with perfect ease. They move with a beautiful rhythm, like one entity, circling the table and serving.

It's a dance - a glorious dance, and it is eternal, and so is he - so is everything.

Eighteen hundred strikes, and the room - it had emptied out only moments ago - comes back to life with a new set of shining, beautiful people. They sweep in and take their seats with a graceful murmur of conversation; Kyung holds a chair for a striking woman in red, dazzled by her shining hair and the jewels sparkling on her neck. The last people to enter command a sudden hush, the men standing to attention, the women holding themselves straight. The man is tall and brutally handsome, features bold in a square face, and he scores over the room with one look, checking that everything is in place. The woman is small, slender, bird-like, her eyes quick and clever, darting between her husband and the boy who stands between them. The boy - nearly a man, not quite, still too fresh faced and gentle to have grown to maturity - is as clear-skinned and pretty as a doll: soft white-blond hair, rosy mouth, long feline eyes. With a nod from his father he takes his mother's arm and leads her to the table. Kyung, along with the rest of the serving staff, holds his breath at the proximity of these terrifying untouchable people. Even in their erased states they know, deep down, that these are the people who hold their lives in their hands.

It's this held in breath that saves Kyung when, without warning, the glittering illusion drops from his eyes. He very nearly loses his balance as the rose-tinted hue through which he had been seeing everything fades away; it's like coming up for air after spending too long underwater and he wants to gasp, but his already full lungs remind him of where he is, and he remains as impassive as the statues to either side of him. In his periferal vision he catches a familiar looking nose, wants so desperately to turn his head and see if it's who he thinks it is, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead and presses himself into the same blank state that all the others are in.

Surprisingly, it's not that difficult to emulate them. Even if he'd been able to make a ruckus the sheer sumptuous glory of his surroundings would have intimidated him into silence. He feels overwhelmingly out of place without that comforting self-assurance that the patch leant him; one wrong move and he knows just his flushing cheeks would give him away. There's some lingering memory from the programming drummed into his head as well, and that helps as the staff turn and begin once again to circle the table, mutely attending to the diners.

Here and there a name catches his ear, and he begins to realise - although really he could have surmised as much - that this is the very cream of society, the absolute top level. Just as level zero, the menial workers who cleaned and carted away rubbish and toiled in the mines were known colloquially as 'invisibles', those of level five were nicknamed 'nobility'. The epithet is not a jest, he can see that now. Everything about them speaks of perfection, elegance, expense. This is where the dreams of just about everyone below them in the hierarchy lie, but he notes with a barely held back shiver the shining silver panels attached to the backs of their necks, and he knows that this is not where true happiness lies, whatever Yukwon's trashy paperbacks say.

The only necks that don't bear that mark of control are those of the controller himself, and his wife. Kyung's forehead grows damp as he moves towards their side of the table, seeing the way the controller watches everything that happens around the table, examining every person he's sitting with - and his wife watches him with just the same hawk-like attention. Only by drawing his focus inward and concentrating on breathing evenly does Kyung manage to pass behind their backs without giving himself away by the tremors in his hands, but he can feel the sweat run down his back and his stomach clench in pure terror.

Taewoon had been right - Jiho is marked in just the same way, visible in the single-minded focus with which he carries on conversation with his parents and eats his meal, a poise and self-possession that is eerily incongruent with his lanky, youthful stature. The spirited light in his eyes and the cheek-splitting grin which is so familiar from his older brother, which Kyung remembers so well from the child he once was, are gone without a trace. His eyes are as round and empty as any of the serving staff.

His chance is there - the clock reads ten minutes past eighteen hundred, and he doesn't know how long they'll sit at dinner. He might not get near Jiho again. The rhythmic swaying and dipping of the staff is almost impossible to break out of - the synchronisation becomes hypnotic after a while - but he manages it, dropping just a centimetre lower than he should, enough to nudge an elbow into Jiho's shoulder. The controller, thankfully, is staring hard at the other end of the table at a small squat man who's eating with rather larger bites than the rest of the company, and he doesn't notice his son twitch and glance up.

A few seconds and the line will have moved on. Kyung looks down at that familiar yet desperately alien face and wills Jiho to recognise him. You once wished I was your brother, he thinks, and pushes his luck just a little further, tugging one corner of his mouth up and hoping Jiho will recognise the smile he always used to call cheesy.

The other boy's eyes widen, just the tiniest fraction; his lips part like he's going to speak. Already feeling the staff to either side of him preparing to move on, Kyung gives the barest of nods, flicks his eyes to the clock and then back to Jiho, hoping he understands: later, after dinner.

The white-blond head shakes; his eyes drop back down to his plate. Kyung moves along in line with everyone else. He's sure the next person he serves can hear how loudly his heart is beating.

As it turns out he does have one more chance to stand behind Jiho. Once again he manages to knock at his shoulder, and this time Jiho is ready, flutters a look up from under his eyelashes which is fully cognisant. His father isn't looking in the other direction this time, so Kyung doesn't dare change his expression but he sees Jiho's lips move without sound, mouthing his name. He knows who he is. That's the best he can hope for, and as Taewoon says, the rest is up to him.

It's eighteen twenty by then, and he moves off again down the immense table; all he has to do now is wait, and see whether his next cold dunk in the water of reality happens with Jiho close by, and himself safe, or in an isolation cell - or perhaps the last thing he'll be fully aware of will be the bullet entering his brain.

He files out in line with the rest of the staff; the sunlight is lowering, peachy and tender, and it touches highlights into the hair of the boy in front of him which makes him want to bury his fingers in it - but he doesn't, even though it looks so soft, because that isn't right and he knows that like he knows where he's going without looking. The double doors of the dining room are propped open to either side of him, and the angelic figure tucked behind one of them seems so wistful - too beautiful to be wistful, he wants to comfort him but it isn't his place. He turns his eyes ahead and keeps walking, and the other boy falls into step by his side. The clutch of slender fingers around his wrist is so delicate, so perfect, and when he pulls him out of the line and leads him back to the dining room he catches sight of the raised red W on his wrist.

He's been chosen, and it is glorious. He has been blessed.