After a while Jiho remembers the conference room leading off the control centre, and they install themselves in there. The heady stench of blood hanging in the air and the silent but oppressing presence of the body on the floor was weighing on their weary minds. Here there is a wide table occupying the centre of the room, ringed with enormous high-backed chairs. Already Jiho looks every inch the young ruler, straight-backed and serious as he touches his wrist to the top of the table and watches the map of the city roll across it in gently glowing lights. Taewoon, at his side, is still rangy and dressed in black, military in appearance. They make a striking pair: the war lord and the politician. Kyung lies right back in his seat and gazes up at the rolling vista of sky, gently dozes off to the sound of the brothers' low-voiced conferring.

He shudders upright again at the dreadful recognition of a high-pitched whining sound. Jiho rises to his feet so quickly that he knocks his chair back and stares with fury at the door as it swings open and the drones file in, each one holding a white-faced, sullen captive. The leader of the guards brings up the rear and indicates down the line, impassive but proud.

"We recovered nine of the eleven renegades, sir," she says. "No force was used." Kyung can see with a single look that she's lying, although the bruises ringing various eyes and mouths most likely came from the cruel arms of the drones and not from the guards themselves.

"Release them immediately," Jiho orders, his voice shaking. Wrong-footed, the guard takes a few seconds to fumble the control from her belt and force the drones to disengage their pincer arms. Each boy stumbles away, rubbing their throats and breathing hard. "Who didn't - "

"Sungjong," Sungmin gasps before he can even ask. He looks wild with fear and worry, and stumbles forward a bit too far, crashing into the table. He turns, stares back at Yuwhan who spreads his hands helplessly.

"I'm sorry," he pleads, "I'm so sorry - we got separated in the line and he panicked, he looked up for me and they spotted him straight away, I couldn't - I couldn't do anything without blowing our cover," and then he has to stop because the younger boy flies at him with his fists raised, restrained only barely by two of his friends.

"You traitor," he howls, "he trusted you - we trusted you - "

"You can trust him." Taewoon's steady voice cuts through the screeching and Sungmin halts mid-struggle, flinging his gaze to the stately man standing by the table. Taewoon meets his eyes steadily, quelling his fury so easily that Kyung can't help but remember his earlier, spiteful comment - like father like son - and wonder if this is why they all obeyed him so readily. "If Yuwhan says that's what happened, you should believe him."

"We know him," Jungwoo breaks in unexpectedly. Out of all of them, he's the only one who doesn't look angry, or frightened - just weary of the whole ordeal, and Kyung can understand that weariness so well. It gets tiring, losing people so often. "Jiseok and I were in class together, and Yuwhan was just younger than us. I promise you guys, much as he's not great with people," and he gives Taewoon a hard look that makes him fold his mouth guiltily, "he wouldn't let you come to harm, not intentionally. If you trust me, trust him."

"Why should we?" With his pointed features under the mop of dyed-fiery hair, Jungkook's flashing eyes makes him look like a demon. "He told us he would switch the cameras, and then we find ourselves being arrested - why would we trust anything you say?"

"The plan changed a bit. We didn't have time to tell you," Taewoon replies, shrugging. Kyung finds himself getting angry then, on behalf of his bewildered friends. They're supposed to be free now, not just pawns in a different game. He only means to shut Taewoon up a bit but he finds the larger boy startled by his glare, raising his hands in front of him. "Kyung will explain," he says - almost meekly, and Kyung turns to his friends, trying not to roll his eyes. 

 They quiet when he tells them what had happened: about the controller lying dead on the floor; about his own brush with complete erasure; about their plans for a new society. A few of them glance to Jiho - conspicuously silent and apparently intent on the table top - when he mentions how the son had the father; their faces express admiration, disbelief, but most importantly a new kind of faith that perhaps things really would change now. "And where's Taeil?" he finishes up, having noticed the absence of his old chef. Minhyuk shrugs; Yukwon's mouth is twisting like he's biting into his lip from the inside.

"I didn't see him after we left the chute."

"He's probably still out there," Minhyuk says, half-hopeful, half-exasperated. "You know what Taeil's like, he'll have found a way to evade arrest. Maybe he's gone back to the hideout."

"And Sungjong?" At this point they turn back to the two brothers, the ones who know the ups and downs of this city better than any of them, and Kyung begins to feel sick as soon as he notices how pale they've gone.

Fumbling in a pouch tied to his belt, Taewoon takes out a handful of small pieces of metal, crusted with blood, sorts through them and picks out one which he throws to the guard. "You know where he'll be. Find him and bring him here, immediately." Then he meets the tense faces surrounding him, shakes his head gently. "There's only one place an escapee from level five would have gone, if he'd been arrested unpatched and untagged."

No one understands until Jihoon, standing at the back of the room, makes a gagging noise and Jaehyo has to throw an arm around him to keep him upright. Then the room erupts into chaos: Sungmin all but flings himself across the table in his efforts to get at Taewoon; Kyung finds himself trapped between Jiho and a seething Jungkook, struggling against Jungwoo's grip. Jihoon sinks to the floor, sobbing, while Minhyuk throws up his hands and turns towards the door, looking like he'd happily return to the kitchens and work another twelve hour shift rather than deal with this.

Except he's blocked in his exit by the towering frame of a guard, who then moves aside, apparently sharply prodded from behind, and a clear voice snaps out, "Stop this noise at once!"

Something in the order shuts all of them up in an instant; something in the tone makes them shift back and squirm slightly, like they've been caught in a misdemeanour. Only Jiho moves, jerking to one side and peering around the others. His eyes get very big and round, his mouth drops open. Through the open doorway sails a woman: tiny, slender, elegantly dressed; her face is fine-boned and the eyes quick and bright as a sparrow, narrowed in anger. Kyung in a breath of recognition as she approaches the table, and the boys surrounding it drop back automatically, suddenly awkward.

No one, however, looks quite as awkward as Taewoon; he glances over at the ever-present waste chute as if sizing up his chances of a quick escape, but he doesn't have a hope as soon as she fixes her eyes upon him. She ignores Jiho's breathless gasp of, "Mother!" and rounds on her eldest son, who scrambles to his feet and uncertainly, shakily, holds out his hands.

She slaps him hard across the face. Jungkook lets out a cackle. "What was that for?" he says, but his cheeks are already flaming red and he's twitching like he wants to back away but doesn't quite dare.

"Running away like that - living in the basement like a fugitive - you didn't even leave me a note, Woo Jiseok, have you any idea how worried I was - " And all the boys in the room - bar Jiho, who looks quite as cowed as his brother - step back and enjoy the sight of the big, brash outlaw getting heartily berated by his tiny, fuming mother.

It takes a good ten minutes for her to run out of steam, at which point she makes a gesture that indicates she's done with her eldest son and he drops, thankfully, into the nearest chair and sets about trying to make himself invisible. Then she turns to Jiho - and, to Kyung's surprise, doesn't spare him her searching eye, beckoning him forward. Not without some trepidation he moves to stand by Jiho's shoulder. "Now," she says, still sharply, "What mess is it that you boys have got yourselves into?"

The story has to be told once again - this time from the very beginning, and it's slow progress because she insists on understanding everything in detail, stops Kyung and questions him intently. He's so tired he's stumbling over his words by the end, and when they're finally done she pats his shoulder tenderly and thanks him. "You've been very brave, dear. And an excellent friend to my son."

The exhaustion prevents him from accepting this with much more than a nod, although a sort of warmth coils in his belly and he sits down feeling nearly comforted. She turns back to Jiho, takes his hand tightly. "So you've killed your father?" Clearly Jiho understands it would be no use apologising; he just admits it with a painful shrug. She sighs, his palm idly. "Well, I can't say he didn't have it coming. You boys know I never agreed with the way he ran things, but I'm glad I was at least able to teach you enough to show you that it was wrong - not," and she turns another hard glare on Taewoon, "that I agree with some of your methods."

"He was going to patch me," Taewoon pleads, "I wouldn't have been able to do anything!"

"You silly boy, do you really think I would have let that happen?"

"You let it happen to me," Jiho says bluntly. Her anger fades then, and she lowers her eyes with a sigh.

"Then, I had to. He always knew it was my influence that made you both so rebellious. I was determined that one of you would see my grandfather's dream rebuilt. After Jiseok ran away he watched me like a hawk. I knew that if I tried to interfere again, he'd have no compunction about setting up an entirely new family. He would have murdered both of us sooner than see his control slip."

"Grandfather?" Kyung stutters out the question before he has time to think. She turns gentle eyes on him, a distant and not entirely happy smile.

"My grandfather was the original founder of this city. My father should have taken control after him, but he was too young; the second in command took over instead, married me to his son to legitimise the chain of command. I never saw my father again. That was when everything changed." The softening of her tone seems to soften something else in her, and she spreads her arms wide, one around Jiho, Taewoon uncertainly letting himself be embraced by the other. "I knew you'd manage it eventually. I'm so very proud of both of you."

She holds this maternal pose for only a few moments. Then the businesslike demeanour snaps right back into place, and she leans forward over the table, looks around at the worn out, confused boys sitting there and clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "We've got an awful lot to sort out, haven't we? You there," and she clicks her fingers for the guards still standing impassively at the entrance. "Find these boys some comfortable rooms, and a hot meal."

Exhausted though he is, Kyung can't bear to miss a second of what's going to happen- and even if he'd wanted to, Jiho's tight hold on his arm and gently beseeching look would have kept him there. He stays while Jiho breaks the news over the announcement system, in a carefully worded speech that his mother writes for him. His tone is convincingly authoritative and strong, but Kyung can see the way his eyes are twitching at the corners. When he's done he pushes the microphone away and breaks into a cold sweat, burying his face in his hands as the enormity of what's happened finally hits him. 

And amazingly, it is to Kyung that his mother trusts him, pushing them both in the direction of Jiho's rooms and whispering to him, "Stay with him, he'll need you tonight." Kyung needs Jiho to stay upright as they find their way to that glorious room. They fall side by side on the massive bed and despite the unfamiliar softness of it, Kyung sleeps like a dead man.

He can't quite believe it when eighteen hundred strikes - that so much could have happened in a single day. They had been sitting side by side in Jiho's room for less than an hour, still rubbing aching eyes, burying their noses in hot mugs of tea - Kyung had never tasted anything so immensely comforting, and thought that those long evenings in the slums would have passed a lot easier with it - and wondering why their rumbling stomachs hadn't yet been attended to. By eighteen hundred, pressed and chivvied by Jiho's mother, they're standing outside the doors to the grand dining room, Jiho nervously preparing to greet the elite (although not for long) citizens of his new rule, and Kyung tugging awkwardly at the collar of his borrowed finery. Behind them Taewoon is still grumbling about being forced to dress up; his mother had forbidden him to wear his outlaw garb to dinner, whatever he said about the impression it would make. 

And behind him - such a thing had never happened, not since the earliest days of the city - are eleven boys, born and bred in the slums and now ready to sit at the highest table. Their faces fit in, since their brief stint on level five, but the bruises inflicted by the drones stand out against their pristine white shirts. Sungjong, recovered unharmed although newly patched from the seediest, most secret part of the city, is still twitchy and unsettled, pressing up close to Sungmin for comfort; Taeil, who Sejoon had brought back from the hide out earlier, hadn't had time to wash properly and already has grubby fingerprints on his cuffs. They shuffle, they mutter, they pick at the gilded buttons on their shirts and scuff shining shoes against the floor, and Kyung looks back at them all with a bursting wave of affection.

If there had been any chatter in the room before they entered, it drops dead the moment the doors open. The long line files in; Jiho holds a chair out for his mother and gestures Kyung to the seat at his other side. The faces - the beautiful, blank faces of the nobility - gaze back at them with utter astonishment. Jiho doesn't need to raise his hand for quiet but he does it anyway.

"As you have all heard, my father, the controller, is dead. I have assumed his mantle of power, and will lead this city forward into a new age, with the help of my family and friends," and he nods to Taewoon, silent and grave, and Kyung, who grins and gave him a thumbs up just because it's so wildly inappropriate in their surroundings. "My first task is to free all the people of the city from the in which they live, and that includes you."

Slowly, ceremoniously, he lifts the control device he'd had made up, a small flat square of metal - lifts it up where everyone can see it and raises his right arm as well, displaying the glowing red W on the inside of his wrist. A low murmur sweeps the room as the cream of society find themselves, for once, in complete ignorance of what is going to happen. Jiho glances again to Kyung; Kyung nods; he presses his wrist to the square and the room is suddenly alive.

Alive first with a series of tiny clicks as each panel shuts down, and then with noise - a glorious, beautiful human noise. There are cries of distress, shouts of rage, screams of delighted laughter; some people leap to their feet, shaking fists at an imaginary adversary; some simply sit, mute and bewildered; some clutch the backs of their necks and moan, but no one is still, no one is impassive. The smile that spreads over Jiho's face reminds Kyung once more of the boy he had known in the classroom: wicked, spirited, mischevious, pulling the biggest prank of his life as the stony faced and ever perfect elite are forced back into themselves and become, without warning, people once more.

The dinner that follows is raucous to the point of unbearable. Nearly everyone is celebrating, and those who aren't - those who shoot dark glances up at the head of the table and muttered ominously among themselves - only added to the new and wonderful variety of expressions that Kyung sees. While Jiho presides over festivities, Taewoon keeps a close watch on anyone who seems disgruntled with the change of affairs, frequently beckoning a guard up to his shoulder and muttering into the waiting ear. Refreshed after his deep sleep, Kyung can barely stay in his seat and dashes from chair to chair, reassuring himself of the reality of everything with the feeling of real warm skin under his fingers, and even Minhyuk, never previously the physical sort, had let him cling on for a good few minutes, laughing at the tight hold Kyung had around his shoulders.

"It's over," he says, "I can't believe it's all over."

Once everyone is sated and sitting back, still wonderingly running their fingers over their necks, Jiho gets to his feet again. "I have a lot to do, and I hope I have your full confidence, and that you will offer me all the aid you can in setting right the injustices perpetrated by the previous controller. Please remember, I am not depriving you of your status. I am only making the luxury that you enjoy the rule, rather than the exception. If you still believe you deserve this high status over others, after hearing how this hierarchy came to be, I would ask you to remember that all destiny is a game of chance. If the dice favour you, it is not of your own doing."

Kyung goes to applaud but no one else does. Then he becomes aware - his chest seizing up rapidly - that it is to him that everyone looks, following Jiho's lead. Jiho's eyes lock onto his and he nods encouragingly, and Kyung realises what he wants. For a moment he wonders, and not for the first time, why it should be him, but then he remembers that really, despite Taewoon's rebellion and Jiho's power, despite Sejoon's arrest and his dorm mates' seditious talking, all of this really begins and ends with him. He thinks back to that first moment he saw the outlaw crouched high on the pipes, when he shut his lips tight and only wished for that sort of freedom, and finally - not through necessity, or control, but genuinely and honestly - he feels truly part of something.

Clumsily he gets to his feet, drains the glass in front of him for strength and belatedly uses it to salute Jiho, his mother, his brother, all his friends.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he begins - pauses, laughs disbelievingly, throws his arms wide. "People."

It takes a good two hours, much prompting from the family group beside him, many shocked exclamations from the table and random outbursts of anger or hilarity from his friends, but no one moves a muscle to leave until he's done.

A daunting amount of work lies ahead of them. They have to start slowly, much as it pains them all to know that people are still starving in the slums; a whole society can't be reordered overnight, and Jiho's mother reminds them frequently of this when they're chafing at the sights projected by the cameras in the lower levels. One of the first things they do is locate their own parents; that alone takes two or three days and a lot of heartbreak when they find that more than half of them have lost at least one family member. Much of level five has become dilapidated after standing empty so long; Jiho gets teams together from the third levels to work on making it habitable again. People from the third level start to migrate to the fourth; those in the second, to the third. The invisibles of level zero are moved up, group by group, to more comfortable quarters and a long process of interviewing begins, ascertaining who - despite their truncated educations - has the skills to take on new roles. The hidden level, the filthy brothels which had caused them all so much pain, are raided and shut down, and their silent broken inhabitants given special care in the city hospitals. Working hours are cut, immediately, for everyone in levels one and two, and the message filters down that in their free time they are welcome to roam at will throughout the city, no longer confined to stuffy dorm rooms. It takes a while for it to sink in but gradually the sight becomes normal: pale, sickly-looking men and women creeping at first through the grand corridors, staring with bewilderment through the glittering glass ceiling. Then they grow bolder, slipping into the libraries and recreation rooms. Jiho keeps himself well in sight and insists the other boys do likewise; whenever he sees these migrants, if they don't run away instantly, he invites them to dine with him.

The former nobility present a challenge, and this is where Taewoon takes over. He deals personally with anyone who expresses discontent; how, Kyung doesn't like to ask, but he gets the idea that it involves some real life experience of the impoverished conditions below. One man disappears for a few weeks and comes back with haunted eyes; Taewoon looks somewhat regretful but the man never again looks at the former waiting staff who sit at dinner with him with anything less than respect. The guards dwindle - they're educated people, and they can't be spared to march around with guns any more. Jiho shuts off their patches, takes away their weapons and divides them out among the levels, delivering aid and reporting on conditions, leading people to their new homes. A week or so after the takeover a few of them go rogue, try to break into the control room and wrestle Jiho out of there; the drones arrive just in time and Taewoon smiles with grim satisfaction as he escorts them to the cells.

Taeil and Sejoon take over the kitchens, replace the foul leftovers that pass as rations with nourishing meals which they deliver with their own team to the baffled workers below. The seizure of children coming of age from the classrooms stops the same day Jiho takes over; his mother sets about organising groups of new teachers, picked from the most intelligent level two and three workers, and starts developing a program of free classes for everyone who missed out. Kyung rediscovers his skill for maths and logic, and sets his sights on a teaching position once he's brought up to scratch. The heady feeling of being good at something is one he'd totally forgotten.

Of course it's an intense and frightening time. Kyung still wakes in the night, expecting to see the black spire of the drones looming over him, or the walls rising blank and stony around his bed, and he knows from the dark circles under his friends' eyes that they're not quite accustomed to this new position of status either. Because everyone seems to know who they are now: the boys who assisted Jiho in his father's takeover. For Kyung the scrutiny is even worse, because Jiho wants him at his side nearly all the time, and he gets used to watching people bow to their leader and sweep their eyes sideways at the boy next to him, wondering if they should attend him with the same honour. After a while he starts to wish he had his old face back, so at least that would be one clue to his real importance, but Jiho nearly shakes him when he expresses this.

"You're still in that same mindset, that you don't deserve to be here," he says, utterly exasperated. "I'm not above you, I'm not trying to put myself above you. You know, this probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you - you're just as important as me, or Jiseok, or anyone else - more even, maybe. You have the same right to respect that everyone else does."

"It's just awkward," he replies, twisting uncomfortably under Jiho's hard stare. "I'm not educated or - you know, refined or anything. I don't know how any of these things work - "

"It doesn't matter any more." And Jiho grips his shoulder, knitting his eyebrows sympathetically. "I know it must be strange, but this is the truth of it: there are no rules any more. There's nothing to say who can and can't be in certain places, have certain things, do certain jobs. You belong here with me because you saved me. If the old nobility look at you weirdly because you use the wrong fork or don't pronounce your vowels like they do, just remember that if it wasn't for you, they'd still be puppets. They owe you their freedom. You don't owe anyone anything."

Difficult as it is to get his head round this, it eventually slots into place, and strangely it happens when he has an encounter he didn't expect to have again. Walking into the dining room one evening, taking Jiho at his word and dressing for his own comfort rather than for the expectations of others - and this is easier, now half of the table is made up of people from the lower levels, and elegance and expense is by no means the rule any more - he sees someone at Taewoon's side, smiling genially as the taller boy talks and gesticulates wildly. The arched brows and fine nose are ones he only remembers hazily, haloed in that surgical white light, but Mino apparently never forgets his own work. As soon as he glances up and meets Kyung's eyes, the eyebrows disppear almost to his hairline and he gets to his feet.

"Goodness," he says, surveying him carefully. "I have to say, I never expected you to wear into that face quite so well."

"You mean it was a temporary hack job?" Kyung jokes, to take the edge off the incredulity with which Mino looks at him.

"Not at all. My work is never a hack job. I meant that you look born to it." He reaches out with two slender fingers and tips Kyung's face up to the light, turning it from side to side just like he did that day in his surgery. His eyes take in every line and plane, and he smiles as he releases him - not a calculating smile, but a smile of genuine warmth still tinged with disbelief. "You look comfortable. At ease. Even without the patch."

Kyung's slightly wrong footed; he looks to one side, out across the table, to buy himself time to think - but then he understands what Mino is talking about. The crowd is a mixture of everyone: those who would have been considered the highest, to those from the very bottom of the city. Former nobles rub shoulders with assembly line workers, serving staff with their skin grey from the kitchen, bleary eyed beaurecrats in cheap black suits. The upright posture of guards contrasts with the hunched over, hacking miners who squint with wonder through the glass ceiling. Greasy-handed engineers; long- artisans; a couple of freed political prisoners with ugly red wounds where their nails once were. Jiho, the heir who rebelled, and Taewoon, the rebel who is once again an heir.

What marks invididuals out is the way they react to this melee of people, to their glorious surroundings; how they move through the room and approach the company. And while some stutter and apologise for themselves in the way they speak and walk, some - a rare few - possess a certain ease of posture, a certain natural air: not necessarily comfort in their surroundings, but comfort in their own skins.

"That's a very hard thing to acquire," Mino says lazily, leaning on the table and watching the comprehension dawn on Kyung's face. "You're either born with it - some lucky people seem to be," and here he gives an amused look towards Taewoon, "Or you learn it. You learn to be comfortable with yourself whatever the circumstances are. It's nothing to do with the shape of your face or the clothes you're wearing. It's just about knowing that you can always survive."

Something in his tone makes Kyung turn his head, wondering suddenly about Mino himself and his smooth flawless skin, but he's already melted away into the crowd, taking Taewoon with him. Alone for the moment, Kyung looks out into the room at the mess of people, all lit the same by the subtle glow of the sun through the endlessly arching ceiling. In a few more months, no one will be able to tell that this room was once so ruthlessly segregated. No one would know he had come from the lowest levels to stand by the side of the controller. No one need ever know that he had once been someone else entirely, one small scrawny boy, trapped in the relentless crushing grind of the city and hopeless of ever getting free.

He smiles, takes his seat at the table and prepares to begin his new life.