Ryff, as the woman and the rest of the ragged men and women who lived downstairs quickly discovered, was not to be broken. So they did the only other thing they could do: they accepted him.
He learned from the woman, whose name was Sara, that they were the rebels who had refused to become Workers. Downstairs had been devised as their personal hell, and every once in a while, they were given an unruly worker to torment to pass the time. Sara herself, he was awed to learn, had been the original leader of the revolt.
"And we would have won too," Sara scoffed, "but some of us were weak, or tired, or both. And now we live here, nothing better than animals."
"At least you're free," Ryff sighed. "You don't have to work under whip and prod every day for the rest of your miserable lives. When you get too old or feeble to work, no one will give you the shot. And your children aren't born in test tubes like some chemical."
Sara arched an eyebrow. "You're daring to speak against the system?"
"Speak against it?" Ryff chuckled. "I'd fight against it if I had the means and the force! The Workers aren't going to take this forever, one day we will win."
"A second revolt," Sara mused, eyes glancing about at the ragamuffin group she had been and was still the unnoficial leader of. "You're crazy, Ryff. But it takes a certain amount of crazy to pull off a revolt."
"Would you help? You and the original rebels?" Ryff asked, suddenly excited. With the help of Sara and the people she led, he could easily lead a revolt. It would be perfect: they could destroy the factory from the inside out.
Sara gave a harsh laugh. "In case you haven't noticed it, none of us are in much of a position to do anything."
"Neither are the Workers, but we'll find a way," Ryff replied stolidly. "You have ways out of here, right? I assume they don't give you supplies, so you must get out somewhere to to get food and clothes and anything else you can steal. If we can get enough people down here and then get them out, we can organize and then attack."
Sara regarded him for a long time before she spoke again. "It won't work."
Ryff shrugged. "Maybe it will, maybe it won't. The way I see it, I can either accept the fact that I'm a useless Worker and get on with my life, or I can try to change things. I might not suceed, but at least I won't have to live as a Worker."
"I guess I don't know what it's like up there," Sara mused. "Do you think people would follow you into this?"
"If you knew what it was like up there, you wouldn't be asking that question," Ryff replied. "Can you help me?"
Sara smiled. "I think we can."
Ryff never did have to fight. The officer either forgot about him, lost interest, or both. It didn't matter to Ryff, he was too busy planning his revolt to think about it anyway. Sara and her people indeed had many secret exits, some more dangerous than others. A few had been blocked off over the years but there were still enough for a large group of people to filter in and out.
The plan he proposed was simple enough: get everyone downstairs and then out into the world, with the assistance of Sara's people, to gather weapons and anything else they might use to sabotage the factory. Then they would begin. At first it would be little things; something to jam a machine here, a small fire that destroyed goods there. Then it would get bigger, slowly picking off overseers, which there were plenty of, and then moving in on the officers. When all the upper class people working in the factory had been killed, the factory would be burned and they would move onto the next factory.
But though the plan itself was simple, the individual steps were not. First, how were they to get the word to Workers to come downstairs? Once everyone was downstairs, how would the dissapearance of so many Workers to steal weapons go unnoticed?
"We could take them in groups," Sara suggested. "There're so many Workers, they can't possibly keep track of all of them. And if we take them at night, how will any of the upper class know?"
"That could work," Ryff replied slowly, "but how are we supposed to get the message to the Workers? We may be able to get out, but if there's a way up you haven't told me about it."
"There is a way," Sara admitted reluctantly, "but we don't like to use it. It goes through the lab... the Breeding Rooms, as they're probably known to you. There're usually people there, so we avoid using it. But I suppose in this instance we don't have another choice."
Ryff smiled. The lab, perfect. He could take out a few test tube babies on his way; the first step in the revolt. "It will work out quite well, actually. I have a few friends who can help lead, I will have them organize the workers and bring them down."
So late that night Ryff was armed with a flashlight, batteries, and a knife and sent off. The stairs leading up to the lab were creaky but he scaled them easily. The door, suprisingly, was unlocked, and Ryff stepped cautiously in.
It was even more horrible than he could have guessed. There had to be thousands of test tube babies, all at different stages. They ranged from barely formed embryos to infants in artifical wombs, all of them intended to someday become Workers. Ryff regarded the rows with disgust but could not bring himself to kill any of the infants and contented himself to wiping out groups twelve through fifteen, leaving ten and eleven alone because they looked too much alive to kill.
The lab was close to the women's dorm, and that was Ryff's destination. He moved through the darkened halls as quietly as possible, pausing every few minutes to listen for the footsteps of guards making their nightly rounds.
He reached the women's dorm unharmed and unnoticed and in plenty of time. The door was locked but he made short work of slicing through the lock with the knife, which, according to Sara, could slice through any material as if it were air.
The women's dorm was as packed as his own, though it was considerably larger. There had to be hundreds of rows of workers and breeders, curled up on ragged matresses with equally ragged blankets pulled about them. Ryff cursed under his breath as he scanned the rows. How was he supposed to find Lena in all this?
Luckily, that was all the thought he had to give to the subject because Lena found him. "What the hell are you doing here, Ryff?" Lena demanded in a rough whisper. "Didn't they send you downstairs?"
"Glad to see you too," Ryff grumped. "They didn't count on the back door in the lab, which leads downstairs. Or up here, depending on where you happen to be at the moment."
"Still doesn't tell me why you're here," Lena reminded him. "Or what all that stuff is you're holding. Is that what they keep down there?"
"This, and a whole lot more," Ryff replied. "But I'll explain later. Right now, I need your help. We need to get everyone to go downstairs, in small groups, at night, to go get supplies. The original rebels are down there, Lena, and they're going to help us lead the second revolt. And this time we'll win."
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