"But they're wearing worker's clothes!" Lena heard someone insist. She opened her eyes but could barely make out a face above her. Her head hurt tremendously and all she could manage was a groan.
"They're obviously not workers, what'd they be doing with weapons and on this side of the Blue Horse? The only factory close to it is a mile away, and it went up in flames from a chemical accident the night before they were found!" another voice argued.
"They could have escaped from the fire," the first voice retorted. "They're definetly workers, Arnelle. And we have to turn them in."
"If they're Workers, why don't they have an ID tatoo?" the second shot back. "I've never heard of a Worker without an ID tatoo."
"Well if they're upper class, what're they doing in Worker's clothes?" the first challenged. "Theyd've been asleep, in upper class clothes, when the fire started."
"We weren't asleep," Lena told them, frustrated at how weak her voice sounded. "We grabbed the first clothes we could get our hands on - from the bodies of dead workers." Lena cast a look at her clothes which she had seen used by upper class officers in the factory many times. "They are flilthy, but they're better than nothing."
Neither doctor, as Lena could now tell they were, asked her exactly why they had been awake so late at night and why they had not had clothes on. That went without saying. One of the doctors, a sharp nosed and equally sharp eyed woman, nodded. "Well Sadir, it sounds like a sound story to me."
The man, Sadir, gave Lena a doubtful glance but shrugged. "I suppose. But we're going to have a helluva time explaining this to Tam."
"Tam is half-Worker, as a select few of us know, and I doubt he'll give us too much trouble about these two," Arnelle replied with a wry grin at Lena. "What's your name, ma'am?"
Lena had never been called a "ma'am" before. "Girl", "Worker", or "Breeder" were the only way outside of her ID that anyone had ever referred to her. She hesitated before answering, deciding against using her real name, just in case. "Trian."
"Beautiful name," the woman remarked. "And your... friend here?"
Lena realized she was blushing and tried to hide her face. In the Worker's world, love did not exist. Any attraction one Worker might have towards another was squashed out early on by strict laws about speaking to the opposite sex and harsh labor. Ryff was certainly handsome, and, now that she was no longer a Worker, she could think about such things as love. "He's Ren."
"Trian and Ren," Arnelle said to herself, turning the words over in her mind. "Would you two like a separate room? Except for minor burns, you're miraculously well for having escaped the biggest fire since the revolts and since you'be slept for three days straight, you should be fully recovered soon."
Lena blushed again but this time tried to smile good naturedly. "Oh, no, we're not like that. And I'd rather be here, where I can tell what's going on around me."
"Sure hun," Arnelle replied with a wink. "As for news, you haven't missed much. The factory burned to the ground and everyone in it went with it. As far as we know, you two are the only survivors."
"No other survivors?" Lena asked, and didn't have to feign the sadness in her voice. Of course, Arnelle thought she was sad for the upper class, not the Workers.
"None," Sadir replied just as sadly. "Which is why you two are going to be very helpful once you are fully recovered. The authorities need to know what caused that fire. Was there unrest among the Workers? Any machines working funny?"
Lena shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I was only visiting my father there. He was an overseer, like Ren." She knew Ryff would be angry with her for that lie, but he would see that there had been no other explanation. "I woke up to the smell of some gas and smoke and people screaming. Ren broke a window and we got out, and I don't remember anything after that."
Sadir nodded glumly. "Well, you can't be expected to. Perhaps Ren will be able to tell us more when he wakes up."
"Ren", Lena knew, would have suffered as much memory loss as she, but she smiled. "Hopefully. I'm very hungry. May I have something to eat?"
"No, we're going to starve the rest of your memory out of you," Arnelle threatened, sighing when Lena's face drained of color. "Sarcasm hun, sarcasm. Of course you may. What would you like?"
"Oh, just some water and a small meal," Lena replied. "Not too much."
Arnelle raised an eyebrow. "No wonder you're a stick, eating like that. I'll have the day's lunch sent up from the mess."
"Well, if you need anything else, we're just a holler away," Sadir told her before sliding a curtain around their beds and leaving Lena alone with the still sleeping Ryff.
Lena sank back into her pillows and tried to organize her thoughts. She was safe. And she was no longer a Worker. She raised her hand to where her ID tattoo should have been and flinched when the new skin stung at her touch. The tattoo had marked her as a Worker since it had been placed on her neck when she came out of the incubator as a baby, and now it was gone. As far as Arnelle or Sadir knew, she was Trian, an upper class woman, not Worker number 2700584-9.
"Lena?" Lena whipped her head around at the sound of her name, placing a finger on her lips to quiet Ryff, who was raised up on one elbow. "Call me Trian."
"Trian?" Ryff scoffed. "Why the hell should I call you that?"
"Here's you're meal, ma'am Trian!" a boy's voice piped from outside the curtains. "Just like you ordered!"
"That's why," Lena told him under her breath and slid off her bed and over to the opening in the curtains.
Lena popped her head and hands out from the curtains, took the tray, and darted back in again. "Just so you know, I told them your name was Ren. You and my father, who I was visiting at the time of the fire, are overseers. We got our Workers' clothes from a dead pair of Workers in the hall."
"And why did we need to put on Worker's clothes in the first place?" Ryff asked with a meaningful glance.
Lena settled herself cross-legged on her bed with her meal on her lap and flashed him a sweet smile. "I didn't have to elaborate."
"And what happens when a real overseer recognizes us as Workers?" Ryff asked.
Lena didn't answer for a few moments. "We were the only surviviors."
This stopped Ryff dead in his tracks, so to speak. All the workers he had trained, made into a fighting force, readied to liberate the entire Worker population and overthrow the upper class, gone. They couldn't be. His mind simply couldn't imagine such horrors. Had he lived at the time of the first revolt, he would have compared it to the bombs that had wiped out entire cities of lower class people, but, to him, that was the stuff of legends and history lessons. None of those people had a face. These people did. They were his friends; Forn, Tuck, San, and all the other guys from his dorm. They were Lena's bunch; Trian, Kitt, Maina and other innocent women. And they were Sara and her people, who had survived downstairs simply by their own willpower.
Now, with one flick of a switch, they were all gone.
It was a small consolation to Ryff that many of the upper class had gone down with the Workers. So Ryff was condemned to the fate of any leader who wins at a cost as great, if not greater, than his enemy. He talked to Sadir and Arnelle about his "escape" from the factory, but he only elaborated on Lena's story. The rest of the time, he was silent, laying on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring silently up at the immaculate tiled ceiling.
Lena was just as sad about it as Ryff, but she soon grew annoyed with his silence. "Ryff, you can't just wallow in self pity for the rest of your life!" she reminded him angrily a week after the fire. "We have to move on! Get jobs at another factory, rally and free the Workers there! Are you going to just lay there while, at this moment, there are Workers slaving away, dying because they are pushed too far?"
Ryff turned cold eyes on his friend. "Why?" he wondered. "So that they can die like Forn and Tuck did? No matter how many upper class we kill, it only takes one to flip one switch and kill all the Workers. They're better off as Workers."
"How can you say that?" Lena snarled. "Listen to yourself! How much of your memory is really gone? Don't you remember what it was like to be a Worker? To get up each morning to the crack of a whip on your back, to work until you collapsed and then get up and work some more? Do you remember how happy they were when they found out they could overthrow the upper class? Remember what we promised Trian before she died, to make sure they all ended up dead? I don't know about you Ryff, but I plan to keep that promise. For Trian, if for nothing else."
A sad smile slowly spread across Ryff's face. "Lena, you don't know how much I wish I could blow each of those bastards to bits. But I tried, and I lost many lives in the process. Too many. The upper class is simply too powerful for us, Lena. How can we fight them if they can kill us all with one flick of a switch?"
"Well we have to somehow. The idea didn't stop you before," Lena reminded him angrily. "I'm sure if we worked at a factory as upper class, we could find a way to disable the gas. But either way, we owe it to Forn, Tuck, Trian, and everyone else to at least try!"
Ryff glared at her for a moment before his face softened into a pout. "I hate it when you're right."
"Life must be hell for you then," Lena chuckled.
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