Lena hauls me up through the hatch, grabbing my clothes and yanking me by the shoulders to help me climb. I stagger to my feet and Lena shuts the hatch quietly, holding a finger to her lips. Moments later, the warden’s footsteps pound along the tunnel underneath us, their muttered curses echoing throughout the delivery passage.

“This way,” one of them calls, his voice reverberating along the brick tunnel. “They can’t have gone far.”

They run right past us, not bothering to look up through the access hatch.

We stay frozen on the spot for a few moments, waiting for more wardens to follow, but the tunnel is silent.

The small room is dark and musty, featureless save for a collection of cloth sacks piled high against one corner. Lena leans back against one, catching her breath. Frank pats Dani on the shoulder as they sob into his chest, his expression grave.

Once the wardens have gone too far to hear us, Frank turns to me. “Ike?”

I shake my head. “He stopped… We were almost… But he made us run.”

Frank winces. “Did you see what happened to him?”

My eyes find the floor. “No. We… he held them up for us to get here. I heard a taser.”

He sighs, nodding his understanding. “Alright. We have to go on for now. We’ll figure out a way to get to him later.”

“Can’t we go back for him?” I ask. “Maybe we can get him up here before the wardens get back—”

“And get him up how, Kyla?” Frank asks harshly. “He’ll be unconscious. Lifting dead weight through this hatch is almost impossible. He knew the risks. We have to go.”

Ike and Caleb merge into one in my mind as I gaze at the dusty floor, counting the piles of bodies I’ve left in my wake. Caleb, Ike, Bennett, Jenna… I glance at Dani, their shoulders shaking as they clutch Frank’s plaid shirt. He strokes their shoulder, shushing like a father would to a child.

Dani was lucky. They should have been my first victim. If Frank hadn’t been looking out for them… 

If only he’d been looking out for Caleb, too.

Lena squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

I nod mutely, trying to find any feature of the room I can distract myself with, anything I can investigate to take my brother’s face out of my mind. But we may as well still be inside a prison cell, as dull and featureless as this place is. I’m forced to push my attention outward, focus on the sounds outside.

And then I hear it; a dull, rhythmic beat, like a marching drum, feet on concrete, or clubs on helmets, it’s impossible to say. I imagined that if everyone in Skycross were to stamp their feet at the same time, it would create a similar sound.

“What’s going on?” I ask, finally looking up. 

Lena smiles. “A revolution.”

I frown, but she shakes her head. “Best you see it for yourself. Here, I brought some clothes.”

I take the bag from her, wondering if she’ll dress us in her patchwork leather garb again, but relieved to find perfectly normal worker clothing in linen and cotton filling the bag. I put on the grey cotton dungarees and a loose woollen jacket, while Dani covers her threadbare reform uniform with an oversized plaid shirt and linen trousers.

Once we’re dressed to merge with the crowd, Lena and Frank lead us outside. The storage room opens directly into Lena’s industrial unit. From there, the sound outside gets even louder—marching and loud shouts outside, hundreds of voices merging as one.

Dani follows me to the exit, where I pause with my hand on the door. “Is it safe to go out?”

“For you?” Lena nods. “Yeah. For a warden, not a chance in hell.” 

I frown, pushing the door a crack. 

In the distance, a roar of anger swells, like a crowd gathered at a festival. White smoke billows above the rooftops, lit by the crackle of electricity. With each zap of lightning, the crowd’s roar doubles, triples in volume, their rage multiplying exponentially.

The back streets are fairly empty, save for the occasional person running towards the main street.

“What’s going on?” Dani mutters.

“The workers are rioting,” Frank says. “It started a day or two ago.”

Lena lays a hand on my shoulder. “K, you should know… it’s because of Caleb.”

My heart thuds in my chest at the mention of his name. “What?”

Frank nods. “CCTV footage from reform was leaked. It’s the first time anything like that has ever been caught on camera. No one would have believed it unless they saw it with their own eyes.”

Footage leaked? Frank didn’t seem to want to put a name to it, probably in case I lashed out at him, but someone had to be responsible for leaking the footage. I look from Frank, to Lena, and back again, noticing how dark the circles under his eyes have gotten, how the lines in his face seem to have deepened.

Realisation dawns combined with the sickening thought of Caleb’s death playing on a loop across Skycross, on every billboard and display screen. “Melly.”

Frank nods. 

I curl my hands into fists, gritting my teeth. So they used footage of my brother’s death to spark their revolution. A loud buzzing fills my ears, my palms stinging as my nails dig in to flesh.

Caleb is dead. That would have happened, no matter who recorded it. Melly recorded it. She had been watching us in reform all along, maybe even before we got there. She had always seemed far too advanced for a cafe AI. Now I knew why.

And Frank, and Lena, and Ike; they’d taken the footage of my brother’s death and sent it wide. Allowed every person in Skycross to watch it, like a drama playing on a loop. Skycross’ public had their awakening, their moment of truth. And my brother died for the price.

Then I realise that my mother has seen it, too. She’s watched her own son die on a screen, powerless to do anything, and with no warning. I ache to find her, hold her, and beg her forgiveness. But there’s no way I can find her in this chaos.

I’m about to speak out, ask Frank how he could do something so vile, but Dani takes my hand and strokes it till my fist loosens in their grip. 

“Can we go to see?” Dani asks.

Lena shakes her head. “I wouldn’t. The back streets are fine, but Main street is a shitshow right now.”

She motions to her desk and flicks on the row of display screens, each showing a different CCTV camera around Skycross. The scenes play out like a war zone—crowds of rioters pushing in on rows on wardens dressed in full riot armour. People clutch at their blacked out visors and rip them off, fighting to expose them for who they are.

“Unity!” One man shrieks, answered by echoes from the crowd as he streaks towards the wardens with a smoke bomb. He throws it at them just as they tase him, many rifles pointing at him at once. His body jerks and spasms on the floor as white smoke billows in front of him, thankfully obscuring the view.

In another section of Main Street, rioters stand in front of self-driving cars, manipulating the auto-stop systems so they can grab VIPs and drag them out. They rip open electronic hatches and rewire the controls—no doubt these are workers from the very factories that make them. They stand back, and the cars shoot off at outrageous speed, racing into the line of approaching wardens. Some run, evading death or injury just in time, others are mown down, unable to escape. One even stands there as the car approaches, sure the auto-stop system will activate and save them. They don’t even flinch, not even when the car lifts them over its bonnet and flips them into the air like a rag doll. 

On another screen, a giant mob of workers invades Premier Sheridan’s offices, streaming in through the corridors, hoisting placards high above their heads. “No more Abandoned”, “Down with Reform”, “Claim our Lost”. 

My heart jumps at the sight of Caleb’s face on some placards, his chin stained in black, his eyes vacant and staring. Then, from the moment I see him once, I see him everywhere; on placards, his name graffiti’d on walls, a video of Harding gripping him by the chin playing on a billboard.

And on, and on…

My stomach churns, the room spinning. Lena’s excitement fades to background noise, drowned out by tinnitus. 

I stare into the corner of one screen, where a dishevelled VIP cowers under a bin, her eyes wide with fright, her silk shirt torn into tatters around her waist. Her face is smeared with dirt, her sweat-drenched hair hanging in messy curls. Workers march past her, most ignoring her, but some kicking at her, or stamping on her feet as they pass. More than one spits on her, hooting maniacally.

“This isn’t right.” I sink into a chair. “This is awful.”

“People are angry, Kyla,” Lena says, her smile souring at my lack of delight. “They want change.”

“This is change?” I point at the woman cowering in the corner. “That’s not the kind of change I want.”

“Kyla,” Lena pinches the bridge of her nose. “VIPs have tormented workers for decades, used their privilege—”

“I don’t care!” I punch my fist into my own thigh. “More people will die. Innocent people.”

Caleb, Ike, Bennett, Jenna… And now hundreds of wardens and VIPs. Some were just living their lives, ignorant and privileged, yes, but no more guilty than any worker in Skycross’ factories. Hell, I could have been one of them. Caleb had been well on his way toward becoming a VIP—I wonder if the rioters even knew that, when they elected him as their golden boy, their martyr for the cause.

I stare at the screens again, ignoring the scathing look Lena gives me, the grave resignation on Frank’s face. 

Nobody deserves this, no matter how angry we are.