Miriam wandered into Jonathan's office at midmorning and almost spilled her coffee down her front as she jumped in surprise.
"You're back!" she cried, before clapping a hand over her mouth in horror.
Carmen rolled her eyes in exasperation but Nigs gave her a smile.
"We're back," he confirmed. "And we were just preparing for a meeting. People should be hear in a minute."
"I think I missed that memo," Miriam took a chair. "Unless you didn't invite me."
She noticed the dark circles under the eyes of both of them, and how strangely changed they appeared. She got the feeling that they knew a lot more than she did, and that bothered her. The two of them, in particular, didn't need another reason to feel superior.
"Morning," Sandy swung the door closed behind him and dropped into a chair. "Who's still missing?"
"Just Natalia," Ebb answered. "She said she'd be late."
Miriam's eyes narrowed as she looked from his face to Sandy's and carefully made a mental note of what she saw.
"Should we start without her?" Carmen asked, clearly impatient.
"No," Jonathan decided. "We wait till everyone's here."
They sat in slightly uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before Natalia came hurrying in, locking the door behind her.
"Sorry," she said, a little breathlessly. "Things to deal with. We still have to run the corps, you know."
"It's alright; you're here now," Jonathan smiled at her. "Carmen? Nigs? What do you have to tell us?"
So out came the story of the second level, while the other conspirators listened in stunned silence to tales of the families up there, of the machinery and the synthesising plants, of the door they had found.
"The door?" Jonathan burst out, unable to keep silent any longer. "Do you think it's the door?"
"I think so," Carmen said, but Nigs looked more doubtful. "It had something written by it too."
She explained, briefly, about her brief spying mission and the pencilled words.
"Key card," Puck murmured. "That would make sense. Lots of the most important doors in this place are opened with key cards."
"How would we get it?" Sandy asked, logically. "Even if we could find where a key card might be hidden, how would we know it was the right one? And even then, we don't know if it's the right door."
"It's our best shot, though," Puck argued. "It's all we have to go on. And we know how much they've been lying to us now, about our history and about the people upstairs. We can't trust any of them. This matters now."
"That's something I've been meaning to bring up," Jonathan added, taking a deep breath. "But I was waiting for Nigs and Carmen to come back."
"Oh, you shouldn't have worried about us," Carmen said, airily. "We could have caught up."
"No, but this is serious." Jonathan's expression was grave. "Listen, a few nights ago someone turned up at my door in the middle of the night."
"How scandalous," Carmen rolled her eyes.
Miriam felt a spark of irritation. Something about the way Carmen always pulled that face, so superior and so dryly entertained, got on her nerves. Jonathan, however, just ignored her.
"I don't know who it was," Jonathan continued, "but they left behind a video chip. Another recording from my past self."
"Was he more helpful than usual?" Nigs inquired.
"Sort of," Jonathan hesitated. "He seemed to have had a change of heart. Or, at least, he looked scared by something. Anyway, he...he said that this place was all wrong and that I knew what I should do."
"And do you?" Puck asked, doubtfully. "Do you know what you should do?"
"I know what he meant," Jonathan looked worried, but fiercely determined. "He meant that we should overthrow the system."
There was a pause that stretched on and on.
"Well, we always knew it was an option," Miriam broke in. "Didn't we? When we first started discovering that all of this was a lie, we knew it might come to that eventually."
"Actually, we didn't," Natalia shook her head. "We knew the system was wrong. We thought we might have to persuade people to change it. Not that we would be overturning it. Betraying everyone."
"It's not betraying!" Jonathan said, indignantly. "It's rebellion."
"It's the same thing!" Natalia gave him a hard stare. "We are their soldiers and we swore an oath to them. To turn our back on it now, whether for right or wrong, is to be a traitor."
Jonathan stared her down. "I would rather sacrifice my honour than let a place continue to live under a control like this."
"It all makes no sense," Carmen said, gloomily. "Everything about Subterra is so contradictory. I don't know what to think anymore."
"I have a question," Puck said. "Though I'm not sure it's relevant, so it can wait."
"No, go ahead," Jonathan said, hastily. "It's fine. What do you want to know?"
"I want to know who left you a video chip in secret in the middle of the night," Puck folded his arms. "Just me?"
"Was it you, Natalia?" Sandy asked, surprising everyone. "Not to accuse you or anything but the first thing that the video-John told us was to trust you, and you were closer with him than anyone was back before."
"A fair theory," Puck agreed. "Natalia?"
Natalia looked stunned. "It wasn't me. You have to believe that. I'd have told John in person if I was delivering messages to him. Maybe it was one of your upstairs people?"
"No," Carmen said, instantly. "If they had that message, why wouldn't Jonathan have remembered them from before? We remember so much now. And why not mention anything to us when we were up there?"
Miriam looked from one to the other, feeling somehow as though she was cut out of an important loop. Everybody seemed to be communicating in meaningful glances but she couldn't read a single one.
"Well, I think it's fairly obvious what's going on," Ebb said, calmly. "Don't you?"
Everyone turned to look at him.
"Do you really?" Nigs said, sarcastically. "How fascinating."
"Give him a break," Sandy scowled at Nigs. "What do you think is going on?"
Ebb shrugged. "We're being played. All of us."
"Being played?" Carmen echoed, as though she'd never heard the words before.
"Yes." Ebb folded his arms. "We're being played. We have been for the last two years. We're all pieces in some big game and our every action is being manipulated."
"If he starts talking about some god or other, or the powers of fate," Nigs said, in a low voice, "I swear I'll wring his neck."
Carmen laughed loudly but the look Sandy shot the pair of them was pure murder. Miriam saw Carmen visibly recoil and felt slightly smug about it. Ebb, however, seemed not to have heard at all.
"Think about everything that doesn't make sense," Ebb said, reasonably. "We're put to sleep for two years to live a dream life that makes us forget out loyalty to this place, for some purpose that nobody even bothers to tell us when we wake up. We just go right back to our old lives."
"They said we'd work the purpose out," Jonathan interrupted.
"I know," Ebb scowled at him. "But then you add the fact that you've left cryptic video messages for yourself, messages first telling you to trust the high command and then to overthrow it. We're left to our own devices. Security everywhere we try to go is terrible. Someone leaves you messages in the middle of the night. And then you've got the fact that someone has written on the wall by a high-security door. Why would they do that, if not to leave it as a message for someone?"
"You're saying all of this is deliberate?" Miriam couldn't help but sound disbelieving. "Like, what? It's some kind of psychological experiment?"
"Maybe," Ebb considered. "Or maybe they want us to overthrow them."
Nigs barked a laugh but Carmen, to Miriam's relief, looked thoughtful.
"You mean, they're trying to get us to fight them?" she frowned. "But why?"
"I don't know," Ebb frowned back. "I haven't got that far. I only came up with this theory a minute ago."
"It's as good a theory as any other," Jonathan said, but Miriam could tell he wasn't convinced. "But it's not going to help us much. Either we agree to fight against the high command or we agree to carry on as we are."
"How are we going to fight against them?" Natalia demanded. "How could we do it? They're an army, John!"
"There aren't as many in the sub-dwellings as we think," Jonathan murmured. "That's what video-John told me. I think...I think maybe we could do this."
"Do what?" Miriam said, disbelievingly. "Overthrow this entire establishment? Essentially a country?"
"Don't think of it as a country," Jonathan suggested. "Think of it as a corporation. And yes, I think we can. We've been given all the answers! We just didn't know how to see them."
"Enlighten us," Carmen put her feet up on the desk, "do."
"The youth corps stays where they belong," Jonathan said, carefully. "The adults mostly stay in their sub-dwellings. The high command is like a separate entity, between the two. I think...yes, I think we could take over the high command without the people in the sub-dwellings ever finding out."
Natalia laughed. "Are you crazy? You think they wouldn't notice?"
"Well, would they?" Jonathan asked. "Honestly? Do they ever go into the high command? Do they ever visit the youth corps? So long as they still get orders as normal, are they ever going to see that anything's different until we agree to let them?"
Natalia chewed on her thumb nail. "I don't...I mean...John, it's not that simple. The high command are the best. The most well-trained soldiers we have."
"We beat them on numbers," Jonathan countered. "And I've noticed that they aren't always armed, either."
"Beat them on numbers?" Nigs looked suspicious. "Are you sure? Cos I'm only seeing eight of us in this room right now."
"He's not talking just about us," Miriam realised. "He's talking about the whole youth corps. His own army, against theirs."
Jonathan nodded, his whole face lighting up. "Well? What do you think? Do you think we could do it?"
There was a long, long silence.
"And if we don't, what are you intending?" Jonathan added. "To carry on sneaking around until finally they get tired enough of us messing things up and just shoot us?"
"I think we should check out this door first," Sandy said. "See if we have anything worthwhile."
"It'll be easier to find a key card once we have the high command in our power," Ebb countered. "How do you expect to search it whilst they are wandering around?"
"But we might be fighting for nothing," Miriam rushed. "I mean, what if there is no door? Nothing on the surface worth living in? Nothing worth all that killing for?"
"We can help the people upstairs," Carmen said, fiercely. "We can give them a reason to stop thinking they are defective and worthless and wrong. And we can give people down here a reason to have, I don't know, proper family and friendship and freedom of speech. There's always something to improve, even if there is no surface. Even if there is no sun."
"Technically, Jonathan's in charge," Natalia said, "and what he says goes. But democracy might settle this better. A vote?"
"A vote," Jonathan pounced on this idea. "All those in favour of rebelling against the high command, raise your hands?"
Only Sandy, Miriam and Puck abstained. The others exchanged smug, excited looks.
"So here we go then," Jonathan's voice cracked with excitement. "At what point do you think we should tell our army what they're going to be fighting?"