No one can remember quite how they got there.

Everyone's earliest memories are of the Factories. And the fights. And the death.

Legend has it that, long ago, the Workers and the upper class lived together. There were still classes, but the Workers were free to do as they wished. But the upper class began to see how hard it could push the lower class, and that was when the revolt began.

At first it was just a small group of lower class rebels, and it grew smaller with deaths of its members at every demonstration. It grew slowly, and eventually the entire lower class was rebelling against the upper class.

From the start, it looked as though the lower class would win. They far outnumbered the upper class and were used to hard living and fighting to survive. The smaller upper class was used to an easy life, not prepared to face people fighting for their freedom.

The one thing the upper class had going for them was money. With that money, they devised weapons. Weapons that could kill an entire city's population of the lower class. It took only two demonstrations of this power to end the revolt. While the upper class had lost more people, the lower class had lost its will to fight.

But the upper class was now suspicious and a bit fearful of the lower class. How could they trust that somewhere down the road another revolt would start and suceed in finishing what the first had started? So the factories were built and, within the space of a few years, the lower class went from people to Workers. The worked as hard as the upper class told them to, they fought when the upper class told them to, they bred when the upper class allowed them to, and they died at the slightest whim of the upper class.

Not by far a perfect life. But, perfect or otherwise, it is the life that Ryff, known to the upper class overseers as 6238706-8, and Lena, 2700584-9, were forced to live.

But not a life they accepted freely.

As soon as he was moved from the nursery into the Factories at the age of ten to begin the brutal life of a Worker, Ryff knew instinctively that it wasn't right. He'd listened to his history lessons well, he knew why he was here. But the lessons had not instilled in him a sense of guilt, as it was intended to. Instead, he took away of leading the second revolt against the upper class, this time to finish them off. Lena became his first and fiercest supporter.