Not everyone accepted the revolution. In a place called the Deep Tunnels—a part of the station that few people ventured into—a group of resistance fighters were hiding. They'd fought against the old regime but had been pushed out when the democratic structures took over. They believed that the new system was just the old system dressed up differently.
Maren encountered them one day while exploring the older parts of the station with a team of historians. They were documenting the physical history of the station, including the tunnels that had been used for resistance during the revolution.
One of the Deep Tunnel fighters, a woman named Vera, confronted him.
"You're the sister's brother," she said, recognizing him. "The one who helped create the new system."
"Yes," Maren said carefully. "Sera was my sister."
"And if she were alive today, do you think she'd be satisfied?" Vera asked. "With what you've built? Or would she see that nothing has fundamentally changed—that you've just made the oppression more subtle?"
It was a question that haunted Maren. He'd asked himself the same thing many times.
"I think," he said slowly, "that Sera would recognize that change is always incomplete. That the work is never done. That justice is something we have to fight for constantly, not just once."
Vera considered this. "You might be right," she said. "But the Deep Tunnels will keep watching. If the new system becomes as corrupt as the old one, we'll fight again."
"I know," Maren said. "And maybe that's how it should be. Maybe change requires constant vigilance, constant resistance to the tendency for systems to calcify and become unjust."
It was a sobering thought—that revolution wasn't an endpoint but a beginning. That the work of building a just society was never finished.