The sky above the Red Quarter was never dark, never light — just a permanent haze of rust-colored dust that clung to the bones of the city. Mars-like, they called it, though nobody alive had ever seen Mars. Terraforming had scorched the planet centuries ago, and now Earth breathed like a dying beast, coughing dust into every open mouth.
Here, air wasn't a right. It was a tax.
Max learned that before he could walk. The filters strapped to his family's walls groaned day and night, wheezing out the cheapest grade of oxygen — ash air. Each breath was a gamble. If the dust didn't scar your lungs, the metallic toxins would. Most people in the Red Quarter lived fast and shallow, hacking up blood before their twentieth birthday.
Max's sister was almost there. She coughed into a rag, again and again, until the cloth turned crimson. He looked away, because he couldn't stand the sound. Because he knew she wouldn't see twenty-one.
"Max…" she whispered, voice raw as sandpaper. "We'll breathe clean air someday, right? The kind they breathe in the towers?"
He lied, as he always did. "Of course."
But in truth, the towers were as far away as another planet.
The Red Quarter had no laws, no leaders — only kings. Men like Rattler Kane.
Kane wasn't a politician, though he wore the mantle of one. He was a gang boss, yes, but in the Quarter that made him as close to royalty as anyone could dream. His men carried rusted weapons, their filters hissing with mid-grade oxygen the slum-dwellers could never afford. His symbol, a rattlesnake coiled around a canister, was splashed across every wall. To the desperate, it was both a warning and a promise: Breathe by my mercy, or choke without it.
And mercy was in short supply.
That morning, Max had no tribute to offer. No credits, no scrap filters, no stolen canisters. His pockets were empty. His name — Weak Max — carried no weight but shame.
They found him anyway. They always did.
Two of Kane's men dragged him into the open street. The crowd parted without a word, dozens of hollow eyes watching. Nobody intervened. To defy Kane was to defy air itself.
"Well, well," Kane said as he stepped forward, tall and lean, his mask gleaming with polished filters. He didn't just breathe better than the rest of them — he looked like it. Healthier skin, steadier voice, sharper eyes. He was proof of what a higher tier of oxygen could make of a man. "Weak Max. Out of breath already?"
The men laughed. Their own filters hissed like snakes, mocking him.
Max's chest burned, but he forced himself upright. "I'll pay," he rasped. "I just need—"
"Time," Kane finished for him, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder. His grip was iron, steady as if the dust itself bent around him. "That's the one thing you don't got."
The crowd laughed because Kane laughed, because to live under him was to echo his humor, his cruelty, his whims.
Max stared at the red sky as their boots drove him into the dirt. He felt the hate boil, the kind that burned hotter than oxygen, hotter than life itself.
Someday, he promised himself. Someday he'd breathe the air of kings. He'd rip it from their lungs if he had to.
And when that day came, they wouldn't call him Weak Max anymore.
No — they would choke on his name.