The Red Quarter had no clocks, no schedules. Time was measured by coughing fits and by the wheeze of failing filters.
The air itself carried a weight, like wet cloth pressed against the lungs. Slum children learned to play without running, because running meant gasping, and gasping meant blood. People were born shallow-breathers and died even shallower.
Old women said the Quarter was alive, that it breathed through the people who fed it with their lives. Each death was another sigh in the lungs of the city.
Max knew better. The Quarter didn't breathe. It choked.
From the rooftops, he watched life below unfold. Men and women lined up before cracked filter towers, their faces hidden behind rags tied over their mouths. The towers exhaled dirty oxygen like gods too tired to care, giving just enough to keep the rats alive. Children dragged empty tanks, hoping for a refill. Most went home with dust.
In the alleys, the gangs patrolled. Not all were Kane's men; other kings ruled other corners. Each with their own symbol painted on walls — a skull, a serpent, a handprint dripping in red. Borders marked not with walls but with breath: step into the wrong zone, and your oxygen mask got taken, or your throat cut, whichever was faster.
A beggar collapsed on the roadside, clutching a cracked canister. Nobody helped. They stepped over him, eyes down, saving their pity for themselves.
Max had seen it all before. This wasn't cruelty — it was survival. In the Quarter, pity was as useless as hope.
Above, the towers of the Authority shimmered faintly beyond the haze, white monoliths in the distance. To the slum-dwellers, they weren't buildings. They were another world. People there breathed air so clean it was said to add decades to your life with every inhale.
But in the Quarter, lives weren't measured in decades. They were measured in coughs.
Max pulled his rag tighter around his mouth, though it did nothing to filter the dust. His sister's cough echoed faintly in his ears, no matter where he went.
The Red Quarter breathed. And every breath was borrowed