The laughter of Kane's gang still echoed long after they were gone, bouncing off the crumbling walls like a curse.
Max sat in the dirt where they left him, jaw aching, lungs burning with every shallow breath. The Quarter moved around him — men hauling empty tanks, women dragging children who coughed like old men. Nobody spared him a glance.
That was the way of the slums: pain was private, unless it was profitable.
He forced himself to stay still, even though his body screamed to lash out. Not yet, he told himself. To strike blindly was to die. Kane hadn't beaten him because Kane was strong — Kane had beaten him because Kane owned breath. And in the Red Quarter, owning breath was owning life.
Max wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. The taste of iron sharpened his thoughts.
His eyes slid toward the scavenger brats watching from the alley mouth. They whispered to each other, waiting for him to snap or break. He gave them nothing — no words, no threats, no promises. Let them think he was just another beaten cur. That was safer.
But inside, his hatred grew teeth.
Max didn't want Kane's respect. He didn't want the Quarter's pity. He wanted the throne Kane sat on, the filters Kane controlled, the air Kane hoarded.
And beyond Kane… beyond the gangs… there were towers of the Authority, their pure-white spires stabbing into the sky like the fingers of gods. Inside those towers, they said the rulers breathed oxygen so pure it stretched their lives for centuries, even made their bodies into something more than human.
Max closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. His sister's cough haunted him even here, rattling in his memory like a chain. Fifteen years old and already burning out like a used-up filter.
If he stayed low, she'd die. If he rose too fast, he'd die.
So he would move carefully. Patiently. He would bleed the cracks in the Quarter's system, learn where oxygen leaked, where guards slept, where Kane's reach ended.
He wasn't strong. Not yet.
But he was hungry.
And hunger, in the Red Quarter, was sharper than steel.