Part I
The Middle Rings smelled of damp iron and stale sweat.
The air here wasn't pure, not even fresh. It was a borrowed breath, recycled so many times that it seemed to carry the memory of every lung that had exhaled it before.
My every step echoed in the narrow, metallic hallway, a hollow reverberation inside a cage. The intermittent neon lights sputtered overhead, dimly illuminating the residential modules stacked like vertical coffins.
The screen inside my mask projected the target data onto the internal lens:
Client: Pneuma Corp
Address: Ring 3, District 17, Module #4281
Vita-Credit Status: –0.07 (Critical Delinquency)
Order: Immediate Disconnection and Sealing
The number flashed red. –0.07.
It was worse than zero. It meant they had already taken more than their share of breath. They had consumed air that didn't belong to them.
I sighed. Although, in reality, all that escaped me was a mechanical hum filtered by the mask.
"Kaelen-7, confirming order." My voice came out distorted, robotic. It didn't even sound like mine.
The interface responded with a confirmation beep. The order was logged. The rest was routine.
Module #4281 was like all the others in this district: a metal door with peeling paint, a small square window that barely showed the gloom inside, and a control panel on the side with the digital meter embedded.
The crystal displayed a searing red. The counter dropped every few seconds.
Inside, I heard voices. Crying. Muffled thuds against the door.
"Please, one more cycle! Just one more! My husband will get work back at the Forge, I swear—"
It was a woman's voice, broken, with that tone I had heard dozens of times before. The tone of someone pleading not out of faith, but out of pure survival instinct.
A second later, another voice, deep, joined in:
"We can pay. I have spare parts, old implants... Just let us have one more breath!"
The mask registered the vibration of my breathing. My Exoskeleton adjusted my metabolism, reducing oxygen consumption by 8%. An automatic function. One of the advantages of being an Augmented.
I pressed the authorization panel. The crystal confirmed: Eviction in progress.
The door opened with a rusty screech.
The interior was dim. A family of three huddled in a corner. The mother's hands were bloody from hitting the metal. The father held an empty, useless cylinder. The daughter... she could barely be ten cycles old. She looked at me with eyes so large and wet they reminded me too much of my own, back when I was a child in the Shells.
But I wasn't that child anymore.
Now, I was Kaelen-7.
The Respirator.
"Time expired," my mechanical voice filled the room like a sentence.
The mother crawled toward me, pleading.
"No! Just a few hours! Just until tomorrow! My children—!"
The father dropped to his knees.
"Mercy. I will work for free in the Gearworks, but let them live. Give us one more day."
Their words bounced off the mask. Cold. Distant.
My training had sealed off the part of me that still wanted to listen.
I pressed the final command.
Air cutoff initiated.
The familiar hiss filled the module. That sound... that hollow whistle that never left my memory.
The air began to escape, invisible but lethal.
The mother screamed. The father tried to block the vents with his bare hands.
And the daughter... the daughter ran towards me.
She punched me in the chest, over and over, with her small fists.
Tears streamed down her dirty face as she screamed:
"You don't breathe like us!"
The mask vibrated with each impact. And for an instant... I felt that those words weren't hers, but my own, years ago, when I watched my mother suffocate as the counter dropped to zero.
The Vita-Credit crystal flickered, and the number became final: –0.99.
The module was sealed.