Part II
The girl's small fist struck the cold surface of my mask again.
Clang.
A hollow, metallic sound. It wasn't the impact of flesh against flesh, but of flesh against machine.
"You don't breathe like us!" she shrieked, her voice broken and raw, charged with a pure hatred that belied her young age.
Her words cut through me like a scalpel.
The internal filter of my mask hissed softly, adjusting the flow of recycled air. My breath was a low, inhuman, artificial hum. A constant reminder of what I was: an anomaly.
A half-man, half-machine following only orders.
The girl took a step back, trembling, her tear-filled eyes seeming to glow even in the module's gloom. Her mother was crawling on the floor, trying to reach her daughter, but the air was already failing her. Her skin was turning gray. The father, gasping, futilely attempted to push the empty cylinder against the sealed vents.
The Vita-Credit counter projected a searing red glare onto the rusted wall: –1.00.
A final number. A sentence.
I had seen that figure hundreds of times before.
Every time, the same fate.
Every time, the same hollow hiss marking someone's end.
But this time… something in me fractured.
My fingers trembled slightly inside the reinforced glove. This shouldn't happen. The Exoskeleton covering my arms was designed to stabilize my movements, to keep me cold and efficient even under stress.
Yet, the image of that girl, with her large, wet eyes, resonated too strongly in my memory.
Because I had been her.
I had been in her place, in a different module, so many cycles ago I could no longer count them. I had watched my mother plead, I had felt the air flee my lungs as the meter dropped to zero.
I had watched a man like me now, wearing a mask like mine, seal the door without blinking.
And yes, I had survived. But not as a human.
Not as a child.
I survived because someone rebuilt me as a useful machine, and that utility was now my sentence.
The father fell to his knees, his hands still pressed against the useless cylinder. He coughed, spitting blood. The mother fainted, her body convulsing on the floor. The girl was screaming, her voice growing hoarser, her throat torn by the stale air.
I… simply watched.
My protocols were clear: do not intervene beyond the order. Do not waste oxygen on words. Do not spend resources on sentimentality.
I was a Respirator.
An air executioner.
But every hit from the girl against my mask, every scream, every tear that fell on the dirty floor… imprinted itself on me like invisible scars.
The system confirmed the operation with a soft beep.
Eviction completed.
An automated record was sent to Pneuma Corp.
Module #4281 was officially sealed.
The inhabitants were no longer "users."
They no longer existed.
I raised an arm and shut the metal hatch with a screech. The final noise was like a nail driven into my memory.
Behind that door, three bodies slumped.
Three lives that were worth less than the air they had breathed.
The hallway returned to its habitual silence, broken only by the hum of the generators and the sputtering of the worn-out neon lights.
My mask's meter displayed my own consumption: –0.03 Vita-Credit spent during the operation.
My breath wasn't free. Not even for me.
The Chamber charged for every gasp, even from those of us who worked for them.
A cruel irony: I sealed away the debtors, but lived with my own counter always on the verge of red. All it would take was one badly executed order, one delay, one mistake… and I myself would be dragged to the Shells.
Or worse: to where the exiles truly went, a place I still pretended not to know.
I walked back down the corridor, my steps echoing metal-loud.
The echo seemed to throw back the girl's voice, repeating over and over in my head.
"You don't breathe like us."
The phrase dug into my mind like a hook.
It was true.
I didn't breathe like them.
The mask filtered, adjusted, and rationed every inhalation, ensuring my body consumed 60% less oxygen than a pure Umbrati (unmodified human). My lungs were no longer made of flesh. They were machines.
Every time I inhaled, I didn't feel the relief of fresh air. I felt the cold metal of an industrial process.
I didn't breathe. I processed.
And yet… I did it.
I kept breathing.
For what?
The hallway opened toward the main corridor of District 17. There, giant screens showed the Vita-Credit consumption rate in real-time. Graphs, numbers, and Pneuma Corp ads were projected in a constant bombardment of information.
"Breathe Responsibly."
"Save for your children's future."
"Air is Life. And Life is Vita-Credit."
The propaganda was so constant that no one listened to it anymore. It was part of the background noise, like the hum of the machines that kept the arc-city moving.
I paused for a moment, observing the crowd.
Men with visible respiratory implants, tubes embedded in their necks. Women with cheap masks, breathing black-market, adulterated oxygen. Children with scars on their skin, already prepared to receive their first modifications as soon as they reached the minimum age.
Everyone breathed… but everyone knew that every gasp came with a price.
No one breathed for free.
The internal communication system vibrated in my ear.
"Kaelen-7, Central here. Order completed successfully. Corresponding vital credit will be deposited into your account next cycle."
I didn't reply.
Protocol did not require it.
I kept walking, the echo of my steps mixing with the crowd.
No one looked directly at me.
Respirators were seen as a necessary plague.
A living reminder that the air had an owner.
A silent executioner who could knock on any door, at any moment.
And still… I couldn't get those eyes out of my mind.
The girl's eyes.
My own eyes.
The difference was that she would die as a human.
I would continue living… as a machine.
The phrase returned to resonate in my head, with the force of an eternal echo:
"You don't breathe like us!"
I stopped dead in my tracks.
The air I inhaled at that instant tasted bitter, more bitter than ever.
And for the first time in many cycles, I remembered what it felt like to believe that every gasp could be the last.
The crowd parted as I passed, as if sensing that my mere presence was dangerous. Not because I would attack them… but because my job could reach them at any moment.
Every face in those corridors could be my next target.
Every pair of lungs could be silenced with a single command.
And I was the hand that executed that command.
Not because I wanted to.
Not because I chose to.
But because it was all I had left.
The girl's echo was still pounding in my mind when my steps led me back to the elevator connecting to my district.
The hatch closed. The hum of the motor surrounded me, and the flickering lights inside projected my silhouette onto the metallic walls.
A tall, hunched figure, covered in a black Exoskeleton with wires gleaming beneath pale skin.
An opaque mask, without eyes, without a mouth.
A monster.
I looked at my reflection in the distorted, polished metal and, for an instant, I didn't know if what I saw was a man… or a machine disguised as one.
Inside the cabin, I whispered.
The words barely filtered out, caught in the echo of my mask.
"I… don't breathe like you."
And the silence that followed was as heavy as the vacuum of space.