Part I
The artificial dawn of Ring 3 was nothing more than a programmed lie.
The ceiling neon lamps flickered, modulating their intensity from a gray tone to a sickly yellow that attempted to mimic sunlight.
But down here, the sun didn't exist. Nor did warmth, nor blue sky.
Only tubes, metal, and the constant hum of machines pumping air too old to be called fresh.
The mask system issued a soft alert.
Filtered Oxygen: 21%. Personal Consumption: –0.04 Vita-Credit.
My first breath of the day.
I was already in debt.
A Respirator's routine always began the same way.
First, checking the list of overdue quotas. A translucent screen deployed in front of my eyes upon connecting the mask to the central system. Endless rows of names, ID numbers, and percentages of oxygen consumed.
District 9, Ring 3 → 12 families in delinquency.District 14, Ring 4 → 5 families.District 17, Ring 3 → 8 families (sealing completed yesterday).
The count was inhuman, cold.
There were no photos of faces, no life stories.
Only figures. Only numbers in red that determined who would keep breathing and who wouldn't.
Next, the protocol required marking priority orders. Those with delinquency exceeding –0.05 Vita-Credit had to be addressed immediately. The Chamber called it "vital resource recovery." I called it something else: Acts of Silence.
Because that was what I signed every time I completed a sealing: an electronic document certifying that the allocated air had stopped being wasted on useless mouths.
A contract of death with an overly elegant name.
The first module of the morning was in District 12.
A narrow corridor, full of cables hanging from the ceiling like metallic roots. The air here smelled of ozone and mildew.
Panel #2214 showed the meter in red: –0.08 Vita-Credit.
A standard case.
The kind of job I was supposed to do without thinking.
I approached and slid my authorization card into the slot.
The system recognized my code: Kaelen-7, Designated Respirator.
The door hissed open. Inside, an old man sat on the floor, breathing labor Edly. His skin sagged over his bones, as if the air itself was escaping through his pores.
He didn't say anything. He didn't plead.
He just looked at me with resignation, and closed his eyes.
I pressed the final command.
The system beeped softly.
Air cutoff initiated.
Then came the sound.
A hollow, prolonged hiss that traveled along the metal walls of the module like a ghostly moan. The air escaping through the ducts, stolen from the lungs of those still trying to cling to it.
That sound… I knew it too well.
The sound of an empty coffin.
That's what I called it.
Because there was no grave or body to bury.
Only a silent, sealed module, turned into the coffin of everyone who had breathed inside it.
Every time I heard it, a part of me returned to that night in the Lower Rings.
To the beeping of my family's counter dropping to zero.
To my mother's desperate screams, to my father's eyes filled with helplessness.
To the air burning in my child lungs, unable to understand why I was suffocating in my own home.
Time hadn't erased that memory.
My Exoskeleton could stabilize my breathing, reduce my oxygen consumption, suppress my adrenaline.
But it couldn't erase that sound.
The hiss remained alive in my ears, like a perpetual wound.
When the process finished, the panel flickered green.
Eviction completed. Record sent to Pneuma Corp.
The old man was no longer breathing.
His body slumped slowly, like a broken doll.
I closed the metal hatch, leaving behind another silence.
The system prompted me for a signature.
I slid my finger over the panel and confirmed.
Act of Silence registered.
The personal counter on my mask updated: +0.02 Vita-Credit for the operation.
I had earned a couple more inhalations.
The irony was grotesque.
Every life I sealed bought me a few extra gasps.
Every death elsewhere was my air.
I continued my round through the corridors of Ring 3.
The noise was always the same: footsteps, the hum of ventilators, muffled arguments behind closed doors.
In every module, a different family. In every family, the same fear.
Some screamed, others offered objects, organs, old implant parts.
Others simply knelt and waited for it all to end quickly.
The routine enveloped me like a steel blanket.
The world wanted me to be a machine that didn't hesitate, didn't remember, didn't feel.
And for a long time, I had succeeded.
But since yesterday, since the little girl's punches against my mask… the echo wouldn't be silenced.
"You don't breathe like us."
The words returned again and again, every time a module hissed its last breath.
The last on the list was in District 18.
A sector closer to the border with the Shells.
The order flashed on my screen with a warning:
Danger: Mass Delinquency Zone. Limited Patrols. Proceed with caution.
My steps stopped for an instant.
District 18 wasn't like the others.
There, the walls were covered in moisture, the neons were almost always dead, and the air was so thick that even my filters struggled to process it.
Entering there was like walking inside an open grave.
But the order was clear.
A module in critical delinquency.
One more sealing that had to be completed.
The system vibrated in my ear with a final notification:
"New order received. Destination: District 18, border with the Shells."
The elevator leading down to that level opened in front of me.
A dark, unlit shaft, descending towards the heart of misery.
I clenched my fists.
The Exoskeleton hummed softly, adjusting the pressure on my muscles.
The air I inhaled tasted even more bitter than it had this morning.
The hiss of the sealed modules still echoed in my ears.
An endless echo, like a funeral dirge that only I seemed to hear.
And as I took the first step into the darkness of District 18, I understood something clearly:
That sound would pursue me until my last day.
The sound of an empty coffin…
and mine was still open.