Part III
The fire continued to crackle in the center of the cavern, small and useless, like a heart about to be extinguished.
The children coughed around the improvised cylinder.
The woman stared at me, unwavering in her silence, waiting for me to decide if that warmth would continue to exist or if it would be put out with a simple gesture.
My hand hovered over the disconnection panel.
The system continued to emit its insistent beep.
Pending procedure. Immediate disconnection.
But I didn't move.
My finger trembled inside the reinforced glove.
That tremor didn't come from my muscles, because the Exoskeleton was designed to suppress weaknesses.
It came from deeper.
From the memory.
Of my father.
I saw his face again, as clearly as if he were right in front of me.
The sweat on his forehead, the swollen veins in his neck, his hands beating against the module door that was closing on us.
I heard him scream:
"Just one more cycle! Let us breathe, you damned dogs!"
His voice superimposed itself onto the voice of the man who had just tried to rip off my mask, roaring:
"Your air is mine!"
Two voices, two different moments, but the same echo.
The echo of someone on the verge of losing everything, of someone who no longer begs… but demands as a final instinct of life.
The smallest child began to cry.
A hoarse, weak cry, as if every sob tore a piece of oxygen away from him.
The woman hugged him tighter, bowing her head, as if trying to hide him from me.
Then I heard the crunch.
A man emerged from the shadows of the side tunnel.
His body was thin, almost starved, but his arms were reinforced with rusted metal plates, like makeshift prosthetics.
In his hands, he held a long, serrated bar, made of welded gear remnants.
He positioned himself between me and the group.
His breathing was heavy, smoke-laden, but his eyes burned with savage fury.
"You won't seal us." His voice was a snarl.
I did not respond.
I shouldn't.
The protocol was clear: neutralize all resistance.
The man took a step forward, dragging the bar across the floor.
Sparks illuminated the tunnel, reflecting off my opaque lenses.
"You… Respirators… you think you can decide who breathes and who doesn't." His voice broke, but he didn't back down. "Well, I'm going to rip the air right out of that mask, you Chamber dog!"
He lunged at me.
The movement was fast, desperate.
The bar slammed against my arm with an impact that resonated like thunder in the tunnel.
The Exoskeleton absorbed the force, redistributing it.
I didn't move an inch.
The man snarled, raising the bar again to strike my head.
In that instant, I activated the reinforcement.
The servomotors roared in my limbs, lighting up with a faint glow beneath the reinforced skin.
The Exoskeleton turned my body into a precision weapon.
I raised my arm and blocked the blow with brutal ease.
The metal of the bar groaned against my forearm.
With my other hand, I grabbed his neck.
The system detected his accelerated pulse, his erratic breathing.
The man spat on my mask, his saliva uselessly running down the black surface.
"Die with me, machine!" he roared, trying to dig his nails into my filter vents.
For an instant, his face distorted before me.
It was no longer him.
It was my father.
My father, gasping, eyes red with desperation.
My father, pleading and cursing at the same time.
My father, hitting the door, trying to wrench air from where there was none left.
An internal hum shook me.
The Exoskeleton calculated the force needed to neutralize him.
Recommendation: Reduce resistance. Intensity: 48%.
I didn't hesitate anymore.
I squeezed.
The man let out a strangled cry, his arms convulsing.
The bar fell to the ground with a metallic crash.
His eyes opened wide, reflecting the cold shine of my mask.
I lifted him off the ground, holding him suspended as if his famished body weighed nothing.
His breathing became a weak gasp, like the final hiss of a broken lung.
And then, I threw him against the wall.
The impact echoed throughout the cavern.
The man slumped, motionless, his chest barely rising.
Neutralized.
Not dead.
But reduced to what the Chamber called: an unnecessary subject.
The protocol was fulfilled.
My Exoskeleton hummed softly, deactivating the reinforcement.
Silence returned.
The children huddled even closer, embracing each other.
The woman sobbed silently, her gaze fixed on me, filled with a hatred that not even fear could extinguish.
I breathed mechanically, each inhalation a metallic echo.
But inside… something was vibrating.
My hand was still shaking.
Not from the fight.
Not from the effort.
But from what I had seen in that face.
From what I had remembered.
My father.
Hitting.
Pleading.
Cursed by a system that had decided his air was worthless.
That tremor ran through me as a reminder that I wasn't completely a machine.
There was something in me that was still human, even though it hurt more every day.
My mask system emitted its automatic confirmation.
Anomaly neutralized. Procedure completed. Act of Silence pending.
I slid my finger onto the panel.
The signature was registered.
Another Act of Silence.
Another red number converted into a dead statistic.
My personal counter increased: +0.03 Vita-Credit.
A few more gasps.
Bought with silence.
But as I left the improvised module, the echo of the impact still resonated in my ears.
The sound of the bar colliding with my Exoskeleton.
The man's roar as he tried to rip off my mask.
The memory of my father superimposed on all of it.
And I understood something I didn't want to admit:
That internal tremor wouldn't go away.
Because the Shells weren't just rusted tunnels and dying bodies.
They were my reflection.
They were the wound that never healed.
I moved through the tunnel, the fire receding, the children's crying fading in the distance.
Silence enveloped everything again.
A heavy, damp silence, as if the arc-city itself were holding its breath.
The sigh of the subdued man still vibrated in my memory.
A sigh that was no different from my father's.
A sigh that merged with my own.
A sigh of the Shells.
And as my mask registered my constant, metallic breathing, I understood that the true enemy wasn't that man.
It was what I was remembering.
What I had tried to bury in the silence of every signed act.
I closed my eyes for an instant, and the tremor returned.
A slight, almost invisible vibration, but relentless.
The crack was already made.
And I knew that, sooner or later, it would split completely open.