My Mask is the Debt: I Collect the Last Gasps on Arc A-7.
When Air Became Debt
In the immense arc-city of A-7, oxygen isn't a right; it's a currency known as Vita-Credit (or CrediVita). Every inhale has a cost. For Kaelen, a boy from the Middle Rings, that lesson was a deadly one: he watched his mother's meter drop to zero as she begged for an extra breath. The system swallowed his family, exiling them to the rusted tunnels known as the Shells (or Hulls). Kaelen survived, not by luck, but by metal: a clandestine workshop turned him into an Augmented, a cold and efficient man.
Years later, Kaelen-7 is a Pneuma Corp Respirator (or Pneumologist), the enforcement arm that seals the modules of debtors. His life is a routine of death: checking quotas, blocking air connections, and signing the "act of silence." His exoskeleton and his breathing mask are all that he is. However, one day, while sealing a family in the Middle Rings, the daughter strikes his mask, shouting at him: "You don't breathe like us!" That cry, barely a whisper of residual air, plants the first seed of doubt in his core of steel.