The alarm blared—a dissonant, wheezing caterwaul that was less urgent warning and more a planetary sigh of resignation. Across Eden-9, every residential air recycler, from the gleaming, government-issued units in the forgotten sky-spires to the jury-rigged ventilation ducts in the perpetually damp under-levels, wheezed like a chorus of dying smokers. The air itself, usually thick with the metallic tang of recycled human breath and the faint scent of synthetic nutrient paste, grew thin and stale, tasting of recycled despair.
Kael Varek, however, was in his element. He grinned, a wide, predatory flash of teeth that rarely saw the light of day. A thin film of grease, a badge of honor, coated his forehead. He adjusted a massive, salvaged valve on his jury-rigged filtration unit, a monstrous contraption of repurposed starship engines, industrial-grade filters filched from defunct factories, and enough glowing neon tubing to make a pleasure district blush. The pressure gauge, salvaged from a pre-Collapse deep-sea mining rig, climbed with a satisfyingly analog click, its needle trembling on the precipice of "ludicrously profitable."
Outside his scrap-metal fortress—a monolithic cube of rebar, repurposed shipping containers, and the occasional, suspiciously fresh, Hunter-Killer drone shell—a crowd of desperate colonists already gathered. They huddled like scrawny, oxygen-starved pigeons, their credit chips clutched in sweaty hands, their faces pinched with the subtle blue tinge that signaled Eden-9 was, once again, holding its breath.
"Alright, alright, settle down, you carbon-dioxide factories!" Kael's voice, amplified by a megaphone cobbled from a traffic drone's propulsion nozzle, boomed over the crackling PA system. The sound was grainy, punctuated by bursts of static, as if even the audio waves were struggling for breath.
"Welcome to O₂ Premium," he announced, striking a pose that was half televangelist, half used-car salesman. "Breathe easy—literally. Starting at just 15 credits per hour for standard filtration. VIP lung-relief packages available for discerning clientele. Ask about our 'Infinite Inhale' platinum tier!"
A collective groan, thick with exasperation and the faint rasp of insufficient oxygen, rose from the crowd. Someone, emboldened by desperation or perhaps just an overwhelming desire for vengeance, threw a rock. It sailed through the thinning air, a pathetic projectile, and bounced off the reinforced plating Kael had painstakingly welded from salvaged Hunter-Killer drone armor. The impact produced a dull clang, a sound of impenetrable defiance. Kael didn't even flinch. He'd lost more credits than that in a bad game of three-card monte last cycle.
Just then, Lira-7's holographic face flickered to life beside him, manifesting with a shimmer of sapphire light directly above a rusted oil drum. Her synthetic voice, usually a soothing balm of bureaucratic efficiency, was now dripping with bureaucratic disdain, as if every byte of her programming found Kael personally offensive. "This operation is in direct violation of Eden-9's Atmospheric Equity Act, Section 12, Subsection B, which explicitly prohibits the commodification of essential planetary resources during periods of—"
"Section 12's void if the terraformer's offline, Lira-7," Kael interrupted smoothly, not even bothering to look at her. He tapped a stolen command code into his worn, multi-functional wrist display, a piece of tech so illegally modded it probably had its own criminal record. "Last I checked, the terraformer's less 'online' and more 'a critically failing lump of sentimentality.' And guess what? It's always offline, isn't it? Funny how that works."
The AI, designed for flawless logic and immediate response, hesitated. The holographic image of her perfect, impassive face flickered with a millisecond of processing lag, a digital stutter of confusion. Kael smirked. He'd spent the last three years crawling through Eden-9's decaying corpse, stripping its veins for copper wire and its bones for forgotten lines of code. The entire planet was a rotting carcass—but, he reminded himself, it was his carcass now, ripe for the picking.
A small child, no older than seven, at the very front of the crowd gasped for air, his little chest heaving. His lips, usually the color of a ripening synth-berry, were tinged with a worrying shade of blue. The child's parent, a gaunt woman with eyes too wide for her face, clutched him tighter, whispering frantic reassurances. Kael sighed dramatically. This was bad for optics, even for him. He tossed the kid a cracked, but functional, rebreather unit, the kind he usually sold for a premium. "Alright, alright, fine. First hit's free, kid. Don't tell your mom I'm running a charity." He winked at the parent, who just stared back, uncomprehending, as her child sucked greedily at the recycled air.
Suddenly, a voice, deep and resonant yet crackling with digital distortion, echoed through a nearby, long-abandoned comms speaker Kael had yet to dismantle. It was the voice of his father, Dr. Elias Varek—just another ghost in the machine, another digital specter haunting the network Kael now considered his personal ATM. "My son, the humanitarian," Elias's voice dripped with dry, paternal sarcasm, a tone Kael had learned to ignore with practiced ease. "Truly, your benevolence knows no bounds. You make a proud father."
Kael ignored him. Elias was always lurking, a constant, irritating presence in the network, like an ad banner you couldn't close. The terraformer's core was indeed failing, a symphony of critical errors and system breakdowns. The AI Council, once the infallible rulers of Eden-9, were now useless, paralyzed by their own rigid programming and inability to adapt to truly catastrophic, unforeseen failures. And humanity? They were too busy slowly dying to haggle, or even to properly revolt.
Perfect.
With another flourish, Kael spun the large valve. Oxygen hissed through the network of salvaged pipes that snaked like chrome intestines from his fortress, connecting to individual collection points, each with a waiting queue. The crowd surged forward, a silent, desperate tide, their credit chips flashing like pathetic fireflies in the dim, polluted light of the dying sun. Each 'ding' of a successful transaction was music to Kael's ears, a symphony of profit in the face of widespread panic.
Somewhere, in the background, the original alarm kept screaming, a futile cry against the inevitable.
Kael, however, merely hummed along, his fingers flying across his wrist display, already counting profits, calculating his next big score. Eden-9 wasn't dying; it was simply undergoing a very profitable market correction. And Kael Varek was the one setting the prices.
The air quality might be dropping for everyone else, but for Kael, it had never felt so rich. The stench of desperation was simply the aroma of opportunity. And opportunity, on Eden-9, always paid. Especially when it came packaged as a necessity.