The Copper Lung

The copper floorboards beneath Elias’s boots shuddered—a deep, tectonic groan that vibrated through his ribcage before rattling the foundations of the suspended city. Then came the third whistle. Its metallic roar tore through the twisting alleys, where thick copper cables hung like the exposed veins of a titan, pulsing with dead electricity. Golden dust—a lethal silt of metal filings and alchemical residue—swirled in the sickly phosphorescent glow of the streetlamps, clinging to his heavy canvas coat until the smell of rust and scorched oil felt like his own skin. Elias wiped a bead of cold sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand, flinching as a sharp, rhythmic heat flared at the nape of his neck. His digital brand, the invisible tether binding his biology to the city’s gears, began to pulse a congested orange. The light flickered, announcing the expiration he had spent months trying to outrun: the Age of Depletion. His lungs were no longer generating enough bio-alchemy to pay the city’s survival tax. Cuprum, the hungry brass beast, was calling for its tribute, and it did not accept IOUs. He heaved open the heavy iron door of the tenement, greeted by the suffocating stench…