Unbreathable

Chapter 1

The last time I stood here on this hill, Father was alive, Earth was thought to be destroyed, and I was human.

I ignore the pang in my chest, because tonight isn’t for grieving. Tonight is for redemption, for proving to the hopeless human race that Earth is real. Because until three nights ago, Earth was nothing more than a beautiful impossible dream.

With a deep breath, I take off down the hill. Every pounding step sends a billow of sand puffing into the wheezing, dry wind. The planet Jutaire is nothing more than a sea of red, rolling for as far as the eye can see, dotted with boulders and buildings raised to life by man and Jute. If anyone were to glance at the hill now, they would see me, a dark smudge against leagues of red beneath the silky moonlight.

But everyone is tucked in bed, breathing the oxygen inside their sealed homes. They live because there is nothing else for them to do. For them, this night is another and tomorrow will bring a day like any other. That’s the despicable way I was for seventeen years. Existing without living.

It was only after losing everything I had—after death stole my father—that I realized there’s a purpose to my life.

I have to finish what he started.

I adjust the mask suffocating my skin. Manufactured oxygen tries to soothe the fear drumming in my bloodstream. The clear mask is only half a sphere, much like the masks Father said they wore in hospitals back on Earth, only these are sleeker, fitting tight around our noses and mouths.

Because it only takes one breath of Jutaire’s toxic air for a human to die in mere heartbeats.

As I near the Chamber, where the metal and glass are tucked away, the worry gnawing at my insides increases. I'm fully aware of the many ways this could go wrong, and that every way will end the same.

With me hanging limp from a noose.

I clench my jaw and stare ahead. Nothing can stop me, not even the whisper of death.

The Chamber is protected by sweeping lights and a high metal fence. The walls are of faded, deep blue metal, with a barely visible ten-pointed white star emblazoned in its center. I’ve seen the star countless times from a distance, but never up close. The building is unsuspecting on the outside—like pretty much all of Jutaire—but it houses the most precious elements on our planet.

My palms are slick with sweat when I crouch behind a boulder as a scope of white light sweeps past, illuminating the brittle ground. I count the heartbeats beneath my ragged breath before it swings back.

Forty. I have forty beats to cross roughly five feet and scale the six-foot fence.

Breathe, I remind myself, as worry and fear threatens to overwhelm me.

The light passes. I dash out from behind the boulder and thread my sweaty fingers in the fence, struggling to find footing and climb. I move quietly, though the fence is keen on exposing my existence. I listen to the thud, thud, thud of my heart, counting away the time before I am caught.

One. Five. Eleven. Fifteen. Twenty-three. Thirty-five. I drop to the other side with a muted thud. A fine layer of dust coats my mask and stings my eyes.

I scramble to my feet and press against the smooth wall, flinching at the chill of my sweat-soaked shirt.

The positions of the lights and the locations of all three entrances have been ingrained in my mind, flashing behind my eyelids with every blink. It’s supposed to be simple, from the plans I had scribbled on scraps of old paper. Yet the voice of my conscience stokes my fear without fail. This is how Father died. He stole from the Chamber.