The Climate Cartels

2077: Chicago is a skeletal city, choked by smog, its air controlled by the Climate Cartels—corporations that have privatized the very act of breathing.  Elara Sorenson, an air quality inspector for the dominant Cartel, OxyGen, understands the cruel irony of her job: maintaining the illusion of scarcity.  While corporate towers filter the toxic air, the masses in the slums gasp for every rationed breath.  Elara’s detached existence is shattered when she uncovers a hidden sub-level containing evidence that the air shortage isn't natural—it’s manufactured. OxyGen is suppressing advanced air purification technology, controlling human evolution, and steering the future towards a privileged few.
Torn between complicity and conscience, Elara’s INTJ mind races. She joins forces with Jason Wang, a disillusioned data analyst haunted by his own role in the Cartels’ deceit. Together, they unearth a sinister evolutionary agenda: the creation of a new breed of humans, genetically modified to thrive in the toxic atmosphere.  Their investigation leads them to Elizabeth Franklin, a brilliant but morally bankrupt geneticist who holds the key to the Cartels' terrifying ambitions.
Meanwhile, in the slums, Mateo Rojas, a charismatic resistance leader, fights for his community's survival. He discovers a cache of pre-collapse air filtration technology, offering a flicker of hope.  As Elara and Jason’s investigation deepens, they uncover a web of orchestrated environmental disasters, exposing the Cartels’ depravity and making them targets. Genetically modified enforcers, adapted to the toxic air, hunt them relentlessly.
The race against time intensifies when Elara and Jason discover the Cartels’ final, horrifying plan: a virus to sterilize the unmodified population, making way for their new human breed. Their fight for clean air becomes a battle for humanity's survival.  In a heart-pounding climax within OxyGen’s headquarters, Elara, Jason, and Mateo’s resistance must expose the truth to a dying world, unaware of the forces suffocating it. Can they shatter the illusion and ignite a revolution, or will humanity’s last breaths be auctioned off to the highest bidder?  The fight for clean air might be won, but the struggle for a just future is far from over.