Five days. It was strange how precious everything becomes when you only have five days left. Less than that, now, though Max had lost track, day bleeding into night, sleep not really being, well...much of a thing.

'You can sleep when you're dead'—the slogan of the young and desperate, burning their proverbial candles at both ends, and pretending to feel some warmth from it, as though to grow old was unthinkable.

He'd give anything to grow old, right now, anything to have something like a future again.

The saying was a lot less witty now, the truer it was and Max didn't want to waste any of his limited hours left. How many? Less than a hundred, a tiny treasure of time slipping through his plasalloyed palms.

Max slumped back against the wall outside Spider's place, trying to ignore the unfamiliar scraping sound of the metal of the exoskeleton holding him up against the brick wall. He took a long breath of air, a hungry gulp, just remembering that he can breathe, he's still breathing, and that meant he could still do something. Just…what? Spider would help. Spider would get him up there, somehow. Spider would have a plan, and Max would hate it, but it would be something. A start. A way to keep moving, to try to outrun his own death, or at least make it have to chase him down.

But for now, it was enough to look up at the dark vault of the night sky as he caught his breath, the pain in his side finally ebbing, the night air stirring and cool on his skin. He could hear the soft pings of the exo-suit's heated pistons cooling as he tilted his head up to watch the little bright streaks of light across the sky, meteors falling under the slender wheel of Elysium, and he tried not to think of the fact that they were burning up, dying to shine so bright.