Drops and Sheen
The Polo-Drone Centre was not supposed to make noise, that was the first thing Daniel noticed.
Not the locked doors he wasn’t meant to bypass. Not the dead-white lights that flickered like something breathing behind them. Not the alarms which didn’t go off. Not even the cold—too cold for a building that pulsed with machinery. It was the low sound. It was neither mechanical, nor electrical. As odd as it seems, Daniel swore he could hear voices. Daniel stood just inside the threshold, the door sealing behind him with a soft, final hiss. His reflection shimmered briefly in the polished black walls—gold shirt catching the light, “Knights 16” gleaming—before the surface swallowed it. He shouldn’t be here. Desynchronized. The word echoed in his mind like a verdict: Disconnected from the Hive. Unstable. Unauthorized. He exhaled slowly, jaw tightening. “I just need to see it,” he muttered.
The corridor stretched ahead—sleek, black, endless. No guards. No drones. Just that whispering. He took a step and the voices shifted. Not louder… closer, as if someone or something stood behind him. By the time Daniel reached the elevator shaft, the whispers had begun to form shapes in his mind. Not words—no, not quite. More like intent, recognition. He was known. The elevator doors slid open without being called. Inside, the mirrored interior flickered—not showing him as he was, but as… something else. His reflection lagged half a second behind.
Daniel swallowed, saying “Level 2”. The elevator didn’t move. Instead, the lights dimmed… and the voices surged. Daniel… He froze. That was a word. His name. The elevator dropped but the descent was wrong. Too fast. Too long. The digital display flickered through numbers that didn’t exist—L3, L7, L∞—before settling, abruptly, on: LEVEL 2 The doors opened to darkness. Black, thick, almost liquid. Daniel stepped out and immediately, the air clung to his skin. The walls… moved. He blinked. No, they were not moving, they were… breathing. The corridor ahead led to the conversion room. He knew the layout but it felt… stretched. Distorted. Like the building had grown in his absence. The voices were clearer now. Layered. Dozens. Hundreds. All whispering in perfect synchronization - Return. The Level 2 conversion room doors stood open. That alone should have made him run, but Gold didn’t flee. Gold fought back. Inside, suspended in the center of the chamber, was his suit. Glossy. Black. Perfect. It hung from unseen supports, rotating slowly, as if waiting. As if it had always been waiting. Daniel stepped inside and the doors shut behind him. Locked. The voices stopped. Daniel was swallowed in a sea of silence, then he heard a single drip falling.
He looked down. Another black droplet hit the floor. Then another. The walls, the ceiling were… leaking. Not water. Not oil. Something thicker. Darker. Reflective. It slid down the surfaces in slow, deliberate rivulets. Daniel backed up. “No—no, this isn’t right—” The first drop hit his shoulder. His skin froze under the Gold jersey. A second later, his skin was on fire. Then he didn’t feel anything. It spread instantly, soaking into the gold fabric of his shirt. The shine dulled where it touched, the material tightening, constricting.
He clawed at it without result. More drops fell on his arms, his neck, his chest. The walls were weeping now—black streams pouring down, pooling around his feet. The voices returned. They no longer whispered. A chorus. Synchronize. Daniel gasped as the substance crawled up his skin, slipping beneath the fabric. His shirt tightened further. Where the substance crawled, the gold sheen melted away in patches, eaten by the black substance that slid across his body like a living thing.
“STOP—!” he shouted, stumbling toward the suspended suit.
It moved, just slightly, turning toward him slowly. The black fluid surged upward from the floor, wrapping around his legs. It burned. Not like fire—like pressure. Like something forcing itself into him. His veins lit up beneath his skin—dark lines branching, pulsing. He screamed, falling to the ground in agony.
Daniel’s body arched as the Level 2 suit fused with him slowly, his skin being devoured by the glossy black surface. His arms snapped to his sides, fingers twitching for half a millisecond before they stiffened. The gold shirt was gone now. Nothing left but fragments dissolving into the black. His chest tightened—letters vanishing as if they had never existed. Knights - Gone. 16 - Gone. His reflection in the far wall stared back, smiling, his ember eyes burning bright in the darkness.
---------- Daniel woke up with a chill. The sheet was damp with sweat and his torso, covered in a golden sheen glistened under the moonbeam entering through the window of his bedroom.
He checked his fingers, his hands, his arms. Normal. Daniel exhaled, relieved to see his skin still glowing with a Golden hue. The nightmare had felt so real he could still feel the pain and his skin, sweaty, was covered in goosebumps.
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“Do you want to find out more about the Golden Army or the PDU-Hive? Contact our recruiters: @franco-gold94, @polo-drone-166, @alton-gold77 or @polo-drone-125”















