#85

You can't help it, and as the unending night goes on You feels inclined to sleep. It won't be for that long, You tells Yourself. Just a few minutes...

When You wakes up again, it's to the sound of something rustling. You starts, realizing that it's much later; probably by a matter of hours. The sound could be that guard coming upon You, having seen You at last. You flinches with more noise than You'd like, but the guard is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it seems to have gone away entirely. In its place, the injured soldier is now trying to stand up.

He grunts deeply with pain, and You sees he's lost a lot of blood. His armor is now more similar, actually, to the red guard's armor, given how much of the crimson stuff is spilled over it. He's clearly pale, even under the low light.

Suddenly, he cries out, and there's a burst of blood from his neck. You jumps at this just as he does, but You has the chance to actually see what hit him. It's a dart of some kind, and it seems to be burrowing into the exposed flesh. Froth begins to pool around his mouth as he collapses again, twitching and grunting.

That's when another figure walks into view: one of the medic cyborgs. Is it sensing his distress and is trying to help him? Or...something else? He seems to be trying to crawl away from it, yelling at it. And You's starting to guess why. Its hand is changing, somehow. The metal of the fingers is shifting around, revealing what seem to be a number of spikes. It's talking, too: “Beginning process of conversion.” That doesn't sound good.

It's pulling away the armor on his left arm, now, but not without resistance. It glances at his face, and suddenly spikes appear on the knuckles of its other hand. It punches downward, and there's a burst of electricity, causing the paralyzed man to scream. As he continues to flail the syringe-hand clenches around his exposed skin, and the needles bite into his flesh. With this, he struggles more, but eventually relents. The medic then retracts its needles, stands up, and walks away without a word.

The man appears to be dead. Euthanized, perhaps? But why? A fuel treatment, certainly, could have restored him to health. Unless there's something else going on.

Wait. There is. The area around his arm is beginning to be covered with what looks like a moving tattoo of sorts. It's barely visible in the night, but it seems to be slowly spreading all over his body, including beneath his armor. As it reaches his armor, though, it begins to change its color. The armor is turning scarlet, a deeper color than that from the blood.

You doesn't like this, and You likes it even less when the tattoos—now resembling circuitry—go over his head, and onto the surface of his eyelids. Suddenly, those eyelids snap open, revealing glowing red eyes. They shine through the darkness with great ease, and the light coming from them seems to be mechanical. As the eyes open, You has to shield Yours as there's a sudden flash of electricity that makes the dead man's body flop around. Once this is over, however, the body turns and push itself upward.

The armor now is totally red, and You knows what this soldier is now, even without the helmet. The fabric strips are slowly materializing now, likely due to some sort of advanced, microscopic machinery that that medic must have installed. There's a low gurgle then as more sliding parts emerge from the dart in his neck, to wrap around his throat. Once this collar forms, You hears what is now a machine's voice issue from it. “Crimson Guard online.”

The Guard then begins to walk off, not pausing at all; You hasn't been noticed, thankfully.

So this is the new Imperial protocol. 

Whatever causes that conversion isn't consensual; that soldier looked terrified, and when he was scared earlier it might have been a fear of those medics. Now You knows what they're really used for, at least when it comes to this emergency protocol or whatever.

And You thought the whole time they were doctors. You let them take care of You when You was hurt that one time.

The chill You gets brings forth tiredness. You needs to sleep, and You has faith that You'll live until the morning.

Even if You doesn't, maybe it's just as well, in a world that looks like this.