Back to the Gridiron: The Trials of PDU-070 - 7
Scene 1 — The First Dream — The Forbidden Contact
The recharge cradle sealed with a soft mechanical whisper as the chamber lights dimmed to their low operational glow. Within the quiet interior of the Golden Stadium, the systems of PDU-070 gradually reduced external sensory input, routing power toward restoration cycles and neural stabilization. Outside, the city drifted into the deeper silence of late night. Inside the Hive’s distributed architecture, the drone network entered its own rhythm of quiet maintenance.
Maximus felt the descent into recharge as a gradual loosening of the world.
The hum of machinery softened. The weight of his body faded into a distant sensation. Thoughts slowed and stretched thin, dissolving into the indistinct horizon where memory and dream begin to overlap. For a time there was only darkness and the quiet mechanical cadence of the restoration cycle.
Then the darkness resolved into a room he knew.
Percival’s office stood exactly as he remembered it. The narrow desk was crowded with datapads and scattered research notes; the soft glow of a desk lamp cast warm light across shelves of technical volumes and half-finished prototypes. Even the faint smell of coffee lingered in the air. The familiarity struck with such sudden clarity that Maximus simply stood there for several seconds, trying to understand how he had come back to this place.
His last memory had been the recharge cradle.
The crimson ruin where Percival had been lost.
The voice came quietly from behind the desk.
Percival (@polo-drone-001) sat in the chair where he had spent so many nights reviewing drone architecture reports. At first glance he looked exactly the same: shirt tightly fitted,,gold tie, posture composed but weary in the familiar way Maximus had seen countless times when assisting him in his work at the Golden Head Office.
Yet something about him felt strained, as though the air around him were under pressure.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Maximus felt a tight pressure in his chest.
Percival rose slowly and stepped around the desk. The movement carried a slight hesitation that Maximus had never seen before. When the lamplight caught his face more clearly the signs of fatigue became unmistakable—dark shadows beneath his eyes, a faint tension along his jaw.
“You can hear me,” Percival said quietly. “Good. I wasn’t certain the connection would hold.”
Maximus stared at him, struggling to reconcile the sight with everything he had witnessed in the containment chamber. “You’re… alive?”
Percival exhaled slowly. “Not in the way you remember.”
“But some part of me still exists inside the structure.”
The words struck with quiet force.
Maximus took a step forward before he even realized he had moved. “The Red didn’t erase you?”
Percival’s expression softened slightly as he studied Maximus. For a moment the familiar analytical focus returned to his eyes—the calm, steady attention Maximus had learned to follow without hesitation.
Then Percival reached out and gently lifted Maximus’s chin, straightening his head so their eyes met directly.
Yet the effect was immediate.
A deep surge of devotion rose in Maximus’s chest, warm and instinctive. That quiet, steady authority—the simple certainty of Percival’s presence—had been the axis around which his entire discipline had formed. For a fleeting moment the chaos of the past hours fell away.
He had missed this more than he had realized.
Percival seemed to notice the reaction. His hand lingered briefly before dropping back to his side.
“You survived the breach,” he said softly.
Maximus nodded. “Yes. The Red’s spreading though. It hit the Unity Center. Drones have been converted—”
The office lights flickered.
For an instant the room stretched into something else.
The walls elongated into a glossy corridor of deep crimson rubber that extended endlessly in both directions.
Percival had gone very still.
“…It’s searching.”
Maximus frowned. “What is?”
Percival glanced toward the far wall as if listening to something beyond it. “It monitors the internal architecture constantly. Opening a channel like this—”
The room flickered again.
This time Maximus felt it in his body.
His skin prickled suddenly, the sensation sharp and unpleasant, as if the texture of his own flesh had become unfamiliar. He looked down instinctively and for a brief moment his hands appeared smooth—featureless, rubbery—before snapping back to normal.
The office returned once more.
Maximus forced his attention back to Percival. “Master?”
Percival nodded slightly, though tension had crept into his posture. “Stay focused. The connection is fragile.”
The office vanished entirely.
Maximus stood alone in a corridor of glossy crimson rubber that stretched endlessly into darkness. Far ahead a tall silhouette stood motionless beneath a dim red glow.
A horizontal visor of light burned where its eyes should have been.
Maximus took an involuntary step backward.
Percival’s office reassembled itself around him.
Maximus inhaled sharply, trying to steady himself.
Percival was watching him closely now.
“It’s probing the signal,” he murmured.
Maximus shook his head, forcing the fragments away. “Then we need to finish this quickly. If you’re still inside the Red there has to be a way to—”
The change was immediate.
His body stiffened as though something invisible had seized control of his muscles. The lamplight flickered violently, casting sharp shadows across the walls.
The sound that emerged from his throat glitched into static.
A thin crimson line appeared beneath the skin of his forearm.
Maximus felt dread surge through him. “What’s happening?”
Percival staggered backward, grabbing the edge of the desk as the red line spread rapidly beneath the skin like branching veins.
The office lights shifted from warm gold to a harsh pulsing red.
Percival looked up at Maximus with sudden panic.
The skin of his arm split.
Crimson rubber pushed through the opening like living muscle, swelling outward in a smooth, gleaming surface. Tendrils erupted from the rupture and lashed through the air with inhuman speed.
One of them struck Maximus across the chest and wrapped around his arm.
The sensation was immediate.
The tendril tightened, crawling toward his throat with deliberate purpose. Maximus tried to pull free but more strands burst from Percival’s transforming body, coiling around his shoulders and dragging him closer.
Percival’s face twisted in horror.
The words collapsed into distortion.
The crimson substance surged across his neck and jaw, swallowing his features beneath a smooth layer of living rubber. The office dissolved around them, replaced by endless red corridors pulsing like the interior of some vast living machine.
At the far end of the hall a tall crimson figure stood watching.
The tendrils tightened around Maximus’s throat.
The sensation of conversion began—cold pressure pushing inward along the edges of his nervous system, searching for a path deeper inside.
Maximus jerked violently awake.
The recharge cradle lights flared to full intensity as his body surged against the restraints. Air rushed into his lungs in a ragged gasp. For several seconds he remained frozen inside the sealed shell of the cradle, heart hammering while the fragments of the dream slowly dissolved into the sterile quiet of the chamber.
Only the steady hum of the recharge systems.
Maximus exhaled slowly, trying to steady his breathing.
Yet one thought refused to fade.
For a brief moment—before the nightmare began—Percival had been unmistakably real.
And if the dream had truly been discovered…
Then somewhere inside the Red, the man who had once been his master might still be fighting to survive.
Scene 2 — Morning Unease
Dawn filtered through the high windows of the Golden Stadium, pale light spreading slowly across the quiet training halls. The recharge cradle opened with a soft mechanical release and PDU-070 stepped out with measured precision, the polished black surface of the polo uniform catching the first thin rays of morning. For several seconds he remained still, allowing the last echoes of the dream to settle.
Percival’s office.
The calm warmth of the lamp.
The gentle pressure of fingers beneath his chin, lifting his gaze.
Then the rupture.
The crimson veins.
The tendrils.
070 processed the memory the way he processed everything: methodically, stripping emotion away from observation. The dream had been unstable. Multiple intrusions. Distortions of spatial structure. External presence detected. Yet one detail refused to behave like simple manipulation.
The conclusion was inconclusive, and therefore dangerous. 070 filed the memory for later analysis. There would be time to study it properly once the immediate situation stabilized.
For now there was a more pressing priority.
He turned toward the training field.
Morning drills were beginning to stir across the facility. The distant rhythm of running steps echoed through the corridor, the familiar cadence of Golden discipline returning to life after the long night. PDU-070 crossed the polished floor with steady, controlled strides and stepped out onto the field where the first groups were already warming up.
055 (@polo-drone-055) was not there.
070 paused near the sled rack and checked the internal clock. The meeting time had passed by several minutes.
Christian—PDU-055—was not careless with schedule commitments. The drone discipline in him was as precise as the timing of a well-executed block.
The unease that had lingered since waking returned, subtle but persistent. 070 scanned the field again. Some bros were started to arrive for early trainings. But no sign of 055.
070 turned and left the field without another word. Was he too late ? He need to check with others at the Golden Stadium. Starting with Wells (@wells-gold58). He was both a potential target and someone who might know where 055 was.
The corridors of the residential wing were quiet. The black polo uniform peeled away a moment later as Maximus felt the Gold influence and let the structured calm of PDU-070 recede. The shift was subtle but immediate; the cool analytical distance faded, replaced by the sharper instincts of the man beneath the shell.
Wells’ door stood closed, the access panel dark. When Maximus pushed it open the room inside was empty, the bed still neatly made and the morning light cutting a narrow line across the floor.
This was no longer a scheduling anomaly.
He stepped back into the corridor and nearly collided with Gabe (@polo-drone-075) rounding the corner. The younger bro looked tired but alert, as if sleep had come only in short uneasy fragments. When he saw Maximus his expression tightened slightly.
“You heard about Chevy (@chevy-gold) yet?” Gabe asked.
Maximus stopped. “No.”
Gabe exhaled slowly, running a hand across the back of his neck. “He’s gone.”
The words landed with blunt finality.
“Red got him this morning,” Gabe continued. “He walked right up to the stuff before anyone realized what it was. By the time we understood what was happening it had already started.”
Maximus felt a slow heaviness settle in his chest. “He fought?”
“That’s the thing. He didn’t.”
The memory clearly unsettled him. “RED-001 was there. Calm as anything. Just… talking to him. Giving instructions like it was some kind of training session.”
Maximus’ jaw tightened.
“Fuck. And Chevy listened?”
“Yeah.” Gabe swallowed. “Like it made sense to him.”
The silence that followed carried a different weight.
Then Gabe added quietly, “Something else happened too.”
“For a second I thought I was next. My vision flickered… like something was trying to get inside. I caught my reflection in one of the glass panels and my eyes—” He hesitated. “They were red.”
Maximus studied him carefully.
“And then it, like, stopped?”
Gabe gave a short shrug. “Fenrir’s Astra probably blocked it.”
Maximus frowned slightly. “Astra?”
“Fenrir (@danielgold-16) bonded it to me a while back. Extension of his power.” Gabe tapped his chest lightly. “Seems it doesn’t play nice with the Red.”
Maximus nodded slowly. The information filed itself alongside everything else he had learned about the spreading threat.
“Good,” he said quietly. “You might have saved yourself.”
He stepped closer, his voice lowering slightly as the tone shifted from conversation to instruction.
“Listen carefully, bro. If you been touched by that stuff—even indirectly—you fucking need to guard your mind right, like as much as your body. RED-001 ain’t just attacking the flesh. It plays with thoughts. Doubt. Weakness. Damn bastard tries to make you believe you better off giving in.”
“If you feel anything like that again,” Maximus continued, “shut it down right there. Question it. Treat every intrusive thought like that fucker is trying to rewrite you.”
“If you can, talk to Loki (@jordan-gold-40). Or Morpheus (@franco-gold94). They might know ways to shield the mind.” Maximus gave a faint shrug. “And if nothing else—steel yourself. Don’t let the Red tell you who you are, innit.”
Gabe straightened slightly.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re not letting this thing walk over us.”
Maximus allowed himself a faint smile.
For a moment the tension between them shifted into something stronger—shared resolve forged under pressure.
“Besides,” Gabe added, his tone sharpening with renewed confidence, “when match day comes we’re still going to crush them.”
He tapped Gabe’s shoulder once. “Offensive line’s got your back. Wells. Christian. Me. Hans. Briar. We’ll clear the way.”
The brief spark of morale lingered only a moment before the broader crisis returned to the forefront of Maximus’s thoughts.
He opened the Golden network channel and pushed a message through every connected node.
“Bruhz,” his voice carried across the system, firm and unmistakably his. “Listen carefully.
“We are facing a serious threat. Several of our own have already fallen to RED-001’s schemes. Do not trust its rhetoric. It will tell you the Red is evolution, unity, or some form of perfect obedience. That is a fucking lie.
“I came within a breath of conversion myself before SERVE-425 (@serve-425) and Atlas (@polo-drone-084) pulled me back. I remember what it felt like. Red conversion is not submission. It is not the disciplined unity of polo-dronification. It is annihilation.
“The Red does not transform you. It overwrites you. Identity. Awareness. Consciousness. Everything that makes you you is erased and replaced with a foreign structure that only follows directives.
“Avoid all contact with the red biomass. Keep your vaccinations active and guard your mind as fiercely as your body. The Red will try to weaken your resolve before it reaches your flesh.
“Watch out for anyone who has already been exposed. Even if they resist the first contact, the Red keeps probing for weakness.
“Stay close. Support each other. Do not face this alone.
“We cannot afford to lose another brother.”
For a moment the corridor returned to silence.
Gabe nodded once. “I’ll help spread the warning.”
“Good,” Maximus replied. “Coordinate defense if you can. And keep an eye on anyone who might’ve been exposed.”
Maximus’ gaze shifted down the hallway.
The words carried a quiet edge now.
Gabe frowned. “You think the Red got them?”
“I don’t know,” Maximus admitted. “But RED-001 doesn’t strike randomly. It goes after pressure points.”
He stepped away, already moving.
“I’m going to find out where they are.”
As he walked, the warmth of the brief rally faded. The situation had moved beyond reassurance and speeches.
Maximus slowed near the end of the corridor.
Then the black rubber polo formed across his torso again, the calm architecture of the drone mindset settling over his thoughts like a cooling steel framework.
PDU-070 lifted his head slightly and began to search.
Somewhere inside the Golden network, something had moved against them.
And he intended to find it.
Scene 3 — Investigation
The discipline of the drone state settled over him the moment the black rubber polo sealed across his shoulders. The transformation was subtle yet decisive; where Maximus carried emotion and urgency, PDU-070 carried structure. Breath slowed. Muscles aligned. Thought sharpened into ordered sequences. The anxiety that had accompanied the morning’s discoveries did not disappear, but it became something measurable—another variable to account for within the larger tactical problem now unfolding across the Golden network.
He moved through the interior corridors of the stadium toward the analysis terminals with a calm, deliberate stride. The building was already awake. Somewhere deeper in the structure players had begun their morning drills, the muffled rhythm of bodies colliding echoing faintly through the reinforced architecture. Some bros crossed the upper hallways in scattered groups, unaware of how much the night had changed the world around them. To most of them the day had begun like any other.
To 070 it felt like the opening hours of a campaign.
He reached the operations console and began pulling the security feeds. Data cascaded across the screen in layered timelines: Unity Center breach reports, environmental anomaly markers along the island perimeter, internal alerts triggered by the conversion of Chevy—now designated RED-063. Smaller signals appeared as well: corrupted sensor readings, disrupted drone synchronization nodes, fragments of unfamiliar network signatures that had begun appearing only hours earlier. The pattern took shape quickly beneath his analysis.Â
The Red was not spreading randomly.
It was applying pressure.
Multiple nodes had been struck within a very narrow timeframe, each one targeting structures whose disruption would produce cascading instability inside the Golden organization. The Unity Center was the most obvious strike—a programming hub whose corruption threatened the cohesion of the Polo-Drone Hive itself—but the conversion of Chevy inside Golden facilities was equally significant. It demonstrated that the Red had already begun probing the interior of the Army’s defenses.
070 narrowed the search parameters and began filtering communications routed through Golden infrastructure during the night. If RED-001 had reached inside the network, traces would exist somewhere within the signal traffic.
A phrase surfaced in his thoughts.
Not through the terminal.
The host body has been dissolved.
070’s fingers paused above the console.
The room remained silent. No alert had triggered, no message had appeared on the screen, yet the words hung inside his awareness with clinical precision.
The Red now maintains the structure.
He inhaled slowly and let the breath settle through his chest.
The pressure faded as quickly as it had arrived, dissolving beneath the rigid discipline of the drone mindset. The intrusion had not forced itself into control; it had merely brushed against the architecture of his thoughts like a probe touching the surface of a sealed system.
070 resumed his work without comment.
A moment later the console flagged a transmission that immediately drew his attention.
Origin: unidentified node.
Encryption pattern: crimson architecture signature.
The recording unfolded across the speakers in calm, measured cadence. The voice required no confirmation; even stripped of human warmth it still carried the unmistakable tonal structure of Percival’s former authority.
The message revealed itself with deliberate clarity. The Miami apartment. Trey restrained in the chair. The Red Coach standing behind him with silent patience while the red-eyed pup—SERVE-331—circled like a guard animal beside the prisoner. Then the ultimatum delivered with mechanical calm.
Bring Wells and Alton (@alton-gold77) there.
Or Trey (@hero21us) becomes Red Goo.
070 listened to the entire transmission without interruption, absorbing every detail of tone, timing, and location marker embedded within the data stream. When the recording ended the silence of the operations room seemed heavier than before.Â
Christian had not abandoned the rendezvous.Â
He had gone to RED-001, hoping to save Trey.Â
The timestamp confirmed it. The message was delivered just as PDU-070 as waking up. PDU-055 had avoided all security system since, obscuring its whereabouts. Would he trade Wells, Alton and himself for Trey ? Did he hope to confront or counter RED-001 ? The window for intervention was tight, but still existed. Using Golden flights, PDU-070 could reach Miami just in time if departure occurred immediately. It had to go and secure Trey before PDU-055 gave fully in to that awful blackmail.Â
The pattern of RED-001’s strategy clarified further in 070’s mind as he reviewed the evidence. Trey. Christian. Wells. Alton. Each target represented a structural pillar inside the Golden Army’s operational framework. Remove them, convert them, or fracture their loyalty and the cohesion of the entire force weakened.
RED-001 was conducting a coordinated destabilization campaign.
070 shut down the console and rose from the chair.
Miami was now the priority.
As he stepped outside the stadium complex the humid air of the island greeted him with the smell of salt and warm vegetation. Sunlight reflected sharply off the ocean beyond the perimeter roads, and transport vehicles moved steadily between the airport and the resort facilities that surrounded the Golden compound. To any observer the island appeared calm, another quiet morning in a tropical training environment.
Yet even here the pressure lingered at the edge of his mind.
Resistance is structurally inefficient.
The words slipped through his thoughts like oil across water.
070 clenched his jaw and forced the intrusion aside. The phrase dissolved beneath the iron discipline of the drone architecture. Whatever neural channel RED-001 had opened during the encounter in the laboratory still existed, but it had not yet achieved the depth required to influence him directly.
The airport terminal lay ahead across the wide access road.
Halfway there, movement broke the quiet.
Two figures stepped from the shadow of a maintenance structure bordering the perimeter fence. Their forms carried the unmistakable sheen of deep crimson rubber, surfaces reflecting the morning light with a wet, synthetic gloss that no natural material could reproduce.
The first unit was tall and upright, its body shaped in near-human proportions though the smoothness of the crimson surface erased all traces of the student who had once occupied the structure. The matte black diamond emblem centered across its chest confirmed the designation.
Beside it moved a second figure, lower and more animal in posture. The elongated limbs and predatory stance belonged unmistakably to the creature that had once been PDU-073 (@polo-drone-073) before the Unity Center breach.
Neither unit rushed immediately. They simply watched the polo-drone with the patient stillness of predators measuring distance before the strike.
The analysis took less than a second.
If they destroyed this drone, RED-001 removed a critical adversary. If they merely slowed it long enough for the Miami operation to conclude, the result still served the Red’s objectives.
Either outcome required him to remain here.
Which meant it would not. Tactical assessment : Maximus’s instinct and control of Stigandr rage optimal. The polo gave way to the gold clothes of Maximus form.
The crimson unit lunged forward with sudden acceleration, its arms extending in a motion that was both mechanical and feral. RED-073 followed instantly, the pup launching across the asphalt with snapping jaws.
Maximus met the attack with controlled force. His shoulder drove forward into RED-153’s chest like a lineman breaking a block, the impact scattering the creature’s body across the pavement in a violent splash of crimson mass. The structure collapsed instantly into a spreading pool of living rubber.
But even as it struck the ground the fragments began crawling back together.
RED-073 reached him an instant later. The pup’s jaws clamped toward his leg, but Maximus twisted sharply and brought his elbow down across the creature’s spine with brutal precision. The body shattered beneath the strike, crimson pieces skidding across the asphalt before already beginning the same slow reassembly.
Fuck. Simply putting them out was not working.
Which meant there was no point in fighting here. Maximus stepped backward once. But I’m faster that these punts.
The Red units recovered quickly, their bodies reforming with unsettling fluidity as they surged after him across the open roadway. Travelers approaching the terminal barely had time to react as the Godlen-clad figure sprinted through the sliding glass doors and disappeared into the boarding corridor beyond.
Behind him the crimson shapes reached the entrance only seconds too late.
Security barriers descended across the access points as automated systems responded to the disturbance. Inside the terminal the final boarding call echoed through the speakers.
070 stepped through the gate moments before the doors sealed behind him.
Minutes later the aircraft lifted from the runway, its engines carrying him away from the island and toward the confrontation waiting on the distant mainland.
Only when the ocean stretched endlessly beneath the plane’s wings did the tension begin to loosen in his muscles. The mission was underway now, but exhaustion was creeping steadily through the edges of his awareness. He had barely slept at all with that nightmare. The past hours had demanded more from his body and mind than even the drone discipline could fully suppress.
Scene 4 — The Second Dream — The Handler’s Territory
The steady vibration of the aircraft settled through the cabin like a mechanical pulse, constant enough to become indistinguishable from silence. Outside the oval window the sky had flattened into pale blue emptiness, the island already gone beneath the clouds, but inside the narrow pressurized shell of the plane the world had shrunk to recycled air, muted engine noise, and the slow exhaustion creeping through the Maximus’s trained body. He held out for a while, riled up by the incident. But fatigue moved through the deeper layers of the system with patient inevitability, and after long minutes of stillness, he dozed off.
The transition came without warning. One moment he was aware of the seat beneath him and the faint pressure of the safety belt across his lap; the next the aircraft, the passengers, and the cabin light had fallen away, replaced by a corridor of endless crimson gloss stretching in both directions beneath a lightless red sky. The floor looked wet without being liquid, the walls seamless and faintly pulsing as if the passage itself were a living structure breathing in some slow subterranean rhythm. The air smelled of hot rubber and metal. No warmth lived here. No memory. No trace of Percival’s office or the fragile comfort of the first dream. This place had been built deliberately, and the intelligence that maintained it made no effort to conceal itself.
RED-001 stood at the far end of the corridor.
The figure did not emerge or approach; it was simply there, already waiting, deep crimson surface smooth as polished stone, the matte black diamond fixed at the center of its chest, the visor cutting a horizontal line of cold light through the red gloom. Maximus knew at once that this dream did not pretend to be anything but an intrusion. There was no invitation hidden inside it, no soft reconstruction of the past, only architecture and control. When the voice came it did not rise from any visible mouth. It vibrated through the corridor itself, through the floor under his feet and the walls at either side, a calm resonance that seemed to bypass hearing altogether and settle directly into the bones of his body.
“The connection already exists, Maximus. Denying the structure does not alter it.”
He moved without thinking, shoulders tightening as he turned away from the figure and began walking down the corridor. The walls did not change. The distance did not close. The floor remained the same seamless crimson surface beneath his feet, stretching onward without origin or end.
“You felt the link the moment you struck the node,” RED-001 continued with the same measured certainty. “Your fate diverged when the Red touched you. Resistance has delayed the process. It has not altered the outcome.”
Maximus kept moving. The corridor bent sharply to the left ahead of him. He took the turn—and found RED-001 already standing there at the next junction, unchanged, immobile, perfectly patient.
For an instant he simply stared.
Then he turned the other way.
Another corner. Another corridor. Another waiting figure.
No pursuit. No violence. Only presence.
The rhythm of his own breathing became suddenly loud. He could hear it now—too fast, too heavy, human in the most inconvenient way. His chest rose harder than it should have. The muscles in his thighs felt tight, overworked, still carrying some phantom memory of strain from the previous day’s battles. He looked down and saw his hands tremble faintly at his sides.
“You are tired,” RED-001 observed. “Your muscle fibers require recovery. Your joints carry stress. Your biological architecture accumulates damage with every use. This is not freedom. It is decay.”
A mirror appeared in the center of the corridor without transition, one instant absent and the next standing upright on the crimson floor like a polished slab of frozen light. Maximus slowed despite himself. The reflection it offered was precise and merciless. He saw the version of his body the dream wanted him to see: shoulders heavy with fatigue, breath too shallow, scars and strain and microscopic failure layered through flesh that had never quite stopped recovering from one wound before meeting the next. The body was strong, but it was costly. Living inside it meant friction. Pain. Exertion.
Then another form resolved beside the reflected image.
Not monstrous. Not snarling. Simply complete.
Its surface was seamless where his skin was uneven, stable where his body trembled, smooth where muscles knotted and tore. It stood in utter stillness, and the stillness itself became an argument. No exhaustion. No damage. No hesitation. A structure without waste.
“You call the Red violation because you perceive only the pain of transition,” said RED-001. “Pain is temporary. Structural inefficiency is permanent. The Red does not tire. The Red does not scar. The Red does not carry the burden of self-contradiction.”
Maximus tore his gaze away and forced himself back into motion. The corridor absorbed the sound of his footfalls. Each turn brought the same result: RED-001 waiting ahead, visor fixed on him with the implacable calm of a system monitoring its own process. The repetition became oppressive precisely because it lacked drama. Nothing chased him. Nothing lunged. Nothing tried to seize him. There was only his own effort accumulating against an environment that remained unaltered by it.
“You are breathing harder,” RED-001 said. “Your pulse is elevated. Lactic acid accumulation is increasing in your lower limbs. Your body interprets continuation as suffering. The Red interprets continuation as function.”
Another turn. Another figure.
Maximus’s jaw tightened. “Shut up.”
The corridor did not care.
“The process has already begun,” RED-001 said. “Your acknowledgement is optional.”
That line stayed with him as he moved, because it was not framed as threat but as fact. The dream pressed hardest not when it tried to dominate him, but when it denied him the dignity of meaningful refusal. He was not, in this place, a heroic resister or a hunted victim. He was simply hardware reaching the end of its efficiency curve.
The walls narrowed without warning. The corridor constricted around him, crimson surfaces drawing closer until the passage felt less like architecture than the interior of some gigantic throat. The floor pulsed once beneath his feet. The mirror returned, this time not ahead of him but beside him, keeping pace as he moved. His reflection looked paler now, less certain. The red form beside it remained flawless.
“Look carefully,” said RED-001. “You are not fighting for freedom. You are fighting for the right to remain broken.”
Then the corridor flickered.
The change was abrupt and wrong, like static tearing through a signal. The polished walls fractured into grids of light, then doubled, then vanished in a stuttering collapse that sent a shudder through the dreamspace. RED-001 did not disappear, but for the first time the figure’s stillness seemed interrupted by a distortion running through its outline. The visor flared once, as if the architecture itself were experiencing interference.
The mirror shattered into red fragments.
Not whole. Not stable. More like a person glimpsed through water or through failing glass: one arm covered in red goo, one side of his face flickering faintly with crimson corruption, eyes strained but unmistakably his. He stood only a few steps away, as though he had forced himself through the structure at great cost simply to reach this narrow opening.
The voice was frayed, softer than before, but the effect of hearing it struck harder than any threat RED-001 had voiced. Maximus stopped moving. Every line of him tightened toward that sound.
“Listen carefully.” Percival took a step forward, and the corridor around him trembled in protest. “I don’t have much time.”
The air pulsed again. Somewhere deeper in the dream the figure of RED-001 remained present, not erased but blurred at the edges, as though the intrusion had interrupted control of the sequence without fully displacing it.
Percival’s expression tightened with effort. “The structure contains me, but it cannot erase everything. Not yet.” His hand lifted slightly, and for a moment Maximus thought he meant to touch him the way he had in the first dream. Instead the fingers hovered in the air between them, shaking. “Our connection still exists. It’s the only reason I can reach you.”
Maximus felt something twist inside his chest, hope and dread binding themselves together so tightly he could no longer separate one from the other. “Then tell me what to do.”
Percival’s gaze locked on his with painful intensity. “Do not sever the link.”
The words landed with immediate force.
“If the connection breaks, I weaken.” Percival drew another ragged breath, and the red corruption along his sleeve deepened as if feeding on the effort of speech. “I need your strength through it. Your devotion. Your loyalty. Send it to me when you feel the pressure. Don’t shut me away.”
The corridor around them shuddered again. RED-001’s silhouette sharpened at the far end of the passage.
Percival looked over his shoulder, then back at Maximus with a sudden urgency that cut through the dream like a blade. “I’m still here because of you. Because you still hold me in place. If I fall entirely into the structure, there’ll be nothing left to reach.”
For a moment Maximus forgot the corridor, forgot the plane, forgot even the logic of suspicion that should have risen at such a claim. The plea hit too close to the deepest architecture of his being. Devotion had always moved him faster than fear. The thought that his bond might be the last thing keeping Percival from dissolution was so terrible and so seductive that it bypassed reason almost completely.
“I can help you,” he said, and heard the raw edge in his own voice.
Percival nodded once, the smallest possible movement, but before he could speak again the corridor convulsed violently. Crimson light surged along the walls. The distortion that had allowed him through collapsed inward like a torn wound closing. Percival’s image blurred, stretched, and was suddenly dragged backward into the red geometry of the dream.
Maximus lunged after him.
RED-001 stood before him once more, fully restored, the visor steady and cold.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Then the voice returned, calm as ever, without anger or triumph or even visible annoyance. It was the voice of an examiner concluding a test.
“Your resistance has been assessed,” it said. “It will not change the outcome.”
The corridor dropped away.
Maximus woke with a violent jolt as the aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence, his shoulder slamming lightly against the seatback as breath surged into his lungs. The cabin lights were dimmed. The engine vibration still filled the narrow fuselage. Passengers nearby shifted in their sleep, unaware that anything more than rough air had occurred.
For a few seconds he sat motionless, hands clenched against the armrests, forcing himself to separate dream from waking. The plane still moved steadily west. Nothing in the cabin had changed.
RED-001’s presence inside his mind no longer felt theoretical. The link was real. The pressure was real. The corridors, the voice, the way the dream had turned his own fatigue against him—none of it could be dismissed now as simple nightmare residue.
But Percival had been there.
That was the thought that mattered, and it cut deeper than the rest. Whether it had been truth or fabrication, whether it had emerged through the dream or been placed there deliberately, the effect was the same: a fragment of hope now lived where certainty had been before. If some part of Percival still remained trapped inside the Red, then shutting the link entirely might mean abandoning him. If the link stayed open, RED-001 would continue probing for a way deeper into his mind.
Neither possibility felt safe.
Maximus leaned his head back against the seat and stared at the dark cabin ceiling while the plane carried him toward Miami. He had wanted clarity. What the dream had given him instead was a more dangerous thing altogether.
The fear of losing something he might have already lost.
Are you interested in helping up train for the next match or fight the red? Or maybe you want to hang out with bros and polo drones. Contact one of our recruiters @franco-gold94, @polo-drone-166, @alton-gold77, or @polo-drone-125
Want to follow along or catch up with "The Red" storyline/saga check out the Red Index here: The Red Index
The Red storyline is a collaboration with SERVE. The two groups have a connected past, but are no longer connected. Please do not ask Golden Army recruiters how to join SERVE or SERVE recruiters how to join the Golden Army.
