PROTOCOL: DAWN

As featured by Southern Skies Creatives’ “Spooky Stories Down Under” feature for 2025.

Every morning at dawn, the drones came.
They drifted down the streets in perfect formation, wings humming like locusts. They each stop at every house, extending a single steel arm tipped with a needle. Citizens are required to line up - sleeve rolled, arm out, eyes lowered.
Compliance ensures safety.
The process is quick, painless. Blood is taken, catalogued, and the drones move on to the next house.
Until it was Kylen’s turn.
His drone hovered longer than usual, its mechanical fingers gripping his wrist tighter, needle pushing deeper than it should. He gasped, then screamed as it injected - rather than withdrew - and felt a strange heat, and a rushing emptiness spread throughout his veins.
Others on the street didn’t react or help. They kept their eyes down, silent, waiting their turn.
By nightfall, Kylen noticed the skin on his face peeling. He checked his reflection in the mirror. The edges of his vision began to blur, his eyes bled, and his hair dissolved in clumps. Pressing his hands to his chest he felt something: a faint hum beneath his ribs, steady and mechanical.
When he closed his eyes, he heard them again.
But the drones weren’t outside anymore.
They were inside.