RFL-D-3901 is a man of routine.

Or Renfield, as he likes to be called. The RLF-D designation indicates he's from the Rifleman Division, and 3901 is his serial number within the division. Pretty simple stuff, as Renfield prefers things simple.

At 5:30 am, Renfield wakes up to the wall-chimer playing his favourite music piece. Sometimes it's stuff the older generation of the Sanctorium would consider "degenerate" music, sometimes it's just ska.

At 6:00 am, Renfield finishes showering, shaving, dental cleaning, dressing, folding his blankets, heating up food-pac (On-the-Go®), consuming food-pac, cleaning up utensils, feeding his isopod, watering his chia pet, checking equipment, and writing out his daily to-do list. He makes it just in time to the transit stop.

At 6:45 am, Renfield is squeezed out of transit by the sheer mass of bodies, and plops right in front of the Panopticon Tower. He will always take a moment to watch the synthetic snow falling on his gas mask before heading inside.

He then spends the next minute and thirty seconds or so chatting with the guardsmen. Mainly about cafeteria food and the price of cheese.

"Hope there's no wind today." One of the guards will always say.

"The wind doesn't bother me." Is Renfield's standard response.

At 7:00 am, Renfield arrives at the top of the Panopticon Tower. Before leaving the thermal chamber, he has to run one last equipment check. It takes him about 15 minutes to disassemble, clean, and reassemble his rifle.

At 7:15 am, Renfield gets out of the thermal chamber and into the cold solitude 1.45km above Sector Sigma. Sanctorium is a big place, but from his position, he can almost see the other sectors.

He wonders for a moment, what life is like in places far away.

At 7:20 am he finishes calibrating his scope. Then he lies prone and waits for any moving figures on the horizon.

Every five minutes, the survey drone next to him chimes out the time, wind speed and direction, and scans the barren landscape beyond the sector borders for signs of life. Every five minutes Renfield gets startled out of his daydream and resists the urge to smack the drone.

At 8:00 am, he finally has had enough of the droning. He flops over onto his back, dusts the snow off himself, and squeezes a frozen tube of On-the-Go® ambiguously flavoured nutrient paste into his mouth through an opening in his gas mask.

Then at 8:02 am he gets right back to his rifle and stares at the grey landscape.

If he seems something move, he pulls the trigger. It usually stops moving on the first pull. If it doesn't, he'll hear a rifle go off from the level below him. And another level below if the thing keeps moving, so on and so forth.

Sometimes he will see a little black dot flap its way across the sky while honking. For reasons unknown it bothers him to shoot down that thing.

At 12:00 pm, Renfield finishes his 40-second lunch of rationed Bragels® and cheese. If he chokes on the food, the drone will helpfully punch him in the stomach. And if he's making good time, he will allow himself to roll over in pain.

Pain is a luxury within Sanctorium.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

2:00 pm is when the commandant drone comes over to inspect. Renfield reports his serial number, bullet count, and logs anything out of the ordinary.

"This concludes today's inspection. Please return to your post." The drone chimes pleasantly.

At 2:08 pm, Renfield notices dark shapes writhing in the distance. He knows he should run from it, but he never quite makes it far.

The tox storm sweeps across Sector Sigma like a tidal wave of black cinder. It's billions of sentient, biomechanical insectoids congregating under the command of one hive mind, controlled through electromagnetic signals exploding in the sky.

At the heart of Sector Sigma, the Nexus activates its Aegis Protocol to envelope the city in interlocking anti-cognition grids. The interference is enough to shut down any form of communication within the swarm. The few that pass through the barrier drop harmlessly into the city streets.

However, the Panopticon towers far above reaches of Aegis. And Renfield, left all alone among the clouds, sets down his rifle to watch the swarm split up.

Like a kid playing with magic sand, the swarm stretches itself into long, pointy bits made for killing. The hivemind fragments, seeps in whispers of destruction, and they begin tearing at the barrier.

At 2:11 pm, Renfield gets impatient. He could go back to the thermal chamber and wait out the storm, but he doesn't want to. The survey drone beeps uselessly behind him as he loads another round.

At 2:15 pm, Renfield runs out of bullets. The swarm tires, no longer wary of his rifle. One of them leaps at him and skewers him on its bladed arm like he's a marshmallow. The others follow suit.

At 2:16 pm, Renfield is visually and psychologically indistinguishable from tomato paste

The swarm evaporates as wisps of smoke with the north wind, and the brilliant neurons of Aegis fizzle out as well.

At 2: 30 pm, Renfield wakes up in the Vivarium of Sector Sigma, which is located within the Ministry of Death. He grabs his spare set of uniform, gets dressed, and heads up to the Panopticon again.

At 2: 45 pm, Renfield arrives at the Panopticon. The two guardsmen earlier have left their shift already, and he's greeted by two new recruits.

"ID please. And take your gas mask off." The short one says.

The tall one elbows his colleague, "That's the one they told us not to ID, idiot."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. He's kind of a big deal, I guess?"

Renfield waits for those two to sort things out between themselves, before a command drone flies down and lightly tases the shorter guardsman.

He gets through the rest of the tower no problem.

At 3:00 pm, Renfield spots some kind of small convoy moving through the Bleak Lands beyond Sanctorium. Those must be the illegal firearms dealers he had been informed of in a debrief weeks prior.

He takes out one of the tires on the leading truck, then another, then another. Renfield grins at himself as the convoy comes to a panicked halt. He shoots off the hat on who looks like the leader just for fun.

At 3:19 pm, a shot from somewhere in the Bleak Lands makes its way through Renfield's skull and lungs. He dies choking on his own blood.

At 3:30 pm, Renfield wakes up in the Vivarium again. He heads for the Panopticon as usual.

At 6:00 pm, Renfield eats the other half of his Bragels® while the survey drone rattles off wind speed and weather forecast.

Then at 6:02 pm he nearly scratches that itchy spot on his face underneath the mask. Instead of doing that, he tries to think about his isopod.

At 11:30 pm, Renfield gets the notice to pack up and leave. He kicks the survey drone on his way out.

At 12:00 pm, Renfield gets squeezed out of the transit and plops right in front of his apartment.

At 12:20 pm, Renfield finishes cleaning himself up, measuring his chia pet, feeding his isopod, hanging up his drying clothes, and falls asleep playing pong on his holo-screen.

He dreams about the snow, the storm, his Bragels® and ska.

It's a good day for RFL-D-3901.