Author's Note: How does one gain followers? lol. Enjoy the chapter guys :) We're entering the tower very soon. Also, let me know if these chapters are too long and I'll do a better job of divvying things up.

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Hearing Bryce asking me to show everyone my back, I got slightly embarrassed and said, “Why do you need to see mine? It’s just a drop of water isn’t it? Same as everyone else.”

Everyone looked at me with confused looks on their faces and then it hit me. “Ohhhh, unless each person is marked with a different kind of tattoo?”

Bryce smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly right. I mean, two others in here have the raindrop like me, but where I only have one large raindrop, Teresa and Matthew over there…”

He quickly pointed out a brown haired boy and black haired girl.

“…have multiple raindrops of varying sizes, but there’s don’t shimmer and ripple like real water, but my drop does.”

‘Interesting. I wonder if these marks correlate to the potential of a person’s awakening…’

He then gestured towards some other people in the room saying, “Samantha over there…”

Samantha was the one with blue hair from earlier and I also even noticed a tinge of white within her hair while looking this time.

“…has blue lightning racing across her back and it’s constantly writhing in motion as if it’s straining to break free. Pretty awesome if you ask me.”

I nearly laughed aloud at his last comment since I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if I had some strange lightning of questionable origin on my back that was always flashing around. It would be extremely weird to me at first, but I guess

I’d get used to it in time.

Bryce continued motioning towards others in the room until he had pointed out each person, given their name, and described the type, size, motion and color of the tattoos on their backs.

There was a guy whose bed was nearest to Bryce’s and he had a skull on his back outlined by a frame of pure darkness which made it a little difficult to see the skull due to its faint outline.

Four others in the room had varying types of tattoos that were related to fire, but only one had the smooth flickering of a real flame while the others appeared choppy and unreal at best. The flames also even varied in colors which I could only assume meant that there were different levels to its heat like how blue flames are hotter than orange-red.

The last two had faint outlines of what appeared to be just plain boulders of rocks with scattered metals around it. It was kinda difficult to tell the different metals apart, but I was sure that I could assume it was just iron or steel that lay around the boulders.

After carefully taking it all in, I rubbed the stubble of hair growing on my chin, while turning back to Bryce to ask, “So are these all the only types of tattoos that the aliens marked us with?”

“That…we can’t be quite sure of yet.” I expected this answer so I just silently nodded.

Bryce continued to speak though.

“You saw that there are different types of tattoos which, let’s be honest, correspond to different elements. The rain drop represents water. Flames represent fire. The lighting represents electricity. Boulders represent earth and…well, this is pure speculation, but I’d assume that the skull with darkness represents either darkness or death-”

“So logically, there has to be one for light or life depending on which one that skull is.” I finished for him.

Bryce nodded at my deduction.

“And so I guess since none of us in here has them, you still don’t know what two of the remaining marks are: The air element and the one for light or life, depending on whichever it is, looks like, right?”

Bryce nodded once more and again looked at me the same way he had after showing me his tattoo.

I sighed, but quickly flashed a bright smile.

“Well, since Bryce and you all were so kind as to enlighten me with what your marks are, how could I dare not show you mine?”

I was ecstatic. I had wanted to know what my mark looked like ever since I’d gotten it, which even though it was only one day ago, felt like forever to me.

Everyone turned towards me expectantly as I faced my back towards them and quickly yanked off the strike vest covering my upper body.

I heard a gasp of surprise and then a couple whispers behind me. Turning around quickly, I instantly looked at Bryce and he seemed to be thinking about something.

“Earth to Bryce!” Snapping my fingers at him, he looked up at me and a slow smile spread across his face. “So what is it man? Don’t leave me hanging.”

“It’s a cloud, Alex. Dark gray…looks like its breathing in and out if you ask me and it takes up nearly half your damn back. How’d you miss it?” He jokingly asked me.

“I guess I just was too busy thinking about what I’d need to survive the tower and not what my mark looked like is all” I dismissively waved my hand and smiled in happiness.

“So a cloud, huh? I must be air then. That means we’re only missing that light or life element then, right?”

“Yeah” Bryce responded.

“I just don’t quite understand why everyone has different types of marks.” I said back to Bryce.

‘It’s not entirely true that I don’t know what any of this could mean, but it would be weird to say it out loud and I wanted to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the marks first before I gave my opinion.’

Before Bryce could open his mouth to respond, the lights shut off and we all heard a voice come from the front of the barrack.

“Alright, ladies. Time for lights out.” Giving Bryce one last look, I shrugged at him and he did the same.

“Night, bro.” I said before walking off towards my bed.

Reaching my bed, I tossed my strike vest on top of my pack and fell on top of my bed in exhaustion. Soon after, a darkness more welcoming than I’d been getting lately embraced me as I fell asleep.

………………..

“Rise and shine marked ones! It’s time for p.t.! Five minutes!” The sharp, raspy voice of Sgt. Kesler rang throughout the barracks, waking me from my dreamless sleep.

I remember a month ago, the dreams I had were always something for me to look forward to, but in the five days that I’d been awake after coming out of my coma, half of those five nights were dedicated to reliving the bloody horrors of that night.

A dreamless night was probably the best I could ask for at this point and to be woken from it for physical training of all things?

‘I didn’t come here to join the freaking military.’

Groggily lifting my head, I looked up and saw a small amount of dim sunlight coming in through the windows. Everyone around me was shifting from under blankets and seemed to be getting up out of bed.

‘Oh, screw that. What do I look like to these guys?’ I burrowed my face further into my pillow and right before I could fall back into a blissful sleep I felt something soft grasp my shoulder and lightly shake me.

“Mmmmh? Look at how dark it is outside. I’m going to sleep. Screw p.t.” I mumbled as coherently as I could through my pillow and kept my face turned away from whoever was shaking my shoulder.

However, the shaking returned, but with greater urgency this time.

Rotating my body back towards whoever was shaking me, I wiped my eyes tiredly and got into a sitting position, willing my eyes to become less blurry.

I was met with the sight of the girl whose bed was apparently right next to mine.

I hadn’t really taken a good look at her last night during my talk with Bryce, but now I could fully appreciate the sight.

She was a pale white female who looked to be about half a foot shorter than me. Her eyes glowed in a mix of sapphire blue and dark emerald green. She had an innocently refreshing face, but her hair was the most interesting though and it’s what had caught my attention last night.

It was straight on top of her head, but after a neat bun at the back of her head, the rest of her hair was dreaded a couple inches past her shoulders. Her hair shone in the dim light with a paler blue than her eyes.

‘I hope the other marked girls are made like this one’ I involuntarily thought.

“Hey, didn’t you hear?” She asked me in a soft quiet voice. “It’s time for physical training. So you have to wake up!”

She finished speaking and hit me with a warm-hearted smile.

Completely forgetting my earlier frustration about p.t. and my sleepiness, I stared at this girl slack-jawed for a few moments before reaching down on the ground for my combat boots.

“Right…physical training…haha. Thanks…ummmm?” I sounded like a complete fool, but I had forgotten her name and only remembered her as the girl that Bryce had pointed out the night before with the blue lighting racing across her back.

Seeming to understand my confusion, the girl gave a sweet laugh and then, “Samantha. That’s my name. Although, my friends call me Pixie.”

Immediately, I was flabbergasted at the nickname’s peculiarity, but was looking down while tying my boots so thankfully she didn’t notice.

“Oh…haha. Well, what should I call you?” I laughed out while finishing with my boots.

She put a finger on her chin and looked off into the distance. “Well that depends, Alex. Are we friends?”

‘Oh, damn she remembered my name? Now I look like an ass.’

Standing up, I looked down at her shorter figure and laughingly say, “Always open to making new friends. I’m sure you saw how quickly Bryce and I bonded and hit it off last night. It’s like we were just separated at birth. Speaking of…where is he?”

Looking around, I realized that ‘Pixie’ and I were the only two people left in the barracks.

“Oh! That’s what I’ve been telling you! Physical training! We’re gonna be late, come on.” She hurried down the aisle of beds and out the door before I could even respond.

‘Ugh, physical training…exercise…bleh’

I looked down at my shirt which was lying across my pack on the ground.

‘Might as well leave that here if I’m gonna be sweating and no one said anything about a washing machine yet.’

After a moment of internal debate, I dashed out the door after Pixie and the rest of my barrack leaving my shirt on the bed.

………………..

Five Days Later…

The sun was shining down hard on my back as I sat outside on the ground in an open area eating a turkey sandwich with my barrack mates and a couple other people I’d come to know during my stay at the tower drop zone.

Thinking back on my time spent here, I hadn’t really had a moment of rest since I woke up for p.t. on my first day here.

The military was so intent on preparing us for any eventualities within the tower that our heads had been drilled with a ridiculous amount of real world survival skills.

One of the first things that they had taught us was something that I instantly branded to memory because I felt it was directly related to how one should conduct themselves when prioritizing goals to survive. They called it the rules of threes but, ironically, there were four rules embedded in the principle.

The first rule; on average, a human can survive for up to three minutes without air.

The second rule; a human can survive with an unregulated body temperature for three hours at most meaning shelter is key to carrying on in harsh environments.

The third rule; on average, a human can survive for up to three weeks without food.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘I sincerely hope I’ll never find myself in a situation without at least three meals a day.’

And the last rule; on average, a human can survive for three days without water.

The rules, when presented, were concise and logical, so I thought it was only pertinent to rank them in order so I’d always know what to do if I was stranded.

First priority is always going to be water, followed by shelter and then food. The air rule only really applies if I’m in a life threatening situation so I decided to push it to the back of my mind.

Quite honestly, death by asphyxiation was perhaps the most frightful way to die in my mind. To vie for something so natural, yet be deprived of it no matter how hard you struggle as your lungs burn and darkness consumes you? No, thank you. Absolutely the worst in my opinion.

But I digress…

Branching from these four rules, they taught us a variety of things: effective ways to build shelters for ourselves as well as groups of people, how to purify water, efficient habits in tracking, how to skin and cook animals, what kind of herbal medicines did what and how to apply them, etc.

It had really surprised me when our teachers had us learn a bunch of military tactics spanning through time from the Roman Empire to modern day stratagem.

It was quite obvious at this point that they truly were preparing us for any and all eventualities. The government, though faulty, was not stupid and acknowledged that the towers were not as simple as they seemed from the outside and could hold unimaginable dangers within that were comparable to the day this all started.

Tomorrow would be the day that we finally enter the tower.

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of excitement flow through me as I thought about the awakening we had in store for us once we entered the tower. I wanted to become what the voice had told me I had the potential to become…I wanted to become strong.

Looking at my surroundings, there were over a hundred people conversing and eating around or on tables that had been set out for us. The tower zone had really filled out in the past couple of days as the military installed a food storage and distribution center, bathrooms, showers, etc.

The barracks had also steadily filled up in the past couple of days. Barracks one through eleven were all nearly filled up.

‘Hmmmmm, assuming that each of the barracks has twelve beds like mine, then there are nearly one hundred thirty-two people at this one tower alone.’

A strong shove pushed me from my sitting position onto my side and I just barely managed to save my sandwich from falling to the mercy of the ground.

Using the momentum from the push, I swung back up into my sitting position and glared daggers at Bryce, but then a playful grin broke out across my face.

“While I’m eating, man? This is a new low, even for you. But I understand that you were probably just wanting to feed the ground with my sandwich. It is looking rather desolate…” I gestured to the barren land surrounding the tower due to its crash-landing.

Bryce’s responding laugh set me off into a fit of laughter as I stood up onto my feet.

“Alright, I’ll be right back. Gotta use the restroom.”

Excusing myself from the group of people, I began walking towards the nearest bathroom.

All around me, groups of people, ranging the ages from late teens to early thirties, were all happily chatting with one another as they ate their meager lunches. I assumed everyone was just glad that they could make new friends even in this type of situation. However, I also saw the occasional one or two people sitting off all by themselves in a corner, not really bothering or desiring to interact with others.

Making it near the bathroom, I heard loud cheering coming from the back end of the building and immediately moving past the men’s restroom door, I decided to go and check it out.

‘It really is amazing that the military could construct all this stuff in just a couple days’

I silently praised the hardworking construction workers I’d seen over the last couple of days.

Hitting the corner of the small bathroom building, I was quite perplexed by what I saw.

Two African-American males were leaning back against the wall of the building, cheering for a hugely built and bald headed guy who seemed to be doing nonstop squats.

“One hundred twenty-six, one hundred twenty-seven …” He puffed out after completing each squat. I leaned against the corner of the building and watched the bulky guy keep going.

‘This guys an absolute monster! He makes the bigger half-breed I fought look lanky!’ I thought to myself.

Once the big guy hit one hundred and fifty, he finally stopped and turning away from the two African-Americans watching him began breathing deeply and slowly while stretching out his legs.

He had no shirt on and his muscles looked tough as stone.

What astonished me was that even after all those squats, not one drop of sweat could be seen on his body. Focusing my vision on his back, I strained my eyes to catch a look at his mark and there it was; Taking up a space taking up more than half of the middle of his back was a sky blue rain drop thrashing around as if it had waves rolling through it.

‘What the hell? I haven’t seen one like that yet.’

Bryce’s drop of water that I’d seen was calm and rippled like a pond. This guy’s raindrop seemed to me like it was attempting to turn itself into a raging tsunami.

After finishing his breathing exercise, he turned around and the other two guys started clapping.

Joining in on the applause, I stepped from the corner where I’d been watching, surprising them all with my presence.

“Damn you’re strong, man!” I heartily exclaimed out to him.

He looked at me with a serious look in his eyes causing me to involuntarily tense up at his look.

“The physical training they have us do in the morning is just running, push-ups, and sit-ups. It’s not what I’m used to, so I try to do more by myself in the spare time we have.” He explained in a strong, deep voice.

After hearing him respond to me in a friendly manner, I loosened up and came closer sticking my hand out.

“My name’s Alex. Nice to meet you.”

Now that I’d gotten much closer I could see that even though I had a couple inches on the guy, he was definitely much wider than me and it was all muscle. He also looked to be about one or two years older than me. It was almost comical, but his light brown eyes gave me the impression that I was talking to an intellectual bear minus all the fur of course.

He grasped my hand in a hard, firm grip. Like a steel vice.

“I’m Akito.” He gestured towards the two African American guys. “These guys are Kualin and Milik.”

I looked them over and found that they had a striking resemblance. Maybe not enough to be twins, but definitely siblings.

Kualin was a couple inches taller than me, but with a much slimmer build. His complexion was darker than Milik’s and they both had dreads that went a little past their shoulders. Kualin had high cheekbones and a neatly trimmed beard running along his jaw, whereas Milik had no facial hair and less prominent cheekbones.

The bigger differences between the two were that Kualin’s dreads were all black except for the tips which were highlighted a shining blonde, while Milik’s dreads were completely highlighted creating a vibrant mixture of black and blonde throughout his hair. Milik also had black snake bite piercings in his bottom lip whereas Kualin had only one silver snake bite pierced through his lower lip.

I could tell that Kualin was around two or three years older than me while Milik was at most a year younger than I was.

Reaching my hand out to Kualin I said, “Alex, nice to meet you.” He looked down at my hand and started laughing hysterically. Milik joined in soon after and a moment later, they were both dying laughing.

I confusedly watched while slowly withdrawing my hand from where I’d had it and waited for them to finish.

Kualin looked at me with mirth in his eyes and a huge smile, “Yo, man you don’t gotta be super formal or nothing. It’s all good though. Aye, Milik, we gon’ teach this dude the ways of the Lin Que.”

I got even more confused and turn to Milik. “The ways of the Lin Que?”

Milik started laughing even harder. “Dude, I don’t even know! It’s just this thing he’s always saying!”

Although I was still confused, I felt myself being drawn into the joyful mood that Kualin and Milik had created and started laughing for no good reason.

After about ten seconds our laughter died down and I looked over towards the big guy, Akito who’d just been watching the proceedings with a helpless look on his face from trying to understand why we all had been laughing.

Pulling out my phone, I checked the time.

“Damn. Hey, I gotta go find a way to do my laundry. We’re entering the tower tomorrow and I don’t wanna have to go in smelling like straight up funk.”

They all sagely nodded at that and Akito even sniffed his own armpit, then turned away disgusted. I almost started laughing all over again, but kept control of myself.

“If any of you guys see me tomorrow in or out of the tower, just link up with me. It’s better to go in with friendly people, you know?” Everyone sobered up at my words and nodded.

“Yeah, dude. We’re all in barrack eight, but if we see you in there we’ll hit you up. You seem a lot more laid-back than the rest of the people from our barrack,” Kualin said with a smile.

“Alright then. Akito. Kualin. Milik. Hope to see y’all soon.”

Leaving them, I made it back to my group a couple minutes after using the restroom.

They were all just sitting and chatting away as they had been when I left. I noticed, however, that none of them were talking about the tower or what would happen tomorrow, instead focusing on their lives back home.

Approaching the group, I announced to them, “Hey, guys. I’m about to go find some way to do laundry. Y’all in or what? Bryce, I know you need to.”

I offhandedly swiped my hand in front of my face to ward off the fake stench with a large smirk on my face.

Pixie was the first to stand up, her pale blue dreads swinging as she did.

“I’m in. This sun is killing me.” She feigned passing out in my direction and I playfully pushed her back onto her feet.

“Alright, Pixie’s in. Anyone else? Cough, cough. Bryce.” Everyone grumbled and stayed in a sitting position except for one.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll go. I also want to go and prepare everything for tomorrow.” Bryce’s voice broke through the grumbles of everyone sitting on the ground.

They all looked at Bryce, then towards the tower and slowly began getting up form the ground to join us.

As we walked off, the chatter of the group picked back up. Soon, everyone was laughing and had smiles plastered on their faces again.

I couldn’t help but hope when we entered the tower tomorrow, that maybe we wouldn’t have to go through anything like the catastrophe that had started all of this because I didn’t want to see anyone else I knew die. I just wanted to rid the world of the threat hanging above us.

The Overlords.

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Author's Note: Can I get a hot tub!? <- statefarm commercial. Can I get a comment!? <- desperation