The interior of the military base was just as drab and boring as I had expected it to be, but that was fine because my mind was still reeling at the revelation that officer Blake had thrown at me.

"Sorry, did you just say you're arranging a tournament?" I asked, "What does that even mean?"

The officer turned to look at me with a glint in his eye and a smirk playing across his lips.

"I'd rather not have to explain myself more than once, so let's go and meet up with the rest of the recruits first shall we?" He said, walking on again. 

I kept in step with him, mulling it over in my head. 

A tournament was unexpected, but honestly, it was a good way to figure out who the most powerful people in the group were. 

There was something else on my mind too, however. 

As we had drawn closer and closer to the military base a feeling had been growing in my chest. 

A… warmth. 

A growing connection that, now I was actually standing in the building, was becoming so strong it was hard to ignore. 

It had to be something to do with the exo. 

“What would give you that idea?” The AI asked in my mind. 

I rolled my eyes. Everything weird that had happened to me in the past few days had at least a tangential connection to the exo. There was no way that this didn’t as well. 

I felt a sense of smugness come from the AI as I had that thought. 

The damn thing knew. It had to. 

“Oh no, I don’t know a thing,” The exo AI replied, “I’m just having fun trapped here in your little human mind watching it furiously try to work things out. I’m sure you’ll get it eventually.” 

“Prick,” I muttered under my breath with a shake of my head. 

The AI didn’t respond, so I settled to follow Officer Blake through the corridors of the base. 

There was no doubt I’d memorize the layout of the building in the future, but as it stood I had already become lost winding my way through the corridors of the building. 

Eventually, we came to a set of double doors, and it was at this point that the connection I was feeling flared and grew stronger still. 

Whatever was causing the steadily growing feeling, that burn in my chest, was likely behind those very doors. 

“A synch-unit… but that’s not possible…” The AI muttered. 

I was sure that was something it had been trying to keep to itself, but the level of surprise in its hushed tone betrayed its surprise. 

So what the hell was a synch-unit? 

The AI wasn’t given a chance to answer as Blake opened the door and ushered me through it. 

The room I entered reminded me of a lecture hall from university. 

There was a stage with a lectern at the front of the room with tiered seating rising up a set of stairs toward the back of the room. 

At maximum capacity, it looked as if the room would hold somewhere between fifty and a hundred people, but at the moment it held no more than nine. 

Nine people who immediately turned to stare at me. 

And one of them… her gaze was intense. 

Her amber eyes bore into mine like a drill as if she were searching for something within them. 

After a few moments, she turned her head away, almost dismissively, and let her long violet hair break our eye contact. 

What the hell was that about? 

“Go take a seat, all your questions will be answered in the forthcoming presentation,” The officer said, snapping me out of my daze. 

“Uh… Yeah, sure,” I replied before hurrying over to the chairs to take a seat of my own. 

I had no idea what that girl's problem was, or why she had stared at me so intensely before seemingly dismissing my existence altogether, but right now she wasn’t the issue. I had plenty of time to figure her deal out in the future. 

“So, as you all know, the ten of you have been selected as potential entrants to a new special squad of super-powered individuals to help manage the ongoing crisis that is occurring not just in the UK, but across the world,” Officer blake said, stepping up to the lectern. 

He clicked a button on the pedestal which brought down a plain white screen. When it was in position, a projector beam flickered into life, it displayed a wreckage of one of the alien ships that had come crashing down onto the surface of the Earth. 

“The origin of the crisis are these pods, which have been colliding with the Earth over the past week,” Blake continued, “As of right now we are uncertain of the true origin of these objects, though the leading thought is that they are some form of debris left behind by an…” 

He paused as if he couldn’t believe he was actually going to say, “the leading thought is that they are debris left behind from some kind of interstellar war.” 

He let the words hang in the air. 

This was information that I had already been given by my AI, but the reactions of the other people in the room made it clear that this was not common knowledge. 

“So what? You’re saying aliens exist then?” One of the other nine retorted, “Like, little green men from mars had a bang-up and now people can shoot lasers out of their arses? Yeah right mate, jog on.” 

“As unbelievable as it may seem, this is the leading school of thought at the moment,” Officer Blake reiterated, “The technology recovered from the pods is far greater than any man-made object, and so an extraterrestrial influence is all our scientists can agree on.” 

The mood in the room shifted to one of subtle panic and disbelief. 

All bar one. 

The only person, other than me, who looked thoroughly unperturbed by Blake’s revelations was the girl that had stared me down when I walked into the room. 

Was she… like me?