Life wasnt easy these days. The government had been running low on minerals and supplies to the point neighboring countries were getting ready to invade us.

And we had no power to do anything against them.

That was until the Ship.

No one knows where it came from, who it came from, or why it came, but all we knew was we had to exploit it.

Humans, that’s what we’re made for.

The minute the government learned about this they sent out a nation-wide alert, saying they needed volunteers for the job.

No one volunteered. Why should we? We were poor enough already, but they made it clear that the volunteers wouldn’t get paid unless something valuable was found.

So what did our beloved and ever-caring government do about that?

They made a draft.

They said that they’d pull out ninety random birithdays and anyone born on that day who was between the ages 21-35 would serve in helping mine out the Ship.

And I was one of them.

“October thirteenth!” they announced, bringing dread in my home.

Hundreds of years ago before The Great War—where nearly every county in the world—a country named the “United States of America” owned the very land I lived on. There’s an old rumor that back in those days Americans thought October thirteenth was a bad luck day. Guess they weren’t wrong.

So now, I was in the freezing, barren wasteland, given a pickaxe and an unwarming orange-red jumpsuit to go find anything valuable.

As if this old, broken place had anything.

“Ain’t this a sight,” one of my coworkers, Randy, gasped as the airship landed. It was bigger than I thought, our own ship now felt like a child’s toy compared to it.

Slowly I stepped onto the crunching, white snow, gazing at the monstrosity.

“Unit Gamma?” one of the managers asked, holding a tablet that identified us.

“We need you inside, here.” He turned the tablet to us and tapped an area deep inside.

“Yes sir,” we all responded.

We walked to the ramp that led inside the dark, haunting hallways. Our flashlights illuminated only a small section. Metal plates were everywhere, green dimming lights ran through the hallways.

“I don’t like this place. Gives me creeps,” Randy muttered to me.

“Neither do I. I touched a piece of the metal, but nothing happened.

After a while of exploring and looking for our designated area, we eventually found it. It was a large, hollow area with shattered glass everywhere.

“Well…let’s start!” Another one of my group mates, Yelena, announced and struck her pickaxe into a spot of the area, the metal bent forward. “Oi! Look at all these cables,” she called us over. When we all got there, she wasn’t kidding. There was a network of more cables than I’d ever seen in my life, sparking electricity here and there.

I began mining my own spot, digging out cables. This would be valuable to the government for sure, there had been a decrease in them and an increase in their price ever since Carolina stopped trade with us.

“Hey guys…” Ava asked, making us all stop.

“What?” Bucky responded.

“Do y’all hear that?” We all went quiet, listening intently. Then we heard it. A low buzzing, but it got louder and louder. Suddenly Yelena was blasted to the other side of the room as a bolt of electricity burst out her digging area.

“Humans,” a low, almost mystical voice came.

“What the hell…” John said lowly, and Ricky stepped closer to me as we all heard loud and booming footsteps.

And then a green, slender entity came through the doorway, an eerie smile on it’s face.