We drank water and ate some energy bars while I told them what happened. I told them about finding the stone in Crash’s chest, and how that kicked off the drive to find gemstones in the chests of the creatures and corrupted humans.

“So, what is it?” Carter asked after I’d finished my story. “Magic?”

“Mana,” Mason said. “In video games, it’s usually called ‘mana’.”

“This ain’t a video game, kid,” T-Bag said, then muttered under his breath, “millennials.”

“I know it’s not!” Mason protested. “But, if we’re going to call it something, ‘mana’ is cooler than just ‘magic.’”

“Well, why don’t we cut open one of those other squirrels?” Chavez asked. “See if another one of us can use that energy… mana?”

“We don’t know what the long-term effects are,” Carter said. “It could be harmful to our bodies.”

“It sounds more like it improves our bodies,” T-Bag said. “At least from the description.”

“It changed my vision,” I said, “but can you see any improvements anywhere else?”

“Sorry, Mr. Special Forces.” Sarcasm painted his words. In my special vision, I could see the red in his face deepen slightly, even if nobody else could.

It was helpful having two different colors overlaid in my vision, but sometimes it could be quite distracting, like when Mason started to dance from foot to foot and there was an increase in the amount of blue energy in his groin area. I just don’t need to know when other people need to use the restroom.

“We’re not all perfect physical specimens,” T-Bag said bringing me back to my thoughts. “Maybe it doesn’t change someone who’s already perfect.”

I snorted. “I doubt anyone knows what ‘perfect’ even means.”

“Speak for yourself,” Chavez interjected. “I achieved perfection years ago.”

“Back to the point,” Carter said, “No one under my command has permission to do this.” There were disappointed replies of “Yes, ma’am,” from most of the crew, but T-Bag remained silent.

“So, what do we do with the bodies then?” Mason asked.

“I keep going,” I said simply. “We find out the long-term impact of this change on me.”

“Forrest,” Andy said, “You got a wife and daughter.”

“I’m already deep in this.” I met his gaze levelly. “We have no idea what’s going on, but I’m getting the feeling it’s a lot bigger than just this small town.”

“You gotta live to get back to your family, man.” Andy looked like he wanted to try to pull rank on me. Technically, we were both Lieutenants, but Anderson was the senior on the team and second to Captain Ares. While in the field, Andy had authority over me. Andy thought for a moment longer, then nodded. “You keep absorbing that power for now,” he said. “But I make the call for when you stop.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered. I would get no better response than that. With that permission given, I moved over to the remainder of the squirrel corpses and extracted the gemstones. The moment I touched them, I felt the familiar energy rush into my chest as before, where it stayed. I’d gutted the fourth squirrel and placed my hand on the stone when I felt a new sensation. Instead of the energy flowing into my chest, as usual, it spread out into the rest of my body. I felt refreshed, like after a good night’s sleep. Then the energy seeped out of me, and I watched in fascination as some green-gray energy evaporated into the air, though most of it flowed into the ground at my feet. Or through my feet. It was difficult to tell.

When I moved to the next squirrel, I touched the gem, but nothing happened. I felt the stone at the tips of my fingers, the feel of it distinctly different against the bones and organs of the squirrel’s insides, but still, nothing happened. I forced my hand in further until three fingers could reach around the stone, and I pulled it free of the corpse.

Even though it should have been covered in blood, the rock was clean and colored a pure green-gray to match what I’d just seen dissipating into the air. For several more seconds, I held it in my hand, while it… did nothing.

“Something wrong?” Andy asked. He’d been watching with detached curiosity as I worked on the corpses.

“Not sure. When I touch the stone, I just absorb the energy. That… didn’t happen this time.” I continued to look at the stone in fascination. I could still see normally, and every physical thing had texture and color as before. What I could see now was, I thought, the flow of energies around me. Now, I could pick out the difference between the physical appearance and the underlying nature of a thing. The gemstone, however, had no flows of energy that were distinguishable from the natural color of the stone itself.

“But it’s not happening now?” Andy asked, taking a step closer to me.

“Nope,” I said.

“Put it in your bag, and we will keep going,” he said. “Maybe we can figure it out later.”

I repeated the procedure with the remaining corpses, and I carefully placed each gemstone into my backpack after failing to steal the energy.

“All done?” Carter asked when I returned to the rest of the group.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Good,” she nodded. “Same positions. Chavez, lead the way.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chavez said, and he got to his feet.

When everyone had settled, we moved out, continuing our trek north. It was hard to believe, but after a half-hour, we were still only a couple of hundred feet from the station. At this rate, we would not make it the mile-and-a-half it would take to get to our destination. We pushed on, past an unnecessarily large “Welcome to Texas” sign, then left on West University Blvd.

That’s when I saw the bodies. Human bodies. They were on my side of the road, so I spotted them first. They lay abandoned next to an ATM, the single car in the parking lot where they had likely been waiting for some kind of power to be restored.

I flipped up the ACOG sight on my MP5 and looked through the lens.

“I’ve got two bodies here,” I told the rest of the team.

“Any signs of movement?” Carter asked.

“Negative,” I said. “The bodies are just lying there.”

“Let’s check it out,” she said. “Ward is on point.”

I remembered to pick my route carefully along smooth walkways since Carter was still pushing the janitor’s cart. With some effort, we wound our way along sidewalks into the parking lot and approached the bodies on the ground. One of them — a woman with gray hair — had her chest ripped open. Next to her, face swollen and blue, was an elderly man, his left hand stretched out toward the woman. I spotted a gold ring on his finger.

Around the man’s throat were bruises left by powerful hands. I remembered Yankee’s hands around my throat, and I swallowed. This was not a pleasant death.

“Any idea of what caused it?” Carter asked.

“Bruises on the neck point to strangulation, and the patterns on the throat are consistent with human hands.”

“How can you see details like that from this distance?” Chavez asked his eyes on the pair.

“Less than twelve hours ago, I almost had the same thing happen to me,” I avoided the question. In truth, I wasn’t sure how I could see those details without getting closer. “If I had to guess, the woman had one of those gemstones in her chest, and the… thing that killed her was after that.”

“Then why kill the old man?” Chavez asked.

“It’s not really a person anymore,” T-Bag said. “It’s just an animal. Why not kill the old man?”

“That’s not how animals behave,” Chavez answered. “They hunt and kill what they need. Rarely does an animal kill just because it can.”

“It’s not an animal,” I said, and everyone looked at me. “It might have reverted to its base instincts, but it’s still Homo sapiens as far as I can tell. And humans certainly kill for sport.”

“So this thing is intelligent enough to understand pleasure,” T-Bag said.

“Pleasure at a deeper level than most animals, at any rate,” I said. “That’s just a guess, though.”

“Yeah,” Carter said dryly, “that’s not concerning at all. Let’s get moving before something comes along and decides to try to kill us.”

“It’s too quiet,” Karl said after we moved back onto the road and continued west.

“No cars running,” Andy answered. “And we’re a decent distance from the town’s population center.”

“Still,” Karl said, “I think more people would be coming to the border stations if they needed help.”

We never made it to the second border patrol station in our self-imposed silence. We passed by the handful of cars in the university parking lot to our left, and I kept a close eye on the buildings we passed by on our right. As we came closer to the center of campus, I heard a high-pitched noise coming closer.

“Do you hear that?” I asked and received a chorus of no’s in response.

We continued on the road, the noise triggering my recognition as it came closer.

“Screaming,” I said.

“Mother of God,” Andy said. “I hear it too.”

“Move it!” Carter snapped. “If there are civilians, we have to help.”

I needed no other prompting. I took point, my eyes up and scanning.

I spotted the first signs of trouble — shattered glass doors, the entrance to the structure. The sign out front read “Casa Bella Apartments”. Inside the entrance, near the back of the lobby, three figures hammered bare fists against a solid metal door. Their tall, pale frames confirmed my suspicions.

We moved up the steps and through the doors, stepping over the shattered glass on the ground. Behind me, Chavez and Mason moved to either side of me, no doubt getting a better view of our targets. When I judged the rest of my team had cleared the doors, I engaged the enemy.

“Hey!” I shouted to get their attention. They turned and rushed at us as soon as they saw us. Without hesitation, I put three rounds in the chest of the central figure. I froze when there was no spray of blood. The figure stumbled but continued its forward momentum. I fired three more rounds into the body as the two on either side took fire from the others and went down under the hail of bullets.

“Two down, one incoming!” I yelled. More bullets flew into the figure that had been in the center.

“Fall back!” Carter said, and we began stepping back as a team, continuing to empty round after round. Eventually, he came close enough that I could see the magic — mana, I reminded myself — flowing through him. The normal colors were there, but when bullets impacted the body, the silver from the bullets shattered against a brighter silver of his skin.

“What the hell is happening!?” Mason screamed in near panic. “Is it wearing some kind of armor?”

“Its skin is too tough for bullets,” I shouted back. My magazine was almost empty, and I decided not to waste ammunition as we kept retreating.

“What has skin stronger than bullets!?”

“Scorpions!” Karl answered for me. “I had to shoot one in the head for it to punch through the armor.”

I fired a single round toward the man’s head. The head snapped back with the impact, but he didn’t stop. A spine-chilling smile crept over his face as he stepped purposefully forward, unharmed despite the direct impact. I let my rifle drop to hang from its sling, drawing the big knife for the second time that day.

“Keep shooting at its head!” I growled out the order, then moved to the right, out of the line of fire as I charged. They kept shooting, bullet after bullet impacting into his face, neck, and shoulders.

I bent low as I ran forward, but my team stopped firing as soon as I was in danger of being hit.

“I really hope this works,” I thought. I jumped, my body going almost horizontal as I launched myself, feet-first, toward the monster. I held the knife clutched in both hands, intending to drive it into my target.

Unsurprisingly, my feet connected directly with his chest. What did surprise me was that his body did not budge, let alone topple over as I expected. It felt like impacting a solid wall, and my body tried to fold in on itself. The man’s arms came up, reaching for my throat, but I focused on his right eye and drove the point of the enormous knife directly into the malicious orb, the only spot of blue and gray on the attacker.

I fell to the ground, my victim toppling down on me. The bastard was heavy, and I felt my ribs crack under the weight of impact. I would have gasped, but the wind went out of me under the pressure, and I couldn’t take a breath. I heaved at the corpse, trying to shift its bulk off my chest. It made my ribs scream, but I could finally suck in a breath.

I lay on the ground, the man’s heavy head turned to the side and resting on my chest like he was sleeping on a pillow… aside from the handle of the large Buck knife sticking out of the socket.

“You are one dumb — and lucky — MFer,” T-Bag said, looking down at me.

“I get that a lot,” I groaned.

“Anderson, Mason, help the lucky man,” Carter ordered.

“Don’t forget dumb,” T-Bag muttered.

“T-Bag, Magnusson, keep watch,” Carter said, pointedly not contradicting him. “Shout if anything happens. Chavez, you’re with me. We find out who’s in that janitor’s closet.”

Andy and Mason began to roll the body off my legs, complaining about how heavy it was. They did not fully succeed, and instead of rolling it, they simply pushed and lifted until I could wriggle my way out from underneath. My knife came out easily, though, and I began trying to cut through the corpse.

“Bullets couldn’t get through that skin, Bear,” Andy said. “No way you manage to cut him open.”

I continued to try anyway, prodding and putting pressure on all areas of the skin.

“That knife probably wouldn’t work, but what about your sword?” Mason asked.

“My sword? Why would it do any better?”

“Well, it looks like an heirloom. Old swords like that are usually better quality than what we create today. They had to put a lot more effort into it, but the weapons that turned into heirlooms were usually good quality.”

I drew the sword from its sheath sticking out over my left shoulder. The sword was straight and double-edged, like a medieval short-sword, aside from the guard, which was circular. When I looked at the sword, I could also see the silver aura coursing down the blade, the brightness even brighter — and somehow purer — than the skin of the dead body beneath me.

I looked again at the body, seeing the core of the power in its chest. I raised the sword in two hands, ignored my protesting ribs, and brought it down point first as close to the shining core as possible. The blade was stopped by the hardened skin, catching on the skin, but doing no visible damage. What I saw overrode the pain in my chest and side. For the barest of moments, the dead silver aura faltered under the pure silver before reforming. I brought the weapon back up, aiming for the same spot and driving it down. No luck. I gave it a third try, this time willing the sword to part the impenetrable energy.

The tip of the weapon punched through the defensive energy and slid into the body. The blade touched the gemstone and the power housed there flowed up the blade. I could see pieces of power that did not move through the blade, each one of them a shining silver, which seemed to join to the weapon and enrich the color already there.

The rest of the energy passed directly into me. Unfortunately, the silver in the body was so prevalent that not much was left after it was filtered and added to the sword itself. I felt my bones reknit, and the exhaustion from the fight left me, but the strength I’d been hoping to gain — the strength to take bullets head-on — did not pass into me. I felt no increase in strength or resilience. Instead, I had a sword that visibly looked unchanged, though its aura was certainly more impressive.

“Shit!” I yelled, bringing the sword up above my head and down into the body again. The mana color had faded from the body, and the weapon sliced through it with ease. Blood sprayed across the ground. But, the sword did not stop. It continued down, through the body, into the ground below, only stopping when I’d driven it up to the hilt in gore. Which was quite disgusting when I pulled it out. Chagrined, I wiped the sword clean on the body and sheathed it over my shoulder again.

“So… what was that about?” Mason asked, then hurriedly added, “if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I was hoping if I absorbed the energy from the core, I would get the power that was in there, making me invulnerable to bullets like him.” I tried not to let the disappointment show through in my voice, though I guessed that cat was out of the bag already.

“And it didn’t work?” Mason asked.

“The sword kept most of it.”

“Oh,” Mason said eloquently. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” I moved over to the two bodies brought down by my party, only vaguely noting the conversation Carter was having with whoever was on the other side of the door. I didn’t bother listening, since I had my next victim. I was much more careful this time as I used my knife to cut open the dead woman’s chest. I reached inside until I could touch the gemstone, which vanished, adding power to my core. I repeated the same process with the third body.

I’d been so distracted by my grasp for power that I’d neglected to examine my surroundings. We were in the lobby of an apartment complex. There was a welcome desk with a fancy sign, which read “Welcome to Casa Bella, your new home for learning. Please sign in.” Next to this sat a clipboard. Apparently, the security guard hadn’t made the intruders sign in because he was dead on the floor next to the desk. A taser lay on the ground next to him, unfired. His arms were stretched wide, shoulders pulled from their sockets. His legs were broken at the kneecaps. I couldn’t see the look on his face, because most of it was missing, smashed to pulp, with brain matter covering the ground.

That was another concern. Before, I’d considered them lone wolves, attacking without coordination. This was different. We needed to get moving, to clear the building.

“I said my name is Agent Sophia Carter,” Carter yelled at the door. “I’m with Border Patrol. We came when we heard the screaming.”

There was a muffled response, so I made my way over. The other four followed, eyes scanning in all directions for more threats.

“We can’t stay here long,” I said when I approached Carter. “We have to get everyone we can out of the building. These things are hunting in packs, and I don’t fancy facing overwhelming numbers.”

“She won’t open the door,” Carter said, gesturing to the metal behemoth. It looked like an industrial door, made to keep college kids from getting at potentially dangerous cleaning chemicals stored in a janitor’s closet. The door was warped inward, the body nearly twisted free of the hinges.

“One moment,” I said. I drew the sword at my back and slashed at the door. The steel parted easily under the onslaught of my weapon, which apparently had quite the upgrade. In moments, most of the door fell off its frame as I pulled it toward us.

“Bloody hell, LT,” Chavez said. “I missed the good stuff.”