The girl screamed again when the door came crashing down. She had decent instincts, even if little common sense. A mop head, soaking wet and smelling of bleach, came flying at me the moment my face came into view. I stumbled back, shouting in surprise and fury as I wiped at my face.

“Don’t come any closer!” she shrieked. If we hadn’t been trying to help her, I would have left the banshee to her own devices.

“Stop!” Carter shouted again. She had ducked behind the wall, only part of her face poking out, in case the girl had more mops in her arsenal.

However, being the intelligent individual that I was, I stood there trying to wipe the chemicals from my face and praying they didn’t get into my eyes. Hence, I was the only target for the follow-up attack. Judging by the smell of the liquid, it came from the bucket where the mop had been resting, waiting to be used.

Thankfully, the chemicals did not blind me, instead completely soaking my clothes. I got the message and took several steps back. That’s me, a prime specimen of intelligence.

“Dayum girl,” T-Bag said. “We’re here to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

I still had my eyes closed, but with my mana sight, I could see her outline cowering in the corner.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re hiding in a closet,” Carter said. I still couldn’t see her face, but her voice carried a sardonic tone.

“Everything is going to be okay.” Surprisingly, it was Mason who stood out in the open, his hands raised and weapons lowered. “I know you’re scared, but we’re going to help you get through this, okay?” He spoke in a calm, soothing tone, no sign of his usually clipped speech.

Once I felt sure none of the chemicals had gotten into my eyes, I lowered my arms. I needed a shower to get rid of the burning, itching feeling on my skin. On second thought, with electricity out, I doubted I would be able to take a shower again anytime soon. At least not a warm shower. I sighed in regret. I would have to find a bar of soap and resort to finding a pond somewhere to scrub down. First-world problems.

With my eyes uncovered, I finally had the opportunity to look at the girl we'd saved. If my daughter were ten years older, I imagined this is what she'd look like. She had shoulder-length hair that was blonde like mine. Her slender build conformed well to her height, though even in two-inch heels she could not have been more than five feet tall. In her current disheveled state, her hair fell messy around her face. The jeans she wore were torn on the knee and halfway up her thigh, though that was probably a fashion statement. She was also wet, likely from trying to throw the bucket at me.

Something else dominated my attention, though. Her aura shone stronger than anyone else around me, and I could see the mana flowing from a power core nestled in the middle of her chest. The energy called to me, pulling at me to take it. It would feel so good to have that power rushing up through my hands and into my chest, adding to the reserve of power already there. I felt the same pull when I’d fought against the humans who’d gone rabid, but never for another, sane person before.

"You okay, Bear?" Andy's question brought me out of my thoughts.

I'd taken a step toward the girl, who immediately cringed away from me. I tore my eyes from the shining core inside her to meet her eyes. Damn, but she had dark blue eyes. Just like my daughter. And they were terrified.

"Sorry," I said, turning away. I looked down at the ground and took deep breaths, trying to clear the instincts screaming at me to reach for more power. "Just a little worked up from the fight still."

"Can we get out of here yet?" Mason asked. "This place gives me the willies."

"The willies?" Chavez asked. "What are you, twelve?" The broad man thought about it for a moment. "Come to think of it, how old are you, Mason?"

Mason didn't answer the question, choosing to talk to the girl instead. "I'm Paul. Let's get you out of here."

"Who were those people? It was like they went rabid or something."

"Something like that, yeah," Mason said. "We don't fully know what's going on. We're heading to the main border patrol station. We'll find out more there. For now, we just need to get out of here."

“We won’t be going anywhere,” Carter interjected. “We’re going to clear the building and rescue as many civilians as we can.”

Mason looked torn when he heard this, looking from the girl to his superior officer. He nodded assent and asked the civilian, “What’s your name?”

“Heidi,” she said.

“Stay behind me, Heidi. We’ll get through this in no time.” She nodded emphatically.

We moved into formation. I took the lead with Chavez on my left and Mason behind me to my right. T-Bag was behind Chavez with the girl between him and Mason. That left Carter and Andy to cover our rear.

Something was different about the situation, though. What was I missing? I looked at my teammates in turn, though I purposefully avoided looking at Heidi. When my eyes landed on Carter, it clicked.

“Where’s the cart?” I asked.

“Couldn’t bring it up the front steps,” Carter shrugged.

“We just going to leave weapons and ammunition out there?” Andy asked, echoing my thoughts.

“The people in this building are our main priority,” she insisted.

“Yes,” Andy said. “But those are weapons that could easily be used against us by another group with bad intentions.”

“Point taken,” Carter said. “Let’s get them inside.”

We moved the cart into the building. It took Chavez and me a combined effort to lift it to the top of the front steps.

“Barely felt like I had to lift at all,” Chavez grumbled. “Did someone build you out of a tank?”

“That’s why we call him Bear,” Andy said. “Big boy here was a middle linebacker before he joined up. Played football for part of his career too, before the Rangers took him.”

“You’re Rangers?” Mason asked. “That’s so cool.”

Andy laughed. “Boy, you don’t know half of it.”

“What’s the craziest thing you ever did?”

“Well, most of our stuff is classified,” I said nonchalantly, leaning one arm on the janitor’s cart. “There was this one time that I killed a crazy man with bulletproof skin in the lobby of a university apartment building.” Everyone laughed at that. “Seriously, though, this is the craziest shit I’ve ever been through.”

“Let’s cut the chatter,” Carter said. “Civilians we’re supposed to be saving. Remember that part?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

We stashed the janitor’s cart in the closet of the kitchenette, snagging a couple of extra available magazines for anyone else using an M4. I checked my own supply of ammo and found it lacking. I ejected the mag and slid another one in. Sixty rounds left, between this magazine and the full one still in my jacket. I had another two hundred in the pack on my back, and of course much more on the cart itself. I smirked to myself. I knew Andy had it harder, since his HK was a .45. I absently scratched at my neck where my skin still itched from the chemicals splashing me. If we cleared the building quickly, I could get out of these clothes and hopefully rinse off.

I led the way toward double doors that I guessed lead to the apartments. I stopped just out of reach of the door and signaled to Andy to open it. He stepped around me, grabbed the handle, then yanked the door fully open as quickly as he could. I moved into the hallway, Chavez following closely. Doors lined the hallway. Some were smashed outward, some inwards, and a few remained untouched.

I took the right doors, while Chavez took the left, clearing each open door as we went. Weapons up and legs crouched to reduce the sound of our movement, Chavez and I would sneak into each apartment, tracing the corners and ensuring nothing dangerous was present. We made it to the first closed door, which happened to be on my side of the hallway. I hammered on the hardwood.

“Border patrol,” I called. “Anyone need help?” No answer. I took a step back and kicked the door in, quickly backing away in case anything rabid decided to rush out at me.

We continued like this down the hall, with nothing changing. No people, sane or otherwise. At the end of the hall, we entered a stairwell and ascended to the next level of apartments. Again, nothing.

The silence was eerie as we moved through the building. I got that strange feeling that the space should have been occupied, or was occupied regularly, but was now suddenly empty. Not empty — abandoned. There was probably a psychology-related word for it.

By the time we cleared the third, top floor, I wanted to hear yelling; I wanted to hear someone in trouble. I was so committed to saving someone from monsters, that I almost needed it to happen.

The top floor had the nicest apartments. We decided to stay the night in a three-bedroom space, rather than pushing to finish the trek while the sun was down. Between all the beds, sofas, and armchairs, there were plenty of places to sleep, but we opted to pull the mattresses into the living room and all sleep together in the large room. The apartment had a TV mounted above an electrical fireplace, both useless now, but I was strongly reminded of putting my feet up in a lazy boy by the fire at home, drinking a beer, turning on the TV, and yelling at my favorite football team. Damn, but I was going to miss football. I chuckled at the thought. Over the last twenty-four hours, I could feel myself getting stronger. Even now, I thought I might be stronger than I’d ever been. For a man facing his early forties, it was quite the prospect that I was at the peak of my performance. And there was no sign of a limit to that power. My gaze strayed over to Heidi and the promise of power from her core.

“Forrest,” Andy tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked up at him. I was sitting on the floor, with my back against one wall, clutching my combat knife in one hand. “Let’s talk.” He offered his hand and pulled me to my feet. I followed him out to the apartment balcony, which overlooked the pond of Fort Brown Resaca. The water surrounded a portion of the university property in a half-circle, turning the campus into a pseudo-peninsula. We were at the edge of campus, but could still make out the very edge of the water, with the sun setting over buildings and hills beyond.

“What happened today?” Andy broke the silence after we’d taken in the view.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Bullshit.” He didn’t bother looking at me. “You got mad at a corpse, almost destroying it.”

“Like I said,” I shrugged, “that thing had power, and I was hoping to get it.”

“Right,” he said. “Then what about when you saw the girl, Heidi?”

I didn’t say anything.

“C’mon, man,” he pressed, “I’m not stupid. You were thinking of killing her. She’s a civilian; we don’t kill civilians.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped at him. “We’re in a goddamn war zone. You were the one who told me I had to make it back to my wife and daughter. But you don’t want me taking the thing that would help me the most? Help me get stronger?”

“Yeah, and what would Penny say if she knew? What would Andrea think of her father coming home with all that blood on his hands?”

“Don’t you do that, don’t you use their names to lay that guilt on me.”

“You know it’s true,” he said. We were nose-to-nose at this point, not caring if we were spitting into the other’s face. I looked into his clear blue eyes. I saw anger there, but beneath it was concern and even fear. That didn’t make sense, though. What would he be afraid of? “If you killed an innocent girl, would you still be the man Penny married?”

“I didn’t kill her, though, did I?”

“Yeah, but you thought about it. Then, again in the living room just now. I saw your eyes on her and your hand on your knife.”

“I was just looking into space,” I lied.

“Bullshit, and you know it.” We stared each other down for a moment before Andy took a step back. “I’m making the call. You’re done.”

“What?” I kept my voice calm, but I was fuming under the surface as I took a step forward. My blood was up, and I could feel my face getting hot.

“I said you’re done. I agreed to let you keep going, but if this was going to change you, I had say on whether you keep going.”

“That’s not your call,” I fumed.

“You made it my call. That’s what we agreed to. The moment you started putting your own thoughts for power above the well-being of another person, you made it my call.”

“I didn’t do anything.” I clenched my fists at my side. It was such an absurd claim, I could have punched his self-righteous face in.

“How close were you, Forrest?” Andy asked. “Seriously, if I wasn’t here, what would have happened?”

“I would have controlled myself.”

“For how much longer? How much harder is it to control these new…” he trailed off, looking for the right word.

“Instincts,” I supplied.

“See?” He said. His voice was back to a regular volume, no longer matching my intensity like he was trying to defuse a bomb with his voice. “You’re usually so cool-headed, but that Forrest isn’t who I saw today. You were impulsive and angry downstairs. And you’re getting stronger. How soon before these ‘instincts’ take over, and we can’t stop you? You need to think about what this new power, mana, or whatever, is doing to you. It’s like a drug, man, and I don’t want my friend to go home to his family as a meth-head.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“No, you’re going to stop,” he said.

I didn’t react well. I left the balcony without another word and stalked indignantly into the nearest bedroom, grabbing my gear as I went. I threw my bag at the base of the wall and dropped it on top of it to rest my head.

The room grew darker until it was black outside, but still, I didn’t sleep. I lay on the floor, the night matching my thoughts until the dawn came bright and unpleasant the following morning.