The five privates were standing at attention before sunrise. I paced in front of them.

“Three days,” I growled. “That’s how much time we have to get you in shape for this new world.”

No one said anything, but their facial expressions indicated offense. They were all so young. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old. Most of them met my eyes with hard stares of their own, giving lie to my instinct to protect these kids. They had already seen hard times and been forced to do hard things. One of them couldn’t quite look up. His hair was jet black, no doubt dyed; it hung just a bit too long for regulation, but not long enough for anyone to call him on it during a crisis. His eyes remained on the ground. I sighed, inwardly, understanding quickly why this one was part of the group hand-picked by the sergeants.

“Oh, I’ll teach you how to fight properly,” I continued. “But more importantly, I’m going to teach you how to survive in this new world. I have been trained to put two bullets between the eyes of targets while on the move.” I patted my MP4, which hung in its harness. I lifted it, pulled the slide, aimed at a stop sign down the street and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Skill with a rifle means nothing if we don’t have bullets.” Then I drew the sword from my back. “Give up on the idea of bullets. Give up on the idea of being able to out-shoot your opponent. It might work in the short term, but in the long run, it will only get you killed.” I pointed my sword down the line of them. “Drop your main firearms. Keep only your sidearm.” I did the same, unclipping the harness that held my MP4 in place and tossing the now-useless weapon onto the ground.

“What hand-to-hand combat training do you have?” I asked.

“Only what we received in basic,” one of the privates said.

“How often do you practice those techniques?”

“Usually, once a month during a weekend we review the techniques,” the same private answered. He was tall and gangly, having not quite filled out to his full weight. From his face, I would guess he was about twenty years old.

“First thing we will do is pick you up some close-quarters weapons. Hatchets and machetes is probably what we’ll find. Eventually, you’ll have to be comfortable making whatever material you decide to fight with, but for now, we’ll scavenge. We’ll do this in a fire team wedge formation. Take your normal positions.”

They formed up into the standard position. Unsurprisingly, the tall kid was in front, and they formed a V shape behind him.

“Rotate to the back,” I said as I walked up to him. “Watch me.” I raised my voice for the sake of the rest of the group. “That goes for all of you. Keep an eye on me and watch what I do. I’ll be watching all of you, and I will critique what you do.”

With that, I moved forward. I nodded to Andy, who stood at the front entrance to the hospital. He nodded back to me, and turned to go back in.

The previous evening, it hadn’t been easy to convince Lieutenant Vance that we were part of the Army. We had no identification, no dog tags, and no papers formally documenting our process. In the end, Andy had convinced him that it didn’t actually matter if we were in the military. We had necessary information and should be considered intelligence assets, if nothing else.

After a time when they questioned both Andy and me, we earned his grudging respect, if not his trust. That being said, I was the only one allowed to accompany his men as we went out.

We headed west, toward an area about the size of a football field, which had become overgrown with bushes. The shrubbery that would have normally come up to my knee now rose higher than my head, making the dense area impossible to see through. Unless, of course, you could see magic like I could.

None of the five people behind me had serious weapons other than their knives. What basic training they would have received with the weapons would have been to combat others, also with knives. This situation, however, would be entirely different. I saw the movement of mana as eight shapes bounded through the undergrowth toward us. Their cores were primarily green with some gray throughout, and I knew from the movement that I had picked correctly.

My sword came up. “Get ready,” I said to the others.

“Ready for what–“

“Oh my god!”

The squirrels came out of the underbrush, heading straight for our group. I killed one with a single swing of the sword, followed it up by slicing through a second, then broke left as I engaged a third of the beasts. This left the line of soldiers to carry the charge of the remaining rabid squirrels.

I finished off my third squirrel and watched as the others engaged with the remainder of the force. As I’d expected, one of the party, the one that wouldn’t meet my eye out in front of the hospital, had fallen to the ground and was kicking at the squirrel as it tried to come for his throat. The young private who had taken the front position before had thrown himself into the fight. Three of the beasts had attacked one of his comrades, but in no time he was there, lifting the hundred-pound rodent off her and tossing it away. He followed up with a downward strike with his combat knife, which punched into a second of the animals, which was going for his friend’s thigh. Together, they finished the third attacker. The last squirrel had the unfortunate luck to be attacked by two of the soldiers. It attacked one of them, who tried to hold it at bay, but the distraction was all he needed while his partner rushed in with his knife.

The private on the ground kicked, his knife all but forgotten, as he screamed in terror. Just as the squirrel managed to get around his gangly legs and come for his throat, I cut the creature’s neck open, causing it to fall limply on top of the boy. He stood up, trying to wipe away the blood, but only succeeding in spreading it over his uniform.

“What the fuck was that!?” he screamed at me. “You’re supposed to be teaching us, not feeding us to those things.”

“I haven’t started teaching you anything yet,” I said. “That was just a test to see who was incompetent. Congratulations, you failed.”

“How was I supposed to know there would be crazy, giant squirrels coming outa at us!?” His voice was petulant, like a spoiled child.

“You weren’t supposed to know,” I said. “I wanted to see how you would behave under pressure. I wanted to know if you had the backbone to fight for your life or the lives of your team. You don’t. Get out of here. Back to the hospital.”

“What!?” he shrieked. “You can’t do that; I was assigned to this by my sergeant.”

“Then tell your sergeant that you can’t be relied upon in combat!” I roared back. “You come up against the enemy, and the first thing you do is fall to the ground and forget about your weapon!?” I gestured at the knife where it still rested in its sheath on his belt. “How can your team trust you in a fight?”

“You can’t send me back.” He’d deflated by this point, my words sinking in. “I would be kicked out of the team, forced to live like the other civilians.”

“If you don’t want to be treated like a civilian, then don’t act like a civilian.” He winced at my words, and I guessed he’d heard something similar before. “I’ll give you another shot.” This finally got him to look up and meet my eyes. I could see a glimmer of hope in them. “One more chance. If you decide that you don’t want to fight, then at least distract the monster for long enough before it kills you. Then maybe your death would be worth something.” He didn’t rise to my challenge; his eyes resumed their regular investigation of the ground, though his head nodded in acknowledgment.

“When I say something to you, soldier, you acknowledge it with a ‘yes, sir!’” I barked.

“Yes, sir!” he exclaimed, his back straightening and his eyes finally coming up to attention.

“You,” I said to the girl who’d fallen to the ground under the attack of the three squirrels. I glanced at the name tag on her fatigues. “Zapata.” I looked back up at her face. “You kept fighting, but your instincts to hold your ground were wrong. When you are about to be overwhelmed, you step back, tactically retreating. It also gives a teammate behind you more time to step in and help.”

I repeated the same process with each of them, pointing out places where they made a mistake in the close-quarters combat. Finally, however, we got to the important part. The reason I didn’t just send the sniveling private back to the hospital. This would seal them to this course of action.

“Watch me carefully,” I said as I went to one of the squirrels I had killed. I flipped the squirrel onto its back, drew my knife, and began to cut into its belly. I heard a gagging sound behind me, but I didn’t turn to see who it was. I had my suspicions. When the cut was wide and deep enough, I slipped my hand into the insides of the thing, feeling for the core. I grasped it firmly and pulled it free from the squirrel’s body.

“This is what you need.” I held the core up for them to look at. “This is the new currency of our world. This is power.” I nodded to the leader-private. I glanced down at the name “Christensen” on his chest. “It’s your turn, kid.”

The reminder of his age was just what he needed to flip over one of the squirrels he had helped kill. He wrinkled his nose at the smell as he reached his hand into the chest off the squirrel, and I saw the moment his hand finally touched the core. The energy surged up his arm, into his chest, and settled there. Some of it dispelled elsewhere in his body, no doubt healing the gashes he’d received during the fight.

“Whoah. That’s a rush.” He stood up and jumped around for a few seconds, like he had excess energy to burn. Which, in retrospect, was precisely what he had. “What just happened?”

“When you touch this stone,” I explained, “the power rushes out of you and into your body, what I’m calling your ‘core’. It stores up energy in your body, which will make you stronger over time.”

“There’s a core in every one of these creatures?” Private Christensen asked, now looking at the other bodies with a hungry expression.

“Yes,” I said. “But remember to share with the rest of your team. Anyone who helped killed a squirrel, go ahead and take one of the cores.” I pointedly looked at everyone except the first recruit I’d berated, then began cutting open my other three kills, and tossing the cores into a duffel bag I swung over my shoulder. It rested uncomfortably against the sword on my back, but didn’t prevent me from drawing.

After I extracted the core from my last kill, finishing before anyone else had completed their first, I held the core in front of the dejected kid. “Peterson,” I said, “In this world, you’re going to keep what you kill. This time, though, I’m giving this to you.” He reached for the core tentatively. I pulled it out of reach until he met my eye. “I’m doing this to prove to you that you can be stronger. You can be better. But you need to make the choice. I’m also doing this, so you don’t eventually fall so far behind the rest of your fire team that you become worthless to them. They don’t need someone holding them back.” I held the core back out to him. “If at some point, you decide that you don’t want to continue on this path, then you leave. It would be cruel, both to them and you, to make them force you out.”

Peterson nodded, steeled his face, reached out, and touched the core. I saw the energy pass into him as well. This time, however, the energy didn’t settle in his chest, like it did with the others. It settled in his head instead. I mused over this while I dusted my hands clean of the crumpled remains of the core.

Everyone on the team was looking at me. I held up one of the shining cores. “Remember.” I spoke in a firm voice, willing my sincerity to reach them. “This is the new currency of the world. Three days, and I have three cores. At the end of each day, one of these will be awarded to one of you. Work hard.” I let the words sink in before I continued. “Back into the fire team wedge formation. Peterson, you’re on my right. Christensen on my left. Zapata behind Christensen. We’ll leave a long tail behind Peterson.”

“What’s our target, sir?” Christensen asked.

“You see that cemetery across the street?” I gestured to the small plot of land, which couldn’t have held more than twenty graves from the looks of it. “We’re going to see if there’s anything nasty over there.”