“If the world was an easy place to live, we wouldn’t form partnerships. Our difficulties create strong bonds. Today your training begins—

I look around at my team of seven as Sargent Thorn and his translators speak. We learn that we can’t survive out of our individual Wolff Packs. If a wound needs stitching, it takes four of us to get it sewn shut. Even our food isn’t digestable without each one tossing in intestinal enzymes. Our water, salted and infected, will have to go through three filters before it can be consumed.

Sgt. Thorn explains that we can only communicate in three degrees. I’m fluent in English, Latin, and Navajo. If I need to communicate with Yelena, who’s fluent in Russian, Italian, and Thai, I will need to have Tico, who’s fluent in Swahili, Italian and English, translate. This serves one purpose, no two people can collude, it’s a perfect system of checks and balances.

—and you can’t remove your pack by yourself, you need others to help. We jump in three days. Suit up."