Seth sat across from Jessica in the back of the Suburban, his face feeling greasy from the black and gray camouflage paint Brett had told him he had no option but to wear. Jessica wasn’t dressed like he had ever seen her dress, either. As she reminded him every time she helped him with his wardrobe, all-black was not a Jessica thing, but here she sat, clothed in a black hoodie, black jogging sweats, with a cloth face-covering hanging around her neck. The team’s MAGINT operator sat next to her, balancing a toughbook on his lap as he worked to calibrate the machinery in the center of the SUV. He had a military-style haircut like Brett, but not the accompanying beard. A hawk-like nose dominated his face. Adams growled under her breath. “Stop messing with it.”

“For the last time, I’m not doing shit,” snapped back Jessica.

“Right, because this abjure read-out is lying.”

“Those are my fucking wards, you want me to drop those?” Seth saw in Jessica’s face a seriousness and authority she’d kept hidden from him the whole time he’d known her. To say he didn’t take Jessica seriously would be an exaggeration of a high degree, but she had never once given him any sort of hint she’d be the kind to tell someone in the special forces to fuck off without batting an eye.

“You’re maintaining class five wards? I’m calling bullshit.”

“Not used to working with the big dogs, huh?”

He glared at her. “Just drop them for a minute, alright? We’re still fifteen away.”

“Fat chance.”

“Adams,” called Brett from the driver’s seat. “Just attenuate and drop the configs onto a new file once you do.”

“I…” He paused. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Don’t forget what I did before I was a TL. Stop pissing the wizard off, dude.”

He looked over at Jessica. “This would be easier without you, you know.”

“Oh, really?” She said as she crossed her arms. “Do enlighten me.”

“We can’t high-jam if you’re there. You’re above a class five. If we spelljam, then you’re going to be dead in the water, too. And they have two high-class souls, so that’s going to be on you to take care of.” He shook his head, angrily typing out configurations on the toughbook. “You better not let Vic get hurt. She’s a good countermage, but class six is almost impossible to snuff.”

Jessica looked Adams dead in the eyes. “You just show me who the class sixes are and I’ll have their heads folded up their own assholes before they can get a spell off.”

His face was stone. “And you.” He looked over his toughbook to Seth. “I trust Sergeant Tiberius, and he says you can fight, but you’re an unknown quantity. Just let us work and don’t get in the way.”

Seth sat upright, meeting Adams’ hostile gaze. “You should worry about the shamans, not me.”

Brett again twisted to looked back. “Adams. He’s the only one who can survive going hand-to-hand with a shaman. Even if you think he’s just a meat shield, show him some fucking respect for that.”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” said Adams as he pressed ‘enter’. “But you know our history working with assets.”

“Sure I do, and you tell me any one of those times that what went down was the asset’s fault.”

“Roger that, Sergeant.” Adams stared at the machinery as the crystal ball began to glow on its stand, shimmering with a faint white light. He nodded, and pressed another button on the toughbook and the light shut off.

“Viking Actual, this is Valkyrie One, come in, over.” Bridgette’s voice came over the communications system up front.

“This is Valkyrie Actual,” said Brett. “Over.”

“Valkyrie Two is in position. Over.”

“Copy, standby for further orders. Over.”

“Roger, out.”

Seth looked to Jessica. She looked calm, her face devoid of the usual cheery emotions that adorned it. As he thought about it, he realized it was the same face he wore just before a tournament or a fight. This was not a situation she was a stranger to, not in the slightest. She caught his gaze. “We’re saving Andrew,” she said. “No other way this night ends.”

He nodded. “No other way.”

A few minutes later, Brett pulled the SUV off into the woods. “Gear up and roll out, everyone. Adams, give me a comm check.”

Adams pulled a handset off the machinery in the middle the vehicle. “All stations, this is Odin. Radio check, over.”

“This is Viking One,” came Bridgette’s response. “I read you five by five, over.”

“Roger, out.”

Seth moved his jawbone headset from his neck to his head, then grabbed the assault rifle they had issued him—complete with a silencer—and stepped out. Brett was already fully geared and out of the car as they disembarked. Brett and Seth wore matching black plate carriers, the pouches on the front loaded with ammo. Combined with the lack of light due to the new moon, they turned almost invisible in the darkness of the woods. Jessica joined them, hood and face covering up, invisible as well. Brett adjusted the sling on his silenced assault rifle.

“Alright, last brief. They’re one click that way. Corporal Meadowcroft and her team already have overwatch. We are not looking for full engagement, but if you receive the command, we go scorched earth and exfil before they send emergency services out. We’re moving fast. We good?”

Seth nodded. “Good.”

“Move out.” Brett turned and strode into the woods, Seth and Jessica keeping the five or so yards of dispersion he had briefed them on. The assault rifle felt strange in Seth’s arms, but the assurance of expensive cold-iron rounds in the magazine gave him confidence. The shamans were no longer a towering threat. Most of them could be deshifted with a single bullet, and he had a strong feeling Jessica had shown nowhere near her full hand in regards to what she could do with magic. He still felt a bit frustrated that such a secret had been kept from him by his friend, but he understood, if only a little.

They moved through the woods quickly, both of them struggling just a little to keep up with Brett’s pace while keeping quiet. Somehow Brett’s combat boots made less noise than their shoes.

Adams’ voice came through their skulls. “All stations, I have movement on Prime One. Currently four active and patrolling. Valkyrie Actual, you have been forwarded coords.”

“Roger,” responded Brett as he came to a halt some twenty yards from the edge of the woods and went to a knee. Seth and Jessica dropped down beside him as he pulled a small tablet from a pouch on his vest. The screen was covered with a sheet of plastic that kept light to an absolute minimum as it displayed a satellite image of the building across the road ahead of them. He pointed to four red dots, one on each of the corners, two of them moving clockwise, the other two moving counter-clockwise. “These are the guards. And that,” he said, tapping on a larger dot off in the woods to the right of the building, “Is one of the high classers. Seth, our suppressors are wet, but cold-iron doesn’t make for good subsonic. They’re unshifted right now, so we can drop them with regular rounds.” He swapped the magazine in his rifle. Seth did the same. “Jessica, I need you to be ready to clean up. Nothing flashy.”

“Don’t worry,” she said.

“Odin,” said Brett. “I need immediate notification if Prime One starts moving.”

“Solid copy.”

Brett went prone and they followed, crawling to the edge of the woods until they had concealment, but could still view the building across the road. The patrolling guards crossed paths and looped around the building. “Next set, I drop the right, you drop the left, then we have about twenty seconds to move over and drop the other two before they’ll round the side again and see what happened. Corporal Meadowcroft is our last resort. You ready?”

Seth licked his lips, adjusting the rifle’s buttstock in his shoulder. “Ready.”

Crickets chirped in the night, and the wind rustled through the trees. Two guards came around the corners. They looked tired, unaware of their surroundings. Seth peered through the small scope on top of the rifle, lining the red dot inside up with the head of the shaman. Breathe out. Shoot at the bottom of your breath. The dot settled.

“Engage.”

FWIP.

The combination of a wet suppressor and subsonic bullets proved only a little louder than Hollywood silencers. Brett’s target dropped like a sack of bricks, but Seth’s went low, burying in the shaman’s shoulder and spinning him to the side. He crashed into the railing around the building as he let out a loud cry.

“Jessica,” hissed Brett.

The shaman’s head suddenly separated from his shoulders and he fell hard to the ground, his head rolling onto the road, blood spurting from his neck.

“Goddamn,” said Brett. “Move.”

Seth and Brett rose and crossed the road to the corners of the building while Jessica stayed on the edge of the treeline. Seth could hear feet feet running from around the side as he crossed into line of sight. No, not feet. Paws. Seth rounded the corner to see a black bear barreling straight for him. Seth fumbled, ejecting his current magazine and letting it crash to the ground as he whipped out one of the cold-iron magazines and jammed it into the well. He barely got off the remaining subsonic round in the chamber before the bear bowled him over and reared up over him, bellowing in rage. He barely registered Adams’ voice in his skull.

“All stations, movement on Prime One!”

Seth held his rifle up and jammed it lengthways into the bear’s mouth as it descended, chomping for his face. More weight than he had ever handled pushed down on him and his elbows dug into the ground, his chest and shoulders straining. The bear whipped its head from side to side, and Seth felt a pop in his left shoulder as the rifle wrenched from his hands. The sling kept it on his body, but he was defenseless now. The bear lunged down.

Seth jerked hard to the side, the bear’s jaws closing on the air where his head had been just a moment before.

Seth ripped his knife out of its sheath and slashed, opening a long cut on the bear’s neck. It stumbled back, rapidly shifting to the form of a man. The shaman held both his hands over a cut along his neck that leaked blood between his fingers. His mouth was open to scream, but Seth surged forward, shoving his knife forward in a a desperate lunge.

The blade sank up to the hilt in the shaman’s throat, killing him in seconds and silencing him. Seth pulled back and let him drop to the ground, then scanned the area as he sheathed his knife and pulled his rifle back into his hands. His left shoulder had a deep ache in the joint.

“Valkyrie One,” came Brett’s voice. “Weapons hot. Engage if within fifty meters.”

“Roger. Weapons hot.”

“Valkyrie Two, spells hot.”

“Roger. Spells hot,” came Vic’s voice.

“Wizard, standby to engage.”

“Got it,” said Jessica.

“Odin, I need movement, over.”

“Prime One is moving straight for you. There is no movement inside the building, over.”

“On my mark, Valkyrie Two, snuff, Wizard engage. Odin, give me fifty meters.”

“Fifty meters in one mike, over.”

Everyone went silent. Seth crouched next to the building, hidden in the shadows as the shaman beside him stained the grass around him with spurts of blood from the two wounds in his neck. Seth’s heart pounded with adrenaline-laced blood through his body.

“Fifty meters in thirty.”

Seth readjusted his grip on the rifle and looked across the road. He could just make out Jessica standing among the trees.

“Twenty.”

Seth worked to steady his breathing.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

“Standby…” Said Brett.

“Three. Two. One. Fifty meters.”

“Engage,” growled Brett over the comms.

Seth heard a crackle of static over the line, and squinted, seeing Jessica moving her hands in a series of complex motions. The static cleared, and they all heard her voice, clear as day. “Digiti Mortis.”

A roar like thunder came from beyond the building in Brett’s direction, some loud explosion.

“I said nothing flashy,” came Brett’s voice.

“He’s got wards!” Snapped Jessica.

“Valkyrie Two, can you snuff?” Asked Brett.

“Forty meters and moving faster.”

Bridgette’s voice came over the headset. “Valkyrie Two is compromised.”

“Fuck! Everyone, weapons hot. Odin, spelljam one through three, Valkyrie One, Wizard, you have full permission to engage. Jeopardy, we’re going in, main entry. Move!”

Seth vaulted the railing and moved to meet Brett in front of the main door to the building.

BANG!

The loud crack of a powerful sniper rifle rang out through the trees and for half a second, Seth felt a phantom pain in his left knee. He shook it off as Brett set up in front of the door. “Breaching.”

Seth held his rifle at the ready as Brett hauled back and kicked the door in with enough force it ripped straight off the hinges and crashed into the lobby inside. Seth suddenly heard a whine in his ears that hadn’t been there before, a high pitch just beneath everything. Could he hear the spelljamming? He followed Brett inside, covering left along the main hallway as Brett covered right.

“Valkyrie Actual, movement on Prime Two, your direction.” Said Adams.

The door at the end of the hallway burst open, and Arc stood there, already shifting into bear form, dominating the room as he grew into his enormous grizzly shape and lumbered into a charge. Seth and Brett both fired, over and over, emptying at least a dozen rounds a piece into Arc as he charged them, but the shaman didn’t slow, and he didn’t deshift. He ran Brett over, sending him hard to the floor, and then swiped at Seth.

Seth threw himself backwards, crashing into the wall and getting off one more round, but missing anything vital enough to stop Arc’s advance.

BANG!

Arc stumbled like he’d been hit by a small car, and a spray of blood erupted into the air from his side as Bridgette placed a round through the front door and into Arc. Seth raised his gun and started firing again, squeezing off every single round as he strode forward, an intense anger bubbling inside of him that kept every round centered on Arc’s broad head. The shaman continued to stagger back. Seth let his rifle drop on the sling and drew his knife again with an ice-pick grip.

He stabbed, the point sinking into Arc’s neck.

He stabbed again, and again, and again, fur and blood flying. He felt claws scrape over his augment for a second, and then powerful jaws clamped onto it and flung him across the lobby. Seth’s left shoulder hit the deck first with an explosion of pain, and he rolled, the rifle jamming into his chin and filling his vision with stars, the knife now missing from his hand. Seth came to a stop, and saw at the top of his vision, another brown bear entering the lobby.

BANG!

Arc staggered as a second sniper round impacted him from behind. Seth scrabbled to his feet, but jaws clamped down around his augment and jerked back, sending him crashing to the ground again.

BANG!

Arc crashed into the wall and slumped to the ground, still in bear form. Seth tried to turn, but he couldn’t. He could feel the bear’s teeth clamping down hard on his leg, not damaging the augment, but keeping him pinned there. He heard a deep, terrifying warrior’s cry, and Brett surged forward, Seth’s knife in his hand. Point found skull with a sickening crunch, and the bear’s maw released Seth’s leg. Seth pushed back as the bear fell to the ground, dead and slipping out of their bear form. The shaman was a woman, blond hair now stained with blood from the jagged wound in the top of her skull.

“You’re pathetic,” hissed Arc.

They turned to see the shaman, now in human form, stripped to his waist and leaning against the wall, eyes screwed shut. Bullets suddenly ejected themselves from his body, clattering to the floor in a chorus metallic rings as the wounds they left closed before Seth and Brett’s eyes. Arc stood upright. “You can’t even kill me with cold-iron.” His pained face turned to a grin. “It’s a goddamn tragedy.” He slowly raised his hands, thumbs together, fingers extended.

His ribcage flayed open and all of his organs exploded at once from his torso in a shower of gore.

Seth and Brett stared with wide eyes and slack jaws as the shaman fell to the floor, dead. Their eyes moved to Jessica in the doorway, the light just enough to tell that blood already soaked her clothing. “They’re not high-classers,” she growled, striding towards Seth and Brett. “Your operator didn’t account for form-power. He’s a fucking class four.” She tugged her face-mask down and spat on the corpse. “Stand aside, I’m rescuing my boyfriend from these filthy casuals.”

A bear roared behind them and they heard its thundering charge. Seth and Brett moved out of the way as a black bear sprinted into the room, maw wide, teeth glistening—for half a second.

Jessica waved a hand, making an audible expulsion of breath as she did so, and the bear continued its forward momentum downwards as its legs flew off of its body in a spray of blood. Jessica shoved her other hand forward, fingers splayed, palm up.

CRACK!

The bear simply lay there, motionless. Jessica took a deep inhale and stepped around the bear, towards the doorway. A few steps from it, she raised her hands in an ‘X’ before flinging them down to her side. The pained, human-like cry of multiple bears echoed from the darkness beyond.

Brett turned as she walked through the door and spoke over the radio. “Valkyrie One, this is Valkyrie Actual. Status on Valkyrie Two.”

There was a long moment of radio silence. Seth heard another bear screaming from the rooms beyond.

Bridgette’s voice came through, her tone strained. “It was a hard compromise. She’s alive, but not responsive.”

Brett cursed loudly. “What happened.”

“Acute rebound,” said Adams. “Her spell and Wizard’s spell hit the same ward. One bounced, one broke.”

They turned to face the doorway as they heard a bellowing, rage-filled roar. It rang through the whole building, but cut short.

SQUELCH!

A wet slopping noise ended the cacophony.

“Keep her stable. We have a high-class caster, she might be able to save her.”

“Roger,” said Bridgette.

Brett raised his rifle again and motioned for Seth to follow him through the doorway. They passed through one hallway, and then other, following a trail of bloody shoeprints barely visible in the night. They came to a large, well-lit event room with a small stage on one side. The metallic stench of blood was strong here, forcing its way up Seth’s nostrils. Shamans both in and out of bear form lay scattered all around the room, slaughtered like used-up dairy cows—efficiently, yet brutally.

Jessica stood below the stage, some fifty feet away, her shoulders heaving with exertion as two shamans stood on the stage and hurled bolts of energy towards her. Each one, she met with a burst of brilliant light from her hands, but she looked like she’d been going through one of Seth’s selection training sessions. Brett nodded and they raised their guns to the unaware shamans.

FWIP! FWIP!

They both dropped to the deck, dead. Seth had hit the mark on his first try for once.

Jessica dropped to a knee and looked over her shoulder at them, her breathing turning to aggressive coughing. Seth rushed over to her, and as he got close, he saw she was hacking small sprays of blood. “Brett! We need-”

She shook her head, holding up a hand. “It’s…” She hacked blood into the crook of her elbow. “Normal. Right, Hunter?”

Brett met Seth’s concerned gaze and nodded. “It’s called Overcasting.”

“Not quite,” she said with a crimson grin. “This is just Overdraw. Got pissed. Took in more than I could hold.” She took Seth’s hand and hauled herself to her feet, shaky. She coughed up some more blood. Her skin had lost any of its healthy color, and every vein possible stood out on her forehead. She leaned heavily on Seth. “Can you… Make sure there’s no more?”

“Odin,” said Brett. “Enemy casualties?”

“All targets down,” said Adams.

“Where the fuck is Andrew?” Asked Seth.

The three of them looked around as Jessica continued to cough. There wasn’t a sign of him anywhere. Seth had a sickening thought as he saw the numerous dead bears that had yet to deshift. “Did they… change him?”

Jessica wheezed. “No, I know Andrew’s aura. None of those are him. In fact…” She wiped blood from her mouth. “I didn’t pick up his aura at all.”

“Odin?” Asked Brett. “Do a soul-scan. Class zero and one.”

“Roger. Scanning.”

“Oh, you idiots,” said Jessica, regaining some firmness to her voice. “He’s class five.” Seth’s eyebrows shot up at that.

Brett stared at her for moment, then relayed it over the radio. “Belay my last. Class five, apparently.”

“Uh. Roger.”

A brief moment passed in relative silence.

“Nothing,” said Adams.

“Roger.” Brett placed a hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “How soon can you cast?”

Jessica’s face flickered from pain and exhaustion to worry. “What are you talking about?”

“Vic is down. Your spells rebounded.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Jessica. She spoke to the team. “Odin, which fucking spell rebounded?”

“Class seven, necromancy.”

“You’re fucking…” She lurched into a run towards the door of the room, her feet unsteady. She tripped in one of the pools of blood and hit the floor hard. Seth was by her in a moment, but she was already pushing herself up. “Get me to their site, Seth. Now!”

Seth threw her to her feet as she stood and looped her arm around his neck. Brett jogged ahead of them. “Come on,” he said.

They ran out of the building, Seth and Jessica struggling to keep up with Brett’s jog as they moved up the road and towards the woods. They headed in, and the elevation immediately went up, the ground turning rockier, the bushes and shrubs turning to thorny brambles, grabbing at their legs. Jessica heaved for breath, though she’d stopped coughing up blood at this point. She bore a look of pained determination, her eyebrows scrunched hard together and a frown etched across her jaw.

After ten minutes of painful uphill striding, they reached the small clearing the other SUV was parked in. The back was open, and Vic lay flat in the center of it, her face even more icy-white than Jessica. Bridgette charged out of the back, one hand outstretched, finger pointing at Jessica. “You fucking bitch!” She shouted. “Who the fuck casts a class seven without ward-testing?”

Seth slapped Bridgette’s hand away before it could reach Jessica, and Bridgette hauled straight into a right cross that flat-out decked Seth. He stared up from the ground, dazed.

“Back the fuck down, Corporal,” shouted Brett.

“She fucking killed her, Brett,” growled Bridgette.

Seth pushed himself to his feet. Bridgette had Jessica’s collar in one hand and her left fist hauled back to strike. Brett stood beside them, eyes blazing. Behind them, a dark-skinned man—who had briefly identified himself as Green, the medic—in Hunter-33 armor sat in the SUV, tending to Vic. Seth came off his feet and lashed out with a push-kick.

He just meant to knock Bridgette back.

Instead, Bridgette took flight, raising off the ground, folding in half. She snagged on the hood of the SUV, and flipped backwards, rolling over her head and hitting the ground on the other side. Seth and everyone stared for a moment before Brett bolted around the car. He paused at the hood, and pointed to Jessica. “Fix Vic. Now.” He rounded the rest of the way and knelt down, out of sight, as he checked on Bridgette.

Seth followed behind Jessica as she moved into the back of the SUV’s lengthways seating. Green moved aside for her as she crouched over Vic’s lifeless body. “Vitals?” She asked.

“Pulse is about ten beats per minute,” he said. “Core temperature is way, way, way down.”

“Right.” She pulled her cross out of her shirt, and held it between her hands like a monk praying. “Don’t let that crazy bitch do anything to my body.”

Jessica fell to the floor of the SUV. Seth moved to catch her, and let her down slowly beside Vic. “What the hell?” Asked Seth.

“Did Wizard just exfil?” Came Adams voice. “I’m not picking up her aura anymore.”

Seth replied. “She just… Slumped.”

“Overcast?”

The medic spoke. “Negative. I think astral.”

“Roger.”

Green raised his eyebrows and looked at Seth. “Well, now, we just wait and, like she said—keep Brig away from her. Ah, speak of the devil.”

Bridgette and Brett rounded to the back of the SUV. Bridgette wore an inscrutable mask of rage. She stared Seth down. “A lot of nerve to-”

“Shut the fuck up, Brig,” said Green. “She’s crossed over for your teammate.”

“Like that’s a big fucking risk for a high-class user,” she growled.

Brett clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Green can’t do shit for Vic right now. You should go cool off. Right now.”

She shrugged his hand off. “Yes, Sergeant.” She stalked away to the edge of the small clearing and stared out into the night. Seth reached over and felt Jessica’s pulse. Like Green had described Vic’s, it was faint and weak. Maybe one beat every few seconds. Her skin was already turning to ice, and getting even paler than before. “What do you mean, crossed over?” Asked Seth to Green.

The medic rolled his tongue around his mouth as he searched for a response. “I think the best term would be astral projection. I wondered if Vic had done that as a precaution, but I don’t know what she got hit with. Whatever it was, it was high-class, and her body flew back almost across the whole clearing. When I got to her, she was like this. I know she’s been to Gateway training, but to phase that fast…” He made a low whistle. “Hell of a safety net if she can though. Were you tracking she could do this, Tib?”

Brett shook his head. “No, man. She hasn’t had to use Gateway training since she left the school. That was what? Two years back?”

“It was before our little adventure in the Arctic.”

“Ice devils are a disaster, not an adventure. I hate Hell missions.” Said Brett.

“How long is she going to be like this?” Asked Seth as he stared at Jessica with a veil of concern over his face.

“Soul retrieval takes a bit,” said Brett. “If she’s nearby? Less than an hour. If she’s not, well…” He looked at his watch. “She’s got five hours.”

“Five until what?”

“Daylight.” Brett pressed his lips together. “I can’t project myself, but…”

Green cut in. “If you don’t have an anchor, some magical object to keep a tether to your body, your soul gets cut off and you’re basically a ghost. I don’t know about Jessica,” he said, “But I know Victoria most certainly doesn’t have an anchor.”

Brett crossed his arms and nodded.

“What about getting out of here?” Asked Seth. “Don’t we need to get away in case the police arrive?”

Brett gave a frustrated shrug. “I’ll blow cover if we do. It will be a mess, but it’s better than moving them. Best as those of us who can’t project understand it, you can twist and tangle up the path back to their bodies if we move them much more than a few meters.”

“So we just wait?” Said Seth.

“Yeah,” said Brett. “We wait.”

The night stretched on.