‘Tomorrow morning’ meant 2:30 am, a fact that Sid only told me around midnight. I shifted uncomfortably in the middle seat of the car, trying to get the seatbelt to rest where it wasn’t on my bruised collarbone. At least I’d told Dotty this time. Well, I’d told her it was a late-night training session, which was only half a lie.

“This is your first op, so it’ll just be a ride-along. You’ll stay in the car, we’ll execute the plan, and then you can join us for the next one.” Addie had said. “Don’t freak out, and things will go just fine.”

I fidgeted with the ring he’d given me, it was too large for even my middle finger, so I spun it with my thumb. “You won’t need it,” he’d said, “but I’ve charged it up, just in case.”

The others made their final checks, Sid and Jodie cleaned their weapons, a rifle and a handgun, both extremely illegal; Addie, sat directly on my right, knocked back two energy drinks while he put on more rings, to a total of five or six, and blinked as if he’d seen a bright light. Now that I knew how magic worked, I could see just how often he used it. A skull with small ruby eyes sat on his left middle finger, and three braided gold bands adorned the ring finger. They put on masks, Jodie, in the passenger seat, wore a featureless black faceplate that covered her mouth and nose, Sid was driving, she had on a balaclava under a hoodie, and Addie wore demon mask, dark red fibreglass or ceramic, something hard, with the horns sawed off. Jodie clearly thought it was distasteful, but it fit the rest of his outfit, which looked like a comic book. Business-casual, a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up revealing tattoos on his arms, an ourobouros wrapping around one forearm and an octopus on the other, and tapered trousers. He wasn’t even wearing boots.

A voice crackled through my earpiece, Katrine.

“Green grass. Orpheus, confirm.”

“Doing just fine, Argus” Addie responded, with a smile.

“Panzer, confirm?”

“Red Ferrari, Panzer is going.” Sid didn’t pause her examination of her rifle in the slightest while she answered.

“Guthrie?”

“Copy, I’m ready.” From Jodie.

“Stray? How’s your first night out?”

I put my finger to my earpiece, “This is Stray, uh, blue sky, I’m doing good.” Addie had finally explained what the code was. You said a colour and an item that matched that colour, if the colour started with a consonant it meant that the person was safe, if the colour started with a vowel it meant they were in some sort of unsafe situation, and if the colour was yellow, that meant danger. He also told me that if someone ever mismatched the colour and the item, that meant immediate danger and to drop everything immediately.

“Glad to hear it, sit tight and everything’ll go smoothly.”

“Copy that” seemed like the right thing to respond with, but I still felt slightly awkward saying it.

‘Stray’ hadn’t been my idea, Sid had given me the codename when we left the shop, something about the possibility of people listening in and finding our names.

“Everyone remember the plan?” Katrine-slash-Argus asked. She’d told me to think with codenames while we were on missions so I didn’t screw up.

“Ram the truck into the wall, put the guards out, grab the payload, drive off into the sunset. In and out in thirty seconds” Guthrie replied.

“Good enough for me. RWHS are gonna be passing you heading north in… thirty seconds”

Panzer put the car in reverse and drove further into the side road, which joined at a T-junction to the road that the van would be coming down.

“Twenty seconds till go time.” came Argus’ voice, right on cue. I hadn’t noticed I was counting. Sid put the car in drive and started moving it forwards.

“Ten.” the realisation hit me and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before. Panzer’s plan involved ramming into what was almost certainly an armoured car to knock it off the road. We would be crashing into a heavily armoured truck.

“Five.” We were in a Subaru. Panzer was speeding now, and Orpheus rooted around near his feet.

“Orpheus?” Jodie, Guthrie, asked, concerned sounding.

“Found it!” Orpheus grabbed a metal disk, lifted himself up so that he was standing, with his torso out of the window, held the disk up with one hand and punched through it with the other, just as a heavy black van came into view and Argus’ voice crackled through my earpiece, “Contact!”

A the air rippled like a mirage or the heat over a hot barbecue, extending from his fist and snaking through the night till it hit the armoured van and threw it against the wall where it crumpled like a cheap toy.

Wordlessly, Guthrie and Panzer unclicked their doors and stepped out, moving towards the van, now on its side, Panzer moving like an SAS officer with some kind of rifle and Guthrie with a pistol in one hand, her other crossed underneath, it looked as if she’d be holding a torch for light, but it was her ringed hand

Orpheus rubbed his eyes, I hadn’t noticed but he’d collapsed into his seat next to me.

“Lesson three, using magic takes it out of you. Not as much as loading it, but enough of it can hit you pretty hard.” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a very thin ring, made out of a paperclip.

“If this kills me” he muttered under his breath, “Tell Guthrie I’m haunting her ass.” He put it under his mouth and crunched, and immediately his eyes widened and his back straightened. “Shit. okay. Stay here, don’t get up to any trouble.” He got up and jogged after the other two.

“SOS signal’s been sent, they’ll have a team out in under three minutes, which means we have less than five to be out of here.” Argus sounded unphased.

“Driver and passenger are both out cold, Guthrie is working on the door.”

Guthrie was prying on the doors with a crowbar. “Which would be a lot easier,” she grunted, “if Orpheus hadn’t turned the van into a fucking accordion.” With a final strain of effort, one of the doors snapped off, and Guthrie had to take a few steps back from her own effort.

It was a good thing she did too because the roar of bullets would have caught her midsection if she’d had better balance. From my spot in the car, I saw the armoured helm of one of them peak out before Panzer shunted the door closed with a flick of her hand. The figure was in the way, and their midsection was crushed in between heavy metal.

“Fuck, abort, abort right now! Chatter says there’s a team 30 seconds out.” Argus in my ear, I almost jumped at the sound.

“Negative” Panzer said, “we have live enemies. Orpheus!”

“I’m here, I’m here.”

“Get on top of the van, on the count of three, open the doors, Guthrie, you and I start shooting.”

“Confirmed.” he clambered up.

My eyes were glued to what was happening, but headlights in the corner of my eye grabbed my attention. Another van, barreling toward us.

“Uh, guys? Reinforcements are here, they’re coming up on my left, south, even.”

“Shit,” Orpheus sounded stressed, “Panzer we need to abort.”

“Negative. We aren’t losing the payload.”

“Panzer-”

“Open the fucking doors.”

Orpheus made a pushing motion and I saw the doors shoot open below him as if a bomb had gone off inside, and in the same second Guthrie’s hand shot out and I heard the crunching of metal and a few screams, not through the earpiece, as Panzer fired into the van. Three seconds was all it took, but it felt like longer. The other van was approaching, slowed by the narrow road but close. Guthrie slipped into the van while Orpheus slid down, next to Panzer.

The second van pulled up, and immediately figures started to pile out. Orpheus grabbed one of the armoured doors and pushed it, putting it between them and the figures.

Panzer peeked round the door and starting shooting, dropping one of the figures. Two more came forward, and a third had peeled off and was moving towards me.

I lowered myself into the foot space and squeezed my eyes shut. Magic. I could use magic, that wasn’t a question, it wasn’t a hypothetical, I could use magic. I didn’t sound convincing, but I imagined a wave of the same stuff that the others had used, a wave of force. I squeezed the ring and thought of nothing else.

The door opened, and I made a swatting motion, my eyes still closed. I didn’t open them, I didn’t feel anything except tired, I’d failed, and I steeled myself for the sound of the shot that would kill me.

But the shot never came, and when I opened my eyes there was nobody there. I looked over to the van that Addie had hit, and a figure was lying on top of it, sitting against the wall the van leaned on, their neck coming to rest at an odd angle.

In the next moment, the other three were back in the car, Panzer started driving before Orpheus had finished closing the door, and I was still in the foot space.

“They’re following us!” Guthrie yelled, tossing a metal briefcase into the back, as I dully clambered back into my seat, pulling the door closed.

“Guthrie, Rifle!” Panzer kept her eyes on the road, letting Jodie take the gun, I stared out. Everything seemed distant. Even as I felt myself take cover behind my seat under Addie’s orders, it felt like a dream. Jodie started shooting, the shots were a dull thud next to me, the glass of the rear window breaking with every shot Jodie took sounded like hard candy cracking. I was sure that everyone was shouting orders at each other, but I couldn’t hear any of them. I didn’t notice Addie talking to me till he pulled his ring off my hand, leaned out of the window, and made a pulling motion. Another crunch, like a tin breaking, stopped the incoming shots, and after that, the screaming died down. It was nearly two hours till I said another word.