I'm not entirely sure what happened. All I remember hearing were gunshots, scuffling of shoes on concrete, grunting, and someone yelling, "Claude, look out!"

An arm wrapped around my neck, yanking me backwards. My neck constricted under mounting pressure. I gulped, saliva barely squeezing down my throat.

"Ah!" I choked out. Cold metal pressed against my temple.

"Everyone freeze, or he gets it." It was the British man speaking. What happened to my safety being of the utmost importance?

"Claude..." someone muttered from across the room. I assumed it was Raven, exasperated since I was unsuccessful at the one job I had been given—to not get caught. It's not my fault. I ran as fast as I could!

I scanned the room. Raven stood inches from the female gang member, gun in hand. Falcon and Parrot had their fists beared, ready to take on the male in the black jumpsuit. Cougar had a table lifted over his head, aimed... Oh great. It's aimed directly at me. I could feel the metal crashing down on me. Imagine the look on the doctor's face when he had to write 'death by table' on my death certificate.

Slowly, Cougar lowered the table to the ground. Raven gun's thumped on the ground. Falcon and Parrot relaxed their stance. My life is more important to them than evading capture again, I realized. Now I really felt bad.

Our only hope rests in Jordan. He got away...I think.

"Don't try anything," Boyd said. "This fellow is acting as my shield. Anything you do to me will first go through the spineless sea sponge first."

"He-!" I tried to say 'hey,' but he applied more pressure to my neck, suffocating the words. I gasped for air, but none could pass in or out of my lungs. Pain crushed in my esophagus. This is it. I'm going to die. I'm going to choke to death.

Red stars flooded my vision. I closed my eyes. Am I on my way into another world right now? Is this what it feels like to pass from life to death?

I snapped back to reality as Boyd yelled directly in my ear. "What's going on? Who turned the light out?"

He loosened his grip on my throat. I sucked in as much air into my lungs as possible. The stars started to dissipate, and I opened my eyes to pitch black.

Boyd started to pull me to the side, still with me in a choke hold. My shoes scraped against the ground, resisting the motion.

"Drop him," a voice declared.

My throat released. I collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

"Nobody move, or your boss gets it!"

In the dark, I could faintly see amber eyes sparkling. Calico saved me! She must have her knife at his back of something.

I wondered how she had managed to find Boyd in the darkness. I couldn't even see my hands. She must be part-cat or something like that.

"Are you okay, Claude?" It was Parrot talking now.

"I'll be fine," I croaked. I rubbed my throat. I hope my throat isn't bruised. How embarrassing would that be!

"Cougar and Falcon have his assistants under custody," Raven said.

"I grabbed Boyd's gun," Calico said.

"Good. Tie them up. Claude, you need to turn the electricity back on. We've got everyone we need under custody."

"But I can't see," I protested.

"I have my mini flashlight," Parrot said. A tiny stream of light flicked on. When Parrot said mini, he really did mean mini. The flashlight was about the length of my index finger, and had the circumference of a quarter.

"That tiny thing?" I asked.

Parrot shrugged. "It'll do the job. Come on."

I pushed myself to my feet and hurried after Parrot. The thin beam of light was just enough to see the path in front of me. The power box was on the wall just around the corner. A tangled mess of red and blue wires spilled around a red lever.

"Restore the power," Parrot said.

I just stared at the power box. You expect me to magically know how to fix this? Don't you know that every power system is different? I could get electrocuted if I don't know what I'm doing!

Contrary to what I had so naively believed, dangerous tasks were not yet behind me. I was expected to turn the lights on or die trying. I stepped forward towards my doom. My eyes skimmed the wires. Maybe I should just try plugging random stuff until something works.

Did I face the risk of electrical shock? Of course! Did I have a better plan? No.

I eyed the red lever. It reminded me of the classic, red button that people are warned against pressing. It was like it could make everything explode or something. Yet it seemed like a safer place to start before I messed with the wires.

I grasped the metal lever and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body tensed as I pulled it down. The room hummed to life, light shining in front of my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see that darkness had scattered.

Phew! For the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours, I was relieved that I didn't die.

Parrot flipped his flashlight off and shoved it in his pocket. "It's handy for emergency situations."

It's so tiny that I would have lost it by now.

I strolled into the main room to find Boyd and his two minions tied up on the floor. They were completely bound, their arms and knees tucked against their chests. I guess Raven is taking extra precautions to make sure that they don't break free.

"All done, boss," Cougar said. I looked up to see him casually flipped his gun around his finger.

I didn't like how careless he was being with that gun. At any moment, he could accidentally pull the trigger and kill us all. After all this time of facing life threatening circumstances, I better not die from someone carelessly flipping a gun.

"Good. It looks like we have gotten way more than we bargained for. We have a direct confession from Boyd to being involved in the criminal ring, we have him in custody, and we have access to all of the records of people they have been selling drugs to due to the computer upstairs. And we have Mayhad and Senator Nelson..."

"How did you get Nelson?" Boyd interrupted.

"We got permission from the U.S. government to check his computer. It really was foolish of him to have incriminating files of information on his government issued computer."

"He did what?" Boyd fumed.

"Yup, right there on his computer. You're sunk, and you know it."

Boyd glared at Raven, but said no more.

A loud ringing echoed in the warehouse. Raven pulled out his phone.

"Hello? Yes, this is Raven. In how much time? Twenty minutes? Wow, you're ahead of schedule. No, it's fine. Probably better to be early rather than late. We'll have everything ready. Over and out." Raven turned to the rest of us. "I just heard from our contact. She said that she'll be arriving in twenty minutes, so 11:40 p.m."

"Wow, she's ahead of schedule," Cougar commented.

"Better than being behind schedule. Alright, listen up. I need you to round up all of the drugs in this warehouse so we can properly dispose of them at FBI headquarters. We also need to grab anything that is incriminating and find Jordan."

"I'm right here," Jordan announced. He strolled into the room with a large-screened computer in his arms. "Here's the computer, hacked and passwords disabled."

He set it down on a nearby table. Jeez, I would have fainted from exhaustion if I had tried to carry that thing.

Raven grinned. "You haven't lost your touch."

"Never have, never will," Jordan said. His face grew somber. "But I'm never going back to the past."

"Of course not," Raven agreed. "Heck, we'd even offer you a position in our crew if we could."

Jordan's face brightened. "Really?"

"Really. We have an opening for a tech person. Boyd's men killed Shark."

"Yeah, I remember Boyd mentioning that earlier."

"We almost had the gang cornered, too. You know how our missions often depend on hacking and technical expertise. His death was a game-changing setback. We had to go completely back to the drawing board. That's when we started looking for you."

Jordan sighed. "I'd love to help you guys out, but I doubt the justice system would be very lenient with me."

"They wouldn't. You got away with thousands of dollars of theft."

"I did pay it back. I paid back everything I stole and more once I got a stable job."

"Well, I'll look into it. Maybe we can work something out."

"You mean I have to go to prison?" Jordan cringed. "I wouldn't mind it so much...but my wife and kids."

"But you know that serving a just sentence is the right thing to do."

Jordan chewed his lip, staring at the ground. I couldn't even imagine what he must be going through.

Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion hit me. The world spun around me. My legs wobbled, incapable of keeping me upright. I fell forward, crashing into another person.

"Woah there. You okay?" I couldn't register the voice. My eyelids grew heavy and everything went dark.

***

Frigid water splashed on my head.

"AHHH!" I screamed. I bolted upright to find myself on the floor of the warehouse. Ew, this is so gross! Imagine how many germs I've been sleeping on! Has this place ever been cleaned?

Cougar and Parrot stood on either side of me, staring at me with annoyance.

"Dude, you seriously have a problem," Parrot said. "Why are you always falling asleep?"

I'm the one with the problem? Are you kidding me? Sleep is a normal bodily function that every person on this planet needs to survive. The real problem is with you. When do you sleep?

A chill ran down my spine, but this time it was due to the water, not terror. My soaked clothes clung to my skin. My dry clean only blazer is really done for now.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"To wake you up, of course," Cougar said.

"Why didn't you just shake me awake and nearly break my arm again? Why did you need to dump an entire bucket of frigid water over my head!" I seethed through gritted teeth.

"I tried to shake you awake, but it didn't work," Cougar said.

Maybe that's a sign that you should JUST LET ME FREAKING SLEEP!

"Hey, look on the bright side!" Parrot chimed in. "At least you're awake now."

It would only be the bright side of things if the sun were shining in the morning. It would only be the bright side of things if it weren't midnight.

He was partly right, though. I wasn't falling asleep now that a bucket of ice was dumped over my head.

I sighed. "And what's so important that you would need to wake me up for?"

"It's time for you to go home," Parrot said.

"Oh." Okay, you have just cause.

"Do you want to go back to sleep again?" Cougar said, a grin creeping onto his face. "Spend the night here in this warehouse?"

"No, thank you," I said. "I'll go home." Parrot reached down and helped me off the floor. I headed towards the door, but paused. "Is everything taken care of? Like with the evidence?"

"Yup! We turned everything over to our contact five minutes ago. Raven, Calico, and Falcon already left with the contact from the FBI, but we stayed behind to make sure that you got home. A cab is waiting outside, just tell them the directions to your home and he'll take you there."

"Thank you," I said. "Uh, what about Jordan?"

"Jordan decided to go to FBI headquarters with Raven," Parrot explained. "He's turning himself in to the authorities."

"He is?"

"Yeah, he felt like it was the right thing to do. He's hoping that he can get a lighter sentence since he made such a drastic change to his life and paid back everything he stole, but he wanted it to be the Court's decision."

"Oh. Well that's, uh, noble of him."

"Yeah."

"I'm, uh, sorry...for all of the trouble I caused," I said slowly. "I honestly thought you were the bad guys."

"Don't worry about it," Cougar said. "Actually, it kind of worked out for the best. If it hadn't been for you, Boyd probably wouldn't have been at the warehouse tonight, and we would have had to go on a wild goose chase to track him down."

"Oh...well that's good to hear. If you ever, er, need anything, let me know...just maybe have it involve less guns, and knives, and other stuff that's scary. And also don't give me a deadline...or make me stay up late at night."

"Good to know," Cougar laughed.

"Well, bye, I guess."

"Bye dude," Parrot said.

"Bye Claude."

I walked from the warehouse to the parking lot outside. A cab was waiting right in front, the pale yellow barely visible in the darkness. I breathed in the fresh air. Freedom. That's what freedom smells like.

I opened the backseat door to get in, but froze. There was another person sitting in the cab. She twirled a platinum blonde curl, a huge smile on her lips.

"Hi Claude," she said.

"Jamie?" I asked. What's going on here? I looked back at the warehouse, but Cougar and Parrot were still inside the building.

"I wasn't expecting to see you here," she said.

"Yeah...was this set up?"

Jamie laughed. "I don't know. I just know that I was on my way home from working late when my cab driver got a call asking him to pick up another person. He came here and the next thing I knew, you were walking out of that building."

"Look, mister, I got a busy schedule," the cab driver barked from the front seat. "Either get in the car or don't but don't hold me up."

I slid into the car, still numb with shock. I handed him a slip of paper with my address on it, and he drove off.

Jamie batted her eyelashes at me. "Claude, don't you recognize me?"

My brow furrowed. "No..." Now felt like a good time to bring up the plastic surgery. I needed to know why another person had my face, even though I was mildly terrified of her reasons. "Uh, I have a question. Why did you make Jordan Bledou's face look like mine?"

Jamie froze in place, a deer in the headlights. "Y-you know about Jordan?"

"Yeah, I met him today. In fact, someone mistook me for Jordan at the beginning of the day, which caused a whole slew of problems..." I trailed off as Jamie lifted her hand to her mouth.

"Oh, Claude, I am so sorry! I never intended any of that!"

"But why on Earth would you model someone else's face after mine? In fact, how do you know what my face looks like in the first place? I've never even met you before!"

Jamie shook her head like I was an ignorant child. "Oh Claude, let me tell you a story."