DOUBLE DUTCH ▲ KILLJOYS

Beneath the bruise-brown tobacco stains, my fingertips are the blue of a blind man's eyes. My whole body is in harmonic, trembling with the cold no matter how much I try to force myself to still. The night air is so raw it stings on bare flesh, which is no good for my randy band of renegades, who curse into the wind and pull their thin black scarves tighter around their ears. They draw in around me, for the dual purpose of hiding my work and preserving heat through contact. There's no discomfort amongst us when it comes to keeping close; each understands that we work as one body, every soldier a limb, organ and cerebral segment, all at the same time. We function as one. No man is severed off, none a traitor to the others.

The paper stencil curls at the corners as I try to hold all four edges up against the large, grey wall of the hospital. Here, the shadow cast by the Dracs' main forces becomes hazy, and we can get away with more. It's the penumbra of Battery City, perhaps not the perfect location, but close enough for us to make our mark, and make it matter. Behind me, the click-clack of one shrouded companion fiddling with the spray bottle reminds us all of the seconds ticking past. We need to move faster than this. I shift in my heavy boots, and bite the inside of my cheek to stop my teeth chattering, desperately reinforcing the facade that I'm impenetrable. I'm The Girl, which truly means I can't act like one.

The spray paint itself is a custom mix by our own Doctor Death, a blend of supplies from within the District and without which is practically untraceable through customer records of any store. Somewhere between the red of rage and lunar eclipse, it's certainly striking, and as water-resistant as it gets. I spread my fingers and duck away from the stencil, now adhered precariously to the wall, waiting for my ally to finish the task.

It's a dangerous and difficult game that we play here - fox-trot, hopscotch, double dutch - where our companion and abjudicator is Death. One wrong foot is followed by a twisted ankle, a dislocated knee cap, a broken femur and the whole structure of our cause comes crashing to the concrete floor of a Draculoid cell. It's imperative we stay alert. Prepared. Efficient. And, above all, totally synchronised with each other's actions and reactions.