Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Let's do this"
Nathan sprung back to reality when Bain spoke. He was alone in the car, but he had almost forgot he had an earpiece lodged up in his ear.
Dallas. That had become Nate's new alias in this little project of a crew he was trying to assemble. So many years of laying low from the Chicago syndicates had changed his way of thought: Constantly watching his own back was getting old, and he realized he wanted- no, needed something different. Bain named it a "criminal mid-life crisis". Many criminals face trouble in their criminal careers. Many either change their ways or end up in jail, or shot. And so, Bain and Dallas met. Or rather, Dallas met Bain, after a strange text message arrived on Dallas' phone, and the two of them started talking to each other.

Dallas has always been brilliant. A cool head had guided him through a lifetime of crime. He started low as a thug for the mafia and quickly rose the ranks as it became clear he was meant for greater things. The mentors he learnt from often were the people employing him. And after witnessing the capo above him get caught trying to betray the boss, he started brewing a similar plan for himself. It involved setting up a conflict between both his and the rival syndicate so that they'd start a war with each other. Eventually, he'd end up as the boss' right hand, and in one precise stroke, he'd cast both him and the rival boss down, proclaiming himself the head of both syndicates, taking everything for himself. Of course, none of that came to fruition; he was caught halfway through the preparations, and had to flee before they could kill him.
This is somewhat of the reason why Bain had picked Dallas as the leader for this project of his. Bain knew that Nathan was both skilled and out of options: if Bain was capable of tracking him down, what could assure him the mafia could not?

Back to the present, Dallas sat in the car. Many months of planning, scouting, measuring, training, and many other things had led to this. The First World bank, a building sitting placidly in the center of New York City, tightly guarded by guards, doors, and a lightning fast response time from the NYPD. Oh, the bureaucracy, how it disgusted Dallas.
Dallas looked down on himself. A two piece suit concealed a ballistic vest; under his left arm, a handgun with a suppressor, resting in its holster; and under his right arm, rested a wicked clown mask, painted with the flag of the United States of America. Nate may be a criminal, but he is a patriot: in his mind, it was very clear what’s wrong with the country, rich people had too much power, and the weak were so numb to it that constantly getting robbed out of their possessions wasn't considered something to kick up a fuss about. On the other seat, lied a dark gym bag. Inside of it, shotgun shells, magazines for the aforementioned pistol, an assault rifle, and magazines to feed it.
Bain had sorted him and the other three with excellent weapons; gone were the days of running around with baseball bats and tire irons: these were military grade M4A1 rifles and Beretta pistols. Word of mouth said they served all the way out in the middle east.

Dallas grabbed the bag, threw the sling over his shoulder, shut his eyes and let out a deep breath.
The door opens, his shoe hits the ground and as he crosses the street, Bain starts to walk him through the plan once again.
"Right, begin phase one. First step, reunion: as you cross the street, search for two sharp dressed men such as you. One of them wears a dark suit, red tie, nearly bald, bearded, and blue eyes, the other one, a gray suit, blue tie, black, and a short beard. When you see them, give 'em a nod, they'll nod back".
Dallas stepped into the sidewalk and looked onwards: against the wall of the bank, stood two men fitting such description, they were staring at him; Dallas nodded, the men nodded back, and as they turned around they whispered into earpieces of their own.
"That's Wolf and Chains, you will see them again inside of the bank. Give them a minute, and then walk in yourself".

A minute after, Dallas walked inside the bank. As he passed the doorway, he could physically feel the atmosphere change, with his eyes, he scanned everything: The lobby was spacious, two great columns to the sides, and at the other end of the room, the main counter. The bulk of civilians were gathered over there. On top of it, a balcony, with a man overlooking the lobby, Dallas easily identified him as the manager.
There were four guards spread around the room, they weren't looking at him. Yet.
To his right, there were some couches. Bain spoke to him.
"On the sofas, there's a man sitting there, he has a ponytail, navy blue suit, british accent. He will shake your hand, his name is Hoxton".
Dallas walked over to the sofas, the man turned his head slightly, as if acknowledging the heister's presence. He stood up, and as Dallas approached him, he reached out a hand.
"Dallas, I presume?" he whispered. Dallas set the bag down between the sofas, and shook the brit's hand.
"Yeah, I'm told you are Hoxton, right?" he whispered back. The man nodded.
"Well Bain, I'm here with Dallas, do we proceed?"
And suddenly, Bain's voice came through the earpiece.
"Affirmative, I'm opening the channel, you four can speak to each other from now on. Step two, we start the heist. Dallas and Hox are on crowd control, Chains and Wolf go after the manager, take his keycard, and go to the server room to retrieve the drill and the thermite."
A deep voice joined in- presumably Chains.
"What about our insider? I thought someone was gonna let us inside".
"About that- bad news is the insider bailed" Dallas and Hoxton shared a glance of worry. "good news is they left the drill and the cans of thermite in the copy machine in the server room. Find the manager and get his keycard. When you open fire, you'll have a little over two minutes before a patrol arrives, so make it quick“.
Hoxton looked down and contemplated the bag, and then said to Dallas.
"I reckon it's gonna be a shootout then" he made a pause as he surveyed the room "I can take on these two guards to our side, but those all the way at the other side I can't hit with my gun, do you have your rifle in there?"
"Yeah, it's inside. Locked and loaded, only gotta flick the safety off and I'm ready to go, where's your M4?"
Hoxton glanced around briefly and pointed at a briefcase laying in the sofa with his eyes. "It's inside, it was the only way to case the joint without raising suspicion. The stock's collapsed, and it's unloaded, so I'm relying on my pistol for the quickdraw. I was thinking, you reach down there and get your gun out, when you do, I'll shoot these two wankers on my right and you gun down the man by the column and the other one by the far wall, sound good?"
"Sounds about right" answered Dallas.
Then Chains added in "we're up here by the balcony, we'll get the manager when you guys open fire".
Dallas and Hoxton shared one last look, nodded to each other, put their latex gloves on their hands, and slipped their masks on.
And so it began.
The Beretta slid out of its holster and ejected two rounds. Both were headshots. The guard by the column stared wide eyed, scrambling for his gun, as he looked at Dallas, kneeling down on the floor, as he turned around and aimed his rifle at him. He let out a burst, and the man was no more. He then stood up and aimed down on his rifle, and let out a couple rounds on the other guard, who had gotten his handgun out and was taking aim at them. He didn't get a shot out. At this point, all the civilians were either staring horrified or crying out terrified at the four new bodies laying on the ground. Bain broke the sudden silence that had engulfed the room.
"Dallas! You got a guard coming from the room next to you! Drop him!"
The two heisters didn't at all acknowledge the civilians, as they were both hard at work. Dallas ran up to the column adjacent to him and trained his gun toward the doorway. Bain issued a similar warning regarding the doorway on the other side of the lobby. That room contained the access to the vault, many guards were to be expected from there. Hoxton was quick on his briefcase, he pulled the stock out, grabbed the one magazine inside the briefcase, loaded it in and trained his gun on the doorway. One by one they ran out, and one by one Hoxton shot them down.
Dallas got rid of his guard and jumped on top of a table.
"Listen up! This is a robbery! We want to harm no one! We're after the bank's money, not yours! Your money is insured by the federal government! You're not gonna lose a dime! Think of your loved ones! Don't try to be a hero. Just shut up, and stay down, and this will be over in no time!"
At this point, everyone was laying on the floor, Dallas stood on the table overlooking everyone, in the meantime, Hoxton had taken to shooting the four cameras surrounding the lobby, all single, precise shots, as was his established practice. Hox grabbed the bag and threw it over to the desk where Dallas stood, helped himself to some mags, then he took to tying up as many civilians as he could. When he ran out of zip ties, he took Dallas' and carried on. In the meantime, Chains and Wolf had dominated the top floor: Chains punched the manager and tied him down where he had stood moments ago, after taking his keycard, he and Wolf shot their way to the server room. Inside, they took both thermite cans and the drill from the copy machine.
The thermite cans were just gas cans with thermite paste. Thermite is a compound that burns at tremendously high temperatures, capable of melting through steel. Seeing as they were going to break through the ceiling of the vault, two cans' worth of the stuff was required, in addition to that, a heavy door separated them from the area where the vault was housed, for that, a drill had been engineered. Thankfully, all this was either packaged into a bag or tied with a sling, so they could easily carry these things.
Bain cut in to keep the course of the heist.
"Good. Assemble the drill at the vault door, keep breaking any cameras you see".
They all knew the steps of the plan, obviously. Bain repeating it was more like a manthra of sorts, focusing on both doing something and aiming a gun at something was made easier when the task at hand was packaged into bite-sized objectives.

Wolf came down the stairs. And into the vault access door. He set down his can of thermite, opened the duffle bag with the drill parts: One drill, check. One magnet to attach the device, check. One battery, check. One screen with a small computer chip to track the drill's status and progress, check.
Wolf attached everything and engaged the magnet. The drill latched into the door, and with the press of a button, the drill started to spin, and a small gear started to push the drill towards the surface of the door, so that the tip of the drill was always applying pressure. Truly an amazing creation from Wolf, the mad doctor of our newly formed crew. He watched with satisfaction as his creation spun away at the door.
As Chains walked out into the lobby, they were beginning to hear sirens approaching the bank.
"The police are here make sure to give 'em a warm welcome! Stop them by the entrance".
Chains put away his sidearm and, in what Dallas and Hoxton could describe as a magic trick, started to pull out his shotgun -a Remington 870- from the right sleeve of his pants.
"Wolf's also carrying his gun around like that?"
"Mine was in the bag with the drill" said Wolf, as he popped his head out from the doorway, with his Remington rested over his shoulders, and his arms wrapped around it.
A tire screech called everyone into attention.
"Dallas! The ammo bag!"
Dallas jumped down and tossed the bag to the two heisters by the doorway. He then joined Hoxton by the door, as they watched the police get out of their cars.
“You are completely surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”
Chains and Wolf had taken to fill their vests with shells for the shotguns.
“Step two, erase the security footage. Head over to the offices” ordered Bain.
“On it. Hoxton, on my six” Chains took up to the task. Wolf came closer to the door, next to Dallas.
As the pair got up to the server room, Hoxton got to typing Bain’s instructions into the computer, in the meantime, Chains stood watch. As he looked around, he started hearing some noises coming from a nearby office. As he looked inside, he saw some cables hanging outside the windows, presumably for some cops to rappel down.
“Guys, I think we are getting surrounded” muttered Chains.
“They got police cars all around the building, and swat vans closing in, a team is already on the roof. Watch out for flashbangs, don’t start blasting if you get stunned, you might hit a civilian”.
As Hoxton finished with the computer, gunshots came from the lobby: Dallas and Wolf had started firing at the oncoming police, forcing them back into the safety of their cruisers.
Chains took another look through the windows of the office: a S.W.A.T. team was setting a breaching charge on the window. Chains shot the man with the charge as if the officer was a clay pigeon, and caused him to fall off the cable. Other cable-bound officers peeked out and returned fire at Chains.

The other pair retreated back into the cafeteria as the police laid siege to the front door. The four reunited up the stairs and took positions overlooking the entrance. As the officers attempted to break through, or peek out, the gang would let out some rounds and convince them to take a step back, essentially creating some sort of no man's land in the doorway. A couple minutes later the windows of the cafeteria were blown up, opening many ways into the bank, the skylight above them too became a way in for the police, forcing them to back off into the inner hallways of the bank. As Wolf came back down the other set of stairs as he did earlier, he noticed the drill had stopped. The digital display showed that there was a good two minutes before the lock could be pierced. As he fixed it, Chains and Dallas came down and took cover in the metal detectors.
“Where did you two leave the ammo bag?” asked Dallas, worried about their supplies.
“It's over there in the corner, right next to the door” Wolf butted in.
Chains walked up the doorway, back to the wall so as to now expose himself to anyone in the lobby. As he grabbed the gym bag full of munitions, a smoke grenade covered the doorway. Chains quickly retreated to the safety of the metal detector’s wooden desk just as a group of swats walked in through the smoke. They were promptly gunned down by the two heisters, now also joined by Wolf.

Up until now, excluding the security guards, about fifteen policemen had died. Three died in the exchange between Dallas, Wolf, and the first responders, the one shot in mid-air by chains, five were shot and presumably bled out or at least were left gravely injured in the shootout by the cafeteria, a sixth had his helmet made fly by Hox as they retreated back to the Drill, and these last four right through the smoke. The rest of the gunshots were suppressing fire, or non lethal hits to the ballistic vests of the swats, either way, they were staying back, as long as they stood back, all was good.

Another 30 seconds later, and the drill got stuck again, making some awful noise. As Wolf got to fixing the drill, a bullet came out of nowhere and hit right next to where Wolf was an instant ago; a swat sniper had been set up on top of a building, and was shooting through a window high up in the wall. Wolf was alive by sheer luck, Dallas peeked out with his M4 and put an end to the sharpshooter, who dramatically fell off the side of the building.
Wolf collected himself and got to restarting the drill.
“Keep drilling you piece of shit!” Shouted Wolf. Nothing like shouting at an inanimate object to get it to do what you want it to. As an engineer, Wolf knew this better than anyone.
“Hey, how long is this gonna go on for? I don’t know if I can stall this group up here for much longer” asked Hoxton anxiously from the upper hallways, where he had been sitting, stopping anyone trying to break past the elevators.
“Just one more minute!” Wolf shouted back over the gunfire.
Dallas was starting to sweat. He was skilled with a gun, he had experience fighting other goons from rival mafias, but this was beyond him: It was bigger than any other hit he had ever been part of, a shootout while under a full scale assault from the police wasn’t something he knew if he was ready for.
“Short bursts people! Don’t let them take this room before we get through the door!” Yelled Chains out loud. This shook Dallas off his daydream, and had him concentrate back on the task.
“We need to look stronger than we are! Keep sending rounds out!” followed Chains. It was clear to Dallas that his crewmate, although many years younger than him, was very skilled when it came to combat tactics, perhaps he’d get a chance to ask him later.
Two other officers were injured in this back and forth, they fell on the doorway, and promptly bled out in front of the other officers, who desperately tried to reach a hand to drag them back to cover.

Fifteen seconds had passed, the trio was keeping the place locked down. All of a sudden Hoxton appeared from the stairs and joined his crewmates, and promptly got to recharge his ammo reserves, when all of a sudden he looked up and noticed something.
The room was as big as the lobby, separated by the desk with the metal detectors where they were taking cover, and in front of them, an office space with cubicles separated by glass walls. Beyond these cubicles were some great windows, similar to those in the cafeteria, and in the same spirit, an officer was setting some explosives to blow them out of the way. The safe spot they had made for themselves was about to open up like a swiss cheese.
Thirty seconds left.
Chains and Hox traded positions, seeing as Hoxton’s sharpshooting skills with the rifle were going to be a necessity to stop this new advance. Chains ran up the stairs just as the windows blew to pieces. And the cops started to pile on in groups through the windows. The short bursts were starting to lose effect, as they were equally under heavy fire from the police entry teams.
Fifteen seconds left.
Hoxton reloaded, but as he peeked out, a bullet came straight for his chest, knocking him down flat on the ground.
Wolf got down next to him to check him; he wasn’t injured, after all, the swats were employing submachine guns, from this distance, the pistol sized bullets lost a lot of power. Still, he had the air knocked out of him, and was having trouble standing up. Dallas peeked out to the side and saw some operators running up from the cubicles to a statue, where they immediately dove into the cover of the stone pillar holding the statue. Their chances were getting slim, if they could get away from this, it was gonna be close. That was when his mind made up an idea.
As he reloaded both his rifle and Hoxton’s, he told Chains to get himself down there with them once he gave him a signal. He then told Wolf to drag Hoxton over to the gate.
Five seconds left.
And so, Dallas, with the ammo bag slung over his shoulder, signaled for Chains to move, and dove out of cover to dump the mag out of his gun onto the crowd. Glass shattered, papers flew through the air, bodies hit the ground. The officers on the statue were about to swing out on Dallas, when Chains jumped down from the stairs and struck them down with repeated shotgun blasts. As Dallas turned around to run, Hoxton, now in the process of standing up by the metal door, took on the same technique as Dallas, and dumped the mag. Chains did a side step towards the gates as he simultaneously emptied the tube of his shotgun, picked up his thermite can, and ran through the gate right after his buddies.

The small hallway connecting the metal detector area with the pre-vault area made two ninety degree turns, meaning a portion of the hallway offered cover from the room they came from and from the room they were about to enter. The four took a breather, as Bain cut into the air.
“I’ve never seen anything like that, you got them running away!”
“I’d say we won the first round, right?” chipped in Hoxton.
“Very much, yeah. Take a breather, and reload your guns. This won’t last long, I’m catching some of their chatter, they’re getting the hostages out, you have at most a couple minutes.”
The group went on to grab more ammo from the bag; they had dug through half of their reserves already.
“Let’s begin phase two of the plan, getting inside the vault: go over to the rooms on top of the vault and empty the thermite in the meeting room, then light it up.”
Dallas turned the corner leading to the vault, ready to lead the charge onwards, only to quickly retreat back into the hallway as some bullets hit the wall beside them.
About 8 bank guards had their sidearms trained on the doorway.
“Fucking bank guards! Are we done with them yet?” he complained.
The four, letting out numerous gunshots into the room, steadily took the guards down, until they had free way into the heart of the bank.
Dallas looked around the room as they settled in their new lines of defense against the lawmen coming after them: many columns to the sides provided good flanking positions, and a central desk towards the end of the room provided an excellent position to fire back at attackers. He suddenly glanced at the corpses of the guards around the floor, and couldn’t help but think if they were going to suffer the same fate as those unlucky bastards. As he set down the ammo bag on the floor next to him, he watched as Chains and Wolf walked past him, towards the vault, and it reassured him; his crewmates were experienced.
A shotgun blast roared from beyond the hallway. Dallas peeked out and saw another guard lying dead at the other end of the room, Chains racked a round from his shotgun.
“Almost jumped me, guy went for the most obvious hiding spot. Keep on your toes, we may get ambushed again.” He warned as he loaded a fresh round onto the tube of his shotgun.
Dallas returned to the desk, standing watch for the next police assault.
Hoxton followed after the other two. The room with the vault was quite something: two hallways for entrance, black marble floors with red carpets all over it, busts and paintings on the walls. The access to the vault itself looked like walking through a red carpet, lavish stairs, with a small elevator. Likely for carts full of money. Hoxton got all giddy at the thought of it. He then leaned down on the railing and looked at the vault's doors and changed his song;
“Those are some doors there, glad we brought the thermite”.
Wolf and Chains walked into a meeting room, and poured the thermite all over the floor in its glorious viscosity. Hoxton, meanwhile, looked through the partially broken window -some of Chain’s shotgun blast impacted on the window behind it-.
The thermite was laid out generously in a circle next to the door to the room. This room sat on top of what would be the vault. Right in front of it was another room, similar to it, with another control panel. Similar to the one out front. The pair stood back out into the hallway. Making use of the broken window, Wolf took out a lighter, lit its flame, and threw it into the room. The compound violently burst into flames, scorching the walls around it.
“And now we wait for it to burn. Should take about... five minutes. Maybe six.”
“Gang, don’t forget about the cameras. If I can see you through them, so can they. Shoot them down”. Warned Bain. Not a dull moment while on the job.
As the trio took down the cameras. Bain came to them with another dreaded warning.
“Gang, I’m monitoring their chatter: another assault wave is incoming! They got heavy duty units on their way”.

Their new lineup was more organized: Dallas and Hoxton sat behind the counter while Chains and Wolf stood behind the pillars on the side, flanking with their shotguns. They had conveniently left the one camera that overlooked the hallway intact, but with the rest of the cameras gone, they wouldn’t see this one coming.
They sat there, waiting, trigger fingers almost itching from expectation. Bubbling noises came faintly from the meeting room. All of a sudden, stomping noises came from the hallway, then silence. Suddenly an arm quickly appeared from around the corner and rolled a smoke grenade into the room. The grenade started letting out its gaseous payload and soon, a cloud of smoke covered the entrance. Dallas and Hoxton started letting out bursts out into the smoke, a standard procedure at this point. Then Hoxton stopped firing, and in a moment of realization, he grabbed Dallas and brought him down behind cover.
“Wh-...what the hell are you doing?” Stumbled Dallas halfway to the floor.
“The smoke! They may have thermal sights! They can shoot us through the smoke if we are peeking our heads out!”
Bain then objected:
“Hoxton may have a point, I can see them from the camera, and they are just aiming straight at the smoke. The sights on their guns look like they have a little something to them. They aren’t behind cover though, Wolf and Chains could blind fire out of the sides and catch them off guard”
A better plan than no plan, Wolf and Chains slowly crept up to the corners of the hallway, but as they were about to blast into the smoke, Bain then shouted:
“Shit! Get back! There’s a shield going in!”
The pair, however, caught the words too late, as they blasted off into the smoke. A mix of metal noises and shattered glass came from the depths of the smoke. The two retreated back to the safety of the pillars. After a couple of seconds, the special unit with the shield finally came through the smoke, and stood defyingly in front of the now vanishing cloud of smoke.
The hallway’s walls had some grooves, big enough for someone to take cover inside them, and that’s what the operators were doing. In a very small space, about six of them had taken shooting stances, and had since started to lay down some fire to keep the two riflemen down.
“Wolf, move up to the wall, I’m gonna draw their fire, you shoot the shield in the back!”
“Got it!”
Chains and Wolf started to move from pillar to pillar, reaching all the way to the flanks of the shield. Chains shot a round off, most of it went into the shield, and the shield turned itself around to face him. As Wolf shot the shield in the back, the doors of the elevators located right next to him opened, and three heavy units jumped out. Wolf didn’t manage to both rack a new shell and spin around quick enough to beat the officer in front of him, and barely just managed to shoot him in his yellow visor, causing it to shatter into pieces. His gun did still go off, and while the recoil made the muzzle fly away, it didn’t stop three rounds from hitting him in the chest. Wolf fell down on the ground, the air knocked out of him.
The shotgun blast broke through the unit’s helmet, and stunned the unit behind him, as the three had ended up in a line. The third one, however, was still standing, he eyed wolf down, and turned around to face Dallas and Hoxton.
The other pair, however, hadn’t been sitting on their asses, as the heavy turned around, he saw Dallas’ barrel pointed up at him. Quick witted as always, he jumped at an opportunity when it came around.
“Put ‘em up!” he shouted.
The officer, baffled, didn’t know what else to do, so he obeyed.
“On your knees! Now cuff yourself!”
Full of a cold rage, he took the unit hostage just as they had lost a man, they had gained a hostage -a valuable trading pawn. This fight wasn’t exactly a game of chess, and neither there was time for mental monologues on what was best to do, or none of that bullshit. He had just lost a good man, and their chances had gone down drastically.
What he didn’t expect was for Chains to suddenly appear behind the desk with them:
“I’m out of ammo, guys” He started to dig through the bag “What the hell do we do with Wolf? He’s still alive over there!”
Dallas stopped his thoughts, he took a look at Wolf, who was still very much alive, and saw him move his head around, as if trying to look at his surroundings. Dallas then looked over the desk, many of the units that had taken cover in the hallway had either fallen dead or fell back to the cover of the hallway.
“Chains, was that all you over there?” Asked Dallas.
“I didn’t get them all, some of those were by Hox. But yeah, It took all of my ammo to push ‘em back” answered the heister.
Just as he finished the sentence. Bain chimed in to speak to them.
“Guys, there’s a new group of heavy units, and another shield, they’ll go in any second now”.
As he was finishing the sentence, another smoke grenade flew into the room, this time however, closer to the desk: The room was now split in two. It was clear they were trying to get a foothold in.
The three remained expectant, watching behind the columns, staying away from the smoke. Dallas took cover behind the hostage. They had scavenged his gun and hi s shells, it turned out it was also a Remington 870. It occurred to Dallas that it was from there that Bain had sourced the shotguns.
All of a sudden, the shield placed himself in front of Wolf, and from what he could see behind the shield, the swats were cuffing him. Dallas took a look at his hostage and thought of something.
“You take his mask off, and I’ll end this man’s life!”
The cops stopped moving behind the shield.
“If you leave our friend over there, and back off into the hallway, I’ll spare his life and send him walking towards you!”
Chains and Hoxton stared from the opposing row of columns, they were ready to gun down the swat team, but this had taken an interesting turn. Besides, they still had to buy themselves some time before they could jump down into the vault safely. And after a moment of silence, the police answered.
“We accept your terms. We will back off into the hallway, allowing you to get your teammate. In exchange, we expect you to allow the safe passage of our unit”,
The swat team then slowly retreated into the hallway, from where they couldn’t be seen.
“Get Wolf guys, I’ll tell you if they try anything, they backed off all the way into the metal gates. Your move Chains”.
Hoxton moved back into the desk, or whatever was left from it at least. He aimed down his rifle onto the hallway in preparation of what might come.
Chains kneeled down, and from his vest, he took out a shot of morphine. Soon, Wolf was feeling a lot better. Chains took a look at the wound, nothing serious, at worst, a couple broken ribs. Wolf got up, they had taken his shotgun, so he had nothing else but his pistol, resting inside his suit. It was for this that Dallas took the officer's shotgun. He knew they wouldn’t just allow for Wolf to keep a weapon against them. He then grabbed the hostage, Led him to the hallway, and sent him on his way.

With Wolf back in action, they had a moment to discuss their next move.
“Great job with that Dallas, I guess that makes it ‘heisters two, cops zero’, I almost can’t believe it myself” Bain complimented him.
“Yeah, that was amazing, how the hell did they agree to the deal so quickly?” Followed Chains.
Dallas then revealed his logic;
“It was a combination of them thinking Wolf was out of action, and not knowing Chains had medical supplies in his suit, aside from the fact that they took his shotgun. Perhaps they wanted to have their teammate back: not only to have him come back alive, but to hear him give out any info he might have on us. In addition, they are convinced they got us cornered. So this is just barely a delay to them. Not that any of that matters, even if they took Wolf's shotgun, we still got another one for him right here, courtesy of the hostage. And if anything, we still got an ace up our sleeve, they may not know we aren’t playing offense at all.”
“Yeah, we still have the vault to deal with, speaking of which, how long has it been? That floor's got to melt any moment now, right?” Followed Hox.
Wolf, however, had other news.
“Not exactly. The hole may open up an entrance, but don’t forget we are burning our way through walls of steel. It takes a lot of heat, and because of that, we are gonna need to give it a moment to cool off. I’m trying to come up with something. All the material that's melting away is gonna leave a pile of rubble, if you were to land on top of that, it would melt the soles of your feet right away. Then again, I saw a water dispenser in that security room over there, maybe I could use that to cool it off. In any case, we may be in for a couple more minutes of this.”
“Damn, I didn’t have any of that in mind.” This worried Dallas. If they had to repeat the entire fight again, they may not have as good of a chance as earlier: the elevator shafts still posed a threat in the way of entry points for the police.
“Look, I’ll head back over there, it should be almost done by now. I’ll call for you guys once it’s safe to jump down, just buy me some time.” Finished Wolf.
“Whatever you guys do, make it quick, I’m seeing movement in the hallways, it seems they evaluated their options and are about to act upon it: A new police assault is inbound.”

Wolf scurried out to the back as the other three took positions.
“Stall for time guys, get Wolf as much space as he needs.” Reminded Bain.
Guns locked, mags loaded. Dallas stood in the counter, while Hox and Chains were taking cover between the pillars closest to the counter itself. No point in risking another situation like the one minutes ago.
Dallas’ mask looked fierce. All their masks had the eyes open, so you could see the heisters stare you down while they aimed down their guns towards you.
And at a moment's notice, the shootout started. It began with both teams taking pot shots at each other. They attempted to roll yet another smoke screen in, but out of sheer luck, Chains had just let out a blast which impacted on the swat’s arm, causing the grenade to fall at their feet. Covering the entrance in smoke. A fortuitous coincidence, at that, because Wolf had just called for help; The hole was done, but it still had to be cooled down. So close, yet so far. As Chains went away, Hox and Dallas were left to fend off anyone who might try to walk on through the smoke. The shield from earlier was back, however, he had brought a friend, as it was now two shields who walked in. Maybe they heard chains running back and saw an opportunity to move in without risking their flanks. Either way, they were screwed. No real strategy to face off these two that didn’t imply some sort of risk. To make matters worse, the elevators on the left side of the room, which had remained untouched, opened up, presumably with officers lying in wait to jump through them.
“Guys, things are not looking good for Dallas and Hoxton, how long until you can jump down to the vault?” Asked Bain.
“We just got it solved, we’ve jumped down, it’s more or less safe to do so now, so get over here.” Answered Chains.

Dallas, Hoxton, and the two shields had been staring each other down for about thirty seconds. The shields presumably were sent to gather intel on them.
“Hoxton, what’s your name?”
“...what?”
“What do I call you?”
Hoxton hesitated for a moment. Your name isn’t something you give up so easily when you are doing something as legal as robbing a bank and killing cops by the dozens.
“You can call me Jim”
“Listen Jim, the situation is clear, these two asswipes are waiting for us to make a move, maybe they are making sure they don’t expose themselves to any traps we may have for them, maybe they are just waiting for us to just dump our mags on them so their boys can catch us with our pants down. In other words, if we don’t make it inside the vault right now, we are fucked, and so are Chains and Wolf.”
“What do you suggest we do then?”
“I can only think of one thing. We bolt it outta here to the pre-vault room. I then hang around the doorway and delay anyone who dares follow us in there while you get in the meeting room and cover me while I run over there.”
Hoxton then understood why Dallas had asked him his real name.
“And that’s the best plan we got? Lord, that sounds all kinds of wrong.”
“Yeah, I don’t like it either, but I can’t think of anything better than that with the things we got with us. On the count of three?”
The shields kept their staredown, kneeling down so as to cover their legs from danger. Dallas once more threw the sling of the bag on his shoulder. Ready to run with the ammo bag, now lighter than ever.
“Are you ready?”
“Three. Two. One. Run!”
The two of them got up and ran away down the hallway. It seemed Dallas had guessed right, they could hear the swat teams running into the room behind them. Dallas slammed into the wall as he turned around the corner and almost lost balance. Feeling as if he had them right behind, he let out a couple rounds into the hallway just in case. One of the shields had advanced and was yet again staring him down. Dallas, already sick of his shit, dumped the mag down the hallway. So many rounds made the shield lose his balance, and fell down to the floor, a shame that Dallas was done with his mag. Whilst he loaded in his last mag, he came to a realization. There were two hallways leading to the vault. If he was looking at only one shield, that could very well imply that the other one was moving through the other side.
At that moment, Hoxton had just vaulted over the broken window. Dallas started walking backwards while he let out rounds into the hallway. He wasn’t gonna wait for them to start rolling in from the other hallway.
Some operators started to peek at him, trying to get a shot in. Dallas wasn’t letting them, but he had until his gun went “click”. His sidearm wasn’t neither strong nor menacing enough to force them back.
“Dallas I’m in! Get out of there!”
The mag had just run out, and so had Dallas’ tolerance for that position. He turned around and took off towards the window. He could almost see as Hoxton’s bullets flew right past him, gunshots roared from behind him. He clenched his jaw even harder as he braced for the whiplash of pain when a bullet would hit him in the back. The ammo bag bouncing up and down, almost choking him with every step he took.
And at last, he flew over the window and landed on the floor next to Hoxton. Who immediately flipped the long table he was using as a cover. Not that it would stop rifle sized bullets from going through, but it could hide their movements.
The hole was right there, and the swats were all the way at the other end of the room. All they had to do was crawl through the burnt carpeted floor, and jump down.
“Guys! Jump down here! Asap!”
Dallas, still laying down on the floor, with bullets flying over his head, grabbed Hoxton by the collar, and threw him leg first down the hole. Faint British noises of discomfort and hard landing came from down the hole. He waited a moment before jumping down, when he peeked over the hole, a carpet had been folded on top of the rubble, clearly to soften the fall.
He glanced back at the police and they were moving closer to him, ordering him to stay on the ground and throw his weapons out of the room. He, of course, ignored them, and threw himself over the hot metal.
He landed over the carpet, and immediately feeling the hot air all around him, he hopped off the rubble. The other three were there to greet him.
“Thank fuck you made it, that was too close” said Hoxton.
“Yeah, no shit, we almost didn’t make it for a moment there” -Dallas laughed nervously- “Say, what’s all this over here?”
Wolf was taking the carpet off the pile of rubble, and some steam started to come off of it.
“Remember how I said it was really hot? I dumped water from the dispenser to humidify it a little bit, and threw a rug on top of it. I needed someone to help me throw it evenly though, as I couldn’t jump down myself without landing on... you know, the rubble.”
Bain then cut them off.
“Guys, we’re on the clock now, don't dawdle, the cops are in control of the vault door, they’ll open the door any moment now!”
The four sprang into action. Walking past some deposit boxes, they reached a big table, with an enormous pile of cash.
“Cash in transit guys, came in exactly half an hour ago, that’s why they got it just laying around. Get bagging!”
Dallas giddily set down the ammo bag, and set aside the last few mags in order to grab the four duffel bags they had prepared for the cash, all neatly folded onto themselves.
The four broke out the plastic wrapping around the money bundles like kids in a candy store, and started throwing wads of cash into the bags.
“Grab all of it, take it all!”
“This is one hell of a pile of cash!”
“Grab all of it! When you’ve filled your bags, fill your trousers too!”

The bags were full, and not a single dollar was left on sight. After the excitement blew over, the elephant in the room addressed itself: They were almost out of ammo: Wolf and Chains had been sharing the last few of the shotgun shells. Chains had used a lot of them throughout the heist. And as for the rifles, there were a total of three mags left for both Dallas and Hoxton.
“How are we going to break through? we barely have any ammo.”
Wolf was worried, his chest hurt and he was the least skilled in combat of the four, however, Dallas was relaxed about it.
“Remember back on the desk when I said we weren't playing offense? I meant to say that we've been on the defense so far: defending the drill... defending the Thermite..., but now we are gonna fight our way out. On our way out, we will pass right by the corpses of whomever we kill. The heavy swats were using rifles like these, some of them were also using shotguns, and if anything, we can always steal weapons from them. Only thing we gotta do is break through the vault area, and into the lobby, and then we can really begin our escape”
“Dallas is right, I see a bunch of them moving towards you, at least ten of them, In addition to the other group, we can at least count fifteen of them, including both shield units.
With that, gentlemen, we begin the third and final phase of the plan, the escape: first, get out into the lobby and I’ll walk you through it, just make it quick, you got another police assault on the way.”
“Do we actually know if they are opening the vault? For all we know, they might just leave us to die down here.” Asked Wolf, concerned.
And just as Wolf finished that sentence, the vault doors creaked to life, making the floor tremble around them. Hydraulics decompressing from inside its hinges, and the wheels grinded against the rails. The four clumsily scrambled for cover like cockroaches fleeing from the light. From their covers, they all stared at each other, asking ‘Who is sticking their head out first?’ The four pairs of eyes darted between each other for a moment, until they heard a group of them descending through the long, carpeted stairs. In a couple of seconds, they whispered a plan to each other. Chains and Hoxton had run to the room all the way at the back where they had bagged the money, so naturally, they would distract the team walking towards them. Then, Wolf and Dallas, hidden between the rows of walls containing deposit boxes, would flank anyone brave enough to walk into the room.
The room was organized similar to a library of deposit boxes: The shelves acted as bulletproof walls where one could simultaneously hide and take cover behind them without much risk, and were separated by a central walkway which led directly into the caged backroom with the table with the money, where Hox and Chains sat waiting.
Dallas and Wolf hid between the shelves, each on opposing sides. The shields stepped out into the room, allowing for some units to walk inside the vault, and go into the sides to sweep for any of the robbers between the shelves. All of a sudden, Chains and Hox started to blind fire at the police, only allowing their guns to be exposed to the cops’ bullets.
This wasn’t meant to accomplish anything besides distracting the main force, while Dallas and Wolf sprung out on the few units that had moved inside the vault. In a matter of a second, Wolf and Dallas gunned down the units on the hallway, and shot the shields dead, leaving the units exposed. Chains and Hoxton peeked out and shot the remaining units dead.
As they looked out of the vault, some lighter swats, similar to the first responders were peeking at them from the top of the stairs, they were dispatched in seconds.
As they were scavenging ammo from the dead bodies, they started debating their kill count. They were reaching forty, if they hadn’t done so already. As Chains stood watch, he walked up the stairs, he came by one of the swats’ bodies, he was left gripping his submachine gun, an MP5. The heister looked around to check if he was safe, and at the event of seeing no one around, he scavenged the gun from the dead man, reloaded its magazine and threw its sling over his shoulder. It may be good to have an automatic weapon with him.
With their supplies restocked, they began their march to the lobby. Guns pointed forward, after jumping back at the group trying to surround them at the vault, they had every reason to expect at least a small group waiting for them outside. As a matter of fact, it was likely guaranteed the police had the entrance surrounded.

As they walked out, Chains took a look around the corner, shotgun barrel before any other parts of his body. To his surprise, there was no one on sight. He checked the top of the neighboring building, where the sniper had sat earlier, but there was no sniper on the roof either.
Chains ran out and hid behind the desk where the metal detectors stood. He peeked out to get a look at the cubicles, but it was just as deserted as the rest of the room. Dallas popped his head out only to catch a sniper swing out from a window and take aim at Chains, he just managed to shout a warning for Chains to get down as the bullet flew right past him.
The windows which the sniper was sitting at were high up in the wall, similar to the one where the other sniper had shot through. He almost pulled a fast one on Chains, and if Dallas had taken another moment to warn his friend, he likely wouldn’t have missed.
“Bain! What the fuck! Did you not catch them deploying a sniper team just now!?” Asked Chains.
“Sorry, my access to their comms is dodgy at best!” Answered Bain.
They didn’t have time for this. Thankfully, Hoxton had thought of something.
“Chains, stay down for a moment, I’m gonna take a look.”
Hoxton took a quick look at the window, then hid himself again. He was standing at the gates while the sniper was sitting high up on the window, getting a shot that far out with the iron sights was gonna be tough. However, he knew something about sharpshooters. They are fragile. When you are sitting far away, without involving yourself directly, you aren’t expecting bullets to come flying at you. Armor also adds weight, which makes moving around a tiring effort, and being exhausted and out of breath may make you less accurate.
I’m not really sure if that’s actually true, but that’s what Hoxton thought at that exact moment. Chains, with his shotgun, reminded him of a typical british aristocrat hunting birds for sport. The reason shotguns are called shotguns is to fire the “birdshot” or “buckshot” cartridges. This sniper sitting up high reminded Hoxton of a bird, and when a single precise round doesn’t hit a target, just shoot eight or nine of them in its general direction, and your chances of hitting something increase drastically.
Hoxton told Chains of the precise location of the sharpshooter, and told him to shoot the man after he took some shots at him.
Hoxton then made a couple of half-assed measurements, stuck only his rifle out, and let out a burst of bullets. They didn’t hit shit, but they went in his general vicinity, which caused enough of a distraction for Chains to stand up and shoot the sniper down.
“Wow, just... really good” Bain was impressed. This group of criminals had more potential than he had anticipated, “guys, listen, they've blocked out the upper hallways, get running through the lobby. I think we just caught them off guard right now, they will be sending out an assault any moment now! So hurry”.
They ran through the lobby whilst emptying their guns in the street’s direction, as they were taking too much time with it. They reached the cafeteria without receiving much fire at their direction. Chains had decided to use the submachine gun he had previously stolen for the covering fire, meaning that resource was also out of the door. He still carried it out, however, A free firearm isn’t something you come by everyday.
As they ran up the stairs of the cafeteria, they found they had once again tricked the police, it seemed they had expected them to walk out the front and didn’t bother to guard the management offices.
“Now, as we practiced, take the plastic explosives from the printer”. Chains reached to the side of the copy machine and carefully opened a cardboard box to reveal its contents: some C-4 charges. The plan was never to leave through the front door, but by the back, and then through the garage. Of course, the access to this area was locked to them. The insider, who had bailed on them, would’ve provided access to this area if they had gone with their original plan, which also included the alarm not going off so soon. For plan B, they had issued these explosives to blast their way out.
Wolf took the charges and carefully placed them upon the wall. They retreated to a nearby office, behind cover from the shrapnel.
“Knock knock!” joked Wolf, just as the C4 exploded. They could hear more police yelling callouts and clearing rooms out as they searched for them, and with the amount of noise blasting a wall makes, they might as well have yelled ‘We’re here idiots! Come and get us!’. The four anxiously ran through the hole in the wall, came into a blasted bathroom, out into a hallway, and off into an office space. To their dismay, they came across some cops coming through the office's windows. This stalled them, and soon they found themselves exchanging shots from both sides. Some units came from the bathroom, and others were in the offices with them. Soon, the cops in front of them were no more. A good thing, because they were down to their sidearms. Jogging through a group of intimidated civilians, Dallas turned around and dumped what was left of his rifle’s mag into the office area, papers were blasted up into the air, and fancy wood furniture shattered to pieces. Anything to scrape at least a couple seconds of advantage. The four dashed through the elevators, and down the stairway, practically leaping down each flight of stairs.
“Where the hell did those cops come from?!” Complained Wolf between breaths.
“Yeah, how the fuck did they know about our escape route?” Followed Hox
“I don’t think they knew, after all, that office space is also part of the bank. My guess is they were trying to corner you off, only for them to find out you were the ones cornering them.” Bain elaborated.
As they were reaching the bottom of the staircase, short of breath as they were, they heard the police also rushing down the concrete steps all the way at the top of the staircase, but they just kept running, they had no ammo left to speak off other than their little pistols, and they had no intent of hanging around any longer.
That place was huge, running through a labyrinth of dirty hallways and maintenance rooms, they came out into some kind of garage. Just as they did, a garbage truck pulled up in front of them.
“There’s our ride!” Shouted Wolf, clutching his stomach.
The four climbed up the side of the garbage truck, and once on top of it, jumped inside. Where usually there was a pile of garbage, there were now four sweaty, powder stinking, and out-of-breath heisters clutching for air. Soon as the last one got inside, the driver stepped on the gas, and they were gone, like the darkness at dawn.

About a couple of minutes after, the heisters came back to life and stared at each other. They all sat up and took off their masks. And slowly, the realization of what they had pulled off slammed down on them like a piano. The four started laughing maniacally. It wasn’t long before they opened up the bags and clutched the money. Just to corroborate that they weren’t just dreaming. No, this was real life, they were stinking rich and they were away from it.
“Splendid work!!!” Shouted Bain, all that minute of silence had made them forget about their digital overlord “You made it gang! I almost can’t believe it.”
The four cheered inside the truck. They were like children.
“Now guys, listen up for a moment, this begins phase four of the plan: laundering the money. Good news is you don’t have to do anything for this phase. Just gotta follow my instructions.”
The four sobered up for a moment, sat up, loosened their ties and their vests. And very calmly unloaded their guns. Meanwhile Bain followed on.
“You may have noticed, next to you there are four small boxes. It contains all you need for this next step. You have new clothes, new I.D.s, new phones, all the essentials to vanish for a while, you also have tickets for trains headed in different directions, so make sure not to miss them. And lastly, inside that paper wrapping, there’s also a bottle of champagne and four glasses. Just a little gift, thought that if you made it this far you’d deserve a little celebration. I’ll give you more instructions further ahead. For now, just kick back and lay low.”

About an hour later, they popped out at a waste disposal center, where all the garbage trucks were dispatched out of. Bain had instructed them to close the money bags, and put their weapons away on the boxes that contained their disguises. For the following months they would become different people before returning to New York to collect on their hard earned cash after it was laundered. If there is one thing worse than cops, it's the IRS.
The four walked out of the facility, and after sharing one final goodbye, they all walked away in opposite directions. After a long taxi ride, Dallas finally boarded his train, destination: upstate New York. As he drifted away to sleep out of exhaustion, he thought about the guys he had just heisted with. A bunch of proper crooks. He wondered if he’d get the chance to see them again, for he knew nothing of this part of the plan. His only information was that he had a cozy apartment rented out for three months in a quiet little town in the mountains, just half a day away from the Niagara Falls.
He realized not much of it mattered, for now at least.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the great expanses of New York City, Bain was hard at work setting up fake evidence for the cops to chase around. Aside from his desk, lay a pile of old papers. Bain still had a lot of work to do, not necessarily related to the heist, and, as he hit the Enter key to send out the last bit of fake evidence, he leaned back into his chair, rubbing his eyes and stretching his legs. He took a long drag out of his vape pen and downed the last of the beer he had been drinking. Looking around, he reached for a crumpled up paper, and reread its contents once more. As he let out the smoke, he sort of had an “eureka” moment, and chuckled to himself. He had finally come up with a name for this new gang he had formed.
You see, different from what he had his four little heisters think, this wasn’t a one time job only. Bain was a career criminal, he had run many master crafted scores throughout his life. And it just so happened, he had been for long seeking out professionals to fill the roles of his latest Magnum Opus.
As he stood up to go grab himself something to eat at his favorite restaurant, he repeated to himself the new name he had thought of, and the more he did, the more he liked it.
He kept smiling to himself as he reached for his coat and walked out of his house: “PAYDAY it is, I guess. Yeah, ‘PAYDAY Gang’ definitely rocks.”

Chapter Text

Three months after the hit at First World Bank, Hoxton received an email stating he had a reservation at a small restaurant in downtown New York. As he walked under the rain, a memory of his wouldn’t stop popping up in his head. That day reminded him of the time he got his nickname.

When taking a look at Hoxton’s background, we can see he isn’t your run of the mill criminal: In 1982, James Hoxworth became the third son of a wealthy family, with two loving parents and two brothers. His brothers were a tad older than him: The eldest born in early 79’, and the middle one came by at the end of the following year.
Hoxton’s parents sent their children to the typical British aristocrats’ practices: fishing, hunting, and on occasion, horse riding. These activities turned them into fine young men. This was all paid by the family’s chain of owned businesses around Sheffield and its vicinities, bringing in enough money to sustain their status.

However, as you may know, the early half of the eighties was particularly rough for britain. And even though the second half of the decade brought some improvement for the country, the Hoxworths never truly recovered from this crisis: Where James’ father, Sir Hoxworth, was once a successful businessman, he now found himself with barely a handful of his businesses, which meant they could no longer lead the lavish lifestyles they once had grown accustomed to. Week after week, they were losing more money, and problems started making themselves apparent: Having to quit their pastimes, being constantly on edge and being mocked by other rich families soon caused tension in the household.
In the end -and in a somewhat uncharacteristic turn of events- James’ father kicked out the rest of the family out of the manor, accusing them of being dead weight, while simultaneously going back to his lavish lifestyle now that he had all the money to himself.
After such events, Miss Hoxworth had to take the lead and care for her children herself. Thanks to some connections from her days of nobility, she managed to move to south London, and although she did well by herself, raising three boys by herself brought many limitations: the three children immediately found themselves switching from high class private institutions to regular public schools.

By 1994, they had very little to do every day besides school. Their mother had grown rather distant from them, always focused with work just to hold a roof over their heads and a plate of food on their tables: gone were the days of exciting activities. James and his brothers - now fifteen, fourteen, and twelve -, regularly bored out of their minds, decided to search for new ways of getting money to fund their escapades and activities, like boxing, or going out to local music clubs and bars to watch their favourite bands play.
One thing then led to the other, and eventually, they traded small time jobs for small crimes, such as pickpocketing, alongside their regular trips to the neighbourhood boxing clubs, where they’d challenge anyone who could fight them. Another couple years down the line, and in addition to a couple of his older brother’s friends from school, a rather formidable bunch of crooks had formed up. They began taking part in burglaries, and with every house they cleared, they got better at it. They soon found themselves targeting the rich. It also somehow felt right, as it brought better loot, and despite their background as nobles, taking from those who had more than them made them feel like modern day Robin Hoods.
The news soon started paying attention to this new spree of burglaries; it got so bad that one day, some man from the police went to the school to give a talk on how wrong it was to do crimes and so on. Needless to say, the gang found it hilarious. It was rather ironic that about two weeks after that, right as James turned sixteen, the police somehow found out that they were going to do a hit somewhere in the district of Hoxton; when it happened, the entire gang was caught with their pants down. It was there that James got his nickname.
There had always been a bit of a silent agreement between the two older brothers about looking after their younger brother in case shit hit the fan. If they got busted together, they agreed to tell the police their brother was innocent.

The police wanted to find the mastermind of the gang. Even if such a role didn’t really exist, they still wanted to pin all the blame on someone, so they took a different approach against the gang. They told each member that they were all telling on each other, and soon mistrust grew between the gang members. Nobody knew who to depend on any more: James’ brothers thought he had sold them out as the masterminds; James himself thought his brothers were the ones selling him down the river; and his brothers’ friends were blaming each other as the informant. Thus, the once strong five man group had been reduced to a bunch of scaredy mice pointing their fingers at each other. James, being the youngest of the group, decided to make up something about his brothers stringing him along to those hits, and so, the police pinned almost everything on them.
Due to the fact that James was just sixteen, he was only sent to Her Majesty’s Young Offender Institution. Away from his brothers, who at the time were already over eighteen years of age, and in turn got sent to regular prisons. Three painful years had passed when he walked out of the correctional facility, and, through a letter from his parents, he found out her mother had moved back in with his father, and they were asking him to come back to Sheffield, offering him an olive branch. 
This angered James deeply: his mother had become nothing to him: never caring for what her children were doing, and then showing nothing but disgust when they got caught had broken James’ trust in her. On the other hand, his only memories of his father were of a pathetic man who had kicked him and his brothers out when he was young. Going back to them meant that all of his actions until then, and everything he stood for would have been for nothing.
Tearing the letter to shreds, he walked away, ready to begin a new chapter in his life as the turn of the century came closer.

Unbeknownst to him, that was the last time he would hear from his family.

He finally arrived at the restaurant. At half past one, the restaurant was almost emptied out from the lunch rush. He saw the other three sitting at a table by the far corner of the room. As he sat down, he felt unsure of what to expect from the other three; as soon as he was about to speak up, Dallas broke the silence:
“So, you must have no clue why Bain gathered us here today, right?” The other three glanced at each other.
“Right. Well, Bain thinks we did well in the hit at the Bank three months back. He’s got another job planned out, so he’s willing to give this group another shot”.

Bollocks. Hoxton was afraid of hearing something like this.

When he got out, Jim went back to his life of crime. Much more level headed now, he operated by himself for some time after he eventually became part of the mob. Apparently, mafia men can always use a skilled infiltrator to acquire hard to get things without raising too much of a fuss, so Jim found himself in no trouble when looking for a job. With the help of some of his contractors, he also purchased a couple businesses to launder his money, similar to what his father had owned back in the day. With neither friends or partners to speak of, he was the ideal crook. Which also made him feel empty. He could buy as many things he wanted for himself, but nothing could fill the void in his heart as his brothers had done so back in the day. The only people he became close with were a young woman who he mentored and then became partners in crime with for some time. She reminded him of when he was younger, and he taught her everything he knew. One day, however, she sold him out during a job, getting away with all the loot, and he barely got away from the police. The other one, a couple years later, was a somber American hitman he worked with for a couple months. He was polite, of few words, and extremely talented at his job. This was the first time Hoxton had worked as a team after the incident with her pupil, and the professional courtesy the American carried himself with was refreshing, above all else.

When they parted ways, Jim went back to his lonely life, until a strange letter arrived from the states, inviting him to take a daring heist on one of the biggest banks of New York. Fast forward some months, the hit on the bank happened. Add another three months, and here he was. Half the reason why he accepted Bain’s offer was because he thought it was gonna be a one time thing, and the other half, was the same as Dallas: if Bain could just track him down like that, then he was just as capable of sending out a hit on him, or worse, sell him out to the police.

Back at the restaurant, he could feel each individual hair on the back of his head rising up at the thought of working with these people again. Undoubtedly, they were experienced, professionals, even. But teamwork wasn’t something he wanted to get used to.

Dallas then resumed his speech.
“So, the story goes that someone messed up the labelling in some important deliveries, and somehow, a package with printing plates wound up at the British Consulate, some blocks away from here. These plates can be worth a pretty penny. There’s also heaps of paperwork being filled out to explain the fact that the plates were just delivered to the wrong address, and they weren’t stolen or anything like that, which in the end, just  gets the delivery further delayed. That’s where we come in”.

Wolf took a moment to object:
“How are we planning to break into an embassy? Anyone would consider us terrorists the moment we bust through the door”.

Then Dallas leaned forward.
“It’s definitely going to be a lot more lowkey than the other hit. This is one of those jobs that is both easy, and risky: if you know what you are doing you can pull it off with minimal risk. The problem is that anyone with the balls to do it is either too dumb or doesn’t know they can do it, and anyone smart enough to do it doesn’t have the resources or just pass it off as too risky. but we are different, we are the right combination of brains and muscle to pull this off. If half a million per head in less than five minutes without the heat on our back doesn’t sound juicy, then I don’t know-”.

“I see the four of you are here already, are you ready to take your order?”
The waitress was walking towards them as she announced herself. Hoxton noticed Dallas was caught off guard for a moment. An instant passed until Dallas’ persona came back to him as he told the waitress they would have four coffees.

As she walked away, Dallas’ heisting persona came back to him, and started describing the plan to his mates. Hoxton stared attentively, he remembered the time in the bank he convinced the police to not take Wolf into custody. Undoubtedly, he was an astute actor, and it was likely he wasn’t showing his full hand.
“Anyway, as I was saying: minus the costs of the heist, it’s half a million for the four of us. Pretty good for what would essentially be a five man crew”.
“Five man crew? Who the hell’s the fifth clown? The Joker?” Frowned Chains.
“Remember the garbage truck back in the bank? The guy driving it will drive for us again, some guy called Matt. He gets a small cut for it. He’s just there to make sure we get out. We also have a backup driver in case Matt gets compromised, some kid called Bruce”.
Everyone took Chains’ side, Dallas then followed.
“Yeah, I know, it sounds like a lot for a heist that’s supposed to be easy. If anything, at least Bruce has agreed to only getting a thousand dollars if he isn’t needed”.
Their coffees arrived. They drank them quickly, they got the check and left the place.

Dallas then scheduled a meeting in that same place for two days later. As everyone split up and went separate ways, Hoxton held Dallas back and confronted him:
“Listen, I get that you boys think I’m good, and I’m flattered and all, but I’m against this. If I had known we would work together again, I wouldn’t have taken the bank job. And don’t just sweet talk me, ya big bastard, that act you play I’ve played it myself countless times, I’m only here because Bain tracked me down, but being honest? I want out, and you won’t force me to do a job with you”.

Dallas had been staring at him, blank faced. He then noticed Hoxton had finished his sentence and let out a small shrug.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you then. To begin, I don’t hold as much authority as you are making it to be, if anything, Bain is at the head of this, but I’ve got a feeling he wouldn’t hold you back if you ask him to let you out of this”.

“Right, and why aren’t you trying to convince me to stay then? Give me a reason I shouldn’t just walk away from it”.

“Well, money's always a reason, what are you gonna do after this? Go back to doing crimes by yourself?”

Hoxton, for a moment, wasn’t at all sure about what to answer, before he could open his mouth, Dallas followed.
“Let me put it this way, the First World Bank was five million, give or take. From that, subtract around a million and a half in equipment and setting up the heist. Subtract another million for Bain’s, Matt’s, and the insider's cut, and that leaves us with about two-point-five million dollars to split up four ways, we get about six hundred twenty five thousand dollars each for the heist. I don’t know about you, but I’m forty-two already, and in my life I have not seen a cut so big. And it’s only the beginning of this... partnership, if you wanna call it something”.

Hoxton just now realised he had made a fool of himself, he had just let the man sweet talk him right after telling him not to do it, and it had worked: he would go back to his old life if he got the choice. And what awaited him there? Working for the mob? The bank hit was ten times as big as his biggest ever paycheck. Still, he couldn’t in good faith just trust other criminals right off the bat. Even though they fought side by side in the recent heist.

Then Dallas sealed the deal.
“You told me your name when we were surrounded back when, Jim, was it?”
Hoxton nodded at him, and Dallas stared back:
“Nate... you can call me Nate if anything goes”.
Hoxton thought about it for a moment.
“Nate... alright, I’ll keep it in mind”.
With that, the two bid each other goodbye and walked away in their own directions.

Two days later, the heist was beginning. The hit would take place half an hour before the transport service came by to pick up the plates, meaning they would be packed and ready to go from the start. All they had to do was break in, control the crowd, take the briefcase, and drive away. Most of it done below five minutes if things went according to plan.
The first part of the plan involved infiltrating the place quietly:
Thanks to Bain sending a virus hidden inside a file on an email, he had root into their systems. Making a couple of things here and there stop working in order.
Hoxton then walked in through the front door as a civilian. No vest, no pistol, nothing. He would pose as a regular British immigrant, and make it look like he was renewing his travelling visa. Or something similar, the more time it took, the better.
As he sat down, acting as he was waiting, he scanned the room. Bain’s hacks meant some metal security metal curtains were stuck closed, blocking the way to the restrooms, forcing everyone in the building -employees and outsiders- to use the bathrooms at the back. Getting access to the back of the building allowed Hoxton to make his way down to the garage. Generally there’s cameras watching the hallways to stop this, but since deleting the camera footage was a part of the plan, Hoxton could walk down the hallway without worrying about his identity getting out to the public.
And that’s precisely what happened. After walking inside the restroom, he counted to a hundred seconds. When walking out and heading back to the waiting room, he took a different turn, and then another, until he was walking down some stairs.

As he went down, he pulled out a number of papers, making it look like he had some business there.
He reached the delivery area, nearby was the security room. The door was wide open, and a bunch of guards sat inside, presumably on break. One of them stood up and greeted Hoxton.
“Sir, this area is restricted to the public, you should go back up to the waiting room”.
“As a matter of fact-” Hoxton replied while bringing up the papers on his hand “-I’m here for the... special delivery”.
The guard took a look at the papers, surprisingly, they seemed legit.
“Huh..., you guys are thirty minutes early today, what gives?”
“Oh well, you know, when the managers’ jobs are on the line everything goes like clockwork”.
The guard chuckled at Hoxton’s commentary.
“Heh, yeah, I see, they’re like that, for sure.” -He passed the papers to one of his coworkers- “You know you are supposed to come in through the driveway on the side of the building right? Didn’t you come with the transport?”
The building was built as such that on the side of the building, a long driveway reached to the back of the building, and down to the garage door. On its side, there was a glass entrance that also led to the garage, meant for anyone to walk in without going through the hassle of raising the garage door all the way up. The glass entrance itself was built in a box shape, like an airlock: the door that led to the garage was inside this box. However, trying to go in through that door would cause the guards to see they were just driving a van instead of the armoured truck that’s supposed to move the plates.
Hoxton replied to the guard:
“Yeah, I arrived five minutes ago actually, I guess the doorbell’s just not working, I’ve been standing by the intercom for a while now. Decided to go through the front door and they sent me down here".
“Oh, yeah I know, we’ve been having things acting up since the building opened up this morning, maintenance is supposed to swing by and fix it any moment now”.
As he spoke, the guard reached for some keys and walked Hoxton down to the garage door.
The chains on the side creaked to life, and slowly, the old door made its way up. However, when the door came up to his eye level, he found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle. And behind it, three masked clowns looking at him. The gang quickly took control of the guards. They also grabbed Hoxton as a hostage, so as to sell the idea that he wasn’t with them. After tying up all the guards, they shoved the four of them inside a nearby broom closet. The three then freed Hoxton and made their way upstairs.

Phase two of the plan was in motion, Dallas and Chains would control the crowd whilst Wolf broke inside the storage room. Meanwhile, Hoxton would put his vest on and load up his guns in case things went loud and the police got involved. Matt walked inside the garage and handed Hoxton his bag. He got to fitting himself up with his things, while Matt went into the security room and patched Bain into the system, where he got busy deleting the files.
Hoxton took out his equipment from the bag. Among his things, there was an M14 rifle, fitted with an aftermarket body made out of plastic, instead of the original, made out of wood. He flicked the iron sights up, and racked the charging handle back. You never know when things may get ugly.
Meanwhile, Matt was closing down the garage door. No point in allowing someone to just walk in and see something.
As Hoxton finished up with his equipment, he turned his earpiece on, to which he heard Chains cursing someone out.
“What the fuck is going on up there?” Asked Hoxton, Matt turned his head towards him, curious about the situation.
“The fucking lady in the counter pressed the panic button, the cops are on their way!”
“Shit, alright guys, just hurry up with that, we got to solve another problem we got. It's gonna take a bit longer to delete the security footage, we need someone to stay behind and watch it”.
Hoxton glanced at Matt, who was still inside the security room, typing away at the computer.
“How about we leave Matt? He’s not wearing a suit, he could just walk away if he does it quick enough”.
“Hang on, let me take a look at the computer, maybe I can automate the system so that it works without us staying here”.
About ten seconds after that, Wolf came down the stairs alone with the briefcase.
“Dallas and Chains are upstairs watching the civs, let me take a look”.
Wolf set the briefcase down by the door and got typing. Hoxton, meanwhile, couldn't help but notice Matt looking a bit nervous. He ignored him and walked over to the computer. Wolf was scrolling through some files and deleting stuff by hand as he listened to Bain tell him which ones he had to delete. They could hear as Dallas and Chains came down the stairs. Everything seemed to more or less be moving along, maybe things would go to plan for once.

Obviously, things didn't go to plan. Because if shit didn't hit the fan at least a little, neither you nor I would be interested in reading or writing about this heist.

As Dallas and Chains were walking towards the security office, Hoxton looked at Matt, and realised why he was so nervous. In a quick motion, Matt snatched the briefcase from the floor and turned around towards the door. The four looked at each other confused.
“OK, I’ll get the plates out, you guys erase the security footage” said Matt as he tried to hide a grin.
Chains followed after him:
“No, that wasn't the plan! Don't change things up man!”
Matt, however, turned to face the gang as he drew a pistol and shot twice. Chains ducked and the bullets hit the wall behind him.
“There slick! I call the shots now!” He shouted, as he stumbled through the exit. The four ran after him, and as they ran through the door, they found Matt already on the other side of the glass door.
“HA HA! Fooled you guys!”
Hoxton was livid, he quickly got to picking the lock on the bulletproof door, as they watched Matt get in the van. The door flew open, and as the van started to drive away, the four shot at the van, fruitlessly. The gang ran up the driveway and onto the street as a police cruiser sped right past them, pursuing the van. Hoxton still wondered how the situation had gone to shit so quickly. Easy heist his arse.
Then Bain made himself present.
“Guys! Keep after him, I'm patching in your backup getaway driver” - “Bruce! We need you to pick up the crew immediately”.
A young voice came in through the radio.
“The cops got roadblocks everywhere! It's like someone tipped them off! I'll pick you guys a bit further up ahead!”
The four ran down the street, yelling at civilians to get down. They soon arrived at the other end of the block, and around the corner, two police cars were blocking the streets. Some policemen were taking cover behind them. As the gang gunned them down, they saw another car driving down the street towards them, as they ran by the patrol cars, the car stopped in front of them and the driver rolled down the window.
“Guys! Hurry, get in!”
The four immediately ran to the car and got inside. As they closed the doors, Bruce shifted gears, and floored it out in Matt’s direction.

The car drove down the street, away from the embassy. As they stopped at a corner, two swat vans suddenly drove past them.
“What the... where are they headed?” wondered Dallas as he looked back at them from the front seat.
“Maybe they haven’t made this vehicle yet... Let’s hope we can keep the advantage a little longer”.
Bruce made a turn and merged into the avenue. As soon as he was in he floored it and drove down the street. Bain came back to them with directions:
“Guys, I’m tracking Matt through the police’s comms, it seems like he got the heat on him and crashed, they think you are inside the van”.
Hoxton piped up from the back of the car:
“Wait, you mean to say that we could just drive away now?”
“Probably, I’m not hearing anything regarding you guys at the moment, they don’t seem to know how many people are really inside the van. Whatever, it’s your call”.
“Get us the location from Matt, let’s turn this around somehow!”
Chains had seemingly spoken for the whole crew, even for Hoxton. If there was one thing Hox hated more than betrayal, it was the person betraying him themselves. He was gonna give Matt a piece of his mind once they caught up to him.
Bruce swerved between the traffic. A couple blocks later he took a turn on Easy street, and it was made evident they were nearing Matt: a block away from them, some cops were setting up a roadblock in the middle of the street. Bruce just crashed through it, sending the barricades flying in pieces, and scaring off the cops besides them. They would have to drive in, get the briefcase, and get out.

If only such things were so simple.

As they got close to the address Bain had provided them, they were welcomed by a hail of fire from a S.W.A.T. team. The four sprang to action and shot back towards the lawmen: Chains and Wolf rolled down their windows and started shooting through them, Dallas shot back through the windshield. The glass shattered like a spider web: bullets flew back and forth as the car closed in towards the crash site. And all of a sudden, a tire popped. The car swerved, and although Bruce attempted wrestling the steering wheel, a bullet went straight through the speedometer and on to Bruce’s chest. His body slumped on the steering wheel and the car sped up out of control, crashing on a lamp post.
Dazed and confused, Hoxton looked up and watched as Dallas shook Bruce’s lifeless body.
“He’s gone, leave him! Just get out of the car!” Chains brought everyone back to life with his nerves of steel. The four crawled out of the car, smoke coming out of the engine. And ran off into a nearby alleyway. 

Hoxton peeked out to scout the area. The swats that shot them down were closing in on the alleyway. Beyond them, the street went on under an overpass, and finally, over there lay the crash site. In front of the street, there was a parking lot.
“Hey guys, maybe we can circle around through this alleyway?” said Wolf tentatively.
The four walked on between some scaffoldings and came out on some kind of depot for containers. The access back out to the street was right there.
A swat van and a police car were parked in front of the entrance, perfect for taking cover; the four looked out onto the street, far off, in front of the crash site, some policemen were moving in, presumably to arrest Matt. To the other side, the S.W.A.T. team they had just fought was moving into the alley they had moved away from almost a minute ago.
They all grouped up and discussed a plan. In just a brief moment, they decided the best course of action. They waited some more seconds until the swats went into the alleyway, and charged off into the crash site. There were many cars abandoned along the way, presumably boxed in when the police started to block the streets surrounding Matt’s accident.
As they came below the overpass, they stopped behind a Swat van, and took a look around: There were around five policemen inside the depot, and another group by the barricade, at the other end of the block. An ambulance had made its way into the depot, and was working with the police to assist the people in the scene. They all froze at the crew running in and shouting at them to get down on the ground. Although the policemen attempted to fire their guns towards the heisters, they got taken down before they could do anything.
The crew then walked up to the van. It was flipped on its side against a metal container. Hoxton knocked on its side with the butt of his rifle.
“Matt! You fucking bastard! Get out of there right now!”
“No way! I’m taking my chances with the cops!”
The crew weren’t surprised at Matt’s reaction. What worried them was a simple detail I haven’t mentioned thus far: Matt’s van was bulletproof. He had it like that for a long time before the heist was planned, which was part of why Bain decided to hire him, after all, a little bit of extra insurance couldn’t hurt. Bain could have never expected, however, that it would backfire on them like this.
“Shit, how do we get it open? Even the glass is bulletproof”
“Guys, listen, think fast; the place you’re at is named Inkwell Industrial. Industrial means heavy tools. Get searching around for something useful. Just remember the swat team from earlier is coming for you, in addition to reinforcements. At most, we got two minutes before they crack down on you”.
Bain, as always, cemented his place as the director in the crew. Quickly, Wolf and Hoxton got looking around the place for something to break the van’s locks. First, Hoxton came back with a crowbar. It didn’t work. He then dragged in a sledgehammer. Didn’t work either. As he was about to go away to look for something else, he heard gunshots coming from the street, evidently the Swat team had come around for them. He then realised Wolf hadn’t brought anything back yet, Hox called for him on his earpiece.
“Wolf, get back here, we can keep looking later, we got cops coming f- whoa, what?”
Hoxton cut himself short when he saw Wolf sprinting at him with a jerry can, he could hear gas sloshing around inside it.
“There’s nothing around here that is both strong and fast enough for us right now. I thought of something, however.”
Wolf then started to cover the van in gas, the roof, the doors, its side, all of it. When the can was empty, Hoxton pulled out his lighter.
“This should make a cosy campfire for him”
As he finished his sentence, the flame touched the gas and the van went up in flames.
“Nice” Bain chimed in “Give it a couple minutes, he’ll come out alright, just dig in, because things are about to get messy, the police are here!”
As he finished with his instructions, Dallas and Chains ran through the gates, chased by gunfire.
“They’re closing in, there’s a chopper coming!”
The four took cover around the yard. The van was flipped over next to a pile of containers, the gang were hiding inside some of these. Around this central pile of containers, there were various cars, crates, other containers, and the ambulance to run around for cover. The very first assault wasn’t very eventful: the four traded shots with the police, who were attacking from the street, leaving the four to cover the same side, scoring them a clean assault off their backs. There were no casualties amongst the police, but rather, they were stepping back to get the wounded out, regroup, or maybe come up with a better plan. 

Not that it mattered, because the gang got back to work with the van. The fire was dying down after all.
Dallas approached the van.
“So, Matt, how are you holding out there? Feeling hot yet?”
“Fuck you guys! I ain’t coming out!”
“Oh! Excuse me then, I was under the impression that those screams of yours were your skin melting off your bones, but if that wasn’t the case, I guess you can take another can of burning gas, am I wrong?”
No sound came from inside the van, Dallas shot a glance at Wolf, who was standing next to him with another can of gas. The four stood back, and he threw the gas can on top of the van, and as the fire consumed it, the can exploded, covering the van in flames yet again. Matt’s begun screaming yet again. And so, Bain cut their recess short with the announcement of a new assault wave.

As they took cover, they realised there was something wrong.
“Hey Dallas, where’s the ammo bag?”
“I... augh, shit, where is it?”
“Come on Dallas, I’m running out of shells, where’s the ammo?”
Chains kept pressing Dallas, who all of a sudden, facepalmed through his mask.
“It’s inside the fucking van. The one we’re torching right now. Fuck!”
“Hang on, you mean the ammo’s compromised? You idiot, why didn’t you say anything? We should have gotten away while that kid was alive!”
“Calm down you fucking clown, there was spare ammo in the trunk of the car, I forgot about it when we crashed”.
The four sat in silence for a moment, as if processing the situation. Then Wolf spoke.
“Listen, I don’t know how much heat bullets can withstand, but if Matt is still alive, then that means it’s around a hundred degrees, maybe a hundred and twenty, but not much. A person can survive at most fifteen minutes inside a sauna as hot as that, so if Matt is still capable of screaming, the ammo should be fine”.
Chains answered
“It’s definitely hotter than just a hundred degrees in there”.
“What?” Answered Wolf confused, then Dallas interjected.
“Wolf, do you mean Celsius or Fahrenheit?”
“Oh, yeah, I see. Um... a hundred Celsius should be around... two hundred ten, maybe two hundred thirty Fahrenheit?”.
“To summarise, its pretty fucking hot in there” Added Hoxton.
“And what do we do, we gotta go through another assault with almost no ammo to speak of?” Questioned Chains.
“Just shoot to kill, if anything, I still got two full mags in my gun, assuming I hit all headshots, that’s forty people dead.”

Hoxton felt confident in himself. He was good with a rifle, provided his mates covered him, he could get away with bringing down the entire assault.
And so it began, the first group of four to approach the gates was stopped right in their tracks when the one in front got shot down when he showed his face around the corner.
Thirty nine bullets left.
The real problems came when Bain reported that another team was coming around from an alleyway on the back of the terrain. The crew had to shift around to cover both advances. A couple moments later, Dallas had used half of his mag to delay the advance from the front while Hox and Chains shot at the advance from the alleyway.
Thirty three bullets left.
All of a sudden, some Swats were rappelling down from the overpass onto the pile of containers. Due to some other swats laying down cover fire from on top of the overpass, Hox couldn’t shoot down any of the swats, and now they had a swat team breathing down on them from on top of the containers. Hoxton then swapped sides with Wolf, who was at the front with Dallas. The swats that were awaiting beyond the gates had reinforcements, and were charging in with smoke grenades. Between Dallas and Hox, they managed to stop them, but only barely.
Magazine empty, reload, twenty bullets left.
A new team started coming from the rear alleyway. The four moved to the back to finish off both teams, but it was starting to get too close. Chains and Dallas were down to their pistols, and Wolf barely had a little less than a full mag on his rifle. It was gonna come down to either Hoxton shooting their way out, or him missing everything and getting swarmed by the police. As the team from the alleyway started approaching them, the swats on top of the containers were keeping them down, waiting for a chance to shoot them. The alleyway team started getting closer. And closer.
Ten bullets left.
Four out of six down. Dallas and Chains are shooting them with their pistols, but it's not enough.
Six bullets left.
They’re down.
The team on the containers isn’t in the containers any longer. They flanked around while the team on top of the overpass laid down fire on them. Suddenly, Hox has an operator in front of him. He’s turning his shotgun towards him, as if he hadn’t expected for someone to be there at that moment. He shoots from the hip with his rifle, the kick throws the cop off balance towards the wall. Then Chains beats him down with the pistol grip, he takes his shotgun from the ground and peeks out from the containers, there’s the other three.
Seven shots, three kills. Gun’s empty.
Hox, finally free, moves around to the other side of the pile of containers and peeks out. 
Four bullets, four headshots. Gun’s empty, assault is over

The four jump on the dead bodies as if the ammo they had in them was worth as much as solid gold bars. After finding some shells and some mags, they approach the van. Surprisingly, though dying out, the fire is still very much alive, and Matt’s screams are still as delightful as earlier.
“He’s gotta be running out of oxygen any time soon” commented Bain.
And as if by command, the back door suddenly swung open, and Matt crawled out of the van, blood curdling screams coming out of his mouth from the many burns over his body, the right side of his head was completely scarred, his ear completely gone. Some patches of his suit had been burned off, and blood had dripped out of his body and onto his clothes. Hoxton went to grab the suitcase of off him, however, the four made a disappointing discovery:
“What the- Oh! You bleeding cocksucker! He’s handcuffed his arm to the briefcase!” Shouted Hox.
“Oh what? Uh... can’t you break them or something?” Answered Bain, caught off guard.
“I’m trying to pick them open but it's like they are jammed or something. Did these melt off?”
“They are made of steel, they can’t just melt off!” Said Wolf.
“Guys! Don’t get distracted, keep going! Drag Matt’s ass outta there if need be. I’m sending in a new escape vehicle, get back to Jake’s parking lot!”
Dallas reached his hand for the ammo bag inside the van. Most of it had scattered through the van in the crash. When Dallas took the bag out of the van and reached inside it, he almost burnt his hand off. The mags, made out of metal, had gotten very hot. In the end, it didn’t matter if some of the ammo was still usable, it was useless if it was too hot to load it in the guns.
“Bain’s right, let's get to the car a.s.a.p., there’s ammo we can use in it!” Said Dallas.
And so, the four moved out, pushing Matt in front of them
“On the double”
“Move it”
“Come on!”
“Guys, don’t scream so much!” complained Matt.
“Shut your pie hole Matt!” Hoxton shot back.

They trotted down the street back towards the car. It was in the same spot Bruce had crashed on, his corpse still on top of the wheel. They opened the trunk and grabbed themselves a fresh serving of ammo. Dallas slung the bag over his shoulder and ran after his friends, who had moved into the parking lot.
“So, who’s coming for us now? We are probably surrounded”.
Said Chains as he scouted the area. They were holed up in an alleyway, there was a little fence gate separating them from some stairs. They probably lead towards the overpass.
“That’s right Chains, a car’s gonna have a hard time getting in there, they are labelling you as terrorists by this point, so they aren’t letting anyone in or out of the block. Luckily, I got you a helicopter, you are getting out through the air”.
“A chopper rescue? This is just like the movies.” Commented Wolf.
“Yeah, you could say that; Alex, come in, how close are you from the gang?”
Another voice made itself present.
“I’m not far, I’ll be there in a few minutes. You guys should consider getting as high up as you can. Makes the extraction easier for everyone”.
“Alex is right, try and see if you can get on top of the overpass. Just remember, there’s still a lot of cops around, they got an assault on the way, so it would be a good idea to cash out of there while you can”.

Chains kicked the door down and led the charge upstairs, clearing every corner in case of an ambush. They walked in front of a laundromat, then up another flight of stairs, and in through a courtyard. As they saw the street, they could see some Swat vans stopping down the street, some heavy Swats were jumping down and deploying on the area. They were outfitted similar to those in the First World Bank: Heavy body armour and helmets with their orange visors, assault rifles in hand. The crew went through an adjacent building, which was left open. They hid inside, and watched as the Swats ran through. However, Matt was still planning something.
“Help me! They got me host-”
Matt was interrupted by Hoxton’s furious fist striking his lower jaw, leaving him slightly disoriented. It accomplished very little, because the swats outside had stopped running, and were likely about to enter the building. The four, whilst dragging Matt with them, moved out to the front door of the building, leading to Armitage Avenue, the street that used the overpass to go over Easy street.
They walked outside, looking at the stairs leading to the back alley. The swats would come for them any minute now. They could feel the tension rising up again. Almost as if a song was building up in the back of their heads, ready to crash down with the beat.
They left the building and got out into the street. Far away they could see a police blockade, and some regular cops staring at them from behind their vehicles. They sure had made a statement about not messing with them.
All of a sudden, Chains let out a shell. He had been looking at their six, waiting for one of those heavy Swats to come out of the alley, and it had finally happened. The four ran up to the overpass, where lots of cars had been left behind by the civilians who had already been evacuated. As they ran up the hill, they found themselves surrounded from both sides of the overpass. They had the swat team chasing them, and another group of policemen blocking the other side of the overpass. As Matt kept walking up the overpass, they kept using him as a shield as they ran from cover to cover. The closer they got to the end of the bridge, the harder it got to move up. Still, Dallas and Wolf mag dumping the covers of the police was good enough of a distraction for Hox and Chains to land shots on the policemen, and to keep the heavies at bay. When they finally got to the top, Alex’s chopper suddenly appeared on top of them. As it lowered down they dumped everything they had towards the cops. As they threw Matt’s sorry ass onto the chopper, he tried to struggle against them, still, after enough rage fueled insults and punching and kicking from the four of them, they got him in and flew away.

As they rode in the comfort of the helicopter, conversation ensued.
“Well well, it seems that we made it out, didn’t we?” Asked Hoxton.
“Hey, don’t jinx it” Answered Chains.
“Relax, I can get them to lose this chopper, there’s many news choppers surrounding the area, Alex can make a good impression of a reporter, right Alex?”
“Sure can, I guess...”.
Bain and Alex gave the crew enough assurance to look into the real elephant in the room. Well, aerial transport vehicle. Same thing.
“So, Matt, I’m gonna cut it short, because I’ve had enough of you. What the fuck was all this about?” Asked Dallas, his eyes drilling straight into Matt’s soul through the eyeholes of the mask.
“Hey, I’m sorry man, it was just something that I thought at the moment, I wasn’t really planning on bringing you guys down, you know? I only wanted the plates, besides, you had Bruce, you could’ve gotten away if you wanted to”.
Dallas looked around at his teammates, and the four stared back at Matt.
“How about all that ‘I'm taking my chances with the cops!’ thing you kept yelling at both us and the cops themselves. Does that ring any bells?”
The only thing audible was the helicopter’s rotors spinning on top of them. Matt was sweating so bad he was probably going into at least a mild dehydration.
“I swear... I can explain everything... just...”
Ten seconds went silent as Matt couldn’t find it within himself to break through Dallas’ staredown. There was nothing for him to say, nothing for him to do, other than to accept defeat and admit he was trying to throw them under the wheels in the name of personal gain.
“This was meant to be a quick and easy heist, Matt, drive us in, wait a couple of minutes, then drive us out, and that’s it. You would have been more or less a hundred thousand dollars richer, and all of that out the window. Can you find it within yourself to explain why you didn’t go through with it?”
“I... a hundred dollars wasn’t enough. I have debts, you know? I had to pay them back soon, a hundred wasn’t enough, and-”
“Not enough? I’ll tell you what’s enough. Maybe I should chop your arm off, kick your teeth out. Is that what you want? To get your ass kicked?”
Suddenly Wolf spoke.
“Oh shit, of course”.
The four, Matt included, looked at him confused.
“Why didn’t we shoot your arm off? We could have just shot your arm off, and you’d be both dead and we’d still get away with the loot”.
The heisters nodded in agreement as they looked at Matt, expectantly. 
“I mean, seriously, it was so obvious”. Wolf repeated, obfuscated at his own inefficiency.
“Well, we can maybe do it when we touch down. Isn’t that right Matt? How about we do that? Or maybe we could throw you to the cops, send you on a vacation to a penitentiary. Does that sound good you little shit? Tell me Bain, does he have info on us?”
“Don’t worry, he doesn’t know shit, I’ve made sure of it”.
Matt lay terrified on the floor, afraid of what may come to be of him. With nothing else to be said, they sat through the flight quietly.

As they touched down on Alex’s helipad, Wolf got himself a couple of bolt cutters and cut through the cuffs. The briefcase was finally free. However, it turned out there was some bad news.
All the mess that took place was nowhere near part of the plan. If they had gotten in and out, the plates could have been moved right away, and the money would have been wired immediately. However, because of the mess they made, the plates had lost value, as anyone who was working with the government would look anywhere for a clue leading towards the clowns. This would add many months to the loot’s “cool off” process, rendering them nigh worthless. At this point, it was smarter to just tape the plates up to Matt and drop him off at a police station, so that he could be arrested.

A while later, they all changed out of their suits and left them in the building. Chains was the first to walk away, bidding goodbye to the crew as he walked towards a bus stop. A while later, Wolf also went away. Leaving Hoxton to himself as he packed his suit and weapons in a container, so that they could be hidden away for the next occasion.
As Jim finished up and connected his headphones to his mp3 player, Nate walked into the room as he hung up on a call. Jim spoke to him, curiously.
“How did it go?”
“Well, it's confirmed, we aren’t making a single cent off of this bullshit. Bain’s sent someone over, I’m gonna wait for him to arrive and I’m fucking off outta here myself, I don’t even want to touch that little fucker”.
“And after that? What will Bain’s man do to him?”
“That’s what we were speaking of. Matt did mention something of being full of debt. Bain said there were some big fish in that list of debts, this guy is gonna try and find out if any of those contacts can be... hit... or worked with... so we can make back what we lost today”.
Dallas seemed defeated, it was clear he was beyond unsatisfied with the situation. He then said something else”.
“I’m sorry Jim, I guess things didn’t go the way we were planning”.
“What?” Answered Jim, confused.
“After the meeting, a couple days ago, I said this was only the beginning, but right now, things look like we’re just about done for”.
Jim stared at him in the eyes, and finally found the words to say what he had been thinking.
“You know, this heist might have been the very worst I’ve had in years. Out of all the heists I’ve pulled off throughout the years, none have gone as bad as this one, not even the one where me and my old gang got busted went this bad”.
Dallas frowned.
“You’ve done time?”
“A juvie prison, most of the blame landed on my older brothers, who tried to throw me under the bus when the law cracked down on us”.
Then Nate, as sly of a fox as Jim, finally pieced the puzzle together.
“Was that the reason behind not wanting to work with us again? Fear of betrayal?”
“I wouldn’t call it fear exactly... a lack of a desire for getting double crossed would be a better word. That’s why I mistreated Matt so bad. He made a perfect representation of everything I hate in this world. You guys, on the other hand, we stuck together. I appreciate the loyalty a lot more than you’d think”.
The two of them stood there for a moment, when suddenly, the doorbell rang.
“That must be our guy” said Nate “Say, would you like to go for a beer after this?” He followed as he confirmed it was their man at the door.
“An Englishman saying no to a good pint after a bad day? What do I look like to you? French?”
The two shared a hearty laugh, and after showing Bain’s contact the place, they walked away, towards the nearest bar.

Back at Bain’s house, he rubbed his eyebrows together. How did an idiot like Matt just slip by him? Was he getting slow? His performance had left a lot to be desired.
He looked away from the screen for a moment to relax. He eyed down his research papers, and the same thought flashed over his head: It had been many months since he had any new material or clues regarding “the three kings”. So many treasures left, so much to uncover, and yet, almost no information surrounding it.
He stood up, and finally grabbed the papers off of his desk and put them in a nearby filing cabinet. There were other things more important at the moment, like paying off insiders, informants, and arms dealers for the many things used in the heist, in addition to paying his web of guys to burn any evidence that may lead the police to them.
Luckily, Matt would cough up some info for him to scheme over. Soon, a new heist would start brewing for The Payday Gang.

Chapter Text

A dark car drove down Easy Street, the sunset beginning to set in through the tall buildings. The car pulled over right in front of Jake’s Parking lot. Many forensic policemen were busy analyzing the crime scene while regular “blue” policemen held the press and many curious civilians behind the barriers.
From inside the car, came out a sharply dressed man. He adjusted his dark aviator sunglasses, and walked towards another man wearing an F.B.I. jacket, who turned around to greet him.
“Captain McCauley, I presume?”
“As advertised. What can I help you with?” Answered the captain, while chewing down on his gum.
McCauley was an old man, carrying around streaks of gray hairs in his head. He had been in the police for a long time: from regular beat cop, then lieutenant, and all the way to captain. Despite barely being fifty years old, he knew he was way past his prime, only still in the police force for his knowledge of the field, maybe also due to the fact he had many friends in high places. For more than fifteen years, he had run a tight ship in the city, and it had made his work boring. He missed the thrill of the hunt, the days of chasing down criminals on foot. This thing of office work was worse than death. That’s why when he heard about four robbers causing a massacre right in the middle of downtown New York, he rushed over as soon as possible. It’s not everyday you get new game waiting for you at your doorstep.
The agent then spoke to him:
“I’m agent Hanna, F.B.I.” He flashed his badge. “I’m gathering around any information on this case. As you may know, something was stolen from the English Consulate, some blocks away from here.”
“Alright” he exhaled tiredly “What do you need from us?”
“Let’s begin with the M.O.”
The two started walking around the crime scene as McCauley thought about a reply. They walked past a crashed sedan, the body of a young man still sitting in the driver’s seat, bullet casings scattered all around the floor.
“...Their M.O. is that they’re good... very good” Said McCauley after a pause. “We only have info on a similar crew hitting a bank some months ago, same types of assault weapons, same masks, and the same excessive use of force.”
“Right. Any info on what they might have taken from the consulate?”
“That? You’re losing your time with that. They took some printing plates, sent there by mistake. Some asshat must have blown the whistle on it and these guys jumped into it. Although this whole thing of chasing down that van and carrying the guy out with them probably wasn’t part of their plan”
“How so?”
“The printing plates lost most of their value when the police department found out about it. Now they know that any bills printed with that set of plates could be counterfeit. Making them extremely hard to sell off to anyone else ready to print money with it. Their escape plan was likely supposed to be lowkey, but instead, the guy driving the van either backstabbed or intercepted them while they were heisting.”
The agent wrote down something, and then asked something else.
“Are you sure they couldn't have taken anything else?”
McCauley then took a look at the agent.
“Agent, can I trust you with something?”
“What do you mean by that?”
McCauley sighed, then followed.
“Look, after all these years, I have a bit of a feel for this. These guys were likely after an easy payday, bank robbers turned terrorists is a rather unusual plot for career criminals. Too much risk, too little pay. Printing plates, however, can be worth a lot of money, provided you have the connections. I just came from the consulate right now and everything accounted for is right where it was.”
“Are you perhaps implying the plates weren’t accounted for?”
“I can’t say for certain, but I’ve heard some things about some... corporate-side fuck ups regarding the plates: something about wrong labelling on a delivery which caused the plates to arrive at the consulate instead of their intended location. Supposedly, it got swept under a rug, and the blame landed on some office workers. Anyway, you can bet some big names are gonna be stepping down from their posts soon, my suggestion would be to start over there.”
“That’s some valuable material you’re passing on without me even asking for it.”
“It is, isn’t it? If you wanna call it something, then just call it a favor, because I feel we will see each other again soon regarding this crew. And when we do, I’ll want to have something to follow these guys with.”

A month passed, and McCauley’s dream of having intel on them wouldn’t turn out as well as he would expect.
Nicolas slowly opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. For a couple of minutes, he lost himself within the different spots of the mold stains up on the roof. He then sat up in bed and saw the TV was still on from last night. He stumbled off the bed and turned it off.
He stood in the dark for a moment, as silence engulfed the room. He got in his jogging pants, threw on a hoodie and walked outside. He took a good look at the sunrise as the sun beams reached out to him from behind the mountains, locked the door to his motel room, and took off for his morning run.
As he trotted on down the road, he began thinking about his life again. About all the things he had done.

Nicolas is cut from a different cloth than the rest of the crew. He isn’t really a silver tongued gentleman like Nathan or James, but more of a violent enforcer: when speaking softly and making the other guy feel like an idiot by just saying smart things isn’t working, you send someone like Nicolas, who will make sure said guy actually feels like an idiot for not cooperating when he had a chance. Nicolas isn’t the type of guy who gets scared of action, but rather is the thing that makes other people get scared of action.
Do you see what I mean?
I’m asking because I’m trying not to put this as him being the strong and dumb type of person. A long list of people have thought of him this way along his life, disregarding him for just another big ball of muscle.
He never liked that.
Young Nick was born in New York in 1976, and it was instantly a case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire” for him. I told you lots about Hoxton in the last chapter, and compared to Nick’s upbringing, he had it very good: Nick was an orphan almost from the get-go. He never met his real parents, and he had no parental figures to speak of. Even before turning ten, he was already a troublemaker, always doing the opposite of what he was told and enjoying when he stood up to authority, no matter who that was. Nuns, bullies, older kids, whomever was dumb enough to mess with him, he fought. He quickly learnt to fight and to grow big and strong was primordial for his type of life. This caused him to jump from foster home to foster home, and later from juvenile detention center to juvenile detention center. As he turned eighteen, he realized he could actually go to real prison, and thought of something different. He always saw in movies that soldiers were always respected and held in high regard. So he enlisted, and didn’t stop going for promotions until he made it all the way to the navy seals. After some short period of time, however, he was discharged, on account of his tendencies towards unnecessary violence, difficulty to follow orders, and being all around an unpleasant person to deal with. After that, he decided to become a mercenary, going around the world, doing dirty jobs, all for a quick dollar and his adrenaline fix. He met many people, went to a lot of different places, and saw a lot of things all before he turned thirty. He had also survived many near death experiences, which had made him convince himself that he was impossible to kill.
Around late 2010, he had a small injury, although nothing serious, he decided to take a vacation, seeing as it had also been a while since he had a break. However, as he was getting ready to go back to his life as a mercenary, a mysterious figure named Bain appeared to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. And the rest is history.

All this thinking had made time pass quicker. He had already reached the gas station he had been running towards. He bought something for breakfast and walked back to the motel. Back there, he had his breakfast, took a shower, packed his bags and walked out to his car. After loading everything, he checked out at the reception and stood waiting next to the payphone.
And all of a sudden, it rang. Chains answered it.
“Speak”.
“U.S. Highway nine, six thousandth mile, look for the nearest radio tower”.
“copy”.
Nicolas hung up the phone and got in his car, and drove away.
Later that day, he arrived at the destination, where his crewmates were waiting for him. The three got in the car with him, and he drove away, headed back towards New York. As they greeted each other, Wolf took out a portable computer from his satchel, and connected himself to a voice call. A familiar voice came through.
“Hey there, I see you are all finally reunited. How y’all holding up?”
“Being broke sucks ass” Chains answered almost instantly.
“I agree” Followed Hoxton.
“Yeah, this whole embassy thing was a waste. I’m thinking we should stay away from robbing from the government, at least for a while. It’s a good thing that Matt quacked; we got some leads out of him, and I’ve been cooking something up. As it turns out, Matt did owe a lot of money to a lot of people. Recently, he went to some top dog in the projects, and asked him for a loan to pay off all of his small debts, some guy called Chavez. However, with each day that passed without Matt making any payments, Chavez would start pressing him; when Matt couldn’t make a payment with money, he would instead work for him, that’s when I scouted him for the First World Bank. It turns out, most of his cut went to this top dog. Together, we are going to plan his downfall, starting now. Any questions?”
“I’ll go first” Said Dallas “How much are we looking at?”
“I think... we might actually break ten million with this one”.
The four cheered and made noises of approval.
“Alright hold on now, how many people are involved in this plan?” Asked Chains
“Good question. It’s the five of us plus Alex, the chopper pilot. He pulled through nicely last time, and I’ve run a long background check on him, I don’t think he’ll try anything”.
“What’s the trick to this?” Pointed out Hoxton “Ten million dollars in cash hiding somewhere in the New York projects sounds absurd”.
“All of it is inside a panic room, not a vault, but a panic room. Big difference”
“How so?”
“Well... maybe not so different. The panic room, however, is made with the intention of keeping the insides totally isolated from the outside, rather than being easy to open for storage. That means the door is a lot harder to break than in a traditional bank vault. Uhm..., generally speaking at the very least. The real challenge, however, lies at moving the money around: getting the thing open is really hard. No lock to drill or saw through”.
“I take it thermite isn’t an option?” Asked Wolf.
“Exactly. The thing should be only as big as a wardrobe on the inside, so the thermite would fall directly on the loot, aside from sticking your hand in there to get the loot is also really inefficient, so no dice. There’s also a whole ‘nother detail, back on the bank hit, it was all wads of hundred dollar bills. This time, it's likely a lot of unorganized bills, plus a stash of drugs that make up the ten million dollar loot, so it would take a lot more bags to carry the stuff around”.
Bain made a pause, in which Chains had a thought come up to his head:
“Bain... please don’t say what I think you’re about to say”.
“And that being...?”
“Are you trying to get us to steal the whole room?”
“Exactly, we’re... wait, what?”
The other three clowns in the car took a moment to realize what Chains had just said and started asking all sorts of questions in utter confusion. Then Chains clapped back at them.
“Alright damn, don’t give me shit. I mean you keep telling us there’s this great heist but then you hit us with ‘uhhhh we can’t get the loot out’ and all this shit about it being complicated. I mean, the fuck you want us to do?.”
Bain took a moment before answering.
“You know, that might actually not be as bad of an idea as I thought. A lot simpler than my initial plan actually.”
“Whatever that was must be a crazy idea to make something like ‘taking the whole vault with you’ sound like the simpler approach” Hoxton commented from the back seat. Bain then explained himself.
“My first idea was somehow coming up with an explosive precise enough to break the door without damaging the insides, or just taking over the whole building, but this is quicker actually. You see, this building is old as hell, very easy to break a hole somewhere. We just so happen to have a chopper to airlift it out of there too, so it would all boil down to the details.”
Everyone kept questioning things and throwing their ideas into the ring. After that, it was the even smaller details.
“ey, therb’f albo abober bing”. Said Chains with a mouthful of sandwich.
They had stopped at a gas station to fill up on gas, and buy some snacks. Dallas had swapped seats with Chains -who at this point had been driving all day- and was now side eyeing him with intrigue while he drove down the road. After Chains got done with his bite, he continued.
“I think we need more guns too”.
“What for?”
“No, I mean, the ones we got are fine, we just need a couple new things to back ourselves up a little better. It’s all about strategy” -he set down his sandwich to make gestures with his hands- “This plan is time intensive, so we are gonna need to be able to stall them for a longer time. An apartment building has many openings and flanks too, so we need something to counteract all”.
“Well, that’s gonna be an additional cost, but we can manage. What did you have in mind?” Asked Bain.
“A’ight, to begin with” -he took a sip of his drink- “Give Dallas a light machine gun”.
Dallas was also taking a sip of his drink. Chains’ proposal made him cough it back out.
“Do I look like Rambo to you?”
“No, for real, you’ve seen yourself fighting? You go through your mags like they’re bottomless, you’re using an assault rifle like a machine gun with all that suppressing fire. It’s a good strategy, but you need the right tool for that. Get a full auto sidearm for moving around, and you’re set to block an entire assault for a while. For me, well, I stole a gun from one of the cops in the first heist, I’ve kept it with me, so I’m covered. Hox, you should get something else too”
Hoxton nodded from the back of the car. He also added something for himself.
“I’ve also been thinking of something... how about we get some grenades? Should make easy work of any shields they send in”.
Chains turned around to look at Hoxton in approval, then asked Bain:
“We got any links on grenades?”
“I don’t think there is, gun traffic in this area has been kind of cut off for some time now, it was hard enough to move your weapons for the first heist”.
“You can get plastic explosives, right?” Asked Wolf.
“That I can do. They’re part of the plan after all”.
“Then get some spares, I can make some bombs too”.
“Fantastic. I guess that’s everything covered then, give me a couple days to set up everything, I’ll send everyone their stuff and arrange some things for the heist. See each one of you next sunday”.

Some time later, they all received their packages. Dallas unboxed an enormous Heckler and Koch model 21. Its 7.62 bullets felt enormous. As a “side dish”, he got a Colt model 1911, chambered in .45 ACP, offering a lot better stopping power than the nine millimeters. To top it all off, he got a Mac-10, a gun that fires as fast as a thousand rounds per minute, while shooting in the same .45 ACP that the 1911 fires. God help any fool standing in front of him.
Chains, on his part, already had his shotgun and the MP5 he had stolen back at the bank job, so he instead got a .44 Magnum revolver, a Taurus Raging Bull. An enormous handgun capable of throwing anyone off their balance, if not outright killing them.
Wolf got only a 1911 to replace his nine mil., he was already quite heavy with all the tools needed for the heist.
As for Hoxton, he actually went along with the nine mil., and got himself a Super Shorty. A shotgun made for being compact and easy to carry, while retaining that big punch that twelve gauge packs. He also ended up carrying the brand new “trip mines” that Wolf made. Turns out hooking up a small amount of plastic explosive to a motion sensor makes for a very nice mine.
With everything set, the heist was ready to take place. If The Payday gang wasn’t taken seriously yet, it would soon be.

When hearing the proposal for the job at the bank, he was a little indecisive. He had never considered openly being a criminal. When young he got into trouble, but he wasn’t like James, who had his own gang.
It was Nicolas against the world when he was a kid, he never really considered making friends up until the army, where sleeping in the barracks inherently caused at least some kind of interaction. There, he met a quiet, yet professional guy who was rather pleasing to be around. He was of very few words, and only said what was necessary to express his emotions. Nicolas learned a lot from him, not only fighting wise, but also about interacting with people. After his discharge, they never saw each other again. After that, he started being a little more socially outgoing, and although he had made other friends in his many other jobs, memories of him still popped up in his mind from time to time.
When presented with robbing a bank, he initially felt conflicted, for one, he didn’t hate the idea, but he wasn’t sure if he was on board with it. Of course, after thinking about it for a while, he leaned towards breaking the law. Figuring his job was already pretty low.
This new crew of his, he felt like he belonged here with the criminals. Differently from his former colleagues, these guys weren’t bloodthirsty or just plainly in it for the money. Well, maybe that last part was indeed the whole reason they were in the game, but at least they were genuine, by their own choice.
At least Chains felt it was that way, and for him, it was all that mattered. Take it from someone working on a field where your best friend could suddenly drop dead from a stray bullet meant for someone else.

After what seemed like ages, Sunday finally came around, and the heist had begun. First, they all got together at Alex’s helipad, where they delivered the tools that Alex would require for his part of the plan.
Then, they drove down to the projects, parked their (new) van somewhere far away, took some duffle bags from the back, and got to work.
The projects are dubbed as such due to the fact that these are... well... projects. They were meant to provide housing for low income families, but have since turned into run down buildings and gang hideouts. So much so that they’ve singlehandedly turned the word projects into a synonym for dangerous neighborhood. They are a mixture of industrial warehouses, and, as previously mentioned, old apartment buildings.
The gang walked through a metal catwalk which went over a street. Why is there a catwalk in the middle of the street? Not even Bain knew the logic behind it, but it was what they had been instructed to do. Chains walked up front, carrying a bag full of money, behind came Dallas, with what on the outside seemed like another bag full of money, but instead concealed a large supply of ammo. Third came Wolf, with a smaller bag, concealing his assault rifle, Hox’s rifle and shotgun, Dallas’ machine gun, and a bunch of saws. Finally came Hoxton, suave as always with his hands in his pockets. As they crossed the street and walked down the stairs to a small yard to the side of the building, they noticed someone inside was looking at them from behind a window.
“Right, they’re expecting you, go in there, and make the deal, they won't see it coming”.
Bain had arranged for a drug deal between the crew and the gang to take place: Chains would walk in with the money and go through the deal. It's a lot easier to take over the building when you’ve already walked inside it.
“Right, let’s slip into our roles in this drug deal charade” Said Hox as he looked at Chains, who was looking back at him from the bottom of the stairs “Those junkies won't know what hit ‘em before it’s too late”.
“He he, that panic room is gonna be full-of-cash. And we’re gonna take it all!”
The four walked up to a gate as it buzzed open. They walked down the alleyway as civilians and gangsters alike watched them walk by. As they reached a door, some dude standing there looked at them up and down, told them they were expecting them, and banged on the door with his fist. The door opened, revealing another similarly dressed gangster inside. The four walked inside.
The building was very dirty, and had all kinds of weird things around. Two guys were throwing punches at a boxing bag in the corner, some music came from a very old radio,
Chains went inside a room, where some guy - Chavez’ right hand - was waiting for him.
“Put the money by the table”
A really thick Jamaican accent came out of his mouth. Chains did as told, and the gangster started checking the contents of his bag. The heister looked back to the hallway, where Hox gave him a nod. They were close.
“A’ight, I’ll get my main man Chavez to get you guys’ shit then, you guys hang around”.
Chains barely understood what the guy said, but he was going upstairs, which opened the second part of their plan. Bain chimed in through their earpieces to announce that very thing.
“Right, mask up when you’re ready to roll.”
Chains put on his mask and pulled out his shotgun in a similar fashion than in the first world bank. Outside the room, Dallas and Wolf set down their bags.
At the blink of an eye, everything went upside down. As Chains walked out of the room, the other three took out their sidearms. Hox with his Beretta, Wolf with his colt, and Dallas with his submachine gun. The three killed all the thugs around them, as Chains blasted away two thugs sitting by the stairs. Dallas and Chains moved up the stairs while Wolf and Hoxton moved back out to the alley to clear out the mobsters outside.
Chains loaded up two new shells and got up the stairs, and peeked over the railing of the stairs.
The stairs led out to the hallway of the first floor. The stairs to the second floor were on the other side of the hallway. The hallway then stretched out on both ends allowing entry to the apartments. Chains could hear movement inside the rooms, meaning those doors would be opening any moment.
In the hallway were two thugs, one of them drawing his weapon, and another one fumbling what he had in his hands in order to likely also draw his weapon out. A third thug was rushing down the stairs from the second floor, betrayed by his legs appearing before him.
Chains dispatched the three men in a short two seconds, and then walked out into the hallway as one of the doors was kicked out from the inside and a gangster walked out with his gun pointed towards Chains. The clown was quicker, however, shooting the thug back inside the room with the excessive recoil of the buckshot. Chains took a look inside to make sure it was clear, and moved onto the next floor.
Dallas, in the meantime, had shot down two more thugs trying to catch Chains off guard. As he loaded in a new magazine, he let Chains walk in front of him to clear off the next floor.
Although Chains had made himself into some kind of “support” role -as in, helping Wolf with equipment, carrying around extra ammo, or generally just watching the flanks-, it was still apparent he was the best fighter in the crew, maybe matched by Hoxton’s sharpshooting, but still only barely.
Dallas was covering his back while they cleared out the floors, in his not-so-experienced hands, the submachine gun was best used for single targets; the moment there’s more than three people it gets tricky: The Mac fires around one thousand two hundred (1200) rounds per minute. If you don’t know how much that is, just imagine a laser beam made out of lead, and there you are. This laser is fed from a thirty two round magazine, meaning that you can burn through the mag in about a second and a half, which also sends a notable amount of recoil. For that, he had installed a suppressor. The big, classic one, seen in pretty much any movie where a character uses a Mac-10, you know the one I’m talking about. The whole point of that suppressor was to give Dallas some more gripping space, rather than suppressing the noise, because blowing up the whole building doesn’t really imply stealth.
Chains tore through the inexperienced gangsters with his shotgun. When they finally reached the top floor, they found Chavez hiding behind a couch. The big and scary top dog was cowering like an amateur, curled up on the floor. They tied him up and threw him inside a bathroom, ensuring the police wouldn’t find him.
Back down on the second floor, Chains unlocked the door and pushed it open with the barrel of his gun. A smart move, as a variety of guns started firing uncoordinatedly from inside. As they all stumbled to reload, Chains and Dallas swung out from cover and shot them all down.
From the first floor emerged the other two, carrying the gun bag with them. Wolf set it down and they took their guns and one saw each. Hoxton and Wolf started mounting theirs, while Dallas and Chains moved on down to the floor below.
In order to get the panic room out, it first had to be detached from its reinforcements. There were four spots needed to cut through: two of them were on the sides of the panic room, on the second floor, and the other two below it, on the first floor. The steel beams were just slim enough to be able to cut through them with a saw. They could’ve used thermite and have it melt faster, but they didn’t want to risk damaging the already weak floor of the building.
As Hoxton got done with his saw, he stood up and took a look inside the panic room. It was full of dollar bills and assorted bags of different drugs.
No one in the gang had yet dealt with drugs so far. Dallas was on the mob, which is known for staying away from that type of stuff. Hoxton was more into burglaries than anything, aside from the fact he already had enough with alcohol. Chains found them boring, believing the thrill of warzones and being deployed to shoot other people was already more exciting than anything else, and Wolf just found violence a lot more enjoyable, aside from the fact that he also needed to sell off any drugs he came by instead of consuming them. Money had always been tight.

Bain’s eyes darted from one screen to the other; as the crew were working on the panic room, he tracked what the police were doing. So far, the amount of gunshots coming from the building had been considered a matter of concern, and two patrols were dispatched to check it out.
“You guys got the police coming. I suggest you stop them by the front entrance”.
He listened to the crew coordinating their positions while the police approached the door. Chains fired out a shot through the window, and the police ran back to their cars. About a minute later, more cars arrived, and the door was kicked down. The first couple of unfortunate policemen to stick their heads through the door were shot back out by Chains and Dallas.
Three minutes passed of this back and forth, until finally, talk about swat vans came through the radio. The real fight was about to begin.
“Listen up guys, you got an assault coming in approximately thirty seconds, dig in!”
As he said that, some swat teams came around the corner and crossed the street towards the door.
“Twenty seconds”.
Hoxton came downstairs and sat beside Dallas behind the cover. Chains also backed off from the windows.
“Ten seconds!”
A smoke bomb fell in the middle of the hallway. The second it exploded, the team leader peeked out with his thermal sight. All he saw was Dallas’ and Hoxton’s smug faces, sitting behind Dallas’ big machine gun. He let off a long burst, sending the team leader into an early retirement and daring anyone else to try and walk through.
Bain kept listening to the radio, trying to pick up anything useful: He could hear a team of shields closing in on the area. Another team of swats was flanking around the alleyway.
“Clear!” Said one of the swats as he looked around the alleyway. The rest of the team moved in and stacked up on the door. Too bad that as soon as one of them set foot inside, the bomb that Hoxton had rigged behind the door got tripped and blew away the rest of the team. Hoxton and Chains noticed this, and so did Bain.
“Guys, that building is opening up like swiss cheese, I suggest you move up a few floors, and defend from up there”.

Everyone went up the stairs, and started letting out bullets down the stairs. The casings from Dallas’ submachine gun and Chains’ shotgun rolled down the steps. A minute later, Bain announced the assault was done. Clowns one, cops zero.
They checked the saws, and not so surprisingly, they had all jammed half-way through the process. After they had them fixed, Bain decided to speed things up, given the police weren’t putting up much of a fight.
“Seeing the saws are more or less close to finishing, we’re moving through with the second phase of the plan: letting the air in. Alex, when can you come by and drop the C4 for the guys?”
“I’m close by, just make sure the roof is clear, I’m an easy target for snipers up here!”
“Alex is right guys, two of you, get up there and make sure the coast is clear for Alex”

Chains and Hoxton paired up, given that Dallas’ guns were too big to haul around the many stairs, and Wolf was needed close to the saws in case one of them broke down.
As soon as they got to the roof, they looked around and found... nothing.
“Bain, the roof is clear, copy?”
“Keep a good look around then, I caught something about the building being surrounded, it wouldn’t be too strange if they decided to move in from any of the many flanks”.
Chains and Hoxton went around the door and sat in a corner, shielded from most of the other buildings behind some ventilation ducts.
The roof had two access points, the one they came out from, and a fire escape ladder on the front side of the building, which could in theory expose them to gunfire. The space was cluttered by many ventilation ducts, some kind of old, rusty antenna, and a couple chairs covered by wide plastic tarp. Seemed like a chill spot.
Chains’ sightseeing of the roof was suddenly stopped when Hoxton shot away at something across the street, on the other roofs.
“Keep down! Bain was right, those fockers are deploying snipers!”
“Keep ‘em busy for a minute, Alex will be there any moment now”.
As Bain instructed the other pair to brace for an incoming assault, the two up on the roof started looking around for anyone else brave enough to come at them. A minute later, Hox had shot two other snipers, and Chains a fourth one. Suddenly, Alex declared his arrival with the noise coming from the rotors.
“I’m here guys, making the drop”.
The two clowns looked at how the chopper flew above them and dropped the bag at the very last second, watching it disappear behind the ledge. The two of them looked at each other, as if asking each other if they saw things right. The two then looked over the ledge and found the bag on a balcony below them.
“Alex, fuck kinda throw was that?” Asked Chains in disbelief.
“What happened?” Bain cut in.
“The C4 fell off the building, it almost fell all the way down to the street. Way to go, Alex” Said Hox sarcastically.
The sound of Bain facepalming came through their earpiece.
“Alex, you’re an idiot. Apologies fellas, I guess Alex wasn’t the ace he claimed he was”.

As the two went down to the third floor, they found themselves pinned down by crossfire. They retreated back up to the fourth floor, where they traded shots back and forth with the swats. From further below the building, they could hear Dallas’ gun stomping away at whatever was being thrown at them. Hox got down on his knee and peeled the film off the back of one of the bombs, activating its adhesive, and planted it on the wall next to them, he then flicked the switch on the side, looking at the laser come to life. The two retreated back into a room next to them and shut the door. As they reloaded their many guns, they discussed tactics.
“So... how do we get the C4?”
“We kill ‘em”.
“Oh fuck off, what are you, some kind of commando?”
Chains shot an almost playful look at his crewmate, who suddenly regretted teasing him like that. Chains opened a door which led to another fire escape on the other side of the building, and upon seeing everything was clear, he ordered Hoxton to sit tight behind the door with his shotgun. He had something funny in mind.
Chains walked out onto the fire escape and ran down to the third floor. He looked inside through the window and found the coast was clear. He crawled in and looked out onto the hallway. He saw as two swats were aiming their guns upstairs, focused on the two other swats who presumably were about to trigger the mine. A loud bang drew a smirk upon Chain’s cheek, who had predicted that would happen. He swung out, shotgun barrel first, and shot down both swats out on the hallway. He looked at the other two who got caught on the explosion, only to notice they were already gone.
He cleared his surroundings for any other officers and yelled at Hoxton to come down, the man looked down from the top of the stairs and muttered something in disapproval as he stepped on down, taking care not to touch any of the corpses.
The two grabbed the C4, and, with Bain’s instructions, planted the charges in the right places.
Next step was very straightforward, getting to a safe distance from the explosives. Hox and Chains went down the stairs, finding a surprising lack of targets. When they reached the second floor, they found out why.
Piles of bodies littered the floor. As they walked around the corpses, Dallas stuck his head out of the room, and on confirming it was his crewmates, he called upon Wolf to move out from the room. The four went down all the way to the bottom floor, to also find it very deserted.
“All right Bain, we are out of the way, hit it!”
As Dallas finished his sentence, the four heard the loudest bang of their lives. Dust came down from the walls, their ears started ringing. Chains lost his balance and fell to his knee. When things stopped shaking, they slowly moved up through the building. Naturally, no policemen were in sight, even the cockroaches were scared away by the explosion. Everything standing had been knocked down, some walls had new cracks over them, and things mounted on walls were now lying on the floor.
Standing on the hallway of the third floor, they could already see that the room that sat above the panic room had had a chunk of its wall blown out: they could look out to the sky through it.
“Great job guys, that hole is perfect! Alex, you got the magnet? Get back in there”.
“Magnet’s hooked, I’m on my way”
“Guys, I’ve also caught something about a ceasefire and regrouping outside the building, they aren’t aware the explosion was deliberate. Seems like for all they know, you guys got blown away. Take that break, and get to work!”
A break sounded nice. Chains set his shotgun aside and stretched his arms, his shoulder was getting sore.
After a couple of minutes of watching the doors in case the police made an entry, Alex appeared on top of the building with a magnet hooked under the helicopter. He slowly lowered it down through the hole. Dallas and Hoxton looked down from the third floor as Wolf jumped on top of the magnet to switch it on. He opened a little box screwed on to the magnet, turned a switch, and closed the box. However, nothing happened. Confused, Wolf looked below the magnet and saw there was still too much space between the panic room and the magnet to do anything.
“Alex, come down a little more, the magnet’s not attached yet”.
“I can’t, I’m already too low”.
“What?” Wolf looked up “No- you still got some more room to descend”.
“Dude, I really can’t move much more, you sure you got the magnet on?”.
“Of course I switched it on, do I look like some kind of idiot to you?”
Chains was standing next to him, on the floor, slightly amused at the situation.
“Hey Wolf, I’m gonna go up there and grab some ammo from Dallas, don’t go falling through the hole or something." As he put down his foot on the first step, he suddenly realized something. With all the noise the chopper was making, it could perfectly cover up the sound of a swat team sneaking up behind them.
He went back and looked over the railing of the stairs to the floor below them.
“Bain, what’s the situation with the cops?”
“I got some movement on the alleys, but aside from that, nothing else. I can’t catch anything through the radio either... I think they’re up to something.”
Chains stepped back from the handrail. He took another glance towards Wolf, who had now resorted to stomping on the magnet to get the two to connect. All of a sudden, the two got close enough and violently connected together. This caused the clown to lose his balance and fall down, he then slipped through the crack between the floor and the panic room and fell to the floor below.
“Oh shi- Yo! Wolf! You good down there? What happened?” Shouted Chains.
“I’m alright!” He yelled from the hole in the ground “I just lost my balance, I landed on my feet”
As Chains felt relief, he jumped at the sound of Wolf firing his gun.
“They’re down here! They’re coming through the windows!” As Chains heard that, he looked towards the window, and on the neighboring building, there was a swat taking position on a balcony. The two raised their guns almost in unison, and shot each other down to the ground.
It felt like a fire had started right in Chain’s chest, the wound ached like dragging his feet through burning coals. As he regained consciousness, he looked up, and saw the swat at the window lying on the ground. He could also hear as some swats were stomping up the stairs next to him. He raised his gun towards the stairs, still on the ground, and upon racking the shell, it got stuck on the ejection port. His gun was jammed, Chains slightly panicked at it, and tried hitting the shell out of the gun, to no avail. And finally, the first officer came over the railing, with his gun pointed at Chains.
“Stay down! No sudden movements!”
And suddenly, as if from thin air, a hail of bullets tore the cops to shreds. Chains covered his head with his arms as bits of wood and plaster fell all over him. It only lasted a moment, but it had been enough to send anyone on their way up back down the stairs.
“Chains!” Yelled Dallas from the top of the stairs, at the fourth floor. “Are you okay?”
Chains shot a scornful look at Dallas from the ground. “Motherfucker!” He made a pause to look around himself “You almost shot me!”.
“Get away from there buddy! Hoxton’s circling around to get you, get in the room!”
Chains started dragging himself away as he made an attempt to stand back up. He dug inside his suit for his revolver. The short barrel certainly helped with taking it out. As he turned around, still lying on the floor, an officer was carefully peeking his head out of the stairs. Chains turned to lie on his back as he aimed the revolver at the man, waiting for Dallas to light them up. Suddenly, it began raining fire again.
But no bullets came down the stairs.
The officer peeked out with his gun towards the stairs, now very clearly visible from Dallas’ point of view, but still the gun was silent. Chains realized he was alone, and just as the officer pointed his gun toward him to clear off that side of the hallway, he pulled the trigger, for a .44 magnum bullet to go through the officer’s goggles, inside his head, and then back out through the back of his helmet, and still hit the wall behind them.
“I’m fucking boned” thought Chains, there were surely more people behind the man he just shot, and he wasn’t going to find out if they were good enough to kill him. He turned on his stomach to stand up and run inside the room, only to run into Hoxton, shotgun in hand.
The two ran back out into the fire escape, when Chains took a shot of morphine from his coat and stabbed himself. He leaned back on the wall, feeling the relief rush into him.
“What the fuck happened down there?” Asked Hoxton, while he looked inside the room in case they were followed.
“I don’t know much, as far as I could hear, they got Wolf either cornered, in custody, or...”
“Bollocks... Dallas, you there?”
“I’m inside the fire exit room, just above you, I got jumped from another one of the rooms around here. They used the other fire exit”
“They got access to the roof then? Shit, we could get flanked any moment now”
As Chains focused back, he realized another thing. The helicopter was still there, loudly hovering on top of them.
“Alex, ‘fuck you doin’ around here still? The magnets attached, go fly away”
“They are holding me at gunpoint” replied Alex, with a notable shake in his voice “There’s like ten guys around me with their guns, if I move, I’m as good as dead!”
The pair cursed to themselves. Chains made a decision as he stood back up.
“Fuck this, listen to me” he begun, while finally getting the shell off of his shotgun “Give me your shotgun shells, get back to Dallas, stock back up on ammo, and free Alex”
“What? What about you?” Answered Hoxton, semi worried for his crewmate.
“Chopper can’t have much more fuel left on it to hover around like that without moving, you gotta break it free or this heist is a bust”
“And what are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna go find Wolf and clear a way back down from the roof for you guys”.
Hoxton twisted his head in doubt as he looked at Chains full of worry, but still, he reached into his suit for his shells and handed them to the man.
“I hope you know what you’re doing”.
“Hey relax, I’m invincible” chuckled Chains, smugly.
The two then turned around and walked off to the other end of the fire escape exit and parted ways, Hoxton up the stairs, and Chains back inside the building. The fire escape was made long enough so that both apartments on that side of the building had access to the fire escape exit. The two had fled from the cops out through the other door. Maybe he would get a chance at jumping them from behind. He got close to the door of the hallway, and opened it only but a crack small enough to see through. The cops were piling out through the stairs, taking positions against the stairs and the room he had previously ran through. Likely three, with maybe some more on the floor below.
He loaded a shell into his shotgun, thirteen shells left. took his revolver out, and replaced the bullet he had shot out, twenty-three shots left, and finally checked his submachine gun, one mag left. Not much, but his guns were full.
A deep breath, and he opened the door.
He shoots, and the first cop, pointing at the fourth floor gets blown away. Rack the pump, and shoot again. Another man down. The third man is already turned around, but still too late, as Chains has already racked the pump and pulled the trigger again. As the dead man falls, his gun goes off, lighting up the room. Thankfully, Chains was already back inside cover. He shoots a couple shots down the stairs and retreats back out to the fire escape exit whilst reloading. Eight shells left.
Down to the second floor through the fire exit, he goes inside a room, walking past the panic room. And peeks out shotgun-first into the hallway. There’s a guy pointing his gun up the stairs and some others around the hallway.
Pull the trigger. Rack the pump, aim, and pull the trigger again. Another two down, and only six shots left. Retreat back into the room. He racks a new shell and moves towards the fire escape, loading up his last shell not inside the tube. That makes his last seven shots.

He walks outside, gun raised up in case someone else gets the same idea. He can hear gunshots coming from the roof, the helicopter is still there. The fire escape is built in an odd manner. The first floor fire escape is separated from the rest of the building, and would be linked by a hand ladder hanging from the second floor. However, the hand ladder is missing. This meant that once he went down, his only option was to advance. No retreating.
So be it.
He jumped down to the balcony below him, and went inside the only door open, the room below the panic room was clear, but tactical callouts came from the hallway, inviting Chains to go on yet another sweep.
As he peeked through the doorway, he saw Wolf handcuffed on the floor with his mask off. Surrounded by at least four cops.
Swing out. Shoot. Man down. Rack. Shoot. Man down. Back to cover.
Two others are out, the other two are left in a state of half-panic half-determination. He still has four shots left. He blind fires a shell around the corner, and peeks out with only his head. He got lucky with his shot, even if he hit the man in his chest, he got knocked off to the ground.
Shoot the other guy. Dead. Pump. Finish off the last guy.
Chains walks up to Wolf, making sure the hallway is empty. However, he forgot he hadn’t really cleared out the floor above him.
“Up the stairs!” Shouts Wolf from the floor, splattered with blood.
Chains looks up at two swats coming down the stairs. He turns his gun just in time to shoot in their general direction before one of them shoots his submachine gun on his chest, knocking him down to the ground. The majority of the pellets go inside the face of the man closest to Chains. He’s dead on the spot. Some others hit the next guy, but it only knocks him back, causing him to fall down the stairs. As Chains and the cop find themselves face to face on the ground. The cop pulls out his combat knife. As it's coming towards him, he flails his arm towards the cop’s elbow, and stops his attack. With his other hand, he tries to grab the hand with the knife, but a sharp pain stops his arm from carrying out the order issued by his brain. With the knife dangling in front of his eyes, he instead pushes himself off of the man, turning himself around while still holding onto his arm, and puts him in a chokehold with his legs.
However, the swat pulls his sidearm out with his other arm, forcing Chains off the choke lock to kick the gun off the officer’s hand, but it’s too far away, so at best he manages to step on his arm.
Stuck in some kind of stalemate, the two start to struggle. Chains is getting tired, and the knife starts to get closer to his neck. All of a sudden, Wolf comes out of nowhere and throws himself on top of the officer, knocking the air out of him. Chains grab’s the knife with his good arm and buries it in the cop’s neck, finally ending him.

Wolf and Chains are left panting on the ground, covered in blood. Some of it from other’s, some of it theirs. Chains begins patting himself on the arm to see where he got shot. Blood starts to pour out of his left shoulder. He slowly grabs some gauze from his inner pockets and starts stuffing the wound with it. The bleeding stops. For now.
He looks up, and catches Wolf, maskless, staring at him.
“...they see your face?” Asked Chains, tiredly.
Wolf looks around the room.
“They took my secret to the grave” Chains let out a little air out of his nose.
“Yeah, thanks to me... look at us man... we look like one of them Tarantino movies”
Wolf laughed a bit from the floor.
“You are the last person I thought would come out with a tarantino reference”
“Bro... I love movies”
Suddenly, Bain brought the two of them back down to earth.
“Hey, are you guys still with us? Come on, Alex has a lift off!”
Chains rose up at the sound of that, he hadn’t been paying attention to the radio chatter throughout the gunfight.
“Yo which of these bodies has the keys?”
“It’s uhhh... the one with the helmet, that you blind fired”
Bain then spoke again for everyone to hear “Hurry up everyone, they’re throwing everything they got at you, they don’t want you to walk away free, so hustle it!”
In a moment, Wolf was free again. He put on his earpiece and collected his guns and tools from the floor. Chains grabbed his shotgun and threw it on his back, he figured that with his left arm like that he was best off using his revolver one handed.
Soon, the other two came down the stairs. They weren’t doing well either. Both had some bullets stuck to their vests, and Dallas had sprained an ankle going down the stairs.
Wolf led the charge to the alleyway. They came down to the ground floor, where some cops tried to shoot them through the front doors. As they came out to the back alley, another group of cops was walking down towards them. Wolf emptied his mag towards them as Chains picked them off with his revolver. They ran down to the basement of the building, accessed from the outside of the building, through a ladder on the back alley. They shot the hinges off the door and rushed inside a room with a manhole. A not-so hygienic escape route, but a most effective one when you’re surrounded.

An hour later, they emerged at the pickup, where Alex was waiting with the van. He drove the four to a “doctor” that Bain had on call to treat their wounds. After a while of hard work, the four had their beat up chests treated properly. Dallas had his ankle looked at, and Chains had the bullet fished out of him. It was hard to believe it, but in the end, they had gotten away with their lives. If they weren’t yet in the searchlights of every New York policeman and/or detective, they for sure were now.

The four disappeared in a similar fashion, bidding each other farewell for some months until whatever else came up. Payment would come later, wired through Bain’s connections.
Bain himself was sitting back in his chair, in his house. The news said very promising things. A while after the crew got out, the building collapsed and came down. Burying anything inside it under a pile of rubble. This meant finding incriminating evidence would be tougher for anyone looking for any of that. Which was for the best, he had a feeling that heisting in New York again would be a dangerous decision, considering the chief of police and the FBI were after his case, he had all the right to be cautious.

Luckily, someone’s birthday was a couple of months away. You wouldn’t know about it, but this someone is a person Bain hates with a passion. We won’t find out why, but just know that he hates him. And what better way to express it than ruining with a heist on their birthday?

Chapter Text

The afternoon after the shootout in the building at the projects saw no end of activity for the neighborhood, dust and rubble covered the street, emergency services rushed in to clean up the mess and tend to the wounded. The shimmering lights of dusk mixed in with the dust flying around the air sure made the anguish palpable. It was such a mess indeed that it soon drew in the shadow of a federal agent.
Agent Hanna stopped his car, and felt as his jaw dropped. He had arrived at the latest crime scene from this masked gang of robbers he had been thrown at by his superiors. He stared at the enormous pile of rubble in front of him, and pinched his nose in frustration. He could already tell the bosses were going to pin this on terrorism, he’d be put on investigation, and would all be a waste of time. He got out of his car, and saw as the captain was coming towards him, followed by another old man. Probably just another detective.
“Agent!” McCauley welcomed Hanna, with a smug smile across his face. “We meet again, after all”
“Yeah, we do” Hanna stopped to look at the captain. He was an old man, at least fifteen years older than him, likely near his sixties. Hanna himself was in his mid thirties, his career at the FBI hadn’t started so long ago, this one being his very first task out on the field.
“Let me present to you, Inspector Callahan.” He said, pointing towards the other man. He looked younger. Old, but not as old as McCauley. He still had most of his head colored in black, only sporting a couple gray hairs here and there. “Callahan, this is...” he followed, looking at the Agent “...you have a name don’t you?”.
“Um... Agent Hanna. Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He snapped out of his observations and reached his hand out to stretch the inspector’s hand. The man was taller than Hanna, and he had kept a face of discomfort from the moment the agent had gotten there. He stretched his hand with a nod, and walked back towards the building.
“So, captain, you say this was the same crew as the last job right?”
“Yes, and the same from the bank job. Only difference is, that this time they looked more like that ‘point break’ crew operating around the world some years ago than regular bank robbers.”
“You know about that group?”
“Sure I do, it’s not everyday you see a man and his crew going from L.A. bank robbers to globetrotting-daredevil heisters. Diamonds raining from the sky was a strange headline to read in the newspapers.”
“So, about this heist here, what do you know?”
“What I know is that... aside from bringing forth chaos, killing forty two operatives and injuring another twenty nine, and later stealing away many million dollars in drugs and blood money; they got rid of one of the most vicious slumlords I’d seen in a while”.
“Slumlord?”
“He was known as Chavez, like the Venezuelan president. Trying to bust that guy was both dangerous for me and my men, and for the people living in the area. He was the most despicable and ruthless... uhm... ‘crime lord’ I’ve had to deal with. This does open up an opportunity to tighten the city’s grip on the area, which does lead me to my next point.”
The captain remained silent. They had begun walking towards the rubble, which covered both sides of the street.
“These people are something else. Entirely. They just came out of nowhere and wiped out the most dangerous building this side of the city. The same one we’ve been trying at for years, all gone in a shootout.”
“You always forget about this, Mac” The Inspector had come back towards them. “They don’t play by rules, like we do. We follow the law, while they can pull weird things like this one”.
“Wait a moment-” the agent asked “-you mentioned a fortune being stolen from this place, we are in the middle of the projects, where was that hidden?”
“You know what a panic room is, right?” Asked the captain “They had one inside the building, they were using it as a safe to keep everything stashed away. It was estimated to be holding at least five million dollars, maybe more. In order to steal it, they blew up the roof and the two floors above it, and carried it away with a helicopter. We have no info if they got out before the building collapsed, but when the excavators are done, we’ll likely find the answer to that question”.
The agent wrote down some things from the conversation to review later, when suddenly the Inspector spoke once more, while looking at the building.
“For years everyone tried to bust these scumbags. Back in the nineties this place was already like a fortress to criminals, they were almost like a family, many people tried to take them down... Up until a week ago, I was the only cop to ever walk inside and come back out unscathed. Shame that after this I will hold that title forever”.
He walked away, sulkingly. Captain McCauley watched him leave for the station in a police cruiser.
“Some operatives and a civilian were caught inside when the building collapsed, amongst the operatives, he had some friends. He always hoped he’d live to see Chavez behind bars... we all did... just, having it happen like this, instead of a proper crackdown... it doesn’t sit right”.
“Wait, so you mean, Chavez is still alive?”
“If he lives? Of course, he was rushed to the hospital, but from what I’ve heard, he’ll live. Which is where I believe you and I will have to start from if we want to catch these clowns”.
“One last thing... why are you being so forthcoming with me?”
“I haven’t seen this much movement in years, and having the FBI involved can mean only a few things. Among them is terrorism, something the government has taken a likeness for. This is the kind of headline that people may mark as terrorism, either out of fear, lack of knowledge, or plain racism. Whichever it is, there were high explosives involved, which likely means your superiors will be coming down to speak with me any time now. Wanna hear me make a prediction?”
“...Sure, why not?”
“This whole thing is gonna put these people in the spotlight, assuming they weren’t already in it. If these guys have as much brains as they have muscle, they won’t just stick around New York: The next heist will be in another city, maybe even another state”.

Hoxton opened his eyes.
He was getting drowsy. He was still exhausted from the heist two weeks ago; just the thought of lugging around all those guns made him tired. He set aside the newspaper he was no longer reading and took another sip of his tea.
It was cold.
He looked at the time: eight o’clock. Hoxton and Chains were set to arrive any moment now. He put his coat back on, and walked out of the office. He approached the large steel box they had stolen recently. A drill, similar to the one they had used back in the bank job, sat beside it on the floor. Wolf had worked his magic on that door, and all left to do is pry it open with a crowbar.
The rest of the warehouse wasn’t nearly as interesting. Spacious, and the fact it was empty only helped to make it feel bigger than what it really was. A thick layer of dust coated everything, the carcass of an abandoned car, cardboard boxes left behind, and remains from either homeless people taking shelter or teenagers fooling around. There was a large hole in the roof, the moonlight fell through it, likely used by Alex to get the panic room inside before getting away with his helicopter.

Hoxton walked outside and lit a smoke. He took a single drag and then drifted off into his thoughts as the cigarette burned in his fingers.
The ice had finally melted off in this strange business relationship he had here. He wasn’t entirely sure he thought of them as his friends just yet, but he could relate to them, and he felt they could be trusted, at least up to a certain point. Living in the United States was weird, different measuring units, the change in laws, accents, the weather, the quality of different things, the bigger proportions to everything... life was really weird there. Unwelcoming, maybe. And yet, it made sense sometimes. Hoxton didn’t know about it at the time, but he was experiencing what having proper friends feels like, where he didn’t have to hide things from them, or keep his guard up waiting for someone to try and backstab him. It felt nice to share something with someone without having to worry about doing a Freudian slip and spilling the beans on his secret life. Life away from the mob was nice too, not dealing with annoying bosses, not having to share half his pay with his superiors. He had to admit, being his own boss had its benefits.

Suddenly, his staring-at-nothing got interrupted by a pair of headlights coming over a hill. This would be the first time seeing his friends since the heist, there was no phone line over there either, and with the cell service being dodgy at best, he hadn’t received any info on when they would get there. “Better safe than sorry” he thought to himself, putting out his smoke as he gripped his handgun and switched the safety off. As the headlights came closer to the warehouse, Hoxton made out the crew van, with Dallas behind the wheel. Relief rushed through Hox’s veins as he put his gun away and welcomed his friends to the warehouse. As they all stepped inside, the pair also greeted Wolf, who had come out of the little office they had been lounging around at.
“So, how’s your chest?” asked Hoxton.
“Couple fractured ribs, plus a bullet somewhere above my shoulder” answered Chains “No organ damage or anything, so it should take four more weeks to go away”.
“Shouldn’t you be bedridden for that?”
“I’ve been, ever since the doc finished me up” Chains slowly sat down on a plastic lawn chair, left around the panic room “I wouldn’t miss this shit though”.
The three gathered around the panic room -Chains still in the chair- as Wolf grabbed a crowbar and stuck it on the side of the door. The door was barely holding on, and with just a teeny tiny bit of pressure, the door fell out, and many wads of cash came flooding out of the panic room. The four started cheering and picking up the money, like four kids playing with snow. Then a bag full of cocaine fell out, and the four looked at it. Hoxton picked it up and looked at it. Then Dallas took it off his hands.
“Don’t even think about it” He looked at the other three “This is part of the reason why this job was worth ten million, besides, right now we are in debt from the last heist going wrong, so keep it clean”
Dallas’ stern tone killed the enthusiasm, but he was right, they were in no place to be burning money like that. Coke was expensive, and if they could move it right, they could sell it away.
The four then got to work moving the loot out of the box and inside duffel bags, and the bags inside the back of the van. When it was all done, they gathered Wolf’s equipment and drove off in their cars, leaving the panic room inside the abandoned warehouse.

About four hours later they were back in civilization, the four were inside a room, they had a bascule for the coke bags, and many piles of bills of any and all denominations. Hoxton had made a run for some pizzas, so they were also having dinner in the midst of it all. They were having beers, and in the corner a radio was playing some music. If not for the dirty money and the coke bags, this would make for a very relaxing environment.
“Had we known these idiots were keeping this many big bills, we could have just blown off the door as we had originally planned” Said Chains, putting a rubber band around a stack of one hundred dollar bills.
“Well, we got everything out this way, and no one died, so I’d say we did alright” Said Hox.
“Yeah, I walked out of there with three fractured ribs and a hole in my... umm”
“Trapezius muscle” Said Wolf, without even looking away from the bills he was counting.
“Yeah that, right next to my fucking neck. A little more to the right and I was gone” -Chains took a sip of his beer- “Which reminds me, how the fuck you manage to fall through the hole?” As he looked at Wolf.
Wolf looked up, sort of surprised he was being talked at, and shrugged.
“Don’t blame me, if Alex had gone just a little lower as I told him, the magnet would have connected properly and I wouldn’t have fallen, and then pulled away into custody”.
“Yeah... he ain’t too trustable, is he?”
“He’s unlikely to betray us, or so said Bain” Jumped in Dallas, while writing down the weight of a bag of coke “He does suck however, that whole thing you guys were talking about the bag of C-4 falling off the side of the building... thank fuck it wasn’t armed, right?”
“Yeah, he’s missing some practice... non-stop, until he can hover fifty centimeters lower than he does now!”
Suddenly there was a silence, as Dallas and Chains looked up from their work to stare at each other, then at Wolf, quietly. Wolf, noticing the silence, looked up at the two others.
“What, did I say something weird?”
“So, centimeters?” Shot Chains with his eyebrow raised, a smirk forming up on his lips. Wolf blinked long and hard, tired.
“Oh, in the name of Churchill’s left ball, not this again” managed to say Hoxton, before all chaos ensued.
“I’m not switching over to feet, no matter how much you assholes pick on me”. Begun Wolf.
“We are in AMERICA, we use IMPERIAL here!” Yelled Chains.
“YOUR SYSTEM WAS MADE WITHOUT ANY REGARD-”
“WE WON TWO WORLD WARS WITH IMPERIAL”
“ANY REGARD FOR PRACTICALITY AND BEING COMPATIBLE-”
“SHUT UP! WOLF! LISTEN! It’s really fucking simple, feet to a mile, that’s fifty-two hundred eighty feet, to remember that you just say five tomatoes cause it sounds like five two eighty!”
“YOUR SYSTEM WAS MADE BY A DRUNKEN WIZARD WHO DECIDED TO BE AS MUCH OF A NUISANCE AS POSSIBLE!!!”
“FUCK YOU WOLF! WE GOT TO THE MOON ON IMPERIAL, I HAVEN’T SEEN THE SWISS FLAG UP THERE!”
Wolf was so shocked by that last statement that he looked at Dallas and Hoxton for confirmation on what he had just heard: the first one was as red as a tomato from the laughter, the latter one had fallen off his chair and was instead rolling on his side and thumping the floor with his fist. Wolf then looked at Chains in the eyes, and took a deep breath.
“Chains, you might want to hold on to your chair for this one” Chains stared attentively ”You know N.A.S.A., right? The ones who went up to the moon? All the calculations they made were done in the metric system”.
Chains stared in disbelief “Bullshit”.
“And just so you know, Swiss is for Switzerland. I’m from Sweden, that makes me Swedish”.
“Wh-... what?” Chains was once again left flabbergasted. Hoxton, who had managed to regain his composure, broke into laughter again.
“Bloody hell Chainsey, did you even go to school?”
“Hox, do I look like a guy who went to fucking school?”
Then Dallas jumped in.
“Hox, he was in the army, some guy I know told me they get fed crayons for breakfast”.
Chains sat there, defeated.
“That’s the marine-corps that eat crayons, smartass”.

An hour later, they finally were done with the counting and weighing. They called Bain and reported their findings. Around six million were in cash, and the rest was in kilos of coke. Bain’s buyer was offering a good price. Having the exact numbers figured out, Wolf e-mailed the details to Bain, who upon receiving it, called the room for a “business meeting”.
“Great job guys, almost half a million for each one of us and paying off all debts makes for a great performance. Shame it was only nine million instead of the estimated ten mill., guess you can’t always get what you want... Anyway, we have some topics to discuss, so I’ll keep this one brief. I’ll start with the aftermath of this job, in other words, what the police know about us... As you may have guessed, they don’t have any leads about our identities, so we can freely speak through landlines, as long as we don’t divulge any sensitive info. The guy at the helm of the operation is the guy in the first picture I sent you”
Wolf placed his laptop on the bedside table, next to the phone, which was put on speaker. On the laptop was a picture of an old man in some police attire giving a speech.
“He has been police captain for a lot of years, he’s been stomping out many crime families and syndicates for a long time, and us coming into town only has put him back on the hunt. What does that mean for us? From now on, we can’t leave any evidence anywhere, I’ll be taking care of that for us, so as long as you follow any instructions I may give you, we’ll be in the clear. As to what they have on us, they only seem to know the surface level things about us; as in masks, the type of weapons you use, all that stuff. At least, that’s what my back door at the police station’s server system tells me. From what I’ve uncovered, there’s someone at the F.B.I. looking into us, working alongside Captain McCauley, some guy referred to as ‘agent Hanna’. Whether that’s his actual name or if it’s just an alias, I couldn’t find out. Regardless, they are after us because they thought the assault on the embassy was a terrorist attack of some sort. They will likely figure out it wasn’t that sort of thing. I heard that Chavez actually survived the building collapsing, so we can assume they may find something out about us, perhaps via Matt. But that’s only if they cooperate”.
“Popping a cap on that little shit’s head is sounding like the wiser idea rather than sending him to jail”.
“Yeah... oh well, he didn’t really have anything on us, so we’ll see how long he lasts in there. Moving on...”
A silence ensued for a moment, the four looking at each other expectantly.
“I got a new heist planned out for you already, anyone care to guess?”
“A new heist already? When is it gonna be? My chest is still busted”. Said Chains.
“Don’t worry about that, I still need three months of work for the preparations, so you can relax for the time being, you guys deserve it. Anyway, if any of you guys ever wanted to buy jewels, then this is your lucky day, we are going after some very pretty ones. Take a look at the Garnet Group Skyscraper, headquarters of the famous jewelry corporation. At the top of the tower, they hold their primary offices, where they overview everything regarding the company across the country. In there, they store a showcase of their most valuable jewels. Its estimated value: Twenty. Million. Dollars.”
Sounds of awe came out of the four heisters.
“So, questions?”
“Well, addressing the elephant in the room: What’s the risk?” Began Hoxton, always cautious.
“Ah, I was hoping you’d ask that. Have you ever watched any spy movies? When they sneak around and grab things in the dark? That’s what’s coming down... or rather, up, since the heist is gonna be on the three tallest floors of the building.”
“What’s the catch then? It’s a relatively risk-free heist, with an incredible payout. There’s got to be something unwelcoming about it”. Said Dallas, always the strategist.
“Well, that’s what I was talking about earlier, I’ll have to stay busy for the next three months. Hacking takes a lot more time than it really seems. It’s also gonna take a lot of initial investment for us to get things easy. That twenty million dollar collection is guarded by many systems, if we want this to work, we’ve got to lay a sturdy foundation”.
“And this investment, how much would it be?” Once again, Dallas headed straight for the point.
“I can’t say exactly, but it's at least a couple million dollars, maybe more.”
“I knew it was too good”. Hoxton was good at playing the devil's advocate. Then again, it wasn’t an easy heist, double the pay from their last job without a gunfight was tempting, and above all, Hoxton had started as a burglar, so he would be playing on his own field for this one. Needless to say, however, this was going to be, yet again, their biggest operation thus far.