Papers fluttered across the polished marble floor like dead leaves in a windstorm that had already passed. Sirens hadn’t started. The lobby was empty. The vault was still closed, but the silence was disturbed by a faint clicking sound.

Click, click, click, clack.

He looked towards the entrance of the bank with his gun drawn, watching and keeping an eye out for @Dynamite whilst he cracked the safe in the back.

“Dynamite,” he whispered with a low, gritty and shaky voice. “We are good out here; how long you got before you get that safe open?”

There was a pause that was too long. Then a sharp, metallic clunk echoed from somewhere in the building. Cyclone’s breath caught. That wasn’t the satisfying click of a lock yielding. That was something else. A mechanical whine began to rise, almost imperceptible at first, like something charging up or counting down. His grip tightened on the pistol. He turned halfway toward the vault and called out again, louder this time, “Dynamite... is that you?”

Still no answer. He stepped back, closer to the hallway, heart thumping harder now not from the threat of guards or alarms but the creeping dread of something gone wrong. He could still see the way Dynamite smirked before vanishing behind the clerks counter into the vault room, still hearing him say.

“Sixty seconds, tops. Smooth as silk.”

But it had been longer than that, as his nerves are getting to him. With his sweat dripping from his brow onto his gun.

Dynamite felt the sweat on his brow and he was under pressure. He had to focus his attention on cracking the safe all while his boss @Cyclone was keeping watch. Every second mattered as the police could break through at any moment. As he twisted the last number, his hands started to shake. He had to get his nerves under control. Dynamite took a deep breath and put his magnifying goggles and stethoscope back on. When he got to the third number on the safe, put his hand on the handle and turned.

The safe opened and Dynamite found a small box inside. He reached in to grab it and it burst, a dye pack! Luckily he had his goggles on as he pulled them off, ink still all over his face.

"It's a setup!" he yelled to Cyclone, getting up quickly and running out of the vault. As soon as he exited the vault, the alarms began to blare.

Cyclone’s eyes snapped toward the vault the second he heard the hiss and pop from inside.

Then "It's a setup!" Dynamite’s voice cut through the heavy silence like a knife.

A flash of red ink puffed into the hallway as Dynamite ran out of the vault, goggles dripping, face streaked like some twisted war paint. Cyclone’s stomach dropped.

He didn’t need the blaring alarm to confirm it; he already sensed they were burnt before the alarm sounded, solely based on a gut feeling.

His boots echoed hard against the marble as he rushed over, grabbing @Dynamite by the arm and pulling him behind cover near the counter. “Who the hell knew the code?!” Cyclone barked, scanning the entrance with wide, frantic eyes. “Who else knew the time and place?!”

The vault door, still cracked open, hissing and whining like it was mocking them.

“We got played,” he muttered, more to himself than to Dynamite. He looked down at the box still clutched in the hands of Dynamite. “And we’re leavin’ empty-handed.”

His jaw tightened. “We need a back exit now. We don’t got minutes. We got seconds.”

Already the blue and red lights were strobing through the stained glass windows. Cyclone pulled the slide back on his pistol and checked the hallway again.

Dynamite looked at Cyclone and saw him ready for a fight that Dynamite knew would not end well with the police. Nevertheless, Dynamite pulled out his pistol as well, crouched down and ready. He could hear the police setting up a barricade outside.

Looking around, he saw a phone at the teller's station. He ran up to the phone picked it up and called his CA ChristopherSpecchio. After exchanging some brief words, Dynamite put the phone down and looked at Cyclone with a smile on his face.

"My inside guy has a higher rank than that googootz that betrayed us with this fuckin' job," Dynamite said to Cyclone. He looked up and the police turned off their sirens and headed out.

Dynamite thought to himself, why would their informant set them up? Was it a part of a deeper plan? He looked at Cyclone, concerned.

"So boss, what's our next step from here?" Dynamite asked.

Cyclone didn’t lower his weapon right away. Even as the sirens faded and the flashing lights retreated from the bank’s tall windows, his shoulders stayed high, coiled tight like a spring still waiting to snap.

His eyes flicked to Dynamite, to the ink on his face, to the trail of red dye on the floor behind him. He ground his teeth, spit pooling with the taste of betrayal.

"Somebody sold us out," he muttered, holstering his pistol slowly, like it pained him to do it. “And it wasn’t some rookie makin’ noise for stripes. This was inside, clean… until the dye hit.”

He stepped around the ruined vault, surveying the empty teller stations franticly searching for papers with any name on it.

Then he turned back to Dynamite, voice low and cold as ice scraped off a gravestone.

“We go dark for a bit. No contact. Anyone reaches out, even friendly? Don’t answer.”
He paused. “I’ve got three CAs who were looped in even lightly. We check every single one.”

Cyclone pulled a crumpled cigarette from his jacket, lit it with a flick, and let the smoke curl around his head.

“Start with Marciano. He had scheduling access and claimed he vetted the bank contacts on the side. If he’s clean, we move to Lorna; she’s been trying to get closer to logistics lately, too eager. Then Constantine. Quiet one. Too quiet.”

He flicked ash toward the vault.

“We bleed this slow, not loud. Not until we know which one cracked us open like that safe.”

Cyclone looked back to the safecracker with a fire now steady in his gaze.

“You got any contact's who scrubs info clean? We’ll need a trail wiped once we know who’s guilty… and one left very visible for the message.”

His voice dropped again, a whisper of war plans and vengeance.

“They drew first blood, kid. Now we write the second act.”