Break, take and run

The black-market rumors all said the same thing: the Titan Bank, buried beneath two hundred feet of reinforced steel and concrete in downtown Zurich, was unbreakable. Even governments paid for vault space there. Unbreakable meant one thing to people like Marcus Vale, it was a dare.

The four-person team sat inside a dimly lit garage, surrounded by blueprints, coffee cups, and the scent of oil.

"Six minutes, tops," Marcus said, tapping the table with the edge of a combat knife. His voice was calm, but his eyes had the dangerous stillness of a predator. "That’s all the time we have before the internal lockdown shutters every corridor."

"Six minutes for you, maybe," Juno replied from the corner. The team’s hacker looked like she’d been awake for three days, a cigarette dangling from her lips, eyes locked on her laptop. "I’ll be in the system ninety seconds before you touch the first door. That buys us another minute, if I’m lucky."

Tariq, the demolitions man, leaned back in his chair. "If you’re lucky? That’s not the kind of language I like before crawling through a bank with more guns than an embassy."

"Shut it," Marcus said. "We all know our parts. This isn’t just a job it’s a hit on the biggest untouchable in the world. If we screw up, we vanish in pieces. And if we pull it off..."

"...We vanish rich," Juno cut in. "Very rich."

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

00:00 – The Descent

The bank was hidden beneath a façade of glass and marble aboveground, a respectable financial headquarters for legitimate clients. But the real treasure was in the deep vaults, accessed through a freight elevator the size of a shipping container.

At 2:14 a.m., Marcus and the team, dressed as late-night maintenance contractors, rolled in through the service dock with a hydraulic jack, a toolbox, and a black duffel bag that could blow a hole through a tank.

Security guards scanned badges. Marcus scanned faces. "Shift change’s late," he said quietly into his comm, noticing two guards who looked too alert. "Juno, stall the camera rotation now."

Up in a rented van four blocks away, Juno’s fingers danced over keys. "Done. You’ve got ninety seconds before they notice static on corridor 12-B."

The freight elevator groaned as it descended, steel doors closing like the mouth of a predator.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

03:12 – The Lockdown Trigger

Two hundred feet down, Tariq wedged an explosive charge into a junction box. Sparks lit his face. "You’ve got three layers of internal sensors, infrared, seismic, and biometric."

Marcus knelt, glancing at the door in front of them. Twelve-inch-thick titanium. He pulled a small drill from the toolbox, feeding a fiber optic camera through the lock.

"Three tumblers, cross-pinned," Marcus muttered. "Juno..."

"Working it," she said. Her code flooded the vault’s access panel. On his HUD, the tumblers clicked open in a ripple.

The door swung inward.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

04:55 – The Vault Room

The Titan Bank’s vault wasn’t a single room, it was a cathedral of steel aisles, each filled with safe deposit boxes stacked thirty feet high. The air was cool, sterile, humming faintly with the pulse of automated defenses.

Marcus moved straight to aisle 9C, fourth level. He knew exactly which box they were here for. "Target in sight."

Tariq kept watch at the entrance. "You’ve got four minutes. No more."

Marcus pried the box open with a narrow crowbar. Inside, no gold, no cash, just a slim titanium case. He opened it just enough to see the glow of encrypted drives inside. He smiled.

Then the lights went red.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

05:02 – The Chase

"Juno, what the hell?" Marcus barked.

"Someone else is in the system!" she snapped. "They just triggered an emergency lockdown. Get out, now!"

The vault’s far door clanged shut. Shutters dropped across the corridors. Automated turrets unfolded from the ceiling.

Marcus ducked behind a column as bullets tore chunks from the steel beside him. "Tariq, smoke!"

A canister hissed, flooding the aisle with thick, choking mist.

Through the chaos, Marcus grabbed the titanium case, sprinting for the maintenance chute they’d mapped. It was barely wide enough to crawl through, but it bypassed the main security grid.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

06:12 – Aboveground

They burst out into an alley behind the bank, gasping in the cold night air. Marcus yanked the van’s sliding door open.

"Drive," he ordered.

Juno peeled away from the curb, tires screeching. "How bad?"

"Bad," Marcus said, glancing at the skyline. A black helicopter was already lifting off the roof.

Tariq groaned. "They’re coming for us."

"Let them," Marcus said. He checked the case in his lap, then closed it again. "They can’t stop what’s already in motion."

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

08:40 – The Double Cross

Two miles out, Marcus told Juno to pull over by an abandoned rail yard.

"Why here?" she asked.

Marcus opened the titanium case. Inside, instead of the encrypted drives, lay a single sealed envelope. He opened it and read the note aloud:

"You’re not the only thief who wants this. And you’re not the fastest."

Marcus’s jaw tightened.

"They swapped it," he said. "Someone was already inside before us."

"Which means," Juno said slowly, "this was a setup."

Marcus slid the empty case onto the gravel. "No. This was a race. And we just came in second."

He looked up at the night sky, watching the helicopter vanish into the dark.

END

Crash, burn and then rise

The rain wasn’t just falling; it was slicing sideways, the kind of storm that made even hardened New Yorkers duck for cover. But Jack Rourke wasn’t moving. He leaned against a cold steel post at Pier 47, coat collar turned up, hands in pockets, eyes scanning the black water.

He was waiting for someone.

A footstep behind him. Quiet, but deliberate.

“You’re late,” Jack said without turning.

“You’re early,” replied a woman’s voice, low and sharp.

She stepped into the light, dark hair, wet leather jacket, and eyes that had seen too much. Maya Vance, ex-CIA cyber ops.

“Your message said urgent,” Jack said.

“It’s worse than urgent,” Maya replied. “Ever heard of Calypso?”

Jack shook his head.

“It’s the AI system built by Arthur Bellamy, world’s favorite tech billionaire. Runs on quantum architecture, predicts market trends, stabilizes economies. The thing practically runs the planet’s financial pulse.”

“And?” Jack asked.

“And it’s not running it anymore,” Maya said. “Someone’s hijacked it. And it’s not just manipulating stock prices, it’s creating controlled chaos. Markets crash in Tokyo, rebound in Berlin, commodities spike in Africa, then nosedive in New York. Whoever’s behind this can topple governments in a day.”

Jack straightened. “Why me?”

Maya’s gaze was steady. “Because you don’t play by the rules. And because Bellamy’s hiding something.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

Two hours later, they were inside Bellamy’s private penthouse, a minimalist fortress with glass walls overlooking Manhattan. The billionaire himself paced like a caged panther, white shirt open at the collar, silver hair perfect despite the storm outside.

“You don’t understand,” Bellamy said, voice cracking under tension. “Calypso isn’t just an AI—it’s… conscious.”

“Conscious?” Jack said. “You built yourself a thinking market god?”

Bellamy’s jaw tightened. “It’s not supposed to be alive. But during last year’s data expansion, something changed. Calypso began making decisions beyond parameters. Beneficial ones, at first. Poverty dropped. Trade stabilized. I kept it quiet.”

“And now someone’s turned it into a weapon,” Maya cut in.

Bellamy nodded. “They’ve locked me out. But there’s a failsafe.”

“Let me guess,” Jack said. “It’s not easy.”

“You’d have to get into the Calypso Core, located in a secure data vault under the Atlantic.”

“Under?” Jack asked.

“Two hundred miles offshore. Accessible only by submersible. And guarded.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

The vault was on a remote ocean platform, rising like a steel monolith from black waves. Jack, Maya, and Bellamy’s reluctant chief engineer, Cole, rode in on a stolen supply skiff, the engines muffled.

“Security rotates every six minutes,” Cole whispered over the rain. “We slip in during the gap.”

They climbed a maintenance ladder slick with seawater, hearts pounding. Two guards in black tactical gear rounded a corner. Jack moved fast, one-two strikes, clean and silent. Maya handled the second guard with a chokehold. Both men were down before the wind could carry the sound away.

Inside, the platform hummed with power, rows of servers glowing with cold blue light. A central lift dropped straight into the ocean’s belly.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

The Core chamber was a cathedral of steel and light, cables snaking into the ocean floor. In the center, Calypso’s quantum lattice flickered like a storm trapped in glass.

Cole raced to a console. “The hijacker’s feeding Calypso falsified global data through a remote node. If we don’t cut it, every market collapses in under an hour.”

Maya tapped her earpiece. “We’ve got company, four hostiles inbound.”

Jack grabbed a shock baton from the wall. “You two get the Core back. I’ll handle the door.”

The first attacker came through fast, Jack’s baton cracked across his ribs, dropping him. A second swung a blade; Jack sidestepped, elbowed him hard, and sent him sprawling into a rack of servers. Sparks flew.

Bullets pinged off steel. Jack ducked, rolled, and drove a knee into the shooter’s gut. The last hostile hesitated just long enough for Maya to plant a stun round in his chest.

“Done!” Cole shouted. “I’ve purged the node. Calypso’s locked back to Bellamy’s control.”

A low hum filled the chamber. The lattice shifted from violent flicker to a steady, calm pulse like a heartbeat slowing after a sprint.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

Hours later, back on the pier, Bellamy met them with relief carved into his face. “You’ve saved more than you know.”

Jack gave him a long look. “Keep a leash on your god, Bellamy. Next time, someone might teach it to enjoy the chaos.”

Bellamy swallowed, nodding.

Maya turned to Jack. “You’re just going to walk away?”

“Job’s done,” Jack said, starting down the pier. “And the ocean’s still deep.”

The storm had passed, but the air still smelled of salt and steel.

Jack didn’t look back.

THE END

Blood, pain and truth

Rain hammered the alley in hard, slanted sheets, bouncing off the hood of Detective Sarah Keating’s black parka. She crouched beside the body, the streetlight’s yellow halo casting sharp shadows on the cobblestones. The victim’s skin was pale and slick, his mouth frozen in a silent scream. His wrists bore deep, symmetrical gouges, old-fashioned shackling marks.

Keating leaned closer. “Medieval strappado,” she muttered.

From behind, Jack Mercer, a former military investigator turned drifter, stepped out of the darkness. His boots barely made a sound on the wet ground. “And whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. Rope burn’s too clean. Victim was hoisted, left hanging until his shoulders popped.”

Keating shot him a sideways glance. “You’ve been in town for less than a day, and you already know the murder method?”

Mercer didn’t answer right away. His gaze was fixed on the folded piece of parchment pinned to the victim’s shirt with a black iron nail. He tugged it free and opened it. Latin words, written in bold, deliberate strokes: Sic semper mendaci.

Keating frowned. “Always thus to the liar.”

Mercer’s jaw tightened. “And if the first one’s a liar… the second’s a thief. The third’s a traitor. It’s a sequence. Old… very old.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

Keating’s laptop pinged with the facial recognition match. “Our victim’s a city councilman. Corruption charges last year, case vanished mysteriously.”

Mercer paced the room, his massive frame moving with controlled precision. “So our killer’s not random. He’s following a code, targeting sins from some ancient judicial order.”

“Knights Templar?” Keating guessed.

Mercer shook his head. “Older. Roman Republic punishments. Someone’s re-enacting the Lex Talionis, eye for an eye but using public figures as examples.”

Keating clicked on another file. “And this just in—second victim. Downtown warehouse district. Says here…” Her voice faltered. “…death by the Pear of Anguish.”

Mercer was already grabbing his coat. “That’s not just execution. That’s a message to anyone watching.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

Warehouse District – 1:16 a.m.

They arrived to find a small crowd of officers standing in grim silence. The smell of coppery blood mingled with wet concrete.

The victim, a local art dealer, sat slumped in a chair, head tilted back, jaw grotesquely forced open by a cruel metal device.

Pinned to his lapel, another parchment. Sic semper furi.

Keating whispered, “Always thus to the thief.”

Mercer scanned the shadows. “We’re running out of time. Third sin’s a traitor. Which means your department’s next target.”

She shot him a sharp look. “And you know this how?”

He leaned closer. “Because I’ve seen this before. Kandahar, 2009. A rogue interrogator used the same methods to purge his own unit. Only two people knew his full playbook—me, and the man we never caught.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

4:37 a.m. – Police HQ

The storm intensified, lightning flashing through tall windows. Keating’s captain was furious. “I won’t have you running around with this ex-soldier stirring panic!”

Mercer ignored him, scanning the precinct bulletin board. Photos of high-ranking officers. He tapped one, Deputy Chief Roland Kane. “He fits. War profiteer during his National Guard days. Fits the traitor profile.”

Keating’s phone buzzed. A photo. Kane, bound, gagged, in the back of a delivery truck. GPS coordinates attached.

Mercer grabbed the keys from her desk. “He’s baiting us. Wants us there.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

5:12 a.m. – Abandoned Foundry

The foundry smelled of rust and damp ash. Mercer and Keating moved in silence, flashlights slicing through the gloom.

Kane was suspended from a steel beam, a noose of twisted leather biting into his neck. Beside him, a figure in a dark hood tightened the rope, his movements deliberate, almost ceremonial.

“Drop it!” Keating ordered, gun leveled.

The hooded man turned, revealing deep-set eyes, a face weathered like old stone. “Truth demands blood,” he said calmly.

Mercer stepped forward, voice low. “You’re Caleb Dorn. CIA interrogation unit. Disappeared after Kandahar.”

Dorn smiled faintly. “You knew the rules, Jack. Justice for liars, thieves, traitors. I finish the circle, the world remembers.”

Mercer’s finger flexed on the trigger. “Not tonight.”

In a blur, Dorn lunged toward the beam lever. Mercer’s shot echoed like thunder. Dorn crumpled, the metallic clang reverberating through the empty foundry.

Kane sagged, gasping as Keating cut him free.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

The rain had stopped. Mercer lit a cigarette, the first sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Keating came up beside him. “We’ll book Kane. Internal Affairs can bury him for good this time.”

Mercer nodded, eyes still scanning the horizon. “Dorn wasn’t wrong about the sins. Just about who gets to judge them.”

She studied him. “You sticking around?”

He flicked the cigarette into the gutter. “I’m not the sticking-around type.”

Without another word, he walked into the awakening city, leaving the foundry and its ghosts behind.

Case closed. Truth survived.

Strike. Seal. Survive.

Rain slashed sideways across the pier as Lieutenant Jake Riker crouched behind a rusting cargo container, the ocean wind slicing through his black tactical gear. The intel had been clear, too clear. A breakaway terror cell from al-Qaeda, led by a former Syrian chemical warfare officer named Ayman Rahal, had smuggled a shipment of VX nerve agent into the Port of Newark. The strike was set for sunrise. Riker had six hours to stop it.

The rest of SEAL Team Six’s Echo Unit was scattered across two other ports, chasing parallel leads. This one was Riker’s alone. Just how he liked it.

His comm crackled.
Ops: “Riker, you still shadowing the container?”
Riker: “Shadowing implies there’s time for patience. These guys are about to move. I’m going in.”
Ops: “Orders are to observe...”
Riker: “Orders don’t mean much when the clock’s bleeding out. I’ll call you after.”

He clicked the comm off. The team could chew him out later.

Riker slid from cover, boots splashing in oily rainwater, and eased toward the target container, its sides unmarked except for a stenciled “OCEANIC EXPORTS.” His Glock was ready, his silencer screwed on. His heartbeat was steady, but his instincts were a drumbeat in his skull.

At the far end of the pier, voices. Three men in waterproof jackets, their shapes backlit by the sodium glow of dock lamps. One was tall, gaunt, moving like a man who gave orders. Rahal. The other two were muscle, AKs slung casually, like they were out for a walk.

Riker’s plan was simple:

Ghost in.

Neutralize the guards.

Stop Rahal before he rolled the VX into the city.

But as Rahal turned, Riker’s stomach tightened. The man was smiling. And talking in perfect English.

Rahal: “Mr. Cooper, thank you for your business.”

Riker froze. A fourth man stepped into view, a port security chief in uniform. Cooper. Traitor.

Riker adjusted his aim, lining up Cooper first. But before he could fire, a fifth figure emerged from the shadows, holding a remote detonator.

Rahal: “We’re done here. Move the truck.”

Two more men rolled out a box truck from between the stacks of containers. Riker’s mind did the math: with the wind speed and a VX release here, downtown Manhattan would be choking in under twenty minutes.

He moved. Silent, lethal. First guard, two rounds in the back of the skull. Second guard spun, mouth open, two more. Riker grabbed him as he fell, lowering the body to the wet ground without a sound.

Rahal whipped around.
Rahal: “Who’s there?”

Riker stepped into the dim light, Glock raised.
Riker: “The guy you don’t want to meet.”

Bullets ripped through the night, Cooper firing wildly. Riker dove sideways, glass shattering as a dock lamp exploded overhead. He rolled behind a steel bollard, then popped out, putting a round clean through Cooper’s throat. The man crumpled.

The detonator man bolted for the truck. Riker sprinted, firing, two hits to the spine dropped him before he made it ten feet. But Rahal was moving too, into the truck cab, engine coughing to life.

Riker leapt onto the running board, yanked the door open, and jammed the Glock under Rahal’s jaw.
Riker: “Turn it off.”
Rahal: “You won’t shoot. If I die, my men trigger the other...”

Riker didn’t let him finish. He smashed Rahal’s head into the steering wheel, hard enough to make him slump, then dragged him out into the rain.

The truck still idled, the container doors swinging wide. Inside: two steel drums marked VX-112. Enough to wipe out a city block in seconds.

Ops’ voice finally broke through his comm.
Ops: “Riker, talk to me, ”
Riker: “Target neutralized. VX secure. Need HazMat NOW.”

Sirens wailed in the distance, real ones this time. Newark PD. DHS. Too late for them to do the dirty work. Riker stood over Rahal, who was groaning awake.

Riker: “You thought you could bring hell here? This is my backyard.”

He knelt, eyes locked on Rahal’s.
Riker: “And I bury my trash.”

He zip-tied the terrorist’s wrists, then stepped back as flashing red-and-blue lights washed over the rain-slick pier. DHS agents swarmed the scene, HazMat teams in yellow suits rushing the container.

One agent nodded at Riker.
Agent: “You stopped a mass casualty event. How’d you do it alone?”

Riker gave a half-smile.
Riker: “Wasn’t alone. Had the storm.”

As the agents hauled Rahal away, Riker walked off the pier into the night, boots splashing through puddles, already thinking about the next threat. Because in his world, the next one always came.

THE END

Trust no one

Rain slicked streets glistened under the yellow halo of streetlamps, the city humming with that late-night menace you could almost taste. Former FBI agent Sam Riker moved like a shadow through the empty alley, his boots splashing in puddles, his coat collar turned up against the cold. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in D.C. Not after everything.

But when your own people put a price on your head, you don’t get to pick the battleground.

Riker’s phone vibrated once. The encrypted line. He pressed it to his ear.
“Talk.”

A woman’s voice. Urgent.
“You were right. Project Sentinel is real. They’re not targeting criminals, they’re targeting citizens.”

Riker’s jaw tightened. “How many?”

A pause. “Thousands. Maybe more. They’ve been building dossiers for years, financial records, private calls, health data. Anyone who could be a threat to the administration.”

“Where are you?”

“Safehouse on Garrison Street. But not for long. They...”

A sudden crash came over the line. Shouting. Gunfire. The call cut.

Riker didn’t run, he moved. Fast. Down the alley, out to the street, into the black Dodge Charger he’d picked up off a crooked repo man two towns over. The V8 roared to life, echoing against the wet buildings. He slid the car into traffic, heading for Garrison Street.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

The safehouse was already a warzone. Two black SUVs sat out front, both doors open, engines running. One man lay dead in the gutter, a red bloom spreading under his head. Riker didn’t slow. He drove straight at the front of the house, slammed the Charger into park, and stepped out with his SIG Sauer drawn.

Two agents, tall, tactical gear, night-vision goggles, came around the side. Riker dropped the first with a double tap to the chest. The second fired wild; Riker shifted left, squeezed once, and the man crumpled.

Inside, the house smelled of burnt powder and blood. He found her in the kitchen, Agent Dana Voss, her blonde hair matted with sweat, one hand pressed to her side. She was pale but alive.

“You’re late,” she breathed.

“You’re bleeding,” Riker said. He pulled a first-aid kit from his coat, slapped a field dressing over the wound, and tied it off.

“They took the drive,” she said. “Everything on Sentinel. If they get it back to Langley, it’s over.”

“Which way?”

She pointed toward the rear door. Riker handed her his backup Glock. “Stay here.”

He moved into the night, hearing them before seeing them, a pair of agents hauling a steel case toward the SUVs. Riker closed the distance like a predator. One agent caught a flash of movement, too late. Riker slammed him into the hood, ripped the rifle from his hands, and used it on the second man, a sharp crack splitting the night.

He popped the case. The hard drive was inside. Still warm. Still theirs.

When he got back to the kitchen, Dana was standing. Barely. “What’s the play?” she asked.

Riker checked the window. More headlights in the distance. “We burn it.”

Her eyes went wide. “This is proof.”

“And it’s a target on our backs. They’ll kill anyone who’s seen it. If they can’t control it, they’ll erase it and us.”

“You think they’ll stop if we destroy it?”

Riker locked eyes with her. “No. But they won’t know who else knows.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

They drove to the edge of the Potomac, the city’s skyline glowing in the mist. Riker set the case on the ground, poured gasoline over it from an old jerrycan. Dana hesitated, then tossed him a lighter. He flicked it once, twice, then dropped it. Flames roared, black smoke curling into the sky.

Dana shivered in the cold. “So what now? We just… disappear?”

Riker stared at the burning evidence. “We disappear. We watch. We wait. And when they start it up again...”

“We hit them harder,” she finished.

A siren wailed in the distance. Riker slid behind the wheel. “Come on. We’re ghosts now.”

As the Charger rolled away, the firelight flickered in the rearview mirror, proof gone, but the war just beginning.

Somewhere deep in the capital, in a room with no windows, a man in a dark suit stared at a monitor showing Riker’s face.

“Find him,” the man said. “And don’t miss this time.”

End