Nighttime strikes quickly as Swift drives his way around the city, heading for East Los Angeles, the area Audrey told him the warehouse is located in, and the address she already gave him as well. Shrouded in darkness and sparse silence, he focuses on the road all the while listening to a couple of tunes playing on the radio, tunes that were such a perfect background ambience for him, thoroughly fitting for a night drive in the city. He's obsessed with this kind of atmosphere. The lack of light makes it even better, and more relaxing. He got distracted by the song that he almost forgot to turn right at an intersection.
Swift discovers his palms are sweaty after so long of holding the steering wheel. So, when he arrives at a red light, he takes his hands off of it and cleans it with a handkerchief in his inner pocket. The light has not yet turned green when his palms are all clean, so he waits, resting his hands on his lap, waiting to grab the steer back once he sees the traffic light turn green. Just before it does, his phone that rests on the dashboard rings. He looks at the contact name. Lars.
He answers the phone, putting it on loudspeaker. "Swift speaking."
"Kid?"
"Yeah, it's me," Swift wonders why Lars sounded puzzled. "Who did you think this was? You didn't save my number, did you?"
"Did you decrypt it?" Lars asks.
"Uh, m-maybe. Not sure." Swift's lips shake a little.
"What do you mean not sure?"
"Well, one of my friends is handling it. Turns out the file has a thicker kind of security that'll take... probably a few days to crack. Me? I'm heading out." Swift puts the car to a halt when another vehicle in front stopped.
"Heading out? Where?"
"One of Edmund's old properties. I'm heading there to pay a visit to his former associates." Swift replies.
"Oh, let me guess. The masked crooks Edmund had under his command to distract the authorities by robbing banks and getting away with it all the time?" Lars says. A long pause kicks in between them, with Swift being silenced in startlement. "Hello? Kid?" Lars calls out, wondering what the silence is.
"I'm sorry, you knew that the entire time?" Swift asks. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't ask," Lars responds.
Swift makes a furrow, "I could've used the intel, Barlowe. Would've been helpful."
"Speaking of, how'd you find out about them?" Lars asks.
"A friend of mine told me."
"I see," Lars nods. "And I assume this friend of yours knows Matt's deal?"
"Mhm." Swift hums positively.
"So, what are you planning to do?"
"I'm planning to talk to them first, then flush them out. That'll compromise Matt in some way, right? Make him panic and stuff?"
Lars contemplates, "Are you sure? Because that's... I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. Are you sure you're up for it?"
"You're starting to make me doubt my decisions here, Lars. Of course, I'm sure." Swift says. Just a few blocks away from the warehouse. He thinks as soon as he sees another street sign, now needing to go straight forward to his destination.
"If that's what you feel like doing, then go for it." Lars sighs. "You mentioned talking to them before you do what you're gonna do. What exactly are you going to talk to them about?"
"I don't know. Anything related to Matt that no one else knows, maybe?" Swift hesitates.
"How do you know if they know anything?"
"Come on, dude." Swift tries to reason, "They've been working with Edmund for more than ten years, right?"
"I get that," Lars interjects. "But they're not that close, y'know. Worth a shot, though."
"That's what I thought."
Swift halts the car completely after stopping next to the curb, in front of presumably a retail warehouse. On the other side of the street, is the abandoned warehouse Audrey was talking about. It wasn't at all looked abandoned. The lights are still on and it looks to be in a stable condition. Swift looks at the warehouse's exteriors. No wonder people said it's abandoned. The metallic walls were slowly rusting away from the edges. If there was no light coming from inside, he would consider it as a haunted building. He parked the car on the other side knowing people inside the warehouse, if there are any, would hear a car coming.
Swift turns off the car and picks up his phone from the dashboard. "Okay. I'm at the place. I'll talk to you soon." Without waiting for another response from Lars, he just hangs up.
He exits the car and goes to cross the street carefully not to walk into a car's trajectory and get run over. As soon as he steps onto the curb, he pushes himself quickly, now off the street. Strangely, there isn't much of anyone walking the same curb as Swift. The pedestrians mind their own business, making Swift practically invisible. Who knows what their reaction would be if they see a seventeen-year-old wearing a tuxedo wandering the streets this late? He stumbles upon a tall wall. Walking across the curb and going to the side, he eventually finds an entrance, where he could fully see the warehouse. He walks into the warehouse grounds, his brown dress shoes stepping into some dirt, soiling the sole. He approaches closer and closer to the entrance until he stops.
Okay. First step: Find a way in... Aha. Swift didn't have to scan the warehouse completely to figure out where the entrance is. The door is right there, unknown if it's locked or not. He just had to ascend two to four steps of stairs before he does. But he rethinks his strategy before he could go further. He knew whoever was inside obviously isn't welcome to a random person just walking in, so he had to come up with another strategy. Still staring at the warehouse, Swift walks to the side until he no longer sees a wall. Turning by the corner, he notices a couple of construction scaffoldings that top each other, reaching the warehouse roof. Wouldn't you know, it leads up to two windows on the slanted part of the roof, the near one open. He smirks. Bet I could use that to get up there.
Swift takes no time making his way up to the scaffolding, climbing a wooden platform. The nearer he gets to the window, the more he hears faint voices coming from inside the warehouse. He jumps again to a second wooden platform above the first one, and now he's right next to the window.
"Mind repeating all of that? Except this time, simplify it." Swift hears a man's voice demand. He continues by looking through the window, where further inside the large warehouse he sees four middle-aged men gathering around in a circle, a suspended light bulb hanging above them. The window he looked through seems to lead into an elevated platform higher than the floor the four mysterious men are on.
"What, you didn't hear all of that? Even though you've been standing right next to me this entire time?" The group's leader says with a raised voice, higher than his usual low and commanding voice. He glares at his colleague, who stands at the other side of the stack of plastic blue crates they call a makeshift table, one they had to make to lay their plans on.
"Oh, no, I got all of that. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss any important details about this job, excluding our strategic moves that you delicately crafted because I wrote them all down." The caucasian man says, holding up a notepad and pencil.
"So, what? You didn't write the important details down?" The leader asks.
"They're pretty easy to remember."
"Dear God, can you just answer his question?" One of the men standing by the table, darker in complexity, complains.
The leader groans. "Crestwood Bank. Nine o'clock on next week's Tuesday," He plants his index finger on the map that's been laid on the 'table.'
Swift overhears the conversation from far above them. As he listens, he attempts to climb through the open window.
"Eight million dollars, two for the each of us. Only go for hostages if plan A turns out badly, which will slow down the cops if they storm the place immediately. You two are on crowd control," The leader points at the dark-skinned member and one with dyed-blue hair. "While you and I," He says to the notepad guy. "We break that vault open. Getaway car's on the south side of the building."
Swift manages to land his dress shoes on the metal platform completely unheard. He ducks while moving between mysterious silver canisters laid on the sides, removing his footsteps.
"We got them guns, we got them gear. Ain't no problem for us to get this done." The dark-skinned member said. He looks around the group, impressed to see their gun locker and a few explosives scattered throughout the warehouse.
Meanwhile, the blue-haired man hesitates. "We sure we need to do this?" He asks, visibly nervous.
"Well, yeah. Isn't that what we do? Pull off these jobs as a contribution to Mr. Hendrix's business so he can do it peacefully, without the cops being on his tail?" The leader asks.
"I'm just saying, now that Mr. Hendrix is dead, we're practically working for his kid, and you don't seem to be gnashing your teeth at that."
"None of us saw that coming. Hell, no one who knew Edmund did. Personally, I hate that we work for him now. But the bright side is, Tuesday is our last job. Our final score. We do this one last time, and we won't have to anymore. Besides, we showed our loyalty to Mr. Hendrix, not his kid. It's Edmund, and Edmund only, right?" The leader says courageously, making his associates shout agreeingly. "I thought so."
"I beg to differ,"
The group hears a male voice that belongs to none of them. They're a little startled by it, their eyes widening and their heart rates go up. They scatter away from the table quickly as they look around for whoever made that voice.
"Tuesday won't be your last,"
"Who said that?!" The leader shouts adrenaline and anxiety in his voice. "Tell me this is one of y'all's jokes?"
"No?" The notepad guy shakes in fear.
"I know," The group eventually knows where the voice came from. They turn to the bigger section of the warehouse, where they see a figure revealing itself from behind a big wooden box.
Not a single feeling of fear runs down Swift when he walks out from his cover spot. He turns to the robbers with a look that says anything but afraid, "Because today will be your last." He says with his hands digging into his pockets.
The group tenses. They know what they're confronting is basically just a boy far, far younger than them, but they wonder why there is even one in their secluded hideout. They even question how did he get in here in the first place. Even the tuxedo confuses them further.
"Sorry, was that a little underwhelming?" Swift smacks his lips, jerking his head to the front because of how disappointed he is that the first sentence he says is not as cool as he thought.
"Kid, who the hell are you? How the hell did you get in here?" The leader says.
"Doesn't matter," Swift says. "You won't have time to figure that out."
"And why's that?" The dark-skinned man asks.
"You won't be alive by then," Swift replies.
Hearing that, the group bursts out in a peal of amused laughter, leading to Swift rolling his eyes at them. They genuinely think he's playing a joke of some kind.
"That's cute. What are you gonna do, beat all of us up with your bare hands?" The leader says, still smiling after that good laugh he had.
Swift makes a head turn, "Maybe." His expression has uncertainty carved on it.
The leader snorts, "Okay, okay." He chuckles. He turns to the dark-skinned man, "Get this kid out of here, will ya'?"
The man obeys and walks up to Swift fearlessly. "Alright, kid. Enough, you got us laughing." He grabs Swift's left arm, "Now, let's-"
Out of instinct, Swift removes the man's arm from his and locks it with his own. He pulls out his silenced pistol from his concealed holster inside his suit, and sticks the barrel's end under the man's upper arm, firing three bullets into it. Not anticipating it, the man yells out painfully before Swift kicks him away on the chest, falling into a wooden pallet behind him. The others back away screaming, having not expected that.
"He's got a gun!" The notepad guy drops his pencil and notepad, of course, out of shock. He remembers he always brings a pistol everywhere, so he pulls it out, but he's too late to pull the trigger because Swift does it first. He fires two bullets into his chest, making him drop his gun and drop himself.
Meanwhile, out of panic and not having a weapon to protect himself, the leader flees towards the front door. Swift shoots a few more bullets into the wall beside the door to try and scare him, and it works. The leader runs away from the door. There was only one more guy Swift didn't do anything to yet. Armed with a wrench, the blue-haired man fearlessly advances to Swift. He swings the wrench, hitting him in the arm and making him drop his gun. He swings the wrench again, but the other is quick enough to prevent the weapon from hitting him. Swift punches the other's inner elbow and hits him with a kneecap shot. The man collapses. Grabbing his gun back, Swift fires three bullets at the man who's lying on the floor without even looking at him.
"What do you want?!" The leader shouts from an unknown position to Swift. Swift strains, slowly wandering around the warehouse to find him. "You want in?! You want a cut of our score?! Our money?!"
"I can assure you I want none of that!" Swift shouts back.
"What then? You wanna kill us?! Who sent you?"
"No one bad!" Swift says. He hears the man's voice go nearer and nearer. "I just wanna ask a few questions!"
The leader scoffs, "Oh, and what makes you think I'll answer them truthfully?"
Meanwhile, Swift walks closer towards a massive shelf, having no sight of what's behind it because of a wooden wall it has. But he's positive that he knows who's behind it. "I don't..." As the leader turns the corner to make his attack, Swift anticipates it and tackles his arms. "I'll make sure you scream it."
What Swift didn't expect is the gun the leader's holding, so he holds the other's hands up, making him shoot wildly into the ceiling. A few bullets later, the unsuppressed gun empties. Swift tosses the leader's gun aside but as he did, the leader takes out another weapon. A blade. A pocket knife that Swift didn't anticipate is suddenly speared into his left shoulder, right above the collarbone. Swift yells at the pain, the knife being pulled out almost immediately, adding it to a double. With the knife almost being pushed into him again, Swift pushes it back and just like the first guy he took out, he fires twice from under the leader's arm, piercing right through. He then throws the leader to the ground, the hands above his shoulder.
Overpowered, the leader stays down, and he made sure he stays that way because of Swift who's pointing a gun right at his face. "Who's buying from Edmund, huh? The organizations who offered him?"
The leader grits his teeth, "You think I know?!"
"You've been under his command for twenty years, clearly you know something I don't," Swift aims at the leader's knee and shoots a bullet, leaving him screaming. "Come on, you don't have long."
The leader tries his best to control his breath, but from his injuries, he doesn't think he can. With his remaining breath, he speaks up. "It's the whole system! All of them! Organizations from all around the world want a piece of it!" Swift's eye twitches, not having a sense of what he's saying. "Yet, there's only one who towers above them all."
The leader takes another breath, while Swift waits for the answer. "They're-"
He suddenly shuts up, startling Swift, and along with that is a loud gunshot. Not one Swift made, from another inside the same warehouse. A bullet hit the leader which made his head jerk to the left. Swift was taken aback by the occurrence. He looks to his right, where he thought the gunfire came from, and he was right. The same dark-skinned man, the first person he took down, had his left arm bleeding intensely, pouring on the floor. He couldn't stand, he crawled his way toward Swift. With a gun, he takes no hesitations to shoot Swift in the right pec, knocking him back. Although he didn't get shot right through, the bullet still hurts like hell. Another shoots the same pec, wounding Swift.
Realizing he's in no condition to fight back, Swift makes a run for it, while the other tries to shoot him down. Swift holds up his jacket, far from his body so the bullet wouldn't hurt him. Running and crouching dodging bullets, he climbs a set of stairs that leads to the platform he stepped into to enter the warehouse, using the metal fence as cover, even when it's barely protecting him. Swift was about to load another magazine into his pistol when the man suddenly stops shooting, even though he had a clear aim. The man directs his aim a little to the side, where he fires another bullet, but not to Swift. A metal ricochet sounded when the bullet hits one of the silver canisters that greeted Swift on the way in. Leaking through the bullet hole is a hissing matter of gas. Swift's eyes grow big. He discovers that exact moment, what's inside the canister.
"See you in Hell." The man snarls. In a quick fashion, Swift dives out of the warehouse through the other window next to the one he entered, before the man could shoot at the canister once, sparking a fire that lights up the leaking gas, causing an explosion that branches throughout the warehouse by the other explosive materials the group stored.
Swift had no choice. It's either dive head-first into a glass surface or be blown up. How painful could it be? For him, it was painful enough. Pieces of glass fall along with him to the ground. Bad luck strikes Swift as he accidentally hits the top half of his body on the edge of the scaffolding's wooden platform, making the wood break. Eventually, Swift hits the rough ground, and the broken pieces of glass make it worse. He's lucky to have his face not get cut by glass when he face planted. He's half-conscious at this point. He felt like he had no energy left to get up again. No. He knows he had to, energy or not.
His body trembles when he tries to lift himself up. It hurts like hell. Not to mention the glass that he accidentally presses with his palms which wounds him more. He had a bad time trying to get back on his feet, his legs rattling after that fall. He looks up to see a giant cloud of smoke floating from within the warehouse, sourcing from a fire. That'll attract the fire department for sure. With Swift back standing, he limps away to the entrance gate, all the while he ignores a sense of pain that bites him in the collarbone.
It won't matter anytime soon, he thought. As long as he returns to the apartment, he'll be able to patch himself up. He walks across the quiet street. A few people on the curb comment and chatter about the fire, disregarding the heavily injured Swift casually limping on his way to the car. Arriving in the car and slamming the door shut, he starts the engine, but the same pain in his collarbone comes back again.
He lifts his tuxedo jacket, pressing a palm under on his left collarbone. He felt something wet, something leaking that drenches the shoulder of his dress shirt. He pulls his hand out. To his horror, the metallic-scented, red blood he catches on his hand. It's leaking through his dress shirt. He's been stabbed before, but none of them caused a leak that's like this. He suddenly feels dizzy, like the world spinning around him. It's the bleeding, that's what's causing it. He knows if he doesn't treat this wound fast, he'll soon be dead.