Braveheart hit the stairs at a run, boots slamming on shining marble, breath loud in his own ears. Billy pounded behind him, panting, and three crusaders clattered after them, armour scraping the handrails, rifles held tight.
They burst up from the lower vault level onto the ground-floor landing.
Braveheart was already aiming for the next flight, ready to charge up toward the second floor — toward the security room — when he stopped dead.
Through the smashed front doors, past the cracked windows, from somewhere beyond the square, he heard it:
Police sirens.
Not just one.
A lot of them.
They weren't yet in sight — probably keeping their distance to avoid getting shot — but they were close.
Growing louder.
Multiplying.
WHEEW–WHEEW–WHEEW–
"Damn," he muttered. "Already?"
Billy swore. "Oh, Jesus, man. We're done for. We are actually done. We're so fucking done."
Braveheart forced himself to breathe. To think. To be, if nothing else, as brave as the name he'd given himself.
"Relax, man," he snapped. "It's probably just those unarmed regular patrol cops, making a perimeter. Regular police, maybe some firefighters, ambulances. They can't do shit against us. Look at what we've got."
He jerked his thumb back at the crusaders looming on the stairs and down toward the door where Sir Egg stood.
"We have nine of these mad bastards, with armour out of a sci-fi film, rifles, plates. Whatever those police have — they don't have this. And once the real armed police show up, we'll be long gone. They can't stop us, man. We're basically invincible. Just trust me."
Billy didn't look convinced, but he didn't argue. There was no going back now; he was in this until the end.
Braveheart leaned sideways and shouted into the hall:
"Sir Egg! COVER! Take cover — don't just stand there like a fucking statue! If they see you, they might take a shot! You know, shoot you with guns like yours! And we don't want everyone seeing how fucking armed and armoured we are. Let's keep them guessing and hope the fucking army doesn't show up for our arses."
Sir Egg stood framed in the shattered doorway like a bouncer sent from Hell, watching the rain and the distant wash of blue and red emergency lights. He turned his helm slightly toward Braveheart. The tone stung — no knight liked being spoken to like a recruit — but the gestures and urgency made sense.
"Aye, I'll shift. Ye've made your meaning plain enough," Sir Egg said stiffly.
He did not like Braveheart talking as if he outranked him, but he couldn't ignore the man's knowledge. In Sir Egg's world, you took cover when enemy archers raised bows or when siege engines fired. He had seen what these new "rifles" did to stone and flesh. If the enemy had similar tools, standing in a doorway was suicide.
He barked a harsh order in his own tongue; his two men moved at once.
Sir Egg stepped a little to the side of the doorway so he could still peek out, but with most of his body shielded by stone. The two heavy-armoured crusaders pulled back from the direct line of sight and planted themselves behind the thick stone walls flanking the entrance, using the large front windows as firing slits. They looked like professional soldiers on medieval battlements, ready to meet an enemy volley — only their "arrows" spat 7.62.
Luckily the bank's facade was mostly stone. Only four windows on the first floor faced the front yard, which made it easy for three armoured men to secure.
Their rifles rested on the sills; their eyes watched the rain with hard, patient vigilance.
Satisfied, Braveheart turned back to the stairs.
"Right. Security room. Let's turn off that God-damn alarm."
He charged upward. At the top of the stairs he turned right without thinking.
Billy grabbed his sleeve. "Not that way, you maniac! Security room's down this corridor, not up there. Come on — I'll lead."
Braveheart snarled, but he let Billy take point. Better to be led by the idiot who knew the building than to pretend he didn't need a map.
They moved down the second-floor corridor at a half-run. Sirens keened louder through the windows; the alarm still screamed inside the walls.
At the end of the corridor, around a corner, the security room door waited: plain, painted, trying its best to look unimportant.
To Billy, it had never looked more important in his life.
He fished the keys from his belt — the ones he'd remembered to grab before coming back into the bank. His fingers shook as he rifled through the ring until he found the right one.
"Right," he muttered. "Let's go say hi to Stewart."
The key slid into the lock smoothly, turned with a solid clack. The bolt drew back. Perfect. He pushed the handle down and shoved.
The door moved a centimetre — then stopped, dead.
Something on the other side was holding it shut.
Billy grimaced. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Stewart. Really, man? Are you really doing this?"
He rattled the handle and leaned his shoulder into the wood. It flexed, but didn't give. It was like somebody had wedged their whole body against it.
"Stewart!" Billy yelled through the door. "It's me! Open the fucking door or I'll have these guys shoot it open!"
Braveheart stepped beside him, eyes narrowing at the resistance.
Behind him, the three crusaders waited in a tight wedge, rifles at low ready, watching Billy struggle with the door.
"Move, Billy," Braveheart said quietly. "Let's just kill all of them and be done with it already."
Billy swallowed, pressed his forehead briefly to the cool paint, and listened to his own breath bounce back.
"Stewart," he said, voice rough. "Open up. Or you're going to get everyone in there killed. Just surrender, man."
The door stayed shut.
The sirens wailed closer.
And behind the security room door, four hearts hammered, Stewart held the handle with both hands, and no one dared speak.
Stewart had braced his foot against the door as Billy rattled it from the other side. He was not a soldier, not a hero, and not especially brave on any normal day — but right now he was the only man in a room with three terrified women.
So he stepped up to be the hero.
Even if nobody asked him to be one.
His muscles burned.
His breath came short.
The wood trembled with every shove from outside.
The security room hummed, blinked, and grew hotter by the minute — warm from the monitors, warm from the machines, warm from the sheer number of panicking humans all crushed inside.
It was barely a room. More like a cramped cave jammed into the left side of the second floor, windowless and claustrophobic.
Inside, the layout split into two parts, shaped like an L: Directly ahead of the door stood the heavy safe where keys, codes, and confidential documents were kept.
Beside it sat a clutter of desks stacked with binders, handwritten passwords, emergency procedures, and old memos no one had read since 1978.
Pinned to the wall beside them were two framed group photos: in one the entire staff of the bank, and in the other one was the security team, all smiling awkwardly in their uniforms outside the building.
Now most of those people were dead.
The room bent to the right into the real heart of the bank:
A row of desks bolted together, each bearing chunky CRT monitors, blinking lights, green-grey control panels, and a tangle of cables.
More screens were mounted along the wall above, showing a dozen angles: The wrecked hall. The ruined front steps. The front lawn glistening with rain and blood. The burning bus and half-collapsed café. The vault where money was being bagged
And most importantly: the hallway outside the security room door, where three armoured crusaders loomed, rifles lowered but ready.
On the far left feed, Billy stood arguing with Douglas Horn — the crazy ex-soldier, D&D lunatic, and newly self-declared "Sir Braveheart."
Under the desk beneath the monitors, Elaine and June Kerr were curled together like frightened animals.
Their neat uniforms were soaked with sweat.
Navy cardigans clung to their trembling bodies; their skirts were streaked with dust from the filthy carpet that no one ever cleaned properly.
Their blonde hair had fallen loose, framing tear-streaked faces.
Mascara dripped.
Glasses fogged.
Pretty young teller faces that belonged behind a banking counter — not hiding under a desk listening to gunmen upstairs.
Elaine squeezed June's hand so hard their knuckles went white.
"Don't look," she whispered, even though June's eyes were already squeezed shut. "Just don't look at the screens. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Police are coming…"
June shook her head in tiny, jerking motions, breath shuddering.
Irene stood just beside them, half blocking their view of the monitors, one hand gripping the desk edge, the other clutching the phone like a lifeline.
She still wore her cleaner's uniform — practical shoes, faded overalls, an old-lady cardigan. Sweat darkened the fabric under her arms and along her neck.
The room was always warm, but now, with four bodies crammed into it and the machines overheating, it felt suffocating.
The smell of coffee, dust, hot plastic, and human fear clung to every surface.
Still, Irene held the phone and her composure.
She spoke into the receiver again and again, voice shaking:
"Please… please hurry… they have guns… so many guns—"
The operator kept repeating,
"Stay inside. Stay safe. Officers are on the way."
As if they hadn't been doing that for the last six minutes.
In the back corner, behind Stewart's braced feet, a small wooden table held with a scratched microwave, half a dozen chipped mugs and Stewart's lunch: porridge with blueberries,
(not cheap on his salary, but blueberries made him happy.)
Now the porridge sat cooling inside the microwave — forgotten mid-cycle the moment the front doors downstairs exploded.
Below it, a humming mini-fridge waited, full of sandwiches and drinks that would never be tasted by their now dead owners.
Beside the main door, another door led to the secondary room — the machine chamber.
A narrow, hotter space packed with tape decks, recording units, spinning reels, and the security staff's lockers.
It was the hottest point in the whole bank — a mechanical heart pumping out heat and data.
Stewart could feel that heat now, seeping through his shirt as he pressed his weight against the door.
Outside, Billy's voice came muffled through the wood — pleading, swearing, promising and threatening in the same breath.
Inside, Stewart shut his eyes.
Pressed his shoulders harder.
Tried not to look at the monitors showing the carnage below.
He thought of the photos on the wall: the staff all smiling, alive.
Guthrie was gone.
MacLeod was gone.
Half the bank was gone.
And Billy — Billy, who he'd eaten lunch with, joked with, smoked with — had betrayed them. He'd thrown in with Douglas's deranged plan to "liberate Scotland" or whatever madness the two had cooked up.
"Hold it, son," Irene murmured, lowering the phone briefly to put a hand on his shoulder.
Her voice cracked but stayed steady.
"Just a wee bit longer. They're comin'. Just hold."
Stewart nodded once, knuckles white on the handle.
And in that cramped, humming room: one man held the door, one woman held the line to the outside world, two young women held each other and tried not to scream… as Stewart prepared to make the decision that might kill him:
keep holding the door or surrender and pray the monsters outside showed mercy.