“Why do I have a feeling you’re not joking?” Danny asked Teddy, watching as his friend leaned his head back, trying to force the last drops of beer out of his bottle and into his wanting mouth.

his lips and slamming the empty bottle onto the coffee table adding it to the large collection they were accumulating, Teddy replied soberly. “Because I’m not.”

“I get it. Times have been tough, especially with your pops being in the slammer and all but we’re talking about robbing a bank here.” Jinhwan interjected, looking back at his old time friend.

“I know.” Teddy simply replied. He had been throwing the idea of robbing a bank around with his friends for the past week but there was something about the way he spoke this time around that forced the other three in thinking that maybe he had been serious this whole time. The four friends sat in Baek Kyoung’s small apartment in silence, all weighing out the pros and cons of actually doing it. The idea was initially perceived as a joke between the men but over the next five minutes it suddenly became tantalizing. The prospects of robbing a bank, outrunning the law and then being able to reap the benefits of having money they never had before seemed too good to pass up. The only con they could think of would be getting caught.

“Well, even if we do go through with this, it’s gotta be planned out to the tee.” Danny began to speak. “I mean none of this running in with guns blazin’. We gotta do it big and with class.”

“Wait, so we are going to do this?” Baek Kyoung asked innocently, staring at his friends, the corner of his lips twitching up into a grin. The idea of being infamous bank robbers sounded so alluring. Imagine all the girls we’d get, he naively thought.

“Hold up. I see the creepy glimmer in your eyes Baek Kyoung. This is serious . I mean, we’re talking about around fifteen years in jail, and that’s not including if we have to shoot anyone.” The wise elder spoke up, trying to bring some glimpse of reality to the glamorized idea in their minds.

Leaning back into the couch, Teddy scoffed. “That’s if we get caught, Jinhwan.”

“That’s a in’ big if Teddy.” Jinhwan countered, glaring back at the man who seemed to be pleased that Baek Kyoung was already on his side and for all the wrong reasons.

“Not if we have guidelines.” Danny interjected.

“Oh, like a code of conduct, a gentleman’s code?” Baek Kyoung questioned goofily. The young male was far to interested in the hyped up plan and Jinhwan groaned knowing that it was probably three against one now.

“Sounds legit.” Teddy smiled, his eyes darting over to Jinhwan. “We’d need someone great with computers though. So we can monitor everything the police are doing.”

Jinhwan stared back at his friend, knowing all too well that he was asking him to be involved. “It’s too much of a risk Teddy, you know that.”

“Not if we have everything laid out.” Danny stepped in again. “Look, first rule: never cause bodily harm to any outside party.”

“That’s not going to fly.” Teddy pursed his lips in discontent. “Who is going to give you money if you aren’t threatening their life?”

‘We wouldn’t have to use them!” Baek Kyoung added his two cents in; pleased with the reaction he received.

“Thatta boy.” Teddy nodded his head agreeing with the male. “We’ll have them for our protection but we won’t use them.” The three men huddled closer around the cardboard pizza box on the coffee table as Danny continued to scribble out potential rules on the box each adding their input to the growing list they were forming, while Jinhwan sat back and watched them with hesitation.

Jinhwan eventually caved in and quickly became an integral part of their plan. Exactly how did that happen? Well, there were numerous factors involved in finally persuading Jinhwan to join. After the idea had been accepted between the three other friends, they began spending more time together, planning out details, staking out potential banks and ultimately leaving Jinhwan out for the sake of secrecy. For Jinhwan, finding a group of friends that didn’t mind his anti-social tendencies was hard enough and now they were slowly drifting away from him. For the other guys, finding someone who was both skilled at hacking governmental databases and trustworthy was proving to be harder than obtaining the assault rifles and even the trinitrotoluene (TNT).  Ultimately they both needed each other, and with enough convincing from Baek Kyoung, Jinhwan’s soft spot, the eldest of the group of friends finally joined in the operation.

The confidence Jinhwan held in their code of conduct could only be attributed to just how innovative and conclusive it actually was. The code, which only consisted of four rules, dictated just how they acted during the actual robbery and held no responsibility for the preparations required up to said burglary. The first rule ensured that if they were unfortunate to get caught they would at least only be charged with robbery.

Over the three years, the men had successfully completed five bank robberies all around the country, the first three occurring in the first year alone. However, the second bank robbery changed the way they ran things. Up to that moment, they never used real guns and instead ran around with toy AK-47’s, per Jinhwan’s request. But what they hadn’t expected was one of the banks to have an undercover security guard who kept a gun hidden behind one of the teller counters. That robbery, although successful, managed to leave Danny with a large gash across his arm as a constant reminder that they shouldn’t trust the hostages any more than they should trust them, and ultimately changed how they did things during subsequent hold-ups. Nevertheless, the first of the four rules was to never use aggressive violence with any of the hostages.

Well that rule just went to , Jinhwan groaned internally when he saw the pool of blood that seeped into the grout of the marble floor design.

“What the , Tyke?” Teddy ran up to Danny and shoved the man hard in the chest, forcing the man to stumble backwards and collide into the wall behind him.

“He tried to in’ shank me Tom!” Danny yelled back, kicking the small black switchblade toward Jinhwan and Baek Kyoung as proof when he felt his back collide against the wall again.

Stepping forward to pull Teddy away from Danny, Jinhwan spoke up. “But you knew the rules Tyke. You could have improvised. Hell fight him off, but not in’ shoot him!”

“Guys, he’s bleeding a lot.” Baek Kyoung interrupted the escalating brawl between the three other men as he crouched down leaning over the security guard, his finger timidly poking at the open wound on his thigh.

“Well stop it!” Danny yelled back not moving away from the wall as the tension between the three men remained.

Baek Kyoung swiveled around, “how am I supposed to do that?”

Jinhwan walked away from the two men, picking up the abandoned switchblade as he got closer to the group of hostages. Kneeling down beside Alex, he cut her free. Alex trembled as Jinhwan’s finger dug into her upper arm, pulling her up to her feet and nearly dragging her towards the security guard while she looked back at Hyunshik, her eyes conveying just how scared she was. “Be a good girl, and help stop his bleeding, and nothing will happen to you ok?” Jinhwan told the frightened girl as he pushed her to the ground next to the bleeding security guard. Alex merely nodded her head in compliance knowing there was no point fighting with men who had guns that evidently weren’t just for show.

“How is she going to-“ Baek Kyoung started to ask but was cut off by Danny when he demanded that the young male go back downstairs and resume his task of getting into the vault. Alex peeled off her light pink jacket, bunching up the material and pressed it against the guard’s leg trying to apply as much pressure as she could to stop the bleeding.

Teddy’s eyes scanned the lobby, trying to figure out what actually happened before turning back to Danny. “Look, there’s nothing we can change about what happened now, but I need to know, tell me exactly what went down.” Teddy tried not to show his growing concern when he noticed that Haeri, the mother, had actually moved from where they had initially placed her with the rest of the hostages to now resting against the adjacent wall near the teller’s counter.

“It all happened so quickly Tom.” Danny began speaking, describing how the security guard ran at him while he had his back turned with the switchblade. He stated there had been a struggle and in the midst of it he accidently pulled the trigger on the M16. “I wasn’t going to shoot, but it just happened man.”

“Nothing else happened?” Teddy asked in a near whisper, stepping closer to the other male. “Like no one else moved?” Teddy’s eyes darted to the right, motioning for Danny’s line of vision to deviate to the same side. Danny’s shoulders immediately tensed up. The mom moved.

Before Teddy could ask another question and even before Danny could try and recap everything that happened in those short few minutes, the sound of a notification alarm went off on Jinhwan’s laptop. The four men froze. They had been well versed in what sounds should normally come from the laptop and this wasn’t one of them.

“Crap.” Jinhwan skidded over to the desk and tapped away quickly on the keyboard.

But before he could even say as to what the alarm eluded to, the sound of loud sirens from outside the bank could be heard. “This is the police. You have been surrounded. Please come out with your hands up.”

“What the did you do?” Danny roared, pointing his M16 at the mother as she tried to protect the little girl in her arms.

“Whoa, back off Tyke.” Teddy reasoned, pulling the angered man away from the woman. “We’re already in deep . Let’s not make it worse.”

Danny spun around. The man was clearly infuriated. “What the hell do we do now?” Time was clearly not on their side, but there was no point in the hostages celebrating any time soon. To them the four men seemed like your average bank robbers, but there were far greater forces at play.

“Jerry.” Teddy called out, prying the young man’s attention away from the bleeding security guard. “Listen to Tyke, go back downstairs. Don’t worry about anything up here, ok? I need you to focus. We need to get into that vault.” Turning his attention toward the bank manager, who was seated amongst the group of hostages, Teddy slowly walked toward him, speaking out in a tone that surprised the group as he crouched down to the floor to be eye-level with the man. “The code for the keypad has been changed. Now don’t make things hard on yourself and just tell us the new one.”

“Like I told your other friend, I don’t know it.” The bank manager answered, his voice cracking. “It changes every few hours automatically. I only get the code if someone has made an appointment in advanced to enter the vault. Other than that, I don’t have access to it.”

Teddy stared intently into the man’s eyes, deducing if the manager was indeed telling the truth. Without saying anything in response, Teddy stood back up his eyes darting back toward Jinhwan who was still typing away furiously on his laptop.

“SWAT is two minutes away.” Jinhwan announced. “There’s six cop cars, um, give me a sec- about ten cops accounted for. They’ve blocked off the whole grid, from 3^rd up to 5^th ave, and from Union down to Market. But, so far the SUV seems to be untouched. Plan B?”

Teddy nodded his head as he took in all the information he was given. “Not yet.” The idea of outrunning the law had never been an issue, as each previous bank robbery ended up with the four men walking out unnoticed, but this robbery definitely wasn’t going to turn out that way. He should have seen this coming, Teddy kept telling himself, while his eyes surveyed the faces of the nine hostages sitting in the lobby. Too many things had gone wrong, starting with not knowing the key code changed every few hours to missing the switchblade in the security guard’s pocket.

Walking over to the security guard, Teddy frowned. They had never shot their guns before, and even if they did it was never directed at a person. In the three years they had been doing this, the only blood that had been shed was Danny’s. “How is he?”

Alex scoffed. “He’s shot and bleeding. How do you think he’s doing? You know, you’re not going to get away with this, you piece of .”

Instead of getting mad, Teddy hung his head low. He should have expected an outburst from the young woman but it still stung. Teddy’s concern may have been conceived as fake by the other hostages but Hyunshik, the middle-aged youth pastor, felt otherwise. If only they weren’t wearing masks, Hyunshik wondered, then he could confirm his doubts about the man who seemed to be shrouded with guilt over the guard’s injury.

Teddy rose back to his feet mentally groaning when he heard the bank phone go off, its high-pitched ring piercing through the silence. The four friends had seen enough movies to know that chances are it was the cops calling them. “Tyke, take the call.”

word count: 2316

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one of the best ways to confirm that you're invested into the story you're writing...

is when you start having dreams every night about being held up at gunpoint and then getting shot...