Cut to black.
A white van rode the empty highway, and Thomas sang to himself.
*"Down on Skid Row..."* — off-key, cheerful, completely unbothered. The van was quiet except for him and the road hum. No radio. He didn't need one. He knew every word, every harmony, the whole miserable chorus of it. He'd sung it in his kitchen once, dancing in his socks, and he sang it now with the same joy — a man doing what he loved.
The highway was empty in both directions. The city glowed ahead, hazy orange against the clouds. Somewhere behind him, the capital sat locked down and guarded, full of soldiers watching an empty building. He smiled at the thought and sang louder.
The side of the van read CAPITOL CLEANING CREW in blue stencil, with a phone number that rang to nowhere. In the back, under a tarp and a stack of folded uniforms, sat enough explosives to level a city block.
He sang the next verse louder.
The Federal Reserve Bank rose out of the dark like a temple — columns, stone, the weight of money made architecture. Thomas turned off toward the parking structure beside it, the underground lot that served the bank and, two levels down, the largest gold depository in the United States.
The guard at the booth barely looked up. Skeleton crew — everyone with a badge and a gun was at the capital, guarding an empty building against a bomb that had never existed. The guard waved the cleaning van through with half a glance at the stencil.
Thomas smiled and sang under his breath and drove down the ramp into the concrete dark.
Level two. He parked in the far corner, where the cameras had a blind spot he'd mapped three weeks ago — except tonight he didn't want the blind spot. Not for the walk out.
The work was quiet. Methodical. He'd done quiet work in louder places.
He moved through the concrete dark with a bag over his shoulder, placing each charge where it would do the most honest work — the load-bearing bones, the pillars, the joints where the building held itself together. He knew structures the way other men knew people: where they were strong, where they pretended to be, where they'd break if you asked them properly.
He hummed while he worked. "Down on Skid Row..." The tune bounced off concrete and came back to him, and he smiled like a man gardening. When he finished a placement he patted the concrete once, absently, the way you'd pat a dog. Good. Good.
It took forty minutes. He didn't rush. Rushing was for men who got caught.
When it was done, he stood in the empty parking level and changed.
The coveralls came off, folded, into a bag. The suit went on — dark, tailored, the black tie knotted with practiced fingers. And then the mask, from its case, settled over his face like it had never been anywhere else.
Thomas was gone. The van still said cleaning crew. The man standing beside it was Fauwks.
He walked.
The corridor cameras caught him first — a dark figure, unhurried, head tilted just slightly as he passed under each lens. Halfway down the corridor he did a little dance — a shuffle-step, a spin, arms out wide — singing from under the mask, "'cause we go downtown," and kept walking like nothing had happened.
At the stairwell door he paused, looked straight up into the camera, and adjusted his tie. Deliberate. A signature. Hello.
Then the lobby cameras. The plaza cameras. He gave them all the same unhurried walk, the same tilt, the same small adjustment — and under the mask, he was humming.
*"Down on Skid Row..."*
A night guard at the far desk looked up, frowned at his monitor, reached for his phone — and by the time he looked back at the screen, the figure was gone from that frame, already in the next one, already past.
Fauwks crossed the plaza with the bank rising behind him and the city spread out ahead, and he didn't look back. The van sat two levels down with its cargo. The charges sat in the bones of the building. The gold sat in its vault, gleaming, oblivious, guarded by no one who mattered.
He hummed his show tune into the dark, and walked on, and the night didn't know yet what morning would bring.
Chapter 29