Max Calder should've been in class. He'd even made it to the front doors of St. Bartholomew's before the building's stale warmth and fluorescent buzz tightened around his ribs like a fist. Then the bell rang, and students flowed past him in waves, laughing, complaining, alive in the way people were when the biggest worry in their lives was missing assignment deadlines, or forgetting their homework. Max turned around, and walked back down the street.
He walked around aimlessly, hands in his pockets, blond hair messy and unbrushed. His eyes were the color of dried rust; brown, with hues of red being visible under the right light. Despite the cold, he had decided that wandering the city in sub zero temperatures was more ideal than going to class. He told himself it was just a skip. Just air. Just getting his head straight, as if he hadn't been doing the same thing for the last two months.
He walked by the shops he'd grown up with, passing the bakery he used to visit with his parents, the diner with the shitty coffee that tasted like fermented dirt, and the movie theatre he went to on his first date back in grade 6. He walked until he recognized the bank on the corner. It had tall glass windows, dark brushed steel, and fancy stonework, a sort of cursed amalgamation of different eras of construction. It always smelled like hand sanitizer for some reason, and Max had only ever gone inside with his mom, when he first got his bank card. He'd passed it a hundred times, although he'd never really thought about it more than a passing joke about robbing it if his life ever got bad enough. Little did he know, someone else was about to do just that.
A black van rolled up to the curb a few feet away from him. It wasn't dramatic. There was no drama, no tires screeching. The doors opened and four figures hopped out, with plain clothing that made them blend in with the crowd. They moved quietly, coordinated, in a way that felt practiced. One of them, a slim man with a metal cane in his hand, paused for a second to look up at the cameras placed on every corner of the bank, and a grim smile spread across his face. Max's stomach tightened for seemingly no good reason as the four people walked past him.
Max shook off the unsettling feeling, and began to walk past the bank, heading to the variety store across the street. Then, the air in front of the bank seemed to get thicker, harder to breathe. Pressure built up in Max's head, and his brain screamed for him to run, to be anywhere but there. And then a scream burst through the lobby doors.
People stumbled out, one man clutching his chest, as if he was trying to rip his own heart out, another pale and shaking, throwing up on the sidewalk. The security guard outside drew his sidearm and stood hesitantly at the door, confused on whether he should run or investigate the incident. Max's body moved on its own, pulling people away from the door. For whatever reason, while the miasma in the air was making him feel like his head would explode any moment, it seemed to be having much worse effects on everyone around him. "Come on, move!" he shouted, grabbing a woman's elbow and tugging her back from the entrance. "Get away from the door!"
Someone inside shouted something about a gun, while someone else screamed the word hostage. Max saw the security guard's face; confused, furious, terrified, and then, in an instant, understood why. Inside the bank, near the counter, a man in a suit knelt on the ground, shaking uncontrollably, eyes manic. Max could see something surrounding the man, something he couldn't explain. A reddish fog was growing around him, and everywhere it touched things went haywire. Pens on the counter rolled by themselves, computer monitors flickered, money was flying everywhere. But the shimmer in the air around him didn't exactly look like smoke or light, it looked like the space itself had become unstable.
Max's lungs struggled to pull in more air, and the pressure in the lobby grew, forcing nearby pedestrians outside to fall to their knees. People stumbled as if gravity itself had increased its pull. The glass windows of the bank rattled in their frames. Max should've dropped like everyone else, but instead, something inside him answered. A painful, searing heat flooded into his limbs, lighting his nerves on fire. This wasn't just adrenaline, it was something stronger, more pure. His muscles tightened, and everything felt a little lighter. He continued dragging the now collapsed people away from the entrance, now fueled by a new source of energy.
The pressure snapped outward, making the world blur at the edges of his vision, but Max stayed upright through it, defiant. Inside the bank, the robber with the cane turned his attention to the trembling man. He tapped the cane down once with a heavy clang, like a hammer striking steel, and approached the man on the floor. For a moment, Max thought the robber would shoot him, until the man did something else. He helped the man stand up, in a seemingly kind gesture. He was gentle, keeping the man stable, and then he pressed his hand against the man's forehead. For a moment, the air in the lobby swirled inward, like a whirlpool, with the man at the center. The shimmer around the man collapsed, compressing into a fine point at his forehead, and promptly disappeared. The man went limp, crumpling to the floor. He was unconscious, breathing shallowly, alive.
Max stared through the glass, unable to reconcile with what he'd just seen. A bank robber had contained whatever that was with the ease of muscle memory. The other three men worked the counter with the same cold efficiency, stuffing cash into duffel bags. They brought the bags back to the van, and the man with the cane announced that they should begin cracking the vault. It was almost… too smooth. There were no random gunshots, no shouting, no cruelty. It was clear to even Max that this was just a job for these people.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but they could never have arrived in time. There was a boom, and the four robbers swiftly emptied the contents of the vault. On the way out, the man with the cane stopped for a split second, and turned to Max. He looked like any other office worker, with tired eyes and a refined stature. If Max hadn't just witnessed him rob the bank, he'd have thought that he worked there. The man's gaze cut through Max, seemingly staring directly into his soul itself. A familiar pressure built up again in the air, before abruptly disappearing. He then nodded once, and got in the van, driving away.
The crowd erupted with noise as soon as it left. Anger, shock, people talking over each other, phones out, hands shaking. Max stood there in the cold with his heart hammering, and just as quickly as it had risen up, the heat in his limbs faded away. Then a hand settled on his shoulder. "Don't try to run." a man said close to his ear. "They're watching you" Max spun around, still on edge from what he'd just witnessed. The man behind him was tall, muscular, and dressed plain enough to disappear into any crowd, with a black T-shirt and sweatpants. He had short black hair and a faint shadow of facial hair that made him look about ten years older than he really was. His eyes were sharp, dark with exhaustion. "What—" Max began to ask. "You didn't fall," the man said, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. Max blinked, thrown. "I—what?" The man's gaze cut back to the bank, then to the street where the van had vanished. "You should've dropped when the overflow hit. Everyone else did." Max's mouth went dry. "Overflow? What are you talking about? You mean that weird fog?" The man simply responded with "The name's Devon Astor, official Association agent, you need to come with me." Max's first instinct was to refuse. His second instinct was to run. His legs didn't move. The memory of that pressure, of the world buckling, was stuck in his mind.
"You're… police?" Max asked, grasping for normal labels. Devon's mouth twitched, humorless. "Not exactly, more like the cleanup crew" Max's phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. Devon's hand stayed steady on his shoulder, not a threat, but not gentle either. "Come on," Devon said. "Before someone less merciful comes along."