"This is crazy, this is crazy," Poe mumbled to himself as he walked toward the freight elevator in Miller Tower.

"Shut up," the man next to him hissed. Poe hadn't learned his name and didn't think he'd ever care to. "Shut your damn mouth and get the job done."

One thing he hadn't anticipated was the amount of physical labor this job would require. His muscles ached, his vision swam, and he couldn't stop staring at the ring still on his shaking hand.

For a moment, Poe couldn't even hear the man speaking to him. All he could see was that guard's blood on his hands whether or not it was actually there. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that Memphis was hurt, badly. But he forced himself to focus on the task in front of him.

He heard footsteps nearby but chose to ignore them. Until he realized his mask was propped on top of his head. He yanked it down quickly before turning to face the newcomer. Praying to god he wouldn't have to "take care of them" like he did the guard.

His eyes widened in horror to recognize the face he saw. Parker Orlov. She was about Jun's age and used to work with Memphis back when Memphis could still manage to hold down a job that wasn't mass robbery. 

"We're almost done here, get back inside," the man next to Poe shouted. 

His voice made Poe want to cower, but they had a job to do. He was not going to let his family suffer for his mistakes. 

Little by little, the auction items were loaded into the freight elevator. The door opened on to the roof and Poe gazed longingly over the skyline of the city. The breeze swept his hair and the cold stung his face. 

He wondered briefly if jumping off the side would somehow get him out of this.

They loaded up the helicopter which was becoming a little full. Poe had heard of the place that the helicopter was from. An old flight school called Koller Campbell Air that went out of business after they stupidly got one of their customers killed or something. Their had been rumors about a mechanical failure, and Poe wasn't sure if he wanted to find out if those rumors were true.

He said quick thank you that his part of the plan was to leave through the security exit. 

Stepping back into the building, Poe could still see Memphis's blood on the jagged door frame. He increased his pace back into the building. He tried to convince himself that his intuition was incorrect. That his nerves were on the fritz since a gun was metaphorically being held to his head, forcing him into this robbery.

But something told him that wasn't it. 

As they descended in the elevator, noises could be heard over the whirring of the gears. Thuds and grunts, and by the time the group exited Poe had broken into a sprint. 

He reached the door of the vault and the first thing he saw was blood. Lots of it. And from what he could tell, it was coming from Memphis as she struggled against the security guard desperately trying to grab her gun back.

"It's over," he mumbled to himself almost absentmindedly. 

The guard would get the gun, she would kill them or turn them into the police, and he would singlehandedly be responsible for his sister's death. For his parent's death.

De la Porta had the entire city in his pocket. There was no where they could hide. No where he could not reach them. He felt the tingle of De la Porta's breath on his neck and his whisper in his ear, and that was enough to force Poe's aching joints into motion.

Making quick strides, Poe grabbed hold of the security guard, knocking her away from Memphis who promptly collapsed on the ground. 

The guard struggled against his grip, but the two fell to the ground and Poe swung at her face, hoping to subdue her as easily as before. 

But something was different, and she continued to fight back. She continued to scratch and claw at Poe who was sitting on top of her in tears begging for her not to make him do this. For her to leave them alone.

Blinded with fear and with tears, Poe kept hitting and hitting and hitting.

His eyes were closed. His fists were clenched. For a moment, he thought he heard a sickening crunch but in hysteria he kept hitting and hitting and hitting, not noticing the guard had stopped moving beneath him. Not noticing that she had stopped breathing beneath him. 

Audibly sobbing, it wasn't until he felt the arms of the other man grab him that he regained some semblance of control and remembered Memphis.

Whipping around, his mind was a frenzy. He saw a bleeding Memphis delirious and not fully conscious. The other direction yielded an image of a bleeding security guard with a fractured skull not moving. 

"I don't-" he started "-I can't."

Full sentences escaped his train of thought. He was not a religious kid, but in that moment he would swear he felt his soul descend to the depths of hell. He felt responsible for something heinous. Something irredeemable. 

Turning back and forth rapidly, Poe couldn't seem to make up his mind on which scene was worse, and he blamed himself for both. 

What finally shocked him back into focus was the rough hands of the other man gripping his shoulders and shaking him.

"Hey," he shouted in Poe's face. "Kid, focus. Your sister needs help, let's go!"

He needed direction. With instruction, his mind was able to focus even momentarily on what he should do next enough to climb off the guard and crawl towards Memphis. He lifted her head up and cradled her in his arms while her eyes darted rapidly, moving but not seeing, and her blood kept a slow but steady drip onto the floor.

The other man grabbed her uninjured arm and hoisted her to her feet. Unable to support herself, Poe did his best to gently lift her other arm and put it around his shoulder.

She winced and Poe could see tears streaming down her face as her mask had been rolled up. He had never seen her cry before.

The group hobbled down the hallway and to the freight elevator, leaving what Poe was sure would be a trail of blood behind them. As Memphis's breathing slowed down, his sped up. And as the elevator slowly grinded along, Poe could tell they were losing time.

"Come on, come on, come on," he muttered gently cradling her head.

"Hey kid," the man leaned his face forward so he could see around Memphis lolled head. "She's a fighter. She's gonna be f-"

"Fine!" Poe shouted. "She'll be fine."

It was the first and what he was sure would be the last time he ever yelled at one of the members of this group, but he wasn't going to let himself be responsible for anyone in his family getting hurt, and that included Memphis. 

The elevator door creaked open after what Poe would insist was hours and they made their way towards the helicopter. Memphis was no longer conscious enough to even keep her ankles flexed, and her legs drug behind her as the two carried her towards their escape. 

The pilot shouted something that Poe couldn't quite hear, but he lifted with all his strength and rolled Memphis onto the helicopter.

"Go!" He tried to shout over the wind, but he could barely hear himself.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see the other man shaking his head.

"What do you mean no?" Poe yelled. "She's hurt."

"We've still got a job to finish, kid."

Only concerned with making that helicopter take off as soon as possible, Poe's body seemed to move on autopilot. Racing back into the building, he loaded the rest of the items with an urgency he didn't know that he was capable of. 

She paid careful attention to not glance at the ever-growing pool of blood that slowly pooled out from under the security guard he attacked.

"She's alive," he reassured himself.

Though he wasn't sure if he meant the guard or Memphis, and hated himself for it.

The last of the items were loaded up, the door was shut, and Poe watched as the helicopter flew his sister to what he could only pray was safety. He wanted to believe that her health was the first priority, but that could never be the case. He had begged and pleaded to be allowed to go with her, but he knew the plan and he knew what happened if he messed up.

Poe and the other man re-entered the building and beelined towards the stairs where he was mentally preparing himself to race down forty flights. A hand on the doorknob, Poe stopped as a voice rang out from behind him. He turned to see someone dressed in an elaborate costume. 

If he didn't know better, he would have believed it to be De la Porta. Even seeing the lookalike sent shivers down his spine. But he distinctly recognized the voice to be different, and when the person started screaming about invitations, Poe and the other man took off running down the stairs.

His heart thudded with every step he took and the moment he reached the security door at the bottom, he shoved it open and let it slam behind him while ripping off his mask. 

The cold night air filled his lungs and for a moment, he could breath. 

For a moment, he closed his eyes and pictured himself walking around downtown with Jun. The two would window shop, try all of the best foods they found, and end with the best falafel in the entire city. He could smell it now.

The two of them would laugh about nothing in particular, and things would be happy. The way they always were with Jun.

But his fantasy was interrupted by the harsh slamming of the door again. The other man stumbled out into the alley, and Poe, with tears in his eyes and with a last burst of confidence, let all his anger out of the man. He yelled at him for forcing him into the crime, for putting blood on his hands, and for killing his sister. 

All things he wanted to yell at De la Porta. But all things that would never be allowed to be spoken in his presence. 

He could feel De la Porta's hand on his back, guiding him towards the window in the Ivy Lane apartment and inviting him to look at Miller Tower from the window.

"Wonderful view, isn't it?" De la Porta said. "You can see everything but no one can see you."

Poe was a happy person. He'd cried more times in the last few months than he had in his entire life. As De la Porta's hand slid further down his back, he cried. As he sat listening to Jun's voicemails that he couldn't bring himself to answer over and over, he cried.

The man had started yelling back at him, but he had barely noticed. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had thrown the mask on the ground when he heard a voice that stopped him in his track's.

"Poe?"

Jun.