The city was screaming. That’s what it sounded like to me, anyway. To everyone else, it was just Friday morning. Traffic humming, horns bleating, the rhythmic thump-thump of bass from a passing car. To me, it was a threat assessment overload.

I walked with my head down, hands buried deep in my pockets, shoulders hunched. I blended into the flow of humanity like a drop of gray paint in a bucket of water. A mother pushing a stroller clipped my elbow; I didn’t flinch. A businessman shouting into his headset about “quarterly projections” nearly walked into me; I sidestepped him with a fluidity that he wouldn’t even register.

I was a ghost. I was nothing.

Prestige First National Bank sat on the corner of Fifth and Hamilton like a monument to things I didn’t understand. It was all marble columns, brass fixtures, and intimidation. The architecture wasn’t designed to welcome you; it was designed to remind you of how small you were. It whispered, Wealth lives here. Power rests here. You are either a guest, or you are trespassing.

The revolving doors were polished to a mirror shine, reflecting my distorted image back at me—a gray smudge against the gold.