Jay

Jay keeps pressing that damn button. Click, click, click after click, and nothing happens. No flash of fire, no violent destruction. No blaze of glory.

Several agents close in on him and Bill—one of them practically throws himself at Jay to disable his arm, take the remote, deny his last act of defiance. Several guns in his face, they yell and scream at him, tossing him around. To the floor, to his knees. His arms twist behind his back to the point of wanting to snap.

Some cop points at Bill. “He’s been shot, get him medical!” Some other federal thug complies, rushes out to get help, while another starts to deal with Bill. Pressure on the wound, keeping him stable. From down here, from the corner of his eye, it doesn’t appear that Bill is reacting.

Jay would like to struggle, at least a bit. But his head hurts, and he’s subdued. Can’t even tell them to fuck off. They read him his rights, while they pushed his face into the floor of the train. He grunts, barely.

No bang, just a whimper.

Ash

A fever dream of motels, hitching rides, and long, painful walks in the middle of nowhere between it all. Just get away—as far away as possible. It’s nothing but survival right now, but that’s what it takes. Nothing points to her being on that train, and her aunt’s hopefully busy enough with the fallout to have time to go after her.

And if she does, Ash still has the phone. It’s turned off, of course. Her aunt can’t track it while it’s off, right? Well, if she can, she hasn’t done so just yet. Or else, Ash would be dead by now. Or worse.

One day at a time, she moves closer to the city. The road behind her is but a blur—one instinctive move after the next. Just survive for a little longer.

Even if the image of Billy bleeding to death won’t leave her vision when she cries herself to sleep at night.

Even if the memory of Jay’s hurt eyes, after they broke his trust, chokes her to teeth in the quiet moments.

Even if it costs her everything, she’s finally free.

Bill

Six hours of surgery. Weeks in recovering in the hospital. It’s all paid for by the government, of course. Occupational injury coverage, or some such shit. Doesn’t make up for the fact that he got shot in the stomach by his best friend. That the love of his life left him to die.

Bill filled his report when he was ready for it. Some of it was the truth. But even now, after everything they did to him, he can’t bring himself to hurt them. Jay is a fall guy. Ash was never there. Of course, he fails to mention his own incompetence. Bill did what he could, he writes.

Now he’s looking at early retirement. They call him a hero back at the agency. Stopped a bomb on a train. None of it happened that way, but setting the record straight wouldn’t change anything.

At least he’s alive. Even if the pain in his gut and back from the bullet and surgery will be a constant reminder that, maybe, death would be better than living with his own failure for the rest of his life.

Jay

This is fine. Prison isn’t exactly where he saw himself just a few weeks ago, but it’s better than bleeding out in a train.

The bomb was a dud, of course. But that also meant that the feds couldn’t charge him with the worst of the worst. There’s still the matter of the bomb being a thing in the first place, the detonator in his hand, and the man with a bullet in his gut that Jay put there. But it’s all more or less circumstantial, of course. No witness of any of the actual crimes allows Jay the privilege of a very long, very messy trial.

They come to him every so often, asking questions, wanting details. Names, places, deals. But, unlike his best friend in the whole wide world, Jay is no rat.

Sooner or later, they’ll convict him of something. But for now, he’s just hanging out in his cell, getting regular meals (not great food, but it is what it is), and no one forces him to do anything.

Ash

Once you start running, you can never stop. Every day you don’t move, every moment of rest, every breath you take, could be the one they catch up to you.

So Ash stays on the run, even after she makes her way to the city. The truth is, she’s completely out of her depth. Luckily, has a few contacts she can reach out to, but unluckily for her, these contacts came about by working for her aunt. How can Ash trust any of them? Surely, her aunt has reached out to her people, put them on finding Ash, bringing her back.

Money’s an issue, too. She can only get so far by panhandling and stealing.

Day after day, one week after another, she lives in constant paranoia. Looking over her shoulder, sleeping only as much as she needs to.

All that ambition, all that careful observing and quick thinking in the moment, and all she has to show of it as her own survival, and not much else. A life of survival by any means necessary is no life at all.

Jay

To say this is awkward would be a massive, fucking understatement. And Bill, sitting across from him in the visitor room, must feel it too. Neither of them says a word for a while.

“Nice wheels,” says Jay, breaking the silence.

Bill puts his hands on the wheels of his wheelchair. rocking back and forth a few inches. “It’s not permanent. Got months of physical therapy ahead of me.”

He wants to say, sorry, that he didn’t want this to happen. But all that was said that day in the train already. Hasn’t changed a thing.

Instead, Jay asks, “Why have you come here?”

Bill sighs. “Because I care, I guess. Cause I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

Arms crossed before his chest, Jay half scoffs, half laughs. “Right. Little late for that, see?”

Bill nods.

Then, there is silence again.

This time , Jay waits for Bill to break through it. Though, what could he possibly say to make a difference?

“There’s a way out of this for you, Jay.” The words sound hesitant, unsure. Like it took all of his courage to say them.

“What?” But Jay gets it before Bill clarifies. “Fuck that. I ain’t a snitch.” He looks left and right, paranoid that anyone else is listening. That she, the Boss, has eyes and ears in here. Because she likely has.

“Ash is gone, Jay. She took the phone from my pocket and ran away. She played us against each other. Without her, you are the only chance that something will come from all of this.” Bill is hurt, got it written all over his face. Not just physically, but deep in his heart. In his soul. Like he ever really cared.

But Jay is not convinced. “That’s why you’re here, right? They put you up to this. Like I give enough of a shit about you and what you have to say.”

“Think about it, Jay.” Bill knocks on the table between them, and pulls away in his chair. “It’s not too late.”

Of course it is. There is no way out. He can’t go against the Boss. Right?

Ash

One morning—one of many like this one—Ash wakes up on some stranger’s couch, hungover, disoriented. For months now, she fell back into her old habits: scams, dealing drugs, playing the only game she truly understands. And why not? No sign of her aunt anywhere. Maybe the bomb went off, and it all collapsed on her.

Over time, Ash grows complacent. Big city hustler, she works her way up the food chain of the well-off, the rich and bored. From a stranger’s couch to luxury hotels. From cheap booze to caviar and champagne. A survivor turned user. New contacts, new friends, new marks.

A life that never changed, in the end. A life she never wanted, yet it’s all she’s got. She is wasting away, slowly, but she’s not really been alive since she left Billy to die on that train. No amount of parties and drugs can hide that lie she stares at in the bathroom mirror between lines of cocaine.

Try as she might to get away and start over, old habits kill slowly.

Jay

A cap’s waiting for him just outside prison gates. All charges dropped, no conviction, no more incarceration. All because he broke and made a deal. It took a while, but Jay couldn’t shake what Bill said.

Jay doesn’t have anything to pin on the Boss, of course. But he knows a lot about her street-level operations. Knows the people involved, the places they hide and do business. Enough to move up the ladder to get to her, eventually. And, as it turns out, enough to let him go.

The cap driver looks at him through the rear view mirror. “Where to, boss?”

Good fucking question.

Bill

Bill follows the case as closely as he can. The agency won’t let him take part in it—he’s biased, they say. But it’s happening: the Boss is going down.

Jay came through, after all. Flipped, made a deal. Took a while from there to move up to her, but in the end, enough people came forward to testify against her. Behind closed doors, of course. Special grand jury, all that.

Stuck at home, barely able to walk, Bill watches the whole thing on TV. Live coverage, the whole deal. The Boss is being incriminated on a dozen different charges, all put before that grand jury. The door to the court room opens, the federal prosecutor steps through. It’s written all over her face, the disappointment, anger—the stink of it all.

“The jury has decided not to go forward with an indictment at the moment,” she says. The testimonies will be sealed, the Boss walks, and nothing else will happen. Sure, a lot of the little guys will go down, but she remains untouched.

Somehow, the Boss got to the jury. Turned them, bribed them. Blackmail, threats. Just more games, more threats pulled by a bitch of a spider at the center of her web.

Bill wants to throw up. The pain in his stomach burns almost as hot as the rage inside of him. He strains to stand on his feet, teetering like a sad little boy in a storm. Helpless, lost. Bill kicks the wheelchair, tumbling over himself. Something tears in his side.

Blood, fresh and new, soaks through the dressing over his wound. Doctors told him to take it easy, or he could get in serious trouble. Undo all that fine work they did, bleed out in minutes.

And so he does. On the floor of his shitty apartment, in front of a TV showing the Boss’s fancy lawyer talking to the news about the great justice that just prevailed. She is standing next to him, smiling this fake, stern smile. Untouchable.

Bill bleeds out, knowing that all of it was for nothing.

He dies alone. Pathetic. A failure.

Ash

The cold wind of the pier whips her made-up hair into her face. She pulls the faux fur coat tight around her neck to stay warm. The snow by the river is more slush than anything—the city doesn’t ever get quite as cold as the country. Yet, she’s frozen to the bone.

It’s been a year now, since she stepped off that train. Ash remembers kissing Billy, remembers the look in Jay’s eyes before he turned around and shot his best friend in the stomach. Maybe she could have helped Billy, stayed with him until help arrived. Or, at least, she could have been there for him so he wouldn’t need to die alone.

Braving the cold wind, she takes out her aunt’s phone from her coat pocket. Ash hung on to it all this time, but never once turned it on. A year went by, and her life is her own now. She has money, people to look after her. Fancy boots and coats, expensive perfume, polished nails. Ash couldn’t ask for more, and yet she feels so empty.

So alone and lost.

Before she tosses the phone into the river—a final goodbye to her old life—she considers turning it on. Ash imagines it springing to life, somehow still having some battery charge left. The moment it would boot up, it’d be flooded with notifications: missed calls and unread messages. Emails, reminders, and god-knows-what collected over a year of being inactive.

But she doesn’t. Ash looks at the dark screen. It’s utterly dead. Useless. She throws it into the water, never to be seen again.

Good riddance.

She stays for a while longer, despite the cold and wind.

Eventually, she gets ready to leave. When she checks her own phone for the time, her heart nearly skips a beat at the sight of a single notification: Grand Jury Drops All Charges Against Alleged Crime Boss. A picture of her aunt standing next to her lawyer burns itself into Ash’s mind and heart, haunting her like a ghost of her past.

She stands at the pier, shivering from a cold deep inside of her, a frozen panic no expensive coat could ever warm. This can’t be happening, not now, not after all this time. Ash got out, got away, started over.

She allowed herself to breathe for a single moment, and just like that, it all caught up with her.

And then, Ash starts running again.

Jay

A bottle of beer in one hand, a loaded gun on the other. Before him, stuck in ice and muddy snow, a shitty stone remembering William McKinney. Gone from us too soon. Jay raises the bottle to toast the grave, squeezing his eyes tight to push away the tears. Wind’s picking up, freezing his eyelashes together. Shivering, shaking, he takes a sip.

“Fuck, Billy. I want to blame you for all of this, man. But I can’t, see?” The tears win out, pouring down his cheek. “But I did what you wanted. Made a deal, tried to make a difference. Wish you would be here to see that. Even if it didn’t work, like I said. Every time we try to take control, something kicks us right in the nuts. It’s all bullshit, Bill. All of it.”

Jay finishes the beer, tosses the bottle aside carelessly. It lands somewhere in the snow without so much as a thud. Then he drops to his knees before the stone, slumps into himself.

Snow starts to fall around him. Thin, single flakes at first, but they turn into a thick, white blanket soon enough. The safety on his gun clicks off.

As the snow covers him and the grave, Jay’s sobbing slows down. Nothing else left to cry about. Nothing left inside of him to cry with.

Nothing’s left.

Just a man, his gun, and a whole lot of regrets.

Ash

The crackling radio plays jolly holiday tunes, a static, irregular buzz cutting in and out. Blood runs down her forehead, dripping off her chin. Arms torn and twisted, both numb and throbbing with pain. Shards of glass stuck in her skin, a piece of metal shredded through her leg.

Ash had to leave the city, had to go on the run. Her aunt will find her, now that she’s free to do as she pleases. Her reach, her power is inescapable. In the middle of the night, amidst a heavy snowstorm, she lost control of the car. Out here, somewhere between nothing and nowhere, far away from the city, her panic choked off her breath, seized her body. All it took was a patch of black ice for the car to slide off the road, crash into a ditch, against a large tree.

Windows broken, the warmth of the radiator is leaving her. The car’s frame is twisted like a nightmare come to life, smoke and steam rising as if from gates to hell.

The urge to struggle, to break free, but she can’t. She’s trapped, unable to get out. She wants to move, wants to run and scream and get away.

Just keep running, Ash.

But she can’t move, can’t run anymore. Her head rests on the steering wheel, her eyes staring at the dark shadows in the flickering headlights on the verge of dying. Within it, flashes of memories flood her vision, like a sad stage play of her past.

She thinks back to Jay, smoking weed behind the dumpster at work. Uncomplicated, honest. Then, back to Billy, the last time she ever saw him. In his eyes, look of sadness and anger at the world, as his parents took him away from her. Tears form in her unblinking eyes, mixing with blood, freezing halfway down her cheek.

Maybe no one is coming for her. But it’s not enough. There’s just nowhere left to go. After all this, she ends up right where she started. One year of running, of surviving. From county jail to the riches of the city. A reunion with her past friends, and her betrayal of their trust. Their love. It all leads back to a car crash in the snow, lost in the middle of winter in the dead of night.

Nothing but a broken body—a reflection of the broken person underneath.

Maybe she should have stayed in prison. Maybe she should have died in that crash just over a year ago.

The cold now numbs her pain, calms her mind. The cheerful tunes die down to a humming silence.

Maybe this is for the best.

Ash allows herself to stop running