“Is that my fucking gun?” Jay cornered Bill in the small space between two passenger cars; at least those are connected in a much safer and sheltered manner than the commercial cars in the back. Ash is here too, of course.

Bill leans against the door, holding his shoulder with his empty hand. In the other, he has a gun, which prompts Jay to ask him once again. “That my gun, man?”

Plan was to get off the train at the last stop. After he set up and armed the bomb. Instead, the three of them just stand around like a bunch of idiots, riding a train with a bomb on it.

Ash pushes past Jay to get closer to Bill. She puts her hand on his, as if she could make his shoulder all better. “What happened, Billy?”

Bill stretches his back in pain, grunting (jumping through the train door must have left a mark). “It’s complicated.”

“The fuck it is,” says Jay, a rarely seen anger rising up within him. Driven by this, he pushes Ash aside and steps up to Bill, straight into his personal space. Whatever’s going on here, Bill messed up, Ash is playing games, and Jay just about had it with the both of them.

Bill, for his part, reacts without hesitating, pushing Jay backward with his forearm and reflexively lifting the gun in his hand to point at his friend. Ash gasps, reaching out for both of them to stop this. “Guys—”

If there’s one thing Jay enjoys less than being messed with, it’s having a gun in his face. Let alone it being his own gun, held by his best friend. Just like Bill, his reflexes kick in and he smacks the gun arm out of the way, steps in, and with a quick control of the wrist, Jay takes hold of the gun while twisting Bill’s arm in a very painful way. Not his first time on the wrong end of a firearm, after all.

Now he’s the one pointing a pistol at someone. He flicks the safety to OFF and pulls back the hammer. Bill lifts his hands before him, wincing as he does on account of the pain in his shoulder and, now, wrist. Ash, too, pulled back from her attempt at talking to them, crossing her arms before her chest, making herself look smaller.

They stand like this for a long, drawn out moment. Good thing this section is mostly empty at the moment. The train rumbles beneath their feet; their balance shifts slightly with every bend in the tracks ahead. The vibration is almost soothing, the constant thudding a reminder that they are, in fact, still in motion.

Jay’s the one breaking the silence, seeing how he’s the one in control after all. “Okay. Alright, cool. Now that we got that out of the way, mind telling me just what the fuck was that out the with the Boss?”

“It’s not what it looks like, Jay.” Bill’s voice is much calmer than Jay would expect, or even appreciate. Like he’s trying to diffuse the situation, is about to talk Jay down. As if he had training for situations like this.

Jay’s not buying it. “Yeah, what does it look like, Bill?” No answer, just Bill trying to find his words, measuring his response carefully. So Jay fills in the gaps. “I tell you what it looks like, man. Looks like you had a gun to our Boss’s head. I can’t imagine why in the fuck you would do that, but here we are.”

“Jay, please,” says Ash, her voice cracking, barely rising above a broken whisper, “put the gun down.”

“And you,” is Jay’s reaction. “You ran off with the detonator, after I was so nice to you. I really trusted you, see? And what do you do, mess around. We had a good thing going here, just one stupid job, and all we had to do was work together.”

“The job was a setup, Jay.” Bill makes the slightest move toward him, now that he’s focused on Ash, but recoils as Jay and the gun’s focus returns back to him. “She never wanted us to see it through. It’s all just a game for her. You have to trust me on this.”

“Why should I?”

Then, something breaks within Bill. It’s written all over his face, pushing past his pain, forcing itself to the surface. Jay can feel it in his guts, his stomach sinking, his heart racing. This strange moment just before the truth comes, when you couldn’t possibly know, and yet, somehow, you do. Before his eyes, Jay’s friend transforms to anything but.

Bill’s eyes shift to Ash, and says, “Because she found out.”

“Found out what, Billy?” Even Ash can feel it now, Jay is sure of it.

Jay narrows his eyes, his mind putting two and two together. Maybe Ash could figure it out, too, but she hasn’t been working with Bill for as long as Jay has. She’s all caught up in her feelings for him, their past and all that romantic shit. Perhaps she wouldn’t even accept the truth.

But Jay has figured it out. “You’re a cop.”

Bill, his face stern, turns back to look at Jay. He just nods.

“It’s been all the little things, see? Constant nagging, constant asking questions. At first, I thought you were just excited to be part of this. But now it all makes so much sense.” His grip on the gun tightens amid the sweat pooling in his palms. His finger curls around the trigger now.

Not that he would actually shoot his best friend.

A cop—a damn rat that has been using him all this time—now that’s a different story.

Ash stays quiet. Good, Jay can’t deal with whatever nonsense is going behind her eyes at the moment.

“It doesn’t matter what I am, Jay.”

“The hell it does, man. You used me, lied to me.” Jay was wrong: there is something worse than having a gun pointed at you. He could cry, scream, burn it all down right now. Betrayal, that’s the big one to him, he realizes now. Fucking rat.

Bill’s hands lower slightly, as his posture relaxes. Surely, another bit of his police training to deal with hostiles. Make them feel more comfortable, more in control, so they let down their guard.

He says, “This whole job was a setup, a sick game, to get to me.”

“Yeah, cause you’re that important, right?” Jay almost laughs, but the bitterness wins out. “I’m sure you have all sorts of lies prepared to get out of this. I, for one, am done with this bullshit. With both of you. The bomb’s set and armed, and we’re seeing this trough. Then I hand you over to the Boss myself, let her decide what to do with you.”

“Jay, please—”

“Shut the fuck up.” The gun’s pointing at Bill’s head now, making him listen for once.

“Alright, that’s better. Ash?” Jay doesn’t take his eyes off Bill. “Would you be so kind as to hand me the detonator you stole from me?”

“What are you going to do with it?” Ash asks. Stupid question.

“You’re supposed to be in charge here, Ash? Told me yourself. It’s clear that you don’t have what it takes, see? So, just give me the damn remote, and let me take control here.”

Bill says, “Don’t do it Ash.”

But she does. Maybe it’s her feelings for Bill, maybe she’s just finally seeing the light, but Ash is doing the right thing. She places the remote detonator in Jay’s empty hand. He should have never given it to her in the first place.

“Now what, Jay?” Bill’s eyes shift from the remote back to the gun. “Blow up the train, make the Boss proud? What if I told you—”

The train jerks to the side with a sudden bump, the force knocking all three off balance. Ash, who’s still standing close to Jay, throws herself into him, forcing Jay to nearly topple over.

Bill doesn’t waste a second. He rushes forward, knocking Jay’s gun hand to the side much the same Jay did to him just moments ago.

The ring of the gunshot fades quickly within the rumble of the train. The bullet is buried somewhere in the ceiling, harming no one.

The back of his head has an unceremonious meeting with the wall. Then it’s lights out for a beat.

The world’s spinning for a while after he comes back to; it takes him a few tries to get back to his feet, and by the time he does, Bill and Ash have long escaped through the door toward the back of the train. The detonator lays on the floor, discarded. At least there is that..

Fuck them—both of them. Jay is so close to finishing this job. And now that he knows the truth, catching Bill will make the Boss even happier, that much is clear to him. Jay has the remote, the bomb is set, and Bill and Ash have nowhere to run. At last, he’s in control.

Gun in hand, Jay rushes after his friends.

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