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In MJ’s defense, it’s not like the bus was her first option.But, really, what else is she supposed to do?Call Cindy or Betty, beg one of them to drive halfway across town at some ungodly hour and drive the forty-five minute commute to get her to her dead-end, go-nowhere job on time?(She already tried that.)(They both said no.)And she’d gotten away with calling an Uber for the first few days, but quickly figured out that that was going to eat into her admittedly meagre paycheck.And so here she is, taking the bus.Or, more accurately, yesterday she took the bus.Same with the day before.Today, however, it is 7:01, and she is currently flat-out sprinting down the street after the bus, bowling over Soccer Moms in overly expensive workout gear and praying to every deity she can think of that Walt is feeling charitable.“Walt!” she nearly screams, waving her arms as the bus heads for the corner. “Wait! Come on, Walt, stop!”Bus drivers are supposed to be late.That’s a thing, right?Buses are always late, and people stand around and complain about it, and that’s a thing that happens.Surely movies and tv shows wouldn’t just lie to people like that.The bus brakes at the corner, and MJ crashes through the doors before they’ve even opened all the way.“Bus stop’s back there, MJ,” the driver points out, but he’s grinning, like MJ’s extremely cool and dignified sprint was amusing to him on a personal level.Walt’s a nice old guy, she guesses, but his sense of humor leaves something greatly to be desired.“You’re a lifesaver, Walt,” she manages to gasp, and swipes her card as she clambers the rest of the way up the stairs.God, she’s out of breath.She takes the first seat she can find, still breathing hard and trying to remember when the last time was that she actually ran of her own free will.High school gym doesn’t count.(Not that she actually ran then.)(She’s very proud of that fact.)The man in the seat behind MJ smiles as she sits down, and she does her best to smile blandly, politely, in response.She fishes her headphones out of her pocket, and they’re a tangled mess, which should surprise exactly nobody, but is still kind of inconvenient.“Is it always like this?” the guy behind her asks.MJ glances up from where she’s trying to untangle her headphones. “Sorry?”“The weather,” he says, like they’re continuing an earlier conversation. “Is it always so hot this late in the year?”“Santa Ana weather,” MJ says, and begins to regret her seat choice.She’s lived in LA for three years, and she’s still not 100% certain what Santa Ana weather actually means, but she’s found it’s usually enough to nip any meteorological discussion in the bud.Not this time.“It’s so warm,” the guy says, in a wondering voice. “You know, back in Chicago, we’re already getting winter weather.”MJ eyes the water bottle and sunscreen that the man’s got next to him, the handful of brochures and actual paper maps sticking out of his backpack.“Really,” she says, and it’s not a question.“Oh, yeah,” he says, undeterred by her flat tone. “Oh, gosh, that was such a touristy thing to say, wasn’t it?”Her earphones finally come untangled with a last, vicious tug.“Hmm,” she says.“Oh, man,” the touristy guy says, before she can put her earphones in. “Just look at that traffic.”MJ puts her earphones in anyways.“Hmm,” she says again, and hopes he’ll get the hint.He doesn’t get the hint.“Just feels like it keeps getting worse.”It’s too early for this.“Uh-huh.”The guy still doesn’t get the hint.“You know,” he starts. “One of my friends on the city planning council—”“Oh, gosh,” MJ says, standing again and not even trying to sound like she means it. “Oh, you know what? I can’t sit here, I just realized.”The guy blinks. “Wait, why not?”“Gosh, what a bummer,” she says, already halfway back up the aisle again. “Hey, do you mind if I—thanks.”The lady in the first row moves her bag obligingly, and MJ feels a little bad for making her share a seat, but she likes sitting near the front, and there were no double seats still available.She sits, earbuds still hanging in one ear, but apparently today is the day for chatty seat partners, because the older woman sitting next to her looks out the window for a few more minutes before turning back to MJ and sticking out her hand.“I’m Helen.”MJ tugs out her earbud, shakes the older woman’s hand. “MJ.”“Nice to meet you,” the woman—Helen—says, and beams like she really means it.“You too,” MJ says, and wonders if it would be rude to put her music back on again.“You work downtown?” Helen asks, after another few moments of silence.“Yeah—yes,” MJ says, figuring it can’t hurt to be polite.Helen waits, and MJ realizes she’s waiting for further clarification.“I’m a photojournalist,” she says, and Helen’s eyes widen like that’s the best thing she’s ever heard.“Oh, wow,” she breathes. “That’s so exciting! Where do you work?”This is mostly why she doesn’t like telling people stuff like this.“Oh, well,” she says, stalling. “I’m more of a freelance writer at the moment.”“Wow,” Helen says again. “What does that mean, exactly?”MJ winces.“It, um. It means I work at Hot Dog on a Stick.”“Oh.”“Yeah.” MJ shrugs and then slaps on her very best Customer Service voice and smile. “‘Stick a smile on your face!’”“Oh.”“Trademark,” she adds.Helen looks like she wants to laugh, but doesn’t want to be rude.MJ just wishes she’d go ahead and laugh.“It’s just temporary,” she says.
That’s what they all say.
“Of course,” Helen says immediately, so MJ knows she was thinking the same exact thing.“You know,” she says. “Just until I save up enough to fling myself into oncoming traffic. How about you?”“Oh, I work at one of the Citibank offices downtown.”“Oh,” MJ says, and has no idea what to say as a follow-up.Fortunately, Helen’s there to pick up the slack.“I’d been driving this way for fifteen years,” she says, and waves a hand to indicate the LA freeways in general. “And I just couldn’t take it anymore, all the stress, you know?”MJ sneaks a look at the clock on her phone.7:13—she’s got plenty of time before her shift starts, she’ll be fine—“Sure,” she says.“This way, I can just relax and enjoy the ride.”Walt slams the brakes, and MJ’s head comes dangerously close to bouncing off the Plexiglas panel separating the driver from the rest of the seats.“Uh-huh,” she says, catching herself just in time. “Relaxing.”“It keeps me from tensing up all the way into work,” Helen continues, cheerfully oblivious as MJ braces herself a little more carefully in her seat.“That’s fair,” she says, only half listening. “I miss my car, though.”“Oh, well, it’s a young person’s game. Is your car in the shop?”Let’s go with that interpretation.“Yes,” MJ says. “Yes, it is.”
In the shop. Is exactly where my car is.
Helen looks very mildly suspicious, but MJ’s saved from any further explanation when a sea of red taillights swallows up the road in front of them and the whole bus seems to groan in protest.“Oh, look at that,” Helen says.It must be an accident up ahead—MJ can see cars moving way up ahead, but traffic has crawled to a literal stop, and she tries not to despair.“Unbelievable,” she mutters, and checks her phone again.7:16.Her shift doesn’t start until 8:30, she should still be okay, but God, that traffic really is horrific, and also she doesn’t have the best track record for actually showing up exactly at 8:30 on the dot—“Can you imagine what it’ll be like in another half hour?” Helen says, and MJ shudders at the thought.“God, yes.”She can absolutely imagine that.The traffic will be backed up for ten miles, easily.If she’d missed her bus—“You’re lucky Walt stopped for you,” Helen says, wondering.“Yeah, well,” MJ says.Then she catches Walt’s eye in the rearview mirror and raises her voice.“If he was late every once in a while, like a normal bus driver—”He scoffs and focuses on the road in front of them, which is good, seeing as how, again, the traffic is literally insane up ahead.“It’s the least he can do,” Helen says, in the same overly-innocent voice, and MJ nods, approving.“Exactly,” she says, and Helen laughs.She’s a nice enough lady, MJ thinks, and tells herself it’s probably a solid plan, to make friends with some of the regulars.If she’s going to be stuck riding the bus for the next three months, it can’t hurt to have someone to save her a seat.God, she thinks unhappily. This is like high school all over again.Except she’d taken the subway to school, when she’d been a student.But the comparison still stands.MJ leans back in her seat and bounces her leg absently.“Goodness,” Helen says, staring out the windows as they inch along at a blistering ten miles an hour or so. “I hope someone’s already called the police, there must be an accident up ahead.”MJ starts to respond, is about to say something else—Someone’s shouting.The sound shatters her train of thought—it’s faraway, muffled somehow, but it’s getting louder—“What is that?” she asks, before she can stop herself, and she looks around to see some of the other passengers muttering among themselves, glancing around uneasily.Then someone points, MJ cranes her neck to see—“What the hell?”“Stop the bus!” shouts the man beside the bus.He’s running.Like, actually legitimately running alongside the bus, waving his arms and hitting the side of the bus, voice barely audible over the noise of the freeway.The touristy guy leans back against the window, points over his shoulder at the Running Man, and takes a selfie.MJ’s standing before she knows what she’s doing, is hanging onto the bar right behind the driver’s seat.“Walt,” she says. “Walt, don’t let him on.”“Oh, you think?”He would roll his eyes, she thinks, but he’s too busy splitting his attention between the road in front of them and the crazy man currently pounding the side of the bus like he’s trying to actually bash his way inside.“Hey, man, leave off!” Walt yells, even though there’s no way the guy can hear him, like it’s a reflex more than anything else.The traffic really is crazy.Any other city in the world, MJ thinks wildly, and they’d have left this lunatic in the dust long ago, but the traffic’s just slow enough—The man slams his fist against the nearest window, and the glass actually splinters.“Oh my God!” someone yelps, and MJ can feel her pulse pounding in her ears.Come on, she thinks, staring at the cars ahead of them. Come on, move—The guy’s still shouting something, and he’s digging in his pocket, searching for something—The other passengers are shouting, too, crowding back, away from the windows, because who knows what he’s looking for—Out of the corner of her eye, MJ sees a kid across the aisle slide out from his seat and move towards the back.The cars in front of them are still stalled out—Come on, please, get out of the way—There’s a break in the traffic.Walt floors it.The bus shoots through the gap in the cars, roars off down the freeway, and the crazy guy is left standing in the exhaust cloud they leave behind, holding something in his hand that MJ can’t make out at all, no matter how she squints at the rearview mirror.Her heart is still pounding.
What the hell was that?
“MJ,” Walt says presently.“Yeah?”“No standing while the bus is in motion.”Now that they’re out of danger, MJ feels safe rolling her eyes.But she goes and sits back down, and Helen offers her a nervous smile.“Wonder what that was about,” she says, like MJ’s got any more of a clue than anyone else.All the other passengers are muttering, and the touristy guy looks a little disappointed as he lowers his phone, but all around her, MJ can hear the same question being asked, over and over again.
What was that?
What did he want?
I wonder what that was about—“Maybe he just missed his stop,” MJ says, in what she thinks almost passes for a casual tone.“Yeah,” Helen says, and then laughs, like she really hopes that’s what it was. “Yeah, maybe.”The road’s still congested, but up ahead, the traffic looks like it eases up a little, and so MJ sits back in her seat, tells herself to relax.“Oh,” Helen says brightly, like she’s just seen the same thing. “Oh, okay, here we go.”“Don’t worry, folks, we’ll get downtown in time,” Walt calls.A few people clap, and someone in the back of the bus cheers, but other than that, it’s like they’re all pretty determined to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary just happened.“Lucky me,” MJ says to Helen, only mostly sarcastic. “I'd just hate to be fired.”“That’s the spirit.”The bus starts to pick up speed once more, and MJ glances at her lock screen.The whole thing—the crazy guy and the maddeningly slow traffic—have really taken a dent out of her carefully timed schedule.It’s 7:47 now.She had better not be late.It’ll be okay, she tells herself. She’s still got forty-five minutes—The nearest exit signs slides easily past them outside her window, and MJ grits her teeth.Forty-five minutes to finish out the rest of the thirty-five minute drive.And then a ten-minute walk to work.It’ll be fine.No problem.So long as they can just get through the rest of the commute without any further issues—As soon as she thinks that, she knows it’s a mistake.Because, really, she thinks she kind of just jinxed it.The next second, there’s another murmur of conversation, and something about it forces MJ out of her thoughts, and she looks around, trying to figure out what sounds so off—“Do you hear that?” Helen asks.Somewhere back behind them, some jerk is laying on the horn pretty heavily, as though everyone on the freeway isn’t currently doing their level best to get wherever they’re going as soon as physically possible—“Goodness,” Helen says, looking out the window for the source of the noise. “I guess someone’s in a hurry.”A squeal of tires, and then there’s a car—a convertible, some reasonably pricy brand that MJ doesn’t really care enough to identify—swerving into the lane beside them, and the driver has got one hand pretty much glued over the horn.“Are they honking at us?” she demands, suddenly angry on Walt’s behalf. “We’re literally not doing anything—”She chokes off mid-thought, and behind her, she can hear some of the other passengers reaching the same conclusion.“Wait,” she says, and Helen follows her gaze to stare at the driver in question. “Wait, is that the same guy?”It is.It’s the crazy running guy.“Oh my goodness,” Helen says, which doesn’t seem nearly extreme enough for the situation.The convertible speeds past them, pulls into the lane directly in front of the bus, still honking wildly the whole time, and MJ can see that Walt’s got his window shoved open, trying to hear what the guy’s saying.“This guy’s insane,” MJ mutters.She takes her place right behind the driver’s seat again, where she can see the out-of-control car and its passengers—The woman in the passenger’s seat is writing something on a piece of paper, and she can see the shout-y guy waving for her to write faster.Something here is wrong.Like, obviously something is wrong, but words like hijack and carjacking start to swirl around in the back of her mind, and MJ grips the stair railing a little harder than she means to do.“Walt,” she says. “Walt, what’s going on?”The old driver actually jumps, like he hadn’t realized she was there, and then turns to shoot her the most serious look she’s ever seen from him.“MJ,” he snaps, and it’s not a suggestion. “Get back in your seat.”It’s not a suggestion.She goes back to her seat.It’s kind of out of character for her, but she’s got no clue what’s going on, so she thinks she can be forgiven for being a little more cautious than usual, right?“What’s happening?” Helen asks, as she sits back down.“I don’t know,” MJ says, still staring hard out the front windshield, like she can somehow guess what Walt is seeing from back here. “I don’t know.”Whatever he sees, it’s enough to make him react.For a second, the bus slows noticeably, but then it jumps back up to speed, and MJ can see the man in the car waving wildly, gesturing for them to keep going.This is wrong.This is really, really wrong.The convertible stays in front of them for a few seconds longer, and then veers into the lane on their right, so that a chorus of honks echo up from the cars that brake to avoid it.“Don’t open the door!” shouts one of the other passengers across the aisle, and MJ watches, stunned, as Walt ignores him and presses the button that makes the doors hiss back on their track.For a second, she doesn’t understand.And then she does.“Oh,” she says. “Oh, no way.”The convertible zips ahead, pulling way out in front of them—And then it’s flying backwards.Tires screech behind them, and a couple people scream, and then the door of the convertible hits the side of the bus with a deafening crash and the shriek of tearing metal.“Oh my God,” someone behind her shouts. “Oh my God!”The wind is roaring through the bus from the open door, and MJ’s got one hand clamped over her mouth—dimly, she realizes Helen’s clinging to her other arm—as the convertible swings back into view just outside the door, pacing them.There’s no way.There’s actually no way.This is not going to work.She can see the shouting man standing in the now-doorless driver’s seat, and the woman in the passenger’s seat is holding the wheel, doing her best to keep it steady, and swearing quite creatively, from the look of it.“Oh, I can’t watch,” Helen whispers.MJ doesn’t blame her.But she can’t look away.They tear down the highway, neck and neck, for a few impossibly long seconds—And then the man jumps.Actually, literally jumps, is airborne for one horrible moment before he crashes into the stairs with an impact that makes MJ want to cover her ears, struggling to his feet as Walt closes the doors behind him again.Helen’s hand on MJ’s arm is squeezing hard enough to hurt.“What the hell is he thinking?” MJ mutters.The guy’s talking to Walt, quiet and careful, and MJ pushes herself to her feet again as he claps the older man on the shoulder and turns to face the rest of the bus.“LAPD,” he starts to say, in a Very Official Voice. “Please remain—”“Excuse me,” MJ snaps, stepping into the aisle and ignoring the way she can feel Helen plucking nervously at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Yeah, sorry, what the hell are you thinking?”Up close, she can see that the guy’s a few inches shorter than her, probably around the same age, younger than she expected.He's not in uniform, either, wearing a horrible plaid shirt buttoned up too high—but he’s got a badge and a look on his face that’s half determination and half fear, and it’s enough to terrify her, let alone the rest of the passengers.“Ma’am,” he says, in what she thinks is supposed to be a calming tone. “I need you to stay calm—”“No, I will not stay calm, are you out of your mind?”“Ma’am—”“Look, you’re scaring all these people,” she says, a little louder than necessary, waving to the other passengers. “Now would you back off—”“Ma’am, please.”He’s shorter than her, and his voice isn’t exactly the most commanding she’s ever heard.But he looks her full in the face, and he’s not kidding around.Whatever it is that’s going on, it’s pretty serious.LAPD, he’d said.He’s holding his badge in his hand, like an apology.This is serious.Serious enough to chase after a 12-ton vehicle on foot, serious enough to actually jump out of a car going 50-something miles on the worst freeways in the whole country—MJ hesitates.Then she sits down.The policeman nods once, moves past her, heading down the aisle.“My name is Peter Parker,” he announces to the bus at large. “I’m an officer with the LAPD. We have a bit of a situation—”“Get away from me!”The shout comes out of literally nowhere, and a few people scream—and then the kid MJ saw before, the one who’d slunk towards the back of the bus, is standing in the aisle, holding a gun—The policeman has his own gun out and raised before anyone can even blink, and more people are screaming, ducking down, trying to take shelter behind the thin bus seats.MJ pulls Helen down beside her as she ducks, slips out of her seat to kneel on the floor, moves her bag in front of her head, just in case, just in case—“Oh my God,” Helen’s muttering. “Oh, goodness.”“Stop the bus!” the kid yells, and MJ risks a look around the edge of her seat to see that both his hands, clutched around the gun, are shaking.“He can’t do that,” the policeman—Parker—says, voice steady with an artificial calm.The kid shakes his head, desperate. “Stop the bus!”He’s panicking.MJ’s mind races, looking for a way out—They have to calm him down, have to figure out how to get him to lower the gun.Parker-with-the-LAPD clearly realizes the same thing, because he lowers his own weapon, moving slow and deliberate.“Alright,” he says. “Alright, look. Look, it’s okay.”He re-holsters his gun, tosses his badge to one side.“See?” he says, holding his hands up in the universal no harm meant gesture. “Everything’s okay, just—I’m not here for you. Alright?”The kid’s eyes dart around wildly, and MJ can see his arms starting to relax, just a little.“I don’t know what you did,” Parker says, still in that same, overly smooth voice that makes MJ want to grit her teeth. “And I don’t care. I’m not here to make an arrest.”Behind the kid, she can see the other passengers huddling, murmuring fearfully, eyes fixed on the pair standing in the aisle.“I need you to listen to me. I’m not here for you. It’s okay.”The kid finally blinks.“Just put the gun down,” Parker says. “Okay? Please, just put the gun down—”Three things happen in the same moment.The kid starts to lower the gun—someone lunges up from behind him, and Parker shouts “No! No!”—gunshots ring out—one, two, three—And that’s when things really go bad.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The second bullet strikes Walt.MJ sees it happen—the first bullet shatters one of the windows, and the third tears a hole in the roof of the bus, but Walt cries out and clutches at his stomach, and she knows where the second bullet has lodged.For a second, she just stares, horrified.Dimly, she's aware of Officer Parker and the kid struggling, wrestling for control of the gun, but she doesn't turn her head to see, just stares at where Walt has sunk low in his seat.Then the bus veers wildly, careening across two lanes of traffic, heading for the concrete walls on either side of the freeway, and MJ panics.She lunges for the driver's seat, seizes the wheel, and yanks it all the way to the left, so that her arms scream in protest with the effort of correcting their course.She's just in time.The tires squeal at the sudden change, and the bus scrapes against the wall for a few terrifying moments before straightening out, leaving a streak of gray paint against the concrete with the screech of metal against stone.Behind her, people scream, and she can hear a few of the passengers being thrown around as the bus rocks a little on its wheels.Walt's foot is wedged against the gas pedal, and MJ tries and fails to move him out of the way."Walt," she begs, trying to control a fifteen-ton vehicle from literally the worst angle ever. "Walt, move your foot, come on—"But Walt, face paper-white with pain, shakes his head weakly, and someone in the back of the bus shouts, "No, stay above fifty!"Parker."He's been shot!" she yells back, not daring to look away from the road for more than a second. "He's bleeding, we need to get to a hospital—""You slow down, and this bus will explode!"The bus goes silent.A few people are murmuring quietly, but otherwise, no one speaks, and MJ steals half-second glances at Officer Parker in the rearview mirror as he heads back up the aisle."There is a bomb on this bus," he says, and someone sobs. "If we slow down, it'll detonate. If we try to take anyone off, it'll detonate."He's still talking, but her world has narrowed down to the words bomb and slow down and detonate.Detonate is such a professional word for what an exploding car bomb will surely look like.A hand on her shoulder makes MJ jump, but it's just Helen, with one of the other passengers, who's wearing scrubs, blue and clinical—"He's bleeding," MJ says, helpless.Helen squeezes her shoulder once before she and the other lady slide Walt out from behind the wheel, and then MJ drops into the driver's seat as they lay Walt down on one of the passenger seats."There's so much blood," Helen murmurs, and the lady in scrubs says, "Keep his head up."Stay above fifty.MJ glances at the speedometer.56.She can do this."Ma'am?"MJ flinches, startled, but it's just Officer Parker.He's shed that godawful plaid, and MJ glances in the rearview mirror to see the blue shirt slowly turning red as Helen and the other passenger press down on Walt's stomach until he bites his tongue to keep from crying out again.The sight makes her sick, and she looks away again quickly."Ma'am," Parker says again. "Are you okay to keep driving?""Um," she says, and tries to blink away the memory of how Walt went all slack when the bullet struck. "I, um—yeah. Yeah, I'm good."She's never seen someone get shot before.It didn't look exactly the way it does in the movies.Not really.Not at all.Belatedly, she realizes that that wasn't the most convincing answer, and she spares a look up at the man next to her in time to see him looking apprehensive."Are you sure?" he asks.It's a valid question, but MJ can't help but bristle at his tone."I'm fine," she bites out. "Just tell me what the plan is."To his credit, he doesn't press the issue.But he doesn't answer, either, and MJ doesn't like the hesitation at all."Is there a plan?""There is a plan, yes.""Is it a good plan?""There is a plan, yes.""Cool," MJ says. "I feel really good about this plan.""Just stay above fifty."She blinks."Is that it?""That's all we can do for now.""Okay." MJ looks at the speedometer again. "I can do that."Parker nods, like she hasn't noticed him glancing nervously between her and the speedometer, too."Good," he says. "You're doing good."I'm doing well, MJ thinks, because it's easier to be petulant than terrified. Not good.But Parker doesn't try to pat her shoulder or anything, which MJ appreciates, so she sneaks another look up at him as he turns to face the rest of the bus once more."So you're a policeman, right?""That's right.""Then I should probably tell you—"Parker turns to look at her, and MJ thinks about the very official legal document in her apartment that forbids her from operating a moving vehicle for the next three months.Until she learns to stay at or under the speed limit.Parker's still waiting, but MJ looks at the dial on the speedometer, which is currently hovering around 58, and thinks, eh, never mind."—that your shirt," she says instead. "It kind of undermines your whole Very Serious Business deal."Parker glances down, like he's only just now realizing that he's wearing a t-shirt that has If you believe in telekinesis, raise my hand written on it in old-timey font, and gives a laugh that sounds more like a sigh than anything else."Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I get that a lot."MJ almost smiles, but then there's a car moving too slow in the lane ahead of them, so she has to scramble to find the controls for the bus's blinker in time to change lanes.The other car honks as they blow past, and if this were any other situation, she'd flip them off, but she doesn't dare take her hands off the wheel, and so she settles for scowling hard at the road."Tony," Parker says, and MJ spares another glance to see him braced against the railing, phone against his ear. "I'm on the bus."It's unexpected, the surge of relief she feels at the realization that they're not in this alone.Parker seems like a decent human being, and he's certainly proven willing to pull some frankly insane stunts to try and help—But at the end of the day, he's still trapped on the bus with the rest of them.He didn't have to get on in the first place, she reminds herself.All this flashes through her mind in the space between two breaths, and then Parker is crouched beside her, checking under the driver's seat.Looking for the bomb, MJ realizes."Not under the seat," he says into the phone. "Not on the main console, either. I know, I'm looking—ma'am, sorry, I need to get between your legs—"MJ raises an eyebrow, and Parker turns beet red."Um," he says. "I just meant—I need to look—I need to check for the bomb—""That's what they all say," MJ says, but she does her best to move out of the way.For his part, Parker is clearly doing his best not to touch her at all as he checks the floor around the gas pedals."Shut up," he mumbles into the phone, and then, a second later, he adds, "The floor's clean. Nothing here."He backs off quick, still kind of avoiding eye contact, and MJ presses down harder on the gas pedal as soon as he's clear.55, she thinks.She'll stay above 55, just to give herself a window, in case she needs to react to something else on the road ahead.There don't seem to be as many cars around them now, and MJ wonders if the news has already leaked, if everybody knows there's a bus running wild down the 105.Surely they must know, right?Seriously, Parker jumped onto a moving bus, and they very nearly crashed, and now they're just tearing down the highway—surely someone must have noticed by now, right?"I can't do that," Parker says, and then, sounding frustrated—"Well, because it's kind of in motion, Tony!"Under the bus, MJ thinks. The bomb must be under the bus.It just makes sense.Where else would some lunatic place something that could kill them all, except for the one place where no one can get at it?"Access panel."Parker spins around, and MJ looks in the rearview mirror to see Walt pushing himself up on his elbows, even as Helen tries to coax him to lay flat again."Access panel," he says, and his voice sounds more like a whisper. "In the floor."The access panel clatters as Parker pulls away a whole couple feet of the floor, and MJ looks once, sees the road rushing by underneath, and doesn't look again.Without meaning to, her eyes drift once again to the dials on the dashboard, and the needle that hasn't moved from just above the little hash mark halfway past 50 mph.Right.This she can do.This is what she has to do.Parker's job is to worry about the bomb.Her job is just to make sure they all live long enough to let him worry about the bomb.Okay, MJ thinks. Okay, so do your job, Jones.She's vaguely aware that Parker is leaning his head and shoulders down into the hole in the floor, like he's actually insane, and the touristy guy from before is repeating the words that he's shouting over the rush of wind beneath the bus.But she blocks it all out, focuses on holding the bus straight, on keeping their speed steady, on scanning the road for any slower cars or sudden lane changes coming up.So it's still way up ahead when she sees something that turns all her blood to ice in her veins.Another sea of braking taillights.Nothing but red.Another accident.Oh, God."Officer," MJ says, because Parker's no longer hanging halfway under the bus.He's talking on the phone, something about wiring and watches, in a quiet voice that's full of concern.That's probably not good.The stretch of traffic is coming up fast, though, so they've all kind of got a much bigger immediate problem."Officer," she says again, louder this time.He holds up a hand, which would annoy her under the best circumstances, which these are definitely not, and so it's enough to turn her almost homicidal."Tony," Parker says. "There's enough C4 there—"A few of the other passengers have noticed the traffic jam barreling towards them—she can hear them muttering, and the touristy guy says, "Uh—"They don't have time for this.MJ fumbles for the loudspeaker, presses the button, and cranks the dial for full volume."OFFICER!"The microphone squawks, and Parker nearly drops his phone through the open panel, but then he's staring out the windshield, too, and MJ points wordlessly."Shit," he hisses."What do I do?"The next exit goes to an overpass, she can't make that turn at their current speed, but they can't just drive over all the other cars, either—The shoulder is clear.
The shoulder—
"Get on the shoulder!" Parker says, and she's already started to turn the wheel before he's finished the first word.They shoot past the first cars in the pileup, and MJ lays on the horn, just in case, and sees a few cars turn further into their own lanes, clearing the space.Maybe the bus really is on the news.Or maybe they're just seeing an actual bus roaring down the shoulder and are making the entirely logical decision to get the hell out of their way.Any feeling of gratitude only lasts a few seconds, and then MJ's heart gives a horrible leap, and she's white-knuckling the steering wheel in a second.In retrospect, it shouldn't surprise her.The traffic's there for a reason, it only makes sense that they'd be coming up on that reason pretty darn fast—But there's a wreck in the shoulder, and a wall of cars on their left and an exit on the right, and she can't see what the road looks like off the exit, but they don't have a choice—"Parker," she says."Get off the freeway," he says, and then, to the rest of the bus: "Everybody hold on!"They hit the off ramp at 59 miles per hour, and apparently everybody else has had the same bright idea, because the traffic around them is just as bad as the traffic on the freeway—No choice, MJ thinks. No choice, no choice—oh, God—The first car they hit is pushed into the next lane, and then it's a chorus of horns and crunching metal, and MJ realizes she's making an eeeeeeeeek noise that's somewhere between an apology and a pterodactyl screech.59, the speedometer reads. 58...57...56...They can't keep plowing through cars like this, it's slowing them down.They have to get clear—The light is red up ahead, and she nearly closes her eyes, but she can't, she can't, and so the other passengers scream as they hurtle through the intersection and some unfortunate car bounces off the side of the bus."Cap!" Parker is yelling into his phone over the noise of everyone on the bus panicking. "Sir, you've got to get us out of here!"The next light is red, too, and MJ's about to run it again, but there's a water tanker moving slowly into the intersection, they're going to t-bone it dead on if one of them doesn't move—"Come on, move—""Go left!"MJ jerks the wheel before she realizes what she's done, and then they're flying into oncoming traffic, and cars are slamming on the brakes and swerving madly to get out of their path.Parker braces himself, still clinging like a grudge to the stairway railing, and someone behind MJ is praying a Hail Mary on a breathless loop at top volume.It's really, really not helping.Somewhere far away, there are sirens, and she can't turn her head to look, but that's got to be good, it's got to be—"Up ahead!" Parker blurts, and she looks where he's pointing, nods once—At the next intersection, the light is green, and she flips on the turn signal, cuts off three separate cars as the bus veers back onto the right side.Movement on her left startles her, and she almost pulls the bus away—"It's okay," Parker says, and he still doesn't reach out, but his hand twitches toward the steering wheel for half a second. "It's just the cavalry."MJ tears her eyes from the road long enough to check for herself, and it's a black and white cop car, and another one is pulling into position on the right, and a third car is swinging out in front of them, lights flashing and sirens wailing.An escort.A police escort.The lights, MJ thinks. They're changing the lights.It's working.The road is clearing out ahead of them, and she can see the lights ticking green, green, green, one after another, as the bus roars along.The other passengers have stopped screaming.A look in the rearview mirror tells MJ that Walt is still too pale—and touristy guy is looking a little green himself—and people are still wide eyed and clutching at each other's hands, but they're on the right side of the road, and their lights are all green and they've got squad cars on every side, giving them a buffer—For the first time since the access panel rattled open, MJ lets herself breathe out."Okay," she says, and her voice only shakes a little. "I think it's time for a new plan.""Yeah," Parker says. "I think you're probably right.”MJ's heart is still beating loud in her ears, so she breathes out, in, out again and tries to force her shoulders to relax just a little, as they're currently hovering somewhere around her ears.Parker's on the phone again—MJ listens without actually hearing any words, sees a helicopter whir by overhead, and thinks about how she's definitely going to be late for work.On the upside, she's definitely got a very valid excuse.Unless—
No.
She's not thinking about that.Parker's job is to worry about the bomb, she tells herself again. Your job is to keep everyone alive long enough to let him worry about the bomb.Thinking about it any more closely than that is—unsupportable.Unbearable.Unhelpful."Okay," Parker says. "How far ahead? Four more blocks. Okay."He lowers the phone."What's in four blocks?" MJ asks."A soft right turn.""Okay.""Three blocks. Onto a portion of the 105 that's not in use."That—doesn't sound possible."An unused freeway?""It's built, but it just hasn't been opened to the public yet," Parker clarifies. "Two blocks.""I see it."It's barely a turn at all, more like a merge onto the off ramp, and MJ takes another breath, flips on her turn signal for the squad car behind her—A sudden movement makes her breath catch in her throat, and it's like everything in the world is frozen in slow motion—There's a little group of people on the corner, and MJ sees the exact moment that the school kids make up their mind.The police escort has cleared out all the other cars around them, so the roads are almost empty, and that's why, that must be why—Three ambiguously-middle-school-aged children dart out into the street, heading for the concrete island that separates the far right lane from the rest of the road.For one breathless, awful, unthinkable moment, MJ almost doesn't react in time.But then she jerks the wheel straight again, and she catches the briefest glimpse of someone yanking the kids back, out of the way, as their picture perfect soft right turn blurs past in the blink of an eye.She wants to scream.Instead, she grits her teeth and shakes her head, trying to clear her mind."It's okay," Parker says, and she would snap at his tone, except for the fact that she'd heard the way he stopped breathing when the first kid had jumped into the way, and he sounds like he's trying to reassure himself as much as he is her.So instead, she nods, mimics the half hearted smile he's giving her."It's okay," she says.The other passengers, she can hear, are still buzzing over their near miss, but they don't seem to know what they just lost with that easy turn.Parker does, though, and so does she, because she's looking ahead, and she's not sure, but it looks like they're going to run out of road.Parker raises the phone again."Sir," he says. "We missed it."He doesn't look away from the road ahead of them.Neither does MJ.There's a pause, and then he says, "Okay. How far?"Another turn, she thinks. Please, please, be another soft turn.It's not.It's really, really not."There's another turn up ahead," Parker tells her. "It's pretty rough."MJ nods, because there's nothing else she can do. "How rough is pretty rough?""Somewhere between sandpaper and a cheese grater," he says, and points. "That's it."She looks where he's pointing. "Where?""There.""That's not a turn.""Yes, it is.""That's a dead end.""We can make it."It's not a turn.It is a literal dead end, there's literally no way they're going to make it."Parker," she says, and the speedometer drops from 56 to 54 to 53. "We're not going to make it.""Just get in the left lane," Parker says, still staring hard. "We can make it.""We're going to tip over."It's a genuine fact, but the objectivity of it doesn't help her stay calm, weirdly enough.For a second, Parker just looks at the not-turn that's coming up so, so fast—"We're going to tip over," he agrees in a sickened tone, before turning back to the rest of the passengers. "Alright, everyone on this side of the bus!"It's a desperate, childish hope, like the combined weight of a couple dozen people is going to be enough to counteract the pull of their inertia.Surely Parker knows this, but he helps move the passengers to the left side, tucks bags and purses under bus seats, and MJ flips on the turn indicator and does her best not to think about how this is impossible.The squad car in front of her has swung back, which does not inspire a lot of confidence, and the bus is all the way in the left lane—The concrete barriers keep her from turning until the last possible moment, and MJ curses the city planners who somehow failed to take this exact situation into account.Then she turns.Immediately, the bus tires are shrieking in protest.The sound quiets after a moment, and for a second, MJ thinks that it's good, but then an unfamiliar motion rocks her in her seat, and the view through the windshield is at the wrong angle, somehow—Oh, she thinks.Two of the wheels are off the ground.They're going to tip over."Parker!" she blurts, without even a clear idea of what she's trying to say—But before she can figure it out, there's a second pair of hands on the steering wheel, and both she and Parker are pulling at the wheel with all their strength, and it's still not enough—MJ screams with the effort of it, and every muscle in her body is screaming, too, and Parker grits his teeth, wrenches the wheel another torturous inch, and then another—54, the speedometer reads. 53...52...51...The bus takes the turn on two wheels, and MJ can feel it, can feel the way the whole thing is listing so heavily to the right, has just enough time to think, oh my God, I'm about to die—The bus lands back on all four wheels with a tremendous crash, and the whole cabin rocks dangerously—And then they're charging up the beautifully empty freeway at 53 miles an hour, and MJ spins the wheel in the opposite direction, straightens the bus seconds before they would have plowed directly into the side of the road.
54...55...56...
For a second, the bus is silent.Then someone screams, "Yes!", so loud it makes MJ jump, and the whole bus erupts in cheers and shouts and wild, chaotic relief.They didn't tip over.We made it.MJ laughs.Actually laughs out loud, and feels some of the terror leave her all in a rush, so that she slouches in the seat, sinking down a few inches."We did it!" someone shouts, and someone else cries, "We didn't tip over!"Parker is grinning ear to ear, and it splits his face and makes him look about twelve years old.Someone claps him on the shoulder, and he disappears back down the aisle, trying to reassure the other passengers, promise them that they're going to make it.MJ watches him go in the mirror, and then forces her attention back to the road and realizes she's still smiling, a wide, unthinking grin that probably looks about as dignified on her as it did on Parker.She doesn't care.
We made it.
We didn't blow up.Not so far.Not yet.They can do this.She can do this.There are no other cars on the freeway, and she doesn't have to worry about red lights or sudden water tankers or lane changes.They'll just keep driving, and someone will figure out some genius way to disarm the bomb without slowing down.They can do this.They can beat the bomber.Whoever the bomber is, they can beat them.MJ breathes in, and then out, and doesn't have to remind herself to breathe in again.Parker makes his way back up to the front, still smiling like a child, and his hand hovers over her shoulder for half a second before he moves it to the back of the driver's chair instead."Are you alright?" he asks.She nearly laughs again."Ask me again in about five minutes," she says. "I'm still not a hundred percent sure, yet."He smiles politely, and MJ nods in his direction."You alright?" she asks, just to be clear, and he looks mildly surprised."Yeah," he says, a second too late to be completely casual. "Yeah, of course.""Of course," she echoes."That was," he starts to say, and then gives her another smile, one she recognizes from doing time at Hot Dog on a Stick, the smile of a Very Professional Service Provider. "Ma'am, you did really good."MJ figures she's let it slide once, which is still one time too many."Really well," she corrects, and Parker glances down, absent."What's that?""I did really well," she says. "Not good. Superman does good. Tasks are done well."It's a distinction drummed into her by teachers at three separate levels of education, and she realizes a second after she speaks that she probably sounds overly pedantic.But Parker's customer service smile vanishes during her correction, so that now it's replaced by a smile that looks half as polished and about a billion times more genuine."Oh," he says, all false contrition. "Sorry."MJ sniffs. "It's an important distinction.""Ma'am," he says, overly formal. "You did very well.""Aw, shucks," she says, deadpan.He laughs then, quick and bright, like it was startled out of him."No, I mean it," he says. "That was—you did an amazing job, Miss—"He trips over her name, and MJ realizes he doesn't know."Jones," she says, maybe just a little bit too quickly."Miss Jones," he says, obliging.It sounds weird, so she frowns and amends her answer—"Michelle.""Miss Michelle Jones," Parker tries, and that sounds just as wrong, so MJ rolls her eyes and gives up on escaping the nickname that she doesn't hate nearly as much as she pretends to do."MJ," she says."MJ," he echoes.It sounds better."You know," MJ says, and shrugs. "It's a lot better than ma'am, at least."Parker nods, considering it."But twice as long," he points out, and she shoots him a look, supremely unimpressed.He grins again at her expression."You did well," he says—one more time for good measure, she guesses. "MJ.""Well, thanks," MJ says, and then, because she's still riding on that adrenaline rush, and it can't hurt to be a little nicer than usual. "You're not so bad yourself.""Thanks," he says, as deadpan as she was earlier, which is almost impressive.The speedometer is holding steady at 56 when she glances at it, but it's enough to steal a little of that post-adrenaline feeling, remind her of what, exactly, is going on.She can feel Parker's gaze on her, see him out of the corner of her eye, and so she tips her chin at the display panel to indicate their whole situation in general."The bomber," she says. "Are they—why are they doing it?"She thinks, given the circumstances, she ought to at least know that much.Surely she deserves to know at least that much.Parker hesitates.He's not smiling anymore, when she glances up at him."Because he can.""That's it?"He shrugs. "Sometimes that's all it takes."MJ thinks about that.It's true, she doesn't doubt, but she also doesn't think that's the case here."I don't buy that," she says. "Feels a little too personal for something as simple as that."She knows she's hit the nail on the head when Parker winces, not exaggeratedly, but enough that she can catch it when she looks sideways up at him again."He wants money," he says. "It's as cliché as that.""Huh. Why couldn't he just sell an organ like the rest of us?"That earns her half of a smile, but it isn't the same as it was earlier."The bomber—he tried to hit a building a few months ago," he explains. "It—didn't work, and we stopped him, and he blames me. So here we are.""A rematch," MJ says, thinking out loud.Parker makes a face, like he doesn't like that idea."Something like that," he agrees anyways.MJ considers it.She tries to remember if she saw anything in the news about a bombing—but Parker said the bomber was foiled, it might not have even made it off the evening news.A rematch.And she—and all the other passengers—they're just pawns.Complications.The bomber, she thinks, is probably counting on them to be docile, complacent—too terrified to get in the way of his one-sided rivalry with Parker and whoever Tony is.The idea irritates her."Well, then," she says, and takes her eyes off the road long enough to give what she hopes is a reassuring smile.She thinks maybe it comes out a little too sharp to really make it work."We'll just have to make sure you win this round."Parker's face is serious, which she's starting to think might be more or less his default setting, but he nods anyways, and she'd rather see that than another too-practiced smile."We're gonna get through this," she tells him, and tries to convince herself that it's not a lie."We're gonna get through this," he says, and it sounds about as certain in his voice as it did in hers.The cell phone in his hand rings, and this time he hesitates the length of a full two seconds before he lifts it to his ear once more.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
So MJ guesses they’ve got a plan now.Based on the look that crosses Parker’s face, it’s not really a good one.“Sir,” he says. “I don’t think—that’s not a good idea.”Something moves in her rearview mirror, and the wheel jumps to the left before MJ even realizes she’s told her hands to move.“It’s okay,” Parker says. “It’s just—it’s the cavalry.”He still doesn’t sound too thrilled.A second later, he hangs up the phone, and the full impact of what she’s seeing sinks in, and MJ understands why.It’s a truck—a long, flatbed truck, with a platform that can hold plenty of people—and there are policemen standing on the bed of it, all suited up and uniformed and official looking.If we try to take anyone off, MJ thinks again, and watches as the truck swings nearer and nearer.It should be reassuring, seeing them there.But all the passengers flock to the left side of the bus, and MJ can hear them chattering, hopeful, and her heart sinks.They can’t get off.“Parker,” she says—or starts to say, and then realizes she doesn’t really know where she’s going from there, just that they can’t move the passengers, they can’t—A helicopter whirs by overhead, the letters of some local news channel painted large on the bottom, and surely this is live footage.If the bomber’s watching—They can’t move the passengers.“Parker,” MJ says again, and her heart is pounding in her ears again, so that she feels almost sick with dread.“I know,” he says. “Open the doors.”“We can’t—”“I’m not moving them,” he promises. “Just open the door.”MJ sucks in a breath between her teeth but opens the doors anyways.They hiss open, and then MJ’s watching out of the corner of her eye as Parker leans halfway out of the open doorway to talk to a man on the flatbed truck.It’s not Tony, because Parker says “Rogers. Sir”, before he says anything else, so MJ guesses that this is Cap, the one who found them the two right turns.She doesn’t really know how police ranking works, so she’s not even going to try and guess at any official titles.“We’ve got to get these people off the bus,” Rogers calls across the two or three feet of empty air between them, and MJ shakes her head, even though he’s not even talking to her.“We can’t,” Parker says immediately.“Parker, this is not time for another stunt—”“I have my orders, sir.”That gets the older man to hesitate, and Parker points up, to where the news helicopters are circling, filming the whole thing.“We try to move anyone, he’ll see,” he says. “I’ve got my orders.”Rogers follows his gaze, swears viciously, and then backs off—It’s not fast enough.The phone in Parker’s hand rings again, and MJ doesn’t understand the look he gives it, because surely it’s just the other guy, Tony, or someone else like that, right?Someone who can help.But Parker waits a second too long before he answers, and when he does, his voice is harder, more clipped and less polished.“Yeah,” he says, and turns away from her, towards the open door and the road outside.MJ wishes she could hear the speaker.She stares carefully out at the road, tries to think of who else could be calling—“You’ve got to let me have one,” Parker says, and MJ understands.It’s the bomber.She stops breathing for half a second before remembering that having two medical emergencies on the same bus isn’t going to do anyone any favors, and forces herself to breathe out, then in again.It’s the bomber.“Please,” Parker says. “The driver’s been shot, you have to let him get off—he’s going to bleed to death—”MJ risks a look in the rearview mirror, and then wishes she hadn’t, because everyone’s listening, everyone’s staring hard at the front of the bus—But Walt is lying flat on his back now, and Helen is staring around with a slightly desperate expression, and MJ must not have been paying attention, because when the hell did Walt get that pale?“I’ll stay behind,” Parker promises. “There are still plenty of us to kill, just please, please, let me have this one.”He tried to bomb a building.We stopped him.Parker knows this man.MJ turns that fact over and over in her head.It must be the worst thing in the world, to have to beg to be allowed to save one person.To have to beg a murderer for mercy.Whatever the bomber says, Parker squeezes the stairway railing until the knuckles turn white where they jut out against the skin.“It’ll grease the wheels with the money men,” he offers. “A show of good faith. Just the one. There are still plenty of us left—”She knows the second the bomber relents, because Parker turns back to face her once more, eyes skipping over her face and sliding back to the rest of the bus.“Thank you,” he says, and the words sound like they’ve been torn out of him.MJ’s stomach twists.Parker hangs up, stares at his phone for a second before slipping it back into his pocket.“He’s letting us move the driver,” he tells her—tells the other passengers.“What about the rest of us?” Helen asks, in a tiny little whisper that tells MJ she already knows the answer.“Just the driver,” Parker says. “For now.”Helen sits very still, and now that MJ takes another look at her, she can see that the older woman is shaking, just a very little.“But what about the rest of us?” she asks again, like she can’t help it.“Help me move him,” Parker says, and won’t meet her eyes.The lady in the scrubs nods, eyes wide but determined to be professional. “We’ve got to hold him steady, or the wound will tear.”Walt groans a little when they lift him off the seat, but he reaches out to MJ as he passes her, so she takes his hand, squeezes it once, like she’s a friend and not just some random girl who’s ridden his bus three times.“MJ, try and get us closer,” Parker says, and she drops Walt’s hand and forces her attention back to the road.“Right,” she says. “How’s this?”The whole bus is holding its breath, it feels like.No one’s breathing, no one’s making a sound, and they inch closer and closer to the flatbed truck, until MJ can’t help but wonder why the police vehicle isn’t the one moving towards them.Walt has his eyes squeezed shut, like looking at the road rushing by would be too much, on top of everything else, and MJ doesn’t blame him.“Sir, are you alright?” Parker asks. “How are you feeling?”Walt manages a laugh that only sounds a little like another groan.“Like I’ve been shot,” he says.Parker grins—that same, 12-year-old smile—and slips an arm under the older man’s arms, holding him steady.“Good,” he says. “Let’s see if we can’t fix that.”They’re so close to the other truck now.No one else dares speak.Any closer, and she’s going to bounce right off the other truck’s tires, she doesn’t dare get any closer—Helen is still holding Walt’s other hand, and she’s staring at the flatbed truck with a look that’s halfway between terror and longing.“Alright,” Rogers calls. “Alright, keep him steady—”Parker moves the last few feet, and Walt cries out at the sudden movement—For one second, he’s hanging, suspended over nothing, grasping hands on both side scrambling to keep him still—Then he falls forward, the same way he did when the bullet struck, slumps forward into the waiting arms on the other side of that six-inch gap—A few people cheer, but it’s not the same as when they made the turn.Instead, it feels like the whole bus breathes out at the same moment.A simultaneous sigh of relief, and the last thing MJ sees of Walt is his too-pale face as he’s carefully laid out on the bed of the flatbed truck.Parker, who was (of course) leaning way too far out of the door to make the transfer, reels back into the bus and helps the doctor lady back to her seat, tries to wipe away some of the blood that’s pooled on the fake-leather bench.They did it.The bomber’s one show of good faith, and just like that, it’s over.No one else is getting off the bus.But Walt is safe.If nothing else, MJ thinks, at least one of them got out alright.If nothing else, at least they got the one.She forces herself to smile, because that’s supposed to be good for people, she thinks, something about triggering an artificial rush of endorphins, and it feels more like a rictus grin.They can do this.They can beat this guy.“Lady, come on, jump!”The shout makes her flinch, and she darts a look over at the still open doors.No.Helen is still lingering in the doorway, hands clutching at the railing, but she’s staring at the other truck with a hungry expression, and MJ’s heart gives a horrible leap.“Helen,” she says. “Helen, no, don’t—”It’s the other policemen.Rogers is still with Walt, but it’s the other goddamn policemen who are leaning out, reaching out their hands, encouraging Helen to make the jump—If we try to take anyone off—Please, please, let me have this one—“I’m sorry,” Helen whispers.Parker turns around—“Helen, don’t!”Parker makes a wild grab for Helen’s arm just as she takes one more step—And an explosion rocks the bus.The sound is deafening—a blinding flash of red and white and orange that burns straight to the back of MJ’s eyes—a wall of heat that crashes over them like a flood—Helen screams, one long, hideous, drawn-out note—And she falls.She falls, just straight down, and then there’s a horrible, horrible thump as the bus hits something beneath the wheels—Hits someone—Helen falls.The bus is going 58 miles per hour.And they can’t slow down.There was never going to be a way to avoid it.MJ screams, too, and she’s going to be sick, she’s going to throw up, right here behind the wheel—Parker is lying flat on the base of the steps, where he’d tried to catch Helen as she—as she—MJ’s shaking, her teeth rattling together as the road blurs in front of her eyes, and she can’t do this, she can’t pass out or do anything dramatic, because there are still people on the bus, there are still all these other people she has to take care of—I’m sorry, Helen had said.Parker slams his hand against the base of the railing, hard enough to buckle the metal, and pushes himself back up to his hands and knees.MJ waits until he’s moved back from the ragged hole in the floor before she presses the button to slam the doors shut once more.She can see some of the men on the flatbed waving for her to open them again, and she yanks on the wheel, swerves the bus away from them, into the left lane, away from the grasping hands and the way Helen had screamed as she fell.The policemen—They knew—They knew, and they told her to jump.Her hands are shaking wildly, and it’s fear and grief and blind, unthinking rage, all at once.And—And relief.MJ hates Helen, suddenly and desperately, hates her for being so stupid, hates the policemen for encouraging her when they knew the consequences, hates the bomber for putting them in this unthinkable situation—Hates herself for daring to be relieved.Parker’s phone is ringing at once, of course, and he answers it, still on his hands and knees next to the still-smoking metal.“Rogers,” he says, sounding so much older than anyone else on board, and every word is perfectly clear, perfectly enunciated. “Get those fucking helicopters out of here.”He hangs up again before Rogers can say anything else.By the time he climbs back up to his feet, MJ can hear people weeping behind her.The doctor lady is dry-eyed and blank-faced, but her hands are curled into fists in her lap, and the touristy guy keeps running his hand back and forth along the edge of his seat.Parker goes to each person in turn, talking them down in the same hostage negotiator voice he’d used on the kid with the gun, and it’d be so much more believable if MJ hadn’t seen the way his hand is bleeding from where he struck the railing.They don’t know what to do.No one knows what to do.The sun streams through the window, the bright yellow glare of the early morning, and it’s clear and crisp, and it really shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t be so cheerful and bright, not when something like this has just happened.She wonders what time it is now.She’ll have to open the doors eventually.But MJ can see Rogers screaming at the policemen who held out their hands, and she can’t bring herself to do it, not just yet.If the bomber calls back, she thinks, she’ll kill him herself.She’ll find a way.“You okay?”It’s Parker.MJ starts to answer, and realizes that she’s crying.She doesn’t remember when she started.So she shakes her head instead, and Parker crouches down beside her, puts a hand on her shoulder, and doesn’t say anything.That’s good.If he said anything, she thinks she’d have to hate him, too.She takes a deep breath, then another, blinks hard to clear her eyes, and tries to focus long enough to speak.“When the bomb went off,” she starts, and Parker’s hand on her shoulder is perfectly still.“I know,” he says.No, he doesn’t.“I thought that was it,” she says. “The Bomb. And I thought we were dead.”It had been so fast.There hadn’t been time to think, time to be afraid.There had just been the noise and that awful heat—They had been dead.And then they weren’t.“And then when I realized it wasn’t,” she presses on. “When I knew it was just—just her, I was—”She can’t make herself say it.As it turns out, she doesn’t have to.“You were relieved to still be alive.” Parker’s voice is quiet, just between them, so that the rest of the bus doesn’t hear, and MJ nods.“I’m sorry—”“Don’t be,” he says immediately. “MJ, don’t be. We’re all glad to be alive. It doesn’t mean you don’t care.”It’s a very nice sentiment.She can’t quite make herself believe it.“She was so scared,” she whispers, and her voice breaks on the last word.“I know.”“She didn’t deserve—”“No one does,” Parker says. “But if she’d gotten off, it would have killed us all.”If we try to take anyone off—The flatbed truck is still a few lanes away, but MJ glances at it, and her heart twists all over again, and she sees the look on Helen’s face right before she’d reached out—“They knew,” she says.Her voice is cold, harsh, and Parker follows her gaze to the other truck.“Yeah,” he says, and doesn’t try to deny it.“Parker, they knew, and they told her to jump.”“Yeah,” he says again. “I know.”“They still told her to jump.”It’s so unfair.It’s so unbelievably unfair.“I know.”It’s really all he can say.Anything else, and she would have shrugged his hand from off her shoulder.But instead, she lets it stay where it is, and he moves his thumb back and forth, and she lets him do it once, twice—“I could have pulled away,” she admits finally, barely loud enough to be heard.Parker’s hand freezes.“No,” he says. “MJ, no, you couldn’t—you didn’t do this.”She knows that.She knows she didn’t do any of it, necessarily, but her mind’s still stuck on the few seconds before the bomb went off, and if she’d moved the wheel a little bit sooner, would the bomber still have detonated?Would Helen still have fallen?“The bomber did, okay?” Parker insists, forcing her thoughts back to the present. “This is his fault. Not yours, not Helen’s. He’s the one who put us here.”MJ wants to close her eyes.She can’t, though.Can’t look away from the road, after all.So instead, she nods, takes a deep, shuddering breath, and glances out the window one more time.“I’ll open the doors,” she offers, after another few moments.“You don’t have to.”“I’ll do it. Just give me a second.”“You don’t have to.”He sounds like he means it, which is sweet, MJ supposes.She tries to smile, and it feels a little wobbly, but she can’t fall apart.She’s got a bus to take care of.“This what they teach you in cop school?” she can’t help asking. “How to talk all nice to hysterical hostages?”That gets a smile out of Parker, and it looks about as convincing as hers feels.But they’re trying.It’s all they can do.“No,” he says, casually dismissive. “It’s mostly tying square knots. Building fires. Stuff like that.”MJ hmm-s, thinks it over. “Sounds boring.”He shrugs, and his smile is a little more believable, this time. “I’m kind of a boring guy.”“I don’t believe you.”“That’s okay.”He seems to realize that his hand is still on her shoulder, drops it sort of awkwardly, and MJ wants to roll her eyes, but she thinks it would just make him turn red again, and she really doesn’t have time for that.“We’re going to get through this,” he says, the same way she did before the bomb went off.She nods, tries to match his tone, tries to convince herself that it’s true.“We’re going to get through this,” she says, and it sounds like a prayer.She doesn’t move the bus back towards the truck.But she hits the button, and the doors hiss open once more, and the flatbed truck stays carefully on the far side of the highway.It feels like a compromise.And of course, it hardly lasts long enough to be worth anything at all.A blur of motion catches her eye, and then she glances over to see Rogers waving his arms, which is kind of difficult to overlook when the person doing the arm-waving is roughly seventeen feet tall.“Can you—”“On it,” MJ says, before Parker can figure out how to ask.She eases the bus over, and they meet the truck in the middle lane.Rogers’s face is grave, too stern to be believed, and Parker leans out of the doorway to talk to him.They’re too quiet, even though they’re both raising their voices to be heard over the speed of the bus.But then Parker says, “How ugly?”, and MJ wants to laugh.Laugh or cry, she’s not really sure.She could go either way, at this point.Because of course there’s something else.Why the hell not, right?“What’s ugly?” she asks, keeping her own voice still kind of quiet.Rogers retreats the rest of the way onto his truck, and Parker stays in the doorway, facing away, for a few seconds longer.His head drops for just a moment, and then he turns back to her, and the expression on his face is unreadable.“Parker,” MJ says. “What is it?”Parker looks at her.Then he leans against the console, turns to face the rest of the bus.“There’s a gap in the road.”MJ feels all the blood drain from her face.A few people curse, someone starts to cry—No one screams, though.Not this time.Not anymore.“A couple of miles up,” Parker says. “About fifty feet wide.”There’s that number again.A couple miles away—It’s not enough time.“Oh, God,” MJ says. “Oh, God—Parker—wait, Parker, what if I just shift into neutral? Keep the engine revving so it stays above—above fifty?”She’s stammering, she realizes.It’s not like her.Her hands are cold.“No,” Parker says. “No, he’d have thought have that.”“Okay, well, what, then?”It comes out too loud, too sharp, and she can feel everyone in the bus watching them—watching Parker.Waiting for him to give an answer.He doesn’t have an answer.MJ looks in the rearview mirror, thinks about how much it’s going to suck, when her obituary comes out, and it says, she died in a bus on her way to work at Hot Dog on a Stick. No, Cindy and Betty won’t do that to her.They’ll find a way to change it.Oh, God, someone’s going to have to tell her parents.Her hands aren’t shaking, but they’re so, so cold, and she can’t think about that, can’t think about the phone call that’ll let them know—She was supposed to fly back to New York next month, she can’t miss that—her mom already bought the tickets, she can’t—they can’t miss that—Parker is still leaning against the railing, but then he looks down at the speedometer, and she sees the moment he realizes.“Speed up.”Absolutely not, MJ thinks.But they’re on a freeway—there might be an incline—They’re grasping at straws, anything that might make a difference, anything at all—It’s all there is.MJ steps on the gas pedal, and the needle begins to rise.58…59...60…Parker moves away, and she has the sudden, childish urge to call him back, to make him stand up there at the front with her, so that she doesn’t have to watch the road they’re swallowing up at a blinding speed.
61...62…63…
As through a fog, she can hear him talking to the other passengers, helping them stow away bags and telling them to keep their heads down, hold on to the seats, it’s going to be okay, don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.“Is this going to work?” someone asks.Maybe it’s the touristy guy.Maybe it’s the doctor lady, or maybe it’s the kid with the gun.“Of course,” Parker says.He’s a pretty darn good liar.
67…68...69…
In the distance, she sees the gap.It’s an awful thing, a hole in the road that’s enough to freeze her breath in her lungs, turn her hands to ice on the wheel.There’s an incline.
Is it enough?
She doesn’t know.How should she know?The flatbed truck isn’t beside them anymore, and in the rearview mirror, she catches one last glimpse of Rogers, standing stern and unsmiling as the truck drops out of view.
73…74…75…
They’re coming up so fast, so fast, and it’s not fast enough, it can’t possibly be fast enough—Parker’s beside her again—at the end, he comes back up to stand beside her, and MJ wants to say something, something clever or heartfelt or brilliant—She can’t think of anything.She can’t speak at all.
79…80…81...
It’s too much.It’s too close.It’s all too much—She steps on the gas pedal with both feet as construction signs blur past outside, has just enough time to think here we go and God, it’s too much—Parker grabs the wheel, pushes her head down so that he’s between her and the window, and they’re both clinging to the wheel, trying to keep it straight, and her forehead’s pushing hard against the spokes of the steering wheel, and he’s shaking, or maybe she is, she can’t even tell—They hit the gap at 83 miles per hour.It’s like nothing she’s ever felt, the sudden, unbearable weightlessness—Her eyes are closed tight, even though there’s nothing to see, and she can’t bear to open them, can’t make her hands uncurl from the wheel—The back of the bus starts to drop.She can feel it happen, feels the sickening drag of gravity against the bus, feel the way the nose lifts in the air—
Crash!
The front wheels hit the ground hard enough to shatter the driver-side window, and the tires squeal as they spin uselessly against the road—Metal screeches as the undercarriage of the bus drags the edge of the highway—The tires are still squealing, and people are screaming as the bus lurches horribly, seats tearing loose of their moorings and listing wildly about—For one breathtaking moment, the bus seems to hold still.Then there’s a wail of tires and the shredding sound of ripping metal, and then the back tires are tearing at the road, too—The speedometer’s dropping—52—51—no, wait, please—Her foot came loose from the gas pedal as they fell, and she jams it back into place, presses down on the pedal with all her strength—
51—52—53—
55.The needle stops at 55.For one more second, no one speaks.“Yes!”The shout fills the whole bus, and then everyone—everyone—is screaming, shouting, cheering wildly, incoherently—Parker unwinds himself from around the wheel, pushes away with a shaky breath, and MJ sees flecks of red from the glass that showered over the both of them.“We made it!” the touristy guy screams.People are jumping into the aisles, clinging to each other—someone catches Parker in a hug, spins him away, and he grabs someone else’s arm, laughing—“Way to go, MJ!” someone shouts, and MJ realizes she’s laughing, too.She doesn’t dare let go of the wheel with both hands, but she waves, mimes a bow.“Thank you, thank you!” she yells back, and can’t stop laughing. “Don’t forget to tip your driver!”And there’s people clapping, and people crying, and people hanging off the seats, off the railing, like they don’t have the strength to stand—They made it.For just a little bit longer, they can keep going.To the next obstacle, and then the next and the next, and there’s a very high chance that their luck will run out, sooner or later—And the suspension took a hit with that landing, so that the bus lists to the left unless she holds it steady, which is going to get really old, really fast—But not yet.Not right now.Right now, people are still cheering and shouting, and it really almost feels like they can do anything.MJ grins until her face starts to hurt, and then breathes out, checks the speedometer, and stares at the road up ahead.Parker makes his way back up the aisle, and he’s grinning, too, so bright and sunny that she almost wants to laugh all over again.“We made it,” he says.MJ still can’t look away from the road for more than a few seconds, no matter how much she wants to.“We made it,” she agrees, and bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing again.Parker’s hand on her forehead makes her jump, but he just uses the corner of his dorky t-shirt to wipe away the blood from a cut she hadn’t even realized she had.“You okay?”“I’m fine,” she says, because it must have come from knocking her head against the wheel. “You?”“I’m fine,” he echoes, as though she can’t see all the cuts from the glass.He sees her looking and shakes his head, so she lets it go.“No more surprises,” she says. “Okay?”Parker laughs, glances over his shoulder like he’ll still be able to see the gap in the freeway.Gap.What a joke.Fifty feet is not a gap.“Okay,” he says, and nods seriously when she shoots him a look. “Promise.”“Well,” MJ says. “So long as you promise.”He laughs again, and glances out the window—Then his smile disappears.“Get off the highway,” he says.“What—where?”“There.” He points, and there’s an exit rushing at them, almost too fast to process. “Take this exit. Go—”MJ jerks the wheel, and a few people yelp in surprise, but everyone’s riding too high on the adrenaline to really sound put out—The bus careens across three empty lanes, and then they’re flying down the off ramp, and MJ’s really wishing she’d had enough time to actually read what the exit sign had said.She finds out almost immediately when Parker points again and says, “Turn here!”The few seconds of confusion cost them dearly—They turn into the airport parking lot in the wrong lane, and MJ hears a tire blow, somewhere in the back of the bus—She has just enough time to be terrified before the bus is rolling on, apparently unharmed, and she remembers that, right, buses have about a billion wheels for exactly this reason—And they’re at the airport.MJ thinks about crowded terminals and busy parking lots and thousands of angry commuters—“Parker,” she says, but he just shakes his head.“There’s an empty terminal,” he says. “Under construction. Head straight.”“The freeway was under construction, too,” MJ mutters, but she follows where he’s pointing.Airport means restricted airspace, which means that the news helicopters can’t follow them.No matter what happens now, there’s not going to be any eyes on them—MJ can’t help but feel a sudden, terrified burst of hope.If ever there was a place to try to solve this thing, this would be it.The ends of the runway are wide enough to let her turn without too much issue, and there are no news helicopters overhead, and there aren’t any civilians around in case—just in case—New plan, she tells herself.They can do this—Okay, she thinks, and doesn’t pay attention to the planes that taxi up and down just on the edges of her vision field, so far away that they look more like toys.
Okay, so now we’re at the airport.
Time for a new plan.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When the phone rings again, MJ tenses up as much as Peter does.It was easier before, when the only person she thought was on the other end was Rogers, or Parker’s partner Tony, and she didn’t have to guess, each time it rang, whether it might not be the bomber on the other line.She wishes she knew his name.She wishes she could see his face.It would be easier, she thinks, if she had one single person she could point to and blame for all this madness.As it turns out, she’s right to tense up.Parker swipes to answer the phone, says, “What do you want?”MJ recognizes the tone.She doesn’t look away from the road.Next to her, Parker retreats slightly, and when he speaks again, it’s in the carefully modulated voice he’d used to try and talk down the kid with the gun.“I’m sorry, sir,” he says, and the last word sounds like it hurts more than any of his cuts or scrapes. “Why are you calling me?”The bomber must respond, because he falls silent, listening, and MJ can almost feel the wheels in his brain turning.Then he says, “You really want your money? Come on, you said you’re committed, everyone else thinks you’re doing it just for fun.”Whatever the bomber says then, he’s not happy.MJ can hear him shouting, even over the noise of the bus, even with the way Parker turns away, tries to shield the conversation from the rest of them.“They do,” he says. “They do think that. You want me to convince them otherwise, you’re going to have to let me off.”MJ goes very still.Parker keeps talking, and the bomber must be talking, too, but she’s just focused on holding the wheel straight, which seems a lot harder than it did before.He’s getting off the bus.“Ten minutes,” he says. “I promise.”Ten minutes—It should be a comfort, the promise that he’ll be back—But MJ thinks about having an empty space on her left, and thinks about the way he’d covered her when they hit the ground—And she’s scared.It shouldn’t feel like such a confession, considering the situation they’re in.Of course she’s scared, everyone’s scared, she’d be foolish not to be scared—That doesn’t make her feel any better though.Parker hangs up the phone, stays looking out the windshield for a second longer.He does that, MJ’s starting to realize, whenever he’s trying to work up the nerve to say something difficult, something that he doesn’t want to say or something that he knows everyone else will take poorly.Then he sighs and raises the phone again.“Rogers,” he says, after a moment. “He’s letting me off. Ten minutes, and then I have to be back on. I know.”Parker pauses a second, glances sideways at MJ.Then he says, “Yeah. I know.”When he hangs up, a few other people have heard the news, and everyone’s watching him, tense and silent and afraid.“Everybody,” he says. “Everybody just sit tight. I’m getting off for a minute.”There’s a murmur of dismay from the other passengers, and the doctor lady says, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”Someone else says, “You’re just going to leave us here?” and someone else pipes up, “I would.”“Don’t worry,” Parker says. “I won’t go far.”Off everybody’s reaction, he turns back to MJ, crouches a little, the way he did at the beginning.“Just keep circling,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”MJ looks at him.She should tell him, she thinks.She should tell him about how her arms are starting to hurt from the strain of holding the bus straight, tell him that she’s pretty sure that that tire they blew has fully unspooled and is lying in the runway each time they pass, tell him that she doesn’t blame him, about how she knows they must be running out of time—Instead, she tries to smile, and it almost feels real.“Don’t forget about us,” she tells him. “Okay?”From his reaction, it’s like she’s just slapped him in the face—he looks pained for half a second, and then she watches him tuck the reaction away, smooth out his features until he looks calm and confident and certain all over again.He doesn’t answer.Instead, he puts his phone on the dashboard, where she can reach it, and turns to the open door.Distantly, MJ thinks that there’s a very real chance that she won’t see him again.She really does hope he won’t forget them.Won’t forget her.Apparently life-or-death situations make her sickeningly maudlin.Who knew?There’s a van that’s been pacing them for the past few laps—a black SUV-type deal that must be the police, because it draws nearer, and then Parker steps from the bus to the running board, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, just one foot after another.And then he’s gone.The bus—The bus is silent.The SUV pulls away, and then they’re racing down the track by themselves, just a bunch of passengers on a bus that’s rigged to explode, and MJ cranks the wheel hard to ease them into another easy right turn.It’s getting harder.They make a lap in almost perfect silence.One lap, and then another, and people are beginning to talk amongst themselves.It’s been about three minutes.Seven minutes left.Unless—He’ll come back, MJ tells herself, and tries to convince herself that it’s not a lie. He’ll come back.“So what’d you do?” she hears the touristy guy ask, and glances in her rearview mirror to see him talking to the kid with the gun, who looks cagey and defensive.“I didn’t do anything,” the kid says.“Then why’d you freak out? Why’d you even have a gun in the first place?”It’s a little too loud, a little too accusatory, and MJ’s hand drifts towards the intercom button, but she doesn’t know what to say to de-escalate.“Nothing,” the kid says. “Leave me alone—”“What, is it, like, a gang thing?” another passenger asks.Everyone on the bus is listening, and the mood hasn’t shifted towards blame just yet, but it could go that way so easily.“No!” the kid protests. “It’s not even mine—took it from my cousin—”“What for?”The kid’s silent for a moment.Then he says, “Home protection.”MJ moves her hand from off the button.She doesn’t think people will keep pressing after that.She’s right.Instead, the conflict comes right the hell out of nowhere, with a couple guys near the front—MJ vaguely remembers one of the men helping load Walt onto the police truck—“I’m telling you, that cop’s long gone, he’s not coming back.”Way too loud, MJ thinks.They’re all thinking it, of course, but to say it out loud just seems in poor taste.“You don’t know that,” the other guy protests weakly.“Sure I do! You don’t think he was glad to get off this thing? I mean, we’re going to explode—”That gets a few reactions, and then they’re arguing, voices rising, until there’s a crowd of people standing in the aisle, shouting and waving their hands—The phone begins to ring.For one foolish, childish moment, MJ lets herself hope that it’s Parker, that he’s calling to check in on them, that he’s got some great new insight on how they’re all going to get out of there—Unknown Number, the screen reads.MJ stares at it.Behind her, the two guys are still going at it, with all the rage of misplaced terror, and she watches the phone tremble against the dashboard.Then she reaches over, presses the intercom.“Everyone,” she starts, but everyone’s shouting too loud, and someone’s crying, and the phone’s still ringing, and it’s so loud—“Everybody shut up!”The loudspeaker screeches with the sudden feedback, and the shouting stops pretty darn quick.“We’re going to be fine,” MJ says, and tries to channel the same voice Parker had used, smooth and even and not at all afraid.It doesn't really work, but she gives it a few more seconds anyways, before abandoning the hostage-negotiator schtick in favor of her usual sarcasm.“Okay, listen, kids,” she says, in her best Annoyed Parent Voice. “I will pull this bus over if you don’t get along, alright?”That gets her a few weak laughs.“Alright?” she says again, glaring at the two problem guys in the mirror until they look away. “Now if we could all be very quiet, I have to take a call.”Then, before she can think better of it, she picks up the phone and swipes her finger to accept the call.“Hello?”The voice change throws the bomber, she can tell.He hesitates a full half a second before demanding, “Where’s Parker?”“Oh, I’m sorry,” MJ says, and doesn’t even try to sound sincere. “Parker is unavailable at the moment, may I take a message?”The bomber snorts out a laugh. “I’d watch the tone if I was you, missy.”“Can’t,” MJ says. “I’m busy watching the road.”Part of her is screaming that she should shut up, that she should grovel and beg and apologize for her disrespect—But here’s the thing.If they blow up, the bomber doesn’t get his money.And his money was apparently important enough to let Walt off the bus, to let Parker off the bus, his money is apparently the whole reason he’s doing this.If he loses his money, Parker wins.It’ll be a hollow victory, but she imagines whatever pieces of her corpse are left to be scraped off the road will appreciate the thought, at least.But the bomber just laughs again.“Fine. Where’s the cop?”“He had to step out for a moment,” MJ says, even though they both know that the bomber knows this. “If you’d like, I’ll tell him you called.”“Don’t get cute. He’s not coming back.”“Why not?” MJ weighs her chances, and then mentally shrugs. “He’s not you.”“You think so?” The bomber sounds amused. “You have no idea how very close you are to almost saying something smart, Little Miss East Coast.”For heaven’s sake.She’s worked so hard to not have an accent.“I say lots of smart things,” she says. “Was there something you wanted?”“Just wanted to check in,” he says, smug and casual, like they’re just chatting. “It’s a pity that Parker wasn’t even clever enough to take his phone.”It’s been five minutes.MJ’s about done.“Okay,” she says, as dismissive as she can possibly manage to sound. “Well, if you’re quite finished, I’ve kind of got bigger tasks to focus on than playing phone tag, so I’ll tell Parker to call you back—”“Wait.”Her thumb was halfway to the end call button, but she hesitates.She waits.“I could have blown you all to kingdom come,” the bomber says, and he’s not laughing anymore. “The second that old woman reached the stairs. You know that, don’t you?”His voice is cold and cruel, chilling in all its smug satisfaction, and MJ has to swallow once to get her voice to work.“I know,” she says, and hates the fact that he can probably hear the change in her own voice.“I could’ve killed you all when Parker got on in the first place,” he presses. “Or when you took the bus driver off. Say that you know.”She hates him.She hates him so much that it makes her teeth hurt.“I know.”The bomber’s quiet for a second, and then, in a voice so full of amused condescension that she’s going to shatter a tooth if she doesn’t stop clenching her jaw— “Well?”“Well, what?” MJ growls.“That’s three times I’ve saved your life now.”That’s a pretty damn funny way of looking at it, you absolute bastard.She doesn’t say anything.“So?” he prompts. “What do you say when someone saves your life?”MJ can’t breathe.Thank you.She’s not going to say it.Parker could do it, could apologize and say sir and sound like he really means it, even though it’s clear that each word hurts more than the last—She’s not Parker.“Well? I’m waiting, East Coast.”If they live through this—when they live through this—They’re going to get through this, just so she can see his face.Just so she can watch his world collapse.“Aren’t you going to say thank you?”MJ takes one deep breath, and then another.She should do it.She should swallow her pride, it couldn’t hurt to beg a little—Instead, she takes one more deep breath and hopes to God that she hasn’t read the man wrong.“How badly—” she starts, and it comes out too shaky.So she shakes her head, clears her throat, tries again—“How badly do you want your money?”And she hangs up before he can answer.Six minutes.The bus has been silent throughout their call, and she hears the collective intake of breath when she throws the phone back on the dashboard.MJ waits one second—Two seconds—They don’t blow up.That’s lucky.She read him right, after all.“Was that—”The touristy guy is at her elbow, and so is the doctor lady, both of them looking grim and serious.“The bomber,” MJ says, and pulls the wheel to coax the bus into another turn. “Yeah.”The doctor lady pats her once on the shoulder, and MJ almost smiles.“What the hell is that?”The touristy guy takes the question right out of her mouth.Surface level answer: it’s another truck.A police truck, with a flat shipping bed—not as big as the first truck, with something hitched behind it, and there are a bunch of police officers standing around on the back of it—MJ counts a blonde ponytail, a man with short hair, and twenty-foot-tall Rogers on his left, and then, pulling a tactical vest over a dumb graphic t-shirt—“There he is,” the doctor lady breathes. “What is he—”MJ looks at the thing trailing behind the truck, and she understands at once.“Oh my God,” she says. “He really is insane.”It’s a mechanic’s cart.A mechanic’s cart made out of—freaking aluminum or whatever else, and attached by a single cable, and MJ’s watching in horrified fascination as Parker steps down, lies flat on his back.“This is a bad idea,” she says. “This is a really, really bad idea.”“Hold the wheel straight,” the touristy guy suggests.“Oh, really? Thanks for the tip.”And the cart heads straight for the bus.MJ watches it until it disappears between the wheels, and so she sees the moment Parker looks up, gives her a thumbs up like he’s not about to do something so incredibly reckless and stupid that she wants to scream—And then he’s gone again.Seven minutes.He has three minutes to disarm the bomb.MJ watches the road up ahead, tries to figure out how much longer before they have to make a turn—if she goes straight, takes a longer loop, she can get back on this track, but it’ll give them more time on the straightaway—She can do this.Just hold the wheel straight.The phone starts to ring again.The doctor lady picks it up before MJ can react—“It says Unknown Number.”“Hang up,” MJ snaps.She doesn’t have time to deal with the bomber’s mind games.“But—”“Just hang up!”The doctor lady rejects the call.Two minutes left.There’s still one minute left when the cable snaps.That tire—that damn blown tire—they’d driven over it without even a bump dozens of times already, but she forgot—how could she have forgotten—Something hits the cart beneath the bus, enough to make the cable swing, and MJ sees the exact moment it tears free of its mooring.The cable snakes wildly towards the bus before it disappears, too, and MJ’s mind is just a blur of white noise and panic.In a second, she’s hearing Helen scream again, feeling that awful thump as her body was pulled under the wheels, and she can’t see, she can’t think, she can’t hear a thing—But there’s no thump.“Look behind us,” she murmurs, and then, louder. “Someone look behind the bus!”“He’s not back there!” someone—the kid—shouts back.“What—look under the bus!” she snaps, pushing at the touristy guy. “Someone look under the bus, did we hit him?”The touristy guy is laying flat on the floor, craning his neck to see beneath the bus—the truck is pacing them now, and she can see Rogers and the other officers doing the same, screaming Parker’s name, over and over—“He’s not down here!” the touristy guy yells, and someone’s prying loose another panel in the middle of the bus, sticking their head out. “I can’t see him!”“Oh, God,” MJ realizes, and wants to be sick. “Oh, God, we’re dragging him.”They’re dragging him—how long can he hold on, beneath the bus?—they don’t have time for this—The phone starts to ring again—
“I see him!”
It’s one of the men who was fighting earlier, and MJ takes back every mean thing she thought about him, because he’s trying to reach under the bus, leaning out further and further.“Someone hold his legs!” she nearly screams. “Can you reach him? Someone help him!”The phone’s still ringing.“Come on!” someone yells. “Come on, reach—”“I’ve got him—”“Come on—”“Almost—”The whole bus is pulling, straining, and it seems like everyone moves at once—and then Parker’s there.Clambering through the hole in the ground, face red with the strain, and that stupid t-shirt stained with all the grime and oil of the bottom of a bus—But he’s alive.They didn’t hit him.He didn’t leave them.The fighting guy hugs him, and he laughs—it sounds exhausted, but he’s still smiling, so that’s good, that’s got to be good, and he’s alive—By the time he makes it up to the front of the bus again, the phone’s stopped ringing.MJ guesses they’ve met their time limit, then.“Did you have any luck with the bomb?” the touristy guy asks.“Sure,” Parker says. “It didn’t go off.”It’s—not the answer she wanted to hear.But it’s a silver lining, she guesses.She’ll take it, for now.“MJ—”Seeing him up close, all of her fear is replaced with anger, and she punches him once, as hard as she can, which only results in her hitting a tactical vest at full force and is very much a mistake.Parker has the good grace to look sorry.“You scared the hell out of us,” she tells him anyways, for good measure. “Don’t you dare do something like that again, do you hear me?”He holds his hands up in surrender, grinning again—Something smells off.MJ looks at him, and then looks at the stains that are splattered across his chest and arms.A horrible suspicion begins to grow in the back of her mind.“Parker,” she says. “What’s that smell?”His smile fades, and he drops his voice, so that the rest of the passengers won’t hear—“Gas.”
Gasoline.
She’s been so focused on the speedometer that she hasn’t really paid a lot of attention to the rest of the dashboard—But now, before MJ’s eyes, the needle on the gas gauge drops, just a little.They’re leaking gas.“Naturally,” MJ says. “Because things were so nice and easy before.”“Something like that.” He’s worried, but not nearly as worried as she thinks he probably should be, given their current situation.“Okay,” she says. “So what’s the good news?”Parker’s still studying the dashboard, but then he shakes his head and looks back at her, and his smile is starting to creep back again.“Tony found the bomber.”For a second, MJ doesn’t understand—Then she does.“Tony,” she echoes. “Your partner.”“He found the bomber,” Parker says again. “It’s a remote detonator, once they get to him, they’ll be able to deactivate it remotely, we won’t—”MJ laughs.She tries to be quiet, because she still doesn’t want everyone else to get their hopes up, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s really, really hard not to laugh.They’re going to get out of here.They’ll be able to stop.They’re going to make it.“Remind me to buy your partner a drink,” she says, and Parker gives another flash of that ear-to-ear grin, so that MJ can’t help but grin back, like an idiot.“We get out of this,” he says. “And I’ll buy the whole damn bus a drink.”“Sounds fair.”It’s crazy to be able to think that far in advance.For the past—however long—she’s been thinking second to second, with no room for anything except for whatever will get them around the next turn, past the next obstacle—When we get out of this—MJ almost laughs again, but shakes her head and just keeps smiling, like she can’t seem to make herself stop.They’re going to make it.“I told you,” Parker says, and his smile’s a little smaller, a little softer, but she doesn’t mind at all. “We’re going to be okay.”MJ nods, tells herself that it’s the truth, that it’s not just another reassurance.“Your partner,” she says. “He’s good?”Parker’s smile is fond, and she can see the shared history of him and his friend scrawled in large letters across his face, so that she knows what he’s going to say long before he opens his mouth.“He’s the very best.”It sounds like a promise, and MJ lets herself believe it.“Okay,” she says, and her voice only shakes a very, very little. “We’re going to be okay.”“You’d better believe it,” Parker says.His eyes drop to the gas gauge again, and it’s not enough to spoil the moment, but it’s enough to temper her reckless relief.Just because there’s a way out—they can’t slip up now.Until Parker’s phone rings again, they’ll just have to ride it out.Careful as anything, until the phone rings, and they know—they know—that they’re safe.“The gas,” she says, following his gaze. “How far away is the bomber?”“I don’t know,” he says.He raises a hand to press a button on his vest, and then he’s talking into what she assumes is a two-way radio or something.“Rogers, we might need a fuel truck to pace us,” he says, in a voice that MJ’s beginning to suspect, based on what little she’s seen of the man and his scowl, is based off of Rogers’s own Serious Business Voice. “We’re losing gas.”He releases the button, and MJ studies his vest for a little too long.“Fancy,” she says, when he catches her looking and raises an eyebrow.“Oh, yeah,” he says, and makes a show of brushing some of the gas and debris off his shoulder.She rolls her eyes, and then glances back at the gas gauge.It’s definitely dropping.Hovering a little above the halfway point, when Walt must have filled it up this morning, because it had been around three-quarters-full before—“You think that’ll work?” she can’t help asking, and tries not to think too hard about the logistics of refueling an explosive bus while the engine’s running and the bus is moving—“It only has to buy us time.”MJ nods.“Right,” she says, and watches as the needle moves another fraction of an inch lower. “That’s all we have to do.”“It’s just buying time,” Parker says again, and when she glances up, he’s watching the needle, too.Just buying time.They just have to wait a little bit longer.Just until the phone rings."Come on, Tony," Parker says, so quiet she thinks she wasn't supposed to hear it. "Save our lives."They make another lap, and the needle sinks smoothly beneath the halfway mark.When the phone rings, they both jump, but then Parker’s face splits into a grin and he grabs the phone so quickly that he nearly drops it.He fumbles it for a second, then swipes up, presses the phone against his ear, and MJ watches the way he’s still smiling way too wide—“Tony!” he blurts. “Tony, tell me the good news, man!”MJ’s smiling, too, and she’s watching his face—So she sees the exact moment when he realizes.In a high school physics class, MJ’s teacher had showed them this one experiment, after putting on goggles and gloves and making them all stand way back.The Prince Rupert’s Drop.She only vaguely remembers, but it was something about glass that was cooled a certain way, so that it looked like a teardrop, and you could hit the bulb with a full blown hammer, and it wouldn’t crack at all—But there was something with the distribution of forces, the teacher had said, and had made them all take another step back, tapped the tail end of the teardrop with a baton—It had shattered.Shards of glass had flown out in all directions, and MJ had yelped and ducked under the table, and so had everyone else, and the teacher had been very pleased with herself for the rest of the day—She’s looking right at him.So she sees the exact moment he shatters.His smile vanishes in an instant, and his eyes are too wide, unfocused, jumping about without seeing a thing.MJ reaches out towards him without even knowing why, but he’s already moving, turning away from her, away from the rest of the passengers.For an impossibly long moment, he doesn’t speak.When he does, she barely recognizes his voice at all.“I’m going to kill you,” he says, in a voice that sounds like dust and like the rasp of metal over stone and like something very far away and very cold. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill you.”It’s not a threat.It’s a simple statement of fact.MJ realizes she’s still holding out her hand.“Parker—”But he doesn’t turn, doesn’t look back at her, just stands completely motionless, everything in the world dialed down to the phone in his hand.“I hear you,” he says, after another long pause, still in that same awful voice.He hangs up the phone without saying anything else.Three times now, she’s seen him turn away before trying to talk to the rest of them.But this is different.“Parker?” she tries, and hates the way her voice comes out too high, all frightened and uncertain.Parker stands stock still for another second—two seconds—three seconds—Then he smashes his phone against the nearest pole and screams.It’s the worst sound she’s ever heard—a wordless, inhuman shriek that seems to come from somewhere sightless and unthinking—and it doesn’t end, even as he crashes against the same dented railing, shaking like a man possessed—“Parker!” MJ cries, reaching out again without even thinking. “Parker, please—please, don’t do this!”He doesn’t hear her—can’t hear her—“Peter,” she begs. “You have to—please, you can’t—please, please, stop!”She manages to hook two fingers through the waist of his vest, hangs on even as he lurches blindly away, still shaking, clinging to the railing with all his strength.“I’m sorry,” she says, and presses her knuckles beneath the vest, against the worn fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry, whatever happened, I’m so, so sorry, but we need you.”Whatever happened.She knows what happened.Of course she knows.And it’s horrible, because she doesn’t know Tony.She never met the man—she never will—she has no context for this awful, all-consuming rage and pain and grief—she has no way of placing it with a face, no way to relate and sympathize—But she can’t stop seeing the way Parker’s smile had frozen, and she’s shaking too, almost as badly as he is.“Okay?” she says, and is horrified to feel her eyes burning. “We’re all really scared, and I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t—I can’t do this by myself. Alright?”He shakes his head against the railing, bent nearly double with his own helpless fear and fury, but he stills, slowly, finally, and she pushes against his shirt again.“Parker, I need your help,” she says. “We can’t do this without you.”It’s not enough.Of course it isn’t enough.But finally, finally, Parker nods.He turns his head to look at her, and his eyes are too far away, too scattered, and he stares at her like he’s never going to look away again.MJ tightens her grip on the vest and forces herself to adopt a sternness she really doesn’t feel.“I’m sorry about Tony,” she says. “But we still have a problem. And we need to find a solution. And we can’t do that if you’re shaking to pieces in front of everybody.”She can see the words settling in his brain, flipping the switch between The Job and what he’s just heard, whatever the bomber’s just told him.He’s still staring at her.Then he smiles, a slow, cold thing that curls his face horribly and doesn’t reach his eyes at all—perfectly polished and perfectly empty.“We’re going to die,” he says.It’s the same way he spoke to the man on the phone.Not a threat.Just a statement of fact.“No,” MJ says, and pushes at him one more time. “No, we’re not. We can’t. We didn’t make it this far just to die now.”Parker closes his eyes.He straightens slowly, like he’s trying to push up against the weight of the entire sky.She has to release her grip on the vest when he turns to face the rest of the bus, but he catches her hand when she starts to move back, and she stares out at the road as he laces his fingers through hers.She’ll have to pull her hand away, she knows, when they make the next turn—there’s no way she can do that one-handed—but for now she doesn’t say anything, and she watches the road while he watches the rest of the bus, and they don’t say a word.The bus is too silent—in the rearview mirror, MJ can see the rest of the passengers staring at him, frozen between terror and shock.Parker’s supposed to be the one with all the answers.He opens his mouth, like he’s searching for the words to reassure the passengers, tell them that they’ll be okay, that he didn’t mean it—But any words would just ring hollow, with what they’ve just seen.So he closes his mouth again, and she squeezes his hand once, and he squeezes back, glances down with the ghost of a smile—“MJ,” he starts to say. “You—”Then he freezes.In a second, his grip on her hand is too tight, so she makes a face and pulls away, and he lets her go, staring hard at her shirt.MJ shrinks back just a little before she even realizes what she’s doing.Parker glances over his shoulder, and then crouches beside her, the way he’s done so many times already.“Your sweater,” he says, and MJ looks down.“Oh,” she says, because she’d honestly forgotten what shirt she was wearing. “It’s—you know—it’s just from school.”It’s a worn old thing, with the letters of her university stamped across the chest, faded purple letters that are vaguely letterman-style—“NYU,” Parker says, voice very careful. “You went to NYU.”“Yeah,” she says, and doesn’t know why it’s such a big thing. “Photojournalism degree.”“Good football team?”That’s pushing it.“Eh. They’re okay.”“NYU Bobcats.”The way he says the last word, it’s like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place, except MJ didn’t even know there was a puzzle on the table to begin with—“Right,” she says slowly. “Everyone says Violets, though—”But Parker just leans closer, pretends to wipe at the cut on her forehead again, and says, in a voice so quiet it sends chills down her spine—“He can see you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
For a solid three seconds, MJ doesn’t understand.When she does, it’s like someone’s dumped a bucket of ice straight down her back.“Parker,” she says, and then runs out of words and has to try again. “What—”“He can see you,” Parker says, still too close and too quiet.MJ scans the dashboard and sees nothing, but then Parker stands again, leans back and around the railing, moving to stay out of the way of some unseen camera—There.In the top right corner of the windshield.It’s such a tiny thing—she never would have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking, just the blink of a tiny red light every couple seconds.How could they have missed it?“A camera,” she breathes out, and doesn’t look at it again.If the bomber knows—If he figures out that they’ve spotted his secret cheat card, will he detonate?She doesn’t know.How should she know?She doesn’t look at the camera again, and Parker must come to the same conclusion, because he leans against the railing once more, the way he’s been doing all morning—all day?—and doesn’t look back at the camera again.“He’s had a camera right in your face this whole time,” he says out of the side of his mouth. “I didn’t even realize—he called you Bobcat, and I didn’t even hear—”Little Miss East Coast.It hadn’t been her accent.He’d been staring at her shirt the whole time.MJ can’t help shivering, just a little.This whole time—their decision to head for the airport, the way the news helicopters have been chased away—and the whole time, he was watching them.When Helen reached for the door—The whole time, MJ thinks, and grips the steering wheel hard enough to hurt.The gas needle’s still dropping.“He’s watching me,” she says, keeping her face as steady as possible. “Can he hear me?”“I don’t think so,” Parker says. “Looks like it’s just a standard security cam. No audio feed.”For a second, neither of them speak. Then, an idea strikes her out of the blue—“Parker,” she says, at the exact same moment that he says, “MJ, wait—”One look at his face, and she knows they’ve had the same idea.The camera—If it’s broadcasting—They can spoof the camera.MJ—has no idea how to do that.But Parker’s got his little vest walkie-talkie thing, and surely, surely there’s someone in the entire LAPD who can tell them exactly how to do it—“Rogers,” Parker says, and presses the button on his vest, turning his back on the camera that’s still blinking steadily over his shoulder. “Rogers, are you there?”His expression stutters as his superior officer says something into the wire in his ear.MJ feels her stomach tighten unpleasantly.It wasn’t that she’d forgotten, necessarily, about what’s just happened.Of course she hasn’t, she’s not completely heartless.But the thing is—it’s really difficult, in this specific situation.It’s a lot easier to not think about something that happened five minutes ago, or what’s going to happen in five minutes.It’s a lot easier to focus on the single moment, on what’s going on at that exact space in time, than it is to think about what’s been happening all morning.If she thinks about the whole morning, MJ thinks, she might just lose her mind completely.So it’s easier to push that all away, tell herself that she’ll deal with it later.Right now, there’s a new line, a new spark of an idea that might just be a way out.Get through this, MJ tells herself. And then you’ll have time to freak out.Get through this first.We’re all glad to be alive, Parker had said, and it’s crazy to think that that was just barely an hour ago. It doesn’t mean you don’t care.She just needs to stay alive.She can care later.But at any rate, the discovery of the camera had forced Parker’s partner out of her mind, so when she sees his expression go all stiff and tight around the eyes again, she feels a momentary pang of guilt before she pushes that away, too.“Yeah,” Parker says. “Yeah, I know about Tony.”There’s another moment of silence before he speaks again, and MJ almost reaches for his hand again, but stops herself.“Yeah,” he says again. “Me too.”But then he takes a deep breath, leans back against the railing, and MJ sneaks a look at him out of the corner of her eye to watch him do the same thing she’s been doing, pushing the bad things away and focusing on what they can do in that moment, just long enough to stay alive—“Rogers,” he says. “Can you put Ned on the line?”MJ doesn’t honestly know a lot about how the whole video streaming thing works.That’s not her playing dumb, either—she’s smart, and she knows she’s smart, but there are certain areas that are outside her expertise, and swapping live feed from a wireless camera with a spoofed video is definitely one of those things.But Parker seems to understand most of it, and the unseen Ned seems to know even more, and so MJ listens while they talk it over and tries to tell herself that this is going to work.It has to work.Because they’re starting to run out of gas.“Requires physical network access,” Parker says. “So, what, it has to be—that has to be from inside the bus? What if it’s encrypted?”MJ doesn’t mean to, but she looks over her shoulder to where she can see Parker’s phone—or what’s left of his phone after he pitched it halfway up the bus.There’s—not a lot left.“My phone,” she says, and Parker jumps and looks down at her. “Second row, on top of the bag. You can use my phone.”“What’s the number?”She tells him, and he tells Ned, and then brings her phone up to the front of the bus, hands it over to her to unlock, which is a nice gesture, but they really don’t have time for this.There’s one new message from an unknown number.“This isn’t going to, like, completely wipe my phone, is it?” MJ asks without thinking, and then glances up in time to see Parker looking like he wants to laugh. “Right. Priorities.”She taps the link in the message.After that, it’s a lot of black screens and white text, and again, she’s not really sure what’s happening.“What’s it doing?” she asks, after a few seconds.Parker takes her phone, looks at it.“He’s looking for the network,” he says. “Once he finds it, he’ll be able to intercept the stream.”“This is going to work,” MJ says, and she’s not sure if it’s a question or a statement.“This is going to work,” he agrees.He places the phone on the dashboard, where he left his phone when he stepped off the bus, and then he turns back to the rest of the bus.“Okay,” he says, and everyone’s listening at once. “We’re going to try something. But I need all of you to help me.”They listen.No one says a word.He’s kept his tone even, hasn’t said anything as foolish as this is going to work or we’re going to get out of here or we’ll be off the bus in X amount of minutes—He doesn’t have to.As soon as they know there’s a plan, MJ can feel the collective pulse of the entire bus jump just a little.It’s ridiculous, really, how easy it is to hope.How many times have they let themselves hope this morning, and then it’s been nothing?When they saw the police cars—when Parker went under the wheels—when he promised that Tony would be able to catch the bomber, cut him off at the source—Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, MJ thinks.But she can’t help hoping, anyways.It’s going to work.It has to work.They don’t have time.If it doesn’t work—They don’t have time for anything else.It’s this, or it’s nothing.
Is that it?
That’s all there is.
It’s this, or it’s nothing at all.The concept is pretty simple.They’re going to sit where they are, still and unmoving, for the time it takes the bus to complete a lap—or two laps—however long it takes Ned to record a proper loop and sync it up so that it looks okay—There’ll be a glitch, Parker says, right when the video switches over, so it’s important that nobody moves, or does anything that could give them away.Nobody move.Nobody speak.It’s not going to be too hard.Parker’s meltdown pretty much scared the whole bus into silence, and it’s not like anyone was particularly chatty to begin with, after Helen and after the gap jump and after Parker almost fell beneath the wheels—God, MJ thinks, and almost wants to laugh. How has it only been a matter of hours?It feels like they’ve been on this bus for centuries.In the end, Parker comes up to stand beside her again.“Let me know when,” he says into the radio on his vest, and then, to her—“Right when we round the corner. When we pass that flag.”MJ nods.The bus seems to shudder beneath her as she wrenches it into another turn.They pass the flag.The whole bus is silent.She can hear her pulse sounding in her ears, can hear each breath echoing through her lungs, can hear the rattle of the engine, somewhere beneath her, she can’t tell where—Her arms hurt.She’s been fighting against the bus’s screwed-up suspension this whole time, and it’s been way too long, and her arms are so tired, they hurt so badly—She looks straight ahead, tries to look small and cowed and frightened—It’s easier than it should be.Parker leans against the railing, staring out through the windshield ahead of them—Can the bomber tell?Can he see that they’re being silent, that they’re being so still and quiet and motionless?Or will he even notice, once the video’s been looped?MJ breathes in and out and in again, and she does her best to not move.They’re tearing down the straightaway at 58 miles an hour, and there’s another turn coming up. MJ panics briefly, because how is she supposed to get the wheel back into the exact same position as it was, will it be enough of a glitch to tip the bomber off?She throws all her weight against the wheel, manages to ease the bus through the turn smoothly enough not to rattle any of the passengers, and the quickest glimpse in the mirror shows that they rock with the movement but remain mostly still.“One more lap,” Parker says, barely moving his mouth at all. “That’ll give us time to get everyone off.”MJ nearly nods before she catches herself.Her eyes drop to the dashboard without meaning to—“Parker,” she says. “Look.”He must look, because he swears under his breath, and MJ should look back at the road, she knows, but she can’t, she can’t look away from the gas gauge—The needle hovers above the E.And the red light is blinking.They’re out of time.“Ned,” Parker says without moving his hand at all, and MJ realizes they’ve been on an open channel this whole time. “Ned, we’ve got to run the video.”He listens, and nearly shakes his head—MJ sees the motion start before he catches himself just in time.“There’s no time,” he says. “We’re going to run out of gas. We need to get them off now.”Another pause while he listens to the response.“Loop it,” he says. “We’re out of time.”For one terrible second, MJ watches the needle slide another fraction of an inch.We’re out of time—“Okay,” Parker says, and when MJ looks up, he’s stepping away from the railing. “Okay, we have to hurry.”Okay, MJ thinks. So here we go.Just like it did the first time, the sudden movement coming up fast in her rearview mirror makes her jump, and it’s a whole lot, to see that same flatbed truck pulling into place beside them.If the bomber sees—He won’t be able to call Parker.Not this time.If anything happens, they won’t know until—Until it’s too late.On the upside, MJ supposes, it won’t much matter, then.She catches a glimpse of someone waving for her to open the doors—the back doors, further from the camera, just in case, just in case—She has to search for the button, but then she gets it, and then they’re racing down the track, side by side, and how in the hell are they going to manage the turns like this?She slows down, from 58 to 52, and it’s terrifying, seeing the needle so close to 50, but this will buy them a few extra seconds, won’t it?Just a little bit longer—There’s a plank—a bridge—a plank of wood that the officers are laying across the gap between the two vehicles, and she can see them shouting, holding out their hands as Parker heads for the back of the bus—It’s too familiar.In a second, they’ll know.The first one to step onto the bridge is an old lady, and her husband is right beside her—MJ bites her tongue until it bleeds, and she’s not looking at the road anymore, she’s just staring at the old couple in the rearview mirror—The old lady steps onto the bridge—She takes another step—And then the officers on the other side catch her arms, pull her onto the truck, and she’s across, and she’s safe, and her husband follows her in a second.And she’s safe.They haven’t blown up.It worked.It worked.MJ’s barely breathing, but someone else on the bus shouts, “They’re across!”They made it.“Okay, you three next,” Parker’s saying, waving each group across, quick and certain and not wasting a second.MJ watches in the mirror, and her eyes are stinging, but she can’t stop smiling—One of the fighting guys crosses to safety—The kid with the gun—he says something to Parker, something that could be an apology and could be something else—and then he’s across, too—The doctor lady holds her head high, takes a deep breath, and then she steps across, and she’s safe, just like Walt was, they’re out of danger, they’re safe—The touristy guy is the last to cross.He hesitates a second too long before stepping down to the bridge, and MJ can see him staring hard at the road, and it’s not like she blames him for being afraid.But he takes one step—and then another—And he’s across.MJ’s the only one left.She has just enough time to know, with a horrible certainty, that they’re going to leave her, that the truck will pull away and leave her still trapped on the bus that’s also a bomb—But then Parker’s racing back up the aisle, and the truck does pull away, and she sees he’s holding a bundle of rope and a pipe, to wedge down the gas pedal—The truck pulls away—Why is the truck pulling away?The turn.In her panic, she hadn’t noticed—The turn comes up too fast, and MJ yanks the wheel hard enough to send Parker stumbling into one of the seats—Her mistake costs her dearly.They hit the turn way too late, still going way too fast, and it was already so hard to fight against the pull to the left—MJ braces her foot on the dashboard, pulls with all her strength—It’s not enough.“Parker!” she pleads, and he manages to stagger the last few feet, pull the wheel, so that they’re both straining with every last desperate bit of power, fighting against the bus that’s already been pushed to its limits a thousand times over—Two wheels lift off the ground.MJ feels it happen, and the tiny part of her brain that isn’t swallowed up in the haze of panic and strain and desperation thinks, well, this is familiar—The wheels crash back down onto the ground.“MJ,” Parker manages between breaths. “The suspension—”“Yeah,” she grits out. “It’s bad.”“You didn’t say—”What good would that have done?“The pipe,” she says. “We’re almost out of gas.”“Right.”They manage to wedge the pedal down, and then he ties one of the ropes to the steering wheel, holds it steady as she climbs over the pipe where it had pinned her against the seat.“Okay,” she says, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Okay, so how do we get out of here?”Parker’s still holding the rope, holding the wheel straight as they tear along.“The access panel,” he decides.MJ does not like that plan.But she looks at the gas gauge, which is blinking sort of aggressively now, and the needle has dipped below the E, and they’re running on fumes—“Access panel,” she agrees, and remembers to grab her phone before reaching for another rope.It’s a lot easier to lower the panel down to the ground on a length of rope than it is to step down onto it, especially with the way that the edge touching the road is splintering and sparking, and MJ almost loses her nerve at the sight of the road rushing by beneath.You can’t stay here, she tells herself. You have to move.She takes a breath.It would be really, really stupid if we died now.One foot, and then another—She steps onto the panel.Instantly, the vibrations of the road are enough to rattle all her teeth in her skull, and her feet scrabble for purchase, and she can’t make herself take another step, is just crouching on the top of the panel, clinging to the bus floor with white fingers.
You can’t stay here. You can’t—
You are not dying now.In the end, the choice is sort of—out of her hands.An eerie choking noise fills the bus, and for a few seconds, she doesn’t understand what it is.But then the engine rattles, coughs once, and her heart seizes up in terror—The engine is silent.They’re out of gas.“Go!” Parker shouts, and jumps after her, sliding down the access panel, pulling her with him—She lets out the rope, but it tears through her hand fast enough to rip away the skin—The wheels—Oh, God, we’re going to hit the wheels—MJ closes her eyes, pulls her knees up to her chest—They fall the rest of the way to the road, and there are sparks everywhere, all around them—her ankle sticks out over the edge of the panel, and she yelps as she feels the road scrape the skin raw in a second—Parker is trying to cover her head, cover his own head, and there are sparks everywhere, and they’re falling, moving, too fast to see, too fast to steer, too fast to know anything at all—For a second, everything is dark.Then the sun is blinding on the backs of her eyelids, and the smell of exhaust fumes is choking the air, and they’re spinning wildly, careening out of control—They didn’t hit the wheels.They’re off the bus.The bus—They’re still skidding down the road on the too-small panel of wood and metal, but they hit the edge of the runway and stop fast, so that they both go flying. MJ lands first, and Parker covers her head again, moves so that he’s covering her, the same way he’d done when they jumped the gap—She has just enough time to be confused before the explosion rocks the world.The explosion that made Helen fall—It’s nothing compared to this.The bus is nearly on the other side of the runway, but the heat from the blast washes over them in a sudden, awful wave, and for one second MJ thinks that they’re too close, that they’re somehow still too close—It’s heat and noise and light, like nothing she’s ever seen, and it’s too much, too loud, too hot—If they’d still been on the bus—If they’d been closer—If they hadn’t gotten off in time, if the other passengers hadn’t gotten off in time—But we did.There’s soot raining down around them, soot and ash falling like rain, and Parker’s the first one to lift his head, shift slightly so that he’s not lying on top of her anymore, but his arm’s still under her head, and he doesn’t move that.We made it.MJ’s mind stalls out for a second, just trying to get her head around it.They’re not dead.They didn’t blow up.They’re alive.Somehow, impossibly, they’re alive.She pushes herself up on her elbows, looks back towards the bus—It’s nothing but a skeleton, a twisted carcass of metal, with wings of flame streaming out on either side.If they’d still been on board—
But you’re not.
“God,” she says, and her voice is too high, too wobbly. “That poor bus.”Parker laughs, but it sounds more like a sob.MJ’s crying, she realizes.The sun is so bright, and the air smells like smoke and dust and heat, and her eyes are stinging, no matter how hard she tries to blink it away.She’s clutching her phone in both hands, hard enough that she realizes she’s going to crack the screen, and so she forces herself to relax, check its face.It’s still working.Still sending the video.She drops it onto her stomach, careful not to push anything on the screen.“MJ,” Parker says. “Are you okay?”It’s a loaded question, to be honest.Her legs are bleeding, and her hands are, too, and her head is pounding and her chest feels too tight, in a way it hasn’t all morning.But she’s alive.She’s alive.“I’m okay,” she says, although her voice is still strained, so it doesn’t sound super convincing. “You?”“Yeah,” he says, and gives another desperate laugh. “Yeah, I’m fine.”She doesn’t believe him. His hands are torn and bleeding, where he put himself between her and the sparks and the road that blurred past them—he’s got a cut across his face, and there are still all those smaller cuts from the glass and that dumb freaking t-shirt has torn at the sleeve so that she can see the gash across his shoulder—But they’re both breathing.They didn’t blow up.Alive.“We’re gonna be okay,” she tells him, because she figures it’s just a matter of time before one of them has to say it.“We’ll be okay,” he agrees.MJ smooths her hair back from her face, presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, and tries to make herself breathe normally.Parker’s arm is still beneath her head, and she lifts her head up slightly, in case he wants to move it—He doesn’t.He doesn't, and she feels his hand ghost over her arms, so light and careful that she barely feels it at all.Okay, MJ thinks, and moves her hands so that she can look up at him. Okay, so we made it.He won’t stop looking at her, eyes scanning over her face, and MJ realizes he’s doing the same thing she is, checking to make sure she’s okay, that there’s nothing else that they could have missed.When he realizes she’s watching him, his ears turn pink, and MJ raises an eyebrow, which makes them go from pink to red.It’s a neat trick.“You going to say something mushy?” she asks, and he laughs a little and shrugs.“Probably,” he admits.“Yeah?”“Yeah.”“Huh,” she says. “Well, you might have to hold off on that for a while.”“Why’s that?”She points. “Because I think our ride is here.”Parker looks, and there’s an ambulance heading for them at a breakneck speed, so far away across the runway, siren wailing.“Well,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”He helps her to her feet, and she’s still a little wobbly on her legs, and so is he, so they have to take a second to lean against each other, take a second to catch their balance before they can limp their way towards the ambulance.“Besides,” MJ says as they go. “Shared trauma isn’t a solid basis for—anything.”“Anything?” Parker echoes, and she doesn’t have to bother looking over at him to see that he’s grinning again. “Why, what did you have in mind?”“Anything,” she says again. “Intense circumstances aren’t a great foundation for any sort of relationship.”“You thought that was intense?” He scoffs, but it’s offset by the way the motion pulls at the cut on his face, and he winces. “I do that every day.”“Oh, really?”“Really.”“I thought you were a boring guy.”“I am,” he promises immediately. “Very boring. Not intense at all.”MJ laughs.“Oh, well, then,” she says. “That changes things.”“Does it?”The ambulance reaches them before she could answer.She thinks that’s probably good.The medics swarm out of the ambulance and help them to the back, pushing them to sit down, forcing water bottles into their hands with strict instructions not to speak until they’ve consumed at least half a bottle—One of the medics douses a cotton pad in disinfectant, and MJ hisses in pain as they do their best to clean her hands and legs, and then bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out again, because, really, these people are just trying to do their job, they don’t need her carrying on the whole time.Parker’s not doing much better.She sits on the back of the ambulance and watches the muscle in his jaw as he tries to keep quiet, even as a medic has to pull the fabric of his t-shirt out of the gash on his arm.Then there are more sirens wailing, and Rogers and a few more officers are racing towards them—MJ catches a glimpse of some of the officers off the back of the truck, and a guy around Parker’s age who she thinks might be Ned—“Parker,” Rogers says, and his tone is all strict and professional, but he’s relieved.Anyone could see it."Sir,” Parker says, and straightens up a little.Up close, Rogers is about twenty-five feet tall, and it’s a lot to take in.MJ actually has to tilt her head back to look at the guy, and the motion snaps Parker’s attention back to her immediately.“MJ,” he says. “This is Captain Rogers. Cap, this is MJ.”“Hey,” MJ says.In college, she’d gone through the whole “meet the parents” thing exactly once, and it had been enough to put her off it for a while.But Rogers nods to her, and she has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing at how much this feels like that.“Are you two alright?” Rogers asks.MJ looks at Parker.Between the two of them, there are more scrapes and cuts than actual unmarked skin, and MJ’s still a little (a lot) jittery any time her eyes drift in the direction of the still smoking bus, and Parker still jumps anytime someone laughs too loud or speaks too quickly—“Oh, you know,” MJ says, and waves a hand dismissively. “We’re doing great.”“Glad to hear it,” Rogers says, and it’s very impressive how he can convey amusement without actually moving his face at all.She’s going to have to work at that.“The other passengers,” Parker says.“They’re safe,” Rogers assures him. “They took them into one of the terminals to get medical care—”“What about the driver?” MJ blurts, before she realizes that there’s a good chance she’s interrupting some sort of post-mission briefing.Rogers doesn’t seem to mind, though.“The driver is safe,” he promises. “He was taken to a hospital, and they were able to stabilize him almost immediately.”MJ breathes out.Walt is okay.The other passengers—touristy guy, and the kid who stole a gun, and the doctor lady, and the guys who were arguing—the other passengers are okay.She and Parker are okay.“You did well,” Rogers says, and MJ blinks to find him looking between her and Parker with something almost like a smile. “You both did really well.”Yeah, MJ thinks. Yeah, I guess we really did, didn’t we?“Keep it up,” Rogers says to Parker. “And I just might let you have the rest of the day off.”Parker flounders for a response, but MJ leans forward to knock her shoulder against his side, widens her eyes and says, “Oh, boy” in the same perfectly flat voice Rogers is using.The captain almost—almost—laughs.MJ’s counting it as a win.The sun streams down from almost directly overhead—what time is it?—and the air is still too bright and hot, and there’s smoke settling slowly down around them—But they’re alive, and she and Parker are okay, and Rogers is apparently a sarcastic asshole who knows when to use well instead of good, so things are alright.She can breathe.She can finally breathe.We’re going to be okay.“Cap!” someone shouts, and then it’s one of the officers from the back of the truck, and seriously, what are they feeding these guys at the LAPD, why is everyone so tall?“Sam,” Rogers says. “What—”“It’s him,” the new officer says, and MJ realizes he’s holding a phone, face set and angry. “He wants to know when he’s going to get his money.”It’s him.The bomber.Any trace of amusement on Rogers’s face is wiped clean in a second, and he snatches the phone.“Son of a bitch, I’ll tell him where he can get his money,” he growls.MJ looks back at the twisted wreckage of the bus—Wait.“Wait!” she yelps, just as Parker says, “Sir, wait, he doesn’t know—”They talk over each other, and it’s enough to make Rogers pause, cover the phone to muffle the sound.“Parker?” he asks, and it’s a very clear explain yourself.“The bomber,” MJ says, and Parker says, “He doesn’t know it blew up!”For a second, Rogers stares between them.Then his face is perfectly blank, and when he raises the phone to his ear, his voice is even and full of barely-restrained loathing.“Pershing Square,” he says. “Twenty minutes.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
On the way to Pershing Square, Rogers tries to convince Parker to stay in the ambulance.“Absolutely not,” Parker says. “Sir, I’ve seen this guy, I’m the only one—”He catches himself mid-sentence, and MJ winces.
We stopped him.
Your partner, he’s good?
He’s the very best.Tony is dead.Parker’s the only one left who’s seen the bomber face to face.“I’ve seen him,” he says again. “I can ID him before anyone else.”Rogers hesitates.It’s clear he doesn’t like the idea, but it’s also clear that Parker’s got a decent argument.MJ can see the moment he decides.He nods once, short and abrupt.“You stay away from the windows,” he says. “Nowhere where he can see you. We don’t want him getting spooked.”But he’s going to be in the room with everyone else.The money’s being left in a trash can.There are people in all the buildings, eyes glued to that thing, and a tracker inside the bag, and a couple packs of ink that’ll discharge when someone disturbs the stacks of money—The main control has set up camp in the barber shop across the square, and Parker ditches his tactical vest to follow the others inside—MJ stays behind.Right before he leaves, Parker hesitates, like he’s only just realized that she’s going to have to stay behind.“MJ,” he starts to say, and she waves him off.“Go get the bastard.”He doesn’t need to be told twice.She watches until he’s out of sight, and then sits back and makes herself stop looking in that general direction, because that’s just overdramatic, and pretty much the last thing she needs to be right now is overdramatic.It’s almost over.Just a little bit longer.And it’ll be over.MJ rubs her arms and glances around the empty ambulance—the EMTs are talking quietly in the front seat, and if MJ leans out of the back and cranes her neck, she can just see The Trash Can, the one with 3.7 million dollars.It’s not a real number. 3.7 million dollars—that’s, like, an insane, made-up number—It’s so much money.It’s not nearly worth what the bomber’s put them all through.She wants to see him.She wants to see his face when he realizes he’s been caught, that the cop he thought was stuck safe and sound on that death trap of a bus is the one to pick him out of a crowd.She wants to see his face when he realizes that he’s lost.MJ bounces her leg up and down, feeling restless and still full of jittery energy.She wonders if she’ll ever see any of the other passengers again.She wonders if they saw the bus explode.She wonders if they know that she and Parker are okay.In theory, MJ supposes, she could just wait a few weeks and then hop back on the bus, and presumably at least some of the passengers will be the same.But the idea of climbing back on another bus—The thought nearly chokes her, and she has to force it away, because she can’t even begin to imagine getting on another bus.Not yet.Not so soon after the fact.Okay, she thinks. Okay, so it may take some time.She can visit Walt, she guesses.Once Parker gets back, and Rogers and the rest of them, she can figure out which hospital they took Walt to, go and check in on him and make sure he’s doing okay.Rogers said he was fine.But she’d like to check.Just to be sure.Maybe some of the others will be thinking along the same lines.She’d like to check in on the kid, make sure he’s okay, make sure he’s going to be alright—And the doctor lady, she’d like to talk to her, let her know how much she appreciated her keeping calm and helping Walt—And Helen—Oh, God, someone’s going to have to tell Helen’s family—Did the older woman have family in the area?She hadn’t said—the few minutes of conversation they’d had—they’d covered workplaces, commute schedules, but that had been it—Citibank, wasn’t it?She worked at Citibank.Someone should check on that.Someone should know. MJ’s phone was confiscated as official evidence, and Ned promised that they would get it back as soon as they had the information they need.So instead, she borrows a phone off one of the medics, hops out of the back of the ambulance, and walks halfhearted laps around the ambulance while she calls her parents.Her mom doesn’t answer, and neither does her dad, and the thought strikes her as funny.As far as they know, there’s no special reason for her to be calling—and they’re both at work right now, it’s still only barely 2 o’clock in New York, they’re both still at work.It’s funny, because it’s really not that late in the day—if she’d gone in to work, she wouldn’t even be on her lunch break yet.It just—feels like a lot longer.That’s normal, right?Time moves slower or faster or just weirder in general, when people are in a stressful situation.That’s a thing, isn’t it?It feels like it’s probably a thing.So her parents—they don’t know how long it’s been, they’d have no reason to expect a frantic call in the middle of the day.It just feels a lot longer.She leaves a message on the home phone.It’s a rambling, incoherent mess, because she starts to trip over her words halfway through, and then she’s trying really hard not to tear up again, because she is sick of breaking down every five second—“I’m fine,” she concludes at last. “If you see anything on the news, just—just know that I’m okay, and if you can’t reach my phone, that’s because the police are looking at it—I’m perfectly fine.”It feels like empty assurance, like they’re still going to panic when they get the message.Especially if they haven’t seen anything on the news.It’s distinctly possible, MJ realizes with a dry twist of amusement.Things like this, they hardly make the news anymore, do they?“I love you guys,” she says. “I’ll try to call you later. But I love you guys, and I’m okay. See you soon.”She’s got that trip coming up, after all.Is a plane safer than a bus?Will she freak out, walking down that corridor to get on the plane?She hopes not.She hangs up, hands the phone back to the lady who’d loaned it to her, and then she should probably go and sit back down again.But when she sits down, her hands start to shake, and her mind starts to replay all the events of the morning on an endless loop, and she’s really, really not feeling up to that right now.She’ll deal with that later.She slips out the back of the ambulance again, arms crossed tightly across her chest, and walks in great, meandering loops around the vehicle, around and around and around—Has it been twenty minutes yet?Have they caught the bomber?She really doesn’t think he’s the type of guy to be late.MJ remembers the way the phone had buzzed against the dashboard, when she’d had to snap at the doctor not to answer, and she knows—she knows he was calling to gloat, before he blew them all to pieces.If Parker hadn’t gotten back on the bus—So he won’t be late for this deadline, either. He’ll be perfectly on time.A quick question to the EMTs tells her it’s only been ten minutes, that there are still ten minutes left before the bomber’s deadline.And there’s another fun bit of information—All this time, there was a deadline.The whole time Parker was trying to stay calm, when he went under the bus—running out of gas wasn’t their main concern, until it was.If they’d been on the bus past 11 o’clock.We didn’t blow up, MJ reminds herself. We didn’t.It doesn’t matter.She scuffs her shoe along the curb, counts her breaths in and out, measured and steady—one, two, three—one, two, three—Surely the time is almost up.Come on, she thinks at the bomber. Come on, where are you?They’re running out of time.
Come on, don’t you dare stand us up now.
Not after what you did.You don’t get to walk away now.There are still five minutes left when the policeman comes to get her.“Miss,” he says. “You’re not allowed to be here.”MJ blinks and sees that she’s wandered a ways away from the ambulance, and feels a rush of guilt.“Sorry,” she says. “Parker said—”“Parker sent me to get you,” the officer says. “He wanted you to be there when they caught the guy.”It’s a surprise, but not an unpleasant one, and so MJ steals a glance at the officer’s badge, just to be sure he’s all official and everything, and then lets him lead her away from the ambulance and back towards the square.She’s so tired.She’s so ready for this to be done, and then she can go and collapse at home, and not move for a solid week.Maybe she’ll quit her job, she thinks as she walks.Hot Dog on a Stick doesn’t really seem like something she could humanly go back to, not after something as impossible as all of this.Maybe she’ll quit her job.If there was ever a story she could photograph to shop around the various agencies, this would definitely be it.She could find the other passengers.Make it a whole thing.She could get each one of them in black and white—title each one Portrait of a Survivor, Portrait of a Tourist, Portrait of a Doctor, something like that, something different for each passenger.She could find a picture of Helen.Portrait—She doesn’t know what Helen’s portrait would be called.She can’t seem to find the right word.But the rest of them—she could find them all, take a picture, make it a thing, like a photo essay.It would be good.She thinks it would be really good.The officer—Toomes, she remembers vaguely—is opening a door, waving for her to go ahead—MJ pauses.“What happened to the barber shop?” she asks, because this is a flight of stairs leading down, and she doesn’t think this is a shortcut to the barber shop—“They had to move,” Officer Toomes says, apologetic. “The windows were too exposed, the bomber would’ve been able to see right in and know his cover was blown.”“Oh.”That makes sense, she guesses.But MJ steps through the door, follows Toomes down the stairs, and something in the back of her mind begins to pulse in time with her footsteps.This is wrong.“How much further?” she asks, and her voice doesn’t shake at all.She’s not tired anymore.That’s kind of funny, isn’t it?“Oh, not too much further,” Toomes says. “We’re almost there.”“Cool,” MJ says, and tries to make herself sound vacuous and unthinking, even as her eyes scan from side to side, looking for a way out.She still doesn’t know what it is that’s making the hair on the back of her neck stand up, just that something is wrong, something is wrong, and it’s starting to terrify her.“You okay back there?” Toomes asks.“Fine,” she says, and laughs vaguely. “Just, you know, tired and all.”“You sure?”“Sure.”“Okay,” he says, and smiles politely. “Just wanted to check in.”Oh.His smile is bland, detached, but there’s something glinting behind his eyes, and if she had a camera, if she could capture the moment—Portrait of a Murderer.MJ doesn’t trip.She doesn’t gasp or miss a step or react in any way that would give her away.But she knows.She knows, now, what’s so wrong.Toomes, she thinks, and then, Will the mystery guest please sign in?The bomber.Toomes is the bomber.She’s walking down an abandoned utility corridor with the bomber.Okay, MJ thinks. Okay, so now what?He’s not going to let her go. At the end of the day, she’s seen his face, he can’t just let her go—what, once he’s got his money?He’s going to kill her.It’s just a matter of when.MJ’s heart pounds in her ears, and she counts her breaths, counts her steps, one after the other—Toomes is walking a few yards in front of her, and she slows her pace, lets the distance between them lengthen.
Think.
Think, Jones.
Find a way out.
There’s a bend in the corridor up ahead.A corner.MJ slows her pace further—she doesn’t know where he’s leading her, but this is a chance, and she’s going to take it, it might be the only chance she gets—Toomes is about ten feet ahead of her…eleven…MJ keeps her gaze wide and unfocused, in case he looks back.Twelve feet…thirteen…Toomes rounds the corner, and MJ spins on her heel and sprints back the way she came.She doesn’t make it very far.Before she’s gone more than ten yards, there’s a noise that sounds like a firework—no, a gunshot, like on the bus—and something splits the air just over her head—MJ ducks on instinct.It’s her fatal mistake.If she’d kept running, she thinks, could she have zigzagged across the corridor, dodged the bullets long enough to get back to the stairs?But she ducks, and her concentration is shattered by the bullet that flies over her head, blink-fast, and it’s just enough—just long enough—She falls.And Toomes is on her in a heartbeat.“What’s the matter?” he asks, and the smug condescension in his voice is enough to chill MJ’s blood to ice. “Was it something I said?”Things happen after that.MJ is sort of loosely aware that he’s got a gun in her face, that he’s hauling her to her feet, dragging her the rest of the way down the corridor.But it’s all very far away.Everything is very quiet, and very far away.She doesn’t need to be here for this.Not 100%.Not really.So she lets herself drift, lets her mind work from a ways away, turn over solution after solution that can only end poorly, and then start again.Toomes is pulling something over her shoulders, something cold and heavy, and she lifts a hand to brush the tips of her fingers against something—something—She can’t make sense of what she’s seeing.Every time she tries to look at it, she can feel her brain uncoiling, unspooling, shrieking and curdling and flinching away from her skull—So she doesn’t look at it.Toomes is talking.She can’t hear him.She doesn’t want to hear him.And then the gun is prodding her in the back, and she stumbles forward, the rest of the way—there’s a hole in the ceiling, and two great duffle bags lying beneath—There was a plan—They had a plan—They were going to find the bomber—She found him.The plan was never going to work.Toomes is exultant, talking about people tweeting, about how he knew the bus had blown up, and MJ thinks, well, right, we probably should have thought about that—There was never a way to control this story.This was never going to work.But she’d thought—She’d been so sure.Everything had been so perfect—And then—And then—“Pick it up!”From the way Toomes is shouting, MJ guesses he’s probably repeated himself multiple times.She picks up the duffle bags.They’re heavy.Her arms hurt.It’s enough to pierce the growing fog in her brain.Her arms hurt so badly, and she’s so tired, after that sudden burst of adrenaline has come and faded again, and her arms hurt so badly.“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Toomes says, from somewhere way too close. “It won’t be much longer.”He reaches out like he’s going to pat her on the head, like she’s some kind of lapdog, and MJ jerks her head out of his reach, raises her chin and shoots him her best unimpressed look.“I’m not worried.”Her tone is dripping with scorn, and Toomes just chuckles, casts an eye over the Thing strapped to her chest that she still can’t look at, not all the way.“Oh, no?” he asks, and the tone makes it clear he doesn’t believe her.That’s okay.He doesn’t have to believe her.She’s not afraid.That is, perhaps, the strangest thing of all.Because everything feels so detached, so far away, she can sift through the emotions and see which ones she’s currently dealing with—She’s angry—so unbelievably angry—and she hates the man standing in front of her more than she’s ever hated anything—But she’s not afraid.That comes later.“No,” she says, and it’s the truth. “It’s going to happen. You’re going to kill me either way.”Toomes makes a face, like she’s just hurt his feelings.“Oh, now,” he says, still mocking and false. “You don’t know that.”MJ looks at him.Then she laughs.You don’t know that.“You’re a sadistic control freak who needs 3.7 million dollars to live happily ever after,” she says, and pours every ounce of disdain and condescension into her own voice, matches him note for note, like she’s talking to a two-year old and explaining that one plus one makes two. “There’s no way you’re going to leave a witness who can identify you.”It works. The smug smile vanishes, and his features are blank with barely-controlled rage.“Listen, East Coast, you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about—”“Don’t I?” MJ laughs, even though it’s the last thing in the world she feels like doing, but it comes out so cold and mocking that she suddenly thrills at the sound. “I know you’re a smug mass murderer who gets off making people beg and plead and is desperate to get his grubby little hands on a bunch of money he didn’t earn.”“I earned it!” Toomes shouts, face red and teeth bared. “Don’t you dare—do you have any idea what I’ve done for this city?”“No,” she says. “And I don’t care.”She turns her back on him, even as every instinct in her body screams at her to turn around, and busies herself adjusting the duffle bags.“I was a cop, too, you know!” Toomes snarls. “Like your precious Parker, and Stark—I helped this city—”Stark must be Tony’s last name.It sounds vaguely familiar, but the way Toomes spits it out is enough to cloud MJ’s vision with rage once more.She forces her voice steady, flat and careless and effortlessly dismissive.“If you say so.”“No, listen to me, dammit—”Toomes grabs her arm, spins her around—MJ looks at him for one second, two—Then she purposefully blanks her gaze and looks somewhere over his shoulder.His face is so red, and he’s practically spitting with helpless anger, and it makes her laugh again.“How’s that for a thing, Toomes?” she asks, once he’s sputtered himself to a stop. “The one thing you can’t control. You can strap me to a bomb—another bomb—and you can either kill me now and lose your hostage, or kill me later, but you can’t make me listen to your bullshit.”She warms to her subject as she speaks, so that she’s smiling ear to ear by the time she’s done, and she still won’t look at him.He can do everything else.But he can’t do this.Toomes swells all over again. “It’s not—”“You kill people,” MJ says, blunt and cutting. “You killed a nice old lady, and you killed Parker’s friend, and everyone else who gets in your way. Whatever you say you did for the city, it doesn’t matter.”“East Coast—”“That’s your legacy, Toomes.”When she finally looks at him again, his face is twisted into a snarl, and she smiles at him, and her own hatred turns it into something cold and cruel and sharp.“You’re nothing but a penny-ante thief and a murderer,” she says. “All the money in the world won’t change that.”“How dare you?”“You’re nothing,” she says, and nearly spits the word at him. “You’re nothing. Live with that.”For a second, she really thinks Toomes is going to shoot her.His hand moves, and she’s not going to give him the satisfaction of flinching, so she just stares him in the face, wills him to feel every last bit of hatred and condescension and rage that she’s felt for the past five hours—But he just lays his hand very lightly on her shoulder.It takes a considerable amount of effort, but he manages to untwist his features, and then he gives her a smile in return, one that looks about as real as hers feels.“That’s just it,” he says, and that smug tone is back in his voice. “I will live with it. Now come on. I think we’re going to have company soon.”At first, she doesn’t realize what he means.She’s too busy turning over her minor victory, trying to think of a way that she can push him farther, make him drop his guard enough to escape—He doesn’t get close when he’s angry.He gets close when he’s confident, when he’s gloating and certain and feeling on top of the world.It’s important—Or it could be—Or maybe it used to be—She needs time to think.She can’t do this right now, she needs time to think about it—But then he’s dragging her through the hallway again, and really, can’t he just point in the direction he wants her to go?This is all very unnecessary.They head down another flight of stairs, and she’s given up on trying to make a map in her head—And there are footsteps behind her.Someone’s coming—running fast, charging down the hallway behind them—and MJ wants to scream at them to get away, get back, don’t they know what they’re about to see—But then Toomes shoves her behind him, between him and the footsteps, and she stumbles, regains her footing—“Freeze!”MJ freezes.It’s Parker.Of course it is.It’s Parker, and it’s dark in the corridor, so he’s got a gun pointing directly at her head, but she can see the moment he understands, because it’s like all the air leaves him at once.Like he’s forgotten how to breathe.“Parker,” she says, and he looks at her like a nightmare.“MJ—”“I’m sorry,” she says.She really is.She hoped no one would be around.At the end.She hoped no one would have to watch.“No,” he whispers, and the look on his face is something terrible.“I’m sorry,” she says again.And Toomes laughs.She’d almost forgotten he was there.But something presses against the back of her head—the gun—and she can hear the smile in his voice as he steps closer, forces her head forward an inch.“What are you gonna do, Parker?” he asks, gloating and so, so certain of his victory. “I don’t think you can shoot this one, can you?”“Let her go.” Parker doesn’t smooth his voice out, the way he did on the bus, doesn’t manage to soften all the edges into something approaching appeasement.Instead, each word sounds like it’s being dragged out of him, raked over his teeth and out into the empty air.Toomes thinks about it.“Hmm,” he says, savoring the moment. “No, I don’t think so.”“Come on, you’ve got your money,” Parker says. “You don’t need her, just take your money and go.”Toomes tsk-tsk-tsks and MJ watches out of the corner of her eye to see him shake his head.“Afraid I can’t do that, Pete,” he says, voice rich with satisfaction. “You see, I’ve got to get to the train—”“Take the money!” Parker snaps, and he’s so much closer than he was a second ago. “Just take the money and go!”It’s too loud.It’s too loud, and they’re both too close, and MJ wants to scream, but she doesn’t want to add to the chaos, and Toomes is laughing, waving something in Parker’s face, so that he has to reach over her shoulder to do so.Her arms hurt so badly.She doesn’t want to look at the thing he’s holding, any more than she wants to look at the Thing on her chest, with the wires and the blinking lights—“I’ll drop it!” Toomes snarls. “Don’t think I won’t do it, Peter, I’ll drop it right now!”I’ll drop it—What will it do?What is he holding?She can’t look at it.But he waves it in front of her, in Parker’s face, all bared teeth and mocking tone, and he’s so, so certain that he’s won.It’s enough.Parker backs off, and she doesn’t know when he lowered the gun, but he keeps looking between her and Toomes, and MJ knows how this is going to go.“What are you gonna do, huh?” Toomes sneers. “What can you do?”Nothing.There’s nothing to be done.It’s okay, MJ wants to tell him.It’s okay.“Come on, East Coast,” Toomes says, and wrenches hard on her arm.I’ve got to get to the train—They’re at the subway.This whole time, this was always the goal, they were always heading for the subway station—He shoves her through a door, and she almost falls again, but he’s right there a second later, dragging her along—people are screaming, scrambling over each other to get away—Toomes fires a shot into the air, and then another, and everyone’s screaming, and everyone’s fleeing away from them, there’s no one close enough to help—The doors to the train are opening, and people panic at the sight of a man with a gun—And her—At the sight of her—The train clears out in seconds, and MJ watches the other cars empty out, too, and it’s just her and Toomes and that poor, poor conductor, who’s rooted to the spot, frozen in terror.“Come on, let’s go!” Toomes roars at him. “Let’s get this thing moving!”The man fumbles for the control, and the train lurches to life and starts to move, picking up speed—MJ thinks she catches a glimpse of Parker trying to reach the doors—But then the tunnel swallows up the light, and he’s gone.If he was ever there to begin with.Once he’s satisfied with the conductor’s compliance, Toomes turns back to her, and MJ realizes she’s just been standing there, holding the duffle bags full of money.“Alright,” he says. “Drop the money, let’s get those hands out of the way—”He latches onto one of her wrists, and has to pry the bags out of her hand, and he’s holding the other thing in his hand, and she’s got to look at it, she’s got to make herself focus—“—you copy? Do you copy?”The sound startles her, and she glances around wildly—it’s the radio.At the front of the train the radio crackles, and MJ sees the conductor, still unmoving, sees Toomes reach the same realization.“No,” she says, barely above a whisper. “No!”Toomes shoots the conductor in the back of the head, and he falls forward, the same way Walt fell, the same way Helen fell, and someone is screaming—It takes a second for MJ to realize that it’s her.“He wasn’t going to answer!” she shrieks, when Toomes turns to her once more. “You didn’t have to kill him!”He doesn’t seem to hear her. Instead, he frowns, like this is all a big inconvenience, and that smug tone is back in his voice.“Alright, sweetheart,” he says, and she can’t stop looking at the driver, where he’s slumped over the controls. “I think you’re getting a little hysterical, so I’m going to need you to—”His hand closes over her wrist, and she wrenches it away—But then there’s something cold around her wrists, and she can’t move her hands, and she pulls once, uncomprehending.She can’t move.Her wrists are cold.Handcuffs.She’s cuffed to the pole.She’s cuffed to the pole, and there are all the wires on her chest, and the thing in Toomes’s hand is blinking, too, in sync with the lights on her vest—She doesn’t want to look at it.It makes a sound like shrieking in the back of her mind.I don’t want—MJ looks at the bomb strapped to her chest.Oh, God.There’s too much—there’s more than enough of—whatever it is—to blow her to pieces in a second, surely all of this isn’t necessary?Surely half the explosives would still get the job done?She doesn’t want to look at it.But she counts her breath and blinks past the panic and the shrieking in her skull, and she makes herself study the vest.She has to see it.She has to know—She has to look at it.So she does, and it makes her skin feel like it’s peeling back from her bones, shrinking away, and she wants to throw up, or find some place to hide.Her arms hurt so badly.She’s so tired.Toomes seems to take her revulsion for fear.“Aw, East Coast,” he says, light and mocking. “It’s alright, it’ll only hurt a second—”
Thump.
The sound comes from above them, and it freezes the rest of Toomes’s speech, cuts him off mid-thought.Then he grins.“Is that you, Parker?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Parker.
MJ stares at the ceiling.It can’t be.He was back at the station, he was safe, what the hell is he doing on top of the train?It can’t be him.
It can’t be.
He was safe—“Persistent little bastard, isn’t he?” Toomes says, but he bites out the words like it’s all just incredibly inconvenient. “Not too bright, though.”MJ tears her thoughts away from the top of the train, blinks back down at the vest, at the thing Toomes is holding so casually in his left hand.He’s too close.The doors at the end of the compartment hiss open, and then Parker is there.Suddenly, incongruously, MJ wants to laugh.It’s not funny—not really, except the train is dead silent, and there’s a dead man at the front of the car, and she’s handcuffed to a pole with a bomb strapped to her—And they’re all just standing there.It’s so awkward, so horribly unfunny, that she really, really wants to laugh.Toomes seems to find it amusing, too.“Good of you to join us, Parker,” he says. “What do you think is going to be different here?”Parker looks at Toomes, but it’s a brief, glancing look, and then he’s back to staring at her, like if he just looks long enough, he can figure a way out of this.MJ doesn’t blame him.She’s been doing the same thing.The bomb, she thinks, and then, The switch—the other thing—“I can’t let you do this,” Parker says.Toomes laughs.“Parker,” he says, in a chiding sort of tone. “You’re not going to do anything to stop me. Not as long as I’ve got this.”He waves the thing in his left hand.It’s a detonator.No—a switch—A remote—Toomes shoves the remote in her face.“You’re so smart, East Coast,” he sneers. “Why don’t you tell me what this is?”MJ stares at him.
I’ll drop it.
Don’t think I won’t do it.
Not as long as I’ve got this.
I’ll drop it—
Oh, MJ thinks. Oh.She lets her head droop a little, keeps her eyes fixed on the floor, hunches her shoulders and leans into the pole until it hurts.“Please—”Her voice isn’t even a whisper.But Toomes’s eyes light up, and she remembers the way he’d pressed her for a Thank You on the bus, the way she’d hung up on him before he’d gotten the chance.A smug mass murderer—gets off on making people beg and plead—Toomes steps closer, grinning from ear to ear.“What was that?”His voice is so impossibly smug, so impossibly gloating.
Closer.
Come on, get closer—“You’re going to have to speak up, darling,” he practically purrs.Her pulse is pounding in her earsShe's afraid again.She'd been wondering when that would come back.Closer—Toomes is grinning so wide, showing every single one of his teeth.“I couldn’t quite hear that—”And MJ grabs the remote.She crushes Toomes’s hand against the buttons, feels something crack and presses harder, grinds his bones into the hard plastic and the wiring—He tries to pull away, and she can’t see anything, can’t feel anything at all except the way her arms are shaking and his hand is twisting wildly, trying to get away—She closes her hand like a vice, and Toomes is shouting, snapping—something hits her hard in the side, and she ignores it, ignores everything else—The shot shatters the air right in front of her.For one horrible second, no one moves, and MJ doesn’t even dare breathe, because there’s something warm and wet on the side of her face, and she doesn’t dare look, in case it’s something that will hurt, in case she’ll only know when she moves—She can’t—Everything’s—Toomes blinks at her once, twice.Then he falls.He slumps over—like Walt, like Helen, like the conductor—and she tears the remote out of his hands, presses the single switch as hard as she can.Toomes falls.Parker is there, turns Toomes over on his side, bends over him for a second—MJ can’t stop staring.“Is he,” she tries to say, and then has to clear her throat and try again. “Is he dead?”Parker stands up again.“He’s dead,” he says. “You don’t have to look.”MJ looks.Toomes’s eyes are still open.He’s dead.He’s dead, and there’s nothing he can do. No way for him to hurt her—hurt anyone else—make anyone else furious and afraid and helpless—there’s nothing he can do.Never again.It’s not enough.It’s somehow not enough.But her hands are starting to ache, with how she’s still pressing the button, and she shakes her head, forces her mind to clear.“Parker?”“Yeah?”She shrugs to indicate the vest. “Can you get this thing off me?”“Yeah,” he says, and laughs. “Sounds like a plan.”He steps behind her, does something she can’t see, although she feels him tugging at all the wires that cross and zigzag and connect the lights and explosives.“You’re good,” he says, and MJ tries to make her hand uncurl from the button.She can’t seem to let go.“I can’t—”Parker helps her pry her fingers loose.The bomb doesn’t go off.“You’re good,” Parker says again, and she remembers how to breathe. “You’re okay.”The straps of the vest can be undone without moving her hands, and she lets Parker undo the Velcro fastenings, ease the weight from off her shoulders.It was so heavy.She hadn’t even noticed, but it was so heavy, and now that the weight is gone—Parker tosses the useless vest onto one of the bench seats, and MJ feels like she’s just shed about a thousand pounds, just like that.All of a sudden, it’s like her legs have forgotten how to work, and she leans against the pole.The cold metal digs into her arm, and it’s something to push against, something to ground her as she opens and closes her hand, trying to force the feeling back.Parker’s hand is on her shoulder, and he’s not saying anything, but he’s looking at her like he’s terrified she’s going to burst into tears at any moments.She’s kind of considering it.It’d probably be kind of cathartic.Instead, she tips her head back, smiles weakly at Parker, and ignores the way her eyes are threatening to start stinging again.“Thanks for coming after me.”He shrugs, tries to play it off as no big deal.“Well, come on,” he says. “What else was I going to do?”MJ laughs.They’re still racing along down the subway tunnel, and MJ watches the darkness blur past outside the windows, wonders where the train’s going, how much longer before it runs out of fuel or whatever and the rest of the cavalry shows up and takes Toomes’s body away.She’s so tired.The radio at the front of the train has been silent since the conductor fell, but suddenly it crackles to life, and MJ watches with a polite detachment at sparks fly off the circuit board.When Toomes shot the man—Some of the bullets must have torn up the control panel, and the man is slumped over it so that his blood pools out into the circuits.It’s so horrible.She watches it blankly for a few more moments.Then she realizes that someone’s speaking—on the radio, someone’s speaking—She knows that voice.Rogers.“—Parker,” Rogers barks. “Are you there? Parker, come in—”His voice is mangled by static and sudden interruptions.She can barely hear a single word, it’s so torn up by the white noise—Parker heads for the front of the train, and she can see him punching at random buttons, like that’ll be enough to resolve the issues.“I can’t,” he says, and flips one of the switches back and forth, tries again. “It’s not—Rogers, I can’t—”Rogers says something else, a garble of syllables and consonants that she can’t even begin to comprehend.But whatever it is, Parker seems to understand.He stands stock still for a second, the way he’d stood in the doorway of the bus.Then he laughs and turns back around.“MJ,” he says, dry and rueful. “You’re gonna love this.”“Can’t wait,” she says. “What is it?” “We’re going to have to—”He was still smiling sort of wryly, but he stops in the middle of his sentence.And he stares. For a long moment, he just stares at her, and she watches the smile bleed from off his face, and she still doesn’t understand.“The train’s out of control,” he says finally, hollowly. “And the track ends up ahead. It’s a wall. We need—we have to jump.”Jump—from a train at top speed.It won’t be the dumbest thing they’ve done today.It won’t even be the dumbest thing she’s done in the last half hour.“Okay,” MJ says. “Okay, so can we—do you have a key?”She asks the question without thinking—And then all at once, it catches up with her, and she understands.She understands why Parker’s looking at her like that, and she can’t move, can’t even breathe.Parker touches a hand to the link between the cuffs, and she knows the answer before he opens his mouth.“Not for this,” he says.
No.
It’s not fair.It’s so unfair.Toomes is dead—they won—they won, and now—And now—It’s not fair.She pulls against the cuffs once, experimentally—they don’t give, and she pulls harder—Something in the back of her mind snaps, and then she’s wrenching back on the cuffs with all her strength, and her wrists are bleeding—Parker is pulling, too, his hands on her arms, pulling back until she nearly screams from the pain—Wasn’t there something—a bone that people can break, or something like that—but the cuffs are too tight, Toomes put them on too tight, even if she shattered every bone in her hand—She can’t get loose—Parker’s kicking the pole, trying to knock it free, his whole body going into each hit—She rips the skin off her wrists, and the pain and the speed of the train are too much, and she feels her knees hit the floor, even though she doesn’t remember moving—She can’t get loose—She can’t get loose.“Parker, I can’t—” MJ nearly sobs, and then she knows.She knows the answer to this question.“You have to go.”He shakes his head immediately.She thought he might.“MJ—” he starts, and she cuts him off.“You have to go,” she says again, and it’s a lot harder to keep her voice steady, when he’s standing right there. “There’s not a lot of time.”There’s just not enough time.“It’s okay,” she says, and she means it.“I’m not leaving you.”“Parker, it’s okay,” she says again, but he’s looking around wildly, and she can hear her voice starting to raise, losing its calm in seconds. “It’s okay, really, there’s no time, you have to go—”“I’m not leaving you!” Parker snaps.There’s not enough time.She knows the answer—“Parker,” she says, and wills him to listen to her, to understand. “What else is there?”Parker goes very still.The words sounded familiar when she spoke them, and she doesn’t realize why until Parker’s head turns back towards the front of the train.That’s all there is.The controls are busted, the brakes don’t work—But maybe—“That’s all there is,” Parker says, and he’s on his feet in a second, dashes to the front of the car.“Oh, God,” MJ says. “Parker, this is a bad idea. This isn’t going to work—”But even as she says it, she’s staring at the map that’s up above the doors, the bend in the track.She doesn’t want to do this.She doesn’t want to get her hopes up, and have it not work, and have Parker stay—he could leave, he could get clear, and she’d at least have that much—In spite of herself—In spite of her best efforts—The train shudders and begins to move, faster and faster, and really, what else were they ever going to do?How else were they ever going to try to get out of this?In spite of herself, a tiny, desperate flare of hope begins to burn in her chest, and she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to have to feel the way it’ll go out—Parker comes back to her, and he doesn’t reach out towards her.He kneels beside her, but he doesn’t try to touch her shoulder again, just waits there, looking scared out of his mind, but like he can’t bring himself to be anywhere else.Like on the bus.What else were they ever going to do?“It’s all there is,” he says, like he didn’t have a choice, like he couldn’t jump from the train now, even now, even as the train races faster and faster and faster still. “MJ, it’s all there is.”What else—“Okay,” MJ says, and hates herself for hoping. “Okay.”It’s a tricky thing to manage, with her hands in front of her and still scraped and bleeding, and her legs folded kind of awkwardly out to the side—But she lifts her arms, and Parker ducks his head just a little, and she ignores the way she can feel the pole digging into her shoulder, pretends she’s just hugging him, pretends she can’t hear the roar of the train all around her.Parker wraps his arms around her shoulders, and she tucks her nose into the crook of his neck, tries not to listen, tries not to think about what’s about to happen.“We’re going to be okay,” Parker says.MJ laughs, because it’s a lot easier than crying again.“You’d better believe it,” she says, and she’s not sure, but she thinks he might laugh, too.The train is flying down the tracks now—She feels weightless, the way she did when the bus jumped the gap, when the wheels left the ground, each time she turned—The walls blur past until she closes her eyes, and the engine is roaring, is screaming, is singing—The crash, when it comes, is everything.The force of it throws her forward, and something breaks, and she feels weightless all over again—Parker’s there, still, somehow, and she clings on like death—The train’s still moving, and it’s still so fast—Another crash, and the train is slowing, but it’s still so much—If they hit anything else—even as the train slows, if they hit anything else—the front of the train car is crumpling, tearing like a tin can, like aluminum foil—They’re slowing down.Each bump throws them another foot in the air, and she can’t even see, can’t think straight—Something is falling around them—a window shatters, and then another, and then another—And then everything is still.For a full five seconds, MJ keeps her eyes closed.
One—
Two—
Three—
Four—
Five.
She opens her eyes.And she isn’t dead.At some point, that’s going to stop surprising her.She’s alive.
Parker—
They’ve been tossed around so that she’s half on top of him, and she starts to move, to pull away, but his arms are still around her shoulders, and so she doesn’t.It’s alright, she thinks.This is alright, too.“You didn’t leave,” she says, and Parker doesn’t say anything, but she can’t believe it. “You didn’t leave—”“Come on,” he says, voice a little weak, but still grinning like an idiot. “Where else was I going to go?”MJ stares at him for another second.Then she laughs out loud, and it sounds different than it has all day.His face is so close, just a little space away, and it would be nothing at all to close the distance, nothing at all, because they’re alive, they’re alive—“MJ, you don’t have to—” Parker breaks off, thinks it over, and tries again. “It’s over, you don’t—you can walk away.”MJ sits up, and he lets her go.The pole snapped when the train went off the rails.She can slide the chain of the cuffs off the broken edge, and it’s not the same as being loose, but it’s a whole lot better than it was before.Outside the windows, the sun is shining.She can smell the ocean, can see the light streaming in through the windows, and she has no idea what time it is, not anymore.They’re on a street.In the middle of a street, more accurately.She doesn’t want to look back the way they came, but she has a vague idea of where they are, knows they must have crashed through another construction zone to clatter to a stop in the middle of the street.Cars are stopping all around them.It’s just a matter of time before someone comes to get them.Maybe Rogers, maybe someone else.Toomes is dead.They’re alive.That’s all there is.They’re alive.MJ wants to cry, and also wants to laugh again, and she can’t decide which one sounds better, so she just sits there and chews on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.You don’t have to—you can walk away.What an idiot.“How boring?” MJ asks.Peter blinks, and then he frowns.“What?”“You said you were a boring guy,” she says, because he had said that, about a million years ago, this morning. “How boring is boring? I mean, is it, like, scary boring?”Parker has to think about it.“I was on an Academic Decathlon team in high school,” he offers.It’s not saying much.“So was everybody.”"I don't think that's true.""It's true enough. What else?"“I watch professional AcaDec competitions on television,” Parker admits, which is one hundred percent the level of boring she was expecting. “Sometimes I’ll even cheer for the different teams.”That’s unforgivable.MJ nods, and has to work very hard to keep a straight face.“Okay,” she says. “That works.”“Works?” Parker says.But his face is twitching in a funny kind of way, and MJ thinks he’s trying really hard not to smile, too.“If you’re a boring person,” she says, like it should be obvious. “Then this isn’t an intense situation, right?”He gets it.Of course he does.“Right,” he says immediately. “Yeah, right, definitely.”“Cool,” MJ says. “So this is okay.”And it’s the most natural thing in the world, to slant her mouth across his, and she feels his arms around her waist again, one hand on the side of her face, pulling her closer like he’s scared to let go for even a second.She knows the feeling.“Yeah,” Parker says, when she breaks away to take a breath. “Yeah, this is okay.”She doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s smiling.Later, she knows, there will be time to remember the way Toomes smiled and laughed, time to remember the way everybody fell, time to remember the way that Parker screamed when the news came down the line, time to hear the shriek of metal and the whine of an engine that’s running on empty.Later, there will be sirens, and presumably Parker will have to go through some sort of paperwork, file some sort of report, and she’ll have to find a way to get her phone back, try and make it back to her apartment without her wallet or anything else that was in the bus when it blew.And there will be meetings, and nightmares, and explanations that she doesn’t want to give, and pictures that she can only vaguely remember, and trying to find a way to make it all make sense.Later.But for now—For now—The sun is streaming through the broken windows, and the air tastes like salt and like the sea, and all the other cars and all of the people are still on the edges of her vision, and she doesn’t have to worry about them, doesn’t have to worry about what comes next.She can do this.She can have this.Just this.So she kisses Parker’s smile, pushes away the moment after this, and the moment after that, and they lie in the rubble of the train, tangled together at awkward angles, until she forgets how to breathe, forgets how to think about anything else at all.They’ve got time to deal with that later.She’s not going anywhere right now.It’s all there ever is.For now, MJ thinks, it might almost be just about enough.