[CW: discussions of violence, murder, and cannibalism]

The briefcase was safe beneath his seat. Malachi, too, was safe above it.

However, the safety of an aging passenger seated near him, perhaps several feet away but still too close, was repeatedly called into question every few times the wheels of the train made a full rotation. Which, considering the damned thing was moving, was very, very often.

And every time the wheels circled back around to keep on going, to continue pushing forward as trains did, the aging man – a decade or two older than him, he thought – took it upon himself to breathe louder than Malachi, with his aching throat, could currently even talk.

No – it wasn’t breathing. It was far too loud, too offensive for that. It was an awful, heaving sound, as if with every intake the man breathed in all of England and sighed it back out. To say that Malachi was agitated was… it was very generous. He’d been biting at the inside of his cheek since they had boarded, and glancing down just to double, triple, quadruple check that Arthur’s briefcase was still beneath his seat.

It always was. He just had no idea what to do with himself, trapped inside the cage that was their train car, and the item proved a point of focus.

He was annoyed. He was restless. Trapped. He was – excited, and it was making him nervous, which in turn just made him more annoyed.

Malachi leaned closer to Arthur, eyes fixed forward, and dropped his scratchy voice to a whisper.

“If no one would stop you,” he said, “what would you do to the people in this train?”