From his time at the range with his father as a young boy, to his training in military school and then BUDS, to his many tours as a SEAL, to the years and countless gunfights he had been in with Five-0, not one of the shots he heard was as deafening as the one that rang out just before his full body weight landed on the hard ground.

His arms collapsed around nothingness. He had missed the feet of his intended target. He had failed. It was too late. He had let his brother down.

He lay prostrate with his forehead resting in the crook of his arm. He couldn't lift his head. It was too heavy. He would not be able to take in the devastation of Danny's lifeless body. Soon Gabriel would take him out anyway, then Chin.

Another shot rang out into the air.

"No!" he heard himself yell. He was wrong again. He wasn't next. That was Chin. That had to be Chin. Oh, Chin, I'm so sorry I let you down. He would be next. In a matter of seconds, it had become his only desire. He had just lost his brothers. He longed for it, to take him from the misery. He needed it to be soon. The anguish was just too much to bear.

He heard the third shot. He should not have heard it. He would be dead instantly, but he heard it… and then he heard a fourth… and shouting… and shuffling.

"Steve! Get to Danny! I'm going after Gabriel."

Chin? That was Chin's voice. Going after Gabriel? Get to Danny? Danny's dead.

"Steve, behind you!"

That wasn't Chin's voice, that was… Kono.

Pulling on some kind of involuntary inner impetus at Kono's warning, Steve rolled onto his back to see Ron reaching toward him with the rope wound around each hand. A second later and the rope would have been slipped around his throat and twisted to sure death, but from his back, he was able to defend himself using his legs and arms. Ron tightened the rope down on Steve's throat but could not get the desired leverage as they continued to grapple for control.

With his airway constricted, Steve used his hands to fight to remove the rope while he used his legs to try get Ron off of him. His supply of air was getting more and more scarce. When he was just about to succumb to unconsciousness, Ron's weight and the force of the rope was swept away from him in an instant. Steve was left grasping at his throat as he tried to suck in air.

Somebody had grabbed Ron's ankle and jerked him off Steve. He rolled onto his side and saw the catalyst that had taken away his attacker. Danny?

By some miracle, Danny was alive and had somehow inched his way over and pulled Ron away from Steve.

On his stomach, with one leg entrapped by Danny's grip, Ron was able to pull his free knee up and gain some momentum to kick Danny in the face. Danny consequently lost his hold and Ron scrambled for an advantage.

Being given a minute to recompose himself, courtesy of his injured, but still fighting, still living, partner, Steve was able to maneuver behind Ron and wrap both arms around the top and bottom of his head, jerking it to the side with a sharp, quick snap. Ron's body dropped to the ground.

Now that that particular threat had been neutralized, he could assess what was taking place around him. Piper was dead. A round had gone behind his ear and exited through his temple on the other side of his head. Kono was running toward him. She had been the deliverer of the bullet that saved him. Another shot had come from Simon, as he reacted to Steve's launch on Gabriel and then Kono's shot. However, Chin had also reacted and fell to the floor. When Simon saw he had missed and his brain caught up to see two new members of Five-0 that had come to the rescue, he fled. Adam pursued him through a door and they both disappeared.

Chin had scrambled to his feet and had called out his intentions of chasing after Gabriel. Gabriel. He, too, had taken off in yet another direction of the huge building.

"Steve! Danny!" Kono knelt down beside the pair. "Are you okay?" She didn't give either of them time to answer. "Oh my ... Danny!" She had noticed the visible extent of his injuries, the dark, contemptuous bruising on his face and torso, the bright red blood trickling from his mouth and nose where he had obviously been recently beaten and then kicked seconds before, the red, inflamed rope burns around his wrists, and the already dried and caked blood almost everywhere, including in his sweaty, disheveled hair and on his pants.

"'s okay," Danny mumbled.

"Steve?" She briefly glanced at her former boss and saw marks from the rope on his neck and could tell he had also been through the ringer. She did not get a response but went about helping Danny, whom she had triaged as priority.

"Can you stand?" She addressed Danny again as she was busy slicing through the ropes that bound his wrists. "We need to get you out of here. I don't know if there are more of 'em coming. Here, Steve, can you help me get him up?" She took Danny's hand in preparation to wrap his arm around her shoulder when she noticed Steve wasn't helping. He was staring into space, lost somewhere inside his head. "Steve! Are you all right? We need to help Danny. Hey, Steve!"

Steve blinked his eyes firmly and then again. "Yep." That was all he could get out at first. He still wasn't sure what was happening. He had been certain he had lost his brother, but the lag in realizing the truth faded and he knew the only thing that mattered was he had to get Danny out of here. "Yeah, I'm okay." He crawled closer to Kono and Danny.

She held Danny's hand, ready for Steve to get the other so they could lift him up, but when she lifted his arm to put around her shoulder, Danny cried out in agony.

"All right. Hey, buddy. It's okay. I think it's dislocated." Steve dropped Danny's arm on his side. "Here, Kono, you get this side." He traded spots with Kono and gently bent Danny's arm at the elbow and wrapped it across his mid-section. "We can do this. Just keep your arm as still as you can and we'll do all the work. Okay?" Then, while trying to maintain his upper arm's position firmly against his body, he wrapped his arm around Danny's back and lifted with Kono helping from her side.

Kono heard painful groans from both men, but they all made it to standing. "Are y'all all right?" she questioned, knowing Danny wasn't the only one in bad shape.

"Yeah, babe," Danny echoed Kono's concern to Steve. "You all right?" Once they were upright, the pain in Danny's arm had become a not-so-dull throb, but it was better than the sharp, intense pain a moment before.

"Stop it. Will ya?" Steve answered. "Can you walk?"

"I hate to mess up my socks, but yeah, I can walk."

"All right. We'll take it easy. Let's go, Kono."

"What about Gabriel?" Danny asked as they took their first steps toward the door that would lead them through the lower level maze that Steve and Chin had come through, what now seemed like a long time before, to get to the steps that would take them out.

"Chin's on it. We need to get you some help," Steve dismissed.

~~~~~H50~~~~~

Chin had grabbed Piper's gun and followed the fleeing Gabriel down a corridor in the direction of the back side of the building. He thought he was gaining ground on him, when he stumbled on some unassembled, corral fence piping that Gabriel had strewn haphazardly in his escape path. The harsh echo of the clanging metal from the stall attempt still rang in the air. He regained his footing and continued his pursuit.

The hallway abruptly ended at a door leading to a stairwell. Because they were below ground, there were no exits to the outside unless they went up. It was in the stairwell that Chin saw gravitational drops of bright red blood. It was right in front of him, at his eye level, pointing out the direction in which Gabriel had escaped. There was a lot of it, more than his pseudo-bandaged arm would be losing. He had been hit. One of Kono or Adam's shots had once again hit its target, and this time it looked to be bad. Gabriel would be losing a lot of blood and with it, his stamina to continue.

His realization had caused him to pause in his pursuit, but he quickly came to himself and followed the drops up the steps. As soon as he pushed on the heavy metal door at the landing at the top, a bullet hit the outside and ricocheted off. He pulled the door back closed just for a moment and readied his weapon to continue out. When he did, he saw Gabriel lumbering toward the open pullup door at the end of the spacious, abandoned corral area. He appeared to be losing speed with every step and the shuffling steps he took morphed into more of a dragging of his feet.

Chin saw him blatantly, and uncaringly, lay his pistol on a metal drum that happened to be about waist high, where it was easy to do so. His injured arm, that he had cradled earlier in an attempt to stop the bleeding was now forgotten and he used both arms to wrap around an injury in his abdomen, as of now unseen to Chin's eyes. He could, however, see a shiny, wet crimson stain on the back of his shirt. The blood spatters on the floor became larger and closer to each other. Gabriel was bleeding out. The gunshot that had been fired in Chin's direction before he came through the stairwell door had just been a fulfilling of an obligation to try and halt his pursuer. The expectation was short-lived and Chin could see the surrender in Gabriel's body language.

"Gabriel! Stop!" Chin had stopped where he was and, possibly unwisely, slowly lowered the aim of his gun to the floor. His instincts told him that Gabriel was no longer a threat.

Chin saw Gabriel pause and raise his head from the weariness of his deteriorating condition. He must have heard him call out to him and must be considering his options. After a couple seconds, he took another step dragging his foot as he went.

"Gabriel!"

This time Gabriel did stop. He slowly turned, exposing his shredded stomach. The dark red fluid almost completely covered his shirt and a good portion of his trousers. His head fell sideways, toward his shoulder as he waited to hear what Chin had to say.

Now, Chin didn't have the words. He made a show out of catching up to the metal drum and laying down his own weapon alongside of Gabriel's, which was actually Steve's commandeered pistol.

"Listen to me, you're hurt bad."

"No shit, Sherlock," Gabriel muttered in response to the stupidest statement he had heard all day.

"We can get you help. You made it through before, somehow. Your stubborn ass can do it again. We just need to get you to a hospital."

"I'm not going anywhere, Chin. You know it. I know it," he calmly spoke with confident resignation. "You win."

"Gabriel, it's not a competition, or a… or a game. It's never been a game. Is that what you thought?"

With his tilted head, and dull eyes, Gabriel just stared at Chin, confirming that what Chin was surmising was true. When a wave of fatigue hit him, Gabriel grabbed the edge of the drum to gain stability, but it was short-lived and he fell to first one knee and then the other. Chin started to reach down to help him up, then Gabriel spoke words that Chin never thought he would hear from him.

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Chin. I'm sorry I couldn't save Malia. I'm sorry I blamed you for her death…"

Chin shook his head, silently begging him to stop and not go there.

"And your dad… I'm sorry about your dad. I wish I could go back and change things, but I can't."

"Gabriel, come on let's get you outta here." Chin reached for him to help him up, but Gabriel placed a bloody palm on his chest.

"No!" He spoke forcefully, taking a big chunk of his last energy reserves. Chin held back. "No. Take care of Sara for me. Give her that future you told me about. And one day… maybe… you can tell her that I..."

A large, military looking truck with a dark green canvas covering over the bed, screeched to a halt on the slick concrete just inside the open door. The driver and a passenger looked toward Gabriel and Chin. The driver wasted no time in running back out the door they had just driven through. The Asian passenger took a second to look with pity in their direction before following his cohort out.

"Chin! You need to go! Get out of here!"

"You're coming with me. Let's go." Chin again reached down to get an arm to wrap around his shoulder, but Gabriel grabbed one of the guns lying in his reach and pointed it at Chin. Chin was taken aback by the switch from Gabriel's zombie-like state to his quick, dexterity. He threw up his hands in a "whoa" motion.

"Don't make me shoot you. That was Masuda's man. He used to work for me. The truck's rigged. It's gonna blow and you don't have time to argue."

"But, Gabriel…"

"Go make sure your cousin and Noshimuri are out… and your two lovebird bosses. Go! Get the hell outta here! … Now!"

Chin made a wide circle around Gabriel who had now collapsed onto his bottom but was still able to maintain his grip on the pistol that was pointed at him. He backed slowly the first few steps and finally gave Gabriel a knowing nod before turning and sprinting toward the open door.

He didn't turn around. He didn't look back.

~to be continued~

\,,,/BronsonL