"Chidori?"

She looked around, but there was only blowing snow. The cold had squeezed every trace of warmth from her bones The ground was hard and frozen. It felt like she might never thaw out.

"Sousuke?" she cried into the swirling white storm.

He was nowhere.

030

Kurz was nowhere to be found the next day. He hadn't left the sub, even after they came ashore in Honolulu and Kaname ran to the surface to suck in fresh air. When she returned, even Melissa hadn't seen him. No one had been by his quarters to check on him in several days in the first place, and no one was going to start the day after Sousuke's service.

She might have done the same, but today particularly there was a feeling in her stomach that she simply couldn't ignore. The slip of paper with coordinates and addresses was still clutched in her tiny fist, stuffed down in her pocket in case someone tried to take it from her. A cold lump sat in her stomach like a rock, and it hadn't been there the day before. If she was very still and quiet, she almost suspected the knot had a heartbeat of its own.

It was too much to hope for, and it was too dangerous for Kurz to take the terrorist at his word, and she knew that, but still her legs pushed her down the hallway, then another, down a flight of stairs, past checkpoints, all the way to where she knew Kurz was sitting in his room, staring.

She didn't knock; she burst in with a resolve that even she found untrustworthy. "You have to go," she blurted out without meaning to. "I mean – oh, Kurz, I'm sorry –"

His gaze turned to her, but she couldn't read his eyes. "Think there's a chance he's still alive?"

That made her pause, because saying yes probably made her crazy. But she bit her lip. "…Yes."

He didn't make a big deal about it; he just sighed and looked away. "I was afraid you were going to say that. I really was. But whether you mean to or not, I think you're the only person who really knows."

"What about him?" she asked plainly.

His face darkened. "I can't trust him even remotely."

"So what's your plan?"

"I don't have one."

030

The note was very specific on where to be and when, but North Korea was North Korea no matter how badly you needed to get around, and there was just no easy way to get from point A to point B. Gauron had not been specific at all on how he was supposed to reach the rendezvous, and it wasn't a cake walk.

So it annoyed Kurz greatly when he came walking up to the specific coordinates he'd received, so filthy that he almost couldn't be recognized, but exactly on time – and Gauron didn't even bother to ask him how he did it. He was just standing exactly where he said he'd be, his back to the wind and a cigarette flickering in the twilight. He nodded his head in the direction of a slight break in the forested landscape, and wordlessly they moved into the cover of sinking darkness.

After ten minutes of pushing through brush silently, he realized there was a path buried deep beneath the dense foliage. The elevation dropped slightly and so did the temperature, and they moved as quickly as possible for nearly an hour.

"Where are we going?" he asked after the speechless push into woods.

"Not much farther. You're carrying?"

"Yes."

"Distance shooter, right?"

"Yes."

"Then shut up and stop asking me questions."

"Here," Gauron announced finally, stopping in the middle of the unbroken forest.

"Here what?"

"Enough with the questions. Jesus. You see that roof?"

Kurz followed the finger that pointed before him, squinting between trees and spotting – "Oh. Yeah. Is that where you need me?"

"Just… aim at it. How accurate are you at this distance?" he probed.

"Better than you," was the short reply.

"You should really talk less. Don't follow me, don't try to contact me, don't get spotted, or Kashim is dead. Follow me so far?" the terrorist asked tartly. "Keep watch for anyone that isn't me. If you see anyone come or go from that front entrance –" here he gestured at the shack in the distance – "shoot them."

"Anyone but you?" he said darkly.

"Coming from there? Anyone, period. Shoot them."

"What about you?"

"Just wait for me. I don't usually come through the front door anyways." Then he grinned absently. "Of course, I'll let Kashim explain why." He shoved a small pouch at Kurz. "Be ready to use that. It's one dose of adrenaline, and he's going to need it. I won't be able to get anything but Kashim physically out of there."

"And your gun," Kurz grumped stupidly.

"Not even that, punk. Shut up and don't get killed."