*two days later*

Winston looked around. The contact he was to meet with had a thing for unusual meeting places, but an inoperative submarine-turned-museum was extravagant even for him. He could see the advantages though: a lot of crowd to hide in, little open space to be observed from.

As Winston pretended to read some of the info signs, he noticed a figure approach him. Looking up, he expected to find his friend amongst a lot of tourists. Instead his eyes fixed on- Guerrero? He was running towards him. In horror, Winston saw him bring up his gun and aim it right at his head. Before Winston could react Guerrero fired.

Everything went pitch-black and quiet. Not in Winston's head, as he noticed after a moment, but in the submarine. Guerrero had taken out the main switch box behind him. Of course, that didn't explain why the emergency generator didn't spring to life, but as Winston was about to ask Guerrero what in the hell it all meant, it hit him: Guerrero was trying to hide them. In a confined space like a Second World War submarine, there weren't an awful lot of options to become invisible, so Guerrero had opted for the Evil-no-see-tactic. What evil this was supposed to be eluded Winston.

He listened intently, but the only sound he could make out was Guerrero's breathing right next to him. In a literally silent understanding they stayed as quiet as possible. Then Winston felt Guerrero's hand on his arm, pushing him gently to the right. Winston got the hint and without a noise moved to the right of the nearest door for cover. Guerrero's hand disappeared and he knew the assassin had taken position at the other side of the hatch.

As they waited for God knew what in the impenetrable darkness, many questions formed in Winston's head. How did Guerrero even know about the meeting? Where in the world were all the tourists from before? And who the hell were they hiding from?

Winston had lost sense of time when suddenly four quick shots were fired in a row. Three of them came from right next to him, one from the other side of the bulkhead. Another minute passed in complete silence, then Winston heard a click and the beam of a flashlight blinded him. When his eyes got somewhat used to the light, he found Guerrero crouched with his back against the metal wall, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

Guerrero pointed them both down the room next door, exposing as little of his body as possible. Then he motioned for Winston to get up and cautiously they made their way through the door and back to the entrance of the submarine. Winston finally dared to pull his own gun, but as they passed through the next compartment, the only two thugs he found were apparelled with clean headshots. Guerrero didn't deign to look at them. The rest of the journey was over in a few seconds: climb up to the main hatch, run to Guerrero's awkwardly parked car, floor it. Winston felt he didn't have much of a choice as the still silent man next to him was the one who held all the answers to this mess.

Guerrero was driving like a mad man and his eyes were fixed on the road. Winston was through with being ignored. Too many questions had bottled up over the past minutes, but as he tried to formulate them all at once, all he came up with was:

"What the hell WAS THAT?"

Guerrero just glanced at him and took another daring turn, so Winston chose a more specific approach:

"What were you doing there? How did-"

"What was I doing there? Dude, I pulled you out of this! What were you doing there?"

Winston wasn't to cooperate with the maniac next to him. Besides, it was none of Guerrero's business. "I have a thing for submarines."

Guerrero shook his head and took another turn, then slammed on the brakes and stalled the engine. Winston saw that Guerrero had taken them to some harbour complex outside the city. Nowhere near civilization. Guerrero turned to face him.

"This is important, Winston, so stop the prancing. Did you want to take them on alone, is that it?"

"WHAT? What are you talking about! I don't even know who they are or why they would be there. I… came there on request of a friend who needed a favour."

"What friend. How did he contact you. How did you contact him."

"How's that important? Did you hack into my email account again? How did you know about the meeting? What made you come there? And who are those blokes you took out? Answer me!"

"Email, huh?" Guerrero turned to face the front again and for the better part of five minutes stared at the wheel of his caddie. Winston knew he would only be ignored again if he spoke, so he watched silently as Guerrero's mental cogs turned and finally locked.

"I did some digging into the Dawson incident. At first I didn't come up with much, but a couple hours ago the submarine popped up. Figured whoever vaporized Dawson's fancy glass globe would hit there next. So I went to check it out. Saw your car in the parking lot. Didn't make any sense at first, but it's all coming together now."

"First you, then me. Someone's trying to get to us. But how?"

"My guess is they wanted to seal all the visitors into the submarine, then gas them through the old ventilation system."

Winston looked shocked. "You sure?"

"That's what I'd do, but I was too busy evacuating the fucking Kursk back there and separate you from the crowd to ask the perps what they had planned for you. When they saw their potential victims file out, they went in after me before I could find you."

"How did you evacuate all the-"

"Not important, Winston. What's important is that this wasn't a coincidence. Neither was the explosion. But when they failed to get rid of me, instead of trying again they made a move on you. Means neither of us was the actual target."

"Chance."

Guerrero nodded. They remained silent as they let this sink in.

"Chance's in danger, we need to warn him."

"No we don't. Dude, if they wanted Chance dead they would've made their move already. Instead they chose us. They want to make him suffer. And not only by killing us, but by killing as many innocent people as possible with us. Also supplies them with a nice diversion, so no one comes asking questions about us. With the whole city in general terror panic, no one cares about individuals."

"I don't know. Could be a personal vengeance thing. That would mean they merely started with the less important and now work their way up to the star prize. No offense."

"In that case they wouldn't change the order and just skip me after the failed attempt. No, this has been only about Chance from the beginning. Someone knows that living with guilt to him is worse than death. They can make him suffer more if they don't kill him off."

"But what went wrong with Dawson?"

"I did. I didn't take a simple program from him. They invented a nice little gadget that detects errant radio frequencies, such as the ones of remote controlled bomb triggers. It blocks them within a certain range. I tested the damn thing when I was with Dawson and something came up. Thought it was one of Dawson's doohickeys to make sure I wasn't recording our conversation, so I didn't pay it much attention. When I walked back to my car the disturb signal became too weak and the bomb went off."

"The 'damn thing' saved your life, Guerrero."

"Yeah well, it didn't save the other forty-one, did it." Guerrero actually sounded pissed. He checked their surroundings in the side mirror. 'Because I walked it out of the building.' Winston completed Guerrero's thoughts for himself.

"All those people. They died because someone wants to make Chance suffer." he reasoned. "Man, that's cruel."

Guerrero now looked directly at him. "Which is why Chance won't know."

Winston's blood froze at the sound of those words.

"I can't do that, Guerrero. Chance has a right to know. Besides the wirepuller behind all this is still out there and we need Chance's help to identify and stop him before he kills more people."

"That was not a suggestion, Winston. I can handle whoever's behind this, I just need a little more time. Chance won't know that this was about him, do you understand?"

"And what are we supposed to tell him, genius? You don't think he'll let the Dawson-thing go just like that, do you."

"That's my problem, dude. I'll come up with something."

Winston saw where this conversation was headed and he didn't like it one bit.

"No. Nooo! I know your moral standards are far beyond saving, but you won't degrade me to your crooked little ideas of friendship. Chance is my friend and I respect him, I need to tell him the truth!"

"Nice speech, dude. Only it'd kill him. Maybe not literally, but look how the whole Katherine-story messed him up. Multiply that by forty-one and there won't be any Chance left. It's not like we have a choice here."

"Katherine was different. He was in love with her."

"You really think Chance would suffer more for one girl he loved than for forty-one people he didn't even know? He's not like that, dude. For him nobody deserves to die and his falling for a girl doesn't make her deserve to die even less… Winston, how hard do you want to make this?"

"How hard do I- you don't seem to get the point here!"

"The point, dude, is that Chance can't handle it, so he can't know about it." Guerrero was reaching the end of his rope.

"Oh so that's all there is to it for you? Look, you might not give a damn, but his trust means something to me, so how dare you demand that from me? You would betray him like that? That's just pathetic, even for you! What kind of a friend-"

"Dude stop." Guerrero leaned forward. "You think this is fun for me? I can only do this because I consider Chance a friend. You need to stop thinking about your own sorry ass here Winston and realize that your so-called 'betrayal' is nothing more than us protecting Chance from himself. So you will do it."

"Being lied to by the people he considers his friends ain't gonna protect him from nothing! How can you even live with yourself?"

Guerrero somewhat slumped at these words. Then suddenly, with a snappy "I give you five minutes to make up your mind." he got out of the car and slammed the door shut.

Winston hadn't bargained for Guerrero to react quite as impulsively, but it was good to bring some space between them. He couldn't believe that Guerrero asked, no, demanded to make a pact with him. It felt like betraying Chance in more than one way. It felt like he was betraying himself. And on top of all that he would have to trust Guerrero. Oh boy. But he knew Chance. And he knew that Guerrero knew him even better and that he was right: What choice did they have?

Guerrero finally returned and wordlessly sat back down behind the wheel. In the silence that followed Winston had to admit to himself that the man was putting his friendship with Chance at risk just as much as he was. And that Guerrero had to trust him just as he had to trust Guerrero. That thought almost comforted him until he realized that there was still a huge difference between them. And they would not move until he was ready to give up his much-valued views on loyalty.

"You haven't answered my question." he revived the conversation.

"What- how I live with it? You don't want to know that, dude. What you want to know is how you will be able to live with it. You're only afraid you'll end up like me."

Winston sighed. "Guess we'll find out."

Guerrero started the engine.

I know this chapter might come across as rather odd with the no-talk submarine introduction and the huge dialogue that followed, but I still trust you to review. What choice do you have?;)