Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.

The warehouse.

The call came five minutes after they had all gathered at the office again.

Ames was sporting a black eye, Guerrero's clothes were torn and bloody, so were Winston's. It was safe to say things had gone majorly wrong on their side of the job. Without anyone actually voicing it, however, they all sensed that something regarding Ilsa had gone even more FUBAR.

Chance's eyes were dead. Plain and simple. When he stepped out of the elevator, Guerrero froze for a moment because he looked like Junior again, Junior in his darkest moments, before he pulled the trigger and took down a mark, his face an empty mask.

What the hell had happened?

Ilsa had insisted on accompanying Chance first down to the Bay where they got rid of the body, then back to the office to meet the others. He thought she didn't want to be alone in the apartment after the horrendous event of having to shoot another human being.

And again because of me. She would have never met Hector Lopez, hadn't she met me. And she would have never become a target of that thug, hadn't she met me. She had to take two lives, lost her innocence forever. Because of me. I once saved her life, yes, but for what price? This will leave a permanent mark on her. It's all so goddamn senseless.

The truth was the thug had been right – it did get easier the second time. At least to Ilsa it felt like that at the moment. She was shaken, yes, and the first few minutes of realizing in all its finality what she had done had been horrible, yes, but she hadn't had much of a choice, had she? He had come into her apartment, he had tried to kill her…

What really concerned her right now was Chance – he looked, for lack of a better word, destroyed. She had seen Winston and Guerrero stick their heads together quite a lot lately and she wondered if they had noticed Chance's mood growing darker, too. Today's unfortunate events seemed to have flipped a switch in that regard. For the first time she could really believe he had been a cold-blooded killer once. She had always known it, of course, but when being with him, witnessing all his mischievous little pranks, his manner of making light of difficult situations, the comfort he could give, it had always seemed unreal.

Not now.

"What do you want?", Chance asked the caller and the tone of his voice made Ames look up. It wasn't the anger in it that made her shiver. It was the coldness. He sounded defeated, but not helpless-defeated, more lost-defeated, like a caught tiger or something – fully knowing that the steel bars would hold and because of that even more ready to lash out at anyone coming near. She could see in Winston's face that he was alarmed, too.

"I want, as you might have gathered by now, revenge", the caller said. "I want to inflict as much pain on Ms. Barnes and, because you helped her, you people, as possible."

To the outside, Chance seemed to be cold as ice, but inside his mind was reeling. The only way to make this whole goddamn situation somehow half-way right again, is to get Emma and everyone out of it safe. Should anything happen to her or anyone else… Chance forced himself to concentrate on the caller again. "Why are we having this conversation?"

"Because I figured out that punishing Ms. Barnes the same way she punished the love of my life is one thing. Much more interesting however, would be to let her experience the guilt of the survivor that I have to live with for the rest of my life. Thus I propose an exchange: Ms. Barnes against one of you. I don't care who, but rest assured, whoever it is, you won't see him or her alive again."

Chance cursed himself for having put the caller on speaker. Now he'd have to go twelve rounds with the team over exchanging himself for Emma.

Oh, how right he was. They wouldn't hear any of it. Ilsa and Winston tried it with argumentation. "You're not thinking clearly! This is a trap!"

Guerrero, in the meantime, gave Ames a meaningful look. She wasn't exactly sure what he was hinting it, till he tilted his head and stared straight at the chair she was sitting on. She felt underneath it, groped around a little – oh, a taser…

Three minutes later Chance was tied up and unconscious in the trunk of Guerrero's new car while they were heading towards the meeting place Emma's kidnapper had told them in his second call, only seconds after they had brought Chance down. His instructions had been very simple: They would wait at a railroad crossing for a freight train passing by. The train would go extraordinarily slow. One of the goods wagons would be open. One of them would jump in and they (apparently the kidnapper had hired himself a crew) would throw out Emma on the other side.

They hadn't decided yet how to proceed – the time frame they had been given had been too small to come to a decision at the office, so they had to wing it out on site.

Which was, in hindsight, a good thing, because while driving to the railroad crossing, Guerrero thought of something.

"I don't believe for a second he'll really give Emma back", Winston snarled, getting out of the van.

"Well, it's worth a try, dude, isn't it?", Guerrero replied almost casually, climbing out of his own car.

Everybody stared at him in disbelief. He stared back at them, almost as defiantly as Chance had only a couple of minutes ago. Then…

DISMISSIVE SNORT

"Cause not for real. Chance is the crazy here. I'm going to jump at the wagon and miss. Will be a hard fall but I think I can manage. It must look as if it was an accident, as if I really tried to get in – this will buy us time. Haven't you noticed how precisely the calls are timed? He always knows exactly when we are all together and calls as if on cue. There's probably a bug hidden somewhere in the office and where there's a bug, there's a signal. While he sets up a new scenario for the next "exchange", we'll try and track him down through the signal."

Good plan.

If only they had shared it with Chance… But he was in the trunk, supposedly unconscious, but actually working frantically on picking the lock.

From his point of view he got out right in time to see Guerrero getting ready to jump into that wagon.

No way he was going to let Guerrero sacrifice himself. No way.

Chance pushed him aside just in time to jump into the wagon himself. Of course there was no Emma inside. As he hit the wagon's floor, a searing pain shot through his ankle. The wagon's doors slammed shut and he was surrounded by pitch black darkness as the train suddenly picked up speed.

Of course the team followed the train, managed to make it stop, but it was too late: By the time they got to the wagon, it was empty.