LOST chain story

Wow, you really need to continue these. They are fantastic

Okay, mea culpa. I'm sorry. I've been forgetting to post these episodes as I've been writing them, and now that the story is finished, it's going to be hard for Gl12 and me to post them as we did, in sequence.
So I'll post them all here, her chapters and mine. (See if you can tell which is which :-)) And if anyone wants the rest of the story straightaway (there are 500 pages of it, now, in 4 big Word documents,) you might want to email me at: keyserzozie@yahoo.com
and I'll send you the lot. Okay?
Oh, and you'll notice that from the next entry, the chapter numbers have got slightly out of sync. This is because is the later edit, we added a few bits and pieces.

Chapter 41.
For a moment the three of them stayed transfixed; Ben’s eyes widening a little at the sight of the knife. Locke might not have killed his father, he thought, but he’d been more than capable of dealing with Naomi, and his hand was quite steady on the knife’s hilt as he gestured to Ben with a jerk of his head.
“That way,” he said.
Ben only hesitated for a second. He knew he couldn’t depend on Karl – the boy’s loyalty was divided, at best – and although he was fairly sure that Locke wouldn’t kill him outright – he’d passed by that chance a dozen times – there was nothing to stop the bigger man from beating him senseless, as he’d once beaten Mikhail, then just slinging him across his shoulder and carrying him to the desired spot. The bruises he could deal with, Ben thought, but the lack of dignity hurt more.
“Thank you, John. Of course,” he said, politely ignoring the hunting knife at his throat as one might ignore a social transgression – a refusal to shake hands, perhaps. “May I ask where we are going?”
“You know,” said Locke gently. “You go first.”
That was why Ben led the way, feeling the point of the knife in his back, across the yard and along the green, all the way to the polar bear cage.

That had been a long time ago, before even Ben had come to the island; another DHARMA venture gone wrong. Since then the cage had been abandoned, apart from a brief interlude when it had been used as a racquetball court, and the polar bears had been safely kept to the smaller island, Pala – or as they called it, Alcatraz - while the cage’s former occupant had vanished into the jungle far beyond the sonic fence, where, for all Ben knew, her offspring survived, feeding on small animals, an alien in a foreign land.
Even Ben had almost forgotten it. Unlike the cages on Pala, which were large and open on all sides, this was partly below ground level, with steps leading six feet down to a concrete base that had once included a swimming hole. Now it stank; the concrete was split, and the ground was almost invisible beneath the profusion of jungle plants that had half-consumed the abandoned structure, but the bars above it were still intact, and with the aid of a chain and a padlock salvaged from the Black Rock, Locke was able to ensure a comfortable measure of security.
Ben feigned indifference as he heard the door clang above his head. In fact, he was profoundly uneasy; Locke wouldn’t kill him in cold blood, but finding him helpless and alone, Ben could think of quite a few people – including some of his erstwhile friends – who might not be so merciful. He’d seen the black smoke from the beach, and he knew full well what it meant. The Temple was where it all began – but he knew they’d return to the village in time, and when they did, it would be under a new kind of leader, one with strict orders regarding Benjamin Linus.
He looked up to see John Locke peering down at him through the bars. Locke’s face was inscrutable; a tiny smile played at the corner of his mouth. Ben realized, with some bitterness, that he might have underestimated Locke. He’d thought him weak; a dreamer; a romantic. Now he saw that behind all that lay a ruthlessness, a will as inflexible as his own and the patience to wait – for as long as it took – until he got whatever it was – revenge, satisfaction, answers, the truth.
“Make yourself at home,” said Locke. Ben sat down cross-legged on the concrete floor. It was cold and damp; from the overgrown swimming hole came a reek of stagnant water and rank vegetation. The food dispenser had long since been disconnected; the water trough was filled with earth. Ben could endure discomfort, Locke knew. But he also knew Ben was curious – and that, thought Locke, gave him the edge. So he waited for Ben to make a move – waited as his muscles cramped and his mind raced with impatience, knowing that his adversary was as hungry and tired as he was, both knowing that the first to speak would be the one to concede the point, but knowing too that time was running out.
He’d expected Locke to question him. To threaten him with violence, or worse – after all, the man had gone through a great deal to learn the secrets of the island, and Ben had managed every time to thwart his curiosity. Surely now was his chance, Ben thought. No-one even knew they were here. But Locke was in no hurry, it seemed; after watching Ben through the bars for awhile, his face withdrew and there came the unmistakable sound of receding footsteps across the grass.
At first Ben assumed it was a trick. Locke had only pretended to leave, and was watching him now from the line of trees. But as night fell he became convinced that he was genuinely alone. As he stood up and looked round the cage, he wondered what Locke’s game might be. Could he have gone in search of the Others, hoping to make some kind of a trade? Or had he decided to enlist someone else – James Ford or Sayid Jarrah – to help him with Ben’s interrogation?
The cage was quite secure, as he’d thought. Hauling himself up to look through the bars, he found himself at ground level, watching the village through the long grass. It was deserted. Nothing moved. Even the birds had fallen silent. The sky was clear and filled with stars; their light was so bright through the bars of the cage that Ben could see shadows against his arm. His mouth was dry, and his stomach hurt, and that was when he remembered that he’d taken his last meal on the beach before the helicopters came.
Patience, he told himself. Locke would come back. But what was his game? And what were the stakes? And did he even know the rules?
Ben lay down on the floor of the cage and tried to make himself comfortable. The ground below him was a combination of broken concrete, sour, wet earth and a vast collection of brambles and weeds; hardly an ideal resting-place. Still, somewhere along the line, Ben slept, and dreamed a complex and lovely dream that fragmented and scattered as he awoke into a kaleidoscope of broken images from which he remembered only a few.
His mother’s face was one of them, her hair held back with an Alice band. She had spoken to him, he remembered that, but could make no sense of what she had said. Then he’d seen lights - like stars, but brighter – hovering like fireflies in the air. In his dream Ben knew how to fly, and he wanted so badly to join the lights, but could not pass through the bars of his cage, and he awoke with moisture on his face and a feeling of overwhelming loss –
No more than a couple of hours had passed. A young moon like a slice of pink watermelon was just appearing over the trees, and maybe it was the aftermath of the dream, but Ben was suddenly convinced that someone was standing beside his cage, their shadow just grazing the edge of the bars, their breathing soft in the quiet night...
He sat up, wincing at the stiffness in his joints. From above him there came a sound – a shifting, a whisper, a movement of air – and Ben felt a rush of adrenaline that galvanized his exhausted body into some semblance of readiness. He looked around for somewhere to hide – but apart from the weeds and some tangles of creeper, there was no cover inside the cage. He suppressed the urge to call for Locke, knowing it was irrational. If Locke was there, that would show weakness. If he was not –
Then Ben was in trouble. Someone whispered – Benjamin?

So I'm finally getting round to posting all of this, following a few requests for me to do so. I'm posting my chapters and GL12's too - I guess it will be up to you to decide who wrote what...

Chapter 48.
Rose had made a pot of tea. Well, not so much of a pot, she thought, as a tin can hammered into shape, with a lid made from coconut shell - but the tea was Darjeeling, which she liked just fine, and it was hot, which she liked even better. She drank it as the sun set and listened to the sound of the waves. Such a restful sound, thought Rose. And that sky –
When she’d had her last MRI, there’d been a mural on the wall. Something nice to look at, she guessed, for folks with not too much time left for looking at nice things any more. It had shown her a scene much like this one; a splashy sky all pink and gold, with palm trees cut out in black against a sun like a cauldron of fire. When you’re dying of cancer, Rose thought, you start to notice the little things. A sunset; a cup of tea. You start to see how you took them for granted back in the days when you were well. She prayed that it would never happen to her. No sir. Not again. When God sends you a miracle, what do you do? Spit in His eye?
Way down the beach, Bernard was running. Got to keep in shape, he’d said, but Rose knew for a fact that Bernard had never worked out in his entire life, and she guessed that his sudden urge to do it now had less to do with keeping fit and much more to do with what had happened the day the Others came– the day he never talked about. Well, that was okay, Rose thought. He’d talk about it when he was ready. Killing a man should never be easy, not for anyone, and especially not for a man like Bernard, a trained dentist who couldn’t even watch the tooth-pulling scene from Marathon Man.
But crises affect people in different ways. Take Jin, a man who Rose guessed might have had more than a passing knowledge of violence. During his months on the island, the Korean had become visibly gentler and more sociable, had exerted himself to learn English (if with somewhat mixed results); had helped them to build their boat; had even gone camping, for Pete’s sakes, and now that Sun was eating for two, had been going around with that big, sappy grin on his face, like a kid whose Christmases all came at once...
This place has a way of changing folks, Rose thought as she sipped her tea. Changing them for the better, she hoped – although sometimes it was hard to see how. But Rose believed in miracles, and she saw them everywhere on the island, had seen them from the first day.
Her gaze moved onto Jack’s tent. Now wasn’t that something? The woman they’d rescued from the crashed helicopter turning out to be Jack’s wife? It sounded as crazy as – well, as polar bears in the tropics, or cancer suddenly curing itself, or John Locke getting onto that plane in a wheelchair and getting out on his own two feet. She hadn’t mentioned that to John. Rose guessed that if he wanted to talk about it, he would have talked to someone by now. And besides, what did it matter? You make what you can of the hand you’re dealt.
She wondered what had happened to Locke. She hadn’t seen him for a while – not that he’d ever been sociable, especially not after Naomi’s murder, an act for which he’d been widely condemned and for which he’d offered no explanation. And now he’d gone off into the jungle with Benjamin Linus, of all people –well. It was easy to see how some folks could think he was crazy, or worse. But Rose wasn’t one of them. John had his reasons for what he had done. And as for Ben – Rose smiled. Now he was something else, all right, with his Who, me? look and his smart mouth and that way he had of winding folks up and making them want to punch him out. She just hoped John was looking out for him, because if that boy had a gift, she thought, it was getting himself into all sorts of trouble.
She looked back at Jack’s tent. It had been quiet there for nearly half-an-hour, and she guessed maybe the doctor was sleeping. All the better, Rose thought. The doctor hadn’t slept at all since they’d pulled that pregnant girl out of the sea. And there was Kate sitting outside for hours on end like an abandoned puppy – Rose felt a jolt of sympathy for Kate, just like the girl in the old song; torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool...sometimes, Rose felt, being young was mightily overrated.
“Do you want some tea, honey?” she suggested, holding out the pot. Kate looked up. “No thanks,” she said, with a smile as bright and as meaningless as a paparazzi flash. “Sweetheart, it would do you good”. That smile might have convinced Jack, but then Jack was only a man, after all. Rose could see Kate was shivering; and there was a raw, teary look around her nose and mouth. That girl sure got it bad, Rose thought; and though she knew there was good in Kate, she couldn’t help feeling uneasy, too. There was a recklessness in that girl, a potential instability that might, left unchecked, erupt into some kind of violence. Rose had sensed the same thing in Alex – Alex, who on a single passionate impulse, had betrayed her people, her friends and her cause, and delivered her father into the hands of his enemies.
Young love, thought Rose. Ain’t it grand? The world could end and you wouldn’t care, as long as you and he were together.
Suddenly there came a sound, a muffled call from inside the tent.
Kate sat up. “Jack?” she said.
A moment later Jack’s face appeared, looking dishevelled and flushed with sleep, but more rational than he’d been in days. His eyes rested briefly on Rose and Kate, then he stood up and called down the beach; “Sayid? Sayid!”
“I’ll get him,” said Kate. Jack seemed not to hear.
“Why? What’s happening?” said Rose. For a moment the doctor just looked at her, and although he looked calm enough, Rose could guess at the effort involved in trying to maintain that illusion. He was their leader, after all – he was supposed to know what to do. They had come to count on him too much, not realizing that a medical crisis and an emotional crisis were two entirely different things. While Sarah was still unconscious Jack could concentrate on what he knew; on her physical state, on her pregnancy, unexpected though that might be. But now, thought Rose, all that would change. Questions would have to be answered, and the answers might be painful to hear.
She looked at Jack with sympathy. “If you need help, you know where I am”.
He nodded, still preoccupied, and the look in his eyes confirmed Rose’s suspicions just as a panicky voice came from inside the tent: “Where am I? Who are you people?”
Finally, Sarah was awake.

Chapter 49.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the island, a hasty meeting had been convened. Evicted without explanation from their homes, alarmed by the rumours that swept the camp, robbed of Ben’s stabilizing presence – an uneasy combination of confidence, charisma, bravado and lies – the group had fragmented rapidly, with the few that were still loyal to Ben greatly outnumbered by those who believed that he had betrayed them from the start; had lured them here with promises that he had been unable to keep and had maliciously isolated them from the outside world for sinister reasons of his own.
Angry, bewildered and afraid, they had finally gravitated towards Richard for help, which was why they were all assembled here in the caves on the island’s northern shore, the ruined place they knew as the Temple. No one knew much about the Temple. Clearly it was centuries old; a complex of caves both man-made and natural, topped by a pyramidical structure that had once supported a carved figure of such colossal proportions that the mind could barely envisage it.
The figure – named Ozymandias by Ben, who knew his Romantic poets – had been mostly destroyed by time and tide, with only a fragment left intact; a gigantic four-toed foot – presumably, one of a pair that had straddled the rocky harbour-mouth like that of the fabled Colossus of Rhodes.
Exciting though this discovery might have been to an archaeologist, the DHARMA people had shown no interest beyond a cursory initial exploration of the site, and although the caves below the Temple were extensive enough to house a whole tribe, with plenty of access to water and even a number of hot springs, it was not a place in which anyone would choose to settle for very long. For a start, it was eerie; in the furthest passages, the slightest sound could set off an avalanche of whispers that escalated to unbearable volume in the many chambers carved into the rock. And there were voices in those sounds, voices that the more imaginative among them claimed to be the voices of the dead.
There had been unexplained disappearances, too – four of their tribe unaccounted for, lost in the echoing passageways or taken, perhaps, by some animal living deep in the labyrinth beyond the reach of their torches and guns. The Temple was not a place they would choose to live, but it was a place of power, they knew. That was why Ben had sent them there, and that was why they were gathered here now, a dwindling group, all eyes on Richard in the torchlight.
“How long are we supposed to wait here?”
He did not see who spoke first. No matter, that was the question on everyone’s mind, and if he wanted to avert panic, then he would have to handle this very carefully.
“What happened at the beach?” someone said.
That was Cindy, who had joined them following the plane crash. Her loyalties were still divided, he knew; she’d had friends die on both sides that day.
He touched Cindy’s shoulder comfortingly. “Juliet betrayed us,” he said. “They were waiting in ambush. They killed them all.” He spoke simply and slowly, allowing his voice to penetrate the veil of whispering that was the inevitable backdrop to any conversation in the caves under the Temple. He allowed the truth of what he said to filter through to the little group. Not that it came as much of a surprise; the rumours had already come through. But to announce it as a hard fact – that had a potency, Richard though, an emotional impact he could use.
Richard went on. “We lost them all. Tom and the others. All dead. And Greta and Bonnie, too,” he said. “They died protecting the Looking Glass.”
Another strike, he told himself. Rumours of the Looking Glass had been especially common during the long trek to the Temple, and this confirmation of their worst fears made a shiver of fear run through the group; fear and a growing sense of rage.
“What about Ben?” yelled a voice from the back. The echoes picked it up at once, and soon the cave was percussive with the sound of Ben’s name: Ben? Ben? Ben? Ben?ben?benbenbennn –
as it ricocheted against the stones, going deeper and deeper into the caves until nothing was left but a low vibration that tugged at their eardrums and made their hackles stand on end. Richard hid a little smile. What about Ben, indeed?
He took his time before answering. He stood before them, head bent, hands clasped like a man praying for inspiration. Finally, he looked up. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” he said in a low and grieving voice. “As you know, Ben was like a brother to me. He had his faults – but we followed him. We trusted him. We believed in his dream”. Richard paused for greater effect, hearing his voice roll away into darkness. Then he spoke again. “We were wrong”.
As the cries of dissent began, Richard smiled at the ragged group. “We have to face facts. Ben lied to us”, he said in that low, regretful voice. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, but after this, we have no choice. The signs are all too clear”, he said. “And now that Jacob has spoken to me -” The murmurs of discontent subsided.
“Jacob,” repeated Richard firmly, “Jacob himself told me the truth. And the truth is that Ben is a traitor – to you, to me, to Jacob himself!” He paused for maximum impact. “And the proof, if you need it, is right here.”
Now, from behind his back, he drew an object that all of them recognized. It was scuffed and stained with blood and grass, but it was still unmistakably Ben’s satchel, left on the ground by the castaways and containing all of Ben’s personal effects.
“Including his diary”, Richard said, “which, as I’m sure you’ll all agree, makes very interesting reading....”

Chapter 52.
Cindy shrank back in disgust as the crowd pressed around Richard. There was something grotesque about the glee with which they almost literally tore into Ben’s journal. Cindy thought of animal packs that ripped apart their deposed leaders. Suddenly this community, which had seemed so advanced, took on a primitive tinge. Perhaps it was simply the surroundings which seemed tailor-made for ancient and savage rituals, she thought. Cindy felt a stab of pity for the man she had met just once, and then only briefly.
The group that had gathered around Richard moved away as one, apparently in an effort to find better lighting with which to devour the secrets in the diary. When they did, Cindy noticed that the bloodstained satchel had been abandoned on the stone floor. She looked around and, satisfied that no one was watching, she lifted the flap and peered inside. Among some other items, she saw a cylindrical figure, decorated with faded and chipping paint. She drew it out and saw it was a rough carving of a girl. She thought it an odd thing for Ben to carry.
As a small group broke away from Richard to retrieve the satchel, Cindy stood up quickly and slipped the doll into her pocket. It seemed such a personal object, and she told herself that with it she might rescue a trifle of the abandoned leader’s dignity from his wounded and frightened followers.

Chapter 53.
When Ben was satisfied that Karl could find his way to the Temple, he handed the younger man the map and the radio.
“Find Richard and give him the walkie,” Ben said. “If you need to contact me for anything else, make sure you don’t give away your location or mine, and don’t use names. We don’t know who might be listening”.
Karl nodded and stuffed the radio and map into his knapsack. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to stay out of trouble,” Ben said.
Karl grinned in reply and then jogged away toward the dark edge of the jungle.
When he had gone, Ben glanced around the deserted village and then went back inside his house. He sat down at his desk, and laced his fingers together in front of him. He was so focused that he did not even notice the empty frame that lay face-down on the desktop.
Ben took a deep breath and then spoke to the empty room. “Now is as good a time as any,” he said in a loud voice. “We might as well do this and have it over.”


Chapter 54.
Richard gave a thin smile as they strove for possession of Ben’s journal. They were such ignorant children, he thought; so keen now to believe the worst, to condemn the man they had once idolized.
Still, he’d warned him, Richard thought. For years Ben had walked a perilous line between guidance and dictatorship, speaking for Jacob, lying at will, thinking himself invulnerable, conveniently forgetting that even a god has responsibilities, and that when a god disappoints his people, their thirst for vengeance knows no bounds.
They might forgive Ben his lies, he thought. What they would never forgive was his weakness. And in that journal was evidence - entries dating back sixteen years; names; dates; experiments, all just waiting to be exposed – evidence that the man they’d thought infallible was really just another man, as vulnerable as the rest of them. For that they would never forgive him, he knew. Ben Linus was as good as dead.
He turned his gaze to the journal. The script was small and obsessively neat, like that of a natural left-hander, forced as a child to use his right for school work. Most of the book was written in code – a code Richard had not broken, as yet, and which corresponded to nothing he’d met before – but even so there was enough in the un-ciphered sections to incriminate Ben twenty times over.
Not that they would see it at once. Ben was not a prolific diarist. On some occasions, months had elapsed between entries, and his phrasing was typically brief and laconic.
Sunday, 5th December. Annie left. Better this way. Mikhail stays to guard the Flame.
It might be that Richard would have to point out the way that Ben had brought them here, making them think they had the choice, but pulling at the threads of their lives, drawing them in, cutting them off, making them dance to his tune.
Thursday, 9th September. Swan experiment to be discontinued. Control suspended. Inconclusive. Greta and Bonnie to stay in Looking Glass. Code Yellow. Communication with Central to be suspended indefinitely.
It might also be that Richard would tell them how often they themselves had acted as subjects for Ben’s experiments. Those pregnant women and grieving men – all part of a long series of physical and emotional trials designed to test their suitability, their courage for the next stage.
Sunday, 12th September. Regroup to barracks. Casualties – 3. Harris, Thibault, Coomins. Jacob to be approached with extreme caution.
And then there was Jacob himself, he thought. That powerful and mysterious presence, which spoke only to Ben himself; the one who decreed that bodies be burnt in order to ensure successful rebirth; the one who decided worthiness; who drew up lists of weak and strong; who chose Ben as his favourite, but whose anger was most terrible.
Thursday, 13th February. Rousseau gave birth. Child female, apparently healthy. Needs 1 week’s contact with mother for full immunity. Control group – terminated. Conclusion – uncertain.
If none of that was enough to condemn him in the eyes of his people, then Richard would point out Ben’s greatest weakness; those women to whom he’d given his heart.
First, Annie, who should have perished with the rest of her group, but whom he had talked into leaving the island just a few weeks before the Purge. Then Juliet, whose abortive attempt on Benjamin’s life should have earned her the death penalty, but whom he had spared – disastrously – allowing her to betray them all. And lastly, the girl, the Frenchwoman’s child, the last survivor of a failed experiment, who should by rights have been written off like a lab rat that had served its purpose.
For a moment Richard knew a pang of sympathy for Benjamin Linus, who had seemed so very promising as a boy, and who had blown his chance at true greatness for the sake of a child who wasn’t his. Still, he’d tried, Richard thought. It wasn’t his fault that Ben had grown soft. As Ben himself would be the first to acknowledge, no-one was irreplaceable. He’d thought John Locke might be the one – but Locke had turned out to be both less predictable than was entirely safe, and too set in his ways to accept what Richard needed to teach him.
No, Richard needed someone young – younger even than Ben had been on the day he had recruited him. Someone who’d spent all their life on the island, and who would therefore reap the maximum benefit, both physically and intellectually, from contact with the power source.
He looked across the little crowd – still passing the journal from hand to hand, as if physical contact might show them how to decrypt the code – and for a moment his gaze met a pair of eyes that stared up at him with veiled reproach. It was Cindy, he saw; one of the first survivors to join them from the crashed plane, her pleasant face now taut with disgust.
He smiled at her. She did not smile back. Instead the look of disgust intensified, and he knew that she, at least, was yet to be converted.
“Cindy? What’s wrong?” he asked her gently.
Childishly, she shook her head. She seemed to be standing awkwardly, as if she were hiding something behind her back. “Please, Cindy. It’s hard for me, too. Ben was my friend.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re enjoying this.”
Richard gave her another narrow smile. It might be that Cindy had been a bad choice; that Ben, in his desire to find women of childbearing age, had selected one of the difficult ones. He wondered what she was holding so clumsily behind her back. But he couldn’t deal with her now; there were too many people vying for his attention. By now the contents of Ben’s satchel had been passed several times around the cave; a cavalcade of whispering accompanied each object. A photograph in a metal frame – from it a younger Alex smiled gap-toothed at the camera. Several books - The Art of War; Carrie, Anna Karenina in the original and surprisingly, The Railway Children; - a small washbag, a clean shirt and a change of underwear; a pen, a clasp-knife, the everyday trivia a man might need whilst spending a week away from home. Richard was surprised not to see more junk in there – Ben could be strangely sentimental at times – but it would serve, nevertheless.
“We won’t need this stuff. Burn it all,” said Richard, retrieving the journal, which of all the contents of Ben’s satchel was the only thing that might be of use. He sensed that his people needed to gather momentum before they could be brought to act; the ritual burning of Ben’s few possessions would give them the stimulus they required to prepare them for the main act: the sacrifice of the man himself.
A small fire had already been lit in the centre of the cave. On this, they piled the satchel’s contents; books, clothes and keepsakes, before adding the satchel itself, which went up in a crackling cloud of sparks. No-one seemed able to keep still; feet shuffled, bodies swayed, mesmerized by the leaping flames, and before long they began to dance, first on the spot, then more violently, lifting first one foot and then another, stamping and sweeping the rocky floor, spinning and rocking like dervishes.
It was a kind of hysteria; a cathartic response to a stress situation. The echoes followed like smoke given voice, and soon they were all a prey to it, dancing and swaying and murmuring, so that when Cindy turned and crept away, no-one even noticed her go, and when Danielle Rousseau walked into the cave, her first thought was:
My God, they’re all infected –
And her second, as she met Richard’s gaze, was:
- That’s not a man. It’s the Devil himself…

Chapter 55.
Ben felt an old familiar weight in the pit of his stomach when he looked up into the visage of Roger Linus. Twenty years in the grave had not erased the look of disappointment from his face, and Ben knew exactly where that disappointment came from. He clenched his jaw and reminded himself that he was no longer that little boy, so unfairly indicted for the death of his mother. He was Benjamin Linus, a man to be reckoned with.
“This place sure looks different,” Roger said, looking around Ben’s orderly living room. Ben looked at him with distaste but did not answer. He had no desire to make small talk with this apparition. Roger shuffled toward a bookshelf, and as he did Ben stood up and slipped around the end of his desk. He reached for a small framed photograph of a smiling young couple and laid it face-down on the shelf.
Roger looked at Ben with defeated eyes. “It wasn’t enough to kill me once, eh?” he asked sadly.
“No,” came Ben’s icy reply.
Roger looked as though he had been slapped. He went to the couch and slumped down on it in an ugly lampoon of the drunken stupor that had comprised most of his wasted life. His eyes wandered over the many photographs of Alex that decorated the living room wall.
“Pretty girl,” Roger said. “You’ve gotta watch her, though. She’s not as tough as she’d like you to think.”
“You’re giving me parenting advice?” Ben sneered.
Roger gave a lopsided grin and raised an empty-handed toast. “Ain’t that a kick in the ass,” he said, and chuckled to himself.
Ben sat stiffly in an armchair and regarded his father with a stony expression. “What are you doing here, Dad?” he asked, the familial endearment slipping out from habit.
“Beats me, Benji. You’re the one that brought me here.” The part of his brain that never stopped observing and cataloguing behavior noticed how quickly Roger slipped back into his old who-gives-a-s**t attitude. Ben brushed away a guttural impulse to lunge at the loathsome creature and throttle him. Pointless and even tactless under the circumstances.
“The only reason I’m talking to you is that I know that is true,” Ben said tersely. “Which means you must have something to say to me. So let’s forgo the family reunion and get on with it.”
Roger sighed and hauled himself into a sitting position, his elbows resting on his knees. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “If I had remembered your goddamned birthday that day, would you still have killed me?”
Ben blinked and let out a humorless laugh. “All these years, that is what has been on your mind?” He stood up, shaking his head, and walked to look out the front window into the common area of the village.
Roger sat staring at his son’s back for a long, silent moment.
“You have to be careful, Ben,” Roger said finally. Ben turned his head slightly, still not looking at his father. “Jacob is…” Roger continued, but trailed off when the younger Linus turned around fully and met his eyes.
“Jacob is what?” Ben demanded.
“John Locke…well, things are not – not always what they…” Roger stammered and then stopped. His eyes darted around the room nervously, and when they settled back on Ben, there was a desperation that Ben had not seen before, and it startled him.
“Just be careful,” Roger finished, almost in a whisper.
Ben’s frustration crowded out any other feeling. “Well, thanks for the heads-up,” he snapped and turned away angrily.
“Ben,” Roger said quietly. “For what it’s worth – I don’t blame you for what you did.”
“I don’t want your forgiveness,” Ben snarled.
“Well then it’s your bad luck that you have it,” Roger replied without malice.
Ben turned toward his father again, his blue eyes aflame with hatred. “I don’t forgive you,” Ben’s voice choked in his throat.
Roger seemed to absorb the words and then he nodded slowly. “I didn’t expect you to,” he said.

Chapter 56.
Karl arrived at the Temple area about dusk. Infused with the enthusiasm of having a mission and the confidence that Ben would somehow make things right, he had run almost the whole way across the island. He had stopped only twice to refill his canteen. His sparse meals had been eaten while on the move. Karl had been to the Temple many times with Alex, as he had been nearly everywhere on the island with Alex. The few children in the community had been mostly left to their own devices, and Alex had had adventurous spirit. Whereas the tangle of caverns and passageways had given Karl the heebies, Alex loved to wander the dark labyrinth singing and then harmonizing with her own echo. She had tried to persuade Karl to play hide and seek as children, but he would never let her out of his sight long enough to hide.
As he approached the outer entrances Karl imagined he heard the echo of her reedy voice still bouncing off the stone walls. Outside one of the larger openings in the rock he saw a mound of discarded tents and other equipment. He hoped the others had not penetrated too deeply into the caves. Fortunately, it was easy enough to follow the trail they had not attempted to hide. Occasionally he came across equipment or personal items that had been abandoned as too heavy, or stowed for later retrieval. It occurred to Karl that the strongest men had not been with this group, but had split off for the ill-fated raid on the beach. Unbidden, the image of his friends being dumped into a mass grave flashed before him. Karl hurriedly pushed these thoughts aside and concentrated on his mission, moving toward the source of what sounded like singing.
I need Richard, Ben had said.


Chapter 57.
Richard had just spied Rousseau at the edge of the undulating mob when Karl burst out of a passageway on the opposite side of the rock room.
“Richard!” Karl pushed through the crowd toward Richard, who stood at the edge of the fire. The moaning hymn grew quieter but it did not die. Richard recognized the look of near hypnosis of those whose individual wills had been subsumed to the consciousness of the mob. He stole a look at Rousseau, afraid she might slip back into the darkness, but Karl was at his side now.
He was dirty and soaked with sweat from his trek through the jungle, and now he stooped with hands on his knees to catch his breath.
“Richard,” he repeated, “It’s Ben….he told me….” Karl’s voice trailed off as he panted for breath. Richard took his elbow and pulled him up straight, his mind reeling with the possibilities that Karl’s arrival introduced.
“Just take it easy,” Richard said in his honey-smooth tone. “Catch your breath for a minute.”
Only then did Karl seem to take in the scene around him. Richard saw him scan the crowd and nod greetings to familiar faces, and then the narrowing of eyes when the greetings were not returned. Karl’s gaze darted to the fire where the remnants of Ben’s satchel were turning to ash.
“What’s… Is that Ben’s stuff?” Karl asked. His young lungs recovered quickly and he stood up straight, pulling his arm from Richard’s grip. “Richard?” Karl addressed the question first to Ben’s long-time right hand, and then looked at the others. “What’s going on?”
Keeping one eye on the crowd, Richard turned to the newest arrival. “Karl, you said Ben told you something?” Richard prompted. “Did he send you here?”
The young man’s brow had knit in confusion and he took a step backward. “Why are you burning Ben’s stuff?” he asked.
A shout from the crowd answered. “Ben betrayed us”.
Karl looked stunned. “What?! What are you talking about? Ben would never…”
“He joined up with the doctor and his friends. Ben and Juliet must have had it planned all along.” Murmurs of assent followed the anonymous voice.
“No!” Karl protested. “They practically killed him! Jack – the doctor – beat him really bad and then they had him tied to a tree and they would have killed him for sure if Locke hadn’t…”
“Karl,” Richard interrupted. “There are things about Ben that you don’t know,” Richard sensed a shift in the mood when Locke’s name was mentioned – a shift he didn’t like. John Locke was still seen as something of a miraculous figure, and Richard knew that loyalty could easily shift to him in a vacuum of leadership. He held up Ben’s diary to refocus emotion where he wanted it. He would deal with Locke later.
Karl was still shaking his head in denial. A new voice shouted out from the crowd. “He’s just Ben’s lackey,” the voice sneered. “He already said he came here on Ben’s orders.”
“Oh that’s rich coming from you, Adam,” Richard recognized Amelia’s voice in reply. “He’s right,” another voice joined in. “You can’t trust him.”
“But wait, Ben did all sorts of things to him to get him away from Alex.”
“So why is he doing errands for Ben now?”
Arguments broke out and raised voices echoed off the walls till you couldn’t hear someone talking a foot away from you. Karl’s eyes grew wide with fear as the crowd began to press toward him, the cacophony of voices resuming their singsong timbre. Individual faces were impossible to recognize as bobbing heads seemed to form a boiling mass of humanity. Karl shrugged off his knapsack to prevent being pulled backward into the voracious crowd and attempted to shake off the hands that were clutching at him.
Finally Richard raised his hands to quell their eagerness. “Wait!” he commanded, his voice ringing out over the rest. “If he is working for Ben, then we can use him. Check his bag.”
“He’s got a radio,” shouted the woman who had seized the knapsack.
“Good,” said Richard. “Give it to me. Let’s get Ben here to answer some questions.” The murmurs swelled in response.
“What should we do with him?” All eyes were still on Karl.
“Tie him up,” replied Richard, pointing at two men near the front of the group. “And don’t let anybody talk to him.” Satisfied that the discontented throng had a focus to hold them for a while, Richard turned away to find Danielle Rousseau.

Chapter 58.
“I have no idea where he is,” he said, keeping his hands at chest-height. The gun was barely twelve inches away, leveled at a point right between his shoulder-blades. As he walked slowly through the undergrowth, Mikhail calculated that a low, fast sweep to the left, aimed at Annie’s knee-joint would probably knock her off-balance before she had time to pull the trigger. Probably.
Not yet, he told himself. First, find out what she knows.
She had been in her early twenties when she left the island, only weeks before the final Purge. Ben had had something to do with that, although the details were still unclear to him. All he remembered was that Ben had been quiet to the point of sullenness throughout those few critical weeks – though, not being sociable himself, Mikhail had found this something of a relief. He also knew that Richard had not liked Annie – had met her, in fact, only once, when she and Ben were still in their teens - and that he had resented the power of the strong-willed half-Russian girl over his youthful protégé.
Richard and Ben had quarreled about her, but Annie had been the one to leave. “You came over by boat?” The inflatables were fast, he knew, but unsuitable over anything but short distances. Had the helicopters dropped them earlier? Or was there another ship out there?
“You know I did, Mikhail. What I’d like to know is what happened here. What was blocking our radio transmissions? And who sent out the distress call?”
Mikhail said nothing.
“Come on,” she said. “I know you know what I’m talking about. This island isn’t easy to find. Besides, I didn’t want to come back. I was angry with Ben, you understand. I never wanted to see him again. And then, six weeks later, we got a call.”
“Really?” said Mikhail.
“A call from the Flame,” Annie said.
Mikhail shook his head. “You must be mistaken. I was alone. And I did not contact you.”
Annie went on, ignoring him. “The message was in code,” she said. “It wasn’t a standard DHARMA code, or anything we had in our books. And we couldn’t get back on any channel, not to any of the stations, not even to base.”
Mikhail shrugged. “How unfortunate.”
“We sent a plane. It never came back. We sent another. It flew into a blind spot and barely made it home again. We searched by boat – there was nothing there. It was as if the Island had just sunk into the sea.”
Mikhail turned round, keeping his eye on the gun she held. “And?” he said.
“And nothing. I quit. I moved on. I had nothing here to come back to.”
“But you are here,” he pointed out. Annie sighed. “Who sent you?”
She ignored him again. “I ought to just have let it go,” she said. “But I kept thinking about that message. You see, we had a code, Ben and I. It was just a standard number code, but it was based on a certain edition of a book, a book we’d both loved as children. Without our copies of the book, the code was quite unbreakable. If anything ever happened, he said, he’d find a way to get word to me. And he’d use that code – ” She broke off, her eyes over-bright.
“I see,” said Mikhail.
“You’re telling me you didn’t know?”
“There are many things about Benjamin that I do not know, Anastacia.” He looked at her. “What was the message?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Annie said. “But it ended with a request. At a certain time precisely, I was to contact the sender by radio, on a very specific frequency, at which point I was to receive further instructions, more information, including the means to find my way back-” She paused again, and Mikhail saw that the barrel of the gun had dipped a little. To disarm her now was distinctly possible, but still he held off, wanting more.
“You tried?” he said.
She smiled. “I tried. But there was no message. Well, not from Ben. Instead all I got was a woman’s voice, a distress call, repeating over and over again - Ils sont tous morts. Il les a tous tués. (They’re all dead. He killed them all). Then, nothing.”
There was a long silence. Annie stepped back and once more leveled her gun without hesitation at Mikhail. He had no doubt that she would use it if necessary – even at twenty, Annie had been tough. It took nerve to be loved by Benjamin Linus. “So what I want to know,” she said, “is who it was Ben killed, and why?”
In spite of himself, Mikhail grinned at the speed with which she had put two and two together. “What makes you think it was him?” he said.
“Please,” said Annie with a trace of impatience. “Don’t talk to me as if I were a child. There was always something cold in Ben, something that never ever stopped - thinking, reasoning, calculating the odds. When he was a boy he had a white rabbit called Peter. He took it everywhere with him. And yet, whenever he had to go Outside, he’d put the rabbit through the sonic fence first, just in case it was still active -”
Mikhail frowned. “I don’t see the p-”
“Of course you don’t,” said Annie impatiently. “The point is; he loved that rabbit. But he never forgot it was just a rabbit, bred in the labs for experiments. When it died, he dissected it, and I wouldn’t speak to him for a month. Poor Ben. I don’t think he ever really knew why. My point is, if he killed them all, he must have had a reason. Just the same way he had a reason when he gave up his research and took that stupid workman’s job. Just as he had a reason when he quarreled with me and made me leave just before we lost contact with the group.”
“Benjamin does not always confide readily,” said Mikhail.
Annie laughed. “That’s for sure. Who was the woman whose voice I heard? The one who recorded the message?”
“Her name is Danielle Rousseau,” said Mikhail, watching Annie carefully. Would she remember the name? he thought. Would she show the same lightning response to a name last heard over sixteen years ago?
Her eyes widened fractionally.
“So you do remember the name,” he said.
“Remember it?” said Annie softly. Her face was very pale now, except for two fever-spots of red, high up on the cheekbones. “Oh, I remember Danni Rousseau. She was the reason Ben gave up his job. She was the reason we quarreled that time, the reason I finally left the island for good. I don’t suppose you knew about that. As you say, Ben has trouble confiding in people. But Danni Rousseau -” She gave a harsh laugh. “She was Ben’s white rabbit.”

Chapter 63.
Alex sent Hurley back to the beach while she took the short cut across the headland, using a dugout canoe she had stashed away in one of her several hiding-places. It had taken her years to come to terms with this impulse of hers to hoard and hide, to build lairs and nests and complicated dens, to watch the world from the tops of trees and from holes in the ground like a wild thing.
Perhaps that was why she had accepted Danielle Rousseau so quickly as her mother. The eerie, silent Frenchwoman who watched her with such intensity was nothing like the gentle, loving, but above all, fictional mother of Ben’s imagination. And yet she had recognized herself – had seen in Danielle one of her own. Did that make her a bad person? Was that the real reason she had betrayed Ben?
Even after everything he had done, the thought still had the power to unsettle her. And with everything that had happened in the wake of the attack on the beach, her certainties had begun to erode, leaving her with the growing conviction that she had made a big mistake, a mistake that only she could put right.
Ben needed help – that was for sure. And Alex knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for it. Ben would want them to come to him, to offer freely, to understand. For such a smart guy, she thought, Dad could be sometimes be very obtuse. She had seen that at the edge of the pit, when Jacob had spoken from out of the smoke, demanding a sacrifice. And Dad had refused. He’d defied Jacob. She still had the shakes at the thought of it, and her fierce admiration of him was coupled with a fiercer resentment of the fact that now she was in his debt again – that he’d saved her life at the risk his own, and that now she owed him her loyalty.
She beached the canoe just out of sight and dragged it up to the line of trees. Sunrise was five or ten minutes away. Hiding behind a screen of foliage, she could see Jin fishing down by the shore, Bernard apparently exercising and Rose boiling water to make tea.
Alex gave them a wide berth. She moved carefully down the beach, using the tents as cover. Most of their occupants were still asleep; Sawyer with his arm flung over his face, Kate curled up next to him, only her hair visible beneath a messy tangle of blanket; Claire with her head on Aaron’s empty cot; Sun just beginning to stir as the morning light touched her face.
But Alex didn’t need any of them. She made her way towards Jack’s tent, saw by the lifted flap that it was empty, and moved on softly down the beach. Jack Shephard couldn’t help her now. Today, she needed someone else.
She found him sitting on the far side of the camp, a hundred yards from the nearest tents. He showed no sign of surprise as she sat down wordlessly by his side. He simply gave a little nod and went on watching the ocean, his overlarge shirt flapping like a loosened sail, as if they’d planned this rendezvous.
“I can’t help you,” he said at last. His voice was roughened, as if by grief. “I tried to help Charlie, and look what happened. I can’t change anything.”
“But you do – see.”
He nodded. “Aye.”
Alex smiled. Her instinct had been right, she thought; although she barely knew this man, had only encountered him once, in fact, during her short stay in the camp. There was something about him that intimidated her – his alien accent, perhaps, or his mad, staring, visionary look, as if whatever he had seen during those flashes of his had been burnt into his retinas, a permanent stain on his view of the world. But this was the man she was looking for. The one who had turned the failsafe key the day the sky turned purple.
She wasn’t supposed to know that, of course. But she couldn’t help overhearing things – besides which, spying on Ben had often been her only way of keeping in touch with developments. Exactly what the Swan hatch was for, or what purpose the anomaly served, was something she had never learnt, but from whisperings between Ben and Richard, and later between Mikhail and Ben, she knew that its destruction had been an event of some importance, disastrous to the rest of the group, but, like the loss of the submarine, secretly welcomed by Ben himself.
“So - what did you see in the Looking Glass?” said Alex, when Desmond failed to go on.
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I think it does.”
Desmond shook his head again. “It doesn’ae make sense,” he said softly, his accent thickening so that Alex could hardly understand. “It was meant to be Penny. I heard her voice. And then Charlie said -” He rubbed his eyes. “Like I said, it makes no sense. It was a dream, after all.”
Once more, Desmond wiped his eyes, and Alex finally understood that, in spite of the hour, the man was drunk. He looked vaguely ill; unshaved and unwashed, as if he had been drinking steadily since the helicopters left.
She fixed him with an earnest gaze. Still young enough to believe in miracle cures and freak happy endings, she had pinned so many of her hopes on this man that to see him like this – hopeless, drunk and disorientated – was almost as powerful a blow as when she had seen her father beaten and tied to a tree.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she told him fiercely. “You saw things. I want to know what.”
Desmond gave a wry smile. “I saw another world,” he said. “A world where I had my chance again – and blew it again, like the other times. I saw Claire and Aaron getting into a helicopter. I saw Penny -”
“A helicopter?”
“Aye,” he said.
“Where?”
“On the beach. Back there, on the beach.” He pointed to a place about a mile down from the survivors’ camp, where part of the fuselage remained, a solitary monument to the dead. “But that didn’ae happen, did it?”
“Did you see anyone else with Aaron and Claire?” She tried to keep the eagerness from her voice. “I mean, Juliet, or -”
He glanced at her sharply. “Juliet?”
Alex lifted her chin in defiance. “She needs to get off the island,” she said. “She’s got Naomi’s satellite phone. She’s been speaking to someone on that ship.”
“What?” said Desmond in disbelief. “She did that, after everything that’s happened? And how do you know, anyway?”
“I was going to use the phone,” said Alex simply. “I lifted it out of Jack’s pocket on the way back from the radio tower. I dropped it on the beach when the helicopters came. Then I saw her pick it up.” For a moment she held his gaze. Then she dropped her eyes to the sand. “I want to get off the island too. It’s the only way I can be with Karl.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Desmond’s voice was deliberately harsh. “Why don’t you go find Juliet?”
“Because Jules’ people are after Ben,” said Alex in a quiet voice. “I think they want to kill him”.
“So?” He gave a staccato laugh. “Did ye not know that before?”
She looked away. “I – changed my mind. I made a mistake. And now I have to fix it. Okay?”
Desmond shrugged. “You’re talkin’ to the wrong man. You need Jack, or Sayid.”
“No. Desmond. I need you.” Her eyes were enormous in her thin face. “I need you to tell me what you see.”
“I dinnae see anythin’,” he said.
“You’re lying,” said Alex. “I want to know. Desmond - did you see Ben?”
Desmond grimaced and shook his head.
“Please,” she said, taking his arm. “I need you to tell me the truth now. I don’t care how bad it is. You have to tell me what you saw. If it was Ben, I need to know. I need to know if you saw him die!”
Once again he shook his head.
“But you saw something-”
“Just leave it,” he said. “I told you, before. I can’t change a thing. I see these flashes – so Mikhail says – like pieces of film left on the cutting-room floor. They’re not part of the main picture. They’ve been cut out. Forgotten. Erased. Just like us. Lying dead in some other world. Walking around this island. Dead men walking, all of us. And that’s why we can never leave. That’s why this island is all there is.”
Alex was getting impatient now. “Just tell me what you saw,” she said. “Was it Ben? Did you see him die?”
And now he turned and looked at her, his eyes wide and desperate, his mouth drawn down in a tragic mask. “Do you really want to know what I saw? Do you want to know who’s next on the list?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He gave a sigh. “You know I can’t change anything”.
“Just tell me what you saw,” she said.
“You,” he told her. “Alex, it’s you.”


Chapter 64.
“Where is Danielle Rousseau now?”
“I do not know.”
Annie had followed Mikhail with caution as he led her back towards the barracks. She had not expected to remember the way, but the landmarks of sixteen years ago seemed eerily unchanged to her; and as she reached the sonic fence and recognized the hollow tree where she and Ben had often met, hiding from teachers and parents, she felt as if two pieces of her life had been unexpectedly stapled together, connecting past to present with an almost painful click.
“And the child?”
“Benjamin raised her. Raised her alone,” added Mikhail, seeing the expression that crossed Annie’s face. “Danielle was unstable. She left the camp. We have had little contact with her since then.”
“Oh.” In spite of herself, Annie felt a slight lessening of the pressure against her ribcage. It was ridiculous, she knew. Sixteen years had passed since she left. Absurd to imagine that Ben could have missed her - that he might even have waited for her.
“So – how is he?” she said at last.
Mikhail cocked a satirical eyebrow. “You are asking after Benjamin?”
She nodded. “Why are you so surprised?”
“I’m assuming you want to kill him,” he said, disarming the fence and crossing through.
Annie pointed the gun at his chest. If he were to make a run for it, then here would be the place to choose. “Why do you say that?” she said. “Why would I want to kill Ben?”
“Everyone else does,” said Mikhail.
Annie tried for a moment to work out whether he was laughing at her. Even in the old days, Mikhail’s sense of humour had always been somewhat impenetrable, and his scarred face and ruined eye made his expression all the more difficult to read. She stepped between the sonic barriers -
And fell to her knees onto the grass as the charge went through her - something like an electric shock - rattling the fillings in her teeth, making her muscles clench and spasm and sending blood pouring from her nose.
Mikhail relieved her of the gun. Annie found herself staring down its barrel, its single eye and that of the Russian both focused upon her with deadly intent. Annie could see her own death in that black, unblinking eye, and she had a second to wonder at her own naïveté in believing that she could carry this through.
And then, just at that moment someone stepped out from in between the line of trees, gun leveled at the Russian’s back.
“Put down the gun, Mikhail.”
Slowly, the big man turned around, and with a gesture of exaggerated slowness, laid down his weapon on the ground.
“Now step back through the barrier. Do it, Mikhail, or I’ll shoot.”
Annie was beginning to recover. The sonic gate had been set to surprise her, but the charge, though unpleasant, had been far from dangerous. Indeed, Mikhail had managed to ignore its effects completely, catching Annie unawares. He stepped back through the barrier now, keeping an eye on the stranger, who immediately stepped up to the fence and raised the levels to their lethal limit.
Then she turned to Annie, who meanwhile had pulled herself to her feet and was watching the newcomer with a wary curiosity.
“You must be Annie,” she said, and smiled. “Nice to meet you. I’m Juliet.”


Chapter 65.
John Locke lay in the undergrowth, silently watching the mouth of the cave. He’d been lying there for nearly six hours, tracing the comings and goings from the Temple, trying to keep his mind alert and ignoring the mosquitoes that swarmed and proliferated along that part of the coast, settling on every inch of exposed skin, making him yearn to itch and slap –
Instead, he lay still and was patient. Locke had learnt patience over the years, and knew the value of timing. So far he had gathered some useful facts; he knew where the Others had their quarters in the caves under the stone feet of the broken figure; he had seen how Richard had taken charge and how the rest of them deferred to him – with that look of half-awe, half-apprehension that once they had reserved for Ben. He had seen a group of four of them move away, armed, into the jungle, and had heard the instructions Richard had given – to make it quick, so he doesn’t talk. He had watched as a body was burnt without ceremony in an ash-pit down by the shore, and had heard the cry of an infant some distance from the main camp. All of these things John Locke noted, and when night fell and the campfires were lit, casting giant shadows against the tunnel mouth, he crept out of his hiding-place, knife in hand, and silently went out hunting.
He located the child almost straightaway. Aaron’s wails had made it necessary to remove him from the tunnels in which the Others slept, and Amelia and Aaron were quartered beneath a traveling tent on the other side of the giant’s feet. Two armed guards were left to protect them – Locke did not remember their names, though he knew both of them by sight, and watched from the shadows as they lit a fire and sat drinking coffee late into the night, their faces red in the firelight, their guns slung carelessly to one side. They did not seem to be expecting trouble.
Stealthily, Locke drew closer, crawling on his stomach across the broken mess of rubble and long grass that formed the path to the temple. Once it had been a fine pavement, he saw; inlaid with pieces of coloured marble. How long ago had that been? A thousand years? Longer, maybe? The feet reminded him of those of the Colossus of Rhodes, long vanished now but remembered in legends, though their strange four-toed appearance was more like Egyptian or Sumerian art. He paused behind a fallen slab, tattooed with rosettes of whitish-green lichen, the rough stone still warm beneath his hands, although the sun was long gone.
Locke guessed it was almost midnight. Aaron had at last fallen silent, his exhausted cries tailing off into hitching sobs, then nothing. The only sounds were those of the sea and the little popping, crackling sounds of the Others’ small camp fire. From the lack of movement within the tent, he guessed Amelia must be asleep.
Locke inched forward, making no sound as he approached the tent. The two guards were still awake, but their vacant expressions suggested that they were less than alert. Locke kept the fire between the guards and himself, knowing that the brightness of the flames would do much to diminish their night vision, and began to move very cautiously towards the rear of the little shelter, moving only an inch at a time, then he skirted the tent, using its bulk to shield him from unfriendly eyes, and, using the tip of his knife, carefully cut a peep-hole into the weathered canvas.
As he’d thought. The woman was asleep, Aaron swaddled on a mat at her side. Thread by thread and in silence, Locke widened the gash in the tent, then, as his every nerve screamed at him to move fast and run for it, he snaked in one arm, then his head, and drew the child gently towards him.
At once, Aaron opened his eyes.
Locke froze. One cry, and he was done for. The small mouth puckered in readiness. The blue eyes fixed on Locke’s scarred face –
And whether the child remembered the man who had built his cradle, or whether Locke’s serenity, even in this time of crisis, was enough to reassure the frightened infant, or whether Jacob’s influence was somehow protecting the two of them, but Aaron did not make a sound, but simply smiled and held out his arms –
Five minutes later, Locke was on his way to the survivors’ beach. There was no time to see Jacob right now. As soon as Richard discovered that the baby was missing, he would search – and eventually would pick up the trail, although Locke had tried hard to hide it. But Richard knew the island too well to be fooled by a few simple hunter’s tricks. If Aaron was to be totally safe, then Locke had to hide him where Richard would not think to look – and where his mother could care for him in safety while awaiting rescue.
It would take Richard’s people twenty-four hours to reach the survivors’ camp, he knew. He could make it in rather less, with the help of the boat Cindy had told him about, hidden near the abandoned dock. A flat canoe, like Alex’s, which could make it to the beach in less than a day, and from there to Pala in rather less time than the Others would take to track them down.
Pala, now abandoned after the loss of the submarine, but well-stocked with food and medical supplies, and with Cindy to help her, Claire would be reasonably safe from whatever forces threatened her baby – be they Others, strangers or Jacob himself –
John Locke. Come to me. I demand it –
Come to me. Now!
Gritting his teeth against the voice that had whispered ever more persistently in his mind ever since he had left the little hut on the mountainside, Locke quickened his step again, moving at a hunter’s pace through the jungle, away from the hut, away from the camp where the Others still slept and where the man who called himself Richard Alpert – and who was, John believed, not a man at all – flicked with increasing frustration and wrath through the pages of Ben’s diary, finding nothing but coded messages instead of the information he sought, and slowly coming to the tiresome conclusion that Ben’s code was unbreakable without the key – unbreakable, therefore, without Ben –
Softly, Richard swore to himself. There was no other choice, he thought. They would have to bring Ben back alive. He turned on his walkie. “Jason. It’s Richard. Where are you now?”
“Near the barracks. A half-mile away. Why? Is there anything wrong?”
“Change of plan. I need Ben alive. Now let me talk to the kid.”
Now Jason sounded uncertain. “I’m not sure that’s such a -”
“I want to talk to him now,” snapped Richard.
The walkie crackled for a time, then a familiar, youthful voice said; “Hello?”
Richard smiled and took a deep breath, making his voice silky and confidential. “I need you to do something for me,” he said. “Remember your training? Room 23?”
“Sure I do,” said the youthful voice.
“All right, Karl. Now listen to me. I need you to do something dangerous. I need you to-”
There came a sudden thump and a squawk of static from the walkie.
“Karl? Can you hear me, Karl?”
Now there was urgency in the voice. “Richard, it’s –”
The line went dead.

Chapter 66.
Rose had seen Alex slip past the group on the beach and make her way toward the lone figure sitting down the beach away from the others. She observed their conversation like a silent movie, almost hearing the rise and fall of music as the silhouettes sat motionless and then became animated and then returned to stillness. Twice Alex had stood up and started to walk away, only to return, first sitting next to Desmond, then crouched back on her heels in front of him.
When she finally left him and moved back toward Rose, she seemed dazed, her footsteps drifting distractedly toward the water’s edge, and then zigging back up the beach when the waves on her ankles roused her from her clearly troubling thoughts. When she came near enough to hear, Rose called out to her.
“Come on and have some tea,” she said.
Alex looked at her for a moment, as if Rose had spoken a foreign language, and then shook her head absently and walked on. Rose threw a glance to Bernard, who interrupted his newly adopted morning workout, and caught up to Alex. Taking her gently by the elbow, he steered her toward the cookfire and deposited her on a tattered airplane seat. Rose smiled affectionately at her husband. They had not yet celebrated their first anniversary, yet Bernard sometimes seemed to read her mind. Of course, those occasions were merely punctuations in long stretches of typical male obliviousness, but that only made the occasions sparkle that much more.
Rose turned her attention back to Alex.
“You look like a lady with a lot on her mind,” Rose said.
Alex looked vaguely back at her, and Rose patted her shoulder.
“Here,” she said, handing her a mug of steaming liquid. “You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t…” Alex began. “I don’t know what…I can’t…” she stammered.
“That’s alright,” Rose said in a soothing tone. “Just drink your tea. You have to wait till your mind slows down enough for your tongue to catch up.”
She poured another cup of tea and handed it to Bernard. He did not reach out to take it and Rose saw that his gaze was transfixed on something in the distance over her shoulder. She turned to look, and in the growing glow of dawn, she saw the thin black line of smoke that split the sky.
“Not again,” Bernard murmured.
“’But when the cloud began to rise from the city in a column of smoke, Benjamin looked behind them; and behold, the whole city was going up in smoke to heaven. Then the men of Israel turned, and the men of Benjamin were terrified; for they saw that disaster was close to them.’”
“What?” Alex asked, seeming to emerge from her ruminations.
“Judges, chapter 20,” Rose said absently.
“What is that?” Alex asked, her voice more insistent.
Rose forced herself to look away from the distant cloud and sat down across from Alex.
“It’s from the old testament,” she explained. “Don’t you know your bible?”
Alex shook her head. “I’ve read parts of it,” she said. “I didn’t know there was a Benjamin in the bible.”
“Benjamin was Jacob’s youngest son,” Rose said. Alex’s eyes widened. “But not his favorite.”
“Who was his favorite?” Alex asked.
“Joseph,” said Rose. “Of course, Jacob playing favorites caused a lot of trouble for the family.”
“What happened to Benjamin?” Alex asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“He was accused of stealing something,” Rose replied, skipping the more lurid episodes surrounding Joseph and his jealous brothers.
She is stolen property. Jacob’s words echoed in Alex’s memory. The voice had seemed to shout inside her head, hurting her ears from the inside out. Involuntarily she squeezed her eyes shut against the memory of the white light that had engulfed Ben as he stood above her on the cliff’s edge – a pitiful and insignificant barrier between her and the shimmering creature made of darkness and cold. Protecting her as always; saving her from the calamity he himself had created.
Damn the man. Damn the father who had left her motherless. Could he save her now? Now that Desmond had seen her die? Would he? Did she want him to? Alex shook her head to still the raging confusion. She needed Karl. He would go with her to a hiding place where she could think what to do next.
Alex stood up even as she opened her eyes and muttered a perfunctory thanks to Rose and then turned toward the jungle.
“He was innocent,” Rose said. Alex took a few more steps and then stopped.
“What?” she said, at a loss to decipher Rose’s comment.
“Benjamin,” Rose replied, pouring Alex’s untouched tea into the sand near the fire. She cast an eye toward the dark-haired beauty and continued. “He wasn’t a thief. It was all a set-up.”
“By who? By Jacob?” Alex asked, not sure why she should care how the old testament fairy story turned out.
“No,” said Rose. “By his brother. Jacob’s favorite son.”
Alex nodded, although the clarification had only added to her confusion. As she moved off toward the trees, a form that had been hovering nearby dropped into the sand next to Rose.
“So is there a Hugo in the bible?”
A smile spread over Rose’s face. “Not one that gets any credit,” she said, wiping sand out of a fresh cup and handing it to Hurley.
Amelia let out a soft sigh of relief as she shifted her weight off of her arm and stretched it out. In the darkness of the tent, she opened and closed a fist and shook her hand to work out the pins and needles. She had been laying on it so long in the same position that it had fallen completely asleep. After a moment, the numbness subsided, and she settled into a comfortable position on her back, turning her head to glance at the bundle next to her. She wondered what Locke would think when he found the bottle of fresh milk and bits of toast she had tucked into the baby’s blanket with him. The silence outside her tent told her that the guards were none the wiser to their late-night visitor. Evidently they had assumed that any assault on the tent would have to come from the front, and that the priceless cargo inside was protected on three sides by a layer of canvas. Amelia shook her head in disgusted wonder and then pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.


Chapter 67.
Annie wiped the blood from her nose, trying to regain some dignity. This wasn’t the way she’d planned their meeting, but the unsettling combination of Mikhail’s treachery and the impact of seeing Juliet at last had contrived to rob her of her calm.
She looked the other woman up and down. It was a look that Juliet would have recognized, had she not still been watching Mikhail; a lightning top-to-toe appraisal, conducted in less than a second, but which took in every detail of her appearance, from her frayed and muddy T-shirt and jeans to the mass of pale ringlets that framed her face and fell across her china-blue eyes…
Damn her, thought Annie. She’s beautiful.
She was also younger than she’d thought; far too young for a person of her scientific standing and achievements. No wonder Ben wouldn’t let her go, Annie thought with sudden viciousness, conscious of her own bedraggled brown hair and the smear of blood across her face.
Still, she forced herself to smile and extended a hand towards Juliet.
“Rachel sends her love,” she said.
The stricken look on Juliet’s face was enough to calm some of her doubts. Whatever this woman’s allegiances, her present need to go home was no lie.
“You saw her?” she said.
“She misses you.”
Tears came into Juliet’s eyes. “So it’s real. I thought perhaps -” She swallowed. “I thought perhaps Ben faked it,” she said.
“Faked what?” Annie said.
“He showed me some video footage of Rachel and her child. A little boy. Julian. They were playing on the swings in a park. The little boy looked just like her. Ben showed me -” Juliet’s voice trembled a little, and Annie realized that her tears were of anger and helplessness, not of grief. “Ben showed it all to me. Then he told me I had to stay. He told me until my work was done -” Now her face was distorted with rage. “I hated him so much,” she said.
“Really?” said Annie.
On the other side of the sonic fence, Mikhail gave his derisive grin.
“What are you smirking at?”
“Nothing, Anastacia.” He turned to Juliet. “And so. This is why you betrayed him,” he said, a note of contempt in his dry voice.
“No,” protested Juliet. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone – I only wanted to go home!”
Annie interrupted her. “That doesn’t matter now,” she said. Her heart was frozen beneath her ribs. This woman – this beautiful woman – she thought, could not have hated Ben with such violence if she had not also loved him – once.
And what about Ben? Had he loved her? The thought alone made her mouth go dry.
“Mikhail. Do you know where he is?”
The Russian shrugged and shook his head. “I have not seen Benjamin since the beach. He may have escaped to the barracks. Or -”
He broke off abruptly.
“What is it?”
“Shhh.”
A crackle of something like static sounded, very loud in the quiet air. A radio? A walkie, perhaps? It came from Mikhail’s side of the fence. Holding up a hand in mute appeal, the Russian turned in the direction of the sound, moving in eerie, balletic silence towards the source of the interference.
Annie watched him, wondering how such a lanky, awkward man could manage to move so quietly. He drew back into the line of trees –
Just as three men and a woman entered the clearing beyond the fence. For a moment everyone froze and Juliet saw them clearly –
Karl was in the lead, she saw, still holding the walkie that had alerted them. The two men behind him were Jason and Adam - both armed with handguns, which was bad enough - but Juliet’s heart gave a sick jolt when she saw the woman who followed them. The young men were harmless enough; eager, biddable, glad to follow orders – but Isabel was a different breed; older, colder, clever and controlling. She had acted for Ben on a few occasions, helping to quell insurrection in the ranks, but Juliet knew that even Ben had never entirely trusted her – nor she him, for that matter.
As for Juliet herself – she’d seen the look in Isabel’s eyes when the order had come for her life to be spared. She’d shot her such a look of concentrated rage - and for a terrible moment Juliet had been certain that Isabel would simply refuse; would defy Ben and go ahead with the execution as planned-
But in the end she had not dared. Ben’s will had proved stronger than hers, for which she had never forgiven him. Since then, there had been no sign of her. Juliet had always vaguely assumed that when Ben had left the Hydra, he’d left orders for Isabel to stay –
Clearly, she’d had other ideas.
Now, for a second, their eyes locked. Juliet had time to see the other woman’s face harden fractionally, then she issued a sharp command. Jason and Adam drew their guns. Karl spoke urgently into his walkie–
“Richard, it’s -”
And then, in an instant, Mikhail was upon them. Unarmed, he was still a force to be reckoned with; first, knocking the walkie from Karl’s hand, he delivered a kick to Adam’s midsection that left him gasping on the floor, then, relieving the fallen man of his weapon, leveled it at the remaining two.
“Mikhail.” It was Isabel. “Put down the gun. We can talk about this.”
The Russian smiled. “Call me paranoid, but I already died three times this week. I think I prefer to keep the gun.”
Isabel shrugged. “As you wish.”
Meanwhile, behind the sonic fence, Annie looked at Juliet. “Hostiles?” she said.
Juliet nodded. “You could say that.”
“I imagined Ben would have dealt with them by now.”
Juliet gave a wry smile. “He did. But not the way you think.”
Keeping a wary eye on the Russian, Jason lowered his weapon to the ground. Isabel was apparently unarmed, but she faced Mikhail with a quiet arrogance that made Juliet feel profoundly uneasy.
She gave Juliet a contemptuous look – then fixed again on Mikhail. “Interesting choice of friends,” she said. “And I thought you were loyal to Ben.”
“What makes you think I am not?”
She smiled. “Ben may have tried to protect her,” she said, “but it’s clear she was planning to kill him.”
On the far side of the sonic fence, Annie drew a sharp breath.
“She enlisted Shephard to do it for her when Ben was on the operating table. It almost worked. Ben nearly died -”
Slowly, Mikhail shook his head. “I think someone else was behind that plan. Maybe even Benjamin himself -”
Isabel made a dismissive sound. “You’re telling me Ben would risk his life -”
Mikhail interrupted her. “It was a calculated risk. Benjamin knew that Shephard would act as he did. He knew about Juliet from the start. He knew that Juliet’s treachery would act as a means of securing the doctor’s co-operation. He, too, had been betrayed by a woman – a woman with a striking physical resemblance to Juliet. Benjamin was aware of this. He is an excellent judge of character.”
Isabel’s harsh features twisted into a sneer. “Perhaps not as good as you think,” she said. “Or do you think he also planned for her to betray us to the Dharma group?”
“Ben is a liar,” said Karl unexpectedly.
Mikhail gave him a thoughtful look.
Once more Isabel eyed Juliet with contempt, then allowed her gaze to rest on Annie. For a moment the younger woman was conscious of the intensity of Isabel’s will, of the chilly, feline curiosity in her pallid grey-green eyes.
“And who are you, my dear?” she said.
“Don’t tell her -” began Mikhail.
“I’m Annie,” she said. “I’m looking for Ben.”
Isabel’s eyes widened a little. “Really?” she said in a silken voice. “In which case, you should come with us. Juliet is a traitor, you know. She’d do anything to get what she wants. She even managed to seduce Ben into believing she was on his side.” Now Isabel’s voice took on a softer tone. “Of course, she’s very attractive,” she said. “You can see why someone like Ben might be - vulnerable – to that kind of manipulation –”
Annie looked at Juliet. “Did you?” she said in a voice that trembled a little.
“Annie, please. It wasn’t like that -”
But Annie’s face had hardened again. She aimed her weapon at Juliet. “Disarm the fence. I’m coming through. Mikhail. Put down the gun.”
“Annie, don’t -” said Juliet.
“Shut up!” cried Annie, finally losing her self-control. “Another word, and I’ll shoot you myself! Now, Mikhail. The gun, please -”
With exaggerated care, Mikhail lowered his weapon onto the grass.
Quickly, Jason picked it up. “Now turn around. Slowly.”
Isabel disarmed the fence, punching out the number code on the little keypad.
“Now walk,” said Jason to Mikhail, and gave him a hard shove backwards. For a moment the Russian hesitated, calculating the distance between them, trying to work out a possible move -
But Mikhail had not survived so long by taking unnecessary risks. Three guns were pointing at him now, ready to fire if he tried to resist. Annie might not shoot him, but Jason and Adam certainly would –
Shrugging, he went back to Juliet’s side. This way he still had a chance to warn Ben. Keeping his one eye on the guns, he backed away slowly towards the trees. Reluctantly, Juliet followed him, watching in silence from afar as Annie left the compound, and Juliet’s hope of rejoining her sister grew ever more distant in her wake...
Behind her, the fence was re-activated, the levels set to their lethal limit. Then Jason used the butt of his gun to smash the fence’s instrument panel, then, to ensure that it could not be quickly repaired, pulled out its electronic guts, its wiring and circuit boards, leaving them dangling uselessly from the shattered, buzzing keypad.
“Good,” said Isabel to Jason. “Get Richard on the walkie. Now.”
Annie looked at her, perplexed. “Richard?” she said. “What about Ben?”
“Let me explain,” said Isabel, putting a friendly arm around Annie’s shoulders whilst casually taking the gun from her hand. “Recently some of us have had certain – issues - with Ben.”
The friendly arm dropped a fraction, and Annie suddenly found her own arm trapped in a sudden, excruciating lock. She tried to break the painful grip, but Isabel seemed not to notice.
“In fact,” she went on, “there are some of us who think that for the good of us all, it’s time for a change of leadership.” Now the gun was pointing at Annie, digging into the small of her back. Behind her, Annie was vaguely aware of Jason, speaking in low, rapid tones, into the walkie.
Calmly, Isabel went on. “It’s time we had some discipline, not someone who thinks he’s above the law, who changes the rules whenever he wants to. Whereas Ben -” She gave her chilly smile. “Clever as he undoubtedly is, I’m afraid he hasn’t been clever enough. He’s told too many lies for that. Squirmed his way out of too many scrapes. He’s come to think that he’s immortal, and that Jacob will protect him no matter what. Well, he won’t. Not any more.”
Now Karl handed Isabel the walkie, and she held it to her ear in silence, her face alight with fanaticism. Annie could not hear what was being said, but the tone of Richard’s voice was urgent – and she thought, triumphant - as it sounded through the tinny speaker, rising and falling in the unmistakable cadences of authority.
Richard? she thought numbly. Richard’s in charge?
Now Isabel gave a thin-lipped smile, directed this time at the clump of trees into which the others had disappeared. She raised her voice a fraction, allowing it to ring across the little clearing.
“Of course, if he co-operates, then maybe Richard will let him live. Maybe we can do a trade -”
“A trade?” said Annie.
Isabel ignored her, simply raising her voice a little more. “I know you can hear me, Ben,” she said. “Karl told us you were hiding here. The moment we tripped the sonic fence, a little red light lit up in your quarters that was linked straight to that camera there -” Isabel pointed into the trees, where the squat shape of a surveillance camera was indeed just visible, high against the trunk of a palm, its LED like a distant red eye. “And you’ve been sitting there watching us ever since. Hiding down your rabbit-hole. Wondering what to do next -”
“How nice to be omniscient.”
The quiet, slightly nasal voice cut through Isabel’s speech like a blade. She turned instinctively towards the sound, and saw him standing some twenty yards behind her, in the jungle, legs apart, head slightly bent, eyes as hard as agates.
Isabel gasped – “Ben, no!-”
Then he shot her in the chest, then turned and shot Jason in the head, and would have done the same to Adam had Karl not already taken his gun –
“Thank you, Karl,” said Benjamin.
The young man gave a curt nod.
“I’m beginning to see why my daughter likes you. Shoot him if he moves. All right?”
Annie, watching open-mouthed, had time to appreciate the deftness and familiarity with which Ben handled the weapon, and to remember with a pang of regret the awkward teenager he’d been.
He’d changed so much – and yet, now, as he looked at her, his eyes alight, she realized he hadn’t changed a bit.
“Annie,” he said at last. “You came.”
Annie nodded. “Just passing through.”
Ben smiled, and reached for her hand – and just at that moment the sound of a shot ripped through the clearing. For a second no-one moved, or even seemed to acknowledge the sound - then Annie saw Karl’s face, as smooth and blank and impenetrable as the smoking pistol in his hand.
Ben’s face betrayed no pain. If anything, he looked puzzled, the way one might look when trying hard to see something just out of one’s visual range. He took a single step towards Annie, then stumbled and would have fallen, had she not reached out instinctively, supporting him as he collapsed then laying him gently onto the ground.
Even then she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that he’d been shot - until she saw the blood on her hands, the blood soaking through the back of his shirt –
“Ben?” she said. “Oh, please, Ben -”
Karl gave a little shake of the head, as if to banish some persistent insect. “Ben is a liar,” he said again in an oddly vacant, childish voice. And as Annie watched in horror, he raised his gun a second time and aimed it at the unconscious man, straight at his temple this time, as if he intended to finish the job.