"Don't worry about James. You only injured his pride. It's good for him." Locke set a reassuring hand on Alex's shoulder, as a look of uncertainty had appeared on the teenager's face.
"Well are ya comin' or ain't ya?" Sawyer's voice found its way back to his three companions.
"We should catch up to him. He doesn't have a clue where he's going." Alex ran ahead to guide everyone in the right direction. Rousseau and Locke followed her.
"Son of a bitch," Sawyer uttered in pure astonishment at what sat in front of him. By then, Locke, Rousseau, and Alex were standing behind him. "The hell is this, Underdog?"
"I don't know yet, Sawyer. Give me a minute to find out." Alex snapped in a whisper.
The thing standing in the middle of a clearing was a gigantic cube, about eight feet in each dimension. A coat of graying paint was flaking off the outside. Embossed into one side were the letters "CV."
"CV… CV…" Locke muttered to himself. He had obviously seen these letters together before.
"These are familiar to you?" Rousseau's question was directed at Locke.
"CV stands for something…" Locke's hushed manner indicated he was thinking. "Where have I seen these letters before?"
"Hey! Look at this!" Alex's voice came from the far side of the cube. Rousseau and Locke came to see what she was yelling about, but Locke stayed put.
"Now what've we got here, Sheena?" Sawyer's mocking tone didn't fully disguise a genuine interest.
"Just watch." Alex reached up the metal siding, felt around for a moment, then gripped something. With a yank, a lever came free. Once pulled down, the box gave a shudder. Mechanical sounds began to emanate from inside. A corner of the box fell away, revealing a five-foot high door.
"Son of a bitch." A note of awe found its way into Sawyer's statement.
Alex, who'd managed to climb up and sit on top of the container, jumped to the ground, and made her way through the door. A moment later she emerged and barely managing to get away from the cube as its roof raised, detaching from three of four sides, only stopping once it was flesh with the rest of the wall. All four walls then sank into the ground.
A large, oval-shaped hole gaped in the spot where the box had stood a moment before. Walking around to the far side of the pit, Rousseau laid down amongst the grass.
"It looks like a grate or filter of some kind." Rousseau informed her companions.
An expression of comprehension flitted across Locke's face. "It's a vent."
"The hell you talking about, Hoss? Why would there be a vent in the middle of the jungle?" Sawyer, ready as ever with an insult and a nickname, asked.
"Remember Desmond's hatch? The one Boone and I found?" Locke began to explain. "It went into lockdown mode once, and my leg got trapped under the door. The lights went out, and an image of a map appeared on the door I was under. On it, the letters CV were marked in several places. This must be one of them."
"So you think the V stands for vent." Alex clarified. "What's the C for then?"
"Cerberus. The C stands for Cerberus." Sawyer and Alex jumped as Ben's voice came from directly behind them. Locke and Rousseau barely twitched.
"Hello, Ben. Thanks for joining us. Care to explain what the Cerberus is?" Locke addressed Ben as if they were old friends who'd recently come to hate each other more than a snowball hates a microwave.
"One of the most advanced security systems around. An intelligent being that can defend without worry of being hurt itself. Genius." The fact that Ben had answered Locke's question without argument was stunning.
"If it's a security system, why do you need the sonar fence?" Alex asked her adoptive father.
"That's the question isn't it? The Cerberus was designed to protect the DHARMA Initiative, but it got out of hand. Now it thinks everything is a threat. The only thing that repels it is the fence, which you successfully disarmed! If it learns about the vents, we're all done for." Only a hint of anger colored Ben's voice.
"There's more of 'em?" Sawyer strode up to Ben, his hand going to the knife lent to him by Alex.
Locke spoke up, at that moment, first to placate Sawyer, then to question Ben. "Take it easy, James. What exactly does this vent do?"