That night, we explain to Jack and Hurley what's going on. "Candidates?" Jack asks. "Candidates for what?"

"To replace Jacob," I answer. "There are seven of us. Me, Sun, Jin, Sayid, Sawyer, and you two."

"Well, that's great," Frank says. "So what do we do now?"

"I don't know," Ilana says.

"Then, who does?" Jack asks.

"I as supposed to bring you to the Temple, but I can't do that now. So I'm supposed to ask a man named Ricardus what to do."

"Who's Ricardus?" Hurley asks.

Ilana points to Richard. "He is. So, Richard, what do we do next?"

Everyone looks at Richard, but he just starts to laugh. "Uh, I have no idea what we do next. You didn't tell your friends that I was trying to kill myself when you found me?" he says to Jack and Hurley. "That sounds like someone who has a plan?"

Ilana looks confused. "Why would Jacob say you knew what to do if—,"

"Because everything he ever said is a lie."

"What are you talking about?" Jack asks.

Richard just looks at Jack for a few seconds before explaining. "You wanna know a secret, Jack? Something I've known a long, long time. You're dead."

"You mean that figuratively right?" Hurley asks.

"No, I mean literally. We are all dead, every single one of us. And this, this, all this, it's not what you think it is. We're not on an Island, we never were. We're in Hell. So, I'm not interested in what Jacob said. In fact, maybe it's time to stop listening to him, and we started listening to someone else, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do." Richard grabs a torch out of the fire and heads into the jungle.

Ilana stands and walks over to her guns, loading it. Jack follows her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going after Richard," she says.

"Why? You heard him he doesn't know what we need to do next."

"He knows! Jacob told me. He has to know."

"Alpert has lost his mind," Richard's last name must be Alpert. "He thinks that we're, we're in hell. If he cared about what Jacob said, he wouldn't be talking about, about listening to someone else."

Ilana walks back over to the fire, sitting down. "Wait, you know who he meant?" Jack asks, confused. Oh, God, he doesn't know.

"Oh, this should be interesting," Ben muses.

"What?" Jack asks.

"He meant Locke," I say.

"Locke is dead."

"If it's any consolation," Ben says. "It's not exactly Locke."

Hurley is standing away from the fire, mumbling something out of earshot. Jack walks over to talk to him as Ben leans over to Ilana.

"Shephard is right, you know."

"Right about what?" Ilana asks.

"Richard. Going after him is a waste of time. He doesn't know anything."

"And what makes you so sure? "

"I've known him since I was twelve years old. That should count for something," he says.

"So you guys met when you were kids, huh?" Lapidus asks.

"No Frank, I was a kid. Richard looked just like he does today."

"You're saying this guy doesn't age."

"Believe it or not, Frank, he's telling the truth."

"How do you know?" Ilana asks me.

"Because I met Richard when I was stuck in the 70's with the DHARMA Initiative. And he looked exactly the same then as he does now."

"And how the hell do you think that happened?" he asks.


The next morning, Hurley went chasing after Richard. No one knows what to do, so I've fixed the collapsed dining table that Sun is now making breakfast on. I'm currently playing cards with Frank and Miles with a DHARMA pack I found in the kitchen.

I hear Ben start talking to Ilana, who is cleaning her rifle beside Sun. "Now what?" he asks.

"We wait."

"Wait for what?"

"For Richard to come back."

"You'll forgive my skepticism," Ben says. "But the last thing Richard said before he went stomping off into the jungle was that we were all in Hell and he had no idea what we were supposed to do next! In fact, I would bet money we never see him again!"

"Hugo will find him. He will track him down and bring him back."

"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I'm not sure Hurley can track anything," Miles says, looking up from our game.

"Hey, don't talk about bacon," Frank mutters.

"Jacob has never lied to me before," Ilana assures us. "If he said Richard knows what to do, then Richard knows what to do. He'll come back. And until then, we wait."

The next thing we know, slam! Sun thrusts the knife she's using into the table and storms off to her garden. Jack gets up from his seat and follows her.

I lay down my cards. "Gin."


An hour later Ben comes back from the jungle helping support Sun, who has a nasty bump on her head. "What happened?" I ask, coming over. Jack bends down and looks at her head.

I was getting mangos from the jungle and I found her unconscious. Sun says something in Korean, and I look at Ben. "Oh, and she can't speak English for some reason," he wraps up.

Ilana just stares at Ben. "What? I was just gathering mangoes and she was already unconscious when I found her. Why won't you believe me?"

"Because you're speaking," Ilana answers.

Jack looks at the wound on Sun's head. "You got a pretty decent size bump, might be a slight concussion. You can understand what I'm saying?" She just nods. "But you can only speak Korean."

She says something. I've spent some time in Seoul these past few years, working with Sun and I've picked up a bit of Korean. I manage to make out the word "right."

"She hits her head and forgets English?" Miles asks skeptically. "Are we supposed to buy that?"

"Asks the man who communes with the dead," Frank retorts.

"It might be aphasia," Jack says. "It's um, a condition that's caused by trauma and it affects the language center of your brain. It's usually temporary. Sun, you're gonna be okay."

"What are you smiling about?" Miles asks. I look over and see that he's talking to Ilana. I follow her gaze to the tree line, where Richard and Hurley appear.

"Pack your bags," Richard says. "We're leaving."

"Where exactly are we going, Richard?" Jack asks, standing up.

"Where's Locke?" Richard asks Ben, ignoring Jack.

"What?" Ben asks, confused.

"You said he came to recruit you. Where did he say he'd be?"

"Hydra Island."

"Which is exactly where you landed the plane that you flew back here, right?" Richard asks Frank.

"That's right."

"This man wants to leave the Island, and that plane's the only way he can do it. You wanna know where we're going, we're gonna stop him."

"This is your fault isn't it?" Miles says to Hurley.

"Sorta."

"How are we gonna stop him from getting on the plane?" Ilana asks.

"We have to destroy it."

At this, Sun gets up and starts yelling. I can't really understand her because she's speaking really fast. But I can tell from her inflection that she's asking questions.

"Why isn't she speaking English?" Richard asks.

"She was hit on the head when she was running away from Locke," Jack answers.

Richard's eyes widen. "He came back here?" Jack nods, and he turns back to Sun. "What, what did he want? What did he say to you? Do you understand me?"

Sun yells at him some more. At one point she points to Ilana. Then she just storms off to her old tent.

"I don't think she wants to come," Hurley says.


At night, Jack discovers that even though Sun can't speak English, she can still write it. He convinces her that we need to follow Richard's instructions. We have to destroy the plane.