The Alarm
Every hundred and eight minutes, the alarm went off. He'd hardly noticed it last night. Too much pain and fatigue. Now he was more clear-headed. The continuing pain actually helped. He'd come to view pain as a clarifying and focusing force, when it wasn't too overpowering. That began back when he was twelve, when he came back from having been "kidnapped" by the Hostiles and, at first, thought his father had changed and would love him and later, with the first drunken clout across the head, knew both that his father would never love him and that he would never again fear him or the pain he caused.
That was the time he went from being an American kid stuck in Dharma Never Never Land to being an undercover Hostile in the enemy Dharma camp. He couldn't remember the precise change. It had all been a time of pain and chaos in his childhood that was all a blur in his memory. All he remembered was one day he was one of Them and he knew one day he would be their leader. They'd made it happen, he and Richard. The somewhat pathetic irony of the tumor in his spine was that what was going to kill him barely hurt yet, while this ridiculous hole in his shoulder that wasn't remotely life-threatening hurt worse than anything he'd ever experienced. Except for being shot as a child, but he could scarcely remember anything about that.
He turned his mind away from such edifying subjects and opened Karamazov. He hadn't read it in years, but the first sentence was still so familiar.
"Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place." He appreciated things being in their proper place. He easily fell into the Russian rhythm of the storytelling, while also thinking about what Henry Gale would say about it, how he could use it to extract information from Shephard or, particularly, Locke, who seemed to be familiar with Dostoyevsky, and about what was going on outside the armory. People came in, people went out, the alarm went on, it stopped. He wondered who was entering the code and who had told them what to do. Shephard's annoyed words to Locke might have indicated that they didn't know what they were doing and possibly that Locke was the one who had convinced the others that they needed to do it. How had he done that, if he had?
When the door lock began to click, he had time to flip to the front of the book and pretend like he hadn't gotten a fair way into it, mesmerized by its words. Shephard came in, carrying his little tray again.
"I want to take a look at your shoulder. We need to prevent infection."
"By all means, let's prevent infection." Henry Gale had a snarky side to him, it seemed, very similar to his own but also entirely different. He was sarcastic and snide for the sheer love of the words and because there was a certain entertainment value to be got in others' reactions. Henry Gale was sarcastic because he was a powerless little man in an uncertain, frightening position and only had his tongue as a weapon.
He closed his eyes as the front bandage came off and Shephard began a careful examination of the front of the wound.
"Looks like you're doing good."
Doing well. If I were doing good, I would be going around giving shoes to orphans. Is there something about America that makes even highly educated people unable to speak their own language? I think I'm glad I'm not American. (Never mind that technically he was.)
"What is that alarm that keeps going off? It's very annoying."
"Talk about it," Shephard muttered, moving around to his back.
"So…do you know what it is? If your plane crashed here so recently, you can't have always been responsible for it."
He felt Shephard's doctorly fingers stop prodding him for just a second. "What do you mean, responsible?"
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Alarms don't go off for no reason. They want you to respond to them. And an alarm that goes off every hour and a half like clockwork wants you to do something every hour and a half. So you have to sit around here doing what it wants every hour and a half. I just hope there's a good reason."
Shephard taped a new bandage to his back slightly more forcefully than necessary, which made him smile to himself.
"There's a reason, and it's none of your business."
He didn't actually smile, because Shephard was going back around him to pick up his plate.
"Do you want a wash?"
"A wash?"
"You know, the thing you do with water and soap? You could use one."
"Yes, well, that happens when you're locked in a room for two days."
"Shut up and come on."
Shephard kept a firm hand on his left shoulder and steered him out of the armory. He took in as much as possible of the Swan station, which wasn't much, because Shephard pushed him around the corner and into the bathroom.
"Sink, soap, razor. That's what you get. The door doesn't close."
"I take it being a jailor isn't a normal pastime for you."
"Shut up and wash."
"It just doesn't seem to suit you, that's all," he murmured and bent over the sink.
Some minutes later a deep, resonant voice echoed through the station. "Hello?"
Frantically Shephard jolted up from his position against the wall outside and slipped into the bathroom, slid the door closed. Henry thought of several snide things to say and did not say them.
"Hello?"
He dried his hands. "What's the—"
Shephard waved a hand in his face. "Shhh!"
"Hello?"
Locke's voice answered. "Howdy."
"Hello, John. You're alone?" There was a deepness to the vowels and a lightness to the consonants that made him pause to try to place the accent, running over the survivors in his mind.
"Not anymore," Locke said lightly.
"How many of you—" he began, but Shephard interrupted him.
"Shut. Up."
"I was hoping to borrow a saw," said the new voice, and with that he placed it. African. Eko. Nigerian drug lord and pretend priest. Quite the intriguing character. Difficult to find information on, but his contacts in Africa had done it, and Goodwin had sent back some interesting character analysis, before he died.
"Absolutely. Right this way," Locke said cheerfully, and they moved off out of earshot.
"Who was that? Was he African? Are there many more of you?"
"Just finish."
"Nice that you managed to find a place like this and a stash of tools to dole out to people," he said, finishing his shaving. "What do you make them pay?"
"Pay? We don't make anyone pay. We're not like that."
"Oh. Sorry. I just figured you have this whole mini society set up. You as president or king-slash-jailor, Mr. Jarrah as policeman, Mr.—whoever the bald man is—as—what? Cook? Obeyer of the alarm?"
"You talk too much."
"Well, what else am I supposed to do? Memorize Russian names from Dostoyevsky? I can't even pronounce them."
A flat hand slapped the door. "He's gone," Locke said.
Shephard opened the bathroom door. "You done?"
"I suppose I'm presentable enough for prison."
As he stepped out of the bathroom, the alarm went off. Shephard seized him by the shoulder and propelled him back into the armory. "John!"
"I've got it," Locke said, loping off across the room.
"His name's John? He doesn't look like a John. Allan, maybe."
"Allan?" Shephard paused in the door of the armory.
"You know, Quatermain? Never mind. Don't forget to lock the door on your way out. And I wouldn't mind some lunch."
