Chapter Nine:
"Faster, faster."
"Be patient," Harold advised, though on the inside he was just as anxious as Amy. The airlock seemed like it was taking forever to drain and the door to the sub bay wouldn't open until it did.
Harold glanced down at his watch and realized that it was already past three thirty in the morning, which meant that the Hostiles had been on his island for over nine hours already.
Finally, once the room was sufficiently emptied, the light next to the door turned green and Amy pushed it open without hesitation.
At first, Harold was relieved to see that the sub bay was empty. Then he realized that not only was it devoid of Hostiles, but that Grant and the others were absent as well.
"The door's closed!" Amy yelled. Harold peered down through the pool water and saw that she was right. "We're doomed."
"Not yet. There's an override control inside the sub itself. Come on."
Harold climbed onto the deck of the Galaga and down through the hatch, with Amy close on his heels. He left her to shut and seal the door behind them while he sprinted for the driver's seat and began starting up the machine.
"What happened to the others?" Amy asked as she caught up with him.
"I don't know. They probably turned around once they saw that the bay doors were closed. I'll bet they went back to the beach and if that's the case we can pick 'em up on our way out."
Suddenly, they heard the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere outside the sub. Harold peered through the periscope and saw four Hostiles, all armed with rifles, running towards them.
"Did you lock the door?"
"Of course."
"Then we should be fine." For the first time, Harold realized that they actually had a chance of escaping. Their plan had been shot to sunshine, but somehow in the end it had all turned out okay. Hope flooded through his heart as he hit the button to open the bay doors.
"This is it, Amy," he said with a smile. "We're free."
"No, I'm afraid we're not."
Harold's head snapped up look at Amy. But to his great surprise he found himself looking, not at her angelic face, but down the barrel of a gun.
"What… what are you doing?" he asked nervously.
"I'm sorry, Harold. But I've been thinking about what Arnold said and I'm afraid he's right. This is their island, and we have no right to be here."
The momentary shock of Amy's betrayal finally began to wear off. "Fine, so let's leave."
Amy shook her head. "It's too late for that. There's no place for us out there anymore. This island is our home now. And besides, if we leave, DHARMA will know that something went wrong and when they find out what the Hostiles have done, they'll come back seeking revenge. It'll be complete genocide of an innocent civilization. I can't just allow that to happen."
Harold swallowed audibly. "Amy, look at me. What are you trying to do? If we stay here, they'll kill us; we have to leave!"
"No, we don't. Like Arnold said: if we apologize, they'll forgive us."
Harold took a moment to think about his situation. He was incredibly tempted to do what she said, and the two of them could live on together as part of the Hostiles. But Harold knew that he would never truly be happy again; he couldn't live with the woman who had betrayed him.
"I'm sorry that this had to happen, Amy, but I won't apologize for events beyond my control. We came here seeking a better world, and we found it. I wish that the Hostiles had never been here, that this conflict had never started, but that's just not the case. And if they couldn't live with us peacefully, then we had no choice but to fight back."
"I'm very sorry you feel that way."
Before Harold had a chance to say anything else, Amy lowered the gun and shot him in the chest.
As his vision began to grow blurry, he had time to utter but one more sentence, "I love you, Amelia."
His beloved smiled. "I love you too, Harold." Then she reached down, ripped out a lock of Harold's hair, and glanced at her watch.
"Time of Death: four o'clock."
THE END
