I grab the arms of a woman I do not recognize and pull her out of the window of the burning house. The walkie talkie on my belt goes off, Sawyer's voice yelling out, "All security! All security! This is LaFleur! We have a fire! Everyone get to building fifteen, now!"

"Roger that. I'm on my way," Phil's voice says from a different feed. He shows up moments later, Sawyer eventually managing to start one of the emergency fire hoses and dousing the scorched house.

When the flames have died, Sawyer notices Phil. "Why're you here?" he yells.

"You called all security to the fire."

"Not you, you dimwit. You were supposed to guard the hostile!"

"He's locked up in a cage. We've got nothing to worry about Mr. LaFleur."

"I'll say when we've got nothing to worry about, Lurch," Sawyer grits from his teeth, heading toward the security monitoring station. I decide not to follow, since I'm technically not on duty.

As I make my way back to my house the walkie goes off again. "Attention," Phil's voice says. "The prisoner escaped. The hostile is no longer in custody. Be on the lookout. He could be armed."

Crap. I turn around and start to jog back to the security station, when Jin's voice comes out of the walkie. "LaFleur, it's Jin here. Come in."

"Jin? Jin, what's goin' on?" Sawyer asks from his walkie, but there's no response. "Jin? Jin!?" Nothing. "All security, this is LaFleur. Everyone report to the monitoring station, immediately."

I continue my jog towards the building. I see other beefy security members file inside. I enter, and I'm easily the smallest person there. "Everyone here?" Sawyer asks. "Alright. The plan is to search the grids in teams for the hostile. There's no response from Jin, so we need someone to keep calling him on the walkie until we can get through or find his body." There's an uncomfortable shift throughout the room. I know Sayid would never kill Jin. Jack, maybe. But never Jin. "Phil, you keep trying to get through to Jin while we're on the lookout. Tia, you don't know the grid system yet, so we'll keep you here with a walkie at the monitoring station." I nod in agreement. "Alright, let's move out."

Everyone leaves the building and I'm by myself. The weirdest thing about all of this is that Sawyer seems to genuinely want to protect these people. He actually cares. Seems like Sawyer's done a bit of growing up these past few years.

The door to the station was left ajar and I hear Horace's voice ring out throughout the Barracks. "Okay, everybody listen up! We don't know yet if another attack is coming. So everybody needs to be ready for your security assignments. Make sure you're in contact with your team leaders. LaFleur's got search parties out, but the hostile's got a good jump on us. We're pretty sure he used this fire as a diversion in order to escape."

"He was locked up. How would he start the fire?" a familiar voice asks.

"Who are you?" Horace asks.

"I'm Jack Shephard. I'm new."

"Well, Jack, the way he started the fire is he had help, okay? Somebody torched that van, and then that somebody let him out of his cell. And since the security cameras didn't pick up any hostiles crossing the perimeter that means it was one of us."

There's chatter amongst the DHARMA folk at the news of this new revelation. I had muted my walkie so that Phil's calling for Jin didn't drown out Horace's speech, but now that it's over, I turn it back on. "Hello Jin? Are you there? Jin?! Can you hear me?"

"Hello?" Jin's muffled voice finally answers the call.

"Jin? It's Phil, man. Where have you been? The hostile escaped. We're searching the east grid."

"He's headed north."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Because he attacked me."

At this, I am not surprised. If Jin is as invested in these people as Sawyer and Miles seem to be, then he would have been very cautious about this whole thing, giving Sayid motivation to make a quick getaway. Then I remember what Horace said. Someone on the inside had to help him. It wasn't me and it wasn't Kate. It definitely wasn't Sawyer, Miles, Jin, or Juliet. Could it have been Jack or Hurley? No, I seriously doubt it.

"What?" Phil's voice asks Jin in surprise over the walkie. "Where are you?" There's no response from Jin. "Jin?! You still there? Jin!"

"We have an emergency," Jin says. "One of the children has been shot by the hostile."

The walkie falls from my hand in shock and clatters on the ground. Sayid shot a child? There's only one child here he would kill.

Sayid has just shot a twelve-year-old Benjamin Linus.

There are plans made over the walkies to pick up Jin and Ben. As the location is given, I switch the monitor to Jin's location. Ben is in his arms, blood spilling from his stomach. Sayid's shot wasn't very clean.

The cavalry of DHARMA security appears on the camera and they load Ben into one of the blue vans. Soon, they're on their way back and I'm not familiar enough to follow them by switching the monitors. I don't know the grids that well.

About fifteen minutes later, I hear a male voice yell out "That's my kid! That's my kid!" Are Ben's parents here? Wow, this is so weird.

So, if Ben dies, does that mean we never come to the Island? Or do we still, but we don't have to deal with the Others? I have no clue how this time travel thing is supposed to work. Faraday could probably explain it, but Faraday is in Ann Arbor.

Sawyer comes down the steps into the station moments later, his hands stained from Ben's blood. "Hey, Brown Eyes," he says to me, sounding completely exhausted. I smile as he starts flicking switches on the monitors. But not much time passes before Kate is in the room with us. She gives me a suspicious look, then turns to Sawyer. "What happened?" she demands.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sawyer asks, turning around to face her.

"That was Ben. That kid who was shot was Ben. Was it Sayid? Did he shoot him?"

"Here's what you need to do, Kate: keep your mouth shut and stop asking questions. 'Cause putting any attention on yourself is the last thing I need right now. Now scram. I don't want you around here."

"I just wanna know what's going on," she says. "Why is Tia in the loop, and I'm not?"

Before Sawyer can answer, Horace's voice comes from outside the door. "LaFleur," he says, entering the room with Miles, Phil, and Jin. Horace notices Kate immediately. "What, uh... What's she doing here?"

Sawyer points awkwardly at Kate. "This is, uh..."

"I'm Kate," she answers for him.

"Kate. She's new over at the motor pool. I was seeing if she saw anything suspicious, but she didn't, so...you can run along, thanks."

Kate quickly leaves the station and Horace turns back to Sawyer and I. "Have either of you checked out the hostile's cell yet?"

"We were a little busy trying to keep the town from burning down, Horace," Sawyer defends.

"Okay. Well, then let's do it." Horace leads us into Sayid's cell. The door is ajar and unbroken. "He didn't break out. Somebody let him out."

Sawyer grabs the set of keys on the bench. "These are janitor's keys."

"We've only got three janitors," Horace says. "There's Roger, Willie and, uh, that new guy. I just met him. His name's Jack."

"Yeah. I just brought him in from the sub. I'll go talk to him. Miles, Tia, you wanna come with me?" Sawyer asks.

"Yeah, sure, boss," Miles says, and I follow the two men up the stairs.

Outside, Sawyer looks around to make sure he can't be heard and he turns to Miles. "All right, I want you to find Jack and Hurley and Kate as quick as you can. Put 'em in a house and sit on 'em."

"What for?" Miles asks, confused.

"'Cause I don't want 'em talking to anybody else. Things are starting to spin out of control here."

"All right, I got it."

Sawyer turns to me. "You're with me. Come on."

"Where are we going?" I ask him.

"The infirmary. They've probably got Juliet in there working on Ben, but she may need an extra pair of hands."

"What makes you think I would be any help in this situation?"

"I thought you took out the doc's appendix?"

"Three years ago. Sawyer, I haven't done anything medical in a long time. I'm out of practice. And I'm no help anyway. I saw Ben's wound on the monitor. It's too difficult to repair. He's a goner."

Before Sawyer can respond, we've made it to the infirmary and a man with sunken eyes sits on the steps on the porch. "Who did this?" he asks Sawyer, standing up. I look at his breast pocket and see that his name is Roger and he's a workman. "Do you know who did this to my son?" Ahh, this is Ben's dad. Roger Linus.

"Not yet," Sawyer tells him. "But we're working on it. How's he doing?"

"I don't know. Juliet told me to wait out here."

"Let me see if I can get an update for ya," Sawyer says, waving my inside.

"Thanks, Jim," Roger says. "Hey, who are you anyway?" he asks me.

"Oh, I'm Tia. I'm new."

"Can you help my son?" he asks me, with pleading eyes. Never in a million years did I think I would ever walk into an O.R. trying to save Ben's life, like Jack had all those years ago on Hydra Island.

"Roger?" Sawyer says, turning back around, not giving me a chance to respond to Roger's pleading.

"Yeah?"

"You happen to have your keys with you?"

"Yeah. Why? What do you need?" Roger starts patting his pockets, but they must be empty since he produces nothing. "I must've left them at...at the house," he says, confused.

"It's all right. Don't you worry about it," Sawyer says to him. "Come on, Tia."

I follow him inside and a woman hands me a surgical face mask. I tie it on, but Sawyer just holds his over his mouth. I follow him to one of the beds, where Juliet stands over it, her hands in Ben's gut. "More gauze," she says t the nurse, who hands it to her. "If we can't stop the hemorrhaging, we're gonna have to pack the whole tract."

"Where's the doctor?" Sawyer asks her.

"At the Looking Glass station til Friday."

"How is he doing?"

"Not well." She tells the nurse to hold on and she walks us away from Ben's cot. "He's still bleeding in there somewhere, and I can't fix it," she says, sounding defeated.

"It's all right," Sawyer says, trying to comfort her. "Maybe Tia can—,"

"No, no not Tia," she protest, shooting me an apologetic look. "Someone needs to get in there who can find the damage that bullet did and fix it. He needs a real surgeon."

Sawyer and I exchange a glance and instantly, I know we're thinking the same thing. But there's no way in hell he would do it. Not again.