Chapter 1

SEATTLE GRACE

TWO DAYS LATER

"I'm a little surprised you've gone to all this trouble, sir," Dr. Izzie Stevens said to her patient.

"Please, call me Matthew."

"All right, Matthew." Izzie graced her subject with the smile that, for a change, was not entirely genuine.

Usually Izzie Stevens liked working at the clinic. For all the bittersweet memories that it brought up in her – it was, after all, named for Denny who had left her the money to finance it – she still got a sense that she was doing good in it. It had taken her awhile, and her bout with cancer the previous year hadn't helped, but she had finally gotten to a place where she really was over the cardiac patient she had fallen in love with, a man she had never even got on a proper date with before he died. Working here every week gave her a feeling that she was paying tribute to Denny, not simply deciding to die for him.

However there was something about today that just seemed off. The man she was currently performing a physical on had shown up about an hour ago. A couple of nurses who worked in the clinic had approached him and asked if he needed help, but he didn't seem to hear them. In fact, he'd barely seemed to acknowledge their existence. Then ten minutes ago, an understandably irked Izzie had walked over to him, intending to ask him to leave. A moment later he'd gotten to his feet and apologized. He'd said that he'd just made a trans-Pacific trip the day before and was feeling rundown. When she'd suggested that it might just be jet-lag, he'd told her that he'd been on his share of flights over the years and he just felt more tired than usual. "In my case, its better to be safe than sorry," he told her.

"So what is you do, Matthew?" Izzie asked as she began to draw blood.

"I'm a corporate recruiter," he told her. "I've been all over the globe for my next assignment and I thought that I needed to get looked at before I got on my next plane."

"Sorry you had to spend what little time you have here," Izzie said.

"It's all right. I've spent my share of time in hospitals." He didn't elaborate which Stevens wasn't inclined to pry on.

"What exactly are you recruiting for?" she said, trying to change the subject.

"The same thing I always do." Matthew kept his eyes on her. "Getting people where they need to be."

That was a neat statement. It took a moment for Izzie to realize he'd completely avoided answering the question.

"This Denny Duquette? How much did he give to get this place named for him?"

The statement was delivered so casually that actually took a moment for it to sink in. As was always the case, she tried to keep her demeanor perfectly blank. But either it must've shown through or this man was extremely good at noticing when he'd struck a nerve. "Did you know the man?"

"You could say that." Izzie said as calmly as she could manage. "He was a long-term patient at this hospital. Died here, actually."

"Were you…friendly?"

For the first time in she didn't know how long, this strange tingle started in Stevens' stomach. It was nothing she could put her finger on, exactly, but she had this sense that somehow this Matthew knew the answer to that question. Had, in fact, known it before he had asked about the clinic in the first place.

"When a patient spends as much time in the hospital as you do, he gets friendly with almost everybody." Izzie tried to answer in as neutral a tone as she could. "I'd say almost everybody who was in the hospital then still mourns his loss."

"That doesn't seem like a healthy attitude to take."

This was a perfectly rational tone for an outsider to have. Nevertheless, she was starting to feel hostile to this man in a way she hadn't felt towards anybody for a very long time.

"Forgive my impertinence, Dr. Stevens, but I would imagine that when it comes to the field of medicine, a doctor must be impartial if they are to survive," Matthew seemed remarkably calm given how serenely he was picking her profession apart. "You have to take the position, that no matter what how much you try there are some people who you can't save. Whose paths do not lead to leaving alive."

"When did you receive your last tetanus shot?" Stevens asked in a way where she could tell the hostility could've been felt in Tacoma. Matthew, however, seemed unfazed by it and gave her his information.

They spent the next couple of minutes going over medical information and running various tests, so they were spared the effort of further conversations. Izzie was just about at the point where she thought she could set aside her earlier feelings of hostility when Matthew asked another question.

"I'm sorry if I upset you earlier, Dr. Stevens," Matthew said apologetically. "I just get this feeling when I'm in a hospital."

"It's all right," Izzie said, though honestly she wasn't sure if it was. "Everybody gets nervous when there in a hospital."

"I never said I was nervous," Matthew replied. "It's just that sometimes my job requires I go to places like this and often, you really don't know what you'll see."

"Your job requires recruiting doctors?" Izzie was starting to doubt every word out of this man's mouth.

"You never know where you'll find the right candidates for the job," Matthew said. "Besides, sometimes you go there and you find some truly inspirational people. I remember a few years back, I was in this hospital in Los Angeles."

If there had been a tingle before about this man, a genuine warning siren went off the second she heard the last two words. It could've been nothing – Los Angeles was one of the biggest cities in America and a corporate recruiter might very well go there – but a hospital? Izzie was becoming increasingly certain that this man was not just here for a physical.

"There was this man. He'd been thrown from an eight-story window and was still alive." Matthew said calmly as ever. "I know you've probably seen cases like this yourself, Isobel, but this man, there was something about him."

Izzie was in such a panic about the fact that this man clearly knew who John Locke was and what had happened to him that it took her several seconds to realize something very clearly. "How do you know my first name?" she said, using all of her self-control to maintain a calm demeanor.

"Like I told you, I'm a corporate recruiter. And I do my homework when I do my job, Dr. Stevens." Something about Matthew's tone had changed. "What did he tell you?"

Izzie knew that there was a threat in the man's voice now. "Who do you work for?"

"The kind of people who would like to know the kinds of things you do," Matthew said. "The kind of people who know that they're lying."

There was little point in pretense now. "Answer my question, and I might answer yours."

"How long have you been in remission?"

Now Izzie was past worried; she was borderline terrified. She also knew she needed to keep this conversation going. "If you know I had cancer, you also know it's gone."

"It's in remission. Which is code for, 'until it comes back.' You're a doctor; don't pretend you don't worry about every time you go to bed at night."

Izzie knew this man was trying to figure out how much Jack had told her. "Why me? You could have chosen any of the doctors in this hospital, but you wanted us to be in the same room."

"I represent people who have a vested interest in what Dr. Shephard has told his colleagues. Now if you were willing to extend certain courtesies, there are things I can do that as a doctor, you'd find appealing."

With certain queasiness, Izzie was beginning to realize this was a variation of the offer that Richard Alpert had made to Juliet to get her, without her knowledge, to the island. "I'm fine where I am."

"You're sure about that," Matthew said coolly. "As a doctor, you wouldn't be interesting in going somewhere where the laws of science don't apply? Where your cancer could be permanently treated?" He paused. "Where you could see him again?"

Whoever this man really was, he had the capacity to go straight for the jugular. A year ago, this offer would have been tremendously appealing. Even now, content as she was with Alex, a part of her really ached at the thought of seeing Denny again.

"Dr. Stevens?"

"You're good." Izzie gathered all the force she could. "But your sales pitch really needs work."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your mistake was you didn't lead with the promise of the cure for cancer." Firmness she honestly didn't think she had was beginning to fill her voice. "I mean, what doctor could resist the lure to treat the deadliest of all diseases, especially one that almost killed her? But you started out by threatening my friend. A friend who saw me through the worst moments of my life. And once you've done something like that, asking me to betray him – that was idiotic." She looked at him. "There's nothing wrong with you – physically, at least. Now you say your job is to get people where they need to be. Well, you need to be anywhere but here."

She said the last half of that speech turned away from the man, wanting to sound as cold and dismissive as he had been. It was not until she turned back to him that she realized that she had made a major miscalculation.

He'd seemed cold and dispassionate before. Now he looked like an animal waiting to pounce. "You made a mistake too, Dr. Stevens," he said a silky tone that was clearly all for a choice. "You assume that the people I work with take no for an answer."

Izzie had tripped a panic button, but 'Matthew' was impossibly fast. He had his hand on her wrist before she could blink,

"I need you to deliver a message. It's relatively simple, so don't make a mistake," Matthew said in a bone-chilling whisper. "As much as they want to pretend it doesn't exist, we know it does. And if they thought that they could turn their backs on it, they are sorely mistaken."

There was no point in pretending any more. "They left. It's over."

"The only reason they left is because it let them. And it's not done until we say it is."

By now, someone was pounding on the door. "I'm curious as hell as to how you intend to get out of here," Izzie couldn't help but say.

That was all she got out before she was thrown to the ground so hard she lost consciousness.

LGLGLG

"Our security system was overhauled after the Code Black. How the hell is there no footage of this man leaving?"

Miranda Bailey was practically living up to her nickname, but the security guard stuck to his guns. "There's no footage in any of the elevators. We're checking the security in the garage and all the exits. They show him entering the building at 1:15 PM. There's no sign anywhere that he left."

"And there won't be." Bailey looked up to see Jack had reentered the room. She made a motion and they walked outside.

"I take it you talked to Stevens," she said to her friend.

"The woman had me called down before she put security on this." Jack reminded her. "She knew exactly what this was about and what this man wanted."

Miranda gestured toward the picture of the man. "He signed into the building as Matthew Abaddon. Recognize him?"

Jack looked. "No, but that doesn't mean anything. None of us had any idea of all the players on the island, much less off it. Make sure I get a copy, I'll pass it along to my friends." He lowered his voice. "What's the gossip so far?"

"So far, all we're saying is that a patient attacked one of our doctors. Out of respect for privacy, no names have been revealed."

"Do what you can to try and keep it that quiet." Jack sighed. "Tell Webber that I want to as quietly as possible have a staff meeting with everybody here who knows something about the island."

"That may end up raising more questions than we want," Miranda said.

Jack gave a humorless laugh. "Welcome to our world."

LGLGLG

Jack looked at Izzie. "I'm really sorry that I got all of you involved in this," he said quietly. "Especially you."

"Was he always this apologetic when you two first met?" Mark Sloane was addressing his question to Juliet.

"Actually, he was a lot more self-righteous," Juliet told them. "But he did always want to fix things and I think some part of it still does now."

"I learned quite awhile ago I couldn't do that," Jack said.

The circle in Seattle Grace that Jack and Juliet had entrusted with the secrets of what had happened to them after the crash of Oceanic 815 – and to a slightly larger extent, what had happened on the island – was much larger than perhaps any of them were comfortable with now. It now included the Chief of Staff, four attendings, four residents and one intern. There were going to be a huge number of questions when this meeting was over – it might even penetrate the consciousness of Christina Yang, the one member of the 'Golden Five' who had never given a real damn about what any of the Oceanic survivors had gone through over the nearly three years that Jack Shephard and Juliet Carlson had been on staff. Not even Meredith Grey had been able to come up with a realistic explanation to her 'person' as to why Stevens had been the target of an attack by a patient or why she was being excluded from this 'emergency meeting'.

But right now, this was the least of either Jack or Juliet's concerns. Both had talked fairly extensively with Izzie after the attack. Neither of them recognized the man who'd done it or knew whose interests he could possibly represent. The fact that were people out there who knew that they were all lying about the island didn't really concern them – they'd known for years that those people were out there. But as enough time had gone by, they – not just them, but everybody who'd come back – had allowed themselves to believe that they could put that ugliness behind them. Now it seemed that their chickens were coming home to roost, and that those people were determined to attack them where they were all the most vulnerable.

"Please tell me whoever this man was didn't decide to threaten my girlfriend just to get at you," Alex growled in a tone that was a little too reminiscent of the Karev who had first come to Seattle Grace.

"The alternative isn't going to make anybody feel any better," Jack said sadly. "It's just as likely that he could've gone to you or Meredith or Lexie. He was here to deliver a message to us. Who he wanted to be the messenger might've been entirely random."

Stevens shook her head. "I realize you know these kinds of people far better than us, but I just don't buy into that. Abaddon or whoever he is clearly had done his homework before he came here. It's not just that he knew about my cancer; it's that he knew about my relationship to Denny… and he may have even known what my initial symptoms were. He might not know how much you told me about the island, but he definitely chose me because he thought I was the weak link."

Jack looked at Juliet. "You know, this would be a lot scarier if this had happened on the island."

"It would've limited the number of suspects, too," Juliet admitted. "Considering that all of this is basically on the internet, anybody could've picked it out for him to find."

"You do know who suspect number one has to be?" Jack said rhetorically.

"That Ben Linus guy," By now Meredith was aware of who had been their nemesis much of the time they were on the island. "But didn't you tell us that he'd already come to the hospital before?"

"He did," Juliet said thoughtfully. "And say what you will about him, he wasn't the kind of man to try the same play twice."

"Wasn't the move this guy used basically Other 101?" Callie asked. "No offense."

"Very little taken," Juliet told them. "But bare in mind, we basically used psychological warfare because that's the only real warfare we had. If this man really wanted to be more direct…"

"Need I remind you how your friend Ethan operated when he was exposed?" Jack said. "I nearly had a broken rib as a result of it. All that being said, as far as we know all of Ben's people are still on the island. Abaddon seemed hell-bent on going there."

"Hold on," Derek said. "I know some of us are a little late to the game on this, but I'm pretty sure that you told us that the people that were looking for were under the auspices of Charles Widmore. Didn't you and your friends basically break down his organization two years ago?"

"We got rid of Widmore, yes," Jack told them. "And his daughter basically has spent the last couple of years pulling it apart. It doesn't change the fact that Widmore spent far more time building up a network to begin with. He could have it hidden in places that she wouldn't know existed and have people loyal to him that we never found."

"I thought you said his bedside manner improved in the last couple of years," Lexie asked Juliet.

"There's bedside manner, and there's being honest about how serious the condition is," Jack reminded them. "This isn't the time for false hope, especially when the doctors don't know what the cause is."

"Atta boy Jack," Sloane said. "Really drive that medical metaphor into the ground."

Jack actually smiled at this. "We didn't call for this meeting just to give you a line of BS that everything will be okay and you have nothing to worry about. I tried that particular line over and over on the island and no one believed me then, not even me."

"Jack has a point," Juliet agreed. "We're doctors. We have to remain calm during a crisis. Which this may very well be."

"There has been an attack on one of my residents at my hospital," Webber told them. "Now there's no reason the public has to find out and I can probably convince most of the people who aren't in this room that this was just a random attack. But at some point, people on the board are going to want some kind of action to be taken. And I can't exactly hold them off forever."

Jack felt genuine sympathy for Richard. "How much leeway do you have to negotiate for more security for the hospital?"

"I probably won't have to push that hard, considering there's been an attack," Richard said. "What we end up getting, of course, may not be nearly enough."

"If they don't give you the money, I will." Jack said.

Izzie looked at him. "I appreciate the consideration, but I've been in a situation. Giving money away because you feel guilty about something doesn't solve anything."

"It is if you really are responsible for the problem," Jack reminded her. "Besides, it'll save the trouble of getting another donation from this hospital most famous benefactor."

"He gives any more money, the board might end up giving him the hospital," No one was sure if Webber was joking.

"Honestly Richard, you'd probably have a lot more freedom if he did." Juliet wasn't.

"Extra security's one thing," Derek said. "The problem is no one's going to know what to look for. Say what you will about Stevens' attacker, he did everything a normal admit would. He didn't become a problem until he was threatened. My guess is whoever else shows up, won't make the same mistake."

"And it's not like you exactly have an Other mug book," Callie told them. "Even if you did, it'd be a minimum of two years out of date."

"I asked for this meeting to tell you about precautions the hospital has to take," Jack said calmly. "If you're looking to me to come up with an answer," he sighed, "the truth is I don't have one and I'm pretty sure Juliet doesn't either. Short term, we need to know what steps to take."

"And in the long term?" Sloane asked.

"That's not your problem." He looked at Juliet. "It's ours. Which is why both of us are going to have to take a leave of absence for at least the next few weeks."

"You honestly think not being here will solve the problem," Meredith said doubtfully.

"No, But our friends probably can," Juliet told them. "We've already called our families. They're sending the word out to those of in LA. We're going to have to spend the next several days trying to figure out what's going on, who's after us and what we can do to stop it."

Juliet and Jack were talking so calmly that it took a minute for the last part of what she had said to sink in. "What are you going to do?" George finally asked.

Juliet looked him right in the eye. "For all your sakes, its better you don't know."

The matter-of-fact manner of Juliet's implication really shook everybody up. They all knew to a degree what Jack and his friends had needed to do get off the island. They knew, at least in the abstract, that Juliet had to have done some pretty –unpleasant – things the three years she had been working for Ben Linus. But its one thing to know your colleagues may have done some – un-Hippocratic things in the past. It's another to openly hear them tell you that they're going to do them again to protect you.

Even Alex Karev, normally the most hard-nosed of them, whose fiancée had just been the subject of a brutal attack by these people, was clearly unsettled. "Look, you really don't have to do this for us."

"We're not doing this just for you," Jack said. "These people came here for us. Whether or not any of you end up getting hurt – whether or not Seattle Grace burns to the ground – is collateral damage, and none of them will think twice about doing it to gain an advantage. They're fighting for a place where the laws of science don't apply, never mind the laws of man. Do any of you really believe if we were just to call the police that they would be slowed for a second? For better or worse, the only people who have any idea how to deal with it are people who were there. Which means it's up to us. Not you."

The cool-headed Jack Shephard that the staff at Seattle Grace knew wasn't in the room any more. Neither was the self-righteous man that so many of his friends had known on the island. In their place was someone who only occasionally had shown up on the island – the level-headed leader who so many had looked for after the crash, but was almost never there.

"Now I appreciate your concern about this," Jack told them. "We all took the same oath, after all. Thing is, they didn't. You know that now. Juliet and I" and now the calm broke a little – "we're probably going to have to do some ugly stuff the next few weeks. And whatever it is, trust me; you don't want any part of it."

LGLGLG

"Holy shit. Where did that come from?"

After Jack had made his last point very clear, he had left the room with Juliet a step behind him. Those were the first words out of her mouth.

"Trust me I was never that eloquent on the island," he told her,

"You weren't that scary, either."

Jack looked at his friend. "Are you worried or impressed?"

"A little of both, I think," Juliet admitted.

"That's good, because at least ninety percent of that was pure bravado. I have no real idea what we do next." Jack told her. "We're about to go to war with an enemy we know nothing about but who clearly knows everything about us. And that's assuming its just one enemy."

"You think it's more than just those two sides?" Juliet asked.

"I was honestly hoping you'd have a better idea," Jack told her.

"I've told all of you everything I know already," Juliet was sounding a little irritated.

"I was hoping you were still holding out a little," Jack said sheepishly. "Well, the ten percent that was accurate is that we do need to get together and figure out who the hell were fighting."

Juliet stopped in her tracks. "There is someone who probably does know."

"No." Jack knew exactly who she met. "For all we know, he sent this guy here just for this very purpose."

"I'm just telling you, we're probably going to have to find him at the very least," Juliet knew Jack's look. "You think I want to talk with him? I trust him ten times less than you do."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

"Hey."

It said a lot about how used both Juliet and Jack were to being back in civilization that they hadn't noticed Callie sneak up behind them. Well, that was probably an exaggeration – they'd been so intent on their situation they probably wouldn't have noticed a freight train.

"Callie, why are you here?" Juliet asked.

"Do you really have to ask?"

"You did hear what I just said."

"Yeah, war is coming, bad things are going to happen, yada yada yada. " Callie waved it off. "If you seriously think I'm going to abandon my friends in their time of greatest need, you really don't understand me at all."

"Callie, Jack was, if anything, understating the situation," Juliet told her. "I saw firsthand for three years what these people are capable of, and that was a group of people that Ben referred to as 'the good guys.' We were lucky to leave the island before another faction with even lesser intent tried to take us. And those are just the people we know are involved. A lot of people died in this fight. And they knew what they were getting into."

Callie didn't even flinch. "Well, then that means at least, you're going to need someone who can properly nurse you back to health."

Jack really didn't want to play this card, but he wanted to keep his friend safe. "Callie when Libby was murdered, it very nearly broke Hugo. And he only knew her for a few weeks. If something were to happen to you, he would never forgive himself."

"Seriously? Your wife and your sister are going to be neck deep in this fight, and you think you're going to scare me off by playing the girlfriend card?" Callie told them. She didn't sound angry or hurt, just a little amused.

"You already talked to Hurley didn't you?" Jack said resignedly.

"Right before our meeting. He tried every single sales pitch to tell me not to get involved. He offered to give me his Golden Ticket to get as far away from here as possible." Callie was actually smiling at this. "I had to gently remind him that a trans-Pacific flight might not be the best course of action for any of us right now. If he couldn't convince me, what do you think the odds are either of you will?"

Jack and Juliet knew Callie too well. "All right," Jack said. "We'll call you the official Seattle Grace representative in this fight. Make it clear. No one else. Not even Stevens and Karev."

Callie smiled. "It's like they said when one Texas Ranger showed up at a riot. Only one riot. Why would you need more?"

LGLGLG

Hurley was understandably less than thrilled that his girlfriend has bossed her way on to this fight. "All those times on the island you convinced people that you alone could handle anything; you couldn't try the same thing here?" he asked Jack.

James was a little more realistic. "As I recall, not a lot of people were exactly convinced by his arguments then," he reminded Hurley. "Consider yourself lucky, Hoss."

"Lucky?" Hurley asked doubtfully.

"Your girlfriend asked before she tagged along. If it had been Freckles, we might have been halfway to New York before we found out she'd tagged along," James reminded him.

"You do learn your lesson after awhile," Jack turned serious. "Everybody in LA knows now."

Kate nodded. "They're all getting on the next train up, Sayid and Locke tried to persuade their wives to stay behind, but they had about as much luck as you guys did with Callie."

"Might not be the worst idea for them to be here anyway," Juliet admitted.

"You don't have to say it," Jack admitted. "That said, I think it's in everybody's interest if we keep them off the battlefield."

No one had to argue much with that. "What about Desmond?" Claire asked.

Hurley looked concerned. "I tried calling him and Penny two hours ago. Straight to voicemail. I thought it was the time difference, but now I'm starting to get worried."

At that moment, James' phone rang. He took it out. "Speak of the Scottish devil," he said before he answered. "Des! I take it you got our message…" He trailed off. "Seriously?" He hesitated. "You sure you want them involved?"

At that point James realized everybody was looking at him. "Hang on." He took the phone away from his ear and put it on the table. "All right. You're on speaker with the Seattle contingent of the Oceanics. Tell them exactly what you told me."

"Sorry I took so long getting back to you, Hugo," Desmond's familiar Scots accent filled the air. "But my wife and I spent the last few hours getting the corporate jet ready to fly."

The meaning of this didn't escape them. "You were already planning on coming here," Jack said.

"Dude, did you, like, have another one of your flashes?" Hurley asked.

"I wish it were that simple." Only in the world they were immersed in would Desmond's powers of foresight be a 'simple' explanation. "Two days ago, my new in-laws came back from their honeymoon."

Daniel Faraday and Charlotte Lewis weren't entirely in the inner circle as the rest of survivors of the crash, but by now they were, as Hurley put it, 'island adjacent'. Considering that Dan was Penelope's half-brother and that his mother Eloise Hawking and had a far greater connection to the island than that, it hadn't taken much pushing for anybody to let them into the inner circle. James had a working relationship with both of them – they'd done a fair amount of research for the YA series he was writing – and both he and Juliet were convinced that Charlotte had some link to the island as well. Desmond had acknowledged as much privately, but both he and Penny said she'd tell them when she felt comfortable. Considering how much withholding of personal information all of them on the island, none of them had decided they could take the high ground.

"I'm guessing that they had more than snapshots to show you when they got back," Kate said.

"There have been some major developments in their fields and ours in the past few days," Penny was speaking now. "We knew we had to inform you as soon as possible. We just didn't realize until your call just how urgent matters may be getting."

"What did you find out?" Juliet asked.

"Is everyone else there yet?" Desmond asked. "Because like everything else in our lives, this is a complicated story and the fewer times we have to share it, the better it'll be for all of us."

Everyone was looking at Jack again. Somehow he wasn't surprised. "Are you in the air yet?" he asked.

"Wheels up in less than five minutes," Penny spoke up. "Everything goes according to schedule; we'll be there by midnight tomorrow."

"I think we can hold out that long," Claire said. "Tell us this much: do either you or the rest of your family have an idea who might be behind this new threat?"

There wasn't a hesitation this time. "There's a good chance." Desmond told them. "But considering that none of us are entirely convinced about secure lines at this point, all we will say with certainty is this. It's not a new threat."

"It's an old one."