Chapter 9

"How are you handling this John?" Jack asked his old rival.

"Why do I feel I should be the one asking you this?" Locke countered. "I'd think you'd be having a much harder time accepting this than I would."

"You know that it took me the better part of a year and a half to come around to your way of thinking," Jack admitted. "This, however, makes me want to do a hard reset."

"For the first time in I don't know how long, you and I are in total agreement," Locke acknowledged. "We were supposed to be on that plane and crash on that island. We know that there was a higher force bringing us there. But it's a lot easier to accept that when a miracle happens to you. To accept the fact that someone in civilization knew all of that before we got on the plane; that does test even my incredulity. Throw in the fact that person had lived on the island decades before, and even my unremitting belief is seriously being tested."

"Welcome to the other side of it," Jack told him. "Doesn't feel very good does it?"

It said a lot about how much had changed between the two men who had barely survived their time on the island without coming to blows that they were able to have a civilized conversation about the very differences that had put them odds their entire time together. But it was hard to argue that this new wrinkle – the one that Ben Linus had revealed to Claire and Kate just a few hours earlier – was somehow more unsettling than anything either man had experienced in their time either as leader or on the island.

Locke turned his attention back towards Kate. "Ben's sure about this," he asked.

"He says he is," Kate didn't have to remind any of them about the gap between what Ben said and what he actually knew.

"I have to tell you even by the man's standards, this would be a hell of a tale to spin," Juliet reminded them.

"Scott Jackson was really the son of Stuart Radzinsky," Jack put it out there. "Any way we can independently confirm this story?"

"All that time we spoke to Olivia last week she never mentioned Radzinsky having a son," Locke told them. "Of course, she never knew the man that well and she was gone from the island long before the new wave of Dharma recruits ever came to the island."

"We have only that man's word that those recruits even came," Sayid reminded them.

"Olivia left the island in 1977," Claire started. "The Purge – according to Richard – took place in 1990. I find it hard to believe that the Dharma Initiative could have managed to exist for nearly thirteen years without any fresh recruits at all. Somebody had to come to replace the people who left."

Sayid reluctantly acknowledged the point. "That still goes a long way to prove the rest of it."

"What were you and James able to find out about Scott or Steve or whoever he was claiming to be after the crash?" Jack asked instead.

"Like every story about the island, it does raise a lot of questions," James pointed out. "We decided to do a background search on both Scott Jackson and Steve Jenkins. Scott was supposedly in Sydney on a two week vacation that his company Nozz-O-La Cola, provided for him. Except apparently no one named Scott Jackson ever worked for Nozz-O-La. That ain't surprising because until 2002 Scott Jackson himself didn't exist."

"He just appeared out of nowhere." Jack said doubtfully.

"Talking as a criminal, creating a false identity is surprisingly easy." James told them. "I did a lot of work to create a full background for Richard Sawyer in case anybody tried to figure out who he actually was. And as Freckles knows, sometimes you don't even have to do that much work."

"Ben knows that just as well as we do," Kate acknowledged.

"Connecting the dots is easier once you know where the dots are," James told them. "Once we knew about Stuart Radzinsky and how he connected to Dharma, Scotty and Penny were able to give us some background on him before he ended up on the island."

Sayid looked at his own file. "Stuart Frederick Radzinsky, born in Au Claire, Wisconsin in 1941. Graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan in May of 1962, doctorate in Physics. His thesis dealt with Tesla and the true potentials of electromagnetic energy."

"No wonder the DeGroots recruited him," Locke said. "He was practically in their own backyard."

"But apparently Olivia wasn't kidding about them missing the psyche profile," Sayid told them. "There are three recorded incidents of campus brawls throughout his time as an undergraduate. And when he was twenty-three, there was an 'incident' in the laboratory that it took the police to break up."

"He must have been rich or connected," Kate told them. "There's no way that kind of thing happens and he didn't end up in jail."

"There must have been some level of his charm in his personality back then," James said. "According to the hall of records, he was married in 1965. One child, Samuel Jackson, 1967. Six months later, the wife files for divorce. And here's the weird part. He fought her for every dime he could possibly give her. But he waived parental rights without even putting up an argument. I knew most of us had lousy parents, but this guy didn't want to be one."

"Do we have any idea what happened to the mother?" Locke asked.

"She died of cancer in 1981. Might explain why the kid hitched a ride to Dharma in the first place," James reasoned. "Either way, there's no record of a Samuel Radzinsky after 1982."

"We're missing something," Jack told them.

"We're missing everything, Doc," James reminded him. "And we ain't gonna get that piece of the puzzle until we figure out what the picture on the box looks like."

"We could really use Desmond's psychic power now," Hurley told them. They looked at him. "Hey I know the flashes stopped when we left the island. Just saying."

Jack looked at Sayid. "Have we had any luck connecting with any of the other names that either Ben or Olivia gave us?"

"Whatever means the Others had of gathering information on us on the island is somehow less complete than the ones we have back in civilization," Sayid said with a hint of regret. "Aside from social security numbers and driver licenses there isn't much that's there. No criminal records, precious few hospital records, the occasional college transcript. Most of them seem to have done a remarkable job of staying off the grid."

"That shouldn't come as a huge shock," Juliet pointed out. "Considering they lived a considerable part of their lives where there was none."

"I've read a few books like this," James mused. "Some of them are in my field. Kid grows up in the suburbs with his parents, has a girlfriend, starting pitcher on high school ball club. Then one morning, he finds something a little off. Maybe it's something big, like his picture on the back of a milk carton. Maybe it's smaller, like his mom's talking to a relative that he never knew they had. Either way he – or she – learns that they are living is a complete lie."

"Yeah, but that's a young adult, not real life," Hurley pointed out.

"Which doesn't mean there isn't truth to it," Locke argued. "As someone who lived his entire childhood in the foster care system I don't have to tell you how many fictions kids like me told themselves about their lives and how they got there. The children of the Dharma Initiative – Sam Radzinsky among them – no doubt spent much of their lives looking for answers about what happened to their parents. For better or worse, that's what I did."

"So what is the next step?" Kate asked.

Jack thought for a moment. "Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," he said slowly. "We're trying to find the children. And the easiest way to do that…"

"…is to find out who took over raising them when they were kids," James finished the thought. "We have to have another talk with Red. She might not know where the kids were, but her mother had to."

Jack nodded. "I'll give them another ten minutes then I'll reach out."

After Izzie had told Jack and the rest every detail of the meeting she'd had with Ben, she made an unusual request. She had asked if she, Alex and Callie could have a meeting with Dan and Charlotte. She had been vague on the details, but Jack figured that she wanted to try and have a discussion with people with similar scientific minds who weren't directly connected to the island.

"Hell, invite them all over," James said. "Considering what we're up against, we're gonna need as big a brain trust as we can get."

"During my formative years, I did experiments with high levels of radiation," Daniel said slowly. "I've studied relative physics, leaning towards time travel. In the past year I've learned my mother was involved with a mystical island for most of her life and spent a lot of it trying to guide me towards that island. And a couple of weeks ago, I found a journal that I have no recollection of writing in, saying that I traveled to this same island in the 1970s with what appears to be the intention of detonating a hydrogen bomb. So there are a lot of things that I can accept. But when you," he gestured towards Alex, "tell me that your girlfriend told you she was seeing and having sex with her dead boyfriend and you didn't immediately take to her to a psychiatrist that is by far the craziest shit I've ever heard."

"Well, when you put it way," Alex tried to make a joke about it.

Izzie had wanted to have this meeting with Dan and Charlotte because she had wanted to see what people with a scientific background might think about the level of her hallucinations and whether there might be something to what Ben had suggested. Unfortunately, she had made the vital error of explaining why she hadn't dismissed them as a mental problem. Her friends at Seattle Grace had been so concerned with her cancer that they had all chosen to overlook the major symptoms. Dan and Charlotte clearly weren't going to be so detached.

"I'm honestly not sure who's crazier in this scenario," Charlotte added. "You or her."

"Forget crazy," Dan said solemnly. "I would be jealous if you had a meeting with one of your old boyfriends from college for dinner. Now, maybe I don't understand the logic of the hospital you work at –"

"Trust me," Callie piped up "brains are rarely the parts of the anatomy that function among our staff."

"…but please tell me what world you were living in when your girlfriend, who previously left you for this man when he was alive, tells you she is having relations with his ghost and you just write it off?" Dan asked.

"You know this sounded bad even before I knew something was wrong," Izzie admitted. "Hearing it in the cold light of day..."

"General Hospital wouldn't consider this a plausible storyline," This seemed to have broken Dan in a way everything else hadn't. "I'm kind of astonished the two of you are still in the middle of your residencies."

"Jack didn't exactly think we were qualified doctors before this," Alex admitted.

"If I ever need an emergency appendectomy on a deserted island," Dan turned to Charlotte, "you get the scalpel ahead of them. "

Charlotte gave a small smile. "First of all, given the situation we're in that's not an unrealistic possibility," she said softly "and hopefully in that situation, Jack or Juliet would be there with us."

Charlotte's voice clearly had a calming effect on her husband; Dan managed to regain some of his usual sense of detachment. "My apologies for overreacting towards your questions," he said in a much calmer tone. "But even for people who are beginning to believe science doesn't have all the answers, this whole scenario does have a certain mind-boggling aspect to it."

"Honestly, if I'd gotten that sort of reaction when I'd told Alex the first time, I might have been more inclined to seek treatment," Izzie admitted. "I love you Karev, but you really did drop the ball here."

"You don't think I spent the weeks between your diagnosis and your surgery beating myself up over it." There was just a hint of the old pain in Alex's voice.

"Hey, it's all right," Callie, of all people, was now the voice of reason. "It worked out. You're alive and healthy."

"Physically healthy. It is the mental part that bothers me. That's actually the other reason I asked Callie to join us." Izzie looked at her old rival. "When Hurley was in Santa Rosa, he said he had hallucinations of a man called Dave."

Callie nodded. "And I have to tell, there is a certain similarity here. On a couple of occasions Hurley said that he thought Dave wasn't real, but then Dave slapped him in the face and he clearly felt it. He managed to have a breakthrough not long after and realize that part of him wasn't real."

"Until he got to the island," Izzie said. "I know this is a sore spot for him, which is why I didn't ask him to join us." Hurley was fine most days, but the ghost of Libby Smith still haunted him every so often. Izzie was reluctant to rouse it again, especially for what she thought might be her own selfish concerns.

"You do know it wasn't just Hurley?" Callie reminded her.

"I know that as well as you." Izzie acknowledged. "Quite a few people on the island had…well; let's call them 'reminders' of their life before the plane crash. But the thing is Hurley's the only one who was having these kinds of hallucinations before he came to the island."

The agitation had worn off; Dan was back to being a scientist. "And now, you're trying to figure out whether what you saw was part of the disease or something that might be…"

"Unscientific, for lack of a better term," Izzie acknowledged.

"Well, we're willing to try and help but I'm still not sure how we can do that," Charlotte asked. "My field is anthropology and Dan's was physics. This is still more a medical field than yours."

"Maybe." Izzie paused. "We all studied science to a degree, though different fields. And I guess I'd understand quantum physics about as well as you two would understand the nature of the exact nature of how dialysis might affect the liver. But I think there's enough of an intersect that we can find some common ground."

"Still, wouldn't it make more sense for you to have a PET scan, see if there was some sector of the brain that might be working in a way that ours aren't?" Dan asked.

"We thought about it," Alex admitted. "But honestly Jack and Derek went through all kinds of brain scans when they were looking for the tumor. Something would've stood out to Derek."

"You're right on our side of it," Dan pointed out. "But one of my experiments was to trying to find a way to unstick a person's consciousness in time."

"Forgive me for saying this," Alex said softly, "but from what little I heard from Jack, all you ever got to show for it was minor memory loss and a bunch of dead rats."

"It's a fair point," Dan acknowledged. "There is a good chance if I'd carried on my merry way I would've been checking to see if his experimental Alzheimer's drug might be able to help with severe brain damage."

Everybody winced at this, even Alex.

"I know even less about neuroscience than Alex and Isobel do," Callie admitted, "and next to nothing about physics but are you trying to see that Izzie might've actually be seeing Denny – but from an earlier time?"

"I've been dancing around it, but yes," Dan admitted.

"Take us back a few steps, because I don't follow at all," Alex told them.

"I don't, and I'm the one who saw him," Izzie pointed out. "I knew Denny over a period of four months in his life. How would I have any knowledge of him before then?"

"And most of that time, he could barely walk," Alex reminded them. "Nobody in this hospital knew Denny Duquette at a time when he was healthy."

"I'm not sure he was when I saw him either," Izzie reminded them. "He was always in a gown. "

"That actually speaks more to the idea it was some kind of hallucination," Charlotte, who'd been quiet for awhile, spoke up. "You saw him in a gown because that was how you knew him best. It speaks more to the idea that it was a memory than the possibility of his being some kind of time traveler."

"Which brings us back to the idea it was like some kind of hallucination that people had on the island," Izzie said thoughtfully. Briefly she recounted what she had been told about some of the other hallucinations on the island – Jack's father appearing in the suit he was buried in, Kate seeing a black horse that had been part of her escape and how Ben had seen his mother as a picture before he was born.

"The thing is, it's like they sang on Sesame Street: one of these things is not like the other," Dan reminded her. "And in this case, it's pretty clear who the outlier is."

"Bottom-line it for us, Iz," Alex asked his fiancé. "You want to find out if you're like everyone else who spent time on that island or that you're not?"

"That's a question I've been thinking about ever since I met with Ben yesterday," Izzie admitted. "And I still don't have a good answer. If the answer is no, then it means I 'only' suffered from a form of cancer that nearly killed me and drove me insane. If it's yes, then it means I was never entirely crazy…but it pretty much means that the world that we," she indicated the three residents, "have been trying to convince can explain everything is a lot fuzzier than we want to admit and that I am somehow connected to it."

"Jack and the rest of them lived with it and they're doing fine," Alex reminded them.

"They're dealing with it and they've accepted it," Callie corrected. "Trust me; they're not anywhere near fine with it."

"We've just had a hint of the last several months and now direct proof is in our hands," Dan echoed, looking at Charlotte. "I'm not exactly dealing with it well myself and I know you're not "

Charlotte hesitated awhile before speaking. "You're right, we're not surgeons. But Izzie in particular knows what it's like to be both a doctor and a patient. So in that sense as someone who has been through both sides of the looking glass, isn't it better to know than to spend so much time wondering? You may not know what's wrong with you, but you had to have a sense of dread. At least if you know, one way or another, you can make a plan."

They considered this. "You would have made a hell of a surgeon," Alex finally said.

"I've heard what goes on in your hospital. I'm not sure how much of a compliment that is," Charlotte said with a smile.

As they were chuckling over this, Izzie's phone beeped. "Speak of the devil," she said. "It's Jack. He wants to meet up with the rest of the group. Figure out what the next step is."

ONE HOUR LATER

"It's a little after five in London," Charlotte told the group. "I'll give her another hour."

"Want to give her a little more unbroken sleep before you hit her with the bad news?" Juliet asked.

"We're not sure how bad the news will be, "Charlotte shrugged. "I didn't think I was old enough to start worrying about protecting my parents from my actions."

"You're lucky," Locke said with sympathy. "Most of us don't even have parents we want to protect and those of who do…" He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have too.

Izzie changed the subject. "This isn't particularly easy for me to talk about, but I think we have to figure it out going forward." She looked at Locke in particular. "I'd rather not do this until I'm sure of anything, but Alex and I would like to talk to a couple of you in private if we could."

"Who do you have in mind?" Hurley asked.

"You, John and if Michael doesn't mind, Walt," Izzie hoped the implication would be clear enough so that there wouldn't be a lot of questions asked. She already felt awkward enough without having to explain.

Jack clearly understood. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Ben does have a way of getting in your head."

"I came to this on my own," Izzie was a little annoyed.

"Hey, no judgment. When I told you about seeing my father, I'll admit I wasn't entirely being honest, "Jack admitted. "I'd spent the previous year convincing myself it was all in my head and my focus was getting you to seek the help you needed."

"And now you think differently?" Alex asked.

Jack looked at John. "He made a pretty persuasive case, and to his credit I didn't need that much convincing the first time. Still, it's a lot easier to belief in the impossible when you're on that island and a lot harder right here. All that said, are you sure you want to go down this road?"

"Not remotely," Izzie admitted. "But given what I've been through and the last week in particular, I don't think I have much of a choice in the matter."

Locke gave a small smile. "You know when I was on the island I might have made that same argument. Probably thrown in some words along the line that it was destiny that put you on this path. You might have returned fire by saying:" Was it destiny for me to almost die of cancer?" and I honestly wouldn't have had a good response."

"If you'd said something along the lines of 'all roads lead here,' I might have actually punched you in the face," It was hard to tell how much Jack was joking.

"I'm kind of surprised that you never did," Locke returned his attention to Izzie, a little more serious. "The point is, you have a choice and I think it's important you understand it because I'm pretty sure it wasn't clear to anybody on the island." He paused. "I know it never was for me."

The group was shocked by this – except for James. "I always knew for all your talk, you were always scared."

"That's what you are if you believe in destiny and you don't understand why it's happening," Locke looked at Izzie. "You and your friends truly have gone above and beyond the call the last several months and you have had a choice every step of the way. But there comes a point when you can't make a choice any more and you're fast coming on it."

"That's the main reason I tried so hard to keep the hospital out of this," Jack agreed. "It was my choice to work at Seattle Grace and I've never regretted it. But I spent a very long time trying to keep what happened before outside my present. So far, there haven't been any unalterable consequences. Now there might be. You go down this road, as hard as we try none of us can promise it won't somehow end on that island."

Everybody knew how hard it was for Jack to admit this. And the thought had crossed Izzie's mind repeatedly ever since Abaddon had entered her exam room. She liked her life. She was happy. And she had heard so many horror stories the past two years it was almost funny that the act of hearing these painful stories had somehow gotten her through her cancer. Some part of her – the part that had kept her up last night – really wondered if Denny was trying to hurt her again. The last time she had seen him, it had almost killed her. Could it do so again if she chose to try and find him?

"I know you really must have gotten sick of hearing 'live together, die alone', she finally said to Jack. "But the fact is, if I hadn't decided to follow that precept, I'd probably be dead too. Now you can argue as much as you want that it was brain surgery and massive amounts of chemotherapy that did it, but the fact is you" she looked around at the rest of the Oceanics "saved my life. And I think I have to at least try to return the favor. Which means trying to figure out if some part of me is connected to this island."

"I never saw your name on that lighthouse," Locke said quickly.

"Even if you hadn't, I don't know if it matters," Izzie pointed out. "The position's been filled by people who were never on the list. I appreciate everybody trying to protect us, but at this point I'm going to channel my fiancée and tell him to blow it out your ass."

"Ah, can your fiancée possibly add his two cents about protecting you?" Alex asked. "I may want us to go on a tropical honeymoon, but I'd like the plane to land on the island and be able to leave when we want to."

"We're going to do everything in our power to keep you away from planes as a rule," Jack assured Alex. "As to the rest of it, we'll have to see where it goes." He looked at Locke. "I'd feel a little more assured of this part if you knew what you were doing," he admitted.

"For now, we'll go out back and talk," Locke looked at Michael. "You're sure this okay with you?"

"I'm done speaking for Walt," Michael replied. "Just be careful."

LGLGLG

"So how exactly did this work?" Alex asked a few minutes later.

"There was never a consistent pattern among us," Locke admitted. "As I recall Hugo was the only one of us who saw something before he came to the island and then on. So whether that was the island speaking to him or something else I don't think even you know for sure."

"I thought I was going crazy again," Hurley said. "And by the way, eventually I got so concerned I went to see Sawyer to ask him if he had any anti-psychotics." He fixed Izzie with a stare. "You do remember how badly he treated me the first two months we were on the island together, right? But I went to him because I thought I was going crazy."

"All right, you don't have to keep rubbing it in," Izzie pointed out.

Hurley made sure his point had landed and then paused. "Then again, maybe I had a connection with the other world wasn't sure of. Two days after we opened the hatch, I had this really weird dream about eating all the food in it. In the middle of this I've washing down a mouthful of cookies with milk and Walt's on the side of the carton with the word Missing over his picture." Hurley looked at Walt. "Your dad and the rest didn't get back to us for another three days."

"You think the island was telling you I'd been taken?" Walt asked calmly.

"Or maybe you were. " He hesitated. "Sayid told me after we got rescued that Shannon said she saw you in the jungle. He said he saw you too right before…" He didn't finish the sentence.

"I've been thinking about that for awhile," Walt admitted. "I knew for awhile I had something, so I kept trying to see if there was some way I could make somebody in your camp see me. But honestly, I was trying for Vincent more than anything else."

"Your dog," Izzie was skeptical but not entirely dismissive. Quite a few times, the survivors had told them that Vincent himself might have been special. He seemed to have a way of knowing when his master was in danger and everyone acknowledged as soon Vincent was no longer present, Walt had immediately been in danger.

"Of course, there's also the possibility that it had nothing to do with Walt at all," Locke said simply. "Keep in mind I saw you when you weren't on the island any more."

Walt looked at him. "You think it had something to do with that thing in the jungle?" he asked.

"I may have seen it as beautiful, but it had no problems destroying anyone else it touched." Locke admitted.

"Was Shannon's name on the lighthouse?" Alex asked.

"Number 38," Locke said simply. "So it had every reason to lead her to her death even if she didn't know why. Still, Hurley could be right about his original point. Maybe the island sensed he was special and was trying to send him a message."

"Sorry I never delivered it, little dude," Hurley said. "I mean I'm not sure anyone would've believed me anyway, but it might have prepared us a little sooner."

Walt waved it off. "Are you saying that Hurley was special too?"

"He might have had a communion of the island all his own," Locke admitted. "I had my share of dreams and visions when I was on the island. Often they led me down the right path, sometimes they were messages from my subconscious and sometimes they were a combination of the two."

"Give us an example," Alex said.

"After I broke the computer on the hatch and Desmond turned the failsafe key, I woke up in the jungle," Locke told them. "Physically I was unhurt, but I had blood on the left side of my face and I was unable to speak. I found Charlie – he had some tinnitus from the explosion, but he was basically unhurt himself - and I communicated to him that I wanted his help regaining communion with the island."

Hurley knew this story. The rest of them didn't. "What did you do?" Izzie asked.

"I built the equivalent of a Native American sweat lodge," he told them. They were looking curiously at this. "About ten years ago I spent some time on a commune in Bridgeport. Every so often we would have these kinds of rituals."

"No, no judgment," Hurley told him. "I had some friends like that growing up too. That where you learned to make that weird paste Charlie saw you making?'

Locke nodded. "Herbs and vegetation found in tropical locations can be used to make a hallucinogenic. I'd had some success with then in the past."

There was clearly more behind this statement, but Locke didn't elaborate and nobody pushed him. "So you built the lodge, you consumed the paste and then you went inside," Izzie said. "How'd it end up working?"

"Even I wasn't expecting what happened." Locke took a deep breath. "I was pouring water on the rocks, and then Boone was there."

Even Izzie and Alex knew what this meant.

"I tried to apologize, and he said it was all right. 'I was the sacrifice the island demanded.'" Locke shook his head. "I don't know if that really was him accepting my apology or whether that part was in my head. In any case, he told me there was somewhere we needed to go. I tried to get up and I couldn't move my legs. He told me I was going to need this. And there was my wheelchair."

Hurley didn't know the whole story, but he knew how big a deal a wheelchair had always been to Locke.

"Where'd you go?" Walt asked.

"I was in an airport. Boone was pushing me and told me: 'Someone in this airport needs your help.' What I saw was half psychic vision and half my own head filling in details that mirrored how I saw everybody."

"How exactly did that work?"

Locke looked at Hurley. "The first people I saw were Charlie, Claire and Aaron."

Hurley looked wistful. "Seeing them as a family didn't take much imagination."

"Boone said: 'They'll be fine. For awhile.' We all know how that story ended. Then I saw Sun and Jin arguing, which was nothing knew except Sun was speaking Korean and Jin was answering in English. Sayid was intervening. Boone told me:' I think Sayid's got it."

Walt looked at Hurley. "Did Sun and Jin have a fight when they were coming to try and help the rest of you?"

Hurley nodded. "They couldn't find them right away. Jin didn't want Sun to be in trouble, so he refused to, like, pilot the boat. Sun told Sayid she could. It wasn't pretty, especially since Sayid was trying to lead a trap for the Others at the time and he wasn't exactly being truthful to Jin and Sun about it." He looked at Locke. "Sayid might've handled it, but he nearly got Sun killed."

"What did you see next?" Izzie asked.

"Hugo." Locke looked at Hurley. "You were behind the desk, helping everybody get on the plane." He paused. "Every time you typed something in the computer, I heard the beeping from the hatch along with sound of the clock turning over. I'm pretty sure something was trying to tell me your connection to the numbers."

"You might've reasoned that out from a couple of other things by then," Hurley admitted. "What did ghost- Boone have to say?"

"Just 'not Hurley'. Maybe he was trying to tell me you'd be okay after the last few days."

"Nice of him." Hurley said with a tinge of melancholy. "Next?"

"Desmond, he was wearing a pilot's uniform. Which was weird because the logical assumption should've been he was dead." Locke said. "So not only was the island telling me was still alive, but that he was going to be fine."

"You couldn't assume that," Alex said.

"Boone said so. "Forget it, he's helping himself.' In a way, the island may have been trying to tell me that he was essential to our salvation. Let's face it. You wouldn't have been saved without him."

"The guy believed in destiny as much as you did," Hurley admitted.

"Then I saw James, Kate and Jack going through the metal detectors. And it didn't take a genius to know what this was about. Especially when I saw that 'Henry Gale' was working security. "

"Henry Gale?" Walt said with a frown.

"The name Ben used when we had him locked up in the hatch," Hurley explained. "Island didn't tell you his real name?"

Locke shook his head. "His nametag read Henry Gale, which was the only name I knew him by at the time. But I knew he was trouble. I was pointing and trying to warn Jack and the rest even though I still couldn't talk. Boone told me: 'There's nothing you can do to help them. First you have to clean up your own mess.'

"What did that mean?" Walt asked.

"There was this flash, and I was at the foot of an escalator. Boone was at the top of it, and he was covered in blood. Somehow, I managed to crawl on to the foot of the escalator and then I worked by way to the top. And there I found Mr. Eko's stick. Boone tells me: 'They've got him. You haven't got much time.' I hear a bear roar and just like that the flash is over. I crawl out and Charlie asks me what I need to do. And I knew I had to save Eko's life."

"From the polar bear," Hurley filled in.

"Was it the same one that attacked me and my dad?" Walt asked.

"I couldn't say for sure, but I assumed as much," Locke told him. He looked at Izzie and Alex. "Now there might very well be a rational explanation for what I saw and I'm sure a pretty good psychiatrist could dissect every element in that vision and explain how I was seeing what I wanted to see and hearing what I wanted to hear. But after I saved Eko, something happened that I'm not sure how to explain, even more than three years after the fact. Charlie left to get water and I apologized to Eko for what I had done, that if I had just let him keep pushing the button, I would've been able to go out and help save then." He hesitated. "Then Eko spoke."

"What did he say?" Hurley didn't seem phased by this.

"'You can still help them. You can still save them.' You'd think I would have been a little shocked by this, but I took it as normal. I told him I didn't know how. He said:' You'll find them. After all, you are a hunter.'"

"What's so weird about that?" Alex asked.

"Charlie came back with water. I turned away, and when I looked back Eko was unconscious. It was like he had never said a word. We took him back to the camp and he didn't say a thing until…" He looked at Hurley. "Well, you know the rest. To this day I don't know if Eko actually spoke to me or whether it was the island speaking through him."

"You don't think it was part of the hallucination?" Izzie asked.

"It might be. But Eko had the same communion with the island that I did. I don't think it was a coincidence that he was the one who spoke to me."

"All of this is really interesting," Alex wasn't entirely being sarcastic here, "but how does that us find out if Iz has this kind of link that she thinks she does?"

Locke had gone quiet. "We may not be on the island, but that doesn't mean we can't use the methods we used there to try and help each other." He walked over to Hurley. "Can you go inside and talk to Kate and Sun? Tell them I'm going to need their advice for what I'm about to do."

"No problem, dude," Hurley said.

Locke looked around. "You're currently living in Derek's old trailer," he asked Alex and Izzie. "I'm assuming there's a lot of wide open space next to the forest."

Alex wasn't sure where Locke was going. Izzie thought he did. "There's nothing but space. Certainly enough for what you're thinking of."

"Which is?" Alex asked.

"Izzie doesn't just need to find out her connection to the island. She has to find out what to do next." Locke had a touch of his old enthusiasm. "So we're going to build a sweat lodge. And see what the next step on the journey is."

NOTES

I didn't just mention Nozz-O-La Cola on a whim. There's a link between it and Lost – and I'm not just talking about the Stephen King one. I'll connect the dots in an upcoming chapter.

Was Dan really out of character in his reaction? This was tongue-in-cheek. The Izzie-Denny hallucination story was one of the truly worst ideas in all of television history, nobody how it was resolved. Just as I had Jack chew out the residents for their actions as doctors around Denny's death in an earlier story, this is Dan taking the voice of the scientific community based on another truly ridiculous storyline. Have I mentioned Grey's Anatomy could be ridiculous at times?

The Locke hallucination in Season 3 was one of the more intriguing elements in the series that deserved to be looked at. As with so much of the story, I owe Nikki Stafford a debt of gratitude for her analysis of it in Finding Lost, though I did make a few leaps of my own volition. As to what happened with Eko well, that's one mystery I'm glad the writers never explained.

This will be a much longer story than some of my other ones in this series. Be prepared for a long ride. Read and review.