"So you must have been pretty scared right about then, huh?" Shannon said, laughing.
Saiid chuckled. "Scared? Not then. That was nothing compared to what happened the next day! See, I was"
Saiid's words were cut short by an ear-shattering shriek in the distance.
"Claire!" Saiid said. He stood up and ran, leaving Shannon alone on her towel on the beach. Shannon snorted. "Thanks a lot, Claire"
Jack dropped the pan he had been filling with water. Kate, who was standing nearby, looked at him.
"Was that Claire?" she asked. She picked up her bag and ran, Jack right on her tail.
Several other people had heard it too, and they all seemed to have met in the jungle.
"Where is she? Where's Claire?" Charlie said. "Where is she? WHERE IS CLAIRE?" Charlie grabbed the nearest person (Hurley) by the shoulders and shook him menacingly.
"Charlie. CHARLIE!" Jack said. "You need to chill out! We don't know where Claire is. That's what we're looking fo"
"JACK! JACK, JACK, HELP ME!" Claire's voice came. "That way!" Michael said, pointing in the direction Claire's voice was coming from.
They ran. Claire was sitting on the ground, bruised and harassed-looking. Alex was lying beside her, and standing above them both was a man that looked exactly like-
"ETHAN!" Claire was crying. Charlie did the first thing that came into his mind. He went over to the Ethan clone and socked him in the face.
The man who looked like Ethan gasped and put his hand to his chin where Charlie had hit it.
"Don't... you... DARE..." Charlie hissed as he hit the man over and over. "Touch... her. Understand me"
"Why"
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" "YES!" "Charlie!" Kate yelled as Charlie's hand went up again. "DON'T HURT HIM"
In the midst of it all, Michael and Locke had managed to grab the man that looked like Ethan and trap his hands behind his back. Charlie aimed another punch. "DON'T!" Saiid cried. "He can tell us something"
"No he can't," Boone said. "Look at him. He's unconscious"
The man was hanging limply from Locke and Michael's arms, blood dripping down from one of his nostrils. Charlie ran over to Claire. "Claire. CLAIRE! Claire, are you alright"
Claire looked up. "My baby," she whispered. "He wanted my baby!" Sun came over and gently picked up Alex. "Here," she almost said, but she caught herself. She handed Claire the baby.
"Thank you," Claire said. She accepted the tiny body from the woman and examined him all over. He looked unharmed. Besides the fact that he was bawling his brains out, of course.
"Here. Someone take Alex. We'll take care of Claire." Jack said. Alex was handed back to Sun, and Claire tried to stand. Her knees collapsed beneath her. "Here, love. I've got you." Charlie said. He helped her to stand and carried her back to camp. Once they arrived, he sat her down on an airplane seat. Jack took a look at her bruises.
"Did he hit you, Claire?" he breathed.
"Yes... I think so." Claire said. Charlie's fists clenched once more. "Don't." Kate said, putting her hand on Charlie's shoulder so he wouldn't hurt the man.
Michael was staring at the man. "Who is he?" he wondered out loud. "And why does he look exactly like Eth"
"VINCENT!" A shout came from the east. "VINCENT, GET BACK HERE"
Walt was bolting full speed at the group on the beach, his dog several feet in front of him, trailing the leash.
"VINCENT!" Walt yelled. "GET BACK HERE"
Hurley attempted to grab the dog and missed- Vincent ran towards Claire and licked her face.
"Vincent!" Walt said, gasping for breath and clutching a cramp in his side. "Stop it!" "Walt, you take that dog of yours back to the campsite and tie him up." Michael demanded.
Walt pulled Vincent off Claire. "He's been really bad lately! I don't know why, but I can't seem to control him"
He was cut short but Vincent's barks. Vincent broke free of Walt's grip once more and ran towards the man who had attacked Claire.
"AAH!" the man had awoken and looked around. He began to uncontrollably sneeze. "GET IT AWAY FROM ME, I'M ALLERGIC"
He turned and tried to run to the jungle, but Locke and Michael caught him again.
"Hey! Let go of me"
"What's your name?" Locke demanded of the person in a harsh voice. "Ni-Nikkolas." He said. He looked around. "Please. Just let me go"
"Nikkolas what?" Locke said in the same harsh voice.
"Robb, but"
"Robb. Do you know Ethan Robb?" Hurley said.
"Well, duh, he's my brother!" Nikkolas said. "My twin, actually"
"That's why you look just like him, eh?" Locke said fiercely. "HE TRIED TO TAKE MY BABY!" Claire yelled. "I DID NOT!" Nikkolas shouted back.
"Yes, he did! He said 'give me the baby' and when I refused, he kicked me!" Claire shouted. She breathed in and out. Alex began to cry in Sun's arms again.
"That's not her baby!" Nikkolas said. "He's mine"
This was by far the strangest thing any of them had ever heard.
"What are you talking about, dude?" Hurley demanded. "We watched her birth the child, he cannot possibly be yours!" Saiid agreed. "No, no, NO!" Nikkolas said. "My brother... Ethan... he drugged you! He put... something, I forgot what it was called- in your spring! Please, please, just listen to me"
The castaways listened, but they did not let go.
"He drugged your water to make you think Claire was pregnant. She wasn't even really expecting when she got here! It made you all think she was, and she believed it too"
"But I knew!" Claire yelled. "Before I came! Eight months before I even got on the plane, I knew I was pregnant!" Nikkolas held up his free hand, which was snatched back by Michael. "No. You thought you were. You see, Ethan was a psychic living in Australia when he met Claire. He knew you would all end up here. Ethan drugged Claire to think she was pregnant. He drugged her boyfriend to think he had done it. He switched the sonograms to make the doctors think it too"
"Load of bull," Charlie grunted, but he kept listening anyway.
"Ethan knew you were all coming to this island. He planned on hiding on the plane you were going on and killing you off one by one once you all got here. He convinced me to come with him"
"But why would he do that? And why did you come if you knew the plane would crash?" Saiid questioned.
Nikkolas hung his head in shame. "Ethan was born with a mental defect. He gets no sense of happiness from things normal people do, but killing people makes him happy. "For years I have lived with him. He constantly threatened to kill me, to hurt me, to do something to me. I had had trouble with the law before and I didn't need anything more." Nikkolas balled his fists. "I wanted him dead. I wanted him out of my life once and for all.
"So. I figured that I would believe him, and once we got here, I'd kill him." He grinned. "Only Austin Powers over here did that for me, eh"
He pointed to Charlie, who blushed. "Bull!" Jack called out. "There's no such thing as a mental defect where someone is happy from other people's misery! I'm a neurologist, I should know!" Nikkolas glared at the speaker. "Ethan was the only known man in the world to have it"
"He's making it up." Kate said. "Jack would know about it"
Jack flahsed Kate a huge smile. "Yeah, I would!" From his spot where he stood, several people behind Kate, Sawyer saw this action and snorted. "Besides," Hurley said. "There's no such thing as psychics!" "Yes, there is." Claire said softly. She snapped back into it. "But Ethan couldn't possibly be one!" "Why ever not?" Nikkolas said.
Claire thought. "Because... because..." she stumbled. "Oh, I know!" she looked around at the castaways. "The psychic that told me to come here told me that you have to be very, very intelligent and aligned with the world to be able to see into the future. Ethan had a brain defect! It was impossible." She folded her arms smugly in a "Ha!" sort of way. "That's a lie." Nikkolas accused. "It is not. If Claire says she's telling the truth, then she's telling the truth." said Charlie.
"Can you tell us this, Nikkolas?" Jack said. "Are there any more people on the island"
Nikkolas looked at them. "Yes"
"Do you know them"
"Now I do. Yes." he looked around at all the castaways. "We've met them in the past"
"If Ethan was a psychic," said Kate. "Then when are we getting off this island"
Nikkolas sighed. "We will never know"
The survivors figured that they probably got all the information they could out of Nikkolas, but they weren't taking any chances. They kept him in the camp where they knew they could find him, and he was never alone. At night they tied his hands to a tree and didn't let him go anywhere without someone else.
"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Shannon asked Saiid. "Nikkolas"
Saiid sighed and pushed a lock of Shannon's blond hair behind her ear. "I don't know"
"I think he's telling the truth. Nothing else makes sense. It could happen." Shannon said. Hurley sat, alone, as usual, in the distance, watching all this go down. He sighed. He turned to his left. Claire and Charlie sat, playing with baby Alex. On his right Jack and Kate were talking and laughing.
Hurley sighed again. He was all alone out here. The only person he had was himself. Who was going to protect him if something happened? No one wanted the fat guy around. His thoughts were interrupted by the rustling of leaves in the background. "Hurley"
Hurley turned around. "where is he?"