Chapter 3: Lost and Found

It was still dark when Kate's eyes flashed open. She spent a disoriented moment trying to figure out what she was doing in the sand. Hadn't she just been at the hatch? Weren't they trying to get inside?

She remembered in the same instant a strange, foreign sound froze her in place.

She lay perfectly still, only her eyes moving back and forth as she tried to place the strange noise she was hearing. It seemed to be some distance off-but wait. Was it coming closer? Was it a storm rolling in? Was it thunder she could just barely discern over the rolling of the waves?

It came closer still. And then she knew.

"Oh, my God," she breathed.

Suddenly she was a flurry of movement, instinct warning her to hide, to conceal herself in the trees. Grabbing her pack, she scrambled backward, pushing back the flap of the tarp and sliding out. She dragged the pack after her and let the tarp flap closed again.

She nearly panicked as something bright flashed for an instant, then was gone. Some latent instinct kicked in, probably developed during her years on the run. She dropped her pack and cautiously pulled the flap of the tarp back. Reaching forward with a single hand, she methodically disturbed the sand where she'd been sleeping, erasing as best she could any signs of her presence.

She pulled her hand back and let the tarp fall back into place an instant before the flash came again, almost right on top of her. She dropped to her belly, hoping her shadow hadn't been visible through the tarp.

The flash she'd seen was a search light, the strange sound the chug of a motor. But it wasn't coming ashore, and nobody was calling out to anyone who might remain on the beach.

Instinct warned her that this was not the rescue everyone had been hoping for, and that if she wanted to remain safe-as relative a term as that might have become-she should remain hidden.

The light came back, flashing over Sawyer's shelter again. She didn't move. In fact, she scarcely breathed. Did whoever was out there know she was here? Had her quick disguise of he presence not been enough? She squeezed her eyes shut, dizzy and a little sick from the adrenaline slicing through her.

The light moved away, the sound of the motor becoming less distinct as it moved down the beach.

For long moments she didn't move. That definitely hadn't been rescue. If it had been, they would have stopped and explored the signs of habitation on the beach. But they hadn't. They'd been searching for something.

When she was sure they were gone, she let go of the gun-which she hadn't even realized she'd been holding-and slung the straps of her pack over her shoulders. Taking the gun again and staying low, she dashed into the trees.

She ducked behind a large tree and leaned against it. What the hell was she supposed to do now? It was clear to her that she couldn't stay at the beach; it was far too exposed. But where should she go? To the caves, to warn everyone that she'd seen something? But what would she tell them? She hadn't really seen anything, except a flash of light. Would they think she was crazy? Would it be a revisiting of the night Claire had woken up screaming, claiming someone was trying to hurt her baby?

Should she go back to the hatch, warn Jack and Locke that someone was out there? But what if they weren't at the hatch? Would she be able to find the Black Rock in the dark, having been there only once?

Or should she simply run, vanishing into the trees as Danielle had done?

A branch snapped several yards behind her.

She whirled, gasping, the gun held out in front of her. Her eyes scanned the trees, but she saw nothing. She felt it though; felt certain someone or something was out there.

She backed away slowly, taking one quiet step back at a time. She couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. She eyed the entrance to the path that would lead her to the caves. To hell with this, she thought. She wasn't going to wait for whatever was out there to come back. She'd go back to the caves, and if Jack tried to order her around, she'd decide then whether to follow him or not.

She'd taken a few steps down the path when the brush began shaking and rustling. Her mouth went dry, and when two sections of the brush began to part, she turned and fled.

Away from the caves.


The sky was an angry gray, dark clouds roiling and breaking open to let loose a flood of rain. Not that they were lacking in water.

The three men clung to their lifelines, ruined pieces of the raft that had given them hope an instant before threatening their lives. They'd survived the night, watching warily as the skies transformed from midnight black to a furious, threatening gray. They'd watched in silence as the fire finally died down, and then they'd been left in darkness, the only sound the soft lapping of the water as they contemplated whether or not they'd make it out of the water alive.

It was the first heavy raindrops that forced Sawyer back to consciousness. He'd been drifting in and out throughout the night, the pain alternately dragging him under and becoming so intense it brought him to wakefulness again. It had been a hellish few hours, made more miserable by the stiffness of his muscles, the pounding of his head and the wandering of his mind.

The loss of blood and accompanying pain had lowered his defenses, crumbled the wall he normally kept around himself. Not knowing whether he'd survive or not, there had been nothing to keep unwanted thoughts at bay. He'd spent much of the night-those bits of consciousness he could remember, anyway-flashing back on the past weeks on the island, on the events that had led him to this spot in the middle of the ocean.

The one thing he couldn't get out of his mind was her. Freckles. She wouldn't leave him alone. She was there, floating through his mind whether he liked it or not. But the images weren't the sexy ones that had occasionally peppered his dreams. Instead she taunted him, laughing as she passed by him to stand with Jack. And not just stand next to him. They were all over each other. The images slapped him in the face and refused to go away.

He shook his head, groaning when the movement jostled his shoulder. He didn't have any claim on Kate, had no reason to give a damn what she did with her time. And yet, somehow the dream-nightmare-images were like rubbing sandpaper on a fresh wound.

He squinted against the sting of the rain and stared out at the endless expanse of choppy sea. He figured it was time to face facts. There wasn't much chance of survival out here, and there never had been. The second the flames had flared to life on the deck of the raft, they'd been done for. Even if they knew which direction to swim, they were fifteen miles out. An impossible distance, even without a hole in his shoulder.

Jin murmured something suddenly, but Sawyer ignored him. He wondered how long it would take-how long they'd have to drift out here in the water before they'd start to fade into unconsciousness. Before it would end for good.

Jin's voice came back to him, louder this time, a hint of excitement underlying his tone. Sawyer tried to ignore him, but when Jin tapped his arm with a quick repetitive motion, Sawyer turned his head and opened his mouth to berate the man for bothering him.

The angry retort died on his lips. His eyes followed Jin's outstretched arm, and through the rain he saw...land.

He shook his head, trying to clear the rain from his eyes. He had to be hallucinating. There was no way he was actually seeing a slip of land on the horizon. Maybe he was getting a fever after all. He'd thought the coolness of the water was helping to keep a fever at bay, but apparently he'd been wrong. And yet...he blinked several times, and when he opened his eyes again, it was still there. "You're just dreamin'," he muttered. "It's a mirage."

"A mirage we all see?" Michael asked from the other side of him.

Sawyer turned, but Michael's gaze was firmly fixed on the horizon. The man had been so quiet, Sawyer had almost forgotten he'd been there. "That isn't a mirage, man," Michael said. "That's land."

Between Michael's sudden mood change and Jin's rapid-fire Korean, Sawyer was starting to get really irritated, more so than before, which surprised him, since he hadn't thought things could get any worse. Didn't they realize they were seeing things? "You're just seeing what you wanna see," he grumbled.

"Hey, believe what you want to believe, man," Michael said. "I see land, and I'm not waiting around any longer."

Sawyer watched as, still clutching his piece of driftwood with one arm, he began stroking toward the horizon. Jin tapped his arm and gestured toward Michael. "I'm tellin' you, he's crazy," Sawyer said.

But Jin was determined. Sawyer supposed he would be. After all, he had a wife to get back to. And Michael had his son. What did he have, he wondered. Revenge, a voice whispered. Hadn't he promised himself just a few hours ago that he was going to make those bastards pay? That he wasn't going to make it easy on them and simply die?

"All right, all right," he muttered. He shifted, drew his arm from around the driftwood to take a stroke-and immediately sank into the water. Choking on a mouthful of water, he pumped his legs and broke the surface. "Son of a bitch!"

He bit back a groan as pain ripped through him. Not only was his injured arm stiff as hell, but overnight the muscles in his good harm had stiffened from their unnatural position and nearly locked. Gingerly, gritting his teeth at the pins-and-needles sensation as blood flowed into his arm again.

Shit. This was going to be tougher than he'd thought. He was going to have to use his injured arm to hold on to the driftwood and his good arm to stroke through the water.

He raised his arm and took hold of the driftwood, keeping his shoulder as close to his body as he could. "All right," he told Jin. "Let's do this."

They stroked forward awkwardly, Jin's end often moving ahead, forcing him to slow down and match Sawyer's slower pace. Sawyer continually cursed under his breath, the pain fogging his vision. He felt like his shoulder was being ripped apart. The distant slip of land never vanished, no matter how many times he blinked, even seemed to move closer the longer they swam. The rain continued to pour down in sheets, but the mirage was always there.

Maybe it wasn't a mirage after all...

He nearly passed out twice on the seemingly endless swim. Jin kept urging him on, but he didn't get his final burst of energy until he looked up and saw Michael stagger out of the water and fall to his knees on a beach that definitely wasn't a mirage.

Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, he adjusted his grip on the driftwood and stroked as hard as he could. The water shallowed as they neared the shore, and soon it was shallow enough that they could stand.

He let go of the driftwood and staggered to his feet, but almost immediately he fell to his knees. When he continued to fall forward, instinct brought his hands out to brace himself. The pain from the jarring of his wound blacked his vision. He fell face-first into the shallow water.

Without a word Jin took his good arm, slung it over his shoulder, and half-carried him up the beach. Sawyer coughed up his latest mouthful of water, and was only half-conscious when Jin laid him on the sand. He rolled onto his back, his eyes closed against the sting of the rain. They were on land again. What land, he didn't know. Clearly they'd drifted quite a distance during the long hours of the night, but it was entirely possible that this wasn't even the island they'd been on before.

But at the moment none of that mattered. At the moment, all he cared about was that there was finally solid ground beneath him. He let out a deep breath and was unconscious within seconds.


Kate stumbled and staggered through the jungle, every muscle in her body shaking. She had no idea where she was. She'd been moving for hours, blindly running away from whatever had been on the beach-if indeed anything had been there at all. More likely than not, it had been some kind of jungle animal that had been rustling around in that brush. There had been boar on the beach before. Maybe another one had ventured there looking for food.

But as much as she wanted to believe that it had only been a boar, there was some tiny corner of her mind that rejected the idea. So soon after the appearance of what had to have been some sort of small boat, hearing something rustling in the bushes struck her as a little too coincidental. Maybe the boat had seen her after all, then gone ashore a ways down the beach, its occupants making their way back to her. She shivered at the thought. Perhaps they were tracking her even now.

She gripped her gun in cold, stiff fingers. The rain had started a couple of hours ago, and she'd been soaked within seconds. But still, she hadn't stopped moving.

When she'd taken off, her first thought had been to circle back around and go for the caves. To warn everyone that something, or someone, was out there. But then it had occurred to her that if she went to the caves, she would be leading whoever was out there straight to everyone. So she'd kept heading in the opposite direction, putting as much distance between herself and the caves as she could. She wasn't going to put everyone in any more danger, before the raft crew even had a chance at success.

She wondered how far out they'd made it, and how they were fairing in the storm. She hoped they were all right.

But did she really hope they found rescue?

She'd asked herself the question several times since they'd left on the hike to the Black Rock, knowing that the raft would be launching shortly thereafter. After all, what awaited her once they were rescued? Either jail, or if she somehow managed to escape again, more time on the run. More loneliness, more guilt, more fear. But here on the island the specter of unknown peril constantly hung over their heads.

She'd been asking herself the question, but she didn't have an answer.

She stumbled and fell to her knees, the gun tumbling from her grip and landing a couple feet away. She crawled across the mucky ground and retrieved it, then braced herself on a narrow tree trunk and staggered to her feet. She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes. She needed to rest, and she needed to eat something.

She tipped her head back and sighed. And then she heard the crack.

Her heart tripped, but it happened too fast for her to react. The tree trunk snapped and began to fall, and since she was leaning against it, she went with it. She let out a short shriek as she fell, landing hard on her side. But she didn't stop there, didn't lay still on the ground. It wasn't until she was falling, rolling, that she realized she'd been standing on the edge of a heavily-forested hillside. She rolled down the hill, trying to hold onto the gun, trying to protect her face.

She landed at the bottom of the hill with a thud, her breath leaving her in a rush. She curled onto her side, groaning as various aches and bruises began to make themselves known. Several moments later, when she started to breathe again, she cracked her eyes open. She saw the gun laying a few feet away from her, and became aware that she was lying on a bed of sand and weeds. So she'd found the beach again. But which part of the beach? How far would she have to walk, and in which direction, to find the camp again? If she could get back to the camp, she could easily get back to the caves.

She squinted against the sky, turning her head to avoid the sting of the rain. And at the hazy edges of her vision, she saw something. A dark shape, how far down the beach she couldn't tell. No wait...there wasn't just one. She turned her head slightly, and she saw two more. She squinted, rolling over and looking up. Her heart began pounding. It couldn't be. She had to be seeing things.

She stood up and rubbed a hand over her face, clearing the water away. She blinked several times, clearing her vision. And when she realized that she was indeed seeing the impossible, she took off at a run.