A/N: Thanks again to all the great folks who reviewed me ((Flame31, mfkngst, ElvenRanger13, Evermore, and erabuhikari)), you guys rock my entire sock drawer. Anyway, sorry if this chapter confuses, I promise the pieces will soon fall into their proper places after everything is "launched".

Jack stopped eventually and dropped his bag onto the dirt and leaves. His eyes skirted the tall stalks of some kind of bamboo-like plants and tropical trees and hand he listened for a branch snapping, a bush rustling, anything that wasn't one hundred percent natural. Something wasn't right; he could feel it in his gut even though everything seemed normal.

That was the problem, actually, everything seemed too peaceful.

Kate and Charlie paused behind him, both surprised that he'd stopped so suddenly after seeming as edgy as he had before. He still looked just as jumpy to Kate and this made her more bothered than she'd been before. All she wanted to do was help him, damnit, why wouldn't he let her? Jack was planning something and she had a suspicion she wasn't going to like whatever it was. What she needed to do now was stay calm and off his nerves while keeping an eye on him. He wouldn't do something stupid if she had anything to say about it, and she was certain she would.

"Kate, Charlie, stay here. I'm going to scout ahead a little before we move out." He paused and looked at his bag and Kate noticed his hand move slightly towards the knife in his belt, "If I'm not back in an hour, turn around."

Kate opened her mouth to protest but her voice was covered by Charlie's before she could even say a word, "And just leave you there? No, I don't think so. I'm not leaving until you come back out to meet us, if you insist on going by yourself."

Charlie's blunt command left Jack speechless as his mind searched for another idea to work around the problem. As long as they didn't follow after him, maybe nothing would, maybe his plan would still work.

"Alright, wait here. I shouldn't be more than," Jack paused, "An hour or two. Is that satisfactory enough for you?"

"It's fine." Kate replied coolly and handed Jack his bag as she watched him disappear into the forest ahead of them. She didn't know what he was up to, but he'd been acting secretive the whole way into the forest and she was not going to let him have his way about everything. Had she known, she would never have let him leave the group.

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Sayid stared out into the trees lining the beach. Inhaling deeply, he took the first familiar step along the beach, his crude map clutched in his right hand and a walking stick in his left. Finding her, even with the map as a guide, would be like trying to locate a moving, paranoid piece of hay in a giant needle stack. Hopefully that place he'd been at before was her main, if not only, hideout.

But if he thought finding her was difficult, he knew figuring out what he was going to say to her would be much more so. Would she even help them? He highly doubted it. Even so, though, he had eventually admitted grudgingly to himself that Sawyer was indeed right and that if it could help at all, then it needed to be done.

What would happen if she did help? What could she do? Sayid had no idea, but he was determined to find out.

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Shannon watched Michael and a slowly growing group of people working on what looked to her to just be a few ordinary, everyday tree trunks. She knew that Jack and a few of the others had left to carry out some sort of 'plan', everyone in both camps knew that by now. They were going out to rescue Claire and whatever it was that Michael was working on had something to do with it, although she doubted even he was quite sure exactly what it was.

A she sat on her rock watching them, another pang flipped her stomach as she thought about another rescue party, one that had gone out on the first day and had yet to return.

He's fine, chill. You'd know if he wasn't.

Shannon pulled her knees close, crossed her arms on them and then rested her chin on top.

He can handle himself. He was the only one in the family who ever could…

She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but she was too antsy. No one had even mentioned Boone or Locke since last afternoon, everyone was too concerned with the new plan.

No one else cares; they're all too busy. What if they never come back? You can't let that happen.

Well, if that was the way it was going to be, she'd think up something on her own. Resolutely, she stood up and marched off, an idea already forming in her mind.

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A boar.

Locke looked it over carefully.

At least with a little work it will be.

He lowered his knife and glanced up from the small, wooden carving in his hand. Boone had started to pace again and there were few things that unnerved Locke so much as pacing. That was the main reason Locke had been trying to keep them moving, but following the piece of underground sheet metal had been proving meaningless that day, so he'd finally thrown in the towel for the afternoon.

"Something the matter?" He asked casually, sliding his knife back into its sheath on his belt slowly. One of the other few things that unnerved Locke more than pacing was a mistreated knife.

Boone stopped and sat down across from Locke on a mossy stone and shook his head, "No, it's nothing."

Rolling the small beginnings of the statuette in his palm, Locke raised an unconvinced eyebrow and Boone frowned.

"It's just that we've been out here nearly two days following that stupid piece of plane or whatever it is, but we haven't even seen a clue of the people we're looking for since we split up!" He stood again and walked to one edge of their small camp and said with frustration, "How long are we going to be wandering around out here?"

"I was figuring on as long as it takes to find out what that," He gestured to where they left off on the trail of metal, "leads to."

"What about the others though? If we stay out here another couple of days, weeks even, how're they going to know we're still alive?" Boone protested, still facing the jungle.

Locke paused, and then remarked, "If this is about your sister, I'm sure she can handle herself well enough if we're gone another few days."

Boone laughed scathingly, "Have you even seen her? She can hardly look after herself for half an hour, let alone a week!" He slumped down to the rock again and shook his head, "If I'm not there I don't even want to think about what kind of trouble she's going to get into."

There was silence as Locke's eyes wandered back to his carving and Boone stared at his folded hands.

"You're aloud to be worried, you know." Locke remarked eventually.

Boone leapt up again, "How can I not be worried?" He shook his head and began to walk as he spoke, "I can't tell if anything will happen to her from out here! She was in trouble when I went to get her and it's pretty apparent that there's something out there that wants to kill us all, but I still leave her alone! What if something happened to her while I was out here? I wouldn't find out until it was too damn late to do anything! I mean, I know we bitch at each other and everything, but she's my sister." Out of steam, he sank back to the rock, " I won't be able to forgive myself if anything happens to her."

Locke shrugged reassuringly, "As long as she stays with the others she'll be fine. There's safety in numbers."

Boone sighed, "Yeah, I guess you're right. She'll be fine…" He trailed off, still only partially satisfied, but enough to distract his mind to other things.

Locke had been right about almost everything so far, Boone reassured himself. He won't be wrong about this.

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Kate, too, had spent most of the last hour pacing. Jack still hadn't returned and the bad omen in the pit of Kate's stomach had grown to the point of almost being unbearable. Walking was becoming the only way to stop herself from feeling sick.

Charlie hadn't been much of a help, either. The whole time they'd been waiting, he'd been as silent as the forest around them, his eyebrows wrinkled in concentration. What he was thinking about Kate hadn't the foggiest idea, but she could guess.

It was on one of her numerous times back from one tree to another that Charlie finally spoke up, "Look, I know that you don't want to betray Jack's trust or whatever, but I think it's about time you let me in on what his plan is. I've been following you around all bloody day without even the slightest hint of what we're doing and now that he's surprised us both by leaving I would say it's the right time to speak up."

Kate stopped mid-step and stuttered, "W…What? You think I know?"

"Well, yeah. Jack tells you practically everything, so it only makes sense that you'd be the one he let in on his plan in case something backfired." Charlie retorted.

"You'd be surprised." Kate muttered and then argued, "I don't know anything! Weren't you listening to us earlier?"

Charlie shook his head, flustered, "I hardly 'eard you two speak at all! All I could see most of the time was that you two were doing a lot of arguing which, then, seemed like a bad idea to get involved in, but I guess it would've been the only way I'm ever going to find out about this plan as you've clammed up!"

Kate stomped forward, pointing at him and exclaiming, "I'm telling you the truth! I thought he'd told you since he'd been so willing to let you come along, but I guess I was wrong and I'll admit it."

She braced herself for another round of attacks but Charlie was quiet and his eyes looked around like he was just barely grasping something and didn't want to lose it.

"Charlie? Charlie what is it? You do know something, don't you…" Kate grumbled in frustration.

"No, no, no." Charlie paused, calculating, "It's just that he didn't tell me, and he didn't tell you, and the only other person I saw him talking to was Michael and I'm pretty sure he's almost as in the dark as we are…"

"So?" Kate asked, shrugging, not really seeing any relevance to what he was going on about.

"So no one knows any details of Jack's plan," Charlie began hurriedly.

"Yes, we're both quite aware of that, but I don't see-"

Charlie cut her off with a wave of his hand, "And he ups and leaves by himself, just like he wanted to at first, remember?"

Kate nodded hesitantly, "Yeah…"

"He says he's 'scouting', but-"

"But he doesn't know anything about scouting!" Kate finished, catching on to what should have been remarkably obvious to her an hour ago, "The last time he tried to scout he wandered around in circles for fifteen minutes! Anyway, he knows I'm the one with tracking abilities. But why didn't he let me do it if he's trying to find that trail? It would save time."

"Unless he isn't really tracking a trail at all." Charlie interjected, his eyes shining with excitement.

"But that still doesn't explain why we're retracing these steps." Kate said with frustration, "Claire has to be down the other trail. This one was just designed to lure us away, even Jack has to see that."

Charlie stopped and furrowed his eyebrows again in thought, "I don't think he ever intended to try to rescue Claire directly."

Kate snorted, "Well, if he wasn't going to do that, what good did he think he could he do?"

Charlie paused, looking at the ground, the crease lines on his forehead increasing visibly. Kate didn't like that look; it was not a positive one.

She questioned quietly, "What? Charlie, what do you think he's up to?"

"I think he knew that Locke and Boone probably have a much better chance of finding her than he did so he was going to come up here on his own-" Charlie began, the light gone from his eyes again.

"Why on his own?" Kate questioned probingly. None of this was making sense to her now, but Charlie looked increasingly bothered and that was not helping the worry she felt.

"To be bait to lure out…whatever it is. To give Claire a chance to escape or be rescued." Charlie said in almost a whisper.

"But... but that's suicide!" Kate stammered, and her stomach did the largest flip she'd felt so far as she stepped back and sat down, suddenly feeling a little faint, "He could never take them on by himself. You saw what it did to the pilot! How could Jack be so stupid not to have figured that out?"

Charlie spoke slowly, "I…I think he knew." He gulped, "This whole time he's been teaching us…me and Hurley, I mean, lots of stuff about medicine and the like, you know. Hurley and me together probably know enough to handle most of the common things that'd happen to any of us just from what Jack talked about when we went to deliver water and such."

"That's ridiculous, though, he couldn't have known then that this would happen, no one did!" Kate interjected, hoping his theory was wrong.

"Maybe it wasn't all him…maybe…maybe it was fate." Charlie replied in such a low tone he was hardly audible now, "Locke told me before that the island has powers, what if this is the way the island wants it to be?" Charlie asked, although he didn't seem too sure of it himself.

Kate looked up furiously, "So Jack's just going to be killed because some stupid piece of land says so?" She stood up, her hands balled into fists at her side, "I don't give a damn about fate or this island! Jack is not going to die out there fighting alone while I sit here and do nothing!"

Charlie jumped to his feet, Kate's determination rubbing off to him as well, "Then let's go! You follow him, as you'll catch up to him the fastest, and I'll circle the area in case he changed direction."

Kate nodded and grabbed her stuff, almost running as she picked up the trail. She was going to catch up to him, and if she had to defy fate itself to do it, she would, assuming she was there on time.

Oh god, let me be there on time.

A/N: Phew, long enough for ya'll? I really hadn't intended it to go on this long but heck, a lot of stuff happened, what can I say? Please r/r, much thanks!