Shannon sucked in another raspy, half-breath of air. She tried to push herself further under the large banana leaf she was using for a makeshift shelter.

Her eyes were red and puffy; her mascara had run, creating long, dark streaks from the corners of her eyes, over her cheeks. Her hair was lank and dripping, the leaf proving of little protection.

The ground was boggy, and her feet kept getting stuck, as she slowly and carefully picked her way through the jungle. There was no way of knowing if she was going in the direction of the caves.

Shannon let out a loud scream as lightning struck the branch of a tree a couple of meters in front of her, bringing it crashing down where she could have been standing a few seconds later.

She sniffled a little, but started off again, concentrating on keeping her breathing normal, which wasn't easy.

A pool of water had formed in the middle of the banana leaf, making it heavy to hold above her head. After a few seconds thought, she dropped it on the ground, abandoning it. She was already saturated, anyway.

Lightning flashed again, causing her to give a little whimper, and an involuntary shriek when a particularly loud clap of thunder resounded through the jungle.

Her foot caught on an exposed tree root, and she stumbled, splattering herself with mud. Still, she pushed herself up again and continued.

Shouldn't she have reached the caves by now? Was she just going around in circles? There was no way she could possibly know; she didn't often navigate the jungle. She could only hope to keep walking, and hopefully come across the beach or the caves, before a bolt of lightning came across her.

-----------------------------------------------------

"Shannon!" Boone called out, as he squelched through the muddy jungle floor. "Shannon, answer me!"

"She can't hear you." Sayid said, needing to raise his own voice just to be heard. "The noise created by the storm is drowning you out."

"Well then how in the hell are we going to find her?" Boone shouted, not necessarily for the purpose of being heard over the wind.

"We look for her footprints." Sayid said calmly, without a moment's hesitation, keeping a cool head as usual.

Boone scoffed at this, thinking it ridiculous.

"Look behind you." Sayid commanded. If he was offended by his companion's skepticism, he didn't show it.

Reluctantly, Boone threw a careless glance over his shoulder.

Etched into the mud, from as far behind them as they could see, were their own footprints.

Boone promptly turned a delicate shade of scarlet, embarrassed by his misguided cynicism.

A large fork of lightning shot through the sky, causing all three hunters to tense slightly.

Sawyer, who was bringing up the rear, scanned the ground around him for footprints. There were none, apart from their own.

Lightning lit up the sky again, and again.

"Is it me," Boone began. "Or are the lightning flashes becoming more...?"

"Frequent?" Sayid finished for him. "That's exactly what I was thinking. It's getting closer."

"Are you meaning to tell me," Sawyer began, eyes wide in incredulity. "That this bitch is gonna get worse?"

"If you are referring to the storm," Sayid replied coolly. "Then I am afraid so."

The lightning was now almost incessant, and they had not discovered a single trace of Shannon.

A sudden, choked cry from behind them caused both Boone and Sayid to spin around.

Sawyer was sprawled face-down in the mud, unmoving, a scorch-mark burned into the back of his shirt.

"Sawyer!" Sayid gasped, as more of a statement than an exclamation, kneeling down beside him.

Boone just stared at him.

"He's been hit by lightning." Sayid pointed out the obvious, rolling him over onto his back so that, if by some miracle he was still alive, he would be able to breathe. His entire front was caked with mud.

"Is - is he…?" Boone asked shakily.

"I am not authorized to make that judgment." Sayid replied while checking him over. "Jack will be able to tell you that for sure."

"But Jack isn't here!" Boone shouted.

"We're going to have to get him back to the caves." Said Sayid, somehow remaining calm.

"But what about Shannon?" Boone asked, still yelling.

As if on cue, a high-pitched scream resounded through the jungle.

"Shannon!" Boone and Sayid shouted in unison, turning towards the sound.

Boone was about to take off through the jungle after the scream, but Sayid stopped him.
"Wait." He said. "One of us must get Sawyer back to Jack."

"I have to go after Shannon!" Boone said immediately.

After a few seconds, Sayid gave a single nod, giving his consent, and Boone took off.

-----------------------------------------------------

"Jack!" Sayid yelled, bursting through the waterfall-like curtain of rain over the cave mouth. "Jack!"

It was a few seconds before Jack and the cave's other occupants realized that the saturated and mud-caked, blonde-haired figure being carried by the equally-saturated Sayid was not Shannon.

"Oh God." Kate was the first to rush forward, and spot the dark scorch-mark on Sawyer's shirt. "What happened?"

"He got hit by lightning." Sayid said in a rush, laying Sawyer down on the ground beside the fire. "Where is Jack?"

Kate didn't say anything. Her hand had flown to her mouth, and it looked as if she were trying not to cry.

Meanwhile, Jack had emerged from the crowd of onlookers, and dropped to his knees beside Sawyer's motionless form. He looked terrified.

Suddenly, Kate remembered to first time she'd met Jack, when she'd had to sew up a gash in his side. She had been amazed at how calm he'd been, and she'd asked him why he wasn't afraid. He had told her that when he felt scared, he would let the fear in, but only for five seconds. Then it would be gone.

Kate counted to five in her head. One, two, three, four, five. And then the fearful look was gone from Jack's eyes, and he was pulling his penknife out from his back pocket and cutting Sawyer's shirt off, tossing it aside.

There was a pink patch on his skin where the scorched part of his shirt had been, but apart from that, Sawyer didn't look any different than if he had been sauntering around, calling nicknames after those who were lucky enough to merit them.

Jack leaned down and placed his ear against Sawyer's bare chest.

After a few seconds, he raised his head again, nodding, but still breathing heavily from the initial shock.

"He's breathing." Jack announced, and a resounding sigh swept around the cave, not all of them due to relief. "But only just." He turned to Sayid. "Did you give him CPR?"

"No." Sayid shook his head. "I brought him straight here."

"Ok." Jack nodded, gesturing from Sayid to Sawyer. "Tilt the head back, hold his nose and breathe in his mouth. We might be lucky."

"Jack, he got hit by lightning! Don't you have some magic-medicine you can give him, or something?" Asked Charlie, who, although he wasn't about to hop on the 'I-love-Sawyer' bandwagon, neither did he wish his death.

"Charlie, rescue breathing and CPR have some of the highest success rates with lightning victims." Jack said patiently, with the air of someone reciting from a textbook.

Sayid's insistent mouth-to-mouth didn't seem to be having any visible effects, but Charlie shut up anyway.

Jack pulled open the metal box which held all the medical supplies, to see if he had anything that could help. He checked the labels of bottle after bottle of pills and syringe refills, but to no avail.

He turned back to Sawyer's motionless form lying on the ground.

"That's enough." He said, and Sayid stood up, allowing Jack to take his place.

He placed his ear back against Sawyer's chest to make sure he could still hear his heartbeat. It appeared that he could, and he began CPR again, desperately trying to blow air into the unconscious man's lungs.

Had they been back in the civilized world, in a hospital, and had Sawyer been hooked up to a heart-monitor, the constant blip-blip-blip would have been suddenly replaced by a long, high-pitched ringing sound.