Part Twenty-One

Even though there was nothing that Jack would have liked to do more than turn right around and follow the labyrinth that the Others had built for themselves over the years and decades until they found this source that Locke had alluded to, so that Jack could tear its guts from its body with his own two hands, in the end they followed the sea. The smell of salt grew stronger the farther that they ventured out, the heavier with humidity the air grew, and with it all came a rich smell of earth. Jack would have thought that the smell of dirt would be overpowered by the water as they drawer closer to the ocean, but he supposed that if the clouds had finally released the rain as they had been promising to all afternoon and for most of the night and the earth was wet then it might still be winning out. The heavy feeling of electricity crackling through the air in appreciation of a coming storm seemed to confirm this.

It was the rational thing to do, traveling outwards until they found the sea, though Jack nearly punched Locke in the mouth again when he suggested it. The realization that their positions had been reversed was hardly a comforting one. Jack knew that Locke was right, however much he hated to admit it, knew that it was much better to travel to the outside and get their bearings back before they came back to rescue Walt rather than wandering around in disoriented circles until they were captured or killed.

It didn't matter how much he understood this rationally, Jack realized, and was even more disturbed by that thought than any of the very troubling ones that had come before it. He still had to clench his hands into fists several times until his own nails cut into his palms, using the pain to keep him grounded and away from simply running back down the corridor to fight every single one of the Others at once if that's what it took to get at the source and destroy this decaying castle once and for all.

Jack did not think of the source as anything other than a living thing, even though he knew that some form of geothermal energy was at least logically possible. Not with all of the other rude awakenings that he had been given about the true nature of the place that they were beginning to call home. 'How much faith do you have in Sawyer?' continued to fly about Jack's mind and batter butterfly wings against the inside of his skull, always coming back to, 'How much faith do you have?'

'Enough,' Jack decided finally, slowly forcing his hands to uncurl. 'I have enough.' In Sawyer and in everything else.

So they followed the smell and, eventually, the sound of the sea.

The hallway stretched on and on, curving now and then even though it never showed a fork or any sign that they were going to be given a choice in which way they turned. Jack waited for the cry of a minotaur that never came. The only sound audible was that Jack's own footsteps and all three of them breathing.

"This place is enormous," Locke said from a few feet to Jack's right. Jack jumped, for Locke moved with hardly a sound. "There's no way of knowing how long it took to build."

Jack thought of the rubble that they had left behind and said, "You said that the first computer was built in the 1940's."

"That we are aware of." Jack felt alarmingly as if they were on the verge of having an actual conversation here, rather than simply trading threats that came with brilliant smiles and raised hackles.

Jack threw Locke a sideways glance. He could feel Kate's eyes resting on them both as she maintained her half-walking, half-jogging pace from a few feet behind them. She made only slightly more noise than a cat as she moved. "Don't tell me that you're one of those conspiracy theorists, John. Do you also think that the government is holding secret briefings here that they don't want us to know about?"

Jack almost wanted to Locke to say yes. That way he could write him off as another crazy, one of hundreds that Jack had treated for their physical wound and then sent on their way to receive the appropriate psychiatric help.

The corners of Locke's mouth quirked up as he looked back at Jack. There was a spot of blood on the corner of his mouth from where Jack had struck him earlier, as well as a spreading indigo bruise. Jack felt something that wanted to be guilt but could not push itself over those final necessary steps. He shelved it along with the long list of other things that would drive him crazy if he looked at them yet. "A short time ago I had a conversation with a ghost, Jack," Locke replied in a mild voice. Trust in him to drag all that right off the shelf again. Maybe and Jack both needed to be put under psychiatric evaluation. "And it was not the first. I think it's about time that we stop making easy assumptions about was is or isn't possible."

Jack looked forward again so that he would not have to respond. The smell of the sea was thicker than ever on the breeze, a welcome distraction that would have ruffled Jack's hair if it had been long enough. He looked over his shoulder at Kate and saw that the wind had pushed her hair back from her face, and she was pushing forward into it. Jack wondered what thoughts had be going through Kate's mind and what freedom she was smelling on the salt-scented wind.

The breeze soon afterwards brought with it a lapping sound that Jack knew had to be the ocean. The tunnel began to brighten with a glow that was both lighter and sweeter than anything that the florescent lights could have thrown down even if they had still been working. The full moon outside, breaking free for the moment from the clouds that had been obscuring its face for hours. Jack's feet broke into a sprint without waiting for permission from the rest of his brain, uncaring of the extra sound that he was making. When the hallway ended and the cool moon shone down, Jack all but cried.

There was a crude dock stretching out from the rock face that the tunnel had been carved from, made of wood as old and worn nearly as slick-smooth as the boards that comprised the tunnel floors. Jack started to skid on the slick surface, bringing himself to a halt as the moon slipped behind its clouds again. The form of an ancient fishing boat, of escape, became a dark and shapeless hulk again moments after being glimpsed for the first time. Didn't matter; even without sight, Jack could hear the boat calling to him. A way out. A way home.

Jack brought himself to a halt before he could careen off the edge of the dock and into the silver-black water beyond and laughed, putting his hand over his mouth to cover a sound that came very close to being a giggle. After all of that time waiting for rescue to come to them from the sea or the sky, and it had been sitting here all this time and waiting for them to take it. For the Others it might be a weapon, but for them it would be more than that. They would make it more.

Jack walked towards the boat without hesitation, registering with only half of his mind that he could not hear Kate or Locke behind him. With the moon once again shrouded in clouds, the world felt as if it was waiting, the island at his back hushed and waiting for a sign before it erupted. Maybe the girl in white would lead the charge. Jack was sure that if his hair had been long enough it would have been standing on end, and he was very aware of the gaping maw at his back.

The boat rocked against the dock as a sudden wave picked it up and set it back down again. Jack almost imagined that there was a beast beneath the waves rebuking them for altering the established way of things, for trying to escape. Jack pulled his lips back from his teeth into a grin. 'Not going to work.'

The boat itself counted as modern on a technicality, in the same way that the computer that they had destroyed did. Lucky for them, it had none of the computer's forgotten, dejected air. In spite of the fact that there were only a few flakes and paint and numerous patches of rust covering the hull, the deck was kept clean and uncluttered. Jack turned his head back towards Kate and Locke and called out, "I'm going aboard!"

The two of them were still standing at the far end of the dock, locked in a heated argument. Neither of them looked particularly pleased with the direction that it was going. Locke's hand was gentle and fatherly on Kate's arm, but her own was clenched into a fist. There was a version of herself reflected on Kate's face that Jack had never seen before and that he did not like in the slightest. It hearkened back to far too many musings that Jack had had over the kind of person that she must have been before she came to the island, on what she had done that kept so much of her mind constantly fixated on escape now.

Concerned, Jack took a few steps closer to them. Her called Kate's name softly and felt his own hand curling into a fist when he glanced Locke's way. Kate jerked her arm free from Locke's grasp and glanced at Jack when she heard the sound of his voice, looking quickly over his shoulder. Even if the fickle starlight Jack could see her eyes widen. "Jack, look out!" Kate yelled, already lunging forward.

Six weeks of living on an island where the only sources of nourishment were fruit, fish, and fresh water and where everyday chores were a physical struggle had taken Jack's body and molded it, stripping away the useless fat and turning the muscle into something that more closely approximated granite. Jack spun to the side as soon as he heard Kate's warning, barely even giving himself time to process the words. He crouched slightly to maintain his balance on the slick wood and as a result felt the blow that had been meant for the back of his head come down across the broad plane of his shoulders instead. Even though it was only a glancing blow rather than the full-on knockout that his attacker had envisioned, it felt as if the sun was going nova beneath the surface of his skin, and he staggered hard. Jack had not been in a real fight since he was in college, but all of the instincts still came back in a rush between one second and the next. Jack refused to freeze up, instead twisting away so that he could face his attacker. A second blow whistled by his head and would have brought him to his knees if it had connected. Jack exhaled in gratitude, for his left arm was already tingling from the shoulder all the way down into the elbow. The third try was not going to be the charm, either, as Jack saw it coming from the corner of his eye and caught his attacker's wrist before it could come within a foot of his face. He found a new and faintly sadistic edge for his medical training by putting his thumb into the underside of his attacker's wrist and pressing with all of this strength on the tendons and nerves located there. Jack heard a short cry of pain and watched as the short length of wood that had done such a number on his shoulder fell to the dock with a heavy clunking sound. It rolled away, over the edge and into the waves. Gritting his teeth against a momentary urge to dig his thumb in even harder as payment for the fact that it would be hours before his shoulder stopped aching, Jack dragged his attacker away from the shadow of the boat and into the light. The clouds obliged by rolling back, turning the scene into one almost as bright as the day.

The wrist that Jack had grabbed was filthy, both it and the arm that it was attached to so lined with dirt and something that looked as if it might even be dried blood that it was impossible to gauge age from skin alone. The face was little better, with thick fingers of hair that might have once been platinum blond but were now brown for the dirt ground into them dangling in front of features that were not much cleaner. By squinting very hard Jack was able to tell what was dirt and what was the work of long hours or even years in the equatorial sun, but it was no easy task. Jack put his age as somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five, though the panic in the gray-green eyes that stared back at him made him lean towards the lower end of that scale. The maybe-child hissed, showing Jack a row of teeth that were still intact and in relatively good condition, all the while continuing to squirm and struggle. In spite of the fact that every move Jack made sent a hollow thunking sound reverberating up and down the dock and even Kate and Locke were making soft padding sounds as they came up behind him, the boy did not make a single noise as his feet scuffled and dug for purchase on the highly polished wood. The boat was the only place that he could have come from. Jack cast it an apprehensive look, wondering what other surprises were waiting to pop out at them.

"Easy, easy," Jack caught himself saying in a soothing voice, ignoring for the moment that this was the same person who had tried to break his skull open only a few moments earlier. "Calm down." The sound of the kid's panting was the loudest one on the dock, and his face was rapidly turning a clotted magenta color as he drifted closer and closer to the edge of hyperventilation. He wasn't trying to fight Jack any longer nearly so much as he was only fussing and squirming in a mindless attempt to get away. Jack ignored his shoulder and grabbed at the man-boy's other hand as it flailed by his face. "Okay, okay, relax. What's your name?" He could feel Kate and Locke coming to a halt directly behind him.

"LeggoofmeNOW!" the youth yelled instead, flicking his gaze over Jack's shoulder. He renewed his struggle, sounding closer to the edge of outright panic that ever before. The youth reared back at last, showing a boot that looked as if it had been through three generations and numerous patches before it had come to rest on this particular foot, and aimed a kick at the meaty part of Jack's thigh.

Jack grunted in pain as it connected and felt his grip loosen just enough to let the kid pull free. He made a short hooting sound of triumph before he finally lost his footing on the slick wood. The kid's yelp was cut off abruptly as he fell off of the dock and into the dark water beyond, his skull making a horrible hollow sound as it struck the edge of the dock in passing. A dark glitter of blood was left behind on the wood.

Jack rushed to the edge of the dock and fell to his knees, leaning over the edge so that he could peer into the waves. There wasn't so much as a ripple to mark the place where the kid had been.

Old habits died hard. Jack barely glanced over his shoulder at Kate's shocked expression and Locke's impassive one before he dove into the water himself and felt it close over his head.

End Part Twenty-One