Chapter 26
A fifteen man army was assembled by morning, and the training began at the crack of dawn. There were enough guns for each person to carry both a rifle and a handgun, and Sun helped to fashion belts to carry knives and extra magazines. By mid-afternoon, Sayid's patience was wearing thin, and his frustration was growing.
Locke approached him and suggested breaking up the army into groups of four, with Kate training one group, Locke another, and Sayid the third. Sayid consented to the suggestion, and the division of labor did improve matters. It also meant that if they had to divide to conquer, each group would have formed a bond from their afternoon of training.
When night fell, the would-be soldiers retreated to their tents and slept as best they could. In the morning, those who were leaving bid their final farewells to those who would stay behind, and the fifteen-strong army set out to interrogate the twenty-some Others, following Michael's lead toward their camp.
Sayid insisted on camping for the night, though Michael assured him that, if they pressed on, they would be at the Others' camp in a matter of hours. But Sayid thought their weariness from a full day of hiking would negatively offset any benefit they would obtain from the element of surprise, and, in the end, Michael conceded.
As Sayid took his shift standing guard over the slumbering camp, Hurley approached him and insisted on relieving him. "I can't sleep anyway," he said.
"Nor can I," replied Sayid. "Not at the moment, anyway. Let us keep one another company."
Hurley nodded and leaned back against a tree, and Sayid thought for a moment that the big man had snapped a fallen branch on the ground. It was only a second, however, before he realized the sound was the cocking of a gun, but by the time he had identified the location, a man had already stepped from the shadows and had placed a barrel against the side of Hurley's head.
Sayid heard the approach of another figure and whirled to raise his rifle straight into the face of an armed woman, who stood motionlessly before him, holding her gun at the level of his chest. In the meantime, two other men stepped from behind the trees and pointed their guns at the nearest sleeping hostages they could find: Jack and Kate.
The woman who stood in a face-off with Sayid spoke, and Sayid instantly recognized the voice as one he had heard that day when they had searched for the balloon. The Germans had returned, but this time with a fourth.
By now, the rest of the camp was stirring. And when individuals began to reach for their guns, the new, fourth German spoke in his accented English: "Do not move, or we will kill your friends." The survivors froze in place. The man then asked, "Who is in charge?" and Sayid and Jack answered simultaneously, "I am." Locke looked from one to the other quietly.
But it was Sayid to whom the German spoke. "At first we thought you might be with Dharma. But we have been watching you since we first encountered you in the jungle. You are the subjects, aren't you? You were part of that plane crash, and now you are planning to attack Dharma."
"Who are you?" Sayid asked, not looking at the speaker but at the woman who still held him at gunpoint.
"We are not your enemies," said the man. "We are scientists. Eight of us were hired by Dharma to come here to engage in an important experiment. But we did not know the subject of the experiment or the means. When we arrived, some of us were…displeased with the institution's methods, and we refused to cooperate. We were taken to re-education sessions, and four of us came to agree with the Dharma initiative. The remaining four of us pretended to until we could escape into the jungle. Apparently, we were neither the first nor the last scientists to so desert the project. There are others on this island."
Kate, struggling to a sitting position and running a hand through her tangled hair, said, "We know. We've encountered them. But why did Dharma take the children? Why did they take some of us and not others?"
The German, not relinquishing his hold on his gun, explained, "Dharma has taken those it considers impressionable and easily reformed: your children and certain select survivors, those they think will serve well as a new generation of scientists loyal to the initiative, scientists who can one day replace the current members of Dharma. Outside recruits such as ourselves have proven…unreliable."
Sayid now lowered his gun and turned away from the woman and towards the man. "What is the nature of the experiment?"
"It is psychological and sociological. The Dharma initiative seeks to uncover the source of humankind's tendency to descend into chaos and violence and to correct it—to refashion the minds and hearts of men. So Dharma studies those whom the scientist in charge considers fallen. Dharma scientists catalogue how you react to uncertainty, to hardship, and to deception. The goal, in effect, is to stamp out original sin." The German smiled wryly. "So far, it has not worked."
"And where is the man in charge of the project?" Sayid asked. "Where is he?"
Locke now broke into the conversation as he drew himself into a sitting position. "Is he in Dharma's sixth station?"
The German's mouth twisted into a grimace. "No. He is beyond it." He then motioned with his rifle. "Come, follow me," he said to Sayid. "You can bring your gun if you like." Sayid glanced at his fellow survivors but followed the German away from the camp.
As they walked, Sayid asked him, "The sickness, is it real?"
The German replied, "There is no sickness in the sense that you mean. The scientist in charge believes that the tendency of human beings to slay one another is a sickness, and he believes he can correct it. Earlier test subjects have all turned on and killed one another. New test subjects are continually brought in. Eventually, he believes he can condition a group of people to respond to any situation, however uncertain, without violence."
"Yet Claire—one of the plane crash survivors--recalls having been kidnapped and inoculated while pregnant."
"Yes, the scientist in charge ordered that. He believes he has finally created a drug that can alter the brain chemistry of infants and unborn children to make them…how shall I say it? Nonviolent. He will be observing the baby as it grows. This is the first time the medicine has been used."
As their hike continued, the German asked Sayid, "Did you wonder how the rain could suddenly stop and start without warning? Did you wonder how there could be polar bears? Did you wonder how your plane could crash here and yet you could see no other plane fly overhead for weeks and weeks?"
"Of course," Sayid answered.
"Let me show you why."
They had by now walked for almost a mile, and they stopped at a clearing in the jungle where the trees did not form a canopy. Instead, the night sky could be viewed clearly. "This is the only spot on the entire island from which you can see it," the German said, and he pointed upwards with his gun.
Sayid's eyes followed the direction of the gun, up to the dark sky. He blinked when he saw the strange constellation. He tried to decipher its form, and at length he realized he was staring up at the Dharma logo. Beneath it, spelled out in the twinkling lights that passed for stars, was written: "Station 6 of 6."
"You may attack the Dharma scientists if you like," said the German quietly. "But that attack will not free you from this hatch. This hatch can only be opened from the outside, by remote control, by the man in charge. The entire environment is manufactured. When a plane flies overhead, it sees only a blanket of fog. But when your plane flew overhead, the doors were opened, and the co-pilot, who was an agent of Dharma, brought the plane down. It was not supposed to explode or splinter in two. It was supposed to have a rough landing but ultimately a safe one. No one was supposed to die. He must have lost control."
Sayid drew his eyes away from the stark truth written in the sky and murmured, "There must be a way to escape."
"No, but there is a way to survive. The four of us will join your army, and we will join your camp. When you have regained the children and those who are still of their own free minds, return to your home on the beach. Abandon the hatch and the button and all the things that Dharma would use to manipulate you. Build your society. The scientist who put this project into motion," he pointed upward to the sky, "constructed this immense hatch, but he himself has never set foot in it. He will not open the doors to the hatch to let you out. But nor will he destroy you. He will only let you destroy yourselves."
Again Sayid's eyes wandered upward to the hopeless constellation above, and he recalled how Jack had once said, We're surviving, let's go on surviving.
Yes, Sayid thought, until they could find a way to scale the immense height of this enormous laboratory, until they could find a way to break through the ceiling that appeared to them as a sky, they must go on surviving.
The End