"We must be going crazy," Mike muses.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Ari answers.
They slink along the edge of the jungle, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Everyone's out there fighting: Sawyer, Jack, Charlie, Sayid, Bernard, Jin. There are probably more somewhere, but they just can't see them.
Suddenly, Ari trips himself up on something in the brush. He crashes to the ground and flinches as twigs and leaves crack under his weight.
"Damn," he snaps, angry at his klutziness.
"What was that?" Jake asks.
Ari reaches down and pulls up a rope. He stares at them. "Trip trap. Say that ten times fast."
"Yeah. We needed that humor, man," Mike says, lending Ari his hand.
When he does, though, someone hears them. And it's not a good someone.
"Damn," Ari says softly.
"Run," Jake whispers. The guy raises his gun and points it at them. "Now. We need to run."
They all want to, but fear has taken over their minds, like it usually does during times like this. They stand there, their eyes wide, bodies resembling those of a deer's in a car's headlights.
The guy's finger wraps itself around the trigger, and three echoing bangs echo throughout the area. They feel nothing. They look down and see no blood. The shooter has collapsed, sand around him being stained a deep red. And there's Sayid behind him, frozen.
"Holy crap…" Mike's voice trails off as his eyes take in something that's become repetitive to him.
"What are you doing out here?" Sayid asks, eyes darting around nervously.
"We want to help," Jake tells him determinedly.
"You want to help?" Sayid sounds genuinely surprised at this. "Does anyone else know you want to help?"
"No, except for Claire and Sun."
"Do you have any guns?"
"No. That's where we're going. To get some."
Sayid shakes his head and mutters something under his breath.
"This is too dangerous," he tells them.
"This whole island is too dangerous," Jake insists, "but we're still here. Mike watched his best friend here and my mom--my mom--get killed by them. The whole godforsaken place is too dangerous, but everyone else is doing something."
Sayid looks at Mike, who stares at the ground. He turns back to Jake. "Do you want to fight in order to help, or is your main purpose to get revenge?"
Jake opens his mouth to answer, closes it, then tries again. Nothing comes out. Sayid's right. He only wants revenge. But he's got no right to deny him that. No one does.
"We need those guns," he repeats in a low voice.
Sayid stares out at the fight going on. It's mystical, almost dream-like. Everything seems to be going on in slow motion, like a DVD that's playing frame by frame. Finally, he takes a gun from behind his back and hands it to Jake.
"You'll have no time to get three," he says. "Not if you want to live." With that, he runs back into the skirmish.
Jake fingers the grip on the gun, his hand taking the shape of the new object.
"What do we do, then?" Ari wants to know.
"Cover me," Jake answers quickly.
"What?" Mike yelps. "Like, you mean, go in front of you and take a bullet if it goes your way? Is that it?"
"No. Like, just, I don't know, tell me if someone's coming or something," Jake says, stumbling over his own words.
"Um, Jake?" Ari asks.
"Yeah."
"Someone's coming."
Jake turns around, and feels the gun being ripped out of his hand and banged down on his head. He collapses, his head throbbing. He can see the same being done to Ari and Mike. He tries to act unconscious, but it doesn't fool their attacker. He brings the gun down a few more times, and everything goes black.
His head hurts.
As Mike slowly opens his eyes, he feels extremely lightheaded and dazed. There's someone standing above him, but he can't make out who it is. Not that he'd recognize the person, anyway.
Once his vision clears, he squints, and sees a girl about his age, peering down nervously at him. Then it hits him.
"Alex!" he yelps, jumping up a little. Panicked, she clamps her hand over his mouth.
"Quiet!" she whispers urgently. "They can't hear you."
She removes her hand and pulls him up by his wrist. Mike shakes his head a little in an effort to clear it, but it doesn't work too well.
She leads him down a brightly lit hallway that reminds him of a hospital. She turns to the left and opens a door. Suddenly, voices echo from the other side of the hall. She shoves him inside, goes in herself, and shuts the door behind them.
"Where are we?" Mike whispers. There are no lights on in the room, and he has a feeling that Alex has no intention of turning them on.
"The hatch," she breathes.
The hatch. Mike has heard of it. The name has been sprinkled in various conversations of the other castaways', but he's never seen it.
"It's not your hatch," she informs him. "It's theirs. Otherwise I wouldn't be trying to get you out."
"Where are Ari and Jake?"
Alex is silent. "I dunno," she answers finally. "I couldn't find them. Only you."
"You found us."