XLVI: Carmelita

"Charlie? Have you seen Hurley?" Libby wants to call Hurley 'Hugo,' but she does not dare. She strides towards the blond Brit, smiling at him. She aims for genuine, but the tenseness she can feel tells her that it's only congenial at best, and perhaps not even that. She takes a deep breath, adding, "He's been missing since last night."

Charlie shrugs, shakes his head. "Not a jot. Sorry."

Where could he have gone? She shakes her head, scowling at the lack of response before dropping the expression, aware that she was involuntarily scowling at Charlie instead. However, she does have something to discuss with him, and she leans in towards the question a bit, to prove to him that it's serious. "You didn't tell him, did you? About what I told you – about him?"

Charlie scoffs, shaking his head. "Not at all. Why would I do that? You told me not to, didn't you? You think I'd just turn on you and him, and tell him? To spite you? No bloody way; I won't. Unless you want me to tell him now – is that the story? Changed your mind?"

She bites down on her lip, not daring to give him an answer. Anything she could say in the situation would be wrong, and she knows it. The last thing she wants is him dogging her for more answers. "Forget it," she replies, and then adds a, "Please?" to soften the command.

He shrugs carelessly. "Well, all right, then. I won't. Of course, if he's gone, I can't very well do that, can I? We'll look for him instead. We'll find him, wherever he's gone to. He's run off before and we've found him. No trouble."

She wants to tell him that it's more complicated than that. She wants to say that, if he's made it anywhere beyond just this edge of the island, he may well have been taken by the people that run the place. She wants to explain all this to him so that he can understand the gravity of the situation, but instead she shakes her head. "All right, if you insist."

"Of course I insist. That's why I said it!" Aghast, Charlie shakes his head. "We'll find him. I just… need a moment. See you in a few?"

"For what?" she asks, but he's already taken off. She stands and stares for a moment before shaking her head, and goes to pack. She hopes she remembers how to get through the island, and supposes that she will find out. On their trek through the jungle, Ana-Lucia led them down a few wrong paths, and they seemed to make out all right. If only that fellow Goodwin hadn't been placed in there, she suspects they would not have gotten off-track. That was the wrong idea, and should she have the opportunity, she means to mention this to her superiors. That is, if they even want to see her anymore. They probably want nothing more than to have her off the island and to have her stop interfering with the experiment, but who can blame her, she reasons. Things went south and they started killing people. That was not the plan. They are not scientists anymore. They want to be deities.

She has not signed up for that. She has expected there would be some unpleasant parts to this, even anticipated it, but not murder – never murder. There has been an agenda here she hasn't been told about, and she was uncertain if that scared her more or irritated her more.

She packs her stuff quickly – she doesn't have much, thanks to that trek across the breadth of the island's inner jungle – and resumes waiting for Charlie. When he comes out, she thinks, Oh, no. His pupils are constricted, little dark pinpoints in his pale face. He's clapping his hands together briskly, as if in premature celebration of the journey. His mood is instantly chipper. "All right! Ready to go?"

"You…" She knows a heroin user when she sees one. She stares at him for a long time, her mouth agape, unable to get the words out within the proper time. "You're using," she declares flatly. "Trust me. I've seen plenty of users."

He rubs his hands together briskly, sticking them in his pockets, and bebops around towards her, his eyes on her. "Using what? I'm not bloody well using anything."

"I'm not going to find Hurley with you if you are, and you are," Libby replies solemnly. She slings her pack on her back and prepares to set off without him. "Goodbye, then. Wish you could have come along."

That stops Charlie. He panics, taking a few steps towards her. He looks at her dimly, shaking his head. "No. You're not going without me. Hurley's my friend, and no matter if he was your patient, I'm finding him along with you."

"You won't even walk properly if you take another hit of that stuff," she warns him.

Charlie bristles. His chest sticks out, as if he's got something to defend, as if she has somehow slandered his honor. Maybe she has, but she does not care. He deserves to be called out on this, especially as he wants to put himself in a dangerous position. She cannot let that happen. Too many have died already, even if they were not specifically recruited, and he was specifically recruited, she thinks.

Libby's voice is direct. "You're not going with me."

Charlie changes his mind, then, and the contrast startles her. "You're not going to find him like that. We need to do something different than just go off on a search through the jungle. Look at the other search," he observes. "They didn't find Sawyer, did they? No. So this one won't find Hurley, either."

She stops, turns towards him. Her voice is sharper than she had meant it to be. Something about Charlie's boyish enthusiasm for everything exhausts her, brings that tone out in her. She wishes it didn't, but there it is, and there's nothing that can be done about it. "What?" She takes a step towards him, but he does not take a step back.

His tone grows sharper. "You won't find him. I know where he is." She stops cold. For the moment, his voice seems not his own, as if somehow the heroin has taken control of his nerves, turned him into something – a robot, perhaps, a machine, a mouthpiece for some nebulous group that might be Dharma, but probably isn't. She is not quite sure what it is. She stares at him, her eyes widening, and he only continues. She feels further stunned at her mistaken guess: "They took him. They must have taken him like they took the people from your group. My friend is gone, and Claire doesn't want me around anymore, so there's no bloody point to this place."

She feels like laughing when he pulls out the gun. It's so incongruous that she has trouble not doing that. She manages, though. "Charlie," her voice is soft, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Getting rid of this bloody place. I'm sick of all this! If they're taking people, if they took Hurley, we're drawing their attention, and not through some mad search party." He doesn't shoot her, though. Instead, he turns and starts moving, sprinting as quick as he can, and she knows enough about the island to know instantly where he's going: Desmond's hatch, and the computer therein. She starts to run after him for the bunker, hoping she can outrun him.

With adrenaline fueled by drugs, heroin addicts are apparently harder to catch than she would have expected. She stumbles on twigs that he has sailed right over, nearly knocks into the hatch while he glides right past it. "Charlie! Wait!" She can offer him no reasons why, she realizes, and so keeps trekking after him.