"We don't need all three of them," she said. "It's more work to have all three, to keep them ignorant. Let the man go."
"No." He couldn't believe she was arguing with him. Hadn't she learned by now to trust his judgement, to recognize that maybe, just maybe he knew what he was doing?
He watched as she walked over to the computers, and started staring at them, biting her lower lip slightly. He grinned. He could read her like a book, that Bea Klugh, and right now he knew where her head was. Wondering how possible a mutiny was, and whether the risk was worth the possible gain. He walked up behind her, and placed one heavy hand on her back.
"Bea, I know this is making it more difficult on our people."
"We don't need them all," she said again.
"I know," he said, a small smile breaking the icy shield of his face. "But I want them."
He couldn't stomach the waiting. Nor could he stand it, so instead he continued beating his hands against the door. It hurt, hell it hurt, but at least it was real. Unless the craziness in here.
He turned around, and there it was again. That damned bed, with the damn teddy bear. He blinked, but it was there again. One more time. Still there.
Just above the bed was a small window, which he noticed for the first time.
"It's all in the details," Sawyer muttered to himself. How the hell had he let that one get by? He walked over, stood on the bed and peered over the side.
With a gasp, he fell back down. That couldn't be. It didn't make sense. All of his partners were standing just outside that door. Hibbs, Gibson, Fredericks, hell, even Cassidy and she shouldn't even count! He sat on the bed, pulling his knees to his chest and squeezing his body as close to the wall as possible. It wasn't possible. That needle they'd injected him with. . .it was giving him visions of something that wasn't real. That was the only explanation.
The door swung open, and Sawyer closed his eyes.
"It'll come back around," Frank Duckett said, a twisted smile on his face. Sawyer opened his eyes, but it didn't help. The man he'd killed was standing right in front of him.
"All right, very funny," he growled, standing up and walking over to the other man. He knew this couldn't be real. It had to be some kind of a test set up by the Others. Dead men didn't come back to life, not even on the fucking island of mystery. "What do you want?" he snarled.
"Oh, it's not what I want," Duckett responded, still smiling eerily. "It's what you want that matters. You want to get out of this place, don't you?"
"Hell, yeah, I want to get out of here," he said.
"All right then. Follow me."
Sawyer felt weird the minute he left his holding cell, an itching feeling between his shoulder blades, a breeze on the back of his neck. Somebody was watching him, but no matter how he craned, he couldn't see damn Big Brother.
"Where the hell are we going?" Sawyer asked irritably. "You ain't lost, are you?"
"We're just going to meet some old friends," Duckett responded, still as calm as ever. Sawyer glanced down the hallway. There didn't seem to be any guards, or anything. It was just a long, cold, concrete hall. He considered making a break for it.
"I wouldn't try that, Mr. Ford," Duckett said. "You wouldn't get two feet. And besides, we still have your friends. You wouldn't want to see anything happen to them because you got a little antsy, would you?"
Sawyer glared at him. "You tryin' to blackmail me, Ahab?"
There was no response to this. The man just reached out, and pushed open a door that Sawyer hadn't even noticed a minute earlier. It swung open, and there, crouched on the ground, were two figures.
"Kate!" Sawyer yelled, running forward to them. "Jack! You guys okay?"
"We're alive, anyway," Jack said.
He turned to Freckles, and for just a moment his vision went black.
Sawyer caught her as she slowly slid to the ground, gasping in pain-stricken breaths.
"Damn you!" he growled. He wanted nothing more than to lunge after that bastard and wrap his hands around his neck, but his arms were a little full of a bleeding Kate at the moment. Damn girl. Second time she'd let his revenge get away, right between his fingers.
"Sawyer," she rasped, and he dropped everything next to the doc and ran to her head.
"Yeah, baby?"
She turned her head a little, eyes attempting to focus on his face. "You didn't sign the letter," she said. It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about. She sighed. "I don't even know your name."
Her eyes drifted closed. Sawyer closed his own in response. He didn't try to wake her up, didn't beg her to breathe. It was over. Just like that.
He shook his head, and there she was again, right in front of him, not hurt, not injured, every freckle firmly in place. Impulsively he reached out and hugged her, ignoring her gasp of surprise.
"Don't you do that to me again," he said urgently.
"Don't do what?"
"Die," he said, simply. He was confused. What was he talking about? She sure as hell wasn't dead. He looked over her shoulder, saw Hibbs and Gibson glance at each other nervously. The reality of the situation flooded back over him. What the hell was going on?
"That's enough," Cassidy said harshly, but her voice was different now, hard and robotic. Sawyer looked up at her, surprised. "You want out, Ford?"
He nodded, releasing Freckles and standing up. She knew his name now, too? He shouldn't be surprised. Everyone seemed to know who he was.
"Here," she grabbed his arm, shoved something cold and hard into it. "All you have to do is shoot."
Kate was confused, to say the least. How had she gotten here? She glanced over at Jack, saw the same unbelieving look in his eyes.
"What's going on?" she whispered. The people in the room all seemed fixated on Sawyer. He seemed safe enough for the moment
"Trust me," he said. "Please. No matter what the hell they tell you Freckles, you gotta ride with me on this one."
"I don't know," Jack said truthfully. He looked at her strangely. "Sawyer's right, though. It's good to see you alive."
Why did they keep saying that? It wasn't as though she'd been injured, unconscious, nothing! Just that weird dream that kept floating through her head.
"What the hell do you mean, shoot?" Sawyer snarled. "Shoot you? Peachy keen, glad to oblige, Zeke."
"I choose Sawyer," she said immediately, no question. That didn't mean there wasn't a question in her heart, and all she could think, all she could pray was that her trust wouldn't be misplaced."
"No," the woman said, and in an instant a dozen rifles were cocked and aimed straight at Sawyer. He glared at all of them, a contemptuous look on his face. Kate reached out one hand, grabbed Jack's arm, and squeezed. Don't let him do anything stupid. Let him think with his brain, for once, and not with his cock.
"Sorry," Sawyer said, actually smiling a little. "So how 'bout you just tell me what I take out, and then I'll be waltzin home."
"You have a choice, Mr. Ford," she said, stepping back. "Everything, you see, is about choices." She pointed a hand down at Kate and Jack, still tied on the ground. Kate gasped. She looked worriedly at Jack.
"Shoot one of them?" Sawyer asked in disbelief.
"Either one," a tall, heavy black man said, coming to stand beside him. Kate could feel the sweat now, beading up on her forehead, seeping into her shirt. Sawyer wouldn't actually be capable of shooting one of them, would he? Would he? "Just a shot in the heart and you're home free."
"Ain't you been keeping track, Hibbs? When it comes to the heart I have a tendency to miss."
"That's all right," the man said complacently. "Without medical attention the victim will just bleed to death."
Kate closed her eyes. She couldn't imagine a worse death than lying in that cold, concrete room, alone. Jack squeezed her hand, and she opened her eyes. He was pale, so very, very pale, but he looked calm. She smiled. If he could be calm, than so could she.
"So what's it going to be, James?" the woman said again. "Sacrifice one for the good of two, or do we just keep you all?"
"Go to hell," he growled, and lifted the gun again, pointing it straight at her face.
"Wrong choice," the black man growled, and quickly pistolwhipped Sawyer. His head snapped back and he stumbled, tripping on Kate's body and falling to the ground. She hid a yelp of pain as he tumbled over her shoulder.
He sat up quickly, wiping a line of blood away from his lip. Kate tried to calm her heart, which was beating about twenty thousand miles a minute. Sawyer was glaring at the men above her. They pulled the safety off the gun.
The gun. Kate suddenly remembered. Sawyer's gun. She turned around, looking desperately for it somewhere on the ground. It wasn't there. Had one of the Others taken it?
"One person has to die?"
Kate glanced up. Jack. He was standing now, Sawyer's pistol held tightly in his grasp.
She ran, his hand clasped tightly in her own. Behind her, she heard the whirring of a whip as it flew through the air, the sharp, harsh crack against skin, the anguished scream.
She didn't look back. She couldn't. She just ran.
He brought the gun up slowly, pointed it toward Sawyer. The conman didn't say anything. He just sat up a little straighter, stared at Jack with what almost looked to Kate like understanding in his eyes. He nodded.
"Jack, no," she whispered. She couldn't keep the words in. It was stupid, she knew. Sawyer was dead either way. If Jack didn't shoot him, who knew what would happen.
"Kate," Jack said, but he stumbled over her name. He licked his lips. "I'm sorry."
He brought the gun to his own head and fired.