Author's notes: To anon, let's say Walt is growing faster than normal instead of aging rapidly. It isn't my intention to shorten his lifespan. Regarding an earlier comment by Zombie Kitty, I now have a use for the numbers in mind, but it is a long time coming. More characters will be involved in the future. Thanks for the reviews!
Walt attempts to send a message through the last, forbidden corridor blocked by rocks.
After hearing the noise of some object hitting rock, Walt couldn't think of anything else. He went up to the edge of the rock fall, and listened. The sounds were coming at regular intervals, but not perfectly evenly spaced. That made it more likely that they were manmade rather than a machine. The sounds were muffled quite a bit; it was obvious that the other end of the rock pile was not close, but perhaps twenty or thirty meters away. It was impossible to know for sure. Stepping back to examine the obstruction, Walt observed that the rockslide rose clear to the ceiling. In fact, it looked like the ceiling itself had been damaged, and may have been a main source of the debris.
Walt tried to determine if it was possible that his friends were digging in the mines, looking for him. He knew he was well underground, more than ten meters for sure. He didn't remember any such excavations made by the castaways. Maybe this was some sort of trap. But it would have to be an extremely complicated one, and that just seemed too unlikely. After some more thought, Walt remembered a spooky incident with Locke. The man who had taught him backgammon and how to throw knives had just grabbed Walt's forearm, and a premonition struck the boy.
"Don't open it!" Walt had warned.
Locke pretended not to know what the youngster was talking about, but on that occasion was a complete failure.
"Whatever it is, don't open it!"
Walt sensed that Locke had ignored his warning, and was frightened so much that he had rather taken his chances on the dangerous raft. Walt didn't know what he was talking about, but it sounded like some kind of door. A door into a cave? Or maybe into the ground? It was possible that Locke had done something of the sort. Walt reconsidered his premonition. He had been certain he was right, and that opening "it" would be dangerous. On the other hand, he did not foresee his kidnapping at all. He had even encouraged his father to fire the flare. On this occasion he appeared to be dead wrong, so it was possible he was also wrong about opening the gate into some subterranean network of tunnels.
Now deciding that he was thinking rationally, Walt made up his mind to communicate with whoever was at the other end. He hit a rock with his fist, but that didn't produce much sound, and would only hurt him if he kept it up. Shouting would attract the attention of Alex and/or the Others. He would have to get one of the tools from the wheelbarrow and strike the rocks hard with it.
Walt emerged from the last tunnel and headed back to the third-to-last, where he had left the wheelbarrow and tools. He picked up the hammer and was ready to go back, but when he looked up the corridor he saw Alex approaching. He had been contemplating the rocks so far long that he had lost track of time. Consequently, this morning's output of otherite ore was the lowest he produced, by a good margin, in the month he had been there.
"Is that all you got?" asked a worried-looking Alex. Her face seemed paler than usual, and a bit horror-stricken.
Walt had to come up with a reasonable answer in a hurry. "I had a hard time detecting the stuff today. Maybe that thing they injected me with is wearing off."
Walt studied Alex's reaction. The answer might have been good enough for her, but what about for the Others? She silently walked back to Walt's room, with Walt pushing the wheelbarrow as usual, but this time loaded with just a paltry collection of ore. Lunch was consumed in an awkward silence. In the afternoon, Alex followed Walt for a while, making sure he was working, and then left him in half an hour. When the coast was clear, Walt made a beeline for that last corridor, hammer in hand. The periodic noise was still present, but if it was any closer Walt couldn't tell. He banged his hammer hard three times on a rock at his edge of the rockslide.
The noise at the other end stopped. Then there were three consecutive sounds, evenly spaced apart. It appeared for all the world that whoever was at the other end had heard Walt's hammer blows. Now how to send a message? At least Walt knew what an SOS was. Three quick blows, then three blows with a long pause in between each, and three more quick blows. While he was thinking, more sounds came, in a fairly regular pattern involving the dots and dashes of Morse code. But who knew Morse code these days? If there was one person from the plane who knew, Walt was certain who it must be.
The message had unquestionably been received. How could he send a more informative message? Unfortunately, Walt didn't know any real codes. Well, there was that thing with "A" being one, "B" being two, and so on until "Z" being twenty-six. Well, why not try it; what did he have to lose? When the pounding on the other side stopped, Walt counted off the letters. Twenty-three strikes stood for "W", one for "A", twelve for "L", and finally twenty for "T". He could hardly breathe while he waited for a response. After a minute, twelve sounds came in rapid succession. Then a pause, and fifteen more. Then three, and eleven, and five. L-O-C-K-E.
Now Walt was extremely excited. He desperately wanted to chip away at the rocks on his side, but wasn't going to get anywhere with just a hammer. And the noises didn't seem to be coming appreciably closer. Locke and anyone he might be with still had a lot of rock to cut through. But Walt had an opportunity to ask the question that had been on his mind the past month. Eight hammer blows, then fifteen, then twenty-three again, and soon he had spelled out, "How is Dad?" After a minute of silence, the response came. Starting with four strikes, the message was, "Dad is OK. Be here same time tomorrow."
It was extremely difficult, but Walt eventually forced himself to get out of there. He wasn't going to be able to contribute anything significant from his end. It was apparent it would take some time to break through, and if he lingered there too long, the Others would find him out. He peeked into the main tunnel corridor, saw no one, and quickly made his way back to near the central cavern to resume his mining. "Tomorrow will be a memorable day," he thought. He was right about that, but completely wrong about the reason why it would be memorable.
When Alex appeared to mark the end of the working day, she was practically in tears.
"What's wrong?" asked Walt. Was there something wrong with her, or had he been caught, or suspected? He looked at the meager ore collection for the day, and guessed that might have something to do with it. "Are you sick?" When there was no response, he continued, "If it's the otherite, I'll get more tomorrow, I promise. It was just a slow day for me."
Alex managed just a slight nod, and mechanically wheeled the barrow off to the laboratory and returned with dinner, as per the usual routine. But she was obviously bothered, and ate in silence. When they were finished, she departed with the dinnerware as customary, allowing Walt to wash up in the adjoining bathroom to get ready for bed. On this night he had an uneasy feeling, which turned out to be justified.
When Alex had returned with the small amount of ore at noon, the Others were immediately suspicious. They ordered her to pretend to Walt that everything was normal, so that she would accompany him for a short time after lunch, and then return from the mines. Then one of the Others made the long trip all the way down to the last corridor. Well before he reached it, he could hear the hammer blows. When he did get to the end of the main tunnel, walking silently, he peeked in and saw Walt hammering away, apparently trying to send some sort of message. The Other remained unseen since Walt's back was turned. The Other was sure it would take several days to break through all that nearly solid rock, so he simply reported back to the rest of the Others his findings, and they had a discussion on how to deal with this matter.
As Walt entered his bedroom from the short corridor to his bathroom, his face was immediately covered by a rag soaked in chloroform. Someone had been standing against the bedroom wall beside the connecting passageway. Walt found out with a single inhalation what the chemical smelled like. As unconsciousness took place five seconds later, all he had time to think was, "Something bad is going to happen to me."