Chapter 3

Prompt 20 - Reflection

by: KC

He would often dream of her. It wasn't the same with Aaron. He had witnessed that too, in the stairwell, holding Claire back, pulling her to safety – her wild hair a mess of blood and tears, arms flailing. It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach every time he thought about it – the child's lifeless body being thrown over the railing, landing in front of them on the stairs, face up, bloodied, arms and legs twisted and broken, eyes wide with terror. At least they'd shot him first, he had thought at the time, the cruel words pounding in his head much louder than Claire's cries. He had become accustomed to this. But there were never dreams about Aaron like there were with her. They always started differently, but ended the same: with her dead and with blood on his hands.

"You're an excellent chef," he said. He was sitting on a flat rock on the beach back on the island. Everything was brighter than usual. She scooted closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I don't know about that," she said, laughing as she grabbed a slice of mango from the plate he was using. It was the same china his mother used for company when he was a kid. He was never allowed to touch it. Now, that forbidden dinnerware seemed suddenly small in his large hands. "Doesn't take a culinary miracle to chop fruit." He kissed her then, tasting the sweet juice lingering on her lips. She was cold. He shivered as they parted.

"Why did you stay, Kate?," he asked abruptly, and suddenly the plate was gone. The façade of the beach began to diminish around them, and after a few moments, they were once again tied up and huddled together on the stone floor of that basement.

"Don't you know?," she asked, discarding her bonds as though they were made of paper instead of thick rope.

"Would I have asked?," he reasoned. She took his hands palms-up in hers and kissed his fingertips.

"You know something, Jack?" She looked up. He could vaguely sense her reaching around to grab the 9MM from behind him, could feel the cool metal move over his skin as she pulled it out from its familiar spot at his back, but he couldn't stop what would happen next. Never could. "You won't ever find out." And he knew the rest. She pressed the cold barrel of the gun against her temple and squeezed the trigger in one swift motion. The sound of the bullet never changed - a blast and a sickening splatter as she slumped into his arms - all life drained from her in a single moment.

He awoke with a start in an unfamiliar bed. Had he slept all this time? He tried to think, the floodgates opening when he twisted in an attempt to get up and he felt the sting of pain in his arm. He grasped it involuntarily, feeling the rough work of her quick sutures which lay just below his tattoo. He remembered an abandoned barn, the smell of fuel oil and pig shit, the sting of her needle and an all-black 1975 Chevy Camaro, which she'd hotwired like she'd been doing it for years. She had been doing it for years.

None of the memories were clear. It must have been the drugs. They carried some of the strong stuff with them at all times. They couldn't afford the risk of hospitals, so they chanced it. They could always get rid of it in a hurry if they needed to, and Jack always knew how to get more. She must have overmedicated him when before stitching him up. He'd have to remind her to be more careful with that. How long had he been sleeping?

He sat up and immediately felt a wave of nausea hit him. He pressed his palms into the edge of the bed as he hunched over and dry heaved. He really had been sleeping a while. He stood up and felt a subtle loss, a lack of pressure around his neck. On the nightstand was a withering black fabric cord with a key attached – the key to the box that housed Kate's secrets and that he had kept with him to this day. Why had she taken it off? He grabbed it and tied it quickly around his neck.

Sun came out of the bathroom with a towel around her neck followed by a billow of steam. The top of her slender legs disappeared underneath a long t-shirt. She stopped when she saw him.

"You're up," she said, taken by surprise. She paused when she noticed him finishing up with the knot. "It fell off," she said simply, resisting the urge to ask him why he still wore that, feeling the weight of her wedding band pressing against her ring finger. She knew why he did. What she didn't say was that it fell off because she had been messing with it as he slept, fingering the knot a little more roughly than she maybe should have. When she had helped him into bed, she was surprised to see the black fabric peeking out from behind his white t-shirt. She didn't realize he had kept that thing all of these years.

"Did you check us in under…"

"Archie Canyon? Yeah," she finished for him, "I remembered."

"Good." He sighed. It was a code. He'd leave a voice message on a landline answering machine based out of Ottawa Ontario with the name of a city and a different alias so that Locke could reach them wherever they were going.

"How are you healing?" Sun walked over to him and reached for his arm, her gentle touch much less abrasive than his was a moment earlier.

"Stitch job could have been better," he teased, finally shaking off the last bit of sleepiness.

She looked at him and smiled shyly, "Well, I was in a hurry, Doctor Shephard."

He turned his head slightly towards hers, the distance between them becoming almost non-existent. "You did a fine job," he assured her, brushing a strand of wet hair from her eyes. She blushed violently.

"Well, I only learned from the best." She quickly let go of his arm and turned away from him, grabbing a towel off of the dresser and tossing it to him. "Shower's free."

He sighed, knowing he had crossed the line. It happened much more frequently now that they were alone. "Thanks," he nodded, walking past her to the bathroom. "Oh, Sun?," he asked, turning towards her as he passed.

"Yes?"

"Any word?"

"Not yet." She swallowed, shaking her head as she shot him a grave look. It had been over a day. "Not yet."

Sun lay on her stomach and flipped through the channels on the small television, searching for something in English. Usually the hotels would have a few programs for tourists. She heard the shower being turned on as the hard spray hit the walls of the tub and the cheap metal rungs of the curtain screeched in protest at being yanked across the bar.

She tried not to think about the exchange that had occurred between her and Jack. It wasn't the first time they'd shared awkward moments such as that. But each time, it seemed increasingly harder for her to ignore the stirring in her stomach when he looked at her that way, the way his voice dropped to a level that she knew could mean only one thing, when she could feel his hot breath on her neck.

Three sharp raps at the door pushed the unwelcome thoughts from her mind. She jumped up as a lump rose in her throat and waited for four more knocks to signify that it was a friend. She tiptoed to the door, looking through the peephole. The hall was empty. She could hear the water running, so she knew that Jack was still in the shower.

Her hands shook slightly and she willed herself not to call for him. It was probably no big deal. She looked again. Still nothing. She turned and headed for the bathroom door when she heard four more sharp knocks.

Jack stood directly under the shower head and let the cool spray beat down onto his head and back. He pressed his palms against the wall in front of him and examined his stitches further. She really had done a shoddy job, but he couldn't blame her after the chase.

He tried to push away the images of her: sewing him up, hotwiring the car, walking around in that night shirt, blushing at his touch. He tried to ignore his growing erection at the mere thought. The cold shower wasn't helping him at all. He closed his eyes and ran both hands over his head and then his neck before dropping one arm down to remedy his situation. He sucked in a sharp breath, water filtering in through his lips and stopped fighting the images that flashed in his mind.

When Jack came out of the bathroom a half an hour later, Sun was sitting cross-legged, on the bed, surrounded on all sides by what looked like the New York Times. "Jack!," she said excitedly. "Locke sent us a message."

She jumped from the bed, papers rustling in her wake, some falling to the floor behind her. She handed him a small notepad on which she'd scratched some notes. "These words and letters were marked in a yellow highlighter. I put them together in order. It's a message of some kind. At the bottom." She pointed to the only coherent bit on the page.

Go to God, where I've been kept safe for two years.

"'Go to God?'" Jack repeated.

"I know. It doesn't make sense to me either," Sun said. "But look." She turned, grabbed the front page, and thrust it at him. "Our numbers are written here." She pointed to some handwritten numbers in the center of the page. Jack held the page closer, examining the numbers intently.

24 32 61 51 8 4 :51 40 - 21 50

"The first group is the numbers from the computer in the hatch. They're backwards," she added. "I have no idea what the second group of numbers mean."

"Well if they're backwards…," Jack said, walking past her to sit on the bed.

"Then these others must be backwards as well." She turned around, knitting her brows in thought. He reached out, his fingers brushing hers as he grabbed the pen from her hand. He wrote the numbers in reverse.

05 12 - 04 15: 4 8 15 16 23 42

"Five twelve," he said aloud, "May twelfth. That's my birthday. Sun, is your birthday in April?"

"The fifteenth," she said quickly, glancing at his notes. "But what does that mean?"

"Was there any delay in getting our room? Anything weird when we checked in?"

"Well," she paused, thinking as she sat next to him. "The front desk clerk," she said finally, "there was this look of… recognition," she continued, "when I gave him the name – Archie Canyon. I mean, I'm no Archie Canyon. I figured he just assumed it was an alias. But maybe… maybe not. I had to wait a full half hour before the room was ready. Do you think they were waiting for us?"

"It's happened before, Sun," Jack said. He stood, walked over to the dresser, and began opening the drawers. "Maybe there's something else here. What about a date book? Did you see anything?"

"No." She reached for the drawer in the night stand. "Here." A small black leather-bound date book sat alone in the top drawer. She opened it to May 12th, the first date in the message. "Meet at Club Revelation," she read aloud. She flipped back to April 15th, "Thirteenth Street."

He picked up the phone and dialed the front desk. "Sí. Inglés, por favor." He waited. Sun walked over to him, showing him the notes in the date book.

"Yes, Hi," he said finally. "Is there a Club Revelation in town?" He paused momentarily, allowing the attendant to answer. "Okay, well, are there any clubs on Thirteenth Street?," he asked. After a quiet moment, he thanked the attendant and hung up the phone.

"There's no Club Revelation. There's not even a thirteenth street." He looked at her and she met his gaze. They stared at each other for a few moments, both lost in thought.

"Isn't Revelations a book in the Bible?," she finally asked.

"Of course," Jack said. "'Go to God.' It makes sense." He glanced toward the night stand. "Was there a Bible in there?" He hoped that Gideons International hadn't forgotten about Costa Rica.

"I don't know. I didn't check the bottom drawer," she answered.

Jack crossed the room and pulled out the red hardcover book. He flipped through the pages until he reached Revelations, chapter 13. At the bottom of the page were a set of global coordinates.

15° 33' 46S 72° 56' 18W

"Bingo!," he said, a smile creeping onto his face. John never let them down. "He left us some coordinates. This must be where Locke is hiding. I'll need access to a computer."

"There was one in the lobby," Sun said. "We can check tomorrow."

She walked back over to the bed and plopped down. "How does he do it?," she wondered.

"Do what?" Jack asked, sitting beside her.

"Trust all of these people," she answered.

"He's foolish." Jack answered simply.

"And us?," she asked, looking at him her eyes locking with his. "What does that make us?"

"We're desperate," he answered. "We have no other choice."