Chapter 3

Present day....

The cool night air swirled through the camp, being filtered through the littering of huts and finally gently caressing around Jacen. While the smell of the beach was usually sweet, the smell of his fellow survivors was not. Many people were still struggling with the idea of being stuck on the island; the normal routines of life such as a bath were being ignored due to trauma. Jacen frowned. No wonder the boars were coming around the camp, the horrible smell of human life was drawing them. At least Locke should be able to find one easier.

He sat quietly, listening to the waves crashing against the beach and then rolling back out to the ocean. The constant rush of rhythmic noise gave his mind something to focus on, and push his mind into neutral from all the thoughts in his head. He spent too much time thinking, and the boredom of having nothing but time was not helping him.

"Want some company?" Her familiar voice asked from behind him.

"Sure." He answered, listening to her walk through the sand and then sit closely to him. In the cool night air, he could feel the warmth of her body radiating against him. It was the simple things like feeling her next to him that he liked, maybe because it had been so long since somebody had been that close to him.

"It was a good dinner..." Veronica said, drawing her knees up under her chin and resting it against them.

"Yeah, good of Locke to bring one in for us..." He answered.

The silence seemed to ooze back in between them, and even the gentle crashing of waves seemed somber now. Jacen sat there, struggling between the urge to talk to her and the desire to simply be left alone. It was the same struggle he'd had with every girl in his life since his incident.

"So, who's this Jacen character?" She asked.

"What?"

"Well, if you're going to go trampling off into the jungle tomorrow, I should at least know what to say for your eulogy when you don't come back...." She said, and the seriousness in the joke was off-setting for Jacen.

He thought for a moment, and then answered, "Well, what do you want to know?"

"What did you do for work?"

"I was... retired." He answered, taking a handful of sand and letting it cascade between his fingers.

"Come on, you're not that old..."

"No really. I saved up every bit of money I could get while I was working, and a couple years ago, I made my last paycheck. Put it in the bank, and been travelling around ever since." He answered.

"You've been living off that? You can't be more than twenty five, how did you save up that much?" She asked.

"I....," He started to say, then readjusted his thoughts, "I did things other people wouldn't do, and I got paid well for it."

She coughed, and then turned to him, "So... what? You killed people?"

He looked over at her, their eyes matching each other's gaze. Without smiling he answered, "57 people..."

She froze, her eyes widening. She blurted out, "Wha?-"

"I'm kidding!" He smirked, putting his hand up, "I wasn't a hit man."

Her face scrunched in anger and she punched him in the arm, "That's not funny!"

"It was from my end..." He chuckled, leaning back in the sand.

She shook her head in mock anger, "You're not right...."

"I know," He answered, smiling. Letting a few seconds pass, he finally added, "I did things like freelance security for celebrities or political figures. The more people hated them, the better I got paid. I'd risk my neck for people I hated, but at the end of the day, it paid the bills."

She caught the anguish in his words and said, "It was a job, that's all."

"Yeah... I guess....," He sat back up, and turned to look at her, "So what about you?"

"I was a waitress at a restaurant." She answered.

"You don't have an aussie accent..." He noticed, assuming that since they'd flown from Australia.

She shook her head, "No, I'm American. My parents died when I was twelve, so my Aunt and Uncle took me in. They live in Sydney, and as nice as it is there, I miss home. So I was saving my money, and on my twentieth birthday a couple weeks ago, I bought a plane ticket," She said, and her voice mellowed and saddened, "I was going to visit my Parent's graves, first thing...."

Jacen sighed, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay; it's been a long time. I'm just sad I didn't make it." She said, then turning her head around, she scanned the area behind them. She turned her upper body, and stared backwards, "I-"

Jacen caught the look in her eye and turned to face where she was looking. Toward the jungle line, there was a small opening but nothing there. He turned back to her, "What?"

"I thought... I thought I saw someone..." She said, "Someone go into the jungle..."

"Who?" Jacen asked.

"That Ethan guy...." She replied, almost whispering, "He's weird. Keeps asking weird questions."

"Like what?" Jacen asked, turning back to the jungle. Still nothing there and it was too black in the jungle to see anything further than a few feet in.

"First, he was asking about Jack and Locke, even Kate. Then, he starts asking about Claire. How long she been pregnant? She having pain? Baby still moving? Weird questions, you know?" She said, her brow lowered in annoyance.

"Yeah... I don't know, be careful." Jacen answered, turning back around and facing the ocean. He didn't know Ethan or what he even looked like, but he was going to keep an eye out now.

"He's fine, just weird. We're all out here stuck on the same beach and living the same nightmare... Maybe it's just getting to him..." She said, trying to let it go.

"You're too trusting..." He answered, "The bad part of this is that we don't know anything about these people. They could be anybody, they could be murderers or terrorists or rapists for all we know. If he causes you trouble, you let me know. But, don't trust anybody."

"Not even you?" She asked with a smile.

He shook his head, "Who said I was a good guy?"

Morning had come quickly to the camp, most of the survivors were now groggily moving in their tents or huts. Some were up and walking around to talk to others and some were even taking off for a morning bath in the salty ocean water. Still, some were just ignoring the noise around them and trying to snooze a little longer.

Jacen was up since dawn, though. He'd spent a fair amount of time talking to Veronica last night, happy to be a listening ear as she chatted about her life as a kid with her parents, and then her life struggling to get over the loss. He empathized with her, knowing the feeling of suddenly finding yourself alone despite having the entire world around you.

As she was now slowly stirring to life in her own little hut, Jacen was already long gone. He snaked around trees and pushed large green leaves from his way as he trekked through the jungle, his adventure starting at dawn. Even out here though, he'd seen a few survivors. Not too far into the jungle this morning, Sawyer was walking around doing some business Jacen didn't care about, and they simply exchanged nods of their heads. Sawyer was gone though, left far behind as Jacen pressed on.

The coolness of the morning was beginning to lift, and even under the shade of the trees, the heat was building fast. He was starting to wish he'd kept that bottle of water he'd left with Veronica. Quickly, he found himself thinking more of her with each step he took. He kept thinking about her smile, the white teeth that sparkled in the sun when she laughed. She had striking eyes, even without makeup. He liked the way her eyes began to smile before her lips would. Somehow, the thoughts about her drove away the gnawing nervousness of being in an unfamiliar place with no weapons other than his hands. Not to mention, his haunting memory of Christian and his beast.

He neared a ridge, and stopped at its edge. It was a short cliff below, leading down into a stream that lay at the bottom of the twenty foot drop. Tree roots grew out and back into the dirt of the cliff, and Jacen figured he could climb down. Maybe the water would be okay, he thought. If it was this easy to find though, somebody else would have found it by now.

He began to climb down the vines along the rock, easily grappling his way down. Midway, he froze. Somewhere above him, he'd heard a sound. He listened, the ambiance of the jungle fading away as his senses honed in on the sound he heard. It was faint, but clearly unnatural to the jungle. It was like... whispering. He leaned back, trying to see as far over the top of the cliff as he could and saw nothing.

He shook his head, and then continued down. It sounded like ten people whispering at once, and if there were ten people atop that ridge, he'd of known it before he could hear whispering though. The last half of the cliff was easily traversed and he dropped down into the streambed with a splash of water. The mud stirred up from his landing was quickly drawn away downstream, and below him was the clear trickle of water. It was very shallow though, much less deeper than he perceived. It reached barely to the ridge of the sole of his boots.

He reached down trying to catch some in his hand, and then brought it up to taste. Sloshing it around in his mouth, it seemed fine. A little bitter, but he wasn't an expert at identifying ocean water from fresh water. He stood back up, trying to make a mental note of the direction he came to reach the stream. Then, he looked downstream to where it led. The already slow, shallow trickle was even harder to notice the further it went from him. Turning around, he looked upstream and decided to follow it. If anything, the source of the stream would be deeper.

As he walked, the stream curved to the right then back to the left. The farther upstream he got though, the more he began to notice little difference. He was beginning to assume this lead to nowhere and the stream was going to just disappear underground when behind him, he heard a noise again.

Flipping around, he quickly scanned the jungle behind him. This sound was familiar, and nothing like the whispering he had heard earlier. This time, it was like a soft clicking noise. It was a noise he'd heard before, the day of the crash. He stepped backward, and noticed in the foliage movement. It was black like the darkness of night, and seemed to... hover. He couldn't explain it but it wasn't natural. This wasn't normal. Movement to his left drew his attention in foliage much closer to him.

"Son of a....." He breathed out, a large plume of black smoke snaking up from the foliage and hovering over him five feet or so above his head.

It was smoke, but it wasn't. It didn't just hover away, but it locked in on him and seemed to stare him down, threatening him or sizing him up. From his right where he'd originally seen movement, another plume of smoke snaked between the trees and then slithered over to the mass in front of him, merging together.

"Smart little bas-" He started to say, but froze. Inside the smoke, it appeared to be like flicks of light blasting and then fading. Inside, he felt a strange fogginess in his head. He felt drowsy, as if he hadn't slept for a day. But, then it left him. The black smoke then began to swirl faster, as if agitated.

It roared, if it could even be described as that. Then, it slithered backward into the foliage behind it. Something about its movement though, something told Jacen that it wasn't a choice to retreat backward.

Behind him, he heard another sound. This time it was the whispering, and Jacen flipped around, looking up the ridge that followed the stream bed. Something was moving up there, and this sound was already too much. Jacen couldn't explain what he'd just seen, and now he was facing a sound he couldn't even explain.

Movement stirred behind him again from the direction of the smoke, but above the ridge from the source of the whispering, came a familiar face. Christian stood there, his unwrinkled and perfectly clean suit resting against his motionless body, and his face without expression, but he raised his left arm and pointed upstream. He opened his mouth, and said calmly, "Run."

Jacen's nerves were already firing through his body and flooding adrenaline into him. He bolted, legs churning and splashing water around him. He leaped out of the stream and onto the ground; he blasted through ferns and vines. Behind him, he could hear it again. The clicking sound that came from the black smoke and even the loud blast of unnatural tone that Jacen assumed was the creature's roar. He leapt over a large root, body burning adrenaline like gasoline and crashed through several vines snapping them and erupting through the other side still barreling ahead. He felt like he was running forever, dodging trees and jumping roots or ducking under vines or tree limbs. His lungs were burning, but his body wasn't slowing down.

He burst through a tree line into an open field, and immediately cursed. He didn't want to be in the open, trees gave obstacles for Jacen to put between him and the creature. Crashing back into the jungle on the other side of the clearing, Jacen's legs were starting burn like his lungs. Fear was still flooding his system with adrenaline though and his pace never faltered. He kept moving, churning his legs through the jungle. He could hear it behind, the ethereal sounds of the creature pressing in on him from behind. Somehow, the minutes passed by and he was still moving. Years seemed to pass in those minutes of running, and somehow, he kept the creature at bay behind him.

He burst out into the open again, cursing aloud through gasping breath. Ahead of him was a concrete column and what looked like two metal bowls fixed to its sides. He bolted toward it, and planned on using it as an obstruction for the creature. Fate had no such intention. He barreled through the invisible fence, and the consequences invaded his head. The sound burned into his eardrums and echoed through his skull. Just a foot past fence, and he fell limp, rolling to a stop and gazing behind him. The black smoke collided with the fence and hit it like an invisible brick wall.

Blackness swirled around his eyes, unconsciousness threatening. Jacen screamed and yelled in his head, trying not to lose control. Heat erupted from his left ear and trickled down his throat, the sensation overwhelmed by the pain in his head. He struggled with his own mind more than the creature, knowing that unconsciousness meant death. The creature was repelled by the fence, but it wasn't giving up. It pounded into it with its mass of smoke, swirling against it. It pressed into it, seeming to break the unseen barrier by a few inches then be pushed back. It roared in pain, the sound lost on Jacen at the moment but it's reverberations he felt in his chest.

He struggled, gripping the earth with his hand and trying to pull himself away from the fence. He couldn't muster the strength, and even with his body flooding adrenaline, darkness crept further into his vision. That stupid old man led him to his painful death. Why did he listen to that old man?!

As the darkness took his mind, the roar of the creature echoed through the jungle again. Lost in anguish, Jacen could do nothing but succumb to the pain and sleep. He fell into the great black unknown, his mind crashing to a stop and halting. He lay there, no more than two feet from the creature that was still assaulting the invisible fence and thought only of her face. Veronica..... He should have stayed at the camp.....

Three years prior to the crash...

He should have stayed home.....

It was the only thought coursing through his mind as he stood outside the vault, watching the young bank teller enter a code on a keypad. The poor young girl wasn't going to get it, he thought. It was her third try, and whatever it was she was doing wrong, she kept doing it. But, just as Jacen's pessimistic voice was about to be right, the thick, heavy lock snapped open. The young girl turned around, and stared at the two crooks and Jacen.

"Finally..." The female crook said to her, then motioned her inside with the gun. The young girl pulled the door open, and forcefully pushed it fully open. Inside were large metal plates lining the wall like mailboxes. Jacen realized this wasn't the vault for the bank's money; this was the vault for safety deposit boxes.

"Find number 1623!" The man suddenly barked, showing the same hurried anxiety the woman had been showing the entire time. Jacen's assumption of him being an 'experienced' crook was starting to unravel. The more he saw from them, the more he wondered what they were after. It seemed very important, and they didn't care about the other boxes.

The young teller quickly began searching for the box, her small fingers trailing across a line of boxes. Finally, she reached the correct box, and turned to look at them, "This is it."

"Open it." The female crook retorted.

"I can't, only the customer has the key." The girl replied, the fear welling up in her throat and threatening to come gurgling out.

"Don't lie to me." The woman snarled, and stepped forward. The butt of her gun came crashing down on the forehead of the young girl. Blood quickly began coming out, trickling down her face. The female crook growled, "I don't have time for this! You'd better start thinking, cause I want this box open now!"

The male crook turned around and stepped around Jacen. Looking out the vault that led directly into the front lobby, he yelled, "Whoever the manager is, you'd better get in here or the girl gets a bullet!"

Within minutes, an older man with a heavy belly came tumbling through the vault door. His pudgy, pale face was shaking with his hurried movement, and he froze immediately once he saw the bank teller bleeding from her forehead already. Jacen feared the man was going to faint in a moment's notice, and then the two crooks were only going to become angrier.

"I can't open the box, we don't have the keys." The man said.

"Too bad for you." The woman said, raising her gun toward the bank manager about to fire. Jacen saw a moment to act. The male crook was unprepared mentally, and obviously not used to the situation. He began to tense up, the pistol in his hand could have easily been taken and used, and Jacen thought that he would have been quicker than the woman whom would have been caught off guard. The moment passed though, and suddenly the bank manager was lying on the floor with blood leaking from a hole in the back of his head.

Jacen wanted to reach up, to wipe the blood from his face but he was afraid trigger-happy 'Bonnie' might put a bullet in him. When he glanced down at the bank manager, he felt grief in the pit of his stomach. The man was dead because he didn't react, because he didn't follow through with what the years of training in his memory bank flashed through his mind. He should have disarmed the man, firing one round into the woman's neck or forehead. Self-preservation and fear told him to stand there and let the man die. Sadly, he listened.

The bank teller broke down in tears, dropping to her knees and giving in to the scared child within her still. She began to wet the floor with her tears and sob without fear of what Jacen or anybody thought. Jacen's conscience now gnawed at him more, knowing that now this girl watched a man she worked with, and may have been friends with, die in front of her. She wasn't prepared for that, Jacen knew it firsthand. He still remembered his own trauma that haunted his nightmares at times.

"Why did you do that?" The man asked gruffly, agitated with his partner in crime.

She had no reason, only a scowl presenting her dissatisfaction to everybody in the vault. She felt no remorse, and whatever was driving her, was forcing her to extremes. Jacen knew that whatever was in that box was very important to her, and she was going to get it. Jacen wondered what would push the woman this far.

"The girl can't tell us anything! That man was the only hope we had at any information on this box or how to get into it. Now, he's on the floor with a bullet in his head! You're not using your head!" He growled at her.

"We're running out of time, I need in that box. Arguing about who can or can't open the box isn't helping us." She turned and yelled at the girl, "Get his keys, and try them on the box!"

The girl didn't move, sat there on her knees and cried harder. Jacen didn't think she could have cried harder, but somehow the tears spilled in greater drops from her eyes. Jacen stepped forward before the female crook could bark at her again, and said "I'll get it."

Both of the crooks eyed him suspiciously, already untrusting of him. Thinking for a moment, the woman finally said, "Alright, hurry up."

Jacen reached down, searching for the keys on him. Not finding them in his suit jacket pockets, he reached into the man's pants and grabbed the keys from the man's pants pocket. He quickly pulled them out, and held them up, "Found them."

Outside, the front glass windows of the bank filled with flashing red and blue lights. Cop cars screeched to halt in the front of the bank, the formation of a make-shift barrier their first line of defense. Jacen knew that much. They wouldn't enter the bank, but they would lock down the neighborhood and SWAT would be arriving soon.

The female crook cursed, then looked at Jacen, "Come on. I still want in this box."

This was going to get much worse now.....