Chapter 2

"How the HELL you know that name?" he demanded, jerking the gun back up into her startled face.

"What's going on here?"

"Who are you!"

"How did you get down here?"

"Answer the damn question!"
"Don't you point that gun at me-" and she reached out, grabbed the barrel.

Acting with his panic and not with his head, he- in a fraction of a second- spun the gun around, raised it back behind his shoulders, brought it down.

She crumpled like an opera glove. He stared at his own handiwork, horrified, then dropped to his needs by her side. Fuck! He hadn't meant to really hurt her.

Thank god. A pulse. A breath. She was fine. He rolled her onto her back and just had time to move her away before someone was yelling down into the bunker "Kate! KATE!"

With a muttered curse he scrambled back into the corner. Round two: fight.

The other ones right on her tail, or so it seemed, and Sawyer could hear footsteps coming down, hitting ground, getting close. Just one, it sounded like. Sawyer listened to the breaths, holding his own. An old man.

What the hell was going on?

"Kate?"

FLASH.We need to acknowledge that we may be here for some time.

"Kate!" and the man- Sawyer saw now smaller and stocky, and old just as he suspected- darted to the woman's body mere metres away. "Kate!" He could hear the other guy too, rappelling down the hatch. If he was going to act it had to be now.

"Don't move." Low and lethal, training the gun on the old guy. Standing up, stepping forward- revealed, out of his shadows, no longer hidden. He felt the last vestiges of security slipping away. "You stand right there."

Didn't move- at all. Didn't seem alarmed- surprised- nothing. Not even a word of protest. Sawyer felt cold, suddenly. This wasn't right. Who the hell had the gun?

"Locke?" Round three had touched down. Shit.

Any rate Locke wasn't replying, eyes fixed on Sawyer, face drawn. Curtains real.

"Did you kill her?" Voice appallingly conversational. "Kate. Did you kill her? Sawyer?"

Explosion. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE!" Trigger finger nearly twitched. "How the HELL do you know my name? Is this some kind of goddamn joke?" Stationary gun aimed at Locke's stationary skull. "You a joker? Huh? This your idea of a fun time? Or-" he swung the MK-41 around to cover the other guy, who had just captured the hallway. "Or are YOU the man?"

Round three had a gun. Fuck. At least he looked alarmed, though his voice was steady when he spoke, trying so hard to hide it.

"Put the gun down. Sawyer. Please put the gun down." Bedside manner for the sick man. Sawyer's eyes narrowed.

"You know what? I don't think I will."

"Look." Very reasonable. "We both have guns. This is pointless. You put yours down, I'll drop mine."

Sawyer snorted with a derision he could not feel, that no one could feel that close to the end of the beginning of the end. "Cortez, you're betting a midget gun against my MK-41. Don't reckon I fancy your chances."

Pause. Change of tack. "Where'd you get the gun, Sawyer?"

"I stole it," he said sarcastically.

FLASH.(Took the badge, too. I thought it was cool.)

"But-" he stammered, shaking his head, trying to clear it- "Looks like- it came in handy-"

(Guess what? I just shot a bear!)

"SHUT UP!"

-Could hardly hear himself in his own head- room tilting a little, hands shaking again- closing his eyes so he didn't throw up- and his hand twitched and someone fired, and he didn't realize until afterwards that it was him, that he had accidentally pulled the trigger. Mind reeling, blackness behind his eyelids spinning, he could hear the two invader's disjointed meaningless yells, and as he raised his free hand to cover his ear- pointless, didn't help at all- a strong arm wrested the MK-41 from his grip.

He opened his eyes again, the room stayed still but the two other men didn't, and as he snarled and made a dash at Locke to recover his MK-41, the other guy got in between them- threw a clean right hook that would have impressed him under other circumstances-

-And caught Sawyer clean in the jaw, and the carpeting rushed up to greet him as everything slowly swam black.

((A/N: Error in the last chapter- there should be a few asterisks indicating time passage between "Quarantine was a bitch" and "Sawyer thought that…". FFNET keeps on deleting them for some reason, probably it's my fault but I can't figure it out. Anyway. Just in case you were confused.

-Locked Heart Ami))