Others' Warehouse and Landing Strip- Guam

Richard Alpert arrived pretty much where you'd want to if you were falling there from the Weather Vane hatch and were worried about the integrity of your bones: Dead center into the Others' huge warehouse on Guam, in a very wide-open area. He was glad to see his aim was improving. He lay there for a minute, recovering his sense of which way was up and then he made his way in the semi-darkness to the far wall and threw on the lights.

He literally rolled up his sleeves and started planning, picked the best spot for processing the new recruits before their flight to the island. He cleared, cleaned, set up tables and plugged in laptops to charge. He did it all in silence, glad for a few hours of peace where his task was easy, all physical and almost mindless. When he was done, he knew he was ready for when Ben and Frank and the newbies arrived. He'd made them a clean, well-lighted space.

Richard locked it up, walked a few blocks to the building where the Others owned apartments and hit the shower. He stood under the hot water for a quarter of an hour letting his mind empty of the challenges ahead. There was nothing more he could do about them tonight. Then he got dressed and went down the street to the last restaurant still open. It was hot out and the place was packed, doors and windows open and no air conditioning. There was a huge buzz of conversation all around him as he sat at the far corner of the bar and ate dim sum and drank sake.

In the middle of his meal he got a sudden shot of a memory: He and Juliet sitting on a beach on the island. It was the only night in all their time together when they'd spent a couple of hours, just them, talking. They discussed their lives, what they feared and what they still hoped for. It was a few months after she'd accepted the job he had recruited her for. She was still happy then, hopeful. He wondered why he'd thought of it and to shake it off he took a look around the restaurant and that's when it hit him: He could never live an average life, not on Guam, not in L.A., nowhere.

He'd told himself he'd set off the Weather Vane to keep it from Ben, to keep it safe, but he realized now he'd done it for himself too so he would have a reason to go back. He wondered if the rest of them – Kate, Sawyer, Miles – If they'd come to their own understanding that they'd never really break free of it either? Frank might, but the rest? Could any of them really just tell Hurley and Ben goodbye and good luck?

He continued to watch the others in the restaurant the rest of his dinner as if he were peering in at an alien world he'd never live on. Though he couldn't say he felt happy about the night's revelations they had come with an emotion. What was it? Relief, he decided.

He went back to the apartment, and fell into the first perfect sleep he'd had in years.

Ann Arbor, MI

Annie and Sawyer pulled up to the U of M satellite research center in Ann Arbor, and Sawyer drove to a point halfway between the street leading out to the highway and the building Annie was gesturing to.

"Before you go in there," Sawyer said, parking, "Will you tell me again why we are kidnapping an orangutan?"

"I am not going in there. We are going in there," Annie said, "It'll help him feel a lot more comfortable, he'll trust you more if it's us together he sees from the start. And we're taking him because he's the only thing that will break my mom, that will make her talk and tell us what we need to know about exactly who is after you and gunning for the island."

"What are you saying, if she doesn't give up the info we want you're going to hurt a poor defenseless primate?" Sawyer still hadn't taken the keys out of the ignition, was clearly on the fence about whether they were staying or not. "Wouldn't that pretty much give you the worst Karma ever? Sounds like a ticket on the train straight to hell to me."

"We're not going to hurt him!" Annie was clearly horrified by the idea, and Sawyer relaxed a little in his seat. "I've known Joop my entire life. If she won't crack, we take him back to the island – but I won't tell her that. All she'll know is that she'll never know. She'll always have to wonder what happened, where he is, how long he lived, when he died. Believe me, it'll be enough. I may be her daughter," Annie said, opening the car door. "But Joop is her baby."

It was close to dark. Sawyer was about to give Annie some suggestions on breaking into the building when he saw her walk up to the door, whip a key from her key ring. She let them in like they were just going home.

He'd expected a jail or a zoo, but even though it was square and flat and college-like on the outside, the inside of the building was set up like a house. They walked through the living room, and Annie went to one corner, stood on the arm of a couch and reached up to disconnect a surveillance camera. Sawyer smiled.

"You seem to know your way around. Any more surveillance we need to worry about? The cops going to come take us away?"

"They'll notice the cameras out eventually," Annie said, "But it's a pretty sleepy little operation in this facility. We have an hour, I'm sure. There is another camera in the hall – maybe you could bust it for me? It's up near the ceiling."

Sawyer did, after they climbed the stairs. Annie led him to a room off of the master bedroom, held a finger to her lips for silence as they entered just as Sawyer saw Joop lying in his double bed. He was very orange and tan and fuzzy, all arms and legs, snoring softly. Annie pointed to a chair, and Sawyer sat, watching as she pulled her own chair up closer to her old friend.

"I think it'd be best," Annie whispered, "If we don't wake him on purpose. He's not infirm or anything, he's very well," she said, "But he is a whole lot older than you might think. He's part of the Dharma Life Extension project."

"How old is he?" Sawyer asked simply, not whispering but keeping his voice down.

"One hundred and six years old," Annie said, "and ten months."

"What?" Sawyer said that a whole lot louder and more harshly than he'd intended to, and Joop stirred, rolled over, one arm draped over his forehead, blinking.

Joop saw Annie, and Sawyer was dumbstruck at what he swore was the sight of an Orangutan smiling. He sat up, and that's when he saw Sawyer, who braced himself for who knew what would happen next. But all Joop did was look from him to Annie, his smile melting into a question mark. She nodded, an "it's all right" smile on her own face, and Joop relaxed, sat back, put his hand on her shoulder, patted it.

"Want to go on a road trip, Joopie?" Annie asked, and that's all it took: He was up and at the door before them, looking back as if to ask, "What are you waiting for?"

"It helps," Annie said, "That I used to take him on road trips when I was a teenager."

"Where, Vegas? Spring Break?" Sawyer asked as the three of them walked together to the car. "I've seen some things the last couple of years," he said, "And this is definitely one of them."

He laughed softly.

"What?" Annie said.

"I'm picturing Miles' face when we get back to the house."

The Island

She had given it a good half hour after Richard left the Weather Vane, but Kate was too wound up with anticipation, couldn't wait any longer than that. She and Walt were inside that hatch now, sitting in front of the bank of computers across from the platform where one stood to take a quick trip to any of the places it connected to: Guam, the Lamp Post, and the Island.

She was urging Walt to tell her what he could, which wasn't very much. He hadn't had any formal training on it yet. All he knew was what he'd learned when he instinctively floated through it to one of the five iterations of the Island it was connected to now that Richard had set it off.

The computers couldn't show images of the places the hatch was linked to, instead there were screens and screens of data upon data – GPS information in each location, weather stats, maps showing hot spots where people were gathered, air mixture levels, a lot else that made no sense to her.

"Do you know," Kate asked, "How to avoid the bad places, like the one where the freighter people came through, the ones with the orange blood? Can you kind of pick which one you go to?" Walt nodded. "That's great. Can you send me, let's say just for an hour, to the beach where you went, where Charlie recognized you, the one just like here? And maybe, can you aim for not long after we crashed?" He nodded again and she walked to the platform.

"Walt, do you know what the phrase "office politics" means?" She asked. He just shrugged, so she went on. "Right now, Hurley and Ben and Richard are all concerned about the big picture," she said. "I'm thinking about us – you and Rose and Bernard and Des and Penny and Vincent…."

She stood there, took a deep breath.

"I need to make sure we have somewhere to run if the worst happens," she said.

"I know," Walt stayed where he was. "But if we're going to be honest with each other, Kate, I know there's more to it than that," he said and she was glad for his bluntness. "I'm not a kid anymore." Her heart broke a little, hearing him say that at fourteen. "I know you have your own reasons for wanting to go there, too. But I trust you, I know you're looking out for us."

"What makes this place 'work'?" Kate asked, realizing she was more than a little nervous. "Do you use that control panel?"

"No," Walt said, "It's all done with our minds. I just feel it and you go… then you come back when I bring you back. Same way. I can go with you if you want?"

"Not this time, Walt. Next time, though, okay?" She braced herself, started to feel the room go thin, blurry, and then she couldn't see it, or anything at all. "Oh, wow. Damn," Kate said, her voice quavering, clearly scared, and then she disappeared.

"See you soon," Walt said, did the math, started the timer on his iPhone, waited for it to get to 3,600 seconds.

The Island, Weather Vane Connection Four of Five

Kate was very fortunate on her first trip through the Weather Vane. She landed on her feet and almost fell but immediately pulled herself up to standing. She caught her breath, recognized the beach just a few hundred yards away dead in front of her. She walked as close as she dared, hiding behind trees, behind bushes.

She saw Shannon and Boone walking together, arguing, him lecturing her not so gently. Her eyes stung with tears at the sight of them and she had to look away. She saw Rose a few dozen yards further off sitting staring out at the water on her own. It was enough: Kate knew now just exactly where she was in this particular moment in time, on this island, knew it had only been couple of days since they'd all arrived. She circled back a few dozen yards and walked around the camp, went to look for Jack.

It took a whole lot longer than she'd hoped, nearly 50 minutes of her hour to find him. He was walking in the jungle, kicking the underbrush and searching for fallen fruit. He was frowning, intent on what he was doing. He was wearing the white shirt with the red lines through it that she remembered, and looked so much younger than the Jack she'd known in L.A. or the one she'd left behind on the island three months ago.

She had thought she was mentally prepared to see him, but standing there now she could barely breathe or swallow. She stood there with one hand on her neck, realizing that the phrase "my heart was in my throat" was not just an old saying.

That's when he saw her there, stopped, waved slightly, the frown replaced with a small smile. "What are you doing all the way out here?" His eyes went back to the trees, the ground, looking for more food. He kept walking, and she walked along.

"About the same as you." She kept it simple, didn't trust herself to say more.

"I could use your advice on something," he started to say, then he looked at her directly and he stopped dead in mid-sentence, clearly confused.

She knew he'd felt it then, what she hoped he'd see instinctively and without explanation, that she was not the version of herself he had crashed here with. She could tell he was a few seconds from adding it all up. Many things were different, actually: Her bearing, her sense of herself and of him in relation to her, the look in her eyes. Those were things that would take time to decipher. But then he saw the one thing that was purely physical, unequivocal – her stomach, and the small but undeniable baby-bump.

Suddenly he looked as terrified as they all had been the day they'd gone to look for the cockpit of the plane, and the smoke monster had smashed the window and grabbed the pilot. It was almost a 'fight or flight' response on his face and she feared that 'flight' was winning, especially when he dropped the backpack and turned away from her.

But he stopped, leaned against a tree with one arm and then looked back, angry.

"What the hell?" was all he said. "Who are you?"

"It's me, I promise Jack. It's just not the me you probably talked with an hour ago," she said. "It's a me who has known you for years, and who is going to really need your help next time you see me. We might all need your help- all of us in the place I came here from. I had to come find you now, so that when it all really hits the fan…. Well, you're not quite so shocked as I'm sure you are now."

She stopped there, and he started pacing, one hand on his forehead.

"Do we get home? And if we do get home, how? When?" He asked, and she was mentally transported back to the time when that was all that was on their minds.

"This isn't going to make any sense to you at all," She said. "But don't be in too big a rush for that. I know," she saw his reaction, held both her hands up as he started pacing angrily again. "I told you it wouldn't make sense. But trust me. It's not all so wonderful."

"Trust you?" He shouted it, and she jumped. "I'm about a thousand questions and answers from having any reason to trust you."

Kate decided that more talk would only lead to more frustration and so she did what she had wanted to do since she'd first seen him: She walked over and slid her arms under his, around his back, laid her face against his chest. She stood there feeling the sensation of holding him again, smelling his sweat through his shirt, felt dizzy with it all.

He was tense at first but then he relaxed and though he didn't hug her back he just stood there letting her hold him.

"It's me," Kate said. "It's the same person who sewed up your back a few days ago. I swear it's just me."

She looked up and he saw tears were rolling down her face and then he did put one arm around her, one on her shoulder in a way that suggested he was trying to piece a lot of things together quickly.

And then she saw it: It had just struck him that wherever she was here from, things had not gone so well for him. He looked horrified, shook his head, and then looked down at where her stomach was pressed against him, back up at her face. She nodded, smiling through her tears, took his hand in hers and set it on the bump.

"Oh my God," he breathed it as much as he said it.

They stood there several seconds, not moving, then they heard feet running their way, voices calling for him. Kate instinctively turned to run, but he grabbed her wrist, pulled her back, held her there a second.

"Let me go," she tugged, broke free. "Go help them. I'll be back."

She ran for several minutes, half blind and then sat on a log to catch her breath. She barely had it back when the island went all swimmy in front of her eyes, and then she was in the Weather Vane and Walt was helping her to the barracks, seemingly not the least surprised by the mess of a state that she was in. It was almost like he expected it.