The Island

The Barracks Cafeteria

"Kate I know you're eating for two," Hurley watched her shoveling down scrambled eggs, pulling apart a piece of toast that clearly never stood a chance. "But you do realize the other one's just a really tiny baby?"

She gave him an "oh, that's nice" grin, wrinkled her nose, didn't slow down.

"We have got to get Annie back here," Hurley whispered to Richard on his right, as if Kate couldn't hear him. "Like now."

"She'll be home," Richard said, "Soon."

Ben and the three of them were at a table, sharing food and updates. It was lunch hour and the small room was full of the new recruits, the conversation level noisy enough that they could talk with some degree of privacy. Ben said Miles had teams canvasing nearly every corner of the island but so far all was quiet. Richard explained that the Orchid and the Flame were both fortified with supplies and material for barricades if they needed to hunker down. A team of six was guarding each of the posts.

"I talked with Frank in Guam, too," Richard said. "I had him partition off the old Dharma warehouse, make some holding cells of a sort."

"Why?" Hurley looked like he suspected the answer and didn't like it.

"If we win, Hurley, we'll need somewhere to keep them until…" Richard hesitated, looked at Ben. "Well, until we decide what to do with them."

"You mean like interrogate them? Kill them?" They could hear Hurley's stress building and Kate reached out a hand to squeeze his arm. "No way. No one gets killed and no torture."

"We don't know what's coming," Ben said after a short silence. "But what you say goes. Still, it's a great idea Richard: Safer to keep them somewhere we control but off of the island entirely. Good thinking."

"Thank you, Ben," Richard didn't look at him as he said it, but you could hear he appreciated it. Hurley let it go, noticing that they were working better together than ever: Any old grudges and differences of opinion they'd had over the decades seemed to be dissolving.

"I should head back to the Flame," Ben got up. "I'll check in with Penny and Eloise again. Hurley, you'll meet me there?"

"Right after I see them off," he looked at Kate, who avoided his eyes and picked at her now almost empty plate with her fork.

"Could you give us a second?" Hurley asked Richard, who got up to go too.

"See you soon," Richard waved to Kate. "We'll be back in training in no time. Take care of Walt."

"See you, Richard."

She waited until they were a few steps away to say it.

"I should stay here and help you."

"You will be helping me. You'll be protecting Walt and his menagerie," Hurley smiled, tried to keep it light. "You and my dad will be making sure my mom is okay, and watching Rose, so she doesn't worrying herself sick over Bernard," he paused and when she still wouldn't look him in the eye he dipped his own head down, peering up at her. "And I'm going to need you around for a really long time when this is over, so, you know, I need you to protect yourself too."

"I've proven I can handle myself in a tough spot, I know how to make the fast decisions," she rattled her case off to him, not giving in.

"And we don't know…" Hurley emphasized the 'we' "What they have planned. What if they gas the place the way the DI was gassed by the Others? That'd be kind of like a revenge move, right? Even the hatches here might not be safe if they do that. I feel really strongly about this, Kate: You have to stay on the island right now, but for the next couple of days it has to be that island you've been visiting. Richard will come get you all the second it's over."

"And how long do we sit there and wait if Richard doesn't show up?"

Hurley smiled, relieved. He'd won.

"Three days. If you haven't heard from us by then," she looked up, saw a flicker of concern in his eyes for a second and then he grinned again. "You may need to come take the place back."

The Searcher

At Sea

Penny was on her way up to the control room with coffee for her and Desmond when she saw one of their guests walking the deck, head down against a strong breeze, hands in his pockets.

"Max," she reached out with one of the cups. "Coffee? I didn't know you were up so early."

It was barely dawn but Max looked as if he'd been up and watching the waves for hours, which he had.

'No, thank you," he said, nodded upstairs. "Is there anything I can do to help? I get the sense our quiet moments are going to be over soon."

Penny smiled, shrugged.

"They might, but we don't know for sure. We haven't spotted them yet. Hopefully they haven't spotted us." She saw their other guest coming up the steps behind Max from the lower deck. He gave them both a wave and started his own loop around the boat and Penny pointed her chin toward him.

"There is one thing you can do for me," she said. "Can you tell me anything about him?"

"Armin?" Max sounded surprised. "I'm sorry, I thought you knew our histories. I could have filled you in a lot sooner. Have you not heard of Armin Scharff?"

"No," Penny said, "Sorry, never have. Ben only told us we were picking up a cosmologist and a shrink… and well, you're the time and space guy so…"

Max clearly got a kick out of her innocence.

"He is that, but he, well he specializes. His father was known as the best interrogator of the mid-20th century," Max said, watching Armin turn the corner of the ship on his walk. "He's better."

"He's a torturer?" Penny looked horrified to think their polite, nearly silent guest could be so different from her conception of him.

"No," Max was quick to clarify. "He's that good. He'll get whatever he wants to know out of you without ever laying a hand on you. The psychological damage though, can be far from pretty. He's thorough, and he works fast."

Penny was looking up at Max, her eyes a little sad, a bit apprehensive.

"Strange times we live in," she said, wondering what Hurley, or more likely Ben and Richard, wanted with a skill set like that on the island.

"They're all strange times," the cosmologist said with a grin. "We only notice it more about ours because we're stuck in them. At least sometimes we are," he said with an anticipatory glint in his eyes.

"You can't wait to get back to the island, can you?" Penny was smiling again, heading up the steps and Max didn't bother to deny it.

"The sooner the better," he said, started back on is march around the ship. "Every second counts."

The bridge was quiet when Penny walked in, handed Desmond his coffee and curled up on the padded bench along the windows next to him. Mathias and Henrick were manning the controls, Mathias surfing the web and watching the computer systems that connected to the tracking station where the two of them had spent so many cold winters.

Penny was starting to feel like maybe it'd be another peaceful day after all when she saw Mathias jump, an involuntary sound escaping his throat.

"We're being hacked," he said, started flicking off computers, waved to Henrick. "Print it out, the directions to the island, and then shut everything down," he said, looked back at Desmond and Penny. "Turn off your phones, too," he said, but Des already was dialing.

"Calling Ben first," he said. "Then I will. I'll let him know what's happening and that we'll be flying in blind."

Penny was staring straight into his eyes with a look of apology and he shook his head at her, telling her silently to stop it.

"Well," Desmond took a deep breath, then, phone to his ear as he waited for Ben to answer. "Here we go."

The Island

On the Way to the Weather Vane

"It's gonna be like we're camping," Walt was very excited as they trekked to the Weather Vane. He looked at Kate. "Can we have a fire and marshmallows?"

"Dude, we do that here all the time," Hurley pointed out.

The three of them were at the back of their little group. David Reyes was leading the way, Carmen and Rose chatting together a dozen yards behind him. Joop and Vincent were all over the place, clearly enjoying the hike most of all.

"Yeah," Walt said, "But this will be different. It'll be so quiet there."

Hurley looked at Kate and they both realized what he was saying: He wasn't used to all the new recruits, all these new people on his island.

"I know what you mean," Hurley said, "I kind of liked it when it was just us, too. But we need them."

"Yeah," Walt said, "I guess," and he took off running, laughing, toward Joop, who was chasing Vincent.

"Why?" Kate took the opportunity while she had him alone. "Why are you so set on us going to January, '05? Why can't I go back closer to where I was before, check them one more time before they try to leave their island?"

"Too many variables are going with you," Hurley had been expecting the question and he was ready with an answer. "It was one thing for you to go there alone, but put all these other people in the mix while they're still there and who knows what the heck could happen. Plus," he stopped, waved for her to stop, too. "You say you don't want to know if they made out safely, but I want you to find out. We need to know for our research on the Weather Vane and you need to know for your own sake."

"Hurley," she was instantly unhappy and he shook his head.

"Are you seriously going to tell me it's not eating at you? The Kate I know doesn't live in fear of finding out what happened next."

She looked both tired and a little pissed off as she answered.

"The Kate you know lost Jack, failed Claire, almost died making it back here, found out she's a fugitive again and realized Sawyer's been lying to us since the plane landed in Nauru," she stopped, "All in the last five months. I don't know how much more I can take."

"A lot more," he said, put an arm around her, walking them slowly forward. "You can take a lot more because you're going to have to. You miss him, don't you?"

Kate kept going but for a second she wondered if he was trying to make her hurt so much that whatever was coming next couldn't.

"I miss them both," she said, her voice catching. "But when I'm with him then I'm with them both."

They went on in silence for a minute.

"You could have come with me," Kate said, "To see her. I'm surprised you haven't wanted to."

Hurley shrugged.

"Everyone's different about it," he said. "It's enough for me that you got 'other me' and 'other her' off the island safely. That's enough."

"If I actually did," Kate said, downbeat one more time.

"You did," Hurley said, "I'm sure for you, even if you're not."

They were at the Weather Vane, and then it was a flurry of busy-ness that was all business. Hurley waited off to one side of the hatch while Walt helped his friends through one after the other. He was standing there still as Kate took her place on the landing pad, the last to leave.

"Goodbye Hurley," she said to him "We'll be thinking of you every second. See you soon."

"Absolutely," Hurley nodded, "See you again, Kate - in this life."

Hurley closed his eyes, not particularly wanting to watch her disappear and when he opened them again he was alone. He sat for a minute, drinking in the silence, and then he headed for the hatch door to make the walk back to the Flame.