A/N:
Cleo: I agree that the letter in Sawyer's pocket should have been history by now, but I'm not making this up. indeed, legend has it that the note was in fairly good condition that many years later :) Lorenemichelle41, Umusarah, Kbrow, OliviaKuhns.18 : I can't thank you enough for your continued support and PM's. Scotchsista: Thanks for your message.
Thank y'all for your reviews & amazing support for this fic. The feedback received for the last chapter both positive and negative was very useful to me. Guest reviewers: thank you for your comments. One of you wrote a long review to which I would have liked to respond in a private message as I do have a lot to say (Surprise!), can't do it here as my notes are already overly lengthy. I'm working hard on this, believe me! I know I tend to get carried away sometimes, so thanks for your patience.
About this chapter:
Please keep in mind that this fic is loosely based on LOST events, we're only skimming the surface of such a complex show. Further, This fic is about Olivia and Fitz (that is, everything important in this fic is relevant to them)....and NOT about island mysteries. To attempt to do both would be overly-ambitious for an aspiring writer like myself ...plus, what would be the fun in that?
NOTE: this chapter resumes where chapter 21 left off.
As it turned out, the events that took place during the next 16 hours happened so fast that Fitz felt as though he'd been watching a movie unfolding at a mind boggling pace; one of those movies that you just can't stop watching not even for a second because if you do, you might miss an important detail...or two.
It all started with Locke making an astounding revelation soon after Fitz and Kate had found him and Charlie resting under the shade of a tree.
"I've got a confession to make," Locke announced as cool as a cucumber, slicing a mango with his knife and eating the wedges one by one. "The other day, Boone and I found a place...a hatch of some sort...it goes to a lower ground level but we can access it around the back of a mound."
Fitz hesitated. Their mission no longer seemed to be about finding Claire. If they went back in the direction of the so called hatch they would actually be closer to the survivors on the beach than to the other side of the island.
His hesitation turned to indignation when he fully realized the implication. It seemed that this hatch, was a fully furnished place equipped with all the modern conveniences one could hope for.
The fact that Locke had kept this little nugget of information to himself made him want to strangle him.
Nonetheless, his curiosity was greater than his anger and thus, in the end, the whole group followed Locke down the yellow brick road.
They finally arrived at nightfall, completely exhausted, and looking forward to a hot shower and a nice place to rest.
"Perfect place to spend the night," Locke concluded with a wide smile, just as they arrived in front of a heavy metal door. Then, he let himself inside and flicked on the lights as though he owned the place.
The hatch was absolutely phenomenal; it had four spacious bedrooms, a kitchen, home gym and other impressive living spaces.
Kate ran her finger through the dining table, checking for dust. "Remind me to leave a tip for the housekeeper," she chirped.
The main attraction, however, was a vintage computer monitor (encased in a heavy white frame) sitting in the middle of the living room. The group flocked to it at once, hoping it could be a source of communication with the outside world.
Charlie was the first to try and type various commands followed by the enter key. Nothing happened. "Bloody hell?" He frowned, confused. The PC monitor displayed the numbers 4, 8 ,15, 16, 23 and 42 flashing in green. A blinking cursor punctuated the last number. "What do those numbers...?"
"It's probably broken," said Kate, "It's like what...50 years old?"
Fitz tried shutting down the computer and re-starting it several times, but the same screen came up again and again with the numbers flashing.
"Um...Those numbers must mean something," Locke observed, rubbing his chin.
"Maybe they're the combination to a safe," Kate joked."We're about to become millionaires," she flashed Fitz one of those coy/flirty smiles she reserved just for him.
Fitz ignored her. "We'll stay here tonight and in the morning we'll go back to camp and tell everyone." Fitz declared, giving up on trying to work the computer, thinking it was too old to be able to access the World Wide Web anyway. Fitz couldn't wait to see the look on Olivia's face. He missed her so much that it felt as though they'd been separated for weeks and not merely a little over twelve hours.
"This place has enough food to feed us all, there is a cellar behind the laundry room," Locke informed them. "But we can't bring everybody here...it will be chaos, people helping themselves and squandering and fighting..."
"So now we're the ruling class here?" Kate replied, her voice brimming with disapproval.
"I think we're all done listening to you," Fitz peered at Locke with disdain. "You lost that right when you decided to keep this place a secret." Then, he turned to Kate, "There's always going to be a ruling class, my dear...the question is really whether those in power rule with justice for all..."
"Justice for all? Is that really possible?" Kate sneered. "As long as there's government, people will sooner or later start a revolution."
Fitz frowned. "I don't think you know what you're talking about here."
The tension in the air could be cut with a knife.
"Hey, everybody...I don't know about you, but I'm starved..." Charlie cut in, hoping to steer everyone in a different direction. "I'm looking forward to some beer!"
Fitz gravitated toward a room which held a huge wall bookcase while the others helped themselves to some canned food and drinks. The bookcase held books, a wide assortment of old records, and a record player.
Charlie and Kate soon followed enjoying a couple of candy bars while Fitz continued to focus on the books.
"Oh, Gosh...these are old! And huge! " Kate chuckled, taking a Beatles vinyl record and dropping it on the turntable. "They're like over-sized dinner plates!" she added while grabbing the needle and carelessly letting it drop on the round black disc which resulted in a loud booming sound.
"Hey, be careful with that!" Charlie protested, waving the sleeve to the record. "you're gonna scratch it! Hey, these records are classics, you know...this right here is the Beatles Collection Volume 5 from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band! "
Kate rolled her eyes at Charlie.
Lennon and McCartney started singing:
You say you want a revolution, well, you know we all want to change the world..." As if on cue, the record started skipping. "Don't you know it's gonna be all right? All right, all right! All right, all right, all right!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Fitz spotted a book that on the surface seemed like it belonged to a set of leather bound books. Yet when he picked it up it was incredibly light as it was one of those fake books used for decoration. When he opened it, he found a few miscellaneous papers and a Polaroid of a young black couple posing for the camera with their arms around each other. On the back of the picture, someone had written in ink: Maya, 1977.
Tucked at the bottom of the fake book, there was a blueprint of a place called the Looking Glass Station. It was the diagram of a moon pool or platform which can be used for underwater explorations allowing researchers to lower instruments into the sea and which offered a submarine docking area for submarines to enter and or leave the water in a protective environment. Fitz searched his mind regarding what he knew about the subject, paying particular attention to the think power supply cord that went into the moon pool.
Later as the group got ready to settle down for the night, Locke called everyone into main living room and played a tape on a black and white TV set. He'd said the tape had been inside the VCR player and that he'd only viewed it once.
Fitz couldn't help but stare at the screen, fascinated. As the video started playing, there was that same logo filling the TV screen which matched the one he'd seen printed on the diagram of the Looking Glass station.
An Asian man started a black and white presentation in standard American English:
"The DHARMA Initiative was created in 1970, and is the brainchild of Gerald and Karen DeGroot, two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan. Following in the footsteps of visionaries such as B.F. Skinner, they imagined a large-scale communal research compound where scientists and free-thinkers from around the globe could pursue research in meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism..."
Fitz and Locke exchanged a long puzzled look.
In the video, the Asian looking man kept on talking. "...This station was originally constructed as a laboratory, where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations emanating from this sector of the island..."
Fitz thought about this long and hard. If people from the Dharma Initiative were here on this island at one time or another they must have had the means to communicate with the outside world. All at once, everything seemed to click into place. He figured they had to find this Looking Glass Station which had to be powered by a generator either in the moon pool itself or at a different location. For all he knew those people could still be on the island and the station could still be used to communicate with incoming submarines.
Early the next morning, the group left the hatch after packing their backpacks with cans, packaged food and drinks from the cellar.
About an hour into their journey back to the beach, they ran into two extremely thin women of medium height (one brunette and the other a blonde) who looked like a fright with their mud-caked clothing clinging to their bodies like a second skin.
At once, Fitz drew his gun at the two strangers that appeared seemingly out of nowhere and squinted his eyes, trying to peg them. Foes? Friendly? One could never be too careful. Nothing changed in their faces as though they had been expecting this encounter and the weapon was of no consequence...yet Fitz could sense their attention sharpening.
The brunette woman came forward and said: "I'm Cindy Chandler. We spotted you a while back and have been trying to catch up with you. We're from the tail section... flight 815."
"Where? Where are the rest of you?" Locke asked.
"That's it...There's only two of us left."
Fitz lowered his weapon, as recognition settled in, keeping it pointed at the ground.
"She was our stewardess," Fitz murmured, recalling her words on the plane: "Our policy for serving alcohol is that all refills must be purchased with a credit card of your choice." Refills on international flights had always been free and Fitz had resented this.
Locke regarded the women with intense scrutiny."How did you two survive?"
"How did you?" Cindy snapped back, cocking her head and giving him a long hard look.
"We can swap stories as we move along," Fitz said after a few moments, tucking the gun in the back of his jeans. "There is a whole group of us on the other side of the island," he continued taking long strides while the others hurried to catch up with him. "Anyway, one of us went missing... and now we're looking for this communication station..."Then, he went on to explain how moon pools are underwater habitats that have just the right combination of air and water pressure in their design to allow people to carry out basic human functions in a protective environment. "We believe it's about 2 miles north from here...once we get there, I believe we'll be able to phone home."
Cindy turned in front of the group smiled. "Come this way..." she veered her steps slightly northeast, claiming to know the way to the exact location of a power cable which happened to be on the beach on the opposite side of the island to where the middle section survivors had settled their camp.
The midday sun was relentless and they walked mostly in silence to conserve their energy, Kate handed the two women a couple of water bottles as they seem to be traveling with no backpacks or anything.
It didn't take them long to realize that Cindy was the leader and that the other woman, Libby, faithfully followed along without saying a word to the point that they all soon forgot she was there.
Soon enough, they reached the beach. There was power there drumming in the air even as the surf drummed on the rocks and a flock of seagulls circled the air as though they were leading the way. Fitz remembered reading somewhere that in Native American culture seagulls were symbolic of energy and freedom.
As they climbed down to the shore, Fitz thought of Olivia, missing her. He'd now wished that he'd let her come with him. And not for the first time he'd wondered what she would say about the latest developments. He wished he could run his ideas by her, certain she was the only one he could trust.
Fitz spotted the glimpse of a power cable partially buried in the sand. As he and Charlie pulled on it, they discovered that it ran all the way from the shore to the deep ocean.
In the meantime, Locke turned to Cindy and asked: "So...are there other people on this island?" She shrugged in response.
Fitz and charlie took their shoes off and swam alongside the power cable until it ended down into the ocean.
"I'm going down there..."
Fitz narrowed his eyes. "Hold on a second, not so fast!"
"I can do this. I'm a strong swimmer. I swear, I hold the record for holding my breath for up to four minutes..."
"I used to surf off the coast of California, and trust me...those California waves are nothing to sneer at," Fitz quickly replied...not that this was some kind of bragging session, but still..." seeing the fierce look of determination on Charlie's face, he added: "Fine...you go first. I'll follow right behind you."
Fitz dove under about a minute after charlie, after taking a moment to close his eyes and imagine Olivia's lovely face smiling at him. Even though he was a strong swimmer and had won a competition or two, uncertainty gripped his heart...
And in his mind he heard her voice saying "I love you."
And he felt like the luckiest man on earth.
And exactly two minutes later (after swimming under a metal roof of some kind), Fitz found himself in the middle of a square pool gasping for air.
"This way," he heard charlie say next to a short ladder that lead to a spacious platform.
In awe and still struggling to catch his breath, Fitz gazed at his surroundings, the bright lights surrounding the moon pool blinding him. In no time, he was moving about with his weapon drawn, certain that someone had to be guarding the place.
Meanwhile, Charlie ventured into a airtight chamber through a submarine style door.
Once inside, his eyes were immediately drawn to the keypad in the middle of the control panel that went along one wall of the cabinet in front of a TV monitor. Then, as a smile of recognition flashed across his face, he wasted no time keying in the numbers 4, 8 ,15, 16, 23 and 42.
He waited and waited. Nothing happened.
Then, as he turned to leave, a beeping sound very much like the beeping of an annoying ring tone stopped him on his track. A red light was furiously flashing on the control panel. Further inspection revealed the words 'incoming transmission' flashing in unison.
Much to Charlie's utter amazement, the TV monitor showed a black and white motion picture of a person coming in and out of focus, followed by a barely audible male voice. "Hello, hello?"
In a daze, he picked up a small silver microphone attached to the sound board. "Yes, I can hear you."
"Who is it? who am I speaking with?"
"I'm Charlie Pace. I'm a survivor of flight 815. Oceanic."
A man of color could now be clearly seen on the screen. "Where are you?" the man asked. "How did you get this frequency?"
"I'm on an island. " Charlie's voice soared with excitement. "There is a group of us, we survived and it's..."
"On an island? Where is the location?"
"I don't know. Who are you?"
The sound on the TV monitor became filled with static so that some of the words got cut off. "... Pope... I'm Olivia's father. Is she...is she okay?"
At once, Charlie sprinted to his feet and shouted Fitz' name.
"I got someone! I got someone!"
Fitz got to the chamber in a flash. His eyes widened at the sight of Eli Pope's anguished expression, larger than life, seemingly ready to pop out of the screen and step into the chamber at any given moment.
"Hello! I repeat... I'm Olivia's father. Is she okay?"
That face. In spite of the obvious aging that had taken place, Fitz immediately recognized him as the man from the photograph he'd found along with the blueprints for the Looking Glass Station. "She's okay..." he answered still in a daze. This was one hell of a coincidence. Olivia's father? what were the odds? and the snapshot...how was that possible? "We're on an island somewhere in the Pacific...can you send us some help here?"
"I think I got it!" Eli Pope said triumphantly, his gaze dropping to what appeared to be a control panel on his side of the screen. "I think I got the coordinates...I'll be sending a boat and a helicopter right away!"
A/N:
Hang in there y'all, more twists and turns ahead!
From this point forward I will be taking more time to fully develop each chapter and thus updates for this fic will not be as frequent as they have been. Just know that I'm not abandoning this story. Thanks again for your patience.