Chapter 9

There were tiny scratches across Lauren's face from the branches that fought against her as she ran. Her eyes fixed on Zane's figure in the distance. Running like she never had before, Lauren's mind screamed at her for this insanity. Lauren, he's not real! But she ignored every doubt. It was him. It had to be.

The other survivors had given up, their calls had ceased a mile ago, and Lauren knew they weren't following her. Her legs burned and her stomach ached, but she pushed forward until she reached a clearing that was almost perfectly circular. Lauren took her eyes off of Zane for a moment and hunched over, trying to catch her breath. When she arose she saw nothing, Zane had disappeared. Lauren looked around her wildly, searching for her brother. When she was sure he was gone, Lauren fell to the ground and wept.

****Flashback****

"In cause no. 00-F.E.D.-82342, Dohler v. Everlasting Funeral Parlor, LLC, summary judgment is awarded to the Dohlers, damages and attorneys' fees are to be determined. This case is dismissed." The judge banged his gavel. Lauren's parents hugged each other and then turned to hug Lauren. The young teen wiped the tears from her eyes and gave her mother a sad smile. They had won, but for what?

Their lawyer came over and shook Lauren's father's hand. He was a new lawyer, just graduated from law school. He looked smug as he congratulated them, as if the whole mess was fixed because he won them some money. Lauren sneered, but listened to the man speak.

"Next, we'll go after Mitelos BioScience, you'll see. We'll be millionaires!"

"We?" Lauren's mother scoffed. The man stuttered and apologized, before excusing himself to speak with his co-counsel.

Lauren stared as he walked away. She wanted to scream at the idiot lawyers in their expensive, tailored suits, at the judge, who just ruled in their favor, even at her parents, who, despite being divorced, had put on a united front for their only remaining child. Before Zane was died, the two barely spoke outside of exchanging the kids. Now, they held hands as Lauren's aunt came to give her congratulations and sympathies.

Zane had just turned 15 when he became a medical anomaly. "Pentalogy of Fallot" was what the specialists called it, but from what Lauren could gather, it meant he had a heart defect that caused a hole in his atrium. Lauren and her mother flew from Louisiana for Zane's birthday and attended his party; they were only there for an hour when Zane collapsed, his lips a deathly blue. The family called 911 but when the operator asked if he had a pulse, there was none to be found. Her father did CPR as Lauren and her mother huddled near him, surrounded by shocked teens. The EMTs arrived shortly after and pronounced him dead. When the autopsy declared it was cardiac arrest, Lauren's parents searched for more answers, each blaming themselves for not watching Zane's health more closely. They hired experts to determine what exactly led to his death, but the answer did not ease their grief. Lauren's parents reluctantly began to plan the funeral, insisting on a closed casket. They couldn't bear to remember him that way, blue and pale.

The events that led to the lawsuit were not entirely clear to Lauren. Somehow, the casket they buried had been empty, and the funeral home had sent Zane's body off to some medical corporation. They argued in the suit that they had received shipping confirmation and a tax receipt for the donation of the body. The funeral home thought, or so they said, that the Dohlers wanted to donate Zane's body for research, given all the experts they had brought in to examine his body. Despite no evidence of consent from the Dohlers, they shipped his body off the night before the funeral. If it wasn't for the pallbearers' comments that the coffin felt light, no one would have known a thing. Lauren's mother protested, but her father lifted the coffin lid in the middle of the cemetery, right before it descended into the earth, and everyone saw the empty white bed.

****Flashback Ends****

"Are you hurt?" Locke asked.

Lauren nearly jumped out of her skin, having been all consumed with thoughts of her brother. She looked up at Locke who was extending a handkerchief.

"It's clean," he reassured her. She took it and dried her eyes.

"Thank you," Lauren croaked. Locke sank to the jungle floor across from her.

"What are you doing out here alone?" He asked gently.

"Looking for you," Lauren lied, knowing that if she admitted to seeing her dead brother in the jungle, he was sure to think she was crazy.

"All by yourself?" He questioned.

"I… I got separated from the others…"

"Is that why you're crying?" Lauren looked at the inquiring man.

"I can't just cry?" Her stubbornness rose to protect her, a coping method from her youth.

"I s'pose you can," Locke smiled. They sat in silence for a moment while Lauren's breath went back to normal. Her sobs had interrupted her natural breathing, and she struggled to put it back into its natural rhythm.

"Why didn't you come back?" Lauren finally asked. Locke looked at her, into her, peering at her soul.

"Can you keep a secret?"

****Passage of Time****

Locke tracked Lauren's trail back to where the group had gathered, before she took off. From there, they tracked them up the mountain, eventually crossing paths as the others made their descent.

"Well, well, looks like the track star quit running," Sawyer commented.

"Are you alright?" Sayid asked, touching her face where the branches scratched her.

"Yes," Lauren breathed, surprised by his touch. He let go immediately, but beckoned her to follow him. They walked several paces up the mountain alone, when Sayid reached into his pack and pulled out the transceiver.

"You don't happen to speak French do you?"

Lauren wondered why he was asking her such a random question, but she responded, "Kind of, not really. I lived in Louisiana in high school and took basic French and got really into learning Creole, which is based in French, but it's not really the same thing. Why?"

"Listen to this, the battery doesn't have long but just translate as best you can,"

He fiddled with the transceiver buttons, and eventually a woman's voice came through the static, followed by a robotic tone stating a series of numbers.

"Please, help us," Lauren repeated the woman's frantic cries for help. "They're dead. They're all dead…. It killed them." There was more that Lauren couldn't understand but her eyes were filled with horror as she listened on. The message looped again and again, repeating the woman's grim words.

"It's been repeating for 16 years. The numbers at the beginning, those were the number of times the message has played."

"Maybe somebody came for them! Maybe someone heard this message!" Lauren argued.

"It wouldn't still be playing if someone rescued her," Sayid stated simply.

Lauren began to hyperventilate. No one's coming… she thought as Sayid knelt beside her, apprehensively resting his hand on her shoulder. I have to tell them… I have to tell them…

"Shhhh, it's alright. I was a communications officer in the military, I am good with tools, I can use this device and others from the plane to send out a distress call. Shhh."

Lauren tried to regain control of her breathing, but the news she had to deliver felt like a cinder block on her chest. She inhaled through her nose for a few seconds, held it and exhaled slowly through her mouth. Again and again she did so, with Sayid by her side. Her breathing slowed, but the tears didn't, and finally Lauren looked up at Sayid.

"I have to tell you something." He waited for her to continue.

"Before the crash… The pilot told us… Well…" Lauren took a deep breath, "Our communications equipment malfunctioned, so the pilot turned us towards Fiji… when we crashed…we were probably over a thousand miles off course…"

Sayid was taken aback for a moment, but then said, "We must not tell anyone about the French woman's distress call."

"Why?"

"We don't fully understand it yet. The others will lose hope and hope… is a very dangerous thing to lose."

"Sayid," Lauren whispered after a few moments of stunned silence, "where are we?"