Chapter 13: THE HUNT — PART 2
Fifty yards of open ground separated us from Claire.
Ethan's hand paused over the syringe. His expression shifted from concentration to recognition to something colder—calculation, threat assessment, the analysis of a predator encountering unexpected competition.
"James Ford." His voice carried across the clearing, conversational despite the circumstances. "I wondered when you'd figure it out."
"Sooner than you expected, apparently."
Locke crouched beside me in the undergrowth, machete ready, his breath steady despite the tension. He'd seen the medical equipment, the restraints, the clinical setup that spoke of experiments rather than rescue. Whatever faith he had in the Island's benevolence, this wasn't what he'd imagined.
"You're not from the plane," Ethan continued. "Not really. You know things. Move like someone who's seen these paths before." The syringe lowered, but his other hand found a knife at his belt. "Who sent you?"
"Nobody sent me. I just pay attention."
"To what? Details that don't exist yet?"
He suspects something. Not the truth—not transmigration—but something.
Claire moaned on the gurney, her eyes flickering but not focusing. Whatever Ethan had been injecting her with, it had left her somewhere between consciousness and sedation. Her stomach swelled visibly beneath the medical gown—eight months pregnant, maybe more, carrying a child the Others couldn't produce themselves.
"Let her go," I said. "Walk away. This doesn't have to end with blood."
Ethan's smile was thin, humorless. "You brought a gun to negotiate?"
"I brought a gun to make sure negotiations happened."
"And if they fail?"
"Then one of us dies in this clearing."
The words hung in the humid air. Behind us, through the jungle, I could hear the others approaching—Jack's voice calling coordinates, Kate responding, Boone crashing through undergrowth with more enthusiasm than skill. Our flanking maneuver had bought time, but not much.
Ethan heard them too. His calculation shifted—one man with a knife against two armed opponents, with more on the way.
"You don't understand what's happening here," he said. "Claire is important. Her baby is important. We're not trying to hurt them—we're trying to save them."
"Save them from what?"
"From what happens when the wrong people get involved." His eyes found mine with unsettling intensity. "You're one of those wrong people, James. I don't know how, but you are."
He's stalling. The others will reach the clearing in minutes, and he's hoping backup arrives first.
I raised the gun. Sighted down the barrel. My hands didn't shake—Sawyer's hands, trained by years of bar fights and back-alley confrontations, steady despite the stakes.
"Step away from Claire."
"If you shoot me, you'll never know why we need her. Why we need the baby. Why this Island matters more than any of you understand."
"I'll take that risk."
The jungle erupted behind us. Jack burst through the vegetation first, followed by Kate and Boone, their faces shifting from determination to horror as they took in the scene—the medical camp, the restraints, Claire's motionless form.
"Ethan!" Jack's voice cracked with something between fury and desperation. "What the hell is—"
Ethan moved.
---
Combat happens faster than movies suggest.
One moment Ethan stood beside the gurney. The next he had Claire's body hauled upright, the knife pressed against her throat, using her as a shield against five converging threats.
"Anyone moves, she dies."
Jack froze. Kate's machete lowered. Boone took a half-step back without realizing it.
I didn't stop aiming.
"Sawyer." Jack's warning was sharp, controlled. "Put the gun down."
"If I put the gun down, he takes her deeper into the jungle. We never find her again."
"If you shoot, you might hit Claire."
True. The angle is bad. But Ethan's positioning has a gap—his left shoulder, exposed past Claire's head. A small target, but a target.
"Let her go," I said to Ethan. "You've got nowhere to run."
"I have exactly where I need to go." His smile returned, confident now. "My people are close. Closer than you think. By the time you find the camp again, we'll all be gone."
"Your people didn't come when Charlie screamed. They didn't come when we tracked you for hours. Either they're slower than you thought, or they're not coming at all."
Something flickered behind Ethan's eyes. Doubt, maybe. Or the realization that his plan had unraveled faster than expected.
"Sawyer." Kate's voice now, soft and urgent. "Don't do this. We can negotiate—"
"He hanged Charlie from a tree. He was about to inject Claire with something that would have—" I stopped myself. How do I know what he was going to inject? I shouldn't know that.
Ethan heard the slip. His expression sharpened. "What would it have done, James? What do you think you know?"
The show never explained it fully. Something about the pregnancy. Something about the baby's immunity. Details I half-remember from late-season expositions.
"Doesn't matter. Let her go."
"Make me."
The standoff stretched. Jack wanted to talk. Kate wanted to maneuver. Locke stood watching with that serene focus that made him impossible to read. And Ethan's knife stayed pressed against Claire's throat, a hostage situation with no clear resolution.
The pilot died anyway. Some deaths are fixed.
But some deaths aren't.
I fired.
---
The bullet took Ethan through the left shoulder.
Not lethal. Intentional. The impact spun him sideways, breaking his grip on Claire, sending the knife clattering across the medical equipment. His scream was surprisingly human—pain and shock and the sudden realization that negotiations had ended.
Jack lunged for Claire. Kate caught her as she collapsed, lowering her to the ground, checking her vitals with competent hands. Boone stood frozen, staring at me with an expression somewhere between awe and horror.
Ethan scrambled backward, clutching his shoulder, trying to reach the tree line.
I fired again.
Center mass. The way the gun training had drilled into everyone who'd practiced on the beach. The way Sawyer's reflexes wanted to complete the motion.
Ethan dropped.
The jungle went silent. Even the insects seemed to pause, acknowledging the weight of what had happened.
"You killed him." Jack's voice was hollow. "He was wounded. He was running. And you killed him."
"He would have come back."
"You don't know that."
"I know exactly that." I lowered the gun, checked the chamber—two rounds left, same as the polar bear day that felt like a lifetime ago. "He hanged Charlie. He abducted Claire. He was going to—"
"Going to what? We'll never know now, will we?"
Jack's face had shifted from shock to something harder. Medical ethics, maybe. The healer's instinct to preserve life at all costs, even enemy life. He saw Ethan as a patient I'd executed rather than a threat I'd neutralized.
He's not wrong. But he's not right either.
"Check Claire," I said. "Make sure whatever he gave her isn't going to hurt the baby."
"Don't tell me how to do my job."
"Then do it."
We stared at each other across Ethan's body. Two men who'd never learned to trust each other, separated by a corpse that represented everything wrong with both of us.
Kate broke the tension. "She's breathing. Pulse is strong. I don't know what he injected, but it doesn't seem to be hurting her."
"We need to get her back to camp." Jack moved toward Claire, switching modes from moral arbiter to physician. "Locke, can you fashion a stretcher?"
Locke nodded and began cutting branches. Boone helped, grateful for something to do that didn't involve looking at the dead man.
I walked to Ethan's body.
His eyes were still open. The expression frozen on his face was somewhere between surprise and recognition—like he'd finally understood something important in the moment before the bullet hit.
You knew something was wrong about me. You just didn't know what.
I closed his eyes with two fingers. The gesture felt hollow, but necessary.
Charlie's voice filtered through the trees. "What happened? Did you find—" He burst into the clearing, took in the scene, and stopped dead.
His eyes found Ethan's body. Found me standing over it. Found the gun in my hand.
"He's dead," Charlie said. Not a question.
"He's dead."
Charlie walked past me without another word. He knelt beside Claire, taking her hand, murmuring something I couldn't hear. His whole body trembled with the aftermath of trauma—the noose, the jungle, the hours of captivity he'd barely survived.
I gave him the moment. Stepped away to a small stream running through the edge of the clearing.
The water was clear, cold, completely indifferent to the violence that had happened nearby. I washed Ethan's blood off my hands and watched it flow downstream, red fading to pink fading to nothing.
First kill in this body. First necessary murder.
The thought should have bothered me more. Maybe it would later, when the adrenaline faded and the weight of it settled into my bones. But right now, I felt nothing except tired. Tired and hollow and empty, like something vital had been spent and couldn't be recovered.
Locke appeared at my shoulder. "You did what was necessary."
"Did I?"
"He would have killed them both. Charlie first, then Claire once the baby was born. You know that."
I know that because I watched it almost happen on a television screen. Because I remember episodes where he came back, where he terrorized the camp, where people died because nobody had the nerve to end him when they had the chance.
"Maybe."
"The Island required a sacrifice." Locke's voice held the quiet certainty of faith confirmed. "You provided it."
"That's a convenient way to think about murder."
"It's the only way I know how to think about survival."
He walked back toward the stretcher, leaving me alone with the stream and the blood and the growing certainty that I'd crossed a line I couldn't uncross.
Claire couldn't remember how she was saved. Couldn't remember who pulled the trigger, or why, or what it had cost.
But I would remember. I'd remember everything, forever, because that's what Perfect Memory meant.
Every kill. Every cost. Every choice that led me deeper into the Island's dark heart.
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