They were in the middle of the jungle when Michael stopped. Jack stared at him intently, wondering why the abrupt change in plans. Kate came up from the back to stand beside him.
"Michael, is this is?" she asked. Michael turned to them, and his eyes weren't focused on retrieving his son. Instead they glistened, with almost realizable tears, as he turned to face them, a gun pointed straight at Jack's heart.
"I'm sorry," he said, trembling a little. "They took my son. I had to do it. . .to get Walt back." He closed his eyes. Kate screamed. And Jack suddenly found himself spitting up dirt, with a heavy body over him.
"Shoot, girl!" Sawyer yelled, still on top of Jack. The doctor could feel fumbling above him, realizing that the conman was probably trying to get his own gun out.
"I can't," Kate said. "It's Mike!"
But there was a gunshot, and a minute later Michael fell to the ground. Behind him stood the bearded man, a sick smile on his face.
"I'm really sorry, Michael," he said. "But you failed. And you know that the boss doesn't like failures."
By now, Sawyer had gotten his gun out, and without a word for once, he slid off Jack's body, aimed, and fired. When the man fell to the ground, he finally allowed himself a quick one-liner.
"Sorry Zeke," he said, standing and walking over to the man, who he kicked viciously in the side. "But you failed."
"Sawyer, get back here," Jack ordered, coming to his knees and reaching for his own gun. Kate's gaze was torn between the two men, checking to make sure they were both okay. "There could be more of them."
"Shh," Sawyer held his free hand back to them, gesturing for them to stop talking and moving. His other hand held the gun up to chest level. "Someone's coming."
A minute later, a young black man stepped into view. He looked at all of them for a moment. Jack peered back at him, confused. There was something very familiar about the young man. Then, his gaze fell on Michael, either unconscious or dead. Jack kicked himself for not giving in to medical instincts, and hurried over to the man.
"Is he dead?" the stranger asked. Jack felt for a pulse, and breath. He sighed.
"No," he said, and then ripped open the man's shirt to check for injuries. The bullet had gone straight through his left shoulder, apparently missing lungs and heart. Lucky.
Sawyer sauntered over, and hunkered down beside them. He laughed, and pointed at the shoulder. "Looks familiar, don't it?"
Mike pried his eyes open. Jack let out another sigh of relief. Pulse, breathing, and conscious. Michael should be able to pull through it. The injured man coughed.
"Well, Sawyer," he said. "Looks like now we both took one for the team."
The stranger, forgotten in the worry about Mike, took the other man's hand in his own.
"Dad?" he said gently. Jack's head ripped around. Those eyes, those features. . .it was Walt. He didn't seem to have been hurt in any way, he realized. Except that he looked about five years old. But how was that possible?
"Hey, boy," Michael said weakly, squeezing the boy's hands. "I told you I'd come get you."
Walt nodded as his father slowly closed his eyes and lapsed into unconsciousness. He finally looked up at the others.
"Hey," he said. John Locke stepped forward, and smiled down at the boy.
"Hello, Walt," he said gently. "Welcome back.
"Hey, Ted, come take a look at this."
Theodore Constanpolis sighed as he wandered over to his friend. He hated the name Ted. He hated the name Teddy. He also hated T-Dawg, Theo, and Consty. In fact, he hated any nickname given to him, ever. That, of course, didn't prevent his friends from using such nicknames whenever they desired.
"My name isn't Ted," he said, before leaning over the computer. His glasses slid slowly down his nose, as they had an irritating habit of doing whenever he glanced down. For once, he didn't instantly push them back up. He just stared at the screen in front of him.
"What the hell is that?" he asked.
Brian shook his head, never taking his eyes off the screen. "I was hoping that you could tell me. It looks like some kind of a magnetic disturbance. Then again, my physics classes were a long time ago."
Theodore nodded his head, and pushed O'Keefe out of the way. He went without much complaint, just grabbing another chair and scootching over. They continued to stare at the pulsing point, just a few hundred miles off from Fiji.
"I can't even imagine what would cause that," Theodore said. He finally noticed that his vision was fuzzy, and pushed the glasses back up. "It's like that little spot right there has its own magnetic pole. And it's reversing."
O'Keefe laughed. "That's not even possible," he said. Theodore didn't even glance at him, he just continued to stare at the monitor. "Right, Ted? That's impossible."
"Why were you even looking at this?" Theodore asked, finally breaking out of his daze. O'Keefe smiled, showing those brilliant white teeth that were sometimes enough to make people forget about the pallor of his skin, and the heavy dark circles under his eyes. He leaned forward, his eyes widening with excitement.
"I was in the lab today, just running some of the tests on the subjects," he said. Theodore froze for a second. Since when were second year grad students allowed to test any genetic theory on people? Then he realized what the other man considered to be subjects, he considered to be rats. "And I was talking to the prof, who mentioned that the funny thing about rats is that they don't seem to sense the poles the way other animals do. You know, migratory animals, polar bears, even deer. And I asked her why nobody had ever studied that. And she said that one group had, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean."
"What's your point?" Theodore asked. "What the hell does that have to do with our pulsing red beacon there?"
"Well," and here O'Keefe leaned forward even more, enough that he was balanced precariously on the chair. "She said they'd tried to reverse the polarity of an island, and they'd brought polar bears there to see if they would adapt. And they did."
"What exactly does this have to do with genetics?"
"They needed to test if the bears responded to the climate, or the polarity."
"And?"
"That's the thing," O'Keefe said. "The prof didn't know. So I did some research of my own. No results were ever posted."
Now it was beginning to make sense to Theodore. His friend had never really been the best student. He hated sitting and taking notes. But give him a mysteriously missing piece of code, or an untraceable strand of DNA, and he'd dig, research, and investigate until he'd found the pieces of the puzzle and put them back together.
"So you came to the geology department, to see if you could figure out the island."
"Exactly," O'Keefe said, and his finger hovered over the pulsing spot. "And guess what Ted—I think I just found us a whole bunch of polar bears."
Theodore nodded. "Okay."
O'Keefe stared at him, clearly waiting for him to say something. But Theodore didn't really have much to say. As far as he could see, O'Keefe had solved the mystery, case closed. But something in his friend's posture warned him that there was more to come.
"This isn't just okay, man," O'Keefe said. "Aren't you curious about what else they were doing there? About what happened?"
Theodore shrugged his shoulders. "Not especially," he said. "Besides, how long ago was this?"
"Fifty years," O'Keefe said. Theodore quirked an eyebrow. Fifty years, and O'Keefe was still stuck up on this? The blond boy leaned forward.
"Okay, I get it," he said. "You're not interested in the polar bears or the ramifications for genetics research. But here's my question—aren't you at least a little curious about how, exactly, scientists fifty years ago were able to reverse the polarity of just one island?"
Theodore sighed. And he'd been reeled in, hook line and sinker. Again. He could only hope that this wouldn't end up like many of O'Keefe's other exploits. He really couldn't afford to be found in the girl's bathrooms wearing a nightgown again. The other students in his department already called him silk teddy. He didn't think he could stand another nickname.
"So what do we do?" Theodore asked. O'Keefe grinned, and leaned back in his chair. The plastic creaked as it was forced to assume his full weight.
"You check out the polarity. See how far it extends, how new the change is, and see if you can figure out a way to change it."
Theodore groaned. That was going to take a lot of work, if it was even possible. "And what are you going to do?"
"I," O'Keefe said, with the widest grin his face was capable of. "Am going to call in Jess."
Theodore froze. His friend was taking this far more seriously than he could ever have imagined. "Is that really necessary?"
"Oh yes," O'Keefe said, with that familiar and frightening glint in his eye. "This is big, Ted," and then, much less seriously, "besides, I don't get why you're so scared of her. She's just a girl."
And that, Theodore thought grimly, was precisely the problem.