Chapter One: Richard doesn't stick around

None of them could agree on when Richard Alpert had disappeared. Kate remembered him running in front of her and to her right as they headed toward the tree line parallel to the runway. Claire said no, the last they'd seen Richard he was standing in front of the plane. She remembered a glimpse of him holding several armed guards at bay with nothing more than an upraised hand and a few words in a language she didn't recognize. She remembered wondering as she ran how many languages he knew.

Miles and Sawyer agreed later that to them, it was as if Richard had disappeared right off of the plane as illogical as that sounded. They both noticed how he didn't leave his seat when it taxied to a stop, how he sat with his hands folded, fingertips under his chin looking determined and maybe a little angry. Sawyer said it seemed like Richard had made up his mind about something he had to do next, something he hadn't shared with them and something he wasn't very happy about at all.

Hours before they'd landed, the group had agreed on their plan. Sawyer and Miles would wait a beat while Kate, Claire, Richard and Frank threw the handmade ladder that had been crafted on the island over the side of the plane, climbed down and distracted any security that might show up. Then the Sawyer and Miles would do their best to slip off unseen and head for the one place no one would expect them to run: Straight to the airport terminal and the money, clothing and supplies inside that might help them all get away and on their way home.

Only two flights land each week at the Nauru Airport. Odds were that an unannounced, unexpected jumbo jet setting down on the lone asphalt strip at INU would raise not only a fair amount of attention but maybe a little panic, too. They could only hope that by waiting, and landing late at night they might manage to evade whoever came out to confront them. In the best scenario they could come up with, no one would emerge in time to challenge them and they'd all make a clean escape. At worst, security might catch every one of them. Then the questions would start: Where was the plane during the days since it had disappeared off radar on its way from LAX to Guam? How did people never on the original flight list end up on board? Where were the other passengers, the luggage? And complicating matters was one simple fact: Most of them had no I.D. on them, and very good reasons not to want to answer questions about who they were and how they came to be on board Ajira-316.

The landing was smooth but their getaway less so. For a few seconds after they'd popped the door open and started climbing down, they felt only a heavy, humid silence and saw a moon so bright the runway glowed faintly. But then they heard voices headed their way. Kate and Claire barely made the tree line in time. Sawyer and Miles were spotted, chased and tackled, and had to fight their way clear. They abandoned their plan to raid the airport gift shop and offices for supplies, and ran instead for the residential neighborhood near the airport in search of Kate and Claire.

And as for when it was that Richard had disappeared, Frank Lapidus was the most confused of them all. He was sure Richard had been right with him all the way, talking down the guards, agreeing to explain how they'd come here and who they were, walking with him to the airport door— Richard was right there up until the moment when he was gone. And on top of it all, the guards expressed no surprise at all, never looked for or asked about Richard. It was like they'd never seen him. They simply sat Frank down in the lobby, posted a guard and left him waiting for whatever was coming next.

Most people would have felt a hollow chill from their scalp to their shoes to be left to fend for themselves that abruptly, to have gone from six of them in it together to being alone with so much to explain. But Frank could only shake his head in amazement at how surprised he was not at that moment.

That was 108 days ago. The rest of the story of the return of Ajira-316, and how those on board made it back home will need to get told later. But now, 108 days after the plane touched down, Kate, Claire, Sawyer, Miles and Frank each had one thing on their minds. Every one of them wanted to find Richard Alpert, for very different reasons. And for one of them, it was turning into a matter of life or death.