The following takes place during the Season 3 finale of LOST.


I

On the second day he realized that, even if he wanted to get out of the ditch, he couldn’t. His legs were motionless once again.
John Locke lay in a hole, surrounded by the decayed corpses and skeletons of what Benjamin Linus had called “his people.” In this regard, Locke thought Ben was telling the truth. An old, moldy piece of clothing was wrapped around the nearest corpse. There was a symbol on the chest: THE DHARMA INITIATIVE, it said, with that familiar octagon holding the symbol of The Flame station. Locke guessed that there were probably bodies here from all of the different Dharma Stations—Pearl, Flame, Staff, and of course, Swan. And probably some that he didn’t even know about. And now, never would.
Because of Ben. It always went back to Ben, didn’t it? Ben, who led him on a wild goose chase into the jungle in search of an entity that did not even exist. “Jacob,” he had called it. How could I have been so stupid? he thought, staring up at the unchanging canopy of trees that provided at least enough shade to keep him cool, and he thanked the Island for such small favors. How could I actually believe him? Now he knew. His desire had blinded him. His foolish desire to uncover the secrets of this damned Island had led him directly into Ben’s trap. He had trusted him. He had trusted the devil himself.
And now to find himself right back at the beginning with legs that don’t work seemed almost perfect. He smiled in spite of the gravity of his condition. The discovery of his returned paralysis had almost been freeing. Now he knew what had to be done, and could do it with no regrets.
Locke reached over to a skeleton that lay across the ditch. He had to swing his legs over with his arms, and wondered at how strange it felt to be falling back on these old habits. He reached the corpse and removed the gun—a retro six-gun revolver that looked like it came straight out of a Western—and laid back down, exhausted by the amount of effort even the simplest of movements expended. Yes, this is right, he thought. He pulled back the hammer until he heard it click and put his right index finger tentatively on the trigger.
A shadow fell over his body.
A figure stood at the head of the ditch. He looked startlingly different, but Locke recognized him immediately.
“Walt?”
“Hi, John,” he said. Walt stood almost a foot taller than when he set out on the raft so many moons ago. Not just taller. Older. “Get up, John.”
“I can’t. Ben shot me and I can’t move my legs.”
“But you can move them. Now get up.” John looked down and felt his toes wiggle in his boots. He wondered how he could have ever thought he was paralyzed again. Walt spoke once more, and it filled Locke with the energy and motivation he needed to climb out of his premature grave.
“You have work to do.”

II

When Locke climbed out of the ditch, Walt was gone. He looked around in a desperate search but saw no signs of the boy—if he still was a boy. “Walt!” he called. There was no response except a low chirping sound. To John it sounded like an army of mechanical crickets, but it was a sound he had heard many times before. It was close.
The chirping grew louder and John saw a streak of black zigzag across his vision. It moved like a wave when in this form, he knew from experience. Although this was not the first time John had been approached by It—what the beach folk called the Monster—he was still afraid, because he didn’t know just what this thing was. What he did know was that fear was an acceptable response. It had killed Eko for no discernable reason, but had spared John on several occasions, pausing only to flash It’s lights (ones that reminded John of a camera flashbulb) and move on.
The chirping faded and disappeared. Locke was about to sit down—his legs were still regaining their strength—when a tree beside him exploded. Branches and bark rained down around him, some landing in the ditch from which he climbed, breaking skulls and bones. He shielded his eyes momentarily, and opened them upon the Monster.
It stood twenty yards away from him, a levitating cloud of opaque, black smoke. Within Its dense body were occasional flashes of what looked like electricity. These were different from the flashbulbs that John had seen previously. Each electrical flash that occurred drew a distinct image in John’s mind, which his eyes projected into the black smoke. He saw his father, Anthony Cooper. He saw Helen as she drove away from an airport motel parking lot, whom he would never see again. And lastly he saw the wheel chair. The damned wheel chair. It was almost too much and he looked away.
The Monster rumbled as if in protest and John was forced to gaze upon it once more. It began to separate, forming three distinct columns that jutted out from Its body. They looked like heads, three of them lined in a row. All staring at John. A moment later the entire Monster was compact again—nothing more than a swivel or wave of blackness, chirping like some other worldly cricket. It darted left and right, then disappeared into the jungle.
Follow.
This was not John’s own voice, but one that seemed to interject itself into his head. He tucked the revolver into the back of his pants and walked after the Monster. His legs were weary at first, but soon regained their former strength.

III

The jungle through which he traversed was far more dense and dark than the ditch had been. Locke knew that in most rainforests, only about one percent of the sunlight reached the jungle floor, and now he believed it. In all his exploring, he had never encountered this level of darkness during the day, and he gave occasional glances up through the trees just to confirm that it was still daytime.
He did not know how long his journey would be, but could only follow the strange chirping sound which occasionally came to him. He would not say that he heard the sound, precisely, but it was there all the same: directing him where to go.
You have work to do, Walt had said. But had it been Walt? John thought surely not. Hugo had told him that Walt and Michael left on a boat when Jack, Kate, and Sawyer had been kidnapped. It seemed impossible that Walt would be here in the jungle—no matter how “special” the kid was.
And he was older. The idea was ridiculous, and yet…somehow irrefutable. You know he was. And John did. The Walt he saw had aged at least five or six years. Hell, he probably could have grown a full beard and bought a case of beer, he thought. But that was too much to concern himself with right now. He was being led somewhere by the Island itself. He thought he would soon have answers.
Two hours later, John Locke arrived at his destination.

IV

The cabin stood before him. The darkness through which he was traveling intensified tenfold around this haunted house. A quick glance upward assured him that it was still daytime, but the space around the cabin itself was black as midnight.
In the smashed window, a light suddenly flared. Then the front door creaked slowly open.
Locke looked around the jungle. He was completely alone. He checked the six-gun he now carried and made sure it would fire a loaded chamber if called upon. You have work to do, he thought, and approached the cabin.
The inside looked identical to his previous visit: a strange, faded painting of a dog, mason jars filled with a mystery fluid that Locke had no desire to further investigate, and a cracked, wooden table on which the lantern, glowing brilliantly, now sat.
He slipped inside the front door.
His first scan of the cabin yielded nothing. It was empty. He looked at the picture of the dog and noticed something shimmering on the ground beneath. Two stones lay before him, one was a deep black that matched the eerie haze of darkness that surrounded the cabin; the other was a brilliant, dazzling white. John bent down to pick them up. He—
“I wouldn’t do that, kiddo.” It came from behind him. Locke wheeled around as quickly as he could, drawing the revolver from his pants as he did.
There was a man sitting in the rocking chair. The chair had been empty a moment before, John was sure.
“You don’t want to bring those things here in a bad temper.”
“Who are you? What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter. We have other things to discuss, John. Important things.” The man rose from his seat and approached him. He entered the light given from the lantern and Locke finally got a good look. He was a few inches shorter than Locke himself, with white hair that was slicked back from his forehead. He wore a blue, pinstripe suit the likes of which John hadn’t seen since arriving on the Island. Where did he get that? he thought, but quickly dismissed it as unimportant. But the real kicker was those shoes. Not formal business loafers that might match the suit, but bleached white tennis shoes adorned the man’s feet. They gave him an awkward and comical look.
John stood up. “What do you mean?”
“Your work, John, that’s what I mean. There is something very important you must do right now. It is vital to the survival of this Island. As we speak, your people are in the process of making a call.” He looked at John here and smiled. “Their leader is brave and strong, but he does not know what he’s doing.”
“Jack?”
“That’s him, kiddo. This call he’s going to make will result in a group of people coming to the Island. People that mean great harm. Your former friends will think they symbolize rescue, but their true motive is far more severe.”
“What is it?” John asked.
Smiling again, “To kill every living person on this Island. To exploit the unique characteristics of this place, and to line their own pockets with silver and gold. John,” the man said. “These are bad people.”
John looked at him. He did not know who this man was, or how he knew what he did, but he felt a sense of confidence return. This is right, his mind said. Whoever he is, he knows a lot more than you do. More than Ben too. And he’s chosen you. “What do I do?” he asked.
“That’s good, kiddo. Real good. A member of this approaching team is already amongst your former people. An English woman she is, by the name of Naomi. Her helicopter crashed here several days ago, John, and she has the phone with which this call will be made.
“Naomi must be taken out.”
“Taken out? You mean killed? Why would I kill a woman I’ve never even met?”
“Think of your friends, John! They think they are bringing help, when all these people represent is death and destruction. They are ignorant, John. But you are not. You know the truth, and you know that this must be done. Down deep, you know.”
Locke’s head was spinning. He didn’t know if he could murder a stranger. Hell, I couldn’t even kill the man who ruined my life, could I? How can I do this? He didn’t know. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? You won’t even tell me who you are.”
“Fair enough, John. My name has been lost for many years, but the man you know, Benjamin Linus, calls me Jacob, the name of the man I was upon our first meeting.”
“The man you were? What does that mean?”
The man offered a low chuckle, then wiped his left eye. “It’s a little complicated, John. Let’s not confuse ourselves.”
Locke saw his opportunity. Answers were close. “You bring me here and tell me to go kill someone—a complete stranger—and just expect me to do it? Even when you won’t tell me a damn thing about how you know all this or why I should trust you? If you want this woman—Naomi—taken out, then I want to know the truth. Who are you? What are you?”
The man was no longer smiling. He looked John directly in the eye for what seemed like hours before speaking. “Okay, kid. You got it.”

V

“Jacob was the name of a premier scientist within the Dharma Initiative, a group I believe you’re familiar with. He was a brilliant man, John. Amidst the bumbling morons that made up Dharma—of which I am sorry to say my great grandson was apart— Jacob was an extraordinary man. So I brought him here, to this cabin, just as I have brought you now.
“But Jacob refused to believe. He couldn’t bring himself to accept that which he could not calculate in his scientific mind. He refuted the Island. He refuted me. But his arrogance served as his ultimate undoing, as he drew the attention of Atropos.”
“Atropos?”
“What you and your people call the ‘Monster.’ Atropos exists here in a form that is difficult to understand. A mind such as yours interprets him only as darkness.
“When Atropos was done, Jacob’s life force was extinguished. When a man like that moves on, John, is when I move in. The mind that contains me must be great.”
“The mind that contains you? You mean you possessed this man?”
He laughed. It laughed. “Not quite, John. As I said, Jacob’s life force was gone. I simply moved in and redecorated. No use wasting that capsule of mind and body, is there?”
“No, that’s impossible. You can’t—”
“It is not impossible, John. So long as the body is fresh and is brought here in sufficient time, I can use it. Would it surprise you to learn that the body in which I now reside was taken from your own plane? Poor man, he was. A brilliant mind—a surgeon I do believe—but drank himself to death in grief. Sad, really.” It flashed a smile. “Oh well! No more troubles for him, eh? Just peace and quiet.”
“So what are you? What allows you to just take over any body you want? And where are you really?”
“I am right here, John. In this cabin. I’ve been in this cabin for more years than you can imagine. What you would call years, anyway. Time is tricky though, isn’t it John? So many wastrels out there who think of it as impenetrable and eternal. Fools—living their lives enslaved by a mere concept.”
Locke was startled. “Time? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything, John. And nothing. It is where I am, and where I can never be again.” Silence for several moments. “I see I’ve confused you. As I said, it is complicated, but you will learn. Surely you know that this Island is, shall we say, unique? There are properties here that exist nowhere else on Earth—or in the known universe, for that matter. And time is at the Island’s very core.
“I was one of the first to learn of the Island’s true nature. There was a well on this Island from which the strongest electromagnetic energy in the world emanated. Before the fools of Dharma constructed their ‘Swan’ station on top of it, that well’s energy was emitted freely. I stumbled upon it after my shipwreck, quite by mistake. And imagine my surprise, John, when I opened my eyes upon the French Revolution?”
“What? I don’t—”
“And imagine the thoughts that filled my mind when I opened them again on my own childhood? Then again on the Island, back where I started? Do you see, John? Do you see the power that this place holds?”
“Time travel? You’re saying you traveled back to the past?”
He nodded. “I was transfixed. The experience changed me in ways I can’t explain. I returned to the well every day thereafter to continue my travels. At the time I knew nothing of the dangers—of the possibilities.
“Eventually my jumps became more and more strenuous. My body would leave the Island, but would not immediately arrive anywhere else. There would only be darkness. Each time I thought it was death—that I had made that final jump and it had killed me. But then color would return and I would be in another time.
“Until it happened. The electromagnetism changed somehow. Almost like its power was dissipating. This was weeks after my first travel, and I sensed the difference immediately. That day the jump was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. As soon as I flexed that muscle in my head—the one I used to jump—I felt an indescribable ripping sensation, like my mind was literally tearing free from my body. I know now that that is almost precisely what happened.”
“What does that mean?”
“My mind—my consciousness—parted from the body that carried it. One minute I was fine—preparing myself for the jump—and the next I was staring down at my own body as it collapsed to the ground. A minute after that I was in the darkness. The space between times.”
“You mean your mind got stuck in some kind of time-space purgatory? A limbo?”
The man smiled and nodded. “Yes, I like that terminology, John. It did indeed feel like purgatory. I cannot tell you, John, how strange it is to exist outside of time itself. It was not until then that I discovered just how crucial time was: it is the cornerstone on which every aspect of our lives relies. And here I was, learning of its fragility and easy manipulation.
“Trapped in that timeless darkness, I came to realize I was not alone. There were…noises. Chirping sounds, almost like crickets. That was when I saw it for the first time. Saw Atropos.”
“The Monster? It came from that darkness?”
“I do not know, John. I think it may have been the darkness. And it spoke. Not to me, but in me. The voice was everywhere. Saying 'it’s not too late,' 'you can return,' and so on. And you know, John? It was right.
“I felt it rip. Not me, but the space around us. I think it tore a hole in time itself, and through that hole I saw the Island. But it was different. There were people now—people everywhere, wearing white coats and aprons. Scientists, John. The Dharma Initiative.
“Atropos—at the time I, too, thought of it as a Monster—spoke again. It told me I must merge my consciousness with its own. With that shared bond, we could create a bridge back to the world. Back to the Island. It said all we needed were two human hosts—people whose minds we could jump into. For this jump it did not matter whether they were dead or alive, so we just picked the first two people we saw.
“I concentrated all my being into that bridge. There was a brief feeling of weightlessness, like I was tumbling, and then I was back. In this cabin. The cabin is the bridge, John. Inside here, the darkness of the in-between exists alongside the world of light beyond. In this cabin I do not need a body, though I often use one. My consciousness can wander freely within these walls, jumping in and out of reality and time as I please.”
“What happened to the person you jumped into?”
“Once the bridge had been formed, Atropos and I did not need the bodies. I jumped back out, remaining in the cabin of course, but for reasons I do not know, Atropos was able to go where it pleased. It was not confined to the in-between of the cabin. We wrapped up the two bodies we used—now dead of course—and dropped them in a cave about a mile inland.”
“Adam and Eve,” John said. “But what about the stones?”
“The stones served as a sort of generator for the uniqueness of this cabin. I thought burying them with the two bodies—those which your people called Adam and Eve—but I was wrong. You finding the stones presented a grave danger. Should they be destroyed, the in-between of the cabin would be destroyed, and I would be cast back into that timeless gap. Or worse. Knowing the importance of the stones, Ben had his spy—Ethan I believe—take them from the doctor’s bag.” He pointed. “They have sat in that corner ever since.”
John’s head was aching, but he thirsted for more information. “And the Monster—Atropos. Do you two work together?”
“In a way. I have no control of that damned smoke billow, but it has a certain…talent, which can be useful.”
Yeah, like cold-blooded murder, John thought. “What talent?”
“Judging. Atropos is gifted with the ability to witness a person’s individual timeline. Imagine a person’s life—your own perhaps—existing as a chain of events that goes from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’—birth and death. Our consciousness can only exist at a single point on that chain at any given time, but the entire chain always exists. Atropos is able to see the entire timeline at once. It sees everything a person will ever do. And it forms a judgment.
“If a judgment is particularly strong—either positive or negative—it comes to me. Many of the negative judgments result in death as Atropos sees fit. I make a list of the supremely positive ones and give it to Ben to do as he sees fit.”
“Is that why you need my help? Because of its judgment of the people from the boat?”
“That’s right, John. No matter what it may seem, or what your people might think, Atropos and I have done everything in our power to protect this wonderful Island. We must, don’t you see? Should anything befall it, the only thing that awaits us is the eternal darkness of the gap between times. The Island must be protected.
“John. You must protect it now. Benjamin has been compromised, he is currently useless, although I know he still has an important role to play.
“You are the one who has to save it. The bad guys are coming, John. Do what you have to do to ensure the longevity of this place. And of your friends, along with it.”
“And killing Naomi will do that? You know it?”
“Eliminating the woman is only the beginning.
“A war is coming, John. You don’t want o get stuck in the middle.”

VI

John Locke twirled his hunting knife around his left index finger, thinking. He had already accepted his fate, but needed time to embrace the idea of murder.
“Remember, John. If eliminating the woman does not work, do what you have to do to ensure that call is not made. Do not let a stubborn man—another man so blinded by his science that he cannot see the magic all around him—ruin our plans. Do what you have to do.”
“And what will you do?”
“I will be here. I can feel this body beginning to fade, so I will jump to the in-between. The deterioration will be halted while I’m there, but I can still see and hear all that occurs within this cabin. Return to me when your mission is finished.”
Locke walked to the cabin’s door, ready. He turned around a final time and spoke.
“Who are you? Who are you really?”
The man smiled once again. It was a smile that John was beginning to dislike. “My name is Magnus, but that is all I will tell you now. You have work to do, John. Do it.”
Slightly disappointed, John turned and left. As his distance from the cabin increased, the natural daylight grew steadily stronger. He held his knife firmly in his right hand as he headed for the radio tower, and along the path he thought was his destiny. An hour’s hike is all it took to reach the tower, and he identified the woman, Naomi, immediately because she held the phone in her hand. Locke could already hear it ringing. She had already made the call.
John Locke accepted his fate. He loosened his grip on the knife and hurled it through the air. It flipped exactly six times before the blade plunged itself into Naomi’s back, sending the phone tumbling across the grass.