Chapter 17: Ethan's Escape
POV: Charlie
Charlie Pace sat on watch duty beside the pit they'd dug to hold Ethan, his hands trembling slightly from more than just nerves. The withdrawal was getting worse—three days without heroin and his body was starting to rebel in ways that made concentration nearly impossible.
But Claire trusted Mac absolutely now, which made Charlie both grateful and jealous in equal measure. The pregnant woman looked at Mac like he was some kind of guardian angel, her protector who'd risked everything to keep her safe. Charlie wanted to be that for her, wanted to be the man she turned to when danger threatened, but his addiction had made him weak when strength was needed most.
So here he sat, proving his worth through vigilance, keeping watch over the monster who'd tried to steal away the woman he was falling in love with. The pit Mac had designed was ingenious—deep enough to prevent escape, angled walls that provided no climbing purchase, reinforced with bamboo spikes that would discourage any attempt to dig out.
Ethan lay at the bottom like a broken doll, bound with every rope they could find in camp. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, giving every appearance of unconsciousness. Charlie had been watching him for six hours without seeing so much as a twitch.
Maybe that was why he'd let his attention drift, lost in thoughts of Claire's grateful smile and the way she'd held his hand while Mac worked to save his life. Maybe that's why he didn't hear the ropes snapping until it was too late.
Ethan exploded from the pit like a demon escaping from hell, impossibly having broken bonds that had held him securely for days. He moved with inhuman speed and fluid grace, covering the distance between pit and Charlie in a single leap that defied every law of physics Charlie thought he understood.
The Other's hands were around Charlie's throat before he could draw breath to scream, superhuman strength crushing his windpipe with methodical precision. Charlie couldn't breathe, couldn't call for help, couldn't do anything but claw uselessly at fingers that felt like steel cables wrapped around his neck.
His vision darkened at the edges as oxygen starvation began shutting down his higher brain functions. Through the gathering black, he saw Ethan's cold smile—the expression of someone who took professional satisfaction in efficient violence.
"The addict," Ethan said conversationally, as if commenting on weather. "How pathetic. She could do so much better."
Then he was gone, vanishing into the jungle with the same impossible speed that had brought him out of the pit. Charlie collapsed to the sand, gasping for air through a crushed windpipe that wouldn't open properly. Blood pooled in his mouth from internal injuries he couldn't see, and darkness crept across his vision like a tide he couldn't resist.
He was dying. Drowning on dry land while the monster who'd nearly killed Claire disappeared into the night to finish what he'd started.
POV: Mac
Mac jerked awake in Fort Probably-Won't-Collapse as his danger sense exploded to life, every inherited instinct screaming that something had gone catastrophically wrong. He rolled out of his shelter and ran toward the source of the alarm, his enhanced senses already detecting the metallic scent of blood on the night air.
He found Charlie collapsed beside the empty pit, blue-faced and convulsing as his body fought for oxygen that wouldn't come. His windpipe had been crushed with surgical precision, the kind of injury that killed quickly and efficiently if left untreated.
Mac's hands worked frantically, healing energy flowing at Phase Two intensity as he reconstructed damaged tissue cell by cell. Golden light flooded the beach while Mac poured everything he had into Charlie's ruined throat, forcing oxygen into a brain that was seconds away from permanent damage.
The healing took everything Mac had and more. He felt Charlie's pain as his own—the crushing agony of a throat that wouldn't open, the panic of suffocation, the desperate need for air that wasn't coming. But slowly, impossibly, the damage began to reverse itself.
Charlie convulsed back to life with a gasping cry that was the most beautiful sound Mac had ever heard. The musician's eyes fluttered open, focusing on Mac's face with confusion and dawning recognition.
"Ethan," Charlie croaked through his newly healed throat. "He escaped. Going after Claire."
Mac nearly collapsed from the healing effort, but forced himself upright through sheer willpower. Claire was in danger. Ethan was free and moving toward his primary target with nothing left to stop him from completing his mission.
"Stay here," Mac commanded. "Get Jack. Tell everyone Ethan's loose."
Mac plunged into the jungle, his Prestidigitator senses tracking disturbances others couldn't see—broken twigs positioned at unnatural angles, disturbed earth that showed the passage of something moving with inhuman stealth. Ethan was circling back toward camp, using the jungle as cover while he approached Claire's sleeping area from an unexpected direction.
Jack, Kate, and Locke followed Mac's trail, their voices calling questions he didn't have time to answer. His vision narrowed to a red tunnel of protective fury as fragmented memories provided tactical knowledge he'd never earned but desperately needed.
This had to end. Now. Tonight. Ethan would never stop hunting Claire, would never abandon his mission, would keep coming until someone died permanently. The only way to protect her was to eliminate the threat completely.
Mac built as he ran, his Master Builder abilities constructing death traps from jungle materials with Phase Two efficiency that turned debris into weapons in seconds. Snares that would catch and hold superhuman strength. Pressure traps that would trigger when stepped on. A gauntlet of lethal obstacles designed to slow, wound, and ultimately stop a predator who couldn't be reasoned with.
When Ethan triggered the first trap, Mac was already there, using Prestidigitator illusions to appear behind him while the Other was distracted by pain and surprise. They fought with brutal intensity, but this time Mac wasn't holding back or trying to capture. His combat instincts, enhanced by supernatural abilities, turned him into something deadly—a phantom striking from angles that shouldn't exist.
Mac's snare trap finally caught Ethan's leg, the rope and pulley system Mac had built sinking its teeth deep into inhuman flesh. The Other was trapped, caught in Mac's web of constructed violence, bleeding from a dozen wounds that would have killed a normal man.
Ethan laughed through the blood filling his mouth, his cold amusement undiminished by impending death.
"You can't kill me," Ethan said with calm certainty. "You're a healer. A builder. Not a murderer."
Mac's hands shook as he picked up the sharpened stake he'd built into the trap system, its point designed to pierce vital organs with maximum efficiency. For a moment, Ethan's words almost stopped him—he was a healer, someone who saved lives rather than taking them.
"You're right," Mac said finally. "I'm not a murderer."
He drove the stake into Ethan's chest with surgical precision, finding the heart with inherited knowledge of anatomy he'd never studied.
"I'm a protector."
Ethan's eyes widened with genuine shock—perhaps the first real emotion Mac had seen from him since his arrival. Then the light faded from those cold orbs, and the Other went still with the finality of death.
Mac stood there with the bloody stake in his hands, watching life drain from someone he'd killed with deliberate intent. Nausea overwhelmed him suddenly, and he staggered to the nearest tree before vomiting everything in his stomach into the jungle undergrowth.
"I'm a killer now," Mac realized with crystalline horror. "I've crossed a line I can't uncross, become something I never wanted to be. But Claire's safe. Her baby's safe. That has to matter more than what this does to my soul."
Jack, Kate, and Locke arrived to find Mac standing over Ethan's corpse, looking like his world had just shattered into irreparable pieces. Locke nodded with obvious approval. Jack's expression held horror and disappointment. Kate's face was carefully neutral, but her eyes held understanding of what Mac had just sacrificed to protect someone he loved.
"He wouldn't stop," Mac whispered. "He'd never stop hunting her."
They dragged Ethan's body to a clearing and buried it in a grave Mac insisted on digging himself, his hands working mechanically while his mind tried to process what he'd become. The work was therapeutic in its mindlessness—shovel, dirt, deeper, repeat until the monster was covered and could never rise again.
That night, Mac sat outside Claire's tent with the bloodied stake still beside him, watching the jungle for threats that might never come. Claire slept safely inside, unaware that her protector had just crossed into territory where heroes became something darker.
Mac's hands wouldn't stop shaking, and he wondered if they ever would again.
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