Chapter Text
“Hey, you awake?” Sapphira’s eyes shot open, head and right leg throbbing. She felt herself moving, being carried by a man whose face she recognized from the plane. Boone, he had said. Boone Carlyle. A wave of incoherent pain flooded over her as Boone lowered her down onto the ground, which felt like sand.
“Wait just a minute and I’ll bring back some help.” His voice grew far away as dizziness washed over Sapphira, another wave of agony washing over her, starting at her leg and shooting up into her core. What was going on?
Thirty Minutes Ago
“Hey, aren’t you a bit young to be flying without an adult?” A young man’s voice interrupted the peaceful revery Sapphira had entered, quietly reading a novel she’d been assigned in school. She looked up to see a man with dark brown hair and a leather jacket who she had heard speaking to a middle-aged man, both sitting in the middle row of seats next to her.
“My family’s here, they’re just a few rows ahead of me. Four-person seating ran out or something like that. At least I’m not sitting directly next to someone, though.” She shot him a half-smile, closing and marking her place in her book.
The middle-aged man turned to them with some difficulty. “Your family, huh? What were you doing in Australia?”
“My twin brother has an international track competition. I only went for my friends on the guys’ basketball and baseball teams, but there wasn’t enough space on the place we were meant to take, so I volunteered my family to take the next plane.” She replied, shrugging a shoulder casually. “What about you? Business or pleasure?”
“Bit of both. I went on a walkabout.” The middle-aged man smiled.
The brunette raised an eyebrow. “Walkabout?”
Sapphira grinned. “So, what, you survived in the jungle with, like, a knife and a backpack?”
“Exactly.”
While the young girl didn’t seem surprised, the brunette’s expression contorted with fascination.
“What about you?” The middle-aged man asked the brunette.
“Thought my sister needed help getting out of a relationship she didn’t actually want to get out of.” He pressed his lips together.
The man, apparently slightly guilty for bringing it up, offered them his hand. “Well, that must be frustrating. I’m John. John Locke.”
Sapphira stood and shook his hand, smiling. “Sapphira. Sapphira Jackson.”
“Boone Carlyle.” The brunette shook their hands. Just as Sapphira sat down, a boy walked past them, shooting Sapphira a death glare and an eye roll. His hands were shoved in his pockets and he was making his way towards the bathroom.
Locke looked at Sapphira. “Looks like he’s got something against you.” She sighed, watching him disappear into the bathroom.
“That’s my twin brother Jay. Love-hate relationship; but it’s usually just hate bit that applies.” As soon as she finished her sentence, the plane hit a bit of turbulence. The fasten seatbelts sign flicked on, and they buckled quickly. As the turbulence began getting worse, a man and woman ran past Sapphira, shouting for their son.
“And they’re my mom and dad.” Her eyes widened in realization, and she moved to unbuckle and follow them, but Boone stopped her.
“Don’t,” was all he said, shooting her a reassuring glance. Passengers around them were screaming and passing out, and soon Boone and Locke followed. Sapphira, however, witnessed the whole thing. As the plane shook, she twisted in her seat just in time to see her parents and brother sprinting back to the middle section of the plane just as the tail section broke off and fell, the trio screaming as they fell with the section they were in.
The middle section suddenly jolted, and something hit Sapphira’s head, knocking her out.
Present Time
Sapphira struggled to stand, fighting back the pain of her right leg as she did. She caught sight of Locke, standing up with an expression of disbelief on his face. She saw a man in a tattered suit arguing with Boone, who was incorrectly performing CPR and mouth-to-mouth on an African American woman. As he ran off, Sapphira ran to the man in the suit.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” He looked up, seeing her badly bleeding leg and head. “Rest, you’re injured.”
“I got over here just fine. Are there still people in the water?” She shot back, not giving him room to argue.
Hesitantly, he sighed and nodded. “I think so.”
Without another word, she dashed towards the water. Living in Hawaii had its perks. She was used to swimming in the ocean, avoiding pieces of litter and debris. As she ran, she remembered what she’d seen happen to her family. A small part of her knew they were dead, but she refused to believe it, despite how awful they tended to be. She shouted their names, hoping they’d survived.
Diving into the water, a wave of pain shot through her leg as the salt water entered the wound. She ignored it, swimming out and dragging bodies to shore, then swimming back out, hoping she’d see her mom searching frantically for her brother, or her dad, looking for her mom, or her brother, checking to see if his phone had been damaged. But she didn’t.
Sapphira was vaguely aware of the man in the suit wading into the water to help her, making lugging the unconscious and possibly dead bodies much easier. When they finished, she realized how exhausted she was and how much she’d missed. The engine of the plane had exploded, the wing of the plane had fallen, and countless wounded and dead scattered through the beach.