Lost Episode 4.08 Meet Kevin Johnson

Locke holds a group meeting in his house and promises there will be no more secrets. He brought Miles with him, and Miles tells the group that he was hired for one reason: find Benjamin Linus. This is not a surprise to anyone. Sawyer wants to simply turn Ben over to them, but Ben informs them that once they have him, their orders are to kill everyone on the island. The seriousness of that sinks in. Ben says he knows this because his spy on the ship is Michael. Hurley and Sawyer are upset. The guy who killed two women in cold blood to set Ben free, then sold all of them out so he could get off the island? Yes, that Michael.

As the meeting ends, Ben calls Alex, Rousseau and Karl over. He gives them a map to the Temple and tells them it's a sanctuary and maybe the only safe place on the island. He wants them to go there. Karl asks why not take everyone, and Ben says the Temple is for them. Alex asks if the people coming are more dangerous than Ben. He says yes, but her mother will protect her. Rousseau is touched by this gesture, and they leave.

On the freighter, Sayid and Desmond are woken up by an alarm. Two guys were trying to steal the tender and get off the freighter, but Captain Gault stopped them and is beating them to a bloody mess. Captain Gault tells them that the rules of desertion apply to everyone. He orders a deckhand, Kevin Johnson, to clean up the mess, and Michael steps forward. Sayid seizes the opportunity to ask Michael what he's doing there, but Michael is nervous the Captain will notice them talking. Sayid persists, and Michael says he's there to die.

The next morning, Sayid and Desmond find Michael in the engine room helping with the repairs. Sayid wants to know why Michael's on board, and Michael says he won't understand. Sayid says he'll understand perfectly and orders Michael to start from the beginning. Michael realizes he has no choice, so we WHOOSH to

Michael's crappy New York apartment. Michael's disheveled, worn and depressed. As he writes a letter, he looks up to photo of him holding Walt as a baby. Michael finishes the letter and leaves. He gets inside his car and pins the note to his jacket. Then he takes off down the street, drives to the piers, going faster and faster, hurtling towards a huge metal container and then CRRAAASSSHHH!! He smashes into the container at full impact!

Cut to a hospital as Michael wakes up. A nurse comes in and tells Michael it's a miracle he's still alive. It's a cold night and she brought him some extra blankets. She steps into the light and it's Libby, one of the women Michael shot and killed! Michael screams and wakes up in the hospital. It was a dream. The real nurse comes in, and it's not Libby. She tells Michael he's lucky to be alive. He had no I.D. on him, so she asks for his name. Michael won't answer. Then she asks if she wants him to contact Walt. The note pinned to his jacket was written to Walt. Michael says no.

Michael leaves the hospital and goes to his Mom's house. However she won't let him in. He asks to see Walt, but she refuses. Whatever Michael said to him, Walt doesn't want to see him. Michael says he has a right to see him, but his Mom tells him he gave up any rights he had. She thought he had died but then he shows up alive with Walt. She can't tell anyone about them, and she can't call them by their real names. Now Walt wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, and she's the one who has to comfort him. Michael leaves, and asks that she tell Walt he loves him. Then he looks up and sees Walt in a second floor window. Before he can say anything, Walt closes the curtains and disappears from view.

Michael goes into a seedy pawn shop and pawns his watch. The owner asks how come it's got Korean writing on it, and Michael explains it was a gift from a friend who was Korean. Michael doesn't want money he wants a gun. With bullets. The owner makes the deal, and Michael takes the gun to an alley and loads it. He puts the gun to his chin, and when he's just about to pull the trigger

A familiar voice asks for the time. Michael looks over and sees Tom Friendly! Michael tries to shoot Friendly, but he grabs Michael's wrist and twists it painfully to the side. Michael drops the gun, and then immediately punches Friendly. He blocks Michael's blows, but Michael finds an empty champagne bottle and slams it up against Friendly's head. Friendly grabs the gun and holds it up to Michael's head, ending the fight. Michael tells him to shoot him, but Friendly won't.

Michael asks how he found him, and Friendly asks if Michael honestly thought they weren't going to keep tabs on him. Friendly guesses that Michael wants to kill himself because he couldn't keep the guilt of killing Ana Lucia and Libby to himself and now can't stand that Walt knows he's a murderer. Well, Friendly's got even more bad news: the island won't let Michael kill himself. No matter how bad he wants to or how many different ways he tries it, it won't happen. Michael has more work to do. Friendly tells Michael he's staying at the Hotel Earle when Michael's ready to talk.

Michael goes home, more despondent than ever. He puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Click. Nothing. Michael checks the barrel all six rounds are loaded. He tries it again and is interrupted by a news report the wreckage of Oceanic flight 815 was found with all 324 passengers on board.

Michael immediately goes to Friendly's hotel. Michael asks why his plane is on the bottom of the ocean. Friendly tells him it's not his plane, it's a phony. A man named Widmore staged the whole thing 'cause he doesn't want anyone finding where the real plane ended up. Friendly gives Michael a file with proof: the cemetery in Thailand where Widmore dug up the 324 graves for the corpses; the purchase order for the 777 through a shell company; the shipping logs from the freighter he used to drop the whole thing down a trench deep enough to guarantee that no remains would ever be identified.

In a few days Widmore has a freighter that's leaving port from Fiji. The Others have reason to believe he's found the coordinates of the island. They want Michael to be their spy on the boat. They've already arranged a job for him as a deckhand under the name Kevin Johnson. Michael asks why they think he'll work for them, and Friendly tells him if Widmore finds the island everybody on it dies. If Michael wants to redeem himself for what he did, this is his only chance. Michael says he can't go back to the island, and Friendly tells him he's not going back to the island. He's going on the freighter so he can kill everyone on board.

At the port of Suva in Fiji, Michael meets George Minkowski and Naomi when he reports for duty. Naomi tells him a crate arrived for him. Friendly calls him on his cell phone and asks if he got the package. Michael says yes. Friendly tells him to wait until they're in the open sea before he opens it. Michael is starting to get cold feet about it now, and Friendly reminds him of Sun, Sawyer, Jack, Claire and her baby back on the island and asks if Michael's in. Yeah, Michael's in.

Michael picks a time to open the crate and discovers it's a bomb. Resigned to his fate, Michael arms the bomb and presses the execute button but instead of an explosion, a tiny white flag pops out with two words printed on it: not yet.

Later on the ship, Michael gets a call. It's Ben. Michael immediately lays into him for making him think the bomb was real. Ben is surprised Michael actually activated it. Ben explains that there are people on the freighter who are innocent, who have no idea the man they're working for is a monster. Ben may do whatever he needs to win, but he will not kill innocent people. Ben tells Michael to compile a list of the people on the freighter, report back, then disable the radio room and the engines. The freighter will never reach the island, and his friends will be safe. And if Michael does that, he can consider himself one of the good guys.

We WHOOSH back to the engine room as Michael finishes telling Sayid and Desmond his story. However, Sayid is not happy to hear that Michael is working for Benjamin Linus. He grabs Michael and forces him into Captain Gault's room. Sayid tells him Michael is the one who sabotaged the radio and engines. Michael was with him on flight 815, and he's a traitor.

On the island, Rousseau, Alex and Karl stop for break on their way to the Temple. Suddenly, silenced bullet rounds whiz through the air, and Karl is hit! He falls over dead. They're under attack! Rousseau tells Alex she loves her very much, and on three they're going to get up and run. But when they take off, SSNAP! Rousseau is hit, and she falls over dead, too. Alex yells out to save her own life and tells them to stop shooting. She's Ben's daughter she's his daughter!