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Jin should’ve stopped him. She knew she had the power to but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. There was a lot left unsaid between them. She ignored them, all the things she couldn’t say to Will. After all, it was easier to cry. There were still preparations to be made, examinations he had to pass. Time hadn’t run out quite yet.
Wade rested in the leather chair under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room, dressed in his pinstripe suit with a black portfolio of documents on his lap. Will sat up on the hospital bed and Jin had to admit that he looked sick. He was always scrawny, since they had met, but now his collar bones were more pronounced, his skin was translucent and the circles under his eyes were the worst she’d seen them. Still, the Will she had known for so long persisted, courage glinting in his blue eyes.
An oath of loyalty to the human race. It was a joke. Paper that wouldn’t stand the test of time. Paper that could not survive 400 years. An empty promise thrown out into space. Jin knew that others might have signed it without a second thought. Will didn’t.
What if the San-Ti were better? But Jin couldn’t think of anyone better than Will. Wade pressed on, the San-Ti were set on destroying the human race, stopping scientific progress. Crushing the bugs when they arrived. All that was not enough for loyalty to the human race. Will wasn’t doing this for the human race, as far as he was concerned the humans could rot, he was doing this for Jin. A last grand gesture; a 19 million pound star and his brain. He could give nothing more.
When Wade stood up, Jin felt a weight off her shoulders, a feeling that wouldn’t last. Will was perfect for the Staircase Project.
Will asked Jin not to come, he couldn’t say goodbye to her. Seeing her would convince him not to go through with it; to spend his last weeks on the shore, with expensive whisky and Jin. And so he called Saul. Jack was dead and Auggie had left.
The needle stuck inside his arm weighed him down. Will wasn’t sure if it was due to the deadly chemicals inside or his own weakness. Saul brought up a night from years ago that Will hadn’t remembered until then. It was strange to think that this would be the last time that he could talk to Saul. If the San-Ti brought him back, Saul would be long dead by then. The torture that Saul proposed didn’t register; everyone he’d ever known would be dead by then. He wanted to laugh, if by some miracle he was brought back he would’ve cheated death. He wouldn’t be dying then. He saw the tears roll down Saul’s cheeks and then the understanding in his eyes that there was nothing he could do.
“I’ve never had many friends. But thanks to you guys, it always felt like enough,” Will said with glassy eyes and a knot in his throat.
“Will, I’m gonna miss you man,” Saul whispered.
Will thought back to when Auggie was still there, back to when Jack was still alive, back to when there were no aliens, back to when there was no cancer. A memory of the five of them in the pub they always went to. A memory of them laughing. He thought of this as his hand hovered over the number six on the screen.
Jin’s heart beat loudly in her chest, the sound drowned out all other noises. She hoped that Will had decided to live one more day. That she would open the door to his room and see him there talking to Saul. Laughing about some old night long forgotten. She wanted to see him, talk to him one last time. She was done ignoring the things left unsaid. When she opened the door and saw the room empty except for the orderly, she knew she was too late. Still, she searched for the lab. She wanted to see him, to see his hands, to see his brown hair, his blue eyes. She wanted to see Will. When she burst through the door, a metal cylinder was all she saw. Will’s body was covered by the blue sheets. Jin would never see Will again.
Time had run out.