Fighting back
Title: Fighting Back
Author: pemphredouk
Pairing/Characters: Michael, Sara, Lincoln, LJ,OC, Alex, Sofia Gretchen and Whistler
Rating:NC-17 after the first few chapters
Summary: Michael and Sara discover things, good and bad about themselves as they finally start fighting back. All locations mentioned in the story actually exist and can be found on the google map I've made to accompany this fic. It can be found at -
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=103288565057239961114.000450311da1ba4287bb4&z=4
I'm nearing the end of this story, yet Michael and Sara's future still seem so unresolved somehow......
Chapter 27: The Beach, just off Highway 1, Los Angeles, CA
LJ heard the receiver crash down onto the phone base from the kitchen and halted his exploration of the fridge for a moment, looking back along the hallway towards the living room. Seconds later his father was storming down it, filling the narrow space with his looming presence.
"They tell me they don’t know where he is! How the fucking hell can they not know where their most famous prisoner is?" And he slammed his hand down on the kitchen worktop. LJ closed the fridge, his hands now full of cold meats and pickles and looked a little sheepish wondering if it was inappropriate to be thinking about his stomach at a time like this.
"Well perhaps its because he's out on the west coast, maybe those guys haven’t told the ones back here yet?" he suggested hesitantly, quickly adding in a helpful tone.
"What about the ones who interviewed you a few weeks back, Dad, maybe they can help?" and he tipped his armful of food onto the counter and reached for the bread.
Lincoln seemed to be thinking about LJ's suggestion for a moment but then noticed the mini food mountain that had suddenly appeared.
"We’ve already had dinner LJ what's all that stuff?" he asked, nodding his head at the counter.
"Dad that was at least a couple of hours ago, I'm starving." and Linc shook his head in incomprehension of a teenager's ability to consume food. He sighed, reflecting on the many phone calls he'd now put through to the Cops, the Feds, the DOC and anyone else he thought might know where Michael was being held. A desperate search that had begun the afternoon the news broke about his capture and the double murders on national TV.
"No one seems to know where he is, something about a Federal transfer, I don’t know if they’re just not telling me or if they really don’t know either."
He was becoming so frustrated by this and small doubts had begun to creep into his thoughts. Something wasn't right and he had begun to wonder if the Company was somehow involved...perhaps they had got to Michael...and the Feds were trying to cover it up.
He sat down at the counter dejectedly, his hands clasped in front of him.
"I just want to know where he is, maybe visit him, sort a lawyer...I dunno..." and his voice faltered,
"Just be there for him,.." he fell silent and LJ paused half way through buttering a slice of bread as his father continued speaking, struggling now to hold in his emotions.
"Shit... he shouldn't be going through any of this man, he's the good guy, why can't everyone see it?........"
LJ shrugged, before answering. The food in front of him temporarily forgotten as he watched his father almost physically shrink with the weight of his worries for his brother.
"They believe what they hear I guess, the kids at my school can't stop talking about him as if he’s some incredibly tough guy, the tats, the escapes….the way they describe him…I can't think of anything less like Uncle Mike, but they don't listen to me, they prefer the hype they see on the T.V"
Lincoln nodded mutely, bringing his hands together now at his lips as he thought.
"I'm going to call that lawyer back, or maybe hire a better one, there must be some way of finding him, he still has rights to a lawyer, visits, he can't just disappear... even in their crap system..." and he pulled himself up and retraced his steps back to the living room and Google.
LJ surveyed the food, thought briefly about following his father and helping him online but instead quickly started slapping large slices of meat between thick slices of bread....a guy has to eat after all.... and he eventually made his way to the living room once he had stacked a plate high with sandwiches.
~~~~
Sara sat back in the chair and rubbed her eyes, a glance down at the clock on the laptop showed it was ten pm and she'd been working on the research since early that morning. She dropped her pen, closing the notepad and only then turned to contemplate the bed full of printed documents detailing medication regimes, complex chemical equations, medical research published in the foremost journals of the day and googled with the flick of a wrist. Observations on the behaviour of rats in lab tests, tests repeated ad nauseum and recorded diligently by Jason Lief. She wasn't sure she'd studied this hard for her finals and she wondered once again if she was up to it. Was Michael's faith in her enough to do all this justice?
Little by little, she'd edged her way towards what she thought was a sound conclusion to draw. Branch Pharmaceuticals in conjunction with a small and highly secretive research branch of the military were investigating drugs that would enhance the performance of a human brain, possibly just temporarily although the long term implications were horrific. They were working on prototypes that affected brainwave patterns speeding up the electrical impulses that sparked through the brain acting as the messengers for thoughts, conscious and subconscious. They seemed to be trying to create the hyper-enduced states of consciousness currently found in the mind bending and highly illegal drugs she had regrettably far too much experience of. The only difference was their goal, which was to instill the hyper consciousness but with an ability to control the reactions, so their test subjects could make sound judgments and logical decisions but at never before witnessed speeds.
She had drawn most of this from Jason's detailed notes, feeling she had found some insight into the now dead scientist's mind through his neatly scribbled text and occasional diagrams. He'd only been involved in the animal research, but he'd not been blind to the other activities at the Lab and sometimes referred to a mysterious 'Blue Section' with undisguised curiosity. They were a series of rooms and test labs at one end of the main complex that demanded the highest security clearances and an area he was most definitely excluded from.
She had shown her rather crude hypothesis to Michael earlier in the day, and he had immediately seen the link to people suffering from LLI, his eyes instantly narrowing as he saw the possibilities of using people in these experiments who could process the myriad of information their LLI did not filter out at speeds that would allow them to function with incredible response times. Sara had been puzzled to be honest, superfast brains?...But for what use? Especially since the medication could only produce short periods of high lucidity? Michael had paced the room for just a few minutes before suggesting that modern weaponry, fighter planes for example were at the edge of technology, many of their functions being controlled by computers because humans could simply not react fast enough. However computers without true Artifical Intelligence only ever react in pre programmed ways...but a human, able to react, plan, engage at those speeds would become a crucial part of the plane itself.....Sara nodded it seemed logical...terrifying but logical, they were trying to create superhumans and doing it all in the name of defence.
Michael had asked her to check through a few more of her suppositions, hence the extra three hours at the laptop but now she really didn't think she could take it any further. She was a doctor, not a research scientist and she felt at the limit of her capabilities. She stretched her neck back feeling the office chair recline with her movement and she let her head curl down over the backrest straightnening her long legs out in front of her until she was almost lying across the chair. She caught the slow careful movement of the door opening, and leaning back even further, watched the upside down image of Michael pad across the room towards her, his feet bare of socks and shoes. She noticed with the practiced eye of a doctor how he was still compensating for his missing toes, rolling that foot slightly more than the other which produced an almost imperceptible rocking gait as he walked, one she identified solely with him and one she loved.
"Hey, slacking off Tancredi?" he murmured across the room, his mouth curling into a smile that suggested he knew he was way off even though she was no longer tapping away at the keyboard.
She laughed, kicking away from the desk and sitting up,
"You do realise I nearly failed the Pharmaceutical paper in my second year....my tutor would be amazed at all this..." and she waved her hand across the sea of paper on the bed and desk.
" Nearly failed is still a pass, so you obviously did enough..." and he paused "...although I have to admit I aced all my classes. I was terrified if I got even one set of poor marks someone would realise I should never have been allowed there in the first place... quietly tap me on the shoulder and advise me that Michael Scofield was not the kind of student Loyola required..." he dipped his head, his thoughts now recalling those first anxiety filled months at College where he had felt like a fish out of water amongst his self-assured classmates.
"You were just a writhing mass of insecurities back then huh?" Sara was a little pensive now, finding the picture of Michael not coping with anything, hard to imagine.
"Back then?" and Michael smiled "...and now...mainly when I'm around you though." and he closed the distance and kissed her on the shoulder.
"You would have kicked my ass at college Michael if we'd have been studying the same subjects." she responded.
"Maybe." Michael chuckled and dipped his head to kiss her again.
"How's your research going?" Sara asked, keen for some distraction from the agonising soft touch of his lips on her skin.
It seemed to work because Michael straightened and frowned slightly.
"We still can't locate any building plans for the Lab in Long Island that Jason referred to...they seem to have been pulled from every archive there is. But there has to be some ...somewhere...I just need to keep on looking."
"Not tonight though, we've done enough tonight right?" she asked, a glint in her eyes suggesting she had other activities planned.
His hand went to smooth across his scalp, He'd finally taken a trimmer to his beard and shaved his hair back to just a fuzz on his head and he was still getting used to feeling it under his fingers. As he moved he realised how tensed and tired his body felt after fourteen straight hours at the PC.
"Sure we can call it a day." and started to pull her out of the chair in a movement she had not been expecting, she resisted initially and then suddenly with a mischievous grin let him win the tug of war. Unfortunately the momentum of his tugging carried them both onto the bed and they landed amongst the papers, crumpling many...
"Hey my research!" cried Sara, as the papers rustled beneath them. Michael laughed and holding her tightly around the waist rolled them both to the paper free half of the bed.
"Better fusspot?"
"Absolutely." replied Sara who stretched herself out along the lean body of Michael feeling his heart beat out a steady rhythm against her breasts as his hands curled around her waist one more. But before this could develop into the welcoming touch of flesh against flesh and a descent into the carnal they were both desiring there was a less than hesitant knock at their door.
Michael sighed, and unclasping his hands let Sara roll off him reluctantly.
"Yes?"
The door opened and Jen stood in the entrance.
"Sheesh do you guys never stop?"
They both raised their eyebrows in her direction,
"Right because you and Bob have sworn a new code of celibacy since your afternoon 'nap' together?" replied Sara.
Jen at least had the decency to blush
"...ahh you heard?"
"No, we guessed, but thanks for confirming it." she replied with a grin in Michael's direction.
Jen smiled, she really liked this couple, and she was finding it harder and harder to reconcile the real people with the bizarre stories about them circulating in the media and online.
"The Fed, the scary one, is on the line Michael, she wants to talk to you, you left the cellphone they provided in Bob's office."
"Ahh ok I'll be right there..."
Jen nodded and left the room.
"I won't be long, perhaps you wanna clear the bed, unless you’re happy to crinkle...." and he picked up a sheet of paper
'Research into the long term affects of amphetamines on humans and large mammals and the comparative adverse reactions....'
Sara frowned.
"Crinkle it? don't you dare, its going to be my bedtime reading tonight Scofield, I doubt you can compete with that."
Michael smiled as he reached for the door.
"Well I can but try..." and as he left the room, Sara stood back up from the bed, her hands on her hips, mimicking a pose so redolent of Michael as she surveyed the papers. Then one by one she picked them up sorting them into neat piles.
~~~~
Detective Tony Wilson, sat back in his chair....the tape recording had ended but the mechanism had yet to switch itself off and for a moment he lost himself in the muffled whirring of the blank tape as he pondered on what he had just heard.
He picked up the mugshot of Michael, he'd been so sure about the guy when he first saw it, he looked clever, it was something behind his eyes and from what he had read the guy was supposed to be some kind of genius...but the voice ...there was something else there....He shook his head. What the guy was saying couldn't be true....he was surely grasping at straws to save himself from Death Row....but Phil Macken?....and he thought back to the large power boat the guy had bragged about buying just six months ago, the move into the large condo on the lake a few months before that...hadn't he claimed he'd been left money by a relative...?
He rewound the tape and listened to the clear soft voice of Scofield as he answered one of the Fed's questions.
"Jason and Amy Leif's deaths were not an motor vehicle accident, check the records, I think Phil Macken was probably involved with the accident investigation.....he would have been able to throw off any suspicions of foul play......
Scofield was right about Macken filing the report, he'd remembered the accident, it was horrific, the little girl and her father dying trapped below the water and they would normally have investigated an accident like that very thoroughly. But Macken had been the first on the scene and his initial report had gone a long way to it being recorded as just a horrible but unfortunate accident. No one had thought to check it out, why would anyone want to kill a six yr old girl for christ sakes...?
He flipped open his phone, and spoke in hushed tones to one of his team back in the homicide dept in Scottsdale. He was asking for the Leif's accident report and any accompanying documentation to be faxed to him in LA and for access to P Macken's bank accounts. There had been a slight hesitation, a pause punctuated by a low gasp he heard down the line before the young officer responded by checking what he'd heard. Tony had to repeat his request patiently, choosing not to answer the unasked question on the officer's lips. He'd had to calm his breathing, he needed to sound as if this was all standard procedure. Phil was after all a murder victim himself now, it was normal to check these things out...
He read his notebook and asked for two more checks, a new search of the grounds around the Leif house, in particular a large bush just by the side of the porch. The officer asked what they were looking for, since they had covered some of the garden in their first search.
He spoke slowly, describing the small camera device Michael had mentioned in his interview, but not explaining why he thought there would be one there.
Finally, he requested a prints search on the outdoor barometer that was nestled in the rafters of the porch. The officer was beyond questioning the strange requests of his boss and had simply replied with a polite "Yes sir...."
He wanted to follow up Michael's claim of Branch Pharmaceutical's involvement, he'd suggested their property as the possible location of the surveillance tapes that must exist if the camera was operational. Tony knew he would have to approach them very carefully indeed, and that it would have to wait until he returned to Scottsdale. A return that was now imminent as apparently his prisoner, the one he'd flown out to question was no longer in the building and no matter how much pressure he'd put on the two Feds they had made it quite clear he would not be available for the foreseeable future.
He flicked his phone closed, checked his notepad and then clicked the play button one more time, and sat back as Michael Scofield's calm voice filled the room again.
~~~~
"I trust you have something to report?"
"No sir, we still can't locate him I'm afraid."
"And what have you tried so far?"
"Well our infiltration into the Bureau on the West coast isn’t particularly strong Sir, we lost a few after Kellerman's testimony and no one remaining is senior enough to access Scofield's record. His papers have all been transferred to a new section that was set up after the trial. It's top level security clearance only and we just don’t have anyone with that yet.."
"What about our woman in the LAPD?"
"She said his record had been pulled from the database and there was no details lodged in the prisoner transfer records they normally keep. Mr Scofield seems to have fallen into a Federal black hole"
"Well get working on it! I want to know where he is and how we get to him before this time tomorrow!"
"Yes sir..."
~~~~
Lang put the phone down and turned to Wheeler,
"Scofield agrees Lincoln needs speaking to, he's creating too many waves now back in Chicago, if someone decided to locate him just to get Lincoln Burrows off their back then we're in big trouble."
"What did he recommend?" asked Wheeler, his eyes only half on the PC screen in front of him. An email had arrived suggesting that the car accident of the man who had worked for Frank Tancredi, Bruce might require more investigation, and maybe Scofield's suggestion that it had in fact been an assassination had not been too far off the mark....
"He thinks its too risky for him to make contact, he suspects that's how the Company found him the first time...so he has suggested sending someone Linc will know with a message he will understand and accept." Lang continued, making a few brief notes in her small notepad.
Wheeler nodded,
"Or we could have one of our guys on the ground deliver it?"
Lang shook her head, and was temporarily diverted by an incoming email on her screen.
"He said Burrows wouldn't trust them, apparently Feds aren't at the top of his Christmas card list at the moment..."
Wheeler laughed,
"Were we ever?" and Lang shrugged her shoulders before breaking out into a rare smile.
The pressures of forming the new section and the incredible security and secrecy that went along with it were beginning to tell on her. It was a huge career advancement for her and she hadn't thought for a second of turning it down but she was only now really appreciating the responsibilities. She clicked the mail open and gasped.
"They've got Mahone...." Wheeler who had been trying to access some military facilities archive as part of his assistance in locating the building plans sat bolt upright on his chair.
"Where?...How?"
"He walked into a Federal field office in Dallas, no explanation, just stated his name and stood there quietly as he was cuffed apparently." Wheeler shook his head at this news.
"Whose going, you or me?" the unspoken discussion on whether or not someone should go to interview him disposed of with just one shared look.
Lang closed her lips, her mind wandering off to the few brief weeks she had been Mahone's second in command...
"I think I'll go ...if you don’t mind?"
Wheeler shook his head,
"No it's ok, I understand, I want to crack these records anyway, Scofield has suggested I try the Sanitation department next, apparently all facilities built after 1983 had to lodge their drain plans with them..."
Lang just smiled and shook her head,
"Well I can see why that is too fascinating to leave." and she clicked her email closed and called the admin office to arrange her flights.
~~~~
Michael had taken to walking down to the beach each evening and he found himself heading down the hill after another productive days planning. It took about fifteen minutes and he liked how it helped clear his head a little from the constant work of plotting. The beach was usually deserted, helped by the fact that it was one of the few stretches along the coast that didn't have any public parking. The last few nights he had not met anyone on the short stretch between to the two headlands and wore just a cap and sunglasses as his attempt at a disguise. His arms were of course covered up and he donned a pair of running shoes to hide his mutilated foot.
He crossed the busy highway carefully, and then stepped down onto the sand with a sigh of contentment. He was beginning to fall in love with the sound of the sea, and his gaze fell on the breaking waves and beyond that the two leviathan tankers that sluggishly crept across the horizon as he watched. There were still a couple more hours of light and he walked along the surfline, letting it wash over the edges of his trainers as he splashed through the water, his hands thrust deep into his shorts.
He made his way to a small collection of rocks that jutted up from the beach about twenty feet back from the creeping tideline. He dropped down to pick up a large stick that had washed up on some previous tide and sat down on one of the lower rocks, his back to the sea for a moment. Ahead of him he could see the wide expanse of dry warm sand , then the harshly lit strip of highway and on the other side the hillside rising up steeply, a few tiny lights marking the isolated homes that clung to the hillside twinkling now in the dusk. He looked for but couldn;t find the Ranch, it was tucked behind one of the folds of the hills but he smiled at the knowledge of its existence and how it had provided such a welcome refuge for him and Sara.
Wheeler had finally tracked down a set of architectural blueprints for the lab, they were old, probably done at construction time and wouldn't take into account any later amendments, which made them risky but they were a start. He'd spent the day studying them in detail, dissecting and deconstructing them line by line, drain by drain, room by room and had felt the stirrings of a familiar thrill as he did so....this was what he excelled at, this was how his brain worked and it had all felt so right.
He'd already had a few basic ideas for penetration, of course now it was a military site he was sure the security was up to anything he had witnessed at Fox River so he had to be clever here...
He had sketched out several plans, routes, distractions, techniques for breaking into the buildings and they were all sitting on Bob's desk back at the house.
He found himself slowly scoring out the basic shell of the lab in the sand, the Branch lab in Scottsdale, then adding initials for the people involved, linking them with lines and slowly a matrix etched in the grains began to appear before him, how people connected, groups, Jason and his research, LLI, the Company's attempts to get hold of him....the mysterious General, his links to the Feds, Kellerman, the agent Sara had shot in Panama ...T Bag....Gretchen and her henchmen...Mahone, animal experiments, possible human experiments? His lines in the sand grew and grew like some bizarre spiders web...he began to circle some name's drawing them together, trying to make sense of everything, initials, locations, timelines...they were all carved out in front of him. Eventually he stopped, dropping the stick and he climbed to the highest rock and looked down on the incredibly complex matrix he had completed and he sat down and stared at it, his mind tracing every line, every connection...
Sara was searching the house for Michael.
"He's gone down to the beach I think." answered Bob who was busy tracking the software sales his company had made to Branch Pharmaceuticals....
"Again?"
"He says he enjoys the walk, check it out." and he nodded to the telescope out on the balcony.
Sara walked out and fumbled with the eyepiece for several seconds before the beach came into focus. She scanned the sands but could find no trace of Michael, but when she tilted the lens slightly higher she picked out his light blue long sleeved t-shirt against some rocks half way down the beach. He was just sitting there, his knees drawn up, his arms resting on them and apparently deep in thought. He seemed such a lonely figure and her heart jumped as it always did when she had the chance to observe him...especially when he didn't know he was being watched. There was something so quiet, so still about him that she found herself holding her breath as she watched him....
"You're right he's there, I think I might pop down and keep him company."
"Sure." replied Bob . "We won't be having dinner for at least an hour, you have plenty of time."
Sara slipped her sandals off when she reached the sand, the warm granules squirming through her toes as she stepped out towards the outcrop she had seen Michael on. He looked up when she was about thirty feet away,
"Hi..." but she could see he was still distracted by at something on the other side of the rocks.
She climbed up gingerly, the tide was coming in quickly now and the rocks he'd been sitting on were already damp with spray. She noticed a few flecks of water on his shirt and wondered how long he would have sat there...
Once she reached the top of the rocks she could see what had been taking his attention. Below him in the sand was a huge complex diagram, about twenty feet square. It seemed to be in code because she couldn't make sense of it, but once she realised the initials were either people or places the picture started to make a little more sense.
"Don't you have something similar to this back at the house?" she asked softly...
"I have most of this..I've just added a few more connections...it seemed easier down here somehow, more things made... more sense." and he shrugged, disturbed at his inability to describe what he had meant in a more satisfactory way.
She snaked her arm around his waist and he reciprocated by swinging his arm over her shoulders and gently pulling her closer.
"Do you think you've found a way?"
He nodded...
“I've found about three ways...I need to decide which has the best chance of success...just like at Fox River.”
"At Fox River, was the infirmary your first choice?" she asked, curious as always as to how his mind worked.
He shook his head "Hmm..no..." and he lifted his face to hers, wanting her to understand how his manipulation of her back then still weighed heavily on him.
"It was my second choice...my first plan was to escape through the sewers into the river, but when Linc's execution date was set for May, I knew the water levels would be too low as it ran into the river, we would have been visible for too much time as we made our way down and it may not have been deep enough to swim away...so..." pausing he picked a small pebble from a crevice in the rock and tossed it high into the sky, watching it land silently twenty yards beyond his sand drawing.
"Plan B?" Sara offered....
"..Yes Plan B, the infirmary...and you...." and he twisted his head round to stare deep into her eyes. They both smiled, and Sara leant her head on his shoulder giving in to the relaxing sensation of being so close to him, his warmth....
They turned back to his sand picture, and watched as the first few lazy waves dribbled onto it, immediately smoothing out the lines so carefully drawn...flattening the scratches until some were lost below the froth.
"Can you remember it?" asked Sara with just a little concern in her voice
"Yes, I'll remember this, its just a few changes to the one I have back at the house...a few but significant changes." and he turned back to see a more vigorous wave, several inches deep, encroach on the markings, obliterating several more square yards of it...
They stayed until the picture was completely erased by the ocean, then scrambled back down the rocks on the other side before being swamped themselves by the incoming tide. They laughed and joked as they ran back across the beach, running up the hill and reaching the Ranch sweaty and out of breath. They turned before entering, watching as the sun finally started to sink below the horizon, bathing the scene in the glorious deep oranges they had come to expect but were still enthralled by.
Michael took one last look, he knew they had almost finished the planning phase and soon he would have to put it into action. He knew the risks, they were definable, and huge. He once more felt that certain unwelcome heaviness in the pit of his stomach, a sense of expectation and dread at what was to come. He realised they had very few Pacific sunsets left to enjoy, soon he would have to head east and face his future.
TBC
Author: pemphredouk
Pairing/Characters: Michael, Sara, Lincoln, LJ,OC, Alex, Sofia Gretchen and Whistler
Rating:NC-17 after the first few chapters
Summary: Michael and Sara discover things, good and bad about themselves as they finally start fighting back. All locations mentioned in the story actually exist and can be found on the google map I've made to accompany this fic. It can be found at -
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=103288565057239961114.000450311da1ba4287bb4&z=4
I'm nearing the end of this story, yet Michael and Sara's future still seem so unresolved somehow......
Chapter 27: The Beach, just off Highway 1, Los Angeles, CA
LJ heard the receiver crash down onto the phone base from the kitchen and halted his exploration of the fridge for a moment, looking back along the hallway towards the living room. Seconds later his father was storming down it, filling the narrow space with his looming presence.
"They tell me they don’t know where he is! How the fucking hell can they not know where their most famous prisoner is?" And he slammed his hand down on the kitchen worktop. LJ closed the fridge, his hands now full of cold meats and pickles and looked a little sheepish wondering if it was inappropriate to be thinking about his stomach at a time like this.
"Well perhaps its because he's out on the west coast, maybe those guys haven’t told the ones back here yet?" he suggested hesitantly, quickly adding in a helpful tone.
"What about the ones who interviewed you a few weeks back, Dad, maybe they can help?" and he tipped his armful of food onto the counter and reached for the bread.
Lincoln seemed to be thinking about LJ's suggestion for a moment but then noticed the mini food mountain that had suddenly appeared.
"We’ve already had dinner LJ what's all that stuff?" he asked, nodding his head at the counter.
"Dad that was at least a couple of hours ago, I'm starving." and Linc shook his head in incomprehension of a teenager's ability to consume food. He sighed, reflecting on the many phone calls he'd now put through to the Cops, the Feds, the DOC and anyone else he thought might know where Michael was being held. A desperate search that had begun the afternoon the news broke about his capture and the double murders on national TV.
"No one seems to know where he is, something about a Federal transfer, I don’t know if they’re just not telling me or if they really don’t know either."
He was becoming so frustrated by this and small doubts had begun to creep into his thoughts. Something wasn't right and he had begun to wonder if the Company was somehow involved...perhaps they had got to Michael...and the Feds were trying to cover it up.
He sat down at the counter dejectedly, his hands clasped in front of him.
"I just want to know where he is, maybe visit him, sort a lawyer...I dunno..." and his voice faltered,
"Just be there for him,.." he fell silent and LJ paused half way through buttering a slice of bread as his father continued speaking, struggling now to hold in his emotions.
"Shit... he shouldn't be going through any of this man, he's the good guy, why can't everyone see it?........"
LJ shrugged, before answering. The food in front of him temporarily forgotten as he watched his father almost physically shrink with the weight of his worries for his brother.
"They believe what they hear I guess, the kids at my school can't stop talking about him as if he’s some incredibly tough guy, the tats, the escapes….the way they describe him…I can't think of anything less like Uncle Mike, but they don't listen to me, they prefer the hype they see on the T.V"
Lincoln nodded mutely, bringing his hands together now at his lips as he thought.
"I'm going to call that lawyer back, or maybe hire a better one, there must be some way of finding him, he still has rights to a lawyer, visits, he can't just disappear... even in their crap system..." and he pulled himself up and retraced his steps back to the living room and Google.
LJ surveyed the food, thought briefly about following his father and helping him online but instead quickly started slapping large slices of meat between thick slices of bread....a guy has to eat after all.... and he eventually made his way to the living room once he had stacked a plate high with sandwiches.
~~~~
Sara sat back in the chair and rubbed her eyes, a glance down at the clock on the laptop showed it was ten pm and she'd been working on the research since early that morning. She dropped her pen, closing the notepad and only then turned to contemplate the bed full of printed documents detailing medication regimes, complex chemical equations, medical research published in the foremost journals of the day and googled with the flick of a wrist. Observations on the behaviour of rats in lab tests, tests repeated ad nauseum and recorded diligently by Jason Lief. She wasn't sure she'd studied this hard for her finals and she wondered once again if she was up to it. Was Michael's faith in her enough to do all this justice?
Little by little, she'd edged her way towards what she thought was a sound conclusion to draw. Branch Pharmaceuticals in conjunction with a small and highly secretive research branch of the military were investigating drugs that would enhance the performance of a human brain, possibly just temporarily although the long term implications were horrific. They were working on prototypes that affected brainwave patterns speeding up the electrical impulses that sparked through the brain acting as the messengers for thoughts, conscious and subconscious. They seemed to be trying to create the hyper-enduced states of consciousness currently found in the mind bending and highly illegal drugs she had regrettably far too much experience of. The only difference was their goal, which was to instill the hyper consciousness but with an ability to control the reactions, so their test subjects could make sound judgments and logical decisions but at never before witnessed speeds.
She had drawn most of this from Jason's detailed notes, feeling she had found some insight into the now dead scientist's mind through his neatly scribbled text and occasional diagrams. He'd only been involved in the animal research, but he'd not been blind to the other activities at the Lab and sometimes referred to a mysterious 'Blue Section' with undisguised curiosity. They were a series of rooms and test labs at one end of the main complex that demanded the highest security clearances and an area he was most definitely excluded from.
She had shown her rather crude hypothesis to Michael earlier in the day, and he had immediately seen the link to people suffering from LLI, his eyes instantly narrowing as he saw the possibilities of using people in these experiments who could process the myriad of information their LLI did not filter out at speeds that would allow them to function with incredible response times. Sara had been puzzled to be honest, superfast brains?...But for what use? Especially since the medication could only produce short periods of high lucidity? Michael had paced the room for just a few minutes before suggesting that modern weaponry, fighter planes for example were at the edge of technology, many of their functions being controlled by computers because humans could simply not react fast enough. However computers without true Artifical Intelligence only ever react in pre programmed ways...but a human, able to react, plan, engage at those speeds would become a crucial part of the plane itself.....Sara nodded it seemed logical...terrifying but logical, they were trying to create superhumans and doing it all in the name of defence.
Michael had asked her to check through a few more of her suppositions, hence the extra three hours at the laptop but now she really didn't think she could take it any further. She was a doctor, not a research scientist and she felt at the limit of her capabilities. She stretched her neck back feeling the office chair recline with her movement and she let her head curl down over the backrest straightnening her long legs out in front of her until she was almost lying across the chair. She caught the slow careful movement of the door opening, and leaning back even further, watched the upside down image of Michael pad across the room towards her, his feet bare of socks and shoes. She noticed with the practiced eye of a doctor how he was still compensating for his missing toes, rolling that foot slightly more than the other which produced an almost imperceptible rocking gait as he walked, one she identified solely with him and one she loved.
"Hey, slacking off Tancredi?" he murmured across the room, his mouth curling into a smile that suggested he knew he was way off even though she was no longer tapping away at the keyboard.
She laughed, kicking away from the desk and sitting up,
"You do realise I nearly failed the Pharmaceutical paper in my second year....my tutor would be amazed at all this..." and she waved her hand across the sea of paper on the bed and desk.
" Nearly failed is still a pass, so you obviously did enough..." and he paused "...although I have to admit I aced all my classes. I was terrified if I got even one set of poor marks someone would realise I should never have been allowed there in the first place... quietly tap me on the shoulder and advise me that Michael Scofield was not the kind of student Loyola required..." he dipped his head, his thoughts now recalling those first anxiety filled months at College where he had felt like a fish out of water amongst his self-assured classmates.
"You were just a writhing mass of insecurities back then huh?" Sara was a little pensive now, finding the picture of Michael not coping with anything, hard to imagine.
"Back then?" and Michael smiled "...and now...mainly when I'm around you though." and he closed the distance and kissed her on the shoulder.
"You would have kicked my ass at college Michael if we'd have been studying the same subjects." she responded.
"Maybe." Michael chuckled and dipped his head to kiss her again.
"How's your research going?" Sara asked, keen for some distraction from the agonising soft touch of his lips on her skin.
It seemed to work because Michael straightened and frowned slightly.
"We still can't locate any building plans for the Lab in Long Island that Jason referred to...they seem to have been pulled from every archive there is. But there has to be some ...somewhere...I just need to keep on looking."
"Not tonight though, we've done enough tonight right?" she asked, a glint in her eyes suggesting she had other activities planned.
His hand went to smooth across his scalp, He'd finally taken a trimmer to his beard and shaved his hair back to just a fuzz on his head and he was still getting used to feeling it under his fingers. As he moved he realised how tensed and tired his body felt after fourteen straight hours at the PC.
"Sure we can call it a day." and started to pull her out of the chair in a movement she had not been expecting, she resisted initially and then suddenly with a mischievous grin let him win the tug of war. Unfortunately the momentum of his tugging carried them both onto the bed and they landed amongst the papers, crumpling many...
"Hey my research!" cried Sara, as the papers rustled beneath them. Michael laughed and holding her tightly around the waist rolled them both to the paper free half of the bed.
"Better fusspot?"
"Absolutely." replied Sara who stretched herself out along the lean body of Michael feeling his heart beat out a steady rhythm against her breasts as his hands curled around her waist one more. But before this could develop into the welcoming touch of flesh against flesh and a descent into the carnal they were both desiring there was a less than hesitant knock at their door.
Michael sighed, and unclasping his hands let Sara roll off him reluctantly.
"Yes?"
The door opened and Jen stood in the entrance.
"Sheesh do you guys never stop?"
They both raised their eyebrows in her direction,
"Right because you and Bob have sworn a new code of celibacy since your afternoon 'nap' together?" replied Sara.
Jen at least had the decency to blush
"...ahh you heard?"
"No, we guessed, but thanks for confirming it." she replied with a grin in Michael's direction.
Jen smiled, she really liked this couple, and she was finding it harder and harder to reconcile the real people with the bizarre stories about them circulating in the media and online.
"The Fed, the scary one, is on the line Michael, she wants to talk to you, you left the cellphone they provided in Bob's office."
"Ahh ok I'll be right there..."
Jen nodded and left the room.
"I won't be long, perhaps you wanna clear the bed, unless you’re happy to crinkle...." and he picked up a sheet of paper
'Research into the long term affects of amphetamines on humans and large mammals and the comparative adverse reactions....'
Sara frowned.
"Crinkle it? don't you dare, its going to be my bedtime reading tonight Scofield, I doubt you can compete with that."
Michael smiled as he reached for the door.
"Well I can but try..." and as he left the room, Sara stood back up from the bed, her hands on her hips, mimicking a pose so redolent of Michael as she surveyed the papers. Then one by one she picked them up sorting them into neat piles.
~~~~
Detective Tony Wilson, sat back in his chair....the tape recording had ended but the mechanism had yet to switch itself off and for a moment he lost himself in the muffled whirring of the blank tape as he pondered on what he had just heard.
He picked up the mugshot of Michael, he'd been so sure about the guy when he first saw it, he looked clever, it was something behind his eyes and from what he had read the guy was supposed to be some kind of genius...but the voice ...there was something else there....He shook his head. What the guy was saying couldn't be true....he was surely grasping at straws to save himself from Death Row....but Phil Macken?....and he thought back to the large power boat the guy had bragged about buying just six months ago, the move into the large condo on the lake a few months before that...hadn't he claimed he'd been left money by a relative...?
He rewound the tape and listened to the clear soft voice of Scofield as he answered one of the Fed's questions.
"Jason and Amy Leif's deaths were not an motor vehicle accident, check the records, I think Phil Macken was probably involved with the accident investigation.....he would have been able to throw off any suspicions of foul play......
Scofield was right about Macken filing the report, he'd remembered the accident, it was horrific, the little girl and her father dying trapped below the water and they would normally have investigated an accident like that very thoroughly. But Macken had been the first on the scene and his initial report had gone a long way to it being recorded as just a horrible but unfortunate accident. No one had thought to check it out, why would anyone want to kill a six yr old girl for christ sakes...?
He flipped open his phone, and spoke in hushed tones to one of his team back in the homicide dept in Scottsdale. He was asking for the Leif's accident report and any accompanying documentation to be faxed to him in LA and for access to P Macken's bank accounts. There had been a slight hesitation, a pause punctuated by a low gasp he heard down the line before the young officer responded by checking what he'd heard. Tony had to repeat his request patiently, choosing not to answer the unasked question on the officer's lips. He'd had to calm his breathing, he needed to sound as if this was all standard procedure. Phil was after all a murder victim himself now, it was normal to check these things out...
He read his notebook and asked for two more checks, a new search of the grounds around the Leif house, in particular a large bush just by the side of the porch. The officer asked what they were looking for, since they had covered some of the garden in their first search.
He spoke slowly, describing the small camera device Michael had mentioned in his interview, but not explaining why he thought there would be one there.
Finally, he requested a prints search on the outdoor barometer that was nestled in the rafters of the porch. The officer was beyond questioning the strange requests of his boss and had simply replied with a polite "Yes sir...."
He wanted to follow up Michael's claim of Branch Pharmaceutical's involvement, he'd suggested their property as the possible location of the surveillance tapes that must exist if the camera was operational. Tony knew he would have to approach them very carefully indeed, and that it would have to wait until he returned to Scottsdale. A return that was now imminent as apparently his prisoner, the one he'd flown out to question was no longer in the building and no matter how much pressure he'd put on the two Feds they had made it quite clear he would not be available for the foreseeable future.
He flicked his phone closed, checked his notepad and then clicked the play button one more time, and sat back as Michael Scofield's calm voice filled the room again.
~~~~
"I trust you have something to report?"
"No sir, we still can't locate him I'm afraid."
"And what have you tried so far?"
"Well our infiltration into the Bureau on the West coast isn’t particularly strong Sir, we lost a few after Kellerman's testimony and no one remaining is senior enough to access Scofield's record. His papers have all been transferred to a new section that was set up after the trial. It's top level security clearance only and we just don’t have anyone with that yet.."
"What about our woman in the LAPD?"
"She said his record had been pulled from the database and there was no details lodged in the prisoner transfer records they normally keep. Mr Scofield seems to have fallen into a Federal black hole"
"Well get working on it! I want to know where he is and how we get to him before this time tomorrow!"
"Yes sir..."
~~~~
Lang put the phone down and turned to Wheeler,
"Scofield agrees Lincoln needs speaking to, he's creating too many waves now back in Chicago, if someone decided to locate him just to get Lincoln Burrows off their back then we're in big trouble."
"What did he recommend?" asked Wheeler, his eyes only half on the PC screen in front of him. An email had arrived suggesting that the car accident of the man who had worked for Frank Tancredi, Bruce might require more investigation, and maybe Scofield's suggestion that it had in fact been an assassination had not been too far off the mark....
"He thinks its too risky for him to make contact, he suspects that's how the Company found him the first time...so he has suggested sending someone Linc will know with a message he will understand and accept." Lang continued, making a few brief notes in her small notepad.
Wheeler nodded,
"Or we could have one of our guys on the ground deliver it?"
Lang shook her head, and was temporarily diverted by an incoming email on her screen.
"He said Burrows wouldn't trust them, apparently Feds aren't at the top of his Christmas card list at the moment..."
Wheeler laughed,
"Were we ever?" and Lang shrugged her shoulders before breaking out into a rare smile.
The pressures of forming the new section and the incredible security and secrecy that went along with it were beginning to tell on her. It was a huge career advancement for her and she hadn't thought for a second of turning it down but she was only now really appreciating the responsibilities. She clicked the mail open and gasped.
"They've got Mahone...." Wheeler who had been trying to access some military facilities archive as part of his assistance in locating the building plans sat bolt upright on his chair.
"Where?...How?"
"He walked into a Federal field office in Dallas, no explanation, just stated his name and stood there quietly as he was cuffed apparently." Wheeler shook his head at this news.
"Whose going, you or me?" the unspoken discussion on whether or not someone should go to interview him disposed of with just one shared look.
Lang closed her lips, her mind wandering off to the few brief weeks she had been Mahone's second in command...
"I think I'll go ...if you don’t mind?"
Wheeler shook his head,
"No it's ok, I understand, I want to crack these records anyway, Scofield has suggested I try the Sanitation department next, apparently all facilities built after 1983 had to lodge their drain plans with them..."
Lang just smiled and shook her head,
"Well I can see why that is too fascinating to leave." and she clicked her email closed and called the admin office to arrange her flights.
~~~~
Michael had taken to walking down to the beach each evening and he found himself heading down the hill after another productive days planning. It took about fifteen minutes and he liked how it helped clear his head a little from the constant work of plotting. The beach was usually deserted, helped by the fact that it was one of the few stretches along the coast that didn't have any public parking. The last few nights he had not met anyone on the short stretch between to the two headlands and wore just a cap and sunglasses as his attempt at a disguise. His arms were of course covered up and he donned a pair of running shoes to hide his mutilated foot.
He crossed the busy highway carefully, and then stepped down onto the sand with a sigh of contentment. He was beginning to fall in love with the sound of the sea, and his gaze fell on the breaking waves and beyond that the two leviathan tankers that sluggishly crept across the horizon as he watched. There were still a couple more hours of light and he walked along the surfline, letting it wash over the edges of his trainers as he splashed through the water, his hands thrust deep into his shorts.
He made his way to a small collection of rocks that jutted up from the beach about twenty feet back from the creeping tideline. He dropped down to pick up a large stick that had washed up on some previous tide and sat down on one of the lower rocks, his back to the sea for a moment. Ahead of him he could see the wide expanse of dry warm sand , then the harshly lit strip of highway and on the other side the hillside rising up steeply, a few tiny lights marking the isolated homes that clung to the hillside twinkling now in the dusk. He looked for but couldn;t find the Ranch, it was tucked behind one of the folds of the hills but he smiled at the knowledge of its existence and how it had provided such a welcome refuge for him and Sara.
Wheeler had finally tracked down a set of architectural blueprints for the lab, they were old, probably done at construction time and wouldn't take into account any later amendments, which made them risky but they were a start. He'd spent the day studying them in detail, dissecting and deconstructing them line by line, drain by drain, room by room and had felt the stirrings of a familiar thrill as he did so....this was what he excelled at, this was how his brain worked and it had all felt so right.
He'd already had a few basic ideas for penetration, of course now it was a military site he was sure the security was up to anything he had witnessed at Fox River so he had to be clever here...
He had sketched out several plans, routes, distractions, techniques for breaking into the buildings and they were all sitting on Bob's desk back at the house.
He found himself slowly scoring out the basic shell of the lab in the sand, the Branch lab in Scottsdale, then adding initials for the people involved, linking them with lines and slowly a matrix etched in the grains began to appear before him, how people connected, groups, Jason and his research, LLI, the Company's attempts to get hold of him....the mysterious General, his links to the Feds, Kellerman, the agent Sara had shot in Panama ...T Bag....Gretchen and her henchmen...Mahone, animal experiments, possible human experiments? His lines in the sand grew and grew like some bizarre spiders web...he began to circle some name's drawing them together, trying to make sense of everything, initials, locations, timelines...they were all carved out in front of him. Eventually he stopped, dropping the stick and he climbed to the highest rock and looked down on the incredibly complex matrix he had completed and he sat down and stared at it, his mind tracing every line, every connection...
Sara was searching the house for Michael.
"He's gone down to the beach I think." answered Bob who was busy tracking the software sales his company had made to Branch Pharmaceuticals....
"Again?"
"He says he enjoys the walk, check it out." and he nodded to the telescope out on the balcony.
Sara walked out and fumbled with the eyepiece for several seconds before the beach came into focus. She scanned the sands but could find no trace of Michael, but when she tilted the lens slightly higher she picked out his light blue long sleeved t-shirt against some rocks half way down the beach. He was just sitting there, his knees drawn up, his arms resting on them and apparently deep in thought. He seemed such a lonely figure and her heart jumped as it always did when she had the chance to observe him...especially when he didn't know he was being watched. There was something so quiet, so still about him that she found herself holding her breath as she watched him....
"You're right he's there, I think I might pop down and keep him company."
"Sure." replied Bob . "We won't be having dinner for at least an hour, you have plenty of time."
Sara slipped her sandals off when she reached the sand, the warm granules squirming through her toes as she stepped out towards the outcrop she had seen Michael on. He looked up when she was about thirty feet away,
"Hi..." but she could see he was still distracted by at something on the other side of the rocks.
She climbed up gingerly, the tide was coming in quickly now and the rocks he'd been sitting on were already damp with spray. She noticed a few flecks of water on his shirt and wondered how long he would have sat there...
Once she reached the top of the rocks she could see what had been taking his attention. Below him in the sand was a huge complex diagram, about twenty feet square. It seemed to be in code because she couldn't make sense of it, but once she realised the initials were either people or places the picture started to make a little more sense.
"Don't you have something similar to this back at the house?" she asked softly...
"I have most of this..I've just added a few more connections...it seemed easier down here somehow, more things made... more sense." and he shrugged, disturbed at his inability to describe what he had meant in a more satisfactory way.
She snaked her arm around his waist and he reciprocated by swinging his arm over her shoulders and gently pulling her closer.
"Do you think you've found a way?"
He nodded...
“I've found about three ways...I need to decide which has the best chance of success...just like at Fox River.”
"At Fox River, was the infirmary your first choice?" she asked, curious as always as to how his mind worked.
He shook his head "Hmm..no..." and he lifted his face to hers, wanting her to understand how his manipulation of her back then still weighed heavily on him.
"It was my second choice...my first plan was to escape through the sewers into the river, but when Linc's execution date was set for May, I knew the water levels would be too low as it ran into the river, we would have been visible for too much time as we made our way down and it may not have been deep enough to swim away...so..." pausing he picked a small pebble from a crevice in the rock and tossed it high into the sky, watching it land silently twenty yards beyond his sand drawing.
"Plan B?" Sara offered....
"..Yes Plan B, the infirmary...and you...." and he twisted his head round to stare deep into her eyes. They both smiled, and Sara leant her head on his shoulder giving in to the relaxing sensation of being so close to him, his warmth....
They turned back to his sand picture, and watched as the first few lazy waves dribbled onto it, immediately smoothing out the lines so carefully drawn...flattening the scratches until some were lost below the froth.
"Can you remember it?" asked Sara with just a little concern in her voice
"Yes, I'll remember this, its just a few changes to the one I have back at the house...a few but significant changes." and he turned back to see a more vigorous wave, several inches deep, encroach on the markings, obliterating several more square yards of it...
They stayed until the picture was completely erased by the ocean, then scrambled back down the rocks on the other side before being swamped themselves by the incoming tide. They laughed and joked as they ran back across the beach, running up the hill and reaching the Ranch sweaty and out of breath. They turned before entering, watching as the sun finally started to sink below the horizon, bathing the scene in the glorious deep oranges they had come to expect but were still enthralled by.
Michael took one last look, he knew they had almost finished the planning phase and soon he would have to put it into action. He knew the risks, they were definable, and huge. He once more felt that certain unwelcome heaviness in the pit of his stomach, a sense of expectation and dread at what was to come. He realised they had very few Pacific sunsets left to enjoy, soon he would have to head east and face his future.
TBC