Disclaimer: I don't own Prison Break.
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"Goddamn mother-fucking son of a BITCH!"
Index cards hit the floor and went sliding across the hardwood.
The words weren't his. He'd borrowed them from Lincoln, but he doubted his brother would mind, seeing as how Michael was employing them to try and vent his frustration. To clear his head and try to see plainly the answer that had to be staring him in the face.
He just couldn't see it.
His hands scraped over his face and back over his stubbly hair. All his life, people had complimented him on his excellent memory. But it wasn't good enough. It wasn't perfect enough. No matter how often he studied the blueprints and news clippings arrayed on the wall in front of him, his memory wasn't perfect. There was always something he forgot: the exact position of the closet under the infirmary, the length of the pipe between his proposed drill site and the storage room, to say nothing of the Gordian knot of pipes beneath the Psych Ward…
The doorbell chimed, and Michael glanced down at the flashcards scattered across the floor at his feet. His little outburst had been childish in more than one way. More importantly, it did nothing to help Lincoln. He just had to calm down—the answer would present itself. It had to. Because Lincoln wasn't going to die.
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It was just his Chinese takeout at the door. Michael ordered the same thing from the same little restaurant around the corner every Friday night. Had been doing so ever since Lincoln had landed on Death Row. The delivery girl, however, was one he'd never seen before. A college student, or at least that's how old she looked. Her skin had that pasty whiteness he'd always associated with computer programmers and counterculture persons who were primarily nocturnal. The same sort of pale shade that his skin was slowly turning.
That wasn't what captured his eyes. No, those were drawn to the splotch of redness on her chest, just above the low collar of her shirt. Peeping out from behind the edges of her ratty, Army green vest was a tattoo of a hibiscus blossom. The shade of red was picked up again by her faded lipstick, his brain noted absently as he looked to her arms. What he had initially mistaken for shirt sleeves were tattoos.
He was staring, but Michael didn't care. An idea was forming—still nebulous—in the back of his mind as he stared. The solution was standing right before him. Like an answer to a prayer he didn't know he'd said.
"Deus ex machina." He wasn't sure if he said that aloud or not. It didn't matter. The lines of the design were already taking shape in the front of his mind. He'd take the plans and ink them into his skin. Every detail. He wouldn't have to memorize the blueprints—he'd just carry them in on his chest, arms, and back.
"Dude," the delivery girl said, giving him a look, "What the fuck?"
She snatched her tip from him and turned to go, giving him a glance at the black tribal markings on the back of her neck.
The central figure of the design would be an angel, he decided as he watched her stalk down the hall, in honor of this small miracle.