HAUNTED SONA

CHAPTER 4

It felt like an hour had passed before anyone spoke again. There the three of them stood, barely breathing or moving, peering down that dingy, damp hallway at an eerie sight. Alex Mahone looked from Michael to Bellick, waiting for one of those guys to open his mouth. When neither did, he slapped a hand at his side.

"Well?" he prompted impatiently. "What're we doing?"

Bellick turned to him, eyeing him as if he'd lost his mind. "What? You're not thinking of going any closer, are you?"

"Why are you whispering? You afraid the spooks will hear us?" Mahone sneered at Michael. "What about you? You afraid of Sona's ghouls, too?"

"I don't believe in ghosts," Michael countered matter-of-factly.

"Believe in them or not," Bellick said, pointing at the brilliant light coming from the doorway. "You can't tell me that's natural."

"I can't say it's not, either," Michael told him. "Like I can't say for certain that this isn't some kind of trap."

After a brief lull in their conversation, Mahone asked, "Why would it be a trap? Think about it. If any of those goons wanted to do something to us, they're perfectly able to do it upstairs, without all this—this hocus pocus crap."

Bellick lowered his head. "Yeah. They can do anything they want to us without—without all this."

Alex regarded the former prison guard. He didn't want to ask exactly what had happened to the man. He had an imagination; he had a pretty good idea.

Patting Bellick's shoulder, he said, "I say we check this out. Unless you guys are scared."

"I am. I'm scared," Bellick admitted. "I do believe in ghosts. I've been through enough here. I don't need creepy lights coming from doorways, too."

Michael drew a deep breath. "I'm game. I'm also curious."

"Yeah. Me, too." Alex raised his chin and smiled, but it was no gesture of friendship.

That was a challenge.

"Curiosity killed the cat," Bellick reminded them.

"True. Then again," Michael paused, adding, "cats have nine lives. Be a shame not to sacrifice one of them in the name of exploration."

"Oh, yeah. That's us," Mahone tossed back sarcastically. "The big explorers. We're just a pair of Lewis and Clarks, you and me, Mikey."

"You're—uh, no, please," Bellick implored. "Mahone, Scofield, come on. Please don't go down there. Something's gonna happen to you two if you do."

"Something's already happened to us," Michael said. "It's all right. You go on back. We'll be okay."

Something's already happened to us. You happened to me, Mahone thought. And, damn, do I ever rue that day!

"Look, Scofield, I don't know how to say this. But if anything happens to you and Mahone, that leaves me and T-Bag." Bellick stopped to steady his voice. "That means I got nobody in here. All I got is you two."

Mahone sighed and looked away, pursing his lips. All this togetherness was making him queasy. Though, deep down, he understood what Brad Bellick was saying. Exactly what he was saying.

Michael seemed to be handling it much better than he was. "That's okay. Nothing's going to happen to us. You want to come with us, you're more than welcome. But if you can't, then you go on back. We shouldn't take too long."

Mahone scratched behind his ear and took a step back, offering Bellick a nod. The man didn't look pleased, but he appeared to accept the situation.

"Just be careful," Bellick told them. Then he turned and, with one last glance over his shoulder, disappeared back down the hall and around the corner.

"The light's dying down."

Snapping back around, Alex saw what Michael was talking about. The light flooding from the doorway was still there but fading in intensity.

"Wonder what that means?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. This is my first encounter with a haunted prison."

Mahone tried to swallow quietly so Michael couldn't hear him gulp as they neared the doorway. Truth be told, he did believe in ghosts. Silly as it may be, he, Alexander Mahone, a grown man, military veteran and big, bad federal agent, believed in things that go bump in the night.

He'd be damned before he admitted that to Michael Scofield, however. He could barely 'fess up to it to himself. But he knew there were such things as ghosts.

Because this wasn't the first time he'd encountered one.

"Wow. A door with a light coming out of it," he said pleasantly, standing with Michael right outside it. "Spooooo-ky. Well—let's go."

"It's not just a door. It's an elevator. Let's go in. Not afraid to…are you, Alex?"

Slightly, he wavered under Scofield's unblinking gaze. If he needed his pills before, he needed them now even more. Every inch of his body screamed for one lousy little hit.

"No, I'm not afraid. See?" Brushing past the younger man, with long strides of his legs, he entered the elevator. He even jumped once, for good measure. "Step in, ladies and gentleman. Ladies' lingerie, fourth floor!"

Ignoring him, Michael frowned and followed him in. Both of the looked around at the walls surrounding them. As far as elevators went, that one was a claustrophobic's nightmare. The car was large, the walls covered by dirty canvas, and old, like one of those elevators found in buildings that dated back several decades and were close to being condemned. A freight elevator, specifically.

"I don't know about this," Michael remarked. "Does this make sense to you, Alex?"

"What?"

"An elevator. I mean, how weird is that? A freight elevator. Why would you need a freight elevator in this place?"

"Beats me. To transport the body bags, maybe?" Mahone wasn't being sardonic now. That was an honest guess, albeit a morbid one. "Wonder what they needed Otis for?"

Michael chuckled. He seemed surprised to see Mahone grinning back at him.

"You really pissed me off that day," Alex said, recalling the whole Otis-slash-LJ fiasco during which Scofield and Burrows almost ended up pulling a fast one on him.

"Ah, yes, but you have to admit: You were impressed."

"Yeah. Whatever." Alex shrugged. Then, looking up, he gasped. "No, no—"

With a resounding slam, the elevator's doors slid shut behind Michael. His calm expression evaporated, along with the color in his face.

"Open, open, open!" he mumbled, pushing the buttons on the control panel, and they both tried to pry the doors open with their fingers to no avail.

Above them the light flickered twice and began to die out.

"What's happening?" Alex asked.

The car jerked vehemently, nearly knocking the men off their feet. And then the elevator, carrying its hostages, began its slow descent deeper down into the earth beneath Sona.

Brad Bellick avoided making eye contact as he walked into the populated area of the prison. He couldn't sleep; there was something about being awakened by the undead that worked better than caffeine, in that respect. Yet he would pretend to be asleep if he had to, if it meant saving himself from being assaulted again.

When he passed Lechero's lair he picked up his gait as best he could, though the limp didn't make it easy. He didn't want to chance accidentally falling into Lechero's line of fire, if he could help it.

By contrast, they'd been nice to him. They, as in Scofield and Mahone. Scofield had spoken gently to him and Mahone had gone so far as to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. That was nice.

Oh, he wasn't fooling himself. Brad knew those guys had no intentions of getting chummy-chummy with him. Guys like Mahone didn't toss back a few beers while watching a hockey game with guys like him. Mahone's type of man considered guys like Brad to be underlings. Never, ever their intellectual or social equals.

Will you be my dog, Brad?

He winced at the recollection of those words. Honestly, he'd given Scofield enough reason to mistrust and hate him—and that was an understatement. But even if he hadn't, Brad wasn't kidding himself. He knew he had nothing at all in common with Michael Scofield. Scofield was the sort of man who worked hard and lived well. He was also good-looking and bright and, something that was rare these days, he put others—those he loved—before himself.

Scofield could win the heart of someone like Sara Tancredi. Sara was a good, decent woman. Not like the trailer-trash princesses Brad had occasionally gotten to notice him. When they were drunk enough. Anyway, Michael Scofield was the type of man a woman like that looked more than twice at. A decent man with something to offer.

In other words, he was the kind of man Brad only wished he could be.

Finding his usual corner, he crouched down and tried to make himself comfortable. If he could have, he would have made himself invisible. He said a silent prayer that they'd leave him alone tonight…the living, not the dead, of Sona.

Sara. Now why'd he have to go and bring her up? He'd liked Sara, thought she was cute. Hell, he'd known her before she'd started working at Fox River. He was the one who'd given her the recommendation.

Brad rolled over onto his side, feeling achy and out of sorts. He was also anxious for Scofield and Mahone, hoping they were all right. Outside of his mother, he couldn't remember the last time he'd cared about someone else's well-being besides his own. More than a twinge of shame burned in him.

But…back to Sara. Naturally, she didn't see him as a desirable man. She probably wouldn't have wanted him, even if they were the last two people on earth. Could he really blame her? Pretty, smart, and a doctor to boot. The odds were better for him to win the lottery than to win her love. No, Sara would never look at him the way looked at Scofield.

But how he wished some woman would. That wasn't the first time he'd felt so alone. It was just that here in Sona, loneliness was so acute, so strong, much crueler than anywhere else he'd been before. He was reduced to begging for friendship from a man he'd wronged miserably and a man who'd used him.

"Por favor, dime, donde esta mi hijo? Dime, por favor…"

Brad opened his eyes. A female voice, too plaintive and soft to be frightening. Still, it managed to send chills through him. Even if women were permitted in there at that hour, he knew—strangely enough, he knew—that it was no earthly woman speaking.

"Busco mi hijo. Por favor, ayudame, caballeros!"

Hugging himself to stop the shivers, he stared at the ceiling. Maybe it was just his imagination. That could be it, right?

He wanted fiercely to believe that. But then he though back to Mahone and Scofield staying behind to investigate that mysterious elevator, and he realized that in Sona, anything was possible.

Footsteps now. No more Spanish uttered in desperate tones. Just a woman's footsteps falling lightly against the stone floor. Could he be mistaken? Maybe it was a real-life, flesh-and-blood woman out there? One of Lechero's whores?

Against his better judgment, Brad rose to his feet. If Scofield and Mahone could approach that elevator, he could check out something simple like footsteps several feet away in the hallway. Couldn't he? Hopefully he wasn't that much of a big coward.

Except he stepped out into the corridor in time to see T-Bag, there slumped on the floor. Head down, arms wrapped around his knobby knees, his bare feet filthy and bloodied.

And there, at the end of the hall, an older woman, her salt-and-pepper hair drawn up in a bun and a tattered shawl draped around her shoulders, walked briskly until she disappeared into the wall at the end of the hall.

"Mi hijo, mi hijo! My son, my son!"

Brad twirled around so rapidly, he almost lost his balance. That was the woman's voice, all right.

But it was coming out of T-Bag's mouth.

"I'm looking for my son, please! Busco mi hijo, busco mi hijo!"

"Oh, no," Brad rasped under his breath. "Oh, no, oh, my God…"

He backed up against the wall. It was as if he had temporarily forgotten how to breathe.

T-Bag was looking straight at him as his lips curled into the most fiendish sneer Brad had ever seen. His eyes were dark and empty, souless, like the eyes of a shark.

And then, right before Brad's eyes, T-Bag climbed the wall and dangled upside-down from the ceiling…