Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Prison Break. I do not make any profit from this. Please, don't sue me. I got nothing. In fact, the IRS currently wants part of my nothing, so you'll have to get in line.

Author's Note: The information on low-latent inhibition came from a Harvard Magazine article called "Ideas Rain In", which can be found online as well. Type "low-latent inhibition" into Google and scroll down until you see Harvard Magazine in the URL. The lyrics Sucre / Lindsey belts out towards the end are from "Sweet Carolina Rain" by Kane, the country music band fronted by Christian Kane (the actor who plays Lindsey).

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Michael Scofield was a man who noticed things. In fact, he noticed too much. "Low-latent inhibition" is what the psychologists called it. It meant that he took in too many details from his environment; he was unable to discriminately ignore stimuli. If he had been any less intelligent, the doctors had told him on more than one occasion, he would have simply been swamped by all the data his brain tried to process. IQ was a sort of shield that allowed him to function. But, as he had been told by the last psychotherapist, it did not mean he was protected against psychosis. Many of the greatest minds in history were credited with low-latent inhibition. Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and developed the theory of gravity. He also was a manic depressant who suffered at least one complete breakdown. Michael was starting to wonder if maybe he too were going crazy.

It was Sucre that was making him think this. Ever since the Hispanic man had moved back into Michael's cell, there had just been something…off about him. Everything from the way he talked—which was now curiously unaccented—to the way Sucre moved around the cell was different. There were, however, two things—tiny things…miniscule really—that were bothering Michael the most.

First was that when Michael had mentioned the name of Sucre's fiancée in the yard, there had been the briefest moment of incomprehension on the other man's face as if he didn't recognize the name 'Maricruz'. Strange, especially for a man who talked about his fiancée constantly until Michael felt he knew her personally even though he'd never had the chance to meet her.

Second was the cross that had suddenly appeared around Sucre's wrist. Both it and the chain (designed to go around a neck, not a wrist) were made of silver and of fairly plain, utilitarian design. The problem with the cross was that it was a cross, not a crucifix. Sucre was devote Roman Catholic—he and Maricruz were supposedly going to have to have their marriage within the Catholic Church—and the religious jewelry he wore was a crucifix, not the plain cross associated more frequently with Protestantism. The crucifix Michael was used to seeing still hung from its chain around Sucre's dark neck—it caught the light and flashed as the man bent down to splash water on his face.

Michael, sitting on the bottom bunk, glanced down at his black plastic watch. The last of the inmates were being brought back from supper. They needed to hang a sheet and get to work if he wanted to get tonight's digging done before the count. Having Haywire—the bona fida psycho who never slept—as a cellmate, however briefly, had set them back several days behind schedule. The thought made Michael's head hurt more than the slight throbbing from the lump where he had smashed his face against the cell bars. It had been a desperate move—desperate enough that when the COs had shown up, they'd automatically assumed that Haywire had done the bashing, not Michael, and carted the other man back off to the ward with the rest of the crazies.

At the sink, Sucre was carefully squeezing toothpaste out onto his brush. Another thing out of character—normally he wasn't nearly as tidy, getting some in the bowl of the sink that Michael would clean away later. "You never answered my question," the short Hispanic man said before sticking the toothbrush in his mouth.

"About what?" Michael looked back down at his watch as he heard the doors to the cells in the block above them begin to slam shut. Three more minutes and he needed to start unbolting the sink.

"I asked if you'd ever been in love." The question came out around the toothbrush.

"I've dated," Michael replied absently. He scooted off the bunk, pulling the sheet free behind him. It only took a few seconds to string it up so it blocked off the back of the cell from the view of the entire cell block. Sure, the other inmates were going to assume he and Sucre were having sex, but the digging was more important than his reputation among the prisoners. From underneath his mattress, he retrieved the bolt he'd shaped into a make-shift allen wrench and went to work loosening the bolts that held the toilet to the wall.

Sucre stepped back, toothbrush tucked forgotten into the corner of his mouth, as he watched Michael remove the bolts and set them aside one-by-one. Once they were all free, he pulled the toilet out and away and surveyed the state of the cinderblock wall behind it. He'd managed to dig out most of the concrete holding the blocks together before Haywire had been transferred into the cell—he should be able to break through tonight. "Hey, Sucre, do me a favor," he said, "I need you to make noise—a lot of noise."

"Why?"

Michael gave him a leveled look of exasperation. "I'm going to kick the blocks out. It's going to make a lot of noise. We don't want the guards to come looking to see what caused the racket."

Sucre looked from the wall with its chunks of missing concrete to the sheet that was blocking their view of the rest of the prison. "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know…think of something," Michael said as he took a couple of last scrapes at the concrete between two of the blocks.

Sucre ducked under the sheet and a moment later Michael heard him clear his throat. "'It gets wetter and when spring rolls along...'" It wasn't very loud, but it got a shout of "Shut the fuck up!" from the inmates next door. Sucre cleared his throat again. "'It's hotter than hell than when we met last fall / It gets better and better every time we touch…'" He was singing louder now, and more and more of the inmates were starting to get irritated. It sounded as if Sucre wasn't used to singing…at least not with his voice. He kept reaching for notes and then making odd little squeaks when he didn't quite make them. Michael frowned, the tip of his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth. He pulled his foot back, poised to kick.

"'A sticky situation we're in / We're trapped in the car and it's raining again'!" Sucre sang, having given up on being on-key and now just belting it out at the top of his lungs. Beyond the sheet, the angry murmurings were turning into a dull roar as more and more of the prisoners shouted at him to stop. Michael slammed his foot against the weakened section of the wall once…twice…

On the third try, right as the floor alarm went off, the cinderblocks caved. Michael paused—with the walls ringing with the sounds of angry prisoners there was no way the noise had been noticed. He poked his head through the new-made hole and couldn't help but smile as he glanced up and down the narrow tunnel along which the inner workings—plumbing, sewer, gas, electricity—ran.

"Next inmate that opens his mouth goes in the hole!" he heard Bellick shout from somewhere beyond the sheet. The roar of the mob started to die away in response.

Michael scooted back out of the hole and swung the toilet back into place, hurriedly screwing the bolts back on before the COs came by. When he was finished, he rose, yanking the sheet down after tucking the allen wrench back into its hiding place. Sucre had stopped singing and was now just leaning against the bars of the cell, arms folded over his chest, as he gazed off across the cell block.

"I have a question for you," Michael said, wiping the concrete dust from his hands off on his pants.

Sucre turned and looked at him. The look on his face was, for the most part, expressionless, though there was something mournful lurking in his eyes. Yet again, Michael got the feeling that he was looking into the eyes of a completely different man from the one who'd welcomed him "to Prisneyland" on his first day at Fox River. This man wasn't animated enough to Fernando Sucre. Even though Sucre had been in for roughly seven years, there was some part of him that hadn't hardened and been made jaded by life behind bars. Or so Michael had thought. Something very bad had happened to Sucre during his brief stay in the other cell, or…or Michael was going crazy.

"Sure," Sucre prompted him. "What?"

Third thing: Sucre hadn't called him "Fish" once since getting back. That was three things—three very small, but very key things, to the other man's character that weren't ringing true, and Michael had just knocked a whole in the wall behind him. If things had changed as drastically as he was thinking they had with Sucre, then he needed to know now, before any more of the escape plan could potentially be compromised.

"Ok then," Michael said, locking eyes with the other man. "Who the hell are you and just what the fuck happened to Fernando Sucre?"