Disclaimer: I don't own Prison Break, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, or Angel. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from Prison Break episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

A/N: Thanks to Imzadi for the review.

Claire H., yes, the phrase is normally seen as 'deus ex machina', which translates from the Latin as 'god from the machine'. Since here it is referring to the Oracle, who's female, I changed the spelling to 'dea ex machina' or the 'goddess from the machine'.

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T-bag had given them their riot. It was good to know that he could be counted on to do something even if he had to be manipulated into it, Michael thought as he turned and headed right back into the cell. Grabbing the sheet from Sucre's bunk, he turned to the man impersonating his cellmate. "You're coming with me."

"What?" Behind Lindsey, the cell door slid shut with a resounding clang. From beyond it came the sounds of the other prisoners yelling.

"I need you down there—it's a two man job." Judging from the noise, their fellow inmates weren't going to settle down anytime soon, but there was no way for Michael to tell how long it would be before the lockdown was lifted. It might be before chow tonight, or it might be days. It all depended on human factors that he knew deep down that he could never calculate properly. That was the problem with this plan: it relied too much on illogical humans. Would they react this way or that way? He could only guess and pray that luck would be on his side.

Getting assigned a cellmate who was desperate enough to get out that he'd help with the escape had been sheer luck. And then, when the switch (which Michael still didn't understand and wasn't quite sure he completely believed) between Sucre and this Lindsey person had happened, it had again been luck that Lindsey seemed to want to help him. He could have just as easily blown the whistle as soon as he saw the hole behind the toilet.

He yanked the sheet free of the thin mattress. "Let's hang a sheet."

"I thought you only did that when you and your cellie wanted to get…uh, friendly."

"Do you want to protect your prison rep, or do you want to get out of here?" He tossed the wadded up sheet to Lindsey and turned away. Retrieving his makeshift wrench from its hiding place and unscrewing the toilet from the wall was routine by now. The brightness of the light changed as it filtered through the 100-thread count sheet that Lindsey had just hung.

The air that behind the toilet, trapped in the narrow maintenance passage, was stifling and smelled mustier than normal. Michael crawled through first, then moved aside as Lindsey fit Sucre's broader shoulders through the narrow opening the wall.

"Aren't you worried about some repairman finding your little dog door?" Lindsey asked as Michael pulled the toilet back into place.

It settled against the cinderblocks with a dull clang. "Not really—most of this is access to the sewer and water lines from each cell to the mains. Unless there's a major plumbing problem, nobody's going to bother coming back here." He pointed up. "The wiring, heat, and AC run through the ceilings of the cells. The plumbing was all upgraded during the renovations that my firm oversaw, so there shouldn't be any problems until you and I are long gone."

"Sounds like you thought of everything," Lindsey muttered.

Michael led them down the narrow walkway. "Everything that I could ahead of time. There are holes in my plan—places where I have to play it by ear."

"That bothers you."

He nodded. A noise made him pause. Banging somewhere nearby—insistent but too irregular to be mechanical.

Lindsey stopped as well, cocking his head to the side as he listened. "T-bag wasn't in his cell when the doors shut. There were about twenty inmates still loose in the cell block."

Better twenty than all three hundred housed in A-wing. The COs would be able to gain control of twenty after they wore themselves out in the heat. Three hundred prisoners loose, though, was pure hell. Michael swallowed as he remembered the riot that had broken out not long after he arrived at Fox River. Someone had tossed him over the second floor rail, and he'd hit the concrete hard. Tear gas and toilet paper had filled the air as people rushed left in right, making it impossible to tell who had a shank and who didn't. Another inmate, Maytag, had died in Michael's arms after someone carelessly stabbed him in the heart on the stairs. All Michael had wanted to do was get a bolt Maytag had taken, that he needed to fashion his wrench… "Come on," he barked and pushed forward down the passage.