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: I posted chapters 18 & 19 concurrently, so if the last chapter you read wasn't from Michael's POV, you missed chapter 18.
-----
Scofield stood in front of a blank concrete wall, deep within the bowels of the prison. It looked like every other wall in the godforsaken place, Lindsey mused as sweat poured down his face and back. His white undershirt was already soaked clear through.
"Somewhere on the other side of this wall is the main drainage pipe to the prison's old sewer system. If we can get through this wall, we can get into the pipe. If we can get into the pipe, we can get to the infirmary. And if we can get to the infirmary, then we can get out of here."
He looked so confident, standing with his hands in his pockets as he explained the next step in the plan of escape, that Lindsey couldn't help but smile. Maybe Scofield wasn't off his rocker after all.
-----
Cass had adopted her 'Sucre's Sister' disguise but had barely made it through security before the guards started telling her she had to leave.
"There's a minor disturbance in A-wing, ma'am," the guard said as he took her arm and steered her back towards the door. "It's for your safety."
"My brother's in A-wing!" she protested, yanking her elbow out of his hand. "What's going on?"
"He's fine," the guard said even though they both knew that he had no way of knowing. "Come back tomorrow, and you'll probably be allowed to see him."
The Oracle bit back an oath of frustration as she allowed herself to be herded back out into the parking lot. As soon as she reached the cars, she threw her wicker purse with its bamboo handles on to the pavement. Cosmetics she'd never even looked at, much less used, bounced out and rolled under a nearby pickup truck with a 'Git 'er Done' bumper sticker. She'd left a very delicate situation in LA to come out here and deal with this, and she couldn't even get in the fucking building. Not to mention, she hadn't spoken to either Lorne or Anya since she'd sent them through the portal to Houston. If Gabriel knew what was going on, he'd have all her cases pulled and bounce her right back to the ranks. There was no way she was going back to being a foot soldier, even if she hadn't bothered to return her sword.
She wasn't the only one being given the boot, she realized as she watched a man and a woman—both dressed in drab professional clothing similar to what Anya and Lorne were wearing as part of their lawyer disguises—come out of the building. The man headed straight to the car, but the woman stopped and looked across the parking lot at Cass.
For a moment, their eyes met, and a tingle shot down the Oracle's spine. I'll see her again. She didn't know how she knew…she just did.
The man called out to the woman, and she turned away. Connection broken, Cass wondered if she had really felt anything after all as she watched the two drive away in separate cars.
Shaking herself, she looked down at the purse on the pavement. "So, they think they can keep me out of the prison, huh? Well, looks like I'll just have to get another body."
-----
Either some maintenance man had left a very large horde of tools and equipment conveniently next to their target wall, or Scofield had been scurrying around the prison after hours snitching stuff. Lindsey watched as his cellmate hung a work lamp from a carefully adjust stand and draped what looked like an aluminum foil air filter with tissue paper taped to it over the light bulb. "That's one big pile of concrete. How do you know where the pipe is?" he asked the supposed structural engineer turned bank robber.
"We've got someone to show us where it is," Scofield answered cryptically as he lowered the tissue paper into place and clicked on the light.
An image was cast across Lindsey's chest and the wall behind him, and he looked down to see a set of angry looking eyes projected over his heart. Stepping clear, he turned to see a snarling image of a devil with pointy teeth and a curling beard covering the area Scofield had been pointing to earlier when he discussed drilling into the pipe. It looked suspiciously like part of the other man's tattoo, and Lindsey suddenly knew what Michael had been doing with the tissue paper while the rest of the inmates were stewing in their own juices. He'd been tracing part of the tattoo. Clever kid.
-----
The doctor was in the house, and the Oracle was in the doctor. Unfortunately, wherever Sara Tancredi currently was, it wasn't the recognizable infirmary, though there were plenty of medical supplies as well as sick and injured prisoners scattered about.
Cass opened the door that led from the room with the prisoners to what appeared to be a private office, complete with reinforced glass windows through which the patients could be observed. Carefully, she closed the door behind her and heard the lock click automatically into place.
Moving out of sight of the windows, she leaned up against a counter and closed her eyes, forcing herself to concentrate despite the heat. As a Higher Power, she could sense her charges' presence if they were within a few miles from her location as well as any obviously mystical beings, like vampires, witches, etc. unless they were taking special measures to cloak themselves. It took concentration and gave her one hell of a migraine (and her head was already throbbing from earlier), but she need to find Lindsey.
Fox River's aura was almost slimy with pain and evil, no surprise there. She'd been in Hell dimensions that were worse. However, this place seemed remarkably magic-free. Pushing her way through the astral equivalent of a peat bog, she tried to focus on particularly strong energy signatures. The first one she lighted on was a…witch's familiar? That made no sense, but she pressed on, praying that she wasn't somehow screwing this up. This was Human Resources mojo, and as such, she was fairly new at using it.
The next thing that popped up on her mystical radar made her swear. "Shit," she hissed through her teeth. There was a demon in the building. She didn't remember the name of the particular demon species, but they had a ring of small horns around the top of their head that made them look like a cross between a humanoid and a dinosaur. They were also infamous as muscles-for-hire. "What's he doing here?" He seemed to be moving towards another—much dimmer—presence. Some sort of latent talent—she couldn't tell what. "And who is he hunting?"
Lindsey was her first priority. She couldn't afford to get distracted, not any more than she already was. Stretching out her senses even further, she finally found him, far removed from everyone else, another latent working beside him. "That must be Scofield," Cass murmured as she opened her eyes and let the intangible energy signatures slip out of her consciousness.
Time to go play doctor.
One of her gloves didn't seem to be on right, and she had her head down, fussing with it as she opened the door and stepped back into the sick bay. Big mistake.
The guard—the only other prison employee in sight—was laid out on the floor. Behind her, she sensed movement and spun, coming face-to-face with black man almost a foot taller than her borrowed body. "What's up, doc?" he sneered, his eyes roaming predatorily down to her chest.
'Shit' did not even begin to cover it.