Lincoln smoked cigarette after cigarette, as he waited alone, at the appointed rendezvous place – a chalk-grey warehouse, framed by a parking lot that was empty but for bird droppings, the occasional empty bottle, half-hidden in a bush, and the cigarette butts that pooled at his feet with every passing minute.

There was nothing to do for Lincoln but smoke and walk in circles.

It was half past five, on the same Halloween night that had been to Lincoln like a never-ending roller coaster ride (going down and down and down). Two hours and a half before Sara met with Bagwell and his advisor in Paul Kellerman's office, and only a short while after she had dismissed him, having watched the video that gave the cell phone in his jean pocket such a detestable weight.

Whatever plans they were currently deliberating, Lincoln had wasted no time to come up with his own.

"I can fix this," he whispered, under his breath. His voice didn't really fight off the ambient gloom but filled the blackness of night with mad prayers. "I can fix this I can fix this I can fix this."

In the pocket of his leather jacket, the origami rose lay safe and warm, like a baby kitten he'd rescued from drowning.

Two and a half cigarettes elapsed before Lincoln at last saw Roland's car, making its way toward him. Maybe he wasn't late by more than five minutes.

But on that night of Halloween, time had taken on a brand-new attire, so it, too, was dressed like death, and far graver than all the trick-or-treating children.

"Jesus, Burrows," Roland sighed on seeing his friend, after he'd parked and slammed the door of his car shut. "You look like –"

"Don't even tell me."

Lincoln walked up to his friend, and hoped the graveness on his face would be enough to replace preliminary talk about what sort of a situation he was in.

Though Lincoln hadn't seen Roland since before he was sent to Fox River, the young man hadn't changed an inch, from his hairless cheeks to the lank black strands that framed his black-eyed face.

"You know that favor you owe me," Lincoln said, and didn't bother to specify which favor he was alluding to.

The latest one, he supposed, would be doing jail time rather than taking the cops' deal and giving them the name of his collaborators.

Roland's face didn't grow suddenly awkward – he hadn't driven all the way here, in the middle of the night, thinking Lincoln only wanted to catch up.

"Yeah."

Roland didn't exactly inspire the implacable confidence Lincoln favored in this sort of moment – when you've got a debt you pay it, you made a mistake, you fix it – but no shyness or hesitance to indicate he was going to look for a way out of this.

It was enough.

"I need you to hack someone."

Relief was evident on Roland's face. "Man, you actually had me nervous for a second –"

"Senator Theodore Bagwell." Lincoln didn't pause long enough for the dumb shock to give way to words. "We don't have much time. We have very little. What I need is for you to catch him saying something so bad it would disqualify him for president on the spot. Something that'd make our current president's pussy-speech scandal look trivial."

"Linc –"

"I don't know anyone who can handle machines like you do, Roland." Flattery was cheap, but it worked on the kid. Lincoln couldn't afford to waste any chances. "How many are there, in the country? A handful? Most of them are government recruits, so I can't very well go to them about this, can I? It's not a small favor. But it's smaller than what you owe."

"A Senator, Linc? I could go to jail. I could get killed, for Christ's sake."

"They won't trail it back to you. They can't. And if they catch me, you know I won't talk."

Roland considered this, for a while – not really what Lincoln was asking for, but every single other option he might have. Lincoln watched as they passed bleakly by his frantic eyes.

"Oh, fuck. Fuck."

"It needs to be bad." Lincoln said again. "Apart from that, I don't care what. The nastiest, the better."

Lincoln didn't have too clear an idea just what material Roland could get from behind his laptop, inside his tiny, roach-infested apartment, if he still lived in that shit hole where he'd invited Lincoln over for a beer some couple of years ago.

Could he access every single phone conversation Senator Bagwell had had this year? Sure, they told you there were no such records, but wasn't it just safer for you to think so, to think the words you spoke into your cell phone just disappeared into some black vacuum that would never be brought up by anyone again? Could the camera eye on your laptop look at you, if someone was really trying for it – could they catch you wandering off to the shower naked, saying vile things as you can only say to an empty apartment, banging prostitutes, practicing a Nazi salute?

What did Lincoln know about Bagwell's life? The little bastard sure looked like a man who has secrets. People who make it so far in a presidential race often do – secrets far worse than a hidden lover.

Lincoln forced the lid back on his guilt, thick black bubbles bursting closer and closer to the surface.

Later, if this doesn't work, there'll be nothing but time for self-pity.

"If you got qualms about this, I'm sorry." Lincoln said. "I can't tell you why he deserves it. You'll just have to take my word for it that he does – and it's for a right cause."

That meant nothing to Roland, of course. Or next to nothing.

Right or wrong didn't always come into the balance.

But Lincoln wanted to put all the odds into his favor.

Or maybe he just wanted to hear himself say the words. It's for a right cause.

Redemption's a long, long way to crawl.

"All right." Roland said. Again, he lacked in firmness but wasn't completely on the wobbly side either. "When do you need it? Before the election, I assume. Are we talking a couple of days –"

"I need it yesterday." Lincoln cut in. "Today will have to do."

Roland's Adam apple traveled up and down his throat like a small rock he'd tried to swallow. Still, he didn't protest or negotiate. "Okay."

"Call me when you've got anything. And –"

"I got it. The badder, the better."

Lincoln gave a grim nod.

When Roland had disappeared back into his car, for the sake of high spirits, he tested the words out loud again, "It's for a right cause."

The sky outside the window was full black as Michael made it back to his apartment, no hints of dawn. Though exhaustion was surely sawing at his brain (rusty, smiling pain), Michael didn't rush to bed, didn't make hot coffee, didn't do anything that would break the bubble of nightmarish wonders that whirled about him.

A vague protest in the young man's chest, tightening in on itself, urged that he should wake up –

But Michael felt rather like in one of those dreams that take on truer, if blacker, colors than reality, and he was unsure whether his current state was a fading delusion, or if he had merely been asleep until now, all his life.

Those average but pleasant thirty years of life, work and charity and Lincoln and then Sara, Sara who undid every well-set plan, who had brought him to the edge of a steep precipice where a sea of terrors raged on below in apocalyptic battle (my world's a jungle, Michael), Sara, whose very first smile as they met in that charity center had been like a revolution, and there had been nothing for Michael to do but bend the knee, surrender.

Yes, oh yes, darling, wife, queen. This man here is your conquered property, to take, to live in, to plunder, to do with as you wish.

He had loved her before there were words in his mouth to say hello.

He had loved her before he could think to call it love, this blasting defeat, the hopelessness of all resistance.

Michael stood hesitant for a while, in the hall of his apartment. The everydayness of his surroundings disturbed his new unreal reality, where there was no Sara, no Lincoln – nothing but plain old Michael, and those thorny thoughts that embrace the brain before sleep.

He walked in darkness to his living room, past the light switch, without taking off his coat or shoes. Night cloaked his apartment with unfamiliarity, the well-known objects vague outlines and figures. Finally, Michael sat, at ease in this uncanny environment, as if behind the skin, he, too, had been reduced to shapes and shadows.

"What's wrong with you?"

Michael didn't usually speak to himself, but tonight was different.

(It's not every night your brother stabs you in the heart)

Reason hadn't completely deserted him. Michael tried to think, to follow logical courses of reflection – how to get out of this, what to do – but all he came back to, when he tried to untangle himself from those black cobwebs that clawed at him with all their might, the only thing that Michael's mind would rest on, was that first meeting with Sara, in the back of the center, that sudden silence that penetrated his heart, even as Charles and the others went on chatting undisturbed.

Maybe that was the answer to his problem, strange as it sounds.

Why did I love her?

Michael's fingernails sank hard into his thighs, through the fabric of his jeans.

All his life, he'd seen and been appalled at the injustice of the world –

Yes, but what can you do about that? Might as well protect your own, do good on the small scale rather than face those grinning Giants who own the world, and who'll crush your soul if they can't own it. Prefer shadow to the spotlight.

But then, Sara.

Sara who fought the monsters, who tore them apart with the universal truth of her words, who would win even if they beat her.

Was that what it had meant?

That his love for her had felt like immediate, irremediable conquest…

Had he loved her on sight and known at once that she could never love him back, because they had built their lives in different worlds?

I told her it was enough, for us to love each other in the shadows, to save the light for later.

It wasn't enough, now, as Michael sat alone, sickened with every inch of himself.

But my brother ruined her, ruined us, and I sat there and did nothing, said nothing.

Time passed. How much was indeterminable, except that it was still pitch-black outside the window.

Finally, without it looking like the action was prompted by anything particular, Michael got to his feet. Walking. Pacing. Not in aimless circles – no. His mind was teeming with the life of great designs that required careful preparation.

It didn't matter that Michael had studied not law but engineering, or that he had chosen to be a looker-on for most of his life, chosen contemplation to action.

Now was as good a time as any for a change of course.

Michael only knew that because he had sat, a helpless witness to the destruction of his own life and happiness – he would never be passive in the face of injustice again.

Then, as if the brewing influx of thoughts had suddenly become too much for the young man's brain, Michael threw himself on a pen and paper, bent over his desk, started writing it all down, until his project was a thick stack of ink-scrawled sheets.

He was not happy, or hopeful, but he had drawn up his weapons against despair – he was joining Sara's universe.

Whether she would like it or not never entered his brain.

It was the only thing he could do to live with himself – to live with what had happened.

Some great things may still follow that terrible event.

In his head, Michael saw Sara's smile again, that smile that had undone him – Welcome to the jungle, my love. Welcome.

It might have been the tiredness.

End Notes: Please share your thoughts. Comments are welcome. I'd love to know your theories about what will happen.