4 Years Ago
She doesn't remember their last kiss half as clearly as she remembers the last time he wrapped her hand inside his.
The car smelled like the caramels Michael kept popping into his mouth. She was driving. One hand on the wheel, the other on her lap, and when he squeezed it she looked away from the road and he smiled.
"Is now a good time to tell you you look kinda hot when you're nervous?"
Her husband's smile was contagious. She knew what he was doing. Every time they went on a mission, when it was about to get real, he turned to humor.
That was what worked for her. She couldn't handle, This is gonna be all right, and he'd known her too long not to know that.
"I'm not nervous," she said.
"Well, it's an honest mistake. You look hot when you're not nervous as well."
"It must be super confusing."
"We all have our crosses to bear."
She squeezed his fingers. In times like these, she couldn't remember why they weren't living in some sunny paradise, making up for all the adrenaline and risking their lives they'd gone through already.
But they'd seen too much wrong, too much corruption, to just sit back in selfish bliss.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Maybe when they were in their late sixties. Even vigilantes retire.
At the harbor, Mahone greeted them with a nod. Daryl was there, too, already in his wetsuit. "Took you guys long enough. You honeymooned on the way?"
Michael sighed. With Daryl around, she could tell what kind of a father he'd become someday. Though Daryl was only a couple of years younger than Michael, he was their newest recruit. Like everyone in the team, he'd been through more than his share of wrongs. Going after the rotten apples that pulled the strings of society wasn't enough for him. He did it with a vengeance.
Next to Michael, he looked like a young pup barking to pick a fight with an older, wearier wolf.
"That's right," Sara said. Daryl took kinder to her. As a woman, she mustn't look like his idea of an authority figure.
Daryl scoffed, and put on his diving mask. "You ain't ready in five minutes, Scofield, I'm going without you."
Michael peeled off his shirt. He'd changed into his own wetsuit at their last stop for gas.
In the meantime, Mahone handed her earbuds, so she'd be able to communicate with Michael and Daryl from the shore. His own already peaked out of his greying hair. Instead of mics, which would be as good as damned underwater, Michael and Daryl placed a microchip on their back molars, and over their eyes, what looked like contact lenses but actually worked as cameras. Waterproof devices, curtesy of their informatics guy.
"We all know what we're supposed to do?" Alex said.
Sara bit on a smile. Mahone's years spent directing FBI agents were showing. He could never let the team go without going over the goals one last time.
Michael halted on his way to putting on his diving mask, much to Daryl's displeasure. "We go aboard the ship, photograph the evidence."
"Evidence," Daryl slipped off his mask to spit on the ground. "That's people you're talking about, Scofield."
"I know that," Michael didn't lose patience. "I meant, evidence of wrongdoing—"
"Yeah, yeah."
"No playing hero up there," Alex said, eyes on Daryl. "I mean, not any more than we already are."
Sara couldn't deny how frustrating that felt. There had to be at least fifty political prisoners on that boat, some three hundred yards from the shore. Not one of them had gotten a fair trial, and they were being treated no better than if this were Guantanamo. It didn't help that the public didn't even know this place existed—at least, not yet.
"You don't draw attention," Alex said. "You don't break open cages. You just–"
"Take pictures. Evidence," Daryl repeated the word like it was a mouthful of bogeys. "While Mr. Genius hacks the security system," he slammed Michael on the shoulder. "I know."
Michael stiffened at the contact. "We've gotta talk boundaries someday."
"Sara and I will cover for you if things go south." Alex handed her a gun, and she hated the feel of it in her palm. Never mind that it only shot tranquilizer darts. Nonviolence was at the heart of all their operations.
"You'll be careful," she told Michael.
He flashed her the smile that had snatched her heart in Fox River. "Always."
He kissed her on the lips. Just a peck. He was never a fan of PDA.
"All right, all right," Daryl said. "It's not like we got shit to do or anything."
Michael put on his diving mask, and they dropped into the water. Maybe he winked at her before going in. Maybe it was just his mask catching the sun.
They were both good swimmers, and in no more than ten minutes, Michael's voice into her ear: "We're in."
A thrill went down Sara's spine. They know the guards' schedule by heart, she told herself. There's no way they'll run into anyone. Her husband was too careful for that.
"Jesus," Daryl's voice. "This place is fucking Alcatraz."
While Daryl was getting footage, Michael made his way to the computers. Not just to open all the right doors for Daryl, but to get his hands on as much information as possible. This ship-penitentiary had the government's fingerprints all over it, and exposing it to the light of day was going to be a lot easier if they could point to specific names.
Mahone shook his head, and Sara put on the contacts so she could see what Daryl was seeing. The camera device inside the lenses functioned like he was making a video call directly from inside the boat. The state of the prisoners made her take a step back. She had to catch herself on the railing above the water.
Skin on bones, eyes bulging from their skulls. The men—for they were all men—packed as many as four in a cell smaller than their dining table at HQ. Most had their eyes closed, looked only like a tangle of limbs on the floor. But Sara caught sight of a few blurred eyes that skimmed over Daryl without seeing him.
"They're drugged out of their minds," Sara said.
"Must keep them docile."
Sara licked her lips, taking in everything Daryl was seeing. Something was wrong. What exactly, she couldn't put her finger on.
She checked her watch. Ten to midnight. At this time, the guards on watch would be drinking, playing their game of cards to a replay of the best duets by Louis Armstrong and Elsa Fitzgerald—even bad people could like good jazz.
The jazz.
Sara tapped her earbud, to make sure she was hearing Daryl right. "Daryl," she said, "do you hear anything?"
He groaned. "I hear you plenty."
"The songs. You should hear music playing."
Sara turned to Alex. His eyes flicked to her, alert.
"Wait," Daryl's voice, as he zoomed in on the cells. "There's something on them. Shit. It's all over the floor." He crouched, touched his fingers to the ground.
"Don't," she said. "It could be toxic."
"I don't smell anything, with the mask."
"You got the footage, Daryl," Mahone said. "Now, get the hell out."
Sara switched to Michael. All she saw with his eyes was a computer screen. He was copying data from their computer to a flash drive. "How much longer?" she asked.
"I don't know." His voice tense with frustration. "I can't find anything, Sara. This is weird. It's like the whole thing's been wiped clean."
The hairs on Sara's neck bristled. She grabbed Mahone's arm before she could help herself. "They're destroying the evidence."
"What?"
"This whole ship is a smoking gun for the government," she said. "They're going to erase every shred of proof that it ever existed. Get out of here, Michael. Now."
A splash in the distance, as Daryl jumped from the deck into the water.
Mahone met her eyes, grave. She almost wished he'd call her ridiculous—it was fear talking, she was reading too much into this.
Doubt spiraled into certitude.
"Michael, what are you doing?"
"Hacking into the security system. I have to open the cells."
"We said—" Mahone started.
"If Sara's right and they're trying to bury this, everyone on this ship is going to die."
"The prisoners are drugged," Sara said. "You're not going to be able to carry every one of them with you to shore. Michael."
She tossed her earbud to the ground in frustration. She knew her husband. He'd never leave these people to their deaths.
Mahone stopped her hand.
"I'm going in," she said.
"That's absurd."
She motioned toward the water when a burning-hot blast knocked her to the floor. The sound of the explosion smashed her eardrums and her head banged against concrete, loosening one of her back teeth. When she opened her eyes, all she could hear was a low buzz, and the world was blurred.
Then the flames.
Her heart sank all the way to her toes.
"No."
Before thoughts could connect to her brain, Sara threw herself toward the water. Arms wrapped around her, barring her way. She clawed, and screamed, as the word rippled through her whole being—
NO.
The ship was a meteor, shattered pieces of wood that stuck out of the water like jagged teeth.
The fire. The fire.
A great maw of hot flames licking everything on their path.
Michael.
She pushed against Alex's arms while he spoke nonsense, "You can't save him."
"Shut up. He's fine."
Five seconds ago, Michael was speaking into her ear. She could still taste the breath of the caramels he'd eaten in the car on her tongue. The only thing between her and him was the cage of Mahone's arms.
"Let go of me. Let go of me!"
"Sara—"
She kicked blindly and must have hit her mark because his grip loosened and she broke free.
The water hit her hard as a wall of ice. Her ears still buzzing, she moved in blind, swimming toward the whirlpool already forming where the ship was going down.
The salt bit her eyes when she cracked them open. She broke through the surface to gulp for air then went back under. The wreckage was close now, the water tasted like kerosene.
The force of the sinking ship sucked her in like a magnet. Soon her arms flailed helplessly against the current and her body spun round and round, the world blue and blurred, golden red—fire—bleeding through her ajar eyes.
Her lungs hungered for air and she tried to swim for the surface, although the ocean itself seemed ablaze above her.
Water or fire?
The reflex to inhale pulled on her lungs and the water broke in. Salt in the back of her throat as she choked, flapping her hands and feet. But the whirlpool was too strong, taking her down with the ship.
Then a pair of strong hands clutched at her waist. Her fingers raked against the rubber of a wetsuit. Michael. He carried her away from the wreckage and she spat out the water, gobbling mouthfuls of air through the pyre of her throat.
She lay for a few minutes on the concrete floor before she opened her eyes. The man crouching above her was Daryl.
Her mouth pried open and she screamed, and screamed.
"You can't go back." Alex held her, spoke into her hair. Hot tears on his cheek. "He's gone. He's gone."
Daryl was crying, too, the water digging two craters down his cheeks, blackened by the blast.
But not Sara.
She only screamed, until she tasted blood in her throat as well as salt.