What Sara next saw as the car sank inside the warehouse was a world of men.

Tall men, stubbled faces, large arms protruding from sleeveless shirts. Through the rolled-down windows, the smell of coffee and stale sweat hit Sara full strength. A little girl thought crossed her mind, I don't like it here, I want to go home. This was when the consequences of everything that had happened today really dawned upon her.

No home. No return.

She realized her jaw had slackened and clenched her teeth immediately.

If she was going to be the little girl sulking at an unpleasant birthday party, then she wouldn't be the crying type. She'd long for home in dignified silence.

Lincoln stopped the vehicle and opened the car door. A hand closed over Sara's and she started.

"Sara," Michael said. "I know this is stressful. Please believe me, no one here is going to hurt you."

Anger slithered into her tone, "I don't want comfort. My whole life just got sucked into a black hole. I want justice."

A smile crept on Michael's face. "Then you're in the right place."

He waited a few seconds, gauging her face as if to make sure she was ready. She opened the passenger door and stepped out. Bravery was an attitude, right? Fake it till you make it.

The men's boisterous chatter died down the moment her feet hit the concrete. Sara could only assume what she looked like, a show of naked legs, blood smeared over her face, a robe and a tweed jacket she could only close by holding a fistful of it tight over her chest.

Sara's mind barely had time to register the men. Even out of the car, they remained an indiscriminate mass of muscle and shaven skulls. The heat locked in the warehouse felt intolerable, worse even than under the scorching sun outside. Beads of perspiration rolled down her neck.

"You must be the doctor," one of the men said. Long unwashed hair hung alongside his gaunt cheeks.

Sara didn't have time to open her mouth before Michael spoke, "Shut up, John." His hand closed around hers, not like in the car, where he had first gained permission with every inch. Faster. Not rough, but firm. "Sara, if you follow me, I'd like to show you your room."

Her eyes couldn't help but staring. How could his whole tone and posture have changed so much in the span of one minute? Though he framed it as such, it didn't sound like an offer. He'd smoothened the rough edges of the authority in his voice, but it was there.

The words he'd spoken after shooting Kellerman came back to her. You'll have to trust me. What else could she do?

"Sure," she made a show of agreeing, as if her answer mattered. The men's eyes still clung like melted honey and Sara didn't know what to do other than keep hers on the floor.

A flash of red flew to her face as she saw herself keeping close to Michael, following him docilely. What message had she given by obeying his demand? Part of her had known it was pretense. His voice was too sharp, uncompromising. If she had called him out on it, it would have undermined his power over the men. Because this little game hadn't been about her. It had been about them.

Michael led her to another room into the warehouse and stopped in front of a boat hanging in midair, solidly suspended to the ceiling. White, small, with a ladder allowing access inside.

"Do you need help getting in?"

"Oh." Sara realized that's what he'd meant by room. "I'm fine," she said, trying to put coldness in her tone. After what he'd pulled in front of the others, it felt safer to remain guarded.

Also, she'd rather avoid Michael's assistance climbing a ladder when she wasn't wearing much of anything.

"You'll find clothes up there," he said. "The boat should be clean. I warned the guys you'd be arriving. There'll be some water too if you want to clean up. How much time do you need?"

"Uh – I don't know."

He nodded. She looked for a crack over the impassive mask of his face but found none.

"I'll come and see you in half an hour. Is that all right?"

"Yeah," she managed.

Was that another pretend question? What had she really gotten herself into by climbing into Michael Scofield's car?

His footsteps interrupted her train of thoughts. By the time her eyes could focus again, she was staring at the back of his head. Her first reflex was to hold him back, but she closed her mouth after a second of silence. This man had led her to a warehouse filled with strangers – strange men – and he wouldn't leave her without answers.

But as she tried to speak, she felt the caked blood begin to crack on the skin of her cheek, and she realized what she really needed was to be alone. To cope with everything that had happened this afternoon. At least, to put some clothes on.

Michael opened the door they had entered through and disappeared in the other part of the warehouse.

Sara pressed her hand against the side of the boat, reeling. This was too much. The feel of smooth white paint beneath her palm felt surreal. Surreal like the smell of this warehouse, the sight of the men that wouldn't leave her mind.

Yesterday, Sara still thought of Michael as a patient. Polite and very bright, but clinically insane. Less than an hour ago, he had shot a man in the leg and asked him to trust her, and later in the car as his hand covered hers, it had felt like she might. But now, he seemed a completely different man.

A shudder crawled from her neck all the way down her spine.

Just how many faces did Michael Scofield have?

The boat cabin was small, but no smaller than Sara's first apartment when she had gone to med school. A double bed took up most of the space. Aside from that, the strict minimum: benches on each side of the boat, and a table the size of a chessboard that looked glued to the floor. On the bed, a change of clothes – men's clothes – and at the foot of the table, an empty bucket and a bottle of water.

Sara used the water to rinse her face. The blood had dried on her cheek, but she didn't dare near the wound that split her eyebrow. It had stopped bleeding by now. Though stitches would have been preferrable, it wasn't like she had many options. Well, she thought with a mental shrug. It'd leave a bigger scar. Considering the turn her life had just taken, it might be the first of many.

She didn't fare much better with the clothes. The jeans fell loose around her hips, and the belt didn't have holes tight enough for her waist. Still, it felt good to get out of her bathrobe. She buttoned up the shirt all the way up and blushed when she recognized the smell as Michael's.

Then she waited. The impact of what had happened kept striking her, time after time, and each time it came crashing against the resisting wall of rationality.

Yes, her life had turned utterly bizarre from one second to the next, but her future couldn't really change. Tomorrow morning, she'd be at work, examining patients and going over her paperwork, because this was what she had been doing every morning for years. The routine in her life had never been so obvious as right now, when she realized that it had come to feel like a law of nature, like she'd be at the asylum every day as sure as the earth orbited around the sun.

Knocks rattled against the surface of the boat and she started.

"Sara," Michael said, "can I come up?"

"Yes," she said.

Her heart pounded against her ribcage. Should she move from the bed? Michael's face appeared at the entrance before she could decide.

He said, "Hi."

How polite he always sounded when he spoke that word of greeting, every day at Saint Abram's. Once he'd even given her something, an ash tray he had made in one of the workshops. That ashtray still sat on her desk. She used it as a paperweight.

"I know you must be confused," he said. "Let me explain."

She nodded. Her tongue felt heavy as a white whale inside her mouth. Safer not to talk.

"I said earlier that the men at the warehouse wouldn't hurt you. That's the truth. They followed me before I was put into Saint Abram's, and now that I'm out, they'll go on following me."

"Are you saying –" Sara fought the numbness gaining her. "That you're their leader or something?"

Glimpses of Michael's file flashed through her mind. In Michael's schizophrenic world, he is the head of a secret organization that fights to expose the corrupt branch of government called 'the Company'.

"Yes."

The absoluteness of his answer made her arms break into gooseflesh. For some reason, she'd expected him to shy away from it.

"A lot of them are good people," he said. "My brother, for one. But not all of them. And they're dangerous people."

"Even your brother?"

The words she really wanted to ask jammed in her throat, Even you?

Michael didn't answer, and his face – the same mask he had worn earlier – didn't answer either.

"They could hurt you," he said. "But they won't. I promise you this. I can control them, Sara, but for that I have to speak a language they understand."

She shook her head. "Why would you work with people you don't trust?"

"I don't have a choice. Can I sit?"

He motioned toward the bench. She sensed somehow that he did this so he didn't have to talk to her standing up while she was sitting. So it would feel like they were on an equal footing. To have him next to her on the bed would have been too much for her already rapid heartbeat, but the bench was at a reasonable distance and she nodded, yes.

He sat down and joined his hands above his lap. For a moment, her eyes stayed fixed on the intricate network of his fingers. "If I'm going to bring down the company," he said, "I need to work with people who either used to work with them, or people who've been wronged by them. Often though, those two categories end up overlapping."

"You mean those men, they're all –"

"John Abruzzi used to work with them, occasionally. Not for them. You recognize that name?"

She shook her head. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't remember where she'd heard it.

"He's the head of one of the most powerful families in Chicago."

"Families?" she heard how na?ve she sounded and hated it. Like Alice who falls into Wonderland and spends her whole time there asking questions. Time to smarten up. To toughen up. "You mean the mob."

"Yes. At some point though, they crossed each other. I don't know who was in the wrong, but Abruzzi wound up going to prison and losing close associates to the company."

"He escaped," Sara said. This was where she'd heard his name before. The news had talked about his escape for weeks, flashing his face on every TV screen. The face of the man with long greasy hair came back to her, and she tried to reconcile it with his mugshot from prison, his shaved skull and grey beard.

"Now," Michael said, "he works for me."

"So, is your whole team made up of wanted murderers?"

Sara heard the sharpness in her voice but couldn't help it. It felt like information he should have volunteered before taking her here.

"No," he answered. "The worst Sucre ever did was steal from the wrong people. For Tweener, it was just bad luck. And my brother – my brother's no one you need to look out for."

"Then what was this whole show about?" she said. The intensity of his gaze burned, but she wouldn't lower hers. "How you spoke to them. How you touched me."

She almost expected to see him blush. Back at the asylum, Michael always behaved so respectfully. But his face reflected the same stone look as before.

"I was sending a message."

"To John Abruzzi?"

"Among others."

"The same others I don't have to worry about? Wait," she said. Her mind went back to everything that had happened prior to Michael's escape. So many things she should have seen, if she had been in her right mind. "You didn't escape from Saint Abram's alone. Did Bagwell have something to do with the company? Is that why you needed him? Michael –" Her tone darkened. The calm on his face looked very much like the eye of a storm. "Is he here?"