1. Power Outage

“Downstairs!” Agent Todd Wheatley barked at the two SWAT officers charging behind him. It was inexplicably dark, and the officers’ flashlights, affixed to their rifles, cast an eerie glow bouncing off the walls of the stairwell. The three men hustled down, down, down, driven by their desire to thwart yet another escape masterminded by Michael Scofield. Surely the man could not elude the FBI yet again; surely he could not make them all appear incredibly foolish one more time.

Once they arrived to the dank basement control room, the moving rifle guide-lights were no longer the only source of illumination. Flashes of electricity sparked at random intervals in the middle of the room, drawing the three officers cautiously forward. They noticed one cable dangling from the electric generator box, twitching with each jolt of surging current. Wheatley hesitated; did they have a live wire on their hands? Would proceeding forward endanger each of their lives?

“We got a man down!” one officer shouted, causing the lead FBI agent to throw caution to the wind and jog forward, stopping short at the sight on the ground before him.

The tall, lanky body was sprawled on its back, one of his legs tucked under; arms akimbo. Agent Wheatley’s blue eyes trailed up from the soft-soled shoes to the dark-blue jeans to the army-green jacket, finally landing on the beatific face. The man's eyes were closed, highlighting the shadow of long eyelashes in the sparking light. The ghost of serenity spreading across his pallid face contrasted with the deep copper of blood that had spilled from one nostril.

Michael Scofield was dead.

Wheatley had thought that the demise of the elusive genius would provide him with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment, but he felt none of that. Instead, he experienced only sadness. It had been an exhilarating few days trying to keep up with Scofield, futilely attempting to stay one step ahead of his clever machinations, and now it was all over. The thrilling game of cat and mouse had collapsed, now that the mouse, attempting to free the coveted cheese, had been ensnared in the trap. And where was that cheese? There was no sign of Tancredi anywhere.

“Get me some C.O.s down here!” Wheatley barked into the radio. “We’re below the chapel.” He then glared at one of the SWAT officers. “Do a recon—identify every exit from this room.”

“Yes, sir,” the younger officer smartly answered, but then froze in place. His eyes, along with Wheatley’s, were riveted to the body at their feet.

“Did he just move?” Wheatley asked, unable to tear his eyes from the body.

“Yeah,” the frightened young officer slowly replied.

“Postmortem twitches,” the older officer, Spitzer, supplied, grinning gruesomely at them both. “They’re quite common. I’ve seen them before in corpses, especially after getting fried by electrical wires.” He chuckled grimly. “Looks like he’s still got some juice left.”

Wheatley felt disgusted by Spitzer’s cavalier attitude toward the dead man. “Find me the exits!” he shouted, reminding the men of their duty. When they scurried off, taking their flashlights with them, the FBI agent was left standing alone over Scofield’s body in the dim shafts of moonlight filtering through the small barred windows.

Sighing, he knelt down and hovered over the prone figure, noticing for the first time some spots of mottled blackness on the exposed hands extending from the jacket. Gingerly Wheatley grasped Scofield’s left hand, turning it over and scrutinizing what appeared to be electric burns. Why had he electrocuted himself? Had it been an accident? Wheatley shook his head; from what he had learned about Scofield’s precise methodology, the man simply did not allow accidents.

The burns seemed somewhat superficial, unlikely to have killed him. His limited knowledge about executions in the electric chair indicated that the heart and the brain were most vulnerable when it came to electric current. Had Scofield’s heart or brain succumbed to electrocution?

His brain was undoubtedly strong, as evidenced by the incredible Fox River escape, every detail of which Wheatley had memorized once he had received the arrest warrant for Sara Tancredi. Hell, Scofield had already outsmarted him with that fake parachute landing just five minutes ago. And his heart—could Scofield’s heart have withstood such intense voltage? Wheatley pressed his lips together wistfully, realizing that Scofield had likely sacrificed himself so that his wife and unborn child could go free. His heart must have been strong too.

“We got a potential exit over here!” the younger officer hollered, and Wheatley heard the rattle of a door handle. “But it’s locked!”

“What did you do, Mr. Scofield?” the agent softly asked the corpse, gazing down on the tranquil face. “Did you break out your wife before you died?”

With a twitch, the "dead" man mournfully gasped, “Sara.”

Agent Todd Wheatley’s jaw dropped, and he stared at Scofield, unblinking, for several moments. Then, he calmly called out, “Spitzer! How common is it for the corpse to speak?”