Shut Down

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Oh my goodness -- this episode had everything! Any episode that begins with Michael shouting is going to be good, as "Michael Shouting = Hot" is an immutable law of the Prison Break universe. Also, the episode has Lincoln and Mahone taking turns abusing Roland; smacking around Roland is rapidly becoming one of the most amusing leitmotifs on this show. Also, this episode has Agent Lang, and we all know how awesome she is. Finally, this episode has Linc burying the hatchet with Mahone in a breathtaking act of empathy.

So would you like to know what this all has to do with the actual storyline? Here's the deal: Michael loses his temper on Don Self regarding Scylla's six-headed nature, and Don Self reacts by telling Michael he has 'til the end of the day to get the card. He's only pushing the crap downhill, as Boss of Self is all pissy and "pull this project! You don't know what you're doing!"

But Michael has not the time to concern himself with petty federal office politics. He's using the information sucked off Stuart Tuxhorne's PDA (thanks, Charybdis!) to determine the date and time of the cardholder meeting. Conveniently enough, it's at 4 p.m. that afternoon. But where, oh where, can it be?

The guys figure that out in between breaking into a data center, then being chased down by the feds -- Don Self had to pull the plug on the project -- and whatnot, and Michael ultimately breaks away from the eleventy million feds and his girlfriend to go spy on the meeting and record it for posterity. He's all "HA! Recorded evidence of all the keyholders! In your face!" at Don Self, and Don is sufficiently impressed. So he tells his boss to shove it and decides to continue the operation. Something tells me Don's going to end up as a fugitive on the run from the law, just like darn near everyone else around Michael does.

And now, the really wrenching part of the episode: we learn that Agent Blots Out the Sun didn't kill both Pam and Cameron Mahone. He only killed the little boy, in front of his mother, so that Pam could A) live with the sight of seeing her son murdered in front of her, and B) pass on a warning to Mahone that she was probably . Mahone has gotten Lang to pass him the autopsy report and he breaks down at the end of the episode. With a there-but-the-grace-of-God-go-I shudder, Linc promises to help Mahone get the bastards who did this to his son.

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The episode begins with Don Self on the docks, monkeying around with a wedding band. He's distracted by Michael yelling at him. I can't blame him -- I get distracted by Michael yelling. As I've mentioned before, although the laws of space and time are but mumbled suggestions to the Prison Break universe, one immutable law within it is this: Yelling + Scofield = Hot. Michael is pissed too: "What did you get us into? You figured you'd get us on the hook so we could find out for ourselves that how screwed this all was!" Don Self asks irritably, "What the hell exactly are you talking about?" Michael bellows, "I'm talking about the card, Agent Self! I'm talking about the card! It's useless!" Don Self's like, "Wait, what? You have the card?" but Michael completely misses how he's already exceeded expectations here and shouts, "Yes! But without the other five cards, it means nothing! And I can only assume you knew that!" Michael, look at the confusion on Don Self's face. I realize it's one of his default expressions, but in this case, well, assuming made an ASS out of U. Michael steps Don Self through the whole If-Scylla-is-a-pizza-this-card-is-a-slice analogy, and continues screaming some more, and Don Self reminds him that the deal was not for a data card, per se, but for Scylla, and if Scylla is made up of six separate cards, well, guess what the team has to go out and collect?

When Michael comes back in, he breaks the bad news to the rest of Team Scylla. There is only a minimum of bitching and whining, and then Mahone asks quietly, "When the government gets scared, they tend to cut the cord. Did Self talk about shutting us down?" Michael dances around that answer with, "Let's just concentrate on finding Scylla, all right?" Mahone looks at him all, So that's a "yes," then? He heads off, to the general curiosity and disgust of the others.

Roland gets this week kick-started by revealing that Charybdis managed to suck up all the data in Stuart Tuxhorne's PDA. Roland snipes, "Let me make something clear -- I point and click for you guys. Other than that, I'm off the clock." Linc says contemptuously, "Shut up," and Roland rolls his eyes. At least he still has two good eyes to roll, as he's not yet goaded Linc into LINCOLN SMASH territory. Michael asks Roland where Tuxhorne's calendar is, and Roland quips, "Dr. Feelgood's got it." After looking askance at him for his unchivalrous remarks, Michael goes to hang with Dr. Sara, who breaks the news that there must be something going on today, as it's the only day Tuxhorne's completely cleared from his schedule save for an asterisk. Bellick whines about nothing in particular and succeeds in getting on Michael's last nerve, so he calls out, "If you open your mouth, I expect you to offer a solution. I'm not going to say it again."

Outside, it turns out that Mahone's calling Agent Lang. Oh, awesome. She rules! She's also in Gainesville, Florida, at the moment, and I mention that only because it seems like such a random location. Anyway, Lang's suitably surprised to be hearing from Mahone since, last time she saw him, he was a drug-addled loon on his way back to the Big House. Mahone doesn't exactly fill her in on his miraculous rehab and resumed chokehold on sanity, but he does ask her to send him something in Los Angeles. After just a few seconds of beseeching, he asks, "You just need to reach out to the residential agency in Durango." Lang says no, and right as Linc comes out to glower at Mahone, he overhears Mahone saying, "Do you know what they did? They killed my son. They killed my boy." We cut to Linc, who looks like he's revising his plan to bitch out Mahone. We cut to Lang, who is probably remembering that conversation they had about C-Note and his sick kid and feeling like a perfect ass, and she stammers, "I-I don't know what to say." Mahone's like, "Say that you'll help me, please? I just need your help. I need to find out who did it, please."

Dr. Sara comes by to ask Michael why he's being such a snappy little alpha dog to the rest of the pack, and Michael admits, "Self said we have until the end of the day to find the card holder, or we all go back to prison."

Well, you may go there. I am going to the new credits. Most of it appears to be footage from the first two episodes, which is economical, but not exactly intriguing when it comes to forecasting new plotlines. Also, there is no nifty little closing item -- like the origami swan in season one, the dropping cuffs in season two, the dropping chicken foot in season three . Instead, we get a shot of Michael and the outline of a dragon, so I am not sure if this is because his headaches presage his transformation into the fire-breathing mythical creatures of yore, or if this is because someone editing the credits was like, "No way am I closing these on a data card. Come on!"

And now ... we have two extraneous storylines that are have no direct involvement in Team Scylla's capers. Therefore we will have two paragraphs that document these sidelines so any real and relevant plots arising from them later don't come as a surprise to us. In the first, T-Bag's streak of implausibly good luck continues. He ends up at a nicely furnished apartment, and before you can say Pier One Imports much? he's somehow managed to pass himself off as Cole Pfeiffer, salesman extraordinaire with the GATE company ("Greatness Achieved Through Excellence"), a firm referenced in Whistler's bird book. T-Bag's new boss, Gregory White, just can't wait to meet him and give him his $10,000 new-job bonus in person. We'll see how long it takes before T-Bag manages to lose this money in an end-of-season macguffin.

And in the second, creepier plot: Agent Blots Out the Sun has tied Bruce to a chair, filled him with all sorts of brain-bending chemicals, then does this creepy hypnosis trip where he's all, "You're on a family picnic, and everyone you love is there except for Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows. Now where are they, hmmmm?" Since Bruce honestly doesn't know, Agent Blots Out the Sun has to resort to asking if Sara's safe and finds out that she's in the greater Los Angeles area. Then he cocks a gun to the back of Bruce's head and says, "Picnic's over, Bruce." We don't see the gunshot, but we hear it, and given how little Cameron Mahone ended up (more on that toward the end of the recap), it's a safe bet that Bruce's chemically-seasoned brains are now resting in his lap.

Meanwhile, back in the caper-y plot we care about, Don Self is getting his desk job-larded ass handed to him by his superior: "Six cards? That's not what you sold me, Don! I already have people questioning me about the Supermax line we're selling. This whole thing was a mistake." Don Self frantically insists that it was not, saying, "Scofield got us a card within 24 hours of being dropped in Los Angeles. He knows what he's doing. I'm willing to take the risk and do my job here. I don't understand why you aren't." Because otherwise we wouldn't have any dramatic tension in this plotline, what with Michael giving every indication that he'll collect those cards more quickly than a third-grader collects Webkinz? Anyway, the director threatens to call a Senator Dallow to see "whether he wants this thing killed or not. But he follows my recommendations, Don." We cut to Don Self looking like he is perhaps rethinking that lifelong career with the FBI.

We cut to Michael brainstorming with the rest of Team Scylla over what Tuxhorne could possibly be doing today. Everyone's puzzling over an e-mail that talks of moving a flight from London to 4 p.m. -- it's baffling because Tuxhorne is not doing any business in the U.K. -- and Mahone comes back in to say that the e-mail is likely a code. Michael's big brain makes a dazzling leap of insight and he quickly deduces that today at 4p.m., Tuxhorne has a Scylla-related meeting, and since "Tuxhorne did not schedule a meeting with himself, we can assume we'll find the cardholder." Now that they have the "when," it remains only to find the "where." Mahone -- who has resumed his dead-man-walking demeanor, says, "If you were having a secret meeting, you wouldn't send the when and the where together. You'd send them separately, as a precaution." Michael then taps Roland: "Were there any other e-mails sent at the same time as the London e-mail?" Roland replies, "Within a few seconds of the London mail, two more mails followed from the same IP path, but that's where [Charybdis] ran out of hard drive space. It picked up the IP address, but not the content." Linc says, "If we trace the IP address, we can find who sent the e-mails." Roland rolls his eyes at this naivete and explains, "E-mails get bounced around routers all over the world before they end in your inbox. Wherever the mail's been, it leaves a shadow file. Based on the geography, I'm guessing that these e-mails probably squatted at the Anaheim server cluster in NanoSec before reaching Tuxhorne, so that's where you're going to find your shadow file." Linc shrugs that Roland should be able to retrieve the mail, and Roland snaps, "Not every geek with a Commodore 64 can hack into NASA. I mean, these servers have more firewalls than the Devil's bedroom. You want those e-mails, I'm sorry. It's on a main server in Anaheim." Michael confirms that you can pull the e-mails off those servers, then informs Roland that they're off to take a field trip to a server farm. He dispatches Sucre and Bellick to Tuxhorne's workplace: "Stake it out. If you see him, tail him. Call us." Roland's all, "You realize you can't just waltz in, right?" and Michael is like, "Au contraire." Besides, they need that e-mail, because that e-mail will help them determine the location for the Scylla cardholder meeting. Roland says dismissively, "Good luck, man." Michael breaks it to Roland that he's coming along. Roland smarts, "Guess again. Self told me to stay here and make with the clickity-clack on the keyboard. I'm not going nowhere." Linc begs to differ. You just know during sweeps that Linc is going to fold Roland into a small container and announce to everyone else that he's just invented a new toy called the Roland Cube.

We then cut to Dr. Sara trying to distract the security guard at the server farm with a story about how she's one Stephanie Reed, would-be interviewee. After an exchange in which we've established that Dr. Sara is an excellent liar, we head outside where Roland is telling Michael, "She should drop a few buttons on that shirt. The guard will give her the e-mails." Michael does not bother to remind Roland that he, not Roland, is privy to whatever delights lurk under the buttons of Dr. Sara's shirt. Instead, he patiently endures Don Self's livid inquiry, "You're in Anaheim, Michael? This is a strange time to be taking a trip to Disney! I promise you, if you're trying to run --" "We're trying to get you another card," Michael coolly interrupts. "From where? Tomorrowland?" Don Self asks. Honestly, I'd be more likely to hide on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Michael gives Don Self a brief 411 on what they're doing and clicks off before Don Self's head actually explodes from stress.

Michael has good timing: the director guy has just come back in after chatting with his BFF the Senator, and it turns out that Team Scylla's being disbanded.

Meanwhile, Dr. Sara continues to tarry at the front desk. She makes a really convincing single-mom-job-candidate, and as she's getting the security guard to call human resources, the guy leaves his badge on the desk. With one smooth move, she grabs it and passes it on the sly to Michael and Roland as they saunter into to building. The two left-brain ninjas head back to the server room, with Michael coolly telling the we're-gonna-get-lost Roland, "Network and wiring specifications require a server room on the first floor, centrally located -- like right there." He shoves Roland at the server room, and the other guy's weak comeback is, "Don't you want to engineer something?"

Both men enter the server room, and Michael picks that moment to confirm that Roland will be able to extract the e-mails. Roland nervously confirms he can, but boy, is he out of his element: "Listen, man, when I steal, I do it from home, in my boxers, eating a bowl of Crispity-Crunch. No chance of being seen, no chance of being caught." Michael has no time for Roland's script kiddie act; he just rolls his eyes mightily.

Mahone and Linc have been hanging in the server farm's parking lot, but when Mahone's phone rings, he steps out of the car to take the call. "Hey, lady! Did you get what I need?" he asks Lang. She did. He thanks her and Lang says, "I know what you're planning, Alex. But listen to me: if you do track him down, call me. Don't do something that could get you hurt." Mahone reassures her he won't, and Lang confirms that the material he asked for will be in its drop location by 5 p.m. She adds, "I'm so sorry." A dozen different emotions run fleetingly across Mahone's face and he finally smiles a little before saying, "Goodbye, Lang." Oh, I hope it's not goodbye, Lang. I love her! And I want to see her kicking ass and taking names with Team Scylla.

Back at the Anaheim server farm, Dr. Sara's ruse has just about run its course. The security guy realizes that his badge is gone and she had something to do with it. Outside, Linc realizes "She's been made," and he calls Michael to let him know: "The guard has her. You have to get out of there now." No, Michael would rather leave Roland in the server room and run off to rescue his girlfriend from the security drone's meaty paws. Michael's idea of riding to the rescue? Pulling a fire alarm. Out in the lobby, the security bear rolls his eyes all, "Now? REALLY?" He tells Dr. Sara not to move as he heads toward the phones, but the moment he's dialing, she gloms on to a group of people and walks outside.

We cut to Roland, who is alternating between muttering dire imprecations at the assorted machines around him and shaking in pants-wetting terror. Michael comes back in to see how he's doing, and Roland gibbers, "We're almost there! We're almost there!" Then they are there, and it's time to take off -- and that's when the left-brain ninjas discover that part of the facililty's fire plan includes auto-locking the doors and sucking all the air out of the room. Roland's like, "Why the hell did you pull the fire alarm?!" and Michael takes a moment out from muttering, "Stupid, stupid" to feebly reason, "This is an old building. It shouldn't have such an advanced system." Then he broods on how thoroughly he's screwed up.

Fortunately, we have Linc around. He calls Michael to delicately inquire as to why Michael and Roland have not taken advantage of the fire drill to stroll on out, and Michael babbles, "Linc! Linc! We're trapped in the server room, and it's sucking all the oxygen out. We've got two, maybe three minutes of air left. Linc? Linc?"

We see that Linc has hung up and just matter-of-factly strode by a fire truck, liberating an ax along the way. He matter-of-factly walks into the building. Not only does nobody wonder, "Who is that guy and why is he holding an ax?" -- they don't even notice. I love that.

Back in the server room, it's probably occurred to Michael that maybe, just maybe, he would have lived longer if Roland had not had a hyperventilating panic attack. Fortunately, the two of them only have to contemplate their imminent mortality for a moment or two before Linc appears with his ax and the window learns the meaning of LINCOLN SMASH.

We cut to Bellick and Sucre hanging out in the parking lot at Evil Oligarchs Incorporated, and Bellick attempts to make small talk: "You think we're spinning our wheels?" Sucre points out that they have to track Tuxhorne somehow. Bellick says that he's not talking about Tuxhorne: "'I'm talking about finding the cards. I'm talking about finding six cards. And I'm talking about whether we actually have a snowball's chance in Haiti of doing this deed!" Ah, so Bellick's going to be the snivelly naysayer this season? Good to know. He continues, "We're a couple of hours from Mexico, and I wouldn't mind having someone with me who could speak the native tongue." Wait -- didn't Bellick mess with Sucre's head vis a vis the whole "I kidnapped your girlfriend and threw her down a well, so get me money and lots of it!" plot of season two? Does he assume this is all water under the bridge now? Sucre looks like he hasn't forgotten at all.

Then there's a tiny scene wherein we establish that Don Self feels so strongly about taking down the One World Conspiracy that he's willing to go over his boss's head and plead his case to Senator Dallow himself.

Back at Team Scylla HQ, everyone's poring over the retrieved e-mails. One appears to be spam for a virility-enhancing product (Roland is like, "I cannot believe I risked my life for pecker pills"), and the second invite's an chance to join the Stargazer's Club, complete with a labeled map of the heavens. Mahone says, "There's a website that lets you enter the coordinates of star patterns, and depending on the date, it'll pick a corresponding location on Earth." Michael asks, "And you know this because?" Mahone almost sounds normal as he says, "Because my son [pause] and my ex and I used to go on this site. He would look up at the sky, and know where I was." Dr. Sara points out that the star map in the e-mail corresponds to someplace in Antarctica, so, um, not so much with that theory. Mahone's too lost in recriminations and grief to really care.

Roland snots, "So I almost died for nothing. That's good to know." Michael says curtly, "A lot of people have died." Roland gets up to walk away and tosses off, "Well, that's their problem. Because anyone who gives up their life for this crap is a sucker! You guys can't win! Aiiigh!" That last comment comes courtesy of Mahone, who has grabbed Roland by the throat and slammed him down on the table. "Say it again!" he growls. "Say it about the people who died! Say it!" Linc looks alarmed -- he seems to be imagining how he'd react if he were Mahone. Or maybe he's remembering both his ex-wife Lisa and his ex-girlfriend Veronica. (Sure, Veronica was a moron, but she still didn't deserve to be shot.) Only Linc's calm hand on Mahone's shoulder keeps him from murdering Team Scylla's data bandit, and then Linc manhandles Roland some more, adding the admonition, "Get up, get back to your nerd box, and do your job."

Meanwhile, Bellick is still pitching the idea of him and Sucre as the stars of Shawshank Redemption II. Sucre is outraged by the idea: "I vouched for you, Bellick. I told Michael [you] helped me get to Chicago. 'He's a good guy. Trust him.' Are you crazy? Now you want to just run when we have a chance to clear our names?" Bellick says, "Odds of that don't look so good. Tank's full, gas pedal's on the right -- I say we get the hell out of Dodge right now!" Sucre turns to him and says, "You listen to me. There's only one thing I'm thinking about. She weighs seven pounds, has her mother's eyes, and my heart in the palm of her tiny hand. So if I've got to find one card, or six cards, or six million cards, I'm going to do whatever it takes, 'cause I only got to hold my baby girl for ten seconds and that wasn't nearly long enough." However, as of right now, it looks that "whatever it takes" will include "getting arrested by the Feds," as it looks like someone's just pulled the plug on Team Scylla. Sucre manages to text a message to Michael ("Run.") before he's back in bracelets.

We cut to Roland discovering that the Feds have pulled the plug on his computer. He sasses at Linc, "I've even tried a backdoor entry. You were in prison -- I'm sure you were familiar with that one." Roland has the survival instincts of a bug facing a windshield. He's also a lot more likely to become unwillingly familiar with that prison practice than Linc ever was. Mahone confirms that they're being shut down, what with him having been on the other end of this, and Michael triple-verifies that with Sucre's text. Roland declines to escape with the rest of them, so Mahone, Dr. Sara and the brothers pile in a pristine gargantomobile and take off. Fortunately for all of them, Linc's well-versed in evasive driving by this point in the series.

Michael calls Don Self to delicately inquire, "What the hell?" and Don Self kicks the blame upstairs, and once Michael realizes there is no reasoning with Don Self when he's in Organizational Drone mode, he barks at Linc, "Lose him!" Linc -- who is already feeling nigh-invincible thanks to his ax-wielding caper and his casual abuse of Roland -- happily complies. After your usual car chase sequence, the Gargantomobile is, of course, trapped by several government vehicles. I get distracted wondering exactly how much taxpayer money goes toward keeping these gas guzzlers filled with unleaded, and Team Scylla commences the footrace portion of events. As always, I retain admiration for how recent toe-amputee Michael is capable of sprinting with the rest of them.

After everyone takes a break behind a cargo container, Mahone shouts at Michael, "Why the hell did you tell Self we'd have a cardholder by today?" Michael shouts back, "I didn't have a choice!" and Mahone shouts, "And now none of us have a choice!" I... may pass out here, as Mahone + Shouting = Just as Hot as Michael + Shouting. I believe in algebra that we expressed this as a+b = c+b, where b=shouting. Now, solving for a and c only proves that really, Michael and Mahone are Mental Mates. Ah, I love it when we can use math to impose continuity upon a TV show!

Linc interrupts the shouting match -- dammit! -- and reminds them all that there is the small issue of the ankle monitors to deal with, plus eleventy-dozen feds on their tails, plus no clue as to where the cardholder meeting is, so maybe just focus on solving those problems first?

Apparently, Michael manages one of those problems because we then cut to Don Self running around in circles and exclaiming, "The signal's gone! The signal's gone!" Let us all take a moment to stop and marvel at the diversity in federal hiring -- on the one hand, you've got Lang and Mahone. And on the other ... you have Don Self. I wonder who on the writing staff had the bad TSA screening experience at the airport and decided to take it out on Homeland Security.

The Team Scylla fugitives are in a loading dock area, which is fine stopgap measure for losing the tracking signal, but as Mahone points out, it's no permanent solution. Amputations for everyone! Once you're all down a limb, you'll develop the ability to manipulate the weather, read minds, kill people with plasma blasts from your eyes and turn anything you need into ice. At least, that seems roughly analogous to how it's worked out for T-Bag so far. Michael eschews radical limb modification in favor of meditating on those e-mails: "The answers are in here. They have to be. If I can just find them, we might have a chance." Linc points out that the spam ad is filled with gibberish, and Michael says, "That's what makes them ideal for hiding data."

Dr. Sara notices that Michael's got a bit of a headache or something, and she talks him down: "You're going to figure this out. We're getting good at pulling off the impossible. Hell, I came back from the dead, right?" Oh, HA ha. Never mind that head-in-a-box was a dumb idea. Anyway, Michael notices all the concert posters on top of one another, and quickly realizes the e-mails are supposed to be layered. Punch out the holes in the star map invite and lay the paper over the pecker-pill spam and you get the message: "Power plant, new beach." So, it's off to the Newport Beach power plant! Linc says, "We ain't got that long until four o'clock. How the hell are we going to get out of here?" Michael asks, "How fast can you run?" And they're off again.

We cut to Don Self and company chasing them, and one agent cruelly asks Don Self if he's got a signal. Don nearly loses a lung as he gasps that he does. If he's going to stick around on this show, Don Self needs to consider a rigorous cardiac regimen, as he can count on doing more sprinting. Right now, it looks like the only thing that's been on his training table is a plateful of little chocolate doughnuts.

Lincoln cab-jacks a, uhm, cab and drives everyone to the power plant. I hope he didn't switch on the meter.

We cut to Stuart Tuxhorne meeting up with General Von Baldy. Stuart would rather be in a boardroom: "A little cloak-and-dagger, don't you think?" "Belts and suspenders, Stuart, belts and suspenders," Von Baldy says. Then they have a discussion in which it's alluded to that Laos will be the Phase I testing site for some ridiculous scheme, Phase II will involve staging something in Denmark or Chad, and the final phase ... "anything we want."

Not if Team Scylla gets there first! There is something delightful about a group of people pulling up to a hot pursuit site in a cab. It gives me hope that we'll have a later scene that takes place on the parking lot shuttles at Disneyland, or perhaps the rent-a-bikes at Venice Beach. Anyway, the plan to intercept the meeting runs awry when a fleet of feds pulls up. Everyone scatters. Linc meets car and for once, it's LINCOLN SMASHED. Mahone is quickly apprehended. Michael and Dr. Sara run off together (aww!), but she realizes she's not really a wanted fugitive, so she stalls everyone. Thus Michael can sprint off to do some mystery errand.

A cuffed Lincoln tries to explain to Don Self, at the top of his lungs, that they're making a big mistake, what with Michael currently observing a Scylla meeting, but Don Self doggedly insists, at the top of his lungs, that it's all over. Lincoln insists, "It's not." It never ceases to touch me, his faith in Michael.

Speaking of whom, he's just observed a meeting in which Von Baldy alluded to offshore drilling and gigahertz, and then Michael happens to notice that many more black sedans are about to join Tuxhorne and Von Baldy.

Back at Scylla HQ, a mouthy Roland is being manhandled in a van (I swear, it's like he has a fetish for domination play and he's afraid to embrace it, so he's forced to goad muscle-y men into brutality to get his kicks. Prison will either be the death of him, or the site of a sexual epiphany that dwarfs anything Toni Bentley ever pondered.) Bellick snivels some, but it's Sucre's silent and contemptuous look that really chaps Don Self's desk-job ass. Just then, Michael pulls up in a cab. Don Self speaks for all of us with, "You gotta be kidding me."

Michael hands over his smartphone and orders, "Press the video function... it wasn't a meeting between two cardholders, Agent Self. It was a meeting between all six cardholders. So now we know who has the other five cards -- and that should mean something, even to someone whose word means nothing." Don Self flashes back to the head of his department babbling about the senator -- perhaps he saw something on the phone that makes him suspect that his boss is now part of the One World Conspiracy? Whatever it is, Don Self makes up his mind. He hands back the smartphone with a warning: "time you run from me? I'm not going to be chasing you down in a car. It's going to be with a bullet in your back." He then calls to let the cuffed members of Team Scylla free. Don Self's about to piss off his boss!

Dr. Sara, who had been preparing to quietly flee, stops short when she sees Michael. He walks over to her and just sort of leans into her, then says fervently, "Someday soon, we're going to drop that little boat of yours in the water and disappear forever. I promise." She only kisses the top of his head in response.

Mahone ambles off and finds a manila envelope tucked into the joists at the base of a crane. Once inside, he skulks down a corridor. Michael takes note of this and heads over to ask Linc, sotto voce, what's up with Mahone. Linc hesitates before telling Michael, "They murdered his son. The One World Conspiracy killed his son like, like... they tried to kill LJ."

We flash to Mahone looking at the autopsy photos. A few brief flashes are enough: Agent Blots Out the Sun apparently beat the child black-and-blue. We see Mahone hiding in a corner behind a shelf, bent over the folder. When Linc comes over and calls his name, Mahone tries to dissemble, but Linc plows on, "I... I know what happened. I'm sorry." Mahone manages, "They did this... to get to me, to flush me, and then they let my ex-wife stay alive... just so she could tell me that she was if, if I didn't turn myself in. Now she's in protective custody and I'm living in a warehouse, trying to find the son of a bitch who killed my kid." Mahone's trying to choke back the sobs at this point. Linc says, "We're all here for something. You need to stay focused until this is done." Mahone insists he can do his job. Linc replies, "Good. I promise I'll do whatever it takes to help you find the person that killed your son, and the people behind the hit. We're going to get these guys, Alex. I'm going to help you." Mahone tries to pull himself together and reels toward Linc with his hand outstretched. Linc clasps it and Mahone begins weeping again. He can't even look at Linc, but we see Linc looking at Mahone with something resembling parental concern. Ah, Mikey -- you may be the brains of the operation, but Linc is rapidly becoming its Big Poppa. It takes a big guy to bury the grudge against the guy who shot your dad, and an even bigger one to reach out and promise to help him as a bereaved dad. All hail Big Poppa Linc!

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