You can't
just leave Michael and Tatiana in there, but you don't want to leave Erik
either. There doesn't seem to be a way to avoid someone getting hurt.
Erik seems to respect your loyalty to your friends. He releases
them from the torture chamber.
You remember that he said once that nothing comes without a price.
You soon find out that the price of saving them is your spending the next
three days in the torture chamber. Then you can come out. But there's a
catch. No one has ever made it past day one!