In The Fortitude, hundreds of soldiers were walking through the hallway. However, one of them wasn’t who he seemed to be.
Paul was nervous at first. He wasn’t a real soldier, and all the memory he received from Jean were those of the general structure of the fortress. He didn’t even know the name of the soldier he impersonated. If he somehow ran into someone who was familiar with the face he was wearing...he would be exposed in the first five lines of conversation.
The man knew the mutant prison and lab was on the eighth floor of the fortress. This posed a problem. He was a soldier, and only guards were allowed on the upper floors. Paul knew this meant the general had little trust of the ordinary soldiers, and there might be dissent among the ranks, but this information couldn’t really help him in his cause.
However, he did know what could help his cause. With the corner of his eyes, Paul saw one of the armband wearing guard entering the bathroom. He quickly followed.
Inside the bathroom, the guard glanced at Paul, but the latter’s uniform was enough to cover his true identity for the time being. When the guard looked away, Paul, after realizing they were the only two people in this room, took out a dagger from his belt.
The guard was unaware of the situation as he looked down on a sink. That changed when he felt something cold next to his throat. His eyes widened and his arms moved up to deflect those of his opponent, but it was too late. Before he could do anything, he felt the dagger moving and felt an abrupt pain in his neck. A suffocating feeling overwhelmed him.
As the guard choked to death in his arms, Paul acted calmly. He first covered the blood from the wound with his arm and pulled the dying guard into one of the toilet compartments. Once the man was away from potential public eyes, Paul ended his life with two bullets to the head.
Two minutes later, Paul walked out in a guard uniform. He closed the door, washed his hands, and walked out of the bathroom.
Thanks to his newly gained guard uniform and ID badge, Paul got to the eighth floor without any obstacle. The soldiers that came across looked at him with frowning eyes. The few guards were comforted by his uniform. Even among the several hundred guards, not everyone knew the face of everyone else, and it wasn’t like guards would confirm each other’s identity everytime they met a comrade. If they did that, safety would be the least of their concerns. Lack of efficiency would be the first.
It was when he tried to enter the mutant prison in which he was stopped.
“State your name, soldier.” Ten guards stood at the gate of the lab. One of them asked the question while the others looked at Paul with an alert gaze. Even guards couldn’t get into the top secret facility without the needed level of authorization. He needed to check if the man in front of him had the authority.
“Uhhh...Nate.” Paul responded based on the name tag on the suit he took.
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The guard took out his phone and typed in the name before looking up. “You are not authorized in this area, soldier. Leave now or you will be detained.”
Paul sighed. He was hoping for more, but he knew if some random guard could get into the most protected place in the fortress, he wouldn’t be entering a military base. He nodded and turned around to leave.
The men let their guards down. Maybe it was just a guard recruit that stumbled into the wrong place. It wasn’t exactly normal, but it was possible. Guards are human beings, and human beings make mistakes.
That was when Paul turned back around with two silenced pistols in both his hands. Without a single sense of hesitation, he pulled the triggers.
The guards were caught by surprise. The guard that asked the questions was closer to Paul than his comrades, and he paid the price as he was shot in the face and killed instantly. Four other men fell on the ground, shot, wounded, but alive. However, all nine guards fought back immediately. SMGs starting singing.
Normally this would be a problem. He could barely take down the nine guards left while reinforcement would be arriving in just minutes. After all, this was a military base. He had his power, but he would eventually be overwhelmed.
“Time for plan B.” The man moved behind a wall and took out his phone. He pressed a button, and the next second an explosion ripped through the fortress.
After entering The Fortitude, he didn’t go to take down the guard and try to sneak into the prison immediately. Instead, he made a few explosives that could be triggered via the press of a single button for situations like the one he was in. He took his time to hide them in several corners of the fortress.
Paul was ready for the explosion, but the nine guards weren’t. They shook and collapsed on the ground, and Paul used the opportunity to move forward with his guns firing.
Three guards fell immediately, dead or disabled. One of the guards used Paul’s exposure to fire at him. The SMG bullets went through his camouflage suit and hit the Kevlar vest. A normal person would be wounded. Even if the bullet itself was stopped, the impact it carried could cause internal damage.
Paul merely stumbled before returning to shooting position. In just a few seconds, he emptied his clip and was on top of the guards.
At this point most of the guards were dead or down. Only four men were in combat status. This might seem to be an advantage of the guards, but the situation was deceiving. Bullets could do very little to the bulletproof vest wearing, self-mending Paul while they could take down the guards in a few shots if they landed in the wrong place and just one shot if they landed in the right place. The six to zero casualty ratio told the same story.
Firing their last bullets, the four guards replaced their weapons with army knives. In the distance they were in, they didn’t have the time to reload. Plus, bullets did very little to the attacker. On the other hand, if they could melee him and slit his throat...even if the man was a mutant and could heal, it would still take him a while. There was no way someone unprofessional, even a mutant, could melee four soldiers and win. They growled and launched themselves forward, ready for a melee fight.
Paul tossed his pistols aside and moved forward, flexing his arms as he moved as if he was ready for a fight. However, just before the melee guards could reach him, he knelt down and picked up the SMG of the first guard he killed.
The man fell first, so his SMG magazine was still full. Paul grabbed onto the weapon, turned off the safety, and looked at the two guards who had knives in their grips.
“Did you think this is a street fight?” He said with a smirk.
The guards realized the situation as well, but even before they could throw their hands up to surrender, the sound of SMG firing ended the last hope they had.
There were no survivors.