I heard it. The footsteps. After approximately two hours of lying here, there was a guard approaching. We could wait for him, and when he walked past us, we would get the hell out of there. But, was that going to work? I poured myself a cold sweat as he started approaching us. To be completely honest, there were thousands of holes in my plan. It wasn’t a perfect plan, I knew that, but it was the best I could have hoped for. Something was wrong. The guard was staring for too long on the other side of those bars. Why is he still there? Move already! He turned his gaze toward me in suspicion. I quickly closed my eyes, even though it was hard to see in this darkness, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I peeked slightly through my eyes, he was bringing his guarded hands to his waist. He brought a radio close to his helmet.

“Unit 32, requesting permission to enter Cell 2Y, over,” He said. Why is he coming in here?

“Permission granted, over,” The radio said.

The cell door slowly opened, I opened my eyes, spying his entrance. He went over to my side of the bed, Shit! Does he know I have a gun somehow?

“Hey, you, wake up, you are not supposed to be here!” He poked his gun at Ethan. Ethan bolted his eyes open in fright.

“What?” He asked.

“You are not a prisoner of this cell, what are you doing here? You are not Alexei!” Fuck, he figured it out.

Paul grabbed that man by the neck from behind, and Ethan threw himself at the assault rifle, keeping him from shooting it. The guard banged his helmet at Paul, and Paul released him while holding his nose. I jumped at him from above, and landed right on his head, knocking him down. Ethan took the cup that he turned hard earlier and slammed it with all of his might onto the guard’s hand. The guard screamed out as the tiny bones in his hand shattered. Fuck. Other guards could have heard that scream, even though his own helmet suppressed some of the sounds. I took out the pistol I was hiding and pointed it at him, while Ethan pointed the rifle at him. When he realized what was going on, he raised his hand.

“You make another noise and I will blow up that thick skull of yours,” Ethan said to him, he was still in his angry mood. “You move, and I will do the same.”

“You can’t shoot me, you shoot me, the other guards will shoot you on sight as soon as they get here,” He said, panicking.

He was jittering. I noticed there was a pistol on his waist. I get closer to him, making sure he wouldn’t do anything else. Before I could realize what was going on, Paul got up and put his arm around the guard’s neck. It was so tight the guard couldn’t even scream out, Paul was literally squeezing the air out of him. It didn’t take long for him to lose his consciousness. His body stopped moving and Paul dropped him to the ground. I took the man’s helmet off.

“Did you kill him?” I asked Paul.

He shook his head.

“Well then, kill him!” Ethan said.

“What, you want to kill him?” Paul asked.

“Of course! What else?”

“Are you crazy? He could have a family, someone waiting for him to come home!” Paul said in defense.

I reached for Ethan’s cup but Ethan got there before I did. He raised it and instantly smashed the guard on his head. His skull was visibly cracked and some of his brains were pouring out, I was quite sure he was dead.

“I don’t know if he has anything or anyone, all I know is, we leave him alive, we put ourselves and the entire resistance in jeopardy, if you don’t have the balls to do it, I will.”

“Guys, shut up! Don’t be too loud!” I said in the lowest tone I could but still got their attention. Paul let out an angry sigh and shook his head.

“You are fine with this, Arthur?” Paul asked angrily. I got down onto the body and started stripping the guard.

“Did you care that the guard that killed your friend had a family?” I glanced at him judgingly and asked him.

He was taken back, he fell silent.

“This is war, and in war, there are casualties, and I would rather it be them than us.” I finished. Ethan looked like he approved of my attitude.

I finished taking off the guard’s clothes. They looked like they would suit me. I noticed his rifle also had an Anti-Suppression device, that’s great, now we had two. Things were going as normal as it could get until I was startled when the radio went off.

“Unit 32, this is admin, report your situation, over.”

I took the radio. I had to answer, if I didn’t, it would raise suspicions, and everything would go to waste. I tried to mimic his voice as best as possible and pressed the button.

“This is unit 32, there were displaced prisoners, I will now escort them to their cells, please close the cell in 5 minutes.”

The radio was quiet for a while. I was getting nervous.

“Copy that, over.”

I let out a sigh. I put on the guard uniform and the helmet right away.

“Alright, I will escort you guys to the nurse's office. Ethan, please put the guard’s body on one of the beds.”

Ethan nodded. It was a more suitable job for Paul, but I didn’t think Paul would be so willing to take that job. He looked lost, as if not knowing what he was doing. I came over to him.

“Paul, listen, do you want to get out of here or not?” I asked and he nodded.

“Then you better get up, because they ain’t gonna take people that are late. Our rescue ride will leave as soon as 2 A.M, and if you keep sitting around like this, or being slow, no one will come back for you.” I said as I put the helmet over me.

He stared at me. He knew I was right, but it was no secret that he did not like it. He was a man with morals, but sometimes, those morals get in the way, and that might kill him, or worse, us. He stood up.

“Let’s go,” He said.

I nodded. Ethan had already finished tucking in the guard. It was around 12:30 A.M, which means we had around two hours and a half until our ride gets here, probably less. I took the guard’s rifle and started walking. I heard the door closing behind me. We should be fine because I had a guard uniform with me, but I still couldn’t help growing nervous whenever we approached a guard. It seemed like the guards could hear the radio conversation between me and admin because none of the patrol guards paid any mind to us. I could tell Paul and Ethan were nervous as well, it made sense, why wouldn’t they be, it was almost like we were breaking out of a highly-secured prison. We soon got to the nurse’s office. Cecilia jumped when she saw me. I closed the door behind me after Ethan and Paul walked in and took off the helmet.

“Don’t worry, it’s just me, Arthur,” I reassured her.

She let out a sigh and handed me a box.

“I’m not going to ask what happened, but on my part, I got the TNT out of him, he is fine, I’m just waiting for the anesthesia to dose off.” She said, furrowing her brows in stress.

“Alright, now all we need to do, is wait, we blow up that wall as soon as Alexei wakes up,” I said.

Ethan and Paul sat down, far away from each other. It did not seem like they were best buddies, but at least they were willing to work with each other, and that was all I asked of them. I handed Ethan a pistol, and Paul the other pistol that we just got. I gave Ethan the Anti-Suppression device of the guard that we just killed because I had no use for it and the other one to Cecilia.

“Give it to Alexei when he wakes up,” She nodded at my words. “He is the key to all of this.”

I sat down next to Ethan. He didn’t mind my presence.

“Hey, you good?” I checked up on him.

“About as good as anyone here can be,” He was juggling the cup he used to kill the guard.

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected,” I said.

“What about you? You seem tired,”

“I am, but the job isn’t done.”

“You got that part right,” He said, turning away from me. He pointed to Paul. “He doesn’t seem to be very happy with the fact that you gave me the device and not him.”

“Your power is stronger,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t the only reason. “And listen, you need to lead the group out to the yard and blow that wall up. I’m not going to be here, don’t worry, I will escape with you guys in time.”

“Where are you going?” He turned toward me and asked.

“You told me there was a control room controlling the Suppression Devices and the camera, but I remembered seeing a power room when I took my trip down that hallway, I’m going to destroy it, that should power down the cameras and the devices, and there should be a prison riot, it’s going to male breaking out a whole lot easier.”

He thought for a while, then nodded. “Well, make sure you come back, friend.”

Friend, huh. I guessed I could consider him a friend, he saved my life, after all, more than once. I made a promise to myself, I promised that I would get every single soul in this room out of this cursed prison, even if at the cost of my life. After a while, Alexei moved. Everyone got out of their seats and started swarming him.

“Gosh, that hurt.” He groaned.

“You ready?” I asked him.

“Just gimme a minute,” he sat up, trying to keep his dizziness in check. He then got off the table, struggling to keep his balance.

“Alright, let’s go.”

I looked at a clock in the room, it was 12:50 A.M. We had an hour and ten minutes left.

“You guys, get to the yard first, I will be there before 2.”

“Where are you going?” Cecilia and Paul asked me in unison. Alexei seemed to be curious as well, but he was not in the talking mood.

“Just talk to Ethan, we are running out of time, I'm going to make our escape a whole lot easier.”

I turned around and prepare to walk out of the door. Paul tapped me on the shoulder.

“Good luck, you gonna need it.”

I nodded. If I remembered everything correctly, and 99 out of 100 times, I remember everything correctly, the power supply room should be three rooms away from the Head Warden’s room. I put on my helmet and made my way to the administration hallway. There were two guards guarding the hallway. I walked casually between them, but they put out their hands to stop me.

“Unit number?” One of them asked.

“32,” I answered casually.

“What is your purpose in this hallway?”

“I-I was asked to check the power supply, some of the cameras lost power, and I was asked to come to see if anything was wrong.”

They were silent for a second. They stared at me, I couldn’t tell if they were suspicious or not, but it seemed my memory wasn’t needed.

“Very well, we will escort you there.”

They escorted me to a room that says ‘Power Supply’. Well, that was almost too easy, but a problem remained, how was I going to destroy the power when there are two, fully armed guards twice my size right behind me. There was only one way, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to escape if I did this, but it was the only way. I jerked the rifle to turn around, about to shoot them. But before I could pull the trigger, a gunshot echoed throughout the entire prison.