Down the road from the hospital

A black Escalade sat in a gas station parking stall. The windows were tinted so dark in the back that the three passengers seated in the second row couldn’t be seen. The two closest to the doors were geared up in dark grey uniforms, black vests and helmets, neoprene face coverings, and protective eyewear. The driver wore a button up shirt with an underlayer of level 3 body armor. The man in the front seat wore a suit jacket over his own level 3 vest, with sunglasses and a cab hat. The man in the middle of the back seat however, he wore jeans and a black t-shirt, and didn’t bother to wear protective equipment beside a metal mask and a chest rig with two long belts of 7.62x51mm in 200 round bags for a M240B that sat between his legs. The men sitting beside him each carried a belt for his gun, but they had drum fed M4’s, as did the driver and the front seat passenger.

Across the street and another gas station, there sat an Econoline cargo van filled with men dressed in the same grey uniforms and black vests as the men in the Escalade, but their M4’s were not drum fed. Two of the eight men had M249’s, and of the six M4’s, two of those had under-barrel mounted M203’s. Another two had old generation experimental shotgun attachments. The drivers sat watching each other while waiting for signals from sources at the hospital.

At the hospital

Bernard sat on the table with a blank stare, an oxygen mask feeding air to his lungs as an orderly checked his IV bags and recorded his stats from the monitor. In the room sat a guard from Toms department within the agency. He watched the nurse perform her checks, an earpiece sitting snug in his ear as he waited for communication from Tom as to any updates on what was going on.

In the guards mind, he was worried that Michael was on his way to snuff Bernard out.

After the nurse had finally left the room, the guards phone vibrated quietly in his pocket. He stuck his bluetooth headset in his other ear and answered.

“Listen very carefully,” Tom said in the headset, “Your mission has changed.”

“Yes?” the guard said quietly.

“You are currently guarding a prisoner,” Tom said, calmly as if this wasn’t the lead in to tragic and epic action to follow, “he is not to be left unattended. Michael is not hostile, we have evidence to deal with Bernard through procedure.”

The guard nodded once, though there was nobody for him to nod for because nobody was looking at him. “I understand,” the guard said before Tom hung up.

Bernard heard the guard acknowledge something on the phone, not knowing exactly what was said. He looked at the guard and tried to reach out to get his attention. This was quickly halted as the guard grabbed his wrist and cuffed it to the bed. He moved to the other side of the bed and cuffed his other wrist to the bed. “What are you doing?” Bernard tried to ask, but he got no response. After a moment, the guard stepped back to the door and stood where he could watch the door and the bed. “Please,” Bernard spoke again.

The guard put his hand up and interrupted Bernard’s whimpering. “Listen guy,” he said with a blend of snark and disinterest, “Your status changed from endangered to imprisoned, so do us both a favor and shut the entire fuck up. Got it? The complete fuck up is what you’re gonna shut, before I have to smack the sass out of your mouth.”

Bernards eyes went wide. He never expected someone beneath him to ever speak this way, nor did he expect to be caught, compiled with the shock of not knowing exactly what was figured out or how much anyone knew.

Another nurse walked in with a clipboard. The guard stepped in front of him. “Sir, his status is changed to a suspect in custody,” he said trying not to sound too far from law enforcement lingo. “If he speaks any words to you whatsoever, you have to stop what you’re doing and leave the room.”

The nurse nodded, not really giving a shit what this brutish looking guard was saying. Instead of walking around the guard, he produced a knife and thrust it forcefully toward the guard. The guard caught his arm and yanked him sideways. Though the guard was not an Enhanced Individual of Power, he was extensively trained in this exact type of fighting.

The guard lifted his leg and shoved the nurse against the door frame and drew his gun, shooting the nurse three times in the center of his chest and one more through his nasal cavity before he could fall down.

Panic in the emergency ward erupted, a preteen child began screaming loudly as other orderlies and staff ran for alarms and tried to lock doors. In the lobby, another guard who heard the shots and knew something was very wrong leapt from his seat and ran toward Bernards room. His sprint was interrupted as two shots hit him in his lower back. Though he was wearing armor under his suit, the rounds were high pressure magnum rounds from a full frame revolver. The guard fell to the floor, only for a man in a janitor uniform to walk up to him and fire two more shots into the guards head.

More people in the room who watched this man execute the guard froze in terror, staring at him, unsure of what to do. The man in the janitor's uniform looked back at them with an unusually calm expression. He then pointed with an empty hand toward the door. “That’s the exit,” he said softly, “you wanna go that way, yeah?”

After a brief moment, people started slowly making their way to the exit of the room, watching the janitor, fearful that he might open fire on people running.

“I’m not a mass shooter folks,” the janitor dressed man said a little louder to the crowd of cowering onlookers, “I actually want you all to leave, the less of you getting hurt the better, okay? Bye bye, fuck off, go away?”

As he waved at the crowd to get out faster, he turned to see the other guard sighting in on him. The guard opened fire, though the janitor simply twisted his body and dropped to the ground, shooting the shoulder and pelvic bone of the guard with the last two shots. The shoulder of the guard was near amputation, and the shot landing in the pelvic bone shattered it, sending the guard to his back unable to move. The janitor walked over, one round left in the wheel, and leveled the barrel off at the guards head.

“You see,” the janitor said with a half smile, “I’m enhanced, and you’re dead.” He fired his last shot through the jaw of the guard, the shot resulting in the spreading of blood and brain material several feet across the floor.

Bernard sat in the bed breathing heavily. As the Janitor fished the keys from the guards belt, he turned and looked at Bernard. “I’m here to help you outta here lil’ fella.”

Bernard shook his head. “I can’t participate in this,” he said with a cracked squeal in his voice, “wasn’t giving you weapons enough?”

“Well, you helped us a lot,” the janitor said as he began unlocking Bernards cuffs, “I’m sure you have information on the people who will come after us, and it would be kinda lousy if we just left you to get eaten by dogs.”

Bernard began sobbing. “Please, I don’t want war in America,” he said through his cries and sobs, “I wanted you to go to Europe or something, far away where this wouldn’t come back on me!”

The janitor rolled his eyes. “We’re still saving you,” he said unimpressed by the waterworks. He grabbed his phone and hit the dial button. After a single ring, someone picked up. “The Minute is Nigh,” he said, “bring me warmth.” he hung up before anyone could reply. After shoving his phone back in his pocket, he turned to Bernard and put a hand on his shoulder. “I need you to chill out,” he said quietly. “I can guard you in this room from other people, or go room to room and stay with you, but someone else is coming to actually get you out of this place.”

“Please,” Bernard said through choking tears, “don’t hurt any more people.”

At the gas stations

A moment after the econoline whipped into traffic, Michael came around the corner in his suburban. As Michael passed the gas stations, the Escalade pulled into the road. Michael took a turn to go to the back of the hospital, so as not to just walk straight into the Emergency Room door where they had the only metal detector. The phone rang. Michael put it on speaker as he answered it.

“We’ve intercepted 911 traffic,” Tom said in a less than calm tone. “Shots have been fired, three dead, someone might be making their move on him now, my guys aren’t answering their phones.”

“We got this,” Michael said into the phone. “We’re gonna take a different door, we’ve got our badges, I’m guessing we need full kit for this.”

“Do what you do, but be careful because that hospital’s getting evacuated and the police don’t know who you are.” Tom hung up after informing them of their anonymous status to law enforcement.

Lani climbed over the seat and grabbed the bag with her special armor suit in it. She quickly began putting on her arm and leg guards, the torso piece and the chest rig over it with her magazines. She grabbed her Rec7, with a 1-6x short dot optic and slung it to herself. She then grabbed Michaels heavy vest and unfastened its side and shoulder connectors and slid it around Michael’s torso, adjusting it for him as he drove quickly toward the hospital. “What gun are you needing,” she asked as she looked in the bag, “I’ve got six eight on me, you want that too or something meaner?”

Michael pulled a magazine out of his vest and looked at the rounds in it. “Three oh-eight” he said with a smile. He held up the magazine, showing an AR10 formatted magazine with unmarked ammo. This meant to Michael and Lani that it was M80 ball ammo and that he didn’t intend on perching up with a sniper rifle.

Thankfully he had a short AR10 with an Eotech, a ten inch barrel with a permanently affixed four inch can that had no real sound dampening qualities, but allowed him to have a short barrelled .308 without the nasty light show that shorter rifles in full power chamberings usually caused. Stacked up with a full set of 25 round magazines, this configuration was good for fighting hardened persons, either because of enhancement or excess armor. Lani grabbed a 50 round drum and loaded it into the weapon and placed it next to Michael.

By this time, Michael had pulled into the parking lot and parked in the middle of the lot in the nearest empty space. They got out together and began moving quickly toward the hospital. They scanned the building as they approached, watching for potential shooters on elevated floors. They made it inside without issues. Once they stepped in, Michael walked briskly ahead towards a stairway. He looked at the signs for arrows pointing to the emergency ward.

Lani followed behind, looking around. “Mike,” she said nervously, “why are there no security telling us to stay out?”

Michael paused, realizing that this side of the hospital had been too well evacuated for how fresh the incident was.

Meanwhile

Bernard struggled on his feet, the janitor held him up and tapped his gun against his face as he struggled to move. “Mister Bernard,” the janitor said impatiently, “The rescue team is just about here, we have to go.”

The eight men who had departed the van made their way up and entered the ward. They stepped around the dead guard in the lobby, moving towards the pool of blood which made it obvious where they needed to go. As they walked in, stepping around the blood, they lowered their weapons and started stepping back into the main hallway.

"Please," Bernard said through tears, "I don't want it like this."

The janitor grabbed the hair on the back of his head and jerked him back. "I don't care," he said through a growl, "shit isn't gonna go your way today."

As the team began moving from the lobby to the stairwell, two loud shots rang out. Michael had found them. The first man fell as the back of his head exploded through his helmet, and his abdomen was shot through, the exit wound throwing a couple spinal discs across the room, shattered into smaller blood drenched bone fragments. As another one raised his weapon, he was met with his forearm and the side of his face being shattered by another two shots.

The janitor knew he wasn't going to be able to get Bernard through the gunfight that was erupting. He pulled him into another room and threw a chair at the window. As the glass shattered out, he looked down. Only three stories he thought, I can withstand it.

The team of men was down to six already in just a second and a half. They thought they’d be tactical and move four of them to the other stairway to try and flank their shooter. This turned out to be a mistake when they got halfway down the stairs and stepped into another volley of fire. Lani shot through the throat of the first one. He fell kinda slow, almost as if he was too stupid to realize that he had died. The second one got hit in the fingers that he had wrapped around the forend of his rifle. This was followed up by a tightly grouped pair of shots to his collarbone.

The rest of the gunmen were guarding the room that the janitor had run into, laying down suppressive fire at the stairways. The Janitor had gotten Bernard held tightly in his arms, his legs wrapped around his waist so as to minimize the damage done to Bernard during the jump that was about to take place. He stepped out of the window as Bernard watched two more men fall down.

Bernard had been around while Michael worked, but he never had to actually witness the killing for himself. Now he was watching as a .308 round tore through the neck of a man, spinning the dying man's head half off. From the other direction, Lani hit someone square in the forehead with a pair of 6.8mm rounds. That target slumped down, his head tilted back. A moment later, he saw the window of the building moving further away from him, he looked up as the window moved away from reach, he could feel himself in flight as gravity took hold of him.

As Bernard was carried away in the janitors arms in freefall towards the ground below, Michael shot the side of the head of the gunman aimed in Lani’s direction. Lani shot the wrists of the gunman facing Michael. Michael turned his weapon on the wrist-shot man and shot his knee. The shot to his knee shattered and amputated his lower leg, tumbling him down against the wall. Lani ran to the doorway of the room as Michael ran to the falling gunman. As Michael grabbed the vest of the surviving fighter, Lani entered the room and ran to the window, aiming down to see the Janitor fumbling about with his footing as he carried Bernard. She aimed and lined up a shot at Bernard, firing two shots into his lower back.

The Janitor turned and opened fire with his large revolver, firing six shots in rapid succession. The rate of fire which he fired these shots was as quick as Michael or Lani would fire their rifles on Auto. These shots flew very close together straight at Lani. One came very close to hitting her, grazing her hair. She threw herself back in time not to have her head taken off by the volley of shots.

Michael saw the shots land on the ceiling above Lani. Knowing that Lani was okay, he moved to the next room and looked for the source of the shots. He saw Bernard laying on the ground trying to crawl, next to a man in a janitor's uniform holding a large revolver. He watched as he quickly shoved a speed loader to the cylinder and close the wheel, quickly aiming for Lani’s position again to take more careful aim. Michael took the chance to open fire, placing the dots on his eotech reticle in line with the janitors shoulder line and abdomen.

The Janitor dodged the shots, though it was not easy for him to do. Some of the shots were getting closer the more he moved. Why is he not surprised at my speed or accuracy? The confusion didn't last as he realized, This is them, the enhanced interference.

Lani realized that they’d have to leap after him to catch up. She yelled through the wall, “Michael, throw more bullets at him while I chase his fuckin ass!”

Michael dropped his nearly empty mag and slammed a new one into his weapon. As he lined up his next shot, he yelled “Go!” As he started firing, he aimed more towards the legs after having watched the Janitor weave and dive his upper body out of the way of incoming fire.

While Michael fired rapidly at the Janitor to keep him from aiming at Lani’s fixed direction of movement, she leapt from the window and landed hard on the ground below, the weight of her armor causing the sidewalk she had landed on to crack beneath her. As she landed, she leveled her weapon and fired rapidly at the target and opened fire. She aimed for his hips rather than his head or his legs, keeping him from being able to pick up on any kind of pattern.

Seeing that Lani had begun to suppress the Janitor, Michael reloaded and jumped from the window, landing on a small honda to cushion his fall. Before engaging the Janitor, he fired two shots at Bernard, the shots tearing through his gluteus tissues and up into his lungs and stomach area. Once he fired those two shots, he locked eyes on the Janitor, his weapon sight following. The time interval between shooting Bernard the first and second time, and his third shot going toward the Janitor, was synced perfectly enough that a blind man would not know that Michael had engaged two targets with his volley of fire.

Lani ran in a direction away from Michael in order to widen the angle that the Janitor would have to defend against as they continued to attack. Michael moved forward, as one of his shots hit the revolver and blew the cylinder from the frame. The Janitor responded to this by hurling his broken gun at Michael as hard as he could, which turned out to be a tremendous amount of force. Michael raised his weapon up to block the chunk of flying metal, which struck the receiver hard enough to dent the side of the metal in such a manner that it trapped the bolt carrier in place, while moving it just out of battery to the point where it couldn’t be fired anymore.

As Michael threw the rifle aside and started a flat sprint toward the Janitor at such a speed that it looked like he was just taking a few very long leaps forward, Lani kept firing as the Janitor grabbed another gun from his pocket, this one a small 9mm handgun. He fired at Michael twice, the shots hitting his plate. He quickly fired one more shot at Lani that bounced off her wrist worn armor, though the shot had been aimed for her head. He emptied the rest of his magazine at Michael, the shots cracking his plate. The last shot would have hit Michael in the face, but by the time he had fired this shot Michael had closed the distance.

Michael shoulder’d the Janitor hard, sending him to the ground. As he shoved, he drew his Karambit and threw a hard right hook at the target's chest. Though the Janitor met the blow by catching Michaels hand, it was a simple matter of turning his hand and slicing his way through with enough force behind his movement to cut off the Janitors fingers.

As the fingers dangled on his hand, the Janitor grabbed a knife with his other hand and tried to icepick hammer swing it at Michael’s neck. Michael caught him by the wrist and squeezed with a death grip.

Lani watched on, seeing the knife and remembering the night that Michael had collapsed on the floor at their home. She remembered feeling him lay near death in her arms as she finished fixing his hasty self aid measures that had come undone. She remembered fighting an E.I.P. with a knife had almost cost Michael his life.

Michael crushed the bone of his wrist, grabbing his hand with his free hand and twisting it to further the damage being done to where he had broken the arm. The Janitor tried to kick his way out from under Michael but he wouldn’t be budged.

Lani fired twice into the Janitors leg, the impacts tore through both legs. This ended his ability to put up much further resistance.

Michael tossed the knives away from reach and began striking the janitor in the face. At first, there was an effort to evade the strikes. Michael grabbed him by the forehead and held him down, striking his jaw and cheek until the skull began to fracture and break under the force of his strikes. The Janitor eventually realized he had lost, and lay there staring back at Michael as he continued to be beaten to death.

Once Michael was satisfied with how dead the Janitor had been beaten, he stood up and walked over to Bernard. He was still alive, choking on blood. Michael kicked him in the ribs, flipping him on his back. He grabbed him by the head and sat him up. He knelt down in front of him and held his jaw, making sure he didn’t look away. “Not one mother fucking person has escaped me,” He said to him, “you will not be the exception.”

Bernard tried to speak, but was unable to say much.

Michael struck Bernard across the mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t wanna hear a fuck of what you wanna say!” He grabbed him by the side of the head and slapped his face a few more times. “You can’t lie anymore.”

Lani looked around, noticing a small crowd gathering. She saw an Escalade back out of a parking space and floor it to the street and flee. Looking around, she gripped her rifle and watched the people who were starting to come out of hiding places.

Michael gently wrapped his hand around Bernards throat. “It’s time,” he said softly as he tightened his grip, “time for you to die.”

He squeezed. a crunch could be heard. Bernard’s head slumped back. Michael shoved his body to the ground and stood up.