Seoul Third Hospital, Main Building Lobby.
The scent of disinfectant mixed with the hum of the crowd and a faint medicinal smell wafted over him.
The light was bright but conveyed a cold, businesslike sense of efficiency. Long lines snaked at the registration desk, and the waiting area was filled with anxious or weary patients and their families. Medical staff hurried by.
Johnny blended into the flow of people, like a drop of water merging into the ocean.
He wore a well-fitting dark suit, carried a black briefcase that looked like a document case, his expression calm, his gaze naturally sweeping his surroundings, like an ordinary businessman visiting a patient or handling affairs.
He did not directly approach the information desk to ask about "Room 1705" or the name "Leo."
That would be too foolish, tantamount to telling a potential observer: someone is investigating.
He first walked towards the floor directory on one side of the lobby, his eyes quickly scanning. The inpatient department was located in Building B of the main building, on floors 10-22.
He walked steadily towards the corridor connecting to Building B, while observing the camera positions and security personnel patrol routes out of the corner of his eye.
Building B Inpatient Department, First Floor Lobby.
It was slightly quieter here than in the main building lobby, but still bustling with people. The elevator area was crowded with those waiting.
Johnny did not squeeze into the elevator, but instead walked towards the nurse's station in the corner.
Several nurses were busy at computers.
He pretended to check his phone, his body naturally leaning close to the station, his ears keenly catching conversations between nurses and their interactions with patients' families. He needed fragmented information to piece together how things operated here.
The content from the translator in his Bluetooth earpiece was constantly being broadcast.
"The antibiotics for bed 3 on the 12th floor need to be increased..."
"The family of the VIP patient on the 14th floor requested a change of sheets..."
"Have the discharge procedures for the 10th floor been completed?"
"Are there any new admissions to the 17th floor today? Have the equipment been debugged?"
The number "17th floor" made Johnny's attention highly focused, but his face showed no change.
He heard one nurse say to another: "Section Chief, the central monitoring system data flow in the west wing of the 17th floor still seems a bit unstable. Will the engineer come over again this afternoon?"
"Yes, it's scheduled for three o'clock. Pay special attention to 1705, the patient's condition is special, and the equipment cannot malfunction."
1705!
Target confirmed!
It's on the 17th floor!
And it seems to be a key monitoring room, with special equipment.
Johnny's heart settled, but he immediately became more vigilant. A special situation meant there might be an extra layer of attention and surveillance.
He needed a more specific floor plan and patient occupancy list to avoid potential traps and checkpoints.
He noticed a simple floor guide booklet on the side of the nurse's station for families to take.
He naturally walked over, took one, and pretended to flip through it.
The booklet only had simple floor divisions and room number ranges, no specific names.
The list was on the nurse's station computer, or in an internal paper register, which he couldn't access directly.
Johnny quietly walked towards the fire escape stairwell. It was relatively secluded, and there were fewer cameras.
He opened his briefcase. Inside were not documents, but some intricate tools and a tablet computer.
He quickly operated the tablet, connecting to a miniature wireless signal interceptor—a gadget he got from Jackal—attempting to capture nearby open hospital internal Wi-Fi signals or the faint data streams from medical staff handheld devices.
The efficiency was very low; the hospital's internal network protection was clearly not weak.
He could only capture some encrypted, fragmented data transmissions, unable to directly obtain the list.
He needed a more direct method.
Johnny put away his equipment and walked out of the stairwell.
He saw an orderly pushing an instrument cart towards the service elevator, with some monitoring equipment accessories on the cart.
An opportunity arose.
He maintained his distance, following the orderly to the service elevator area, where there were fewer people. The orderly needed to swipe a card to activate the elevator.
Just as the orderly looked down to operate the instrument cart and the elevator doors opened, Johnny approached like a ghost, and a tiny, extremely thin tracker silently adhered to the bottom edge of the instrument cart between his fingers.
The elevator doors closed and ascended.
Johnny retreated into the stairwell and took out his tablet. The tracker's signal was stable, showing the instrument cart stopped on the 17th floor.
He needed to go up.
He did not choose the service elevator (which required an access card), but instead walked towards the passenger elevators. There were still many people waiting for the elevator.
The elevator arrived, people surged in, Johnny squeezed among them and pressed the button for the 17th floor.
Ding!
The elevator opened on the 17th floor.
The corridor here was noticeably wider and quieter than downstairs, with soft lighting and sound-absorbing carpets.
The smell of disinfectant in the air seemed to have faded a bit, exuding a sense of detachment typical of a VIP area.
Near the corridor entrance was a semi-open nurse's station, where the nurses seemed busier, monitoring multiple screens.
Johnny noticed a mobile workstation behind the nurse's station, on which a paper duty log or room assignment sheet seemed to be pinned.
But he couldn't get close; the nurse's station had a good view, and the camera density on this floor was significantly higher.
He pretended to have gone to the wrong floor, hesitated for a moment, then turned and pressed the elevator down button. The elevator doors opened again, he stepped in and pressed the button for the 10th floor.
He couldn't force his way in; he had to go floor by floor, checking from bottom to top, understanding the patterns, and looking for opportunities.
For the next few hours, Johnny moved like a ghost, silently traversing the inpatient floors from the 10th to the 16th.
He used the fire escape stairs to go up and down, observing the shift change routines at each nurse's station, the patrol intervals of security personnel, and the doctors' rounds times.
He noted the routes and schedules of the meal carts, laundry carts, and medical waste collection carts.
He tried to disguise himself as an equipment repairman, after all, his briefcase made him look the part, but a nurse on the 16th floor politely and vigilantly asked for his work badge and appointment slip. He could only make an excuse about being on the wrong floor and left.
He also tried to quickly glance at the nurse's station computer screen or documents on the desk during shift changes or brief moments of chaos among the medical staff, but the angle and timing were too poor to obtain effective information.
Time passed by second by second; patience was the most basic quality of a hunter.
Finally, on the 14th floor, the opportunity he was waiting for arrived.
A nurse pushed a laundry cart towards the soiled utility room, with a high pile of sheets on the cart.
As she rounded a corridor corner in a camera blind spot, her walkie-talkie rang. She stopped to answer it, moving a few steps away from the cart.
Johnny darted out from behind the fire door like a leopard, his movements as fast as lightning, his hands quickly rummaging through the pile of sheets on the cart!
His fingertips brushed against a hard object—a folded, clean orderly uniform jacket!
He unhesitatingly pulled out the jacket, tucked it into his arms, and his body retreated back into the shadows of the fire escape, the entire process taking less than three seconds.
The nurse was oblivious, and after finishing her call, she pushed the cart away.
Inside the fire escape, Johnny quickly took off his suit jacket and tie, stuffed them into his briefcase, and put on the slightly loose light blue orderly uniform jacket. He put on a disposable mask and a pair of plain glasses, and slightly ruffled his hair.
When he walked out of the fire escape again, he had transformed into a tired and busy-looking ordinary orderly.
He kept his head down, pushing an empty medical equipment cart, which he had casually acquired from some corner, covered with a cloth. In this way, he blended into the crowd on the 17th floor.
This time, he didn't attract any extra attention; orderlies in this environment were almost invisible.
He pushed the cart, slowly moving along the 17th floor corridor, his eyes quickly scanning the room numbers.
1701... 1703... 1705!
The door to Room 1705 was tightly closed, and the windows were frosted glass, making it impossible to see inside.
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