[Reputation Points change: +30 (Tony Stark's follow-up feedback after a reexamination). Current Reputation Points: 610.]
The surveillance changed its rhythm on the fifth day.
Before that, they came every other day.
Starting on the fifth day, they came every day—and there was more than one of them.
Lynn's Super Senses picked up two different sets of heartbeats.
One was on the rooftop across the street, in the same spot as before.
The other was in the alley behind the clinic, hidden behind a trash can.
The two surveillance positions formed a cross-monitoring setup.
They had both the front and back entrances covered.
On the evening of the sixth day, Lynn intercepted a faint encrypted radio transmission.
The frequency was around 400 megahertz, and the signal was weak—the surveillants were using short-range encrypted communicators to exchange information.
All-Things Analysis took about three seconds to crack the encryption.
The coding method wasn't complicated, just a variant of a simple substitution cipher. Its security was roughly on par with military encryption from twenty years ago.
Kingpin's people weren't using top-of-the-line equipment.
The decrypted message was brief.
"Target's daytime clinic hours are 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Remains alone in the building after 6 p.m."
"The second floor contains living quarters. No known armed personnel on site. Security system is mid-grade commercial."
The last line read: "Recommended window of action: 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Target should be asleep."
Mid-grade commercial.
Lynn smiled.
They hadn't discovered the advanced surveillance system he'd secretly installed, which he'd designed himself using Tony's Engineering Talent.
It looked exactly like an ordinary smoke detector, but inside, it had motion sensors and communications interception capabilities.
More importantly, they didn't know that the person living in this building wasn't an "ordinary human doctor."
The seventh day.
More fragments of information came together to paint the full picture.
From the pattern of their radio transmissions, he deduced the size of the other team's operation: at least six people were taking turns conducting surveillance.
A codename appeared in their communications: "Grey Falcon."
It came up more often than any other, so he was probably the team leader.
All-Things Analysis, combined with Batman's criminology database, led him to a theory: Shadow Crow.
Kingpin's most elite team of assassins.
They usually had six to eight members, all trained in combat and assassination using Bullseye's methods.
Estimated equipment: silenced pistols, knives, garrotes, possibly tranquilizer darts.
They thought of themselves as hunters.
They thought of him as their prey.
On the evening of the eighth day, Lynn made a decision.
He wouldn't ask Fury for help.
He wouldn't contact Daredevil.
He wouldn't tell anyone.
There were two reasons.
First, he needed to test himself in real combat.
After copying Captain America's Super Soldier Physique, his overall combat ability had reached a new level.
But data was cold. Only a real confrontation could show him what that level of strength truly meant.
Second, he knew Batman had been keeping an eye on him from the shadows.
Bruce Wayne had changed the position and model of his Bat-shaped Micro Drone, but Lynn's Super Senses had still found it. The thumb-sized aircraft hovered on the top floor of an office building five hundred meters from the clinic.
Bruce was watching him.
Then he would give him something to watch.
He'd show Batman what he'd done with the things he'd copied from him.
The timing was confirmed. The latest orders Lynn intercepted showed that Shadow Crow's operation was scheduled for the early morning two days later.
Two days.
Lynn began preparing.
On the first day, he did three things.
First, he rechecked the entire layout of the clinic.
From the first floor to the second, he memorized the dimensions of every room, the positions of every door and window, and all the furniture and equipment he could use, building a precise three-dimensional model in his mind.
Second, he made discreet preparations in several key locations.
He scattered a thin layer of medical paraffin powder on the inside floor beneath the second-floor windows. It was colorless and odorless, but reduced friction to one-tenth that of a normal floor.
He coated the floor of the passage to the first-floor back door with clear surgical silicone oil.
He adjusted the position and angle of a metal medicine rack in the west corridor.
Third, he placed a few things on the instrument table in the operating room.
A packet of No. 10 suture needles.
A bottle of medical alcohol.
A spool of No. 12 surgical thread.
And a pair of hemostats.
They were all medical instruments.
But in his hands, they could be something else, too.
The next day, he saw patients as usual.
He closed at six.
He ate at seven.
He showered at eight.
At nine, he lay down on the folding bed on the second floor and closed his eyes.
He didn't intend to sleep.
But he needed the surveillant across the street to see the second-floor light go out right on schedule at 9:30, just like it had every night over the past week.
The light went out.
Lynn waited in the dark.
His Super Senses were fully active.
Every sound, every heartbeat, every shift in the air within a two-hundred-meter radius was within his range.
Time passed by the second.
Ten o'clock.
The surveillant on the rooftop across the street left.
At eleven, the street quieted down.
Midnight.
Most of the residents in the surrounding three blocks were asleep.
At one, a dark van pulled over two blocks away.
The doors opened, and six sets of heartbeats emerged.
They were here.
Two in the morning.
The six heartbeats split into three teams and approached the clinic from three directions.
Two at the east-side front entrance. Two at the west-side back entrance. Two at a south-facing second-floor window.
Their pace was steady, about one step per second.
They wore soft rubber soles, keeping their footsteps to a whisper.
All of their breathing was controlled to fewer than six breaths per minute.
Professionals.
Lynn silently rose from the folding bed on the second floor.
Barefoot, he stepped onto the floor and made his way to the operating room on the first floor.
He wasn't wearing his white coat.
He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and dark pants.
But he hadn't taken off his gold-rimmed glasses. It wasn't time for that yet; they were part of his disguise now.
He took up position in the corner of the operating room.
His back against the wall, he steadied his breathing and lowered his heart rate to below fifty beats per minute.
He waited.
The two coming from the south arrived first.
They were using suction-cup climbing gear, moving up the outer wall like geckos as they alternated between fixing the four suction cups in place.
They made almost no sound.
But attaching and releasing the suction cups caused the faintest changes in air pressure, which Lynn's hearing picked up perfectly.
They reached the second-floor window.
A glass cutter sliced through the pane. Silently.
They removed a square of glass, forty centimeters across.
The first person climbed inside.
He landed, right foot first—
And stepped onto the paraffin powder.
The sensation must have been strange.
His foot suddenly lost its grip.
His body instinctively searched for balance. His upper body pitched forward, and his hands flew open.
But the paraffin powder was too slippery—his foot slid nearly thirty centimeters forward.
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