Shadow Crow's Reconnaissance

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The reconnaissance changed its rhythm on the fifth day.

Previously, they had come every other day.

Starting from the fifth day, they began coming daily, and not just one person.

Lynn's Super Senses captured two distinct sets of heartbeats.

One set was on the roof of the building opposite, at the original location.

The other set was in the alley behind the clinic, hiding behind a dumpster.

The two reconnaissance points formed a cross-monitoring setup.

Both the front and back doors were covered simultaneously.

On the night of the sixth day, Lynn intercepted a faint, encrypted radio signal.

The frequency was near four hundred megahertz, and the signal strength was very weak—the scouts were using short-range encrypted communicators to exchange information.

All-Things Analysis took about three seconds to crack the encryption.

The encoding method was not complex; it was a variant based on a simple substitution cipher, with a security level roughly equivalent to military standards from twenty years ago.

Kingpin's men were not using top-tier equipment.

The decrypted communication content was very brief.

"Target's daytime clinic hours are 7:30 to 6:00. Remains alone in the building after 6:00 PM."

"Second floor contains living quarters. No known armed personnel stationed. Security system is at a medium civilian level."

The final sentence read: "Suggested action window—2:00 AM to 4:00 AM. Target should be in a state of sleep."

Medium civilian level.

Lynn smiled slightly.

They had not discovered the high-end monitoring system he had secretly installed; those were things he had designed himself using Tony's Engineering Talent.

The exterior looked exactly like a standard fire detector, but the interior integrated motion sensing and communication interception functions.

More importantly, they did not know that the person living in this building was not an "ordinary human doctor."

The seventh day.

More fragments of information pieced together a complete picture.

He inferred the scale of the opposing team from the usage pattern of the communication frequency; at least six people were involved in the reconnaissance rotation.

A codename appeared in the communications—"Grey Falcon."

This codename appeared with the highest frequency, so he was likely the team leader.

All-Things Analysis combined with Batman's criminology knowledge base gave him a hypothesis: Shadow Crow.

The most elite assassin squad under Kingpin.

The number of people was usually between six and eight, and the members had undergone combat and assassination training from Bullseye's training system.

Estimated equipment: silenced pistols, short blades, garrotes, and possibly tranquilizer rounds.

They considered themselves hunters.

They considered him the prey.

Lynn made a decision on the night of the eighth day.

He would not ask Fury for help.

He would not contact Daredevil.

He would not mention this to anyone.

There were two reasons.

First, he needed a live-combat test.

After copying Captain America's Super Soldier Physique, his comprehensive combat power had reached a new level.

But data was cold; only in a real confrontation could he verify what this combat power actually meant.

Second, he knew Batman had been monitoring him in the shadows.

Bruce Wayne's Bat-shaped Micro Drone had changed its position and model, but Lynn's Super Senses still found it. On the top floor of an office building five hundred meters away from the clinic, a thumb-sized aircraft maintained a hovering posture.

Bruce was watching him.

Then he would show him something.

He would let Batman see the extent to which the things he had copied from him were being utilized.

The action time was confirmed; the latest instructions he intercepted from the communications indicated that the Shadow Crow's operation was scheduled for the early morning two days later.

Two days.

Lynn began to prepare.

He did three things on the first day.

First, he re-examined the entire layout inside the clinic.

From the first floor to the second, the dimensions of every room, the positions of doors and windows, and the usable furniture and equipment were all established as precise three-dimensional models in his mind.

Second, he performed inconspicuous pre-treatments at several key locations.

A very thin layer of medical paraffin powder was sprinkled on the floor inside the second-floor window—it was colorless and odorless, but the friction coefficient was reduced to one-tenth of a normal floor.

A layer of transparent surgical silicone oil was applied to the floor of the first-floor back door passage.

A metal medicine rack in the west corridor was adjusted in position and angle.

Third, he placed a few items on the instrument tray in the operating room.

A pack of size 10 silk suture needles.

A bottle of medical alcohol.

A roll of size 12 surgical suture thread.

And a pair of hemostatic forceps.

These were all medical instruments.

But in his hands, they could also be something else.

The next day, he saw patients as usual.

He closed the door at six.

He ate dinner at seven.

He took a shower at eight.

He lay down on the folding bed on the second floor at nine and closed his eyes.

He did not intend to sleep.

But he needed to let the scouts on the roof opposite see the lights on the second floor go out at 9:30 sharp, exactly the same as his routine for the past week.

The lights went out.

Lynn waited in the darkness.

Super Senses were fully engaged.

Every sound, every heartbeat, and every vibration of the air within a two-hundred-meter radius was within his perception.

Time passed second by second.

Ten o'clock.

The scouts on the roof opposite withdrew.

Eleven o'clock, the street quieted down.

Twelve o'clock.

The residents of the surrounding three blocks were basically all asleep.

One o'clock, a dark van stopped two blocks away.

The doors opened, and six sets of heartbeats stepped out of the vehicle.

They were here.

Two o'clock in the morning.

The six heartbeats split into three groups, approaching the clinic from three directions.

Two at the front door on the east side. Two at the back door on the west side. Two at the second-floor window on the south side.

Their cadence was uniform, about one step per second.

The soles of their shoes were made of soft rubber, and the sound of their landing was suppressed to an extremely low decibel level.

Their breathing frequencies were all controlled to under six times per minute.

Professional.

Lynn rose silently from the folding bed on the second floor.

He stepped barefoot onto the floor and walked into the operating room on the first floor.

He was not wearing his white coat.

He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and dark trousers.

But he hadn't taken off his gold-rimmed glasses; it wasn't time to take them off yet, as they were part of his disguise.

He stood in the corner of the operating room.

Back against the wall, breathing leveled out, heart rate suppressed to under fifty beats per minute.

Waiting.

The two on the south side arrived first.

Their climbing tools were suction-cup based; four suction cups fixed alternately to the outer wall, allowing them to climb like geckos.

The sound was extremely faint.

But the extremely weak change in air pressure when the suction cups attached and released was captured completely by Lynn's hearing.

They reached the position of the second-floor window.

Glass cutter. Silent.

A forty-centimeter square piece of glass was removed from the window.

The first person climbed in.

Landing. Right foot touched down first—

It landed on the paraffin powder.

That feeling must have been very strange.

The sole of his foot suddenly lost its grip.

His body instinctively sought balance, his upper body leaning forward, hands spread wide.

But the paraffin powder was too slippery—his foot slid forward nearly thirty centimeters.