The hospital in Starlight Central Academy had been built to provide medical students to help prepare them for real life scenarios. The place operated like an actual hospital as the school management had gone all out by employing several genuine doctors to guide the students, as well as multiple miscellaneous staff. The medical students were simply required to serve as interns to the doctors as well as observe them in action to glean as much as experience as possible. Since it operated like the real thing, the hospital was never closed at any point in the day. Rather the employed staff rotated shifts to keep the place functioning day in and day out.
The sun had already receded well into the horizon when the two Hunters arrived at the hospital. Having spent more than a few hours memorizing the layout of the building, both of them were already familiar with the placement of rooms in the hospital. After taking care to ensure they were not seen by anyone, they made their way to the back of the building quietly.
Jade moved to place her hand on the wall of the building and frowned immediately.
"What is it?" Lee asked.
"There's good news and bad news," she responded. "Good news is that there is definitely something up with this place. It's covered with a lot of advanced magic runes."
"And the bad news?"
She turned to look at him with a bitter smile on her face. "Those runes are all primed for detecting incoming foreign magic energies."
"Meaning?"
"You go in there and every skinwalker in the building will know immediately."
"Well shit," Lee sighed and turned his gaze upwards to stare at the wall before them. "Now what?"
"I have a plan." Jade's words had Lee turning to face her expectantly. "There is a way I can get you inside without them knowing exactly where you would appear. But they will be aware that someone entered the place so you'll have a very small window of time to do whatever you have to do you'll have to get the hell out of there–"
"Let's do it," Lee agreed nearly instantly.
Jade slapped a hand to her forehead in exasperation at the Asian boy's jumpiness. "Lee, this is serious. I know you can fight your way out of there but we're trying to be stealthy here. You absolutely cannot get caught, you understand?"
"Yeah yeah, just open it already," he waved her warnings off.
"Why do I even bother?" Jade sighed and held out her hand. A swirl of purplish black shadows appeared out of thin air and expanded rapidly to a size big enough for a person to fit through.
Once the portal was steady, she turned to deliver some final words of warning to her partner. "Remember I can only buy you about a minute at most. How much you can do depends on how fast you can work."
The boy turned his head to give her a cocky grin. "How fast I can work ehh?"
"Just go dummy," Jade pushed him into the portal, unable to stop the smile that bloomed in her own lips. "Try not to get caught too."
The instant Lee went through the portal, Jade simultaneously opened several other decoy portals in various parts of the hospital that she knew for sure would be unoccupied at that moment. The multiple gateways would all trigger the runes which would in turn inform whomever was watching of several entrances occurring at the same time. Jade had made her one-minute estimation based on the approximate time it would take multiple personnel to investigate the appearance of the portals assuming there was one heading to each portal.
Lee exited the purplish black shadows in a secluded corner of a long hallway. The portal vanished a second later, reminding him that there was no way Jade would be able to pull him out should he fall into trouble. Aware that he was painfully short in time, Lee immediately left the corner after having ascertained the absence of people in the hallway. Recalling the map of the building he had all but carved into his brain, he realized that he had been teleported on the top floor of the four storeyed building. It was also the same floor where the healthcare administrative staff had their office. In other words, the place where the medical records of every patient were kept.
Lee made a mental note to thank Jade sometime later.
As he rounded another corner, he heard footsteps approaching from the bend up ahead. Hastily retracing his steps, Lee made his way back to the hallway he had appeared in. The voices that he could not recognize increased as the presences drew closer. Taking a quick decision in order to avoid the incoming persons, Lee slipped into one of the nearby patient wards and quietly locked the door.
A few seconds later, he heard two people arrive in the passage. Listening closer, he was able to tell by their footsteps that they were moving up and down the hallway repeatedly. Most likely in search of the presence that had entered the building without prior permission. Suddenly one of them began to check the wards in the hallway and Lee felt like cursing the bastard. It had not even been up to a minute since he broke in and here he was about to be discovered. He was not overly concerned about his own safety. If he wanted to leave a place, he knew there were very few things that could stop him. What he was really worried about was that his discovery would against Michael's order to avoid direct and open confrontation as much as possible.
Soon the person inspecting the wards came to the one Lee was hiding in. A tug on the door handle revealed that it had been locked, a precaution the white haired boy felt glad for taking earlier. Lee sighed resignedly as he readied himself to take action in an instant.
"Hey is this door supposed to be locked?" The man asked his partner in a deep tone. Inside the room, Lee tensed the muscles in his legs for a blindingly fast attack.
"Forget about that. We have to check the other places," his partner compelled the first guard. The man stared through the glass part of the door into the empty ward intently, mild suspicion clear on his face. Just when it seemed like he was about to force the door open, his partner called on him again and with one last look at the door, the man moved to join his partner and they left the hallway.
On the other side of the door, Lee heaved a sigh of relief. Thanking the other guard for his narrow mindedness and incompetence, the white haired young man left the ward immediately and made his way down the hallway once more. It took him half a minute to find the records office. As soon as he stepped through the door, he nearly cursed out loud when he felt a sensation wash over him. He instantly recognized it as the energy of the magic alarm he had unknowingly triggered by opening the door. Now he had even less time to finish up here.
Even as he inwardly bemoaned his luck, Lee moved directly the files cabinets. There were several columns of tall metal cabinets that stretched the entire expanse of the room. Inside these were the folders of the hospital's patients. Fortunately the cabinets were arranged according to dates and furthermore the folders inside had been placed in alphabetical order.
Since he had gotten the names of some of the supposedly sick students, it was very easy for him to locate their files. Choosing the first three he found, Lee immediately began skimming through one of them.
'Ryan Jameson... Diagnosed with hypoglycemia... Condition critical... Moved to Starlight City Hospital after a rapid deterioration of his condition...'
The remaining two files said something similar as well. Of the three files, two were female and the last was a male. However all three followed a similar pattern. The students were diagnosed with various diseases, all of which were known to induce body weakness and then after their cases were deemed critical, they were moved to the city hospital.
Before Lee could check more files, the sound of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching the room reached his ears. Seconds later the door burst open and four well built security guards rushed into the room. The place was in pristine condition with nothing looking out of place in any manner. The guards spread out and began to search the room carefully. A muffled flapping sound resounded throughout the room and one of the guards traced the noise back to an opened window whose curtains had been rustled by a gust of wind. The guard approached the window slowly and cautiously until he reached out and leaned over to look down. Finding nothing outside, he quickly shut the window to keep out the chilly wind before returning to resume his search.
Directly above the now closed window, Lee clung to the wall tightly with his claws piercing into the concrete to provide him with a good enough grip to maintain his balance. His feet were only barely resting on the short ledge above the window. His back was practically melded into the wall as he let out a breath he did not remember holding. Now all he had to do was figure a way down without making too much noise –
"How're you hanging in there?" Jade's voice sounded from above, the sudden noise nearly making him lose his grip on the wall. He took a moment to calm himself before glaring up at where Jade sat on the edge of the rooftop.
"Give me a one-way trip to my bed and I'll forgive you for nearly giving me a heart attack," he said tiredly with a small smile which Jade reciprocated.
The female Hunter waved her hand and a spiraling pool of shadows spawned a few feet below where Lee clung precariously. He eyed the portal suspiciously before looking back at Jade.
"This does lead back to our dorm right?"
Her smile was all teeth in a way Lee did not find assuring at all. "Why don't you jump in and find out?"
Lee looked between her and the portal once more, disbelief clear on his face. Finally, he shrugged carelessly. "If I die, Olivia's gonna kill you." With that, he released his grip on the wall and went in a free fall into the portal.
Jade scoffed lightly. "Like I don't know that already dummy." Pushing herself off the edge, she disappeared into the shadowy pool. As soon as she was through, the shadows dissipated into the air instantly just as the last vestiges of sunlight vanished behind the clouds.