Chapter 24: The Hospital

3:55 in the afternoon.

Five minutes remained before the wounded Alpha soldier Li Zhi was due to leave the ICU.

“Ding.”

The elevator doors opened and an empty hospital bed was pushed out, its four casters rattling across the floor.

“Coming through, please make way!”

Li Zhi’s attending physician walked in front, clapping her hands and calling out loudly, while two nurses pushed the bed behind her.

The family members visiting patients outside the ICU parted to let them pass.

The attending physician stopped outside ICU Room No. 1 and, through the glass wall, saw Li Zhi sleeping peacefully inside. The cardiac monitor beside her showed a perfectly steady heartbeat, but the EEG showed no activity at all.

One person still lingered outside the glass—someone who had also been watching Li Zhi, and who now turned to look at the doctors.

She wore a white coat and looked remarkably young: tall, pale-skinned, cold when she wasn’t smiling.

“Hello. I’m an Alpha combat medic who just reported in today. I’ll be doing my training here at your hospital.”

The newcomer offered a friendly smile and extended her right hand. “My name is Sang Ling.”

The two young nurses immediately stifled exclamations, deliberately lowering their voices as they exchanged looks, their meaning obvious.

“An Alpha!”

The attending physician had far more experience than they did and stayed much calmer. She shook Sang Ling’s hand briefly. “I’ve already received notice from the hospital’s personnel department. My name is Cheng Hong—Doctor Cheng is fine. I’ll be your supervising physician from here on, Your Excellency.”

“Is today the day this patient moves from the ICU into the regular Intensive Care Unit?” Sang Ling nodded toward Li Zhi behind the glass. “I’d like to observe the whole process.”

Cheng Hong had intended to send her first to the general surgery office to report in and set up her workstation, since transferring a patient was neither difficult nor something a combat medic would ever need to do.

But one look at the Alpha’s eyes and expression told her the question hadn’t been a request for her opinion.

So she said, “All right.”

Doctor Cheng swiped her own work badge over the card reader at the ICU door, the door swung open, and the four of them filed in.

Just before entering, though, Sang Ling suddenly felt something. Her black military boots came to rest on the sunken doorframe, and she turned to sweep her gaze over her surroundings.

She found no suspicious person anywhere.

Strange. She could have sworn a strong gaze had just settled on her.

“Hurry in and close the door,” Doctor Cheng said.

“All right.” Sang Ling had no choice but to set her misgivings aside and follow them as they transferred Li Zhi.

Before the formal transfer, Doctor Cheng needed to run a final check of her vital signs in case of any accidents.

Under normal circumstances, this would be when she quizzed the intern with a few questions.

But Sang Ling simply stood at the foot of the bed with both hands in her pockets, the very picture of “not my problem.”

The Alpha might be friendly by nature, but her oppressive presence leaked out all the same.

In the end, Cheng Hong asked nothing at all.

Sang Ling, for her part, was righteously displaying her ignorance of all things medical.

She was a freshly minted undercover agent—nobody could expect her to actually understand medicine.

In the end it was the two nurses who helped Doctor Cheng complete the transfer. The bed rolled slowly out of the ICU, down the corridor, into the elevator, and off toward the Intensive Care Unit.

Sang Ling followed behind them like an armed escort guarding a shipment, cold pressure radiating from every inch of her.

Everyone in her path felt how unapproachable she was and hurried to clear the way.

But the moment they reached the Intensive Care Unit’s floor, the effect vanished.

When the elevator doors opened, Sang Ling’s eyes widened slightly. Why are there so many people out there?

Doctors and nurses in white coats, no less.

The instant the doors slid open, every head turned in unison toward her, their target unmistakable: Sang Ling.

Their eyes gleamed like the green-lit pupils of wolves.

After a brief silence, a head nurse at the front of the pack beamed like a flower in bloom. “So this is our new combat medic! What a handsome Alpha.”

Mystery solved.

They had all come to see her.

Alphas were obligated to serve in the military and spent nearly all their lives in barracks; on top of that, they were far fewer in number than Betas, so ordinary people rarely got a look at one.

Let alone a new Alpha colleague.

Sang Ling felt a bit like a giant panda.

Doctor Cheng shot the two nurses a glare. Personnel had only just notified her, and now the whole hospital knew—these two had clearly been leaking the news.

Too many people, too much chaos. Sang Ling instinctively felt it was bad—far too easy for someone to slip through unnoticed in the crowd.

She walked to the bed and stepped out of the elevator first, face set, trying to project Alpha dominance.

Her lashes lowered, she was coldly beautiful. “Please make way.”

Fortunately the medical staff present were all professionals; they lined both sides of the corridor and left a path open.

This time Sang Ling chose to walk beside the bed, quietly raising her guard.

Besides doctors and nurses, there were patients and patients’ families mixed into the crowd.

People seemed born to gawk; seeing so many gathered, other uninvolved people quietly drifted over too.

Once again Sang Ling felt that intense gaze. She searched back and forth through the crowd—and caught only a figure hurrying away.

Now was not the time to give chase. She frowned and said in a low voice:

“Speed it up.”

Doctor Cheng and the two nurses obeyed the instruction without thinking.

Inside Room 902, Sang Ling watched as Doctor Cheng connected every medical device to Li Zhi.

“Is it done now?”

Doctor Cheng nodded. “Her vital signs are stable now. When she’ll wake up is still anyone’s guess.”

“What kind of clearance does it take to enter this room?”

“I and these two nurses are her attending team, so all three of us have access—and as my student, so will you.”

Sang Ling walked to the window, shut it, and locked it, then turned to the three medical staff. “I’m very sorry, but I’ll need your work badges now.”

She offered no explanation, only an expression of utter seriousness.

Given that she was an Alpha soldier—and Li Zhi was likewise an Alpha warrior—Cheng Hong hesitated a moment, then gestured to the two nurses, and all three handed their badges over.

They asked no questions. They had all heard of an Alpha soldier’s vigilance, and Sang Ling was clearly not asking for their consent.

“Then let’s all step outside.”

With the badges in hand, Sang Ling locked the door of Room 902 from the inside.

She stood with her back against it and saw that the crowd outside had not yet dispersed—and that familiar, intense gaze appeared again.

She snapped her head up toward it.

Once again she caught only a retreating figure, and a wisp of hair flung up by the motion.

“Something’s come up. I have to go.”

She tossed off the words and raced after that departing figure.

The person turned a corner first; by the time Sang Ling caught up, the figure was already inside the elevator, the doors sliding shut.

It was a woman.

Head lowered, white jacket, ordinary denim shorts, a baseball cap—Sang Ling couldn’t make out her face, only felt that the silhouette was inexplicably familiar.

But the doors had already closed, and the car was descending.

Sang Ling gritted her teeth, sprinted to the railing on the hospital’s ninth floor, and looked down.

Far below, she saw the elevator doors open on the seventh floor, the woman tugging her cap low as she stepped out.

Sang Ling gripped the railing, vaulted it, kicked off hard, and dropped to the eighth floor.

She repeated the maneuver and quickly landed on the seventh.

The moment her feet touched down she was running, chasing in the direction the woman had gone.

Lin Jinxu’s steps were hurried—by the end she was nearly running.

She didn’t dare stop for even a moment, didn’t dare look back even once. She knew Sang Ling was right behind her.

That shock of seeing Sang Ling outside the ICU hadn’t faded yet. Her heart hammered; all she knew was that she could not be discovered.

Why would Sang Ling be here? What had she come here to do?

What was her relationship with the mission target in that hospital room?

A thousand questions circled her mind, and Lin Jinxu had answers for none of them.

She spotted only one corner leading to the restrooms, swerved, and slipped into the Omega restroom.

She ducked into a stall and moved fast, hands nearly shaking as she pulled the injectable solution from her bag.

The liquid inside glowed fluorescent green.

Lin Jinxu’s usually steady hands trembled as she poured every drop of the solution into the toilet.

Then she dropped the empty vial on the floor, stomped it several times, and swept the shards into the bowl, flushing them down with the liquid.

Thank goodness she had come today with a backup plan.

From that cheap fast-fashion tote she pulled out a lightweight dress, folded flat.

She stripped off the jacket and pulled the dress on over her head, the denim shorts disappearing beneath the hem.

She stuffed the jacket, the cap, and the bag into the tank behind the toilet, drew a deep breath, and pushed out of the stall.

Standing before the mirror in the Omega restroom, she washed her face, wound her long curls into a bun, and tidied herself up. The woman in the mirror now bore no resemblance to the one from minutes before.

She smiled, inexplicably—but the smile didn’t reach her heart.

Lin Jinxu walked out of the restroom just in time to see Sang Ling emerging from the Alpha restroom across the hall, expression grim.

The young Alpha had clearly just searched the Alpha restroom and found no one strange; she was now waving over hospital security to search the Beta restroom while she herself watched everyone going in and out of it.

Lin Jinxu assumed Sang Ling was too busy to notice her. She lowered her head, intending to slip away quietly.

She never expected the young Alpha’s perception to be far sharper than imagined. Her gaze snapped over like a bullet.

“Sister?”