Stringer cursed under his breath as he strode down the corridor of the hospital.
He hated the stench. He always tried to avoid hospitals as much as possible and yet here he was forced to endure another cauldron of disease.
They’re full of fucking sick people, he thought as he flung open the dual connecting corridor doors.
He glanced up at an information board on the wall of the corridor and checked out where he was in conjunction to the rest of the hospital.
He needed eyes on this place and he knew that he would have to de-activate the alarm before any nosey authorities arrived. He knew that his best option would be the security office.
He ignored the fire alarm as he moved towards his destination. He had to increase his vision capability to cope with the dim lighting afforded by the emergency lights.
He had already dialled down his hearing so that the blazing sirens would not affect his concentration.
He had located the security office. It was located two floors up in the west wing of the hospital.
He moved towards the elevator and noticed that the power had been removed as a result of the fire alarm. He swore as he barged through the stairway door and sprinted up the four flights of stairs.
He noticed that the corridor on this floor had stronger illumination compared to the ones below. He realised that, like the operating theatres, the security section had back-up generators.
He normalised his vision and proceeded to enter the security centre.
The room was empty. Obviously the security personnel had taken the fire alarm seriously.
Idiots!
He thought as he shook his head.
He wondered whether they were stupid enough to alert the emergency services instead of just de-activating the alarm.
He dismissed the thought, he had planned to be out of the hospital long before any cops or fire fighters arrived.
The room was a standard security hub. There was a console with at least a dozen monitors on the wall above it. Each monitor flickered with a grainy black and white image gleaned from the myriad of security cameras that were interspersed throughout the building.
The computer server and archive room was attached to the office. This was a fireproof room which held the computer storage and hub for the hospital’s intranet service.
Stringer scanned the console and again cursed this inferior world for not having a neural interface which would have made his job very easy.
Unfortunately he realised that he would have to go ‘old school’ and go over each camera’s playback.
He needed evidence to prove that his target had been brought in and whether she had already been processed.
He tossed up the idea of just vaporising the whole building. He smiled at the thought and then dismissed it as he knew Mundus Nova would not appreciate him sabotaging their entire operation just save his skin.
First things first, he thought as he quickly scanned each monitor.
“Yep, just what I thought. No fire, no smoke, no nothing,” he said angrily as he thumped his fist onto the console.
Those incompetent dickheads, he thought as he reached forward and reset the fire alarm.
Lucky for them, the Inergen system and the sprinklers had been decommissioned!
He looked at each monitor and determined the number of the camera that was assigned to monitor the drop off point in front of the hospital. He then proceeded to the Archive room and retrieved the data disk which contained the video feeds from that camera.
He placed the data disk into the front of the main PC. The caddy slotted perfectly into place and automatically powered up.
Stringer grabbed the PC mouse and started the search for the past three days of video feed. He brought up the video console graphical user interface and clicked on the fast forward button.
He reclined in his chair and placed another infuser on his tongue. He relaxed as the drug melted into his bloodstream.
The image on the PC monitor showed the accelerated camera feed of the comings and goings at the front of the hospital. He enhanced his vision and carefully scrutinised each image.
His facial recognition routines ran in the back of his mind, constantly reconciling each of the Immortal Harvest victims as they were presented to the collectors.
Suddenly he leant forward and froze the image on the screen. The red flash in the extremes of his peripheral vision confirmed the identity.
Stringer smiled as he stared at the image and whispered quietly as he ran his finger down the screen.
“Hello Sylvan, where’s your little boy?”
He synchronised his neural net to the camera network and rushed out of the room to find his prey.