RetroSpace Walkthrough Part 2: Janitor's Haven and the Medical Center

Reaching the Haven means unlocking a portal. The gate out of the Gardens is a symbol lock: a sequence of four symbols that you have been seeing, one at a time, in separate spots around the Gardens as you explored. There is no note that simply hands you the order. You assemble it from your own sightings, which is the game's way of checking that you actually looked at the place instead of sprinting through it.

Work the Gardens thoroughly before you stand at the lock guessing. The head gardener's office stretch is the last leg of the area, and by the time you have cleared it you should have every symbol you need. Enter the sequence, step through the portal, and you are in the Haven for the first time. Treat the sightings as the solution itself: four symbols make a short sequence, and this lock is testing memory.

Your first sight of Janitor's Haven is underwhelming on purpose: a near-empty hideaway at the end of a portal, decorated with a Janitor of the Month wall where every month's winner wears your face. This is your home for the rest of the game — a largely peaceful hub you can return to at will — and it does not stay empty.

As you progress, survivor NPCs move in. Residents sell buffs and abilities, and they hand out the side quests that the Hero we deserve achievement eventually demands all of. Every Haven visit from now on is worth a slow lap: new faces mean new stock, new errands, and occasionally the one conversation a quest chain needs before you leave the timeline it lives in.

Treat the Haven as the fixed point of your route planning. Whatever sector you are pushing into — Medical next, the later decks after that — the working pattern is the same: portal home, upgrade, stash, save, head back out.

Four systems live here, and you will use all of them every visit.

The workbench is where weapons grow. Each upgrade costs Scraps plus one Blueprint item — you found the first Blueprint back in the Nexus Gardens — and upgrades change how a weapon behaves rather than just inflating its numbers; the pistol upgrade that lets rounds ricochet off walls is the early proof. Dr. Miriam's Mutamod vending machine stands here too, but that is a system of its own (see the Mutamods guide in Related guides).

The Janitor Stash is your storage, and it matters because your backpack is small and stays small. Park situational gear, spare resources and anything you are saving for a build here instead of selling or abandoning it across the station. The portals are the other half of that convenience: they form the fast-travel network, so unlocking a new area's portal is worth as much as unlocking its door.

Finally, the Haven teaches a trick you will use everywhere: repair. A tap from the Power Wrench revives dead terminals and broken vending machines across the station. If a screen is dark, do not assume it is scenery — hit it first.

Since the Janitors' Patch #1 update (October 7, 2026), the Haven's hallway autosaves constantly as you pass through it. That turns every hub visit into a free checkpoint — but only if you build the habit of passing through on your way out, not just on your way in.

Remember the shape of the system from the beginner's guide: one manual save, one autosave, no slots. The hallway autosave is generous right up until the moment it overwrites something you wanted. Make your Haven routine end with a deliberate manual save (the patch also added Save and Exit to the menu), and never leave the hub after a long upgrade session on autosave alone.

From the Haven, your next sector is the Medical Section — on the station map it is the Medical Center, its ICU, and Professor Hasmond's Office. The entrance sets the tone immediately: a biometric scanner that wants a severed head. You have one — a head changed hands during the Haven stretch precisely so this door would open. Press it to the scanner and go in.

Work the reception area properly before you push deeper. Medical is a section built out of other people's paperwork: the reception terminal holds the clue the ICU door needs, the wards and side rooms hold supplies, and Hasmond's office is worth the detour. Clear room by room, loot the corners — the small credits and ammunition you skip here are exactly what the mid-game economy makes you regret skipping. While you are at reception, use the map terminal too: the sector map downloads to your PDA, and Medical — ICU, wards, offices, side rooms — is big enough that charting it now saves real backtracking later.

The ICU door is a two-part lock: a keycard and a code. The ICU Keycard comes off a body in the Medical Center — check the corpses, as always. The code is the one the reception terminal points you to, and current walkthroughs record the ICU door code as 0451. (An honesty note, because it says a lot about this game's guide coverage: 0451 appears in the walkthroughs of the one guide family that covers Medical, yet is missing from that same family's own codes page — which lists the ICU as something else entirely. We print it as walkthrough-sourced, and it is the code those walkthroughs actually use to open the door.) Inside the ICU: the Flare Gun, which joins your upgradeable arsenal.

Deeper in, a security override terminal guards the way forward, and its code is hidden the RetroSpace way: written in blood beside a corpse near the map terminal. Blood is a stealth hazard everywhere else on this station; here it is a notebook. Spray the writing clean with the Universe Cleaner to read it. The walkthroughs record the Medical security override as 2177 — and this one you can watch being typed into the override screen, security level and all, in full-run footage, which is as close to in-game confirmation as the current coverage gets.

The last gate is the quarantine. Lifting it is a two-terminal job — the release code goes in at both — and the walkthroughs record that code as

1234. Enter it, lift the block, and the section's job is done. One piece of housekeeping first: Medical pays out well in Scraps and supplies, and the Haven workbench is one portal away — ride the Hyper Drive upgraded, not rich. What happens next is bigger than a door opening: the whole station jumps.

Clearing the quarantine triggers the Hyper Drive sequence at the end of Medical — the first timeline shift of the game, and the moment RetroSpace's structure changes for good. Mia has been hinting at it from her terminal all along: from a certain moment, time and space aboard this station behave unpredictably. She is being literal.

Mechanically, here is what the jump means for every hour after it. The station now exists in two timelines: the present you have been exploring, and a more decayed alternate version of the same decks. Areas, items and some Mutamods have timeline-exclusive versions, so both timelines are mandatory visits — the Space tourist achievement counts all 18 areas across both. Decks you cleared an hour ago are worth re-walking in their ruined state, with different contents and different dangers.

And this is where this walkthrough stops pretending. No published guide documents a fixed route order beyond Medical, and the game's own structure turns partly non-linear from here — the remaining sectors can be approached in an order that bends around what you have unlocked. So Part 3 of this walkthrough picks up the Security Station, the route most sources take next, and from there we go area by area rather than inventing a single canonical sequence the game does not have.

Where exactly is the ICU code? The reception terminal in the Medical Center holds the clue, and current walkthroughs record the ICU door code as

0451. You also need the ICU Keycard, which comes off a body in the section — the keypad alone will not open the door.

Why is the Nexus Gardens security override not in this guide? Because the only published sources conflict on it — 9636 in two places, 5315 in another — and we will not print a coin flip as fact. The hacking route (§1) opens the same systems without it, and our codes guide will carry the value once it is verified in-game.

Can I go back to the Haven whenever I want? Yes — the portal network is the game's fast travel, and the Haven stays open and largely peaceful all run. Build the §4 ritual into every return: stash, upgrade, save.

What should I finish before the Hyper Drive jump? Start The Date by talking to Mia and Joey, clear any Gardens business you care about, and bank a manual save at the Haven. The jump is scripted and safe to trigger — it just changes the station permanently.

Is there a correct order for the areas after Medical? No documented one. Coverage of the second half is thin and the structure is partly non-linear, so any guide printing a single fixed sequence from here is guessing. Go where your keys, portals and quest log point you.