Once inside, the corridor behind the shutter was longer than Lincoln had expected.
Concrete walls, iron pipes and conduits, and wall sconces spaced every five or six meters—most were extinguished, with only a scattered few still flickering, casting alternating stretches of light and shadow down the hallway.
Puddles lined the floor, not from rainwater leaking in, but from liquid dripping down from the overhead pipe joints.
The pipes were old, the sealant around several joints aged and cracked.
Water droplets fell one by one, their steady splashes echoing through the corridor.
Aside from the dripping, there was complete silence.
The three of them advanced about fifty meters down the hallway until they reached the corner marked on the sign.
Turning left brought them to a gentle incline leading upward.
The slope was shallow and easy to climb.
At the top stood a fire door, topped by a green indicator light reading “Ground Floor 1.”
The door was unlocked; when Lincoln pushed the handle, it swung open with ease.
The sight behind the door brought all three of them to a brief halt.
It was a massive foyer.
More precisely, a central hall boasting a ceiling at least three stories high.
Dark marble paved the floor, and directly opposite them rose a grand double staircase.
A red carpet spilled down from the top landing, running all the way to the center of the hall.
The banisters were carved from dark solid wood with intricate patterns.
A massive brass chandelier hung from the ceiling, draped in countless crystal prisms.
The light was off, but a few overhead emergency lights still functioned, casting a dim, yellow glow that bathed the entire hall in an eerie, surreal atmosphere.
This wasn’t the entrance hall one expected of a research facility; it looked far more like the main hall of a European estate.
Lincoln stood at the doorway, scanning the area.
Corridors branched off from both sides of the hall, leading to the wings of the building.
The main staircase led to the second and third floors.
Beneath the stairs sat a door, likely leading to the area behind.
Several oil paintings hung on the walls.
From a distance, Lincoln couldn’t make out the details of most, but the largest hung squarely above the center of the staircase—a half-length portrait of a man.
An elderly man with wire-rimmed glasses, a stern expression, and dark academic robes.
Below the portrait was a brass plaque with an inscription that Lincoln could only read after stepping closer:
“Dr. James Marcus · Founder of the Progenitor Research Institute · Eternal Mentor of this Institute”
Lincoln stared at it for a couple of seconds.
Dr.
Marcus—the head of the leech research.
The documents claimed his project had been terminated ten years ago, yet his portrait hung in the most prominent spot in the hall, labeled “Eternal Mentor.” That wasn’t how an organization treated the director of a shut-down project.
Either no one had bothered to take the painting down after the termination, or the people in this facility still held Marcus in high regard.
Either way, Marcus’s influence here was greater than the records suggested.
“It’s beautiful,” Rebecca murmured, her gaze wandering between the chandelier and the grand staircase.
Billy said nothing, but his eyes didn’t dwell on the decor.
Instead, he systematically checked every corner, exit, and entrance in the hall.
It was the habit of a combat veteran—entering a new environment meant identifying escape routes and cover first, not admiring the interior design.
Lincoln was doing the exact same thing.
After a sweep of the hall, there were no immediate threats.
However, a faint odor hung in the air—not the rot of decaying flesh, but a damp, earthy, biological smell.
It was remarkably similar to the scent given off by the Leech Amalgam on the train.
Lincoln realized there were leeches in this facility.
“Let’s clear the first floor first,” Lincoln said.
“Look for communication equipment and a floor plan. Don’t split up.”
The three of them advanced along the right-hand corridor.
The hallway matched the main hall’s aesthetic—wood wainscoting, carpet, and wall sconces.
But the deeper they went, the worse the conditions got.
Muddy footprints marked the carpet, along with long, dragged stains where something had pulled itself along.
Two dark trails ran along the wall—not scratch marks like before, but dried tracks of mucus that still felt slightly slick to the touch.
Several doors lined both sides of the corridor, each mounted with a brass plaque:
Classroom A, Classroom B, Staff Lounge, Archives.
Lincoln opened the door to the Archives first.
The room wasn’t large.
Bookshelves lined three walls, surrounding a long table and a few chairs in the center.
Most of the materials on the shelves were instructional binders and operational manuals covering Umbrella corporate management, security protocols, laboratory standards, and the like.
It truly fit the profile of a training facility, at least on the surface.
Lincoln quickly thumbed through a few binders and found a document wedged deep into the corner of the bottom shelf.
The cover had no title, but opening it revealed a hand-drawn floor plan on the first page. New chapters come out on g.com first.
The diagram was simple, yet it contained all the vital information.
Three floors above ground:
1st floor: Main Hall, Classrooms, Cafeteria, Staff Offices.
2nd floor: Trainee Dormitories, Library.
3rd floor: Administrative Area, Director’s Office.
Two basement levels: B1 was the Experimental Area, featuring several numbered rooms and a particularly large section labeled “Culture Room.”
B2 housed the Water Treatment and Power Facilities.
In the bottom right corner of the map was a line of neat handwriting:
“Communications Room: East Wing, 2nd Floor, next to the Library.”
Second floor, Communications Room.
Lincoln folded the map and stuffed it into his pouch.
“Found it,” he told Rebecca and Billy.
“The communications room is in the East Wing on the second floor, next to the library. Heading upstairs.”
The three retreated to the main hall and made for the grand double staircase.
Lincoln led the way.
The moment his boot touched the first step, he felt something soft beneath his sole.
Squishy.
He glanced down.
A leech lay squirming on the carpet.
Black, half the length of a finger, identical to the ones on the train.
His boot had pinned half its body, but the front end twitched, its sucker pulsing open and closed as it tried to latch onto something.
Lincoln didn’t touch it, simply lifting his foot to step past.
However, he noticed it wasn’t the only one on the stairs.
Starting from the third step, a dozen or so leeches were scattered across the carpet’s weave.
Some writhed sluggishly, while others lay still as if dormant.
It wasn’t a massive horde, but they trailed from the base of the staircase all the way up to the second-floor landing.
“Watch your step,” Lincoln warned.
Rebecca looked down at the carpet.
Her expression shifted, and her steps became noticeably more careful.
Billy’s face remained impassive, though he deliberately stepped around the squirming black spots.
They reached the second floor.
The second-floor corridor was narrower than the one below.
To the left was a line of doors with room numbers indicating trainee dormitories.
To the right were only two doors: one labeled “Library,” and the other labeled “Communications Room.”
The Communications Room door was closed.
Lincoln tried the handle; it was locked.
No shotgun needed this time.
He glanced at the lock mechanism—it was a standard pin tumbler lock, not an industrial grade.
He pulled a first-aid kit from his pouch, extracted a metal pin, straightened it, bent the tip to an angle, and slipped it into the keyhole.
About twenty seconds later, the cylinder turned.
The door unlocked.
The Communications Room was tiny, less than ten square meters.
An old shortwave radio sat against the wall, flanked by a fax machine and a landline telephone.
A layer of dust rested on the desk, but it wasn’t thick, indicating someone had used it not too long ago.
Lincoln walked over and sat down in front of the shortwave radio.
The power indicator light was unlit.
He spotted the power switch on the wall and flipped it.
Nothing.
He flipped it again.
Still nothing.
Tracing the power cord back to the wall, he saw that the radio drew power from a dedicated outlet next to a small distribution box.
He opened the distribution box and looked inside.
The main fuse had blown.
Lincoln lapsed into a silence for a few seconds.
A blown fuse could just be a natural failure caused by a power surge, but given the sabotage of the train’s braking system, he was reluctant to believe in mere coincidence.
“The radio’s dead,” Lincoln said.
“Blown fuse. We need to find a spare fuse or bypass it with a jumper from another circuit.”
Rebecca walked over to the landline phone and lifted the receiver to her ear.
Billy leaned against the doorframe and chipped in, “That B2 power facility… does the power for the whole building run through there?”
Lincoln considered it; Billy made a good point.
If the entire building’s power grid was down, changing a single fuse wouldn’t fix it.
When they came in earlier, only the emergency lighting had been active.
All main lights were off, and there were no signs that any elevators were running.
This probably wasn’t an isolated failure in the communications room—main power to the whole building had been cut, leaving emergency backup power to handle bare-minimum lighting.
“We need to check the power facility on B2,” Lincoln said.
Rebecca frowned slightly.
“Isn’t our goal the communications gear? Why go underground?”
“Because communication equipment needs power. Without main power, the radio and phones are useless. The power facility on B2 controls the electricity for the entire facility. Restore the power first, and then the comms up here will work.”
Rebecca fell quiet for a moment, then nodded.
The logic was sound.
The three retreated from the Communications Room and headed back down the second-floor corridor.
As they passed the library door, Lincoln heard a noise coming from inside.
Not the groans of zombies, but a wet, squelching slither—identical to the sound made by the Leech Amalgam on the train.
And it wasn’t coming from a single source.
He raised a hand in a stop signal, bringing all three to a halt.
Lincoln leaned in, listening closely for a few seconds.
The noise seeped through the gap under the door.
It wasn’t loud, but it was dense—the rustling, scraping sound of countless small creatures moving in unison.
He angled his flashlight down and shone it under the gap.
The beam hit the floor.
The floor inside was crawling with leeches.
A squirming, jet-black carpet covered every visible inch of flooring beneath the slit.
The floor of the library was buried so deep under them that its original surface was completely hidden.
Lincoln pulled the flashlight back.
His face was calm, but a vein twitched at his temple.
“It’s full of leeches inside. The floor is covered. Don’t open the door.”
Rebecca stole a glance toward the crack, her face turning instantly pale.
Billy took a look as well; his expression didn’t change much, but he discreetly took a step back, widening his distance from the door.
“We’ll take the stairwell down. Skip this corridor.”
The three doubled back to the stairs and descended.
Crossing back through the ground floor main hall, the stairs continued down into the basement.
The stairwell leading from the first floor to B1 had a starkly different aesthetic: the dark wood paneling was gone, replaced by bare grey concrete walls and steel handrails.
The lighting changed too—no longer warm yellow sconces, but harsh white fluorescent tubes, several flickering with a low electrical buzz.
The earthy smell of leeches grew noticeably stronger in the air.
The entrance to B1 was an electronic card-key door, but with the main power cut, the lock was unpowered and defaulted to unlocked.
Lincoln gave it a gentle push, and it swung open.
Behind the door lay a corridor even wider than the ones above.
Matching metal doors lined both sides of the hallway, each set with an observation window.
Plaques were mounted on the walls beside the doors:
Sample Storage Room A, Sample Storage Room B, Culture Observation Room 1, Culture Observation Room 2, and at the far end of the corridor, the largest area of all:
“Main Culture Room”
Lincoln glanced inside through the observation windows as he walked.
Inside Sample Storage Room A were rows of stainless steel racks lined with glass containers—most empty, a few still holding murky liquids.
Culture Observation Room 1 contained several lab benches and microscopes, with charts and photographs pinned to the walls.
Scattered documents and overturned test-tube racks littered the workbenches, giving the impression of a hasty departure.
Culture Observation Room 2 was a different story.
The room beyond the observation window was completely dark, save for a flashing red emergency beacon.
Lincoln pressed his flashlight against the glass and cast light into the room.
In the center stood a large glass culture tank, about two meters tall and one meter in diameter, its base hooked up to liquid feed pipes and lines.
The glass walls were clear, revealing the interior.
It was packed full of black leeches.
Not just scattered, but densely packed and stacked together, filling the entire tank from bottom to top with virtually no empty space.
Mucus smeared the inside of the tank, and several leeches were latched onto the glass with their suckers.
The tank’s lid remained sealed; the leeches were still trapped inside.
Lincoln withdrew his flashlight and continued deeper down the hallway.