A portrait of a researcher who had been dead for ten years hung in the center of the main hall, yet people in the facility claimed to have witnessed a figure identical to him.
Now, an unattributable melody could instantly override the attack instincts of bio-engineered creatures, causing them to abandon immediate prey and dash toward it.
For the time being, he couldn’t piece together the connection between these occurrences.
Yet that singing gave him a deeply unsettling feeling.
It wasn’t fear per se, but rather an instinctual vigilance—a sense that something existing here surpassed their current realm of understanding.
At the end of the corridor was a double door leading to the connecting bridge, labeled above: “Annex – West Wing.”
The door was unlocked.
Pushing it open revealed an enclosed glass catwalk roughly thirty meters long, flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the mountain forest cloaked in night.
With primary power restored, the overhead fluorescent lights illuminated the skybridge brightly.
The floor of the walkway was immaculate—no blood, no mucus, and no claw marks.
It appeared mutates had not yet invaded this area.
The three picked up their pace across the bridge, arriving at the annex building.
This building was far simpler in structure than the main hall, featuring a two-story layout typical of military storage facilities.
The ground floor held a supply depot and garage, while the upper floor housed meeting rooms and several unlabeled doors.
Lincoln headed first to the ground floor supply depot.
Most supplies inside were for training: gas masks, chemical protection suits, dummy rounds, rubber training firearms—things with little practical combat utility.
However, inside a locked steel cabinet at the far end of the depot, Lincoln struck real paydirt.
The cabinet’s lock was a three-digit combination wheel, just like the briefcase in Stateroom 002.
Rather than hunting for a passcode slip, he popped it open directly with his combat knife.
The lock wasn’t sturdy; after a dozen seconds of prying, it gave way.
Inside were four boxes of 9mm pistol ammunition, fifty rounds per box, totaling two hundred rounds.
There were also two boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells, twenty-five per box, totaling fifty shells.
Additionally, there were three M67 fragmentation grenades—olive-drab oval cast-iron casings with intact safety pins.
There was also a first-aid kit containing bandages, tourniquets, anti-inflammatory drugs, and two epinephrine injectors.
Looking at the cabinet’s contents, the corner of Lincoln’s mouth twitched slightly.
Real ammunition and grenades stashed in an “Executive Training School” supply room—this facility had never been meant solely for training.
He divided up the munitions.
He took the two boxes of shotgun shells for his pouch, restocking his shell count from thirty-five to eighty-five.
He gave half the 9mm ammo—one hundred rounds—to Billy.
Taking them, Billy’s expression finally showed a flicker of change as he nodded.
The remaining one hundred rounds went to Rebecca.
Her Beretta M92F was chambered in 9mm as well, matching perfectly.
Of the three grenades, Lincoln kept two and handed one to Billy.
Rebecca took charge of the medical kit.
As the team medic, these supplies were far more useful in her hands than anyone else’s.
With supplies replenished, their overall firepower had improved significantly.
Lincoln ate one of the energy bars he’d taken earlier, simultaneously calling up his interface mentally.
[Safety Threshold: 85/100]
Still no signs of recovery.
Nearly three hours had passed since entering the mountains, and the threshold remained stuck at 85 without nudging.
The interface listed the recovery methods as “sleep” and “nutritional intake.” He had tried eating energy bars to no avail.
He hadn’t had the luxury to attempt “sleep” yet; perhaps actual sleep was required to trigger recovery.
Clearly, now was not the time to sleep.
He closed the interface.
“Resupply is done.”
“Next, we find the maintenance shaft. The entrance should be on the ground floor of this building.”
The lower floor mirrored the depot’s aesthetic: concrete floors, exposed piping, and ventilation equipment.
At the end of the corridor was a steel door bearing a faded label: “Maintenance Shaft / West Exit.”
Lincoln walked up to the door and reached out to grasp the handle.
Just as he was about to push it open, a sound came from the other side.
Footsteps.
Human footsteps.
Someone was walking on the opposite side of the door, their steps slow and measured, moving at an unhurried cadence.
Then, that humming started up again.
It was the exact same melody they had heard in the corridor earlier, but much closer this time—just on the other side of the door, no more than five or six meters away.
A low male voice slowly hummed a lyricless tune.
The pitch was low, but vibrating against the metal door panel, it carried with striking clarity.
Lincoln’s hand froze on the handle, withholding the push.
Rebecca and Billy heard it too.
Unmistakable terror registered on Rebecca’s face.
She brought up her Beretta, though her muzzle trembled slightly.
Billy’s expression remained grim and solemn, but his P226 was already pointed squarely at the door.
The humming continued for about fifteen seconds before fading.
The footsteps receded.
Whatever it was, it was moving deeper into the tunnel.
Lincoln stayed motionless, neither opening the door nor making a sound.
He inclined his ear to listen for another half-minute, releasing his grip on the handle only after confirming the footsteps and humming had vanished completely.
He turned around to face Rebecca and Billy.
“We take another route.”
Rebecca opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Billy looked at Lincoln and gave a single nod.
The three backtracked to the first floor of the annex.
Lincoln pulled out the floor map and studied it once more.
Since the Maintenance Shaft West Exit was blocked, only one path remained.
To cross through the third-floor administrative area of the main building.
A skybridge on the third floor connected to another annex, whose ground floor was marked “Secondary Exit.”
It was a longer route that required doubling back through the main building and passing through the third floor.
The third floor housed administrative offices and the Director’s Office—the very direction where that humming melody had originated.
Lincoln folded the floor map, slipped it back into his waist pouch, and weighed his options in his mind.
He faced two choices.
Option one: force their way through the maintenance tunnel, charging after whatever made that sound.
Option two: detour back to the main building and cross the skybridge on the third floor.
The former was too risky, packed with unknown variables.
The latter was longer, but at least the path was clear.
“We go through the third floor of the main building,” Lincoln said.
The three returned to the glass catwalk, crossed back into the main building’s second floor, and headed up the staircase toward the third.
Inside the stairwell between the second and third floors, something new hung on the wall—a framed photograph mounted at the stair landing corner.
The photo was quite old, its paper yellowed with age.
The picture depicted a group of people posing on the staircase of the training school main hall.
Standing dead center in the front row was an elderly man wearing round-rimmed glasses and dark scholar’s robes—identical to the man in the main hall portrait. Read the latest chapters at novelping dot com.
Lincoln recognized him: Dr.
Marcus.
Behind him stood two rows of young people clad in white lab coats with varying expressions—some smiling, others grave.
Lincoln glanced at the handwritten date at the bottom of the photo: “June 1978.” Exactly twenty years ago today.
His gaze lingered on the photo for two seconds before he resumed walking upstairs.
The third-floor corridor was far quieter and cleaner than the lower floors.
No leeches, no bloodstains, and no claw marks.
The carpet was thick, muffling their footsteps to near silence.
There were only three doors along the sides of the corridor.
The first was labeled “Director’s Office.”
The second was labeled “Confidential Archives.”
The third was labeled “Skybridge Passage.”
Lincoln walked up to the third door first and tested it.
It was locked.
The keyhole was an older double-row pin tumbler lock, more complex than the one in the second-floor comms room.
He gave it a try with a paperclip, but couldn’t pick it.
“The key might be in the Director’s Office,” Lincoln said.
He walked over to the first door and turned the handle.
This one was unlocked.
Pushing the door open, Lincoln stepped inside.
The Director’s Office was spacious, furnished like a private study.
A dark solid-wood desk, a leather swivel chair, and framed botanical specimens hanging on the walls.
Behind the desk stood a wall-to-wall bookshelf filled with books and several crystal paperweights.
The desk surface was relatively neat, holding only a desk lamp, a telephone, and a file folder.
The folder lay open, containing several sheets of paper.
Lincoln picked it up and scanned through them.
It was a draft of an internal investigation report dated July 20, 1998—four days ago.
The content summarized anomalous incidents around the facility:
“…Since mid-June, consecutive civilian disappearances have occurred in the mountainous region surrounding the Executive Training School. As of the date of this report, seven disappearances have been confirmed, and three corpses have been discovered in the mountains. Cause of death is extensive tissue necrosis and severe gnawing by unidentified biological entities…”
“…At the end of June, an abnormal temperature fluctuation occurred in the incubation tanks on Level B1, causing hairline fractures on the outer wall of Tank No. 2. Maintenance teams have completed repairs, but it is strongly recommended that all six incubation tanks undergo a thorough inspection…”
“…Multiple instructors and trainees have reported hearing hummed melodies of unknown origin at night; investigations failed to locate the source sound.”
“Some personnel claim to have sighted a dark-robed humanoid figure in corridors or outside windows, though security feeds captured no anomalies…”
“…In light of the above, it is recommended to immediately suspend all operations at the Executive Training School, evacuate all personnel, and request headquarters dispatch a specialized team to conduct a thorough sweep of Level B1…”
At the end of the report was a handwritten annotation in scrawled handwriting that differed from the main text:
“Report submitted. HQ response: ‘Situation under control, proceed with standard operations.’ They don’t give a damn about anything.”
Having finished reading, Lincoln frowned slightly, folded the sheets, and tucked them into his waist pouch.
He processed the information conveyed in the report in his mind.
First, the facility’s management had known something was wrong four days ago and submitted a report requesting evacuation, but headquarters had denied it.
Second, the “dark-robed humanoid figure” and the “unattributable humming” had already appeared four days ago, meaning tonight’s events were not a sudden outbreak—they had been brewing for at least a month.
Third, headquarters’ stance was “situation under control, proceed with operations.”
This fit Umbrella’s usual operational style perfectly—they always believed they had full control over the situation, right up until the moment control slipped from their hands completely.
And the current reality proved that the situation was entirely out of control.
Lincoln rummaged through the desk drawers and found a set of brass keys.
A small tag was attached to them reading “Skybridge Passage.”
Grasping the keys in his hand, he secured the report and headed out the door.