Lincoln stepped out of the director’s office, clutching the ring of brass keys in his hand.
Rebecca and Billy were waiting in the corridor, neither of them looking particularly relaxed.
The third-floor hallway was quiet, the thick carpet swallowing all their footsteps, creating an uncomfortably silent atmosphere.
Lincoln glanced at the door marked “Confidential Archives” across the hall and gave it some thought.
He had already obtained the key to the skywalk passage, and normally he should have left immediately.
But the archives were right across the hall, only a few steps away.
The mission update said to “collect all obtainable research data within the facility,” and this archives room was highly likely to have the highest information density in the entire Executive Training School.
“Let’s check the archives first.”
“In and out quickly. We won’t linger.”
Rebecca nodded.
Billy said nothing but followed along.
The door to the archives was unlocked.
When pushed open, the space inside was smaller than the director’s office and had no windows.
Floor-to-ceiling metal filing cabinets lined all four walls, with a long table in the center holding an old-fashioned microfilm reader.
The overhead fluorescent lights were on, but one of the tubes flickered, emitting a faint buzz.
Categorized labels were stuck onto the filing cabinets.
Lincoln swept his gaze across them: personnel files, training materials, facility maintenance records, safety inspection reports.
They were all normal administrative documents, exactly what one would expect from an executive training school.
But the innermost row of cabinets was different.
The labels had no text, only numbers from A-01 to A-12.
They were pasted slightly lower than the ones on the other cabinets, and the doors were reinforced, equipped with combination dial locks.
Lincoln walked over and tried the door of cabinet A-01.
It was locked, and the dial required a four-digit combination.
Rather than trying to guess the code, he drew his KA-BAR from behind his waist, slid the tip of the blade into the gap between the door and the frame, and pried hard.
The sound of metal deforming was faint.
The cabinet’s latch was of mediocre quality, and the dagger provided more than enough leverage.
With a soft click, the cabinet door popped open.
Inside was a neatly stacked row of folders with dark blue covers.
The Umbrella logo was printed in the top right corner, with “Confidential – Level 3” marked below.
Lincoln pulled out the top folder, opened it, and skimmed through.
The content was highly technical, filled with biochemical terminology, but Lincoln didn’t need to understand every single word; he just needed to grasp the key information.
He quickly extracted the core points of the report.
In 1978, Dr.
Marcus began conducting experiments using leeches as host vectors for the Progenitor Virus.
The leech’s regenerative abilities and extreme environmental adaptability made it an ideal virus culture medium.
After a decade of trial and error, Dr.
Marcus successfully developed a brand-new viral variant.
This variant was officially named the “T-Leech Virus” in the document.
The wording in the file was explicit: the T-Leech Virus was the direct progenitor of the T-Virus.
Dr.
Marcus had used leeches to cultivate the first controllable mutant strain of the Progenitor Virus, which was the source of all subsequent virus research by Umbrella.
After Dr.
Marcus’s death in 1988, his entire research findings were taken over by Wesker and William Birkin.
William made major engineering improvements on this basis, lowering the host adaptation threshold, reinforcing traits geared toward military weaponization, and ultimately optimizing it into the mass-production T-Virus.
In other words, all the T-Virus infected creatures he had encountered in the mountains tonight—whether they were zombies, mutant dogs, or Leech Amalgams—could be traced back to the things Dr.
Marcus had created in this facility.
Lincoln stared at this passage for a few seconds, turning his known information over in his mind once again.
Dr.
Marcus was killed in 1988, and his research was carved up.
Tonight, ten years later, someone or something had resurrected in this facility, bearing Dr.
Marcus’s face and Dr.
Marcus’s singing voice.
The leech cultivation vats on B1 had ruptured, releasing a massive influx of leeches, and the facility had fallen.
He still couldn’t piece together the exact causal relationship behind all this, but the direction was clear.
What happened tonight was no accidental leak; someone was seeking revenge.
There was another section in the report underlined in red ink.
Lincoln read it carefully.
The general idea was that compared to the subsequent mass-production T-Virus, the T-Leech Virus retained a more complete genetic rewriting capability of the Progenitor Virus.
Once the mass-production T-Virus infected a host, it was a one-way street, irreversibly turning people into monsters.
But the T-Leech Virus had demonstrated a peculiar trait in early experiments: in a very small number of highly compatible hosts, there was a possibility of bilateral regulation in the genetic fusion between the virus and the host.
Below this passage was a small, handwritten note in faded ink: “This trait was abandoned by the Birkin team due to an excessively low adaptation rate (<0.3%), and the relevant genetic segments were completely removed from the mass-production T-Virus.” Get faster updates on novelping dot com.
Lincoln stared at the words “bilateral regulation” for two seconds, his brow twitching slightly.
Thinking of the safety threshold mechanism of the Virus Devourer Terminal inside his own body, a sudden thought crossed his mind.
He didn’t dwell on it, instead folding the document and sliding it into the inner pocket of his waist pack.
He quickly flipped through a few more folders.
The files from A-02 to A-05 recorded the cultivation process of the T-Leech Virus, years of experimental data, and a large number of failed cases.
The number of failed cases far exceeded the successful ones.
The vast majority of test subjects underwent uncontrollable mutations within seventy-two hours of infection, with a mortality rate close to ninety-seven percent.
The file in A-06 was an internal memo.
The date was much newer than the others: June 15, 1998, which was about five weeks ago.
The content of the memo was brief, its tone urgent:
“Anomalies on B1 continue to escalate.”
“Cold Storage Room 3 was forced open by an unknown force on June 12. All frozen samples (LPV-001 to LPV-012) are confirmed missing.”
“A large number of leech activity traces were found on the inner walls of the cold storage room. Preliminary assessment suggests the samples have been retrieved.”
“Starting from the same day, all cultivation vats on B1 showed synchronized abnormal fluctuations. Leech activity inside the vats has risen by over 400% compared to normal levels. Micro-cracks are beginning to appear on the outer walls of the cultivation vats. The maintenance team can no longer enter B1 to work safely.”
“All indications suggest that a highly intelligent control core exists within the facility, systematically reclaiming all research materials and biological samples related to the leech virus. The identity and location of this core have not yet been confirmed.”
The memo ended with a single sentence: “B1 no longer belongs to us.”
Lincoln read the memo twice.
There was a massive amount of information here.
First, as early as five weeks ago, something was systematically reclaiming all leech virus samples and research materials in this facility.
All twelve frozen samples in the cold storage room were gone.
Second, this thing possessed high intelligence; this wasn’t the instinctual behavior of a mutant, but a purposeful, planned action.
Third, B1 had already spiraled out of control back then, with leech activity skyrocketing to over four times normal levels and the cultivation vats beginning to crack.
Combined with his previous deductions, the answer had practically surfaced.
It was Dr.
Marcus—or rather, something Dr.
Marcus had left behind.
It was alive, it had returned, and it was taking back everything that belonged to it.
The frozen samples, the research data, the leech populations—everything was being reclaimed.
The training school was merely its container, while it was the true master of this facility.
Lincoln fell silent for a few seconds.
He folded the memo, put it in his waist pack, and his gaze darkened.
Just then, the encrypted communicator in his waist pack buzzed.