The corner of Lincoln’s mouth twitched, forming an unreadable expression.
Wesker and William.
Those two names surfaced in his mind.
Marcus had been murdered by their joint hands, and his research achievements had been carved up between them.
Now that Marcus’s creations had gone awry, their solution wasn’t to resolve the crisis, but to utterly eradicate every single trace related to this incident.
The Training School, the leeches, the train, the staff—bury them all together.
Clean and efficient.
It was highly characteristic of Umbrella’s high-ranking brass.
“The exit has been welded shut,” Lincoln said, turning back to Rebecca and Billy.
Rebecca’s expression shifted instantly.
“Welded shut? By whom?”
“Company people.” Lincoln didn’t offer a detailed explanation.
“They don’t want anyone leaving this facility alive.”
Rebecca opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Billy, however, reacted calmly.
He tilted his head to look at the welded iron door, the corners of his mouth turning downward.
“So we’re trapped inside.”
“This path is blocked,” Lincoln said, “but not all of them.”
He pulled the detailed blueprint Rebecca had found in the archives out of his waist pouch and unfolded it.
B2 level, water treatment facility.
The blueprint detailed the layout of the B2 level.
The water treatment area occupied a massive portion of the space, with the power facilities situated right beside it.
At the northernmost edge of the water treatment area, a drainage tunnel was marked, stretching northward along the interior of the mountain.
Its destination was unlabeled, but judging by its trajectory, the drainage tunnel likely led to the natural waterway system on the northern side of the mountain.
If they could cross this tunnel, they might be able to escape from the opposite side of the mountain.
“There’s a drainage tunnel on the B2 level.” Lincoln pointed to the location on the map.
“The water treatment facility’s drainage system must discharge wastewater outside the mountain. The outlet can’t be welded shut; otherwise, the entire treatment system would back up and fail.”
Billy glanced at the blueprint, thought for a moment, and nodded.
“But the B2 level is the deepest subterranean floor,” Rebecca said, her face pale.
“Are we going even deeper?”
“We have no other choice.” Lincoln folded the map and stowed it away.
“Let’s move.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
The three of them retraced their steps along the B1 level corridor, weaving through the corpses of the zombies to find the entrance to the stairs leading down to the B2 level.
The entrance to the stairs lay behind an iron door in the middle of the corridor.
It was unlocked, but a yellow warning label was pasted on the panel: “B2 Level • Water Treatment/Power Zone • Unauthorized Personnel Strictly Prohibited.”
Lincoln pushed the door open.
The stairs sloped downward, narrower and steeper than before, with a slick film of water covering the concrete steps.
The humidity spiked sharply, and the temperature began to drop.
The deeper they went, the more they felt a heavy, oppressive weight—the stifling heat and moisture radiating from a vast reservoir of water sealed in the subterranean space.
At the bottom, the exit was an already open watertight hatch door.
Most of the rubber seal on the frame had aged and peeled away.
Behind the door lay the B2 level.
Lincoln stepped over the threshold and swept his flashlight around.
The B2 level was unlike any floor above.
It wasn’t a structure, but a semi-natural, semi-artificial cavern.
The ceiling was bare rock, jagged and uneven, reaching about five or six meters at its highest points.
Part of the floor was paved with concrete slabs, but many had cracked or collapsed, exposing the rock and dirt beneath.
Directly ahead was a row of massive concrete reservoirs, each about four to five meters wide and over ten meters long, lined up in a single file.
Above the reservoirs ran metal pipes and valve assemblies, with rusted iron ladders and maintenance catwalks bolted to the walls.
Most of the reservoirs were filled with water, their surfaces reflecting a dull, dark sheen under the flashlight beams.
The entire cavern echoed with the sound of water dripping from the pipes into the pools.
*Drip, drip, drip.* The rhythm was perfectly steady, amplified many times over in the vast, empty space.
Then Lincoln noticed another sound.
It was incredibly faint, mingled with the dripping of the water, barely audible unless one listened closely.
It was a continuous, wet, squirming sound.
The kind of sound produced only when a vast number of soft, fleshy bodies rubbed and writhed against a surface.
Lincoln slowly shifted his flashlight beam toward the nearest reservoir.
The edge of the reservoir was built of concrete, about waist-high.
He walked over and shone his light down into the basin.
Instantly, his hand froze.
The water inside was pitch black.
Not because it was dirty, nor because the light was dim.
It was because the surface of the water was blanketed by a dense, writhing layer of black leeches, packed so tightly together that they completely covered the water. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
The moment the flashlight beam struck them, the leeches closest to the light source reacted in unison.
The front ends of their bodies reared up, suckers flaring open, and they began to wriggle rapidly toward the light—and toward Lincoln—crawling with visible speed.
And it wasn’t just the ones on the water’s surface.
Leeches were also clinging to the concrete walls of the reservoir.
As the light hit them, they began scaling the vertical concrete wall at a speed much faster than Lincoln anticipated.
Their suckers clamped and released, bodies stretching and contracting, covering over ten centimeters in just two or three seconds.
They were heading straight for the rim.
Lincoln immediately took two steps back, sweeping his flashlight beam over to the second and third reservoirs.
It was the exact same story.
Every single reservoir was carpeted with leeches.
They crawled up the walls, and stray individuals were even scattered across the concrete walkway between the pools, previously unnoticed in the dim light.
The entire water treatment area of the B2 level had become a colossal leech nest.
What was worse, having sensed their presence, the leeches were now moving as one.
And not just the ones nearest to them.
An intensified squirming sound echoed from the reservoirs further away.
The ripples on the water grew dense as a massive horde of leeches began climbing out of the water and up the concrete walls.
“Stay away from the pools,” Lincoln whispered, his voice low but urgent.
Rebecca had already seen it.
The moment her flashlight illuminated the water’s surface, her entire body went rigid.
She scrambled back three paces, raising her Beretta but unsure of where to aim.
Shooting leeches was pointless.
There were too many of them; kill a hundred, and a thousand more would take their place.
Billy swept his flashlight around the B2 level, his expression equally grim.
“Which way?”
Lincoln took a quick glance at the blueprint.
The entrance to the drainage tunnel was at the northernmost end of the water treatment area.
To reach it from their current position, they had to walk about thirty meters north along the walkway between the reservoirs.
The walkway was only about a meter wide, flanked by reservoirs on both sides.
Now that the leeches were climbing up the walls on both sides, the walkway would soon be blanketed if they moved too slowly.
“Go straight to the end. Don’t stop,” Lincoln made a snap decision.
“Run!”