The jet of water blasted for about ten seconds, washing the leeches at the valve room entrance back toward the mouth of the tunnel, where they collapsed into a soggy black mass.
They were still squirming, but they had lost all cohesion.
Without the current pushing them along and their ranks broken by the high-pressure spray, they couldn’t regroup anytime soon.
Lincoln cranked the high-pressure valve to its maximum, keeping the steady stream roaring.
The pressurized water tank had a limited capacity—it would last about ten to fifteen minutes at most.
That was enough.
He climbed down the iron ladder and sprinted toward the entrance of the maintenance access corridor.
Billy and Rebecca were already inside, Billy’s flashlight shining outward from the passage, waiting for him to enter.
Lincoln ducked inside.
The corridor was narrower than the drainage tunnel—about 1.2 meters wide and 1.7 meters high.
Taller individuals had to stoop slightly.
The walls were concrete, and the floor was dry, free of standing water.
Every few meters overhead, a fluorescent light tube burned.
Most were lit; once the main power had been restored, illumination to these functional zones had come back online, making flashlights unnecessary.
Lincoln glanced back at the valve room.
The high-pressure stream continued to blast away, pinning the leeches near the tunnel mouth and keeping them from advancing.
The entrance to the maintenance corridor lacked a door.
However, the passage itself was narrow, and the ground was dry—leeches moved far slower over dry surfaces than in water.
By the time the pressurized tank ran dry, even if any leeches managed to crawl over, the three of them could easily outpace them in such a cramped space.
“Move!” Lincoln urged.
“Put some distance between us while they’re pinned.”
The three of them quickened their pace down the maintenance corridor.
The passage steadily inclined upward toward the north.
Though the slope was gentle, the climb was constant.
They were nearing the surface.
After walking for about ten minutes, an iron door appeared ahead.
Above the door hung a sign, heavily faded but still legible: *Surface Exit · Drainage Ditch Maintenance Access*.
When Lincoln saw those words, the tension in his chest eased slightly.
Only slightly, though.
The previous door marked “Emergency Exit” had been welded shut.
This one could be as well.
He stepped up to the door and crouched down to inspect the seam.
No welds.
The joint between the door and frame was normal metal-on-metal, complete with aged rubber weatherstripping and rust, but there were no signs of intentional tampering or sealing.
As a maintenance access point for the water treatment system, welding it shut would have prevented routine desilting of the drainage ditch.
When Wesker and William locked down the facility, they likely overlooked this exit.
Lincoln grabbed the handle and pushed hard.
As it swung open, the hinges screeched with a harsh metallic scream, the rusted bearings forced to turn after years of neglect.
Beyond the door lay the open air.
A damp night breeze swept inside, carrying the crisp, cool scent of mountain vegetation against their faces and the backs of their hands.
Lincoln stepped out.
The exit opened into a concrete maintenance well built into the northern slope of the mountain, surrounded by dense thickets and low trees.
Beside the access well ran a shallow drainage ditch, its trickling stream reflecting faint glimmers of moonlight as it flowed downhill.
Stars were visible in the sky above.
The night rain had stopped at some point, and the clouds had parted, letting pale moonlight spill through to cast layered shadows of trees across the slope.
Lincoln stood outside the well and took a deep breath.
The air was free of the stench of rotting flesh, the foul reek of leeches, and the cold tang of concrete and rust.
There was only damp earth, leaves, and the crisp chill unique to a mountain forest at night.
He pulled out his communicator and checked the GPS coordinates.
They were currently on the northern slope of the mountain where the Training School sat, roughly sixty to seventy meters lower in elevation than the facility itself.
The rendezvous coordinates marked on his device lay to the southwest—about four kilometers as the crow flies.
But with a mountain ridge and dense forest in between, the actual trek would likely be six to eight kilometers.
A night march through mountain terrain meant three to four hours.
Lincoln looked up at the sky, gauging the time from the position of the moon.
It was roughly three in the morning.
If all went smoothly, they would arrive before dawn.
Rebecca climbed out of the maintenance well and stood on the slope, taking several deep gulps of air.
Billy followed her out, leaning back against the concrete wall of the well as he rolled his neck.
The three of them stood beside the well for a moment in silence.
No one spoke.
Having spent so long underground in the Training School, returning to the open air took a few moments for everyone to adjust.
Lincoln took stock of his gear.
The M1911 had a full magazine loaded, with one full spare mag and another with two rounds remaining.
The M870 had fired three rounds at the amalgam in the valve room, leaving only one shell in the tube.
He pulled buckshot from his pouch and loaded them one by one into the tubular magazine, topping it off back to seven.
Both hand grenades were intact.
His KA-BAR knife was in place.
Inside the inner pocket of his tactical vest, the silver sealed tube remained.
It was still empty.
When the Leech Amalgam collapsed in the valve room earlier, the floor had been scattered with leech corpses and core remains.
Every single one of those leeches carried the fully active genetic sequence of the T-Leech Virus.
Yet he hadn’t taken a sample.
The reason was the same as back in the water treatment area.
More importantly, he had established a hierarchy of priorities in his mind.
The amalgam earlier had been controlled remotely by Marcus, and the Queen Leech within its core was merely an executive unit at the bottom of the chain.
The true control core was Marcus himself—the entity existing in Marcus’s form.
The T-Leech Virus it harbored was the purest, most complete original strain, far more valuable than any terminal amalgam.
*That* was what Umbrella truly wanted.
The order specified “an adequate tissue sample,” without designating where it had to come from.
Lincoln knew full well that bringing back a sample from the host body would be dozens of times more valuable than a few ordinary leeches.
The problem was, he had to find the creature, kill it, and then carve a piece off it.
Each of those three steps was no small feat.
But that was a problem for later.
Right now, the top priority was reaching the rendezvous point alive.
“Get ready to move,” Lincoln said, stowing his communicator.
“We’re heading southwest. Six to eight kilometers—let’s try to get there before dawn.”
He assessed Billy and Rebecca’s physical conditions.
Billy’s forearm was still bandaged from the Eliminator’s claw marks.
It didn’t hinder his movement, but a long march might cause it to inflame.
Rebecca had been bitten on the calf by a leech; though treated, it was still seeping blood, and her stamina was the most drained of the three.
A six-to-eight-kilometer night march through mountain terrain would take a heavy toll on her.
But there was no alternative.
“Let’s move.”
Leaving the maintenance well behind, the three set off southwest along the mountain slope.
Underfoot lay soft leaf mold, deadening their footsteps into silence.
Moonlight filtered down through gaps in the canopy, casting dappled shadows across the ground.
The distant forest was quiet, save for the faint, far-off chirping of insects drifting through the air.
Lincoln led the way, keeping his M1911 drawn rather than holstered.
In the night of the Arklay Mountains, nowhere was safe.
They had left the Training School, but they had not left danger behind.
The mountain was teeming with the aftermath of the T-Virus outbreak.
Mutated dogs, zombies, and likely other horrors they had yet to encounter.
And then there was *that* creature.
The sigh lingering in the valve room still echoed in his ears.
Marcus had made an attempt and failed.
Yet it hadn’t given chase, nor had it flared in rage—it had merely offered a sigh.
That reaction made Lincoln far more uneasy than encountering a furious monster would have.
Because it meant the creature was in no hurry.
It had plenty of time, plenty of means, and no pressing need to finish them off in the drainage tunnel.
It was waiting for a better opportunity.
Lincoln tightened his grip on his gun and kept marching, as the three shadows vanished into the dark of the forest.