[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 311 - Go Back and Stir Things Up

When Martinez was brought before Leon, he nearly dropped to his knees right there.

The man in front of him wore nothing special: a plain black T-shirt, a small knife in hand, trimming his nails.

No deliberate air of authority. No ferocity carved into his face.

He was just sitting there. But he was like a mountain, and Martinez could barely draw breath under the weight of him.

It felt exactly like a low-level gangster finally standing before the legendary Godfather.

"The Governor is eating people."

Martinez didn't dare hold anything back. He poured it all out, every last word.

"He has a daughter — Penny. She turned a long time ago. He's been keeping her like a pet."

"Now that the town has run out of food, he's started... he's started luring the disobedient ones, or the weak ones, into his room and feeding them to Penny."

Martinez's voice was shaking.

"Tonight, he told me to pick ten people. Ten! Penny can't even eat that many, but the Governor makes her eat the freshest parts!"

"He's completely insane! He's a devil!"

Leon stopped what he was doing. He raised his head and looked at Martinez.

"So you ran."

"Y-yes!" Martinez nodded rapidly. "I don't want to keep doing this for him anymore — these conscienceless, inhuman things! I want to live, but I want to live like a person!"

"Do you think you still count as a person?"

The question landed like a slap. Martinez froze, his face draining white, then flooding red.

"You helped him kill people. You helped him loot supplies. You deceived the residents who trusted you."

Leon stood and walked toward him, each step slow and deliberate, until he was right in front of him.

"The blood on your hands is no less than on his."

"And now you're telling me you want to be a good person?"

Leon smiled. There was nothing warm in it.

"Too late."

Martinez felt his heart hit rock bottom.

"But," Leon said, and his tone shifted.

"I'm not an unreasonable man. I give people chances. I don't believe in wiping everyone out."

He patted Martinez on the shoulder.

"You want to live. Fine."

"You want to atone. Also fine."

Leon pointed toward the distant outline of Woodbury on the horizon.

"I want you to go back."

"Go back?!" Martinez nearly lunged to his feet. "You — you're sending me to my death! The Governor will tear me apart with his bare hands!"

He was certain of it. The moment he showed his face, he'd be hanging from the wall, the Governor's warning to everyone else, made out of his body.

"Die?" Leon let out a short, dismissive scoff.

"No. I'm sending you back to be a hero."

"Didn't you say you wanted to be a person? Here's your chance."

Looking into Leon's eyes, eyes that seemed to see straight through him down to the bone, Martinez felt every last thought he had stripped bare.

He did want to live. But he was even more afraid of dying like a dog.

Because he still had a sliver of conscience left.

Under the Governor, even the best man could turn into something monstrous.

Leon knew this. Before Merle ever set foot in Woodbury, that rough, foul-mouthed bastard hadn't killed a single person. He was a thug, loud and mean and worthless by most measures, but underneath it all, he was decent.

Then the Governor raided the nursing home and found Merle wounded, hand already gone. He let Merle live, and that debt became a leash. The dirty work piled up. The bodies piled up. Merle kept doing it, because what else could you do when you owed someone your life?

Countless people died at his hands.

In the end, Rick told him the truth, that it had all been a misunderstanding, that they had gone back for him, that they had never abandoned him. Merle was rescued and brought to the prison. But he felt he could never go back to the man he'd been. So he released Michonne rather than use her as a bargaining chip, and went after Woodbury alone. One man against all of it.

He still chose his conscience.

He killed seven before the Governor put him down personally.

All of it. Every last piece of that tragedy. The root was always the Governor.

So Leon didn't mind giving Martinez a chance to be something better.

"I'm not sending you back to fight him."

"I want you to use your mouth. Use your brain."

Leon's voice dropped low.

"Every filthy thing the Governor has done, you expose it. All of it. One by one."

"How he slaughtered those soldiers. How he keeps his dead daughter chained up and calls it love. How he turns living people into dinner..."

"I want every single person in Woodbury to know that the god they worship is a man-eating devil."

"Information warfare. You understand?"

"Rot him from the inside. Let the fools who still believe in him see exactly what he is."

Rick stood at a distance, listening. Something vast moved through his chest, cold and nameless.

This wasn't war anymore.

This was something else. Something that played with human hearts the way a man plays with a knife, slowly, deliberately, certain of the outcome.

Leon didn't give a damn about Woodbury's walls or its guns. He wasn't even looking at them.

What he wanted to destroy was the foundation the Governor stood on: the lies the man had built his kingdom on, and the authority those lies had earned him.

Strip those away.

And every survivor in Woodbury would walk out willingly, and follow Leon.

➤ Next: Finding Milton — Words Unspoken