[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 433 - The First Time Encountering This Situation

Leon swept his gaze over the ones still pointing weapons.

"Weapons. Down."

His voice wasn't loud.

But it drilled straight into their skulls.

CLICK. CLANK.

One. Two. Ten.

The Terminus members who had been snarling with murder in their eyes a second ago looked like someone had hit a switch. Every one of them went glassy-faced, bent down, and laid their guns, knives, and axes on the ground.

Movements perfectly synchronized. Skin-crawlingly uniform.

Three people were still standing.

They held their weapons and stared at their suddenly disarmed companions in pure horror, then turned that same look on Leon, the look you give something that shouldn't exist.

"Are you people out of your fucking minds?"

"Why are you putting your weapons down!"

One of the men screamed it until his voice cracked.

Shane stepped out from behind Leon.

Didn't say a word.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Three shots.

The three who had stood apart from the rest, blood bloomed from their heads almost simultaneously, and they dropped straight down like cut timber.

The entire slaughterhouse went silent. Nothing left but the sound of breathing.

Gareth and his people looked like they'd forgotten how to function.

They stared at Leon. At this man who had barely moved his lips and turned a pack of stone-cold killers into obedient animals.

What was this?

Magic?

Some kind of miracle?

"Wah—"

Mary finally broke. She knew it was over. She knew she was safe.

She crumpled to the ground, arms wrapped around her naked body, and sobbed openly.

The others went with her. One after another.

The relief of still being alive and the terror they'd been strangling for God knows how long, all of it tore loose at once.

Leon patted Gareth on the shoulder.

"Now you know why."

Gareth nodded. Slowly. Barely.

He knew.

He understood all of it now.

No wonder that man had told him to pour that jug of something into the water tower. No wonder he'd told him to make sure nobody drank from it.

It hadn't been humiliation. It had been a power he couldn't begin to understand, one strong enough to rewrite reality.

Leon's attention shifted back to Robert.

The Terminus tyrant who had been untouchable 2 minutes ago now had the muscles in his face twitching.

His body couldn't move. But his eyes could see.

He watched his own men lay down their weapons, one by one. Watched the three who hadn't drunk the water take a bullet to the skull each.

He wasn't stupid.

He knew exactly what he'd done. Knew what kind of thing he'd walked into.

And what frightened him most was this: somewhere deep inside him, he couldn't find a single impulse to fight back against this man.

That was the part that terrified him.

Leon walked toward him, tapping the clean baseball bat against his palm with each step.

"What kind of feed did they raise you on?"

Leon looked Robert's body over, built like a bear, solid all the way through, and asked it like a genuine question.

"How does a man get this thick."

Under those dark-gold eyes, Robert felt ten thousand needles punch through his brain at once.

He wanted to shut his mouth.

He wanted to resist.

He couldn't do either.

The secrets he'd buried deep started pouring out of him like a dam had given way.

"I... I used to be a butcher."

The words came out ragged.

"I... I loved meat since I was a kid. Always ran bigger than everyone else."

Leon's smile widened.

"A butcher. Perfect."

He glanced back at what was left of Sam, mostly carved down to the bone by now.

"Sounds like you know the work."

"That meat." Leon's tone shifted, unhurried, almost casual. "How was it?"

The question landed like a stone.

"Human flesh. Better than the pigs you used to slaughter, or not as good?"

"I..."

The fear behind Robert's eyes went deeper. He felt stripped bare in front of this man. No walls left. No secrets.

"No... no difference."

He pushed the words out one at a time.

"Just... a little more tender."

"Ha."

Leon laughed.

"A real professional."

Then his eyebrow moved.

Something was off.

Robert's body was still fighting. Not the blank, passive resistance of someone under control, this was deliberate. Purposeful.

His muscles were pulling taut. The veins along his neck stood out like cables, thick and twisted.

His eyes were locked on Leon, and behind the fear, something hadn't gone out. A violence that was still burning.

He wanted to move. His gaze kept cutting toward his boot.

Leon could feel it, the thread running out from his mental network was being dragged against, stretched wire-tight.

Like he'd hooked a shark instead of a sardine.

First time.

The first time a living target had held this much resistance while still under his control.

3 possibilities.

First: the water tower had diluted the effect. But everyone else was stable. That didn't track.

Second: the man's body was simply built too strong. Bear-thick, packed with muscle. Maybe raw physical constitution affected how well mental control took hold.

Third: the one that was the most inconvenient.

This man's willpower was its own weapon.

A tyrant who'd spent years deciding who lived and who died, that kind of will didn't break easy.

None of the 3 were good news.

He ran back through his history. Most of what he'd controlled were small-timers, Father Eugene types. The toughest had been that scorpion-tattooed bald man.

Someone built like this was new territory.

Which made him wonder, would trying to control Shane, whose body was just as abnormally strong, produce the same result?

Not that he'd ever use Shane as a test subject.

He leaned toward it being a combination of possibility one and possibility two.

The amusement left his face.

Not good.

It meant his ability had limits. Hard ceilings he hadn't mapped yet.

But the thought turned over, and another angle opened up. If a target was stronger than him — or built differently enough, his bodily fluids might not take hold at all. Which meant Ashley, Ada...

Hmm.

That might actually be a completely new direction worth thinking about.

He shelved it. Later.

He had a hunch this particular problem wouldn't be solved until he'd gotten his hands on a new virus and brought his own body fully under control.

"You're special."

Leon tapped Robert's cheek with the bat. Light. Almost gentle.

"Everyone else went down. You still want to stand."

Robert wanted to answer. Wanted to curse him out. But his vocal cords were locked too, only broken, meaningless noise scraped out of his throat.

His eyes moved frantically. Peripheral vision cutting hard toward his right boot.

There was a dagger in there.

If he could just reach it,

"Want to grab a weapon?" Leon had already read it. "Go ahead."

Then, as Robert watched in stunned disbelief, his own other hand reached across and started bending his five fingers backward, one by one, toward the back of his hand.

CRACK!

CRACK!

Bone dislocating. The sound was obscene in the silence of the slaughterhouse.

"AHHH—!"

The scream that came out of Robert barely sounded human.

His own hand had bent his right fingers into a shattered claw.

The pain warped every muscle in his face, and cold sweat soaked through his back in an instant.

"Damn, boss." Merle let out a low whistle. "You giving the man a spa day?"

"That technique." He grinned. "Love to see it."

➤ Next: Resolving Terminus