[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 459 - Refusal — Words Unspoken

"I mean you no harm."

His gaze drifted back to Rebekah.

Pure, undisguised admiration. More than that, a thread of something almost feverish, and underneath it, an emotion that defied easy naming.

"Little girl, you are truly gifted."

"From the moment you entered this building, I have been watching you."

"Your composure. Your professionalism. That sharp intuition for the life sciences." He paused, letting each point land. "All of it astounds me."

"You are nothing like the fools outside. You know how to appreciate true beauty. You understand the essence of evolution."

Every gun in the room was still raised. Nobody fired.

The scene was too bizarre.

This should have been the final boss. Instead he looked like a kindly university professor holding office hours, spinning an eloquent lecture for a single student.

Marcus spread his arms wide, his posture as effortless and composed as if he were standing center-stage at an opera house.

"I have spent my entire life in pursuit of truth. Of perfect evolution."

"I walk a path no one has ever walked. I have seen vistas that God himself could never have imagined."

"But this path is unbearably lonely."

"I need an heir."

He looked at Rebekah. His eyes burned.

"An heir who can understand me. Who can inherit everything I know. Who will walk this path with me, all the way to the end."

"Rebekah." He let her name sit in the air for a moment. "I choose you."

"I will give you everything inside my mind. I will show you a world you have never seen — a perfect world, built by the two of us together."

"You will become the god of the new world."

Rebekah stood very still. Her mind was spinning.

The old man's words had a weight to them, a gravity that pulled at something deep.

Leon stepped forward. Put himself between her and Marcus.

"The proposal sounds reasonable."

"But you've got one thing wrong."

"You are not Marcus."

The smile died on Marcus's face.

The air in the greenhouse went solid.

"What did you say?"

"I said, you are not Marcus."

Leon held his pale gaze.

"The real Marcus has been dead for a long time. Killed by his two most prized students — Albert Wesker and William Birkin, working together. His body was dumped in the sewers."

"And you," Leon pointed at him.

"are just the Leech Queen. The one that happened to absorb his memories and DNA."

Whatever was left of the smile vanished completely.

"How do you know that?"

"A beautiful woman I ran into told me."

Leon said it like it was nothing.

From somewhere behind him, Merle muttered under his breath.

"Damn. How does the boss keep running into beautiful women? Merle wants that too."

Daryl jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. Merle shut up.

Then Marcus laughed. It came out of nowhere, the gloom swept off his face in an instant, replaced by something open and almost delighted. The sound rolled through the greenhouse and bounced off the glass.

"The Leech Queen?" He nodded slowly. "Yes. I admit it. I am."

"Marcus's body is dead. But his hatred, his knowledge, everything he was, I inherited all of it."

He tapped the side of his head.

"A leech's life is short. Their memories are nothing but primitive feeding instincts."

"But I," he pressed two fingers to his temple,

"I carry every memory Marcus ever had. From the day he was born to the day he was betrayed by the people you call companions."

"I remember his childhood toys. I remember the thrill of his first dissection, a white mouse, small and soft. I remember the euphoria when he created the Progenitor Virus." His voice dropped, and something colder moved through it. "And of course, I remember what it felt like when Wesker pulled the trigger. The bullet tearing through flesh. And the pain underneath it, not just the body. The other kind."

"So you tell me."

His eyes fixed on Leon, flat and direct.

"How exactly am I supposed to prove whether I am a leech or Marcus?"

"Or better yet — does it even matter? Does it change anything?"

"As long as I believe I am Marcus, that is enough."

He stopped looking at Leon.

His attention moved back to Rebekah. Patient. Expectant. Waiting for her answer like it was the only thing in the room that counted.

Everyone looked at Rebekah.

She took a slow breath. Then she stepped out from behind Leon.

She met Marcus's eyes, those burning, eager eyes, and held them.

And shook her head.

"No."

One word. Quiet. Absolute.

Marcus's expression went still.

"Why?"

"Your knowledge is genuinely tempting." Rebekah's voice had a faint tremor in it. Her eyes did not. "I won't pretend otherwise."

"But you are too cruel."

"You use living people as raw material. You reduce life to data, numbers with no warmth, no breath, no weight."

"You took the students who trusted you and fed them to your monsters."

"Everything you call evolution, every breakthrough, every discovery, is built on the suffering and screams of people who never agreed to be part of your work."

She turned. Her arm swept toward the glass tanks and their twisted contents, toward the mountains of bones heaped beyond the greenhouse walls.

"This is not science."

"This is slaughter."

"I have no interest in learning from it."

Her voice steadied on the last line.

"I have no interest in becoming what you are."

➤ Next: Leech Queen