[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 464 - Ada Arrives — Steel and Blood

Leon and the black mountain stared each other down.

Then he moved.

He darted left, fire axe angled at the creature's limb joints.

The monster reacted faster than he expected. Two massive limbs came crashing down from above like battering rams.

BOOM. BOOM.

The marble floor cratered where he'd just been standing.

He was already at its flank. The fire axe came down on one of the joint segments.

CLANG!

The axe bit in. The damage was nothing.

These enhanced leeches weren't as fragile as they looked.

"Damn. That's hard."

Leon cursed and pulled back immediately.

A black tentacle came at him from behind, silent as a shadow. He didn't turn. Just dropped low. It swept past and grazed his scalp.

"Boss, should we shoot?" Merle shouted from the back.

"You want to put a round through Leon too?" Shawn roared back. "You see how tight that thing's got him?"

All they could do was watch.

He was too fast. Every attack, he slipped it at the last possible second.

But the monster was too big. Attacks came from every angle. No blind spots. No gaps.

He couldn't keep waiting.

He spotted it — one of the thing's arms came down, missed, and hadn't retracted yet. Leon stepped onto it and ran straight up.

He moved like a parkour runner, sprinting up the creature's massive body, making for the head.

He had no idea if destroying the head would even do anything.

Right now he had to try.

The monster clearly hadn't seen that coming. Its three remaining arms started hammering at its own body, trying to crush Leon like a bug. But with him dodging across its surface, it couldn't commit full force.

Leon got closer and closer to that enormous maw.

He was almost in position to jump.

The monster's body went rigid.

More black leeches boiled out from somewhere inside it. They surged upward from below and swallowed him whole before he could react — still running, still reaching, gone.

"Fuck!"

One word. That was all he got out. The leeches hit him like a net, and then the tentacles had him, coiling tight, pulling him down.

The fire axe spun free and hit the floor.

"Leon!" Rick shouted.

"Boss!"

Abraham and Merle both lunged forward.

Countless tentacles wound around Leon and compressed him into a black cocoon, then hoisted him high into the air. The coils kept tightening.

Rebekah's hand flew to her mouth. Tears spilled down her face.

It was over.

And then.

Click.

Every light in the underground space ignited at once.

Not the flickering, half-dead emergency strips. A hundred high-powered floodlights, all of them, simultaneously.

The world went white.

"ROAR,—!"

A furious shriek tore out of the monster's maw.

Light. Blinding, inescapable light, everywhere at once.

The tentacles holding Leon snapped back like they'd been touched by a branding iron. The leeches that made up its body twisted and convulsed under the glare, peeling off in layers, raining to the floor, scattering in every direction.

Leon dropped.

He hit the ground hard. Black slime covered him from head to foot. He lay there dragging in ragged breaths, feeling like every bone in his body had been wrung out.

He lifted his head toward the light.

Standing at the greenhouse entrance was a woman in a red cheongsam.

She held a grappling gun in one hand. A long case was strapped across her back.

Leon smiled.

He knew his Ada wouldn't just let it happen.

"Ada?"

She heard him.

She glanced down at him on the ground.

The look was completely foreign. Like he was a stranger she'd never seen before. Not even a stranger, really. Just something her eyes passed over on the way to something else.

She looked away. Her gaze settled back on the massive creature still coming apart in the light.

Ada walked forward.

Her heels clicked against the floor. Sharp and clean with every step.

Each one landed like it struck something inside his chest.

She walked right past him. Didn't stop. Didn't look down again.

Leon stayed where he was, flat on his back, head tilted up, watching her go.

Ada reached the center of the space and stopped in front of the monster, still shrieking, still thrashing, still dissolving.

She unslung the case from her back.

Click.

It opened. Inside sat a black launch tube.

Ada lifted the rocket launcher and settled it onto her shoulder.

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