[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 474 - Pressing for the Location

Leon pushed Lilly into the room and shut the door behind him.

He set the carbine across his lap and sat down without ceremony.

"Don't try anything."

He didn't bother turning his head.

His senses were sharp. If she moved, he'd know before she finished the thought.

Lilly stood behind him, hands clenched so tight her knuckles ached.

Seeing she'd accepted the situation, Leon adjusted the dial with practiced ease. The radio spat bursts of static as he swept through the frequencies.

He settled on a public band.

"Citizen Z, you copy? Citizen Z?"

Static held for a beat, then a voice cut through, slightly unhinged but crystal clear.

"Oh my God — is that you? Leon? I thought I'd never hear your voice again as long as I lived!"

"Skip it." Not a shred of warmth in Leon's voice.

"Patch me through to home. Private line. Now."

"On it! Right now!" Citizen Z sounded genuinely thrilled.

Less than a minute.

"Done. Dedicated line. Nobody's listening in."

"Rick reached out before — said you went missing. I ran satellite sweeps for ages and came up completely empty. What the hell actually..."

"I was rescued. By the time you heard I was gone, I was probably already out. None of that matters."

Leon kept going.

"What matters is this: get me a location fix so home knows exactly where I am. I'm sitting on something important. No risks, zero. Tell Rick to get people moving to extract me, fast."

He tossed the radio onto the table and turned around.

Looked at Lilly.

"Now. Tell me where we are."

Lilly bit her lip. Her eyes were all resistance.

"I won't."

"You think my people are going to show up and hurt everyone here?" Leon read her face like a page.

"Aren't they?"

"They are." He nodded.

That one word drained the color straight out of Lilly's face.

"They'll show up in trucks. Enough food for a month. Medicine. Weapons."

Leon closed the distance between them, one step at a time.

"And then they'll ask you what else you need. Whatever we have, they'll bring it. Because you saved my life."

"Why would I believe you?"

"You don't have to." He was right in front of her now, close enough that she could feel the air between them.

"All you have to do right now is tell me where I am. Then pray I'm not lying."

Lilly opened her mouth. Leon was already out of patience.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her in close.

"I'll say this once more. My time is worth something."

His voice dropped low. The sound of a very irritated predator.

"If I wanted you dead, you'd have died 10,000 times over from the second I kicked that door in."

"You have two choices."

He leaned in close to her ear. His breath hit the side of her neck, warm and deliberate, and her skin prickled with goosebumps.

"One. You cooperate. You tell me where this is. And we're square."

"My people drop off the supplies and walk away. Your lives stay yours."

His hand slid down her arm and closed gently around her wrist.

"Two," he said, and paused.

"Keep refusing, and you'll become mine. Completely."

"You lose all your freedom. You follow every order I give, without condition. I'd rather not go there." His eyes didn't move from hers. "Understood?"

Lilly's body locked up.

Every trace of color left her face.

She had misread him entirely.

Leon meant turning her into a mutant.

What Lilly heard was rape.

Because in this rotten world, a woman with her looks, carrying the weight of wife and mother, "becoming a man's" only meant one thing. Everyone knew what it meant.

It meant losing everything. Becoming a toy. Property.

She thought she'd misheard. But Leon's eyes held nothing — no clarification coming, no mercy, no correction.

He had no reason to set her straight.

Let it be useful. No need to explain. She'd fill in the rest herself, with whatever she feared most.

"Believe me," he said quietly.

"When that time comes, you won't have the power to refuse me at all."

➤ Next: Grim Tidings — What Was Lost