[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 485 - Injecting the T-Virus

Merle was the first to react. He scrambled to Leon's side, so panicked the words came out in a jumble.

"Boss? Boss, you okay? Shit, don't scare me like that!"

Shawn was right behind him. He shot a vicious glare at Ada as she climbed out of the truck bed, then crouched down and pressed two fingers to Leon's neck.

"Still has a pulse."

He exhaled hard.

Ada ignored him. She spoke only to Candice.

"Don't even think about giving him a neutralizing agent. It treats the symptoms, not the cause."

"If you want him back in his right mind, you have to gamble."

"And don't worry about his body." She glanced at the unconscious Leon. "He's had other viruses injected into him. He's not that fragile."

"The T-Virus. An evolved form of the Progenitor Virus."

"Either it lets him reclaim control of his own body, or..." A beat. "It turns him into something far worse than he already is."

Nobody spoke.

It sounded no different from suicide.

Shawn stepped toward her. He stared at Ada, each word deliberate. "You're not coming back with us?"

Ada shook her head. Her gaze drifted to Leon's face and held there for a moment.

"I was just keeping close in case something went wrong."

"I still have a mission."

Shawn studied her. That mysterious, dangerous woman. The tension in his shoulders finally gave out.

"Fine. I was fucking wrong about you."

Ada smiled. That smile carried too much in it for any of them to read.

"What about Ashley?" Candice pressed, urgency cracking through her voice. "She consumed the Solar Stairway. She's still unconscious. Can you do anything?"

The smile disappeared.

"The power of the Progenitor Virus is something only its creator fully understands," Ada said. "Only Dr. Marcus."

She shook her head.

"I'm not a researcher. I don't understand these things. There's nothing I can do."

Candice's heart dropped.

"However," Ada said, her tone shifting.

"There is one way."

Her gaze moved back to Leon.

"Have him transform Ashley into a Mutant."

"Use his own blood. Forcibly remake her. It might be her only path out."

"Whether that happens..." Ada paused.

"Depends on whether he's willing."

She said nothing more after that.

She walked over to Leon, and under the stunned stares of everyone present, she crouched beside him.

From an inner pocket she produced a thin strip of plastic. Through that transparent film, she pressed it gently to his lips.

Then her fingertips traced lightly across his mud-caked face.

She stood. One last look at the group. She turned and walked into the dark, swallowed by the night as silently as she had come.

"Damn, that woman..." Merle scratched the back of his head.

"That is fucking cool."

Nobody acknowledged him.

The convoy started up again and rolled back toward the prison, carrying nothing but exhaustion and dread.

Lilly was put in the back seat of the Humvee.

She curled herself into the corner, arms wrapped tight around the carbine Leon had given back to her, and stayed that way the entire ride. A frightened quail. That was what she felt like.

Through the windshield she watched the people on the truck ahead scrambling to lift the man called Leon into the cargo bed.

This world had lost its mind.

These people had lost their minds.

She had pulled a stranger out of the river. That was all. How had that one thing dragged her into something this deep, this murky, this completely beyond her understanding?

The prison. The lab.

Lights blazing white.

Leon lay flat on the operating table, his shirt cut open, his lean, muscular torso exposed to the harsh overhead glare.

Candice stood over him, the blue syringe in her hand.

"I've reviewed all the data."

"Ada's files were thorough. Viral characteristics, clinical reactions, contingency protocols for every scenario she could anticipate."

She looked at Rick, then Shawn.

"Theoretically, the odds are good."

"Leon also received the reductive vaccine I made from Murphy's blood. His body already has a baseline. It should be able to carry the T-Virus."

"But..." She drew a slow breath.

"This is still the T-Virus. None of us knows how Leon's body is going to respond."

"You mean he could die?" Shawn's voice came out flat and heavy.

"Or become something none of us can control," Candice said.

The lab went completely quiet.

Every eye in the room settled on the man lying motionless on the table.

He was the heart of this group. That was just the truth.

And now they were about to inject a bomb directly into that heart, with no idea whether it would detonate.

"Do it."

"He's already like this."

Rick's voice cut through the silence.

He moved to the table and looked down at Leon's pale face.

"We don't have a choice," he said. "Either we watch his own power consume him and turn him into something that only knows how to kill, or we trust Ada. Once."

Shawn stepped up beside him. He reached out and smoothed the hair back from Leon's forehead, slow and careful.

"Leon's got the hardest head I've ever seen. He pulled through last time, didn't he?" He cracked a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "He'll be fine."

Candice nodded.

She stopped hesitating. She tapped the air from the syringe, found Leon's vein, and pushed the needle in steady.

The blue liquid fed slowly into his body.

The room held its breath. Nobody blinked.

One second.

Two seconds.

Ten seconds.

Nothing.

Leon lay exactly as he had before.

"It... didn't work?" Merle muttered.

The words weren't even fully out of his mouth.

"NGH—!"

Leon's body arched off the table.

The sound that tore from his throat wasn't human. Beneath the skin, blue-black veins surged to the surface all at once, writhing and twisting like something alive trying to claw its way out. A hundred times worse than anything Ashley had gone through.

"Hold him down!" Rick bellowed.

Abraham and T-Dog threw themselves onto him, both men putting everything they had into pinning Leon to the table.

It wasn't enough. Leon thrashed once and both of them went flying.

CRASH!

The operating table went over. Equipment, bottles, trays — everything hit the floor and shattered.

"ROAR—!"

Leon hit his knees. His head snapped back and he screamed at the ceiling, a sound packed with a kind of agony that had no name.

2 forces were tearing through him at the same time, and his body was losing.

"His vitals are flatlining!"

Candice stared at the monitor, at the red line going straight and still, and the scream came out before she could stop it.

If Leon died, she was dead too.

"Heartbeat's stopped!"

Every person in that room felt the bottom fall out.

It was over.

They'd lost.

Just as the silence clamped down like a lid,

Thump.

One heartbeat. Massive. Definitive. From deep inside Leon's chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Faster. Harder. Like fists hammering a war drum.

Leon's body went still.

➤ Next: Recovery — Breakthrough