[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 486 - Recovery — Breakthrough
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
On the operating table, Leon's body stopped convulsing.
The change was visible to the naked eye.
The swollen, twisted cords of blue-black veins beneath his skin receded fast, draining back into nothing like ink absorbed into paper. His skin returned to a normal color, but there was something new underneath it now, a quality that was hard to name. A pallor. Cool and smooth and dense, like polished marble.
Beside the overturned table, Abraham and T-Dog pressed in close, staring. Their eyes held exactly one thing: horror.
"He... is he..."
T-Dog's voice cracked on the words.
"Did it work or not?"
No one answered.
Candice murmured to herself.
"The T-Virus didn't kill him." A pause. "Now it's remaking him."
"The Restoration Vaccine must have laid a stronger foundation than we realized."
Then Leon moved.
He sat up. Slowly.
The leather restraints across his body, the kind rated for violent patients, the kind designed to hold, went taut as cables. They let out a long, teeth-grinding creak.
"Shit! Get on him, now!"
Shawn Greene's roar yanked everyone back to their senses.
It's over.
That was all that fit inside anyone's head.
They'd lost the bet. Leon was alive, sure, but who could guarantee Leon was still Leon? They might have just built something worse than anything that had come before. More terrifying. More beyond any kind of control.
Abraham and Shawn Greene were already moving to lunge.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Three crisp, flat cracks.
Those restraints, the ones that could hold a bull gone berserk, snapped like wet straw from nothing more than the motion of him standing up.
The laboratory went completely silent.
No one moved.
Leon stood up fully.
He was bare from the waist up. The wound Ada had left on his chest was already sealed, dried to a dark scab. He kept his head down, and no one could read his face.
Merle was the one who finally made a sound.
"Boss...?"
The word came out barely louder than a mosquito.
Leon raised his head.
Those eyes were different. The animal savagery that had burned in them before was gone. His pupils looked deeper, darker, like light couldn't quite reach the bottom.
But there was something alive in them.
Something human.
"I'm Leon."
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Rick was still pointing his gun. Shawn Greene was still gripping his knife.
It was almost funny.
"Shit..."
Merle reacted first. He dropped his weapon on the floor, and his face split into a grin so strained it looked worse than crying.
"Boss, you son of a bitch — you scared me half to death. I thought — I genuinely thought you were dead."
Something in his brain misfired. He reached sideways, grabbed a cup off the nearest table without looking, trotted over to the water dispenser, filled it, and trotted back.
"Here, Boss. Water first."
Leon looked at him. He took the cup.
Then, right in front of all of them,
CRUNCH!
The metal cup crumpled in his hand. Not squeezed, not crushed with effort, just gone, like cheap plastic in a vice, twisted into a mangled spiral of scrap. Water poured out through the bent rim, ran between his fingers, and spread across the floor.
Merle's grin died on his face.
Shawn Greene's eyelid started twitching and would not stop.
What the hell kind of strength is that.
Leon blinked. He looked down at the wreckage in his palm, then at his own hand, not a scratch on it, and his brow creased.
He hadn't adjusted yet. He'd used too much force without meaning to.
"Your muscle density, bone density, and neural response speed..."
Candice's voice came from behind him.
"Based on the monitor's real-time feedback, they have already exceeded the upper limit of human physiology. Exceeded it comprehensively." She pushed her glasses up. "They may even exceed most other large-bodied organisms."
She pushed her glasses up again.
"I need to run a full physical on you, Leon. Your body is an unprecedented subject. The T-Virus inside you is doing something we've never—"
"Where's Ashley?"
He cut her off.
He dropped the crushed cup on the floor. It hit the concrete with a sharp clang.
He had no interest in data. No interest in being anyone's research subject. There was exactly one thing he wanted right now.
"She's in the ICU next door," Candice said.
A beat.
"It's... not looking good."
Leon didn't respond. He turned, walked straight to the laboratory door, and pushed it open.
Rick and Shawn Greene both moved to follow.
"Stay here. All of you."
His voice came back over his shoulder, flat and final.
"I'm going alone."
He walked out. The door swung shut behind him.
The room was left in silence, everyone staring at each other with nothing useful to say.
Shawn Greene looked at the space where Leon had been. Then he looked down at the floor, at the stainless steel cup twisted into a knot of scrap metal.
His back molars were aching.
➤ Next: The Solution — What Was Lost