[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 489 - Encountering Marcus Again

The leeches surged toward Leon in a black tide.

He didn't bother swatting them off.

These newborns couldn't touch him. His reinforced skin turned them away like they were nothing. He could have forgotten they existed.

His focus stayed locked on the mother body, that pulsing, swollen thing still churning out offspring in the dark water below.

He raised his hand.

If he wanted, he could reduce it to scraps in under a minute. Pure violence. Every last one of those crawling little annoyances crushed under his heel.

Then it stopped.

As if it sensed him coming, the mother body went still. The vesicles covering its surface ceased their quivering. The entire leech swarm in the reservoir froze at once, like a command had been issued.

Dead silence.

Then the teardrop-shaped mass began to contract. To twist. To reshape.

It was no longer just a breeding organ.

Leeches flooded in from every direction, latching on, layering over each other like black puzzle pieces snapping into place, assembling something new with nauseating speed.

A shape.

A human shape.

"Holy shit..."

Behind him, T-Dog's flashlight beam was shaking.

"It really is that monster. It came back."

The figure finished forming. A humanoid built entirely of leeches stood in front of Leon, dripping, wrong, and unmistakable.

Leon would have known that face if it were burned to ash.

James Marcus.

He looked destroyed. Far smaller than he had been at the Management Training Facility, his form shrunken and diminished, like something that had survived by the narrowest possible margin.

"Leon..."

The voice that came out was weak.

Leon's raised hand stopped in midair.

He studied this old enemy clinging to existence by a thread. The killing intent in his dark-gold eyes didn't move an inch.

"I genuinely didn't expect you to still be breathing."

"You thought a few rockets would finish me?" Marcus let out a sound that passed for a laugh, ugly and grating. "You underestimate the Leech Queen."

"As long as a single core mother leech survives, I can regenerate. My reproductive capacity is not something you can simply bomb away."

He paused. His gaze moved over Leon with something like clinical interest.

"Speaking of which... something's wrong with your body." A beat. "T-Virus?"

"You actually pulled it off?"

"Ordinary people don't survive that strain. It tears them apart. Unless..." Marcus's voice filled with genuine curiosity. "You had prior exposure to something similar? Something that laid the groundwork?"

"You talk too much."

Leon's hand swung back toward him.

"I'll send you to God right now."

"Wait!" The weakness in Marcus's voice cracked into something urgent. "You can't kill me!"

"Give me one reason."

"Because I can save her."

Leon went still.

Marcus watched his reaction and knew he'd gambled right.

"That girl. Ashley. She consumed the Progenitor Virus, didn't she?"

"How do you know that." It wasn't a question. Leon's voice carried something quiet and dangerous underneath it.

"My leeches move freely through this place. You know that." Marcus's tone was matter-of-fact. "I see things. I hear things. It isn't surprising."

"But that's not what matters."

"The Progenitor Virus is not something an ordinary human body can bear. You survived the T-Virus because something you were injected with before gave you a foundation to stand on." His eyes stayed on Leon. "She has nothing. No foundation. No immunity. Right now, she is simply waiting to die."

He let that sit for a moment. Then he played his card.

"But I'm different."

"I created the Progenitor Virus. No one in this world understands it better than I do." His voice steadied. "I have a way to save her. A real way."

The sound of boots on concrete. Rick, Shane, and the others had reached the reservoir entrance.

They took one look at the leech-built humanoid. They heard the tail end of that exchange.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"Shit!" Shane recovered first. He brought his gun up. "It's that old bastard!"

"Don't." Leon didn't turn around. The single word landed like a wall.

Shane's arms locked in place. He looked at Leon's back, then at the thing standing in the water, jaw tight, not knowing what to do with his hands.

Inside Leon, something was tearing itself apart.

Reason was clear: this creature was one of the sources of everything that had gone wrong in this world. It needed to be destroyed. Completely, finally, without hesitation.

But the other part of him, the part that would burn everything down for Ashley, was screaming.

Let him finish.

"What do you want." Leon's voice came out low.

Marcus smiled. With a leech-built face, it looked like something that should not exist.

"You're a smart man."

"My conditions are simple." He gestured at the space around them. "As you can see, my two favorite students — Wesker and William — would both very much like me dead. The entire Umbrella Corporation wants me erased, my name forgotten, every trace of me scrubbed from history."

"I'm weak. I need somewhere to recover. Somewhere safe, somewhere they won't find."

He spread his arms.

"This prison suits me well. Atlanta. Far from Fort Benning and all those crawling survivors." His eyes settled on Leon. "Give me a sanctuary. Let me rebuild my strength. In exchange, I will tell you exactly how to save that girl."

"You have got to be fucking kidding me." Shane's voice from behind, raw and furious. "Leon. Don't listen to a single word out of this thing's mouth. He'll bring everything down on us. Everything!"

"Boss, he's right!" Merle's voice cut in right behind it. "We chop him apart, burn what's left, flush the ash. We'll find another way for Ashley. There's always another way!"

Marcus didn't look at them. He kept his eyes on Leon only.

"They're not wrong," he said, and his voice held an absolute calm. "You can kill me right now. Put an end to it."

"And then you can stand right where you're standing and watch that girl decay. Slowly. Piece by piece. Watch her become a mindless pile of rot."

"You won't even be able to give her a clean death, because she won't get one. She'll suffer every moment of it. She'll scream. She'll curse you for not being enough. And then she'll die."

"You—" The sound that came out of Leon wasn't a word.

His fist closed. His knuckles cracked.

Ashley's face moved through his mind. White. Twisted with pain.

He couldn't let himself picture it fully.

He didn't have the courage to.

"Leon."

Rick's voice. Quieter than Shane's. Harder to shut out because of it.

"Don't do this. We can't keep a demon in our own house."

Leon closed his eyes.

Somewhere in the water, something dripped.

Then he breathed in, long and slow, and when he opened his eyes, the killing intent was gone.

His hand lowered. The hand that had been deciding Marcus's fate, one twitch away from ending him, came down to his side.

Because he'd already worked out the solution.

He turned around. He looked at his people, Shane's trembling jaw, Merle's wild eyes, Rick's tight, disbelieving face, and let them look back at him.

"Put the guns down."

"Leon, you can't, " Shane's voice broke off. His lips kept moving without sound.

The corner of Leon's mouth twitched.

"What are you worried about? You're forgetting something." He glanced back toward Marcus. "I've fused with the T-Virus. Which means I can try to assert control over organisms that run on the same type. If Rebecca's theory was wrong and I can't hold him, we'll deal with it then. We've still got options."

His gaze moved fully to Marcus.

"I'll work with you."

"But we are enemies. We've always been enemies. I don't trust you, and you'd be an idiot to trust me."

"So here's how this works." His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "You hand over your core leech. Voluntarily. You submit to my control. That's the only way any of this happens, the only way I have any peace of mind about keeping you alive."

➤ Next: Marcus Backs Down