[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 494 - Alicia? — Face to Face

Bruce, Sam, Max, three dogs at prison-yard boss level, stood collectively petrified.

They stared at Marcus. No barking. Just three pairs of dull, frozen eyes locked on that writhing mass of leeches.

Leon took all of it in.

He'd always known these three weren't ordinary animals.

Ada had noticed it too, back then, an unusual interest she hadn't bothered to hide. She'd told him straight: these dogs were more than they looked. Treat them well. They might prove useful someday.

Were they actually connected to the Umbrella Corporation? To Marcus himself?

They knew him. That much was obvious.

Marcus's leech-formed face turned toward the three dogs. Those murky, borrowed eyes rippled with something.

"To think... after all these years, they still recognize me."

There was a thread of something in Marcus's voice. Barely there. Nostalgia, maybe. The rigid, inhuman quality had softened just slightly, more human than before.

Leon raised an eyebrow and looked at the three dogs, still frozen in place.

"These dogs. You know them?"

"Know them?" A thread of old memory ran through Marcus's voice. "They were among the earliest test subjects of the Hellhound Project."

"Umbrella's genetic engineering was still in its infancy back then. Crude work."

He paused, as if pulling up words from somewhere very far away.

"Every day in that lab, the three of them were taken apart and put back together by the experiments. Howling in pain. Bodies riddled with tubes. Walking specimens of suffering — that's all they were."

"There were many others in their batch. Only these three endured."

Leon listened. Said nothing.

"My daughter... Alicia."

When he said the name, Marcus's voice slowed. The writhing body seemed to still, just slightly.

"She was young then. She used to come find me in the lab."

"She couldn't stand watching it. Always thought they were pitiful."

Something crossed Marcus's face that was hard to name.

Regret? Longing?

Both, maybe.

"She pestered me. Begged me."

"So in the end, I went behind the company's back and released them. I let them leave that hell."

Alicia Marcus.

The name hit Leon like a switch flipping.

Alicia Marcus, the prototype for Alice. The one from the movies.

The perfect clone, created by the T-Virus.

He'd always assumed this was a game world. Figured the plot would follow the games.

But now the line between game and film was blurring. The relationships were getting complicated.

He looked at Marcus, then back at the three dogs.

Huh. The ruthless, cold-blooded Marcus, actually had a soft spot. That was almost hard to believe. He wasn't sure he did believe it.

"You had a daughter?" Leon asked.

Marcus nodded. His tone dropped lower.

"Yes. Alicia Marcus."

"She had progeria."

Leon's expression settled into understanding.

That explained a lot.

A father watching his daughter age and deteriorate at a speed nature never intended, what does a man like that do?

Obvious.

"After the Hellhound Project was shut down, her condition got worse fast." Marcus continued, and the weight in his voice was unmistakable now. "I lost my mind. Truly."

"Without suitable primate samples, I started using live humans for research. My own students included. All of it just to accelerate the T-Virus's development."

"You know what the T-Virus does. It doesn't just make you stronger — it extends lifespan. It repairs cells. The T-Virus could absolutely fight progeria."

His body shuddered faintly at that.

"I wanted to find a way out for her."

"Looking back now... I was so insane. But for Alicia, I had no other choice."

A demon. A madman. A scientist driven by hatred and ambition.

And underneath all of it, a father laying bare the most broken part of himself.

That was more staggering than any scheme Marcus had ever run. More staggering than any cruelty he'd committed.

Marcus wasn't born a demon.

He was human. A father pushed past every limit despair could push a person, who had walked himself into the abyss one choice at a time.

Leon's gaze drifted back to Bruce and the others.

The three dogs were still rigid, but the terror had receded. Something else had moved in to replace it.

Familiarity.

They circled Marcus now, tails going, the excitement breaking through in spite of everything. Whatever he looked like, they'd recognized him. The appearance underneath the horror.

No matter how monstrous Marcus was, to them, he was the man who had saved their lives.

"You said they've lived for twenty years." Leon's voice carried a trace of something he didn't bother hiding. "Then why do they still look like this? Young. Full of energy."

Marcus let out a soft laugh. Tired and proud at once.

"Twenty years? That's just your rough estimate."

"When the experiments started, Bruce was the oldest — nine years old. Sam, the smallest, was already seven. Do the math. These three have been alive for 30 years."

He looked at the dogs.

"And yet they're still young. Still full of life. That is the T-Virus's most defining trait, life extension, far beyond any natural limit. Their lifespans will outlast others of their kind. Longer, even, than some humans."

30 years.

Three dogs that had already lived 30 years before the apocalypse even started.

It sounded absurd. But with Marcus standing right there, and the T-Virus behind it, it made a terrible kind of sense.

They were living proof. Anomalies that time had simply forgotten to claim.

Leon's mind drifted to Ashley.

Progeria. The T-Virus. Cellular repair. Extended life. Ashley's Progenitor Virus wasn't the T-Virus, but it came from the same root, a direct product of the Sunlight Staircase, carrying something older and more raw.

If the T-Virus could do all of this... what could the Sunlight Staircase do?

If Aelia survived it, would she come out the other side the same way Leon had? A superhuman?

And then there was Marcus's daughter. Alicia.

He thought of Alice. The one from the films.

A perfect body rewritten by the virus. Speed, strength, and perception that put normal humans to shame, and later, something that shouldn't have been possible at all. Telepathy.

If Marcus had already created Alice, then his grasp of the T-Virus and the Progenitor Virus ran far deeper than Leon had ever imagined.

He wasn't just a virologist.

He was a man who had built a new form of life.

"Alicia..." Leon said. "Where is she now?"

➤ Next: The Alice Project