[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 512 - The Connection Strengthens Again

The prison.

Leon lay on his back, rolled over, and stared at the ceiling.

Insomnia.

The T-Virus had rebuilt him from the ground up, and one of the side effects was energy that never ran out. Three days without sleep? No problem. His body wouldn't even notice.

Too much fuel, nowhere to burn it.

So instead he did what he always did, he checked the web.

It wasn't exactly an ability. Calling it that felt too clean, too simple. It was more like a perceptual map that sat outside the reach of science, something the T-Virus had carved into him along with everything else. Different from the Walker-sense he'd developed before. That one tracked the dead. This one tracked something else entirely.

Mutants.

With Leon as the center, the web stretched outward in all directions, threadlike and vast. Every Mutant inside it showed up as a small point of light.

Candice was in the lab. Her light burned steady and bright.

Marcus, the same.

It meant no one could fake their way past him anymore. No disguise, no pretending. A Mutant was a Mutant, and Leon would know it the instant they stepped into range.

Clear as day.

But tonight, when he ran his check, something was different.

Something new was in the web.

Two lights. Both of them fresh, both of them sharp, flickering at the outer edge of his perception with a frequency he'd never felt before.

The distance was enormous. Far outside Atlanta's range.

Roughly in the direction of Fort Benning.

Leon opened his eyes. His brow drew together.

He went back over everything, every detail, every interaction, every precaution.

Ever since he'd figured out what his bodily fluids could do, he'd been more careful than anyone else alive. Dedicated stainless steel cup. Separate utensils. Even his bathwater drained into its own line.

Nothing shared. Nothing mixed.

He wasn't going to turn Rick, Shawn Greene, and the others into Mutants hardwired to obey him, not without their knowledge, not without their consent.

So where the hell had two brand-new Mutants come from, all the way out at Fort Benning?

He was still running through it, hunting for the gap, when a voice detonated inside his skull.

"Leon, you bastard."

Not sound. Not vibration reaching the eardrum. This was different, syllables hammered directly into the cerebral cortex, like someone had found the frequency of his thoughts and broadcast straight through.

The voice was lazy. Unhurried. The tail end of each word curled upward just slightly, carrying the particular texture of someone furious but refusing to show it fully.

Ada?

Leon sat up.

He touched his ears. Nothing. No earpiece, no radio, no device of any kind.

"I sold myself to you." The voice came again, precise and clear, every syllable landing in Mandarin. "Satisfied now?"

He could even hear the small sounds underneath the words, fabric shifting against bedsheets as she turned over.

This needed verification.

Leon pulled on his tactical boots, didn't bother with a jacket, shoved the cell door open, and walked.

The corridor's motion sensors fired one by one ahead of him, lights clicking on in sequence as he moved.

Candice's lab was still lit.

The woman was a complete workaholic. With Marcus feeding her data, she'd have happily welded herself to that desk around the clock if the human body allowed it.

Leon didn't knock. He pushed the door open and walked in.

Candice had her back to him, fingers moving across the keyboard, a cup of cold black coffee sitting forgotten at her elbow.

"Not locking the door was a mistake," she said, without turning around.

Leon didn't comment.

Since the T-Virus injection, the reversion vaccine had shifted along with everything else. His Mutants had developed a kind of autonomy around him now, as long as he wasn't actively issuing commands, they functioned on their own. Candice's dry irritation was her own, not some glitch in the system.

He grabbed a wheeled chair, dragged it over, and dropped into it like he owned the room.

"Stop what you're doing. I need to ask you something."

Candice swung around immediately, pressing a knuckle to the corner of one tired eye.

"Outer wall's down? Or did the leeches get out?"

"Someone's talking in my head," Leon said. Direct. No preamble. "It's Ada."

Candice stopped rubbing her eye. She reached for the cold coffee and took a slow sip.

"You're just missing her."

"Auditory hallucinations are extremely common under sustained high-pressure stress. You haven't slept in two days. I can write you a prescription, sedatives, sleeping pills, take your pick."

"I'm not losing my mind." Leon tapped his temple with two fingers. "The voice is coming from inside here. Directly."

"And there are two brand-new Mutant nodes in my sensory web. A long way out. Not Atlanta, Fort Benning."

Candice put the cup down and reached for the clipboard on the desk. Her expression shifted, the tired irritation replaced by something sharper and more clinical.

"Who have you had bodily fluid contact with recently?"

"Your personal protective protocols have been running at maximum standard since day one. I test the living area water supply every single day." She tapped the clipboard. "There are zero indicators of viral leakage."

"I haven't touched another person's used towel," Leon said, thinking back through it.

"Then explain the two new nodes," Candice said, watching him.

A pause.

"Is it possible one of them is Ada?"

Leon leaned back.

Candice kept pulling the thread.

"Walk it back carefully. During the T-Virus fusion phase — or specifically during the window when you lost rationality — did anything happen? Any contact that seemed off?"

Lost rationality.

Leon thought.

And then Merle's face surfaced in his memory, cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth, that particular expression of someone who has absolutely been saving this for the right moment.

"Boss, when you went full berserk, that Ada woman took advantage of you. Just walked right up and kissed you while you were out of it. Man, if only you'd been awake for that. Heh heh heh."

Leon raised his hand slowly and touched his lips.

Candice caught it.

"Saliva exchange?"

"That's my best guess," Leon said.

"Then it all fits."

Candice leaned forward slightly.

"Your bodily fluids carry a high concentration of the virus. When your body was in active mutation — going berserk, the virus's activity would've been at absolute peak." She set the clipboard on her knee. "One kiss at that stage. That's more than enough for deep genetic assimilation."

Leon scrubbed a hand down his face.

Ada was controlled.

The female agent who was never seen without a cheongsam and heels. Always composed, always three steps ahead of everyone in the room. Now she was a subordinate node flickering in the back of his skull.

It was absurd. It was also real.

Neither of them had known it was happening. Ada's guess about the situation would be wrong in every detail. But the outcome, the outcome was exactly right.

"What about the second node?" Leon asked. "Who is it?"

"That one's on you to figure out." Candice pushed her glasses up. "Somewhere along the line, you assimilated someone without realizing it."

She tapped the pen against the clipboard, thinking.

"What's worth paying attention to is the mechanism of the link itself. If you can hear her voice, this isn't just one-directional. There's a strong possibility this is something new entirely."

"Two-way communication."

"In theory. You're the host, highest-level access, full authority." Candice's voice took on the measured cadence of someone working through a problem in real time. "But if a Mutant's emotional state spikes high enough, or their conscious focus narrows to something extremely intense, the brainwave output might be strong enough to reach your end in reverse."

"Let's test it." Leon looked at her. "Think of a sentence. Anything. Aim it at me. No sound."

Candice nodded.

She closed her eyes. Her hands folded in her lap, fingers laced together over her knees.

The lab went quiet. Just the exhaust fan turning in its monotonous loop.

Five seconds.

"Get me a new coffee machine. I want freshly ground espresso."

The sentence appeared inside Leon's head with perfect clarity. Every word, clean and sharp.

He looked at her sitting there with her eyes still closed.

"No espresso," Leon said. "We've got instant powder."

➤ Next: Going to Pick Up Ada