[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 535 - Gotta Give Alpha Team a Heads-Up

Leon grabbed the black walkie-talkie off the desk.

He dialed in the frequency and pressed the call button.

On the other end.

Rebekah was buried under a blanket, curled up on her bed, dead asleep.

After everything at Spencer Mansion, plus being dragged around all day by that old lunatic Marcus while he dumped a mountain of gene recombination theory directly into her skull, her brain felt like a pot of porridge left on the stove too long.

Sleep was the only part of her day that didn't hurt.

The walkie-talkie's burst of static hit the silent room like a gunshot.

Rebekah jolted upright, heart slamming against her ribs.

She groped blindly around her pillow, found the black plastic brick, and mashed the receive button.

"Who is it?" Her voice came out rough, still half-buried in sleep.

"Leon."

Low, male, through the speaker. No preamble.

"Get yourself together. Come see me. Alone."

Whatever fog was still clinging to Rebekah's brain evaporated on the spot.

Come see me.

Alone.

Two in the morning.

Those words, stacked together like that, were hard to read any way but one.

Her hand found the edge of the blanket and pulled it tight against her chest.

"Leon..."

She swallowed and tried to keep the waver out of her voice.

"It's two in the morning."

"Is there anything that can't wait until daylight?"

"No." No hesitation, no give.

"You've got fifteen minutes. I'll be in the office at the end of the third-floor hallway."

Rebekah remembered. She remembered perfectly well.

Back when Leon's virus fusion was still deepening, still fighting him for control. In those early weeks, the way the virus rewired his body had accelerated his Loss of Humanity.

She'd had no choice but to step in with certain treatment methods.

But as the T-Virus fusion drew closer to completion, the Loss of Humanity problem was supposed to fade with it. The T-Virus becoming fully integrated was supposed to fix all of that.

"I'm warning you, don't try anything. Didn't you already do it with Ada?"

"I think you've got too much energy and nowhere to put it, and you're using me to fill the gap. I'm not falling for it!"

Five full seconds of silence from the other end.

Leon sat at his desk, listening to the accusation roll through the speaker. He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

What in the world did this girl keep rattling around in that head of hers.

"Did Marcus's Leeches eat your brain?" he said into the mic, not bothering to hide the irritation.

"Put your clothes on, bring your brain with you, and get over here."

"What I have to tell you involves the lives of your colleagues from the department."

He released the button and cut the line.

The flat beeping of a dead channel filled her dorm room.

Rebekah sat frozen on her bed, face burning.

Colleagues' lives?

She stared at nothing for two seconds. Then she threw off the blanket.

S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team.

Her team.

Chris. Jill. Barry. They were in danger?

She yanked her clothes on in the dark, didn't even get her shoelaces tied, shoved through the door, and ran.

Third-floor office.

No overhead lights. Just a desk lamp pushing out a pool of dim yellow.

Leon sat behind the wide desk, waiting.

A knock at the door. Fast. Urgent.

"Come in."

Rebekah pushed inside, still breathing hard, chest rising and falling.

She looked at him sitting there, fully dressed, expression flat. Not at all the scene her panicked imagination had been constructing on the way up. A flush of embarrassment cut through the adrenaline.

She still didn't know why she'd said any of that out loud.

It didn't matter right now.

"Leon." She stepped forward. "You said — what about my colleagues?"

"That captain of yours. The one who wears sunglasses. Wesker." Leon rested his chin on his folded hands and held her gaze. "What kind of person do you think he is?"

The question caught her sideways.

"Captain Wesker? He's... strict. Capable. Cold, most of the time, but he's always been the backbone of S.T.A.R.S."

"Backbone." Leon let out a short scoff. "He's a backbone Umbrella Corporation grew in a lab."

"He was a senior researcher in the Spencer Mansion's underground facility. Did you know that?"

Rebekah gave a small nod.

She wasn't naive. The Alpha Team captain was supposed to serve the government, yet Wesker had been the one to bring her into the Spencer Mansion in the first place. She'd been slow about a lot of things, but not that. She'd known for a while that whatever Wesker's connection to Umbrella was, it wasn't ordinary.

He'd told her it was an undercover mission. Deep-cover infiltration.

She hadn't believed a word of it.

"You were all props." Leon stood. "Dressing in a shop window. Something to look at so no one looked at him." He laid it out clean, every detail of Wesker's real identity, nothing held back.

The full weight of it landed on Rebekah at once.

Her captain. A triple agent.

If she'd been in his position, carrying all of that, she would've broken in half.

Leon didn't wait for her to process it.

"Right now, Spencer Mansion's security system is down. The data is gone. Wesker needs to bring his new master a gift, something that proves his worth."

"The perfect gift is live combat data. High-end bio-organic weapons against a top-tier armed unit." Leon watched the color drain steadily from her face. "If I'm reading this right, he's already been in contact with the Fort Benning police department."

"He'll use the missing Bravo Team as his excuse. You, specifically. He'll use you as bait and walk the entire Alpha Team straight into the Arklay Mountains."

Rebekah's breath caught.

She knew Chris. She knew Jill. She knew all of them.

The moment a search-and-rescue order came down, it didn't matter what was waiting on the other side. A mountain of blades. A sea of fire. Those people would go in without blinking. They'd spend their lives to do it.

They would come for her. She had absolutely no doubt.

"So Wesker locks down every exit. Releases the creatures. Then he sits in the monitoring room and documents every moment of it. Every desperate attempt. Every failure."

"When it's over, he detonates the charges, burns the evidence, and walks away under a new name to live out the rest of his comfortable little life."

Leon rapped his knuckles on the desk. Rebekah's eyes snapped back into focus.

"That is exactly what your beloved captain is about to do."

Rebekah's legs went. She caught herself on the edge of the desk, knuckles white, and held on.

"...Why?" she murmured. "Why would he do this?"

Part of her wanted to push back. But her mind was already running the math, and it kept coming out the same way. Leon had no reason to lie to her. And everything she'd seen inside that mansion, every monster, every locked door, every layer of it, all of it clicked into place.

"That's not the question to be asking right now."

"I know Wesker was well-liked. I know what he meant to your team. But he is a threat that will not stay manageable forever, and this is not the time to sit with your feelings about it."

"What you need to know is simple. I can't let him walk free until he becomes a knife pointed at my back."

"That's why I called you here."

He looked at her steadily.

"You don't want your colleagues to die, do you?"

Rebekah nodded. No hesitation.

"No."

Leon smiled. Satisfied, measured, exactly what he'd expected.

"Good." He leaned forward slightly. "Then you're going to do exactly what I tell you."

➤ Next: Don't Reveal a Single Word to Wesker