[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 539 - Explaining the Crux

Jill froze.

She'd just heard Chris mention that name, and now the man himself was standing right in front of her.

"You're the intern cop who stood the Chief up?"

Now it was Leon's turn to go blank.

His cigarette hand stopped in midair.

He was a transmigrator, a body-crossover at that. How could there be a file on him in the police system?

And these two actually recognized him?

His mind cycled through it twice, fast.

World fusion.

That was the only explanation that held. Two apocalyptic worlds from separate backgrounds had slammed into each other, and certain underlying logic had been forcibly patched to fill the gaps. The System had set him up with a clean, legitimate identity in this world. Complete résumé included.

Fine. In this world, Li Sanguang no longer existed.

If the backstory was already written, it at least saved him the trouble of making one up.

Leon stepped forward and extended his right hand to Chris.

"Leon."

"Chris. Jill." A slight nod. "I've heard plenty about both of you."

Chris grabbed his hand and squeezed hard.

"God, small world." He shook his head. "We were just talking about you on the plane — how you went off to be a prison guard at the Georgia Correctional Facility." He paused, studying Leon's face. "What are you doing here? And why are you with Rebekah?"

The half-familiar filter was already working. Both Chris and Jill had visibly warmed up.

In a world where the living were more terrifying than the dead, running into someone you recognized, not quite a former colleague, more like someone known one-sidedly from a distance, was rarer than winning the lottery.

"Long story." Leon pulled his hand back. "The Georgia Correctional Facility is my territory now. This girl got herself locked up by some priest. I fished her out along the way."

"Your territory?" Chris caught the weight of those words immediately.

The confidence wasn't hidden. It wasn't even subtle. A prison guard who'd turned an entire correctional facility into his personal stronghold, that wasn't something an ordinary person did.

Jill stepped forward, eyes moving between Leon and Rebekah.

"Business first."

"Rebekah — over the radio you said Wesker couldn't find out." Her voice was steady, direct. "What exactly happened in the Arklay Mountains? Where is the rest of Bravo Team?"

At that, Rebekah's shoulders pulled inward. She glanced back at Leon.

Leon tilted his chin. Your story. Tell it.

Rebekah bit her lip and made herself say it.

"They're all dead. I was locked up by the priest before the operation started, so I never joined them. In the end it turned out to be the thing that saved my life."

Chris's jaw tightened.

"The mutant creatures?"

"Not just the creatures." Rebekah steadied herself, meeting their stares. "It was Wesker. He arranged all of it."

"Wait." Chris's brow creased hard. "You're saying the Captain set this up? That doesn't make sense. Wesker had no reason to do that."

"He did." Leon stepped in.

Since they were being straight with him, he laid it all out.

"Albert Wesker isn't just your captain. He's a senior researcher at Umbrella Corporation's Arklay Research Facility — and at the same time, he's working for a rival organization called H.C.F." Leon let that land before continuing. "His position right now is precarious. He needs a serious pledge of loyalty to buy his way into his new employer's good graces."

He looked at Chris.

"You and your team, well-trained, combat-tested S.T.A.R.S. officers, were the perfect expendable material. Live stress-tests to evaluate the combat ceiling of new bioweapons."

"He didn't lure you into that mansion for a rescue operation. He sent you in to die."

The words hit like a fist.

S.T.A.R.S. officers. Used as test material.

Their captain. A triple agent.

Too much, all at once.

Under normal circumstances Chris would've pushed back hard. But he looked at Rebekah, still pale, still rattled, the kind of shaken that didn't fake well, and then he looked at Leon, who wore the expression of a man describing the weather. No satisfaction. No performance. Just the flat certainty of someone who already knew how the story ended.

He let the skepticism go.

If Leon said it, there was proof behind it.

Jill was already running back through the last few weeks. Wesker's absences from the station. Those patrol orders that made no operational sense. The way he'd brushed off every report of anomalies in the Arklay Mountains with a word or two.

Something had been wrong. She just hadn't had a name for it.

"What proof do you have?" she said, eyes fixed on Leon.

"The mansion has an underground facility. Bioweapons inside." He said it like he was reading off a shopping list. "There's also a researcher named William Birkin. He's currently washing test tubes in my lab, we pulled him out from under Wesker's hands. If that's still not enough, Rebekah is a living witness. Wesker had her locked up in that mansion. She saw the underground facility herself."

He paused.

"That's why I had her reach out to you. That old fox is probably sitting in the mansion ruins right now, waiting for you to show up. He's not walking away without that data."

Leon's tone didn't change.

"I have a habit. When I see a threat taking shape, I like to kill it early. And I wasn't interested in watching you walk into that." He met Chris's eyes. "So I cut you off first."

Chris still looked dazed.

He didn't have the full picture yet. But the core of it, Wesker, colluding with Umbrella, that part was no longer in any doubt.

➤ Next: Diverting to the Prison