[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 564 - Sharing Mutant Abilities?

Candice set down the flashlight.

She looked at the steady waveform on the monitor and exhaled slowly.

Lee Mi-joo stood beside her, recording data.

Leon stood at the edge of the bed.

"How is she?" Leon asked.

"Bodily functions completely normal — you could even say suspiciously good." Candice tucked the flashlight into her pocket.

"Then why did she get a nosebleed and pass out?"

"Her brainwave activity spiked with extreme intensity. Similar to a momentary computational overload." Candice paused. "Like an old computer suddenly trying to run a massive program and just — crashing. She'll wake up after some rest. Nothing serious."

Outside the door.

Chris and the others were craning their necks to peek inside.

Leon walked over.

"She's fine. Pushed herself too hard during training, body couldn't keep up." He waved them off. "Alright, clear out. Everyone back to what you were doing."

The group dispersed with a collective exhale.

Not long after, Ashley's eyelashes fluttered.

She opened her eyes.

Leon dragged a chair over and sat down. Candice, reading the room perfectly, took Lee Mi-joo by the arm and walked out of the infirmary, pulling the door shut behind her.

Just the two of them.

Ashley looked at Leon. There was something guilty in her eyes.

"What the hell were you up to?" Leon stared at her.

Ashley propped herself up. She glanced at the closed door, then crooked a finger at him.

Leon leaned in.

She pressed close to his ear. Her breath was warm against the curve of it.

"Leon." She dropped her voice to nearly nothing, tone thick with mystery. "I can hear what other people are thinking."

Leon's pupils contracted.

He turned his head and looked at her.

"Say that again."

Ashley swallowed and laid it all out, everything that had happened, start to finish.

The dog grumbling that the pork was too fatty.

Maggie scheming about how to get him drunk and drag him into her room.

Daryl Dixon complaining about Carol Peletier's creaking spring mattress.

And then trying to listen in on Jill Valentine's thoughts, and her brain crashing on the spot.

Leon's eye twitched steadily through all of it.

Maggie, fine. But Daryl Dixon, that closed-off, say-nothing man, was actually playing the field like that?

Not a word out of him, and he'd already closed the deal?

Respect.

But the gossip wasn't the point.

The point was mind-reading.

What did something like that mean in the apocalypse?

It meant no one in their presence could hide a single secret. Who was a mole. Who harbored ulterior motives. Transparent at a glance.

In a negotiation or an interrogation, it would be an entirely one-sided advantage.

Leon's own Mutant conversion could achieve something similar, but only if he could control the target first. What if he couldn't?

That was exactly where this ability would prove its worth.

Leon took a deep breath. He pressed the shock down hard, buried it.

His expression didn't move.

"Have you told anyone else?" He kept his eyes on her.

Ashley shook her head. "I passed out before I even had the chance."

"Good." He gripped her shoulders, voice dropping flat and serious. "From this moment on, this stays buried. You tell no one — not even the Mutants."

"Why?" Ashley frowned.

"Think about it." Leon's voice stayed patient. "If the people in this camp knew you could flip through their minds whenever you felt like it, what do you think happens?"

"Everyone has thoughts they'd rather keep in the dark."

"The second they feel like they have zero privacy around you, the panic and suspicion shreds the order of this place overnight."

"You become a monster in their eyes. Or worse, a threat that needs to be removed."

"And if someone moves against you in secret, you can't read every person's mind at once. Run into even one of them and you're in serious trouble."

Judge people by their actions, not their intentions. Judge by intentions and there's no perfect person in the world.

That was why Leon had always focused only on results. Never on the process.

Ashley listened. A cold sweat broke out across her back.

She'd only thought it was fun. She hadn't considered for a second that the fallout could be this bad.

"I understand." She nodded, and meant it.

"This ability is our secret weapon. Nothing else." Leon reached over and ruffled her hair. "From now on, don't go poking around inside anyone's head without my permission. Your neural threshold isn't strong enough yet, one more overload and you might turn yourself into a vegetable."

He got her settled and lying back down to rest.

Then he walked to the window.

He lit a cigarette and looked out at the exercise yard.

Mind-reading.

The double mutation from Solar Stairway and the T-Virus had handed him one hell of a surprise.

He closed his eyes.

He let his attention sink inward, down into the viral neuron network threaded through his body.

It was a strange sensation.

In a void of total darkness, he could feel several invisible threads extending outward, each one connecting to a different individual.

His converted Mutants.

His consciousness traveled along the threads.

Points of light flickered into existence in the dark.

One burned bright in the distance, Wesker. The old man was still locked up in the underground solitary cell, freshly converted, the virus not yet fully active, but early signs were already there.

Another light in a different direction, not as bright as Wesker's, but steady and stable. Ada.

But what stopped Leon cold was the node closest to him.

Ashley's node.

It was not a node. It was a floodlight.

Radiating a blinding pulse through the entire Mental Network. Dozens of times the size of Ada's.

Leon understood immediately.

The stronger the converted individual, the more powerful their presence in the Mental Network. Ashley had fused with Solar Stairway. Her physical condition was now at a level that defied easy description. Of course her node looked like that.

His consciousness edged cautiously toward it.

The instant it made contact,

A strange electric current surged back through his neurons and flooded into his mind.

Not pain.

The unlocking of an access level.

Leon's eyes snapped open.

The cigarette had burned all the way down to the filter. He pressed the stub out on the windowsill.

His heart was pounding.

He had just found the most broken hidden feature of this Mental Network.

Ability sharing.

When his consciousness touched Ashley's node, he had felt it clearly, the mind-reading ability she had just awakened was already perfectly replicated inside his own neural center.

As the master node of the entire Mutant network, he didn't just hold absolute control over his converted subordinates.

He could directly use any special ability they had developed through viral mutation.

This was the real cheat ability.

The one catch: it seemed to draw on Ashley's mental energy. Given her current state, he could barely squeeze out a handful of uses.

Still. Acceptable.

As Ashley got stronger, the number of times he could borrow the ability would climb with her. Minor problem. It'd sort itself out.

Leon turned his head toward the bed.

Ashley had her eyes closed, resting.

He focused.

Locked his gaze on her.

In an instant, Ashley's surface-level thoughts rose up inside his mind, clear as spoken words.

Leon was so stern just now. But he was doing it for my sake.

If I really did turn into a vegetable, he wouldn't want me anymore.

I want canned beef tonight...

Will he make a baby with me tonight? He's so strong. I love that feeling...

The corner of Leon's mouth lifted.

It works.

He cut the connection immediately.

Quick test, that was enough. This mind-reading ability was a savage drain on mental energy, Ashley had been out cold for this long and had only clawed back a tiny fraction of her reserves. He wasn't about to let careless experimenting drain her dry all over again.

He was going to need to study the mechanics more carefully.

Was there any way to use it without going through Ashley at all?

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