[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 567 - Wesker Breaks

"What I want to say is, you're nothing but a piece on someone else's chessboard."

Leon's tone was flat. The words landed like a grenade.

"And you've been a piece with a predetermined place since the day you were born."

Wesker's breathing stopped for half a second.

"From childhood, you were selected by Ozwell E. Spencer for the 'Wesker Project', to serve as one of his test subjects." Leon held Wesker's gaze and didn't look away.

"The project handpicked high-IQ children from around the world and gave every single one of you the surname 'Wesker.'"

"Umbrella Corporation provided you with the finest education money could buy, while quietly, steadily filling your heads with extremist ideology, shaping you into something cold, ruthless, and convinced of your own superiority."

Wesker's body began to tremble. He couldn't stop it.

If this was true, if any of this was true, then these secrets could not exist outside of Spencer's own skull. No one else could know.

So how did Leon know?

He had always believed he was an orphan. That everything he'd become, he'd clawed out of nothing through sheer exceptional talent.

He refused to believe his entire existence had been scripted.

"You're lying..." Wesker said through his teeth.

But the conviction wasn't there. Even as he said it, he was turning the question over, is it true? is any of it true?

Leon ignored the pushback and kept going.

"Once you all came of age, as candidates, you were forcibly injected with a mutant strain of the Progenitor Virus."

"Only a handful were able to perfectly fuse with the virus and gain abilities beyond ordinary humans."

"As for those who failed..." Leon paused. "Heh. There was only one outcome for them."

Leon rose from his seat and began pacing the cramped Solitary Confinement Cell.

"After countless trials, 13 candidates remained. Of those 13, in the end, only 2 survived."

"Test Subject No. 12. Alexia Wesker."

"And Test Subject No. 13 — you. Albert Wesker."

Worth noting: No. 12 was a woman, and she also served as the project director of the Wesker Project itself.

She had contracted an incurable illness. After the injection, the virus granted her nothing, no power, no transformation. She survived as an ordinary person, leaving her with only her mind to work with.

Her body was on the verge of total collapse. She had no interest in ruling the world. What she wanted was immortality.

To that end, she later developed the T-Abyss Virus and built a plan that could only be called insane.

The plan: transplant her conscious mind into another person's body. Then do it again. And again. An infinite chain of rebirths, eternal life through perpetual replacement.

In the story's final act, she kidnapped a young girl named Natalia, a child who had lost all capacity for fear due to childhood trauma, and intended to use her as a vessel.

The consciousness transfer succeeded, technically. But her original body didn't die. Fear itself mutated it into something monstrous.

Her original body was eventually destroyed. But her consciousness lay dormant inside Natalia, waiting.

Her plan for immortality had succeeded.

Of course, Leon hadn't encountered Alexia yet. This was all beside the point.

Wesker, having heard every word, stood completely still.

The fragmented shards of memory in his mind were snapping together all at once, faster than he could stop them.

The regular medical checkups. The injections with no explanation given. The way Spencer had looked at him, not as a person, but as a perfect work of art behind glass.

Damn.

It all lines up.

"Alexia survived, yes. But her constitution is weak. Far inferior to yours."

Leon looked at him steadily.

"So Spencer put all of his hopes on you."

"Your later exposure to the watered-down T-Virus strain. The modified T-Virus you injected into yourself to fake your own death."

"Every single piece of it was within Spencer's control."

"He knew you would betray him. He was guiding you toward betrayal."

Each word hit like a blade.

"The goal was to make you inject the virus yourself — of your own free will — so that you'd achieve a perfect fusion. The most successful test subject his plan ever produced."

"If it weren't for your exceptional natural foundation, do you think you'd even be breathing right now?"

"You thought you were the one pulling strings from the shadows?"

"You're a lab rat Spencer raised in a glass jar. He has been controlling your fate every single moment of your life."

"You pitiful thing. You know absolutely nothing about Spencer."

The Solitary Confinement Cell went quiet.

Terrifyingly quiet.

Only the exhaust fan turned, steady and indifferent, its hum filling the dead air.

Wesker stared at the floor.

He didn't ask how Leon had obtained any of this. That question had lost all meaning the moment Leon spoke Alexia's name. No one fabricated details like these. No one invented a person who had no reason to exist in a lie.

This was real.

Humiliation.

A humiliation unlike anything he had ever felt. Total. Obliterating.

The fury it ignited wasn't directed at Leon. It was directed at Spencer.

Wesker had always thought highly of himself. He was an elite, something that had transcended ordinary humanity. He was the man who would one day stand at the pinnacle of the world. That was simply what he was. What he had always known himself to be.

And now someone was telling him he was a mass-produced commodity.

That the old man who had manufactured him, that decrepit, aging Spencer, had the audacity to plan on using him. To ride him all the way to godhood.

And he, Albert Wesker, was nothing but a stepping stone on that old wretch's path.

How could this be?

➤ Next: Wesker's Fury