[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 580 - The G-Virus Is Ours

William crushed Sherry against his chest and held on.

"Oh God, oh God..." He muttered it over and over, the words dissolving into nothing.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, frantic and desperate. He checked her arms. Checked her legs. Terrified this was an illusion that would shatter the second he believed it.

Sherry sobbed so hard she couldn't get air.

"I was so scared, Daddy. There are monsters everywhere outside..."

William's heart seized like something had grabbed it bare-handed.

He couldn't let himself imagine what this ten-year-old had lived through out there.

If not for Leon's people. If not for today...

He snapped his head up.

Claire Redfield was standing behind Sherry. Lilly and the others beside her.

"Thank you."

"Thank you for saving my flesh and blood."

"I, William Birkin, owe each of you a life."

"Whatever you ask of me, from this day forward — I will never refuse."

Claire stepped forward quickly.

"Mr. Birkin, we just happened to be there. In that situation, nobody could have walked away."

Lilly nodded beside her.

"Claire gets most of the credit. She took down a freak inside the police station and pulled Sherry out herself."

William wiped his face, tears, snot, all of it, and gave Claire a slow, deliberate bow.

Leon strolled over with both hands in his pockets. Unhurried.

He watched William's wrecked expression. The old man had genuinely been falling apart.

William turned and looked at him.

He took a deep breath. His gaze hardened into something absolute.

He understood the rules of this world perfectly well. Leon could give him a top-tier laboratory. Leon could give his daughter absolute safety. That meant he had to put something of equal weight on the table.

Everything. Total loyalty. No exceptions.

William crouched and drew Sherry in front of him. He reached up and undid the button at her collar, then carefully lifted the silver pendant from around her neck.

It was large. Heavy-looking. The casing was solid silver metal, and somewhere inside it, a faint dark-violet light breathed against the surface.

William stood. Walked to Leon. Held it out with both hands.

"Boss."

"This is the most I have to give."

Leon looked at the pendant.

He knew exactly what was inside it.

In the Resident Evil storyline, William had hidden his most precious G-Virus sample in Sherry's necklace. This 1 piece of jewelry had triggered every disaster that followed in Raccoon City.

"Open it." Leon raised an eyebrow.

William pressed a hidden mechanism on the side of the casing.

Click.

The silver shell snapped open.

Nestled inside was a tiny spherical glass vial, almost impossibly small. The liquid inside pulsed with a faint, otherworldly violet glow.

Hypnotic. Dangerous. Both at once.

Chris and Jill leaned in to look.

"What is that?" Chris frowned.

Every instinct he had said this was not any ordinary biochemical reagent.

William looked at Leon. In his eyes was the specific pride that belongs only to a man who has spent his life making god-level mistakes in the name of science.

"This is the reason I betrayed Umbrella," William said.

"This is the greatest thing I have ever made."

"A sample of the G-Virus."

He pushed the pendant forward and set it in Leon's palm.

"The Progenitor Virus, the T-Virus — their evolutionary direction is too crude." He shook his head. "They only destroy existing gene chains. They make brainless walkers and mutated monsters. That's all."

"The G-Virus is different."

William's eyes went wide.

"It fuses perfectly with the host's cells. It continuously self-repairs. It mutates and evolves. Every injury it sustains, it responds by generating stronger defensive and offensive organs." He paused. "It is unpredictable. It is the code of life with limitless potential."

He held Leon's gaze.

"With this, combined with Marcus's gene technology — we won't just be able to build super-soldiers."

"We could create something that surpasses humanity entirely."

Leon closed his fingers around the pendant.

The G-Virus.

A double-edged sword if there ever was one. In the original story, William had been cornered, injected it into himself, and turned into a horror that never stopped mutating, until there was nothing left of the man inside. No self-awareness. Just endless, screaming transformation.

But if it could be safely extracted. If its evolutionary traits and regenerative capabilities could be controlled and weaponized.

That was a different story.

"Good." Leon tucked the pendant into his pocket and gave William a pat on the shoulder.

"You've made a smart call."

"I'll have Ashley arrange the best room for Sherry. Best food too. She can move freely inside the prison, no one will touch a single hair on her head. Anyone who crosses her crosses me."

Then his tone shifted.

"But hear me clearly." Leon's voice went flat and precise. "We're about to start developing the G-Virus. Everything in that laboratory falls under my authority. No one runs live experiments without my permission. No exceptions."

William nodded without hesitation.

"Understood. Nobody knows this thing's destructive capacity better than I do. I'll follow every rule."

Leon withdrew his gaze and turned to Claire.

The girl in the red jacket was taking in her surroundings, the high walls, the armed personnel moving on patrol, all of it.

"You're Chris's sister," Leon said. "That makes you one of us."

"If you want to stay, register with logistics."

"Rules here are simple. You work, you eat."

"You'll be safe."

Claire looked at him.

She had heard every word of his exchange with William. G-Virus. Super-soldiers. The words should have sounded insane.

And yet the order here was real. Undeniable.

"I'll stay." Her chin lifted slightly. "I'm not freeloading. Patrol, field ops, I can do either."

Chris moved in close.

"Her marksmanship is excellent. She is not dead weight." He said it fast, like he was afraid Leon would cut him off.

Leon nodded.

He was never going to refuse Claire.

"Go with Chris. Learn the layout."

He turned to Lilly and Tara.

"Same goes for you two. You're here now, so drop every useless rule you used to follow." He kept his voice level. "Find Ashley. She'll sort out your assignments."

Lilly nodded, pulling Meghan and Tara along with her.

That was that. They were staying.

Leon finished giving his instructions and walked straight toward the laboratory.

➤ Next: The Critical Balance