[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 587 - Alice?

"Watch yourselves out there," Simon said.

"Understood. Keep monitoring everything else." Leon cut the line.

He pushed up from his chair, shoved open the communications room door, and headed quickly down the corridor, pressing the walkie-talkie on his shoulder as he moved.

"Chris, Jill, Ada."

"Put down whatever you're doing."

"Ten minutes. Full gear. Garage One."

Brief acknowledgments crackled back through the radio.

Leon swung through the logistics depot, grabbed two spare tactical chest rigs and threw them on, then picked out an M4 Rifle fitted with a holographic sight. He racked the bolt, ejected the chambered round, and checked the rifling.

Ten minutes later.

Garage One.

Chris had already pulled the heavy black anti-mine SUV out of the bay. Jill sat in the passenger seat, Remington Shotgun across her lap, pressing shells one by one into the tubular magazine. Ada leaned against the car door in a black form-fitting combat suit, two Glocks on her hips and a fixed-blade knife strapped to her outer thigh.

"Where are we going?" Chris watched Leon approach.

"30 kilometers outside the city." Leon pulled open the rear door and climbed in. "An abandoned heavy chemical processing plant."

"Anything worth the trip?" Ada slid into the back seat after him.

Leon rested the rifle across his legs.

"Simon just flagged it. There's an insanely powerful electronic jamming field out there." He paused. "Shielding level is off the charts. This has Umbrella Corporation written all over it. Either they're running a secret experiment, or they're sitting on something critically important."

Chris put his foot down and drove out of the prison.

The road was a graveyard. Abandoned cars sat crooked and jammed across both lanes, the asphalt underneath them stained with wide patches of dried, blackened blood. A few wandering Walkers heard the engine and came lunging at them.

Chris didn't touch the brakes. He just turned the wheel.

THUD!

The front bumper caught the nearest one and sent it spinning into the air.

They drove for about half an hour.

The derelict industrial park appeared at the far end of the road. An absurd forest of massive iron tanks rose up against the sky. Enormous smokestacks punched straight overhead. The chain-link fencing was draped in dead weeds and shredded plastic bags.

"Doesn't look like anyone's home." Chris parked behind a concealed dirt ridge roughly 500 meters from the main gate.

Everyone climbed out.

Leon raised his binoculars and scanned the plant.

"No Walkers." He lowered them.

Out in wilderness like this, a truly abandoned site would pull in Walkers through sheer aimless drifting. They'd pool up in any available space. But the entire plant was empty. Not a single one.

"Means the perimeter's been cleared on a regular basis," Jill said.

"Fan formation. Watch the high ground for sniper positions." Leon flashed the hand signal.

The four spread out and moved into the plant, boots crunching over dead twigs and fallen leaves. Massive oil pipelines crisscrossed overhead. They passed through two rows of abandoned brick factory buildings.

Then the view opened up.

Everyone stopped.

In the middle of the plant's central clearing, completely out of place, stood a two-story building.

A white standalone villa.

Red tile roof. Clean white exterior walls. The lawn out front had even been trimmed perfectly flat.

Surrounded by industrial scrap and rusting steel, the thing looked like someone had cut and pasted it in from a different world entirely.

The wrongness was absolute.

"How charming." Ada's voice carried open mockery. "This disguise is an insult to human intelligence."

"The more out of place it is, the more it means something's underneath." Leon raised his rifle and aimed at the front door. "Chris, cover us."

Chris moved left and found a position. Jill and Ada fell in behind Leon.

Leon pressed up against the solid hardwood door. It was fitted with a retinal scanner combined with a fingerprint lock, an exceptionally advanced dual-authentication system for the era.

Ada stepped forward. She pulled a palm-sized decoder from her waist pouch and threaded several hair-thin data cables into the gaps around the lock.

"Internal isolated system. Not connected to any external network." Her fingers moved fast across the miniature keypad. "Give me 30 seconds."

A barely audible electronic pulse hummed through the door.

Click.

The heavy hardwood swung inward a crack.

Leon gestured.

Jill kicked it the rest of the way open and breached hard, Remington up. Leon followed right behind, muzzle sweeping the living room corner to corner.

"Clear," Jill reported softly.

The living room was impeccably furnished. High-end leather sofa. A solid wood coffee table with a half-finished glass of red wine still sitting on it. Several oil paintings on the walls that looked like they cost more than most people made in a year.

The silence was wrong in a way that sat on the back of the neck.

"Split up and search. Don't miss any hidden doors." Leon kept his voice low.

Chris and Jill took the kitchen and study on the ground floor. Leon brought Ada up the heavy spiral staircase to the second floor.

The corridor up there was carpeted in thick wool that swallowed every footstep whole. Bedrooms on both sides.

Leon pushed open the first door.

Master bedroom. Wide double bed, sheets thrown back and rumpled. A framed photograph on the nightstand, a young couple, both grinning wide.

Leon looked at the woman in the photo.

Then a sound reached him. Faint. Almost nothing.

Drip.

Drip.

Water striking tile.

Leon's grip tightened on the rifle. His eyes went to the door at the far end of the corridor.

He signaled Ada.

The two of them split to either side and closed the distance slowly, step by step.

The bathroom off the master bedroom.

The dripping came through the door clearly now.

Someone was in there.

Leon stood at the edge of the frame. He took a slow breath.

Raised his right foot.

BANG!

The door flew inward with savage force, the lock hardware scattering across the floor.

Leon charged in with the muzzle up and swept the room.

The bathroom was enormous. White reflective marble on every wall. Over by the window, a heavy white shower curtain hung across the stall. The dripping was coming from behind it. And through the curtain's faint outline, he could see a shape on the floor.

Someone lying there.

Leon didn't hesitate. He crossed the room in three strides and ripped the curtain down with his left hand.

Both he and Ada went still.

The shower valve hadn't been fully closed. Water droplets fell in a slow, patient rhythm onto the white non-slip tiles.

And lying in the center of the floor was a woman.

Short golden hair, soaking wet, plastered to her cheeks. Her breathing was so faint her chest barely moved.

She was wearing nothing at all.

Her skin was pale, but not the sick pallor of someone kept from sunlight. It was something else. Taut. Dense. Long legs. A flat stomach with the faint cut of muscle visible along the abdomen.

Leon knew that face before he could even process it.

Sharp features. A savage, almost feral beauty.

Even unconscious, even lying there with her eyes closed, there was no chance in hell he was wrong.

Alice.

The undisputed protagonist of the Resident Evil film universe. The mutant who fused with the T-Virus and dismantled every last one of Umbrella Corporation's clones and Tyrants until nothing was left standing.

The corner of Leon's eye twitched.

Twice.

This world was completely insane. The game canon and the film continuity had been grafted together perfectly, right here, right now. The absurdly out-of-place luxury villa as a cover entrance. The woman unconscious on a bathroom floor with her memory wiped.

This was the house from the opening of the film.

Which meant beneath this building, there was a massive underground train platform. And below that, the infamous core facility.

The Hive.

"A woman." Ada stepped forward. Her eyes moved over Alice with clinical efficiency. "No signs of a struggle anywhere. No external injuries."

Leon crouched down and pressed two fingers to Alice's carotid artery.

Her pulse was there. Slow. Too slow.

He held the back of his hand near the ventilation opening. A faint thread of air moved against his skin.

"Nerve agent." Leon found some clothing nearby and covered her. "Umbrella Corporation's standard protocol for forcing employees into mandatory hibernation and wiping their memory."

Boots on the stairs. Chris and Jill came up fast with their weapons raised, drawn by the sound of the door going in.

"What's the situation?" Chris pushed into the bathroom.

He took one look at the woman on the floor, covered only in the essentials, and immediately turned his eyes away.

"Who is she?" Jill frowned.

"No idea yet." Leon said it flat, without missing a beat. A clean lie.

There was no way to explain how he knew her. Not right now. Not ever, if he could help it.

"But she turned up inside a signal-jammed facility like this. She's a key figure in Umbrella Corporation, that much is certain."

Leon picked Alice up and carried her back downstairs. He set her on the sofa, then stamped his foot on the marble floor.

A deep, resonant echo came back up.

Hollow underneath. Definitely hollow.

"Chris." Leon turned to look at the big man. "Did you bring the tools?"

"Right here." Chris patted the tactical pack on his back.

"Find a hidden door. If you can't find one —" Leon's eyes went to the floor — "blow it open."

He fixed his gaze on the quiet corridor outside the bathroom door.

"Whatever's down there, it's going to be bigger than anything we walked in expecting."

➤ Next: Finding the Entrance