[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 589 - Believe It or Not

The cold draft pouring through the hidden door stirred Alice's short golden hair. She stood frozen in front of the keypad, then slowly looked down at her own fingers.

Those numbers had come out like instinct carved into bone. No conscious thought required.

That feeling, her body moving completely outside her control — made every hair on her stand on end.

She snapped her head around.

Her gaze crossed Leon's shoulder and landed on the picture frame sitting beside the living room coffee table. Chris had dug it out during his search and tossed it there without a second thought.

In the photo, she wore a white wedding gown.

She was holding a bouquet, leaning affectionately against a man with a bright, wide smile. The lawn behind them was vivid and lush in the sunlight. Everything looked achingly, perfectly beautiful.

"That's me."

Alice pointed at the frame. Her voice turned urgent.

She desperately needed to understand what had happened.

"My name is Alice."

"The man in that photo is my husband. Spence Parks. We lived here together."

She fixed her gaze on Leon's eyes, searching his face for some confirmation, some acknowledgment from this forceful, unyielding man.

"We were married. I am absolutely certain of that!"

Her voice rose without her realizing it.

"I remember the feeling of that ring on my finger. I remember the smell of cut grass after the lawnmower crossed the lawn!"

"So why can't I remember anything now!"

She was right at the edge.

"Who are you people? And what do you know!"

Leon glanced over at the dust-covered wedding photo.

That crudely assembled prop could only fool a Specimen who had just woken up with a head full of mush.

Umbrella Corporation setting up this kind of scenario — their sick sense of humor was truly bottomless.

"Chris, Jill. Move up front."

Leon didn't take her bait. He turned and issued the order without missing a beat.

Neither of them hesitated. Rifles came up immediately.

Tactical Flashlights clicked on. They led the way into the pitch-black passage descending ahead.

Ada moved along one side, watching the rear for anything that might come from behind.

"Let's go, Alice."

Leon tilted his chin slightly, signaling her to follow.

Alice bit her lower lip. She had a belly full of questions and suspicion, but completely surrounded like this, she had no choice.

She stepped forward and followed Leon into the passage beyond the door.

The corridor was extremely narrow. Rough concrete walls pressed in on both sides.

The group pushed deeper, moving fast.

"You don't have to trust me."

Leon walked ahead of her and spoke without turning around.

"But in a place like this, where you can lose your life any second, I only tell the truth."

The Tactical Flashlight beams swept and crossed in the dark ahead.

"Don't you want to know what really happened?"

"I can tell you."

"That photograph. That luxurious house."

"All those so-called warm memories inside your head."

"All of it is fake."

Alice's feet stopped dead. She stared at the broad back in front of her.

"What the hell are you talking about!"

It came out like something snapping.

"I clearly remember those things!"

"I remember the warmth of sunlight on my face. I remember what he looks like. I can even remember the layout of every room in that house!"

She rushed down the steps and grabbed the shoulder strap of Leon's Tactical Vest with both hands.

"That was my life!"

"What gives you the right to call it fake!"

Leon stopped.

He turned around at the bend in the staircase.

He glanced down at the hand gripping his gear, then brushed it aside, casual, unhurried, a motion that left absolutely no room for argument.

"The human brain is the easiest organ to deceive."

He looked at her face. All stubborn, clenched defiance.

"The pharmaceutical company that built this place is called Umbrella."

"What they specialize in is exactly this."

Leon pointed upward.

"Why did you enter that code without thinking?"

"Because those were never your memories."

"That was a base-level operating program hard-wired into this body's nervous system from the moment it left the production line."

"This house is nothing more than a disguised bunker entrance."

"As for the man who took that photo with you."

"He was just a well-paid security guard hired to stand watch at the door."

Alice shook her head and stepped back half a pace.

She couldn't accept it. An assertion this absurd was a total denial of her existence as a human being.

"No."

"I am not some machine. I am not a program being controlled by someone else."

She clenched her teeth. Her eyes reddened against her will.

"How could I have simply appeared out of nowhere."

"I have parents! I have family!"

"Even if my memory is damaged. Even if I've forgotten where they are."

Alice seized her own short golden hair with both hands.

"Real blood runs through my veins!"

"I must have grown up somewhere. With a home!"

She was practically screaming at him.

Leon shrugged.

There was no point in dancing around it any longer.

Better to rip it open fast than let the pain drag on. Better to lance the abscess now than let her carry that false illusion into the apocalypse and get herself killed.

"The truth is exactly that."

Leon tore it open. Raw, bleeding. No margin left.

"You have no parents."

"No childhood. No bicycle rides."

"You don't even have a real birth certificate."

He bent slightly at the waist, bringing his gaze level with hers, those eyes wide and full of shock.

"From the day your body took shape inside a nutrient-fluid cultivation tank, it looked exactly like this. A fully grown adult."

"You are an Alice Clone."

"One of Umbrella's hundreds upon thousands of identical clones. A high-grade Specimen with exceptionally superior data across every parameter."

Alice's lips trembled.

Those three words hit like a thousand-pound weight, and every last line of her cognitive defenses shattered.

"They extracted a very specific set of original genetic material."

Leon straightened up, both hands resting on the rifle at his waist, and kept walking down the stairs.

"Mass-produced you. Placed you into extreme, sealed environments to test the destructive potential of their biological weapons."

"What you believed to be your past."

"All of it was plot background casually written by an external terminal connected to the nutrient pod."

"They needed you to have human emotions. It increased the authenticity of the experimental data."

Alice stood motionless halfway down the staircase. The draft running through the underground passage beat against her red silk dress.

The hem swayed faintly.

She raised both hands slowly and looked down at her palms.

The delicate texture of her skin. The warm blood moving through her fingertips. The vivid, unmistakable sensation of muscles engaging when she clenched a fist.

All of it was flawlessly, undeniably real.

How could something this real, this flesh, this blood — be nothing more than a clone rolling off an assembly line?

But the man's absolute, unshakable certainty. The instinctive reactions she'd had to her surroundings the moment she woke up. The tactical movements she had executed without thinking, without any deliberate effort at all. Every single one of them was screaming in confirmation of what he'd said.

An ordinary housewife would never have that kind of muscle memory.

"Keep up."

Chris called out low from ahead. His voice cut through her thoughts.

The flashlight beam swept across the end of the passage. The staircase had finally reached the bottom.

A vast underground hall opened up in front of them. Its scale was staggering, the floor area was larger than an indoor football pitch. Massive concrete load-bearing pillars stood in neat rows throughout. Jill raised her shotgun and swept it across the dark corners around her with sharp, constant vigilance.

The silence here carried an ominous weight.

Leon strode down the last few steps and leveled his Tactical Flashlight at the far end of the hall.

A train sat there in silence.

Along the armored panels on the side of the carriages, a large umbrella-shaped emblem had been sprayed in red and white paint. Bold. Impossible to miss.

Behind the train, two thick iron rails stretched away into the pitch-black tunnel at the far end of the hall and vanished into nothing.

Ada walked up to the train's control console.

"Interesting."

She studied the green electronic indicator lights blinking on the panel.

"Everything above is completely dead. But the independent power system down here is still running."

Alice came down the stairs, each step heavier than the last.

The instant her eyes landed on that red and white umbrella emblem, a sharp, piercing pain erupted from somewhere deep inside her skull.

Fragments of blood-soaked images strobed across her vision.

People in biohazard suits.

White gas venting from air ducts.

...

It left her shaken.

Because all of it pointed to something extraordinary about herself.

Leon was very likely telling the truth.

Leon strode up to the door of the train's front carriage. It was sealed tight. The green open button beside it showed no response.

He didn't hesitate for a moment. He slung his rifle behind him, reached out, and drove his fingers into the seam along the edge of the sealed door.

Every muscle across his body snapped taut. Raw, staggering force erupted all at once.

The heavy metal door let out a grinding, tooth-aching SCREECH of deforming steel, and he wrenched it open, forcing both halves apart with his bare hands.

➤ Next: Heading to the Underground Hive