[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 607 - Telekinesis Worth Coveting

"Your name is Alice. But it's only a codename."

"You are a clone."

"Your original has progeria — her body grows at several times the normal rate. Without intervention, she'd be white-haired and withered within a few years."

"Your original's father, Dr. James Marcus, led a team that discovered a flower in Africa. They called it the Solar Stairway."

"That flower carried the Progenitor Virus. The precursor to the T-Virus I'm holding right now."

"It's not an ordinary pathogen. It has extraordinary life-extending and regenerative properties."

"So Marcus decided to apply it to your original body. His plan was to use it to counteract the progeria."

"But he didn't dare use it on Alicia herself."

"So the unlucky ones appeared."

"In a laboratory hidden from the world, there were hundreds upon thousands of cultivation tanks. Every single one held someone who looked exactly like you."

"You had no childhood. No parents."

"Those warm memories that flicker through your mind sometimes, every last one of them was keyed into your nervous system by a researcher tapping idly at a keyboard. Settings. Nothing more."

"Later, Umbrella's top dogs started stabbing each other in the back. Marcus couldn't outmaneuver them. He fell. Faded out of sight. And after that, nobody cared what happened to you clones."

"So when the outbreak was still contained — before it spread — Umbrella needed to cover their tracks. You were the most convenient test subjects they had."

"They needed you to have human emotional responses. Real ones. So when they ran extreme bioweapon tests, the feedback data would actually mean something."

......

With each new piece of the truth, Alice closed her eyes and pressed both hands over her face.

Leon had already hinted at some of this before. But hearing it laid out in full, every piece confirmed and final,

The grief was still suffocating. That vast, hollow grief of being treated as less than a lab rat. Less than human.

No one could accept being someone else's substitute.

No. Not even a substitute.

Just the original's test animal. A thing to trial drugs on.

An industrial product, disposable the moment she stopped being useful.

Leon said nothing. He let her sit with it. Let the brutality of it settle in without interference.

But as he watched her across the dim car, another thought surfaced.

In the original timeline, Umbrella Corporation recaptured her.

They forced the T-Virus into her body and ran experiments that made everything before look merciful.

And that was exactly how Alice became something extraordinary. Misfortune turned into the rarest kind of luck. She didn't turn. She didn't break. Instead she awakened, a mutation so powerful it bordered on the impossible.

Telekinesis.

At its peak, she could reach into orbital space and move satellites with her mind.

But that timeline was gone.

He'd flipped it himself. Umbrella's special forces team had been turned. The underground facility had been stripped bare by Lickers. Alice would never fall back into Umbrella's hands. She'd never get the injection.

If she spent the rest of her life as an ordinary woman,

What a waste.

She was a perfect candidate. Raw material for something extraordinary. He wasn't about to let that go to nothing. He needed that kind of firepower. And he needed it loyal.

That was the other thing. Any powerful individual he brought into his orbit had to be fully under his control. Conversion wasn't optional, it was the only way to be sure.

Besides.

He was the Mutant progenitor now.

Every ability belonging to someone he converted became his to share completely. Ashley's telepathic listening had already proven that.

So if he got Alice's telekinesis,

His combat capability would hit a level that was almost absurd to think about. Psychokinesis. Mental strangulation. Layered on top of the physical strength he already had. It wasn't adding wings to a tiger. It was giving the tiger a railgun.

And sitting right beside him was the metal case he'd pulled from the train's undercarriage, packed with T-Virus vials and serum.

He already controlled the virus. There was plenty of it. If Alice was willing to work for him, sharing this with her cost him nothing he couldn't afford.

Leon's mind settled.

"Alice." He broke the silence.

She lowered her hands. The rims of her eyes were faintly red.

"Do you hate Umbrella?" He asked it straight.

She blinked. Then those blue eyes ignited, a surge of raw, undisguised fury that didn't try to hide itself at all.

"I want to burn that company to the ground." Her jaw was tight. "Every last piece of it."

"I am not merchandise on their shelf. I am a living person, with blood, with a body, with thoughts that are my own."

"They took everything from me. They even took away my right to know who I am."

"Good." Leon gave a single approving nod. "That anger is worth something. So, do you want revenge?"

Alice laughed. Short and bitter.

"Revenge." She looked down at her own hands, pale against her lap. "With what?"

"I know the truth now. And it still doesn't change the fact that I'm one unarmed woman in a world full of monsters." She looked up at him, and the helplessness in her eyes was bone-deep. "I couldn't even handle one of those things crawling on the ceiling back there."

She leaned forward slightly. "But you can. You can control them. You can tear those bioweapons apart with your bare hands. You can make people fall in line just by looking at them."

"Can you help me?"

The corner of Leon's mouth pulled into a slow smile.

There it was. That desperate, aching need. Exactly what he'd been waiting for.

On this wasteland, the best alliances were never built on sympathy. They were built on what each side could give the other, power and interest, traded clean.

"I don't have time to babysit."

He shook his head.

The disappointment crossed her face in the same instant he reached down and lifted the silver metal case from beside him. Heavy. He set it on the floor between them with a solid thud.

In the dim light of the car, the red-and-white Umbrella Corporation logo on its surface caught the eye immediately.

"But I can give you a chance."

His fingers tapped the combination lock twice. Casual. Unhurried.

"A chance to put Umbrella's executives under your foot."

Alice's eyes dropped to the case.

She knew exactly what was inside it.

Those vials of lethal serum. The ones that glowed that deep, cold blue.

"What do you want from me?" The anger hadn't made her careless. She'd learned that much from watching him.

In this world, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

"What's the price?"

Her voice slowed. Her eyes sharpened.

Leon didn't answer right away. Instead he reached down and pressed the latches on both sides of the case.

CLICK!

The silver lid swung open.

Nestled in the shock foam, those vials of vivid blue liquid caught the emergency lighting and held it, glowing with a strange, arresting beauty that pulled the eye and didn't let go.

Leon looked at her.

"I can make sure you survive the injection," he said, his voice completely level. "And I can guarantee you come out the other side with abilities no ordinary human could dream of."

"But you would need to become mine. Completely."

"That's the only condition. Non-negotiable. Because I won't leave a potential threat unaccounted for."

He leaned back.

"Think it over."

➤ Next: A Method That Won't Hurt