[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 759 - Kill Everyone?

The heavy tracked snow vehicle tore across the ice field.

The heater was running at full blast inside the cabin. The atmosphere was something else entirely.

Simon sat stiffly across from Leon.

Kaya was in the back.

Simon swallowed, his expression tight as he finally opened his mouth.

"Leon, sir..."

"No need for the formality. Just Leon." Leon leaned back in his seat and cut him off.

Simon nodded.

"The distress signals on the radio — they've changed. Dramatically, these past few days."

"Before, everyone was talking about walkers. The slow kind. The ones that only kill you through sheer numbers."

"But now, broadcasts all over the world are screaming about runners."

"They can run. Faster than Bolt. They can climb walls. Some of them are even showing signs of organization."

Simon's face had gone pale.

"I've managed to decrypt part of Umbrella Corporation's encrypted communications."

"They're systematically abandoning certain bases while dropping new viral samples in areas with high survivor concentrations."

"I'm starting to wonder... is Umbrella up to something again?"

Leon listened without speaking. His expression darkened. He turned to the window and stared out at the raging blizzard.

"Your suspicion is correct."

"The T-Virus has most likely spread completely by now."

He pulled his gaze back and let it move across the faces in the cabin.

"The original Wildfire Virus has probably been overwritten by the T-Virus by this point. Or merged with it."

"From here on out, life is not going to get any easier for the human race."

"Runners are only the beginning. What comes next might be worse. Much worse."

The temperature inside the cabin seemed to drop to zero in an instant.

Shawn and Merle sat nearby. Hearing this, their faces went ugly.

They had followed Leon to the Spencer Mansion. They had seen the Tyrant with their own eyes, and they knew exactly how terrifying that thing was.

If the whole world filled up with monsters that could punch an armored vehicle to scrap with a single hit, an ordinary survivor camp wouldn't last a single night.

Leon turned his head toward the corner of the cabin.

Alexia Ashford sat watching quietly out the window, as if the conversation happening three feet away had nothing to do with her.

"Alexia." Leon called her name.

She turned. Those blood-red eyes settled on him.

"What's the situation at your Antarctic base right now?" Leon asked.

"We're heading there. I need to know the defensive layout and personnel status."

"It's been fifteen years. Are there any living people inside? Any defense systems still running?"

Alexia was quiet for a moment.

She seemed to be weighing something.

Then she spoke.

"No living people."

"The defense systems may still have some fully automated machine guns, but I have highest-level clearance. I can shut them down directly."

Leon frowned.

"No living people? A secret base that size — how many researchers and security personnel did Umbrella send in there?"

"A few hundred." Alexia said it the way someone might note the weather.

"They all starved to death?" Shawn couldn't help cutting in.

Alexia glanced at him and shook her head.

"I killed them all."

Rick, who hadn't said a word, went wide-eyed.

"Killed them?"

"Why?"

Alexia tilted her head slightly, as if reaching back into something distant.

"The T-Veronica Virus was my life's work. Mine and my father's. But I discovered that those researchers were not truly loyal to the Ashford family."

"They were planning to secretly transmit the research data back to Umbrella's leadership. To Spencer."

"I could not allow the secrets of T-Veronica to fall into the hands of such mediocrities."

"So, before I injected myself with T-Veronica and entered the cryogenic pod, I activated the base's internal purge protocol."

Alexia raised her head and looked at everyone present.

"To ensure this knowledge would not reach the outside world, I had no choice but to eliminate all personnel involved in the research. Security included."

"Not a single one left."

Shawn felt his scalp crawl.

A few hundred lives.

Because she was afraid the knowledge might leak, she killed every last one of them without a second thought.

"How did you do it?" Shawn couldn't help asking.

Alexia's tone didn't change.

"I modified the base's ventilation system."

"While they were in a meeting, I mixed a high-concentration nerve toxin into the heating ducts."

"They didn't even manage to scream before they all asphyxiated."

"As for the outer perimeter security, I released a number of early-stage mutant test subjects."

"Once the security personnel were wiped out, I activated the deep-freeze protocol and locked the test subjects together with the entire base in ice."

After hearing all of it, Shawn felt a chill run straight down his spine.

This kind of cold-blooded calculation was simply monstrous.

This wasn't a person. This was a demon wearing human skin.

Merle sat beside him, his entire body rigid.

He swallowed hard. Cold sweat was already beading across his forehead.

An image from a few days ago at the camp's landing pad forced its way into his mind, and he could not stop it.

This woman, wandering around the camp in a tattered long dress.

And him, not knowing any better, actually whistling at her.

Bragging openly about taking her on a tour of the barracks.

Right now, Merle wanted nothing more than to slap himself twice across the face.

Just what in the hell had he been messing with?

A psychotic killer who had poisoned hundreds of people when she was barely in her teens?

A monster who could use people as fertilizer?

Merle instinctively shrank back into the corner of the cabin, doing his best to disappear entirely.

He made a silent vow. From now on, whenever he saw Alexia Ashford back at camp, he was taking the long way around.

He would rather pick a fight with a rampaging Tyrant than ever mess with this woman again.

Leon watched Alexia and said nothing.

He could feel the complete matter-of-factness in her as she spoke. No guilt. No hesitation. No performance of remorse.

In her worldview, the weak and the mediocre were wasting resources just by breathing.

"Alexia." Leon's voice came out cold. "You answer to me now."

"I don't care what happened before. But going forward, if you touch a single hair on any of my people without my order, I will carve the flesh off your body piece by piece and feed it to the dogs."

The words landed with absolute, unhurried killing intent.

Alexia lowered her head.

"I understand."

"My life belongs to you now."

Leon turned his gaze forward. The ice field stretched out ahead, white and endless.

"How much longer?"

Alexia glanced at the positioning device in her hand.

"At current speed, 2 hours."

"Full speed ahead." Leon told the driver.

The convoy carved deep track lines across the ice and pressed on toward the unknown.

---

2 hours later.

The jolting suddenly intensified.

The driver's voice cut through the cabin.

"Sir! There's no road ahead!"

"It's a massive ice canyon!"

Leon stood and walked to the cab.

Through the windshield, a vast fissure opened across the terrain ahead, deep, bottomless, as though the earth had been wrenched apart by raw force. Both sides dropped away into sheer vertical walls of ice.

"Alexia." Low.

Alexia came forward and looked at it for a moment.

"This is the place."

"The base is at the very bottom of the canyon."

"When we built it, we used heavy-lift helicopters to lower the supplies down. Later, a hidden heavy-duty elevator was installed."

She pointed to a protruding outcrop of rock at the canyon's edge.

"The entrance is behind that outcrop."

"Though after 15 years, I don't know if it still functions."

Leon nodded.

"Stop the vehicle."

The tracked vehicle halted at the edge of the canyon.

Leon pushed the door open. The gale hit him instantly, ice and snow and raw cold all at once. He jumped down and walked to the edge, looked over.

Pitch black below. Bottomless. Only the howling wind carrying upward from the valley floor.

"Rick, Shawn — gear up and come with me."

"Merle, Daryl — stay up top, keep watch. Protect Simon and Kaya."

Leon ran down the assignments without hesitation.

Merle hollered back.

"Don't worry about it, boss. We've got up here."

Shawn and Rick shouldered their packs and ran their weapon checks.

Alexia stepped off the vehicle. She wasn't dressed for the cold, barely dressed for the weather at all, but she showed no sign of feeling it. The T-Veronica Virus kept her warm.

"Lead the way." Leon looked at her.

Alexia walked to the rock outcrop and felt along its surface.

Click.

Soft. Clean.

A panel of ice slid away, revealing a keypad underneath.

Alexia keyed in a long sequence of numbers.

RUMBLE!

The ice beneath their feet shook hard.

Then a large flat section of the ice surface beside the outcrop began to descend, pulling back to reveal an enormous metal platform, wide enough to park a heavy truck.

The elevator still worked.

"Umbrella Corporation's construction quality is genuinely something else." Shawn muttered.

"Let's go." Leon stepped onto the platform first.

Alexia followed.

Rick and Shawn stepped on after them.

The elevator began to descend.

The wind and snow disappeared above as the rock walls rose around them.

Darkness closed in on all sides, total and silent.

A handful of emergency lights along the platform's edges threw a faint red glow across their faces.

Rick tightened his grip on his assault rifle, eyes moving through the dark.

"The power system still works?" he asked.

"Geothermal generators," Alexia said. "As long as this continent still exists, they will not stop."

5 full minutes of descent.

The elevator halted.

A massive metal door stood ahead, Umbrella's red-and-white logo sprayed across its face.

Alexia stepped forward.

"Beyond this door is the quarantine zone."

"I released nerve toxin in there 15 years ago. It has been a long time, but to be safe, gas masks."

Rick and Shawn pulled masks from their packs without hesitation. The T-Virus injections they'd received meant nothing here, and they knew it.

Leon did the same. He carried none of T-Veronica in him, only the abilities it had left behind in Alexia were his to use.

Alexia pressed her palm to the scanner beside the door.

Hiss,

The heavy door split apart and ground slowly open.

Leon clicked on his tactical flashlight.

The pale beam swept through the space beyond.

Shawn drew a sharp breath.

An enormous hall. And covering its floor, wall to wall, packed dense as fallen leaves, bodies. White lab coats. Security uniforms. Hundreds of them.

Antarctica's cold had kept them from decomposing. Instead they had mummified, dried, withered husks that had once been people. Some had died clawing at their own throats. Others were still pressed against the door, fingers dug in. Strange growths crawled over all of them. Desperate red handprints covered every surface of the walls.

Alexia Ashford stepped onto the chest cavity of one of the dried corpses and walked inside without breaking stride. Her heels struck the silent floor crisp and clean with each step.

Leon followed, watching her back.

His eyes were cold.

➤ Next: Subject 04 — Plant Experiment