[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 745 - Release of Control (Patreon)

Alexia leaned against a fractured marble column.

Her blood-red gown had been reduced to shredded rags. Her body was covered in savage wounds, and dark-red vines writhed across her skin without ceasing.

She stopped looking at Ada. Her gaze drifted to somewhere not far away.

There, Leon lay on the ground like a pile of wet mud.

The horrifying mutation across the right side of his body was slowly receding. That enormous eye was sealed shut. The dark-red muscle tissue hung limp against the bone like tendrils drained of all life.

Claire lay at his side.

The fatal hole in her chest had been completely filled by newly grown tissue. Her breathing was unnaturally steady. Claire had clearly come back.

"He could have killed me." Alexia murmured to herself.

Ada said nothing. Just watched her with cold eyes.

"In that final moment."

"One strike of that claw, and I would have died."

"But he gave up."

"Just to use the larvae he had cultivated inside his own body to fill the hole in that woman's chest."

Deep inside Alexia's blood-red eyes was a profound confusion.

"I lost."

Alexia swayed, then steadied herself upright.

She raised her left hand, the one still more or less intact, and snapped her fingers cleanly in the air.

SNAP!

The sound echoed through the ruined banquet hall.

Then the heavy doors swung open from outside.

A chaotic, heavy tread of footsteps filled the room.

38 of the nation's most elite scientists filed in, arranged in neat formation, moving like robots running on a preset program.

Walking at the very front was the President of the United States, Arthur Graham.

Their eyes were vacant. Their faces expressionless.

Alexia looked at this group that had once been her "collection," and the arrogance that had lived in her eyes was simply gone.

"I originally believed that controlling them meant controlling the future of this world."

"Looking at it now — it was nothing more than a dull game of house."

She closed her eyes.

An invisible wave of psychic force suddenly contracted within her.

The Veronica spores nestled deep inside the minds of Arthur and the 38 scientists lost all activity in that instant.

"Hah —!"

Arthur sucked in a violent gasp of air. His whole body heaved with convulsing coughs like a drowning man just hauled ashore.

Behind him, the scientists stirred as though waking from a dream.

Some buckled at the knees and collapsed. Some clutched their heads and groaned. Others stared around in terror, completely unable to understand what had happened.

Arthur's memories came flooding back.

He remembered the terror of being controlled. The contempt in Alexia's eyes looking down at him. And how he had moved like a Puppet, step by step, luring Leon into this lethal trap.

He raised his head. His gaze swept across the wreckage covering the floor and snapped to a halt.

Leon, collapsed in a pool of blood.

"Leon!"

Arthur scrambled forward on hands and knees.

In that moment, every scrap of presidential dignity and every political calculation was thrown out of his mind.

He knew only one thing.

Leon could not die.

If Leon died here, his precious daughter Ashley would lose her mind completely.

He stared at the half of Leon's body covered in dark-red mutated tissue. Stared at that enormous eye clamped shut. Felt his stomach lurch violently.

But he forced the revulsion down and wheeled around, screaming at the scientists still standing there in a daze.

"Biologists — get over here!"

Arthur's voice was hysterical.

"Save him! Whatever it takes, spare no cost, bring him back!"

Several scientists clambered shakily to their feet and stumbled over. One look at Leon's body, and these people who called themselves the nation's finest biologists sat down hard on the floor.

"Mr... Mr. President..."

"This... this is impossible..."

"What do you mean impossible! You are scientists! Fix him!" Arthur grabbed the lead scientist by the collar and physically hauled him off the ground.

"This is beyond the scope of human science!" the man screamed, jabbing a finger at Leon's grotesquely mutated right arm. "His genes are in collapse! We have no instruments, no medication, we don't even know what virus is inside him!"

"He's dead! He is absolutely dead!"

Arthur's hand fell away.

It was over.

Arthur closed his eyes.

"Put away those pathetic expressions."

A cool, clear voice cut through his despair.

Ada walked over, not sparing a single glance at the scientist slumped on the floor. She looked down at Arthur from above.

"These useless people who hide in underground greenhouses can't recognize what this is. Of course they can't."

Ada's gaze settled on Leon's mutated arm. A flash of barely perceptible concern crossed her eyes.

"This is the G-Virus."

"A forbidden product that can drive a living being to evolve without limit, and just as easily turn them into a monster the moment their genes collapse."

Arthur snapped his head up.

"You have a way. Don't you?"

Ada shook her head.

"I can't save him."

The light in Arthur's eyes died.

"But someone can." Ada turned on a dime.

"Who? If they're anywhere in this country, I'll dispatch the military to bring them here right now!" Arthur's voice cracked with urgency.

"They don't need you to bring them."

Ada looked at him.

"William Birkin."

"James Marcus."

"As President, you should have seen both names in Umbrella Corporation's classified files."

Arthur's whole body went rigid.

He knew those names. Of course he did.

The 2 most brilliant, most unhinged researchers Umbrella Corporation had ever produced.

"In this world, if anyone is still capable of resolving a G-Virus going out of control, it's only those two."

Ada crouched down and checked Leon over.

He was volatile right now, clearly not recovered, but stable. A live bomb that hadn't gone off yet.

"They're in Atlanta, Georgia. Inside Leon's prison."

Arthur didn't hesitate for a single second. He lurched to his feet and bellowed at the Secret Service personnel crowding the doorway.

"Prepare the Black Hawk helicopters!"

"Highest priority!"

"Every piece of life-support equipment we can carry, load it all!"

"Destination: Georgia!"

The agents acknowledged and turned and ran.

Chris had been kneeling at Claire's side the entire time. He gathered his sister carefully into his arms.

Claire was a G-organism too, but under Leon's control she had done nothing extreme. Still, her skin burned hot to the touch, and beneath it a faint dark-red luminescence flickered.

Chris knew something unknown was developing inside her body.

He didn't care anymore.

As long as she was still alive.

"We go too." He lifted her. His voice came out hoarse.

Ada rose to her feet and watched Arthur directing the agents as they moved to carry Leon.

"Mr. President."

Ada spoke up suddenly.

Arthur turned.

"Are you going to stay here?" She looked at him.

Arthur froze.

"I am the President of the United States. I need to stay here and manage the situation, "

"Manage what situation?" Ada cut him off without mercy.

She raised her hand and pointed at Alexia.

"Do you honestly think you can still control America?"

"Right now you can't even control yourself."

Arthur's face drained of color.

He, this high-and-mighty President, had been nothing more than someone else's dog on a leash. Without even the slightest capacity to resist.

The power he had been so proud of had completely collapsed inside this bunker.

No military leverage. No authority.

He was a hollowed-out Puppet.

"Stay here, and sooner or later you'll be devoured alive by whatever threat comes next." Ada stepped forward and lowered her voice. "Today it was Alexia. Tomorrow it could easily be someone else."

Cold sweat soaked through Arthur's back in an instant.

"Come with us."

Ada extended the olive branch.

"To Atlanta."

"Solid walls. Absolute force. That is a place that is truly safe."

"More importantly..." Ada glanced at Leon, being carefully lifted onto a stretcher by the agents.

"As long as he is there, no one will dare lay a finger on you."

Arthur stared at Leon on the stretcher.

That man, even unconscious, even with half his body transformed into something monstrous, still radiated a suffocating pressure that left every agent in the room afraid to breathe too loudly.

Power in this apocalyptic world only held meaning when it was built on absolute force.

Arthur turned and looked at the scientists still murmuring among themselves.

He reached up and tore the expensive silk tie from his collar, the one that had always meant something, once, and tossed it onto the marble floor, now slicked with blood and grey with dust.

"Secret Service!"

Arthur strode toward the door.

"Everyone here boards immediately! We're all going to Atlanta!"

➤ Next: How Do You Get Him to Calm Down First?