[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 750 - Alexia Ashford's Redemption? (Patreon)

"Alexia?"

The dark-red muscle tissue Leon had only just suppressed erupted back to life, writhing wildly beneath the skin of his right arm.

Crack.

A sharp snap from his right shoulder. The massive eyeball that had just retracted shoved a bulge of flesh upward from underneath, as if it would tear free again at any second.

"She came back too?!"

Leon's voice shot up an octave. His tone was pure disbelief wrapped around barely contained murder.

He knew exactly how dangerous this woman was.

A madwoman who had spent fifteen years fusing herself with the T-Veronica Virus.

A lunatic who fancied herself a god and treated human beings as fertilizer and worker ants.

Back at the Washington bunker, if he hadn't been driven to the absolute brink, hadn't injected himself with the incomplete G-Virus and barely beaten her on fumes, his ashes would already be scattered to the wind.

And that was just her combat ability. Her intellect was something else entirely. She was a mature embryo-grown body modeled after her ancestor Veronica. The woman was absurdly, terrifyingly brilliant.

That kind of wildly dangerous, uncontrollable variable was inside his home base right now?

"Did she kill anyone? Is she controlling someone?"

Leon tore the white lab coat off his body.

"No. I'm going out there to kill her right now."

He was already moving.

His condition was better than it had ever been. The complete G-Virus had given him absolute physical power and full, unimpaired control of his own mind. Even if Alexia had fully recovered to her peak, he was confident he could twist her head off and kick it around like a ball.

Ada stepped in front of him.

"Stay calm, Leon."

She looked at his right arm, the one that was ready to mutate at any moment.

"She hasn't done anything extreme. Not once."

"She didn't even react when Merle ran his mouth at her."

Leon stopped. His brow knotted into something that looked permanent.

"That's exactly what makes it terrifying."

"Ada, has she gotten inside your head?"

"That woman is arrogant to her core. She's brilliant, and she will do absolutely anything to get what she wants." His voice was clipped, certain. "The harmless act she's putting on right now — she's holding something back. She's always holding something back."

Leon pointed straight down at the floor beneath his feet.

"For all we know, she's already releasing spores into the ground right now, getting ready to turn this camp into her second private garden."

"I don't care what her plan is. The best move is to eliminate her completely before she can run it."

His stance was absolute.

Ada shook her head.

"Leon, I talked with her. On the flight back, and after we landed."

"She seems to have..." Ada paused. "Genuinely changed."

She thought back to the question Alexia had asked her in the cabin. That lost, searching confusion about love and sacrifice, nobody faked that. It wasn't the kind of thing you performed.

"Changed?" Leon scoffed. "A monster turning into a bleeding heart?"

"I'm suggesting you go see for yourself."

Ada offered nothing more.

"She took my advice. She's trying to integrate with this group." A beat. "In her own way."

Integrate with the group.

Alexia.

Those two things placed side by side made less sense than a Walker running a daycare.

Leon stared at Ada, skepticism warring with something reluctant and unwilling to admit itself.

Ada made a gesture toward the exit.

"Fine."

"I'll go see what game she's playing."

Leon walked out of the Underground Laboratory and moved up through the corridor.

The guards along the way snapped to attention and saluted as he passed, but their eyes couldn't stop drifting toward the outer wall. The awe in their faces was mixed with something else. Something closer to fear.

Leon followed their gaze outward.

Cold wind hit him in the face, carrying the green smell of vegetation.

He stopped.

The shock that crossed his eyes was the kind you couldn't fake either.

The entire Atlanta Prison had been transformed.

The tall gray walls he knew were gone under it, buried beneath a thick, suffocating layer of dark-red vines. Those vines were as thick as pythons, coiling and intertwining in every direction, forming a dense, interlocking layer of biological armor over every surface. The outer shell of each vine was crusted with something hard, like chitin.

This was not dead matter.

Leon could feel it. These vines were alive.

They rose and fell, faintly, rhythmically. Breathing.

He walked to the edge of the open ground and crouched down. He reached out and pressed his palm against one of the thick vines that had stretched to his feet.

This was the T-Veronica Virus at its highest form made physical.

Back in the Washington bunker, Alexia had used exactly this to shrug off the assault rifle fire from Chris Redfield's weapon without slowing down.

These vines could ignore low-caliber attacks entirely.

And now she had wrapped the entire outer perimeter of Atlanta Prison in this, all of it, without holding a single thing back.

This defensive capability.

Forget a Walker Horde. You could hit it with an RPG Rocket Launcher and probably not leave a dent.

But what surprised Leon even more was what was happening above.

The Atlanta Prison dome project.

Leon had conceived it to protect against airborne bio-weapons and external artillery. The concept had been on the table for a long time, but the scale of the work was simply too enormous, materials and technology too critically short. The dome had always had one huge gap in it that no one had managed to seal. It had been Rick's biggest headache from the beginning.

And now.

Countless dark-red vines were climbing the high walls, reaching up and meeting in midair, weaving together like a vast net slowly drawing closed across the open sky.

Filling in that enormous gap.

Bit by bit.

Every single person in the camp was standing far back in the open ground, weapons raised, frozen in place. Rick. Shawn Greene. Merle. Every armed guard they had. All of them staring. None of them speaking.

No one dared to speak.

No one dared to go near it.

Directly beneath the biological canopy taking shape above.

A woman stood.

Alexia Ashford.

She was still wearing that long dress. Eyes shut. Both arms raised high overhead, her ten slender fingers trembling faintly in midair like a conductor's hands at the peak of a movement. Every small motion of her fingers sent the vines above surging forward, growing, spreading, weaving together.

Leon saw the problem immediately.

Stimulating biomass growth at this scale consumed an immense amount of energy. Without external nutrients to draw from, she was burning through the core source of the T-Veronica Virus inside her own body.

And she had already been gravely injured. Leon had put her down hard in his G-Virus form. Now she was forcing her body past that, driving her ability beyond its limits, and the wounds across her body were paying for it, splitting back open one by one.

Blood ran down her pale thighs and pooled at her feet, staining the ground red.

Her face was white as paper. Her smooth forehead was sheened with sweat. Even her golden hair, which had once cascaded like something brilliant and alive, looked dull now, threaded through with gray.

Drip.

A drop of blood slid from the tip of her nose and hit the ground.

She did not stop.

She kept driving the vines with everything left in her, fighting to seal that final gap completely.

Leon's brow furrowed. He walked toward her.

The crowd parted as he came through.

Alexia seemed to sense him before she saw him. Her raised hands gave a faint tremble. The vines in midair stuttered and went still.

She lowered her arms slowly and opened her eyes, turning her head.

Their gazes met.

The killing intent that had once stretched between them like a drawn blade — gone.

The lofty, imperious arrogance — gone.

Alexia Ashford's blood-red irises were threaded through with broken veins. She looked at Leon standing there in his white lab coat, whole and unharmed. The terrifying form he had worn was gone entirely.

A flicker of surprise crossed her face.

Then it settled into calm.

"You didn't die."

"Thanks to you, I'm doing just fine."

Leon's voice was cold and flat.

He looked at her, the swaying body, the blood-soaked dress, the legs that were barely holding.

"What are you doing out here? Putting on a show?"

Alexia breathed in shallow, ragged pulls. She raised one hand and wiped the blood seeping from beneath her nose, a careless, almost dismissive gesture. She glanced once around at the walls, solid and impenetrable in every direction. Then she looked up at the dome, just a fraction away from closing completely.

"Ada said I owe you."

She brought her eyes back to his.

"I also wanted to see what it feels like. Using my power to protect a group of weaklings instead of destroying them."

The moment she finished saying it, her body lurched.

Her legs buckled under the weight of everything she'd burned through, and she went straight down, pitching forward.

➤ Next: Controlling Alexia Ashford