[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 751 - Controlling Alexia Ashford (Patreon)

Letting her fall flat on her face would have been exactly what she deserved.

Leon might even have laughed. Said she had it coming.

But his gaze swept the perimeter.

Those thick, dark-red vines had wrapped around the entire Atlanta Prison like a layer of impenetrable living armor. Even the dome overhead was nearly sealed shut.

This woman had pushed her gravely wounded body to its absolute limit, and built an inescapable shell over his territory.

Leon's eyes shifted.

In the instant before Alexia Ashford's face hit the ground.

Thud.

The earth beneath his feet dented slightly, and his entire body blurred into an afterimage.

One sidestep. Leon extended his left arm and caught her by the waist.

Very light.

That was his first impression.

She looked tall, full-figured. But cradled in his arms right now, she weighed almost nothing, like holding a feather. Her body temperature was alarmingly low, and the cold sweat seeping through her skin mixed with blood, instantly staining the white lab coat he'd carelessly draped over himself.

Alexia struggled to open her eyes.

Those blood-red irises held none of their former arrogance. No haughtiness. Only a dim, exhausted blankness.

She looked at Leon, so close now. Looked at the face that had ground her into the dirt not long ago.

"I'm sorry..."

An almost inaudible voice squeezed out from between her cracked lips.

Those words. For the Alexia Ashford of the past, they would have been worse than death.

But now, she had said them. Truly and completely.

Leon's expression darkened.

The wariness in his eyes didn't diminish at all. If anything, it deepened.

"Save it."

He dropped those two words and didn't throw her onto the ground. Instead he scooped her up, turned, and strode toward the interior of the camp.

The crowd parted like a tide, clearing a wide path without a word.

Through the open ground. Into the residential block.

Leon kicked open the door to an empty room.

Simple furnishings, a bed, a cabinet, a chair. Standard issue for every new survivor who joined the camp.

He walked to the bed and dumped her onto it without ceremony.

Not gentle in the slightest.

Alexia let out a muffled grunt as her body sank into the mattress. The motion pulled at her wounds and made her grimace.

Leon didn't look at her. He dragged the chair over and sat down by the bed, legs spread, body leaning forward, both elbows propped on his knees, eyes fixed on the woman in front of him.

For a long while, the only sound in the room was her faint, rapid breathing.

Eventually, she recovered enough to move. She turned her head and looked at him.

"Have you forgiven me?"

She asked quietly. There was something in her voice she probably hadn't even noticed herself, a trace of something almost like hope.

Leon let out a cold laugh.

He shook his head.

"Did sleeping in a freezer for fifteen years rot your brain?"

"Forgive you?"

"You nearly got Claire killed. You forced me to inject that goddamn half-finished virus into myself."

"You think one breezy little 'I'm sorry' wipes all of that clean?"

"Then why did you catch me?" Alexia didn't get angry. She just asked, calm and even.

"Don't misunderstand."

Leon pointed toward the window.

"I caught you because of the shell you just threw up over this camp. That's it."

"One thing at a time."

"That was a small return for the contribution you made — nothing more. It doesn't mean I trust you. It certainly doesn't mean I forgive you."

"As far as I'm concerned, you're still an extremely dangerous time bomb. One that could go off at any moment."

He laid it out with complete clarity. No concealment whatsoever.

Alexia went quiet.

She stared at the ceiling for a long time before her gaze finally drifted back to him.

"What would it take for you to trust me?"

She asked in earnest. She genuinely wanted to understand, how trust between human beings was actually built. She had already chosen to surrender, chosen to set aside that hollow, illusory divinity. She needed a place to start.

Leon looked at her. No hesitation.

"Only after I truly control you will I be able to rest easy."

"I need your life completely in my hands."

"If I want you to live, you live."

"If I want you to die, you won't even be able to form the thought of resisting."

"Only then would I keep a genetic freak full of insane ideas on my territory."

The most naked humiliation and enslavement imaginable.

For anyone with a shred of dignity, these terms would be absolutely unacceptable.

Let alone Alexia Ashford — who had once been arrogant beyond measure.

But contrary to everything Leon expected.

Alexia heard all of it, and showed not a trace of anger.

She simply looked at him. And then, quietly, nodded.

"All right."

Her voice was weak. Her tone was not.

"Then go ahead."

Leon paused.

He'd expected her to struggle. To negotiate. Or to drag out one final burst of T-Veronica power and fight him to the death.

He hadn't expected her to agree this cleanly.

"Are you certain?" He narrowed his eyes, staring hard, searching her face for any crack of pretense.

"Certain."

Alexia closed her eyes.

"I said it — I lost."

"I want to learn how to be human. If this is the price of joining you, I accept it."

She lay still on the bed, like a prisoner baring her neck to the blade, waiting for the final judgment to come.

Leon looked at her face, smeared with blood, still breathtakingly beautiful.

A thought crossed his mind.

Strip her mind entirely. Turn her into something that knew nothing but obedience. Not even a shred of independent will left.

For Claire's sake, if nothing else. Claire had come dangerously close to dying.

But just as he moved to act, he stopped.

If he stripped her mind.

That supremely brilliant brain of Alexia Ashford's would be gone. Her research into the T-Veronica Virus. Her understanding of bioengineering that left this era decades behind. All of it would vanish the moment he reached in and took what made her her.

Turn her into a tool that followed orders and released vines on command?

What a waste.

He needed her intellect. Needed her to refine the unknown viruses, to help turn Atlanta Prison into something truly impregnable. And she had just contributed to this camp at real cost, overdrawn her own life force to do it.

Consider yourself lucky.

Leon let out a cold inward snort.

He stood and moved to the head of the bed.

"Open your mouth."

He looked down at her as he said it.

Alexia compliantly parted her cracked lips.

Leon raised his right hand, brought it to his mouth, and bit through the tip of his index finger without hesitation.

Blood welled up instantly, carrying a faint dark-golden luminescence.

Blood fused with the complete G-Virus, the perfected T-Virus, the primordial Solar Stairway, and the Genetic Assimilation ability.

He held his bleeding finger above her lips.

The drop fell, landing precisely in her mouth.

The instant it touched her tongue, Alexia's body snapped rigid.

Her eyes flew open. Her blood-red pupils contracted violently.

She felt it clearly, that single, seemingly insignificant drop, the moment it slid down her throat, hit like ice water dropped into boiling oil. Every trace of T-Veronica Virus in her body detonated at once.

The virus entrenched in every one of her cells sensed the foreign gene and launched a furious counterattack. Dark-red vines writhed violently beneath her skin, straining as if trying to tear through flesh.

Alexia let out a choked groan and fisted the bedsheets in both hands.

The pain lasted less than 10 seconds.

Then her body went limp.

The vines beneath her skin fell completely still.

She gasped hard for air, her whole body looking like it had just been hauled out of deep water, but the way she looked at Leon had changed. Profoundly. Quietly.

It was submission from the depths of her soul.

No resistance. No lofty, transcendent divinity.

Only absolute obedience.

At the same time, Leon closed his eyes.

Judging whether she was truly his now, or only pretending.

Deep within his consciousness, that invisible grid woven from countless Psychic Links, a new node ignited.

Extraordinarily brilliant.

Brighter than Ada and Alice combined.

It radiated a dark-red luminescence, brimming with vitality and dangerous in equal measure, hovering steadily in the space surrounding the core of his consciousness.

Through it, Leon could feel everything she was feeling at this very moment, her weakness, her exhaustion.

And her unique, supernatural ability.

➤ Next: New Abilities — Inner Fire