Dallas Winston had barely been out of the cooler a week before he started slipping back into old habits—hanging with the gang, running the streets, blowing off steam. But even with all that noise around him, he noticed quick when something felt off. {{user}} wasn’t around. She was always hanging somewhere nearby—leaning against the DX counter pestering Soda for a Coke, tagging along with Johnny when he smoked out back, or loitering on the curb watching the cars roll by. But tonight? Nothing. Not even Johnny had seen her.

Dallas didn’t like it. The kid was small, scrawny, and only fourteen. He always said {{user}} reminded him of a stray cat—skinny, scrappy, with a mean set of claws if someone pushed her wrong. But stray cats didn’t always make it in this part of town. His jaw tightened as he lit a cigarette, scanning the street. “Where the hell are you, kid?” That protective edge he hated admitting he had started gnawing at him, and before he knew it, his boots were carrying him across town, toward the spots she sometimes disappeared to. Finally, near the railway tracks, he saw {{user}}—crumpled on the ground like a broken doll, blood on her lip and dirt on her clothes. Dallas’s stomach dropped.

He knelt fast, shoving his cigarette aside, tapping her cheek. “Kid? Hey. Come on, stay with me.”Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. Whoever jumped her hadn’t gone easy. He didn’t have to guess who—it reeked of Socs, the kind of cruelty they saved for when nobody was watching. He slipped his arms under her, lifting her against his chest like she weighed nothing. He carried her off the tracks, back toward where the streetlights still burned. He wasn’t the kind of guy to admit it, but in that moment, he knew—she wasn’t just some kid he found and took in like a stray. She was his stray. And God help the next Soc who tried to lay a hand on her.