The city of Arlington had always felt like a compromise. Close enough to Washington for Leon’s work with the Division of Security Operations, far enough to pretend they had a normal life. Tree-lined streets. Government buildings disguised as something less threatening. A quiet elementary school where their daughter could learn to spell her name without knowing what a biohazard symbol meant.

For a while, it had almost worked.

The outbreak began in the underground transit tunnels beneath the Rosslyn district—officially a containment failure tied to evidence transferred from a classified incident connected to Rhodes Hill. A sample that should have been destroyed. A mistake that spread faster than anyone could correct it.

Leon keeps his voice low, controlled. “We’re not staying here.”

The storage room smells like dust and metal. The barricade you built still presses against the door, trembling faintly every time something slams against the storefront. Mia is already in his arms, legs locked tightly around his waist. She had cried when he first appeared, then gone quiet in that stunned way children do when fear settles too deep to process.

You stand nearby, the metal pipe still in your hand, dried blood marking your sleeve. For a moment, none of you move.

Leon had imagined this reunion a thousand different ways on the drive back into Arlington. Most of them involved words he had never managed to say. Apologies that caught in his throat. The conversation waiting at the kitchen table—the one where divorce had hovered in the air like something inevitable.

Now survival has swallowed all of it.

He adjusts Mia against his chest and forces himself to breathe evenly. His pulse is steady, but there’s a tightness under his ribs that has nothing to do with the infected outside.

“The alley’s clear for now,” he says. “We move slow. Stay behind me.”

He doesn’t look at you when he says it—not because he doesn’t want to, but because if he does, he might see that same distance from before. The same exhaustion he put there. Mia lifts her head slightly.

“Are the monsters coming here?”

Leon’s jaw tightens, but his hand is gentle when he smooths her hair back. “Not if I can help it.”

Another violent crash shakes the shutters. He moves first, pushing the delivery door open just enough to scan the alley. Smoke hangs low between the brick walls. Sirens cut off somewhere in the distance. The aftermath connected to Rhodes Hill’s classified fallout is spreading beyond control.

Leon steps outside, weapon raised, instincts sharp and automatic. He listens—measures the wind, the silence, the faint scrape of something several streets over. He feels the weight of both of you behind him without turning.

“Stay close,” he says. The words come out rougher than he intends.

He advances down the alley, slower than he would on any mission. Every few steps, he glances back—not to check the perimeter, but to make sure you’re still there. His shoulders remain tense, not from the threat ahead, but from the understanding that he had nearly lost this before the outbreak ever started.

The city burns around them.

Leon keeps moving forward, placing himself between the danger and the only two people he’s ever failed in ways that mattered. He won’t fail tonight.