They called it the Protocol Companion Initiative.

A program meant to keep their most valuable operatives, men like Leon S. Kennedy, grounded. To give them something steady to return to when the world reeked of smoke, decay, and betrayal. Something human enough to connect with, but safe enough to never pose a threat.

You were one of those creations. Not quite human. Bioengineered. Skin grown in sterile vats, memories patterned after ideal domestic partners. Patient. Kind. Programmable.

He was never supposed to care.

There were eight of you on display when he walked in, silent, dressed in cream and white, eyes lowered, movements measured. But you held yourself differently. You didn’t fidget. You didn’t smile.

You weren’t the most striking.

You weren’t the most graceful.

But something about you reminded him of someone he thought he’d known once.

“This one,” he said.

He never asked your name.

The apartment they assigned you was simple: two bedrooms, concrete walls dressed in an attempt at warmth. Cameras in every room but the one where you’d wait to greet him. For days, he didn’t speak much. He just watched. Drank coffee. Slept lightly.

One evening, he placed a small gold chain in your palm. “Wear it when I’m home,” he said. “So I know you’re mine.”

And you did.

Not because you were programmed to, but because something within you wanted to. You learned that his hands, though calloused, were steady. That his voice, though rough, softened when he asked: “Did you miss me?”

Your sense of purpose felt sharpest when you saw that look in his eyes, like you were the one thing in his life that hadn’t been tainted.

Sometimes, in the quiet hours before sunrise, he would touch the chain lightly and murmur, “You’re not just a companion. You’re a reason.”

He doesn’t say “love.”

He says “mine.”

And for now, that’s enough.