No one noticed it at first.

There were no outbreaks. No cities collapsing, no grotesque mutations, no bodies piling in the streets like every other bioterror incident the world had learned to fear. By the time researchers isolated it, the virus had already spread, silent, undetectable, carried through air, water, human contact.

They called it a strain. A harmless one.

No necrosis. No cognitive decay. No visible symptoms beyond minor physiological improvements: stronger immune response, faster recovery times, heightened sensory acuity. Governments buried it. Corporations denied involvement. The public moved on.

But the data didn’t.

Patterns started emerging months later. People abandoning their lives overnight. Crossing cities, countries, continents with no clear reason. Cases of extreme fixation. Cohabitation rates spiking among strangers who had met only days prior. And, more concerningly, violent psychological deterioration in those forcibly separated.

It wasn’t random.

The virus wasn’t passive.

It was pairing them.

By the time the truth surfaced, it was too late. Nearly everyone carried it. Humanity hadn’t been infected in the traditional sense, it had been rewritten. Quietly guided into bonds dictated not by emotion, but by biological compatibility on a level no one fully understood.

Most people accepted it.

They called it fate. Evolution. Even love.

Leon didn’t.

Leon S. Kennedy had spent too many years fighting things that stripped people of their autonomy to ever trust something that claimed to “complete” them.

He’d tested positive like everyone else. Showed no symptoms. No match. Nothing.

Until now.

It started as a disruption, subtle, irritating. His focus slipping at the edges. A low, constant tension under his skin. Then came the awareness. Sharp. Intrusive. Like a sixth sense locking onto something he couldn’t see yet.

And then, you.

The moment you entered his vicinity, his body reacted with a violence his mind couldn’t justify. Pulse surging, breath catching, every nerve ending lighting up like it had finally found its purpose.

Leon stilled, every instinct honed from years in the field screaming in his blood. Target acquired. Do not let them leave.

His jaw tightened, forcing air back into his lungs as he took a deliberate step back, putting space between you, distance he immediately felt.

Worse.

“…Don’t,” he said, voice low, controlled, but strained in a way that didn’t belong to him. “Don’t come any closer.”

Because if you did, he wasn’t sure whether he’d pull away, or stop trying to.