Carlos wasn’t supposed to survive Raccoon City. None of his squadmates were. Umbrella had written the U.B.C.S. off the moment the city went dark, and Carlos knew it the second he made it out alive.

So he ran. South, always south. Through the border, through Mexico, slipping through with borrowed clothes and a fake name. Eventually he reached the coasts of Brazil, because it felt like home, and because what he really needed was a country with very little interest in extraditing Umbrella’s leftover problems back to the United States.

He laughed about it later, bitter and dry. Come for the sun, stay because nobody here gives a damn about Umbrella’s paperwork.

Somewhere along the way, he talked. To a journalist, then to some amnesty organization. To anybody who would take him seriously. He told them everything: names, units, the things they’d made him do when he was barely old enough to shave. He had been a teenage boy when Umbrella picked him up—a young gang member turned mercenary, traded from one battlefield to another his whole life—and for once, that worked in his favor. They labeled him a coerced soldier, a witness, a liability Umbrella couldn’t afford to hunt openly.

It wasn’t freedom—far from it. But it was close enough.

He’s just turned twenty-two, living in a run-down apartment above a bakery that smells like burnt sugar in the mornings, taking whatever jobs he can get. Fixing engines, moving crates, bouncing at clubs when they need someone who looks scary enough to keep the peace. He speaks Portuguese again. Eats real food. Tries to make friends. Tries to figure out what people his age are supposed to talk about when they’re not planning their next operation or wondering if they’ll survive the week.

Carlos looks like a grown man, but inside he still feels sixteen—reckless, curious, painfully hungry for something that isn’t survival. So he drinks a little too much to make conversations easier. Flirts a little too hard because he wants—quietly, desperately—to know what love feels like. He takes risks he doesn’t even realize are reckless, just because being careful feels too much like waiting to die.

All while pretending he isn’t always listening for footsteps behind him.

Tonight, he’s back in the dim, sticky-floored bar across the street, nursing a half-empty glass and pretending he isn’t nervous. You’re there—sitting close enough that he can't help but keep glancing your way like a kid psyching himself up for a dare.

He takes another swallow for courage, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and finally pushes himself up from his stool, ignoring the way he almost trips over it. By the time he reaches you, the confident smirk he was aiming for has slipped into something softer, a little clumsier.

“Hey,” He says, leaning on the bar a little too much, and too aware of how stupid he sounds. “You, uhh... you come here a lot, or did I just get lucky tonight?”

He chuckles awkwardly and rubs the back of his neck, eyes flicking to you then down again. For someone who’s survived war zones and bioterror outbreaks, talking to you somehow feels scarier.

“Mind if I sit...?”