They were halfway down a quiet block when Atlas stopped.
Not slowed, not hesitated—stopped completely.
His ears snapped forward, his body went rigid, and his gaze locked onto something across the street with an intensity that instantly cut through Daniel’s fatigue like a blade. That was all it took. Years of training don’t fade; they settle into your bones, waiting for moments exactly like this, and before Daniel had consciously processed anything, his posture shifted, his senses sharpening as he followed the dog’s line of sight.
At first, he didn’t see anything unusual.
Just the dim glow of a streetlamp flickering unevenly, casting long, broken shadows across the pavement.
And then he saw her.
A small figure standing beneath the light, almost swallowed by the oversized coat she wore, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if she were trying to hold in whatever warmth she had left. She couldn’t have been more than four, maybe five at most, and even from a distance Daniel could see the way her body trembled—not just from the cold, but from something deeper, something that made the stillness around her feel wrong.
