The impact was brutal. The screeching of tires, the roar of the engine, then a heavy silence. From the black car with tinted windows, a man in a suit, around sixty years old, rushed out. His eyes landed on the fragile body of the child lying on the ground—his leg broken, his face bloody, barely breathing.
— "Someone call an ambulance, now!" he shouted to his driver.
This man was the deputy director of the National Defense Council, a powerful figure, respected and feared. When he looked at the young boy, something in his eyes flickered. Maybe an old memory, or a wound never healed.
When the ambulance arrived at full speed, the paramedics jumped out and opened the back doors. The high-ranking official grabbed one of them by the collar.
— "Keep him alive. I don't care about procedures. If he dies, you'll answer for it."
At the hospital, chaos erupted.
The emergency room doors swung open violently. Leon was rushed straight to surgery. The on-call doctor, a woman with tired eyes from sleepless nights, glanced at his vital signs.
— "Pressure dropping. He's losing too much blood. Quick, transfusion!"
Minutes felt like hours. Despite all their efforts, Leon slipped into a coma. His heart kept beating, but his mind had drifted somewhere far away—where pain no longer existed, but the soul was still fighting.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the city...
Doplamine walked briskly, eyes scanning the crowd. He had approached vendors, shopkeepers, then cars. After several rejections, an old man, moved by his gaze, handed him a few bills.
— "Here, son. Take care of your little brothers."
With the small amount of money, Doplamine ran to a black-market stall and bought some bread, dried fruits, and bottles of water.
Bag full, he returned to the spot where he had split from Leon. He sat on a worn-out bench, eyes watching the crowd, looking for his friend's familiar silhouette. Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty.
But Leon never came.
Worry gnawed at him. A voice inside whispered that something terrible had happened, but he didn't have the luxury of waiting longer.
Night was beginning to fall.
With a heavy heart, he walked back to the makeshift shelter they had found—a rundown warehouse on the edge of the city.
He entered, and the tired, hungry faces of the orphans turned toward him. Children from five to nine years old, eyes shining with hunger and hope.
— "Here... eat slowly," Doplamine said, handing out the food, keeping the smallest portion for himself.
He smiled so he wouldn't cry.
He missed Leon.
He still hoped to see him walk through that door, with that determined look and strange strength that made him more than just a child.
But that night, silence was his only companion.
In a hospital room bathed in the pale glow of neon lights, Léon lay motionless, hooked up to several machines that kept the fragile rhythm of his survival. His young face bore the marks of pain and struggle. Doctors came and went in silence, their eyes heavy with uncertainty. The high-ranking official, still present, made sure not a single detail was overlooked.
But inside Léon's mind, there was no hospital, no pain. He floated in a strange world, between shadow and light, between memory and oblivion.
An endless field. Blurry shapes. The distant voices of children echoed softly. He saw familiar faces, laughter from the past, and in the center… his mother, whom he hadn't seen in years.
— "You don't have the right to stop now, my son..." she said, her voice warm like a summer breeze.
Léon tried to speak, but his throat was silent.
— "They need you. It's not over. You haven't fulfilled your promise yet."
Images flashed: the hungry orphans, Doplamine waiting alone, and a deeper, darker voice — Jason, rumbling like a storm:
— "I will find you all. And there will be no more running."
Léon's heart began to beat faster in his chest. He felt something stir inside him — a refusal to die, a quiet anger mixed with an invisible strength.
Back at the Shelter
In the crumbling warehouse, Doplamine kept watch over the children, sitting near the entrance with a stick in his hand.
He didn't sleep. He couldn't.
Every sound outside startled him. Footsteps? A door? Maybe Léon?
But it was nothing. Just the wind.
The children, fed for the first time in days, slept on the floor, huddled close to one another.
Doplamine looked up at the stars through the broken roof and whispered:
— "You told me to protect them... so I will, until you return. But come back, Léon… come back."