"Oh, Ryan!"

Something hit me from behind, arms wrapping around my waist, sudden and tight before I could react. I turned, startled, and found Shannon smiling up at me.

"Shannon..." I managed, returning what I could only describe as the most awkward acknowledgment of a hug in recent human history.

"I really thought I’d never see you again when you left that day," she said, laughing a little, the sound light and soft. "But here you are."

"Change of plans," I said, trying to extract myself from her grip with some degree of dignity. It wasn’t going well. She held on with surprising stubbornness for someone who was still supposed to be favoring a bad foot, her walking stick tucked under one arm in a way that suggested she’d committed to this ambush well in advance.

"Shannon!" Carmen’s voice came down sharply, and she was already moving, stepping quickly behind her daughter and wrapping both arms around her to haul her back. "What on earth are you doing? Let him go!"

"Come on, Mom! He saved my life, you know!"

"That is not a reason to hang off of him like that! Behave yourself!" Carmen got a firm enough grip to pry her loose, pulling her back. Shannon relented, finally, though she did it with an expression that made it clear she was choosing to, not being made to.

In the shuffle, her walking stick hit the ground with a hollow clatter.

I picked it up before anyone else could, turning it over once and holding it back out to her.

"You need to be more careful," I said. "You can’t be making sudden moves like that with your foot still healing. You’ll set it back."

"I know, I know." She took the stick, waving the concern off with her free hand like it was mildly inconvenient information she’d already filed away and chosen to ignore. Then her eyes lit up again. "Actually, since you’re staying here now, why don’t you sleep at our place? We’ve got the room and—"

"Shannon. Enough." Carmen’s voice had a different edge to it this time.

"I already have somewhere to stay," I said. "Don’t worry about it."

Shannon’s face shifted, something clicking behind her eyes. "What, where? I heard Maribel’s been looking after you, don’t tell me you’re sleeping at hers?"

"Nobody is sleeping with me, you little idiot!"

Maribel appeared like she’d materialized from thin air, stepping in from behind Shannon with zero hesitation and pulling a sharp tug on Shannon’s flaxen hair before anyone could really track how it happened.

Shannon yelped and then dissolved into laughter, craning her neck to look at Maribel with pure delight, entirely unbothered.

Footsteps approached from further back, I glanced up and saw Marlon and Molly coming toward us, mid-conversation, though they were already clocking the scene with varying degrees of amusement.

"You might want to consider locking her somewhere, Carmen," Maribel said flatly, pointing at Shannon like she was filing a formal complaint.

"I have been thinking about it," Carmen replied, shooting her daughter a look that landed somewhere between fond and deeply exasperated.

Shannon grinned, wholly untroubled. "You wouldn’t do it, Mom. And even if you tried, Ryan would come get me out, wouldn’t you?" She looked up at me with a wide smile.

I had no idea what to say to that.

She wasn’t being malicious about it, I understood that much. She was young, younger even than Rebecca, and somewhere in the aftermath of almost getting torn apart by Infected, she’d built me into something in her head. A symbol, maybe. A fixed point. It happened. People attached meaning to the moments that scared them the most, and whoever happened to be standing there became part of that meaning whether they asked for it or not. It was understandable. That didn’t make it any less awkward to stand in the middle of.

"Who do you think this guy actually is?" Maribel said, eyes narrowing slightly, clearly picking up on the same thing I was.

"He’s my savior," Shannon answered, no irony in it whatsoever, just plain and direct. "He pulled me out before I got eaten alive. I’m going to treat him like that."

"He did something normal," Maribel said. "Saving a life is just, it’s just what you do. There’s nothing worth building a whole thing around."

I agreed with her, honestly. More than I expected to.

The world had gotten strange in ways you didn’t always notice right away. Survival had become so constant, so baseline, that when someone did something that used to just be called decent, pulling a stranger back from the edge, making a call that cost you something, it could get treated like an event. Like mythology. I got it. I did. But the moment that became normal, the moment people stopped expecting basic human decency from each other and started acting shocked by it, that was when you had to wonder what you were actually rebuilding out here.

"You’re being really cold about it, Maribel," Shannon said, tilting her head. "Ryan saved your life too, didn’t he? And from what I have seen, you tried to kill him first."

"That was before I knew who he was!" Maribel shot back, heat flashing into her voice.

"Alright, don’t let her drag you into it," Carmen said, cutting across both of them, pressing a light hand to the top of Shannon’s head with a quiet laugh. "Don’t take the bait."

"They are remarkably loud for this hour of the morning," Molly observed pleasantly, coming to a stop beside me like someone arriving at a mildly entertaining outdoor exhibition.

"What did you expect?" Marlon said from beside her, coming to stand with his arms loosely crossed. He looked at Shannon with the flat, unimpressed expression of someone who had clearly dealt with her before, though the sternness stopped cleanly at the eyes, which gave nothing like sternness away.

Shannon turned toward him.

There was a beat of pause and then she walked straight at him, stick clicking against the ground, covering the distance. She stopped just in front of him and looked straight up.

It was something to watch. Marlon was a big man. He had the kind of build that made most spaces feel slightly smaller and made most people recalibrate slightly when he walked into a room. Shannon, by contrast, was slight and short-statured, her head barely clearing his chest. She looked, in that moment, like something you’d find painted on a warning sign.

Then she balled up her free hand and punched him in the stomach. Not hard enough to do anything except make the point she intended to make.

"You’re not getting my mom."

The silence that followed was quite defeating and jaw dropped.

I’m pretty sure mine dropped a little too, which I wasn’t proud of.

Where did that even come from?

"S... Shannon!!" Carmen’s face went full crimson, the color rushing up her neck and into her cheeks like someone had turned a dial. She closed the distance to her daughter in two quick steps and grabbed her by the shoulders, already steering her away. "I am so sorry... she’s just... Gods, Shannon, what is wrong with you?!"

She could barely get a coherent sentence out, and she definitely couldn’t look Marlon in the eye. She was throwing apologies out in pieces, half-finished, like she was trying to collect herself and speak at the same time and failing at both.

"He’s not good for you, Mom!" Shannon, for her part, was completely unmoved by the embarrassment she’d caused. She twisted in her mother’s grip with the stubborn flexibility of someone who had been wriggled out of worse. "He has a weird obsession with Summer!"

"He is being an attentive father for his daughter, you idiot!" Carmen shot back in a furious hiss, trying to keep her voice low and failing.

"Then why did he say he won’t ever let Summer get married?" Shannon asked, very reasonably, in the tone of someone who believed they had just won the argument.

"Because he’s my dad and yeah, maybe a little obsessed with me."

Every head in the group turned at once.

Summer was standing a few feet away, having approached at some point during the chaos without anyone noticing, a small smile sitting comfortably on her face, perfectly at ease.

"See!" Shannon pointed, delighted, letting out a laugh that rang through the park.

"Alright... that’s it. We’re going. You need Shawn to check that foot anyway." Carmen didn’t negotiate further. She got a firm arm around Shannon and started marching, the matter apparently closed by executive decision.

"Ryan!" Shannon called out over her shoulder, waving her free hand back at me as she was walked away, utterly unbothered by her own forcible removal. "Come sleep at our house and eat with us! We’ve got plenty of room, plenty of space! You’re welcome anytime!"

"Yeah..." I said.

It was the best I had.

The sound of Shannon’s laughter faded as Carmen herded her away, and the remaining group settled into a beat of quiet.

"Since when are you and Shannon so close?" Summer asked, turning to me with something close to surprise on her face.

"We’re not, really," I said. "I pulled her out of a bad situation with some Infected. She’s been more grateful about it than the situation warrants, even though I told her not to be."

Summer made a face, not quite a grimace, something more thoughtful than that. "Do you actually think that’s what’s going on? That she’s just being grateful?"

I looked at her. "What else would it be?"

She stared at me for a moment, then exhaled slowly. "You’re pretty dense, aren’t you."

"She’s just a kid," I said.

"She’s maybe four years younger than you, at the most," Summer said.

"I’m seventeen," I replied.

"Four years that’s what I said, Shannon’s thirteen." She paused. "Actually, wait. Are you seriously seventeen?" She squinted at me, head tilting like she was reassessing something she’d already calculated wrong once.

"Do I look that old?" I asked, and I was not sure I wanted the answer.

It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten that look. Wasn’t going to be the last, apparently.

"You’re tall," Summer said, like she was working through it out loud. "And you’ve got this face like—" she pressed two fingers beneath her eyes, pointing vaguely at her own expression — "like, ’don’t waste my time,’ or maybe ’I have seen too many things and none of them were good.’ That kind of look."

I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that.

I was still trying to figure it out when I became aware of the shift in atmosphere around us, people had stopped their own conversations to pay attention to yours. I glanced around. Maribel. Molly. Marlon. All of them watching the exchange between Summer and me with varying intensities of suspicion creasing their faces.

Marlon’s was the sharpest.

"Is this the first time you two have actually spoken to each other?" Maribel asked.

And there it was.

I felt the misstep land before I could do anything about it. We’d just gotten comfortable with each other mid-conversation, and neither of us had thought to course-correct before someone noticed. The truth was we had been together at the pier’s shopping mall but nobody here knew that, and this probably wasn’t the moment to bring it up.

Summer had clearly clocked the same thing at the same second.

"I...well. He saved Shannon," she said, recovering with reasonable speed. "What’s strange about talking casually with someone who did that?"

"That was a bit too casual," Marlon said coldly.

Summer turned to him exasperated. "Geez, Dad. It’s fine."

"Right. Anyway." I took the opening and pivoted toward Marlon directly. "I actually needed to talk to you about something. It’s important."

"Important," he repeated.

"Yeah."

My eyes moved to Summer without really meaning to.

Marlon kept her at arm’s length from most of what went on with Callighan, from the threats, the undercurrents, the parts of the situation that had teeth. Whether that was the right call was a separate debate. Molly and Maribel were different, both adults, both already deep enough in the situation to be useful in the room. Summer was Marlon’s daughter, and Marlon was protective in a way that seemed structural, like it was built into how he made decisions. Bringing this up in front of her felt like it was his call to make, not mine.

"What are you looking at?" Summer asked, arms folding, one brow arching at me with clear suspicion.

"Summer." Marlon spoke up. "Give us a minute, sweetheart."

The look she gave him could have stripped paint. She held it for a moment and then she just shook her head.

"I can’t believe this," she said, more to herself than anyone, and walked off without another word.

Now I was the one feeling bad.

"You really should stop treating that girl like she’s still twelve," Molly said.

"She’s my little girl," Marlon replied.

Right, he was obsessed with his daughter.

"Can we please get to the point?" Maribel cut in, her expression scrunching up from the discussion.

Thank you, Maribel.