The red and white van cruised down the empty highway. Inside, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Glenn gripped the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the road ahead. Every rustle of leaves against the chassis made him flinch. Beside him, T-Dog sat with his hands clasped, muttering a frantic prayer.
In the back, Rick wiped down his Colt Python with mechanical persistence, trying to rub away his anxiety. Daryl was huddled in the corner like a wounded wolf. He radiated a cold, jagged energy that kept the others at bay, his eyes fixed on the desolate landscape blurring past the window.
Leon sat opposite him, leaning against the metal wall with his eyes closed. He wasn't praying or cleaning a weapon. He was listening.
He heard Glenn's shallow, nervous breathing. He heard the friction of metal on flannel as Rick polished his gun. He could even sense the low, guttural vibration of Daryl's suppressed rage.
"We'll loop around from the west side," Rick said, his voice raspy. "Glenn, you know the way. Avoid the main roads. We can't get bottlenecked."
"Understood," Glenn replied.
Rick turned to T-Dog. "When we hit the department store, you're our guide to the roof. Don't freeze up."
"I... I won't," T-Dog stammered, nodding quickly.
Finally, Rick looked at Daryl. He hesitated. "Daryl, we need your eyes. You see anything off, you call it out immediately."
Daryl didn't answer. He just turned his head away, his jaw set like stone.
Leon opened his eyes. This team was a powder keg of guilt, brutality, and fear. He was the one holding the fuse.
His objectives were set: check in at the department store for the system rewards, secure Rick's hidden bag of guns, and find Merle—or at least the trail he left behind. He needed Daryl as a weapon, and to earn that loyalty, he needed to resolve the situation on the roof.
"He's just worried about his brother," Leon said. His voice was calm, cutting through the tension.
Everyone looked at him. Daryl's shoulders shifted slightly, though he remained turned toward the window.
"If it were your brother handcuffed to a rooftop, you'd be doing the same," Leon added, looking directly at Rick.
Rick's mouth tightened before he let out a heavy sigh. Leon said nothing more. He didn't need to be a mediator; he just needed them to become accustomed to his voice and his judgment.
They reached the outskirts of Atlanta. The stench of rot and stale gasoline seeped through the window seals. Glenn pulled the van behind an abandoned gas station and cut the engine.
"We go on foot from here. Too many stalls on the main street. We'll get trapped if we stay in the car."
The five men stepped out into a mournful silence. The only sound was the wind kicking up trash against the pavement. Occasionally, a distant, hollow moan echoed from the shadows of the skyscrapers.
"Follow me," Glenn whispered.
He led them through a maze of trash-strewn alleys and over collapsed brick walls. Daryl stayed in the rear, his crossbow raised, scanning every fire escape and doorway.
As they rounded a corner, two walkers stumbled into their path.
Leon moved before Rick could even draw his sidearm. He closed the distance in a blur, the rebar in his hand whistling through the air.
Thud. Thud.
The metal rods pierced the eye sockets with surgical precision, exiting through the back of the skulls. Leon flicked his wrist to clear the blood as the corpses slumped silently to the ground. The entire exchange lasted two seconds.
Rick and Glenn stared, their pupils contracting. They had seen Leon fight before, but the efficiency was still jarring. Daryl watched Leon for a moment longer than the others, his gaze analytical and wary.
"Let's move," Leon said.
Ten minutes later, they reached the department store. The glass doors were shattered, and the interior was a graveyard of overturned displays. They cleared a handful of roaming walkers on the ground floor and headed for the fire escape.
T-Dog led them up to the roof. When the iron door swung open, a gust of wind carrying the scent of rust hit them.
The rooftop was empty, save for a pair of handcuffs dangling from a vertical water pipe.
One cuff was still locked to the metal. The other was attached to a severed hand. The flesh was bruised, swollen, and gray. A pool of black, dried blood stained the concrete, and a blood-slicked hacksaw lay nearby.
Glenn and T-Dog looked away, sickened. Rick's face twisted with a mix of shock and guilt. He hadn't expected Merle to be capable of such a brutal act of will.
Daryl walked toward the pipe, his steps slow and heavy. He knelt in front of the hand—a hand just like his own, calloused and scarred. His eyes turned a violent crimson.
He didn't scream. He didn't roar. He simply took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped the hand with the care one would give a religious relic. He tucked the small bundle into his vest and stood up.
The grief and killing intent rolling off him were cold enough to make the others shiver.
At that moment, a chime rang in Leon's mind.
[Ding! First check-in at "Atlanta Department Store" successful!]
[Reward: Passive Skill "Hawkeye Vision"!]
A cold current flooded Leon's brain and settled behind his eyes. The world shifted.
Everything became impossibly sharp. He could see the microscopic flakes of peeling paint on distant buildings and the individual grains of dust dancing in the wind. He could see the twitching muscle fibers in Rick's jaw. His depth perception and detail capture were now beyond human capability.
"He's not dead," Rick said, pointing to a trail of blood leading away from the pipe. "There are drag marks. Let's go."
They followed the trail down into a cramped office on a lower floor. On the floor sat a charred belt buckle and a spent portable blowtorch.
"He used a belt as a tourniquet and cauterized the stump," Rick noted, his voice carrying a note of grim respect. "The man is tough."
They continued the search, but the trail went cold in a back alley flooded with stagnant water and piles of refuse. The blood simply stopped.
"Damn it," Rick muttered.
Daryl paced the alley like a bloodhound, searching for a footprint or a smudge of red on the brickwork. He found nothing.
"What now?" Glenn asked.
Rick looked around at the intersecting alleys and thousands of dark windows. Finding one man who didn't want to be found was impossible. The group began to stall, the momentum of the rescue dying out.
Leon looked up. He activated Hawkeye Vision.
The environment was instantly parsed and reconstructed in his mind. His gaze scanned the surroundings like a high-definition sensor—filtering out the trash, the shadows, and the grime.
His eyes locked onto a third-floor windowsill across the street. There, a speck of dark red no larger than a pinhead stood out against the gray stone. He analyzed the splatter—the angle of the drop, the level of dehydration in the blood.
Leon pointed. His voice was flat and certain.
"He went that way."