He moved.
He shoved the civilian sideways, putting himself between the man and the raised weapon, and in that fraction of a second, Titan lunged forward, a blur of muscle and intent.
The gunshot cracked through the air.
Daniel felt it before he understood it—a violent, searing force that hit his back and ripped the breath from his lungs as if someone had reached inside him and pulled it out. The world tilted, sound distorting into something distant and warped, and then he was on the ground, the cold concrete pressing against his cheek, his body refusing to respond in ways that didn’t make sense yet.
“TITAN!” he tried to shout, but the word came out broken, barely more than air.
He heard the dog bark once—sharp, furious, alive—and then the sound of movement, chasing, pursuit.
And then nothing.
By the time backup arrived, the suspect was gone, the civilian was alive, and Daniel Reeves was staring at a ceiling he didn’t recognize, his lower body eerily silent in a way that would come to define the rest of his life.
Titan never came back.
The official explanation, repeated in careful tones by people who meant well but didn’t understand what they were taking away, was that the dog had pursued the suspect and likely become disoriented during the chaos. Search teams were deployed, drones sent up, volunteers combed through the surrounding districts, but days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, and eventually, the search shifted from active to hopeful to quietly abandoned.
