O'Brien's brows pushed together and he gave Luke a look when his nephew spoke up with 'Dude'. O'Brien would have told you that he had always been a badass. He just never took that home for the holidays with him. Truth of the matter was, he was actually much less of a badass now, than he used to be. He might admit that. might.
Brannon shook his head, looking from Luke to Alana, "I don't know. I don't know if there is a way to find out without being bitten. I'm not sure anyone even knows what it is that actually makes a person immune, yet. And to be honest, I don't know if it's hereditary or not. I don't know a lot about it. I just know that back in November," He nodded to Alana and her question about being shot, "this Rookie cop and I made it back to New York City. A week or so before Thanksgiving. Actually, probably about two-ish weeks. Anyway. This guy and I have been stuck together for the last several years. It was that, or not have anyone to cover you, you know? Better to travel with a partner. Always. He was the guy that--you know," he glanced down, shaking his head a bit, "When things started getting bad, my partner had already been bitten. So Chief does what?" His brows furrowed as he thought a moment, "Chief sends me out with this idiot guy who'd only had his badge maybe a week before the outbreak. New guy. Hated his fucking guts the instant I got stuck with him." He looked back up at Luke and then to Alana, "but you know, traveling to Missouri and a few other places with him, yeah," he shrugged, "I kind of grew to sort of like the guy. Tolerate, really. I wouldn't invite him to my Birthday party or anything. But-- All of this is kind of irrelevant. I um.. The rookie and I got back to New York City in November. We were headed into this warehouse over in the garment district, and we were literally mobbed by a bunch of shufflers, and a good handful of runners. So we booked it as fast as we could, and lost a lot of them, but there were these Leapers-- I think that's what they call them. And I think that's what they were. I'm not really sure."
He reached up to motion toward his head, "It's all still kind of blurry. All I remember is that we made it to this fence, I helped the rookie over, tossed him my bag, and started over, myself, I gave the rookie my hand-- he was still at the top of the fence, you know, and with his other hand, he reached for my gun," He motioned to his shoulder holster, pausing a moment to pull the holster away from the side he was shot on to show them, "You can see the bullet hole," He pointed to the hole on the leather, and gave a look back up toward Luke and Alana. "So the guy shoots me, takes my Glock, and lets go of my hand, and everything after that is," He shrugged a bit, "I can't remember. Maybe I don't want to remember. I vaguely remember waking up facedown on the sidewalk, but I don't know if that was right after, or hours later.. days later? I have no idea. Pretty sure it was daylight. And we were headed into that warehouse at night. So to be honest, I can't really tell you what happened. I don't know where the rookie went to. My bag with all of my things is gone. My badge, everything."
He looked over his sister a moment before continuing, "Then I woke up in quarantine at the New York Public Library? They said I'd been unconscious for a while, but that I'd somehow managed to stumble into the safehouse, and survived. Hurt like hell. I spent a while in the infirmary too. Had to go out and find my own antibiotics," He smiled, looking down again, "well. I went looking for them, but I had help finding them." Leah. He'd tell them about Leah soon enough. She was just outside the door. They'd meet her sooner or later.
"What about you guys, huh?" He looked back up, "How much longer in here do you have?"