Who: Jondy, Alec and Max What: Jondy and Alec find Max When: Tonight Where: A mall in San Diego, CA Warnings: No
Alec and Jondy had been on the road for almost a month now. Steve had given her his motorcycle which was a welcome surprise. The bike put Alec's to shame since Iron Man had worked on it himself. It came with all the bells and whistles. She tried not to brag too hard about it but every once in awhile when Alec was being really obnoxious she would do something on the bike to show off, to remind him that she had the superior one. The two of them had over their weeks together on the road, their long rides, campfires, slaying hordes of zombies, become very close. At least as close as two transgenics would allow themselves to get. Emotions, feelings like relationships were foreign concepts to the way they had been designed, to the way they were raised and the lifestyles they had to maintain before the outbreak. Some habits were hard to shake.
Surprisingly it didn't take Alec long to open up to Jondy about Rebekah and Faith and how confusing his feelings for both of them were. Despite his rather lackluster outward attitude towards the two women, Jondy could feel the intensity in him. Alec had become the standard to which Jondy held herself in an odd way. She had never been in love she didn't think or at least she had never felt the kind of intensity she was feeling from Alec now. She had cared for Kol, they had given each other a certain something that they both needed at the time but it wasn't love, not really. Kol ran hot and proud and Jondy ran cold and calculated. They cancelled each other out. She never could fully understand his extracurricular activities with the hunter girl and Serena, she just knew that they turned her off. It had been easy to leave him because Jondy had spent a lifetime leaving things behind, leaving her family behind, leaving friends and lovers behind. She never looked back.
Alec was having a harder time letting go and Jondy felt a little guilty for asking him to come with her when he had so much back in Everett to hold onto. Jondy had Tinga and somewhere on the road in the last month, Alec had replaced the tiger as Jondy's sidekick. Maybe sidekick was the wrong word as her and Alec's relationship was more equal than the one she had shared with her beloved pet. It felt strange to be connected to someone again. Especially someone who looked so much like the big brother she had idolized for so long. It had broken her heart when Zack had told her that Max had killed Ben, that she had been forced to because he had gone insane and was killing people. The choice was Manticore or death and Jondy understood perfectly why Ben had chosen death. She wouldn't let the same thing happen to Alec, she had decided. She would make sure that he stayed on the right path, that the world didn't break him down into the confused killer that his twin had become. She would protect him as if he were her brother. He was Ben's twin which was close enough.
To find Max, they had to find Brin. That was Jondy's reasoning. In her note, Max had said that she had a beat on Brin and was going to try and find her. The last time anyone had seen Brin was when Max had taken out Manticore. Nobody that Jondy or Alec knew of had heard from her since. Starting up and around Seattle and then working north seemed reasonable. The two of them crossed into the Canadian border but hadn't found much. She wasn't disappointed when they turned south and started heading down the coast. The weather got nicer the further south they went. Jondy had gone racing for the south when she had first escaped Manticore. The winter reminded her of her time there as a child. She preferred the endless sunshine.
Strangely enough they found fresh motorcycle tracks right outside San Diego. San Diego Zoo was where Max had found Jondy those months ago when she had been taking care of the animals there. When she had left her and Max had opened the gates and let the animals free. How they survived would be up to nature but it was only fair to give them a fighting chance. Everyone was an endangered species. She hoped that she would run into one of the zoo animals, especially the other tigers. She had no desire to adopt another one, she just wanted a sign that at least one of them had managed to survive somehow in the urban jungle.
They had her scent now and the two of them were expert trackers. Navigating through San Diego was exactly as Jondy remembered it. The place was a ghost town. Nobody had settled down here the way they had in Everett or Canada or Los Angeles. Maybe there was a fringe family or two hiding out somewhere but there had been a mass exodus when the virus had first broken out. Jondy had watched the herds flee from the rooftop of her apartment. For the first time, she wasn't the one running.
"What do you think the chances are of us finding Max and Brin?" Jondy asked as they entered a mall where Max's bike was parked outside. Brin was a sore subject because she had been forced to go back to Manticore to cure her Progeria. While the good doctors at Manticore had cured Brin, they had also brainwashed her and reindoctrinated her into their program. The last time anyone had seen her she was a good little soldier for Manticore, trying to capture Max and take her back. The idea of finding Brin too was both good and bad. But regardless, she was their sister and they would figure out a way to unbrainwash her. Somehow.