Chapter Sixteen:
Sunrise
Hugging her knees closer to her chest, Jondy sighed and looked down through the darkness at the lights of Seattle. Her acute senses missed nothing on the streets below. Hundreds of feet beneath her, a woman in a short, tight red leather skirt made her way down the sidewalk. She had removed her skyscraper heels and walked barefoot, her shoes in one hand and her purse in the other. She looked exhausted, as if she had been working all night, and Jondy didn't have to ask what the woman did for a living.
About a block further down, a homeless man slept beside a trashcan, tossing and turning fitfully in his sleep. Fingers sticking out through holes in his gloves, he reached up to tug the worn blanket farther up over his shoulders and slept on.
The sounds of another day in the city were already beginning. For the last hour she had watched partiers straggle into their homes. Some spoke with slurred speech, some wove a bit as they walked, and some were already preparing to leave for another day at work. Sighing, she looked off to the east, but only darkness could be seen. It didn't really matter, though because dawn was coming in an hour or two, and she wasn't sure just how she felt about that.
Her sensitive hearing detected movement behind her, and she hung her head and looked down at her hands. She didn't need to turn to see who it was. Without a word, Max sat down beside her sister and assumed a similar position, her eyes scanning the city below. After a moment of silence, Jondy took a deep breath and spoke.
"I didn't kill him, Max." She almost jumped at the sound of her own voice. She hadn't realized how quiet it was up here.
Max leaned closer to her sister. She'd had a rough night. "No, you didn't. Bleed took care of that," but Jondy shook her head.
"Not Perez. Brian. I didn't kill Brian." Max gave her sister a bewildered look. Jondy frowned and looked out over the city once more. "All this time, I've thought it was my fault. I was the one who exposed him. If it hadn't been for my carelessness, Perez would never have known who he was. I did that, so even if Perez did pull the trigger, I was the one who was responsible." Max shook her head.
"No, Jondy. It wasn't your fault. It was never your fault." She put her arm around Jondy's shoulders. Jondy lowered her head to look down at her hands once again.
"I know that now," she finally said. "Standing there tonight, with that gun in my hand, I realized that I could have ended it all. I could have just taken him out of this world, and he would never have had the chance to hurt another human being again. I kept saying over and over again, 'this is the man who killed Brian,' and that's when it hit me. How could I have killed Brian? I didn't pull the trigger. I didn't make that decision." She paused, a tear sliding down one cheek. "Do you know how badly I wanted to shoot that bastard?" she whispered. "Only I couldn't. I couldn't just shoot an unarmed man in anger, no matter what he'd done to me. Then I wouldn't be any better than he was, and then I would have been the killer." She shuddered for a moment. "We've spent our lives running from what we were made to be." She turned her head to look her sister in the eye for the first time since she'd joined her. "When I realized what was going through my head, I thought I was going to be sick." She rested her head on Max's offered shoulder, and they sat in silence for a few moments.
"You know what? I thought that when Perez was dead all this would be over." She sighed. "I was wrong. It didn't bring Brian back, and nothing ever will." She swallowed back her tears. "But maybe now I can start figuring out just how to live with that."
Several more moments of silence passed, and Max was torn between two feelings. She kept thinking how tonight might have turned out differently. What if something had happened to Logan? What if . . . She shuddered at the thought, but that merely brought on the second feeling. If she placed herself in Jondy's position, if she imagined Brian's death as Logan's, it wasn't hard to understand what Jondy was feeling, and the intensity of it frightened her, but it also made her proud. Jondy wasn't giving up. It didn't bring Brian back, and nothing ever will, but maybe now I can start figuring out just how to live with that . . . Max smiled ruefully. Jondy was determined to go on with her life. Brian loved her, she thought, and it's what he would want her to do.
"So," Jondy finally said, breaking the silence as she raised her head. "How's Logan?"
"I think he's okay. Just another day in the life of Eyes Only." Max gave a sad little grin.
"I know I high-tailed it out of there. I didn't mean to be rude. I just figured you two needed some privacy."
Max frowned and looked out over the city. "With this stupid virus, it's not like it would make any difference."
Jondy glanced sideways at her sister. "Oh, so if it weren't for the virus . . . " she teased, raising an eyebrow. There was a moment of silence before they both broke into giggles. Just like schoolgirls, Jondy thought, but Max shook her head and sobered. "It doesn't matter anyway. It's still there." Jondy put an arm around her sister's shoulders and squeezed.
"Don't worry, you guys are gonna get it all straight somehow."
Max shook her head. "That's what Original Cindy keeps saying. Joshua, too."
"Joshua?"
Max gave her sister a bewildered look, suddenly realizing that there were a lot of things she hadn't told Jondy about the last few months, including her time at Manticore. She hadn't volunteered the information, she realized, and Jondy had been afraid to ask, afraid that she might bring up some ugly subject that Max didn't want to talk about. She shook her head. "Actually, Joshua helped me escape from Manticore . . . "
And with that, Max began to weave her tale, filling Jondy in on her months back at Manticore, labs, tests, and creepy X7's that communicated with each other ultrasonically. About Joshua, about Alec . . . and about Zack. They talked about Brin and Tinga, and then moved on to Eyes Only and the origin of the hideous virus. He really must love her, Jondy thought with an inward grin, to have had Eyes Only take on Manticore single-handedly. Max was definitely lucky to have a guy like that.
She shared Max's confusion over Sandeman and her DNA. She frowned over the idea of White, but shared the same skepticism over Lydecker's change of loyalties that she had with Krit. She just couldn't quite believe that the same man who had shot Eva had been so angry over Tinga's death. Max finished her tale as the first beams of light began to peak over the eastern horizon. They both fell silent.
"Brian and I used to watch sunrises together." Jondy hugged her knees to her chest and looked out towards the east. Suddenly, somewhere deep inside, it felt as if he were still there . . . "I stopped watching them after he died. I haven't seen one since." Max frowned.
"Do you want to go?" she asked as she began to rise.
Jondy grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. "No. No. I think I want to see this one." I want to see this for Brian. I want to remember the good times, just once, without remembering the pain. Max watched as a small smile lit her sister's face, and together, they watched her first sunrise in over a year and a half.
That morning, Max took Jondy to meet Joshua. He greeted her with a handshake, proclaiming with a sniff that "Max sister Jondy" had "cat in her cocktail."
"Don't hold it against me," she had responded. He and Max seemed to find this amusing, although Jondy couldn't quite understand why. Though Jondy was more than a little surprised at first, she was certainly charmed by his gentility. Joshua seemed too sweet and kind to have come from Manticore, but she was even more surprised to find that he was reading Black Beauty, which she discussed with him for over an hour. Having read the book years before, she could still remember it nearly word for word, and she was actually a little sad to leave several hours later. Somehow he reminded her a little of Zane.
When Max decided to swing by Logan's later that afternoon, Jondy elected to stay at the apartment, wiggling her eyebrows up and down as she explained to Max that she thought they needed privacy. For that, she had received a sharp jab in the arm as Max left the apartment. "Use protection!" she joked as Max vanished out the door.
But the apartment seemed empty after she left. Original Cindy was at work, and Milly didn't seem to be interested in anything unless it was food or sleep. "Some conversationalist you are, Milly," she told the sleeping cat, who merely opened one eye at the mention of her name before closing it again and returning to her nap. Apparently Jondy just wasn't interesting enough for the cat. Sighing, she grabbed her coat and went to take a walk.
Strange, she thought as she made her way along the street. Somehow it just doesn't hurt the same anymore. The pain's still there, but it's . . . different. She glanced skyward for the millionth time since Brian's death, wondering if there was a God, a heaven, some odd chance that she just might see him again. All this time I've been blaming myself, begging you to forgive me for what I did to you. Brian, I used to think I killed you. Funny, huh? She swallowed and returned her attention to the street in front of her as she walked on. God, but I loved you. I still do, really. Do you know that Brian? Do you know how much? We were gonna have a baby, Brian, but I guess you know that already, don't you? If you're really up there, give her a kiss for me, okay? A tear slid down her cheek. "If I could go back in time and make it so that we never met, so that I didn't have to live with this, I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't give up a moment of my time with him, no matter what's happened since." I told that to someone once, and you know what? It's true. She sighed, watching an elderly man and woman walking by hand in hand. For so long, all I've been able to remember was you dying in my arms, and I'm trying to remember the good times, the way you used to watch me when you came into the bar every night, the way you looked at me the first time you kissed me, the sunrises we watched together.
I stopped him, Brian. Well, Max and Tacoma Bleed and I did. It's over. He won't ever hurt anybody else again. And you know what? We saved Logan, too. Remember how you told me about him once? You were right, he really is a nice guy, and believe it or not, he's in love with my baby sister. Ironic, isn't it? Remember how you always said that life was ironic? She paused to watch a group of little girls playing hopscotch on the cracked sidewalk. But he loves her, Brian. You can just see it in his eyes, and sometimes it hurts because I remember how you used to look at me that way. It's hard for them though, because Manticore gave Max this virus thing, and that pretty much put a damper on things, but he loves her anyway. He knew what she was from the moment he met her, but it didn't matter to him, just like it didn't matter to you. Guess that friend of a friend lab tech was more of a matchmaker than . . .
Suddenly she froze in her tracks. "Lab tech," she said it out loud, not caring who heard. "Son of a bitch. Jondy, can you honestly get any denser?" she asked herself. Turning in her tracks, she jogged back to the payphone she'd passed about a block back. She had to hold back the urge to sprint there at her top speed, but she was afraid to draw unnecessary attention to herself.
Thinking back, she remembered the series of tones she had once heard Brian dial. Picking up the phone, she punched the buttons from memory. A woman answered.
"Jolene? No, don't hang up. It's Jondy. Jondy McAllister . . . yeah . . . Brian's Jondy . . . yeah, I know, but I'm okay. What about you? . . . great, great . . . hey, I was wondering if you could do me a little favor . . . "