Author's Note: Wow. I got a lot of reviews for the last chapter…which made me hurry up and write this chapter by the way. See you do make a difference! Thanks. The song from chapter 16 was Pink's "18-Wheeler" from her new albumn. And the next question I'm going to adress...How is not so sane Jondy different from sane Jondy? Well, I mumbled to myself about this for a good ten minutes until I came up with the answer. Less than sane Jondy is more violent than sane Jondy. I hope you guys went and checked out my Jondy and Zane pics that I drew. Do tell me what you thought of them when you review like you know you're supposed to for this chapter. Now I know most of you are going to read this chapter and half way through your gonna go "Noooo!" but trust me it's all for the best.

Review, I'm a junkie looking for her fix…when she should be reading a book for her medieval studies class.

Comin' to Get You

Chapter 18: Daughter of Cacophony

"I don't see anything," Alec said softly straining his eyes to see into the building across the street.

"Everything looks legit," Max grimaced as she watched a truck pull out of the warehouse. One of the very limited signs of life that they had seen the entire day.

"Why would there be unmarked cars for Logan to tell you about and isn't this supposed to be abandoned?" Zane asked shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. They were crouching on the roof of a building directly opposite of the warehouse in question. They had sat there for a good three hours as the sun went down behind them, and nothing seemed to be happening.

"Maybe we have the wrong warehouse," Alec suggested curling his lip slightly.

"No," Max shook her head slowly. "I got a look at Logan's map. This is the warehouse."

"I doesn't make sense," Alec agreed with a nod, his brow furrowing as he glanced at Max. "What should we do?"

"Fall back and look for another lead maybe?"

Zane held up a hand, "Can we try for a closer look? I just want to make sure." Wide green eyes met brown and then blue and all Max and Alec could do was nod. They shouldered the backpacks they had let fall to the ground and made their way down the backside of the building they had set up on and took alleyways to the warehouse in question, despite their misgivings they still didn't want to be seen.

"You'd think they would have realized overcrowding the business district was a bad idea…these buildings almost touch," Alec grumbled when they were finally standing beside the warehouse.

"You'd think they would have learned their lesson from the 1500s," Zane agreed with a nod, running a hand along the brick wall looking for an entrance.

"What are you talking about?" Max asked, her lips curling slowly.

"Market places and towns inside castles were usually wood and built with little room to spare," Zane explained absently. "Fire's had a tendency to break out and very little could be done about putting them out. Not much of a history buff are you?" He glanced at her with a smile.

"No…I never thought it was that important." She followed his lead and walked around the corner of the building, Alec trailing along behind smirking.

"History will repeat itself if you don't pay attention to it," he muttered under his breath.

"Shut up."

"I'm just sayin'."

"Shut up, Alec."

"Some things never change," he opened his mouth to say something more but a glare from Zane made him snap it shut.

"There should be more doors than this," Max said with a shake of her head. "It's like they put brick over where the doors."

"There are windows," Alec supplied blithely, smiling sweetly at Max.

"The problem being most of them have bars on them."

Zane shrugged and held up a finger pointing to the roof, "we can try another way."

"So we scale the wall," Max said with a shrug and got a rope out of her backpack.

"Saying Jondy is here what happens when someone looks out a window?"

"My guess would be duck," Zane said with a glare.

Alec pursed his lips and shrugged with a sigh, "Right, forgot about that option."

Zane glanced at Max with a smirk; "Your boyfriend talks a lot."

"Nah, really?" She threw her rope, tied to a grappling hook, onto the roof and pulled it with the full weight of her body. When it held she smiled at the two men, "you comin' or not?"

They both followed her example and followed her up to the roof of the building. Alec paused halfway up to glance in a window with a groan; "I don't see anyone in this place."

"Would you stop complaining and keep climbing?" Max slapped his arm gently.

"But that's no fun, Maxie."

"You 'accidentally' falling to the ground, when I kick your ass, won't be any fun either."

"Sometimes I wonder if you really care," he pouted and batted his insanely long lashes at her.

"Shut up," Zane hissed suddenly, his head cocked to the side. "I hear something."

Max and Alec exchanged a glance before cocking their heads as well. For a long moment they didn't hear anything and there was a soft mumbling of a song. So low that they almost couldn't hear it. "Someone's singing 'Rock-a-bye,'" Alec said more to himself than anyone else.

"Jondy's singing 'Rock-a-bye," Zane said with a grin.

"How do you know?" Zane just looked at him with one raid eyebrow. "Right, sorry."

"Then we were right she's alive…" Max started with a sigh of relief.

"And heavily drugged," Zane mumbled, at the looks he received he shrugged. "She mumbles songs when she's drugged up…An ER crew back east thought it was the strangest thing they'd ever heard." He smiled, "what? You're surprised?"

Alec smirked, "Not really."

They were climbing again, determined that now they knew Jondy was alive she was going to stay that way. Once on the roof they looked for access into the warehouse; all they found was a vent. Big enough for them to fit into crouching but not big enough for any maneuvering if they got into any trouble. Wiggling his eyebrows and smirking Alec was the first one to drop down into the metal shaft, Zane and Max soon following. The end of their vent lead to overlook the main warehouse, a room large enough to fit all three of their apartments and Logan's with room to spare. To the side was a platform that stood high above the pain floor. The problem was the vent was covered with a metal grate cemented in to the wall.

They tried to dislodge it but the metal wouldn't budge. Footsteps told them that to try more would only get them caught. Five men walked onto the platform with straight backs and stiff lips. Suddenly they heard Jondy's voice, more coherent than fifteen minutes ago, but still fuzzy. "Nobody loves me, Nobody cares, Nobody picks me peaches and pears. Nobody offers me candy and Cokes; Nobody listens and laughs at my jokes. Nobody helps when I get in a fight, Nobody does all my homework at night." All three sat crouched above the scene as they watched Jondy being brought out, her bare feet dragging on the floor as two men carried her by her arms. Her hair hung in a blond and blue cascade over her face and back so that it seem the voice came from no where. "Nobody misses me, Nobody cries, Nobody thinks I'm a wonderful guy. So if you ask me who's my best friend, in a whiz, I'll stand up and tell you that, 'Nobody is.' But yesterday night I got quite a scare, I woke up and Nobody just wasn't there. " Another man followed her watching with narrow eyes as she finished the poem. "I called out and reached out for Nobody's hand, in the darkness where Nobody usually stands. Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook, but I found somebody each place that I looked. I searched till I'm tired, and now with the dawn, there's no doubt about it-- Nobody's gone!"

He turned slowly to talk to one of the original five men and Zane heard Max breathe the name "White."

"You're doing it again," White smiled cruelly down at Jondy. It faltered when she didn't lift her head. "Look at me," he ordered softly.

Jondy lifted her head slowly, her blond hair falling away to reveal wild blue eyes, a knife cut along her cheek and chin, and her lips split in a grotesque grin. It unnerved Zane more than anything else, that grin, she had been pushed over the edge and he started to worry that she would never be able to be pulled back. White was talking again, his voice arrogant and controlled.

"Transgenic freak…"

"Can't come up with something new, hmm?" Jondy asked, blinking up at him serenely.

"As we discussed earlier, man made you…" he tried to go on but once again she interrupted him.

"Mad as a hatter!"

"Excuse me?" His control wavered as he knelt down infront of her.

"They. Made. Me. Mad. As. A. Hatter," she pronounced slowly, leaning in so that her lips were an inch from his. "Are you deaf or stupid?" His fist came out connecting with her stomach; she doubled up around his fist with a grimace. Zane started forward but Max caught his arm, "too many familiars we have to wait."

"They're going to kill her," he whispered back.

"They'll kill us if we go in now," Alec whispered his eyes scanning the area.

Jondy open her mouth to say something, shut it, and then opened it again, "I'd say 'oww' but I'm numb from my neck down." She smiled, "I'm sure if I could feel anything that would have hurt though," she spoke as if she was trying to reassure him, not something he apparently wanted to hear. His fist came out again snapping her head around, her hair once again becoming a veil over her face.

"I told you, X5-210, that I would let you live if you agreed to work with us." He smiled coldly and put a hand under her chin to lift it up. "If you don't I'm going to kill you here and now."

Jondy blinked the fire in her eyes growing brighter as she stared at him, "I wasn't very coherent the last time we talked."

"I remember…each day you have a little less animal in you," he commented and lifted an eyebrow, "what of it?"

"I didn't get the chance to ask you what happened to the dog?" The question caught everyone in the room off guard. Zane stared down at her with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging out of his head.

White, however, stopped for a long time to look down at her with narrowed eyes before sneering, "what dog?"

"The one at the apartment, nincompoop, German Shepherd, big, barked a lot, probably bit someone."

"Well, you'll find out if you take the job."

"We were right about him wanting her to help him," Max whispered to Alec.

"She's not going to take the deal though," Alec hissed back, his stomach dropping as he watched White lean in and whisper something too low for any of them to hear it.

Jondy smiled electric eyes flashing and stuck her tongue out at him before she started to sing, "You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What power? The power of voodoo. Who do? You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe."

"Shut her up," White told the men, sighing as though the last day with Jondy had been exhausting. Something in the back of his mind told Zane that it probably had been.

"I saw my baby crying, hard as babes could cry. What could I do? My babies love had gone and left my baby blue. No body knew what kind of magic spell to use. Slime or snails or puppy dog tails. Thunder or lightening. And baby said, 'dance magic dance' magic... " Her song was cut off suddenly when a man kicked her from behind, an 'oof' falling from her lips instead of music, causing her to fall out of the other two men's grasps. A red head bent to pick her up but before anyone realized what was happening she had turned and snapped his neck in one easy motion. Her foot lashed out, her bare foot connecting with one of her captors' faces. She stood in one fluid motion, a cat turned human, with a gun in her hand from the dead man and backed away from the other men. "I might have exaggerated about not having any feeling below my neck," she admitted with a smile.

Zane, Max, and Alec struggles with the grate, pushing their whole bodies into the effort to tear it away, but it didn't move. "Get it open," Zane hissed gun shots, ringing through the warehouse impossibly loud, covering his voice.

One man went down, blood running down from one perfect hole in the middle of his forehead. Jondy was at the edge of the platform, her elbow snapping one man's head around as her knee met with a sickening thud in another's groin. Alec stopped for a long moment to look down at her, one hand wrapped around someone's neck and a snarl ripped from her throat, and saw for a terrifying moment the trapped animal she would have been if she hadn't escaped Manticore when she did. She was turning with her fist just barely touching a blonde's chin when another gunshot rang out.

She froze for a split second before turning and crumpling. Zane's eyes moved of there own violation to rest on White who stood with his gun outstretched and his face blank. Eyes, so bright that Zane could see the color perfectly from his perch, went wide with shock at the impact. He would have screamed except for the hands that covered his mouth and held him back. The world had suddenly gone into slow motion. Zane couldn't hear anything, he saw mouths move but no voices intruded on the perfect silence in his head as he watched her. It seemed forever that Jondy stood there hunched over herself before she toppled. One slender foot slipping and then the other.

She was falling forever, her body floating down to the floor while one hand reached into the air as if she could find a beam of light substantial enough to hold her weight. Her mouth gapped as she stared at the dwindling ceiling in wonder.

Cat reflexes turned her over so that she landed on her feet with a dull thud, but the bones that should have been there disappeared from her body and she slid to the ground. One hand tried to hold her up, while the other held the unseen wound, but it too was suddenly boneless and couldn't support the inexplicable weight of her full body.

She lay on her stomach, eyes as blue as lightening opened wide blinked once and then closed. The metallic smell of blood hung heavy in Zane's nose; he could see the tears glistening in Max's eyes from the corner of his own. He refused to tear his eyes from the sight of Jondy's still form to look over at Alec farther back behind him.

As he watched she stilled, her back stopped moving, stopped swelling with the intake of air and apparently the men in long coats and fake police badges were thinking the same thing he was.

"Check to see if she's alive," White ordered with a sneer. Scrambling down a set of stairs to the ground below one man knelt next to the body, and Zane choked on the description that his own traitorous mind offered. But the shake of the man's head, his fingers still against the place where her pulse should have been, confirmed it. White cursed under his breath and started to walk back the way he had come earlier.

"Sir, the body?" The man still kneeling next to her asked.

"What about it?" White asks coldly, turning with one eyebrow raised.

"What do you want us to do with it?"

"Leave it," he snapped.

"Leave it? But, sir…"

"You heard me, it's useless to us now," White sighed down at another body. "She managed to kill two more of my men before she went down…collect their bodies and let's go."

The man looked back at the still body one last time before he followed the others in picking up the two dead men and filing out. Leaving one body in a cold heap on the floor.

It was a lifetime before the left and it was another lifetime before they could get out of the vent. Alec got a knife out of his backpack and attacked the sheet metal that made the walls of their prison, cursing with every pound of his fist and knife, barely holding back tears as he worked. No one talked as they made their way across the rafters and onto the platform. Zane paused at the edge of the steps; not sure he could make that last and final walk down to where the body of the one constant in his life lay still and cold.

He felt a light hand on his arm and looked up into impossibly large watery brown eyes. He opened his mouth to say something to her but all that he could manage was a strangled whimper before he turned away and started down the stairs, with his fists clenched at his side. Tears were already leaving trails down his face as he rounded the platform's corner to come face to face with the corpse that had been Jondy.

Heavy eyelashes fell in crescent moon on her cheeks, already drained of color. He fell to his knees next to her; not paying any attention to the blood that was suddenly soaking through his jeans. Brushing a hand across her cheek, he pulled a strand of hair from her face. His breath came in raged gasps as he tried not to scream when he touched cold unfeeling flesh.

Dimly he realized that people were sitting around him. With cold green eyes he looked up to see Alec touching Jondy's outstretched hand slowly, reverently, as though touching her would make this ghastly scene real. Max sat next to him, wanting to touch her but terrified to feel the cold skin that had been so warm earlier, so she clutched at Alec's arm in an act of desperation to be grounded in the real world. Zane wrenched his eyes away, with the surety and knowledge that if he didn't stop looking at the dead face lying on the floor he would go insane.

His hands fisted in his hair as he held back his sobs, doubled over his eye clenched shut he felt a keening wail rise in his throat. He heard a gasp behind him, full and throaty and resonating through the room because it didn't belong; didn't fit into the numb silence. He turned and green eyes meet wide wide blue ones and then brown. Alec's mouth hung gaping open and so did Max's but as he watched them a nagging in the back of his mind told him that it wasn't them that had gasped.

"I'm melting. I'm melting." A high pitched voice proclaimed in a four star performance of the wicked witch of the west. His eyes flitted down slowly to meet Electric blue, "Oh what a world what a world." Lips that were turning a bright red finished, her cheek smashed up against the floor. "I'm not dead yet you, little prick."

Zane couldn't seem to move fast enough, fumbling with her body to turn her over as he lifted her into his arms. "Oh my God, Jondy…" he choked out as he heard the hysterical laughter of Alec and Max dimly in the background.

One corner of Jondy's lips lifted slowly," I take it you never learned that trick." She pulled the hand away that had clutched at her side to reveal the deep gash that the bullet scraping against her side had left. "It's just a flesh wound."

Zane blinked down at her, his mouth hanging open as he looked down at her innocent blue eyes and wide grin and lost it. "If you ever scare me like that again, I swear, you won't be able to move for a month!"

Jondy laughed but clutched at her side again with a grimace. "I feel loved." She felt Alec touch her face and turned to face him and Max with a smile. "You weren't worried or anything were you? You should know me well enough to know I'm going out with way more style than that."

A.N. 2: Tell me the truth did I get ya? Did you think I had actually killed her?