The other base wasn't exactly the same as the previous one. It didn't have halls, rooms, or anything - just houses, and one larger white building in the corner. The houses looked the same as the old ones, but other than that, it was completely different.
"No rooms?" This would make JJ's vision of intense isolation harder than he'd originally anticipated. "Whatever, that's not important. This can still work. I just need to find a place where-"
"JJ?" Mikey whispered, tugging on JJ's sleeve. Agitated at the interruption, he was about to scold him when he noticed that he looked nervous. "The people in those houses won't stop staring at us."
"We're new here; of course they're going to look at us." JJ responded bluntly. Before he could go back to thinking, Mikey talked again, frustrating him further.
"No, no- they're not just staring normally. They look scared. It's giving me a bad feeling, JJ. Let's just see your son and leave as soon as we can."
Just then, JJ remembered the excuse he'd come up with to get Mikey to follow him down here. In reality, Connor wasn't the reason he came, but now that they were here, they might as well go see him. Dropping his annoyance for now, he walked over to the houses to start looking with Mikey close at his heels.
"Are they even here? Are we in the right place?" Mikey whispered, clearly unsettled by everything. It was so quiet here compared to the other base.
"They were in the parking garage with us when this all started, and they weren't in the same base as us when we were split. That means they're here."
"At least we won't be searching for long. There are very little houses here."
"Of course its dully populated," Tracing back to a certain memory, JJ turned to Mikey with a subtly haunted look. "Not many people survived December 23rd, 2023."
Realizing the mistake of bringing that up, Mikey took the lead and kept searching in order to move past the conversation. At one point, he found someone questionable.
"That's Alexa, right?" Mikey asked. Upon looking in the window with him, JJ recognized her almost instantly. Except, something was off.
Connor wasn't with her.
"Where else could he be?" The fact that they'd come all the way here just to find no rooms or his son was all starting to build up. "What kind of idiot mother doesn't keep her own son with her?"
Too frustrated to think properly, JJ ran around to the other side of the house and tried to bust his way in. The door turned out to be locked, which infuriated him further, and he prepared to take out all of his anger on the stupid piece of wood. But before he could make the first hit, the door opened.
"What are you doing here?" Alexa demanded, warily eyeing her surroundings. "You shouldn't be here; neither of you should. It's too-"
"I'm here to see Connor." JJ interrupted, pushing her aside and looking around inside the house. "Why isn't he with you?"
"Connor?" The name seemed to catch her off guard. She looked down and didn't answer his question, which irritated JJ.
"Is it really that hard to answer me?" He demanded, his frustration through the roof right now. "Or are you hiding something? Are you still bitter about me taking my own kid on a trip to the city? Fuck that! Tell me where he is, now!"
"I can't."
"You sure as hell can! And if you don't, I'm going to move past just asking."
"You don't want to know."
