Background

Born in New York City in the year 1971 Jorge found himself growing up surrounded by violence and crime in the evergrowing city. His parents did their best to keep him out of trouble. Still, he always seemed to find himself in the midst of it, whether it was sneaking out at night to hang out with his buddies after dark, breaking up fights between the shit heads down the block, or starting some himself he became something of a nuisance to both his parents and of the ones of his friends, garnering the reputation as someone who you couldn't say anything to or his friends without it coming back to bite you in the ass, even as an overreaction. But like most kids, he grew out of it and matured to focus on things someone like him *should*. Developing quicker than most kids his age he found himself standing a foot above the rest and being someone people came to when they wanted to scare another kid straight by having Jorge be the 'big friend'. This however skewed his perspective on personal relations and he soon got used to the idea that people only really seemed to find themselves around him when they needed his size and not *him*. This mindset stuck with him through high school where he found himself torn between two choices- the police academy or the army but after an unexpected house fire that left his mother severely injured he decided that he wanted to put the strength that people came to him for, for good- he studied and jumped through all the hoops he had to graduate to work in fire rescue, clad in yellow and black he found his calling putting himself in danger to try and help, save or prevent others from suffering a fate like or worse than his mother. For a while this was his purpose, it was what he found himself being made for but as one could expect the outbreak threw a wrench into his plans. His department was flooded with calls for help as the local police were overwhelmed and in his time he witnessed many acts of violence. Husbands attacking their own families, sons and daughters clawing at one another, animals off the streets snarling and growling while scared children tried not to set them off. He found his supposed "strength" meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, he couldn't stop the deaths of hundreds- thousands of people he would even glance at in the streets as it all fell to chaos. He remembers his father calling him while he was in a fire engine responding to a call from a landlord who had supposedly set fire to his apartment after a dozen of his tenants began to attack each other in the lobby. His father told him that he was heading to the hospital where his mother was being kept to get her out and shelter back home and for Jorge to join them, he regretted being so hasty in his reply and not talking to him for a second more as he never found his mother or father back home when he returned, only needing to research a small amount to realize that the hospital was one of the worst places hit with gruesome scenes being described by those lucky enough to escape in one piece. So with no family left and no way of contacting those who needed him, he decided to set off with a few trusted friends both from his station and the neighborhood creating a group known as 'Station 9'. A friend by the name of Sasha who he became quite close began to teach him her language to pass the time in between the risky job of going outside into the streets or dealing with, he didn't take to speaking Russian quite so easily as his pronunciation was frankly shit but he could understand the basic characters and sayings so if he were to hypothetically visit her country he'd be able to manage. They defended their block with their lives, they had become so used to dealing with those infected that many of them including Jorge had already killed them in self-defense so this was nothing new, it didn't please them but it didn't bring them down. This was for their survival. They had all agreed not to kill other healthy people though, this ultimately may have been their downfall as Jorge thinks it was one of the rats they let go who led an entire bandit group back to them in the middle of the night, their sheer numbers overwhelming them and whatever night shift they had to defend them. He only escaped thanks to having taken a walk- but seeing the sight of his station he was afraid to return, all his strength couldn't do anything to save his family, his new family. So he ran, he ran and scrounged for scraps knowing that if this group found him they'd likely want to finish him off so he took all that he had, all that he could pawn off, and bit by bit he got enough money to buy his way out of the city the safest way he thought, the land was too dangerous so maybe by the water would be safer...an island he had heard in passing, Braddock island. It was a shitty boat ride and he had only the bare minimum on his back when he got off the boat, he was alone but at least he was somewhere else people hopefully wouldn't try to kill him.