Nick woke up to the sound of the alarm clock. It was a pretty old, mechanic one, but at least it was a reliable time source. Its annoying ringing did its job, the fox was already out of bed within a few seconds. It was 6 in the morning, but he already heard, a lot of mammals walking around outside, and talking to each other. He stretched his arms, gave a huge yawn, and made his way toward his kitchen to make coffee while being careful not to hit his head on the low door-post. Coffee was pretty hard to find these days, so if he wanted to he could have traded it for something else, but the daily dose of caffeine sounded way better. Maybe if things get harder, than he would consider trading it away, but until then, he enjoyed the slight energy boost in the morning.

He poured the liquid into his mug and started sipping from it, as he looked outside. Bunnyburrow was probably the last remaining sign of the civilization, besides Sahara Square, where the virus for some reason didn't get to. You would think they helped the survivors outside of the city, but you would be wrong. They are more scared of the virus getting in, so they isolated themselves as much as they could. They blew up every tunnel that could lead there, so there was no way in or out. At the start, they did help from planes, but with time the support packages started to land less often and in the end, it stopped completely.

The rainforest district was flooded after the ventilation system stopped. All the ice and snow melted in Thundra Town and the water made its way down there, to the rainforest district. The higher points still remained untouched but most of it disappeared under the water. The most dangerous place was Downtown and savanna central, the place where the outbreak probably happened. It was a complete suicide if you wanted to go there. Prey would fell victim to one of the infected predators, in no time, and predators would catch the infection probably during the first hours they are walking in there. Long story short, it would be bad for either side to visit that place.

He took another sip as he looked at the nearby wooden buildings and the one that's being built at the moment. They belonged to arrived survivals, mostly herbivores, but there were a few, where carnivores lived. During the 3 years, about 110 healthy predators showed up, searching for a place to live, and to escape from the virus. Not everyone was pleased with the idea of course. Accepting in more predators also meant more risk. They looked at them as timed bombs that could blow up in any minute, but fortunately, not everyone shared this point of view. Most of the animals were pretty accepting towards them, as long as they helped the community. With daily check-ups and a serum, they reduced the chance of surprise attacks. The serum itself wasn't enough to prevent the virus spreading in a host once it got there, but it was good to prevent the virus from spreading to someone. However, it wasn't a permanent solution. Within 1 or 2 days, the effect would wear off and everyone had to get their dose again.

Nick looked at the clock. It was barely past 6:10 but if he wanted to have time for breakfast he had to go now, or he had to wait until noon, so he drank the last drops of coffee he still had and stepped outside. It was a rather cold day, with a few clouds on the sky. The fox took a huge breath from the fresh air and made his way towards the place, where almost everyone started their day.

"We have a little bit a food shortage, huh?" He asked from the mammal who portioned the food to every predator. Looking at the suspiciously high amount of salad he got to the bugs it wasn't a hard thing to guess

"Don't look at me like that." The antelope said, "They told me to give this amount of food, believe me I would give more if I could."

"Yeah… I guessed so. Thanks anyway." He sighed and walked to the tables, he knew there was no point in asking for more. Despite the fact that it was early in the morning, almost all the tables were full. Chatter and laughter were heard from everywhere, nobody was worried about anything, it was almost like a perfect day. He spotted a certain bunny sitting alone, while hardly thinking about something. When he got closer, he saw a calculator, and a paper in front of her, with a lot of numbers written on it, and

"Wow. Judy Hopps with a Calculator… Not an everyday sight" He said and sat down in front of the bunny who just gave a slight smile.

"Yeah it might be a surprise but I'm not a robot to memorize everything," Judy said, while still typing in numbers into the machine, and in the end, she wrote down a huge 18. Telling by her expression, she wasn't really pleased with the outcome

"18? What's that?" Nick asked and tried to chew on a lettuce leaf but failed to do so, as it stuck on his teeth.

"I don't know If I should tell you..." She sighed "You shouldn't even have seen it."

"Is it about the food?" He asked and looked at his small portion again. "Tell it to me as a friend. I promise I won't cause any panic."

Judy looked at her calculations once more, searching for any mistakes she might have made and finally spoke "Yes it is about the food. It's just so hard to find enough for this many predators. We don't have problems making food for herbivores… but you guys… you are a completely different story..."

"Yeah… Tell me about it." Nick muttered, pushed away the vegetables on his plate and picked up the fried bugs.

"If the searching groups won't find a more efficient way to find food for carnivores… We are in big trouble."

"Well… There is always a solution even if not everybody likes it..."

"Don't… Don't even bring it up. We are not going to push out every predator outside to the danger zone, to force them to survive on their own, without any help. It's not happening."

"I was talking about hunting down preys, but yeah that works too." Nick said but after seeing Judy's face he added "I'm joking. Jeez you know I wouldn't do such a thing."

Judy rolled her eyes, took the paper from the table, folded it in half and pocketed it. "Let's talk about something else. How's your head?" She asked and started to eat her portion of food.

"It's better. The painkiller, you gave me helped a lot."

"Did you report it to the Doc, as I told you to do?"

"For him to overreact everything? No, I didn't, because It was nothing."

"You can't just ignore it…. You know how it always starts… Headache… Increased aggression… Fever..."

"I'm completely fine. IF I was infected I would already shout at everyone for minor things, like breathing too loudly, or looking at me for too long, but as you can see too, I'm fine."

"Nick..." Judy gave out a painful sigh "You should still mention it to..."

"I'm not infected, end of story" Nick closed the conversation and looked at his remaining salad. "Do you need it?"

"Don't be a kid, eat your vegetables nicely, it's full of nutrition."

"Maybe for you…"The Fox said while looking disgusted at a salad leaf." Look, If you don't need It, I'll just give it to someone else, or throw it in the trash. Your choice."

Judy shook her head and tried to bring up more logical reasons why Nick should eat his breakfast fully, but she gave up and finally reached for the plate. "Fine, but no candies for the baby. And don't complain that you are hungry."

"Oh, believe me, the baby will be just fine without those green things. Anyway, what's the plan for today?"

"Well, Bogo said he will send out more teams than usual, and I guess we are in one of those just like every day before, so… Prepare for the journey."

"Well then, I will visit the Doc for my daily dose of antizin or whatever it is." Nick stood up and waved goodbye to his partner. "See you in an hour or so."

"See you."

The lab wasn't that far away from the tables, only about 5 minutes of walk. It was there long before the epidemic started, it was Bunnyburrow's only laboratory for years, and they mainly used it to keep chemistry lessons there, or make experiments. After the outbreak, a doctor, called Dr Daniel Darin Cross moved in to continue his research on the virus. Unfortunately, the lab itself wasn't well equipped for things like this, so it really held back his research, and so far there was no sign of any hope that they could find the antidote.

"Come in." Can be heard from inside after Nick knocked.

"Hey, Doc! I just came for my daily checkup." Nick responded and looked around. The clearness of this lab always amazed him, but as Dr. Cross said, you can't work in a mess, especially if you need to work with chemicals.

"Oh, Mr. Wilde. How's my favorite patient doing?" He asked from behind his computer. It was one of the few houses where they had electricity, generated by backup generators. It helped Daniel to organize his things, and help a bit in the research too.

"Well, I'm still holding up," Nick answered and looked a paper, that was placed on the table. It was full with complex compound names, that Daniel probably used for the serum, and was running low on those recently.

"I'm glad you do." He said and prepared the syringe. "Give me a few seconds."

"Is this what you need the teams to bring back?" Nick Pointed at the paper

"What?" The sheep looked up from his work "Oh yes. Underlined things are very important, without those, I won't be able to produce more of the 'serum' you call it. Those are shouldn't be hard to find though. But please don't bring back Hydrochloric acid instead of Sulfuric acid again. Believe me or not, they are not the same thing, and no I can't replace it just because they both have 'acid' in their name."

"Well, I always hated chemistry, so I have no clue what these things are, but I'll pass the info to the others."

"You just need to understand it and you will even love doing that."

"Yeah… Thanks but... I'll pass. The only thing I learned from Chemistry class, was to never touch anything that has 'acid' in their name."

"Ready?" The Doc asked after giving a slight smile but didn't wait for the answer. He took a few drops of blood and walked back to his desk to check it. "And how's your head by the way?" He asked after he took a look a look at the sample. Now he was waiting for Nick's response.

"How…" The fox started but immediately realized what was going on. It was obvious, since, there was only one other mammal who knew about it "Judy…" He sighed, closed his eyes, and wished he had never said his slight headache to anyone.

"Yes. That bunny has more responsibility than you do, that's for sure."

"I keep telling, it was nothing. I seriously can't believe it. You can't even cough without at least somebody telling you, you are infected. Yes, I had a smaller headache. Then what?"

"Then what?" David looked up in disbelief " I think you don't understand the seriousness of this. There are at least 2 Preys every day, who come in just to tell me, I should replace the Antrioxin-Nitrate to some poison just to get rid of the 'threat' as they say it, but I stand out for all of you, taking all the responsibility. If you just ignore one of the major symptoms, you would basically laugh in the face of everyone."

"If I was infected..." Nick started but got cut off by David.

"Yes, I know, you would be in the aggressive phase, don't try to explain it to me. I spend almost all of my spare time studying the virus and it's mutations but this is not the point. When that symptom comes up, it means we are already late, and every predator here have been infected by you, or someone else, that you infected previously. The least you could do to prevent this, is report to me EVERYTHING, even if you need to wake me up in the middle of the night. Okay?"

"You're the boss." Nick shrugged in the end. He had nothing else to say

"You are clear by the way. There is no sign of infection in the early stage, but still. Tell me everything, we can't be cautious enough."

"All right, all right. I'm Sorry."

"Are you going outside today?" David changed the subject and prepared another syringe.

"Yes. I will be in a team too, probably."

"All right than… 6 ml should do it." He claimed as he filled the syringe with the blue liquid. "Don't worry, I won't poison you."

"I was about to ask you to not."

"Aaaand, We are done here. And remember…"

"Report everything, yeah I know… Don't worry doc, when I'm about to go on a rampage, you will be the first to know about it." Nick said and before he could receive an answer he already closed the door behind himself.