Chapter 1: Arrival
Joseph was starving, and the Monster knew it.
He'd been wandering through this barren wood for almost two weeks now, and in that entire time he had eaten nothing but tree bark and pine needles, his only drink the muddy water he found in puddles on the forest floor. The only chance he had at catching anything to eat would be to let the Monster loose, which was exactly what he was trying to avoid at all costs. He knew, however, that he couldn't hold out for much longer—if he didn't eat soon, the Monster would come out, and it would take care of their needs itself.
He could already feel it happening. The gnawing hunger in his unbearably empty stomach was fast being obscured by the fire that was flooding through every cell of his body as the Monster slowly but surely emerged from within. He could feel his bones beginning to crack and reform as it took hold of his body, felt his muscles stretching and the razor-sharp teeth stabbing down through his gums. It felt like the entirety of hell had been unleashed inside his body at once. Knowing that the change couldn't be far off, he could only hope and pray that he was too far away from any kind of civilization to hurt anyone.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Joseph Solomon trudged through the wet, muddy terrain, clogged with fallen leaves, as the deluge of rain continued around him. Each step was more impossible than the last, bringing fresh waves of pain and hunger. Looking up through the half-barren branches of the woods to the lightning-torn sky, Joseph could already notice the edges of his vision becoming blurred and red. He ran his hands up and down his sodden arms, only to find that the scaly skin had already begun to appear. With one last arduous step, Joseph fell to his knees in agony, all his energy gone, and waited for the Monster to take him.
It would come, once again, with its razor-sharp claws, crushing teeth, and a vicious hunger and rage so powerful that it had already claimed the lives of dozens. As he lay in the mud, images that were the only memories he had of when the Monster took over flashed through his mind, making his empty stomach churn and acid rise in his throat. Steel torn by the strength of its claws…a once pristine white lab coat, now shredded and soaked with red…the feeling of soft flesh tearing beneath the force of his jaws, a torrent of hot, salty blood pouring over his tongue…
The wave of grief and remorse that hit him was a thousand times worse than the pain of the change. No, he thought, digging at his belt for the tool he thought would be his salvation. NO. NEVER. AGAIN. From among the sodden folds of his coat he grasped the handle of the hunting knife he'd been carrying for months. He didn't use it for defense - the Monster could take care of that quite well - but for food, on the occasions that he could actually find it. But not this time. No, this time the blade was for him, and him alone.
Joseph unsheathed the shining blade and held the tip to his throat, resting the hilt against the sodden earth so that blade was aimed straight up against his Adam's apple. No more, he thought. I will not live like this anymore. He pressed the blade into his quivering flesh, which was fast being overtaken by the Monster's scales. He had to do it now, or it would be too late. He was ready.
It was time for him to die.
Just as he was about to thrust the blade hilt-deep into his trachea, the pain rippling through his limbs and body increased a million times. He let out a shriek of agony as a spasm tore through his arm, hurling the knife off to the side where it was lost from his rapidly deteriorating vision. The pain choked him, held him down. He lay flat on his stomach, writhing and agony, in so much pain that he could not draw the breath to scream. It was too late. He was going to black out, and he was going to change. As the darkness clouded his vision, Joseph thought he saw something in the distance: a bright light, coming towards him. Oh, please, he thought, thinking that he was dying. Please, let this be the end.
His hopes for death, however, were soon dashed. As the blazing light drew closer, Joseph saw through his blurred, blood-red vision that the light split in two, becoming a pair of orbs that shone brightly in the night. It wasn't the light at the end of the tunnel.
It was headlights.
No, Joseph thought in terror. Please, no. He could have sworn that he miles away from any kind of civilization. There were no roads anywhere near here. So why was there suddenly a car coming towards him?
As the last of Joseph's strength drained from his body, he went limp on the ground and the lights passed him by. Silently hoping that no one would find him, Joseph gave one final gasp, laid his head in the mud and let the darkness take him.
Although the sprawling metropolis of Zootopia was still bustling with animals going to and fro in the late morning hours, Judy Hopps was bored out of her little bunny skull. Virtually no cases had come across Police Chief Bogo's desk in the last week, and so, by default, Judy and her partner had been given the task of watching for speeders and waiting for a call from dispatch. They were currently seated in their almost comically oversized cruiser in the small parking lot of a second-hand store on Amazon Avenue. Nick Wilde, Judy's red fox partner and the first fox in the Zootopia Police Department, sat in the cruiser's passenger seat, his wide green eyes trained on the game of Sudoku he was playing on his phone.
Judy and Nick had been police partners for just over five months now, and they had been the best months of Judy's life. She got to spend all day, every day, with her best friend in the world. Sure, he could be annoying sometimes—after all, it was Nick Wilde-but Judy loved him for it. As a matter of fact, for the past three-or-so months, the pair had been quite a bit more than best friends. It hadn't taken long after Nick joined the ZPD and was assigned as Judy's partner for the both of them to realize that there was a very special chemistry between them, a chemistry which had been formed during their impromptu partnership during the Night Howler Crisis. Throughout the process of Nick's application to the Academy, his training, his graduation, and his eventual assignment as Judy's partner, the fox and the bunny had grown closer and closer, until neither of them could any longer deny that they had feelings for one another that passed outside the bounds of professionalism or even friendship.
Nick had been the first one to actually open up about it. In the summer of 2017, after a few months of them working together, he had asked Judy out on the first date of her life. It wasn't anything extravagant—Nick had bought her dinner at a fancy restaurant in Sahara Square and then taken her for a walk along the downtown shoreline of Lake Pax, the giant watering hole upon which the city had been built. As they had stood there, gazing out over the water, Judy had found herself almost unconsciously inching towards Nick in the quiet of the night, eventually pressing herself against his side, her paw clasped tightly in his.
They stood like that for a while, silent, each simply enjoying the presence of the other. After several minutes of blissful silence, Nick slowly turned so that he was facing the bunny, their bodies mere centimeters apart. "Judy," he whispered, his voice almost inaudible. The rabbit immediately lifted her violet eyes to his emerald ones, startled that he had used her name—he almost always called her "Carrots" or "Fluff" or some other nickname. The only other time she could remember him calling her by her real name was when they had tumbled into the water outside of Cliffside Asylum—when Nick had, for the briefest moment of sheer panic, thought that he had lost her.
"Yeah, Nick?" she responded, her voice little more than a breath.
"Thank you," he said quietly, his eyes showing a vulnerability he rarely ever allowed. "Thank you for being my friend, my partner. Thank you for believing in me when no one else did. Thank you…for saving me."
Before Judy had time to respond, Nick leaned down and, with a gentleness she never would have expected from him, pressed his lips to hers in her very first kiss.
It was at that moment, as she let herself melt into Nick's tender embrace, that Judy knew nothing would ever be the same. She would never be able to see Nick Wilde as just a friend ever again. In one moment, he became so much more. He was now her partner, her boyfriend, her confidante, her rock-and now, she was beginning to think, as she sat in their cruiser on this unusually chilly October morning, Nick Wilde just might be the love of her life.
Having only been in a relationship for a few months, neither of them had said the L-word yet-not in that sense anyway. They'd had the whole "You know you love me" moment their first day on the job together, but that was when they were just partners and best friends, not a couple. Now Judy was beginning to wonder if it was time to say it. She glanced over at Nick, still playing on his phone, and took him all in: the big green eyes, the red fur, the bushy tail, the delicate paws gently tapping on the screen...the paws that held her after she'd poured her heart out under that bridge, the paws that bound her wound when she'd been injured in the museum. The paws she knew she would always be able to trust. She wondered, for a moment, what her life would be like if she had never met Nick Wilde. As she pictured it, a sudden stab of pain twisted her heart, and she couldn't help but let out a tiny gasp. She saw in an instant a life without Nick in it-and she hated it. Couldn't even stand to think about it. She realized that she needed him. She couldn't live without him.
She was in love with him.
But she couldn't tell him yet.
"You okay, Carrots?" he said, startled by her little gasp.
"Yeah!" Judy said hurriedly, trying to hide her blush going through her ears. "I think I just...dozed off a little, that's all."
"And I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one in this partnership!" Nick said with his characteristic sly grin. Seeing that grin set Judy's heart racing. She quickly looked out the windshield in an effort to hide the warmth spreading through her cheeks and ears.
"Well, I can't do all of the work all of the time, can I?" she quipped back.
"What work?" Nick retorted playfully. "We've been sitting here for two hours and haven't had one speeder!" He sounded as though he was really hoping for one. Judy had to admit, some action would be nice.
"Well," she sighed, "hopefully we'll get a different assignment soon so we don't have to just sit here all day."
As if on cue, the transponder on the ceiling of the car beeped, alerting the duo to an incoming command. It was Chief Bogo.
"Hopps! Wilde! Come in!"
Judy reached for the mic, but Nick was faster. He grabbed it from the roof and clicked the button. "Wilde here, sir. What's the problem?"
"Are you two busy at the moment?"
"Not even remotely, sir. No action all day."
"Good. We just got a call from dispatch about a situation not too far from you, 8600 block of Chestnut. A shopkeeper called in reporting a haggard-looking fox wandering around outside the store. Apparently when she went out to ask if he needed help, he started yelling and screaming and asking where he was and what was happening to him." Bogo sounded rather concerned – more concerned than usual for a routine homeless-animal pickup. "I need the two of you to go and pick him up before he hurts someone—or himself. Try to calm him down, talk some sense into him, and bring him back to the station."
"Sure thing, Chief. We'll be right there." Nick was about to place the mic back in its holster when Bogo's voice came once again from the speaker.
"One more thing, Wilde. Be careful with this one. He seems to be unusually off his rocker."
"Well, how's that, sir? I need some details," Nick said, confused.
"One of the things he kept shouting was…" There was some rustling of papers as Bogo apparently searched for his notes. "Here it is. He kept shouting, 'Why the hell are there talking animals everywhere?'"
Nick cast Judy a worried look. They'd dealt with several cases of raving homeless before, but they'd never had one quite that unhinged. "We're on our way, sir." Nick put the mic back into its holster, switched on the sirens, and motioned for Judy to go.
So much for an uneventful morning.
By the time Nick and Judy arrived at the scene downtown, a large crowd had already gathered to watch the show. The pair had to forcefully push through the mob of mammals, flashing their badges and saying they were ZPD, because the crowd was too thick to get the cruiser through. Once finally on the other side of the mass of animals, Judy could clearly see the suspect: a young red fox, caked in mud, sitting on the ground with his back up against a streetlight, rocking back and forth as gut-wrenching sobs tore their way out of his muzzle. The kit's only clothing was what appeared to be a filthy, torn-up t-shirt that was more suited to a wolf than a mammal of his size. Judy was about to approach him, but Nick placed his paw on her shoulder in a protective gesture. "You handle the crowd," he said. "I've got this." She was about to object, but Nick was already walking towards the fox.
It wasn't that Nick wanted all the action for himself-although he had been horribly bored up to this point in the day-but the guy looked pretty messed up, and he didn't want Judy to have to take him on if he went nuts. The mere thought of her ever getting hurt again like she'd been in the museum was too painful for Nick to even think about.
Nick slowly approached the young fox, his paws up in what he hoped was a non-threatening gesture. "Sir, please calm down," he said in a soothing voice.
Hearing the newcomer, the young red fox snapped his head up, throwing flakes of dried mud everywhere. He was absolutely filthy-it looked like he hadn't bathed in weeks. His eyes were wild, the pupils dilated so much that barely any of his brownish iris was visible. Nick immediately felt his right paw descend slightly towards the taser at his waist.
"Just calm down, buddy, okay?" Nick said, taking slow, tentative steps toward the fox, gradually beginning to crouch down so as to be on eye-level with him. "My name is Nick, Nick Wilde. I'm an officer with the Zootopia Police Department. If you'll just calm down and come with me, my partner and I will be happy to answer any questions you have."
Instead of calming him down, Nick's arrival seemed to only heighten the fox's state of panic. Quickly scanning Nick from head to toe, running his eyes over the shining police uniform, the crazed fox yelled out, "Talking fox cops?! What… the hell… is happening…" Suddenly, with a sharp cry, the fox rolled onto his side, curling into the fetal position and beginning to sob wildly.
Nick gently and cautiously knelt down on one knee next to the fox and calmly placed his paw on his shoulder. The cub flinched slightly, but did not attack. Nick began speaking to him in the most soothing voice he could. "Look, buddy, I'm sure you've been through a lot, but you're safe now. Please, just come with me and I promise you that you'll be all right. Can you do that for me, bud?"
For a few seconds the fox continued to sob, and then, shakily, nodded his head. "O…okay," he said tentatively.
"Good," Nick said, immensely relieved. "Here, let me help you to my car." Nick tenderly helped the still-crying fox to his feet, his body still shaking with sobs. Noticing the shivers going through the kit's limbs and the way his breath clouded in front of him in the chilly morning air, Nick promptly shrugged off his ZPD coat, wrapping it around the shoulders of the shaking mammal. He continued to say soothing words as he led him to the cruiser, trying to keep the poor animal calm. "Shh…it's okay...you're okay now..." Judy saw him coming and opened up the back door of the car to let Nick and the fox in. She was rather in awe of how quickly Nick had managed to calmed him down. She'd never seen him act so gentle towards anyone but her. It was almost...fatherly.
Nick thought that this was good a time as any to try to gather what little information he could from the fox before they got him to the station. "Shh, you're okay. Hey, what's your name, anyway? Do you remember your name?"
It took several seconds for the frightened animal's sobs to become coherent words, but he finally managed to choke it out. In a quivering whisper he said, "M-m-my name's-s-s...J-J-Joseph. J-Joseph S-S-Solomon."