Chapter 1

"Come on, partner, Bogo wants us in his office, and he does not sound happy."

I jerk awake at my desk as my new partner's voice breaks through the relative quiet of the office. I'm starting to think that I may have been a little hard on ZPD before joining up, these guys never get to take a break.

"Nick, come on, up and at 'em. If we keep Bogo waiting too long he'll have us both on meter maid duty for a year."

Thinking I can push my luck a little further, I turn in the direction of the voice without opening my eyes, and am immediately rewarded with the kind of rapid foot-tapping that only a bunny can pull off properly. Satisfied, I open my eyes to see Judy standing maybe two inches away from my nose with an intensely irritated expression, her ears flat against her back. For somebody so tiny, she has a truly impressive glare thanks to those vibrant purple eyes of hers. That and the ears.

"I don't know, Carrots," I reply, "a year of meter duty sounds like a cakewalk."

She rolls her eyes and twitches her ears at me. "You're only saying that because you'll be sleeping in the car the entire time while I do everything else, aren't you?"

I try to hide my amusement, but I can't suppress a tail twitch at her insinuation. I can tell she notices it too as her ears perk up slightly in response.

"Would I enjoy taking the chance to catch a little shut-eye? Yes, yes I would. I don't know how you've always got this much energy, Carrots, with the hours we work."

That gets a smile out of her, and her ears are fully up now. "I don't know, Nick, maybe you're just getting old."

"Or maybe I just haven't worked this hard for so little money in years," I replay, "and laugh it up all you want bunny-girl, you're not that far behind me."

She opens her mouth to respond but stops when we hear an ominous drumming carrying over the otherwise deserted office. Chief Bogo may have warmed up to us after the Night Howler case, but he still doesn't like being kept waiting. Judy twitches her head towards his office and I nod in response, following her lead.

We walk into Bogo's office, shutting the door behind us. Bogo is sitting behind his desk, still drumming his fingers on it in perfect military precision, until we both take our seats in front of his desk. Of course Judy's head doesn't even come over the desk, but Bogo himself is so huge he'd have no trouble seeing her if she was as tiny as a mouse. Bogo keeps up the rhythm for a another minute, probably just trying to make us sweat for taking our time getting here. If so, it's working. I may give Judy a hard time every so often (okay, almost constantly, sue me), but I wouldn't want to get too far onto Bogo's bad side.

Never let them see it gets to you, I think to myself. It's done the job for me in the past, so why fix it if it ain't broke.

At this point Bogo decides to break the silence.

"Well, if our two celebrity officers are ready to get back to work, I have a very important assignment for you. We've been getting reports from Environmental Services that some of the climate control walls are acting strangely, and it looks like sabotage."

That gets both of our attention in a hurry. The climate control walls that split up the different biomes of the Zootopia are the bones of the city. You can't expect machines of that size to not have the occasional glitch, but if someone's actually trying to bring them down, it could be a greater threat to the city than the Night Howler attacks ever were.

"What makes them think this was deliberate?" Judy asks immediately.

"In every case so far, the cause of failure was a single shoddy part having been installed in place of the original. Add how cleanly the swaps were carried out and the lack of signs of forced entry, and we can probably be sure that whoever's doing this has inside help."

Well, that complicates things further. Environmental Services is the largest part of the Zootopian government, with thousands of employees working round the clock to keep the walls going. Digging through all those suspects is going to be a nightmare.

"Chief, why do you want us on this case?" I ask.

Bogo stares at me intently for a moment. "You two are still new enough to the force that I can be pretty sure you're not involved. Plus, the two of you have some….connections that may give you a leg up on solving this."

"But sir," Judy pipes in, "we're not exactly unknown after the mess with Bellwether, we can't exactly blend in."

"I'm aware of that, Hopps," Bogo replies, "but hopefully all you'll have to do is ask around with people who already trust you, and we can proceed from there without any need for cover."

I speak up again, seeing another problem. "I hope you're prepared for this to take a while, they're going to have to move slowly on this to avoid spooking anyone."

Bogo snorts at that, flicking his ears in irritation before fixing his best glare on the two of us. "Then you'll just have to impress on them the seriousness of this case. If those walls fail, Zootopia as we know it falls apart. Tundratown alone has enough ice and snow in it that the meltwater will flood every district, and we may never fully recover. You have your assignment, now get it done." With that, he turns back to the paperwork on his desk, one ear flicking an obvious signal to leave.

Me and Judy look at each other for a moment, then get off our chairs and leave.

Sheesh, sometimes going back to hocking pawpsicles downtown looks so very appealing.