Chapter 3 - Gone
"Hold on," Nick said with a frown, pressing the hold button on his cell phone. "Carrots!" Nick held his phone with three fingers on one side and his thumb on the other.
Judy set down the report she was working on and walked over to Nick's room. "Carrots, what?"
"It's Bogo." He patted his left side of the bed, and Judy sat down. Nick tapped the phone once. "We're here."
There was silence for a moment. "We just received complaints."
The two exchanged glances. "About what?" Nick asked. He took Judy's paw and examined the ring. He about said something, then hesitated.
"Your arm," Bogo said, a bit gruffly. "Some… comrades of yours complained that you can't perform your best with a broken arm."
Nick smirked. "That's obvious, Chief. Spill the carrots—what'd they say?"
"Honestly? That you'll be a burden to their work."
"Expected." Nick nodded. "All right. If you're going to suspend me without pay, go ahead and do it."
There was a slight hesitation. "There were a few requests for that."
"The people have a voice, don't they? Go ahead, Chief, it's a simple phrase—"
"Shut it, Wilde," he snapped. "My officers don't make the rules, I do. After meeting me, the president of the POID has agreed to sixty-five percent pay."
"You have a deal if you cut my bills in half." He gently bit his lip, just enough so Judy couldn't see it.
"You already have insurance through the ZPD."
"I meant after the insurance pays for it."
"Wilde, your hustling days are over. Sixty-fi—"
"I'll be on my best behavior when I come back."
"Do you want me to make it sixty?"
"All right, Chief, you win." He smirked. "Don't forget to send out those inspirational Christmas cards."
Bogo groaned. "Get well, Wilde." He hung up.
"Wow,that was something," Judy said, looking into Nick's eyes. She wrapped her arms around him. "You can even hustle the Chief. Impressive."
He shrugged and held up his phone. "Not as impressive as this phone you got me." He put his finger on the home button. "With a fingerprint scanner, no less."
"You're welcome," she smiled at Nick's cast. "How about we go settle on the couch? I'll make some lunch for us."
He nodded slowly. "A fox can only take so much healing without food." Judy led him downstairs, their paws entwined. When they stepped onto the main floor, she led him over to the couch and lowered him down. She sat down and kissed him, then jumped down and walked into the kitchen. For the next few minutes, there was clamor from pots and pans.
"Keep it down, Carrots—I'm trying to watch here."
"Is it your football again?" she said.
"Do you really think Millian Petersen would play football?"
"Forgive me for forgetting that you don't always watch football." She appeared with a whisk in her paw. "I thought you already watched all, what, twelve seasons?"
"Fifteen. No, I'm on season eight. I've only been in the force for so long, Fluff." He waved her away. "My food doesn't cook itself."
After half an hour, Judy returned with a steaming bowl of carrot soup. "I'll help you with this." She set the bowl down for a second and put up a television tray, then set the bowl on it. She ladled a spoonful of the soup and held it to his mouth. "Choo-choo, comes the train."
Nick rolled his eyes and took the soup, bending his neck slightly out of the way. "Move, Carrots—they just found the suspect."
Judy stepped to the side, eyes fixed on the screen. "It's not him."
"Why not?"
"You see?" She picked up the remote. The show suddenly stopped. "Don't you remember when he said Grindleton did something five years ago? That wasn't to throw you off."
"I can barely remember that."
"Watch." The screen resumed.
A jaguar appeared on screen, wearing a police uniform. "Stop!"
"What?" the main character, a fox in a police uniform, said.
"That's not our guy. It's Grindleton. They just sent the footage."
Nick's eyes widened, but Judy was nowhere to be seen. When Nick's bowl was empty, he had her come sit by him. She sat down and cuddled into him, her bowl of carrot soup balanced in one paw. She took it from her and set it down, then he took a spoonful with his free paw and held it to her mouth. "C'mon, Nick—you don't have to—"
"Like it or not, Carrots, I'm going to," he said, hovering it around her lips. "Open wide."
She opened her mouth, and he fed it to her. Every time he filled the spoon, a dull pain enveloped his arm, but he didn't dare show it. That's what love is, he thought. By the time the bowl was three-quarters empty, Judy had reverted to a crisscross position and was sitting comfortably between the backrest and Nick's ribcage. When he set the bowl down and let the ache diminish, Judy leaned forward to dispose of it, but Nick pushed forward instead and took the bowl in his free paw. "Let me." He put it into the sink and sat back down. This allowed Judy to crawl up the couch and position herself comfortably next to Nick, cuddling her head into his ribcage. Next thing she knew, his strong left arm was around her, and he managed to lift her into the area in between his legs. Sitting down, her head reached his cast, but she avoided it, instead nuzzling her head into his left side. She then realized Nick's only mobile paw—his left—was gently massaging her ear.
The two occasionally struck up conversation about work, though they mostly spent the two episodes of the television show cuddling one another.
When the screen faded out to the credits, Judy looked up at Nick when he stopped stroking her ear. His arm was suspended at the top of the couch, but suddenly dislodged and drifted down the back of the couch and comfortably settle onto the armrest. Soon, breathing—softer than normal, voluntary breathing—entered her ear. She at once knew that Nick was asleep.
Nick could summon the ability of sleep within a matter of minutes. He'd be aware and awake one moment, then another moment he'd be fast asleep.
Judy couldn't manage to sleep. It seemed like Nick had summoned all the sleeping powers of the world and left her awake. All she did was stare at the mesmerizing text that slid down the black backdrop—she didn't know if it would wake him if she turned another episode on—and feel Nick's moving chest. It was like a balloon that was filled up, emptied slightly, then filled up again—over and over.
She managed to paw Nick's phone—set on the armrest, but she had to reach skillfully to reach it—and check the time without waking him up. It was just after ten, much later than she normally went to sleep. Though she felt aware, her body disagreed. She had only gotten six hours of sleep the previous night. Her eyes drifted closed, and her consciousness faded until she was unconscious, head nuzzled between Nick's ribcage and upper arm.
Judy woke, rubbing her neck and adjusting her position on the firm couch cushion. The room was pitch-black, oddly, because they had both fallen asleep when the sun still shined. Something felt different—she felt no expansion and contraction, no breathing. All she could feel was her own heart beating rapidly as she felt the plain couch supporting her. She reached over to kiss Nick, but she fell, palms turned out. The cushion wasn't warm. Where'd he go? she thought. She tried to detect any type of sound—a shower, the sound of water splashing in a bath, the echoing of a phone call, or even breathing from another room. But what surprised her was everything that she didn't hear. It was so dead quiet that all she could hear was her tiny anatomy systems strenuously working, evident by a light ringing in her ears. She reached over to pick up his phone, but it wasn't there. Hers was in her room, but she didn't feel like getting up to get it.
She wanted to call out for him. But she didn't—if he was sleeping in another room, it would make him grumpy for the rest of the day. So, she stood up and tried what was most logical: searching every room in the house. She opened his bedroom door, searched a closet or two, and knocked on every closed bathroom door. She came upon the same amount of information if she were searching in an empty concrete room—nothing.
What seemed like hours of searching turned out to be hours of wasted work. All she could do was sit and put her head in her hands. He would never leave without telling her, so that wasn't the case. The stress piled higher and higher until the dam broke. Tears rushed to her eyes, and a nimbus of frigidity and impatience swirled around her, trying to mix like oil and water, but instead settling at the bottom of her heart and forcing more tears from her eyes.
After a while she felt no tears; she had already spent them all. But she didn't want to stop hoping—she had to omit her emotions and use her police attitude. She stood tall and confidently washed her face in the sink before leaving to the scene in which he had disappeared. The emotions begged to emerge, but she forced them down. Crying won't do anything for you.
She went to her room and scavenged around for a moment. She emerged with a fistful of evidence bags and a small container in one paw and shut the door with the other. Then she returned to the living room and flicked on all the lights in the room. She set the bags on the armrest, produced a pair of tweezers from the container, and enabled the flashlight on her phone and swept it over the crevices of the couch. She stopped at one part and picked at the couch with the tweezers. It was a tuft of fox fur, and she put it in a bag. A few minutes later she secured a small, unevenly cut piece of white fur and put that in its own bag.
Even though the rules disagreed with it, she brought the white tuft of fur to her nose. It was slightly bitter-smelling and had a tinge of body odor. She'd smelled this before, way too may times. It was her species—male, specifically. She tried the next piece of fur and smiled. It was slightly orangey with the slightest tinge of pheromones. She let it linger by her nose for a moment before she put it in the bag. Every particle of that smell was a replica of what she had next to her that afternoon, her love and fiancé. She didn't even have to think to know what it was.
She slipped the bags into her pocket. She disabled the flashlight with a tap and stepped onto the tile of the kitchen. She flicked on the lights and took one glance at the refrigerator, tapped several times, and held her phone to her ear. It rang several times before it opened to several seconds of silence. "This is Q, head of the Research and Development Department speaking." His voice was monotonous, like he had been up all night.
"Q? This is Judy Hopps. We've got a serious problem."
"Did Marco get out of jail again?" He paused to yawn. "I'll be—"
"No," she interrupted. "Nick's gone."
"What?"
She explained it as professionally as she could, but it still came out abnormally.
He paused for a moment, then quickly spoke. "I'll be right over." He said something unintelligible, then hung up.
The soothing voice of his—and, considering, he was also a fox—shook her into reality that Nick was gone. He wasn't playing games. He would never do that.
She put the phone face down on the counter. She put her head in her paws. Once a tear escaped her eyelid, she could not stop crying. She sobbed profusely. All the memories from the earlier night rushed back to her so quickly, she could not accept it all simultaneously. Before long, the firm knock of Q at her door jarred her. She wiped her face with a wet rag and opened the door.
His stance was like Nick. The way he frowned was like Nick. Every feature on him seemed to be like Nick—except, of course, his face. All she wanted to do was hold Q's paw—anything to remind her of Nick—but she refrained, and instead greeted him with a firm handshake, making sure she let go at the opportune time.
"Let's just skip the hellos and get this resolved, shall we?"
She nodded and took a firm, wet breath through her nose. She held out both bags of the fur specimen and said, "this is all I found at the scene."
"Fox and rabbit fur. Nice." He nodded. "Well, let's go." He took the bags in his left hand and led her to his car with his right hand on her back. "Hopefully I'm not offending you by doing this."
She just shook her head.
They entered the car, and Q started it with a turn of the ignition. As Q pulled out of the driveway, Judy's mind wandered to Nick. She felt as if he was driving. She could practically feel her paw grasped in his. She could almost hear his calm, soothing voice speaking to her.
"Hey, Hopps. Any further information on this crime?"
She blinked a few times and nodded. "His phone was off the armrest where he kept it earlier this afternoon."
"You've been asleep that long?"
"I guess. Yeah, we were on the couch at around noon. It's…" Her eyes widened at the clock. "Eight thirty?"
"Hmm," he said more to the dashboard than to her. "We can continue an investigation after we gather up the rest of the information. But I need the ZPD to be involved with this."
"Okay." She sniffed and dialed the number, speaking for a few moments and then hanging up, "They'll be over there soon."
He nodded. A few minutes later, Q parked the car in the parking space.
"Ow."
Nick grunted as he sat up. Though there were silhouettes around him, it was so dark that he still couldn't identify anything. He shivered and rubbed his upper arms, stopping for a second to feel the fabric laid over his trunk. It was a funky, two-piece jumpsuit with elastics at the cuffs, compressing his upper arms and ankles. What was also peculiar was his arm—it felt more stable.
With the help of his night vision, he could make out a few items of furniture in the room: a rectangular bed on the right corner of the room, a toilet and sink, and a small dresser. He crawled over to the dresser with one arm and opened it; he found a flashlight, a comb, another roll of two-ply toilet paper, and a package of gum. He switched on the flashlight and examined the room: it was as he suspected. He recognized a large steel door on the bottom left of the room.
He got to his feet and stepped over to the toilet and relieved himself, then put the flashlight in his mouth and washed his hands in the ice-cold water in the sink. He laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling, then looked down at his jumpsuit he wore. He was clothed with a dark blue jumpsuit with the number D09967A on the top left of his chest. The bottom half of the jumpsuit started at the base of his ankles and ended at his waist. The waistband was elastic, easy for removal, application, and adjustment. The shirt section of the jumpsuit fit like a tight short-sleeved shirt: it started at the base of his abdomen—it also had an elastic band—and went up to the base of his neck and ended at his inner elbows, also featuring elastic bands on the base of them.
His broken arm was encompassed by an ingenious device: a firm plastic sheath covering the entire part of his forearm so that the top of his arm and paw were exposed. He found that by pushing off the bed, the device aided in the support of his partially broken arm, so he felt little pain. His arm also bent neatly and painlessly at the elbow.
The device was ingenious.
But he was confused as to why he was aided in help if he was kidnapped. A normal kidnapper would've used his arm as an advantage. But this kidnapper—they seemed like a part of an organization—seemed like they saw Nick's arm as a disadvantage to whatever horror they wanted to subject him to.
After all the silent acknowledgement, an intercom blared in a plain voice, "All F units report to cafeteria." The door to his room swung open with the intercom's message. He wandered out of the room and followed a line of foxes to the instructed room.
It was empty. A small number of mammals sat at the tables, but very little were there nonetheless. He went to the lunch line and received a tray of what seemed to be more decomposed banana peels than actual food. He sat at a lone table and took a spoonful of the foreign substance. Tastes like peed-on dirt, he thought. He gagged each time he took a bite and managed to choke down a few bites.
A muscular fox with large ears sat directly in front of him. "Hey there," he greeted with an oddly cheery and treble pitched voice, but not one of a vixen. "I'm Matt."
Nick looked at his grin and bit his lip. "Hey." Nick shook his outstretched hand. "Nick," he greeted, eyes slightly widened.
After Matt seemed to calm down, he took a large spoonful of the food and shoved it into his mouth. "Man, this food is delicious!"
Nick shook his head. "Heck, no." He kept his incredulous stare on him.
"Well, it's much better than the junk I ate at home before I was taken from my bed last week. I fought this guy on this company's list, and I got totally in trouble."
Nick leaned in to him, omitting his stare. "Do you, by chance, know what this place is called?"
"Yeah, dude. It's called DecSec. It's owned by some guy I don't know."
Nick looked around. There were more mammals in the cafeteria now, all foxes—short, tall, fat, skinny, old and middle aged, one even looking in his median adolescence. Suddenly Marco popped into his head.
He's one of the only ones left to be biased against foxes. Don't get on his bad side, and you'll be okay.
Nick's eyes widened. "Do you know how we got here?"
Matt shook his head. "All I can predict is that someone kidnapped us and took us here. I can't believe this happened if this is a globally known organization."
"I can," Nick said. "I met this guy who told me that this organization is globally known, but also known for its extreme usefulness in technology. And I think I may know a way around that."