Wild Times opened promptly at six, and what seemed like seconds afterwards, up came their first customer of the evening. A ferret, looking nervous and unkempt.
"I uh…heard that this was a…" He trailed off, looking meekly up to where Honey was manning the ticket booth, then spoke just barely above a whisper, "is this the place where you can get your collar off?" Honey nodded happily.
"Aww, don't be so nervous little guy, just buy a ticket and go see my friend Nick, he'll help you out." The ferret visibly relaxed.
"Thank you," he gushed, some of the tension draining from him, "it's been kind of a bad day today and I…I…thank you." He dug for his wallet.
"Thirty dollars gets you an hour," Honey explained, and the ferret put the money down without hesitation. Nick watched this from just inside the doors. Seeing people's reactions when they were told that they could get their collar off filled him with a confusing mixture of melancholy and pleasure. Pleasure at getting the collars off. Melancholy at having to put them back on at the end of the night.
Squinting through the twilight at the off-ramp, Nick could see a few headlights approaching, winding down the concrete strip. That was slightly unusual, for the most part people walked to Wild Times, not wanting to attract unwanted attention.
"Are you Nick?" The ferret asked from right in front of him and Nick almost jumped, he'd been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn't even noticed the little predator's approach.
"Yes I am," Nick smiled, "welcome to Wild Times, Zootopia's finest predator amusement park, where anyone at all, from the biggest bear to the smallest ferret, can kick back and have a hell of a time." Wild Times had been lit brightly up, the carousal was spinning and Nick could see Finnick out of the corner of his eye, fiddling with a pellet gun at the little target range.
Fishing the city key out of his pocket, Nick unlocked the ferret's collar and let it fall open. The green light remained lit. The ferret stared, amazed.
"You really took it off." He said, voice breathy with disbelief. Nick smiled and withdrew a little pad of adhesive backed name tags from his breast pocket. Coupling this with a pen, he held them out to the ferret.
"Before you go, write your name on one of these and stick it to the collar, so we know which one is yours." The ferret did so, paws trembling with excitement, and then wandered off, almost skipping with joy.
Handing the collar over to Honey for safekeeping, Nick returned to his station and watched the customers begin to pour in. He felt relaxed, in good spirits. Running Wild Times might have been difficult and fraught with legal peril, but it felt nice. Like he was home.
As Nick unlocked a badger's collar and asked him to write down his name, he heard a car door slam outside. A moment later the line waiting for tickets shifted abruptly to the left, leaving the door clear.
"Nicky!" Koslov smiled as he strode through the door, predators scattering around him, like the Red Sea before Moses. A healthy portion of them knew who he was and did not want to be anywhere nearby. Nick smiled politely and tried to conceal the little backflip of anxious fear that his heart was doing in his chest.
"Good to see you sir," he said, the badger he was attending to exiting the scene at high speed as Koslov stepped forward, "what's the occasion?" It was rare that Koslov showed up at Wild Times during operational hours, the bear certainly wasn't the type to frequent amusement parks. That was when Nick saw the cub peeking around the side of Koslov's knee. He was dressed surprisingly formal, in a suit, just like Koslov.
"This is my boy Morris," Koslov said fondly, eyes going soft and paternal for a moment, "he turns six today, I thought that he would like to attend your park." With one huge paw Koslov gently maneuvered his son forward, so that he was standing directly in front of Nick.
"Hello Morris," Nick said, feeling decidedly nervous now, "I'm Nick…I own this place." Morris stared, wide eyed, at the lights and throngs of predators milling about the rides and games.
"Say hello to Nicky Morris," Koslov reminded his son, "he's a very important partner of mine." As surprisingly flattering as that was, Nick couldn't focus on the compliment. Morris smiled shyly.
"Hi Nick." He said, and Nick realized that the cub wasn't wearing a collar just yet. Koslov still had his on though.
"Would you like your collar off sir?" He asked but Koslov shook his head.
"No…no need. You have a good night Nicky." The two bears strolled past, and when he looked back at the doors Nick could see a pair of burly polar bears standing guard over them. So that explained the cars…
Relaxing slightly, Koslov and Morris now some distance away, Nick returned to the task at hand. The pile of collars grew and grew, Wild Times soon became quite busy. Occasionally Nick would look back and see where Morris was, but each time he spotted them it looked like the cub was having fun. That put him at ease.
But even as he turned to the next predator in line and asked their name, the lights went out. All of them. All at once. Nick jumped, startled by the outage, eyes adjusting to the gloom. He stood up, eager to cut off any chaos before it could begin.
"It's alright folks, I think we blew a fuse! Just stay where you are and I'll go check it out!" His voice echoed through the warehouse and, to Nick's relief, nobody began to panic. Moving past the silent carousal, still full of cubs, and a half dozen other attractions, Nick ducked into the back. This was where his office was, and the fuse box.
Nick grumbled to himself as he found the fusebox, lamenting the lousy timing of the outage. It had been shaping up to be quite the evening, and while it was still definitely salvageable, Nick doubted that Koslov would be pleased.
Opening it up Nick squinted at the row of fuses. For a moment he stared, unsure of what he was seeing, then something lurched unpleasantly in his gut. One of the fuses was missing entirely.
Turning, Nick opened his mouth to call for Honey when something seemed to detach from the wall to his immediate left, billowing open into a formless, depthless thing that had no right being as large as it was. Nick froze, terror locking his joints, then the silhouette lunged and his vision exploded into stars.
...
The lights were still off when Nick regained consciousness, but within the darkness were flashes, and screams, and bizarre snapping noises of a type that Nick had never heard before. He tried to struggle up from where he'd fallen but found the world spinning around him, vertigo inducing swoops of nausea crippling his gut. His head was in torment and when Nick raised a paw to touch his forehead he found that his face was sticky with blood.
"Honey? Finnick?" He called weakly, but got no answer. He was lying almost in the doorway of the back room, and realized for the first time that beyond the bounds of his own pain and drowsiness, Wild Times was in chaos.
People were hurt out there, panicking, screaming. And splitting the dark with occasional brutal totality were white flashes that lit a portion of the chaos. A fleeing tiger by the carousal, clutching a cub to his chest. A polar bear slumped against the front doors, eyes blank and unseeing.
Nick tried to sit up once more but had barely gained this when the whole scene was obliterated once more, a foot stamping him back down to the floor. He tried to cry out, to claw at his attacker, but instead the silhouette in the darkness hit him hard again. Nick slumped back, spinning crazily in and out of consciousness. Was aware of something bulky being forced into one paw. Tried to reach out and snag the silhouette as it departed but only managed to graze against a silky, yielding surface. Then it was gone. Then he was gone.
...
"Let me go! You fascists, let me go!" Finnick's voice guided Nick back to a shaky sort of consciousness, but the yelp of pain his friend gave jolted him fully awake. He was still lying in the same place, and he hurt all over. His head was in torment and where his assailant had pressed him to the floor was tender and sore.
"Finnick!" He cried out, head yowling in protest at even this small effort, and staggered to his feet, something clattering to the ground as he moved. Looking down, he was momentarily uncertain of what it was…then shied away with a gasp.
A silenced pistol. The real kind. The kind that killed. They had been banned years before and were beyond illegal. Even Koslov didn't mess with them. Nick remembered the flat snapping noises that he had heard echoing through Wild Times. Whoever had come through had been firing at random…at families and…and…the thought was too horrifying to finish.
"Nick, the ZPD's here! Run!" Finnick shrieked from the next room, but before Nick could move so much as an inch the doorway was filled with dazzling light. He cried out, rearing back, and then was hit hard in the chest by what felt like a red hot fire poker. His limbs went stiff and he hit the floor, agony jolting through him as his muscles contracted. A stun-gun, he realized, perfect. Just one more indignity to add to the day's total.
"We got a gun," Nick could distantly hear one of the ZPD officers saying, "looks like he might be our shooter." An officer stepped over him and scanned the rest of the back, the flashlight strapped to his chest blazing a line of white light across Nick's office.
"Clear." The officer said, and Nick felt himself being hauled up, arms pinioned behind his back, none too gently.
"You have the right to remain silent," a female voice behind him began, "anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney then one will be provided to you." Nick craned his head back to get a look at the officer arresting him and couldn't help but freeze in place, utterly shocked.
A young gray rabbit was reading him his rights, briskly professional, cranking his handcuffs as tight as they could go without cutting off blood flow. She met his gaze with some measured dislike, then yanked his cuffed wrists up, forcing Nick to his feet.
So he was getting arrested by a bunny. Perfect. Just perfect.