Hopps was very quiet for the next hour or so, while the four of them tried to enjoy a spectacularly uncomfortable lunch. Even Honey's spirits seemed to have been broken down by the argument, the only sounds seemed to come from the ZNN broadcasts on the radio, each one worse than the last. Finally Finnick turned it off, and then went back to winding the lantern, staring unhappily at the wall as he did so.
"So…what's the plan exactly?" The fennec asked after another small eternity had ticked by. Nick looked up.
"Plan?" He asked. Finnick nodded.
"Like the bunny said, we cant sit here forever…at least not with her in tow." Nick picked up the bolt cutters once more and fitted them around the damaged link in the chain, but once more could not break through the hardened steel. Hopps watched this latest attempt but made no effort to stop him.
"You're not gonna break those," she said at last, "not without an acetylene torch or something like that." Nick glanced hopefully at Honey but the cheetah shook his head.
"I've never owned much in the way of welding supplies." He said apologetically.
"I guess we're kinda stuck then," he said, tossing the bolt cutters frustratedly aside, "the locks are jammed, the chain is too tough to cut…" Hopps avoided his gaze, focusing on an invisible but very interesting something in the dirt in front of her.
"And you aren't arresting anyone." Finnick added, folding his arms, leaving the lantern alone for the moment. Hopps regarded the three predators, then sighed.
"I didn't realize that there were people out there who…who distrusted the collar so much." She said quietly, an air of uncertainty in her words, "I knew there were complaints and stuff like that, but…nothing like this." Finnick raised an eyebrow.
"Were you born under a rock?" He growled, Nick held up a paw, motioning for the fennec to be quiet. Finnick reluctantly obeyed.
"Bunny Burrows," Hopps said with a faint smile, "almost the same thing. Before I joined the ZPD I never knew anyone who wasn't prey…who wasn't a bunny really. I mean, there was the mailman, he was a goat, but I don't think that counts. And when I made Lieutenant I thought I'd seen the city, I'd met plenty of people, I'd even voted to make a predator mayor of the city…I guess I thought I knew what was going on." She sniffed and Nick was shocked to see that Hopps was fighting back tears. He opened his mouth but was unsure of what to say.
"I…" He trailed off, feeling immensely sorry for the bunny all of the sudden. "I guess I didn't know what was going on either. What I said earlier, about there being species that aren't real predators…that was really dumb of me. Really stupid. I should have known better after Koslov said that same thing about me…" Finnick's ears perked up and for the first time since the argument he actually smiled.
"I still don't know what to think about the collar," Hopps said, "but…I don't think that you shot anyone Nick. You're still a criminal, still a fugitive, but…" She trailed off and shook her head.
"What?" He asked. Hopps wiped a sleeve across her face, wiping her eyes.
"Would it be prejudiced if I said you weren't too bad for a fox?" Nick couldn't help but laugh.
"Yes," he said, "but I'll make an exception for you." Hopps smiled and managed to laugh. The atmosphere in the bunker relaxed significantly.
"So, what're we gonna do?" Finnick asked again, "what's the plan?" Honey picked up the bolt cutters and went to work on Nick's cuff again but only succeeded in chipping the blades. He set the damaged cutter aside with a sigh.
"Are you double jointed?" The cheetah asked Hopps hopefully, "I saw a movie once where the main character was double jointed and he could squeeze out of handcuffs…" Hopps shook her head.
"No…" Honey deflated and sighed, walking unhappily away, trying to think of some other way to remove the cuffs. Nick examined the crimped and mangled chain. Though it had been scored and cut by the bolt cutter it still looked much too strong to bash apart.
"You aren't trying too hard to stop us from breaking these cuffs." Nick said after a moment had passed. Hopps shrugged.
"I don't have to, the cuffs are stopping you just fine by themselves." And wasn't that true…
"Are you still planning on taking me in?" He asked. Hopps hesitated, but then nodded.
"If I get the chance to." Nick had nothing to say to that. At least it was better than an absolute 'yes'. Finnick grumbled.
"You wont take me alive." He said fiercely, and turned away. Hopps was silent.
"I could just take you," she said after a moment had passed, "in exchange for leaving your friends alone. I'm sure I could get the District Attorney and his people to just forget about them, especially if you were to tell us about Koslov…now that you don't have any incentive not to." Nick blinked. Was Hopps really trying to broker deals even now?
"Are you serious?" He asked, bewildered. Hopps nodded gravely.
"What other option do you have? This bunker isn't a permanent option, not when you have the entirety of the ZPD and most likely all of the Tundra Town mob hunting for you. You'd be safest in ZPD custody…I can clear up all of the stuff about my 'death' and get rid of the shooting charges…and a lot more if you help us with Koslov. And your friends walk free." Nick frowned, trying hard not to grit his teeth.
"I'm not going back there," he said firmly, "like my friend just said, you wont take me alive." Hopps laid her ears back, then looked away, disappointed. Nick stewed, feeling stupid. He'd felt like he had actually connected with Hopps for a moment there…then it was deals and calculating, impersonal police stuff once more…
He felt oddly betrayed.
"I'm still a fan of the idea where we break the cuffs and go our separate ways." He said, voice taut with anger. Hopps said nothing.
"I mean, it's what, nearly six now?" Nick asked rhetorically, feeling increasingly upset at Hopps as he spoke, "it'll be getting dark soon. How about we go out there and break the cuffs? I'm sure there's something that can cut through these chains and rid me of you." The words were barely out of his mouth when the world flashed white and he shouted, toppling over, clutching at his neck. The collar had shocked him. Hopps stared, face filled with mingled fear and concern.
"Nick," Honey said, rushing to his side, Finnick not far behind, "goodness…" Nick stared down at the ground and let out a ragged breath. Hopps was still staring. He hated how shocked she looked, how there was even sympathy in her eyes. He wanted his anger at her to be pure, not tainted with an odd guilt that he couldn't get rid of.
"Nick…" She said. Nick was once again surprised to hear his first name coming out of Hopps' mouth. She sounded bizarrely conflicted, perhaps regretting bringing up the deal.
"What?" He asked, a little more harshly than he'd meant to. Hopps sighed.
"If we just…go our separate ways then I'm going to have to come after all of you once I get back in touch with the ZPD." Finnick and Honey exchanged a glance before nodding.
"Bring it on." The fennec said. Honey seemed slightly more conflicted but nodded along anyway.
"Alright." Nick said, and got up.
...
A half hour later, after many warnings from Honey and an assurance from Finnick that they'd find a new place to hide as soon as possible, Nick and Hopps set out into the deepening twilight. The sunset barely reached through the trees, giving everything an eerie deep blue cast.
"Why'd you get so angry when I proposed that deal to you?" Hopps asked after a while, as they walked deeper into the jungle. Nick didn't want to show it but he had become lost almost instantly. His original plan had been to head back to Tapir & Son's, where he hoped he could find a welding torch or something heavy duty to break the cuffs, but instead he was just wandering. He had a feeling that Hopps knew this.
"Judy?" He asked in return, "have you ever distrusted the ZPD?" Hopps shook her head almost instantly.
"No…course not." Nick sighed.
"There's your answer. You cant really comprehend why I don't trust a thing a ZPD does because you've never looked down the wrong end of their stun-guns and batons. Did you know that the first time I was arrested I was nine years old?" Hopps stared.
"No…your record doesn't mention that."
"It was the day after I got my collar on," Nick said, "and I was still convinced that it was a symbol of adulthood, you know, like Koslov said. My father, he was a tailer, he wanted to open up his own shop, and all he needed was a loan. So off we went to a meeting with an old elephant who rejected us out of hand. I got upset by this because I had an inkling that he might have done it because we were predators, collared foxes in an upscale bank. I got shocked for the very first time, fell forward…and was arrested for assault. Fun story, right?" Hopps looked horrified.
"They arrested a…a kit for assault?" She asked, voice heavy with disbelieving shock.
"Ever since that day, every time I see one of those uniforms, one of those badges…all I can think of is the way everyone stared as my father walked us out of the station. Like some sort of mistake had been made and a pair of criminals were walking free…" Hopps put a paw on Nick's arm. He nearly flinched away from her touch but ultimately didn't. It felt oddly comforting.
"If it's worth anything," Hopps said, "I'm sorry that that happened to you." There was silence for a long moment. Then Hopps spoke again. "Did your father ever get that loan?" Nick shook his head curtly.
"No." Hopps had nothing to say to that.
They walked for another few minutes, then Nick heard the murmur of a river, someplace ahead of him. He stopped. It was definite, he was going the wrong way. But before he could ask Hopps if she had a compass or something (probably not, since she'd lost her utility belt at the Winter Palace), he heard a strange whoosh up above him. Like a kite taking off in a heavy gale.
He had turned halfway around to see what it was when something hit him hard in the shoulder, sending him spinning away, yanking Hopps after him. The night had been obscured by a silhouette, billowy and unformed, bizarre looking. Nick tried to lunge up but was knocked back to the ground by his collar. He yelped and then the figure was…folding into itself. What?
Hopps lashed out but the figure was quicker and jumped back before kicking her to the ground. She gasped in pain, Nick scrabbled over her, snarling, baring his teeth at the figure. It hit him again and the world turned to stars.
"Nick!" He heard Hopps cry, then came a sudden blinding light, like a star had exploded to life mere feet away. He curled away, shielding his eyes, blinking dazzling spots from his vision. Hopps grunted, then cried out in pain, Nick tried to reach out but only earned another blow that crashed down over his back. He collapsed to the ground, moldering leaves and dirt pressed against his face.
Then…suddenly, the chain of the cuffs was slack. Nick rolled away, coming up in a defensive position, night vision still dazzled by the flare of…whatever the hell that had been. But he could see enough to make out a dull red glow at the end of his cuff chain…where…
He suddenly remembered Hopps' words about an acetylene torch being needed to cut through the cuffs. But why had the silhouette separated them? A moment later those thoughts were knocked from his mind, the rush of blackness unfolding before him. For a terrible moment the entire world was darkness, a few whirling spots of flash blindness punctuating it, then the figure pulled both feet up, seemingly hovering in midair as it did so, and stomped Nick in the chest. He flew backward and came to a crashing halt in a stand of plants, stunned, chest on fire.
"Go." The figure said coldly, voice coming out as a hiss. The sheer emotionlessness was chilling. And with that the silhouette flowed away, back to where Hopps was. Nick felt himself shaking, terror pulsing through him in great thudding bursts, like the concussion of a really big firework blast.
For a moment all he could think about was running, sprinting through the jungle with no real destination, just until his legs gave out. But…
Hopps cried out again, then the silhouette gasped, it sounded like Hopps had hit him somewhere painful. Nick laid his ears back, balling his fists, and launched himself forward, picking up a stick as he did so.
The silhouette turned as Nick lunged, blocking Nick's blow with a fold of blackness. The stick exploded into rotten chunks, then Hopps kicked the figure's legs out from under him and he fell to the jungle floor with a crash. For the first time Nick got a good look at his assailant.
A leathery, pitch black creature, swathed in nonsensical folds of leathery skin, stared with beady eyes set over a flared snout. The figure opened his mouth in a snarl, revealing a set of razor sharp teeth, then Nick kicked him hard in the chin and snatched Hopps' arm, dragging her after him. The figure shrieked something indeterminable, then Nick could hear that same whooshing that had preceded the attack.
He threw himself to the ground, the figure soaring (soaring!) overhead in a rush of wind, disturbingly prehensile feet scraping along Nick's lower back, tracing red hot lines of agony. Nick scrambled up, then was falling sideways, his collar shooting bolts of agony through him. Somehow he retained his balance and kept limping, dragging Hopps along. The rabbit was staring to her left, face a rictus of horror.
"Nick! It's coming!" She shouted, then the silhouette billowed open n front of them and Nick realized that whatever they were facing had wings. Big ones. These were the strange leathery folds that Nick had seen earlier, why the figure had seemed so utterly bizarre and alien in the brief glimpses Nick had gotten of it earlier.
He dodged to the right and suddenly they were along the banks of the river he'd heard earlier, a rushing torrent of brown water that wound through the Rainforest District before ending up as a tributary of the main river somewhere near the border of the Docks.
The figure shrieked once more, a high, piercing noise, and Nick stared back, realizing with a stab of dread that he had nowhere to go but backward. Into the river.
"You still remember how to swim?" He asked Hopps, voice shaky with fright. She glanced back at the river, then suddenly the figure was gliding towards them, feet aimed at Hopps.
Nick yanked her back, caught a glancing blow on the shoulder from the figure, and then was submerged, spinning through dark waters.
When he came back up Hopps was gripping onto his sleeve, coughing and gasping as they went through the choppy water. The current was much faster than the canal had been and the water much rougher. This was a wild river, fed by snowmelt from Tundra Town.
"Doesn't this…" Hopps caught a wave to the face, which obliterated the rest of her sentence. Nick found himself clutching onto her paw like a life preserver as they spun downstream but was too frightened to feel at all self conscious about it.
"What?" He asked, trying and failing to keep his teeth from chattering. The water was frigid, barely removed from the snow and ice that it had once been.
"Waterfall!" Hopps shouted, and Nick stared ahead, to where the horizon dissolved into a rush of white foam. They were closing in fast, no time to make the shore. Nick clutched Hopps close and then was sucked over the edge.
For an instant they were falling, perfectly in synch with the water, air whistling past their ears, then the impact slammed them apart in a kaleidoscope of shocking pain.
Nick surfaced, body numb and yet somehow tingly, like he'd had a hundred thousand acupuncture needles stuck into him, coughing and sputtering, trying to force his abused lungs to inflate.
"Hopps!" He wheezed, voice barely carrying over the roar of the waterfall, "Judy!" Then he spotted a flash of blue, a spot of white. Marshaling the last of his strength, he swam after it. "I didn't fight that monster just to let you die now…" He gasped and seized onto the back of her uniform. Hopps stirred weakly as he turned her face up in the water, paddling towards a gravel bank.
They made a painful, staggering landfall, Hopps coughing and hacking up river water, Nick dizzy and shivering. He hugged his knees, unable to stop himself from shaking. Hopps stared at him, blinking slowly.
"You saved my life…" She said, and then threw her arms around him in an embrace. Nick jolted back, yelping.
"Ugh…" He groaned, and Hopps gasped, staring at her paw, which had come away red with blood.
"Nick…you're bleeding." She said, and lifted the shreds of his prison jumpsuit away from his back, wincing at what she saw underneath. "That…thing, it cut your back, we need to bandage that up…" Nick nodded slowly and got painfully to his feet. Now that the adrenaline from the fight and their trip over the waterfall was fading he felt hurt and weak, the world spinning disconcertingly around him. His back stung, sending lances of pain deep within him, from hip to shoulder.
"I…" He staggered and fell to his knee, Hopps putting his arm over her shoulder.
"Come on," she said, "we've got to get up the bank, find some help." But even as she said that she looked conflicted. Nick could tell that she wanted to contact the ZPD. He tried to tell her not to but the world turned an alarming shade of gray before he could and he nearly toppled over.
"Just a little further Nick." Hopps urged him, and somehow, though he felt like he'd faint or tumble over every step of the way, Hopps guided him up the steep riverbank and to a mostly empty parking lot next to some abandoned building site or other. Nick slumped down, gasping for breath, Hopps crouching next to him. She was scanning for something but not finding it. Finally she stamped her foot in frustration.
"Where's a pay-phone when you need one?" She wondered aloud, exasperated, then winced. "I'm gonna have to do something illegal," she said, "don't think any less of me…" Nick smiled wearily.
"Am I corrupting you already?" He asked, then Hopps was running over to an older pick up truck, rust spotted and sporting a quartet of bald tires. She looked both ways, spotted nobody nearby, and then hopped up and put an elbow through the front driver's side window. Nick watched, amazed.
"Are you stealing a car?" He laughed, then winced as the effort set his back afire. Hopps unlocked the door and swung it open, running back over to Nick.
"Come on, gotta walk a little more…" She urged and Nick managed the arduous trek over to the truck, clambering into the front passenger seat with a sigh. Hopps climbed into the driver's seat and proceeded to hot-wire the truck with astonishing proficiency.
"You sure you've never done this before?" Nick asked with a tired smile. Hopps shook her head fiercely.
"It was part of training," she said, "I swear." The truck had clearly not been maintained well, but at least it ran. They headed out of the parking lot and onto a dark and largely empty road. Nick buckled his seatbelt, noticing that Hopps had done the same. He felt faint and woozy, and wasn't entirely sure how much longer he'd be able to stay awake before blood loss and exhaustion carried him off.
"Where are we going?" He asked. Hopps glanced over and once more looked conflicted.
"Somewhere safe." She said at last, and Nick grayed out.
...
He awoke in fits and starts, consciousness fogged with pain and fatigue. Once they were going through traffic, Hopps telling him to keep his head low. Then they were cruising along a cul-de-sac, green lawns, massive homes, many decorations in the shapes of bunnies. Was this…?
"Bunny Burrow?" He asked blearily, then passed out once more.
Hopps was gone when he came to next, but he could see her through the window, stealthily approaching one of the homes. She knocked. The door opened, and the resulting shriek made Nick jump. Though he couldn't hear the specifics of what Hopps was saying, the visuals were clear enough. Hopps being enveloped in a storm of hugs by a dozen rabbits of all sizes. A few even seemed to be weeping.
So this was the Hopps family. But why had she brought him here? Nick tried to sit up but his back had been glued to the car seat by dried blood. He tore away, cried out and sank into a faint.
Then he was being carried, very furtively, by a veritable sea of rabbits. A few seemed confused. There was much chatter but Nick couldn't bring himself to understand it.
As they crossed the threshold Nick tried to reach out for Hopps but the world seemed to be moving away from him, shrinking to a pale dot that soon became nothing at all.