In a specially constructed hall hidden fifteen storeys bellow ground, and built with five feet thick reinforced concrete, a large group of mammals were meeting in the capital to discuss what was happening in Zootopia. They were all sat around a large oval wooden table that could fit sixty and there were enough rows of benches stretching out either side of the table to sit three hundred. The hall had been built more than fifty years ago to allow the government to continue to operate in the event of a war that never came, but anybody watching would be hard pressed to think this wasn't as serious. Mammals from various species from rodents to elephants were gathered, all of them had been watching the large cinema like screen at the far end of the hall as a female cheetah with thick fur stood away from the others talking on her cell. It was only an hour after the attack but the death toll was already standing at 168 with nearly five hundred injured so far. It was clear that things in the city were rapidly spiralling to breaking point with emergency services reporting that they were stretched to the limits trying to deal with a situation that nobody had been trained for. The large screen had been split into three with the larger central window showing the news and the smaller windows either side showing two faces, one was of the Mammalia Bureau of Investigations National Director Joey Samuels and the other of Church, they were all linked into an emergency conference call. The cheetah finished her call and sat down at the end of the table and cleared her throat before gesturing to Church's feed,
"For those of you who don't know this is Major Neighland Christoph of the Interior Security Bureau. I've just spoken with the President. She is on her way back from Europe right now and will be landing in seven hours, we have until then to organise an effective response to this situation. I'm aware that there is belief of a second impending attack?"
Director Samuels answered her, his connection was crackly and distant sirens could be heard in the background as his office was only a mile from the blast site.
"That's correct Madam Secretary, Section 12 was investigating a truck filled with chemical weapons, however nobody saw this one coming"
"What kind of chemical?"
"It's new but has been described as Nighthowlers on crack"
"My god. How soon is the attack due?"
"Intelligence points to it happening in around thirty eight hours"
"That doesn't give us much time, where is Regional Director Savage? I would like see the intell before I brief the President"
"We don't know where he is Ma'am"
A heavily overweight rhino who was smoking a cigar interrupted, his southern drawl was thick,
"What do you mean you don't know, he's your subordinate isn't he?"
"Just before the attack S12 HQ reported a potential intrusion, as per procedure lock-down was initiated. Nobody's heard from them since, we don't even know if they are aware of what's happened"
"How could they not know?"
"The lock-down procedure is automated, once triggered it cuts all communications with the outside world and the only entrance to the facility is sealed with a blast door that can only be unlocked once the lock-down has been lifted. Something that can only be done from inside the facility"
Muttering to noone in particular he mumbled
"Who the hell designs these things"
"Cold war paranoia I'm afraid, it's a re-purposed bunker not a fresh build"
The cheetah gave the rhino a filthy look for interrupting her and she took over again,
"What intrusion?"
"They believe that someone accessed their systems, unknown who the culprit is"
"I don't like the sound of that director, if they have been breached then what impact will that have on us?"
"Very little, they have a self contained system, nothing that links back to our systems in the capital"
"That's not what I meant, need I remind you that there is an alien working in that group, if he gets hold of that information then a lot of damage can be done"
"Yes Ma'am"
"What's the situation on the ground, we can see the news reports but we haven't been able to get hold of Commissioner Bogo or the other Sections"
"It's a mess down here, after the blast it was determined that the bomb was likely remote detonated, we've had to block cellular networks in case the second device is already active"
"Who's in charge down there?"
"ZPD are coordinating ground response, they're having a lot of difficulty ma'am"
"What about your agency?"
"All we have in the city is S12 and a dozen agents at a satellite office who are trying to assist ZPD command"
"You have only a dozen agents? Why hasn't there been more agents in the city when a terrorist attack was known to be imminent?"
"Begging your pardon Madam Secretary but I requested authority to deploy large scale units yesterday, but it was rejected by the intelligence select committee for being too brash a response, you're now seeing the results"
She turned to another cheetah sat just behind her and to the side,
"Find out who rejected that request"
A lion in a military uniform with a gold star on his shoulders asked,
"Madam secretary I have a quick reaction force stationed a hundred miles away, we could have units in the city within five hours if given the go ahead"
"General that would be like using an axe to conduct surgery, the situation is bleak but sending the army in is not what I would consider to be a viable option at this stage, I don't want five thousand heavily armed troops being affected by a nighthowler lookalike if it is active"
She turned back to the TV when Church called out to her,
"Madam Secretary I have an option for you"
"Go on"
"My team and I are situated in the city already by your request, we're trained in crisis management as well as other things as you well know. We're a small team which can allow us to move in ways the army can't and we have the skills to conduct operations in this type of environment. If you sign us off we can help guide the ZPD, as well as find Sokolov for you"
Joey's crackly voice didn't give the cheetah any time to respond,
"Section 12 is already hunting him"
"You already said that they are in lock-down, until it's lifted their investigation is stalled and we don't have time to wait to see if they turn up again"
"I realise time is short but they have something no other agency has, Max Langdon"
"Right, the alien. Who's bright idea was it to give an alien a position in one of our security agencies in the first place? Director Savage. And now he's unaccounted for as well as the alien in question, lets also not forget that the terrorist is an alien themselves that comes from the same world that he does, does anyone else see the high likelihood that it was Max who told Sokolov where and how to attack?"
"How dare you talk about my staff like that!"
"Your staff? What do you know about them Director? Nothing at all, everything about them was taken at face value, you have no idea what they're intentions are, for all we know they are here to kill as many as possible!"
"Enough!"
The cheetah snapped loudly and thumped her fist against the table making everyone in the room jump slightly, she took a moment to compose herself,
"I can understand where both of you are coming from, I have read the reports from each of you regarding your views at the beginning when they arrived, but this is our national security that we are discussing, not a pissing contest"
"Sorry Ma'am"
"Understood Madam Secretary"
"Now then, Director Samuels I am going to ask you a direct question and I want a no bullshit yes or no answer. Since the blast have you had any contact with any member of Section 12?"
There was a pause, Joey sighed and had no choice but to answer truthfully,
"No Ma'am, I have not had any contact"
"Then I have no choice but to go with Major Christoph's assessment that they have been compromised. Director Samuels you are to issue immediate orders for the arrest and detention of all members of Section 12, including Director Savage, until such time that we can ascertain whether or not any of them were involved in this attack"
"But Ma'am"
"No buts Director, we cannot risk having a traitor in our ranks, especially when such high stakes are at risk. Major Christoph I want you to deploy your team as you see fit, you have emergency authority so please act accordingly, If you have the opportunity then detain Langdon, if he refuses then use whatever force you deem necessary but Sokolov is kill on sight. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal clear Ma'am"
Claire's heart was racing, stood by the locked door to her room was Sokolov wearing a long doctors coat, his black mask and yellow eyes made him look like something out of a horror movie and it sent a shiver down her spine as she spotted the large pistol in his paw. He glanced out of the observation window and closed the curtains with a draw string,
"We wont be wanting any interruptions now would we"
He walked casually towards her while keeping the gun trained on her, she stayed still and watched him closely for any opportunity to act, and could see one coming. Once he had reached the side of her bed he leaned over and pulled the cable connected to the nurses button out of the wall, but as he did so she flung the covers off the bed and lunged at him, jabbing her stump into his throat and grabbing for the gun with her good arm. He stumbled backwards and she almost had a grip on the barrel before he let it drop to the floor out of reach, he grabbed her with both his arms, one paw around her throat and the other he grabbed a pawfull of the patients clothing around her stomach and lifted her into the air with little effort before throwing her against the headrest of the oversized bed. The impact knocked the wind out of her, she gasped for air and was about to try again before she heard an unmistakable click, she looked over to him to see that he had picked the gun back up and had it trained one her head, the hammer locked back and ready to fire. She wanted to yell for help but nothing came out, she braced herself for the shot, but instead Sokolov de-cocked the hammer and put it in a holster inside the dark blue suit that he was wearing beneath the doctors coat.
"You've certainly got fire in you, I can see why Max has stuck with you, usually he would have left by now"
"You're not here to kill me?"
He grabbed the chair that Max had been sitting on and moved it to the foot of her bed near the window and sat down facing her,
"That depends on you Claire, I came here with the intention of talking to you. But if you want a fight then I'll kill you"
Claire sat herself up but kept her distance from him, if he was going to try anything then she wanted to increase her chances any way possible.
"Alright, what do you want?"
"I want Max, more specifically I want him to live"
"You could have fooled me, your people have tried to kill us at every turn"
"Delay not kill, If I wanted Max dead then I would have waited with my rifle at the railyard for him and we wouldn't be having this conversation, you would be in your little armoured bunker beneath the tower block twiddling your thumbs looking for any clues as to were I am"
"I don't know what you're talking about"
"Don't play dumb with me Claire it's beneath you. I know about Section 12, I know where it is, I know what you've found and what your bosses think of Max. I also know who you really are, been telling lies to Max haven't you, signal corps pfft, is that what they call deniable operations these days?"
Her eyes went wide and she could feel the blood draining form her face
"How the hell do you know?"
"A certain mammal has been keeping me up to date on everything, I've been several steps ahead of you since this all started. But now I've come to a crossroads you see, and which path I take will have profound effects, so I wont make the decision, instead you are going to"
A smirk appeared on his face, or as much as one that the mask would allow, the look in his eyes made her skin crawl and she gulped involuntarily.
"For you to make this decision you need to be brought up to speed, a little history lesson if you will. The Thihir condition is complicated, it forcefully amplifies certain aspects of those affected, we are all stronger, faster and tougher than any normal mammal, but it also specialises us. Mine for instance allows me to see things the way others can't, it's what keeps me ahead of the curve and has made it impossible for anyone to capture me so far. Max's speciality on the other paw is his brutality, when he was found by the rescue teams after the breach that turned him was finally closed it took a couple of rhinos to pin him down after he had torn his way through several soldiers. He is incredibly violent, but violence is useful in war and so he was spared, subjected to conditioning by the council, and used as a weapon. It took a long time and a number of painful experiments to finally get him under control, it was so bad that he doesn't remember it, blocked it out. In the end they linked his violence to a handler, one mammal that he would recognise subconsciously as being in control, normally he would act and appear as an other agent that protected our world, but when the handler releases him you don't want to be in the area, there's a reason he's known as the butcher amongst the scum of our world."
"That sounds far fetched even from what I've seen of your world"
"Is it? Your government experimented with mind control during the cold war, and some came close to success from what I've read, is it so hard to imagine it actually existing? Handlers are an Agents lifeline, it would be easy for them to keep in touch, they feed intell and keep them up to date in the field"
She didn't answer, there was a lot about their kind that nobody knew about, and they had already seen some crazy stuff that they thought impossible previously, but she still didn't want to take him on his word.
"Max has worked alone for years, he doesn't do it out of choice, it's too dangerous to keep others around him when he's working, he injured seven other agents in the space of two years because once he gets going he cant tell the difference between a target and a bystander, except for one. Sarah managed to get through to him better than any other, so much so that he grew attached to her, she was fiery, like you"
"What, you saying I'm his replacement for her?"
"In a matter of speaking. It's all subconscious, he doesn't realise it's happening, as far as he's concerned your works partners and he's looking out for you. However others in high positions are noticing changes in his behaviour, and it's scaring them. I'm sure you've seen his small outbursts, his snapping at colleagues or his heavy pawdness to others, did he ever snap at you?"
"No but I'm not the only one he hasn't snapped at"
"That's true, but after your surgery he came in here and made sure you would survive, before seeking revenge"
"Revenge?"
"He killed Hyde and his guards, he's on his way right now to kill Angie as well"
"What?!"
"It's true, you only have to ask your colleagues when they arrive. They are responsible for hurting you, now he's going to hurt them. This brings us to the second part that you have to know. I know that Angie let her mouth run away with her and she told you about the tunnels beneath the city and our intention of blowing up the carnival, the mammal who provided me with the information in the first place holds a position of power within the government, you know him as Church"
"Church is helping you?!"
"Helped. I have been told that I have a silver tongue, and granted I do have a good track record of manipulating mammals to do what I want, I wasn't a spymaster for no reason. But Church could give me a run for my money, he fed us information for months about the tunnels, the upcoming events, which of the mob bosses in the city would likely back my group and the best way to approach them, everything I needed to know about this city and how it is run was given to me on a silver platter saving me valuable time and effort"
"Why would he do something like that?"
"To get himself a better position, I've seen it done before, unscrupulous mammals with the desire for power have set others up only to pull the rug out from under them at the last minute, some have got away with it too. He is now trying to pull the rug out from me, I wouldn't mind if he was just targeting me, I can get around him easily, but he's not just after me, he's after Max as well"
"Max hasn't done anything, he's been helping us every step of this investigation"
"Exactly, he knows what you do, and he knows me. Church fears that he can connect the dots, see things that you can't and that puts Church at risk. He's going to kill Max, and after his attack on Hyde and Angie Church is going to have grounds to do so and not a single mammal in the government will bat an eye"
"Why are you concerned for Max? He wants to kill you after what you did to Sarah"
"Ah Sarah, she was a lovely mammal, at face value. She was an assassin not a pen pusher, one of the councillors wanted to kill Max back in our world after one of his friends got caught up in an operation Max was part of. I caught wind of this and decided to sent a message with her to the council, Max still thinks of her but that's more from conditioning I think. As for why I want him alive, I have big plans for Max, plans that would be spoiled if he was to die before they came to fruition"
"If you know about Churches plan why don't you stop it yourself, why come to me?"
"If I stop him then it looks like Church was right, if you stop him then he can be brought down"
"Why should I?"
"Because I don't think you're the kind of mammal that would sell out her partner and allow him to die needlessly. So here are your choices, option one you stand against Church and protect Max, you don't need to do it for long, events will transpire soon that will keep him alive, in return I will disappear and leave you and the city to recover for one year, if you find me in that time then so be it but I very much doubt you will"
"And option two?"
"Max dies by Churches paw, and I detonate the chemical bomb, there's enough compound in there to turn twenty percent of the cities population into savage animals in less than a minute. I'll let you decide agent, just to let you know Church is already getting the ball rolling, so don't take long deciding"
Claire was wide eyed as she watched him put his doctors coat back on, her mind was racing from what had just been dumped on her. Sokolov walked up to the mirror-less dresser that held a spare pair of clothes provided by the hospital and her personnel effects, he took his gun out and put it on top of it along with a small black USB stick,
"You're going to need this, Max has taken the guns from your safehouse"
He unlocked the door and walked out of the room. She quickly got up and grabbed the gun, pressed the end of the slide down against the dresser to make sure it was loaded and dashed out into the hall after him but he was nowhere to be seen. There was only a couple of nurses as the rest had gone to help with the blast victims, Claire held the gun behind her so as not to scare them when someone grabbed her arm from behind, she snapped her head around to see the coyote that had been gaurding Max,
"Spencer what are you doing here?"
"Getting you out of here, C'mon there's no time to explain"
Spencer ushered Claire through the staff area of the hospital just as two officers from the ZPD arrived and began searching for her. Her bright blue patient garb was far too noticeable and so she grabbed a tracksuit that had been left on a bench inside the staff locker rooms as they ran through, they only slowed down when they had dashed out from one of the side exits used by maintenance workers to bring items into the building and slammed it shut behind them. Spencer dragged a heavy bin in front of the door and kicked the brakes on, he turned around just in time catch Claire finish putting the track suit on, the pistol Sokolov had left her sitting in the waistband around the back.
"Where did you get that?"
"Sokolov"
"How the fuck?!"
"It's a long story, what the hell is going on Spence?"
"Orders came down from the top brass to arrest all of us in S12, they think one of us helped Sokolov attack the city"
"Are they mad? We're the ones trying to prevent this"
"I know, smells like a set up to me. Jack left me to watch over you before the shit hit the fan, my cars round the corner lets go"
They walked casually across the busy parking lot, there were a lot of other mammals going back and forth and it helped them blend in. They quickly got in with Spencer behind the wheel and he pulled out onto the road leading to the exit, as he did the two ZPD officers that were looking for her walked out the front door about fifty feet away right across their path,
"Oh shit"
Spencer looked like he was about to panic and Claire put her paw on his leg,
"Calm down, act natural"
The officers looked straight at them through the window of the car, but they turned and continued walking through the parking lot, Spencer kept the car slow and steady till it was onto the main road where he quickly increased his speed to get as much distance between them and the cops as possible.
"Where are you going Spencer?"
"Beach promenade, I have a key to one of our safe houses there"
"We can't go there"
"Why not?"
"If they are after us then we have to assume they know where the safe houses are"
He slapped the steering wheel with his palm
"Fuck. What do you think we should do?"
"Head to an apartment complex on Palm view at 75th and 112th avenue, we need to get there quickly"
"I can do quickly"
He put his foot down and screeched down the freeway, although he was not a very good investigator by ZBI standards he was an excellent driver, something that Claire realised she might never be able to do again as she looked at her stump. Shaking the thought she took her cell phone out and tried to call Jack, but instead of getting any signal all she was met with was silence.
"What the hell?"
"Cell phones have been blocked, they think the bomb was remote triggered"
"Dammit, what about radios? I need to get hold of Jack urgently"
Spencer shot down the road and barely managed to squeeze between two trucks making Claire inhale sharply as they had only an inch either side, she was impressed that he didn't even skip a beat and he swung the car around a tight corner straight after and accelerated further,
"Encrypted channels work but they're probably being monitored, we cant get through to HQ either"
"Why not?"
"Just before the blast Jack triggered Avalanche, they've been on lock down since, no communications at all"
"What about TUSK?"
"There were three teams next to the bomb when it went off, most of them are dead or injured"
"What?! So we're on our own?"
"I've managed to get hold of six other agents who were off site when everything went down, but I don't know if they can help"
"fucking hell"
"you said it"
It took a long time to cut a path through the traffic as they headed away from the bomb site, as a precaution the ZPD had evacuated a huge area around the site as well as shutting down the entire metro system, thousands of mammals that had intended to use the trains had instead been forced to take their cars, this greatly increased the number of cars in their path, it also didn't help that many roads had been closed to allow emergency vehicles to get about with little delay, this created bottlenecks in some places that took them longer to get through than they wanted with them moving at a snails pace, but once they had got through these they had a clear path to palm view. Along the way she had explained to Spencer what had happened in the hospital and what they had found out, he understood what she was doing, and even though he didn't like the sound of it he agreed to help her out the best he could. As they descended the off ramp from an overhead highway they could see the apartment complex, Claire was worried with what they saw, the building had many of its windows sealed shut with metal plates that had been drilled into the walls, it was covered in gang graffiti and what few windows remained in the upper floors were either smashed or covered with curtains. Spencer pulled to a stop in an alley opposite and the two of them got out. He popped the trunk and helped Claire put on a holster that was in a a solid metal case built into the base of the trunk, the gun that Sokolov had left her was an upgraded model of the service pistol they used and luckily for her, or planning on his part, the spare mags that Spencer had fit it. Spencer had pulled out a shotgun and some spare shells as Claire was trying to figure out how she was going to be able to change magazines quickly with only one hand when gunshots and screams rang out from the complex.