Nick stared at the box with abject terror, though he dared not show it. It seemed such a harmless thing, like a brass gilded Roobix Cube. He knew better though. He'd seen it three times before. Every time he'd resisted the urge to solve it, but that first time was the hardest, and the worst.
He had just turned 16, and on the streets that meant liquor, drugs and tail. Some dingo had brought the box with them, then pawed it off saying "A birthday isn't a birthday without a present." In hindsight, he now knew what they were really doing; trying to get the cursed box to latch onto someone else. They'd succeeded; he was pretty sure that had been the dingo who washed up in the Canals later that week. He idly wondered if that had worked, or if the poor bastard's soul was now wherever this thing led.
He'd been too distracted by basser pleasures that night, so the box remained unsolved. Time and again over the next week he would begin to think about the puzzle box, only to be distracted by something or another. However, by week's end, he was determined to solve the box. Just as he sat down he was paid a visit. The vixen from his birthday sauntered in with promises of every worldly pleasure. He didn't hesitate. When he woke the next morning, both she and the puzzle box were gone.
At the time he didn't know why, but he was determined to track her and the box down. In his darker introspective moments he could admit that had he found her in time, he would have killed her on the spot. He didn't arrive in time. Whether it was by minutes, hours or even days she was long dead when he got there. All that was left was the abattoir stench, a few tufts of scarlet fur, and a pristine brass gilded wooden box.
Nick ran. He didn't know how long or how far, but he found himself in Tundratown. He was rescued from a frozen death by a kindly old shrew. Mama Big was the name she gave and insisted on, and so he became a part of her 'famiglia'. Life was good for a time, and Nick put the nightmare of the puzzle box out of mind until it found him again.
He had been sent to a Bazaar in the Canyonlands, shopping for supplies and information. He had found a skunk-butt rug he intended to give to Finnick as a gag when he saw it on the table of a ragged eared jackrabbit. In a panic, he rushed over.
"What is your pleasure sir?" There was an unnatural scent about the mammal.
"Where did you get that?!" Nick frantically gestured to the box.
The scarred creature gave a rictus grin and slid it over. "Take it, it is yours." Nick snatched the little wooden cube and turned to rush away as the hare spoke again. "It always was."
Nick jerked his head around, but the hare and his table were gone; the only evidence they had existed at all resting in the palm of his paw.
He rushed back to the Big estate, fully intent on dumping the wretched thing in Mr. Big's icing hole when Mama confronted him at the door. "Nicholas dear, how are you today?"
"Well! Great! Couldn't be better!" Nick barked out. "Just got back from the Bazaar!"
"Oh, how exciting! Did you bring back anything for me?" Nick froze stock still as the family matron shakily reached for the box.
In desperation, he thrust the gag gift into her paws; anything to keep the damned box out of her paws. "Here! I found this, lovely, paw crafted rug!"
Mama's bear-er Sergei looked ready to kill even as Mama cooed over the mammal-fur rug. Everyone in the household was livid at the implied insult, but Mama insisted that it was the most wonderful thing she had been given in ages. Nick was now on the outs with Mr. Big, and was certain the only way he'd get access to the Icing Hole was when he was thrown into it.
As fate would have it, Mama passed away later that month, and Nick knew he needed to leave before he joined her. As he was packing up, Sergei paid him a visit. He threw Nick, bag and all into a sedan and took him to one of Mr. Big's less reputable properties. "Little pelt thinks it is funny, to be giving Mama Big such a gift? Sergei does not." He dumped Nick onto the floor of the warehouse, where the puzzle box clattered to the ground between them.
The bear bent down and retrieved the novelty. "Sergei remembers this. You give Mama that disgusting rug and keep this?" He raised the box to eye level.
Nick blurted out. "Take it! It's yours if you want!"
The bear sneered. "Sergei will." Whatever threats he was going to issue were halted when he absently pressed on one of the boxes faces, and a strange chiming tune began coming out. "Sergei thinks if he is entertained by little box, he will make pelt's death quick." He began working the box in earnest, to the exclusion of all else.
Nick took the bears distraction and scurried out as fast as he could. But the longer Sergei worked the box, the louder the tune became and the more it seemed it wasn't coming from the box. Nick's own curiosity nearly won out before he reached the door, but he managed to slip through and shut it behind him. The alien tune was dulled now and he could concentrate better, until the moment the music stopped and the screaming began. Nick didn't stop running until he was tackled by Finnick somewhere in Savannah Central.
It would be some years before he saw the box again, this time in the paws of a homeless badger everyone called 'Honey'. She had always been kind, if abrasive and fixated on her conviction of the ever present 'Cudspiracy'. That day, Nick was not drawn to the sound of ranting, but of dissonant alien chimes. He saw her hunched over in the depths of the alley, whispering about finally knowing the truth. He rushed forward and snatched the box from her paws and ran. It took half an hour to lose the distraught and raging badger, but better she be lost in the depths of Happytown than succumb to whatever was in the box.
He collapsed in an exhausted heap near the old Banyan St. station, the strange chiming tune never ceasing. He assumed he was crazy, as the few mammals who passed him didn't act as if they heard anything until a dapper elk stopped and looked down at him. "You have something for me?"
Nick looked up. He knew the mammal in front of him; he knew everybody, and Thurston Hornady Sr. was the closest Nick had ever come to knowing a monster. He was a predator in the truest, if not literal sense; many were the working girls who disappeared into the back of his sedan, never to be heard from again.
Nick held up the box. "Here, take it. It's yours if you want it." The elk snatched the box from his paws and walked away gazing longingly at the prize in his hooves. A memory rose unbidden and escaped his lips. "It always was." Nick bolted from the street as fast as he could, and that had been the last time he had seen it.
Until today. Now, Nick and Judy stood in the sitting room of Thurston Hornady Jr. while forensic techs poured over the remains of the only son of T. Hornady Sr., and heir to the Hornady financial empire. Nick felt abject terror, though he dared not show it, for there in the center of the room was the puzzle box in all its banal glory. And if there was one thing he knew with absolute assurity, it was that Judy Hopps would never leave a puzzle unsolved.