Chapter 2

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"-and then, tracing back further, you get to the Renaissance, and the reformation of the Church of the Lamb by our good old bad ram, Martin Loomer," Honey carried on, her mouth, still muzzled, beginning to get dry. She paused, getting some saliva in her mouth and running it around, trying to keep it all moist.

"Want a drink?" Amy asked.

She paused and blinked. "You really think I'm that dumb?" she asked, before laughing. "You really think!?"

The binturong nodded slightly, noting down the laugh before flicking over to another page on her rapidly depleting notebook. This had been… -something.

"The new church you see, was take four! Take four! On trying to make a new world religion, to indoctrinate mammals into the flock. Ewedaism, the old church, Islamb and now the new church! Why d'ya think they pulled it over to the New World, huh? New world, new colony, new religion, new chance to gestate an army and then take over. -Course, they failed what with the native mammals fighting back and other mammals coming over, so they began moving things around. Now, given that they owned the banking system and like and helped found Zootopia, while keeping it out of the States or the Dominion, I was a bit lost for a while. Why not use their power to make it sheep-only? Sure, there's disposable workers for industry and stuff, all powered with the energy from the city's uber dam on the Kula river. Most of that energy all went to the climate works, but that's obviously a test as part of their global terror-forming plan! Don't want no desert or ice wastes in the age of wool, just rolling green boring meadowlands. But why did they want old Zoot to be a melting pot? Obvs, because it gave them a petri dish to test on. Them nighthowlers were the test you see? First test, to see how the world would react when they launched their attack. We live in the perfectly balanced city, as all things should be, so it was the best way to see if they could turn the modern mammal against one group… -and then after that another… -and after that another. And boom! Bye-bye Zootopia, hello, Ewetopia! ..or Ramtopia or Lambtopia"

"I see," the therapist noted, before pausing. Her patient was enjoying this, just being able to preach and preach and preach. Cudspiracy 101 had taken them across all seven continents, back to the stone age, and here and back again. She'd put up with it though, given that if there was any hope to be had, in both understanding and helping this mammal, it would start with Honey trusting her.

Speaking of which.

"Say?" she asked. "Do you want that muzzle off?"

There was a pause, the ratel eyeing her up, thinking and thinking. She looked over at the guard, standing in the door, then back at Amy. "Sure thing boss." With a few swift paw movements, off the thing came, the honey badger opening wide and stretching her mouth. "That's nice," she commented. "That's real nice. -Speaking of nice… That's what Nick and Judy were! They fought the cudspiracy and halted it for just a little bit! They're real heroes, you know?"

"We all have a lot to thank them for," Amy replied, smiling. Just as she'd done the three other times the fox and bunny pair had turned up in Honey's conversation. Amy wished she could mention her involvement with the duo. . Knowing that she helped Wilde could be a big trust builder between the two of them. But confidentiality laws were confidentiality laws...

Maybe she'd talk to Nick about it. Ask if she could say some things, or get him to come to her in person? Would Honey trust the fox more than her? Then again, she'd seemed a bit hostile to her wolf guard, who would surely be on the other end of the sliding scale. Why was that, she wondered, before deciding she might as well ask. "Given that I'm a predator, I can understand why you'd trust me more," she began, before looking over at the wolf. "But wouldn't he be the least likely to be in the conspiracy. He's a wolf after all. Surely sheep would never work with him."

There was a glint in Honey's eye. "Oh yeah, the sheep hate wolves alright. Even more than lions. And that's why you should always trust a lion and never a wolf!"

Amy blinked. Not for the first time, the honey badger had lost her. "Can you explain that, please?"

"Well," she said proudly, jiggling about in her straitjacket. "What's worse, more humiliating, than knocking out and killing up your least favourite species? -Turning them into a pet! They've been warring against the wolves for eons, drugging and manipulating them. Most of the poor dum-dums are now just brainwashed sheep-dogs. Sleeper agents. The works!" She paused, fixing her eyes on the very indignant guard. "Say the right codeword to him, and he might kill us all. Or, as he's been trained and raised to protect the sheep, he's doing just that right now."

"I don't know what you're on," the wolf guard butted in. "But last I checked, I don't know any sheep, and I'm pretty damn sure my brain's working fine - which is more than I can say for you."

Honey looked at him like he was a cub that had just done something adorably cute. "Aaaawwww. You say that, good boy. Don't worry, we'll find the cure. You'll be free soon. It's not your fault they made you this way. You don't deserve what's going to happen to you, don't you? Don't you good boy?"

"Dare I ask what'll happen to me?" the guard huffed.

"Well," Honey began, smiling again. "When you're not useful anymore, the sheep will take you into a woodshed or the like with a shotgun, and you can figure out the rest. BLAM! SPLAT! D-E-D, DEAD!"

Amy coughed loudly - best keep tensions with the guard from escalating further. "Yes, well, that's very vivid," she said, closing her notebook. "Miss Badger…"

"-Call me Honey, please."

"Honey, I'll be seeing you soon. However, as you've behaved, I think we can take you to a nicer cell and get you out of that straitjacket while I work on your case." She paused, glowering slightly. "That said, you injured the guards on your way here, and if you're violent again we'll have to keep you in a more secure facility. None of us want that, so please don't make this harder for yourself."

"Oh no!" she chirped. "I won't. Double-triple promise." She frantically began nodding her head up and down, as Amy gestured to the guard to move her up. As he moved in though, she paused.

"Say…" she began, pausing. "I totally get that on pain of death you may not be able to say this, but…"

"But?"

"But," Honey said, her voice lowering slightly. "You knew about my theories and the like. You totally knew." She paused and stared into Honey's eyes as they began to tear up. "Only a few resistance fighters know about it… Which one sold me out?" She sniffed. "Which of my friends turned traitor?"

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The cell door opened and Honey was escorted out, the wolf guard guiding her. Amy followed, assuaging the ratel. "I promise, though, no-one betrayed you or handed you into us,"

"I'm still not totally sure 'bout that," the badger noted, pausing slightly. "But I think I'll try and trust you. There's very few mammals I do that to, you hear?"

"I hear," Amy agreed, as Honey was taken out of the padded cell and up to one of the secure care wards. The badger's cooperation was a big relief for Amy. Cooping up mammals in the padded cells full-time was a miserable experience for both patients and staff. Speaking of which, a crew of caretakers was coming down now, with a push trolley full of items. Honey watched as they passed her, before stopping outside of the cell next door to her old one. One of the attendants, dressed in a full up hybrid hazmat/bomb suit, checked that they had what was required. A bowl of food and water, a new straightjacket and a bag of changing supplies. He gulped, before entering the room, a set of rabid screams and slobbering sounds streaming out as they struggled to deal with the patient. Amy stayed until the tired, battered, stained and bruised attendants dashed out of the cell. One of them angrily threw a used incontinence pad into the bin, before slamming the door shut and looking up at Amy. "Why can't we just sedate that one?"

"His family doesn't want us too," she said, as she peeked in at the most difficult patient they kept here. It was a long journey for the family to take, coming all the way from Outback Island, but there was no facility there could handle… well, that.

"It really puts the 'mania' into his species name, doesn't it," the attended grunted, as he walked away.

Amy, though, was more hung up on the thought of his family, and that of another patient's.

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It hadn't been that long ago that she'd met with another member of the medical profession; one involved in research, drug development and biochemistry.

She'd given Amy dockets of information, copies of pictures and handwritten notes. She'd talked and talked about her younger sister, what she did and her long history, before asking Amy if she would go ahead and section her.

At first, Amy had been sceptical of the information and unsure about the reports sent by post, or of the interviews with friends and associates. But then, as the news of nighthowlers being in play again rang out and the older sister begged her, pleaded with her, to do something before her younger sibling did something crazy, she'd realised something.

"Something's up with you. What is it?"

The sister's strenuous denials confirmed it.

"There's another reason why you're trying to get me to do this. Please. Tell me."

So, she had. She'd told her of the time a liaison from the Mayor's Office came to talk to her, asking about bringing her onto a project of national importance. Critical importance. There was a new epidemic spreading, one that could tear Zootopia apart. Reportedly it was a secret, the risks of telling the public too high and, while she was nervous about the matter, she had agreed. She'd sworn an oath to help and to protect and heal, and, as far as she knew, this was officially sanctioned. The Mayor was behind this, wasn't he? So, after signing the state secrets act, she was shown the mammals who'd already succumbed. The savage predators, their numbers growing day by day as reports of their disappearances grew.

Yes, they were missing off the street, but that had to be done to keep panic to a minimum. It was government-sanctioned, after all. It had to be the right thing to do, and so she'd set to work, trying to find a cure but never quite pinning it down. The numbers had just grown and grown and then, when she felt that keeping it a secret wasn't going to be viable anymore, she'd asked the Mayor about it. Asked him what the chief of police and others thought.

She then learned just how much of a secret it was, right before it all crumbled. Led away in cuffs, thrown in jail as an accessory to kidnapping, she'd felt scared, confused and betrayed. She'd thought what she was doing was legal, necessary, critical to keeping the people safe. Only now she was behind bars, her lawyer telling her that her signing of the secrets act should provide enough plausible deniability to help her get bail at the very least

But she'd watched on as the case was cracked open and exposed, and the mammals she was locked in with soon turned against her. Rumours flew quickly in there, and she felt like a kick or a stab was waiting just around the corner. She could hold on, though. Her sister visited. She told her sternly that she was dead to her, but there were so many little ticks and in-jokes that Dr Madge Badger had known this was an act. Winks and nudges, and 'I'm totally not gonna's', all of which told her that Honey thought she was a victim. In here as she'd been fighting against the first wave of 'the Cudspiracy.

She got bail after a few days and went home. She called her boyfriend, who was away, and asked him to be there, to help her, to hold her. She was scared. She was scared as the lawyers worked away, even as hers argued that the recording of her that Hopps made, when she'd asked about Chief Bogo's opinion, helped further her case. She was scared as the very justification that Lionheart had used, that it was too dangerous for the public to know, turned out to be true. Savage predators, injured mammals, riots, rampant fear and discrimination; it had felt like the world was coming to an end. She cried, knowing that while the Mayor had betrayed her, he'd been right. Her duty was to cause the least amount of harm, and that was exactly what she'd been doing. Now she might go to jail for it, all as Zootopia fell apart.

Honey had urged her to go into hiding, but Madge had refused. The only thing she could think of doing, to try and redeem herself, was to continue her work to try and find a cure. She asked Mayor Bellwether if she'd be allowed to. After all, she knew more about the savage preds than anyone. She'd been refused. She'd asked again, and again. Meanwhile her case had ticked on, before being dropped by the old DA just as his term ended. Her lawyer had said that the old wolf, given all that was happening, had felt that Lionheart and his team had been in the right. They hadn't exactly taken those mammals against their will, had they? Besides, who could fault them when the true reality presented itself. Who could blame them when they simply did the least harmful option they could choose?

So, she had her reprieve, though Lionheart would still face judgement. Her solace was only temporary though, given Bellwether promoting ADA Kurt Wassermaim, a highly vocal 'savage critic', to the open position ahead of firm favourite, and far more moderate, ADA Jeanette Deaux. As a result, there was an underlying fear that the new DA would double down on the ex-Mayor and likely reopen the case against other members of his team. Not just Madge, but even the security detail.

So it wasn't even that much of a reprieve. The world was still going wrong. Thankfully, though, she finally got her wish from Mayor Bellwether. She could return to the lab to help out the ZPD/ZMS taskforce meant to deal with the savage predator crisis.

And then the truth emerged about everything before she had even attended her first shift there.

Madge hadn't known what to think. She grimly realised, not long after, that her return to the lab might coincide with a dart being fired at herself. What better way to take out such a thorn in their side, and supress the research, than turning her? Over time, though, she was overtaken by a giddy optimism. She helped develop the final cure, feeling untold relief as she finally brought all the mammals back. What's more, thanks to a popular campaign led by the original missing mammals, none of whom had much ill-will or desire to push charges against former Mayor Lionheart, it was decided to drop those against him and thus her.

She was free. She was safe. She'd gripped onto her new life hard. The diamond ring on her finger was proof enough about that.

But, as the ashes fell, she saw a new fire begin to burn. She'd always put up with her sister. Cared for her, despite her behaviour. After all, it was harmless. Except it no longer was. She saw the Bellwether conspiracy as proof, not that she needed such a thing before, and redoubled her efforts. Worse still, society seemed to be ready to empower Honey onwards. After all, it was a very bad time to be a sheep after Bellwether's very public downfall, and especially after the revelation that many of her subordinates were sheep like her. Low level ovinophobia was somewhat ignored by society, as it guilted itself about the Nighthowler plot and the treatment of preds, and in some circles it became popular if not celebrated to 'call them out'. Soon everyone had seen posts, or protest signs, or the odd internet article which got away with saying vicious things about them. Whole progressive media sites, some of them spin-offs of reputable newspapers, seemed to almost adopt it as a central worldview. Sheep jokes were now far more common and tolerated far more than pred, bunny or other ones. Some sheep who tried to speak up were accused of simply being apologists or stooges for Bellwether, or speciesist pred haters. Many trendy young activists put forward arguments that you couldn't ever be speciesist against sheep no matter what you said or did, as they had 'power' or something. That one still confused Madge.

It didn't matter though. What did matter was that Honey began making a name for herself online, and mammals were believing her and encouraging her on. She was even becoming popular on ZooTube. Many comments congratulated her on calling out the sheep and their privilege, and urged her on. Alarm bells were ringing, and the worry took over Madge again. Her sister was burying herself deeper and deeper into her hole, while beginning to talk about revenge. Attacks. Fighting back against the sheep.

Madge hadn't been in jail long, but she'd been there long enough to know her sister couldn't cope if she was thrown in there. If she went in, she most likely wouldn't come out again. She was the squarest peg, and it would be like forcing her into the roundest hole. It wouldn't work and she'd suffer. It would be hell. There was no way she could cope, other than ending it.

How could you ever let that happen to your own family?

That was what it came down to in the end; family. To most outside mammals, Honey Badger was a raging speciesist loon. Many of her designs and concepts were pure on terror, hate crimes, and so on. The simmering anger against sheep was being ignored for now, but a vigilante revenge attack or a full-on assault on the species as a whole? There would be no getting out of it. She'd go to jail and never return.

Madge cried into Amy, asking her to try and fix her sister; to show her the mercy that the courts most likely wouldn't. She hated the idea of locking her up and trying to change her, but she could think of no better option. She'd been forced into making that same decision she'd made with Lionheart and the savage predators, but it was even less clear this time. Was her sister even insane, or just a vile speciesist? Was the risk she might pose to others, and herself, a good enough reason to take away her freedom? She didn't know. She really didn't, and it scared her. Everything scared her.

She just wanted her sister back and safe, and with the nighthowlers returning, she felt that leaving it any later would result in Honey doing something unforgivable in retaliation.

Amy, standing at the same decision this poor mammal had had to make twice before, closed her eyes and agreed with her. Honey Badger was heavily on the spectrum, arguably enough to make her unfit to stand trial, but it was debatable. Her behaviour was erratic, confusing, and her ideology bizarre and nonsensical. Then again, the same could be said about flat-earthers,anti-vaxxers or religious fundamentalists, and they didn't belong here. But this mammal was a risk to others. It was enough to justify bringing her in for observation and diagnosis, for now.

Despite getting what she came for, Madge wept. After all, she'd just got her sister committed; sectioned. She begged Amy to never let Honey know about her involvement, fearing their relationship would be destroyed and how much it would hurt her younger sister, to whom trust was fickle, yet that in her sister was absolute.

Amy had promised.

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"But," Honey said, her voice lowering slightly. "You knew about my theories and the like. You totally knew." She paused, and stared into Honey's eyes, tears beginning to form in them. "Only a few resistance fighters know about it… Which one sold me out?" She sniffed. "Which mammal I trusted did this to me?"

Amy leant in, as the wolf guard came to help move her along. "It wasn't hard. We had a look at your ZooTube channel and your old records, then we interviewed a few mammals.. We came to this decision by ourselves."

"No betrayal?" she asked, hope returning to her voice.

"I promise, though, no-one betrayed you or handed you into us," Amy assuaged, as the wolf guard led Honey out. Off she went to her new room, Amy standing by as some staffers dealt with poor Mr Taznarian in his cell. She eventually left him and his odd grunts and slobbering sounds and returned to her office.

Taking away a mammal's freedom when they hadn't done anything, all to help others. To protect others. Both she and Madge had agreed that it was necessary, justified, the lesser of all evils. But it was still an evil, wasn't it? Wasn't their fundamental creed to do no harm? Could those two worlds, those two moralities, ever truly co-exist?

She was a psychiatrist, not a philosopher. Most of the time, those things didn't tend to go together, though she personally knew at least one colleague where it did…

Regardless, would there ever be a right answer?

She sighed, knowing that she'd better get to work on something else and keep her mind out of that bottomless pit.

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Eventually she signed off with her preliminary notes and suspicions, before signing out of the building.

She hoped that she had earned Honey's trust - or at the very least was on the way to earning it. That was the very first step in the very long road they were about to travel. She was pretty certain that they'd be able to get a full diagnosis and section by the end of the next day, which meant Honey would be kept here for the foreseeable future. It would be tough, it would be hard, but one day they'd get to the end.

With such a tricky case like this, Amy hoped it would be a happy one.