Summary:

Nick and Wolfard listen to Hugo's story, and Hugo listens to theirs. Meanwhile, Dawn enjoy the company of her gray furred companion.


Early Morning at Zootopia ZPD Headquarters, Basement Level

"Welcome to my glorious kingdom!"

Wolfard spread his paws wide to encompass the dark and dusty space they had just entered. Hugo looked around totally bewildered at the row upon row of shelves, stacked high with file boxes, standing around him like castle walls. Nick hobbled over to a box, and reaching a paw over a lid, he drew a finger pad through the dust collected on top. He looked at the pad, then wiped it off on his pant leg.

Turning back to his partner he snorted, "More like the Dungeon of Forgotten Filthy Files."

Hugo asked Wolfard, "Why are you down here, instead of up at a desk? I would think that you would have had a desk with the other ZPD officers."

Nick handled the answer, "The big bad wolf here has a small problem with paperwork. He doesn't like to do any of it, so he likes to wait to the last minute to turn any of it in, and when he does turn it in it's usually illegible anyway. This is the Chief's idea of inspiration." He jerked his head at the shelves, "I guess Bogo hopes all this well organized file work will rub off on my dumb mutt of a partner."

With his paws on his hips, "Yup!", Wolfard agreed, "Inspired! Totally!" He turned and wandered into the stacks, "Come on! There's some couches in the middle of all this. We can talk there." He strode down an aisle.

Nick turned to stump after him on his three legs, but Hugo held up a beseeching paw, "Nick, wait! Please…"

Nick turned his head to looked back at him, and cocking his brow he drawled, "Yeah…?"

Hugo, a little embarrassed, "Um… I'm not sure… Actually, I had just wanted to talk to you about this, not your partner, seeing how he's a wolf, and… um…"

Nick blinked a couple time at that. "A wolf, what?" He looked down at the smaller cat, "Wait, are you having problems with wolves, Doc?"

Hugo shrug, "Well, not me personally. Um… Well, we've have bit of a situation at the hospital and…"

"And it involves wolves, eh?" Nick finished for him. "I don't see the problem. Is it something specific to Wolfard?"

Hugo gestured toward where Wolfard had disappeared, "Well, not him so much as with his pack here in Zootopia."

"Pack?" now Nick was confused. "You mean his family?"

"No, really, his pack." Hugo struggled to explain to the more cosmopolitan fox, "Back home in Amazonia, a wolf's loyalty was to his pack, above all other relations or occupations. A police office could never arrest a fellow pack member for crimes, it just wasn't done. You never turned on your pack brother."

"Oh, okay, I get it." Nick, shuffling a little bit with his cane to put his paw on the margay's shoulder, "Doc, it's okay. Wolves don't do packs here, not like that. Wolves are pretty common here, yeah, but if they do packs it's more like a fraternity thing – like college or something. Drink beer, howl at the moon, chase tail, fail classes together, all that great stuff. But once out in the real world, they leave that all behind." He pointed his cane off towards his partner, "If anything, the ZPD is Wolfard's pack now. He's a third generation cop, totally dedicated to the cause. And if you're having problems with wolves at you hospital, he's gonna have problems with them."

"Okay… If you're sure," Hugo said doubtfully.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Plus, I'm just gonna tell him anyway – he's my partner, ya know? You might as well include him."

"Alright…" Hugo conceded the point.

"You two slow pokes coming or what?" Wolfard barked from further in.

Nick gestured for Hugo to follow the wolf deeper into his lair, and with a sigh Hugo complied.


"Hey what happened to you two?" Wolfard asked them when they finally emerged from the stacks.

The larger wolf stood in the middle of a small dais in the center of the towering stacks shelves, with two small mammal couches flanking a low set wooden desk. It was the kind of wooden desk usually made in a state prison, made from cheap wood and indifferently finished, scarred from decades of use and abuse. Claw and hoof marks scuffed the flat vertical surfaces, exposing the aged wood grain from beneath the layers of dark lacquer. The top of the desk had a single off-white computer monitor in the middle, one of those all-in-one PCs that were popular a few decades past, which was surrounded on all sides by precarious stacks of yellowing folders, stuffed to the gills with papers and photos. The couches themselves were equally threadbare and careworn. They had started their lives as red fabric lounge couches, but over the years of mammals picking at their threads they had sprouted pockmarks of foam and fuzz.

Nick looked up at his taller partner and shrugged, "Sorry, we got to talking. You know how it is." He turned back to Hugo, "Anyway, what do you have for us?" he asked the cat.

Hugo gave Nick a brief scowl, but with a sigh he resigned himself to the reality of the situation. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a small USB thumb drive and held it up. "I have some security footage from my hospital I need you to watch."

Nick looked over at Wolfard, who just shrugged and held out his arms as if to offer the computer to his partner. With a snort, Nick shook his head. He reached over to pluck the thumb drive from Hugo's claws, and then stumped around to the other side of the desk. He struggled for a moment to climb into a chair slightly larger than he was used to, but finally he had his leg brace in a comfortable position.

Tapping on the keyboard, he brought the blank screen to life. Seeing the on going solitaire game there, he banished it to the background before sticking the memory stick into the front of the computer. The other two joined him behind the desk, Wolfard to his right and

Hugo to his left, as Hugo's file of edited footage from the hospital security started to play.

"Huh…" Nick drawled. "So, what happened here?" He gestured at the screen, "These two nurses are moving a patient or…"

Hugo cut him off, "They aren't our nurses. They're not anybody's nurses. We checked. We don't know who they are. We were hoping you knew who they might be. Are they ZPD officers?" He asked the two canines.

Wolfard shook his maned head, "No… I don't recognize them, and I know most of the wolves on the force." He gestured Nick to rewind the video clip back. "It looks like they're talking to some pig here. Did he managed to get their names? And what were they handing over to him?"

Hugo looked at the screen, "No, sorry. They didn't identify themselves. As for what they were doing was swapping out the patient's blood sample for grape juice."

"JUICE?!" Nick exclaimed. "Why the hell…"

Wolfard swore. "They're definitely not cops then. That's interfering with evidence chain of custody right there."

"Kinda," Nick agreed. He looked down at Hugo and explained further, "Chief Bogo is very much by the book. He'd never tolerate somebody interfering with medical testing like that, much less stealing and replacing evidence."

Wolfard agreed, "Yeah, any cop playing fast and loose with this sort of thing would get his pelt nailed to the wall by Bogo. We've lost cases in the past because of stupid shit like this. No cop in their right mind would pull this kind of stunt." He scowled, "No, they aren't cops. If I had to guess, I'd say military, or ex-military."

Nick nodded in agreement, "Yeah, that sounds likely. The question would be which."

"You mean like Spetznaz?" Hugo asked them.

Wolfard looked over at him, "Oh, yeah, maybe. Commonwealth certain has their own, but I don't think this is special ops." He waved his paw at the screen, "They're cool but sloppy. They may have swapped the blood, but they did it front of a lot of witnesses and left video footage of this everywhere. This looks like a couple of grunts trying to hide something."

"Ah!" Nick exclaimed, "Video footage!" He waved his claw in the air as he banished the clip to the background and brought up the city traffic camera system. "Let's see here… Tundra Town Central Hospital, ambulance loading dock… Timestamp is… Okay, I got em!" He pulled up a screen of the two wolves loading the secured patient into a black van.

"Well, well, well. That's not a ZFR ambulance, now is it?" Wolfard drolly observed.

"Nope," Nick agreed, "Very suspicious, that. Alright, so we have them leaving the parking lot here, getting on the main road there… They're continuing north, and… huh. They took the tunnel to the Meadowlands. They're not going to the Commonwealth's polar training base after all."

Hugo watched the screen, "I don't see them coming out of the tunnel?"

"Nope," Wolfard agreed. He looked over his smaller red partner, "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah," Nick yipped. "Service tunnels. Let's see… Nope, nope… No… Okay, I got them now." He pulled up a new feed, "Wow they are way the hell north of downtown." He frowned, "I can't fathom where they're gonna go. There aren't any bases up there, unless they're going to the mainland. And the nearest base is at least a day's drive from here…"

They watched as the van pulled up under an archway by the side of the road before continuing up the winding mountain road beyond. A sign that simply stated 'Cliffside'.

"What the…" Wolfard exclaimed. "That's not a military base?!"

"Cliffside? Cliffside is closed! Has been for years!" Nick looked over at Hugo for confirmation.

Hugo nodded, "Yes. I don't know of any patients there. Or any reason why they should be there."

Wolfard crossed his arms as he frowned. "Didn't they have some problem with asbestos or something? That's why they were gonna have tear it down? Or was it lots of lead paint?"

Nick squinted up at his taller partner. "What?!" Wolfard objected. "I watch the news. I'm not totally ignorant."

Nick just raised his eyebrow at that statement.


A dark hotel suite in the Sahara District

Bellwether sat up, her back supported against the teak headboard by plush pillows in a bed fit to hold an orgy of rhinos. She slowly stroked the ears of the gray bunny doe who slept curled up next to her, the scent of carrots and alcohol wafting up with each sleepy mumble.

Dawn marveled at her luck tonight at finding one of her favorite fantasies sitting all alone at the bar, like she had been simply waiting for Dawn to arrive. And then to find the rabbit was just as friendly and willing to dance the night away was just pure joy.

She was such an excellent dancer, full of passion and power, her grace easily compensating for Dawn's stumbling hooves. But she never made the smaller ewe feel clumsy or slow. Those feet, those legs, and those eyes….

Oh, those eyes! Dawn longed for them to open again, so that she could drown in their depths. They had sparkled with arousal last night, an arousal that Dawn could smell behind the sweat and alcohol. All for her…

What aroused Dawn in turn was what lay deep behind those amethyst eyes, beneath all that lust and passion. Rage. Pure, bottled, murderous rage. An animalistic rage Dawn understood all too well.

Oh, Dawn knew who Judy Hopps was. What oppressed prey mammal didn't? She knew about the horrors rabbit had endured at Cliffside for something that Dawn didn't even consider a crime. Killing predators was a given prey responsibility and the kit hadn't done anything wrong as far as the ewe was concerned. So when it came time to shut down Cliffside, she had pulled some strings and shuffled some paperwork to get Judy released instead of transferred to another facility.

Smiling, Dawn reached over to Judy's face and ran her hoof tenderly over the soft down of the doe's cheek. Judy twitched in her sleep as she turned to the touch, but settled back down as Dawn withdrew her hoof.

"BUZZ… BUZZ…"

Dawn's smile quickly turned to a frown as she turned away from the sleeping rabbit and looked over at her paw-phone. Who's texting me this early in the bleating morning? She wondered, as she opened up her phone to look the message.

It was an automated message from the city traffic cam system, alerting her that somebody had accessed the cameras outside of Cliffside. She looked down at the user tag that was embedded in the screenshot of what looked like a dark van turning into the Cliffside entrance.

"ZPD Nickolas Wilde…"

FINALLY! She pumped her hoof in celebration. Took them long enough! I was starting to loose hope that Bogo's idiot police would ever wise up to Lionheart's scheme.

Nickolas Wilde, who is he again? She wondered as she tried to place the name with the face. OH! Yeah, that crazy fox that had broken loose the whole Cliffside debacle in the first place. Yeah, that is poetic justice right there. Yeah, he got a promotion out of that case, and if he can take Lionheart down he'd get another one again. Bogo would kiss his red tail if he could make that pandering predator politician go away permanently.

Hurm… She muttered to herself. Well, that sure advances my time frame. I better talk to the rams, make some adjustments to my plans. Maybe back off the Night-howler attacks and give the ZPD time to concentrate on Cliffside and Lioneheart?

Yeah… She leaned over and kissed the doe lightly on her cheek, before slipping quietly off the bed. She gathered her things and quietly slipped out the bedroom door.


Back to the basement at the ZPD headquarters

Nick leaned back in the chair, "Well, that is interesting" he remarked.

"So it is a kidnapping?" Hugo asked quietly.

"Looks like, doc." Wolfard agreed with a nod. "Maybe, anyway." He looked down at the diminutive cat, "It could still be a couple of grunts springing their squad mate out of the hospital." He jerked his chin, "We won't figure that out until we start asking around."

Nick could read his partner's face like a book, "You gonna go to Bogo with it?"

Wolfard shook his head, "No, not yet. It occurs to me that if they stole the blood sample that there was something more going on here that they may want to hide. Maybe some illegal kind of illegal drug use or something similar." He chewed on his cheek for a moment as he considered his options. "No, maybe a little quite recon is in order, take a gander at what's going on out at ole' Cliffside manor."

He looked down at the fox. "A recon that won't include you, unfortunately," He waved his paw at the brace, "Mikki would skin me alive if I got you injured again, not to mention what Bogo would do to me for pulling a reserve officer off of desk duty."

"Fangmeyer?" Nick asked, a little wry grin tugging at the corners of his muzzle.

Wolfard actually looked thoughtful at that suggestion, "Yeah, actually. She'd make any wanna-be mall cops piss their pants, plus she's got all kinds of good contacts in the vice community. If it's some kind of drug thing, she'd know all about it." He nodded in thanks, "Yeah, she'd probably say yes."

Nick looked over at Hugo and winked, who looked back at him in confusion. Turning back to Wolfard, "What about your missing mammal thing?" Nick asked him.

"Oh!" Wolfard waggled a claw, "Yeah… Let's see…" He dug through the pile of folders on his desk, pulling one out. He laid it open in front of the fox, pointing at the papers, "Here ya go, Emmett Otterton. Went missing after a limo accident where the driver drove off the road. The driver said Emmett just went crazy and attacked him before escaping the vehicle. Beyond that, the driver didn't have much else to share other than he was a regular client. Since drugs and alcohol didn't seem to be a factor, and the limo driver was reluctant to discuss his clientele, the responding officer didn't do much more than take the report. And that's what I got."

"Who was the driver?" Nick asked.

Wolfard flipped the pages, "hum… Uh… Yeah, the driver was a large male jaguar by the name of Manchas, and he's…"

"Renato?" Hugo spoke up, "Why was he driving?" He asked.

Wolfard looked across at the small golden feline, "You know this cat, Doc?"

Hugo nodded, "Yes, I think so. He was my orderly-assistant at Cliffside when I was running my program there."

Wolfard and Nick shared a look. Nick turned back to Hugo and drawled.

"Say, Doc… You up for taking a little trip?"