2.
The cat was skulking through the cubicles and computer terminals of the 128th floor, towards the gash in the window that Nora had created, while the wolf made for next door in a row of twenty tightly packed of office modules that separated the floor's west half from its east. you're Of the twenty offices Nora could see, the pair of prowlers had already made short work of almost half of them; the doors had all been kicked in or blasted apart, and the contents of the offices had been strewn all over the ground. Heaps of broken tablets and monitors littered the walkway, and there was even a fair amount of paper strewn about.
The company must have been exceptionally paranoid about keeping their files and figures away from prying eyes. Paper was expensive stuff these days, and the only reason to keep physical copies of files around was to make sure that information could only trade hands when it was literally being passed from one set of paws to another. The wolf kicked down the door of the eleventh module, while the cat playfully scraped her claws against the jagged fragments of window left behind from Nora's not-so-subtle entrance.
"We know you're in here, you know" the cat purred. "There's no point in hiding. I can smell that you're close. Just come on out so we can really play." Nora hid patiently behind the flimsy wall of a cubicle that was within spitting distance of where the cat was now tracing her path. In truth, the cat was almost certainly bluffing. Dallis and Brody had put a lot of work into making sure her suit dampened any olfactory emissions that could prove a liability in the field. In Dallis' own words, the keenest-nosed enemy would be more likely to track pick up the scent of a gassy field mouse than Nora, even from a few feet away. At the time, Nora was most concerned with how Dallis' could possibly have the data to back up such a weirdly specific example (he refused to comment), but right now she was more than happy to not look a gift pig in the mouth. Despite the boasting, Nora could tell by the cat's cautious gait and the slow, even pauses between her footsteps that she was relying more on her ears than her nose to track her prey. So far, she was proving unsuccessful.
Nora could pick up her foe's scent just fine, however. The feline carried with her the musky combination of sweat and adrenaline, along with a sour, unidentifiable stink that hung in the air like a cloud, like burning plastic that had been drenched in vinegar. She thought: Is that smell...coming from her gun?
"Quit messing around, Dee," the wolf growled, as he tossed yet another cracked monitor onto the ground. "In and out, remember? The boss wants the drop-off ready in twenty. Just kill the cop and help me find it, would ya?"
"Oh, you're no fun, Jay," sighed the cat, "But I suppose you're right."
Dee? Jay? Either the two really liked club music, or they were using the letters as codenames. The cat called "Dee" slowed her pacing just on the other side of the cubicle Nora was hiding behind. "Okay, copper, you heard the big guy. I'll give you three seconds to come out, okay? After that, though, I'll have to start making a scene. And we don't want that, do we?"
Nora held her pistol close to her face, her paw so close to her face that she could have numbered the fur on her fingers. The cat's hazy reflection was visible in the glass of one of the office doors across the way. Nora watched as the smeary figure took one slow, deliberate step, and then another. Getting closer.
"One…" whispered the cat.
There was the soft scrape of steel as the cat drew her strange firearm. In the glass, the reflection was taking on a much more solid shape. Nora could just make out its perked up ears, and the tail that swished playfully from side to side .
"Two…" The cat stopped. Her reflection cocked its head and let devilish grin drip from its lips. The white pinpricks of its eyes were trained on the toppled crook of cubicles that Nora was crouched behind. The reflection raised its weapon up almost casually, straight to the left. Nora's shifted her gaze slowly upward, and she could just barely make out the dim green glow of the weapon's muzzle. The acrid battery stench that came with it immediately made her nose twitch and her eyes water, even through her mask.
'Super,' Nora thought, digging in her heels and twisting her body backwards.
"Hey there," sneered the cat, as she pulled the trigger.
In the moment or two before the gun fired, the air around Nora's face became burning hot, the atmosphere shrinking and swelling like the skin of a water-balloon that was just about to burst. Then, just as swiftly, everything snapped back into place, and a blinding jet of solid red light sliced through the layers of wood, metal, and plastic that separated the cat with the crazy gun and the fox who was currently trying to not get deep-fried.
Nora slammed into the side of another cubicle wall and quickly dashed to a nearby hiding place. She knew that the cat could see in the dark well enough to track her once she'd been spotted, so the jig was up on the stealthy approach. As she clung to the wall, gripping her pistol tight enough to make her fingers ache, Nora desperately hoped that the cat's gadget had a recharge time that it had to burn through before going off again.
That's how ray-guns always work in the VR games, right? In that moment, Nora herself wishing she'd spend less time churning through the decidedly less tech-savvy mystery sims she loved so much.
Through the crackling of burning office supplies and the dim ring that filled her ears, Nora heard the soft digital hum of her communication channel kicking back in.
"Nora, we...barely see what's going...but...heard….hell of a racket! Are...alright?" Brody's frantic voice was chopped and garbled through a film of white noise, which Nora guessed was a by-product of whatever was coming out of the cat's fancy toy. Before Nora could try to respond, though, she caught the rustling of paper and debris across the ground off to her left, on the other side of the main row of offices. Nora could distinctly mark the positions of the cat and the wolf, who were both making their way to her, which meant this new sound must have come from a third source.
There was someone else on the floor with them.
Nora gritted her teeth. This was bad. The team had only clocked the two current intruders before the lockdown shut everyone else out of the normal entrances and exits, and a professional smash-and-grab job like this would only demand a pair of thieves at the most. Nora's team had been told all of the company employees were assigned to the first thirty floors during the night hours, so either the company had given ZPD bad intel, and some poor janitor or corporate go-getter was trapped in the middle of a firefight, or someone else was sneaking around where they didn't belong.
"Nora!" That was Dallis, though Nora had to strain to hear him. The interference was getting worse. "Nora, if you don't...another five seconds...calling in the calv...!" The static cut the pig off, but Nora didn't have time to respond; she couldn't risk another one of those ray blasts if a civilian was potentially in the line of fire.
Instead, she turned out of her hiding spot to greet the two that were advancing on her head on, training her pistol on the cat while the two aimed their weapons in kind. The cat's gun was a shiny, ergonomic device that really did look like something straight out of an old science-fiction rag, though Nora was happy to see that the wolf held a plain 9mm, probably the same model as her own.
So they only have one. That's good to know.
"Take another step, fox, and you're dead." Nora could hear the sneer that the wolf known as "Jay" was wearing underneath his mask. "It's two-on-one, and in case you didn't notice, we've got a trick or two up our sleeve to boot."
The cat chuckled. "Yeah, we figured we'd run into some trouble, but we didn't think the ZPD would be stupid enough to just end in one cop. I'm honestly a little disappointed. I was looking forward to testing this thing out on a squad car or two. Maybe even one of those fancy APCs you guys love to bust out when those pesky protesters get out of hand."
"Don't worry," Nora said, loudly, hoping that her words were coming through to her friends on the other side. "I've got back-up on the way. They'll be here in just a minute or two. Though you won't be firing that thing again. Dead or alive, you're coming with me."
"RoboHOUND ?" said Jay, " Really? We've got the most advanced weaponry in the world aimed right at your fuzzy little head, and the best you can do is quote dumb movies from two hundred years ago?"
"Hey now, don't be judgmental. That movie is a classic—it's what made me want to become a cop in the first place, you know. Well, that one and BatFox. The good one, also from way back when, with Michael Kitten. Gotta love, superheroes, am I right?"
"I never had any patience for the old flatfilms," said the wolf. "Always struck me as a waste of time if I couldn't feel it in SEN/SATE."
"A VR snob, huh?" Nora said. "Well, that settles it. Now I really need to arrest you."
The three of them were standing stock still, their weapons not once wavering from each other's eye lines. The charred remains of the nearby furnishings popped and crackled with flame. A cracked ceiling tile fell and split in two, trailing a cloud of dust and insulation in the air above it.
"Alright, Dee, let's wrap this up," said Jay, his voice growing impatient. "The drop-off is in a half hour, and you're hide'll be the first I come after if we don't get paid for this crap." He motioned to a small, metallic box he held in his paw. It was a hard drive; the side facing Nora was even decorated with the Ursa-Corp logo: the etching of an angular, stylized paw-print emblazoned in a ring of fire and electricity. The symbol was smack in the middle between the two patches of frayed wiring that had once connected it the computer the wolf had just finished busting apart.
"Sorry, foxy," Dee said, sounding almost disappointed that her game had to end. "Nobody's getting locked up tonight. Not us, at least. You, on the other hand, might have to be shut up in one of those metal drawers they have down the coroner's office." The cat offered Nora a wicked, toothy grin, and Nora watched as the muzzle of the cat's weapon began to hum and glow that awful phosphorescent green.
Behind Dee, Nora caught a swift flash of moving shadow, a shape she could just barely make out through the smoke and dust. She really hoped that neither of her opponents caught the sound of it scurrying amidst the crackling of the debris and their own self-satisfied chortling.
"Any last words?" Dee asked. Nora took a moment to dig through her mental repository of comebacks and one-liners, but before she could respond, a fourth voice cried out from behind the cat:
"Yeeargh! "
Nora had just enough time to savor Jay and Dee's dumbstruck reactions as the rabbit who had just leapt out of the shadows brought the fire extinguisher down on the cat's head - it collided with a weighty thonk , and both the cat and her weapon crashed to the ground. The rabbit followed shortly thereafter, landing smack in the middle of the triangle formed by Nora, the wolf, and the cat, the latter of whom was writhing in pain on the floor and cradling her fresh head wound. The reddish-brown hare landed with surprising grace, all things considered, though Nora thought her tattered business attire looked comically out of place amidst the fully armed mercenaries and the cop in the high-tech stealth suit - or maybe it was the other way around? The wolf cried out in angry shock, and the rabbit looked to be just as dismayed - her violet eyes grew large with concern at the sight of the blood seeping through the cat's fingers.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" she cried out, dropping the now dented fire extinguisher to the ground. "I thought that would just knock you out! Please don't die!" The rabbit's feet shuffled as she danced with uncertainty, clearly stuck between the desire to help the creature she had just thoroughly concussed and the instinctual drive to avoid ending up on the wrong side of the furious woman's claws.
Dee spasmed in venomous and nearly incoherent fury. Through the sputtering and hissing, the cat managed to choke out a few intelligible words: "Tear. You. APART!"
Jay moved to train his pistol on the frightened rabbit, but Nora was faster. She fired two shots - the first blasted the pistol right out of his paw, and the second hit him in the shoulder. Considering the thickness of his body armor, this wasn't enough to send him flying, but it staggered him enough for Nora to connect a hard right punch straight to his jaw.
The wolf was quick, and he managed to snatch Nora's left arm and slam it into the jagged section of nearby broken cubicle - the pain was sharp, even through Nora's suit, and as her hand jerked back, her gun went flying out into the air, landing across the room and skidding into the shadows beneath some anonymous workstation .
Jay, still tightly gripping Nora's wrist, reared back his free arm for another blow. Nora quickly dug her foot into the same wall that pinned her arm and pushed herself up in a twisting arc; she used this momentum to wrap her right thigh around the wolf's neck and bring his face slamming into the wall. She landed face down on her now free paw and twisted herself upright once more to pin the wolf's chest to the ground.
She brought her fist down onto his spine, and with a flick of her wrist, a current came surging through out of the metal contact points of her glove's knuckles. 60,000 volts of white-hot electricity sent the wolf's body into a spasm that immediately knocked him out cold.
"Um, excuse me? Officer?" The rabbit's whimper brought Nora's attention to staggering feline whose claws and vicious glare were now trained upon her diminutive prey and glistening with murderous intent. When Dee spoke, the sardonic glee and the piercing rage had dripped away from her lips; it had been replaced with a dim, raspy monotone that Nora found even more unnerving.
"Dumb little bunny," she said. "For that, I'm gonna kill you slow. And I'm gonna make you watch." The goggles from the cat's mask has been knocked askew by the bunny's earlier sneak attack, and Nora could see the pupil of her one gleaming yellow eye had been drawn close into an almost imperceptible slit. The rabbit's nose was twitching furiously in panic as she cast her own pleading gaze to Nora.
The stun-charge in the glove still had thirty seconds left to recharge, her sidearm was gone, and Nora figured that by the time she either waited for a new stun charge or ran to grab her pistol, the cat would have made mincemeat of her new friend, and that would just be rude. She jumped forward and tackled cat, grappling her arm just as it was raised to slice the rabbit to ribbons. The pair rolled across the floor, tussling for a moment before the cat, who was shockingly nimble for someone suffering from a serious concussion, managed to gain the upper hand and pin Nora to the ground. Nora raised her arms, bracing for the impact of the cat's claws, when a searing bright light flooded the room, accompanied by the telltale whisper-slick whirring of one of the ZPD's drones, though the machine that was hovering just outside was significantly larger than the bug that had been shot down earlier.
Chief Dasher's voice boomed out through the din: "You have ten seconds to lower your claws and surrender to the ZPD! We will not be asking you again. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may potentially be used against you in criminal court." The Chief's signature growl was given an extra dose of gravitas through the mechanical filter of the drone's speakers, and the sharp blue crackling of the two stun cannons protruding from its underside. "You are under arrest for conspiring and carrying out a scheme of corporate terrorism, and for attempted grand theft of Ursa-Corp's intellectual property, as defined and protected by the Zootopian Bill of Corporate Rights." This was a recent addendum to the usual reading of rights, and Nora thought she could detect just a hint of bitterness in the way Dasher recited them.
Dee hissed at the encroaching drone and cast a final, spiteful glare down at Nora. Nora responded by snapping the visor of helmet up so she could give the cat a wink and thumbs-up. Dee cursed and bolted up off Nora and back towards the other side of the office. Nora pursued her, and there was another big drone buzzing in the hole that Jay and Dee had busted into the wall, its stun cannons ready to deliver a crippling double-dose of electrical discharge.
Dee didn't falter for even a second - she jumped into the air at the exact moment the cannons jettisoned their probes into the ground where she had been standing just a second before. Her feet landed on top of the drone and she took a final leap out into the busy Zootopian airways. Nora caught up just in time to see her plummet for a second or two before a foreboding, jet-black vehicle came zipping out from the other side of a building across the way. Dee landed on top of it and ducked into the open passenger door with a grace that Nora found both infuriating and undeniably impressive. The car quickly fell further and further down, disappearing into the horde of aircar traffic that filled out all of the empty spaces between the skyline's dreamy twilight afterglow.
"Nora? You okay?" It was Dallis' voice her ear again, clear as crystal now. "Your suit's feedback protocols all are all shot to hell, and we haven't heard a peep from you."
"Yeah, Dallis, I copy, and I'm fine. We've got one of them here to bring in, but his partner got away - took an express route out the window to catch a ride that was waiting for her. "
It was Brody's turn to chime in. "Dasher already has three different teams scouring the city for them. They'll turn up. What's important is that they didn't turn you into a flambé. Dallis would never admit it, but he'd be totally broken up if anything happened to you on his watch."
"Only because she's wearing the world's lone prototype for our new stealth tech," Dallis chuckled. "It'd be months' worth of research up in smoke! Though I guess it would be nice to keep Nora around too. It'd be a damn pain to teach a newbie how to operate it all over again."
Nora smiled. "Well, it's good to know at least someone appreciates what I bring to the ZPD. I'll catch up with you two in the debriefing - Nora out." She pressed the button to silence her comms and removed her helmet. The past ten minutes had felt like hours, and Nora took the chance to take in a moment or two of peace, relishing the cold breeze as it blew through her fur.
The rabbit strode up and stood next to Nora, also admiring the view of the city. Even through all of the broken class and the red-and-blue glare of the ZPD drone's sirens, it was a striking sight.
"So," she said, "is this a typical night on the beat for you, officer?"
Nora laughed. "Oh, you mean sneaking into corporate offices so I can have mercenaries shoot at me with laser guns? That only happens maybe once or twice a week. Usually I'm on donut duty."
"You didn't happen to bring any of the kinds with jam in them, did you? Those are my favorite, and after tonight, I think I could eat a whole box on my own." The rabbit paused, and then added, "Thank you, by the way. For saving my life, I mean. My name is Juno Mori."
"Well, Miss Mori, I'm Agent Nora Khatri of the Zootopia Police Department, Special Operations Unit, and you don't need to thank me; I was just returning the favor. After all, you're the one who took on a psychotic cat three times your size - though I have to wonder what exactly you were doing here, on the restricted floor of a locked down office building that belongs to a company I can only assume you don't actually work for?" Juno cast her vivid violet eyes down at that, as she nervously kicked at bits of drywall that were scattered about the floor.
"Oh, well, about that. You see, I'm something of a...well, I'm a journalist, and I was investigating a tip one of my old friends gave me about some of the company's shady business dealings. I didn't know things were going to get all..." The rabbit gestured towards the general mess about the place.
"Absurdly, life-threateningly dangerous?" Nora continued.
"I was going to say 'wacky', but that works too," Juno said, winking.
"Do you have a Smart Card I can scan, to prove you are who you say you are?" Nora asked. Juno's ears perked-up and immediately drooped back down a little - a telltale sign of rabbit anxiety. She made a show of patting her sides and giving a resigned - but not entirely convincing - shrug.
"I must have left behind. Sorry. You guys can just print me one or something, though, can't you?" Juno and Nora both knew perfectly well that every single animal in Zootopia had their prints and DNA logged in the city's databases from the moment the doctors got done snipping their umbilical cords; getting and ID for the rabbit wasn't the issue. It wasn't technically illegal to go around without a Smart Card on hand, though it would be before too long if big spenders like FringeTech and Ursa-Corp had their way of it. Still, Juno had to understand how less-than-kosher it looked for the sole civilian witness to a supposedly top-secret espionage mission to just so happened to be lacking any kind of immediately verifiable identification.
"We'll put a pin in that one, for later", I guess, Nora said. Deciding to change the subject, she asked, "That old friend you mentioned? Did they come from here, at Ursa-Corp? Or are they an outside source?"
"That would be telling, now wouldn't it?" Juno flashed Nora a smile that was just too irresistibly cute, though Nora made another mental note, reminding herself of how many of the smaller mammals still bristled when "non-cute" animals made use of the word. Just in case it came up in conversation, later.
"I appreciate your journalistic integrity, Miss Mori though I'm probably still going to need to take you in for questioning. Just as soon as I clean up some of my mess, that is." Nora strode over to where Jay's unconscious body lay and bent to grab the precious hard drive he had been carrying, though she couldn't spot it in the immediate vicinity, though she could have sworn she saw it topple out of the wolf's paw when she'd bull-rushed him. Nora barely restrained herself from jumping when she felt the tap-tap-tap of the rabbit's fingers on her back; she turned to see Juno sheepishly holding the small slate colored drive up to her.
"Sorry," she said, "I grabbed it on instinct when the guy dropped it. I figured it should probably go to you though, right? Since it's evidence, and all?"
Nora plucked the drive from Juno's hand and dropped it into an evidence baggy that she clipped to her belt.
"You know it's not smart to sneak up on a ZPD officer like that, right?" Nora quipped.
"True," Juno replied, "though it's not like I could do anything to match the ninja moves you put on the Big Bad Bozo over here. That was like something out of those Maretrix movies, or something."
Nora was already starting to like this rabbit. 'Damn. Am I really that easy?' she thought.
She didn't say anything to Juno, though, choosing instead to make her way over a few feet and wordlessly fish through the rubble on the floor. It took a minute, but she eventually managed to snag the fancy laser gun that had almost barbecued the whole office just a few minutes ago. Nora allowed herself a few seconds to regard the weapon's sleek, bizarre construction with unbridled curiosity before wrapping it in another airtight baggy that she holstered to her side.
"Alright then," Nora said, finally, "That takes care of things on my end. Miss Mori, I would very much appreciate it if you would allow me to escort you back to ZPD headquarters. We can get your ID all checked out, and I'm sure my boss would rather have you explain the rest of your story in a setting that wasn't quite so much on fire."
"Wait a minute," Juno said, her nose beginning to wriggling with nervousness. "I'm not under arrest, am I?"
"That all depends, Miss Mori. Why?" Nora effortlessly shifted both her face and her voice into the stone-faced Serious Cop persona that she'd been perfecting over the years. " Should you be?" At this, Juno's ears started doing that perky-droopy thing again, and Nora almost felt bad for teasing her.
"Look," Nora said, easing up again, "I can't promise that my superiors are going to be in love with the whole "trespassing on corporate property, gaining potentially unlawful access to trademarked data and IP, anddirectly involving yourself with a covert ZPD bust" situation. They tend to frown on that kind of stuff. But, seeing as you saved my life and all, I'll do what I can to put in a good word for you."
Nora gave the rabbit a wink just as the elevators started whirring and humming back to life behind her. After just a few seconds, two of the doors on the far wall split open, and six ZPD officers came marching out of them. Each of the officers came equipped with their own small drones flying behind them, and they all quickly began locking down the crime scene. Nora motioned Juno to the open elevator doors, though she still looked uncertain.
"Also," Nora added, "I can provide my incredibly official guarantee as an agent of the ZPD that I will split a jam donut with you once we get there. As thanks for your cooperation, and also for the whole 'saving my skin' bit." Juno contemplated the offer for a moment.
"Alright, officer," she said, "I'll come along, but only if the jam is raspberry flavored. I'm allergic to blueberries, and strawberries make me nauseous. I wouldn't want to end up barfing all over your shiny police station floors."
As unprofessional as it might have been to laugh along with a possible suspect in an ongoing corporate espionage investigation, Nora couldn't help herself. "Roger. Raspberry jam it is, then." Nora ushered Juno toward the elevator. As the rabbit joined her and the elevator doors closed behind the pair, Norra added: "I have to confess, Miss Mori: I was really hoping you'd go for the blueberry flavor. Blueberry has always been my favorite."
