Benjamin's teeth were chattering almost audibly when he found the elevator. He'd never been in a mine before, never imagined it would be this cold. Before his unexpected abduction by that rhino Benjamin had put on some warmer clothing to better tolerate the cooler climate of the Nocturnal District, and that was probably the only reason he hadn't succumbed to hypothermia yet. Thank goodness he'd picked up that map. He'd taken a wrong turn twice while travelling through the mines, but finding his way back on track had been mercifully easy. There were lights down here, little plain bulbs as bright as stars, bolted to the wall. He'd had to cross a metal bridge at one point, partly rusted from the underground river beneath it. Further along had been an older bridge, likely the same age as the mine, that let Benjamin cross a short, black chasm on his way. Waterfalls had roared at him from both sides, plunging down into the darkness. One of them had been so close he could reach out with his paws and drink from it.

Benjamin rubbed his arms and picked up the pace as he walked to the elevator. He was freezing, but the important thing was that he had run into no other crazies. He'd gotten lucky when the metal grating had ripped off as Sedor had tried to pull the first elevator back up, and he was sure the great bear was still on his trail. Once Benjamin reached the top of this elevator he'd have to sabotage it somehow, so the bear couldn't come up after him. The elevator was at the bottom when he reached it and pushed the button. The wide grate slid open with a shriek that made Benjamin look behind him in fear, but nothing emerged from the tunnel. He stepped inside and pressed the button to go up.

With nothing to do before the elevator reached the top, Benjamin tugged at his clothes. They were slightly baggier than they were about a month ago. This wasn't what he had in mind when he began considering a diet, and probably not wholly good for him. When he got out of here, he was going to gorge himself silly on donuts and start over again. Maybe he'd get half a dozen boxes and share it all with his friends.

His friends.

He missed them. Honey, Finnick, the little cub, even Nick. Even now he wasn't sure he was ready to forgive the fox for tricking him, and all the horrible things that had happened to him because of that trickery. The thought of it still upset him.

Weakening sunlight hit his face as the sun rose above ground, coming to a stop in a rocky area surrounded by walls built from logs. "Now where the heck am I?" Benjamin asked himself as the door slid open. He cautiously looked around, realized he was alone, and walked out. A small stone building stood beside the metal tower that held the elevator, but all that was inside were old mining tools and uniforms. Sabotaging the elevator proved easier said than done. Even with the tools Benjamin didn't have the strength to break the button panel, and there was no way to safely reach the motor. He waved his arms in horizontal semi-circles to shake off the cold, seeing an opening in the cliffs around him. He followed the naturally formed passage for a time, and then he stopped dead.

A town. He couldn't believe it. An actual town.

It looked like a classic western town, with small wooden huts for houses and flat dirt for roads. It was a small town, so small he could see every building where he stood, and surrounding by the same log wall, like a fortress. It was also completely devoid of life.

A ghost town.

Benjamin couldn't help himself. "Curiouser and curiouser." He said. After a moment he snickered at himself. Coping mechanisms were weird.

The log wall was enclosing Benjamin, too, leaving him with nowhere to go but forward. He warily took the dirt path down to the first building and peeked through the window. The glass was so filthy he had to scrub it with his sleeve. The place looked like it hadn't been lived in for years, but there was an awful smell coming from the half-open door. Benjamin sniffed, the fur on the back of his neck sticking up when he thought of Woolton, but it didn't smell like blood or something rotting. It smelled more like poop. He pushed the door of the rest of the way. On the floorboards was a pile of scat that looked too moist to have been left before the town was abandoned.

Mouth dry with apprehension, he pressed on. He had to figure out where the hell he was if he hoped to get back to Zootopia.

Further into town he started coming across businesses. A grocery store. An old fashioned clinic only a little bigger than Nick's was. One of the biggest buildings he came across was a bar called the Buffalo Bar. The sign, bearing the image of an Animarican buffalo resembling Bisoniing, dangled from one chain. Benjamin wrung his paws, gazing at the image.

Bogo, I hope you're okay. Wherever you are.

The sun was sinking over the tall tree line beyond the wall, casting the sky in shades of blue, red and pink, when Benjamin found the biggest building in town. The church stood apart from the other buildings, in the center of a graveyard that lay between the huts and the wall at the other side of town. Near the graveyard, built into the impenetrable wall of logs, was a set of large, heavy wooden gates.

Benjamin had seen no way out of town anywhere else. He went over to the gates, hoping that on the other side was a road that would take him back to modern civilization. He reached the doors, put his paws under the thick wooden bar that held them shut, and lifted.

It didn't even budge. Benjamin pulled harder, frowning. The bar was made of wood, it couldn't be that heavy. Then he saw metal circles embedded in the bar.

Someone had nailed the bar to the gates.

Benjamin lost his temper and attacked the gates, pounding them with his fists, hyperventilating with frustration and despair, wanting nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare and be done with it. He didn't stop until his weight was propped against the gates, arms and forehead pressed against the wood, panting from exhaustion and fighting back tears. He thought about giving up and waiting for Sedor to claim him. He was trapped. His friends were god knows where, probably arrested or dead by now. His parents were dead. Pottermass, whose wife had died in that same accident, would likely not stop until he suffered the same fate. What was the point of pressing on?

Benjamin opened his eyes, staring at the ground beneath his feet. In his shadow it looked the color of a ZPD uniform.

Bogo would press on. He's survived so much already, risked his life to protect me. Waiting for death like a lazy lemming would be a pretty sucky way to repay him.

Benjamin couldn't go back to the mine. Sedor was back there. He'd have to search the town for something to free the bar, perhaps an axe, or whatever tool existed that could pry out those nails. He'd have to start with the church.

The church was built from wood, just like every other building in town, yet it stood out like a cathedral in a glass and metal city. The tall windows were made of stained glass in abstract patterns, with the exception of the circular window right above the door which depicted what appeared to be a midnight blue flower with six petals. There was something odd about the glass. It looked opaquer than it should be, even with the grime and moss coating it. It was hard to tell in the dying light. The bell tower above the flower window was missing a bell, but Benjamin was more intrigued by the stink that reached his nose when he looked up at the tower; in between two plain tombstones was another pile of scat, this one drier than the first. Benjamin held his flashlight like a billy club as he approached the entrance to the church. There were shallow slashes on the doors, mostly around the handles and keyhole, that looked almost like claw marks…

He held his breath, pushed the doors open with a prolonged creak… and let it out. The church was dark and empty. In fact it was so dark he needed to use his flashlight, and when he turned it on and shone it around he saw why it was so dark and why the glass windows had looked so opaque. Someone had draped black fabric over each window, like ragged curtains, letting no light into the church. Other than that the church looked more or less normal. It had half a dozen intricately carved pews on either side, and an ivory altar with two empty golden candlesticks at the far back. It all looked rather fancy for a small town, but what would Benjamin know?

He almost propped the door open to let some more light in the room, but a year or so back Finnick had showed him a movie in which someone had gotten caught and mauled by a werewolf because they'd done the same thing. So he closed the door, casting himself in complete darkness, and continued his exploration. He shone the light down so he wouldn't trip over anything, and noticed that the floor was covered in scuff marks and prints with four unusually long and pointed toes.

Somewhere on the other side of the room, Benjamin thought he saw the shifting of fabric. He shone the light, half-expecting that it was the one of the ragged black curtains moving, but the beam fell on plain wood.

On the left wall was a closed door, hopefully a storeroom. Benjamin highly doubted a church would contain anything that could be used to remove a giant block of wood, but after meeting that certifiable bat, nothing was certain.

"Another chomper for the experiment. Project Twilight. You would not be completely feral, so you couldn't be called savage, but neither would you be sane."

Levvar, or Subject Twelve as he'd called himself, sounded like he'd been explaining the plot of a generic monster movie, and if he'd heard it before meeting Sedor the cheetah never would have believed it. Was that what had happened to Nick the night Wild Times was exposed? Had he become an unwitting participant of the experiment Levvar had spoken of?

Benjamin heard a small sound, like the hiss of a snake. He turned round, and then he was literally scared stiff.

Something was standing before one of the windows about ten feet away, tugging at the curtain covering it. The flashlight, aimed downward by the cheetah's frozen paw, only illuminated the hem of the figure's clothing, a loose bluish-black garment that could be a dress or a robe. It was moving the curtain slightly aside, looking through the window at the sunset. It was almost Sedor's height, but too slender to be him. It didn't appear be interested in Benjamin, if it had even noticed him at all.

Benjamin couldn't summon the nerve to raise the flashlight any higher. His other paw reached behind, fumbling for the handle of the door he'd discovered. His fingers scrabbled, finding nothing but air. He turned around and grabbed the handle, pushing the door as quietly as he could. Even as the room turned out to be a small office, he faintly smelled the same smell that had been in the fire watch tower full of birds and bottled blood, a stench of death and decay. Before entering he turned his head, and then he gasped.

The figure was coming toward him.

It wasn't rushing at him, however. Hunched over like a ghoul, it walked slowly, almost casually in the feline's direction as he backed into the room. Benjamin made out the shape of a loose-fitting robe, tied at the waist with thin cord. The flashlight caught curved, clawed, pallid hands protruding from billowing tattered sleeves. He thought it might be some kind of large wolf or big cat, but the proportions didn't look right. The arms looked too thin, and the legs looked too long. What he could see of its muzzle look wrong, too. It was as pale as its claws, with a long thin snout and front teeth as long as viper fangs. Its nostrils were right at the front, the nose looking nothing like that of a canine or a feline's. It looked more like a mole's nose, only smoother and more refined and without the pink tip. The fangs glinted pale grey in the darkness. Why did these people have to wear such creepy masks?

It crept into the room after Benjamin as he continued to back away, never taking his eyes off of the hooded figure. His legs hit the desk, which was too heavy to nudge aside, allowing the cloaked creature to come close enough to touch. Benjamin saw its nostrils flare, and noticed pale, blank yellow eyes not really looking at him beneath the large hood. Looking past Benjamin's face, the orbs blinked, the movement slightly tugging at the skin and muscle around its darkened eyelids.

That was no creepy mask. It was real.

Feeling faint, Benjamin slid along the desk, reached the corner of the office and pressed himself into it. The creature did not follow, instead sauntering toward another, narrower door Benjamin hadn't noticed. Every move it made, every step it took was eerily graceful, like a spider stalking in slow motion. It stopped at the desk and slowly plucked something off the surface. It was a large metal key. The creature unlocked the door and opened it, revealing a staircase leading downward. The deathly stench intensified, making Benjamin feel sick. The creature slid inside and shut the door behind it, without even so much as a glance at the cheetah.

After two seconds, Benjamin started walking toward the other door. He was flat out running when he was out the office, almost colliding with the church doors as he grabbed them, wanting nothing more than to get out. The doors were locked. The creature must have locked them in the couple of minutes before he had spotted it. He spun around, the flashlight's beam spinning with him, on the verge of panic before he saw the other door, next to the altar at the far back. He sprinted to the door and threw it open.

This door also led to a set of stairs, and only the absence of a rotting stench gave Benjamin the courage to go down. Had he not still been reeling from his encounter with that hooded freak, he would have been stunned by what he found.

It looked like some kind of twentieth century bunker, full of metallic crates and boxes. There was a desk at the far end, complete with a swivel chair. Everything was covered in dust. Benjamin tried one of the crates. It was heavy but could still be pushed around with some effort. He pushed it in front of the door, then put some boxes on top for good measure. When he was done, he dropped himself on the edge of the crate, sucking in deep lungfuls of air, focused on not passing out. When he was sure he wasn't going to flop to the floor, he considered the make-shift barricade.

He hoped to God it was enough.

Now sealed inside the room, Benjamin took a better look around. Nothing stood out about the boxes, except they each bore a sticker depicting a flag. The flag was a field of black and red stripes alongside a coat of arms, which itself consisted of a pig clutching a sword and a set of scales, with a red heart floating above its head.

It was the flag of Roarcadia.

Benjamin nearly smacked his head. Of course this was Swinetown, that old town that Mayor Swinton's ancestors had founded, only to dry up along with the mine. That still didn't explain why this church was storing assets from a city that been abandoned for far more terrible reasons. The surprise eased some of his terror, allowing curiosity to rise up in its place. What was Roarcadia stuff doing here?

Benjamin opened one of the boxes, finding a set of files. He stared down at them, thinking of the things Levvar had told him. Sedor, Levvar, those wolves and however many psychopaths that were on this mountain had been made that way by some kind of experiment. Project Twilight, he'd called it. Whatever that was, it was connected to the hellish nightmare Benjamin had been forced to endure for nearly two months. He took the entire box over to the desk, sat down and pulled out the first file to read. He hesitated at the thought of that hooded creature. He tried to push the image aside, but could not.

The only monsters that exist in this world are monsters like Cunninghorn and Sedor. Real monsters don't exist. They cannot exist. That had to be a mask. It had to be.

It had to be.