Alyssa was out of practice. Even though she was loathe to admit that, it was clear from Jack's growing impatience that he was starting to suspect.

"I can hear you grinding your teeth, Jack. I won't remind you again that lock-picking isn't as easy as it is in the movies."

"Neither is working on voluptuous vixens." Jack said.

Alyssa paused, her picks losing their grip on the pins. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Really? You don't know what voluptuous means?"
"I know it means I'm hot. You said working on voluptuous vixens."

"I said with."

"No, you said on. I wasn't that bad in bed, was I?"

"No, you were perfectly-" Jack covered his eyes. "God, I cannot possibly answer that as a professional."

Alyssa laughed, and the rabbit lowered his eyes in brief confusion. "I'm just being cheeky, love."

She went back to picking, fleeing the heat of Jack's glare on the back of her head. The cheering up she gave herself seemed to be just the ticket, because a minute later the door was open. "And Bob's your uncle."

"Watch out for traps. I don't want a repeat of the Director's Office." Jack started up the steps first, leaving Alyssa to watch their backs as they started up to the roof. It didn't escape her notice that his ears were drooped, and his shoulders were tense. He was still pissed.

Truth be told, once the amusement of her winding up Jack wore off, and she came across several bloody pawprints on the way up, so was Alyssa.

No matter how much she remembered her mission, her thoughts kept returning to the tablet, stuffed in a pouch she'd found in the armory. The videos and security clips Cheryl had provided had revealed so much, but Alyssa feared that she had only skimmed the surface of the tortures her mentor and the other abducted predators had endured. She needed to break something, something, not someone, and soon.

They reached the door at the top of the stairs, and after another bout of lock-picking they were on the rooftop and making a beeline for the jammer. It was a monstrosity, an ugly black metal and plastic machine the size of a cow. It looked custom-made.

"This is it, alright." Jack said, circling the jammer.

"So, let's shut it down." Alyssa hefted the shotgun she'd brought just for this, aiming it for the rods protruding from the top.

"Wait." Jack had stopped to the right of the machine. He hopped onto the top and knelt down. "There's a sensor on here."

Alyssa lowered the shotgun, embarrassed at her own recklessness. "What sort of sensor?"

Jack didn't answer until he took a more thorough look at whatever device he'd discovered. "Don't worry. I've seen this before and it's not an explosive trigger. It's rigged to trigger an alarm should we do anything to this machine."

"Like blasting it with an H&K Furbarm?" Alyssa asked.

"Absolutely." Jack actually looked amused. "Unfortunately, we can't disarm the sensor without triggering it."

"Fortunately, the only mammals around here who'll respond to the alarm are already being taken care of." Alyssa said. "Let's just destroy the thing and be done with it."

Jack considered the sensor for a moment before standing up. "Do it. I can't find an off switch."

"With pleasure." Alyssa waited until he was off the device before releasing some of her pent-up emotions. When the shotgun was empty, the jammer looked like an artist's abstract sculpture, but the destruction had helped.

Jack surveyed the remains before giving a satisfactory nod. "Now all we have to do is find a way to contact HQ. That shouldn't be too difficult. A facility this isolated must have a comms room."

"Let's use the cameras to find it." Alyssa said.

In the control room, Alyssa and Jack flicked through the cameras, searching for anything resembling a comms room. The cameras showed the main entrance, where Cheryl had been delivered to Slothgeld strapped to a silver platter. They showed the room where Cheryl had been beaten bloody by that dickhead, Cunninghorn. They showed the Director's Office, where in her final moments of sanity Cheryl had begged Alyssa to forget about her.

Alyssa couldn't forget Cheryl's face, the expression and mental pain and despair she'd struggled to suppress along with the madness Dr. Slothfeld had forced on her. She had seemed fine on the radio, that night when Jack's life was in their paws, but Cheryl was a tremendous actress, and she'd had two years to stitch together an appropriately convincing mask. Constantly wondering where Cheryl was, if Swinton had found her, and if she was still suffering, made Alyssa's anxieties rise to near-critical points.

"Jack, what will happen to Cheryl?" Alyssa asked.

"I don't know." Jack said blandly, flicking past the cafeteria feed. "Best case scenario is she goes away for life. Probably a mental institution if she's telling the truth about the Twilight Phenomenon."

Alyssa didn't bother asking about the worst case scenario. "And what about Slothfeld? What will happen to him once we find him?"

Jack paused before answering. "It's the disk they care about mainly, but they'll be wanting Slothfeld alive to answer for his crimes. And he's racked up a lot of them."

"Unless…" Alyssa waited for Jack to finish the sentence for her.

"Unless they see fit to make use of his scientific genius." Jack said. "The weapons division wouldn't want his skills wasted, but think about all the good he could do. The first time Theodore Swinton contacted him was to commission a cure for Alzheimer's. He'll never be a free mammal again, but with constant supervision and the right motivation, he could be a brilliant asset to the country."

Alyssa stabbed the button, switching her feed to the cell holding the captured wolf. He was sulking in the corner, so bored he was passing the time by cutting some sort of tally into his own arm. "You don't really believe that, do you?" She asked.

"Not fully." Jack said. "But us Animericans can be very persuasive."

Alyssa switched to another feed. "Other than that, he won't be getting what he deserves."

When she looked at him, Jack was giving her that intense, scrutinizing look she was becoming familiar with. "What are you implying, Alyssa?"
"Nothing. It's just so unfair."

"Of course, it's unfair. But you know the consequences of failing a mission on purpose. I don't actually know for sure what they will do to him. They may even send him back to Boarland to face his original charges. Just focus on the mission, Alyssa. That's the only thing that should matter to you."

"You're right." Alyssa fell silent after that. She still wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't just step aside if those predators came to kill the sloth.

Two button-presses later, she found herself watching the two remaining wolves in the partitions hallway. They were standing right in front of the big door at the end. The entrance to XIBALBA, the place of fear. A proper prison for a monster like you, doctor.

"Are they… howling?" Jack stared at the screen.

Alyssa nodded, watching as McHorn and Higgins came charging into view, quickly relieving the wolves of their machine guns and tackling them to the floor. McHorn, pinning Akela, the expert torturer, looked ready to give him a bloody good pasting. He even raised his fist before Higgins stopped him with a shout. Judy Hopps strode into view, lips pursed as she howled herself, only stopping once Higgins signaled that the wolves were completely incapacitated.

Alyssa laughed when it dawned on her what Hopps had done. "Dumb bunny my arse, she started a howl. I wouldn't have thought of that, would you?" She took Jack's silence as a no. "Bet you're glad she came now, aren't you?" Jack sighed and looked away from the screen. Alyssa rolled her eyes at his stubbornness.

"Alyssa…" Jack started.

"Jack, you don't need to worry about her all the time. She can obviously take care of herself."

"Alyssa." Jack repeated firmly. "The comms room."

On the monitor Jack had been searching, he'd come across the room they were seeking. According to the feed, the comms room was in the north-east corner on the top floor.

"At last." Jack walked along the edge of the control board and plucked two short-wave radios from the shelf. "We don't have much time left, so we should split up. You'll stay here and watch the cameras for any more trouble, and I'll head underground, tell the others comms are working and find a way into XIBALBA."

Alyssa accepted one of the radios, even though she didn't like being told to stay put. "Shouldn't I head to the comms room?"

"We need to make sure this place is secure when the helicopter gets here. That means someone has to keep watch. And the mammals downstairs may not fully trust you."

"Any more than the shady bunny from the 'Congressional Research Service?'" Alyssa asked with air quotes.

"Fair point." Jack conceded, even though Alyssa still ended up staying in the control room while he took off with the other radio.

While she whinged at thin air, she returned to the monitors and watched the mammals on the screen. By now they had bound both the wolves with the bloody rags of McHorn's police shirt. The rhino, now reduced to a similarly ragged tank top, was standing over Akela and saying something with a snide smile. Probably commenting of the irony of being tied up with the shirt Akela had cut up during his torture session. She returned to the camera showing the underground platform. Sedor was standing just outside the cable car, the 'beak' of his plague mask tilted upward. He must have heard the commotion nearby. While she kept an eye on the big bear, Alyssa resumed checking the feeds on the other monitor. Cheryl had to be around here somewhere. Alyssa had to find her before the ZPD did. There was no way they'd go easy on her, not after what she had done to their city. There had to be another area, another room, something they had missed during the initial sweep. She checked all the cells, the Director's Office, the gate behind the asylum-

"Ah shit!" Alyssa jumped to her feet when she saw the quad bike sitting at the end of dirty skid marks just outside the rear gate. She flicked through the feeds of the rooms closest to the rear entrance, hoping she hadn't taken too long to discover the intrusion. Come on… come on… She finally caught the intruder, a feline wearing the mask made famous by that killer from the Howl movies, slipping into the elevator on the first floor.

She grabbed her radio. "Jack, come in!"

Jack answered instantly. "What is it, Alyssa?"

"We've got company! One masked mook heading your way, probably more, armed and bloody dangerous!"

"Well, I've just infiltrated the labs. Find out how many more there are while I warn the others."

"Cool as a cucumber, like always." Alyssa muttered, even if it was one of the rabbit's more appealing personality traits. She kept the radio pinned between her ear and shoulder as she continued checking the feeds. It wasn't long before she caught another feline wearing a ski mask sprinting down a hallway on all fours.

The hallway right outside the control room.

Alyssa leapt from her chair, pulling out her gun, but it was already too late. A massive gloved paw slashed at her gun, sending the weapon flying and opening a long cut across the back of her paw. Alyssa rolled away, leaving a thin blood trail in her wake, putting as much distance between herself and the predator as she could.

The mammal glared at her with the burning eyes of a savage, crouched on three paws. The fourth picked up her gun and smashed it into pieces on the hard floor. The shotgun was behind him, on the console out of her reach.

"Who are you?" Alyssa asked. When he growled in response, she knew words were useless. On the Twilight spectrum, this predator was more night than day.

"Traitor…" Alyssa paused, shocked that he was still capable of speech. "A traitor to the Queen."

Alyssa braced herself to dodge. She had to get to that shotgun. "Where is she?"

He pounced before she could anticipate it. Instinct sent her diving to the side, into a collision with the skeletal corpse of the guard, left in the corner. She hit the body right beside his shirt pocket, where a black pen stuck out. Alyssa grabbed it, pulled the lid off and scrambled to her feet as the predator prepared for another attack.

She strafed to the side and thrust the pen, straight into the mammal's face. The nib opened a wide gash in the mask, exposing pale gold fur.

A lion. Male, judging from his voice. Ryan Roarson.

Roarson shirked away from the pen, feeling his jaw. Alyssa had read his file. He'd gotten caught tampering with TAME Collars a week before he disappeared, and before that had gotten busted for drug dealing. The only evidence they'd had was a small pouch on his person. It wouldn't even have sold for a hundred bucks. One small pouch was all it took to put him away for a decade.

And it was still nothing compared to being Slothfeld's prisoner for twenty months.

"Roarson, snap out of it!" She yelled as he lion advanced once more. "I know the Night Howler is making you act like this, but you have to stop."

Roarson snarled and swung at her. Alyssa raised her arms to block, but a fox's arms were no match for a lion's. He backhanded her back into the guard's corpse. She felt the ribs break under her weight and poke through the shirt.

She pulled the skull free and threw it with all her might. Roarson caught the skull as she ran, aiming to get to the shotgun. She almost had it when the world suddenly spun, and she ended up pinned under the lion's paw. It was massive compared to her slender body.

"For the Queen." Roarson raised the skull to bring it down on her head.

Alyssa struck first, plunging the pen into his wrist. Roarson did not cry in pain, but he drew his paw away on instinct. Alyssa scrambled away, finding herself back beside the dead body again.

That was when Roarson spotted the shotgun, and he picked it up. Alyssa glanced at the body, and the broken ribs that distorted the torso. One had pierced the shirt. Like a spike. Like a dagger. Alyssa gritted her teeth and pulled the rib free.

Only one way this ends…

Roarson, apparently not knowing how a safety worked, stood up and held the shotgun like a club. "The Queen shall win this game. She will have her revenge. We all will have our revenge."

Skyefall turned the rib in her paw. "Forgive me." She whispered.

She felt sadness and fear as she and Roarson ran at each other.

All these predators… Cheryl, Sedor…

She slid under the shotgun as Roarson swung at her…

They're all Slothfeld's victims…

Then she shot up from the floor, plunging the rib into his heart.

Including you.