Alyssa was leaning against the wall, glaring at the door to Dr. Daniel Slothfeld's panic room with the intensity of a laser cutter, when she heard Judy Hopps enter the lab.
She stopped when she saw the vixen and her sour mood. "Skyefall. How's it going?"
"Not good." Alyssa said. "Jack and your captain are doing everything short of actually torturing the fucker, but he'd sooner let the world burn than give up his secrets."
Judy's ears flattened. "Wow." She looked at the door. "I kind of expected a mad scientist when I first heard about him, but he looks so… normal."
"What, you expected Dr. Strangegrove?"
Judy looked slightly annoyed. "Sort of. How does he move so quickly? I thought sloths were supposed to be slow."
"Most are, but he's not. This isn't public knowledge, but he developed a drug that enables him to move at a speed normal for most other mammals. He still can't move very fast. We don't know if there're any side effects, because he keeps the formula to himself."
Judy looked down to the floor. "I'd be disgusted, but that's not the worst thing he's done. What're you doing out here, anyway?"
Skyefall snorted. "I got kicked out. Apparently, Jack thought my presence would put Slothfeld too much on edge to get through to him. God, isn't it wonderful to be a fox?"
"No, I don't think that's it." Judy said. "No offense, but you've been acting all doom and gloom for the last hour." She interlocked her fingers and stretched her arms high over her head; when she lowered her arms, her eyes shone with empathy. "Listen, I heard about Ryan Roarson. I'm sorry, for both of you. He may have been a drug dealer, but he didn't deserve this."
If looks could kill, Judy would have dropped dead from a dozen daggers to the chest when Alyssa bared her teeth at her. "He was a drug addict. An addict.Not a fucking dealer!"
Judy stepped back, nose twitched "Woah, easy! The report said-"
"Fuck the report! Do you have any idea how many predators are incarcerated compared to prey? Well, do you?"
Judy swallowed. "A rate of four times more."
"And that's just for the minor offenses! So don't you fucking dare stand there and say how sorry you are! It's dickheads like you who get mammals like him killed on a weekly basis!"
"I am not-"
Alyssa pointed a shaking finger at her. "I know it was you who shot Ben back at Wild Times! He literally just showed up, but that didn't matter, did it? Did it?! All you saw at that moment was a suspicious, potentially dangerous criminal."
She expected Judy to shrink back in fear and shame, proving right everything the vixen had just spit at her. Instead, her large eyes hardened, her shoulders squared, and she balled her fists. "That. Was. An. Accident." She hissed. "I regret it every single cotton-picking day, but it was accident. And prey megafauna such as rhinos and buffalos are six times more likely to be incarcerated than beavers and rabbits."
Alyssa blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. Prey can have it just as bad. Ever since Bellwether made it public that the elephant that attacked Bogo was on Musth, hate crimes against elephants have tripled in this month alone. I almost didn't make it into the police academy because everyone thought a cute little bunny rabbit wouldn't make it as an officer. This isn't just about you!"
She turned on her heel and strode down the narrow hallway to the door. She knocked, and Bogo opened the door. Words were exchanged, words Alyssa was too busy fuming to listen to.
"She has a point."
Alyssa flinched away from Nick, who had just materialized on the wall beside her. "Christ on a bike! Would it kill you announce your presence before being a smartarse?"
Nick didn't look very smug as he regarded her. "Apologies. I trained for my entire adolescence to go unnoticed, and I can't just switch it off. And I wasn't being smart. What you said to her, that wasn't fair."
"Are you taking the piss? She wrote you off as a menace the second she saw you."
"And I did exactly the same thing to her." Nick said, watching Judy as she spoke to her superior. "If I hadn't totally insulted her species, she might not have fined me two hundred and fifty dollars. You know, I think a lot of the grief she gave me might have been avoided if I hadn't been such a dickhead myself."
Alyssa scoffed. "About a year ago, I was sent to investigate a crime boss in Liondon, and the mission almost got blown because two police officers saw me driving through a prey neighborhood and tried to arrest me. I had to break both their noses to get away."
"Ok, yeah, that's rough." Nick said sympathetically.
"It just pisses me off when mammals like her act like they get it when they obviously don't." Alyssa said, as Judy finished what she was saying and Bogo closed the door again. "You heard her. She acted all sympathetic and then called him a drug dealer."
Nick sighed heavily. "You know, you and I aren't so different. I automatically see the worst in people on the other side, too."
"So?"
"Sooooo…" Nick said, his gaze turning stern. "You're getting way too eager to see the worst in Carrots, and I don't like it. I mean it, Snowflake. Cut her some slack or you and I are going to have a problem."
Alyssa looked away, saying nothing more. For the sake of not causing trouble when they were so close to the end, she wouldn't say anything to the rabbit at all.
Judy walked out the hallway and stopped before Alyssa.
"I don't know if Nick has already mentioned this to you, but I was just telling Bogo that McHorn is stable. Not that you would have any reason to be happy about that."
With that she walked out the lab. Nick followed her, giving Alyssa a rueful look as he left.
Alyssa couldn't bring herself to feel guilty; McHorn reminded her too much of those officers who confronted her in Liondon. Or perhaps Nick was right, and she was trying too hard to see the rhino as the bad guy. To hell with XIBALBA. She needed to get out of this twisted place and go somewhere with fresh air.
And figure out if and how she would kill the sloth responsible for all of this.
She left XIBALBA, eventually finding her way to the ward where Gabe had taken Starlight. She found them in one of the wards, one floor up from where Maria Manchas and the three wolves were being held prisoner. Starlight was lying in one of the beds, stirring but not quite waking up, as her husband sat vigil in a spindly chair beside her.
"Gabe." Alyssa said wearily. The lean fluorescent lights were making her eyes feel tired as they fell upon the polar bear cub napping on another bed. "What's he doing here?"
"He heard that Starlight was being brainwashed." Gabe smiled gently. "He wanted to be here when she woke up so he could tell her he's not mad at her for kidnapping him."
Alyssa couldn't help but smile herself. "I guess watching too many cartoons isn't a bad thing after all. How is she?"
Gabe had a paw curled around Starlight's. "The drug's wearing off. She'll be waking up soon."
"Any idea if the antidote worked yet?" Alyssa asked, eyeing the straps binding Starlight to the bed.
Gabe exhaled audibly. "Too soon to tell. How's it going with the good doctor?"
"Not good. He's a stubborn old git. Jack's still working on him, but I don't think it's going to work."
Gabe stared at his wife. "If he refuses to talk, then he's useless to us."
Alyssa chewed the inside of her cheek. "I agree. But so long as he's the smartest mammal in the world, they'll need him. They'll put him in a cushy new lab, under twenty-four-hour supervision, so he can go on developing new chemical weapons that will help them maintain their status as the sole true superpower."
While Cheryl and those other victims go on to take the full blame for this mess.She thought to herself with a sneer.
Alyssa closed the door behind her and sat on a bed near Gabe and Starlight. "It's so unfair."
Gabe looked at her for the first time. "'Course, it's unfair. Too often abusers are insufficiently punished for the damage they do." He paused. "Something Elba told me a while back."
"The Commissioner?"
"Yeah. He'd probably say something like that if he was here, even back in Roarcadia. He's been on our side a long, long time."
Alyssa shrugged. "Or maybe he just wanted to feel morally righteous."
"Watch your mouth, Alyssa. He's done more for us predators than you'll ever know." Gabe didn't snarl, but his exposed teeth provided more than enough warning.
Alyssa held her paws up. "Okay, I'll take your word for it. But words of wisdom aren't going to put Slothfeld in the morgue."
"You're right." Gabe said quietly, looking back at Starlight. "What's the ETA on the ZBI chopper?"
"Twenty-seven minutes."
Gabe's expression darkened. "That's how long we have to do something about this."
"That's if we're going to do something about this." Alyssa added, feeling a twinge of fear at the thought of what ZI6 might do to her if she went through with killing the sloth. Killing Slothfeld could do worse than ruin her whole life; without the evidence in his disk, Zootopia was screwed. But was that city really worth saving? According to Llater's report, a riot had occurred in almost every district since the collar crisis began, partly because of the authorities' failure to capture the Red Queen and free the hostages. But primarily they were rioting because Swinton was refusing to submit to the Red Queen's demands to confess the truth. To many citizens, predator and prey, it was a reasonable request, one for which a well-rehearsed lie could have sufficed. It wasn't like the perpetrators were asking for the release of over two-hundred terrorists or anything like that.
Great, now Alyssa was sympathizing with terrorists. This may very well have been why Cheryl never got in contact with her after she escaped.
"And Jack's watching him. We need to think this through, carefully." She said.
Gabe rubbed his thumb over Starlight's fingers. "They'll be taking Slothfeld and McHorn to the helipad soon. Think about it."
Alyssa sat silently on the bed for a minute or two, staring at a dried brown blood stain on the ward's singular window. The central heating hadn't worked in decades, and the cold steadily ate away at her anger until she found herself wondering if there was another way. Killing Slothfeld wouldn't undo the torment Cheryl had suffered, or prevent Zootopia's destruction.
But there could be another way to attain evidence of Swinton's crimes and render Slothfeld's bold defiance pointless. It would do little more than stab at his ego, but it would be a small victory. Perhaps it may even be enough to make her not want to kill him.
Perhaps.
Around four minutes later, Alyssa stood before the cell that held Maria Manchas, AKA, Subject 0. Higgins, sitting on a chair directly facing all four cell doors, was giving her a look. "Put that stink-eye away, Higgins. I just want to talk to them."
Higgins's gaze turned neutral, but he still didn't take his eyes off her.
If the panther proved uncooperative, she would talk to the wolves next. Any cracks about her gender or promiscuity would be penalized with extreme prejudice.
Alyssa heard a scratching sound coming from inside the cell and looked through the door's window. Maria was standing beside the opposite wall, her arm outstretched toward the exterior window; the glass was covered in crooked white swirls.
Feeling the slightest of chills, Alyssa rapped sharply on the door and immediately received a response.
"I've seen enough to know you can't afford my time, yutas."
Speaking of promiscuity cracks… "I'm not the ZPD, your ladyship."
Maria hesitated, lowered her arm and walked up to the window. "Alyssa Skyefall. We meet each other at last. Tell me, that's not seriously your last name, is it?"
"Cut the faux-affably-evil crap, Manchas." Alyssa grimaced when the jaguar giggled. "Dare I ask where you hid that scalpel?"
Maria put on her most psychotic innocent look as she hid the scalpel behind her back. "Could you be a dear and keep this to yourself?"
"Nope."
"Damn."
"It's your own fault for being unable to resist the urge to cut something. Is that disk really so important to you?"
"Very." Maria replied in a faux-high pitch. "As much as we want to personally waltz into City Hall and take turns shanking the Queen of Hearts, that isn't going to get rid of her family legacy. We need proof that it's all bullshit." Maria ran a finger down the window glass. "At least, that's what the Red Queen says. Personally, I just wanna kill every last one of those dickheads and get the hell out of dodge, but there's that whole issue with being a loose end to tie up. So, until that's dealt with, Cheryl's my new boss."
I want to kill a lot of people, too, De Stabbarough. "So, what happened to all the evidence that wasn't in the disk?"
"Everything that incriminated the Swintons was kept in XIBALBA, which I may remind you, was completely sealed off until about thirty minutes ago." Maria said dryly. "I do remember Slothfeld mentioning some stuff about a buttload of 'sensitive information' recovered from Roarcadia, but we searched the whole facility and never found it. Yep, all the important, irrefutable stuff's in the Vorpal Blade. It's why it's called the Vorpal Blade, duh. Didn't you ever read the poem?"
Alyssa rolled her eyes, partly to hide her disappointment. So much for not needing the sloth. "The Jabberwock is a codename for the fake wolf that's been turning predators savage, and a metaphor for the system that forces us to wear those glorified torture devices. Yeah, pretty much figured it out by now."
Maria pursed her lips. "Are you gonna let me out or not?"
"Yeah, like I can pick a lock without him noticing." Alyssa gestured to the hippo nearby. She may be angry at this screwed up world right now, but she wasn't an idiot.
Maria shrugged. "Never hurts to ask." Then she moved closer to the window. "You could still get us out of here, though. Cheryl told me all about your skills. You could get the keys and get us out, easy-peasy. "
Alyssa shook her head. "Can't do that, Manchas. I saw your handiwork in the lodge. You're a danger to society."
Maria's whole demeanor changed. "Slothfeld is a danger, you self-righteous retard!" She snarled, baring her canines. "The things he did to us! The experiments… the electric shocks… he made Cheryl and Sedor fuck each other for crying out loud!" She struck the door hard enough to split the skin on her knuckles.
Alyssa blinked and stepped back from the door. "He what?"
Maria paused. "Cheryl didn't put that on the IPaw? Why would she keep that from you?"
Alyssa bared her teeth back at her, her anger flaring again. "You're making that up. You're trying to goad me into letting you out. Either that or you imagined it, you crazy bitch."
Maria didn't appear to register that. "What am I saying, of course she would. Who wouldn't want their bestie to find out they're now an unregistered sex offender?"
Alyssa ferally snarled at Maria and turned away. "There's a funny smell in here, Manchas, and it's coming from you. What is it? Oh, yeah. Bullshit!" It had to be bullshit. Slothfeld had nothing to gain from doing something so obscene. Did he?
Maria sneered through the glass. "The guards and nerds talked about it for days. Thought it would make great porn if they ever got a hold of the video."
Blam!
The bullet from Alyssa's gun, punched a frosted hole through the window, passing right over Maria's head and tearing a chunk out of the wall behind her. The jaguar ducked on reflex with a wild growl. When she looked back through the window, Alyssa was still aiming her weapon.
"Shut the hell up, Manchas." She hissed.
Higgins thundered up to her. "Are you out of your goddamned mind, fox?!"
Alyssa holstered her gun. "The name is Skyefall, hippo."
Behind the door, Maria burst out laughing. "Losing your grip, Alice? Newsflash, sweetheart, we're all mad here! If you won't help us, on your pretty white head be it! Maybe asking Slothfeld himself will make you come to your senses!"
"Shut it, you!" Higgins snapped at her. When he looked back at Skyefall, he saw that the vixen had gone.
When she reached the helipad that sat adjacent to the facility, Alyssa pressed her forearm into the cold brick wall and then pressed her forehead into her forearm. She felt tense all over. Slothfeld and his escort would be here soon. Soon after that the ZBI helicopter would arrive to pick him up, and then that would be it. He would beyond her reach.
Alyssa lifted her head from her arm. Maybe it was for the best. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say. But a larger part of her was baying for blood.
She hated Slothfeld. She hated that sloth more than anything else in her entire life. She wanted to walk up to him, pull out her pistol, press it to his throat, pull the trigger, and step back so she could get a full view of him drowning in his own blood. But the fate of Zootopia was on the line here. She just had to hold out until Slothfeld coughed up the decryption key for that disk. And then what?
Her ear flicked at the scraping of a rusted metal door opening. She didn't look up, but she caught the scent of a cheetah which grew stronger as he approached her, eventually stopping.
"Um, Alyssa? Are you doing okay?"
"I'm fine." Alyssa said bluntly.
Benjamin huffed. "That's what they all say."
Alyssa gritted her teeth beneath her forearm. "Do you want something, Ben?"
"Just thought you should know that they're bringing Dr. Slothfeld up. They didn't get anywhere with him, unfortunately."
"Of course, they didn't."
"… Your mission hasn't really gone to plan, has it? I'm sorry."
"Gone to plan? Two years I spent searching for Cheryl. Then I found out that not only had she been tortured for nearly eighteen months, but she'd come out of it a complete psycho, lobotomized a lemming with cocktail sticks, butchered hell knows how many other mammals, and turned herself into a full-blown terrorist. Damn right it hasn't really gone to plan."
Benjamin was quiet for a moment. "I super-understated that, didn't I?"
"Yeah, you did." Alyssa said, before she realized that something was odd about his tone. "You don't seem that bothered that your hometown's pretty much screwed by this point."
"Because it's not over yet." Benjamin said, with an air of determination that made Alyssa turn around in curiosity. "There's other evidence, stuff that would put Swinton and her supporters away for life. I told Bogo about it, and he's going to tell the ZBI when they get here."
Alyssa felt her ears go completely erect. "You're winding me up."
"Nope. There's whole load of stuff under the old church in Swinetown that has a load of dirt on Theodore Swinton's activities in Roarcadia. Some of it's pretty twisted, and will totally ruin the mayor's life if it gets out."
Alyssa's heart picked up the pace. "What sort of stuff are we talking about here?"
"The reactor only partly melted, and it wasn't even Liberum's fault. They maintained their cover by pumping some of the survivors with chemo drugs to make it look like they had radiation poisoning, and that's not the worst of it… crud, you're going to think I'm a loon."
Alyssa growled under her breath. "Tell me, Ben."
Benjamin blinked, but obliged. "Illegal experiments. Not like what Slothfeld was doing here. Genetic stuff. Theodore had this crazy idea to harness the predators' power into creating his own super-predators, but it went wrong. Some of them escaped, and the reactor's cooling system got damaged in the attempt to recapture one of them."
Alyssa realized she was gaping and shut her mouth. "Sorry, he tried to harness our 'power?'"
"I said it sounds loony. One of them is still alive. Theodore and Slothfeld brought it here, but the creature broke out along with the Twilight test subjects and it's been living on the other side of Founder's Mountain ever since. It killed Cunninghorn and bit-" Benjamin stopped, his eyes becoming very big, and he turned away while covering his mouth like he was going to be sick.
Alyssa rubbed her scalp, remembering seeing Bogo cleaning and dressing a fresh, bloody bite wound on his forearm. "It bit Bogo on the arm, didn't it?"
Benjamin didn't answer.
"Ben? Ben!" She snapped sharply, loudly, bringing him back to his senses. "Did it bite Bogo?"
The cheetah nodded. "It's got shrew DNA, so its saliva can cause paralysis. Bogo's going to warn the ZBI about that, too."
"And all this is information is hidden underneath this creature's lair?" Alyssa asked slowly.
"Yep." Benjamin smiled in that way that didn't seem entirely genuine and bent forward. "So don't worry about it. We've got tons of time to find that stuff and pass it on to Cheryl so she won't destroy Zootopia. Mission still accomplished, right Alyssa?"
Before Alyssa could answer, in walked Jack, Judy and Nick, the first rabbit escorting a sullen Slothfeld at gunpoint. Judy scowled when she saw Alyssa; Nick frowned when he saw Benjamin.
"Uh, hi." He said, tentatively raising his paw. "Again."
"Hi." Benjamin said, looking just as awkward. "Again."
"Ok, uh, Capt. Buffalo Butt's getting McHorn ready for his flight back to the city. They'll get here as soon as they can."
"How is he?" Benjamin asked.
"Doing surprisingly ok." Nick said. "The Swinton Regime was right about one thing. All stereotypes all come from some element of truth."
Alyssa crossed her arms. "Like how all vixens are slags?"
"Like how most rhinos are hard to kill." Nick didn't miss a beat. "And apparently some secret agents are confrontational radicals."
When Judy approached, Alyssa grimaced and turned back to the wall. She didn't want to hear any more superficial sympathies from her.
"Skyefall, are you ok?"
Like that.
"What do you think?" Alyssa growled.
"Hopps, she's been hit with some hard truths about her friend." Jack said. "Best you give her some space."
Alyssa whirled round, focusing her fury at Judy in particular. "Yeah, 'coz some space is all I need, right? It's not like us chompers have enough feelings to grieve properly, right? I know what you think about us! A bunch of over-empowered killers… bunch of good for nothing criminals… bet the brainwashing collar would pretty appealing to your redneck, grey trash family, wouldn't it?"
"We don't think that at all!" Judy pleaded. "We've never condoned overriding free will! Ever!"
"But you condoned daily electroshock therapy and fox-specific pepper spray, right?"
Alyssa heard a cough and turned her head. Slothfeld, who didn't seem to be acknowledging the gun Jack was keeping on him, sneered bitterly. "I must say, blatantly siding with the terrorists isn't helping your case."
Jack jabbed him with his pistol. "Don't rile her up."
Slothfeld raised a bushy black eyebrow at him. "Rile her up? An interesting choice of words."
Alyssa bared her teeth at the sloth. Nick held an arm in front of her, and Benjamin held her shoulder for good measure. "Ignore him. He's trying to turn us against each other so he can-"
"The hippopotamus told us all about your little episode outside the cells." Slothfeld continued to sneer. "He said you were clearly unstable and to be watched carefully. It's not surprising, really. Radames and Valentino made a poor show of playing the victims as well."
"Jack, shut him u-up." Nick partly-sang through gritted teeth. Alyssa barely heard him through the hot blood thundering in her ears.
"Or perhaps," Slothfeld said as he backed away, the barrel of Jack's gun following him as he went. "They've come to enjoy having power over others. I thought they looked like they enjoyed that particular experiment…"
Alyssa didn't know how she got past Nick and Benjamin, but the next thing she knew she was barging her way past Jack and grabbing Slothfeld by his unwashed shirt.
"Particular experiment?! It's true?! I'LL KILL YOU!"
She slammed the larger mammal against the nearest solid mass, Benjamin's gut, and pressed her gun to his throat.
