Starlight heard gunfire through her headset as she bashed the elevator button, and a second after that she heard Gabriel's voice, thick with tension.
"Shit… Starlight, I'm in trouble."
Starlight grimaced and pressed the button again. "You lost your temper again, didn't you?"
"No… yes… those goons caught up to our buddies and tried to force them to surrender. Their warning shot got a little too close to Morris and, well, I kind of went in guns blazing."
Starlight rolled her eyes. "Of course, you did."
"On the plus side, I gave them a chance to get away. They may not… damn it…"
Starlight heard the pain in his curse, and her stomach dropped. "Gabriel, please tell me you didn't get shot."
"Not directly."
The elevator doors opened at last, and Starlight rushed inside and pushed the button to go up. "What do you mean 'not directly?'"
"I mean I was standing next to a window, they shot the window, I got glass in my scalp and now blood keeps getting in my eye."
"Good god, you can't get taken anywhere, can you?"
"Yeah, yeah, just hurry up and bail me out, capishe? I'm in the cafeteria."Starlight then heard a series of gunshots as her husband returned fire.
Damn it, they didn't have time for this. Elba needed their help, and they had about five hours to get to him.
Once out the elevator Starlight made straight for the cafeteria, momentarily stopping at the hallway just before the room when she caught some chatter from the terrorists' own radios; "This is Gamma Team… We've just finished a sweep all over Swinetown. No sign of Subject Zero… its lair in the church. It's empty, sir… We did find a body matching the description of Commander Cunninghorn. He died very recently… followed the tracks to the Town Hall.. looks like it heard the chopper coming and escaped through the cable car tunnel… Be advised, sir, it may be heading right for you…"
Starlight heard other voices and temporarily switched off her headset.
"Carrots, what part of 'it's suicide' do you not understand?"
"Suicide or not, he needs our help!"
Starlight found the pair hiding behind a fallen gurney stained with old bodily fluids and ended the squabble with a snap of her fingers.
"Holy shit!" Nick clutched his heart and glared at her. "I thought someone was cocking a gun at me!"
"What are you doing here? The way out's on the other side of the cafeteria."
"Sorry, our escape plan didn't factor in a bunch of gun-toting terrorists!" Judy snapped. "And before you ask, your husband's pinned down behind a column just through those doors."
"And before you also ask, there's no way we can get through those doors without getting shot to shit!" Nick angrily added.
"For the last time, I have a plan!" Judy held up a lighter. "I found this in the security room."
Starlight vaulted over the gurney, knelt down beside them, and while Nick tried to cut in with a protest here and there, she and Judy collaborated on their strategy.
One of the cafeteria doors was slightly ajar, so Starlight could crouch beside it without being seen. She spotted part of her husband peeking out from behind a column riddled with bullets, and spots of fresh blood on the dirty tiles beneath him. She pursed her lips and rubbed her shoulder where one of the Dark House's traps had pierced her. With her reflective knife she located the three goons taking cover behind the counter, and surmised Nick was right, in a way. Charging in from this direction was a very bad idea.
The gunfire had stopped; the terrorists had seen that they could not penetrate the column and were saving their ammo. They were staying behind the counter, keeping their sights on Gabe's location, not even attempting to advance. Starlight quickly understood why. The tables between them and Gabe were made of forty-year old plywood, which wasn't exactly bulletproof, and they had no way of knowing how much ammo he had left.
"It doesn't have to end this way, tomcat!" One of the gunmammals yelled. "All we want is the doctor and his pet freak of nature!"
"Freak of nature?" Gabe yelled back.
"Gabe, I see you." Starlight muttered into her headset. "We're cooking up a distraction, you'll know it when you see it."
She saw Gabe holding up the radio. "Ok. Ready when you are. Any idea what these guys are talking about?"
"I think I do." Starlight heard a whisper, turned her head and saw that Nick had returned with what she and Judy had asked for: dry grass, leaves and twigs that over the decades had found various ways of getting into the asylum from outside. If they were to pull this off without those thugs catching on, they needed a smokeless fire.
Nick put down the metal bucket, and while he and Judy filled it up, the rabbit asked, "So where's the other team? Mossberg said you were taking care of it."
"I took care of them, alright." Starlight said. "When the cavalry gets here, you'll need to tell them that they'll find a few bodies in XIBALBA."
Nick and Judy stiffened, their paws hovered over the bucket.
"Bodies?" Judy breathed. "You killed them all?"
Starlight remembered that Judy was a rookie and gave her a stern look. "Before you start reading my rights, remember that we're fighting for our lives here. You stay on the force long enough, you might just find yourself racking up a body count of your own."
Judy looked Starlight up and down, freezing when she saw how red and wet her pants were.
Nick put a paw on each shoulder, smiling as if he hoped his grin would be sharp enough to cut through the ensuing tension. "So, are you ready for the sweet cologne of wet fox?"
"I doubt it. I don't know what model the system is." Starlight quietly explained, looking away from the speechless rabbit to consider what the system could be. Before she'd been captured in Zootopia she'd heard that Zoocell had begun the installation of a brand-new sprinkler system in several major buildings around the city. Starlight doubted it was that. "It could set off one or it could set them all off. It doesn't matter either way." She held out a pawful of grass for Judy to light and dropped it into the bucket. Once she was sure it wasn't going to burn out prematurely, she nudged it into the room.
"And now we wait." She said, crouching by the gap and holding her gun. Judy joined her on the side of the gap, ears taught and eyes narrowed in anticipation.
"Mind if I borrow a gun?" Nick whispered.
"Do you have a license?" Judy asked.
"I have a doctor's license."
"Then, no."
"Can I state my case?"
"Nick, it could go off any minute!"
"It's a tiny little bucket fire and the sprinklers are like ten feet above us. It'll probably take…" Suddenly they heard the hiss of pouring water. "… Aaaaand forget everything I just said."
Starlight waited a second for Gabe to make his move. When she heard the sound of him firing his weapon she slid into the room and took one of the terrorists out with four bullets. Judy leapt into the room, hopping over the vixen's head and blocking the artificial rain for a split second, and fired upon the second terrorist, dropping him like a voodoo doll. Seeing no sign of the third, Starlight carefully advanced toward the counter; when she peeked around the counter, she found the third terrorist lying dead beside his companions with a bullet hole in his cheekbone.
"One apiece. Figures." She smirked and went to check on her husband. He was already making his way over to her, and when Starlight saw the blood covering his head and face she had to remind herself that it was just a cut. Gabe was one of the few mammals in her life who could get her worked up, other than Elba. The sooner they patched each other up, the sooner they could take the chopper and save him.
"Gabriel, are you- where did you get that detonator?"
Gabriel grinned, tossed the detonator and caught it. "Not important."
Judy's gaze hardened and she stepped up to him. "Excuse me, but as a police officer I think that an undetonated explosive is very important!"
Gabe cocked an eyebrow, held up the detonator, and pulled the trigger with a harmless click. "Who said there was? It was the only thing keeping those guys back."
Alyssa kept back from the end of the tunnel, just in case Slothfeld was waiting around the corner with a gun or some other weapon. She stood still, her ears stiffening as she listened for the sloth. She heard the clatter of a small object being dropped further ahead.
Alyssa pressed on, and in her single-minded fixation almost missed the object she had heard being dropped: it was a small, blue, and empty pill box.
What was that the file had said? That Slothfeld had developed a formula that allowed a sloth to move and speak at the speed of most other mammals? Didn't it also say that the effects only lasted for four hours?
"You're all out." Alyssa felt her lips pull away from her teeth as she hissed, from hate more than pain, and lightly touched her side. When she pulled her paw away it came up red. Anger had driven her to carelessness, so when she came across another one of the wolf trio's traps, she didn't spot the tripwire in time. She'd taken cover behind an open door right as the pipe bomb went off, and one piece of shrapnel had punched right through the door and into the vixen. It had embedded itself above her hip, and the part that protruded was too small to package. Alyssa had pulled out the bit of metal, not wanting to risk it working the rest of its way into her flesh, and continued on. The tunnel seemed to grow colder the deeper she went, and it was so quiet that she was beginning to worry that it was already to late to catch her prey.
"Slothfeld…" She whispered, stopping to lean against the wall for a moment. "Slothfeldslothfeldslofeld…"
She pushed off the wall, leaving behind a red pawprint as she pressed on. She would find him, and she would make him talk. For Cheryl. For everyone.
Nick entered the cafeteria, freezing and grimacing when he walked right under the sprinkler. Then he spotted the rim of a puddle of blood spreading from behind the counter and decided that he'd been better off staying out of the firefight. Gabe was sitting on a chair, wincing as Starlight checked the cut on his head, muttering, "We should glue this before you start feeling woozy." She pulled out a zip pouch, procured a small tube and got to work. Nick looked around and spotted the mammal he wanted to see most, or more specifically spotted the black tips over her long ears peeking behind the countertop. When he walked around the counter, he found her kneeling before the three bodies. She was staring at the bodies with the most miserable face he had ever seen.
"Carrots?" Nick tried to avoid stepping in the blood as he approached her. "What's wrong? Was he your first kill or something?"
"He isn't." Judy pointed to the dart sticking out of the mammal she had shot. She let herself fall back onto her rear and sat against the side of the counter. "I keep thinking about the armory back at Precinct One. We have some live firearms, but mostly it's full of tranq guns and tazers. But I can't help but think that after everything that's happened, that may not be the case for much longer. What if they decide that we're better off using only lethal rounds?" She turned her eyes down to the dart gun in her paws. "I don't want to go on patrol with nothing but a weapon designed only to kill. I don't want my every confrontation with a criminal to end like this. Even keeping my fox tazer would be a better option than that."
Nick prepared to ask what had brought this about, but was distracted when her nose started twitching. Her nose wrinkled, and she edged away from him. "Sweet cheese and crackers, wet foxes really do have an aroma!"
Nick sniffed the air and stuck his tongue out. "That's not me. Smells like one of the stiffs crapped himself."
Judy blinked, then sniffed the air again. "Okay, we're moving!"
Before Nick knew it she was up and dragging him away by the back of his coat. He could see his soaking wet tail leaving a shimmering streak in their wake, so he held up a finger and said, "Excuse me, you do realize I'm three times bigger than you?"
"So?" Judy asked tersely as she dragged him to the other side of the counter.
"So don't get me wrong, I think being dragged around by a cotton-tailed amazon is an honor, but tell me, how do you do it?"
He caught a smile twitching on her pretty face. "With patience and persistence."
With that Judy hoisted Nick to her feet and got out her radio. The second she glimpsed Starlight and Gabe, coated in blood that may not be entirely theirs, and sharply looked away.
So that's it, Nick thought.
Judy spoke quietly into the radio, asking Bogo to pick up. Her ears flew back from the radio when the buffalo's baritone voice came roaring back at her.
"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, ROOKIE?!"
Judy stammered out her response. "Ca-ca-cafeteria, sir."
Bogo's response was dangerously quiet. "You went back without us, didn't you? If I hadn't been such a reckless idiot myself…"
"Nick's fine, thanks for asking."
"Hopps…" Bogo's warning growl faded into a sigh. "That's good. Very good. You should have waited for us."
"It wasn't like that, sir. We got split up in the firefight." Judy said.
"Speaking of which, what happened? We haven't heard gunfire for a good three minutes."
Judy hesitated. "We… we took care of them, sir. Mossberg and his wife took care of it, mostly."
Bogo went quiet. "The ZBI wouldn't have done any different, Hopps. I'm on my way back, keep an eye on them until then."
Judy looked at Nick with disquiet. "Sir, I need to talk to you about Nick."
"Save it for when I get there. Bogo out."
Judy lowered her radio and didn't take her eyes off Nick. He knew what he wanted to discuss, or only thought he did. She must have violated dozens of protocols to be here, and even before discovering the truth she had skirted the police rulebook to hunt him down. What if Gabe and Starlight's brutality had reaffirmed her belief that all predators were dangerous without their collars? Had his newfound trust in her been misplaced?
Nick clenched his fists, watching wordlessly as the rabbit seemed to make a decision and walked over to Gabe and Starlight. Perhaps he should slip away while her attention was on the other two mammals. Buffalo-butt could turn up with a pair of fox-sized steel bracelets any second.
Buffalo-butt. Thinking of him like that didn't feel right anymore. Benjamin would be in jail or dead if it weren't for him. No wonder he preferred that burly cop as a friend now.
"Mrs. Mossberg, we need to talk." Judy said.
"About what? I'm kind of in the middle of something, here." Starlight and Gabe had switched places, the vixen having removed her sweater so her husband could better tend to her cuts. "And it's Foxtrot. I keep my maiden name."
"Foxtrot. Right. Look, I overheard you planning to take the helicopter and run before the ZBI gets here. I'm not going to stop you."
"But?" Starlight asked warily.
"But there's a condition. I want you to take Nick when you go."
Nick shook his head. "Carrots."
"So long as Swinton and her friends are in power, he's in danger. I can't in good conscience return him to custody." Judy went on. "I'm going to pretend that the three of you escaped, and in return, I want you to take him somewhere safe, somewhere far away where they won't think to look for him."
Nick looked toward the open door. He imagined Benjamin standing there, pointing a gun at him, facial fur smeared with the blood of dead polar bears.
"Running will make me look guilty!" The half-formed memory screamed at him."I don't want to be a fugitive, Nick! I can't live like that!"
As it turned out, neither could Nick.
He unclenched his fists and stepped in front of her. "Carrots, no."
Judy blinked. "No?"
Nick held up a finger. "Sorry, what I meant to say was no. I will not be getting on that helicopter."
"But Nick, you're in danger if you stay here!"
"Judy."
The rabbit blinked.
Nick pulled up his shirt to expose the graze Doug had dealt him. "That wooly son of a bitch shot Honey to get at me. So long as I'm large, the friends I've got left will be in danger. I can't just keep running." Nick paused. "I'm tired of running."
Judy stared at him with those big purple eyes that made his decision so much easier. He watched as those eyes turned moist and welled up, and before he knew it, she had her arms around his waist.
Nick's cheeked puffed up, trying to keep the air she was threatened to squeeze out of him. He heard her sniffle into his stomach. "I can't." She whispered. "I can't let you. It's a death sentence. This is my fault, too."
Nick swallowed. His paws seemed too large as they fell upon the bunny and gripped her back. What he was feeling right now… it couldn't be. He was just feeling grateful, that's all. He was feeling grateful for her help, for her change of heart, for her comforting him just by being there. No, this feeling wasn't entirely gratitude. Gratitude alone didn't make you feel like more than a just another hopeless criminal hiding behind a dumpster behind a meth lab masquerading as a pawn shop.
Nick found himself caressing her head, and when she didn't stop him he felt his own eyes begin to sting.
Oh, Judy. What's happened to you? What's happened to me? We were just supposed to be working together to save both our worlds. I never thought it would come to this.
Nick almost forgot they weren't alone in the room, and he and Judy jerked apart when Starlight spoke.
"When you're done fraternizing, I'd like to go save my father. Wilde, are you staying or not?"
Nick nodded. Judy elbowed him. "Foxtrot, you seem to have contacts. Isn't there someone who could, you know, hack into the system and remove all the evidence against Nick?"
"No." Nick growled. "No, you are not going to corrupt yourself for my sake. And even if I wanted you to, it's impossible."
"But Nick!"
"This isn't like the jam cams, Carrots. Honey told me the same thing when I suggested it. The firewalls are hack proof, and the staff aren't stupid enough to fall for clickbait. The only way to get in would be to access the system directly from one of their own computers, and even then you'd still need passcodes or whatever they use. If she could still use them, she'd give both her legs for a chance to get into Swinton's secret Big Brother facility, if the place even exists."
Judy blinked. "Wait a minute, what did you say?"
"He's talking about the rumor about Zootopia's illegal surveillance sector, Hopps." Gabe said as he discarded the antiseptic wipe he was using on his wife's wounds. "According to the myth, it's located somewhere in City Hall, and Swinton only uses it for emergencies to decrease the likelihood of the government catching on. We figured it's how Doug was able to track you and your friends down so quickly.
Judy took a step back. "Whoever has access to the sector can see everything in the city."
Starlight nodded, pulled her sweater back on and stood up. "Come on, we need to leave before Bogo shows up."
Judy wasn't listening. Nick watched curiously as she muttered to herself, her eyes widening with each brief sentence. "She's not watching us from here. She's watching us from City Hall. She knew everything about us because she could see everything. That's it! That's what I've been missing!"
"I see you!" Doug leaned out from around the corner of the wall and fired a short, controlled burst at the concrete pillar where Jack was taking cover.
Doug was hurt, otherwise he wouldn't have shouted like that. That made Jack feel better about their stalemate. If only the smell down here wasn't so putrid.
It was a bloodbath. Doug had beaten him to the hatch at the end of the prison block, a wide hallway of glass cells covered in scratches, old feces and blood. There were bodies here, a dozen of them between Jack and Doug, all of them at least six months old, and many of them were literally resting in pieces. The spent ammo casings on the floor were less than half that number, indicating the number of shots they'd managed to fire before getting sliced and diced. This was where the massacre had begun. Jack had pictured it in his head just before he'd caught up to Doug. The cell labeled One had tiger tracks made with brown blood leading to the cell labelled Two, and then, along with a set of grizzly bear tracks, trailed along the rest of the cells. Cheryl had managed to escape first, then freed Sedor, and then released every other predator in the block before unleashing bloody hell on their captors. How Slothfeld managed to evade the vengeful creatures and shut himself in XIBALBA was a question only the sloth himself could answer.
Jack had only been able to catch of glimpse of Doug when he'd opened fire, so he didn't know where he'd hit him. Somewhere vital was good, somewhere not so vital was also good, but would take longer to subdue him. Jack just had to keep him from planting that block of plastic explosive on the emergency hatch until then…
While also keeping Doug from figuring out that Jack was completely out of bullets and down to three arrows.
Behind the pillar, Jack loaded his third-to-last bolt into the crossbow and hoped that Alyssa had regained enough of her senses to keep Slothfeld alive when she found him.
After everything else that had happened, it was perfectly natural for Bogo to assume the worst when he entered the cafeteria and found it empty.
"Hopps?"
He pulled out his gun, told Benjamin to stay by the door, and made a quick sweep of the area, but all he found were three bodies behind the counter. One was still alive, judging by the darts sticking out of him, but he would be out for a while yet.
In the middle of the cafeteria he assured the cheetah that it was clear, before giving in to anger and kicking a chair across the room. Either his rabbit officer had gotten into trouble, again, or she was going to be in trouble, again.
"Bogo?"
There was a tremor in Benjamin's voice that made Bogo turn around quickly, but the cheetah was picking up a torn piece of paper from the counter that the buffalo had missed. He wandered over to Bogo, wide brown eyes fixed on the paper, and showed it to him with trembling paws. "I… I found this letter from Hopps. She's figured out where the Red Queen is. She's hiding out in this illegal surveillance sector in City Hall…"
"Jesus Christ…"
"So she's taken the helicopter and gone after her."
Bogo crumpled up the paper and tossed it. "Goddamn stubborn rookie."
Right after he said this, he heard the clinking of broken tiles coming from on the other side of the other door, and his ears perked. Maybe he wasn't too late.
"Ben, stay here."
Benjamin obeyed without saying a word.
Keeping his gun ready just in case, Bogo opened the door and followed the hallway. He caught one of the wayward mammals emerging from the men's bathroom beside the stairwell presumably leading up to the roof.
"Hold it right there, short-stuff."
Nick stiffened, caught dead-to-rights with his paw half-way up his zipper.
"Do you mind?" He asked, his eyes betraying his surprise as they glanced down at his open fly. "I know for a fact that my junk is anything but short."
Bogo didn't put away his gun. "Where is Hopps?"
"Guys aren't allowed in the ladies room."
"I found the note, so stop with the bullshit. Where is she? Is she on the rooftop already?" Nick didn't respond, tempting Bogo to point his gun at him. "Answer the question, Wilde."
Nick tilted his head back and groaned at the ceiling as he finished zipping up. "Fiiiiine. She's waiting at the chopper with the others."
"What others?" Bogo asked harshly.
"Who do you think? Deathsloth and Lady Shivole."
Bogo had heard enough. "I don't think so. Move it, we're going to the roof."
Nick didn't budge. Bogo could feel the tension rolling off him in waves. "Hold on. If you read the note, then you know why we're doing this. Someone has to stop Cheryl."
"That's what the ZBI is for. And what were you hoping to get out of this? A ride out of the city?"
For the first time, Nick glared back at him. "Getting me out of the city was actually her idea. She's got it in her head that the feds can't be trusted. You gotta wonder why."
Bogo snorted. "That situation is different. TUSK was Swinton's creation, so of course they're on her side."
Nick nodded slightly, conceding the point but clearly resenting having to do so. "You're right about that... Besides, I told her no. I promised Benji that I'd make things right, and I'm keeping it."
Bogo waved an arm at the stairwell door. "And you think accompanying my officer on a suicide mission to take down a highly-trained psychopath will make things right? Ben's lost enough to this conspiracy already. Abandoning him, again, just so you can go and get yourself killed? If you ask me, you're still being a pretty lousy friend!"
Nick set his jaw. "Yeah, I'm a bad friend…" He locked eyes with Bogo. "…but you're no better."
The buffalo frowned. "What?"
Nick took a few steps toward him, his words coming out bitter and cold. "Benji may fall for your good cop act, but I don't."
Bogo felt his hardened expression falter. "You're in no position to be pulling the Hannibull Lecture on me. You're a criminal."
Nick's own expression was scathing. "And you're the most prolific officer of your generation. Over two hundred arrests on your record, more than half of them predators. Cozying up to Benji wouldn't have anything to do with him being the key to cracking the case of the century, would it?"
Bogo swallowed. "I know I wasn't much better than them to start with…"
"You're a giant sack of shit, Bogo!" Nick snapped, his voice echoing slightly in the empty hallway. "Just like all the others."
The decrepit hallway fell silent. Bogo looked away, unable to respond no matter how much he wanted to.
"I'm going with her. I'll gladly let her take me to jail, but not until I make sure there's no-one left to come after my friends." Nick strode toward the stairwell door. He stopped mid-way through the doorway and turned to the buffalo. "Benji already had one shit excuse for a friend screw him over. Don't you dare screw him over, too."
With that, he shoved the door open and ascended the steps out of sight. By the time Bogo found it within himself to come after him, it was too late: he heard the rumble of the helicopter as soon as he entered the stairwell. He returned to the hallway and kicked over a rusted wheelchair, which did little to alleviate his turbulent feelings.
What the hell was he doing here?
Not one thing had gone right since he'd decided to pursue Sedor and Cunninghorn up this damned mountain. A disaster, that's what this was.
"Bogo?"
Bogo turned to see Benjamin slowly making his way up the hallway toward him. Bogo sighed through his nostrils and holstered his gun.
"I thought I told you to stay put." He muttered.
"You took too long." Benjamin said simply. "Nick's gone, isn't he?"
"They're both gone." Bogo said. "Fricking idiots are going after the Red Queen. If we hurry and warn the ZBI, they may still be able to stop them. Remind me to tell them about Cunninghorn too, while I'm at it."
"They're already here. I saw lights on the bridge from the window." Benjamin said.
Finally, Bogo thought, and then paused. "You look pale."
"I got the crap kicked out of me by a rhino, what did you expect?" Benjamin retorted. "Other than that, just plain old Gazelle and donut withdrawal."
Bogo smirked, and put his hooves on his hips. "Yeah, I miss her too. So Cunninghorn did that to you? Makes me wish…" I got to kill him myself was what he almost said, but the words, and the violence behind them, didn't feel right to him anymore. "Makes me wish he was still alive so I could personally put the cuffs on him."
"Yeah, my bad." Benjamin said. "Was his body really that messed up when you found him?"
"You have no idea."
Benjamin bit his lip and sat down on a convenient box. "I feel sick."
Bogo shook his head and held out the arm with the dressed bite. "It wasn't your fault. You didn't kill him, that thing did."
"I let him chase me into its den."
"But you didn't think it could actually kill him. You said so yourself."
Benjamin stared at his knees and averted Bogo's gaze. "That's right. I did."
Just from his tone and body language, his words were tantamount to a confession. Bogo patted the bloodstained dressing and took one more look at the stairwell door, almost as if that damned fox was standing there, glaring at him with silent contempt. The cheetah was not to blame. He was just trying to survive a hellish situation, one that Cunninghorn had dragged him into. Now Cunninghorn was dead, and it wouldn't be long until the surviving conspirators got justice served to them, too.
Self-defense. That's what it was. Bogo would make sure that stuck. Then again, no-one needed to know.
"Let's just go talk to the feds." He muttered.
