Cliffside Asylum

Roughly 45 minutes passed and I could sense we were getting close, as the driver started to acknowledge to himself of just how beautiful the scenery was. He kept mentioning the word "cliffs", which was a dead giveaway to me. I decided to move a little bit so I could angle myself to one of the van's window. The night sky was bright enough to illuminate the ground below, which the skyline of Zootopia as a backdrop. I turned my head just slightly to see a large building located on a tiny platform. It wasn't man made, well, "mammal" made to be politically correct, it was almost nature had a piss fit and grew a small landmass that poked on the crescent of the descending falls. Perfect for place to getaway, and perfect to keep people away… far away.

Before our driver Ivan, who still hasn't felt my presence, made the approach to the gate, I contacted AAL on my coms.

"Alright Sir Howard, here's what I can find about this Cliffside Asylum. Originally built 75 years ago, that's same rate back on the old world, to house mentally ill patients of Zootopia. As per usual with every asylum, it eventually got shut down by the government and wasn't used for roughly 30 years afterwards. That is, until now."

"30 years out of commission, huh? Then how is it still operating if it's holding 14 mammals?"

"Well this is the part that's getting interesting sir. After it was shut down, it was used as secret holding facility for high valued targets. So even though it was shut down for quite some time, it was still being funded through someone."

"Do you think it was Lionhart?"

"I wouldn't assume so sir. Lionhart was sworn in… if I look through… ah, yes, he was sworn in about a year ago."

"Does it say anything relating on who came before him?"

"No it appears not sir. Do you want me to look up who came before him?"

"Not really, we already know that Lionhart is handling this and he's using the facility to hold the mammals captive. That right there is enough to interrogate him without question."

"While I do agree with that sir, you do know that I have no authority over whether or not if you're allowed to interrogate someone. May I remind you that what you're doing is self-driven."

"I know, which makes this even better."

The van went back around the facilty where it was parked in a small driveway. I waited until my personal chauffeur Ivan was cleared of the vehicle, and then I slowly backed myself out of the van from behind.

"AAL, get into their systems a give me a layout of the place. I'm going to need to find where they're holding them."

"I'm on it sir."

I got to one of the backdoors and waited for AAL to come back online. Soon, he gave me the green light. "Alarms are down for 2 minutes sir. Once you're inside, the alarm will be back on, making your escape a bit treacherous."

"And the hostages?"

"Ah yes, the hostages. They're located on the 5th floor, the most southern portion in that area. I'll map it out for you. You will have to engage with some hostiles. Security isn't tight, but it shouldn't be trifled with. If you have to take someone out, use your TDR, and if you're feeling lethal… your suppressed pistol will come in handy."

"I'll try not to kill anyone. I don't need bloodshed on my hands. The less, the better. Also… locate Lionhart for me, or once he's entered the building. I want to pay him a visit."

"Will do sir. I'll keep you updated."

With that, I entered the building and slowly closed the door behind me. I turned on my active camo and started to work my way through the building. Security was light, as AAL mentioned. You would think that a secret facility would be stacked with security, but here… well, this was just asking to be invaded. I turned the corner, and saw one hostile standing very casually. He was dressed pretty much the same as I was, minus the active camo. I stayed still for a couple of seconds to see if he noticed anything strange. Nothing. I decided to pull out my TDR, set the range to short and looked down my sights. I needed to get by as he was blocking the doorway which led to a stairwell, so I held my breath and placed my finger on the trigger.

There's always that split second silence. That silence between the trigger and kill always seems to take forever for me.

Click. Thump. On the ground, unconscious.

The TDR was a non-lethal weapon of my choice. The bullets were only .001mm thick with a sleep inducing formula placed inside. Unfortunately, they were the only ones I had. That wasn't my only weapon on me, I also had a small pistol that could either be suppressed or not. I usually don't use it in battle, its main use was a fear tactic. And just in case if things went to hell real quick, I had it loaded with blank cartridges. Other than being less accurate than a shotgun and non-life threatening to others, it was pretty useless. Well, not entirely since you could technically die if you held it at gunpoint to someone's head, but I never had too.

I went over to check his heartrate just to make sure, and moved his body out of sight. I started to trek my way up the stairwell, scanning for any more hostiles that may be coming. Nothing. This seemed too easy, so I took extra caution while going up. Maybe it's a trap? How? I tried my best to put that thought in the back of my mind. As I made my way to the fifth floor, I could see two guards watching the perimeter or a door to which led to a bunch of containment chambers. I could also hear loud, vicious barking. Like a normal animal would behave when they're in their primitive state.

I pulled my TDR out, but I wasn't going to shoot both of them since my rifle isn't automatic. I would have to get a little touchy with one of them. I looked around to see if there was anything for me to throw to cause a distraction. Whatdoya know, an empty can. Too easy. It still wasn't making sense. Back in my time when I worked for S.C.D., I was challenged. This? This was a cake walk, like if everything was aligned perfect for me so far.

I threw in the opposite direction to one of the guards, and he fell for it easily. He moved away while his friend stood their taking the post, leaving me one on one with him. Click, thumb, down.

His friend quickly turned around to hear what happened since the sound of the body falling created a significant sound. Loud enough that he could just hear it. I was ready though, because I dashed towards him, tackled him, and started to knock him out. "Don't worry, you're going to be just fine. Just a ghost doing his work."

I took care of him quite easily, and contacted AAL to open the locked corridor.

"Got it sir, you're free to enter."

I made my way into the chambers and could see 14 mammals locked inside, scratching and clawing, desperately trying to get there way out. I examined each one of them, and one thing that stood out from each one was that they originated from a different species.

"AAL, are you seeing this?" I asked, I switched my view on my VRWristband to allow AAL to see what I was seeing, another feature that made it seem like I was cheating.

"Yes I do sir. Well, we found the missing mammals. I don't want to be rude, but… now what?"

"14… correct?" Something didn't seem right. I checked on one of the chambers. Tiger… I then moved on to the next one. Bear… and then the next. Cheetah…?

I was about to make the assumption that what I've been seeing were predators turning savage, but that changed when I saw an otter. Now, I'm no zoo expert, but otters, at least to me, were pretty harmless. This one however was going nuts and wouldn't stop barking.

"AAL… this otter… otters are harmless right?"

"Through what I can learn from the database, it says they are pretty harmless. This one… well, this is interesting one, is it?"

It would make sense if the predator species were going back to their primitive state, but if that were true… an otter wouldn't want to go nuts, would it? Unless I was wrong…

"Sir, I've been taking some scans of the otter that is right in front of you… I think what I'm about to show you is pretty telling…"

"Alright, bring it up."

AAL brought up the scan on my HUD. It was a still image of the otter and showed what looked like a bullet wound in the neck.

"That's… a bullet wound."

"Indeed it is sir. And that's not all, take a look at this from your past three encounters recently."

He quickly brought up 3 more still images of the bear, cheetah and tiger, and all three had the same bullet wound marking on their neck like the otter's.

"And sir, I've been doing more scans and taking still images, it appears that all 14 of these mammals have these bullet markings on their necks."

Well this changes everything.

"AAL, I think we're dealing with something much worse here. These animals are not going insane on their own, something is making them do it. Whoever it is, it's not Lionhart. If he was the one trying to get them to become savage, he would of already done something by now to release this to the public, and so far, what we're both seeing hasn't been shown to the public."

"So we're dealing with someone else entirely?"

"Yes, Lionhart is simply trying to protect Zootopia, but in the most extremist way he could have possibly done it: isolation."

"That sounds very sketchy if you ask me."

"It is."

A dead end. I could of swore that Lionhart might have been the one behind all this, but this threw a wrench into what I thought was going to plan out to perfection. I had no more intel left to gather. Just then, AAL came on again.

"Sir, Lionheart has entered the building."

"Huh, nice of him to join us. Did he bring friends?"

"He's brought 12 guards with him, all of them are armed, and are heading to your location."

Shit.

"Copy, heading into position."

My pace amped up considerably and I started to breathe a little bit heavier. At least things were about to get real harder, because I was no longer going after Lionhart. He was going after me.