Chapter 11: Duality
Zootopia, Undisclosed location, Undisclosed Time
They had strapped Nick down onto a table, its head tilted back, his face was underneath a cloth, and they were pouring water over it. Nick couldn't breathe, he gasped and gagged for air, he felt his lungs on fire as the air in them was becoming stale. They would stop just long enough for him to barely catch his breath before doing it again.
Sidney had asked only one question at the beginning, a question he knew Nick would resist answering, at least honestly. Yet he persisted in the endeavor. The question "Where is Judy Hopps?"
It seemed to go on forever, when Sidney finally ordered them to stop, the guards moved the table putting Nick right side up.
Sidney looked at Nick, making no expression, no outward response, just a cold stare as if studying the fox. Nick on the other hand stared daggers back at the weasel, baring his teeth.
"You know, you can make this easy on yourself, just tell me where she is," Sidney commented.
"Why? I thought you were interested in me?" Nick replied, coughing up bits of water and phlegm that had been knocked loose.
"Because it's critical to your development," Sidney replied
"You can't honestly expect I'll tell you where she is, no matter what you do to me." Nick spat back.
"Maybe..." Sidney whispered. "Maybe not."
Sidney gestured to the guards and they left the room. Leaving Sidney and Nick alone.
"Why can't you see what it is I'm trying to do for you? I'm trying to free you."
"From what?"
"From the greatest lie we have told ourselves since the founding of this city."
"Yeah and what's would that be?"
Sidney was about to open his mouth to reply to Nick's question but stopped himself. The weasel pondered for a moment.
"No, not yet. I could tell you, but you would only hear the words but not actually listen. In due course. In due course." The weasel replied, nodding to himself as if agreeing with a suggestion from some unknown presence.
Sidney stepped out of the room with the last sound being the metal lock clicking into place. Nick left in the dead silence of the room. He sat there and tried to catch his breath. The sound of his panting and his heartbeat filling his ears.
"I just have to hold out." He thought to himself. "Judy and the others will find me."
Nick was given about an hour before they came back to start the process again. Sidney's expression never changed, his beady eyes just staring and studying. Minutes bled into hours, hours bled into days, at times the room was kept hot and Nick would sweat profusely, his fur becoming damp and then sticky, other they would keep it cold and Nick would shiver, his teeth chattering. Sidney doing everything he could to make every moment as uncomfortable as possible for the fox. He couldn't even tell whether it was day or night because there were no windows.
Eventually they changed tactics, they suspended him and immersed his feet into a bucket of water. At first Nick pondered what they were doing until they hooked up wires to the metal outside to the basin underneath him and attached contact pads to his wrists.
Nick muttered to himself "Oh shit."
When they turned on the power, Nick felt a painful jolt of electricity travel through his body, from his wrists into his feet, which instinctively made his legs bend to make it stop. At first keeping his legs bent was easy, but as he got tired they would naturally drop, make contact with the water and shock him again, only to start the process all over again.
"Oh, You fucking asshole! When I get out of here, I am going to kill you!" Nick screamed.
Sidney simply shook his head, as if he looked disappointed at a child. "If only you truly meant that." The weasel stated, before motioning to his guards to continue.
Several cycles of this happened over and over. Nick let go of bothering to try and keep count how many times he got shocked..
Nick would try his best to be strong, he couldn't tell what this weasel really wanted. He seemed to be looking for something specific. They would continue until Sid would order them to stop, sometimes hours would pass per session. They would allow Nick only a short respite between sessions, and they would always change the torture to keep Nick from adapting, from waterboarding, the "electric dip", burning with hot irons, or use shock prods, put him through intense heat and cold, they would play loud noises over speakers for hours on end to keep him from finding rest. Never once did the weasel ask any other question than the one he already asked "Where is Judy Hopps?"
Nick had lost all sense of time, his best recollection was weeks had gone by, but this time Sidney came into the room alone and stood in front of Nick.
"You had asked me a question some time ago. Do you remember?"
"What of it?"
"Do you know why I do this Nick?" Sidney asked, his demeanor changed as if wanting to confide in the fox.
"Because you're an evil asshole," Nick replied weakly.
"No Nick, I do this to free you." Sid retorted
"I find that incredibly hard to believe" He retorted back.
"It's true but it is your soul that I wish to free." Sid returned.
"You see, every soul has a true purpose in this world, and the body or the mind can sometimes get in the way. We convince ourselves of something because it's easy, or it gives us a false sense of well-being, so we stay there due to our complacency."
"It isn't until we set our souls free through pain and hardship that they achieve their true purpose, where the soul and spirit lead, the mind and the body will follow."
Sidney paced in front of Nick.
"Your soul is that of a predator, a fox, who wants to hunt, but you are stuck in this belief that you must follow these rules, that they are somehow part of your true self."
"They are nothing more than simple manifestations of the animals trying to make order in a world that is inherently chaotic, they desire order, no matter where it comes from, and no matter who may offer it."
"In turning themselves over to this order, they give up what is truly cherished just to assimilate into a higher structure."
"And in doing so, they lose a part of themselves."
"You're losing me," Nick replied.
Sidney stepped up to Nick and cradled his head in his paws, staring nose to nose at the fox, like a parent trying to make sure their child was listening and being attentive.
"I'm talking about true freedom Nicholas, it is a rare thing, to be reserved for those who have a true understanding of the way the world works." Sid whispered.
"And that is?" Nick asked this time focused on Sidney's gaze.
"Come now, you know, and have always known, that deep down, these 'civilized' mammals are nothing more than savages, convincing themselves they are somehow 'evolved'. You threaten their survival, and they will eat each other alive. and that all this..."
Sidney gestured with his eyes then stepped back and held his arms out gesturing to the world around him.
"…is nothing more than an illusion trumped up for the benefit of keeping us under control by those who truly are in control."
"But you saw it Nick, or rather you were seeing it, until she came along. She convinced you otherwise, she made you believe in that quaint lie."
"And what would that be?" inquired Nick.
"Equality, Order, Structure. There is no such thing. The universe is always in a constant state of change, growth and expansion." Sid fired back.
"Those are just fancy words for a universe that is nothing but entropy. If the universe is equal, ordered, and structured, it becomes stagnant, dark, and desolate. there is no activity, no useful energy, no matter, No old or new, no 'has been' or 'never was', no 'will to be' or 'want to be'. Just one long ever-present 'Is'."
"Judy Hopps would have you believe that the weakest person can make all the difference, that those above and those below can be together, and that simply isn't true."
"Alright, say for the moment, you're right, what is the truth then? I mean you seem to have gone through this amazing effort to bring me here to tell me the truth. So, what is it?" Nick demanded, his voice raspy from the exhaustion and the pain.
"Those who change the world are those bold enough to do so, and moreover stop at nothing till they get what they want, that is simply the way it is, there is no good or evil about it. It simply is, those that have, have because they took it, and those that have not, don't."
"You're here Nick because I see greatness in you, and I do not wish to see you wasted, chasing a foolish dream, a dream that we all know can never be. Unnatural as it is."
"But isn't that my choice?" Nick retorted.
"It is when you are ready when you can see the universe beyond the mere trappings of morality and flesh, when you can see things from a more universal perspective, when you can be more than just a fox but a….."
"What? A god?" asked Nick with skepticism
"No" Sidney scoffed. "A survivor. Just like me. But interesting that your mind would go to that." Sidney replied.
"You're fucking crazy," Nick replied with a huff.
"You think that now but give it time and you will see the truth. As I have, in all its awesome and terrifying glory."
Meanwhile….
Council facility….
Bureau 13 had finished conducting its 12th raid on Council facilities and managed to capture the Wolverine Risk Control agents who were guarding them, Their interrogations would lead to other facilities but none so far have led to Nick, each failure would bring Judy to blame herself more and more, she knew every day she didn't find Nick was another day he was being tortured. She had taken point and had led the raids with remarkable efficiency.
The current raid was a storage and staging area, recent intel reported that cryo pods and prisoners were moved through there recently.
The WRC captain had been secured in an office over the warehouse floor.
"So what have you been moving through here?" Judy asked, the frustration clear in her voice.
"Boxes." The wolf replied with a sarcastic sneer on his muzzle.
"Funny canine. You must be the comedian of this little show." She replied in a similar tone albeit with anger couched just behind her sarcasm.
She turned and kicked him in the kneecap and doubled him over, grabbing the scruff of fur on the back of his head, and yanking it. She jammed her PDA into his face, and showed him the files that B13 had found in the computers.
"We know you moved prisoners through here, where are they!?" she demanded.
"I don't know." He answered.
"You're the commander of this base, you have to sign the orders moving things in and out."
"I don't remember."
"Well, maybe I got something that will jog your memory." She threatened.
Judy kicked the captain, throwing him against the wall, the rabbit leaped onto him and pressed the barrel of her pistol against his head.
"Where are the prisoners? Where is Nick Wilde!?" Judy demanded.
"You're bluffing, what's the bunny rabbit gonna do?" he chortled.
Judy without skipping a beat, shot the captain in the arm, and the captain screamed out in pain.
"Ah! You fucking bitch!" the wolf shouted through gritted teeth and pain.
She placed the gun back to his head, the barrel now hot and scorching his fur.
"You got to the count of three to remember, or I turn your brain into a modern art masterpiece."
"I don't know!" He answered truthfully.
"One" she counted.
"I don't know, I swear!"
"Two."
"Please, don't kill me, I swear to fucking god I don't know!" he pleaded for his life.
"Thr…." she was about to pull the trigger when Kaiden and Kit came charging into the room to investigate the gunshot.
"Judy! Stand Down, Now!" shouted Kaiden
Judy stopped and looked back at the fox, he saw she had the gun pointed at the captain's head, her teeth gritted.
"Outside now! Kit, tend to him," he ordered.
Kaiden walked outside with Judy, he could clearly see this ordeal was taking its toll on her, she was ragged, exhausted, and on edge, but this was the first time he felt that she was actually out of control. She nonchalantly took out an auto-injector loaded it with a vial and put it to her neck, shooting its contents into her, she did this while facing away from Kaiden so he wouldn't see, before putting it back in her ammo pouch. Kaiden overheard the pressurized discharge from the vial which caused him to turn his head in her direction
"What the hell was that?" Kaiden snapped.
"An interrogation" she replied looking up at him
Kaiden could see dark circles under her eyes, her nose or ear would twitch involuntarily every now and then, and he noticed she was carrying herself on the balls of her feet. They had stopped and the two of them looked at the surrounding base in silence, the fox noticed she was tapping her foot unconsciously and she was shifting her weight and her entire form seemed to be a bundle of anxiety.
"How many stims have you been taking?" Kaiden asked with a cocked eyebrow.
"The same number everybody else is taking." She replied.
Kaiden shook his head silently. "Please don't lie to me."
"I don't know what you mean." She replied.
"I already checked with the docs and I know you've been taking a lot of stims, too many in fact. I know we offered the stims to keep you sharp but at this point, I'm regretting I made the offer."
"What are you talking about? I got this. I'm in good shape" she replied back fidgeting, bouncing on her feet as if in a boxing dance.
"How many days have you not slept?" demanded Kaiden.
Judy felt her heart beating quickly against her chest and stopped to take a breath.
"Judy, How long?" he asked concerned.
"Just a few days." She replied trailing off.
Kaiden gripped her by the shoulders, she looked away. The fox had to use his paw to spin her head back until she was eye-to-eye with him.
"A week." She admitted.
"Why?"
"I can't…I can't sleep, the nightmares…"
"That's it you're done." He decided.
"What!? No!" she protested.
"Judy, this is entirely my fault, I should have never pushed you so hard," Kaiden replied back blaming himself more than finding fault with her.
"Listen to me, I got to find Nick and I can't do that just sitting around and waiting." She pleaded.
"Judy, you're not going to do Nick any good if you shoot someone who might be in the know, or worse get yourself killed."
"But I need to do something. I need to find…." Judy's breathing struggled, her voice choking on her feelings.
"Judy I know, ok, I know how you feel." He tried to comfort her.
"No you don't!" she spat back taking a few steps back. "I know what you're thinking, you're thinking he's going to break and that he will tell them where we are, that's why you're all trying to find him so fast, but I know the truth." She defended.
"The truth is he won't, because he won't give me up, and that's what's killing him." Judy sobbed.
"Because he loves me, and if I don't find him, he'll die because of it, because of me." She cried.
Kaiden hugged Judy "He's strong Judy, he will make it, he will make it because he loves you, it's what will keep him alive."
"How do you know!?" she pleaded.
Kaiden broke the hug and confided in Judy.
"I never told you why I joined B13."
"No." she replied
"We all have our stories and our reasons, Kit, Hamilton even me." He started to explain.
"I joined because my wife was killed, by a lynx named Jarod Novitski."
"He was there in the police station." She commented.
"He had murdered my wife to get to me, and I spent a lot of time in a pit of despair and pain because of him."
"All these augments, I volunteered for them, so that I would be strong enough, better enough."
"Every time, they said that it was too much, the stress of adding another would kill me, but here I am, because I still love her."
Judy felt the pain in the fox's words.
"What was your wife like?" Judy inquired.
"Her name was Lily, and she was kind and gentle and she saw the best in mammals, even someone like me." the fox's expression reflected the warm memory of his wife.
"She sounds wonderful" Judy smiled.
"A couple of months before, she asked me to quit field work and get a desk job, she was rather insistent, and I didn't know why. We had a huge fight about it actually."
"It wasn't until later… After…From the autopsy report, I found out why."
Judy's eyebrow raised in curiosity, suspecting what the answer might be, not so much as an investigator but from her instincts as a female.
"Why?" she asked.
"She was….she was pregnant. I was going to be a father and she wanted me… Home." the fox answered his eyes distant, staring off into a distant memory. His eyes welled with water as the emotional impact of the memory hit him. One that he normally works very hard to keep locked away.
"I'm so sorry," Judy answered back with the only thing she could think of.
"Her father didn't agree with our marriage and even less with the idea of me being the father to his grandchild. He said 'I killed her the day I married her.'"
"That's a horrible thing to say. Why would he be so against it." Her face contorted disapprovingly.
"Because of where she was from. Because of the nature of my work," He answered.
Judy face changed to a more puzzled expression. "Why would that matter? Where was she from?"
"South Burrows in Bunnyburrow." He replied.
"I've heard some animals moving out to the South Burrows but I've never heard of a Fox family living out there. In fact the only other fox family I even know are the Grey family." She commented.
"That's because she wasn't."
"She wasn't what?" Just asked even more confused.
Kaiden opened a vest pocket on his chest and pulled out an old photo, it was yellow and the colors starting to fade.
"My Lily, there isn't a day I don't think about her, not a day I don't miss her."
He offered the photo to Judy who took a look at it, and was immediately shocked. The photo was a picture of a Fox, a younger, happier and natural Kaiden without any of his cybernetic augmentation and the other was presumably, Lily, a white rabbit with piercing blue eyes.
"Oh my god," Judy said, covering her mouth with her paw, she looked back at Kaiden.
"So when I say, I know how you feel, I mean I know exactly how you feel." He replied looking back at Judy, his eyes piercing into hers trying to convey the experience of his own life to her.
"But you said she was pregnant, How!?"
"I don't know. Maybe it was….a miracle, a happy coincidence, I just don't know."
"But I swear to God, Judy, I am telling you Nick will have strength, a strength that his love for you will give him. He will survive this…. And so will you. I pledge my life on it." He promised.
"She was beautiful," she said tears now running down her muzzle.
"Yes, she was." the fox couldn't hold back as his own tears ran after resisting the urge to blink.
Judy offered the photo back, Kaiden clasped it, kissing Lily on the photograph, and put her back in the pocket next to his heart.
At an undisclosed location, at an undisclosed time.
Nick was tied to long crossbars, he was positioned like a Vitruvian Fox, his exhaustion had taken its toll, and could no longer stand up for extended periods. They kept the heat on all the time, the sweat running down his face, it pooled into a drop on his nose and fell to the floor with a light spat. He was weak and had lost weight from the resulting water loss. He didn't know how much longer he could keep doing this, He had tried to hang himself with his chains but they stopped him from completing. He lost track of time and didn't know if that attempt was days or weeks ago, he didn't know much of anything anymore. They had replaced the chains with bars of metal with only small links to prevent him from trying again. Or they would keep him strapped to the rack. Clearly, they were trying to keep him from killing himself and denying Sidney his 'Prize'. Nick couldn't rationalize it, though admittedly nothing about this entire situation seemed rational to the fox.
Whether by mistake or by intent, they had left him alone for an extended period this time, Nick was so exhausted he didn't care what the reason was and tried to get some precious few minutes of rest. Despite the pain of being kept chained up, he found a way to drift unconscious for a few precious moments, only to be jerked awake by the sting of his muscles.
Sidney had arrived again, with an almost dejected look.
"You know, maybe we have been going about this all the wrong way."
Sid ordered Nick strapped to a medical table they had brought in behind him, Nick tried to resist but his weakness made fighting back practically impossible, they managed to transfer him without much effort. The clamps that bound Nick made a ratcheting metallic clink as they secured him. The animals putting him on the table looked like orderlies, they had lab coats and were not the normal guards, they rolled Nick to another area, with Sid following them, they reached a chamber. It was a medical facility on top of a cage or reinforced cell. They connected the table to some kind of device, it lifted the flat section of the table that Nick was attached to and connected to some ramp, that slid down into the chamber below. Nick was still flat when they started some kind of preparation.
Nick thought "Maybe they are going to finally kill me." He knew what Sid really wanted, it was Judy and he wasn't going to give her up, not now, not after resisting Sid's pantheon of torment. Nick's thoughts drifted to her, the feel of her fur, the smell of her, the way she looked at him. He tried filling his thoughts of pleasant dreams of Judy to take with him to the hereafter.
Sid walked up to him and addressed him.
"Nick, you are very resilient to our methods, your pain threshold is impressive, you have proven everything I thought about you; you are a powerful creature. I hope you finally see that." Said Sid.
Nick turned to Sid.
"Just kill me and get it over with, at least I won't have to listen to you anymore." Replied Nick flatly.
"Oh no, I have some good news for you if you're interested."
"Nothing you could possibly say could be of interest to me" Nick spat back
"Yes. Normally I don't doubt that, but it seems that Bureau 13 was insistent on trying to find you and has been raiding various Council facilities, putting quite a bit of a damper on our organization's efforts"
"You expect me to feel sorry for you?"
"Oh no, you misunderstand," Sid replied shaking his head. "What I'm saying is that Bureau 13 has done our job for us and brought us miss Hopps."
"What?!" Nick exclaimed.
"Yes, the Bureau was quite overconfident on this latest raid and we quite easily dispatched most of them. Agents Ellison and Ballanger, the two you know as Kaiden and Kit, were dispatched with great haste, they certainly were too dangerous to be taken prisoner but, we did manage to capture miss Hopps, alive." Sidney replied, taking great relish at the end of his statement.
"If you hurt her..." Nick growled.
"I promise Mr Wilde, I am not going to touch a hair on your cute head." Sidney smiled as he held his paws up innocently.
"I want to see her" Nick demanded.
"Two for Two, Mr Wilde, that is in fact the reason you have been brought in here. To reunite with your miss Hopps." Sidney smiled feigning generosity.
Nick's expression changed to confusion, and a small mote of terror gripped the back of his mind. Sidney gestured with his paw pointing down, a moment later the table Nick was on turns, shifting to put him face up again, and a strong spot lamp cast a bright light over him. Sidney approached and looked down at hi, his form appeared like a black outline against the spotlight.
"See I've come to a realization about you, I think deep down inside you hate yourself, I think you have hated yourself for a long time, for being who you are, you feel as though you deserve what happens to you. So no amount of pain and torture we subject you to will cause you to break because, well, you've already experienced pain in life, so what's a little more."
"And now that we have found Miss Hopps, and she's down in that cell below, maybe together I can get the response I need."
"You don't honestly think I'm going to stand by and let you hurt her in front of me? Do you?"
"Ooooh, like I said, I'm not going to do a thing to her."
Sid reached over the table and picked a vial up from a nearby tray and showed it to Nick, a vial with a dark blue liquid in it.
"You, however..." Sidney started, as he cradled the vial in his paws.
"What's that?" Nick asked, his eyes fixated on the vial, the feeling of terror now creeping into the forefront of his mind.
Sid looked at him with his piercing eyes, noticing the fox's eyes locked into the vial with an expression of concern.
"Oh…I think you know exactly what this is." Sidney's voice dropped into a more serious and sinister tone.
Nick's expression changed to one of fear, for the first time in his entire time here, fear gripped his heart.
"Yeah, and this one ain't blueberry juice this time. In fact, this one unlike what bellwether used, will allow you to remember every exquisite detail, it will preserve your sense of self, though you will be 'just along for the ride' as they say."
Sidney held the vial out for the doctor who grabbed it from his paw and loaded it into an injector. The weasel gave a casual nod to the doctor who then injected Nick with it.
Nick immediately felt the burn of the liquid shooting into his artery, there was a disgusting metallic taste in the back of his throat, and he could feel his head on fire. Nick grunted and groaned trying to resist. Sidney turned the spotlight off so Nick could see his face.
"Also, and consider me a bit of a 'romantic', I took the effort to convert the cell down there to look exactly like the exhibit from the Natural History Museum where you and dearest Judy pulled your little trick with Bellwether. Just so this whole thing takes a sense of 'Poeticism'." Sidney chuckled and smiled with an almost demented expression.
Sid hits a button and Nick's table stands upright and is lowered down the a slot into the awaiting chamber below, the chamber just as Sidney described resembled the exhibit pit in the natural history museum, which itself was replicating the natural Savannah of Zootopia from fifty thousand years ago, except it was dimly lit to make it seem like it was night time on the Savannah, save for a small spot lamp illuminating the spot he was standing.
Nick could already feel the effects, his heart started to race, his senses becoming hyper-aware, He could already feel his inhibitions slipping away. The table clamps released and dropped him to the floor and the table went back up the slot.
Nick was alone in the room, the liquid was flooding his brain, he could feel it, and he was starting to go.
"Hope you enjoy your 'reunion'." Sidney said over a loudspeaker.
The sound of someone being dropped into the room. Nick turned
"Who's there, Who is that?" he asked.
"Nick? Is that you? Nick!" answered the voice back.
"Oh god no." Nick thought the voice was Judy's
The other animal in the room approached Nick and stepped into the light, it was a rabbit, at first Nick's vision was blurry from the serum but he pushed through and it resolved, the rabbit was grey and white, her piercing amethyst eyes.
"No!" yelled Nick, he moved back as far away from her as possible. "NO!" he howled
His muscles were tensing, his blood felt like it was on fire, and he could smell her now. Her fear, he could even hear her heartbeat, it was beating fast, and it was exciting him, he could feel his instincts speaking to him.
Nick fought as best he could, but the rushing serum was overriding every civilized impulse in his head.
"Get away from me." Growled Nick, he ran around trying to find a way out, for her.
"Nick, what's wrong with you, what's going on?" she begged.
Nick stumbled into the column of light, he looked up, the sclera of his eyes had turned red, his fangs bared, his lips curled, the hackles fully arose in aggression struggling to keep control, he was changing and he couldn't help it. Tears streamed from his eyes.
"No! No!" he screamed beating his head into the ground, he hit it so hard that he cut a gash into his forehead, a trickle of blood streaming down his cheek.
"I told you Nick, The author of Judy Hopps's doom would be you….by your own paws, and I make good on my promises," commented Sidney over the loudspeaker as he flipped the switch to the remaining lighting
Nick stared up into the light like a drowning animal he disappeared into himself as the column of light dimmed and Nick was in darkness, he was savage and about to imbibe in the dreaded taboo of the kill. The kill of not only a fellow mammal but to his mind, a dearest friend and perhaps something more.
He cried and sunk into the recesses of his mind, with his last conscious thought.
"Judy. Forgive me."