Judy had never seen Nick this scared before.
Beside her, the fox was backed against the elevator doors. His paws frantically spread out from his body, searching for something he might be able to use to get out of their current situation. His breathing was short and rapid, forcing the shock collar on his neck to let out another warning beep as it continued to glow an ominous yellow. Every hair on his tail stood on end—an unconscious effort for him to make himself appear larger than he really was.
But it was the look in his eyes, as he stared at her in despair, that truly told her just how scared he really was. She had seen the look in the eyes of many other mammals before. Criminals she pursued in the field, witnesses who testified in courtrooms, her fellow police officers when pinned down in dire situations…
But never from Nick. Nick was always the cool one—calm, collected, able to wiggle his way out of any situation. Nick always had a backup plan in his mind, and as long as she had been with him, she had never known him to run out of ideas. But it was clear to her now, Nick was out of ideas. He was looking to her, hoping that she had an idea. Something—anything—that could get them out of this alive.
A rumble in the ground forced her to turn her attention back to the hallway. The herd of elephants were slowing down, now that they were approaching the two of them. She dreaded what they were going to do to her and Nick. She figured, best case scenario, they would be taken to a room, questioned, and then let free.
However, that didn't seem likely. One of the elephants emerged from the back, playfully pounding his front hooves together while letting out a chuckle. "Well, well, well," he mumbled, "look who it is."
Beside her, Nick forced one of the weakest smiles she had ever seen. "Tufani," he gulped. "Back so soon?"
Tufani once again pounded his hooves together—louder, this time. The sound was deafening to Judy's sensitive bunny ears, and caused a painting on a nearby wall to tilt off-center.
Clearly, the best-case scenario was not going to happen.
Judy started considering every single idea she could think of, no matter how ridiculous or unlikely it would be to succeed. One idea stood out over all the others. Without taking an extra second to think it over, she summoned her courage and she raised her taser. "Police!" she announced. She pointed her taser at each of the elephants, one after the other, in quick succession. "Freeze and drop your weapons!"
The elephants collectively stared at her in confusion. She could only imagine what they were thinking right now. She didn't know what she was thinking right now; this was nothing more than an act of desperation.
To her surprise, one of them complied, dropping his gun and raising his hooves over his head. Immediately, the other elephants turned their attention to him in bewilderment. Judy and Nick stared in equal confusion, and for the next several seconds, there was nothing but an awkward silence between them.
Finally, Tufani rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the two of them. He locked eyes with Nick, "Remind me again, Wilde." He took a threatening step forward. "How much, exactly, did you charge me for those shirts?"
"Sixteen ninety-nine."
The words slipped out of Nick's mouth so naturally, Judy glared at him, perplexed. Nick was already throwing his paws up to his mouth in an attempt to keep himself from saying anything else.
"Each." Tufani took another step. "Sixteen dollars, and ninety-nine cents, each." He rubbed his front hooves together, now mere inches away from Nick's head. Nick, keeping his paws over his mouth, tried backing further against the elevator door, to no avail. "And I don't suppose you can offer me a refund at this time, can you?"
Judy blinked in surprise. Wait, all he wants is a refund? She raised her paw. "Um, sir? I can give you—"
One of the other elephants shot his gun at her before she could finish her sentence. Her heart skipped a beat, but she quickly realized he had intentionally missed his shot. Instead, the bullet had hit a spot a few inches above her head. She instinctively—though uselessly—flattened her ears behind her head, and followed the bullet's trail with her eyes. To her surprise, it had not only missed her head, it had also missed the wall behind her. Instead, it had been shot into the panel that housed the elevator buttons.
"Now, let's see." Tufani had not taken his attention away from Nick this whole time. "Seventeen dollars per shirt. Ten shirts total. How much money is that, Wilde?"
Judy continued to inspect the bullet hole, curiosity grabbing her attention. She could just about make out the wires inside, which linked the buttons on the control box to the elevator itself. She could see lots of black wires, red wires, and yellow wires, but also a blue wire that, she assumed, was for the emergency elevator service.
Nick gulped, and managed to squeak out in a very small voice, "A hundred and seventy?"
Tufani let out a playful gasp—or at least, it was playful to him. "Oh, that's right. One hundred and seventy. What a coincidence. That's just about how many bones there are in your body." He doubled down his glare on Nick. "And I am going to crush every single one of them."
Judy turned her attention back to the two of them. Nick was so terrified, she swore she saw tears beginning to form in his eyes. Tufani was separating his hooves, only to position them on either side of Nick's head. She could only stare in horror at the situation, helpless to help Nick, and knowing that she was next.
"Any last words, fox?"
Nick bit his bottom lip and slowly nodded. He raised a finger, apparently asking for permission to speak. When Tufani did not immediately crush his skull, he spoke up. "Well…" He cleared his throat. "I do have one thing to say." He turned his attention to Judy and snorted. "Plan D? Seriously?"
His voice had completely changed. Any ounce of fear was gone—replaced entirely by a condescending, accusing tone.
She stared at him in disbelief. "Now? Really?"
"Yes, now!" Nick motioned to Tufani, even as the elephant stared at him in confusion over the sudden change in his demeanor. "I mean, it's not like we're gonna have time later to discuss this!"
He did have a point, but it was still absolutely absurd for him to be doing this right now. "That is what you want your last words to be? No begging for mercy? No death bed confession? That?"
Nick leaned back against the elevator door, glaring at her. "No, no, no, don't you deflect this away, Carrots. Plan D was your idea, and now it's gotten us both killed. But hey, that's okay, because I think I've realized what the D stands for." He crossed his arms. "It stands for 'dumb bunny'."
"I am not a dumb bunny!"
That was her cue—whether Nick intended it or not. As quick as she could, Judy spun to face the elevator buttons, focusing her attention on the hole that the bullet left. She raised her taser and, faster than thought, shot into the hole. A split second later, the electrodes on the end made contact with the blue wire that she had aimed for.
Before anyone had a chance to react—especially Tufani—the doors flew open, disappearing into the sides of the wall. Nick, who had still been leaning against them, fell into the shaft, a short yelp emerging from his throat before he disappeared from view.
Tufani turned to her. His face was a mixture of confusion, outrage, and even a tiny bit of respect for her ingenuity. However, after a few seconds passed, he stood up straight and brushed off the front of his uniform. "That was a clever trick, rabbit," he commended, "but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't survive a fall from this high."
Judy smirked. "He doesn't have to." She tossed her taser to the side and jumped into the shaft herself before Tufani could stop her.
It was a leap of faith. Judy had no way of knowing for sure that this was going to work. It was entirely possible that she and Nick were both falling to their deaths several hundred feet below. She knew next to nothing about how elevators worked—she was mildly surprised that the doors actually opened at all—and it was completely possible that she had just jumped to her doom after pushing Nick to his.
But within seconds, she knew she had made the right decision. Nick's red fur appeared from the darkness, moving up to her at great speed. She braced herself, and a moment later, landed on the elevator roof beside him. The second she felt her feet touch solid ground, she crunched into a ball and rolled forward, absorbing the impact and landing safely beside Nick.
The fox was sitting there. He scowled at Judy, clearly unamused by what she did to him. However, he did not seem injured, which brought her a sigh of relief.
"You could have warned me, you know," he mumbled.
She simply smiled and shrugged in response. When the doors opened, she had assumed that the elevator would be given an emergency signal to go up to the 58th floor, but she had no way of knowing for sure. And even if she did, what was she supposed to do? Tell Nick the plan right there in front of the very elephants who wanted them dead?
Her smile slowly faded. The elephants…
Nick's face lit up in realization at the same time. The two of them simultaneously looked up to the open elevator doors a few floors above them, rapidly approaching with each passing second.
Tufani leaned out of the doors, rubbing his hooves together in anticipation. "Back so soon, Wilde?" he called, echoing the exact words that Nick had said to him minutes prior. "Fine with me. I've really missed you."
Judy's eyes darted back to the elevator roof they currently stood on. She quickly spotted the emergency hatch, which was usually set aside for elevator passengers to make an escape. Now, however, she decided it was time for them to use it as a way to get inside.
She ran over to the hatch, grabbed it, and threw it open. She hopped inside, and landed softly on the elevator floor below. She was relieved to find no other passengers inside; she dreaded to think what might happen to any innocent bystanders. She only needed a moment before she located the emergency stop button, and pressed it.
To her relief, the elevator seemed to be programmed to prioritize internal commands over external ones—even emergency calls from the upper floors—and it immediately halted its trip. Judy sighed in relief when she saw the number "55" flashing boldly above the control panel.
Just in time.
Nick, still standing on top of the elevator, couldn't help but call up to Tufani just before he dropped inside to join her. "You know, that's funny," he taunted. "You just 'missed' me!" He landed beside Judy and flashed his signature half-lidded smile. "What do you think? Was that a good one?"
Judy shrugged. "Eh…"
Before she could continue, a massive shaking of the elevator cut her off. Her attention shot back upwards. Her eyes widened in horror. Tufani had jumped down onto the elevator, and was busy trying to fit himself through the hatch. He was too big for it, however, and after a failed attempt at stepping through, he used his massive trunk to rip the hatch door out of the roof of the elevator—all in just a few seconds.
Judy hurriedly pressed the button to open the elevator doors. She and Nick didn't even wait for them to open all the way before they squeezed through and into the hallway. Tufani's trunk flew through the doors after them, barely missing the tip of Nick's tail before he couldn't reach any further.
There was no time to celebrate. The two of them ran to the end of the hallway and through the door that led to the stairs. Without exchanging words, they started running down as fast as they safely could. As a bunny, Judy was able to hop down the stairs fairly rapidly, nearly able to jump down an entire length of stairs at a time, while Nick had to settle for something closer to a controlled fall—gripping the railing for dear life while he slid down from floor to floor.
Behind them, they could hear the distant earthquakes as Tufani ran down the hall on the 55th floor, then down the stairs after them. However, he was bigger than both of them, and unable to go down the stairs as quickly as they could. The sound quickly faded, and after they had descended just another few floors, it disappeared entirely.
Judy held up a paw, signaling for the two of them to stop. Despite their shortness of breath, they breathed as quietly as they could, listening intently for any signs that Tufani was still following them. After Judy counted a full minute of pure silence, she let out a sigh of relief and rested against the railing. Nick elected to sit on one of the steps, rest his back against the wall of the stairwell, and place a paw on his chest.
"We…are…never…doing…that…again," he said in-between breaths.
Judy was not as out of breath as he was. She raised her arms above her head and stretched them. "It's a deal," she agreed. She glanced at the floor number beside them. "Floor 42."
"The meaning of life," Nick wheezed quietly. He took a few more gulps of air, before he managed to recover enough to talk again. "So what's our plan now?"
That was a good question. By now, the security guards would be swarming the ground floor of the hotel, on the lookout for the two of them. In a few minutes, they would start methodically searching the floors of the hotel, including the stairwells. They would also know every inch of the building, which meant there was nowhere for the two of them to safely hide. It would not take long for them to be caught.
Which meant they didn't have a lot of time to carefully plan their next move. Whatever it was, they had to decide fast.
"What other ways are there out of this building?" Nick asked. They had both gone over the blueprints of the Trunk Hotel earlier in the day, but he seemed to trust her memory better than his own.
Judy knew the answer, but she didn't like any of the options. "There's the front entrance, the back entrance, a garbage door in the basement, and a few fire escapes on the second and third floors." She crossed her arms and thought out loud. "We can't go to the first floor, no way. The basement is inaccessible without a key for the elevators. And the second and third floors will probably be blocked off for us, too."
Nick gently tapped the back of his head against the wall he was sitting against. "And there's nothing else?"
Judy shook her head. "Not unless we can sneak our way into the garbage chute." She knew it was impossible, though. In Zootopia, where animals of all shapes and sizes lived, the garbage system had been designed to trigger an alarm if something alive was sensed passing through any number of checkpoints, including the outgoing trash as it left the Trunk Hotel. The alarm would definitely alert the whole building to their plan, and they could kiss their lives goodbye.
A sigh escaped Nick's mouth, then he was silent for a few seconds as he pondered their situation. Then, a chuckle. "I guess there's worse ways to go," he murmured. "I always thought I'd become a vegetable."
Judy raised an eyebrow. "Like, injured in the line of duty and being hooked up to machines for the rest of your life?"
"Nope. Science experiment gone wrong." Nick slyly smiled at her. "It may not be the most interesting way to die, but it's definitely a unique one."
The joke should have annoyed her. They were in a life-or-death situation, and time was of the essence, with every passing second bringing them closer to their doom. But despite herself, Judy couldn't help but snicker at the absurdity of his words, and soon that snicker turned into a giggle, and before she knew it, she was laughing so hard she had to press a paw against her stomach.
That's just like him. Always trying to make things better for me, even now.
It was one reason she had enjoyed having him as her partner on the force. Nick's sense of humor was infectious, and more often than not, his wisecracks would be the best part of her day at work. Always ready with the perfect quip. Always ready to cheer her up. And even now, with no way out of this situation, he was still doing his best to be here for her. To be her fox.
My fox…
She turned back to him, suddenly aware that several seconds had passed without him saying anything. His smile was gone, and he was staring straight ahead, a look of contemplation on his face.
He had an idea.
Judy felt her heart flutter in anticipation. "What is it?" she asked eagerly.
Nick turned back to her. He raised one paw and pointed straight down. "The laundry is on the 22nd floor, right?"
Judy raised an eyebrow, not sure what he was getting at. "Yes," she confirmed.
"And that's the only floor for the laundry, right?"
"Yeah, all the other floors are used for hotel rooms."
The corners of Nick's mouth twisted ever so slightly upward. "Isn't it interesting that a sixty-story building only has one floor for the laundry?" When Judy didn't immediately respond, he continued, "I'm willing to bet that a lot of the laundry is outsourced. It would have to be, right?"
The thought had crossed Judy's mind earlier, but she had dismissed it then, and she dismissed it now. "We have no way of knowing that," she countered. "And besides, isn't laundry usually done in the middle of the day? You know, between when guests check out and new guests check in?"
Nick's smile widened. "You're right as always, Carrots, but do you really expect all the laundry in a building this size to be done in three or four hours?" He pushed himself off the wall and stood back up on his feet. "Not a chance. Especially when it needs to be outsourced."
Before Judy knew it, Nick began walking down the stairs again, though this time at a much more reasonable pace than before. She started following him, quickly realizing they were headed to the 22nd floor, but not sure of what their plan would be once they got there. "Okay, I'll play along. You think we can sneak out with the laundry?"
"Maybe." Nick was unsure, but there was still some confidence in his voice. "I would assume that laundry tends to get cleaned off-site in the middle of the night, when labor is cheaper." He paused to take a glance at the floor number they were on. The look on his face indicated that he was not looking forward to walking down another eighteen floors. "I would also assume that the laundry has its own dedicated chute to the trucks in the back alley," he continued. "Otherwise there would be a lot of mammals running around with dirty laundry between floors, and that isn't exactly a sight that a prestigious hotel such as this one would want guests to see, is it?"
It was hard to argue with Nick's logic, and it was certainly better than any other ideas Judy could think up. Still, this new plan had a lot of holes in it. Judy's mind ran through the number of ways this could go wrong. What if there isn't a laundry chute? What if there is, but it doesn't lead outside? What if it does, but it drops us onto the street instead of the laundry truck? What if it's a ten story drop? What if Tufani thought of this already and sent his security to wait for us?
But as they rapidly made their way down the stairwell, she realized that it was just a risk they would have to take. No matter the number of ways this could go wrong, it was the only choice they had. Much like captives escaping prison, she and Nick now only had one path forward, and it had to go right. Or else they would die.
All we can do is hope for the best.
She took a deep breath. "Okay." She could hear the uncertainty in her own voice. "I guess we're doing this, then."
In front of her, Nick took a second before he answered, his own voice just as anxious. "Yeah, I guess we are."
The rest of their descent was spent in silence, each of them focusing on controlling their breathing and speedily gliding down the flights of stairs. A few minutes later, they reached the 22nd floor. Without saying a word, Nick opened the door only a crack and let Judy take a peek inside.
The floor seemed deserted. The washing and drying machines automatically worked away at their various loads, but otherwise there was no movement at all that Judy could see. She motioned for Nick to open the door a bit more, and she poked her head inside to get a better look around. After seeing much of the same in every direction, she pulled her head back and nodded to Nick.
Instead of throwing open the door and strolling in, however, Nick poked his head inside just as she had. He didn't even spend a second looking around before he withdrew his head and winked at her. "Okay," he whispered, "the coast is clear."
Judy rolled her eyes, wondering if Nick would ever grow tired of doing that. However, time was of the essence, and with the floor safe, she knew what they had to do next.
Nick opened the door wide enough for the two of them to walk inside. Immediately, they started scouting out for the laundry chute that Nick had hypothesized was there. This meant walking against the wall facing the back alley, looking for doors or holes that might lead to the outside. This took a minute, and they failed to find anything. They next walked back and forth across the floor, looking for any holes in the ground that might have been used for laundry. To their disappointment, after several times traveling back and forth across the length of the room, they could not find what they were looking for.
Still, Judy was determined. She walked along the length of the back wall once again, this time more slowly and deliberately while she searched for a door for a chute. Since the Trunk Hotel was built for elephants, it made sense for a chute to be designed for elephant-sized linens, but since there wasn't one to be seen, she started looking for one designed specifically for smaller animals.
While she scrutinized the wall, she called to Nick, "Anywhere else it might be?"
Nick was zigzagging among the washers and dryers. "It could be one of these, I guess." He stopped in front of one of the washing machines. "As much as the owner of this hotel wants to be seen as a big, important elephant…" He knelt down and examined the machine more closely. "The fact is, this is just another place of business, and the staff don't care how important you are." Finding nothing of interest, he stood back up and continued to the next machine. "They just care about doing stuff as efficiently as possible."
Judy, still unable to find a chute in the wall, glanced at Nick as he wandered from machine to machine. "So you think one of these machines can act like a chute?"
Nick shrugged. "Maybe." His eyes surveyed the room, and he let out a frustrated sigh. "Of course, there's also the possibility that there is no chute at all and that we're stuck here."
Judy crossed her arms, looked up at the ceiling, and took a deep breath. Maybe there isn't. She didn't want to admit it, but the more they searched this floor for a way out, the more they came up empty-handed. They had already spent nearly ten minutes here, searching for an escape route that was looking more and more like a wild goose chase.
She exhaled. Maybe we should start looking for some other way out of here. However, she knew that was impossible. If they left this floor, no matter which direction they went, they would get caught; how nobody had come across them yet was nothing short of a miracle. They were out of time, and out of options. They either left through a laundry chute, or they wouldn't leave at all.
She gazed aimlessly at the ceiling. Then maybe we don't leave at all. Maybe this is how it ends…
Something caught her eye.
Something was on the ceiling. In fact, the ceiling was lined with copper tubing—tubes large enough for an animal even bigger than Nick to fit inside. Multiple tubes stretched across the ceiling, most of them parallel to each other. The two of them had noticed these as soon as they walked onto the floor, but they hadn't paid any attention to them; Judy had assumed they were nothing more than metal ductwork.
But one tube in particular stuck out among the rest. Judy would have never seen it from the center of the room, because it hugged one of the support pillars near the wall. At the wall, it met up with one of the other tubes and disappeared into the ceiling. At floor level, it connected to a machine—a machine that could easily have been mistaken for an elephant-sized washing machine.
She rushed to the machine. A giant glass door was on the front, with a stainless-steel cylindrical chamber inside. The bottom was made of a different kind of metal, and seemed to be detached from the rest of the walls. There was no top to the machine; instead, the copper formed a continuous connection between the machine and the ceiling of the room.
On the outside of the machine, there was only a single, giant red button. And blazoned in bold letters below the button, Judy was overjoyed to see the words, "Press to Chute".
She waved to Nick. "Here!" she announced.
Nick ran over to her and, upon examining the machine, smiled in satisfaction. "Clever bunny." He rubbed his paws together. "So, who goes first?"
Judy looked at him and smirked. "Not it."
He stared at her for a few seconds, then dropped his paws to his sides, defeated. Without saying another word, he opened up the glass door and stepped inside. He stood on top of the platform in the center of the chamber, then turned around to face Judy again. Judy closed the door, pressed the button on the outside, and stepped back.
A beep sounded from the machine. But then, for the next several seconds, nothing happened. If it hadn't been for the beep, Judy would have wondered if the machine was working at all. She had to hold back a smirk when she realized that she had heard the beep, and Nick had not. He continued to stare at her, then when even more time passed, he raised an eyebrow.
"So." His voice was barely understandable behind the glass. "How long do you think this is going to take?"
Immediately, the machine activated. The platform thrust Nick up at an incredible speed—so fast that Judy didn't even see his face change expressions before he disappeared into the copper tube. She could hear his body bump inside the tubing, as he made his up to the ceiling, and then into the wall. Once he entered that, however, all was quiet once again.
The platform inside the chamber slowly returned to its original position, ready to send Judy on her journey next. She wasted no time. She opened the door, pressed the button, and stepped inside. She turned back around and closed the door, then stood still in anticipation of the machine activating.
It was quiet inside the chamber. She could hear her own breathing, and the muffled rumblings of the washers and dryers outside, but otherwise, it was quiet. She patiently waited for the machine to finish its countdown, tapping her foot softly against the platform below.
A ding broke the quiet.
Her eyes snapped in the direction of the ding. To her horror, the elevator door—just barely visible from her position—was beginning to open up. She knew that, if whoever was about to step onto the floor saw her right now, the plan would be compromised. Instinctively, she took a step back, hoping to buy herself more time until the machine activated.
She barely made out the form of an elephant's trunk emerging from the elevator doors when, not a moment too soon, she felt herself shoot upwards.
A moment later, all went dark as she disappeared into the tubing. Since she was smaller and lighter than Nick, she was able to keep herself relatively quiet as she bumped along the walls of the tubing. A few seconds later, she felt gravity leave her as she transitioned from the tubes into the laundry chute inside of the wall.
The chute dropped at a steep angle. Judy had a hard time keeping her feet pointed downwards as she slid down the slick aluminum walls, but she managed to somewhat control herself. After a few seconds, she encountered a short drop—no more than a foot or two—which led to the chute doubling back the other way. Only a few seconds later, there was another drop, but this time the chute did not continue.
Instead, Judy found herself falling through the air. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she was now outside of the Trunk Hotel; the street lights lit up her vision, and a wall of bricks rushed past her face. It was impossible now for her to keep her feet pointed downwards, and she just hoped that a laundry truck really was waiting for her, instead of the hard cement road.
A moment later, she landed—to her relief, it was a soft landing. In fact, in the seconds that followed, as she sunk deeper into the pile of sheets and blankets, she wondered if it was perhaps the softest place she had ever lay in her life. If she wasn't in such a hurry, she might have even been tempted to keep resting and savor the feeling for a few minutes.
But she might have been spotted on the 22nd floor. There was no time to rest.
She raised her head and took a quick look around. The chute had exited the Trunk Hotel several floors up. She was inside of a truck, which was about half full of dirty laundry. It was raining now, heavily enough to completely soak her fur and clothes within just a few seconds, but there was no lightning to be seen nor thunder to be heard.
"They should sell tickets for that."
Nick's voice caught her attention. She turned her head to the side, where she found the fox lying next to her. His limbs spread from his body, and he seemed to be relishing the soft fabric he now lay upon.
Personally, Judy didn't want to ever have to do that again, but she wasn't interested in getting into a debate with the fox right now. Instead, she quickly stood up and walked to the edge of the truck. "Come on, Slick. We've got to get to the ZPD." She heard Nick begrudgingly follow her as she hopped out of the truck and onto the ground below.
As far as they could tell, no security guards were to be seen. In fact, they could not spot anyone at all, which meant they had no trouble walking around the building. It took just a few short seconds to make their way from the back alley to the front of the Trunk Hotel. As they rounded the corner, they cautiously kept their pace in check and walked straight ahead, directly towards their unmarked police car across the street.
Traffic was light, both due to the time of night and due to the rain. The two of them did not have to wait at all to start crossing the street. They walked as calmly and nonchalantly as they could, hoping to keep from arousing suspicion from anyone who might have seen them from inside the hotel lobby.
"I'm pretty sure this is jaywalking," Nick mumbled. Then a tone of curiosity entered his voice. "Does this mean you have to issue a citation to yourself?"
Judy didn't have the opportunity to answer him. A voice rang out behind them, loud and clear even against the sound of the rain. "There they are!" She didn't even bother turning around; she knew it was Tufani, and he had just seen them cross the street. She broke into a run, Nick close behind. "After them!" Tufani yelled once again.
Judy grabbed the car keys from her pocket as they ran across the street. Their car sat in the same spot they left it, just a few yards away, and as they ran she kept pressing the unlock button on her key over and over again. Even after the interior lights turned themselves on to signal that the doors had unlocked themselves, she kept pressing the button, just to be absolutely sure. A few seconds later, she reached the driver's door, grabbed the handle, and flung it open so hard she worried she might break it. She jumped into the seat, slammed the door shut behind her, and jammed the key into the ignition as fast as she could.
Beside her, Nick found his own seat and buckled his seatbelt. "I never thought I'd be happy to sit in this thing ever again," he admitted. Then he added with a nervous chuckle, "This thing is secure, right?"
The car roared to life. Judy turned on the headlights and windshield wipers, and buckled her own seatbelt. "We're perfectly safe in here," she assured him. "They couldn't even put a dent in this car."
The car suddenly jerked to the side, throwing Judy away from the steering wheel and in Nick's direction. Nick grunted as he bumped into his door—which was now several inches closer to him than it had been before.
One of Tufani's elephants had run straight into Nick's door. His massive tusks had caved the door inwards by several inches. By the time Judy realized what had happened, the elephant was already raising his head to deliver another blow to the car.
Judy's training kicked in. Without thinking, she shifted gears and tore away from the elephant as fast as she possibly could, barely tearing away in time to avoid another headbutt. Nick, even wearing his seatbelt, was thrown violently against his door again. An involuntary yelp escaped his mouth, and after he recovered, he glared at Judy.
She just glanced at him in return and raised her fingers off the steering wheel. "What else was I supposed to do?" she asked.
Nick opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it, and closed it again. Instead, he reached for the radio on the dashboard and picked up the microphone. He used his other paw to tune into the dispatch station and, once he found the frequency, he called out, "This is Nick Wilde. I'm with Officer Hopps. We need backup."
A loud, sharp sound erupted inside the car before Clawhauser could reply. Surprised, Judy jerked the steering wheel to the left, momentarily directing the car into oncoming traffic before she recovered. At the same time, Nick dropped the mic from his paw, half-throwing it back at the radio like he had been shocked.
The radio was destroyed, but it wasn't Nick's doing. An explosive bullet had been fired into it from behind the car; the elephant who had been attacking them must have fired his gun at them and hit the shot.
A light shone in Judy's eyes from the rearview mirror. She took a quick glance over her shoulder. Behind them, an elephant-sized car was gaining speed, and sure enough, one of the elephants had stuck their trunk out of a window. The elephant's trunk was holding a shotgun, and it was trained on their vehicle.
She turned back around and focused on the road. "You might want to hold on," she warned Nick, as she accelerated their car as fast as she dared down the slippery street.
Nick instinctively ducked down as far as he could in his seat. "I thought these windows were supposed to be bullet-proof!" he yelled in an uncharacteristically harsh tone of voice. It was hard to blame him, considering how close he had just come to being shot.
"They are." Judy pulled her handbrake and made a sudden right turn onto a narrower street in an attempt to put some distance between the two cars. "They don't work so well against armor-piercing rounds, though." She allowed herself a smirk when the car behind them struggled to take the turn as cleanly as she just had. "Yeah, we're dealing with some serious firepower here."
Right on cue, another bullet entered their car. This time, it shot through the passenger's seat—right where Nick's head would have been if he had still been sitting straight—and lodged itself into the windshield. A split second later, it exploded, destroying one of the wipers and turning the smooth windscreen into a giant spider web of cracked glass.
Nick slunk down even further into his seat and instinctively covered his head with his arms. "This has got to be the first time in Zootopia that a cop car is being pursued instead of the other way around."
Judy tried flipping on the car's police siren, but when she pressed the button, nothing happened. She bumped her fist against the steering wheel in annoyance. I guess that got broken when the radio was shot. A look in the rearview mirror revealed that the elephants were once again closing in on them. She made another quick turn down a nearby street, this time to the left, but unfortunately this time it did not put any extra distance between them.
Her mind quickly ran through the options that she had right now. Ideally, she'd drive straight to the ZPD, where they would be able to share her evidence with Bogo. However, with how much their vehicle had been damaged and how fast the elephants were catching up to them, there was not a chance they would make it there in time. Their second option would be to head to City Hall, or to one of the news stations, where they would be safe—but even if they could make it to one of those, Judy got the impression that these elephants would be perfectly okay with harming or even killing innocent civilians in order to get to her and Nick.
Which means we can't stay on the road, she realized. Thus far, there had been very few cars on the road, but they had been lucky. They had only been pursued for a few minutes. It was late at night. They were staying off the major roads. But if this continued for much longer, who knew what would happen? All it would take was one unlucky traveler to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—
A sudden lurch forward broke her concentration. The car behind had rear-ended them, and at a fairly high speed at that. Her grip on the steering wheel momentarily slipped, and she struggled to maintain control of the vehicle.
Beside her, Nick remained curled up in the bottom of his seat. His arms gripped his knees like his life depended on it, and his tail curled up to hide most of his face. "We're going to die," he murmured. "We're really going to die."
"We are not going to die," Judy assured him, though her tone was a bit more sharp than she intended.
"We're going to die," he repeated, as if he didn't hear her. "There's so much I haven't done. So much I wanted to say…"
Judy looked ahead, looking for another street to turn onto. However, to her horror, the road ahead ended abruptly with a concrete barrier. The barrier was only a foot high, but it was the blue and red stripes painted across its surface that she caught her attention the most.
That paint meant that, on the other side of the barrier, there was a drop-off, leading to the river. Zootopia River ran straight through the center of the city, bringing water to each of the different biomes. Most of the major roads had bridges that allowed for easy passage over it—but, right now, they were not on a major road, and there was a twenty-foot drop on the other side of that barrier to the water below.
For a moment, she hesitated. Every instinct her body screamed at her to hit the brakes. Ramming into the barrier at these speeds was dangerous. The twenty-foot drop to the river below did not guarantee survival—and even if they did survive, the river would be churning and violent right now due to the pouring rain.
Another shot blew through the car, this one passing completely through and striking the barrier at the end of the road. A moment later, the resulting explosion lit up the night.
Judy gritted her teeth and floored the gas. "We are not going to die!" she yelled.
Nick, surprised at her sudden outburst, looked ahead to see what her she was doing. His eyes widened in horror. "Judy!" he screamed, clearly not even caring that he used her real name.
She didn't care, either. "We are not going to die!" she repeated.
Nick continued to stare ahead of them, unable to peel his eyes off the road. "Oh, we're going to die," he said, though this time his tone was more resigned to the fact.
"No we're not!" Judy yelled. She gripped the steering wheel so hard her nails dug into the rubber.
Nick weakly smiled, his body unable to manage anything else. "Oh yes, we are."
"No! We! Are—"
The front of their car collided with the barrier. Judy was vaguely aware of the airbags deploying and her seatbelt catching, pressing her safely against her seat, but the collision did not halt them entirely. As the barrier was only a foot high, the car's momentum carried it up and over, and a second later, they were falling.
She might have blacked out during that moment—on account of the concussion she knew she had just suffered—because the next thing she knew, the car was landing on the water upside-down. The airbags were deflating, but her seatbelt was still locked in place, keeping her from flying up and hitting the roof of the car. Already, water was beginning to flood in through the front windshield, one of the most horrific sounds she had ever heard in her life. Beside her, Nick was flinging his paws wildly against his door handle. The dent in his door seemed to prevent it from properly opening, because no matter how much Nick struggled with the handle, he wasn't able to even open it up a crack.
She blinked hard in an effort to shake the dizziness out of her head, then started reaching for her own door handle. "Don't panic," she called over the sound of the water rushing in. "Remember your training! We can do this!" No sooner did she finish talking than she managed to pry her door open, though this also meant more water was allowed to pour inside.
Nick forced himself to slow down and heed Judy's advice. He took a deep breath and, as calmly as he could, reached for the door handle and pulled on it.
The car tumbled unexpectedly, and all of a sudden, Nick was underwater. Judy could just barely make out the outline of his body begin to panic again before he went under.
"Nick!"
Judy unbuckled her seatbelt, took a deep breath, and dropped to his seat under the water. Nick hadn't been able to catch a breath before he was suddenly submerged, and the lack of oxygen in his lungs threw him into a panic. He flung his arms wildly again, though this time instead of going for the door, he was trying to swim to the surface. The tips of his fingers even managed to touch air, but his seatbelt was still buckled, and he was trapped and unable to move.
Judy quickly reached his seatbelt buckle and tried to release it, but the button was jammed. She tried again, to no avail. She was about to try a third time, but before she could, she remembered that there was a knife in the glove box—kept just for emergencies such as this one. She reached over to the glove box, opened it up, and quickly started searching for the knife.
Nick, in the meantime, was growing more and more desperate. He was clawing as his seatbelt now, hoping to rip it apart before Judy could cut it with her knife. His shock collar, which had been yellow since they had first got in the car, beeped at him in warning, but he either didn't hear it or didn't care, because he kept scratching and scratching, more and more desperately.
Judy finally found the knife. She grabbed it and turned back to Nick. Her eyes widened as she realized just how erratic he had become. His face was turning blue, and his claws were starting to bleed from how hard he scraped at his seatbelt.
She wanted to shout to him, Nick, stop! But she couldn't—and it wouldn't have done any good anyway. Nick's brain was now switched to survival mode, and logic was out of the question.
His collar flashed red and beeped.
Bubbles and an ungodly sound emerged from Nick's mouth as the collar zapped him. He stopped clawing at his seatbelt. In fact, he stopped moving at all. His eyes slowly turned to look at Judy, and the last thing she saw in them was fear—pure, unadulterated fear.
Then they glazed over. The collar quickly went from red, to yellow, then to green. Finally, the light turned off entirely—an indication that Nick's heart had stopped beating.
Judy stared in horror as the scene unfolded in front of her. She wanted to cut his seatbelt, right then and there, but found herself unable to move her muscles. For a second, she thought perhaps it was just because she was so traumatized by what she just saw, but then she realized it was far worse than that.
She was running out of breath.
The car lurched again. They were now several feet submerged. The current was taking them further downstream. The light from the surface was fading with every passing second, as they sank further and further into the depths. The car was flipping on all axes, disorientating Judy and making it hard for her to focus on what she needed to do next.
She could feel her tiny bunny lungs start asking for air. Her head felt light—a combination of her concussion and the lack of oxygen. She closed her eyes, struggling to focus properly on anything in particular. She tried thinking of the knife in her paw. The surface she needed to swim to. All the predators in Zootopia who were counting on her. How much Nick needed her…
Nick…
She found her strength. She opened her eyes and focused on Nick's face. Determination filled her heart. I am not going to let you die! With renewed energy, she swam to his seatbelt and slashed it at the buckle—taking great care not to accidentally slice his arms with the knife as they floated in front of her—and finally freed the fox. She threw the knife harmlessly to the side, grabbed Nick by the torso, and pulled him out of his seat. Then, running more on instinct than thought, she crunched her body into a ball, pressed her hind feet against Nick's door, and thrust the two of them upwards.
They flew past her door and started ascending towards the surface. Judy kept her eyes on the faint light above them, aiming herself in its direction as she paddled her hind feet as fast as she could. She kept a firm grip on Nick with both of her arms, carrying him with his head slightly above hers.
Her lungs begged her to take a breath, but she held off, knowing that her much-needed oxygen was only seconds away. The light grew brighter and brighter, closer and closer. Her legs started losing their rhythm, unable to keep up with the demands of the extra weight. Her eyes began to burn, and she felt herself lose focus of the surface above her. She wondered just how far away the surface really was—and if she could make it there at all.
A beep sounded in her ear. In her peripheral vision, she saw the light on Nick's shock collar glow green. It was only for a moment, before it turned off again, but it was enough.
She summoned the last bit of stamina she had left. She swam all the harder, gripped Nick all the tighter, and in the last few seconds before her lungs forced her to take an involuntary breath, she lunged forward with all her strength.
I will not let you die!
She broke the surface. She gasped for air, filling her lungs with as much oxygen as she could gather. It didn't matter how much rainwater was mixed in, she was just happy to have fresh air again. She pulled Nick's head above the surface as well, hoping that the fox's brain would realize that it had access to air and would make him start breathing again. She took another breath or two of her own, allowing her mind to calm back down to normal levels of control, before she took a look at their situation.
The river was a torrent. She was able to keep the two of them afloat by treading water, but it was a chore, and waves constantly bombarded them and threatened to submerge them again. It was impossible to place exactly where they were at the moment, but trees and foliage lined both sides of the river, which meant they probably weren't in Savannah Central anymore. The only thing that brought her any kind of relief in their current predicament was that the elephants that had been chasing them were nowhere to be seen.
Judy grabbed Nick underneath his arms and dragged him to the side of the river. There was no riverbank—just cement walls that were too steep to climb—but there were a few low-hanging branches that she saw up ahead and knew she could reach. It only took a few seconds before she managed to grab one, though holding onto both the branch and Nick at the same time proved to be difficult—especially with the river still pulling both of them along.
She was thankful she had been trained in water rescue at the police academy.
She looped her free arm around Nick's waist, then fingered her utility belt for her handcuffs. When she found them, she quickly cuffed her own belt, then secured the other cuff around one of the belt loops on Nick's trousers. This allowed her to free up both of her paws and start climbing the branch.
It was difficult. The branch was wet from the rain, which would have made the climb challenging even without Nick's added weight. She had to be careful and deliberate with her movement. Every time she grabbed the branch with one of her paws, she made sure she had a firm grip before proceeding. When her hind legs were high enough, she gripped the branch between her knees as well, giving herself a bit more stability as she climbed.
It was a long process. When she was only halfway up, her limbs ached in protest. But she didn't slow down. She couldn't. Nick was still unconscious, his shock collar still turned off, which meant that every second that passed was one extra second closer to him being beyond saving.
I can't let him die…
The top of the wall came into view. By the time Judy reached it, the branch had bent low enough that she was able to easily transfer one of her paws from it to the lip of the wall. After that, she pulled her other arm up and over the lip, and a few seconds later, managed to pull herself entirely up the wall.
She did not have a moment to feel relief. Without wasting any time, she pulled Nick up onto the top of the wall beside her. She lay him on his back, didn't even bother undoing the handcuffs connecting her belt to his, and placed herself near his chest.
She placed the palms of her paws flat on his sternum and started pushing rhythmically. "Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive." She stared intensely at his shock collar, willing for it to turn back on. "Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive."
Nick remained limp and unresponsive.
Judy kept working at the compressions, pushing the full weight of her little bunny body as hard as she could onto Nick's chest. She stopped singing, though, and started talking to Nick directly. "Come on, Nick," she begged. "Wake up. Wake up." When nothing changed, she gritted her teeth and pushed down all the harder. "Please wake up!" she begged. After a few more seconds of nothing, she could feel tears start to form in her eyes. "Nick, please!"
Water began to ooze out of the sides of Nick's mouth—but whether that was from his lungs, or rainwater that had gathered in his mouth, it was impossible to tell. But it was enough to give Judy a second wind. She kept pressing down, over and over again, in an effort to restart Nick's heart.
Her vision became blurry as her eyes filled with tears. "I won't let you die, Nick." She blinked hard. "I can't. I can't fail you again."
Her arms gave out, and she collapsed on Nick's chest, too exhausted to continue. For a second, she struggled to get back up, but she just didn't have the strength. Instead, she dug her face into Nick's shirt and let out a wail.
Nick's heart wasn't beating, and she could not get it going again.
It was all her fault. She had gotten him involved in this wild goose chase at the Trunk Hotel. She had driven them into the river. She hadn't been fast enough or strong enough to resuscitate him. And all of this, after she had asked him to trust her one last time—after she had broken his heart…
I failed him… She sobbed uncontrollably. I killed him.
His collar flashed back on.
Judy froze. She stared at the collar intently. Nick still wasn't moving, and she couldn't hear his heart beating when she placed her ears against his chest. She wanted to hope—she dared to hope—but she also had to be prepared for the possibility that the collar had been damaged…
A cough escaped Nick's mouth.
Judy lifted her head and looked at Nick's face. As she did, he coughed again, and this time some water started to come out. Thinking fast, she grabbed Nick's head and gently rotated it so it faced to the side, instead of facing straight up. As soon as she did, he coughed one last time—this time, vomiting a fair amount of water in the process.
Judy felt a smile spread across her face. "You're alive!" she whispered.
Nick's eyes were still closed, but his chest began to rise and fall, very slowly. She kept a watchful eye on him for the next minute or two, making sure that his body was working fine on its own. When his collar remained lit and his breathing continued, she finally allowed herself a moment of relief.
Exhausted, she sat down on the grass next to him and leaned against his body. She closed her eyes and relaxed her body, letting the rain hit her face. For the first time today, the rain felt nice against her fur, as if it was washing away all of anxiety. Without opening her eyes, she felt around for the handcuffs that still connected her to Nick, and opened them up. They fell to the grass and, for the next few minutes, she did nothing more than relish the feeling of Nick's chest rising and falling beneath her head.
When she had recovered enough to think properly, she realized that even though they were both still alive, they were in deep trouble. Tufani had identified Nick by name, and it wouldn't be hard to identify her as well. This meant that Assistant Mayor Rolfe—and everyone else who attended the meeting at the Trunk Hotel—would very soon be informed of the two cops who had been spying on them. With her phone crushed and the evidence gone, there was nothing she or Nick could say that would hold up in a court of law.
Assuming they even let us live that long.
Undoubtedly, the first thing Rolfe would do would be contact Bogo to ask what she and Nick were doing there. Bogo had been very clear to her, this assignment was off the record. He would deny knowing anything about it, and would likely go public with a condemnation of her actions. He might even fire her, if only for the sake of appearances, just to make sure Rolfe would never know he had anything to do with it.
In fact, Rolfe would probably put out a warrant for her arrest, and for Nick's as well. If either of them so much as set foot inside the ZPD, they would be arrested on the spot. There was no way to get to Bogo to tell him what they knew—not unless they could reach him on a secure line, which Judy no longer had access to.
That wouldn't be the end of it, however. Judy was the best-known cop in Zootopia. Once word got out that she was a wanted criminal, that would make her easy to identify. There was nowhere in the city she could hide. Her apartment would be under surveillance—as would Nick's place. Every ZPD officer she was friends with would have their phones bugged in case she tried to call them. She couldn't even take Nick to a hospital for proper care, because she recognized one of the animals at the meeting in the Trunk Hotel as the administrator for Zootopia General.
She leaned back against Nick's body, this time out of bewilderment than exhaustion. "Well, Slick," she muttered, "are we in trouble or what?"
A light flashed in her peripheral vision. She glanced over to see what it was, but it was more intense than she expected, and she had to squint to keep from being blinded. However, it was the unmistakable sound of the accompanying engine that told her everything she needed to know.
Judy instinctively wrapped her arms around Nick's head and held him close to her chest, blocking him from the sight of the oncoming vehicle. She knew there was not much she could do to protect him right now, but whoever this was, she wanted them to know that she would stand between them and her fox.
The lights slowed down, and the squeaky sound of tires crawling to a stop filled the air. It was a smaller vehicle than Judy thought—definitely one too small for elephants to fit in. Still, she held Nick all the tighter, preparing herself for whoever this might be.
The driver's door opened, and someone poked their head out. "Judy? Is that you?"
Judy blinked, trying to make out the face of whoever it was that had called to her. At first, she wondered if it was some kind of a trick, but then she realized, at the exact same moment the headlights turned off, that she recognized the voice. She blinked again, this time in disbelief.
"Gideon Grey?"
The fox shut the door to his truck and ran over to her. "Oh my, it is you!" He raised his arms in confusion. "What are you doing out here?"
Judy continued to stare at him. "What am I doing here? What are you doing here?"
"Well, I decided to come into town to get some supplies for your parents' farm. There's this great hole in the wall a few blocks down, and…" His voice faded as he approached the two of them. His eyes landed on Nick's unmoving form. "Oh my," he whispered, his breath caught.
Judy turned her attention back to Nick as well. She placed a paw on his cheek, silently coaxing him to wake up. He didn't.
"Is he…?"
Judy shook her head. "No, he's alive. But…" She looked back at Gideon. "We're in trouble, Gideon. A lot of trouble."
Gideon nervously folded his paws in front of him, rubbing his fingers over each other. "I'm real sorry to hear that, Judy," he said softly. "I—I mean, I saw you two from that road over there, but only because I was looking in this direction, and I thought you might need help." He kicked the dirt. "But what can a fox like me do to help a—" He stammered over his words. "A real cool cop like you?"
Judy felt a small smile creep onto her face. Whether he had meant to or not, Gideon had just given her a little bit of happiness at the end of one of the worst days of her life. Even if he couldn't help her out of her present situation, he at least helped her feel better despite it.
But, she hated to admit, he was right. There wasn't much he could do. Gideon was a farmer, not a doctor, which was what Nick needed right now. And there wasn't much Gideon could do to help her out, either. There wasn't anywhere in the whole city that she would be safe right now.
She paused. In the whole city…
"We have to get out of here, Gideon." She slowly stood up, barely able to hold her own weight on her legs. "Out of Zootopia. It's not safe here anymore, for me or for him." She gestured to Nick. "You can help us with that."
Gideon raised an eyebrow, studying her face to make sure she wasn't teasing him. "You sure?"
"I've never been more sure in my life." Judy knelt back down and shoved her arms under Nick's back. "Come on, help me get him into your truck."
"Okay." Without hesitation, Gideon walked over to Nick's legs and helped Judy pick him up. Between the two of them, it wasn't hard at all, much to Judy's relief. She led him as they carried Nick into the bed of Gideon's truck. They laid him gently on his back, using a few of Gideon's spare handkerchiefs as a makeshift pillow. They then hid him underneath a blanket with the farm equipment that Gideon had come to Zootopia to buy in the first place. Finally, the two of them hopped into the cab, Gideon in the driver's seat and Judy in the passenger's.
Gideon started the truck and was about to start driving, when he realized something. He turned to her. "But… Judy? Where are we going?"
Judy leaned back in her seat and, for the first time all day, allowed herself to relax. She found herself suddenly exhausted, and barely managed to squeak out her response before passing into a deep sleep.
"The one place I can hide… Among millions of other bunnies."