Alyssa tried to fight the creature off even as it sank its teeth into her neck and shoulder. The venom was already taking effect. Beneath the pain of the teeth she felt a tingling sensation and her limbs turned to jelly. Subject Zero loomed over her like a sexual predator, its jaws red and dripping with blood. Her blood…
The vixen rubbed her neck and shoulder, the fabric in turn rubbing the scars beneath.
"You saw it too?"
Judy's question came out thick but weak. "What the hell was that?"
Alyssa swallowed. Her scars ached.
"I think that's what got Slothfeld." Jack said.
He stared intensely at Alyssa, as if waiting for her to confirm what he already knew. Then she remembered that he never actually saw the creature.
"Yes." She spoke. "Yes, it was."
Judy looked between the two and gently pushed Jack way. "You told us Slothfeld was shot. Shot dead by Rameses."
"We were under orders-"
Judy waved off Jack's response. "I know you had to lie to us. I'm not that naïve. We'll talk about what really happened after we find Nick and the others."
"Nick's already out." Alyssa said. Judy's head turned sharply, like a bird's. Her eyes were wide, too. "He came out the same way you did. I told him to find somewhere to hide."
"Where?" Judy half snarled, half whispered.
"I just told him to hide."
Judy gripped the base of one ear, teeth clenched, mentally trapped in indecisiveness.
Jack put a paw on her shoulder. "Find Wilde and hide with him. We'll go back for the others."
Judy nodded and took off. Alyssa sighed, hoping the rabbit wouldn't be too pissed at the lie. She couldn't let Subject 0 have another chance to kill her.
As for Alyssa and Jack, they knew returning to the hotel through the basement entrance was pointless and dangerous. There was another way in, a secondary entrance up some outdoor steps leading straight to the restaurant.
"I'll take point." She said. Jack didn't argue. He slung his crossbow over his back and took out his own pistol.
As they ascended the steps, Alyssa could hear the worried voices of the mammals still waiting outside the front of the hotel. No doubt they had heard the gunshots and called the police by now. Or they'd caught a glimpse of the NEST agents inside and thought they were the police. They had to hurry.
The windows were oddly designed for a restaurant, stretching from floor to ceiling but too narrow for a vixen to squeeze through. The arched door was locked when they reached it, but one bolt from Jack's crossbow smashed a bottom glass panel.
The restaurant was so deserted even the light seemed to have abandoned it. The chairs were stacked upside down atop the tables, forming strange silhouettes in the darkness. Alyssa didn't like this at all. Any one of those tables could be a hiding place.
They inched forward, weapons at the ready. Alyssa kept her jaw set and her eyes sharp. The perfect picture of a secret agent. Inside, she wanted to cry. She felt like she was back in the garage again. Slothfeld was just out of sight. That empty buffet table almost looked the toolbox she'd been searching for tools. Tools to make him talk, and then end his miserable life. The creature was lurking even further out of sight, in the shadows, ready to strike in the split second before she crossed that point of no return…
"Guys?"
The muzzles of their weapons turned swiftly towards the voice.
It was Ben. He was huddled in a shadow beneath one of the bigger tables by the wall. He was holding a two-kilogram fire extinguisher in his paws.
"Thank god." Alyssa breathed and tilted the muzzle upward. "Let me guess, the door was locked?"
"Yep."
She didn't ask if he tried the kitchen door- she already knew that was locked as well.
"Hopps got out. where're the others?"
Ben bit his lip. "I don't know. Mansa told me to run."
"What happened?"
"We got ambushed. Nick got darted. Pushed Judy somewhere before he went down. I don't know where Mansa-"
Jack's paw shot up in the universal 'quiet' signal. His ears swivelled toward the interior restaurant entrance.
Alyssa understood, looked Ben in the eye and put a finger to her lips. Ben hugged the extinguisher tighter and inched further beneath the table.
Alyssa and Jack took cover in the behind the tables, where the upended chair back rests and table legs formed thicker shadows. The vixen's anxiety only grew worse as they waited for the goons to appear. There was nothing in this room to provide adequate cover. Nothing they could do but hope their small bodies and quick reactions would be enough to turn the tide.
That hope was dashed completely when they heard a relentless hissing sound, and Alyssa made out a yellowish mist seeping into the restaurant through the slits in the door.
They can be taught.
"Tear gas!" She whispered to Jack.
"Get him to the kitchen." He growled.
Alyssa signalled for Ben to get moving, but he was already crawling backward under the table, trying to get away from the unpleasant smoke. She could already smell how peppery it was.
She didn't look to see what Jack was doing, but she heard a second hissing sound against the first one. She pulled out her lockpick set as reached the kitchen door and quickly set to work.
The click of the door was accompanied by a sudden burst of gunfire. She looked back, but she couldn't see Jack from her position. Someone, Jack or NEST she couldn't tell, fired back as she pushed the door open and urged Ben though.
The kitchen was just as dark as the restaurant, but the green light of the emergency exit sign guided the way. Alyssa looked left and right, but the place was empty. The gunfight behind them grew fiercer.
Alyssa ran to the exit, frantic to get Ben out so she could get back in there. She leapt, yanked the bar down with her body weight and kicked it open.
The alley was grimy and strewn with old litter. A grisly smell wafted from the nearby dumpster. But it was clear of hostiles. What upset Alyssa was the silence. The gunfire had stopped as quickly as it had started.
She stepped back inside and got out the way.
"Go on, get out of here!" She snapped. "We'll find your friends."
When she looked at Ben, he was sliding down the side of the over, a dart in the back of his arm.
Alyssa saw the antelope standing in the far doorway and opened fire. She aimed for the legs, firing just past Ben's drooping head. The hostile went down. The last bullet in her magazine punched through the visor, stilling his pained struggles.
Alyssa ran to Ben and yanked the dart out, but she could see it was too late. He'd be out cold in little over a minute.
Jack…
She had one clip left. She ejected the clip and slammed in the last one as she ran through the dark kitchen, taking cover behind the wall by the restaurant door. Her eyes instantly began to sting. The restaurant was now almost completely dark and foggy. Alyssa couldn't fight in these conditions. She knew she couldn't. She couldn't leave Jack and Ben, either.
Tears trickled down her eyes. The gas hit the back of her throat. She tried to stop her throat from reacting, but a cough escaped her.
Damn i-
A spurt of tranq darts flew from the yellow mist, hitting the door and its frame. Even if her eyes weren't burning she couldn't see a thing through the gas. Nevertheless she fired back with a few shots and ran to the emergency exit. If she could just get to fresh air, she could recover and attack them from another angle.
She reached the emergency exit, and then she felt a bee-like sting in the back of her thigh.
Even before the drug took effect and the gun fell from her paws, she knew it was over. She fell to her knees and collapsed on her side, finding herself face to face with a dozing Ben. There were footsteps. The approaching mammal muttered the fallen antelope's name- "Verheiden, goddamnit…" and stopped between the two mammals. Their legs suggested the mammal was a pig or boar.
Then she heard the hostile speak, their voices distorted by the masks protecting them from their own weapon.
"Skyefall and Savage are down. Any word on Subject 0?" The mammal paused and listened to the response from the radio. "A blood trail?! Who the hell used lethal rounds? Who shot Subject 0?!" He paused again. "Must have run into one of the other targets… Alright, follow the trail but be careful."
A feminine voice coming from the restaurant spoke, but it was fading along with Alyssa's consciousness. "Sir, we've caught six of the targets barring Elba and Subject 0… Savage, Skyefall, Bogo, Clawhauser, Hopps and Wilde, all of them… We're still on Subject 0's trail, but evidence suggests it was wounded. It's only a matter of time before we… Yes, sir, we know orders are to bring it back unharmed. We believe one of the other targets shot it…"
When Alyssa awoke, she winced from the harsh glow of a single fluorescent light. Her head was aching, but her throat and eyes were no longer suffering from the gas. Ben was gone. So was the kitchen she'd passed out in.
The room was smaller and simpler. The walls were navy blue, with no windows to see where she was. She lay on a mattress, stripped of everything but her clothes. A bare toilet smelled of stale piss. The one vent in the room wouldn't even fit a rabbit. A spherical black camera eyed her from the corner of the ceiling.
When Alyssa shifted her body on the thin mattress, she saw a small blood stain where her arm had been. One look at her forearm told her the tracking chip had been removed.
"Son of a bitch." The blunt curse echoed in the spartan space. She rubbed the spot on her skull closest to the ache. She didn't need to look around to know she was alone in the room. Jack and Ben were either in similar cells or dead. "Son of a fucking bitch."
She lay prone on the mattress, waiting for the headache to ease, wondering how much of this was her fault for not being the agent Cheryl always believed she was. The Red Queen had told her the secret of Theodore Swinton's survival. Cheryl had trusted her to finish what she'd started. Alyssa was glad she was on the other side on the world, unable to see how badly her protégé had failed her.
As it always had before when things went to shit, Cheryl Radames's voice came to her ear.
Don't give up. Figure out where you are. Even nothing is a clue.
Alyssa sat up. As screwed as she was, a little detective work was better than lying there feeling sorry for herself.
Speaking of nothing, the door didn't have a window, or a handle. The room was like a cupboard. Much too small to be a traditional jail cell, but it had been designed to act like one.
Alyssa started to have an inkling as to what this room was. She stopped moving entirely, letting her legs dangle over the bed, focusing on a certain sensation.
There it was. A slight rocking sensation, very slight, more like a vibration.
Great. That was just great. She was in a brig. On a boat sailing to who knows where. If by some miracle she managed to escape, she'd be sure not to sink this one.
If there was one silver lining, it was that the others, whoever was still alive, wouldn't be far. Not if they were all in brigs like this one. She had a bad feeling that Gabe, Starlight and Winters were locked up here, too. It would explain why they never showed up at the hotel.
Alyssa lay back down on the bed, on her side, facing the wall, so the camera wouldn't catch her rapping morse code on the wall. Just tapping a finger on the wall was about as easy to interpret as a smoke signal, but it was all she could do. She did it slowly, pausing in between letters and leaving a larger pause between words.
Jack. Alive?
Someone tapped back. It took two letters for someone to respond.
Judy. You?
Alyssa tapped some more, taking care not to rush.
Alyssa. Who. Else. Is. Here?
Nick. Jack. Ben. Bogo. 0.
Alyssa's heart skipped a beat.
They. Got. 0?
Yes.
Where?
Not. Here.
Jack?
Nest. Took. Him.
Alyssa covered her face with a paw. The thought of what they might be doing to him right now made her sick.
Any. Ideas? Judy asked through her finger.
No. Alyssa hated to admit it even if her tongue wasn't using the words.
Let's. Plan. Judy tapped.
Alyssa realised then who she was talking to and smirked. The world's first rabbit officer and the world's first fox spy. Who knows what trouble they could cook up…