As soon as the door closed, Skye fell forwards, collapsing weakly onto the floor. Judy reflexively tried to reach out to her, but with her paws still tied behind her back, all she could do was scoot a little closer to the poor arctic vixen. "Are you all right?"
Skye struggled for a moment before she managed to shift herself onto her side. Her eyes were wide open, her breaths were weak and airy, and the skin underneath the fur on her cheek was starting to swell up from where she had been punched. A second later, the tears returned to her eyes, and this time she did not fight them off.
Judy looked helplessly down at Skye as she curled into a ball and started to softly cry. Her encounter with her father had clearly left her drained, broken-spirited, and hurt—emotionally as well as physically. She had stuck her neck out for the chance of saving her two friends, and not only had she failed, she might have even made things worse. The cool, confident Chance was gone, replaced once again by the timid, frightened Skye.
It broke Judy's heart to see her like this. More than anything, she wished she could give her a big hug right now, and the fact that she couldn't only made her all the more disheartened. Skye was only in Marble Jade at all because she had tried to save her and Nick, and even though Judy had not done anything to hurt Skye herself, she still felt at least partially responsible for the suffering the fox was going through.
"Oh, Skye, I'm so sorry," she whispered to the weeping vixen. "You shouldn't even be here right now."
Skye sniffled back her tears and fervently shook her head. "No, it's okay." She looked up at Judy, and her icy blue eyes sparkled. "I made a promise, right?" She smiled weakly. "To protect you two, just like you promised to protect me."
It was the promise she had made right after getting shot at in the alley—and while this situation was not quite what Judy had in mind when she and Nick and encouraged Skye to make the promise, Skye had managed to keep it nonetheless. When given the opportunity to run away and save herself, she ran straight to their aid instead. When she could have kept her mouth shut and avoided confrontation, she had revealed exactly who she was so she could have a chance to plea on their behalf. And when Alex had given Nick what sounded like a death sentence, Skye had risked her own safety to make one final appeal for his life.
Judy could not help but smile. Skye might have been a scared, paranoid fox, but she was no coward, and she proved that to all of them today.
She sat down beside Skye and rubbed her elbow against the fox's arm affectionately. "Thank you." She sighed. "For trying, anyway."
The smile on Skye's face grew a tad more firm. "Oh, I did more than try."
Judy raised an eyebrow, and Skye motioned down to her tail. She lifted it up, and Judy's eyes widened. A pair of scissors lay on the floor—the same pair that one of the arctic foxes had used to free Skye at the beginning of her conversation with Alex.
The bunny stared at the scissors in disbelief. "How did you…?"
Skye lifted her head and turned her cheek to face Judy, which was starting to turn an ugly color underneath her creamy-white fur. "Worth it."
It took Judy a second to understand. Skye had known that calling her father a coward would cause him to react the way he did, and when he punched her, she bumped into the fox who had been holding the scissors. She must have knocked them out of his grip and covered them with her tail before anybody realized.
Judy grinned. "Clever fox," she mumbled.
A hint of pride crossed Skye's face, before her expression grew serious and she quickly nodded toward the scissors. "Hurry! We don't have much time."
Judy quickly focused her attention on the scissors. She shifted over to them, turned around, and leaned backwards to grab them off the floor. She had to feel around for a second, but she managed to grab them in one paw.
She smiled in triumph. "Hey, Nick, get over here and help me with this!" However, there was no reply, and she looked in his direction with a raised eyebrow. "Nick?"
The red fox was still kneeling in the same spot, having not moved an inch since Alex left; Judy was so concerned about Skye, she hadn't even noticed. His face hung low to the ground, his half-open eyes staring off into space. His tail was wrapped around his waist and curled up in his lap. His breathing had slowed back down to a normal rate by now, but as Judy listened, she could hear the faint traces of a whimper with every single breath he took.
Her heart sank as she stared at her fox in such agony. She could not blame him, of course; the bombshell that Alex had dropped on him about his father had undoubtedly shook him to his core. From what little Nick had shared with her, he had loved John Wilde dearly while the fox was alive, and had never stopped looking up to him in the nearly twenty years since he had been killed. Clearly, that mental image had been completely shattered in an instant, and Nick was still struggling to process the news that his father was a not as squeaky-clean as he had believed.
She sighed sadly. "Oh, Nick…"
Beside her, Skye sat back up and looked at him with concern. "Nick, you've got to help us out. If we're still here when they come back, we're dead." When he didn't react, she turned to Judy. "Here, see if you can cut through my ropes."
Judy maneuvered herself closer to Skye so that the two of them were back-to-back. She used her free paw to feel around the rope that tied Skye's wrists together, found a section that she thought was a safe spot, and guided one of the blades of the scissors onto the rope and began to slice into it. She tried to cut as quickly as she could while being careful not to accidentally poke either her or Skye's flesh.
Skye turned back to Nick and tried to talk to him again while Judy worked. "Nick, he wants to send you to Wolf Creek. That's a slave camp a hundred miles north of here. This time of year, it's supposed to be closed due to extreme weather. If you go there now, you won't even last three days!"
"Maybe that's what I deserve."
Judy nearly dropped the scissors. Nick's whisper was so quiet, she hardly heard him, even with her sensitive bunny ears, but it was still enough. She looked at Nick and stared at him in disbelief, shocked that he would say such a thing.
Skye did not quite hear him. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"
Nick raised his face only enough to glance in their direction. "Maybe I deserve to die." His voice was louder now, filled with emotion and hurt, and growing wetter and wetter by the second as he struggled to fight off a volley of tears. "My whole life, I thought my dad was a good fox—an honorable fox. I really looked up to him. I thought the world of him! And when he died, it crushed me, because I knew I could never be as good as him. I didn't even bother trying. I dropped out of school, I ran away from home, I spent my whole life as a con artist, and I…" He shut his eyes tight and gritted his teeth hard. "And I thought by becoming a cop, I could make things right. I thought that if I could bring honor back to my family name, he could be proud of me. But now…" Tears started pouring freely down his cheeks. "Now I know he was nothing more than a good-for-nothing fox after all, just like the rest of them!"
Judy did not know what to say. More than anything, she wished that she could think of some way to comfort Nick, but a bell had been rung that could not be un-rung. Alex had provided undeniable proof that his father was involved with White Jaws, and even if Judy freed herself this very second and rushed over to him to give him a hug, it would not change the truth. It was affecting Nick far more deeply than anything else Judy had ever seen before, and it was devastating to know that she could do little more than sit here and let him suffer.
A nudge on her shoulder caught her attention. "Keep going," Skye whispered to her. Judy quickly refocused her attention back to her task, remembering that time was of the essence. Skye raised her voice to address Nick again. "Nick, your father was a good fox. He only borrowed money from White Jaws because he was desperate. He made a mistake—and it was his mistake. You don't need to die over it."
Nick hid his face from the two of them, his pained whines becoming muffled as he dug his snout into the top of his coat. "No, he wasn't! A good fox would have never done something like this, no matter how desperate!"
"You underestimate my father," Skye shot back. "Maybe he made a threat against your mother—or you—and gave him no choice but to agree. Or maybe he tricked him, or trapped him somehow. You don't know why your father signed that contract!"
Nick's voice dropped to a quiet sob. "It doesn't matter. He did sign it." He lowered his head even further, burying it in his tail. "Everything I thought I knew about my father was a lie. How can I live now, knowing that my name—my blood—is stained?"
There was a greater weight to his words than mere depression. Judy had talked with Nick several times before about the differences between fox and bunny cultures, and one of the most important things to foxes was family. The concept of family was held in such high regard, it trumped very nearly everything else—even, in many cases, one's very own life. To Nick, he would have felt just as guilty of a sin his father committed as if he had committed it himself. And even though she refused to believe that Nick had to die because of it, she had no doubt that he would spend the rest of his life in shame, whether it was deserved or not.
It was not something Judy felt qualified to talk to him about—both because she was a bunny, and because she did not know what to say. Nick was hurting from something far deeper than she was capable of understanding, and the last thing she wanted to do was say the wrong thing and just make things worse. Her paw slowed to a stop as she fell into deep thought, desperately trying to think of anything she could say right now to let Nick know that things would be okay, and that no matter what his father had done, she still loved him.
"Our fathers do not define us."
Judy's ears shot up, and she glanced over her shoulder. Skye was sitting tall, with her chin held high, looking straight at Nick with a sense of purpose that Judy had never seen in the vixen before. Her words seemed to have caught Nick's attention as well; the red fox once again raised his head to look at her through tear-filled eyes.
She opened her mouth and spoke again, her voice strong and her words sure. "If anyone deserves to be ashamed of their family name, it's me. My father has spent decades doing terrible things, and hurting a lot of people. He has threatened, imprisoned, injured, and even killed anyone he wants…" She swallowed hard. "Including me, his own daughter. He has always wanted for me to be just like him, so that the Faulkner family could rule over White Jaws with an iron fist for generations to come. He spent most of my life trying to train me to follow in his footsteps, and when I resisted, he always punished me harshly." She turned her head, showing her swelling cheek. "This is one of the lesser things he has done to me," she said sadly.
Nick's sobs quieted down as he listened to her. Judy started cutting through the rope again, but she kept paying attention to Skye while she spoke.
The vixen's voice filled with pain. "Even my real name is a constant reminder of the evil things he has done." She hung her head. "I never knew my mother. She was one of the vixens in White Jaws that he collected like they were trophies. He took me away from her as soon as I was born, and named me Chance, so I would always remember that my continued existence was never a guarantee. Just…" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "A chance." She closed her eyes. "Most days, it was hard to tell if I was the heir apparent to White Jaws, or merely another one of its slaves. My father spent my whole life teaching me that life is hard, and only the most powerful can survive. He forced me to make tough decisions, and a lot of people got hurt because of me…"
She straightened her face and looked at Nick head-on, a newfound resolution in her voice. "But I've always known, none of it was right, and I never wanted anything to do with White Jaws or Alex Faulkner. So I ran. I abandoned White Jaws, I fled Marble Jade, and I ran as far as I possibly could. And you know what I found?" A sincere smile crossed her face as she locked eyes with Nick.
"I found you."
Nick stared at her as she continued. "Nick, you were the very first fox I ever met who treated me with kindness. Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever looked at me the way you did. You gave me a warm bed, a place to work, a home where I could feel safe…" Skye glanced behind her shoulder and shot Judy a quick smile. "And a lot of love and forgiveness, too."
She turned back to Nick. "As far as I'm concerned, Nicholas Wilde, your name is far from stained. I think that the Wilde family should be held in the highest honor throughout the world. You have done enough on your own to prove that. You are not your father, just as I am not mine." She puffed her chest with pride. "I am no longer Chance Faulkner. I am Skye Frost." A smile beamed from her face. "And I will decide for myself what that name means."
Judy finally sliced through the rope. Skye's wrists sprang free, and after taking a second to examine herself to make sure she was not injured, the vixen spun around, grabbed the scissors out of Judy's paw, and quickly cut the bunny's ropes off as well. It only took a second before Judy was freed, and the moment she felt her restraints go slack, she jumped to her feet and ran over to Nick.
The red fox's cheeks were wet with tears, and his eyes were bloodshot as he looked at her, but he had stopped crying. He locked eyes with her, and she was happy to see that there was a small hint of hope in his gaze that was not there before. It was buried underneath a mountain of shame and hurt, but still, it seemed that Skye's words had given him just the encouragement he needed.
She smiled sympathetically and cupped his damp cheek with a paw. "My dear fox…" She gently gave him a tiny kiss on the tip of his nose, then gave him a serious but kind look. "We'll get through this just like we always have: together." She kneaded his fur affectionately. "And for what it's worth, just remember, I will always hold the Wilde family name in the highest regard."
Skye walked over and stood next to Judy, both of them giving Nick comforting smiles. Nick studied Judy's face intensely, almost like he was trying to commit the picture of her permanently to his memory. Then he turned to Skye and looked at her the same way. As the fox looked back and forth between them, the helplessness in his face disappeared, replaced by a new expression: resolve.
He sat up straight and addressed Skye. "Get me out of this thing. I've got a bunny to protect." The faintest of smiles formed on his lips. "And a wonderful arctic fox, too."
An involuntary grin spread across Judy's face as Nick gave her a wink. His shame was still there—and, possibly, would never fully go away—but he had found a reason to keep fighting. Judy knew that as long as his heart beat in his chest, he would never stop fighting to protect her, just as she would never stop fighting to protect him.
She threw her arms around her fox, embracing him in a loving hug. Skye quickly ran behind Nick and cut his restrains off his wrists, and he quietly returned the hug, pulling Judy close to his chest and clutching her tightly. After a few seconds, he began stroking her ears with one of his paws, brushing them gently as they lay flat against the back of her neck, and rubbed his chin into the top of her head.
"Thank you, Carrots," he whispered.
"You know I love you, right?" she whispered back.
"Do I know that?" Nick chuckled and let her go so he could look into her purple eyes again. He smiled. "Yes. Yes I do."
Judy wished the moment could last longer, but she knew they were running out of time, and she forced herself to focus on their current predicament. "Skye." She turned to the vixen. "How do we get out of here?"
With how antsy Skye had been to get out of their restraints, she expected her to have an immediate answer. However, the vixen was currently looking around the room with a look of worry on her face, and as the seconds ticked by in silence, Judy felt her optimism begin to fade away.
"You don't know?"
"Oh, I know all right." Skye pointed to the door they had used to enter the room. "That leads to the main entrance. There will be no less than twenty foxes between here and there, and at least a dozen standing guard outside." Her finger wandered to the other door, where Alex and his foxes had disappeared. "That leads to my father's study. I don't think he would appreciate us barging in uninvited." She turned back to the two of them with a look of despair on her face. "And even if we did get out of this mansion, it's in the center of Marble Jade, so we'd be caught long before we got out of town."
The odds did not look good, but Judy refused to give up so easily. "You escaped once," she pointed out. "How?"
"I faked my death." Skye sighed. "Now that they know I'm still alive, it won't work a second time. And even if it did, it took months for me to make the journey to Zootopia. I barely survived…" A pained look crossed her face at the memory, and she shook her head sadly. "No, it's out of the question. We'll have to find another way." She glanced nervously at the side door. "And we'll have to find it soon. His dinners usually only last fifteen or twenty minutes."
Nick finally stood up on his feet. A confident smile spread across his face. "Don't worry! Carrots and I have gotten out of stickier situations than this!"
Judy rolled her eyes. "That was one time, Slick." She shuddered. "And it took me a week and a half to get all that chocolate out of my fur."
"Lucky you, it took me nearly a month. The point is, we always find a way out." Nick's eyes wandered to the far wall and his eyelids drooped down in the first smug grin that Judy had seen from him in a while. "And I think I just found it."
Judy followed his gaze, her eyes landing on the fire that was currently lit in the fireplace on the wall behind the desk. It was not a particularly large fireplace; it was just big enough for a log to fit inside. She recalled an old movie she watched once, where a fireplace spun around and led to a hidden room on the other side, but this fireplace was too small for that. In fact, she wondered if she would even be able to fit inside of it if she tried…
Her eyes widened. "Nick, you're a genius!"
Nick smirked. "Do go on," he encouraged.
Skye raised an eyebrow. "Did I miss something?"
Judy ignored her. As quickly as she could, she took off her coat and gave it to Nick, not wanting for it to get in the way or, worse, get dirty. She shivered at the newfound lack of warmth, but she pushed past her discomfort, knowing that this was nothing compared to how cold it was about to get for her in just a few short minutes.
She ran up to the fire and motioned for Skye to follow her. "Come on, I'm going to climb up the chimney."
Skye's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"
"You got a better idea?"
"Well, no, but…" Skye struggled to find her words for a second, before finally going with, "Do you have a plan after that?"
"Not really," Judy admitted. "But it's better than sitting here and doing nothing at all." She grabbed the fire iron from its place beside the fireplace and quickly poked at the log. It seemed to have been lit a long time ago, and it only took a few pokes before the log split in two, releasing an energetic ball of flame and embers before rapidly dying down to something more tame.
Judy turned to Nick. "See if you can find something to put out this out." She thrust the iron into Skye's paws and locked eyes with the vixen. "You need to keep the smoke from going up the chimney while I climb up, okay?"
Skye had to blink a few times before she comprehended Judy's words, but she gave a firm nod and turned her attention to the fire. Judy was grateful that the chimney seemed to be made of brick instead of metal, since that meant it would be significantly cooler, but it was still going to be hot to the touch. She quickly pulled her scarf off her neck and wrapped it around one of her paws.
By now, Nick had run up to the desk in the center of the room and started looking through the drawers, trying to find anything that might extinguish the fire. After shuffling past a pile of papers, he held up something for her to look at. "Do you think this will work?"
She glanced up, and groaned when she saw what he was holding: a compact disc copy of Shriller by Michael Yackson. "Somehow, I doubt it." She motioned for him to return to her. "I'll need your scarf."
Nick unceremoniously plopped the CD back in its drawer and strolled over to her, removing his scarf from his neck as he walked. His smirk dropped from his face and he grew serious. "Just be careful, okay?"
Judy took his scarf and started wrapping her other paw. "I will," she promised.
Skye poked the two halves of the log, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces. The fire released an energetic burst with every prod, before weakening immediately after. By the time Judy finished wrapping her paws with both scarves, the fire was reduced to pieces of red-hot wood and crackling embers that floated up and out of sight.
It would have to do.
Judy grasped Nick's paw with her own and squeezed it as best she could past the scarf that was about to protect her fragile flesh. "I'll be right back."
Nick returned the squeeze. A look of worry crossed his face, but he quickly masked it with his usual smug grin. "You'd better." He let go of her paw and patted her coat. "If not, I'm keeping this for myself."
"Deal." She walked up to the fireplace, where Skye was just burying the remaining pieces of wood under as much ash as she could.
She pulled back the iron and turned to Judy. "Remember, you only have a few minutes before my father returns. If you can't get back to us—"
Judy knew where she was going, and quickly held up a paw to stop her. "Skye, I am not leaving you behind."
Skye started at her seriously. "Judy, the second he realizes you are gone, he will hunt you down. You cannot possibly—"
"I can, and I will." Before Skye could interject again, Judy quickly added, "No time to argue. I am not abandoning you, and that's that."
The arctic fox was quiet for a second, and Judy could tell she really wanted to argue further, but she reluctantly nodded in agreement and offered the bunny an encouraging smile. "Good luck."
Judy took a deep breath. "Thanks. I'll need it."
Not allowing herself the chance for second guesses, she jumped in.
Using her small, athletic body to her advantage, she lunged over the fire pit and pressed her arms against either side of the fireplace. It was warm, as she expected, but thanks to her long-sleeved shirt and scarves on her paws, it was not unbearable. The opening above her head was the perfect size for her to squeeze through, and she quickly shimmied her way up the chimney.
Smoke irritated her eyes and mouth, and she had to stifle a cough. As soon as she was out of range, she heard Skye get back to work on managing the fire pit below her. After a few seconds, the smoke cleared, though only slightly, and Judy took a deep breath before it had a chance of getting worse.
The walls cooled rapidly as she climbed, and she was pleasantly surprised when she came to a point where the scarves on her paws provided her with protection against the cold bricks instead of protection against the unbearable heat. When she reached this point, she started using her legs as well, and within mere seconds, she reached the flue near the top of the chimney.
She knew this was going to be a problem, but now that she was here, she had no idea what to do next. The flue was, by design, a choke point in the chimney, and even if Judy flattened herself as much as possible, she would never be able to fit through it. Unlike the bricks that made up the rest of the chimney, the flue seemed to be made of some kind of clay, and she knew it would be close to impossible to break past it armed only with her knuckles and buck teeth.
She let out an amused sigh when the thought entered her head of Finnick rambling about Santa Claws having to do this every single year.
She leaned her head back to rest against the side of the chimney so she could think. To her surprise, the wall reacted: the brick that she leaned against shifted loosely under her weight. She bumped her head against it again, and this time it moved even further. A smile spread across her face, and she quickly maneuvered her body so she could examine the brick properly.
It wasn't just the one brick—all the bricks lining the flue were loose. Whether by design or by accident, the cement that bonded them together when they were first laid was missing for that particular layer, and only on the one side of the chimney. With only a little force, Judy was able to push one of the bricks completely out of its place, and the gentle thump that sounded afterwards indicated to her that it had landed on a floor of some kind just on the other side.
She peeked through the newly created hole, and she was filled with relief at the sight. It was a gap in-between floors of the mansion. A few air ducts and pipes snaked through the small space, as well as wooden beams that provided structural integrity to the floor above, but it was still plenty big enough for her to fit inside. In fact, she had a hunch that it was big enough for Nick and Skye to crawl around, as well.
She could hardly believe her luck. This was their ticket out of here.
The gap in the wall she had created was nowhere close to big enough for her to fit through, so she had to push a few more bricks into the interstitial space. Even with every single loose brick removed, Judy still had to press her hind legs against the next layer down, pray that she was not about to collapse the whole chimney, and force a few more out of the way. It was difficult, since they were properly held in place with cement, but they eventually gave way to Judy's strong feet. It was still a tight fit, but she managed to squeeze through and crawl into the space beyond.
It was difficult to see, since there were so few places where light could naturally fill in the area. Judy had to stay still for a few seconds while her eyes adjusted, and knowing that she could not wait long, she began listening for anything that might be of help. She heard the faint sounds of animals walking on the floor above, and made a mental note to stay as quiet as possible as long as she was in here so they would not detect her. Straining her ears further, she could hear the quiet hum of a large motor somewhere nearby, and even fainter, a fan moving air through the ducts. For a second, she considered entering the ducts and going back to the room that way, but before she could decide one way or the other, her vision adjusted to the darkness enough for her to spot something.
A faint light shined up ahead, barely bright enough for her to make out in the dark area. She quickly crawled over to it, and found herself looking down at a metal bracket in the floor, nearly as long as she was tall. It was bolted in place between two studs, and held something plastic that almost, but not quite, fitted a hole leading to the room below; there were pinpoint gaps where the fitting was imperfect, and the light from the room was what had caught her attention.
It was only when she noticed a series of wires coming out of the plastic that Judy finally realized what it was: a light fixture. It was larger than any light Judy had ever seen, but since the hole it occupied seemed large enough for a bunny—or a fox—to fit through, she was not about to complain.
She had to stifle a triumphant squeal.
She lowered her head and pressed her ear to the floor, hoping to confirm that this was the right room and she was not about to accidentally drop in on Alex Faulkner's dinner. To her dismay, she was only greeted with silence. The small gaps that let light bleed up to her were too microscopic for her to look through, and she dared not move the fixture out of place even an inch to take a peek in case she was wrong.
But at the same time, she also dared not sit here and think up any other ideas; every second that passed was another second that brought all three of them closer to a terrible fate.
Feeling she had no other choice, Judy slid the two scarves off and pressed one of her paws to the plastic casing underneath the metal bracket. As slowly and carefully as she could, she pushed it a fraction of an inch to the side. Her breath caught when the light fixture on the other side scraped loudly against the ceiling, and she stayed frozen for several seconds until she was sure that nobody had heard her. Thankfully, that had created enough of a gap for her to peek through, and she lowered her head once again so she could examine the room below.
She let out a sigh of relief when she saw Nick standing on the ground below, looking straight up at her with a sly smile on his face.
Finally able to throw caution to the wind, Judy pushed her paw against the plastic again, this time rotating it instead of pushing it aside. After just a few turns, the fixture came loose and fell down a foot or so before the wiring for the light bulb went taut and caught it. The fixture hung off to one side of the hole, fully exposing her to the two foxes in the room below.
Skye walked into view, coming to a stop just beside Nick. She stared up at Judy and raised her eyebrows. "Wow, Judy."
Judy beamed with pride. "I know, that was kind of awesome, wasn't it?"
Nick smirked. "No, not that." He raised a finger and pointed at his own face. "You've got something right about here."
Confused, Judy rubbed the area of her face that Nick indicated and looked at her paw. She was shocked to see the paw she stared at was no longer gray, but pitch-black. She quickly brought it back up to her face and patted her it against her cheek repeatedly, filling the air around her with a cloud of soot. She looked over as much of her body as she could, and to her dismay, she realized that her climb up the chimney had turned her—and her clothes—almost completely black.
Below her, Nick let out a hearty chuckle. "You look just like Liz, Carrots," he called.
She groaned. Liz was one of her sisters, and her fur was completely black, except for a white circle just above her tail that she loved showing off to everyone whether they wanted to see it or not. "Don't tell her about this," she begged. "I'll never hear the end of it."
Nick held up a paw and closed his eyes. "Not a word."
Now that she had enough light to see more clearly, Judy was able to take a better look at the metal bracket. At first, she thought it was screwed in on either side, but upon closer inspection, she realized that the bracket was designed with grooves that acted as tracks, so it could simply slide in and out of place along the screws for easy maintenance. With a simple push from her paw, the bracket slid free, and after setting it down off to the side, Judy looked back at the hole.
An excited grin spread across her face. Now that the hole was completely unobstructed, it was ready for Nick and Skye to fit through.
There was, however, still one problem: they had no way of actually getting up there. Even though the room was sized appropriately for foxes, it still meant that the ceiling was six or seven feet away from the floor, and though nobody said it out loud, none of them dared to move any of the furniture underneath the hole for fear of betraying their escape route once Alex and his foxes returned.
Nick turned to Skye and held out a paw. "Come on, I'll give you a boost." When she stared at his paw and hesitated, he grabbed her arm and pulled her close. "Look, we'll get you up there first and figure out the rest later." He positioned her underneath the hole, knelt down on one knee, and cupped his paws together. "You ready?"
"But…" Skye glanced in the direction of the side door, painfully aware of how little time was left, then gave him a worried look. "But what about you?"
"That's the part we'll figure out later. We don't have time right now." Nick beckoned her to place her foot in his paws, and after a brief pause, she did. "Okay, I'm going to hoist you up on the count of three. One, two—"
A piece of fabric fell in front of his face, cutting him off. Startled, he looked up to see where it had come from.
While the two foxes were talking, Judy had taken one of the scarves, unraveled it, and tied one end in a tight knot around her wrist. She was now leaning over the hole, dangling it in front of the two of them. It was so long it dropped nearly all the way to the floor—and it was so thick, she was positive that it would hold their weight without issue.
Or at least, that was the hope.
A look of disappointment crossed Nick's face as he eyed the scarf. "I was looking forward to giving you a boost," he grumbled.
"Maybe some other time." Skye gripped the scarf with both paws and nodded at Judy.
The bunny braced her feet against the stud beside the hole, adopted the proper posture, and leaned backwards, pulling the scarf as she did. When she leaned as far aback as she could, she held the scarf in place with one paw while she wrapped it in a loop around her wrist. Then she leaned forward again, grabbed a new section of the scarf, and repeated the process. She had done this kind of exercise plenty of times in the gym, and she was grateful that she had, because it made this relatively easy.
In just a few seconds, she pulled Skye high enough for the vixen to squeeze past the hanging light fixture, grab the side of the hole, and climb the rest of the way up. Judy waited until Skye settled on the floor beside her and let go of the scarf before she dropped it back down through the hole to Nick.
Nick grabbed the scarf and tugged it twice. "Ding ding, going up," he called.
Nick was a bit heavier than Skye, but with the arctic fox now able to help Judy out, it was not long before the two of them managed to pull him up to the ceiling. As he passed by the light fixture, he grabbed it with one paw, somehow managing to hoist it into place behind him as he crawled through the hole and joined the two girls. Once Judy was free of his weight, she grabbed the metal bracket from the floor and slid it back in its original position. Nick quickly twisted the fixture in place underneath it, once again bathing the interstitial space in darkness.
Judy brushed her paws against each other, satisfied with her work. A fresh cloud of soot danced in front of her, vaguely illuminated by the faint light, causing a groan to sound from the back of her throat.
"Oh yeah, that reminds me." Nick pressed something against her shoulder. "Here you go! You can have your coat back now!"
Any chance of keeping her coat from getting dirty was completely gone now. With a heavy sigh, Judy accepted it from the fox and put it on, stifling a groan as every minute movement coated it in smoky residue. Once she had it on, she turned to Nick and spread her arms. "How do I look?" Nick's night vision was remarkably sharp, and even though she could not see much in the darkness, she knew that he could see her just as clear as if it were daytime.
She heard him chuckle. "I think you missed a spot." In response, she reached out in the direction the voice came from and swatted her paw. She encountered resistance, and she couldn't help but giggle when Nick let out a pout. "Hey, this is my favorite sweater!"
"And this is my favorite coat," Judy shot back. "If I have to suffer, you have to suffer." She couldn't see it, but she was certain that Nick stuck his tongue out at her. She ignored him and turned to the white blur beside her that she assumed was Skye. "Okay, now what?"
Skye paused. "Now what?"
"Yeah, now what? We've made it this far, and now we need to figure out how to get out of here."
Skye shuffled uncomfortably. "I don't know. White Jaws foxes are everywhere, inside and out. I can't think of any way out of here without being seen."
Judy did her best to focus on the vixen in the dim light and gave her an encouraging smile. "I know you can think of something, Skye. There must be somewhere in this mansion we can escape without being noticed. White Jaws can't possibly watch every square inch of this place all the time, right?"
The vixen let out a heavy sigh. "Yes, they can, and they do. As long as my father is in the building, his personal security team will have everything on lockdown. Nobody goes in or out without his permission. Not through the main entrance, not through the rear entrance, not through the basement, and not…" Her voice trailed away, and a second later, she gasped in realization. "There is one way."
The news made Judy's heart flutter in her chest. She allowed herself a quiet squeal of joy and gave Skye a gentle punch on her shoulder. "Atta girl!"
"Don't get too excited just yet," Skye warned. "It's an escape tunnel. It leads to an abandoned warehouse about a block away. My father had it installed so he could make a quick getaway in case Marble Jade ever got raided by the feds. He showed it to me once and told me to keep it a secret. I don't know how many other people know about it. It could just be us, or we could find fifty arctic foxes waiting for us as soon as we step outside."
"Only one way to find out," Nick said.
Judy felt his paw gently grab hers and give it a reassuring squeeze. A shadow moved in front of her, and she guessed that he was doing the same with Skye. She held out her own free paw for Skye to take, which she did a second later. The three of them sat for a few seconds, holding each other's paws in a three-way circle, mentally preparing themselves for what was to come. Alex Faulkner would return any minute and find the three of them gone, and when that happened, the whole town would start looking for them. Based on what Skye had said, it would take nothing short of a miracle to escape, and even if they somehow made it out of Marble Jade, there was no telling how long it would take to contact the outside world for rescue.
To go forward with this plan would mean putting their lives in certain danger. The alternative, however, was to wait here for Alex to kill them anyway, and Judy was willing to take any chance she could for not only her own survival, but the survival of these two foxes as well.
She turned to Skye, and though it was still dark, she caught a faint glimmer of the vixen's eye. "Lead the way."
Nick gave her paw one final squeeze and faced Skye as well. "Ready?"
Without hesitation, Skye squeezed both of their paws in affirmation. She took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and gave her courageous answer.
"Ready."