"They heard. They suspected. They knew! They were making a mockery of my horror! This I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer!"
The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe
Countless times in his career as an actor, Cudd had prided himself on his roles, especially the villainous ones. Long before even his faintest aspirations had gone beyond the law, he had relished the sense of power, superiority, and unbridled passion that evil parts so readily embraced. Oh, the low-brows might roll their eyes at monologues and cackles, but few of them ever imagined the sheer high that came with it all, even on stage.
Doing it for real, with all the winning cards in hand and an old rival standing at his mercy, was a thousand times more satisfying.
When he had finished his laugh, he eyed her smugly. Then he glanced toward Lillian. "Ah, is that confusion I see mingled with your terror, my dear? Did your dear friend never tell you of her old pet project? Let me see; how much time do we have?"
Olivia shook with impotent rage and regret at it all. It was well-known that Night Howlers contained certain compounds that hampered a consumer's powers of reasoning; effectively, shutting off the superego and allowing the id to run free, to put it in psychological terms. This, thanks to other chemicals in the flowers' natural makeup, tended to pair with an escalated combative instinct, causing the unfortunate consumer to attack anyone or anything in reach. Her own research had focused on stabilizing these two; reducing the former effect to modulate such fears as self-doubt, for example, or redirecting the latter to heighten… well, other forms of aggression, as it were.
Catphrodite's Girdle had been essentially the distillation of the first affect, literally turning off higher reason and silencing the voice of free will itself. Depending on how it was administered, it could completely eliminate any and all inhibitions from modesty to survival instinct, or it could even make someone a mindless puppet who would unquestioningly obey any instruction. There had been other less sinister uses, but the danger of abuse as a slaver's drug was too severe to fathom.
As Olivia reflected on this, Cudd glanced at his watch and tsked in a show of regret. "Well, I suppose you shall have to stay in suspense for the time being. The monologue would run too long, and I have a curtain call to make. Perhaps I'll take you on my flight long enough to tell you what your trusted employer did before I push you out."
Olivia could no longer contain herself. With a cry, she lunged at Cudd only to tumble back as he belted her across the face with his weapon.
"Careful, skunk," he snarled, pointing the gun again at Lillian, "or next time I'll forego all mercy. For now, it is enough to know that you didn't hide your research as well as you thought. Yes, I see you already know who betrayed you. Doug Ramses had learned of your project, and unlike you and your old fool of a father he wouldn't let it go to waste. Sadly, your computer safeguards were too strong to simply take it outright. He couldn't move so much as a blueprint outside the system without triggering an alarm, thanks to your brother. So he copied the files, encrypted them against the searches he knew would come after, and buried them inside a mock security program deep inside your own computers. Everything there is to know about Catphrodite's Girdle – the Holy Grail of all drugs – has been hiding right under your constantly upturned nose just waiting for you to hand it over to me. Barracus, tie her up."
Olivia stepped back as her former butler advanced on her, his eyes begging her not to be too harsh with him.
"He threatened my daughter," he mouthed.
Olivia didn't give a wooden nickel for his daughter at the moment. She'd already seen what Cudd was capable of committing en masse, and now he wanted the technology to make any animal alive his absolute slave. It was all too easy to imagine what he would do with that kind of power, let alone who might buy it off of him.
"Go ahead and kill me," she said coldly.
At a snap of Cudd's hoof, Barracus stopped and miserably stepped aside. With him out of the way, Olivia had a clear view as Cudd readied the weapon.
"So be it. Death for you, and a lifetime of grief for your friend. Perhaps she'll end the misery quickly." He brought the weapon under Lillian's chin and pressed it up into her jaw to maximize Olivia's view. Then he brought his face alongside hers, his sharklike grin contrasting with her terror in a nightmarish parody of two theater masks.
"Now, how do they say it on the game show?" Cudd asked smugly before his eyes lit up, either with recollection or the sheer enjoyment of drawing out his cruelty. "Oh, yes. 'Is that your final answer?'"
Maybe her decision then branded her as the lowest of hypocrites, after her anger towards Barracus. Either way, she couldn't help it. "You're a monster," she spat as she put her hands behind her back.
He laughed in reply. "Ah, for someone on the cutting edge you are quite slow," he mocked as Barracus tightly bound his employer. "Monster, businessmammal; it's all just a matter of perspective. Those who adapt the best live and thrive, while others... ah, but I understand your frustration. Evolving is complicated, and it's not easy when the food chain gets upended. Hurry up, Barracus. We're on a schedule."
Barracus paused for one heart-stopping moment as his paw came to rest on the box for the wireless radio, neatly tucked into Olivia's sleeve. The skunk mutely begged – almost prayed – for him to pass it over. Whether he played both sides, or whatever his real intent might be, she needed every chance she could get.
Slipping it into her paw where she could use it, the hyena gave the knots one last tug to pull them tight. "Finished," he replied, nodding to Cudd.
"Then make sure the door is locked, and let's be on our way."
The group of sheep surrounded Olivia and Lillian, hauling them forcefully to the other door. At the same moment, one of them wrapped a hoof around Olivia's mouth. The reason was not long in showing itself. While Barracus' back was turned, Cudd raised the weapon and fired, sending one of the pellets smack against the hyena's neck!
"Gah!" cried Barracus, smacking a paw to the place. He stared at the blue splotch on his paw and tried to process what had happened, but already his mind was beginning to fade.
"Well, ladies, I trust we'll have no arguments from you now. Oh, Barracus, mind the door and give my regards to anyone coming after, will you?"
Barracus' response – half-shout, half-roar – was indecipherable as the steel door slammed in his face.
Far away, another mammal watched the proceedings, having patched into the security cameras by a remote monitoring system – the same sort which, for example, allowed many homeowners to personally observe goings-on at their houses while on vacation. He chuckled as Cudd darted the hyena, enjoying the show with detached interest. He would certainly like to see the goat get his hooves on the formula. Getting it out of him would be far easier and safer than getting it from Olivia's system himself. If the trap which had just been set for the police managed to eliminate one or two officers, all the better. The details were unimportant, however, and the outcome of this particular conflict was of little more consequence to him than the weather report on another planet.
With or without Catphrodite's Girdle, the plan would succeed. It would take years one way or another, but it would succeed. He laced his fingers under his chin and chuckled.
"And they say there's nothing good on television anymore," he mused.
As Cudd was enjoying the first taste of his ultimate victory, Vanya Zarra was in the process of exacting another part of his plan. Her first impulse had been to dart every guard she could for maximum damage, and it had only been professional wisdom and experience that governed her appetite for violence. Now, however, she had found that there was a satisfying side effect to leaving most of the guards lucid; it made watching them routed (and in most cases pulverized) that much more entertaining.
It was just a shame she had to move so quickly on from each massacre, just to retrieve a dumb sheep hardly used to getting a little blood on her hooves.
"What's the matter?" she taunted Bellwether as they took a moment to watch a snow leopard tear up two reindeer and a bighorn ram. "Didn't you ever watch the show?"
Dawn Bellwether looked positively green. "Can we just hurry up and get me out of here?" she asked anxiously.
Vanya rolled her eyes. "Amateur," she scoffed under her breath. "Okay, let's get going."
They reached a point where the duct work was blocked off by layers of metal; heavy steel bars for strength, followed by gradually finer grades of mesh. Even a bumblebee bat wouldn't have been able to get through. Yanya took out a small pry bar and bashed the crook of it against a vent below them, knocking the grate below them free.
"Going down," she announced, dropping nimbly through and swinging just enough to avoid the grate below. Kicking it aside, she stood to catch Dawn as she too jumped down.
A snarl from behind them caught their ears, and they hurried down the passage. This dash brought them face to face with another group of guards.
"Freeze!" shouted a goat, pointing a taser at the two of them.
Vanya flicked her ears back the way they had come, then stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew a sharp whistle. An answering roar came up the hall behind her and Dawn, causing the guards to step back a pace.
"You might want to save those tasers for a bigger target," she advised tauntingly, just before she seized Dawn by the wrist and ran forward, whipping back and forth to avoid the one or two hasty shots. She lunged between the legs of a kangaroo, kicking upwards at the base of his tail to bowl him flat on his face.
The guards' efforts to turn and pursue stopped cold as a roar sounded behind them. Smirking, Vanya wished she had time to watch.
"Let's go," she ordered, rushing off down the hall. She did her best to recall the blueprints she had memorized in preparation for this jailbreak. True to her memory, another vent stood just ahead of them.
"Inside!" she ordered, yanking Dawn after her.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?!" demanded the sheep as they crawled through the vents.
Vanya snorted. "Asks the one who lost to a rabbit with a dollar store trinket," she uttered under her breath. "Trust me, 'mayor,' I was pulling harder breaks than this before you were even on a ballot."
Chafing at the vixen's insolent manner, Dawn considered whether to stop right then and there. She could only take so much mockery, especially from a fox. On the other hoof, the latest polls showed that half the city was strongly in favor of reinstating the electric chair just for her. All things considered, she kept going.
"So did William Cudd send you to bail me out?" she asked boldly.
Vanya glanced over her shoulder with the first ounce of respect she'd shown since she let on that she wasn't really the sheep's new lawyer. "So you figured that out?" she asked with a spark of interest, never abating her forward crawl. "Not bad. Even I wasn't supposed to know his real name. How'd you guess?"
Dawn snorted. "It wasn't that hard. He was the only one who knew enough about my plan to do anything with the leftovers, and none of my hired help were exactly evil mastermind material." She didn't add that up until shortly before the plan launched, she and the goat had been something of an item.
Chuckling, the vixen bit back her opinion that neither was Dawn Bellwether. "Well, he must have a thing for your mind," she remarked, coming up on a duct which she was fairly sure marked their way out. "He's got a private flight booked out of the country for you and all the rest of the merry gang. Excuse me while I radio in and check if the coast is clear."
She pulled out a radio – the prison would be jamming any and all cell phone communications – and squeezed the Talk button. "Are we clear for takeoff?" she asked.
The answer came back in her earpiece. "Guards are busy with their friends inside, and nobody's noticed the sabotaged security gate," came the reply. "All we need are you and the guest of honor."
Vanya smiled and pried the gate open, dropping neatly through. "Our chariot awaits," she sing-songed.
Dawn was just about to follow when disaster struck. As she let go of the edge, a protrusion from the torn-off-metal caught her and left her hanging, neatly as a pinata, by the tuft of wool on top of her head.
"AAAAAHHH!" she shrieked, pain shooting through her neck and scalp. She flailed helplessly, trying to get loose or at least pull herself back up. If Vanya had come of a religious upbringing, she might have thought of Absalom of old, snagged by his glorious locks as he fled his attempted coup. Alas for Vanya, she had only read all the wrong books.
Failing to appreciate the grim irony, Vanya's pulse spiked. "Quiet!" she hissed, dropping the Nigh Howler gun and fishing in her belt for a knife. A quick parkour move would get her up to where she could cut through the tuft and get them both out of there, hopefully before any guards showed up.
Gravity beat her to the punch, as Dawn's tuft tore free of the metal and the sheep plummeted on top of Vanya. The vixen had just enough time and presence of mind to toss the knife away and avoid an accidental stab before Bellwether landed clumsily on top of her.
Dawn rose to her hands and knees, groaning at the haphazard landing, but she had little time to even consider that minor inconvenience. What had begun as a groan from Vanya suddenly turned into a growl.
What had happened was that, as Vanya dropped the gun, she failed to notice that the ammunition clip had popped open. When Dawn so unceremoniously landed on her, her head had whacked against the floor right on top of the last remaining Night Howler dart, smashing it like a grape.
For the first time in her criminal career, Dawn Bellwether had a ringside seat as her own evil genius took hold. Horror flooded her mind as she watched Vanya's eyes narrow and her teeth bare, and as the vixen crouched that horror turned to naked, unrestrained terror. With a panicked scream, the sheep tore off down the hall as the once cold-blooded killer tore after her in the full red-hot grip of a Night Howler fury.
"Shoulder doing okay?" asked Judy as she sped through the tunnel, going just slowly enough to avoid wiping out in case the passage made some unexpected turn. It ran fairly straight, only turning here and dropping or climbing a little there, bored as it was along a layer of softer stone than those above or below.
Nick took his paw off the bandage and checked for any signs of more blood seeping through. "I think it's stopped," he announced after some inspection.
"Keep the bandage on anyway," she ordered. She didn't have Nicole's expertise, but she did know even from her old days on the family farm that only qualified medical personnel should remove dressings from really bad wounds. She gripped the wheel tighter as she focused on the road ahead, vowing to herself that she would make Cudd answer for this if it was the last thing she did.
"I'm going to check in on Poisson," she said, feeling for the power button on her wireless radio. "We might be close enough that it'll work. "Olivia, can you hear me?"
There was a moment's pulse-quickening silence before Olivia's voice answered. "You know they'll hear Barracus through the loading dock door," she said to someone. "Your trap was just a waste of time and the only good fighter you have with you."
Another voice came through; fainter, but not faint enough to escape Judy's ears. "You underestimate the rest of my help. The last time one of them faced Officer Hopps, I understand she needed the next day off for medical care. He only lost because she had backup."
Judy bristled at the indignity of hearing it put that way, but she kept listening.
"As for Barracus, he had played his part as long as I dared keep him in it. I couldn't trust him to keep playing along any longer, so I took his mind off divided loyalties."
It didn't take a genius to put the pieces together. Cudd must have poisoned Barracus with the Night Howler serum and left him where anyone trying to come in by the loading dock would get a face full of savage hyena. Even more, the reference to a loading dock meant they were probably either at a factory or a warehouse. 'Thank you, Olivia,' she thought to herself. First order of business when they got wherever they were going would be to find another way in. Now, if only she could keep that egomaniacal goat talking.
"What's she saying?" asked Nick. He could hear that a voice was coming from Judy's earpiece, but not what it was saying.
"Sush!" Judy hissed back. Every crumb of information they could get would be useful.
"How do I know you'll just take the elevator up to Meadowlands and let us go unharmed?" asked Olivia anxiously.
Cudd's reply sounded suspicious. "What are you prattling on about?" he asked.
Judy stopped the car, just long enough to open her phone and pull up Chief Bogo's contact. "Text him," she ordered. "Obearon is William Cudd. Pwasson factory below Meadowlands farm. Avoid loading dock door."
Nick wasted little time in heeding her instructions as Olivia did her best to allay Cudd's suspicions.
"How do I know you won't hurt Lillian once I give you what you want?" Olivia pressed.
'Keep it up, Olivia!' Judy thought, well aware how ironic it was to find herself rooting for the skunk like this. Lillian was alive, and Cudd was using her to force Olivia's cooperation. Hopefully, that meant they would be there for a while. Maybe Olivia could even use their need of her to stall for time somehow.
"Don't be so naïve, my dear," Cudd smirked. "There's no way you can know I won't, and even you're not stupid enough to take my word for it. You'll obey me because you're too weak to say the word and have your dear Lillian turned into a raging monster with a future of manic depression."
'So, he has at least one shot left, unless he's bluffing,' Judy thought to herself.
"Besides," Cudd added with a telltale click-clack that Judy knew all too well, "although I would much rather let you live to face the totality of your ruin, I can still make my fortune overseas with the formula I tested at your mansion. So if you decide not to cooperate, I could just as easily dispose of you or Lillian with more… conventional methods."
Judy's stomach tightened into a knot, and her awareness flicked to the Chupacabra sidearm discreetly hidden under the sash at her waist. Cudd was thoroughly enjoying the chance to flaunt his winning hand, waving it around card by card to weaken Olivia's resistance. For the moment, Judy hardly dared to think about the damage Cudd could do if he escaped with his new formula. Right now, her main priorities were the two skunks held inside that building and the goat who had them – perhaps literally – at gun point.
She was this game's ace up the sleeve, and she had no choice at all but to win… no matter what the cost.
Well, I hope you all are as on edge from reading that as I am from writing it. Not much to say, but thanks for reading and stay tuned.
As far as the Easter Eggs in the previous chapter go...
Winnie the Pooh was indeed Ellen's inspiration for disabling the bear with an urn over the head. Useful fact: If you ever need to calm an animal down or make it submissive, covering its eyes is usually effective. This is not recommended for wild animals, especially bears, for obvious reasons. Kudos to cdchromebook for this one.
When Scott Lionheart tells the zebra "Hooves off my pop!" he paraphrases a line from a fight scene in Lady and the Tramp 2, Scamp's Adventure. Didn't quite nail this one, but close.
The reference to Surviving Disaster does echo some elements a couple of chapters back, but in this latest case it was actually when Xavier plots their strategy against the bear - specifically, when he thinks about kill zones, fire extinguishers, and the fact that they don't have any high heels to MaGuyver into stabbing weapons. Please note that all this information should only be used if your life is in danger, and at your own risk.