Judy Hopps, Corporate Cop Part 4
The story starts to come to a close.
As Judy ran through the city she pulled up her Toggle case and logged into her police account. Luckily, she found that her credentials were still valid, and the tracking beacon she'd placed on Finnick's van was still operational. She found the van tucked into an alley and walked up to rap on the back door.
The odd cyborg Vector answered the door with a shock baton in hand. "What?" His eyes rested on Judy and his face betrayed a sign of recognition. "Officer Judy Hopps, not in uniform and therefore probably not on duty. What are you doing here?"
"Hi, Finnick? I was wondering if you knew where I could find Nick. He's not in trouble or anything," she reassured him. "In fact I could use his help."
"May I inquire as to the nature of this help?" Finnick asked in response, his eyes scanning her for responses. "The most probable explanation I can imagine involves an insurmountable size difference."
"What?" Judy asked incredulously. After a moment's thought it came to her. "Ew, no. I think I've figured out the reason why predatory Vectors are going berserk, and I need his help to find the ones responsible."
"So, it was the result of deliberate action then?" Finnick said quizzically.
The former cop shrugged, "maybe, I have a theory, but it's unconfirmed. It seems to fit though. A combination of Midnicampum extract and the Master's Voice."
Finnick seemed to consider for a moment. "An intriguing hypothesis, not a theory. Your evidence?"
Judy sighed, this endless line of inquiry was getting tedious. "My uncle Terry went nuts while eating one of the flowers and listening to analog Gazelle music. Look, will you just give me Nick's address if I share the video with you?"
"Nic'las Wilde does not keep a permanent address, but I can certainly provide you with a list of his frequent locations in exchange for the data you offer. If that is what you think you owe."
"Okay, thanks." Judy held out her Toggle case with the video up and Finnick grasped it. After a second the words "upload complete" appeared on the screen and he gave it back. When Judy glanced at it again she noticed that there was now a file filled with GPS coordinates and annotations. "Wow, that was fast. Bye!" She turned and ran off.
The Cogsune that referred to itself as "Finnick" reviewed the video file and correlated with the other data it had collected on the "savage preds" phenomenon. Evidence appears to support hypothesis of Officer Judy Hopps, it thought. Master's Voice requires analog sound. Gazelle's concert in six days will be broadcast by analog radio. At that time Vectors taking Midnicampum will become berserk. It opened a panel and withdrew a battery from the van, puncturing it and pouring the acid over its equipment. Must destroy traces prior to field upload.
Judy found Nick in the third location she checked, under a bridge in one of the station's parks. He was laying back in a lawn chair next to a small cooler, drink in hand and his eyes covered by mirrored lenses. "Nick," she exclaimed, leaping down to his level. "There you are!"
The fox turned to glance at her as she landed. "Go away little bunny." He said, his voice slurred by the contents of his glass. "Don't you know not to approach a dangerous pred now?"
"What?" Judy said, confused. "Nick, it's me, Judy."
"Oh?" Nick lifted his sunglasses to peer at her, his eyes dilated from intoxication. "Well, if it isn't Officer Carrots, you here to blackmail me into defaming another species?"
"No, no!" Judy was horrified. "I don't want to do that, not ever!"
Nick laughed drunkenly, spilling the remnants of his drink. "Didn't stop you before. You made felines look like they were all flaming bigots." He pulled at his eyelid, showing off his slitted pupil. "Foxes are closer to feline than other canidae in the first place, what do you think people would think of one who got some cat genes spliced in?"
"Nick, you know I didn't mean to do that, the media ran away with..."
"And that's not all." He continued. "Then it turned out that any Vector descended from predator species might suddenly go savage and nobody can trust us. As if it weren't hard enough for a fox to be trusted already."
"I'm sorry." Judy said, cutting him off. "I got carried away and things weren't handled as delicately as they could be."
Surprised, Nick fell out of his chair, he fumbled on the ground for a few minutes before drawing out a stim puff and inserting it into his mouth. He depressed the button, coughed, and started to find his footing again. "Wait," he said as he sobered up at an accelerated pace, "did you just apologize for that load of drek?"
Judy's expression shifted to a slow glower up at the formerly drunk fox. "We were played." She told him flat out. "The savage Vectors were all drugged. Midnicampum does something to their brains to make the Master's Voice affect them differently."
"Master's Voice?" Nick replied incredulously. "You do know that's an urban leg-ULP!" He started retching mid-sentence and Judy lept out of the way of a small flood of vaguely fruit-scented alcohol. "I forgot why SoberUp went off the market. But seriously, it sounds a little far-fetched."
Judy showed him the video, "Okay," he admitted. "That does seem a bit convincing. Now we just need to find someone who's been buying up a lot of flowers and tapes."
The bunny ex-cop did a quick search and pulled up an article about a lateral weasel getting caught stealing. "You wouldn't by any chance know this guy, would you?" She said, pointing to the mugshot in the article.
Nick grinned. "I know everybody."
Duke Weaselton was easy to find, he was still recovering from the flurry of needles prior to the arrest and couldn't run far. One small favor from Mr. Big later and he was all too happy to spill his guts. He had been planning to sell his loot to a ram by the name of "Dug", a none-too-pleasant character from the sounds of things. The ferret also told them where to find Dug.
The con artist and the ex-cop followed the directions to a station of the underground rail that had been inoperative for years, station maintenance not bothering to fix it when the accountants had decided it wouldn't be cost-effective. The entire area supposedly off-limits, the ram had holed up in the station offices, the lit hallways had been filled with hydroponic shelves growing the genetically-engineered flowers that produced the drug that had been turned to deadly purposes. "Looks like Dug wasn't taking any chances on the victims having the proper prescriptions." Nick commented as Judy began to take pictures of the entire setup.
A door at the end of the hall opened, and a large sheep in a hazmat suit walked through. Nick quickly pulled Judy behind a shelf as Dug gathered up some flowers and dumped them into a press. While the two watched from their hiding spot he distilled the fluid from the flowers into a dark purple liquid that he filled a small capsule with. Then he stopped to answer a call on his headset. "Yeah? Who's the target this time? Cheetah? Ex-Pulse? Reclaimed? Yeah I can hit him." He opened a drawer and withdrew a glove with an odd device affixed to the outer side. As he slotted the capsule of serum into the glove device Judy recognized the short barrel between the index and middle fingers, a Shardshot! "Please, I was able to sink a dart through the open window of a flying skimmer at 30 meters, I can get some cheetah easily."
Judy shuddered, from the sound of things Dug had darted Otterton with the drug using a weapon that was supposed to be extremely short-ranged. He'd probably been behind Manchas' apartment while she and Nick had been talking to him. Waiting for an opportune moment to sic a berserk leopard on them. She had to stop him, and quickly.
Before the ram knew what was happening a flying grey-furred foot slammed into the back of his head and he slammed face-first into the wall. Judy wrenched the shardshot from his stunned hand and tossed it to Nick, who was scrambling to catch up with her. "Are you crazy?!" He shouted after her.
Dug was trying to throw Judy off of him but she held tight to the back of his neck. "He's responsible for all those Vectors losing their minds. He almost killed us back in the Rainforest district!" As she yelled back the ram took advantage of her momentary distraction to grab her by the throat and hold her out.
"You annoying little pest, I'll OW!" Dug shouted in pain and Judy glanced in Nick's direction as he pulled back the Shardshot to fire another shrapnel dart into the large sheep. "That's not going to work fox!"
Just then, Judy heard a voice from the earpiece in Dug's ear, she was close enough now to pick it up from its' location buried deep in the sheep's ear. "What? Who are you speaking to? What's happening?" The voice was scrambled but the confusion was apparent.
"Officer, Judy, Hopps, IRPF." The bunny croaked out as she struggled to kick free of her captor's grasp. "You're under arrest."
The earpiece's "active" light switched off. A third dart struck Dug and he began to wind back to throw the micro rabbit in his grasp, but then something clicked on the lab bench. A large device with a robotic armature behind a glass case picked out a black plastic disc and placed it on a turnstile. "Oh no." Dug gasped, his eyes narrowing into barred slits in terror. "No, it's not that bad yet!"
Angry guitar strumming emanated from the machine, followed by gutteral screaming in what could barely be recognized as Old English. Realizing what was about to happen Judy struggled harder to get free, dropping to the floor when Dug's grip suddenly slackened. "Run!" She shouted at Nick but he hadn't waited for her warning. Judy hit the ground running as the ram dropped down to all fours and bellowed a challenge to the interlopers who had trespassed on his territory. The little bunny bounded for the exit with the berserk ram close on her heels.
Nick slipped through the door and began to close it, but paused with half a foot of open space left. "Come on, come on." He beckoned to Judy even as the sheep closed in on her. At the last second the fox grapped his bunny friend and pulled her the last foot through and slammed the door shut, locking it just in time for Dug to slam head-first into it. The door shuddered, but the deadbolt lock held.
"Okay," Judy reassured herself as she tried to slow her breathing. "We've got the weapon, and now we have the suspect in custody. Just need to get him talking and we'll find out who's behind all this."
"Yeah, about that." The significantly taller fox said from his position up by the door's window. "I don't think he's going to be talking to anyone, unless there's some sort of afterlife." Judy climbed up his back, eliciting a wince from him, and peered through the glass. Dug laid very still on the floor, his neck bent at an odd angle. While he had inherited the curved horns of his beastial ancestors, his spinal column clearly lacked the same reinforcement.
"Maybe they could do a Body Replacement, that can be done to a dead Vector, right?"
"By the time IRPF got down here and moved him to a medical facility capable of performing that kind of Surgery, his brain would probably be a bit decayed. And that's even before we take into account the head trauma and the drugs. Didn't they say they tried Body Replacement on some of the other Vectors?"
"Oh, yeah." Judy remembered, "they did. But maybe after we tell them the cause maybe Progenitus could devise a cure for that?"
Nick looked at her critically. "For all we know, Progenitus could be responsible for all this, they created those flowers after all." He gestured at the field. "We'll probably need to get to the bottom of this ourselves."
Judy sighed and pulled out her case. "At least we have the lab and the weapon," she glanced at the heavily illegal assassination tool where Nick had dropped it, then went back to flicking through the photos. She paused at a pic of a wall calendar and zoomed in. "What's this?" The current day was marked with a crudely scrawled "B at radio".
The fox peered over her shoulder at the pic. "Maybe it could refer to the analog radio tower under construction? They say when it's done it'll be able to transmit audio in its' purest form to the whole system." Both of them tensed as they realized what it meant. "Perhaps we should go check it out right away."
Judy shot off an email with all the evidence they'd gathered to Chief Bogo's office and darted off for the tower construction site. Most of the massive radio transmitter was being built on the exterior of the station but the programming and administration offices were on the interior touching the eastern hull. For the day construction was stopped, the reason becoming apparent as Nick and Judy spotted the station admin skimmer parked outside. The two were halted at the entrance by two security guards in face-concealing MarsCo Hardcase armor. "This is a restricted area, where are your permits?"
"This is urgent!" Judy protested. "We need to speak with whoever's in charge right away."
As she tried to debate her point with the guards the front door opened and a familiar-looking ewe stepped out. "Oh, Judy, what a surprise to see you here. Let them in." The guards hesitated but stepped aside to allow the odd pair into the building.
"Director Bellwether," Judy said as she went through the door to speak with the station's highest authority. "The berserk Vectors aren't random, or natural. They're being targeted with Midnicampum drugs and the Master's Voice. We found an assassin with a Shardshot filled with the drugs." At her prompting Nick held out the glove they'd found.
"You arrested him then?" Bellwether asked, staring at the Shardshot.
"No," Judy said, regretfully. "He was dosed with the Midnicampum during the fight and whoever he was working for activated the Voice remotely. He broke his neck trying to ram us."
"Well, with Dug gone I doubt whoever they are will be infecting anyone else for a while. Good work Officer Hopps." Bellwether held out her hand to take the Shardshot. "You can give that to me now, I'll make sure the crime lab verifies it."
Nick started to hand over the glove but Judy stopped him. "When did I tell you his name?" Slowly, the pieces began to come together in her mind. The first savage Vector was in Lionhart's office, Lionhart had mistreated Dawn Bellwether, she would have had the means and opportunity to insert a Vector taking Midnicampum into the office and trigger the Voice, and a motive.
Bellwether scoffed. "What does it matter. Just give me the glove."
"No." Judy pulled at Nick's arm and led him off into a side corridor.
The two guards from outside followed them in and stopped by their boss for orders. "Get them."
Nick and Judy ducked a corner, dashing through incomplete corridors and vaulting support beams. Keeping just ahead of the guards. But, on one of her leaps a protruding length of cable caught Judy on the leg and she tumbled to the floor, clutching her ankle.
Her vulpine companion stopped beside her. "Carrots? You okay?"
"I sprained my leg." She winced from the pain. "Go, I'll just slow you down. Get the evidence to Chief Bogo."
"Not without you." He said. "They'll kill you if you catch you."
"Yeah," Judy admitted. "She'd probably make it look like a mad predator did it like Lionhart was planning. Good thing we have the glove." Her eyes widened in sudden realization. "Wait, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Less than a minute later the guards found Nick slinging Judy over his shoulder. He dropped the Shardshot in surprise and ran off, but weighed down by his burden they caught him easily. Bellwether arrived shortly after.
"Judy, Judy, Judy." The ewe intoned. "Such a waste."
'What are you going to do with us." The limp bunny sputtered. "Turn me into a mad beast like you did to your last patsy?"
One of the guards picked up the Shardshot and handed it to his boss. She slipped it deftly onto one hand and examined it. "No, no. That was simply the most expedient way to silence Dug. It's fortunate he broke his neck else we'd have a savage prey Vector running around. Can't have that now can we?" Without warning she flexed and shot a dart straight into Nick's back. He yelped in pain and tried to escape. "There was a pit dug for a garage over that way, toss the two of them in there."
"Why?" Judy asked. "Why does it matter so much that only preds go savage? You've got Lionhart's job now. Why even bother continuing with this ploy?" The guard carrying her and Nick took them to the side of a quikcrete pit with eight-foot-walls, just high enough that neither of them could climb out the smooth walls.
"What? You think that's all this is? A power ploy?" The guard dropped the two over the side. "I did this to save my species before predators like Lionhart and his Felis Supremis drove us into extinction."
"What?" Judy exclaimed as she found her feet again. "I thought they were targeting rabbits, not sheep?"
"Oh, they're not actively targeting us, but their predatory instincts have been driving us under for centuries. How many sheep do you see these days?"
"You're sounding like a Feline Supremicist now." Nick accused. "Canidae and Felidae are the two most populous families because we were made first, we had a head start that's all."
"Shut up pred." Bellwether hit a button on a tape cartridge and music began to play. The fox below started to shudder and convulse, Judy began to back away as her friend dropped to all fours and stalked slowly towards her, lips curled back in a snarl. Satisfied, the ewe pulled out her Toggle case and called the IRPF. "Hello, there's a savage fox here at the radio construction site. Officer Hopps is down.
"You're crazy!" Judy yelled as she was backed against the wall. "You just want to put yourself in charge of the solar system. Are you just going to keep killing off species until you're all that's left?"
"If it comes to that, sure." The sounds of the police barging down the entrance echoed down the hallways. "That was fast, but I don't think it'll be too late for you."
Nick stalked closer and closer to the helpless rabbit, and then, just as the IRPF came in sight, he stopped. "Know what, I don't think so."
"What?" Bellwether looked down, confused. "Why aren't you eating her?"
"Why should I?" He replied, standing up straight, Judy coming up beside him. "Because you hit me with that Shard shooter of yours? Sure, shrapnel darts hurt but they're not too dangerous without toxin."
Bellwether took out the Shardshot again and looked, there was an open slot where the poison cartridge was supposed to go. She was still staring in shock when the police arrived.
'Director Bellwether, that's an illegal weapon." A certain bovine said, looming over her. "Mind explaining why you have that?"
"That Shardshot was used to innoculate hapless Vectors with concentrated Midnicampum serum, triggering an interaction with the Master's Voice phenomenon that made them go berserk." Judy shouted up from the pit. "Director Dawn Bellwether, you are under arrest."
"No," Bellwether said, "it's not going to end like this." She punched the nearest IRPF officer in the groin and ran under his grabbing arms. As soon as she was clear the ewe pulled out her Toggle case and triggered a program. "I think you officers will have bigger problems soon. Bye."
The loud blast of a shotgun rang out and Bellwether fell to the ground, her case falling from her hand. Everybody turned to see Clawhauser holding out a smoking weapon. "I wasn't going to risk it." Was all he offered in the way of explanation.
"I can understand why," Judy said, calling up to them. "Mind getting us out of here?"
One of the officers lowered a cable into the pit while another cautiously approached the Director's prone form. The IRPF agent was barely three feet from her when suddenly Bellwether sputtered out, "execute, program!" There was silence for a minute, then otherworldly music piped up from outside, followed by a series of roars and snarls. "Heh, heh." The ewe seemed to chuckle as she died.
"Officers, prepare to bust our way out!" Bogo ordered, the officers drawing shock sticks or firearms. "Hopps, get out of there!"
The cop lowering the cable turned and ran in a panic, leaving it hanging just out of either trapped Vector's reach. "Life me up." Judy suggested, without waiting for an explanation Nick grabbed the little bunny and held her up far enough to take hold of it. She pulled herself up the wall with ease and upon finding her footing began to feed the cable down herself. Even as the growls and snarls of the approaching horde grew ever louder.
The fox leapt and grabbed at the descending rope, just barely snatching the end of it. He pulled at it to get a better hold on it and almost knocked his bunny friend off her feet. "Careful Nick," she shouted. "You almost threw me back..."
She was interrupted by an orange blur that grabbed the grey bunny and threw her to the nearest wall. Nick gasped in shock and horror before the adrenaline kicked in and he scrambled to scale the sheer cliff with his bare fingers.
Next to the wall a tiger, dressed in a construction engineer's tattered uniform, couched with his prey dangling from his mouth. Judy Hopps kicked weakly at her captor's throat even as her own dripped with blood. "Get off of her!" Nick yelled as he charged. His elbow slammed down into the back of the tiger's neck and its mouth dropped open, releasing the hapless bunny. It turned to face the fox who dared to disturb its meal with unbridled rage showing in its eyes. "Come on," the fox taunted, "you big dumb cat."
The tiger snarled and lunged at Nick with its bared fangs. The fox raised an arm to block and the tiger chomped down on it. Nick yelped and tried to throw the cat to the ground and the two tumbled and rolled on the floor, Nick's arm still lodged in the tiger's mouth even as they struggled against one another.
Judy, abandoned by the warring predators, lay gasping on the uncured pavement. Her trachea had been punctured but mercifully the major arteries remained largely intact, even as she felt blood leak into her windpipe. In addition to her prior leg injury her left arm hung limply at her side and her breath came shallowly as her ribs screamed in pain, souvenirs of the impact. An eye drifted in the direction of the battle, Nick was fighting ferociously but it was clear he was losing. Judy wished she could do something, anything, but what? Despairing, she turned away from the ghastly sight, not wanting to see her friend die. But then, she saw it, her chance to help Nick live. It would take all her remaining strength, but she was dead anyway at this point.
Nick punched at the side of the tiger's face in an effort to force it to release his arm, but it held tight. He was just starting to realize that he was going to die when all of a sudden there was a jerk and the cat's eyes glazed over. Judy stood on the tiger's back, hands gripping a hammer whose head lay embedded in the base of its neck. The bunny looked at the fox, smiled, and promptly collapsed. Nick pried his arm loose of the dying tiger's jaws in time to catch her with his good arm. She hung there, limply, her heartbeat fading fast. It was clear she had given her life to save his, no amount of surgery could recover this little body with the time it would take to reach medical attention. The only thing that could save her in this condition was a complete body replacement, and the brain would only last for... How long would it last? Nick wondered, grasping at a faint glimmer of hope. The fox slung the bunny's body over his shoulder and darted for the exit.
The interior of the unfinished building blurred past as he ran forth on his mission. The fox ducked past protruding girders and grasping paws to reach the IRPF officers holding back a wave of berserk Vectors while their fellows boarded the transports. One of them spotted a bloody fox running towards the transports and reacted logically.
A thousand stinging pellets stung at Nick's face and shoulder, his vision blurred but even still he kept on coming. Another shotgun blast hit him in the gut like a hammer blow and he doubled over in pain, almost dropping Judy.
"Wait," he heard a voice cry out in surprise. "Who is that?" Through his blurred vision Nick saw a rotund spotted shape approach, panting heavily.
Nick held out the limp form in his arm to the cheetah, gasping out "save her." Clawhauser put his shotgun away and gingerly picked her out of his shaking hand. He then began to reach to take Nick with his other hand but the fox withdrew. "Forget me, she's saved my life three times already. Too many debts already." And with that last statement, he collapsed.
Clawhauser turned and ran back to the last transport to leave. He looked back at the prone figure with regret before slamming the door behind him.
Within minutes of the IRPF ground forces pulling out an orbiting battleship trained its laser batteries on the radio antenna protruding from Longbow's hull. Half a dozen emerald beams lanced out and the antenna was vaporized in seconds, along with 20 sq. feet of hull and the body of the station's last Director. The deadly signal was stopped from spreading to the system beyond but for the station the damage was done. Those who retained their sense of mind fled from their suddenly berserk friends and family and streamed to the spaceport in droves. Every available ship was commandeered to carry refugees, filling with as many bodies as their life support systems could sustain before pulling out.
The IRPF left last of all, maintaining order throughout the evacuation. The last of their ships carrying the petite form of a micro rabbit preserved in Vitae alongside the corporation's other fallen officers.
Just outside the blast zone on the interior of the station a few bodies remained twitching. While holo-vids continued to portray decompression as a gale-force wind sucking everything not nailed down into space, the reality was that it barely qualified as a breeze. One fox, beaten and bloodied as he was, continued to draw breath from the thinning air around him.
The atmosphere didn't have a chance to fully leak out, however, as a shuttle docked at the aperture. A suck-suited workcrew disembarked accompanied by a pair of armored guards. While the workers set up the frame for a patch the guards surveyed the wreckage about them and kept watch for signs of danger.
One guard noticed Nick's body twitch. He leveled his rifle at the fox but did not fire, careful to conserve his ammo. Cautiously, he approached, hearing something from the almost dead body.
"Carrots, please." The vulpine mumbled between moments of total unconsciousness. "Save her..."
Astonished, the guard lowered his rifle and called for a medic to come help