Chapter 5

Nick and Judy had been given an address in the Rainforest district, a multilevel community based around trees transplanted all the way from Mars on which the residents had built apartments and shops.  Progenitus owned the district and had designed the ecosystem in order to cultivate some of their genetically engineered plants that grew best in the environment, but some executive had sprung upon the idea of “tree houses” during construction and the place had ended up a mixture of laboratory farms and luxury housing.  It was to one of the latter that the bunny cop and the vulpine con artist were now headed, chaffeuring a mob boss and his guests around apparently paid well enough to rent a place embedded in a tree-trunk no less than seven stories off the station floor.

Judy walked up to a door with a sign labeled “Manchas” next to it and rang the doorbell.  The door opened a crack and a black-furred jaguar peered through cautiously.  “Who?  Who is it?”  The occupant inquired.

“My name is Officer Judy Hopps, IRPF.  I heard you were the last person to see Mr. Otterton?”

Manchas closed the door but continued to speak through it.  “Yes, yes I saw him.”

“Okay then,” Judy perked up, oblivious to the signs while Nick rolled his eyes in amusement.  “If you could just answer a few questions for us?  Like, what exactly happened that night?”

The door opened again and Mr. Manchas shifted to show his other eye, “this! Happened.”  Both Nick and Judy suppressed a simultaneous gasp at the sight, a long white scar stretched from his eyebrow down over his cataract-clouded eye and to the side of his face.

Nick, grimacing, asked first “Otterton did that to you?”

“He was savage, a beast!”  Manchas shouted.  “He started to scream and tear up the upholstery.  I had to land to try and control him, but he didn’t give me the chance!”

While they were talking the neighborhood’s public address system started to play an old human-era song at low volume, it sounded ominous but combined with the constant pouring rain it seemed to have a calming effect on the Vectors involved.

The bunny officer brought herself back to the subject at hand and continued.  “So, he just attacked you and ran, for no reason?”

“I could not say.”  Manchas continued, soberly.  “He said something about flowers, and the Master’s Call.  He started to ask me about music but I can’t quite recall what he said.  I, argh!”  The jaguar yelled in sudden pain.

“You okay?”  Judy asked in alarm.

“My neck.”  Manchas reached and stroked the back of his neck as he spoke.  “Wait, what’s…”  He trailed off and slunk away from the door without completing his sentence.

“Did he hurt your neck too?”  Judy inquired, trying to look at him through the crack in the door.  “Mr. Manchas?”

Nick laid a warning hand on the young bunny cop’s shoulder.  “I think perhaps Mr. Manchas has been through enough on our behalf tonight.  Maybe we should come back in the morning?”

“No,” Judy insisted.  “We’ve come this far and I’m not going to waste time now.”  She shrugged visibly as the background music died away.  “Besides, he might need medical attention.  You saw his eye right?”

“I’m sure that if he needed help he would have gotten it by now Carrots, let’s just go.”  But he saw that his reasoning was futile, she was already wedging the door open just enough to fit her small frame through.  The larger Vector opted to stay outside and keep watch.

Judy wedged her way in between the sliding door and its frame and into the small room.  She heard the sound of pouring rain through an open window across from the door.  Its’ occupant was bent over on the floor, cowering in a fetal position.  “Mr. Manchas?”  The crouched figure shuddered as she spoke to it.  “Are you feeling okay?  Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

Suddenly the curled over leopard reared up, the pupil of his good eye slitted and narrowing.  A low rumble issued from his throat as he got on all fours and began to slowly approach the interloping officer.

“Manchas, please.  What are you doing?”  Judy tried to reason with the suddenly feral Vector as she backed up towards the door, finding herself up against the wall.  “We can help you.  There’s no need to do anything rash?”  Before she could say anything else the jaguar leaped towards her, fangs bared.  But Nick reached through the doorway and yanked her out of the way in time, almost dislocating her shoulder in the process.  The beast that had moments before responded to “Mr. Manchas” slammed into the half-closed door and reached a grasping arm through but the fox and rabbit were already turning to run away.

“I told you it was time to leave!”  Nick shouted as he dashed away across one of the tree limbs that acted as bridges between trees in the district.

“How was I supposed to know that he would go, savage?!”  Judy bounded after him, trying to wrench her shoulder back into place as she went.  Behind them, the jaguar managed to wrench the door open wide enough to fit through and he raced after them on all fours.

Seeing their pursuer closing in on them, Judy leapt and grabbed onto a vine hanging from the next level up.  The beast tried to jump after her, but bereft of her genetic reclamations he fell back without coming close.  Frustrated, the leopard turned his attentions to Nick, who was already becoming winded from his exertion.  When he saw the creature come after him instead, Nick panicked and ran straight for an airship dock that branched off from the main skywalk, and found himself cornered against a forty-foot drop.  He turned to face the beast as it came up and slowed down less than twelve feet away from him.  It snarled and growled in warning as it approached but Nick had nowhere left to run.  When he didn’t leave it reared back to pounce again, and found its’ leap interrupted by a mag-cuff binding its’ leg to one of the mooring posts on the platform.

Judy, standing next to the post where she’d just secured the second cuff, shouted for Nick to get out of here.  “How, there’s nowhere to go?”  the fox yelled back.  The panther turned around and swiped at its’ lapine captor but she vaulted it and landed next to Nick.

“Cargo net, right below the platform!”  She shouted as she shoved the both of them over the side and into the waiting net.  Nick fell halfway through one of the gaps in the netting, sized to save cargo containers instead of Vectors, while Judy only barely managed to grab onto a rope to arrest her momentum.  Judy wrenched herself up and tried to stabilize herself as she drew out her Toggle case and made a call to the precinct.

---
At that moment, Officer Clawhauser was a tad preoccupied with this new app he’d just purchased for his case.  It spliced the user’s face onto the body of a dancer accompanying Gazelle.  The user had a choice of watching a pre-set dance video or playing a rhythm game, but the cheetah was still fiddling with the character selection.  “Seriously?”  He exclaimed as his face lined up with a disturbingly familiar body.  “They could have at least paid me for that.”  He was so preoccupied it took him half a minute to notice his terminal chiming with an incoming call.  “Oh right,” he punched the accept key, “IRPF precinct station.”

“Clawhauser!” Judy’s voice rang out from the speakers.  “I need backup immediately!  Jaguar gone savage on Vine and Tujunga in the Rainforest district!”

“It’s Tu-HUN-ga.”  Nick commented, but his voice was almost drowned out by the sound of boards snapping.

---
The crazed panther had managed to loosen himself enough to reach down towards the ropes securing the cargo net.  His claws snagged in the cheap rope fibers and tore at them, the net buckled as the rope began to snap.

“Oh that’s not good.”  Nick pointed at the fraying cord as more fibers snapped and tore.  “Any way out?”
Judy scanned the surrounding area with haste, her eyes eventually settling on something just below Nick’s line-of-sight.  “Come on!”  Abruptly, with more force than he would have expected from a Vector as small as herself, she leapt and shoved him off the side of the cargo net.  They fell for a moment before Judy grabbed hold of a passing vine, arresting their fall until they careened straight into a bundle of crates hanging from another tree.  The net holding the crates up wrapped around the two and they found themselves hanging upside down over the street as just as the police arrived.

“This had better be good.”  Said Chief Bogo.

---
Judy led the assembled IRPF officers back up the tree in triumph, telling them all about how the trail of evidence had led her straight to Mangas (omitting any details about the criminal element) and how the leopard had suddenly turned on them and “gone savage” without any warning.  

But when they reached the dock where Judy had secured the leopard, he was gone.

“Is this some sort of joke Hopps?”  Bogo shouted.  Clawhauser, on the other hand, stared at the post as if he noticed something off.

“No, Chief, he was right there, I swear it on my oath.”  Judy looked confused, where could he have gone?

The cheetah picked something off the post and held it up to his Toggle case, after a few seconds he tapped his boss on the shoulder and showed it to him.  Bogo looked skeptically then turned back on Judy.

“Maybe you forgot to lock the cuffs and that Vector who seemed to have “gone savage” to a timid micro like yourself just opened them.”

“No, I secured them, I’m sure of it.”  But the bunny found herself wracked by doubt.  Had she actually locked the cuffs?  Or had she assumed that Manchas was too far gone to figure out how to open mag-cuffs.

“I’m taking you off this case, and off of field work right now.”  The chief shouted.  “Now, badge!”

Judy thought of trying to argue further, then glanced at his outstretched palm and resigned herself.  She began to unclip the field authority badge from her breast plate.

Unexpectedly, the fox she’d blackmailed a few hours before stepped forward.  “Um, I don’t think so.”

Bogo rounded on the civilian.  “What was that?”

“Look, you gave her 48 hours, no backup, and a jokemobile to solve a case that has had Longbow’s best stumped for a week.  And in just twelve hours she’s managed to find multiple witnesses and locations past that one video you had.  I think you need her.”

“He does have a point there Chief.”  Clawhauser added.

“Fine,” Bogo grunted.  “Our last deal still stands, but the next time you foul up it’s over!”  He turned back to the street level and the other cops followed.

Clawhauser hung back a second and handed Judy a small purge wave, the standard less-than-lethal incapacitating weapons most police carried when expecting trouble, “you might need this.”  Then he ran off to catch up with the rest.  He headed for the passenger side of the chief’s cruiser and as the portly cheetah stepped inside he asked Bogo something.  “Why didn’t you tell her about the mag-cuff?”  He said, laying one of a pair of deactivated magnetic handcuffs on the dashboard.

“That override is only available to the station Director and his personal security.”  The Chief replied.  “Lionhart isn’t going to let her find that otter because he set her up to fail.  I was trying to limit the damage before she embarrasses herself further.”

“But, why couldn’t you tell her that?”

“Our contract with MarsCo allows the corporation to perform a limited amount of their own judicial actions as necessary to maintain station security.  It would take something big to arrest Lionhart without endangering the contract.”  Chief Bogo picked up the cuff and pocketed it.  “And his office has access to the surveillance cams around here.”

---
“Why did you stand up for me?”  Judy asked, back up at the dock where the police had left her and her vulpine companion.

Nick shrugged, “he wasn’t giving you a chance, it just seemed unfair is all.”

“No,” Judy said, “that wasn’t it.  Something else was going on.”

“Oh hey, look!”  The fox waved at a tree hanging over a bridge that led up to the dock.  “Traffic cameras, maybe they saw what happened?”

Judy looked in the direction Nick was pointing, there was a faint glint of metal beneath one of the branches but it was too dark to tell.  She pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on, sure enough, there was a set of traffic cams secured to the trunk.  “Wow, good eye Nick.  Come on.”

They ran back down to where Judy’s car had been parked and she started the motor.  “What, you think Chief hardass will let you take a look at the camera feeds after that whole thing?”  Nick said, jumping onto the back.
“No, but I know somebody in station administration.”

---
The two ran into Bellwether as she was chasing after her boss, trying to get him to sign a tablet with several tabs of forms.  When Director Lionhart reached the door he rounded on her, “look, I have some very important appointments to attend to now, just clear my schedule for this afternoon and handle the rest yourself.”

He slammed the door shut, knocking the diminutive ewe to the floor.  As she scrambled to pick herself back up and find her tablet Judy approached and handed it to her.  “Your boss giving you a hard time too?”

Bellwether took her digital paperwork back and sighed audibly.  “Yeah, sometimes I don’t think he appreciates the work I do for him.”  At the rabbit’s perked eyebrow she conceded, “okay, all the time.”

“I’m getting to know the feeling myself.”  Judy admitted.  “Anyways, remember that time you said if I ever needed a friend at Administration?”

“Oh, of course, come on over to my office, we’ll talk there.”  Bellwether led them over to her office, if the little nook in the building’s server farm could be called such, and Judy filled her in.  “No problem, I can pull that up.”

As she was working at her terminal Judy asked her how she’d come to work for Lionhart.  “Oh, you know his affirmative action policies, he hired me right out of school to be his secretary to show how inclusive he was.”

Suddenly, the intercom on Bellwether’s desk erupted with Lionhart’s voice.  “Smellwether!  I told you to clear my schedule, get down here!”

Frantically, the small sheep hit the button to reply.  “Just another minute sir.”

“Now!”  The director roared.

“Okay, then.”  Bellwether sighed and got up to leave.  “The last couple passwords should be on a post-it in the top left drawer.”

Once she was gone Nick found the note in question and handed it to Judy after examining it for a second.  While he was writing the passwords on his personal Toggle case before he had the chance to forget them he started chatting with the determined bunny.  “Don’t see too many sheep Vectors around these days, goats seem like they’re taking over the wooly ungulate niche somehow.  Think she counts herself when she’s trying to go to sleep?”

“Nick, shut up!”  Judy grunted as she sped past a video of the two of them running from a crazed leopard, then Judy binding it to the post and their narrow escape off the side.  Minutes later a small, unmarked van trundled up to the port and two wolves got out.  As they watched one of the wolves blasted the leopard with a purge wave and while it was reeling from the sensory assault the other entangled it in a net and stuck a syringe in its side.  The wolves paused to disconnect Judy’s mag-cuff with a thin wand device and then carried the drugged out cat over to the back of the van.

---
The van’s digital trail led over to the coastline of the station’s artificial lake where there stood a mental hospital listed as “abandoned” on the official nets, though a cursory glance told them that it wasn’t quite unoccupied.  While the windows remained blacked out one could spot a small guard station over by the hospital’s sole entrance, staffed by a pair of wolves.

Judy assessed the situation from a hidden position in some nearby bushes.  “Okay, I only see two guards there.  Maybe we could take them out before they sound an alarm.”

“Just wait a second fluff.”  Nick cautioned, wriggling to try and find a comfortable position without breaking a branch in the cramped confines of the bush.  “Who says the alarm is manually triggered?  They could have proximity sensors and even if we manage to get close to them those coats they’re wearing could easily conceal automatic weapons or hard edges.”

“Okay then,” the bunny replied, annoyed.  “You’re the master criminal here, what would you do?”

“Hustler,” Nick corrected, then thought for a minute.  “Do you have any protein bars or anything?”

Judy pulled out a small rectangle in a foil packet with the Pulse logo on it.  “Just this, hey!”  The fox promptly snatched it out of her hands, “that was going to be my dinner.”

Nick examined the label for a second, “SuperFood, wouldn’t be too filling anyways.”  He started to peel off the wrapper, “but perfect for this.”  He broke the brown bar in half and tossed the pieces ten feet away from the guard post, opposite of their own location.

After listening for an alarm for five seconds Judy started to get up.  “Okay, there’s no sensors, let’s go…” she stopped when Nick reached over and held her down.
“Just wait and see.”  As he spoke a cleaner nymph flew over towards the discarded food item, followed shortly after by a small swarm of at least half a dozen.  Almost immediately an alarm klaxon wailed and the two wolves dashed out to investigate, one drawing a sub-machine gun from under his trenchcoat.  “Now!”

Judy bounded towards the door, followed shortly by Nick skulking low to the ground.  They made it through just as the other guard, annoyed, blasted the nymph swarm away with a purge wave.  Ducking a corner they hid in a janitor’s closet to assess the new situation.

“Okay, what just happened there?”  The bunny asked, looking up to the fox trying to press himself against a rack of mops.

Nick made sure nobody was listening before answering.  “Smart motion sensors.  Inanimate objects like thrown rocks are ignored, things with moving parts like people, vehicles, or wildlife trigger an alarm.  And if anything is going to draw in enough nymphs to set it off it’s discarded high-carb snacks.”

“Well, I’m impressed Nick.”  Judy replied as she pulled up the facility map downloaded onto her Toggle case.  “Your criminal background led to something productive to society.”  She re-examined the hospital’s publicly-available floor layout quickly and compared it to what they’d seen outside.  “It says most of the patient residences were underwater, some theory about providing a relaxing environment.”

Nick snorted.  “Or keeping crazies out of sight of the public.  You think that’s where they took Manchas?”

“It would make sense.”  Judy replied, listening for footsteps.  “All right, let’s go.”

They went down a staircase and almost passed by a medical lab that was still open.  Judy paused to look back in and saw a room full of wrecked equipment and torn-up furniture.  It reminded her of the back of the skimmer.

A few doors down they passed into a corridor with a curved glass ceiling, an occasional fish swam over the field of view.  Nick stopped to look up into the light-distorting waters, “okay, I do admit, it’s a little soothing to watch the fish go by.”  But then he was jarred from his reverie by a crashing sound to the side and he reeled away from the sight of a snarling tiger slamming against the window set into his room’s door.

Judy tried to take another look but the big cat had already retreated back out of sight.  “I think that was one of the other missing Vectors.”  She said, down the corridor she could see other apertures presumably leading to other occupied cells.  “Come on, we need to see who else is here.”

They passed by cells holding all sorts of Vectors based on large carnivores, Manchas, still partially sedated but aggressive, was down near the end by a set of open doors.  Across from the leopard they saw another familiar face.

“Emmett Otterton?”  Judy climbed up to the window and looked inside, a faint squeaking sound came through the door from a snout that poked carefully out from under the sparse bed.  “I was sent by your wife, we’ve come to help you!”

Suddenly the otter sprang out at the door, clawing and biting for a few seconds before retreating again.  “Sheesh,” Nick commented, “maybe they should consider marriage counseling or something.”

“But, that’s not like him.”  Judy thought.  But as she was wondering what was going on her long ears picked up the sounds of people talking coming down the hall.  Thinking quickly Nick ducked into one of the unoccupied rooms and she went after him, leaving the door open a crack to listen and watch.

“Well, come on, you have to know something!”  Judy was shocked to see Director Lionhart walking towards them, accompanied by a badger in a lab coat that had the Progenitus logo hastily covered with marker.

“I wish I did, but I’m finding no connection between the patients that could account for their behavior.”  The badger said, exasperated.  Still not believing what she was seeing, Judy turned on the video camera of her case and began to record the conversation as best she could.

“Bogo has his best officers out looking for these Vectors, if they find out what’s been happening not even our contract will protect me, he’ll have to arrest me to keep up the public trust in IRPF.”  Lionhart shouted, exasperated at the doctor.  “Well, except for the otter, for some reason he assigned that stupid little bunny to look for him, we shouldn’t have to worry about her.”

Judy scowled as she continued to record.

“We might have to consider genetics, all of the victims so far seem to be Vectors based on carnivorous species.”

“What, you mean like the station Director, a lion!”  Lionhart scowled, “or by extension the entire Felidae family?  My career would be ruined, and the movement would collapse.  That cannot be the case, you hear me?  Wait, didn’t you say earlier that they were all taking that new Progenitus antidepressant, Midnicamphum or something?”

“Nearly a quarter of the station’s population is taking Midnicamphum extract now, there was nothing like this in the clinical trials.”

Suddenly, Judy’s case chimed with another incoming stream from her parents, at the worst possible time.  “What’s that?”  Lionhart roared, “is somebody watching, security lockdown, get the guards!”

The door Nick and Judy were hiding behind closed and locked itself as the alarm sirens wailed again.  A clatter of footsteps in heavy armor came down the hall and Nick groaned.  “Well, that’s it, we’re dead.”

Frantically, Judy looked around the room, the top half of the far wall above the bed was a sheet-glass window giving a clear view of the lake outside.  She drew out the purge wave Clawhauser had given her and checked the settings.  “Maybe not, can you swim?”

“What?”  Nick looked at her incredulously.  “Yeah, I can swim, what of… oh no.”  As soon as he spoke Judy had leapt over to the window, set the purge wave to its’ highest pressure setting and pressed it to the glass.  “You cannot be that crazy!”

She pulled the trigger and the glass shattered, expanding outwards for a second before the water outside came flooding in.  Judy held her arms up to ward off the incoming shards of glass just in time only to get swept back by the flood.  With the entire window gone the water filled the room in seconds, emergency failsafes cutting off the ventilation system.

Nick shoved off the door and propelled himself out the opening into the open water, struggling to reach the surface before his lungs exploded.  His head popped up into the cool night air and he looked around, realizing he was alone.  “Carrots?”  He said in desperation once he remembered leaving her behind.  “Judy!”

A second later the micro bunny bobbed up on the surface, gasping for breath.  “We need to get this to the Chief, immediately!”  She held up her Toggle case and began to kick for the shore.