Chapter Text
Subjects: Officer Nicholas P. Wilde & Officer Judy Hopps
Status: Held Pending Further Action [Off the Board]
The Past: 5 Years Ago
The air in the back room of the Tundratown construction site smelled of sawdust and fresh concrete. This was before the grand marble floors were laid, before the ice sculptures were carved. It was just the skeleton of what would become the Gallery. Sergio sat behind a folding table, counting stacks of marked bills. He looked like every inch of a Tundratown crime boss—massive, scarred, and bored. Vladislav paced in front of him. He wasn't wearing his signature suits yet. He wore a dusty lab coat over some slacks, his eyes burning with a manic, terrifying light.
"You are not listening, Sergio," Vladislav insisted, slamming a blue folder onto the table. Dust motes danced in the light. "The shipments from the Rainforest District... the timber, the silk... it is a perfect cover for us. We can move the chemical precursors right under the nose of the ZPD."
Sergio stopped counting. He looked up, his black eyes unreadable, heavy with the weight of a hundred winters.
"We move heroin, Vlad," Sergio rumbled. "We move stolen diamonds. We move things that make dirty money. What on earth is this?" He tapped the folder labeled UNITY INITIATIVE. "This is complete science fiction. You want to rewrite DNA? We are an undercover mafia, not some God."
"We are visionaries!" Vladislav countered. "Think of the legacy, old friend. You and I, we have survived the concentration camps. We saw what happens when instinct rules. This serum... it ends the conflict. It creates a proper population that cannot fight back. Imagine a city that does not need enforcers because it has no aggression."
Sergio lit a cigar. The smoke curled lazily into the stagnant air. He didn't care about world peace. But he saw the look in Vlad’s eyes. He had seen that look before—in generals who ordered air strikes on their own villages.
"And the cost?" Sergio asked.
"Minimal," Vladislav waved a paw. "Just a few volunteers. The 'Creative Wing' of the Gallery will serve as the financial funnel for us. You wash the money through the art auctions and sales. I renovate the lab in the old Medical Quarter. It stays in the family–our pack. Just watch this promotional video I have made.”
The barracks were silent, save for the rhythmic click-whir of a film projector.
Sergio sat at the back of the room, his massive frame squeezed into a metal folding chair. He was younger then—his eyes less hollow. Beside him stood Chloe, a rookie sniper with a fresh haircut and a notebook clutched to her chest. Her yellow eyes wide and reflective in the flickering light. On the pull-down screen, a vision of the future was playing. It was slick, high-definition propaganda, saturated with soft focus lighting and medical diagrams that looked impressive to anyone who didn't have a degree in genetics. It was a masterpiece. The music was a swelling, orchestral string arrangement—hopeful, triumphant, and slightly too loud. The narrator’s voice was warm, authoritative, and terrifyingly reasonable.
"Unity is not an ideology," a warm, baritone voice crooned. "It is biology."
Images flashed across the screen: A lion and a gazelle drinking from the same stream. A wolf and a sheep walking paw-in-paw through a sunlit meadow. But Sergio leaned in, his eyes narrowing. There was something wrong with the subjects. The lion’s jaw hung slack. The sheep’s eyes were wide and vacant, vibrating with a subtle, chemically induced tremor.
They didn't look peaceful at all. They looked lobotomized.
"For centuries, we have been told that instinct is nature," the narrator continued. "We have been told that fear is necessary. But what if we could rewrite the code? What if we could burn the predator out of the DNA?"
A complex 3D animation appeared. A double helix of DNA unraveled, the red strands of "predatory drift" being burned away by a glowing purple light, re-knitting into a single, smooth silver strand.
"The Collective offers a world without fear. A world where prey and predator share one nature. One future. One biology."
The scene shifted to a "Success Story." A shaky, handheld shot of a mixed-species couple—a badger and a fox—smiling at the camera. But the badger’s hands were shaking. The fox’s smile didn't reach his eyes.
"Since the treatment," the badger said, her voice flat and monotone, "the noise in my head stopped. I don't feel afraid. I don't feel... anything. We don’t fight anymore. We are…compatible."
"Join us," the narrator concluded. "Help us build the Third Species. Help us end the war before it begins."
The music swelled to a crescendo. The logo of the Collective—a paw print inside a fractured atom—faded in over a sunrise. The screen went black. The lights in the conference room snapped on, stinging Sergio’s eyes.
Vladislav stood at the front of the room. He was beaming. His amber eyes shining with the manic energy of a true believer. He looked like a man who had just discovered fire and couldn't wait to burn the world with it.
"Well?" Vladislav asked, spreading his arms wide, his tail twitching with excitement. "Of course, the serum is in its early stages–it’s not where I want it to be for now. But what do you think? It brings a tear to the eye, does it not?"
The silence in the room was heavy.
"It's... impressive production value, sir," Chloe ventured, her voice careful.
Sergio leaned back. He looked at Chloe, his young protégé, standing in the shadows. She gave a microscopic shake of her head. Don't do it. But Sergio knew Vlad. If Sergio said no, Vlad would go to the wolves in the Outback District. He would go to the Rams. He would find funding somewhere else, and then he would be off the leash, unmonitored and unpredictable.
Keep your friends close, Sergio thought. But keep your madmen closer.
"Fine," Sergio said, exhaling a plume of smoke. "I will give you the money, Vlad. I will build your gallery as you want it. But the lab stays offline until I see those results. If this blows back on the Family... I will shut it down myself."
Vladislav smiled—a beatific, chilling expression. "You are a patron of the arts, Sergio. You won't regret this. It is the future! We can launch the campaign next month. Maybe we can target the universities. The intellectuals. Then more of those desperate mixed couples. Now, if you will excuse me, I must check on the fermentation tanks. Progress waits for no mammals!"
He grabbed the cash and swept out of the trailer, leaving the door swinging in his wake. As it closed, Chloe stepped into the light. Sergio stood up slowly. He walked to the projector and placed his hand on the hot bulb housing.
"He's insane," Chloe whispered. "You saw the preliminary data. The serum doesn't remove a predator’s aggression; it suppresses it until the brain snaps. It's a chemical lobotomy."
"I know," Sergio said quietly, returning to his counting.
"Then why did you fund him?" Chloe demanded, her hand resting on her holster. "Why not put a bullet in him now? Or call the ZPD anonymously?"
Sergio laughed, a low, dry sound devoid of humor.
"Call the police?" He gestured to the stacks of illegal cash. "We are the Tundratown Siberius Syndicate, Chloe. We don't dial 911. If the ZPD looks into Vlad, they look into the Gallery. They look into us. We all go to prison."
"So we just let him build a monster?"
"We let him play with his little chemistry set," Sergio corrected. "We control the money. We control the supply chain. We let him think he is building a savior."
He crushed the cigar into the table, watching the embers die.
"And once he finishes the prototype... once it is all in one vial, in one place..."
"We destroy it," Chloe realized.
"We burn it," Sergio confirmed. "And we tell Vlad it was a wee’ little tragic lab accident. We manage him, Chloe. We don't expose our subjects."
The Present
The world was a violent collision of fire and ice.
Judy drifted back to consciousness on a wave of agony. Her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass and wet wool. Her head swam, the concussion from the explosion rattling her brain against her skull like a marble in a tin can. She couldn't see. The smoke was too thick—a choking, grey blanket that tasted of burning plastic, ozone, and the copper tang of her own blood. The heat was oppressive, pressing against her skin, singing the tips of her fur.
She was moving. No—she was being moved.
A vice-like grip was clamped around her waist. She was being hauled backward, her boots dragging uselessly through the debris, her heels catching on broken glass and tiles.
"Nick," she gasped, the name tearing out of her raw throat like a jagged stone. It was a plea, a prayer, a reflex born of muscle memory. She forced her eyes open, blinking against the acidic sting of the ash. To her left, through the swirling grey currents of smoke, she saw him.
Nick was being dragged by the scruff of his jacket, his body limp and unresisting. A massive, hulking silhouette—Sergio—had him. The bear moved with the terrifying, unstoppable momentum of a glacier calving into the sea, plowing through the burning clinic like a tank, indifferent to the falling ceiling tiles and the sparks raining down like hellish confetti. Judy’s stomach twisted, a physical wring of nausea. seeing him like this—ragdolled, small, powerless—flashed a memory across her mind’s eye, brilliant and painful. Rain against the cruiser windshield. Nick laughed, spinning a paw full of blueberries. "Carrots," he’d said, "long as I’m breathing, nobody touches you."
Now, he was barely breathing. Nick was thrashing weakly, his instincts fighting the heavy blanket of concussion fog. He looked dazed, soot streaking his dark fur, blood from a cut on his forehead painting a crimson river down into his eye. But even in his delirium, he was reaching for her. His arm flailed out, fingers clawing at the smoke-choked air, desperate to bridge the distance.
Then, Sergio tightened his grip, his massive paw bunching near Nick’s neck, dangerously close to his snout. Nick froze. His eyes blew wide, the pupils swallowing the purple irises. He didn't see the bear anymore. He saw a shadow from his past. He saw Vlad. He felt the cold, biting leather of a muzzle snapping shut.
"No—don't!" Nick snarled, but the voice wasn't his usual smooth baritone; it was a high, frantic yelp of trapped prey. He thrashed, panic overriding his injury. "Get it off! Don't—touch—her—!"
He tried to dig his heels into the melting floor tiles, to fight the titan dragging him, but he had no leverage. He was a fox in the jaws of a nightmare. Judy’s heart shattered into a thousand razor-sharp shards. He’s not here, she realized, a fresh wave of horror washing over her. The size of him… he thinks he’s back there. He thinks he’s being silenced.
"Relax, fox," Sergio growled, the sound vibrating through the floorboards like a low-frequency tremor. "If I wanted you dead, I’d have left you in the oven."
They burst out of the back door into the alleyway. The transition was a physical assault. The cold was a hammer blow of sub-zero air that instantly froze the sweat on Judy’s skin, turning her fur into a casing of ice. It was a violent birth, expelled from the womb of fire into a graveyard of snow.
The figure carrying her—Chloe—didn't stop. She moved with efficient, terrifying grace, carrying Judy another twenty feet away from the blast radius before dumping her unceremoniously into a snowbank.
Sergio threw Nick down beside her.
Nick didn't try to stand. He scrambled on all fours, slipping on the ice, his breath coming in hyperventilating hitches. He wasn't trying to run away. He was crawling over her. He placed his body between Judy and the bears, a broken shield of dark fur, snarling at the empty air as his teeth bared in a feral grimace. Judy scrambled up, her survival instincts screaming, overriding the pain in her ribs. She coughed, spitting black phlegm into the pristine white snow—a inkblot on a blank page—and reached for a gun that wasn't there. Chloe had taken it.
She looked up.
The clinic was an inferno. Flames licked out of the shattered windows like hungry tongues, casting long, dancing shadows against the brick walls that twisted and contorted like tortured souls. There were no screams from the test subjects. Silence—heavy, final, and damning—hung over the Medical Quarter, broken only by the crackle of timber. Fred was in there. Burning. The smell of charred wood mixed with the sickening, sweet scent of roasted meat.
Sergio stood over them, backlit by the fire. In the flickering orange light, his scars looked deeper, vast canyons carved into granite. He adjusted the lapels of his coat, smoothing invisible wrinkles, utterly unbothered by the carnage he had walked through. Chloe stood beside him, her white camouflage stained with soot, her rifle slung casually over her shoulder.
"Get in the car," Sergio commanded, his voice devoid of animality, pointing to a black, unmarked SUV idling at the mouth of the alley.
"Go to hell," Nick spat. He tried to stand, to rise to his full height, but his legs folded like wet cardboard. He fell to one knee, panting, clutching his ribs, but he kept one arm extended backward, pressing Judy into the snow, keeping her behind him. He stared at Sergio’s hands, trembling. "You killed him. You executed him."
"We neutralized a simple leak," Chloe said coldly. She pulled off her white balaclava, shaking out her fur. She didn't look like a monster. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were hard, flinty things, but not cruel. "Get in the car, or freeze to death. Your choice."
Judy looked at Nick. He was shivering violently, the trauma of the night compounding the cold. He looked back at her, his purple eyes wide, desperate, and haunted. He wasn't seeing her; he was checking her for holes, checking her for life, terrified that if he blinked, the muzzle would be back on and she would be gone. She reached out, her paw touching his trembling shoulder. The contact seemed to ground him, pulling him back from the edge of his panic attack.
"We go," Judy whispered, her voice steel wrapped in velvet. She grabbed Nick’s arm, hauling him up, feeling the heat radiating off his feverish skin against the biting wind. "We have to know why."
The drive was a fugue state of motion and silence. The SUV wasn't just a car; it was a rolling hearse, sealed tight against the world.
They didn't go to the ZPD precinct. They didn't go to the Gallery. Sergio drove north, past the bleeding edge of the city limits, climbing the winding, treacherous roads into the Tundratown mountains where the trees grew thick as prison bars and the cell service withered and died.
Nick wasn't sitting properly. He was coiled in the far corner of the backseat, as far from the bear as the chassis allowed. His eyes were blown wide, unblinking, fixed on the back of Sergio’s massive neck. Every time the bear shifted to steer, Nick’s lip curled, a low, vibrationless snarl building in his throat. He was shivering, his paws scrubbing at his snout, scratching at phantom leather that wasn't there.
He’s broken, Judy thought, the realization twisting in her gut like a cold knife. She remembered the muzzle from his childhood—not because she’d seen it, but because she’d heard him describe it so many times it had lodged itself in her mind like a borrowed memory. They had seen it in the Textile Mill. Sergio trying to restrain Vladislav. The bear had forced a heavy, industrial muzzle onto the leopard’s face to silence his commands to the test subjects. Seeing that—the snap of the buckle, the stifled yelp—had broken something in Nick.
They pulled up to a secluded cabin buried in the treeline like a wooden splinter festering in the flank of the mountain. It wasn't a vacation home; it was a bunker. The walls were reinforced logs, dark as peat, and the windows were narrow slits of bulletproof glass that glared back at the moon. Sergio dragged them inside. The interior was sparse, smelling of pine, gun oil, and the sharp, electric tang of ozone from the server racks. Corkboards covered the inner walls, a chaotic mosaic of blueprints and surveillance photos. A crate of ammunition served as a coffee table in the corner.
"Sit," Chloe commanded, pointing to a cot in the corner.
Judy sat. She felt hollowed out, as if the fire at the clinic had scooped out her insides and left only pitiful ash. But Nick didn't sit. He paced the small room, his claws clicking rhythmically on the hardwood. He was vibrating with adrenaline, his tail lashing like a whip. He looked like a fox caught in a snare, his eyes darting to the heavy steel door, to the glint of weapons on the table, and finally resting on Sergio.
Sergio turned, filling a tumbler with amber liquid. He noticed Nick’s manic pacing, the way the fox flinched when the bottle clinked against the glass.
"Sit down, fox," Sergio rumbled, his voice a landslide of gravel. "Even you are making me nervous."
"Don't come near me," Nick snapped, his voice cracking. He bared his teeth, but there was no threat in it, only panic. "Keep your paws where I can see them."
Sergio narrowed his eyes, confused by the visceral terror in the smaller predator's posture. "I pulled you out of the fire. Why do you look at me like I am the butcher?"
"Because of what you showed him," Judy said, her voice cutting through the room. She stood up, stepping between Nick and the bear. "We saw what happened in that Mill. Before your fox almost killed us. You put a muzzle on Vlad."
Sergio slammed the glass onto the table. "Vladislav is a dangerous animal! He commands an army of psychotics. I had to bind his jaws to stop him from giving stupid orders. It was merely tactical."
"We... silenced a prisoner," Chloe said slowly, her voice losing its tactical edge. "Standard procedure for a hostile captive."
"It was a muzzle!" Judy shouted. "And you didn't just use it on a petty warlord. You showed him," she pointed to Nick, "that you’re capable of doing exactly what the prey world did to him."
The silence that followed was absolute. Sergio froze, the glass halfway to his mouth. Chloe, who had been stripping her rifle, stopped, her paws hovering over the bolt carrier. They exchanged a look—not of guilt, but of dawn-breaking realization.
"He was only eight years old," Judy said, her voice trembling with protective rage. "The Junior Ranger Scouts. They tackled him and muzzled him because they thought he was savage. When Nick saw you do that to Vlad... he didn't see any tactical decision in you. He saw his own nightmare."
Sergio looked at Nick. Really looked at him. He saw the way Nick was clawing at his own muzzle, trying to peel off a memory. The bear’s expression softened, the granite features cracking just a fraction.
"I... simply did not know," Sergio said quietly. He poured a second glass of whiskey and slid it across the crate, leaving a safe distance between them. "You see, I was once a soldier. I use the tools of war. But I did not mean to wake your undisturbed ghosts."
Nick stared at the glass. He didn't take it. But the feral light in his eyes dimmed slightly as he realized the bear wasn't reaching for him. He slumped against the wall, sliding down until he hit the floor, burying his face in his knees.
"Why?" Judy asked, her voice softer now. "You were his enforcers. You protected him. Why turn on him now?"
Sergio downed his drink in one swallow, the liquid burning a path down his throat.
"Vladislav is a disease," Sergio rumbled. "And I just happened to be the antibiotic."
He walked over to the corkboard and ripped a photo off the wall—a black and white picture of a younger Vlad in a militaristic uniform, standing next to a younger, unscarred Sergio in a frozen prison yard.
"You think the Siberius Syndicate is just a mob?" Sergio asked. "You think we are just simple thieves?"
He threw the photo onto the table. It slid across the surface, stopping in front of Nick.
"Vlad and I... we were not friends. We just happened to be cellmates together. Camp Vorkuta-9. A black site in the old country."
Judy looked at the photo. The background was barbed wire and endless snow. The eyes of the men in the photo were completely dead.
"They experimented on us heavily," Sergio said, his voice dropping to a low, tectonic grind. "The military scientists. They wanted to see how much cold a predator could take. How much hunger. They muzzled us, too. For weeks at a time."
Nick lifted his head, his ears twitching. A dark kinship passed between the fox and the bear—the shared language of the cage.
"Vlad... he didn't break," Sergio continued. "He simply calcified. He was a biochemist before the war. When the regime fell, he took the research. He believed that the only reason we suffered was because of instinct. Aggression. He wanted to cure us of being predators."
Sergio’s jaw tightened. “But that belief twisted. He became obsessed with what he called biological dissonance—predator and prey choosing each other despite what evolution intended. He hated interspecies couples. Said they were proof that instinct was malfunctioning. That love itself was a kind of contamination.”
“He called it Pacification,” Chloe continued, pushing off the wall. “He preached that harmony couldn’t exist while instinct was allowed to choose. In his mind, couples like that weren’t romantic—they were evidence. Fault lines in the species divide. So he targeted them first.”
Judy felt something cold coil in her stomach.
“He recruited the survivors of the camps,” Chloe went on. “Promised them a world where no one would ever be put in a cage again. Where attraction wouldn’t end in violence or fear. Sergio followed him because Vlad saved the rest from the firing squad. So they formed the Syndicate to survive.”
“But the Collective…” Nick murmured, his voice hoarse.
“The Collective was his madness taking form,” Sergio said. “He stopped caring about survival. He started caring about purity. Perfection. He wanted to burn instinct out of the genome entirely. Couples were his ideal test subjects—high emotional bonds, constant stress hormones, conflicting instincts. He said love accelerated the reaction.”
Judy’s ears rang. “So that’s why—”
“Yes,” Sergio said quietly. “That’s why he watched them. Tracked them. Lured them in with hope. Clinics. Trials. Support groups. He told them he could make the world safe for their nonexistent children.”
“He used the Syndicate's money—the money I laundered through the Gallery—to renovate that clinic." Sergio continued.
"So you knew," Judy accused. "You funded this whole thing."
"I contained it!" Sergio roared. "I thought if I kept him close, if I controlled the money, I could stop him from releasing it. I muzzled him physically because I could not muzzle his mind!" He looked at the floor, the fire in his eyes dimming to ash. "I was wrong. It seems that the monster grew. And tonight... it broke the leash."
"So you killed Fred," Nick said, his voice dripping with disgust. "To cover your tracks."
"We killed Fred because he was a liability with a bomb," Chloe said sharply. "He was about to broadcast the names of the buyers. Vlad would have scrubbed the Gala. The Raw Strain would have disappeared into the wind."
"We traded a pawn for the king," Sergio said. "It is quite ugly. But it is war."
He walked to the computer console and plugged in a drive. A video file began to play. It was surveillance footage from the clinic, timestamped an hour ago. It showed Vladislav running from the lab, clutching the silver thermal case to his chest. He was rubbing his jaw, where the nonexistent muzzle had been.
"This is what he took," Chloe said, pointing to the case. "The Raw Strain. Fred was trying to make a stabilizer. But this? This is the unrefined virus. It is airborne. Volatile. If he releases that into the ventilation system at the Gala tomorrow night... it won't just make mammals angry. It will trigger a biological cascade failure. Organ shutdown. Brain hemorrhage. Mass death."
Judy felt the blood drain from her face. She felt completely sick.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why kill his own donors? His own supporters?"
"Because the Gala isn't a fundraiser," Sergio said. "It is a product launch. He has gathered the world’s biggest arms dealers. He is going to demonstrate the weapon on the Tundratown elite to prove it works, then sell the formula to the highest bidder."
Sergio picked up a thick tactical folder from the table. The cardboard was weathered, stamped with the faded Cyrillic insignia of a defunct military unit. He walked over to Nick and dropped it into his lap. The sound of it hitting Nick’s knees was heavy, like a judge’s gavel signaling a sentence.
"This is everything," Sergio said. "Blueprints of the Gala. Ventilation schematics. The list of international buyers. And the override codes for the HVAC system."
Nick looked down at the folder, his paws trembling slightly—not from cold, but from the adrenaline crash. Then he looked up at the bear.
"Wait," Nick said, looking back at the bear, his eyes narrowing, the procedural cop cutting through the fear. "Fred was at the Textile Mill. Why? What was he holding onto in that abandoned warehouse before you... before he died?"
Sergio glanced at Chloe, a flicker of hesitation. "He was holding a specialized signal scrambler. It was rigged to broadcast a false positive in the event of a raid. Fred was providing contingency for Vlad. He was Vlad's last loyalist."
"But why give this to us?" Nick asked. "You're the ghosts. Why not finish the job yourselves?"
"Because if we walk into that Gala, he triggers the gas immediately," Sergio said, pouring himself another finger of whiskey. The amber liquid swirled in the glass, catching the light like a trapped star. "He knows our faces by now. He knows that me and Chloe have defected. He is watching the doors for us. But you..."
He pointed a claw at Nick’s chest.
"You are Oliver Winters. Or should I say, Nick Wilde? You are the invisible artist, no? You are the background noise. You can get close enough to the ventilation controls to insert the override before he releases the gas."
"We can't just override it," Judy said, her voice cutting through the smoky air. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the USB drive. It was sticky with drying blood—Fred’s blood. "We have to cure it."
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. "What is that?"
"Fred didn't just die for nothing," Judy said, placing the drive on the steel table. "He gave this to me before the lights went out. He said it was the antidote."
Chloe snatched the drive and plugged it into the main console. Screens flickered to life, bathing her face in cold blue light.
"Well, he wasn't lying," Chloe whispered, her eyes scanning the scrolling code. "This isn't just a patch. It's a full retro-viral inversion. It targets the Night Howler synthesis and unravels it at the molecular level."
She looked at Sergio. "If we can synthesize this... if we can load this into the ventilation system..."
"We don't just stop the massacre," Sergio finished, a slow, grim smile spreading across his face. "We reverse the effects on the subjects he already turned."
"Play the logs," Judy commanded softly. "The folder labeled 'Marta'."
Chloe hesitated, then clicked the file. A video window popped up. It was grainy, dated three years ago. A female ferret sat in a stark white room. She looked tired, her fur thinning, but her eyes were bright. She was smiling at the camera.
"This is Day 40," Marta’s voice played, tinny and sweet. "The pain is getting worse. My joints feel like they're really burning. But Fred... he looked so happy today when the test results came back. If I can just hold on... if we can just prove that biology doesn't matter..."
She coughed, a wet, racking sound.
"I'm doing this for us," she whispered to the lens. "So we don't have to hide anymore."
The screen went black. The silence in the cabin was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating silence, filled with the ghosts of the people Vladislav had used as stepping stones.
Judy felt a tear slide down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. She looked at Nick. He was staring at the blank screen, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek. She knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about the restaurant. He was thinking about the muzzle. He was thinking about the way the world looked at a fox and a rabbit simply holding hands.
She died for the same thing every interspecies couple wanted, Judy realized, the thought piercing her heart. She died for the right to love without fear. And Fred died trying to fix the mistake of trusting the wrong savior.
"He loved her," Nick whispered, his voice rough with a deep, personal understanding. "Vlad used that love and turned it into a weapon."
"And now we use it to bury him," Sergio said. He pulled the drive out of the computer and handed it back to Judy. "Guard this with your life, Lieutenant. It is the only thing that can scrub the city clean."
"What about you?" Judy asked.
"I will go to the Mill," Sergio said. "If Vlad has any contingency plans... if he sends any more subjects to be burned... I will be waiting."
He looked at Chloe. "And Chloe will be on the roof. Providing overwatch."
"And if we fail?" Nick asked, his voice steady now, calculating the odds.
"Then Chloe blows the building," Sergio said simply. "With everyone inside. Including you."
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Nick looked at Judy. She saw the conflict in his eyes. He was exhausted. He was traumatized by the memory of the muzzle, the death of Fred, the fire—it was all crushing him. The hustler was still screaming run, but the copper taste of righteousness, so long denied, was now filling his mouth.
Judy watched the shift happen. She didn't see the fox who worried about his own survival; she saw the officer who had once thrown away his career to save a city. The mask of 'Oliver' finally fractured, revealing the true face of Nick Wilde—the one who couldn't stand idly by. His jaw hardened. His purple eyes, usually alight with cynical calculation, were now focused with a devastating, protective clarity.
We can't let them die, his eyes said.
"We're in," Judy said, taking the folder from Nick’s lap. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was steady. "But we do this our way. We save the city, and we get the targets. No more bodies."
"Try not to die," Chloe said, the finality in her voice is colder than the Tundratown wind. "The snow is deep this time of year."
Chloe moved away from the blue glow of the monitors, her silhouette cutting through the haze of cigarette smoke and wood dust. She walked to a rusted metal locker in the corner of the room. She yanked the handle; the hinges shrieked in protest, a sound like a dying bird that made Judy’s ears swivel. She pulled out a bundle wrapped in heavy, grease-stained oil cloth and walked back to the central table, unrolling it with a heavy thud. Inside lay Judy’s service weapon—the standard-issue firearm modified for heavy stopping power—and Nick’s sidearm. They gleamed dull and lethal under the bunker lights, smelling of cleaning solvent and cold steel.
"Ah, your cruiser is gone," Chloe said matter-of-factly, sliding the guns across the steel table. The metal scraped against metal, setting teeth on edge. "We have two men torching it in the alley as we speak. It will look like a gang dispute. But these... you will need these back."
Judy reached for her weapon. The moment her paw closed around the textured grip, a wave of relief washed over her, hot and grounding. It was like a missing limb being reattached. The weight was familiar, a tether to the law, to who she used to be before the fire. She checked the chamber—loaded, brass glinting—and holstered it with a sharp click. Nick didn't holster his immediately. He picked up his sidearm, weighing it in his hand, but his eyes were on Chloe. A spark of the old, sardonic Nick—the one who used sarcasm as a shield—flickered in his tired eyes.
"You torched the cruiser?" Nick asked, his voice cracking with a feigned, high-pitched incredulity that almost masked the tremor in his hands. "You have got to be kidding me. I just got the seat settings perfect. Do you know how hard it is to dial in lumbar support with paws this size?"
He looked at Judy, a lopsided, brittle grin plastered on his soot-stained face.
"She was a '25 Interceptor, Carrots. She had heated seats. We had a close connection. I think I left my favourite sunglasses in the visor." He turned back to Sergio, his face dropping the act for a split second. "You owe me a pair of aviators, Smokey."
"We disarmed you," Chloe cut in, ignoring the quip. "We neutralized your vehicle to erase your trail."
"You kidnapped us," Nick corrected quietly, the humour evaporating as quickly as it had come. He spun the gun on his finger—a nervous tic—before slamming it into his holster. "Let's call a spade a spade. You dragged us into the woods."
"We removed you from the board before you got yourself killed," Chloe countered. She looked at him, and for the first time, the sniper’s mask slipped. She looked tired. The lines around her eyes were deep trenches of exhaustion. She looked like a soldier who had been fighting a war in the shadows since the snow began to fall. "Make it count, Wilde."
The meeting was over. The battle lines were drawn. Sergio walked them to the heavy steel door of the cabin. The wind battered against the logs outside, a relentless, howling beast. He paused, his massive hand resting on the iron latch. He looked down at them, his expression unreadable in the dim light, his scars casting long, jagged shadows across his face like cracks in a mountain.
"There is one more thing," the bear rumbled.
Nick tensed, his hand drifting instantly toward his newly returned holster. His tail bristled. "What now? Another trap? A suicide pill in case we get caught?"
"Privacy," Sergio said. He reached into his thick woolen coat and pulled out a small, ruggedized tablet. He tapped a sequence of commands, his thick claws moving with surprising, almost pianistic delicacy.
"Your time in Tundratown – which happens to be one week – Chloe and I have watched you," Sergio admitted, his voice flat. "We have listened to your conversations in Unit 4B. We have watched you sleep. We have watched you pretend to be married in your investigative case."
Judy felt the blood drain from her face, replaced instantly by a burning, humiliated flush that started at her chest and seared all the way to the tips of her ears. The sensation was physical—like icy water poured down her spine.
They saw.
Her mind raced backward, replaying the last few days on a mental projector, the images distorted by shame.
They saw them fighting over an imaginary pillow wall. They saw the way she curled up next to him when the nightmares of the Bellwether case came clawing back. They saw the "almost" moment in the living room, the way her breath had hitched when he leaned in. They saw the striptease in the bedroom before the date—Nick shirtless, his fur gleaming under the lamp, her staring a little too long, the charged air, the pillow fight that had dissolved into breathless laughter. She felt violated. Every intimate moment, every vulnerable look, every secret touch had been consumed by strangers in a secret bunker. The apartment she thought was a sanctuary was just a stage, a glass jar, and she had been performing for an audience she didn't know existed. She looked at Nick. His ears were pinned flat against his skull, his lips pulled into a snarl of pure defensive rage. But even then, he tried to deflect.
"Hope the ratings were good," Nick hissed, though his voice lacked its usual smooth timber. "Did you enjoy the show? I usually charge extra for the shirtless scenes."
"We simply vetted you," Sergio said, unmoved by the sarcasm or the anger. "We needed to know if you would break. You didn't."
He tapped the screen one last time. A red progress bar filled and vanished.
SYSTEM OFFLINE.
He looked from Nick to Judy, his gaze heavy and knowing.
"Tonight is the calm before the storm. You need to rest. You need to prepare. And you cannot do that if you feel eyes on your back."
"Why?" Nick asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Why give up your leverage? You love leverage."
"Because tomorrow, you walk into hell," Sergio said simply. "And a soldier fights better when he has something real to protect. Be Oliver and Elise one last time. Or... be Nick and Judy. It is no longer my business."
Sergio reached behind the door and handed them a heavy-duty, black canvas duffel bag. It smelled of mildew and storage.
"Your clothes," the bear rumbled, gesturing to their blood-spattered attire with a wrinkled nose. "They are completely contaminated. Gunshot residue. Chemical traces. Mink blood. If you walk into the city wearing those, you are a beacon."
He turned his back, stepping out of the small entryway to give them a semblance of privacy—a small mercy after the violation he had just confessed to. The act of undressing was mechanical, forensic, and utterly devoid of the charged intimacy from the bedroom earlier that evening. It felt like an autopsy of their relationship.
Judy peeled off the chunky lilac sweater. It was heavy, wet with melted snow and stiff with dried blood where she had pressed her paws against Fred’s chest. The metallic scent of copper hit her nose, making her stomach turn. She looked at the red stain blooming across the wool—a violent Rorschach test on the fabric of their domestic fantasy. She didn't just take it off; she clawed it off. It felt like burning skin. She balled it up and shoved it into the bag, burying the soft, domestic "Elise" under layers of black canvas.
Nick stripped off his flannel and the corduroy jacket. He stood shivering in his undershirt, his fur matted with soot and sweat, the scars on his arms standing out in the harsh light. He looked at the clothes—the costume of the husband, the protector, the "Oliver" who was brave enough to hold a leopard's gaze—and threw them into the bag with a sneer of disgust.
"Good riddance," Nick muttered, pulling on the generic grey thermal shirt Sergio had provided. "I hated that flannel. It made me look like a lumberjack who couldn't swing an axe."
They finished dressing in the generic grey sweats and thermal parkas. They didn't look like Oliver and Elise anymore. They didn't look like partners anymore. They looked like refugees. Grey, nondescript, and erased.
"You cannot return to Unit 4B," Sergio said, zipping the duffel bag shut with a finality that echoed in the small room. "If Vlad is running panicked, he might track both of you. I will send cleaners to your apartment to scrub 'Oliver and Elise' from the map. It is compromised."
"So we're homeless," Nick said, his voice dead. "Great. I’m back to sleeping under bridges. My mother will be so proud of me."
"We have a safe house in the lower industrial district," Chloe said from the doorway. She tossed a set of keys to Nick. He caught them out of the cold air by instinct. "It’s off the grid. No cameras. No listeners. Just four walls and a lock. We will take you there."
Sergio opened the door. The wind howled outside, carrying the scent of pine, ozone, and distant smoke. The snow swirled into the room, dancing around their feet.
"Clear the board," Sergio said, looking at the fox and the rabbit standing in the doorway of his bunker. "And don't miss."
The safe house was a concrete throat located in the basement of a defunct canning factory on the edge of the canal. It smelled of damp stone, ancient rust, and the sour, metallic tang of old fear. There was a single mattress on the floor stained with water damage, a metal table in the far corner, and a flickering halogen bulb that buzzed like a trapped fly dying in a jar. Sergio and Chloe dropped them off at the heavy iron door.
"Do not leave the premises," Sergio commanded, his voice muffled by the thick steel, sounding like a verdict delivered from inside a tomb. "Do not open the door for anyone but us. My cleaners are already en route to your apartment. They will strip it. They will sanitize it. By morning, 'Oliver and Elise' will be nothing but landfill. We will come for you at 18:00 hours tomorrow for the Gala insertion."
The door slammed shut. The deadbolt engaged with a sound like a prison sentence—thud-click.
They were alone. The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was pressurized. It was the heavy, static-charged silence of a room filled with gas, waiting for a single spark to turn the oxygen into fire. The halogen bulb hummed—a jagged, stinging noise that grated against the nerves.
Nick walked to the far corner of the room, pacing like a caged tiger. He ran his hands through his fur, tugging at his ears, his claws clicking a staccato rhythm against the concrete floor. The energy coming off him was radioactive. He wasn't just agitated; he was vibrating with a specific, sharp-edged panic.
He felt like his skin was too tight for his body. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run, to hide, to get away from the memory of the muzzle and the fire. But mostly, he wanted to get away from her. Because looking at her now, standing there in the dim light, hurts more than the burns.
Judy sat on the edge of the mattress. Her hand was clenched tight in her pocket, fingers wrapped around the USB drive Fred had given her. It dug into her palm, a sharp, physical reminder of the cost of their failure.
She watched him pace. She saw the tremor in his hands that he was trying to hide. She saw the way he wouldn't look at her, the way he was building a wall brick by brick. He was retreating into the hustler, the cynic, the fox who didn't care. And she couldn't let him go.
"We just shook hands with the devil," Nick muttered, his voice bouncing off the hard walls. He kicked a loose pebble across the room. "You saw the way Sergio looked at the blueprints. Cold and detached. He’s a monster, Judy. He’s just a monster on a different payroll."
"We simply don't have a choice, Nick," she said, her voice sounding small in the cavernous room. "They have all the intel. They have the weapons."
"They have a history of torturing people!" Nick spun around, his eyes wild. "I saw the way he looked at you in the cabin. Like you were some variable in an equation. And I’m supposed to trust him to watch your back? I’m supposed to trust the guy who muzzled his own best friend?"
"They watched us, too," Judy whispered, shifting the subject to the wound that was bleeding the hardest for her. The words hung in the damp air, fragile and sharp.
Nick stopped pacing. He didn't turn around. His shoulders were hunched, tight as bowstrings. "Yeah. I know."
"They saw everything, Nick," Judy said, her voice rising, cracking under the strain. She hugged her knees, feeling the phantom eyes prickle on her skin. "The imaginary pillow wall. The nightmares. They saw me staring at you while you got dressed. They saw... the living room. They saw us."
"It was just a job, Judy!" Nick shouted. The explosion was sudden, violent, and terrifying. He spun around, baring his teeth, desperate to torch the vulnerability before it consumed him.
"It was a cover! Who cares if they watched? It wasn't even real to begin with! It was all theater! Can't you get that through your head?"
"But it felt real to me!" Judy shouted back, standing up. The confession tore out of her before she could stop it, raw and bleeding.
I need you to say it, she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. I need you to admit that when you held me, you weren't acting at all. Tell me I’m not entirely crazy.
The silence crashed back down, louder than before. The buzzing of the light seemed to scream. Nick stared at her, his chest heaving, his pupils blown wide.
"Don't," Nick warned, his voice low and dangerous. He backed away as she advanced, terrified of her proximity. "Don't do that. Don't rewrite the script now just because you’re scared all of a sudden."
"I'm not rewriting anything!" Judy stepped forward, tears stinging her eyes like acid. "I'm tired of this damn script, Nick! I'm tired of being 'Oliver and Elise.' I'm tired of pretending that we're just playing house. And Fred died tonight thinking that we were in love. He died thinking we were the only proof that the world could be better! I can't let that be a lie!"
"Fred is dead because he was an idiot!" Nick roared.
He kicked the metal table. It screeched across the concrete, slamming into the wall with a deafening clang.
"He’s dead because he believed in silly little fairy tales!" Nick snarled, advancing on her, his shadow stretching long and distorted against the wall. "He thought that this idea of love could fix biology. He thought that holding hands would stop a bullet in his chest. And look where it got him! Bleeding out on a dirty floor while we watched!"
You don't get it, Nick screamed internally. I am trying to save you. Love gets people like us killed. If I love you, I will make you a target. If I love you, I will hesitate. And if I hesitate, you will die.
"Don't you dare," Judy hissed, stepping into his space, gripping the USB drive so hard her knuckles turned white. "Don't you dare dishonor him. He saved us."
"He almost got you killed!" Nick yelled, looming over her. The anger broke, revealing the terror underneath. "You think I care about the cameras in our apartment? You think I care about your own privacy? I care that I stood there, useless, while a sniper pinned us down! I care that I watched a crosshair hover over your damn skull and I couldn't even breathe!"
He grabbed her shoulders. His grip was bruising, desperate, claws digging into the fabric of the parka he had just given her. He shook her, just once, hard—trying to rattle her bones, trying to wake her up from a dream he deemed too dangerous to live in.
"That bullet missed you by inches, Judy. Inches!" Nick roared, his voice cracking under the strain. "And what did I do? I froze. I watched it happen. I’m just a fox. I’m a liability in a vest."
"That's the job, Nick!" Judy shouted back, knocking his paws away, her adrenaline spiking into anger. "That is the deal! That there is always a risk involved when you join the ZPD! You of all mammals should know that! You put on the uniform, you accept that you might get shot at!"
"To hell with the risk!" Nick screamed, the sound echoing violently off the concrete walls. "And to hell with the uniform! Do you think I care about that stupid badge? Do you think I care about 'making the world a better place'?"
He stepped into her space, looming over her, his eyes wild and terrifyingly honest.
"I didn't join the Academy for the city, Judy. I joined for you."
The admission hung in the air, sucking the oxygen out of the room. Judy froze, her mouth falling open.
"I became a cop because I couldn't trust anyone else to watch your back," Nick hissed, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper. "I did it to keep you alive. That was the only mission. And tonight? Tonight I failed. So don't talk to me about 'accepted risks.' The only risk I care about is when you stop breathing."
He pushed himself away from her as if she were burning, pacing the small room like a caged animal.
"You're addicted to this sick fantasy, Judy," he spat, gesturing wildy at the dingy room. "You want the husband without the funeral. You want the romance without the blood. But look around you, Hopps! We are in a filthy basement owned by warlords! Because Oliver isn't real. Because Oliver is safe to you. And I am not safe! Nick Wilde is not him. Because how can he compare to Oliver Winters?"
His face twisted, a mask of cruelty designed to push her away, designed to protect himself from the agonizing terror of losing her.
"Stop looking at me like that," he spat, his voice dripping with venom. "Oliver is dead. The cleaners are erasing him right now. And I'm just the ex-con who is going to get you killed because he's too weak to pull the trigger when it counts."
Please, Nick begged silently, his internal monologue screaming against his own words. Hate me. Slap me. Walk away. If you walk away, I know you'll be safe. If you hate me, you won't hesitate to leave me behind when the fire starts.
Judy didn't flinch. She stood her ground, her ears trembling but her stance solid. She looked into his eyes, past the aggression, past the bared teeth, and she didn't see a monster. She saw the terrified kit hiding in the dark, waiting for the muzzle to snap shut.
"No, you are not just a liability," she said, her voice shaking but firm. She took a step toward him. "And you didn't join just for me. You joined because you are good, Nick. Better than you think."
She reached out, her paw hovering near his heaving chest.
"You are my partner," she whispered. "And you are scared."
"I am damn terrified!" Nick admitted, the anger collapsing all at once into anguish. He backed away until his spine hit the cold concrete wall. He slid down it, his legs giving out, clutching his head in his paws as if trying to hold his skull together.
"I can't do this, Judy. I can't pretend anymore," he gasped, his breath hitching. "Because if we keep pretending... if I let myself believe that I can actually have this... and then I lose you?"
He looked up at her from the floor. His eyes were wet, the purple irises swimming in a grief so profound it looked like drowning.
"I won't survive it," he whispered, the confession raw and bloody. "I just won't. I cannot watch you die, Judy. I would burn this whole city down to keep a scratch off you, and that makes me a bad cop. But I can't help it."
Judy stood there, her heart hammering against her ribs—the ribs he had joined the force to protect. She wanted to go to him. She wanted to fall to her knees and pull him into the embrace he was starving for. But the wall he had put up was made of razor wire, and he was bleeding out behind it.
"We aren't pretending anymore," Judy whispered to him, her voice fierce with a promise she intended to keep. "We survive Sunday. And then we figure out what's real."
Nick stared at her mouth. The pull was magnetic, undeniable. He wanted to bury himself in her and forget the blood, the serum, and the fire. He wanted to stay in this safehouse and pretend the world didn't exist. But then, a thought struck him. A cold, sharp realization that made his eyes widen. Sergio’s words from the doorway echoed in his mind. My cleaners are already en route... they will strip it... they will sanitize it.
The cleaners.
Nick scrambled up, his breath hitching. An image flashed in his mind, bright and searing. The hallway in Unit 4B. Close to their shared bedroom on the wall. The framed photo.
It wasn’t just any picture. A snapshot taken on their first "day" as Oliver and Elise, ostensibly for the cover. But in that photo, Nick wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking at her. And he was smiling a smile he hadn't worn in twenty years—a smile without irony, without any angles. It was the only proof in the entire world that he was capable of being that fox. That he was capable of being good. It was the only proof that he could be loved.
If Sergio’s men got there, they wouldn't burn it. They would just toss it in a trash bag with the rest of the garbage. They would crumple it up like a receipt. He couldn't let them throw him away. Not that version of him.
"I have to go," Nick said abruptly. His voice was brittle, detached.
Judy blinked, confused by the sudden shift. "What? Nick, Sergio said to stay put. Vlad’s wolves could be anywhere. The streets aren't safe."
"I need... supplies," Nick lied, the words tasting like ash. He grabbed his parka, his movements jerky and frantic. "There’s a cache. Near the entrance. I saw it."
Don't go, she thought. Please, just stay.
"Nick, stop. You're not making sense." Judy stepped toward him, reaching for his arm. "We have supplies. We have guns. We have to stay here."
He pulled away from her touch. He couldn't look at her. If he looked at her, he would stay, and the memory would be trashed.
"I can't be in this box, Judy!" he snapped, heading for the heavy iron door. "I need air. I need to check the perimeter. I can't just sit here and wait for the executioner!"
"Nick, wait! It’s suicide!"
He didn't wait. He threw the heavy bolt, the metal screeching in protest. He slipped through the crack in the door, into the howling wind and the snow. He knew Vlad’s death squads were out there, prowling the dark, hunting for strays. He knew he was walking into a war zone with nothing but a handgun and a death wish.
But he had to get the photo.
"Nick!"
The door slammed shut. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
Judy stood alone in the center of the concrete box. The halogen bulb buzzed overhead, a sickly, yellow eye flickering with the rhythm of a dying heartbeat. She stared at the heavy iron door, her hand half-reached out, fingers trembling in the empty air where his warmth had been only seconds ago.
She sank to the floor, the brutal cold of the concrete seeping instantly through her jeans and into her marrow. She pulled his spare parka tight around her shoulders, burying her face in the rough collar. She didn’t just breathe; she inhaled him, desperate to catch the fading notes of cedar, rain, and that specific, electric musk of a fox who had been running on adrenaline. It was the scent of safety. It was the scent of a partner who had looked her in the eye, called their imaginary love a necessary fiction, and then chose the freezing dark over the terrifying vulnerability of staying.
Her paw drifted to her left hand without her noticing. The ring was still there—cool, unassuming gold. It weighed less than a gram, yet it sat on her finger with the crushing density of a planetary anchor. She turned it once, twice, a small, unconscious ritual, as if the circular motion could wind him back to her.
“With this ring,” Nick murmured, his voice dropping an octave, “I thee wed. For the duration of this silly operation. Terms and conditions apply. Void where prohibited.”
But in the silence of the safe house, which pressed against her eardrums like deep water, the ring felt like the only true thing in a world of ice. It felt like a promise he was too afraid to make and she was too afraid to ask for.
Outside, the world had been erased by white. Nick walked until the burn in his lungs turned sharp and bright, until the frost in his chest drowned out the screaming urge to turn back. The wind tore at his fur, invisible claws trying to strip away the layers of "Oliver Winters" to find the terrified fox beneath.
Keep walking, he commanded his legs. Walking is survival. Stopping is death.
His thumb rubbed over the smooth band on his own hand, a nervous tic that had become a prayer. The tungsten gold was freezing against his skin, biting into him like a brand. He had told her it wasn't real. He had told her it was just a costume, a tactic, a lie to keep them alive.
“There,” Judy said, patting his paw briskly. “Oliver Winters. Graphic Designer. Husband.”
But the ring pressed into his flesh like a truth he couldn’t outrun. He was a creature of the shadows who had accidentally stared into the sun, and now, blinded, he was stumbling back into the dark because he knew his darkness would only swallow her light. He was saving her from the gallery. He was saving her from the bear. But mostly, he was saving her from himself.
He had left her safe. He had left her armed. He had left her with a secure line and a tactical advantage.
But back in the box, as Judy curled into a tight ball on the stained mattress, shivering not from the cold but from the hollow ache burrowing in her chest, she realized he had done the one thing she wasn't sure she could survive.
He had walked out that door, untouched and broken, and left her alone to mourn a husband who never even existed.