Sunderance Chapter 13: Glacial Surge (Complete)

The desktop gave a single beep, at which point the slow laughter died and the long claw returned to the interface. “Motion outside,” the voice of the room said, sounding annoyed rather than concerned. The screens the covered one wall flickered and switched to a single external view of the DMV from across the street. She frowned as the camera zoomed in on the motion, her heart lurching into her throat when she saw three wolves dressed all in black tactical gear literally sniffing around the car. “You have guests.”

“We can assume they don’t know about this place or they wouldn’t be sniffing around the car,” Nick said, his voice even and his eye cool as he watched them follow the scent towards the main building. “I doubt they would be able to get in even if they did.”

“The easiest way to force entry here is tearing down the structure above, then using heavy machinery to dig down,” Flash confirmed, the voice sounding mildly amused and even a bit proud. “And that would draw attention they obviously don’t want. They won’t leave the car unwatched even if they do leave, though.”

“Probably following us for most of the day,” Nick amended, turning his eyes to Judy. Her nose twitched uneasily when she saw the expression and the intensity in his eyes. The same intensity she had seen the moment before he’d turned and faced down a tiger in the streets. “They will have to be dealt with, but only after we finish here. It would be better if we make a quick exit of the scene once they’re dealt with.”

“Can’t we just call the ZPD?” she asked, frowning as she turned her gaze from him to the monitors. “Avoid them all together?”

“It won’t solve the problem. The moment they catch the scent of cops, they’ll ghost,” he explained as the wolves sniffed around the door, the largest of the three, a grey who seemed to act as the alpha of the little pack of killers, drawing a silenced sidearm from his vest as he raised his eyes to look around cautiously. Two quick motions of his paws and the other two wolves split to circle the building. “And if they ghost, they will try again and I’ll lose the advantage of knowing where they are beforehand.”

“Can you,” she began, nibbling on her lower lip as she watched the three large predators on the hunt. A hunt for her. “Disable them? Without getting hurt?”

“Probably, if they stay split up like they are now,” he said without hesitation, causing relief to flood her. She felt the real, potent desire to hug him for a moment before he continued, “And you stay down here until it’s finished.”

“But,” she started to protest, only to pause when he turned sharp green eyes on her and raised a paw.

“I told you before, if it comes down to a choice between your life and theirs, I will choose yours. If you stay down here, the chances of their survival increase dramatically.”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she should take the chance of him getting hurt to save the lives of the wolves. But for all intents, the fox facing her now didn’t seem concerned with the pack of larger mammals beyond minor annoyance at their presence. And if they were taken alive, maybe there would be answers as to who was trying to kill her in the first place. Their gear made it unlikely that it was a random act of hatred for bunnies, after all.

Not killing them was also the right thing to do.

“I’ll stay down here. Just,” she muttered, her tone and the drop of her ears making it clear that she was reluctant. Pride tried to tell her that she could help him, somehow. Emotion wanted her to grab her cell phone, call the ZPD, and order him to leave. Logic and her limited experience told her that she couldn’t help him and would easily hinder him and that he was right. They would simply show up again in the near future, possibly catching them off guard which would make them much more dangerous. “Be careful.”

“Careful is for mammals who don’t have crazy bunny lawyers to look after,” he said, a small grin curving the edges of his muzzle even as he watched the wolves on the screen circling the building. They showed no signs of giving up, having already disabled the alarm system so one of them could enter the building proper.

“The search is finished,” the modulated voice said, drawing her gaze from him to the sloth and then to the interface where multiple screens popped up. She was surprised to see that they were all videos, most of them easily recognizable as surveillance footage of the gas station where Officers Weaselton and Fangmeyer had stopped before receiving the call. One showed an alley that she didn’t recognize and couldn’t place as important to the case yet, another showed a repeated clip of Otterton entering his car at an unidentified parking lot, pulling out and driving away. The time stamp put the date and time as twenty minutes before the murder. Various file names that she didn’t recognize and had never been given access to were displayed as she looked over the information in a state of minor shock, the last of which was an audio file named ‘Dbel’. As she watched, the file names and videos began to scramble until they were unreadable, making her frown up at Flash.

“I will copy the videos to a flash card that can be played on your phone, encrypted. Instructions on how to decrypt them will be forwarded in twenty-four hours. A precaution,” he explained when she narrowed her eyes at his seemingly unaffected expression. “For both our protection. All other files will be sent via E-mail. Instructions for accessing those, Nick has.”

When Nick nodded in response and started to move towards the door opposite the one they had used to enter this lair, she drew herself up as fear started to tighten her gut again. “Nick…”

“They’re no tiger, Fluff,” he cut her off, opening the door and turning to face them both. “Flash, no in or out until I give the clear. She doesn’t leave this room.”

She opened her mouth to protest but found herself facing a closed door that wouldn’t listen to her further concerns. Scowling deeply, anger rising to mingle with uneasy fear, she glanced at Flash to see him finishing a nod of consent.

“Strange,” he said, his eyes shifting just a bit so they came rest on her, “these attempts to silence you over a murder appeal.”

“Yes,” she said, distractedly glancing to the screens again as she raised a paw to nibble on her thumb claw. “Bunnies are not welcome in Zootopia, but this is a little extreme.”

“Extreme for a murder investigation, yes,” he commented, catching her attention long enough to draw her eyes from the circling wolves. “But you seem to have a friend. Rare for her to descend from on high to mingle with the commoners.”

“The Administrator?”

“I find it particularly interesting that she has taken such an interest in you, Miss Hopps,” he said, moving his claw slowly over the control panel until the golden image of the Administrator’s Crest appeared. “Something is happening in the government of Zootopia. An imbalance that may, in some way, be related to the Otterton case.”

“You don’t know?” she said, a little smirk touching her muzzle as she tilted her head towards him.

“I am an information broker, Miss Hopps,” he replied, his surprisingly soft eyes sparkling with humor as she met them. “If I knew everything, I would be The Administrator. But when the case is done, you should stay, enjoy the sights. Zootopia is a beautiful city. Even in its darkest corners.”

“The longer you stay, the darker corners you will expose. And the darker the corner, the bigger the moth.”

Had he heard her conversation with Nick? Or had Nick been quoting something he had heard before? She stared at him, her nose twitching lightly as she considered the words before she saw that his mouth was slowly turning into a frown as he watched the video feed on the wall. She turned her eyes to the wall of screens in hope of watching Nick’s progress and was frozen in horror at the scene before her.

Bodies. The three wolves were lying at the rear of the building, scattered about randomly as if they had died fighting. One wolf, a black one who’s open eyes were facing the camera, had obviously had his throat slashed open while another almost looked as if he had been folded in half backward. The alpha of the three was motionless and there was no doubt in her mind that he was as dead as the others. For an irrational moment, she wondered how and why Nick had killed them so quickly but just as quickly dismissed the idea as foolish. He had just closed the door. There was no possible way he could have reached ground level, killed three wolves and then vanished from view.

“Flash?” she struggled to get out, having to swallow the bile that threatened to rise in her throat before she could continue. “What happened?”

“An unknown player,” came the simple reply, though, from the otherwise silent and motionless state of the sloth, she could guess that he was as surprised as she was.

On the screens, Nick slipped out of the rear door of the DMV near the bodies. Where she might have expected shock, the slightly blurred face of the fox only creased slightly as he frowned and stood where he was. Already wide amethyst eyes followed his paw as it slipped behind his back, pulling the crested baton from its hiding place in the neat line of his suit as he calmly walked towards the body of the alpha wolf.

“You have to let me out,” she demanded, already heading towards the door only to stop when she heard a lock engage. “We don’t know who’s out there!”

“Exactly why I won’t let you out,” he replied, his gaze not moving from the screens where Nick now knelt beside the alpha with his gaze wandering the surrounding area. “I am not sure I fear who did this more than I’ll fear Nick if you end up dead.”

Frustration and near panic had her pointlessly yanking twice on the handle of the door before she ground her teeth as she marched back to the table. Brooding, chewing on her lower lip, she watched Nick move from one body to the next with no chance in results before he drew himself to his feet. When he backed towards the building again, baton in hand, she almost felt relief before she saw motion in the shadows. Nick, seeming to have seen something himself, paused his retreat and stood his ground with his eyes trained on the same patch of shadow.

    "Nick..."

Suddenly, a crackle of static was followed by the blurring of the camera’s vision. For a moment, even as the blur became so intense that she couldn’t even make out Nick as more than an orange and black blob, she almost believed that she’d seen two glowing red eyes in those shadows. Then, she winced at the high-pitched sound of feedback before the screens were filled with nothing but snowy static.