Sunderance Chapter 13: Glacial Surge (Complete)

    “The DMV?”

    Judy really hadn’t intended the question to come out with an amused lilt but she was in a mood that wouldn’t allow her to maintain an entirely professional attitude. At least, not as she walked beside the fox as he led her away from the car. The feeling of uncertainty that trickled through her mind was mostly because of how confused the rest of her emotions seemed to be. She couldn’t decide between abject terror that tempted her nose to twitch every time she looked at him and the pleasant giddiness that set her stomach into excited spins now and then. Their dinner conversation had been the groundwork for something more than what they were now, of that she had no doubt.

    Mutual attraction. Glancing at him now as he led her around to the side of the building, she couldn’t deny her own. His expression had returned to the serious, blank and unreadable one that he wore most of the time. He was… A fox. A narrow muzzle, short but sharp ears, angular features, long bodied, lean, ruddy orange fur, large paws tipped with blunt but dangerous claws, and sharp teeth that she saw every time he spoke. He was very un-bunny like. There was nothing about him that looked soft or gentle, though that perception may have been colored by the fact that she’d watched him dismantle a fully grown tiger. He was predatory, every inch of him and he appealed to every inch of her. The dinner conversation had opened doors that she had, if she was honest with herself, not tried all that hard to keep closed. Walking around in front of him with nothing on but a night shirt and underwear? Of course, he’d noticed that. He didn’t need to be attracted to notice that.

    Next time, Judith, just try throwing yourself at his feet naked. That might be less obvious.

    The thought had her forcing her attention on the red door in front of her, letting her mind focus on how odd it was that they were approaching a government building from the side keep her mind focused on something other than him. She glanced around with a frown when she realized that, much like the parking lot out front, there was no obvious sign of life this close to midnight. “I hope you don’t think we’re breaking in,” she stated, leveling a look at him. She flushed furiously when green eyes, luminous in the dark, turned to her and a smirk curved his muzzle for a moment.

    “No, we’re not going to break in,” he replied, raising one paw to knock on the door twice, pause, knock twice, a longer pause, and then knock three times. This caused her to raise an eyebrow and turned her attention back to the door of what should have been an empty building.

    “Nick, I wasn’t expecting you,” said a voice that seemed to come out of nowhere. A quick glance around told her that there were no visible speakers on the wall, the door or above them. This had her wrinkling her brow when the voice continued in a clear but obviously modulated tone. “And you’ve brought Mrs. Hopps with you. This should be interesting. Stand as you are, please.”

    Blinking as she kept her eyes on Nick for answers, she glanced down at the hand he placed on her shoulder briefly before she felt her stomach lurch. This time, it wasn’t the male that caused it. Rather, it was the way the square of sidewalk she stood on started to drop into the world around it. It was impossible to contain her surprise and trepidation as they were literally swallowed by what looked like a very narrow elevator shaft. When they were fully underground, something slid across the opening to cover it with hardly a sound beyond the light mechanical hum she detected around her. Her ears dropped back as she looked to the fox for answers, only to have him place one finger to the tip of his muzzle to quiet her. Holding her tongue as the ride came to a stop at the bottom of the shaft who knew how far underground, she stared down the short hallway directly in front of them. Tiny cameras lined the ceiling leading down the hallway, each seeming to be trained in a different direction to cover every angle at least twice. The thought of paranoid bunker dwellers, who believed that the system was out to get them at every turn, was the first thought that crossed her mind, making her dread the lunatic that they might meet.

    Then the black door at the end of the hallway swung open. Or crept open, very slowly. Almost painfully slowly as Nick guided her forward, only to have her stop dead in her tracks when she saw the brown and white sloth on the other side. Dressed as she might expect someone who truly worked for the DMV to dress, in a green button up shirt and striped tie with khaki pants, she could only continue to stare as she started to move again when the paw on her shoulder urged her forward.

    “Wait. He’s a sloth?” she whispered, wincing at the volume of her voice in the tiny hallway.

    “The best information broker in Zootopia,” he said by way of avoiding her question, his muzzle curved into a grin to the sloth as they reached the door. “Anything you need, he’s on it. Judy, meet Flash.”

    “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The name struck her as so odd for a member of the slowest species in Zootopia that she hesitated before finishing. “Uh, Flash.”

    “Nice to… Meet you… Too.”

    The sloth looked so incredibly amiable as he slowly stepped to the side, at a pace that made her want to tap her foot on the ground as they waited, that she almost wondered if they were talking to the right mammal for what she could only assume was black market information. But, by the time he extended his arm, the long claws of his paw outstretched to invite them in, she was already ready to climb back up the shaft and break her way out if need be. Nick, however, calmly guided her into the room. Or lair, as she quickly came to think of it as she looked around in awe.

    It had her completely forgetting the sloth as he started the tedious process of closing the door and walking across the room. Monitors covered one wall entirely, though what was being broadcast on them was nothing more than local news stations and what she could have sword was a cooking show for sloths. On another wall was a series of devices that she couldn’t even begin to guess at. Dials and speakers; small screens with various readings that confounded her ability to describe; graphs, longer strings of numbers. Lists of names. The wall furthest from the door they had come through had another door flanked by two massive computers, which even she could tell likely ran all of the electronics to gather and hold all of the data an information broker would need to stay in business. It was all very surreal, very spy thriller or sci-fi movie, which made since when she put her mind to it. No better place to hide than right under a government building that most mammals avoided like the plague unless required to go there.

    Her attention was drawn back to Flash as he sat in a chair in a circular desk in the center of the room. The desk itself was made of glass or something similar and her eyes widened in wonder when, as one long claw tapped the surface, the desk came alive with some sort of complex user interface. The rest might well have been for show, she realized. Out simply outdated when the glass top of the desk lit up much like the screen of her phone, only holding more transparency. Nick guided her forward as she took it all in, her gaze following the claw on the desktop as it dragged a box with various symbols she didn’t even recognize in front of the sloth. The claw tapped one such symbol.

    “I’m glad to see that you’re impressed, Mrs. Hopps,” came the modulated voice again, this time clearly recognizable as Flash’s computerized cadence. It still caused her to jump as the benignly smiling mammal’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “It is not every day that I am given a chance to show off my base of operations. Though if Nick trusts you, I am inclined to do the same.”

    “How?” she asked as she stepped forward, not even sure where she was directing the question. From what she’d seen, he had only pushed a single symbol!

    “A long and complex explanation,” the voice admitted, surprising her with the note of humor in the tone.

    “Right,” she said, realizing that she was being incredibly rude by asking how anything in the room worked when she’d only just met the mammal. Her ears popped upright and her eyes followed in fascination as the claw moved to another symbol on the table top, a screen appearing with numerous files that were coded in the same symbols. She realized that it was either scrambled or he had invented his own language to make more difficult for hackers to decrypt. Though how someone could hack a system like this, she wasn’t sure. “We’re here about the Emmitt Otterton case, Flash. Nick said that you might be able to help?”

    “There may be something to find that hasn’t been found,” he said, causing her heart to race just a bit as she stepped closer to the desk. “As long as you understand that my customers don’t always like what they find.”

    “I understand,” she said quietly, glancing at Nick with an uneasy twitch of her nose. He gave her a small nod, which she returned before she looked at the sloth. “I am only interested in the truth. What do you need to get started?”

    With a slow motion of the claw that seemed to constantly touch the screen, an icon popped to life on the edge of the table closest to her. It only took one glance to realize that it was a microphone icon, one which started to glow faintly to show that it was active. “Information,” he replied simply, one slow blink the only motion she could see aside from his claw’s faint tapping.

    “Everything you have on the case. The date of the murder, times of every relevant event, addresses, names, charges filed, murder weapon. We will start with that. Afterward, if it’s needed, the stories of those involved.”

    Swallowing as she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket to extract her note pad, she considered how odd all of this was for a moment. Was it even legal? Maybe not, probably not, but there was a mammal’s freedom on the line and people wanted her dead. She had to know the truth. So, flipping to the first page, she started to feed information into the system one item at a time. When she realized that the box with the file system had started to move, she understood that everything she was saying was being filtered and sorted. It was a fascinating process. Unlike search engines she’d used in the past, there was no obvious search box. No system to show her what was being searched where. It simply happened and happened very quickly from the looks of the coded files filling and vanishing from the screen with everything she added to the filter.

    “It will take a few minutes for the system to finish sorting the information,” he said, and though his eyes were on the screen now. “The mammals involved in this case concern me and that forces me to ask, before I give over this amount of information if you really want to risk your life further?”

    “Did Nick tell you to ask me that?” she groused, the frown that formed on her muzzle directed at the fox who gave her a perfectly innocent shake of his head.

    “Ah, I see that subject has already been settled,” he stated, his gaze moving between the two of them slowly before he directed his eyes onto Judy. “Then I hope the information I have can help, at least.”

    “Hey, Flash?” Nick said suddenly, cutting through the few seconds of uncomfortable silence that followed and drawing her gaze to his smirking muzzle. “Wanna hear a joke?”

    When the sloth removed his claw from the screen and turned his eyes to the fox, she was further surprised when he spoke with his real voice rather than the modulated tone of the room.

    “Sure.”

    “What does a buffalo tell his son when he leaves for a long trip?” the fox quipped, the jovial, clearly playful tone in his voice and animated hand motion causing her to forget what they were there for momentarily.

    “I don’t… know,” came the slow reply, the snail’s, or sloth’s, pace of his words making Judy’s eye twitch slightly when he continued. “What does… A buffalo say… To his… Son when… He leaves… For a long… Trip?”

    “Bison!” Nick finished, obviously pleased with the horrible joke when he released a short laugh and nudged her. She raised her paw to her forehead, suppressing a little groan and releasing a sigh as she turned her eyes back to the sloth. She watched, dumbstruck, as the placidly amiable face slowly, very slowly, spread into a wide smile. The laugh that followed, like everything else about the sloth, came slowly and lazily and she found it oddly endearing to hear it.

    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.