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Nick woke up in the back of an ambulance, just as they were closing the doors. “Wh… what’s going on?” he asked the paramedic beside him, barely managing to register her words through the ringing in his ears.
The paramedic’s face melted into one of sympathy as he listened to the fox’s rasping voice. “It’s okay, Mr. Wilde. You’re safe. There was an attack at the restaurant tonight, and you got hit with a pretty heavy blow. We believe you have some minor internal bleeding, but it should be a quick fix once we get to the hospital, and then they’ll just want to monitor you for a few days to make sure the stitches hold.
“And… Judy?”
The antelope pursed his lips as he considered how to answer. “Officer Hopps… unfortunately didn’t make it. I’m sorry. Witnesses say the mammals that attacked the restaurant shot her in the head. We weren’t able to get her here in time. We did everything we could, and she was sent to the hospital just in case, but it isn’t likely that she will make it.”
Nick closed his eyes and let himself drift into unconsciousness, despite the protests of the antelope beside him.
Judy is dead…
So why am I alive?
He woke up at the hospital. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but the sky outside was dark. The lights in the room were off (thankfully) and he could hear soft breathing to his right. He glanced over at the source of the sound to find his mother sleeping in a chair beside his bed. She looked anything but peaceful, and certainly more uncomfortable than he liked to see her.
He shifted in the bed, trying to pull himself up into a sitting position. The movement caused the bed to squeak underneath him.
With a start, his mother was awake and by his side. It seemed almost as if she hadn’t been resting at all. Nick had a sneaking suspicion that she had just been pretending for his sake – just like she had been when he was just a kit and they were living out on the street.
“Oh, Nicky…” She pressed her muzzle against his head and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Thank God; I thought I’d lost you.”
“It’s harder than that to get rid of me, Ma,” he replied softly, slowly reaching up and wrapping his arms around her shaking shoulders. “You should know that by now. I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon.”
They didn’t say anything after that, simply taking comfort in each other’s presence. Soon after, Nick fell asleep, and when he woke up, his mother was back in her chair, once again acting as if she was asleep.
A soft knock came at the door and after a pause, a nurse entered. She performed what she said was her regular morning checks on him, and then she left. No one
After she was done, another nurse led in a small grey-furred rabbit with black markings. For a moment, Nick only saw Judy’s face, but that illusion was quickly shattered as he realized it was actually her mate, Jack Savage. He slumped back into bed, letting his focus slip back into the oblivion of the grey sky outside the window.
It was only when his mother placed her paw on his shoulder that he drew himself back to the world of the living. “I’m going to go get some food and take a little walk, okay Nicky?”
“Yeah, sure, Ma. Go get something good, okay?”
She nodded, giving him a hopeful smile. He returned it with some difficulty, and she departed.
Jack took her place at his bedside. It seemed as if it took a lot of effort for the rabbit to look up at Nick, but when he did, Nick noticed how red the mammal’s eyes were. He realized belatedly that they’d both lost someone they loved when Judy had died, and after trying for a moment, he finally managed to rasp out, “I’m sorry…”
“As am I. Judy was… She was the best thing that ever happened to me. And, if I’m correctly reading you, the way you looked at her said she was the best thing to ever happen to you, as well.”
Nick chuckled. Jack Savage was the only mammal that Nick had ever met that could read him better than Finnick. “You’re right; she was the best thing that ever could have happened to me… Even after I screwed everything up between her and I, she was still so willing to keep our friendship. I… without her I never could have…” Nick had to stop, coughing sobs wracking his shoulders.
“You loved her just as much, if not more, than I did.” Nick looked up at the rabbit, stared into his torn and broken eyes. He expected to find his own emotions mirrored back at him. His own grief, sorrow, pain…
Instead, he found a cold anger in the cracks of the rabbit’s soul. It was… scary. He’d heard the tales about how Jack Savage had gotten his name, but he’d never seen it before.
“Do you know who did this to her?”
“I…” Nick licked his lips and shook his head. “I think it was the Vulpine Syndicate. I don’t know if they were targeting her because she was involved in the recent drug bust, or if they were even targeting her at all, but it was definitely them.”
“The Vulpine Syndicate,” the rabbit hissed. “Of course! I have to go. I have things that need to be done.” He hopped down from the chair he’d been sitting on and stormed over to the door.
“Wait!” Jack stopped dead in his tracks, one paw on the door to the hospital room. “What are you going to do?”
Jack turned slowly, the sun catching in the fur on his face, making him light up like a mammal possessed. “Do?” He let out a bark of laughter. “Do? Why, I’m going to destroy the Vulpine Syndicate! What else would I do?”
“How? I mean, I know you’re with the CIA, but even so, destroying a criminal organization as large as the Syndicate? It’s going to take a lot more firepower than one rabbit can muster.”
“You have no idea what resources I can call upon, do you? You really think I’d be so stupid as to go through the CIA? They’ve got far too great a stake in the Vulpine Syndicate to ever allow me near them.”
“So what are you going to do, then?”
“Does it matter?” Jack sneered, turning back to the door.
“Heh. I guess it doesn’t.” Something in Nick’s voice caught the rabbit’s attention again, and the words caused him to stop once again. “It doesn’t matter to me how you do it, as long as I get to do it with you.”
Savage turned back to look at the injured fox, mouth dropping open as he watched the fox climb out of the bed, rip the tubes and needles out of his arms like they were nothing. And when the rabbit looked up into the wide green eyes of the fox before him, he involuntarily took a step back at the intensity of Nick’s expression. Gone was the sly, easygoing mask that the fox normally projected. Gone were the snark and the sarcasm that were the fox’s trademarks. All that was left was a mammal possessed by his own inner demons, hell bent on revenge.
Jack’s face slowly contorted into a ghost of a smile, and he allowed himself a small chuckle. Then, without another word, he swept out of the room and down the hall. Nick followed hot on his heels, barely giving the rabbit enough room to walk without feeling the fox’s hot breath on the back of his ears.
The Meadowlands General Hospital was located right in the heart of the Meadowlands, and unlike downtown Zootopia, was full of parks and lush open spaces. It was to one of these that Jack Savage marched.
He reached a rock right in the middle of the park directly across from the hospital, and once there he pulled out a small knife from inside his jacket. Before Nick had a chance to stop him, he jabbed the point of the knife into his fourth finger – directly above his wedding band – and allowed the blood to drip onto the stone.
He turned to Nick. “I’ll need a drop of fox blood for this to work.” Without hesitation, Nick held out his paw, and the rabbit pricked his paw-pad with the knife as well, allowing it to pool for a moment before reversing Nick’s paw and allowing the blood to fall onto the stone.
The part of Nick that was still sane and intelligent was very perplexed as Jack Savage hopped up onto the stone, placing his right foot directly over the two drops of blood, and started thumping out a deep, almost eldritch sounding tattoo.
As the sound continued, Nick noticed out of the corner of his eye that every rabbit in the vicinity stopped and tuned in to the beat, then almost in unison, every one of them turned towards the sound and started to match it, their right feet tapping in time with Jack Savage’s.
Within heartbeats the sound reached a low rumble, and within minutes Nick could feel the rhythm as reverberations in the ground. And just as Jack Savage stopped his own pounding and stepped down off the rock, a deep bass thrum caused the very ground to shake, followed by another. And another. And another.
More than a dozen thrums in all, and they showed no signs of stopping. Eventually Nick realized that they were reverberating in the same rhythm as all the lagomorphs were stomping their feet. This realization sent a sudden thrill of fear coursing down his spine, and he turned to the rabbit that had started it all.
“What… what did you do?”
“I sent the call. Has Judy never told you about the Bloody Crusades?”
“She has, but she told me that… Oh.” Nick’s mouth fell into a hard line as he glared at the rabbit in front of him. “So that reverberation in the ground is caused by the War Drums? And Savage… You’re descended from the Savage King, aren’t you?”
“You truly are very intelligent, Wilde. I can see why Judy admired you.”
“She… she…” That was a blow to Nick’s already incredible pain, and suddenly he found a snarl plastered onto his lips. “So is all that shit about rabbits settling for the best candidate actually true? They’ll choose power and class over… over love?”
“In the ancient past, that was exactly what rabbits did – just as all animals did in the Dark Ages, before the Waterhole Truce. It just so happens that rabbits and hares carried on the tradition for longer than the other animals.” He shrugged.
Nick’s snarl deepened, and he felt the sudden urge to rip this arrogant rabbit apart. “You little—“
“Does it truly matter now, Nick? After all, Judy is already dead… and now, our only goals in life are to avenge her. Is that not so?”
After a moment, Nick nodded. “You’re right. The only thing to do now is destroy the Vulpine Syndicate… permanently.”
**
Nick sat at the head of the table, garbed in a black suit that they’d picked up from his apartment on their way to The Burrows. To his right sat Jack Savage, CIA-agent-turned-rabbit-General. To his left, circling around the table, were the various patriarchs of the old rabbit clans: Fields, Deburrow, Longear, Herber, and Hopps.
The patriarch of the Hopps clan was a rabbit that Nick had never met before, with violet eyes the same shade as Judy’s had been, a firm jaw, and a set of deep, long-healed scars crossing the entirety of his face. He appeared to be the oldest mammal at the table, as all the others treated him with a deference that Nick had never seen before in his life.
It was now this rabbit upon whom all eyes and ears were fixed, as everyone waited for his decision. The Hopps clan was easily the largest of all the old lagomorph families, and according to some of the rumours that Nick had heard, the oldest of them. If they didn’t have the support of the Hopps’, they would never be able to take down the Syndicate.
The old rabbit sighed. “It has been nearly four thousand years since we have been summoned to war against the damn reynards… I thought I’d never live to see another battle with them. And yet here we stand, with a cause more noble than any before… and it falls to me to decide if we are to march to war.” The old rabbit laughed, sending the long, silver strands of fur whispering against the stone arms of the chair. “And to think, that my own great-great-great-granddaughter Judith would be the one to befriend a fox, be killed by one, and then avenged by that same fox she befriended…” He shook his head. “By all the old ones, I agree. Sprint now, O Drum Dancers,” he called, and the hares that lined the walls of the room sprung to attention. “Run now, and pound upon your instruments the call to arms. Come dawn, we march to war against the Vulpine Syndicate.”
The hares dashed off in different directions, a dozen of them per tunnel, and Nick knew they were preparing to take up their positions along the War Drums – ancient caverns the size of blimps, with braided leather skins stretched taut across them creating the largest instruments in the world. When they jumped, the reverberations could be felt for hundreds of miles around, and normally registered a 5.6 on the Richter Scale at their epicentre in The Burrows.
Jack sighed in relief at the old bunny’s words, then stood up. “My brethren, it is time we acted. Go to your clans and prepare them for war. We have a lot of work to do if we are to stand up to the Vulpine Syndicate.”
**
Nick stumbled across the rubble-strewn ground, clutching his stomach, where he could already feel the last of his blood seeping out of the three bullet wounds that he’d received. A shadow fell across him, and when he looked up, the fire of rage reignited inside of him and he lunged out, trying desperately to kill that monster…
“Now, now,” Jack Savage cooed at the injured fox. “There’s no need for that. May as well save your energy, extend your life by another few minutes. After all, it’s not like there’s anyone waiting for you on the other side. Not after you betrayed your city and everyone who ever cared for you.”
“You bastard,” Nick spat, blood pooling on his tongue. “How could you do this?”
“You said it yourself, Nicholas Wilde,” the rabbit sneered at him. “It was the Vulpine Syndicate that killed Judy. And unlike you, I realize that my vengeance will never be complete until I eliminate all foxes – so really, you’re doing me a favour. Now, say hello to the Devil for me. I’m sure he’ll be willing to welcome you with open arms.”
Jack lifted his right paw. There was a loud bang!
After that, everything went dark. Nick stopped feeling. His last thoughts fell on deaf ears, whispering out with his dying breath.
I’m sorry, Ma. I’m sorry, Finnick. I’m sorry, Judy. I failed. I failed all of you. I failed the city… I’m sorry, Judy… I love you…