Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Returning from oblivion was slow and agonizing, as if Jane were clawing her way through a thick layer of setting concrete. Her sense of touch came back first. The slimy, cold mud and harsh forest roots were gone from beneath her back. Instead, she felt a flat, reasonably firm surface, covered in a cool, perfectly smooth material. Sheets? A medical cot? The air around her was dry, warm, and smelled entirely different—instead of the suffocating stench of rotting greenery and ozone, a sharp, painfully familiar cocktail of antiseptics, alcohol, and sterility hit her nose. That was exactly how Dr. Chakwas’s med bay on the Normandy smelled.

Jane tried to move, but her body responded with a dull, heavy ache. However, it was no longer the mind-shattering agony she had felt in the forest. Something beneath her skin was subtly, rhythmically tingling—a sign that her Cerberus implants were running in regeneration mode, slowly knitting damaged tissues together and securing her broken ribs.

She cracked her eyelids open. The light—harsh, white, glaring from the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling—made her wince and shut her eyes immediately as tears welled up. Forcing herself through the stinging pain, Jane opened her eyes again, focusing her blurry vision. The ceiling was lined with neat white panels. No signs of the Citadel’s destruction. No debris.

She was in a hospital room. The remnants of her N7 armor, heavily battered by recent events, still rested on her chest and shoulders. For some reason, the doctors hadn't removed the armor, which struck Jane as incredibly bizarre.

Her head was still filled with a dense, heavy ringing, through which Jane suddenly caught some sounds. Someone was talking nearby. The voices sounded muffled but highly emotional. Except, once again, it wasn't human speech. Reaching Shepard’s ears were strange growls, guttural inflections, choppy clicks, and whistles. Even despite the Alliance's usual auto-translation, she remembered what the languages of the Citadel races sounded like. This language was entirely unfamiliar to her.

"Damn it… I don’t understand them. The omni-tool…" The thought seared through her mind with a flash of panic. Jane had to control the situation. She needed to know what her potential captors were talking about.

Fighting the weakness in her right arm, Shepard clenched her fingers into a fist and gave her wrist a barely noticeable inward twist. The gesture had been drilled into muscle memory over years of service. A soft chime echoed in the quiet room. Cutting through the dim light in the corner of the ward, the three-dimensional orange hologram of her omni-tool flared to life on her forearm. Fortunately, the Alliance device was intact, despite the heavily damaged armor. The omni-tool was standard issue for any soldier or colonist, essentially being a small chip embedded right into the suit.

Lines of code flashed rapidly across the holographic screen. The omni-tool’s built-in VI translator instantly picked up the audio vibrations in the room. A blinking notification popped up:

“Unknown linguistic pattern detected. Scanning syntax… Analyzing frequencies… Generating dynamic translation package.”

Jane lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, praying her gadget would have enough time to analyze and translate the language. She didn't know how long she had been lying there still, because every minute dragged on like an hour.

The animal's voices drew closer. First, a beep came from the omni-tool’s speaker, and then a message appeared on the interface hologram:

“Syncing… 42%… 68%… Translation active.”

The ringing in her head began to clear, and through the alien, guttural sounds, Jane finally heard crisp, intelligible words. And what they were saying made her tense up internally. To her profound astonishment, the structure of this language was virtually identical to Earth's English, differing only in its specific articulation. Surely, that was the reason why the speech translation, perfected over thousands of years of Citadel races' development, was processed so quickly. They were discussing her. And they were completely baffled.

"...I'm telling ya, Judy, this doesn't fit any classification I know!" The voice, deep and rumbling, belonged to a sleek, graceful leopard in a snow-white medical gown. The doctor was nervously rubbing his front paws together, his spotted tail twitching with irritation.

"She seems to completely lack any fur, except for that strange reddish mane on her head. But look at the scans of her arms! Microscopic metal alloys integrated right into the bone structure, nerve endings backed up by some kind of fibers... What is she, a cyborg? A victim of underground experiments?"

"Dr. Sigurd, please, keep it down," a high but remarkably firm and clear voice chimed in response.

Jane rolled her eyes to the right and saw a young, petite rabbit in a blue ZPD officer uniform. She stood at the edge of the cot, paws behind her back, her long ears twitching nervously at every beep of the medical monitors.

"Whoever she is, she almost died. The main thing is that she’s stable now."

"Stable?" a sarcastic, raspy groan filled with pain came from the couch in the corner of the room.

The red fox, whom Jane had so ruthlessly slammed into a tree back in the forest, was sitting propped up against the pillows. His left paw was tightly locked in a rigid plastic splint and suspended from his neck by a sling.

"Judy, this 'experiment victim' threw me halfway across the woods without even touching me! I've got a double fracture here. And I'm ready to bet my tail and my reputation on this: everything around her was glowing blue, like some kinda disco!"

The fourth person present—a huge, massive African buffalo in a police uniform standing by the door—gave a heavy sigh, making his heavy, curved horns tilt slightly as his nostrils flared with annoyance. He crossed his powerful forelegs over his chest.

"Calm down, Wilde. Forensics have already examined the scene in the Rainforest District. The grass there is scorched in a perfect circle, and the bark on the tree where you landed is completely charred. Is it some kind of portable gravity weapon? We need to look into this."

"She wasn't holding a damn thing, Chief!" Nick winced in irritation, trying to wiggle the fingers of his broken paw, and immediately hissed in pain. "She just put her paw out. Boom—and I'm flying to test the durability of the local flora. Be glad Carrots managed to jump out of the way, otherwise we'd be sharing a hospital room right now. It was like some kinda magic."

"In any case, we can't put her into the general database," Sigurd said, turning back and stepping closer to Jane's cot, adjusting the glasses on his spotted snout. "Her physiology... Her metabolism is off the charts. Those glowing scars on her face and arms aren't scars in the traditional sense. They are micro-channels that are currently contracting and healing internal hematomas at an unbelievable speed. If this is a biological weapon or an unknown species, City Hall needs to know..."

"Look! She's awake!" Judy suddenly took a step forward, her pink nose twitching.

A dead silence instantly fell over the room.

The four animals stared at the cot, where Jane Shepard slowly shifted her heavy, cold gaze toward them. She didn't understand how they hadn't heard her breathing or noticed the light from her omni-tool, which she had already managed to shut off. The translation was ready; she began to understand their language and configured her tool to automatically translate her speech into a language they could comprehend. After all, the omni-tool was an incredible piece of technology.

The silence in the room became palpable, suffocating. The only sounds were the steady, rhythmic beeping of some archaic medical equipment and Shepard's heavy breathing. The buffalo instinctively placed a massive hoof on the grip of his service pistol, the leopard froze with a scanner in his paw, and Judy took another half-step forward, her wide purple eyes locked onto the stranger's face.

Jane swept her eyes over them in a long, piercing gaze. And at that moment, the iron discipline of an N7 operative cracked deeply for the first time in years.

Instead of enemies, instead of husks, instead of surviving Alliance humans, standing before her were... animals. Actual, Earth animals, the likes of which she had only ever seen on old holograms in Earth's archives or in children's books when she lived on starships. A huge African buffalo in a perfectly tailored police uniform, a sleek spotted leopard in a medical gown, a tiny gray rabbit, and a red fox with a bandaged paw. And they weren't just standing there—they were arguing, gesturing, wearing clothes, and possessed entirely conscious, civilized expressions.

The realization of it all was so crushing that Jane physically couldn't force out a single word. Her jaw twitched imperceptibly. Her brain, having just survived the horrors of the Reaper war's finale, refused to process this surreal picture.

'Am I going crazy? Is this a deathbed delirium? Did my damaged implants start causing hallucinations?' An avalanche of panicked thoughts flooded her mind. She stared at them, her eyes wide with horror, breathing heavily and raggedly. Large beads of cold sweat broke out on her forehead.

The animals noticed her state. Seeing that wild, lost look, Judy took another cautious step toward the cot, holding her paws out as if trying to soothe a frightened, cornered creature.

"Hey... It's okay," the rabbit said softly, keeping her voice as gentle as possible. Her ears dropped sympathetically along her back. "Please, don't be afraid. You're safe. You're at Zootopia General Hospital."

Overcoming the wild confusion and the dryness in her throat, Shepard forced herself to speak. Her voice came out low and raspy, but it still carried the steel of a career officer accustomed to pulling herself together in any situation.

"How... how are you doing this?" she rasped out.

"Doing what exactly, sweetheart?" Nick chimed in from the couch, raising an eyebrow in amusement. "Talking? Wearing pants? Or the fact that we didn't hand ya over to Animal Control after you turned me into a tree cushion?"

Jane shifted her gaze to the fox, swallowing hard. Inside her, the professional cynicism of a Spectre clashed with absolute, childlike shock at what was happening. It took a colossal effort of will not to betray her true shock at their appearance and to try and assess the situation.

"You're animals. You shouldn't be wearing clothes and talking," Shepard replied, utterly stunned, receiving looks of complete bewilderment in return.

"But we do," Nick grumbled. "Better tell us, who are YOU? And how'd ya end up in the middle of the woods?"

"There was a disaster at my... facility," Jane said slowly, choosing her words with extreme care. "A massive explosion. I was... injured. A concussion, spatial disorientation. I was in a state of shock in the forest... I mistook you for a threat. Sorry about the paw, fox. I didn't realize what I was doing."

She fell silent, heavily letting her head sink back onto the pillow, keeping an evaluating eye on them. Dr. Sigurd was the first to break the ensuing silence. He stepped closer, adjusting his glasses on his spotted snout and studying the readings on his tablet.

"We understand your speech, but we have never encountered your species before. Do you consider yourself sapient? Who are you? There isn't a single mention in our databases of a species with a DNA structure like yours and... such biomechanical modifications."

Jane closed her eyes subtly, wearily, hiding an oncoming headache.

"My species... is very rare. We live in isolation. It's unlikely you've heard of us. My name is Jane. And as you can see, right now I'm just a survivor of a severe accident."

In the corner of the room, Nick Wilde narrowed his green eyes slightly. His instincts literally screamed at him: this hairless Jane was lying through her teeth. Professionally, flawlessly, smoothly avoiding the sharp corners. He saw how her eyes scanned the room, noting the exits, the layout of the windows, and the holster on Chief Bogo's belt. That wasn't the look of a frightened engineer; it was the look of a dangerous, cornered predator, even if she lacked large, sharp fangs. But at the same time, Nick saw her wounds and understood—the disaster she had escaped from was real.

Chief Bogo took a heavy step forward. The floor creaked subtly beneath his massive hooves. The buffalo towered over Jane's medical cot like a cliff face, and his stern, perceptive gaze from beneath thick brows measured Jane from head to toe. The atmosphere in the room instantly thickened.

"A disaster, then," Bogo rumbled, slowly removing his hoof from the grip of his pistol but maintaining his dominant, rigid posture. "Well, Jane, as the Chief of Police of this city, I must officially state: assaulting an officer in the line of duty is a serious crime, one that gets you put behind bars for a very long time around here. Even 'rare and isolated' ones."

"Chief!" Judy turned to her boss in outrage, her ears shooting straight up. "She's barely breathing! What prison? Look at her condition!"

"I see everything, Hopps," the buffalo cut her off without even turning his head. "And I also know how to read reports. This stranger is nearly twice Wilde's mass, and given her hidden metal implants—even more so. Yet instead of simply pushing him away, she threw an officer into a tree using her mind, leaving a scorched mark at the scene. This isn't simple, and we need to find out NOW."

Jane didn't break eye contact. She stared straight into the eyes of the massive buffalo, and inside her, that part of her that loathed being pressured was routinely waking up—the part that always knew how to put overly confident bureaucrats or military leaders in their place, whether it was the Citadel Council or Alliance generals. She forced herself to sit up, ignoring the painful stab in her ribs. The fragments of N7 armor on her shoulders clinked softly.

"If I wanted to kill your officer, 'Chief,'" Jane emphasized the word with subtle irony, "he wouldn't be sitting on a couch right now with a clean bandage. He wouldn't be breathing at all. I admit I made a mistake, and I've already apologized. But if you want to play tough cop with someone who just crawled out of hell, you're not going to succeed. I have nothing to lose."

From the corner of the room, Nick Wilde gave a quiet whistle, impressed by the sheer nerve. Zootopia citizens rarely spoke to Bogo in that tone, especially while effectively in custody. The fox shot a quick glance at Judy, who was catching her breath, clearly stunned by the newcomer's boldness.

Dr. Sigurd hastily intervened, stepping between Bogo and Jane's cot, raising his spotted paws pacifyingly.

"Enough, you two. Chief Bogo, as a doctor, I strictly forbid any investigative actions in my ward. The patient needs rest."

Bogo exhaled heavily through his nostrils, holding Jane's gaze for another couple of seconds before slowly turning toward the exit.

"Fine, Sigurd. You have twenty-four hours to get her fully back on her feet. Officer Hopps, Officer Wilde—you stay here. This wing of the hospital is under quarantine. Nobody enters or leaves without my personal authorization. Tomorrow morning, we will resume this conversation in a more... official setting. And I hope, Jane, that by then your memory clears up."

As the heavy door of the ward slammed shut behind the buffalo's massive back, silence hung over the room once more, but it was no longer as hostile. Jane leaned back against the pillows, exhausted.

Judy timidly stepped closer, looking at Jane with genuine sympathy in her purple eyes.

"He's not mean... Chief Bogo. It's just... the safety of the whole city is on his shoulders. And you... you're the first one to... well, you know."

Jane looked at the little rabbit. For a second, something human and soft flickered in her gaze—the trait of a hero that always drove her to protect the weak.

"I understand, Judy. He's just doing his job."

Nick shifted on the couch, getting his broken paw into a more comfortable position, and smirked slyly.

"Well now, Jane... Since we're stuck here all night by your grace, maybe you could tell us which tech schools turn out 'specialists' capable of snapping bones with a look? I promise I won't tell Bogo. I've got a terrible memory for info anyway when my arm hurts."

When Chief Bogo's heavy footsteps finally faded down the corridor, a quiet settled over the ward, stripped of its previous aggressive tension. Dr. Sigurd spent another couple of minutes fussing with the diagnostic panel at the head of the cot, replacing an empty saline IV bag with a fresh one, before sighing wearily.

"I'll be in the staff lounge at the end of the hall," the leopard said, adjusting his gown as he looked at the quieted officers. "Try not to exhaust her. She needs rest, not a cross-examination. If anything happens, call me or Bogo."

The door clicked quietly as it shut behind the doctor. Judy Hopps immediately pulled a metal chair closer to the cot and sat down, folding her paws in her lap. A mountain of questions was written all over her face, but she held herself back, trying to look friendly. Nick remained on the couch, settling his cast-bound paw into a more comfortable position, his sharp, slightly mischievous green eyes never leaving Jane.

Jane relaxed her shoulders a bit, leaning back against the stiff hospital pillow. The shock of staring at talking fauna was gradually giving way to a cold analysis of the situation.

"You two..." Shepard spoke first, her raspy voice coming through the translator low but steady. "You're not going to leave me alone, are you? Your Chief made it clear I'm in for a long talk tomorrow."

"Oh, Bogo doesn't waste words," Nick chimed in, twitching his right ear slightly. "Our Chief is a buffalo in every sense of the word. If he's decided you're a potential threat to public order, he will squeeze everything out of you, right down to your childhood memories. So it's in your best interest, Jane, to give us at least something we can feed him in the morning."

Judy nodded in agreement, leaning forward. "Jane, we really want to help. You ended up here alone, injured, without any ID, in a completely strange place. What happened in the woods... we understand it was out of fear. But if you keep shutting us out and speaking in riddles, the city government will just isolate you for safety reasons. Tell us the truth. Where are you from?"

Jane was silent for a few seconds, then shifted her heavy, direct gaze to the rabbit. A bitter, tired smirk flickered in her eyes.

"The truth, Judy?" Shepard asked quietly. "If I lay all my cards on the table right now and tell you the pure, unadulterated truth about who I am, where I'm from, and what happened at my... station... you won't be calling Bogo. You'll call a team from the psychiatric ward, and I'll be locked in a padded room for the rest of my days."

Nick raised an eyebrow slightly, appreciating the phrasing. His tail flicked imperceptibly behind the back of the couch.

"Well, Zootopia has excellent healthcare, but padded walls seem a bit much. Try starting small. Carrots and I are good listeners."

Jane took a deep breath, feeling her cybernetic implants continue to knit the damaged tissues in her chest. She made a decision to give them exactly as much information as they could digest without having an existential crisis.

"Fine. My home... my native land is very far from here. So far that you won't find it on any of your maps, and..." she paused briefly, looking at Judy's furry ears and Nick's fox snout, "...and where I come from, sapient beings look entirely different. My species is the dominant one."

"Without fur or claws?" Nick asked with a hint of doubt.

"Without fur or claws," Jane confirmed. "But with technology that is vastly far ahead. What you took for magic in the forest is the result of complex surgery and physics. My body is modified. I was a security officer at a facility where an accident did happen, one that escalated into a colossal disaster. An explosion of massive power. All I had left was my uniform. I was thrown through... let's call it a spatial anomaly. I didn't know where I would land, and I was certain I would die. Meaning, I don't understand how I ended up here myself."

Judy listened intently, her pink nose twitching rapidly as she processed what she heard. "So... you're a security officer? You look like you've been through a war."

The word "war" echoed in Jane's mind with a dull, painful ring. For a split second, the crimson sky of London flashed before her eyes again, accompanied by the distant, spine-chilling hum of a Reaper. Come back alive, Jane... Garrus's distant, gravelly voice scratched at the edge of her consciousness, making her fingers tighten their grip on the edge of the hospital sheet.

"Yes," Jane replied quietly but firmly, managing the rush of memory. "I don't want your power, your technology, or your secrets. I just need to lick my wounds and figure out what the hell is going on. That's all I can tell you. Believe it if you want, or build your conspiracy theories."

Nick Wilde looked closely at her tightly pressed lips, at how her gaze shifted for a second at the mention of the disaster. The fox was a master at spotting lies, but right now he saw clearly: this hairless woman wasn't lying. She was definitely hiding a massive amount of information and only telling a fraction of the truth.

"Well," Nick moved his healthy paw, breaking the tension a bit. "That's not a bad start. At least it sounds better than if you turned out to be some kind of alien. Bogo will grumble, sure, but City Hall loves humanitarian missions."

Jane let out a hollow laugh. The sound escaped her chest—dry, croaking, entirely devoid of mirth. The omni-tool dutifully translated the chuckle with a mocking, vibrating tone.

The entire time, a single, stubborn thought kept pounding inside her skull. This isn't real. The Reapers. It has to be them. Indoctrination, a mental trap, a twisted simulation by the Catalyst designed to leach the remaining information out of her before finally turning her into gray organic sludge for processing. The ancient machines were just playing with her, throwing her into this ridiculous, grotesque world with fluffy animals. And if that was the case, she had absolutely nothing to lose. The galaxy was either saved or burned to ashes, and Shepard herself was dead or close to it.

"City Hall loves humanitarian missions?" Jane sneered, leaning forward and glaring at Nick. "How touching. Tell your City Hall, red, that they can shove their missions right up their tails. Along with your precious Chief."

Judy sat stunned by such sharpness, her ears instantly flattening against her head. The fox merely gave a funny twitch of his nose, not bothered in the slightest, though a dangerous spark flickered in his green eyes. Both of them were beginning to realize clearly: this hairless woman was holding back, masterfully playing them by mixing bits of truth with outright venom.

"Aren't you prickly, Jane," Nick said, smoothly swinging his legs off the couch. Stepping softly on his paw pads across the linoleum, he walked over to the cabinet in the corner of the ward. "You know, Carrots and I can tell when we're being played. You're dodging the question, and frankly, you're terrible at lying."

The fox bent down and picked up a heavy plastic bag from the floor, the one Bogo had ordered left for forensics. With a dull, plastic rustle, Nick pulled a massive, badly scorched object out of it and carefully set it on the edge of the cot right in front of Jane.

It was her N7 helmet. Or rather, what was left of it. The ultra-durable alloy was covered in deep craters from the explosion, the right side completely melted to expose bundles of severed fiber-optic cables, and the visor was shattered by a deep, yawning crack. But even in this state, it looked like a purebred piece of futuristic combat gear.

Judy stepped closer, pointing a paw at the cracked faceplate. "The officers found this in the ferns, literally a couple of meters away from you. Dr. Sigurd said it was... part of a headpiece. But our engineers at the precinct have never seen materials like this. Or this marking," the rabbit touched her finger to the scuffed but still visible red-and-white stripe and the N7 letters on the temple of the helmet. "What is this, Jane? What kind of 'ordinary security guard' wears a sealed mask with top-tier military-grade composite armor and filtration systems?"

Jane cast a glance at her broken helmet. For a second, a warmth bloomed inside her, and that turian baritone echoed in her ears again. She swallowed the lump rising in her throat with difficulty. Tell them? Tell them she was a Citadel SPECTRE? The first human to achieve that status? The unifier of the galaxy, at whose command fleets of asari, turians, salarians, quarians, geth, and the Alliance marched? Tell them this helmet protected her while she stood alone against an ancient race of sentient starships that had been reaping organics for billions of years? Yeah, they'd definitely lock her in a loony bin. For this world, her reality was pure, far-fetched sci-fi.

Shepard leaned back, interlacing her fingers behind her head, and looked at Nick with lazy, defiant superiority.

"It's a helmet, Detective. My species is called human. And we humans make it a habit at our 'facilities' to protect our fragile heads from flying chunks of metal. The letters? My personal series. The red-and-white stripe? For looks. What, do the engineers in your fluffy metropolis go to work in silk robes?"

"Engineers, maybe. Shock troops, highly unlikely," Nick shook his head, resting his healthy paw on his hip. "You can play the cynical bitch all you want, Jane. But this helmet... it doesn't smell like a factory. It smells like char, burned meat, and gunpowder. I can sniff that scent out a mile away. You're a soldier, not some ordinary guard. And you're clearly running from something that ground your base into dust."

Jane narrowed her eyes. This fox was starting to genuinely irritate her with his perceptiveness. She wanted to sting him harder, to break through this mask of a cocky, street-smart know-it-all, to test the durability of this Reaper simulation. She leaned forward, so close that Nick involuntarily twitched his ears back when he met her hard, frighteningly deep gaze.

"Fox," Jane said quietly with a chilling smile, her omni-tool delivering her voice with a calculated, dangerous rasp. "Let's play a game. Just out of curiosity. What if I told you right now that my species—these very humans—know how to fly massive starships through the endless void of space, making jumps across the galaxy in seconds... Would you think I'm crazy?"

A second-long pause hung over the ward. Nick Wilde looked at her like she was a lunatic, his tail twitching nervously, his face displaying a mix of genuine bewilderment. He took a step back, throwing his healthy paw up in the air.

"You're crazy!" the fox snapped, not even trying to hide his dramatic flair. "Starships? Jumps across the galaxy? Jane, I've heard of severe concussions and delirium, but you're literally reciting the plots of cheap comic books right now!"

"Nick, wait..." Judy looked fearfully from the exasperated fox to the completely calm, mockingly smiling Jane.

"No, Carrots, you listen to her!" Nick was no longer holding back, his voice dropping into an expressive half-whisper, half-growl. "She sits here in front of me, spouting nonsense, throws me into an oak tree with her mind, and now she claims she flew in from the moon! If Chief Bogo hears this garbage about 'space humans,' he'll personally drive you to a psychiatric clinic!"

Jane leaned back against the pillows, satisfied. She felt almost good. The Reaper simulation was giving an excellent, juicy reaction.

Excellent, she thought. Scream, fluffy. Put on a show. And I'll watch how long this Zootopia of yours lasts when I finally get back on my feet.

"From the moon?" Jane raised an eyebrow mockingly, a flat-out bold, predatory smirk spreading across her gaunt face.

The shock had completely given way to the familiar adrenaline rush of an operative with nothing left to lose. She spread her arms as much as her aching ribs allowed, making the remnants of her armor clink softly.

"Oh, think bigger, fluffy. The moon is way too dusty and boring. Nothing to catch there, take my word for it."

Nick was struck speechless for a second. He stared at her, breathing heavily, his sensitive black nose twitching furiously.

"You've got to be kidding me!" the fox finally exploded, completely losing his trademark street charm. He began pacing around the ward, waving his healthy paw and nearly knocking over the medical equipment.

"Judy, do you hear this crap?! This is pure schizophrenia! A textbook case! Her brain melted from that explosion, and we're sitting here like two idiots, trying to play 'Wilde and Hopps Detective Agency'! 'The moon is dusty and boring'! How the hell would you know what it's like?!"

Jane lazily tracked his erratic movements around the room with her eyes. This tantrum amused her. If the Reapers were trying to break her mind with this simulation, they had clearly overestimated her capacity for fear. She shifted her gaze to Judy, who stood frozen to the spot, pressing her paws to her chest, and then looked back at the raging fox.

"Listen here, astronomer," Jane cut him off smoothly, a sharp edge cutting through her words. The omni-tool dutifully delivered her cold, muffled tone. "Before you completely fry your nervous cells, answer me one simple question. Since my 'delirium' hits your delicate ego so hard... Have you mammals actually made it into space yourselves? Or do you still think the sky is a solid dome with light bulbs hung up at night?"

Nick froze dead in the middle of the ward, spinning around on his heels to face her. Such deep, genuine insult was painted on his face, it was as if Jane had just spat on the very history of his civilization.

"What?!" the fox growled, his ears pinning back furiously against his head. "How dare you... Why, we... Judy, tell her!"

The rabbit hastily took a step forward, her purple eyes flashing angrily. The insult to Zootopia's technological progress had stung her officer's pride as well.

"Actually, Jane, we have a very highly developed space program!" Judy blurted out, proudly straightening her posture. "We are not savages! Dozens of high-tech communication and weather satellites orbit our planet! Our space program is the pride of global science! Great scientists spent years developing rockets! And... and by the way, twenty years ago, our historic crew—a brave wolf and two test-pilot weasels—made the first landing on our Moon! They planted a flag there and brought back lunar soil!"

Jane listened to the tirade in silence, her smirk growing progressively more cynical.

'Satellites... Reached their moon twenty years ago... Wolves and weasels on rockets...' Shepard put the pieces together. This world, this damn simulation, was technologically stuck somewhere deep in the dark, archaic twentieth or twenty-first century of human history.

"A wolf and two weasels?" Jane leaned her head back against the pillow and broke into a low, raspy cough that quickly turned into a mocking laugh, making Nick literally grind his teeth. "Oh, Lord... A space program to be proud of! Heroes of the Galaxy, no less. You stuffed predators into a tin can loaded with gunpowder, shot it into the sky, and now you expect me to fall to my knees before you?"

"She's mocking us! She's straight-up mocking us, Hopps!" Nick was no longer just pacing; he was prowling the ward like a tiger trapped in a cage. His ears twitched, and his healthy shoulder gave a nervous shudder. "You hear that tone? This hairless... this creature is sitting on our cot, spouting gibberish, and making fun of us on top of it! You hear me, Jane? We broke Earth's gravity, wake up!"

Jane cut her laughter short. Her face hardened instantly, her gaze turning as cold and sharp as a tactical blade.

"You broke the pull of your local puddle, fox," she snapped, leaning forward. "My ship was slicing through nebulae at faster-than-light speeds using the mass effect while your animal scientists were still learning how to calculate a course by the stars."

Judy stood there, completely lost. Her long ears drooped helplessly over her shoulders, and her pink nose twitched subtly. The rabbit tried to grasp at any semblance of logic, but the world around her was rapidly crumbling. On one hand, there was this obvious nonsense about intergalactic space travel coming from a hairless, undocumented creature. On the other hand, there was the helmet, the scars, those terrifying glowing circuits under the skin that Dr. Sigurd couldn't identify. What if she wasn't crazy? But if she was telling the truth, who were they? And where was their place in the universe?

"Jane..." Judy called out timidly, taking a step back toward Nick as if seeking his protection. "If what you're saying... if you're not delusional... then why are you here? What is your goal? Why did your species come here?"

Shepard let out a bitter, crooked smile. For a second, her certainty that everything around her was merely a Reaper simulation suffered a painful glitch. This fox was freaking out way too naturally. This rabbit was far too genuinely terrified. Could the machines truly recreate such subtle, vivid expression?

'Of course they can,' Jane cut herself off harshly. 'They indoctrinated Saren. They indoctrinated the Illusive Man. They're playing me. They want me to believe in this cozy, stupid little world where the biggest problem is a predator's broken paw.'

"Why did I come here?" Jane shifted her eyes to Judy, her gaze reflecting a void so bottomless and scorched that the rabbit involuntarily shuddered. "I didn't fly here to meet you, Hopps. I'm here because your damn reality is most likely just a twisted simulation inside my dying brain."

Nick froze by the window, slowly turning his head toward the cot. His tail went completely stiff.

"Simulation?" he asked dully, all his anger evaporating. "You think you're dreaming us up?"

"I think the Reapers finally got to me on the Citadel," Jane spat out the name like poison, carefully watching the mammals' reactions. "I think the Crucible failed. Or it worked, but I'm burning up in Earth's atmosphere while ancient machines entertain themselves with what's left of my consciousness. Come on! Tell me, fox, did they make you put on that ridiculous blue shirt? Did the Catalyst invent your Zootopia just so I'd forget about the millions of bodies in London? So I'd forget how kilometer-long squids from deep space sliced our fleet with lasers like a hot knife through butter?"

A heavy, deathly silence settled over the ward. Nick and Judy exchanged glances. There was no anger left in the fox's eyes—only a frozen, deep bewilderment mixed with a creeping terror.

"What... squids from space?" Judy asked softly, swallowing hard. "Jane, who are you talking about? What Reapers?"

Jane scrutinized their faces. Not a shred of recognition. Not a single digital glitch in the textures. They looked entirely, frighteningly sincere in their confusion. Inside Commander Shepard, a spine-chilling gear slowly, agonizingly turned: 'What if... it isn't a simulation? What if I'm actually alive, the plan worked, and I was just thrown God knows where?' That thought terrified her more than all the Reapers' mental tortures combined.

The thought that all of this could be real—a real, tangible world where, instead of the Alliance, she was surrounded by sentient animals—seared Jane from the inside. For a second, her heart skipped a beat. But the battle-hardened soldier within her immediately threw up a mental barrier. 'No. Out of the question. That's too stupid, even for the Reapers. They're afraid, and now their collective mind is frantically grasping at any absurdity to disorient me. They want me to doubt.'

Jane took a deep breath. The panic ebbed away, leaving behind a crystal-clear, vicious resolve. If the machines wanted to play circus, she was going to give them a performance they'd remember until the next cycle.

Shepard's demeanor shifted abruptly. The heavy, searing gaze of a Spectre vanished instantly, replaced by an exaggeratedly wide, manic grin. She threw her hands up, dramatically clasping her palms to her cheeks, making the broken shoulders of her N7 armor clink forlornly.

"Oh!" Jane wailed theatrically with a dramatic howl. "Oh, my sweet Lord! Fox, you are completely, absolutely right! What a fool I am! What an utterly hopeless, clinical idiot! Space squids?! Faster-than-light travel?! God, how could I pull such utter gibberish out of thin air!"

Nick and Judy flinched back half a step from the cot in unison. The fox's jaw dropped in disbelief, while the rabbit's ears shot straight up at such a drastic mood swing.

"Jane?.." Judy called out cautiously, her pink nose twitching rapidly.

"Oh, I'm no Jane, Judy! I'm just the walking delirium of a mad professor!" Jane dramatically collapsed back onto the pillows, covering her forehead with the back of her hand like a Victorian lady in a deep faint. "Quickly, do you hear me, quickly call the doctor! Have him bring the largest straightjacket in his leopard size! And call your boss, the buffalo—let him haul me off to your loony bin! Preferably one with padded walls and three daily doses of sedatives!"

Nick Wilde narrowed his eyes, watching the performance closely. His tail flicked with irritation. He could tell immediately that this excessive flair was pure mockery. A show designed to make fools out of them.

"Right, okay," Nick drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head. "You're a pretty terrible actress, you know. A bit heavy on the drama."

"What drama, Detective!" Jane sat up abruptly on the cot, crossing her legs and staring at the fox with unhidden, genuine amusement in her eyes. She was openly enjoying the moment, as if she were watching a fun show rather than participating in an interrogation. "I've finally realized the true depth of my schizophrenia! I mean, after all... of course! I'm just a mutant! A victim of illegal genetic engineering from your underground labs. A hairless ape whose fur fell out at birth, and a mad rat scientist sewed old plumbing pipes under my skin and made me glow in the dark! Brilliant, isn't it?"

Judy looked back and forth in confusion between the smiling Jane and the scowling Nick. "But... Jane... your scars... that blue explosion in the forest..."

"Just regular tricks with pocket firecrackers, Officer Hopps!" Jane winked at the rabbit, her voice dripping with toxic sarcasm. "Swiped a couple of batteries from some beaver mechanic and decided to make a dramatic exit into the mist. And space... forget it! The stars are just light bulbs. Beautiful, shiny light bulbs. And I'm just a crazy broad. So write up your report, Nicky. Hand me over to the orderlies. The show is over, the audience can go home."

She leaned back on the cot with nonchalant grace, crossing her legs. She was completely bare, covered in scratches, with glowing scars, yet carrying herself as if she were sitting on a throne in her personal cabin aboard the Normandy. Jane Shepard was playing her game against the Reapers, and in her mind, she had won this round.

Judy took a step forward. Her small paws rested cautiously on the metal rail of the cot. The confusion on the rabbit's face slowly gave way to something else—a deep, pure compassion that couldn't be written into any police protocol. Beside her, Nick went quiet by the window, watching them both intently, no longer chiming in with his sharp remarks.

"Enough, Jane. Please, stop," Judy said softly, but with remarkable earnestness. Her long ears drooped gently along her back. "This isn't a show. And you're not crazy."

Jane wanted to fire off another biting remark, but a sudden spasm in her chest made her stop short. The internal implants knitting her damaged ribs together pulsed with a brief, painful orange glow beneath her skin. Jane exhaled sharply through her nose, her fingers clutching the edges of the hospital sheet in a vice grip as sweat broke out on her forehead. Every cell in her battered body burned with a very real, non-simulated fire.

Judy noticed it. She didn't flinch away. On the contrary, the rabbit leaned in closer, looking directly into the grey, bitterly resigned eyes of the human woman.

"Let's just talk normally. We want to help you! And you're not hallucinating, you're definitely not in a simulation run by these... Reapers. You can touch my fur and see for yourself."

Jane narrowed her eyes, eyeing the rabbit's violet eyes with suspicion. Then, she carefully moved her left hand and touched the gray fur. Suspicion and confusion warred in her eyes. She kept stroking the fur, trying to prove to herself that this was all nonsense. But it wasn't—the fur was pleasant to the touch, warm. Real. Maybe this really wasn't the Reapers' doing...

"See? Satisfied?" The rabbit smiled. "Why were you alone in those woods, in the middle of a scorched clearing? What happened there, Jane?"

"I..." Shepard said, bewildered, frantically looking around the room. "I don't know, honestly. I don't understand what happened or how I ended up here myself."

Shepard trailed off, breathing heavily and raggedly through her gritted teeth.

'Could the Reapers transmit sensations with such physical accuracy? Could they simulate this tiny, barely noticeable twitch of rabbit ears?'

"Everything is too unrealistic. I don't know what to believe anymore. It all happened too fast... And..."

'No. Don't you dare give up, Shepard. It's a trap. The moment you believe their reality, they'll take your mind,' an internal voice barked so loudly that Jane physically shuddered.

"We aren't these Reapers of yours. I'm honestly hearing that word for the first time, really. Can we try introducing ourselves properly again? I'm Judy Hopps, an ordinary rabbit from Bunnyburrow who dreamed of catching criminals her whole life. Nicholas Wilde is a fox who spent half his life hustling until we became partners. We're real. Made of flesh, blood, and fur. And we certainly mean you no harm. We just pulled you out of the mud in the rain. Tell us what happened. Please."

Judy's words, filled with a clean, almost cinematic sincerity, breached Shepard's heavy armor for a split second. Jane was taken aback. Her throat felt dry, and her prepared sarcasm got stuck halfway. For a moment, the med bay felt terrifyingly, ringing-in-the-ears real. Those violet rabbit eyes, the smell of alcohol, the dull, throbbing pain beneath her ribs...

Jane slowly lowered her gaze—first to Judy's small paws resting on the rail, then to the rabbit herself, who would barely reach her waist if Jane were standing.

"What if I told you my words about space were actually true?"

She looked around at her listeners, who were paying close attention.

"Even if it sounds like the plot of another superhero comic book, we're listening," Nick said, and Judy nodded in agreement.

"With your level of technological development, it really does sound like a comic book plot, fox. I am a human. My race did indeed learn to travel through space and colonized planets in various parts of the galaxy. I can't tell you everything in one evening because there's an overwhelming amount of information and too much complexity. So let's start small, deal?"

The fox thoughtfully rubbed the bridge of his snout, while Judy looked Jane over attentively. Then, almost in unison, they both nodded.

"My name is Jane Shepard. I'm from the Systems Alliance—a supranational entity formed by the human race from planet Earth. How about you ask the questions, and I'll answer them?"

"Alright, Jane," Judy replied. "Do you mind if I take notes?"

She pulled a carrot-shaped recorder out of her pocket—one that had clearly seen some wear and tear. It was neatly taped together, equipped with a microphone and a button. Clearly a disguised recording device.

"So, Jane. There really are a lot of questions. If you were an ordinary mammal living in Zootopia, we would've identified you and definitely sent you for a psychiatric evaluation by now. But you're a species unknown to our science, so we'll treat your words with complete seriousness."

"And you're going to record everything on that funny carrot recorder of yours?" A smirk touched Shepard's face.

"Um... if you don't mind..." Judy began to answer.

"Oh, come on, I can see your unusual 'pen.' It's a voice recorder. Record away, then—let me indulge this improvised interrogation."

"Alright," Hopps gave a bashful smile, pondering which question to ask first.

"What kind of space 'magic' did you use on me?" Nick asked first, pointedly glancing at his broken paw.

"Fox," she called out softly, her voice stripped of its previous aggression—calm, almost casual. "I used a basic biotic technique on you. I hit you with a 'Throw' into that tree."

Nick flinched involuntarily, instinctively touching his neck under his shirt collar.

"And what kind of... tricks are those?" he asked, frowning, though his eyes now held nothing but professional, deep curiosity. "Our bodies are built differently. We can't paralyze mammals with our minds."

"It's not mind power. It's physics," Jane moved the fingers of her right hand slightly. Beneath her skin, near her wrist, neon-blue veins pulsed subtly once more. "Inside me, integrated directly into my nervous system, are nodes made of a special substance—Element Zero. We call it biotics. My brain can send electrical impulses to them, creating microscopic dark energy fields. We literally alter the mass of the space around an object."

She cast a fleeting glance at the nightstand, where a thick glass tumbler filled with leftover water was sitting. Jane made no sudden moves. She simply raised her open palm smoothly toward the nightstand and curled her fingers slightly.

"Watch."

The air around the glass immediately shimmered with a subtle, sparkling blue haze. With a quiet, clear ring, the glass lifted off the nightstand's metal surface. Nick and Judy leaned forward in unison, holding their breath.

The glass floated smoothly upward by half a meter, as if in zero gravity. The water inside didn't even ripple, frozen in a perfect transparent disk. Shepard guided her palm slightly to the left, and the glass obediently, silently traced a flawless arc through the air of the ward, hovering right between the stunned partners. The dense biotic field held it in a vice grip, defying gravity entirely.

"No magic," Jane added softly, a pale ghost of her former Renegade smirk flickering on her lips for a second. "Just levitation. Reduce an object's mass to zero, and it flies wherever you direct it. A handy skill when you need to flush some bastard out of cover. Or when you're too lazy to reach for a drink."

She smoothly lowered her palm back to the sheet. The blue glow vanished instantly, and the glass dropped back onto the nightstand with a soft thud, settling on the exact spot where it had stood.

Jane closed her eyes helplessly, feeling the heavy, throbbing blood pound in her temples from that brief demonstration. Her internal reserves were completely spent.

"That's... That's incredible!" Judy exclaimed. "I... I'm speechless! That really is actual magic!"

"Like I said, no, it isn't magic. It's a long and complex topic, and I don't have the strength to explain it all right now. But I might have some records—maybe I'll let you study them if I find them."

Jane smiled with satisfaction.

"And by the way, in case you haven't noticed, we're speaking different languages."

Nick froze with his mouth half-open. His paw, which had been mechanically reaching toward his pants pocket for a mint, hung suspended in mid-air. The fox's right ear twitched, making an intricate half-turn as if trying to catch a hidden radio frequency.

Judy blinked once, then twice, her nose twitching rapidly as she processed the information.

"What do you mean... different?" she asked softly, shifting her gaze from Jane's face to the empty glass that had just floated through the air and was now resting peacefully on the nightstand. "You're speaking our language. Well, with a bit of an accent, sure."

Jane let out a quiet chuckle. The cops' reaction was predictable, which made it almost amusing. She didn't want to dump tons of terminology about Earth's language families, signal encoding, and Alliance linguistic matrices on them—that would only overload their already strained brains. She needed to explain it as simply as possible.

She raised her left hand. From the gray composite bracelet fitting tightly around her wrist, a three-dimensional hologram unfolded with a quiet, barely audible hum. The bright orange light softly illuminated Shepard's pale face and reflected in Nick's dilated pupils. Holographic panels consisting of rings, lines of unfamiliar symbols, and scrolling graphs floated smoothly in the air right above her forearm.

Judy's ears shot straight up in astonishment. She took a step forward, mesmerized by the orange glow.

"Is that... Is that a pocket computer?" the rabbit muttered.

"Something like that. It's called an 'omni-tool,'" Jane answered calmly, showing them the bracelet from different angles. "It's a computer, a scanner, a repair tool... and a translator. What you're hearing right now isn't actually my real voice."

Nick finally snapped out of it. He crossed his arms over his chest, shifting slightly from paw to paw, but his tail flicked nervously from side to side, giving away his extreme tension.

"Okay, hold on," the fox narrowed his eyes, trying to find the logic in Jane's words. "If it's not your voice, then whose is it?"

"My device works very fast," Jane touched one of the orange icons with her finger, and it flared brighter for a second. "It has a built-in... artificial intelligence. A smart program. As soon as I woke up and heard your doctor, my omni-tool picked up the sound waves. In a fraction of a second, it analyzed the structure of your language—sentence construction, intonation, word meanings."

She paused, giving them a moment to digest what they had heard. Judy listened intently, nodding subtly, while Nick maintained a skeptical expression, though his ears kept tilting closer to the hologram.

"And what happens after that?" Judy asked, leaning forward.

"Then two-way translation kicks in," Shepard continued, smoothly moving her hand with the orange hologram. "The omni-tool itself is a complex microchip, and its translator operates like a localized field. It emits specific frequencies in a set radius around me. Everyone within that field—like you and Nick right now—comes under its effect. The device intercepts the sound waves of your speech, decodes them on the fly, and translates them into words I understand. And it disguises my speech the exact same way, broadcasting an understandable translation for you."

Judy blinked in surprise, her long ears tilting forward slightly. "So... you hear us directly like this, without any earpieces? The device just changes the sound in the air around you?"

"Exactly. The program literally overlays the translation on top of the original voice," Jane nodded. She turned her head slightly, remembering distant diplomatic missions. "Though the masking isn't a hundred percent seamless. Some species have a dual-tone speech by nature. So through the translation, you can still distinctly hear their real sounds and a strange vibration. If you listen to me closely, I think you'll notice a faint, barely perceptible echo or resonance when I speak."

Nick, who had been listening with narrowed eyes, raised one ear and froze, genuinely listening to her voice. A hint of surprise crossed his face—it seemed he really had caught an unfamiliar frequency in her speech pattern.

"Okay, that explains why we're chatting so nicely in this room," the fox shook his head, his tail making another smooth motion. "What if I step further away? Say, to the end of the hall, or across the street entirely?"

"Then the magic ends," Shepard spread her hands slightly. "The frequency range is limited. Step out of coverage, and the device stops picking up and processing your sounds. I'll just hear a jumble of alien noises, and you won't understand me. We'll be deaf to each other. But if you shout and the sound reaches the radius, it will be translated."

Judy nervously pressed a paw to her chest, looking at the orange glow of the omni-tool no longer with simple curiosity, but with a degree of awe. "Amazing... Such a small thing in the fabric, and it holds the barrier between entire worlds."

"It saves lives," Shepard said seriously, a shadow of memories from distant, alien worlds flickering in her eyes for a moment. "In my line of work, being able to quickly understand your counterpart is the difference between peace and war."

Nick crossed his arms over his chest, shifting his weight from paw to paw, his ears slowly dropping back in extreme focus. He looked closely at Jane, studying her unusual, furless proportions, the five fingers on her hands, and the strange structure of her face.

"Alright, you mentioned the human race. Can you tell us more about yourselves? From what I can see, you barely have any fur, and I don't see any claws, sharp teeth, or fangs for self-defense. What are you guys anyway? Predators, herbivores, or something in between? How is your world set up?"

Judy, standing beside him, nodded vigorously, her nose twitching rapidly with impatience. She even pulled out her carrot recorder, ready to write down every word.

Meanwhile, the fox narrowed his eyes, catching a crucial detail in Jane's earlier words, his right ear twitching upward.

"And one more thing. You just mentioned other species. Does that mean humans aren't the only sapient beings in your world? Do you have a bunch of different species living together there too, like in Zootopia?"

Jane leaned her back against the pillows, feeling her wounded shoulder throb from the long conversation, but her face remained calm. The orange hologram of the omni-tool smoothly faded out, returning the ward to its soft hospital lighting.

"To put it simply, humans are omnivores," Shepard began, noticing Judy immediately holding her pen over the carrot notepad. "We eat both plant food and meat, so in your terms, we're somewhere in the middle. On our planet, Earth, we evolved as the only sapient species. We don't have a division into predators or herbivores—all humans belong to one biological species, even if we look different on the outside in terms of skin color, eye shape, or height. We built huge cities, mastered technology, and eventually went into space."

Nick listened without interrupting, though his eyebrows shot up in surprise when Jane mentioned that humans were alone on their planet.

"A single sapient species for the entire planet?" The fox gave a short snort, shaking his head. "It must have been pretty damn boring for you guys over there. Or, on the flip side, way too quiet."

"More like we did a perfectly fine job of waging wars against each other without any help from other species," Jane replied with a touch of irony, though her face instantly turned serious. "But everything changed once we ventured beyond our solar system. That was when we learned the galaxy was inhabited. Besides humans, there are dozens of other sapient races out there. Turians, asari, salarians, krogan, quarians, geth, batarians... They all look completely different, each with their own culture, biology, and homeworlds. We learned to coexist, to trade, and we established a joint galactic government. But you definitely don't need to clutter your heads with that right now."

Judy, who had been quickly jotting down key terms, suddenly froze. Her ears twitched in confusion, and her pink nose wiggled.

"Wait, Shepard... You mentioned that Chief Bogo left us to watch over you for twenty-four hours. And you didn't react to that number at all."

Jane frowned slightly, not catching where the rabbit was going with this. "Should I have? Twenty-four hours is a standard day on my home planet."

"Exactly!" Judy practically leaped in place, caught up in a sudden rush of investigative excitement. "And Dr. Sigurd said you needed to rest for a few days. In your understanding, how many days are in a year?"

"Three hundred and sixty-five," Jane answered, feeling a strange, creeping astonishment stir inside her. "Unless it's a leap year. And a year is divided into twelve months."

A deafening silence enveloped the ward. Nick, who had been standing in a relaxed posture until now, snapped completely upright. His tail froze dead in mid-air, and his green eyes widened. He exchanged a look with Judy, whose face mirrored the exact same absolute shock.

"Three hundred and sixty-five days..." Nick repeated softly, as if testing the numbers on his tongue. He took a step closer to the cot, scrutinizing Jane's face. "And twenty-four hours in a day. Jane, this is... it's just absurd. We have the exact same calendar and the exact same time in Zootopia."

Shepard braced herself internally. As a soldier and an explorer, she had encountered the most unbelievable anomalies, but this revelation made her heart beat faster. Different worlds, different races, a colossal distance in space—yet completely identical temporal cycles.

"That can't be a random coincidence," Jane said hollowly, staring at the cops. "Planets have different masses, different rotation speeds around their stars. The fact that our days and years match up one-to-one... means that Earth and your world are physically very similar. Or there's some kind of invisible link between them that we haven't even guessed yet."

She paused, her expression darkening. Jane shifted her gaze from Judy to Nick, staring intently into their expressive, emotionally vivid faces, into their intelligent eyes, and felt a chill run down her spine at a thought she had been actively pushing away until now.

"But to be honest... there's something else troubling me," Shepard added in a quieter voice, her fingers gripping the edge of the hospital blanket tighter. "Something far more bizarre and terrifying than matching hours."

Judy stopped writing and lowered her paw with the notepad, picking up on the heavy, altered tone of the conversation.

"What is it?" she asked cautiously, tilting her head.

"You," Jane said, looking straight at the fox and the rabbit. "You see, on my native Earth, the exact same animals exist. Identical. We have foxes, rabbits, buffaloes, leopards—all the species that make up Zootopia, from what I gather. Physically, they look almost the same, except they walk on four legs and don't wear clothes. But the main difference lies elsewhere... They aren't sapient. They have no civilization, no speech, no laws. They live a wild life, governed entirely by instinct. To humans, they are either pets, a part of wildlife, or... food. And the fact that you've built a metropolis here and wear police uniforms while your doubles on my planet are just running around in the woods—it blows my mind."

Jane's words dropped into the silence of the ward like heavy stones. Judy froze, her notepad nearly slipping from her paws, her long ears drooping helplessly against her head. The rabbit's nose twitched frantically as she processed what she had just heard; the concept that somewhere in the universe, rabbits and foxes were just non-sapient wild animals defied all logic.

Nick reacted differently. His tail gave a sharp twitch, the fur on his scruff bristled almost imperceptibly, and a look of deep, wounded bewilderment mixed with disbelief appeared on his face.

"Food?" the fox echoed, a rare, harsh raspiest cutting through his voice. "So, on your planet, someone like me is just a wild animal running through the woods?"

"Yes," Jane answered bluntly and without sugarcoating it, looking him dead in the eye. "For my world, it's the natural order of things. That's why, when I first woke up and saw you, my initial reaction was... specific. Put yourself in my shoes: you fall asleep, and you wake up in a hospital where you're being treated by a bipedal big cat and interrogated by a talking fox and a rabbit in uniforms. I was so stunned and disoriented that I figured I'd finally lost my mind from the trauma or fallen into some elaborate trap. That's where all my aggression came from."

"And what kind of trap would that be? Do you have any ideas how this is even possible?" Judy stepped closer to the cot, her voice trembling slightly with agitation. "Our time, our species... How can two worlds be so connected?"

Jane let out a heavy sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her healthy hand.

"I have three theories. First, it could be the Reapers I mentioned. High-tech machines capable of creating incredibly realistic illusions directly inside someone's consciousness. To this moment, I still haven't entirely ruled out that you two are a complex projection in my dying brain designed to disorient me."

Nick narrowed his eyes skeptically, tapping the edge of the nightstand with his paw as if testing the structural integrity of the ward.

"Well, for an illusion, everything here smells a bit too strongly of hospital disinfectant, and my paw hurts way too much. What's the second theory?"

"A parallel world," Shepard said without much enthusiasm. "The theory that alternative realities exist where evolution took a different path. But to be honest, I don't believe in that garbage at all."

"And the third?" Judy asked, holding her breath.

"The Protheans," Jane replied, her gaze turning contemplative. "An ancient, incredibly advanced civilization that lived in the galaxy long before us. They studied Earth thousands of years ago when my species was just emerging, leaving behind numerous hidden bases and technologies. If they once found a planet with the exact same physical parameters as Earth and decided to transport terrestrial animals here to conduct some massive experiment in accelerated evolution... Your world could very well be the result."

Jane gave a bitter chuckle and leaned her head back.

"And you know what? If this really is the Protheans' doing, I won't even be surprised. There's just way too much crazy shit, unbelievable discoveries, and bizarre phenomena happening in our inhabited galaxy that you quickly get used to it. So a sapient fox in a shirt is just another item on my list of insane things."

Judy sat with her mouth slightly open, her carrot pen hovering uselessly over her notepad. Nick slowly lowered himself onto the edge of the sofa, burying his healthy paw into the red fur on the back of his head. All this information was simply exploding their minds. Portable computers, ancient extinct races, evolutionary experiments... It all sounded way too much like some wild sci-fi space movie playing in theaters, but definitely not like reality.

The partners exchanged glances. In the rabbit's violet eyes, fear mingled with an irrepressible, purely professional curiosity. Taking a deep breath, Judy asked the most logical question swirling in her mind:

"Jane... You've mentioned them more than once now. Who are the Reapers?"

At that question, Shepard suddenly went rigid. The word itself, spoken by the high-pitched voice of a fluffy rabbit in a sterile ward, sounded alien and terrifying. Jane stared at a single spot on the wall. Inside her, a familiar, suffocating wave of longing and phantom pain surged. Before her eyes, as clear as day, Garrus appeared again. His face, badly scarred by the explosion, the steady reticle of his visor, and that desperate, fierce loyalty with which he had looked at her before the Normandy flew away. His gaze, full of sorrow, pain, and love... Her heart squeezed painfully, catching her breath. She still didn't know if her turian Archangel had survived. If anyone had survived at all.

Jane took a heavy, ragged breath, forcing her personal memories deep down through sheer willpower, and shifted her gaze back to the quiet cops.

"Alright, Slick. You're right," she said hollowly, addressing Nick. Not a trace of her recent mocking smirk remained on her face. "I'm not a guard. I'm a soldier. An officer. A Commander. And at my disposal was the most advanced, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated reconnaissance ship in the known galaxy—the Normandy SR-2."

Jane raised her left hand again. The omni-tool blinked obediently, and a flawless, highly detailed 3D model of the starship materialized above her wrist. A predatory, streamlined silhouette, black composite hull panels, massive twin drives, and the proud lettering of the "Normandy" alongside the Systems Alliance symbols on the hull. The model rotated slowly in the air of the ward, casting orange reflections onto the stunned faces of the mammals.

"Beautiful ship, isn't she?" Jane smiled sadly, looking at the hologram, then clenched her fist, extinguishing the glow. Her face hardened instantly. "And the Reapers... they are the ones who came to destroy all sentient life in the universe."

She paused for a brief moment, gathering her strength.

"They are an ancient race of colossal sentient machines from Dark Space. Once every fifty thousand years, they emerge into the galaxy from the interstellar void with a single purpose—to completely wipe out all advanced organic life. They don't take prisoners, and they don't negotiate. They arrive at planets, glass cities from orbit with beams of immense power, and the living beings... they harvest them. They process them into genetic material, turning them into mindless, horrific cyborgs for their army."

Nick and Judy listened to her, holding their breath. The fox felt a cold sweat run down his spine. The sheer horror of what those machines did paralyzed the mammals. They had grown up in a peaceful, civilized society where the worst event was an outbreak of Night Howlers, and they simply couldn't believe that something so monstrous and ruthless could exist in reality. A heavy, oppressive bewilderment settled over the ward.

"It was a war of total extinction," Jane continued quietly, but with a terrifying steel in her voice. "Trillions of living organisms were dying in it. Genocide. Entire star systems burned away in a matter of days. And I... I ended up here right after the final battle. We threw every ounce of our fleets' strength into defending Earth and the Citadel. I activated the Crucible—an ancient superweapon meant to stop the machines. But at the moment of launch, a colossal explosion occurred. I lost consciousness and woke up in your forest. I... I still don't know if we won. I don't know the outcome of this damn war."

Shepard fell silent, her shoulders slumping exhaustedly. Telling the story seemed to have drained the last remnants of her energy.

Judy and Nick sat absolutely motionless, digesting what they had heard. The sheer grandiosity and nightmare of someone else's history weighed heavily on them. But suddenly, Nick slowly raised his head, his green eyes flashing strangely, his ears locking in place with tension. He looked at Judy, and the rabbit returned his gaze with the exact same stunned, suddenly enlightened expression.

Judy swallowed, took a step toward the cot, and, almost stammering with excitement, asked:

"Jane... You said a superweapon explosion occurred while you were there? Tell me... do you know anything about... an incredibly bright red flash that lit up the entire sky and our planet exactly five years ago? Every media outlet was screaming about it."

What?

"A red flash..." Jane repeated, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Everything inside her went ice-cold. Red. The bright red flash that had filled her vision at the very last moment, after making her choice. The choice she had fought through fire and blood to reach on the Citadel, ready to purge the Reapers from the galaxy once and for all. Did the Crucible actually work? Did that wave manage to reach even this forgotten corner of the galaxy? Did that mean she was still in the Milky Way?

But... five years ago?!

That number hit her harder than she could have imagined. In her own perception, only a few hours had passed from the battle for Earth to waking up somewhere in the forests of this world. How could she have woken up here a whole five years later? A time dilation? A spatial anomaly caused by the destruction of the Citadel? It was an incredible, terrifying mystery that made her head spin. Shepard suddenly realized: her appearance here was far from an accident. She was clearly here for a reason.

And right on the heels of the initial shock, a timid but powerful pulse of hope broke through the heavy shroud of despair. Not all was lost. She couldn't be one hundred percent certain—you could never be entirely certain in war, and the Crucible could have malfunctioned or only partially fired—but that red light in Zootopia's sky gave her a real, tangible chance that the sacrifices hadn't been in vain.

"Keelah..." Jane exhaled sharply, closing her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, that same stubborn fire that used to force her to get back up after the heaviest wounds was burning in her gaze once more. "If the flash was red... then the Crucible at least activated. I remember it... There's a chance we... we stopped them."

Judy and Nick watched her, not daring to move. The change in the atmosphere within the ward was palpable—the wounded, lost woman was giving way to a commander who had gripped onto a new objective.

"Listen to me," Jane said firmly, looking at the partners. "I will tell you everything. Absolutely everything, down to the last detail. But later and in pieces, because you already think I'm crazy as it is, and I need time to get back on my feet. Since I've ended up here, out in the middle of nowhere, I don't intend to sit around twiddling my thumbs. Perhaps my knowledge and technology will prove useful to your race's development. But first, I simply need to survive."

She shifted her gaze to Nick, whose ears perked up with interest once more.

"I need to figure out the circumstances that threw me here. Understand why this world, so similar to Earth, even exists. And, most importantly... try to contact my people. I need to find a way to transmit a signal. I have to start somewhere."

Shepard leaned forward slightly, feeling a spring unwind inside her—the same tension that had kept her coiled tight ever since she woke up.

"If the Crucible worked and they won, then over these five years, the galaxy has already begun to rebuild. And my friends... my crew... if they survived and if they have even the slightest shred of evidence, even a shadow of a doubt that I was completely vaporized in that blast—they will flip every sector of the universe upside down looking for me. And I have to let them know that Commander Shepard is alive."

Nick and Judy remained silent for a few more seconds, staring at Jane in fascination. The scale of the story unfolding before them didn't fit into the frameworks of standard police reports, but Judy's natural optimism and Nick's professional pragmatism quickly brought them back to reality.

Judy briskly tucked her notepad into her uniform pocket and gave a crooked smile. Her long ears swiveled forward approvingly.

"Jane, you've given us more answers than we could have hoped for," the rabbit said earnestly. "And you know what? Since you're here—the sole representative of your species in the entire world—Zootopia won't abandon you. Our city is a place of opportunity for all mammals, regardless of who they are, whether they have fur, or where they flew in from. City Hall will absolutely help you with housing, social adaptation, and, of course, a job. We'll help you. With your skills and technology, you definitely won't go under here."

Nick chuckled softly, shoving his healthy paw into his pants pocket, his tail making a lazy, reassuring motion. "Carrots is right. Even with the total lack of a tail and claws, everyone will get used to it quickly. Main thing is—get better. We'll handle the paperwork and getting you set up. Consider it your first couple of friends."

Jane felt a wave of incredible, leaden exhaustion suddenly crash over her the moment she let go of her internal tension. Too many emotions, too many spoken words, and heavy memories for a body that hadn't yet recovered from the shock.

"Thank you," Shepard breathed out hollowly, feeling her eyelids turn into dead weights. "I appreciate it... But right now, officers... please. I need to sleep. My limit for today is spent."

"Of course, of course, get some rest!" Judy caught herself and lightly nudged Nick toward the exit. "We'll be right outside the door. If you need anything, just call us or Dr. Sigurd."

They quietly tiptoed out of the ward, and the heavy, soundproof door clicked softly shut behind their backs, cutting off the rhythmic ticking of the medical equipment.

Finding themselves in the empty, dimly lit corridor of the ward, the fox and the rabbit froze. For a few seconds, they just stood motionless, leaning against the wall. Nick slowly ran a paw over his forehead, ruffling his red fur. His ears were splayed helplessly outward, expressing total mental overload.

They exchanged a bewildered look.

"Tell me, Carrots, that I don't have a stray Night Howler stashed in my pocket and that I'm not imagining all of this. Starships? Her starship! An ancient race of giant machines? A red flash five years ago?" Nick said quietly, almost in a whisper, shaking his head.

Judy looked at her partner with eyes wide and round with shock. Her pink nose was twitching intensely.

"It's real, Nick... Her hand computer, the biotics... We just spoke with someone who survived the end of the world."

The fox narrowed his eyes and gave a crooked but admiring smile, looking at the closed door of the ward.

"You know, Carrots... You and I solved the Night Howler case, caught insane criminals, exposed the lies of the mobster Lynxi. But today... today we officially stumbled into the most amazing and insane incident of our entire lives."

Judy nodded in agreement, feeling a tremor of anticipation for an unknown future stir inside her. The chapter of their familiar life in Zootopia was closed, and right now, behind that hospital door, a completely new, incredible story was beginning.