S01E05 - Breach

"Breach" is the fifth episode of Season 1 of We Can Fix Pawbert and the first part of a two-part Reacher crossover. The episode marks a major turning point in the series as Luther's true identity as a deep-cover ZSI agent is revealed after he single-handedly defeats a six-member professional hit squad while sustaining life-threatening injuries.

Synopsis

A military-trained hit squad assaults the safehouse at 0300. Luther stays behind alone to fight them off while Nick, Judy, and Pawbert evacuate through a hidden ZSI tunnel. After killing all six attackers despite severe wounds, Luther crawls toward the extraction point, where Reacher's ZSI team finds him. Luther flatlines but is resuscitated by Neagley. Chief Bogo reveals Luther was placed by Mayor Winddancer as deep-cover ZSI insurance.

Plot

In the Marshlands district, the industrial zones where streetlights are scarce and shadows pool between warehouses, a hit squad prepares for its mission. Six professional soldiers gear up in silence at a Lowland Drive warehouse—no chatter, no wasted motion, the kind of efficiency that comes from years of training. Oxbow chambers a round and delivers the order: the witness dies tonight, along with anyone who gets in the way. When Gasket, the mongoose armorer, asks about the wolf guarding the target, Oxbow's answer is simple: then he dies too. The squad loads into a black van with stolen government plates.

At the safehouse, an evening of domestic routine is interrupted when Luther detects a perimeter breach. The motion sensor at the east perimeter has gone offline, followed immediately by the west sensor—professional work, someone spoofing the system. Luther's assessment is swift: at least a four-mammal team, coordinated entry. He orders the interior lights killed and moves to a hidden wall panel, revealing a narrow passage leading down into darkness. Nick stares—there's a tunnel in the ZPD safehouse that ZPD doesn't know about. Luther hands Judy a go-bag with emergency supplies and explains the tunnel exit is three blocks east, near the Mangrove Avenue drainage canal. Extraction will meet them there. He's staying behind to buy them time.

Pawbert refuses to leave. Luther grabs him by the shoulders, their eyes meeting. Something passes between them—understanding, fear, something neither can name. Luther promises he'll find them. Sounds of footsteps outside, coordinated. Luther pushes Pawbert toward the passage. The front door explodes inward.

In the tight, dark tunnel—the smell of earth and concrete and old pipes—Nick leads with a penlight, Pawbert in the middle, Judy covering the rear. Behind them: muffled chaos. A flash-bang detonates. Then gunfire, rapid and brutal. Pawbert wants to go back; Nick pulls him forward. Luther is buying them time—don't waste it.

The safehouse becomes a kill zone. Luther, positioned behind the couch with eyes covered and ears plugged before the flash-bang, rises as two operatives enter. He puts two rounds into the first operative's chest—a jaguar in tactical gear—before closing the distance on the second, a wolf. Wrist snapped, knee to the solar plexus, elbow to the skull. Two down in four seconds. A leopard crashes through the kitchen window. Luther's shot catches the shoulder but doesn't stop the charge. They crash through a bookshelf. A knife slashes deep into Luther's forearm. Luther breaks the leopard's knife paw, takes the blade, drives it into the leopard's throat. Three down.

Oxbow enters through the back door with the panther. Luther opens fire; Oxbow takes a round to the vest, staggers but returns fire. Luther dives behind the kitchen island. Oxbow shoves the entire island into Luther, catching his ribs. The panther pins him, draws a knife. Luther headbutts the panther, shattering his nose, then fires point-blank into his chest. Four down. But Oxbow is on him—a massive hoof connects with Luther's ribs. Something cracks. Luther is thrown against the wall, disarmed.

Luther pulls his backup piece from an ankle holster, shoots Oxbow in the thigh. They collide like freight trains. The fight is brutal—no finesse, just violence. Luther drives his thumb into Oxbow's eye. The musk ox throws him off, draws his sidearm. Luther kicks the wounded leg, brings Oxbow down, then wraps his paws around the musk ox's throat. Oxbow thrashes, one blow catching Luther's broken ribs. Luther doesn't let go. Oxbow's movements slow, weaken, stop. Five down.

Gasket, the rear guard, enters to find his entire team dead. He fires into Luther's abdomen—Luther grunts but doesn't scream. Gasket approaches to finish it. Luther's paw finds a mahogany shard from the shattered bookshelf. He explodes upward, drives the shard into Gasket's neck, twists the gun, fires twice into his chest. Six down.

Luther stands in the ruined living room. Six bodies. Blood everywhere—theirs and his. Gunshot to the abdomen, deep laceration on the arm, torn shoulder, broken ribs. He looks at the tunnel entrance. Three blocks. He takes a step. His legs give out. He catches himself on the doorframe and starts crawling.

At the Mangrove Avenue drainage canal, Nick, Judy, and Pawbert emerge from the culvert—wet, shaking, alive. A van approaches. Reacher, a kodiak bear whose presence fills the space, steps out. Behind him: Neagley (caracal), Dixon (cheetah), and O'Donnell (gray wolf). Neagley reveals the truth: Zootopia Security Intelligence. ZSI. Luther isn't a ZPD officer—he's one of them. Deep cover. The department has leaks, and Luther was insurance.

Dixon tracks Luther's embedded ZSI tracker—movement at 0.2 mph. He's crawling. Reacher turns the van around. In the tunnel, Reacher's flashlight finds Luther face-down on the floor, blood pooling beneath him. Luther's eyes flutter open. He asks if they got out. Reacher confirms all three are safe. Luther closes his eyes. Reacher lifts him—the wolf weighs nothing compared to his bulk—and carries him toward the exit.

In the van, the heart monitor stutters. Then flatlines. Neagley curses, directing Reacher to get Luther inside immediately. At Site Two—a converted industrial building that serves as the new safehouse—they burst through the doors. Reacher carries Luther to a work table while Neagley starts compressions immediately. The portable defibrillator fires twice. Nothing. Neagley keeps going, refusing to stop.

On the floor, Pawbert is falling apart. This is his fault—Luther is dying because the Lynxley family wants him dead. Nick drops beside him and speaks firmly: the ones worth saving are the ones who don't think they deserve it. The ones who carry the weight, who would trade places if they could. Luther saw something in Pawbert worth bleeding for. Don't tell him he was wrong.

A blip on the monitor. Then another. The rhythm steadies—weak, but present. Neagley sags over the table, exhausted and shaking. Luther is back.

Hours later, Pawbert sits beside Luther's cot. He hasn't left. He apologizes to the unconscious wolf—Luther shouldn't have stayed, shouldn't have risked everything. But he did, and Pawbert doesn't know what to do with that. He makes a vow: he'll figure out what Luther saw in him. He'll prove he was worth saving.

Chief Bogo arrives with the full truth. The safehouse is destroyed; forensics found six dead hostiles. Luther was never ZPD—Mayor Winddancer placed him directly through ZSI, bypassing the chain of command. After the transport ambush, Winddancer decided ZPD alone couldn't protect the witness. Nick and Judy are detached to a joint ZSI operation with full access. Bogo notes that Luther killed six trained military contractors while critically wounded—that's not ZPD, that's something else entirely.

Luther regains consciousness, barely. He asks if Pawbert is good. Pawbert confirms they all got out because of him. When Pawbert asks why Luther did it, Luther recalls their earlier conversation about fitting the muzzle—he didn't have a good answer then. He does now. One word: live.

Nick approaches Luther afterward, acknowledging he was wrong about him—he thought Luther might be compromised, Lynxley's inside mammal. Luther dismisses it as reasonable caution given the information available. Nick thanks him for staying behind, for fighting six of them alone. Luther claims it was just the job. Nick disagrees—Luther could have come with them, sealed the tunnel behind them. Luther insists they would have followed eventually. Or maybe he just couldn't let them win.

In the operations room, the target board shows the hunt continues. Hackjaw, Clawmark, Coade, Oxbow—all crossed out. Gasket circled and crossed, dead but his connections remain. Reacher explains that Gasket was the armorer who supplied the hit squad, but someone hired Oxbow's team. Dixon is working the financial trail. Luther's voice comes through the comm—Pawbert might know. Milton liked to explain his supply chains. Pawbert remembers hearing the name Gasket; his father used him for specialty items. Milton once mentioned "the procurement specialist"—never a name, just a function. There's a warehouse in the port district where Milton showed Pawbert how the network worked. That's their next move.

Key Moments

• Hit squad gears up at Lowland Drive warehouse under Oxbow's command
• Luther detects perimeter breach and reveals hidden ZSI tunnel beneath the safehouse
• Luther orders Nick, Judy, and Pawbert to evacuate while he stays behind
• Luther fights all six hit squad members in brutal close-quarters combat
• Luther kills the jaguar, wolf, leopard, and panther in rapid succession
• Luther strangles Oxbow to death despite broken ribs
• Luther is shot in the abdomen by Gasket, then kills him with a bookshelf shard
• Luther crawls three blocks through the drainage tunnel, severely wounded
• Reacher's ZSI team extracts Nick, Judy, and Pawbert at Mangrove Avenue
• Neagley reveals Luther is ZSI, not ZPD
• Dixon tracks Luther's embedded ZSI tracker showing movement at 0.2 mph
• Reacher carries Luther out of the tunnel
• Luther flatlines in the van during transport to Site Two
• Neagley resuscitates Luther with a portable defibrillator after multiple attempts
• Nick tells Pawbert that the mammals worth saving are those who don't think they deserve it
• Pawbert vows to prove Luther was right to believe in him
• Chief Bogo reveals Mayor Winddancer placed Luther as ZSI deep cover
• Nick and Judy are detached to joint ZSI operation with full access
• Luther regains consciousness and tells Pawbert to live
• The team relocates to Site Two as their new safehouse

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Lowland Drive warehouse, Marshlands — Hit squad staging area
• Safehouse at 86 Pack Street — Destroyed during assault
• Hidden tunnel beneath safehouse — ZSI emergency escape route
• Mangrove Avenue drainage canal — Tunnel exit, extraction point
• Site Two — New ZSI safehouse, converted industrial building

Items

• Venom injectors — Hit squad equipment, same type Pawbert used on Judy
• Smart-lock spoofers — Hit squad breach tools
• Suppressed Pawther-9 pistols — Hit squad firearms
• Ceramic knives — Hit squad close-quarters weapons
• Hidden ZSI tunnel — Emergency escape route ZPD didn't know existed
• Luther's embedded tracker — Standard ZSI field agent protocol; Dixon uses it to locate Luther
• Portable defibrillator — Field equipment Neagley uses to resuscitate Luther
• Mahogany bookshelf shard — Luther uses it to kill Gasket

Notes

• This is the first crossover episode of the series.
• Luther's revelation as ZSI fundamentally changes the team dynamic going forward.
• Oxbow (introduced in E04) and his entire hit squad are killed during the assault.
• The episode introduces the Reacher ZSI field team, who appear throughout the series as recurring allies.
• Nick and Judy's suspicion about Luther from E04 is confirmed—he moves too efficiently, his contacts are too fast, his operations too smooth for standard ZPD.