S02E03 - Extraction

"Extraction" is the third episode of Season 2 of We Can Fix Pawbert and a crossover with Reacher and his field team. It follows directly from Protective Custody, which moved ZSI's extraction of Pawbert Lynxley up to dawn and ended with a delivery truck full of armed mammals waved through the prison gate. Both clocks run out at once, with Pawbert and Luther still inside the building.

Synopsis

Before dawn, Chief Bogo wakes Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps with word that Zootopia Correctional Facility has gone dark, its cameras and door controls seized while ZSI's extraction team is already rolling. Inside, every cell door releases at once and more than forty attackers, a dozen from outside and the rest bought or freed within, overrun the facility. Luther drops his Rook cover and fights Pawbert Lynxley through the cell blocks. An armed arctic wolf cuts his forearm before going down; Luther hands Pawbert the wolf's spare pistol. Officer Kett stays behind to hold a junction. They are cornered in a dead-end maintenance room until a ZSI team under Jack Reacher blows the exterior wall. At the last choke point before the loading dock, Warden Hartwell orders the team to keep every gun on Pawbert and holds the position himself with two guards, taking three rounds. As he dies, he warns Luther that the attackers mapped the whole facility rather than Pawbert's block alone. Bogo reports twelve guards dead. The team delivers both to the Site Two safehouse and withdraws. Luther and Pawbert kiss for the first time in a year, and Nick and Judy move in as protective detail. On a rooftop, the jaguar who coordinated the assault is ordered to prepare a larger strike on the weather walls.

Plot

Chief Bogo calls Nick a little after five in the morning. Zootopia Correctional Facility's cameras and door controls have gone dark, and the ZSI extraction team timed for dawn was already rolling when the systems failed. Nick and Judy dress in the dark and drive to Precinct 1, where all either of them can do is coordinate and wait. Inside the prison, Pawbert and Luther are both awake in Cell 3C-22, reading a building too quiet for a shift change. The lights flicker and fail, emergency lighting comes up red, and every electronic lock on the block disengages at once. Gunfire follows from several directions.

Luther sheds the Rook posture in the cell doorway and puts down a jackal with a length of sharpened rebar, then a wolverine with a pipe, before either reaches Pawbert. Four more attackers box them into the block corridor: a bull, a cougar, a porcupine and an aardwolf, carrying shivs and pipes but moving with the coordination of a trained unit. Luther fights them in a space too narrow for the bull's bulk and takes a strike to the ribs still healing from the shower assault. When the bull swings for his skull, Pawbert throws his own weight into the bull's foreleg, not fighting so much as spoiling the aim, and the blow catches air. Luther puts the bull down in the opening it buys him.

At Junction C3-A they meet Officer Kett, bleeding from a head wound and still shooting. There is no clear route out, the admin block is compromised, and all Kett knows about ZSI is that they are on their way. He plants himself at the junction, tells Luther to get Pawbert out, and opens fire on the approaching attackers as the two of them go. Deeper into the facility an arctic wolf steps out of a doorway with a smuggled pistol already leveled; the attackers have reached their weapons cache. Luther waits out the burst behind a pillar and closes during the reload, but the wolf gets a blade across his forearm before he goes down. Luther takes the wolf's sidearm, pulls the backup piece from his ankle holster, and hands it to Pawbert with the only firearms instruction Pawbert has ever received.

A wrong turn puts them in a maintenance junction with one entrance and no exit, and six to eight armed attackers closing on it. Before they arrive, a charge detonated from outside blows the exterior wall inward, and Reacher comes through the breach ahead of Neagley on dual pistols, Dixon on comms, and O'Donnell covering the corridor behind them. O'Donnell reads the forearm wound by touch and gets a pressure bandage on it without taking his eyes off the approach. Reacher tosses Luther a fresh pistol and sets a diamond formation with Neagley on point and O'Donnell on Pawbert, and he has the shape of the assault already: forty-plus hostiles in the building, roughly a dozen professionals breached from outside, the rest bought or freed within.

With Reacher's team running the route, the escape stops costing Luther a fight at every corner. Neagley clears junctions two steps ahead of the group, Dixon calls contacts before they are visible, and Reacher handles whatever gets close. The admin corridor is contested, so they drop to the maintenance level to come up behind it, and Neagley takes three armed attackers off the route with three suppressed shots.

They surface into the admin access corridor at the last choke point before the loading dock, where Warden Hartwell is holding a reinforced door with two guards. He recognizes Luther through the cover, credits him with keeping Pawbert alive, and waves them toward the dock. Then Dixon's tablet flags a pursuit force one corridor over and closing, eight or more. Reacher moves to take the front and Hartwell steps into his way: ZSI's guns are the best chance Pawbert has of reaching the dock, and Hartwell will not spend them on a hallway. He sets himself at the corridor mouth with a guard at each flank. The pursuit arrives in a wave, and Hartwell fires first and keeps firing while Reacher and Neagley pour rounds past his shoulders and O'Donnell and Dixon wall Pawbert behind the corner. A young boar guard folds against the wall early; a sable guard keeps shooting with one arm dark with blood; the serval leading the wave and the mongoose behind him both go down, and eventually the corridor has nothing left to send. Hartwell has three rounds in him and stays on his feet a moment longer before his legs give. With Luther kneeling beside him he gets out a last warning, that the attackers mapped the whole facility rather than only Pawbert's block, and then he dies. Luther tells the surviving sable guard to make sure the facility learns who held the line.

Past the choke point the route runs along windows overlooking the main facility, with inmates pressed to the glass on the other side. Luther puts Rook back on and walks it as a convict under escort, O'Donnell playing the rough guard at his shoulder and Neagley covering Pawbert like cargo. The moment the biometric door seals behind them he drops the persona for good, which Reacher finds amusing and O'Donnell finds unsettling. An armored ZSI BearCat is idling at the loading dock. In the back, O'Donnell cuts away the field dressing and rebuilds it properly, telling Luther he needs stitches, antibiotics and a week off his feet; Luther takes two of the three. Reacher's voice comes through the partition calling twenty minutes to Site Two. Pawbert crosses to sit beside Luther and says Hartwell's name, and Luther tells him the warden chose it.

At Precinct 1, Bogo brings Nick and Judy the ZSI update. Both mammals are out and en route to Site Two, and Luther's knife wound is stable. Most of the assault force is down. Twelve guards are dead, the inmate count is unknown, and the facility is in full lockdown. Hartwell is among the dead. Because Nick and Judy are the only officers already read in on the safehouse location, Bogo sends them there.

Reacher's team hands off in the Site Two garage and pulls out, leaving the protective detail to ZPD. Alone together for the first time in a year, Luther and Pawbert kiss and say it out loud. Inside, Pawbert takes the medical supplies out of Luther's paws and stitches and dresses the forearm himself, work he could not have done a year ago, and talks about the weekly check-ins Hartwell made on him without being asked to. Nick and Judy arrive minutes later, and Judy reaches Pawbert first with a year of visits through prison glass behind the embrace. Nick's version comes with an order never to make them do it again. Both of them are moving into the safehouse on Bogo's orders and would have volunteered regardless. Judy states the assignment plainly: keep him safe, find whoever is behind this, end it. That evening on the couch, Luther names what the four of them are.

Pawbert wakes on the couch the next morning still tangled with Luther under a throw someone laid over them in the night, with Nick carrying coffee in from the kitchen and Judy making breakfast, and registers the safehouse as home. On a rooftop across the district, the jaguar who coordinated the assault reports the extraction to a distorted voice on the phone. Moving Pawbert out of the prison has not put him out of reach. Four walls, limited guards and no prison infrastructure make him more accessible than he was inside, so the voice designates him the primary target and orders a larger demonstration to pull attention elsewhere: an attack on the weather wall.

Key Moments

• ZCF's cameras and door controls go dark before dawn, with ZSI's extraction team already rolling toward the same hour
• Every cell door on Block 3C releases simultaneously and more than forty attackers overrun the facility
• Luther drops the Rook persona in the cell doorway and fights out of the block with Pawbert behind him
• Pawbert throws his weight into the bull's foreleg to spoil a killing blow aimed at Luther
• Officer Kett, wounded, holds Junction C3-A alone so Luther can keep Pawbert moving
• An arctic wolf opens Luther's forearm with a blade; Luther takes his sidearm and gives Pawbert the backup, the first firearm Pawbert has ever handled
• Reacher's ZSI team blows the exterior wall of a dead-end maintenance junction and takes over the extraction
• Warden Hartwell refuses to let the team spend its guns holding a corridor, sets himself at the choke point with two of his guards, and takes three rounds fronting the defense
• Dying, Hartwell warns Luther that the attackers mapped the whole facility rather than only Pawbert's block
• Luther resumes the Rook posture for the last camera-covered corridor and sheds it for good once the secure door seals, to Reacher's and O'Donnell's amusement
• Bogo confirms both are out and reports twelve guards dead, the warden among them, and the facility in full lockdown
• Reacher's team hands off at Site Two and withdraws, leaving the protective detail to ZPD
• Luther and Pawbert kiss for the first time since Pawbert's incarceration, in the Site Two garage
• Pawbert stitches and dresses Luther's forearm himself
• Nick and Judy move into Site Two on protective detail, and Luther names the four of them as pack
• Pawbert wakes tangled with Luther the next morning and registers the safehouse as home
• The jaguar is told Pawbert is now the primary target and ordered to prepare a larger demonstration against the weather wall

Key Lines

Locations

• Nick and Judy's apartment
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — Cell 3C-22 and Cell Block 3C
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — Junction C3-A and the corridors toward admin
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — the dead-end maintenance junction
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — maintenance level
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — admin access corridor (the choke point)
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — secure corridor and loading dock
• ZSI transport van
• Precinct 1 — bullpen
• Site Two — garage and living room
• A rooftop overlooking the prison

Items

• Smuggled weapons cache — Real firearms brought into ZCF with the delivery truck; the attackers reach it partway through the siege
• Arctic wolf's pistol — Taken by Luther off the downed attacker; half a magazine remaining
• Backup pistol (ankle holster) — Taken off the same attacker and given to Pawbert with a one-line firing lesson; the first firearm he has ever handled, carried out in his waistband
• Breaching charge — Detonated from outside to blow the exterior wall of the maintenance junction
• Field medical kit — Carried by O'Donnell; a pressure bandage in the junction, a full dressing in the transport van
• Armored ZSI BearCat — Extraction vehicle waiting at the loading dock

No personal property is recovered during the extraction; Pawbert leaves ZCF with nothing of his own.

Notes

• The armored ZSI BearCat that serves as the extraction vehicle takes its name from the real-world Lenco BearCat tactical vehicle, a fitting inclusion in a world of anthropomorphic mammals.