S02E18 - Tempest

"Tempest" is the eighteenth episode of Season 2 of We Can Fix Pawbert and features a crossover with Reacher. It picks up in the middle of the assault on Precinct 1 that closed "Foxhole".

Synopsis

The assault on Precinct 1 continues. Nick Wilde fights through the lobby and the main corridor and kills an attacker at point-blank range. Judy Hopps coordinates from cover and drops an attacker moving on Officer Clawhauser's position, but loses sight of Pawbert Lynxley in the smoke. Chief Bogo holds the stairwell with a shotgun. At the Rainforest-Savanna junction, Luther hears the emergency traffic, leaves Reacher's team mid-stakeout, and drives for the precinct. Behind a pillar, with his two-officer detail already down, Pawbert fights a margay operative and is close to winning when Javier Croft puts a gun to his skull and walks him out a side exit to a van. The attackers withdraw, and Nick works out that the assault was cover for the extraction. Luther arrives and blames Nick to his face, then drives to maximum security to ask Cattrick Lynxley for help. Cattrick sees that Luther loves his brother and could trade on that, but gives up the location instead: the Central Weather Interface, a facility Milton showed his children. Clawrence Lynxley has seized it with old family credentials and killed its staff, and the building's status feed still reports everything normal. He tells Pawbert his voice will be needed, then leaves to arrange a broadcast. Pawbert resolves to give him nothing. Luther, Nick, and Judy drive for the facility without backup.

Plot

The assault on Precinct 1 is still running when Nick works his way up through the lobby. He throws a keyboard past a hyena to pull her attention off the officers she has pinned behind a reception counter, and they drop her; he takes the serval beside her down by hauling on his rifle sling. Rounding the corner toward the main corridor, he comes face to face with a jackal at point-blank range and fires first. It is the first mammal he has killed. He keeps moving.

Near the duty desk, Judy coordinates from behind a fallen bookcase. She finds Clawhauser alive behind his desk, hyperventilating but unhurt, and leaves him there. When an ocelot comes around a pillar toward his position she buckles his leg with one kick and puts him down with a second. Chief Bogo abandons his office and comes down the stairs with a shotgun, kills a cougar on the landing, and holds the stairwell so nobody reaches the upper floors. Nick radios that the main corridor is clear and asks after Pawbert. Judy has had no visual since the doors blew.

At the Rainforest-Savanna junction, Luther waits with Reacher's team over an intersection Clawrence threatened and never touched. Neagley works the perimeter, Dixon monitors comms, and O'Donnell maps routes and exits from the back of the transport. When ZPD emergency traffic reports shots fired at Precinct 1, Luther is running for a vehicle before he has finished deciding to. Reacher calls after him that they cannot abandon the junction. Luther tells him to stay, commandeers a ZSI tactical vehicle, and drives.

Pawbert is alone behind a support pillar at the back of the lobby. The oryx sergeant and badger officer assigned to him went down in the opening seconds of the breach, the sergeant shoving him into cover and absorbing the rounds meant for him. A margay finds him, calls in the package, and closes expecting a lynx who cowers. Pawbert punches him instead. He reads the margay's footwork the way he learned to read Luther, works him backward through the smoke, and gets an arm around his throat in the rear choke he has drilled alone in his cell. He is winning when a gun barrel presses into the back of his skull. Javier Croft calls the fight off, twists the elbow Pawbert throws in answer, and has him walked out an unwatched side exit, past the body of the officer posted there, to a van idling in the alley. Nobody in the building sees it happen.

The attackers withdraw as fast as they arrived. Nick and Judy find each other in the wreckage, then find the pillar empty. They turn over bodies, check the holding cells and the offices and the stairwells, and call his name into rooms that give back echoes. Nick sees the side door standing ajar and works out what the night was for. Nobody was trying to kill Pawbert. The harbor demand and the junction threat had stripped the precinct of tactical units, and the assault itself was cover to isolate him long enough to carry him out.

Luther arrives after it is over. He takes Nick by the collar and blames him to his face; Nick, bloodied and steady, does not defend himself, and Luther lets go. Weeks of tracing shell companies have produced nothing, and the only lead Luther can name is Cattrick, who knows the family locations Milton never committed to paper. He leaves without waiting for anyone to agree.

At maximum security, Luther's credentials get him through the gates and his desperation gets him past a guard citing visiting hours. He and Cattrick meet for the first time across the visiting room glass. Luther tells him Clawrence took Pawbert ninety minutes ago and asks where his uncle would go, and when Cattrick asks why he should help, Luther's composure gives out. Cattrick sees what Luther will not say aloud, that he loves Pawbert and that Pawbert loves him back, and recognizes the exact leverage his father spent their childhoods teaching them to use. He does not use it. He gives Luther the Central Weather Interface downtown, where the climate control systems converge and the master override sits, the building Milton took his children to see and called the crown of the Lynxley empire. Luther is on his feet before he finishes. Cattrick asks him to keep Pawbert safe if he can, and Luther answers with the promise he made to Pawbert: "Always."

Pawbert rides to the facility zip-tied in the back of the van while Javier relays what Milton used to say about his youngest son, and gets a flat answer about what Milton was. They march him through corridors he last walked as a kit three steps behind his father and Cattrick, past control panels Milton once explained to his eldest and never to him, and past the facility's dead: a meerkat maintenance worker still holding her wrench, a hippo guard face down, a young ocelot caught running for an exit. Nothing here was breached. Every door stands open and undamaged and every badge panel reads green, because the building still recognizes the credentials Clawrence walked in with.

In the control room, surrounded by screens carrying the climate readings of every district, Clawrence greets his nephew for the first time. He answers Pawbert's protest about the workers by calling their loyalty inconvenient, then tells Javier to keep him comfortable, because his voice will need to work. He will not say what that means. He promises a conversation about legacy, about power, and about what Pawbert is going to do for him, and leaves to have a broadcast set up. At a side console one of his operatives feeds the city a status loop reporting the facility fully staffed and nominal while its staff cool in the corridors. Pawbert, bound and aching, decides that whatever his uncle wants from him, he will not give it.

Luther drives for downtown with Nick beside him checking weapons and Judy in the back on comms with Agent Ross, who confirms the target location and reports Reacher's team mobilizing from the junction, twelve minutes out. Luther will not wait for them. Judy agrees, Nick puts his objection on the record and chambers a round anyway, and the three of them drive toward the facility where Pawbert is being held.

Key Moments

• Nick kills a jackal at point-blank range at the mouth of the main corridor, the first mammal he has killed
• Judy finds Clawhauser alive behind the duty desk and puts down an ocelot flanking his position
• Bogo abandons his office and holds the stairwell with a shotgun
• Luther abandons the junction stakeout over Reacher's objection when the emergency call goes out
• Pawbert's two-officer protective detail goes down in the opening seconds of the breach
• Pawbert fights the margay operative using the chokehold he learned from watching Luther, and is winning when Javier ends it at gunpoint
• Javier walks Pawbert out an unwatched side exit to a waiting van without being seen
• Nick works out that the entire assault was cover for the extraction
• Luther seizes Nick by the collar in the ruined lobby, then releases him
• Luther meets Cattrick for the first time and breaks down in the visiting room
• Cattrick recognizes that Luther loves Pawbert and declines to use it as leverage
• Cattrick gives up the Central Weather Interface, the facility Milton called the crown of the Lynxley empire
• Pawbert is marched past the facility's murdered staff; every door is undamaged and every badge panel reads green
• Pawbert meets Clawrence for the first time and is told his voice will be needed
• A seized console feeds the city a false all-normal status for the facility
• The pack drives for the Central Weather Interface without waiting for Reacher's team or ZSI backup

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

None.

Locations

• Precinct 1 - The assault continues through the lobby, main corridor, and stairwell
• Precinct 1 side exit and alley - Javier's extraction point; a van waits with the engine running
• Rainforest-Savanna junction - Luther on stakeout with Reacher's team; abandoned when the emergency call goes out
• ZCF Maximum Security - Luther's first meeting with Cattrick, in the visiting room
• Central Weather Interface - Downtown facility seized by Clawrence; Pawbert held in the control room

Items

• Green sweater - Torn at the shoulder by the margay's claws during the fight; Pawbert's only possession at the Central Weather Interface