There was an aspect of police work very few officers ever thought of when joining the force. One that was both profoundly disturbing, wholly life-altering when observed for the first time, and jarring. To protect and serve; their motto, always. But once the protection part fails? It was all coroners, crime scene photos, and leering, empty, pale faces, exhumed from their unnatural resting places to lie twisted and broken in the places they fell. And for Judy, this was her first. To some in the force, it was a badge of honour. Their first murder scene. But this time, it was different, even to the veteran officers on the force.

"C'mon, Rudy, it's okay." A pat on the back and a comforting smile from one of the paramedics as the rhino leaned on the side of the ambulance, a cold, metal box on wheels, and dry-heaved unceremoniously on the snow-speckled ground below, "Happens to the best of 'em."

"I'll be fine." He retorted, somewhat curtly, but upon doing so, the images returned; horrid images of deep, crimson gashes, torn fur, and empty eyes, drying out as the last fleeting embers of warmth left their vessel. So he vomited again.

The air was cold; Tundra region. Freezing winds battered the sides of the patrol vehicles, which stood beside one another at odd angles. The emergency caused them to rocket over as quickly as they could, and in doing so, parking in any organised manner was of little importance. Judy wondered about this as she pushed the night club doors open with her shoulder, the right one moving forward barely an inch or two while the left one swung widely to let her pass. She wondered about a great many things in that moment, but none of them were coherent, or organised into a palpable, rational line. Squiggles on a piece of paper that she had made and flung over her shoulder. No rhyme or reason behind them. And the same images that plagued the rhino plagued her too. Her feet left wide, oblong shapes in the snow as she walked forward, and the chill was strong against her bare pads. This drew her back bitterly, into the real world. For a moment she willed herself to think of Nick, who was home now, lying in their shared bed, sweating out a severe bout of the flu. Her fingers curled around the edges of her reflective jacket. Beneath them, she could almost feel his fur, moistened by his persistent sweating, and the panting which kept her awake in the dead of night, clinging onto the sheets, hoping that he was going to be alright. But now she was at a loss.

Wholly, that was what she felt: loss. Of innocence. Of power. For once, the position she was in no longer gave her the ability to return things to the way they were. Revert the unjust to the just. Five victims. A gazelle, young, no older than her, she imagined, struck down in her prime by a blow from a handgun; the shot ripped her jugular open. She drowned in her own blood. Two wolves, brothers evidently, or at least she had supposed them to be by sight, one with a gaping wound in his chest, made by a shotgun blast. It had severed most of his internal blood vessels, and a good part of his organs lay shredded and splattered across the floor in wide fountains, exuding a force and direction extant for only a moment, a flash upon it leaving the barrel, and then becoming lodged inside of him.

But the streaks had already told their tale, and were now unravelling further secrets to the coroner, who was inspecting the wolf's remains with due diligence and professionalism. Judy could not begin to quantify the polar bear's cold pragmatism as he lifted decaying limbs, turned over victims whose insides spilled everywhere, and examined the frozen expressions on their dead faces with an almost ritual approach, as if he was attempting to piece together those last few fateful moments from a series of shattered snapshots. The second brother had his arm torn off with the very same shotgun. He had lived slightly longer, she imagined, because his arm rested in a pool of blood beside one of the tables, and a series of drips, some forceful, others more restrained, had led them to his final resting place, against the back of the bar. He lay slumped over, having slipped in the direction of his lost limb, and with nothing to support him any-more, he had fallen with the barren stump protruding from beneath his side. It had ruined his coat entirely. A donkey, middle-aged, evidently there for the strippers, who had no place being in the fight when it had erupted, and had most of his head torn off by an automatic. The bullets were numerous, forceful, and frighteningly efficient. In the city centre, Judy rarely encountered firearms. They weren't as common, simply.

Nowhere to hide them, with the prevalence of security cameras both public and private. But here it was open season on as many illicit weapons as one could get their paws on. Evidently the attackers had helped themselves. Military hardware, too, if the profiler was correct. Heavy shit. He spat those words. Mulled over them for a moment as he chewed on a toothpick, and spat them. Between his fingers, he held a cartridge. Judy stood beside him, gazing at him, but through him, through his fingers, through the brass casing in them, and through the din of his voice as he ran through the numbers and statistics, power calculations, kilo-joules of this, and newtons of that. He then asked her whether she was feeling well. "Yes, peachy. Best I've ever felt." A stupid response. Hollow, and without heart. Barren.

Last victim, she thought, as she opened the door of her patrol car and sat down upon the cold leather seat. The door slammed shut behind her, but her breath remained visible; the temperature inside the cab was the same as outside, and the engine was cut. Only the solemn, spinning blue-and-whites bore some expression of activity, and they too shone akin to funeral candles. Dancing in the wind. Spinning. Strobing to some forgotten purpose. Justice. Honour. Bring back the dead. Return what was taken, and ask no more of them, but to tell that final tale. Judy lowered her head into her paws. Her long ears slumped back even further, having sat crestfallen since she walked in, a first responder, and first on the scene, and oddly, she was one of the last out, of the blues at least. Those that remained within the neon tomb were the cleaners. Coroner, profiler, forensics, cross-examiners waiting like vultures to pounce onto the memories of the sole survivor. In the darkness of her closed lids flashbulbs of the horror within played over and over, and she sat chained to her seat, unable to move or escape. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks. Judy broke out into a long, protracted weep, and the deafening silence inside her own car only made it worse. It echoed against the walls and around her. It enveloped her, consumed her. The silent rage.

A balled-up paw struck the space beneath the window, and she beat against it thrice, each time less strongly, waning in power until even she had to submit her badge beneath the gaze of death. This was her reality. To see to the shrapnel in the aftermath. Pick it from the walls, clean it, console those left behind, swallow hard once or twice, and nod to herself. How could they be so calm? It was a storm within her. How could the polar bear (whose name she had not wholly caught) be this calm about holding the paws of that dead wolf? He was someone's son. He was someone's father, someone's brother, someone's something, and now he was nothing but a mass of evidence, to be kept in cold storage until needed. In that moment, a chasm of fear had opened inside of her. Protect and serve. Last victim.

Male, aged between nineteen and twenty. Bullet to the lungs, severed an artery; name of blood vessel expunged in the aftermath. She could not bring herself to recall it. Latin words. His manner of death bit at her. He had survived the longest, having died mere seconds before they had broken the door open with their own weapons, tasers, less-than-lethals, at the ready. Cause of death? Drowning. In his own blood. The coroner had estimated that it took him over an hour to die. An hour spent at the gates of death, in a growing pool of crimson, eyes dimming, breath shallowing. Come to terms with your demons in an hour.

Male, between nineteen and twenty, red fox, green eyes.

White death.