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Chapter Text

“Twenty feet! Fifteen! Ten!” shouted the co-pilot, leaning out from the helicopter door. “Ten feet! Go, go, go!”

 Owen Grady jumped off the chopper’s landing skids, and the ground came up to meet him. He hit the warm stones in a rolling dive, as if he was landing with a parachute.

 Above him, the helicopter was already lifting off again, its downwash buffeting him wildly. He rolled up to his feet and threw them a thumb’s up. The helicopter lifted up and thrummed away back over the Lagoon – giving the water a good clearance just in case the Mosasaurus decided it wanted a Huey for a chew-toy. That was as much of a ride as the helicopter pilot was willing to give him.

 He took a moment to look around. He was standing on the edge of the Lagoon, where the T-Rex had battled the Indominus last night. He was alone, in a deserted resort. For just one more afternoon and night, Owen had this side of the Lagoon all to himself.

 All to himself, that is, except for a loose T-Rex, and at least one velociraptor. The fly-boys thought the squid was out of his mind, and told him so.

 He picked up his pack, and made sure of his weapon.

 The AK47 was a nice surprise. He couldn’t imagine how Claire got managed to get her hands on an AK47 – but carrying it was her condition on allowing him to catch a ride in Jurassic Three back to the Park this afternoon. She was on the mainland, hip-deep in lawyers and journalists and Jurassic World evacuees.

 Twenty-two thousand people had been evacuated from Isla Nublar last night. The Park had plans for every eventuality. They drilled the T-Rex escaping three times a year; they drilled bird flu breaking out among the hadrosaurs; they drilled terror attacks. Jurassic Three and Six were flying sweeps on the far side of the Lagoon, searching for stragglers, and InGen Security were assembling at the ferry port on the mainland. They would be coming back in the morning to contain the escapees, and make the Park safe again for the S&R teams to move through.

As far as the general public was concerned, all that had happened was that multi-millionaire business tycoon and amateur-pilot Simon Masrani had crashed his helicopter into the Aviary, and the flying animals had escaped. There had been at least eight fatalities among the Park guests. The true scale of the disaster was being swept under a raft of non-disclosure clauses faster than you could say Costa Concordia. Claire was the captain of the ship – but she was doing a far better job of damage control than that dumb-ass Schettino. She was still Operational Manager of Jurassic World, and she was diving between her twenty-two-thousand panicked guests and the world’s media with the speed and agility of a cormorant.

 And now, as if she hadn’t already had enough on her plate, here came Owen Grady, bugging her about his lost velociraptor.

 “I have to find Blue,” he’d said to Claire. “I have to get her back to her own paddock, before ACU puts an RPG in her ass.”

 “You can’t go back there alone!” she snapped at him.

 “I have to, Claire!” he said. “No-one else can. InGen won’t mess around with tranqs – they know how dangerous she is. They’ll put her down from the air rather than get close.”

 “You’re on-air in five, Boss!” an assistant had interrupted, leaning into the command tent. “CNN, Al-Jazheera, BBC, Fox…”

 “One minute,” Claire replied, raising one finger in her assistant’s direction, without taking her gaze from Owen.

 “I need to do this, Claire,” Owen said. “I owe her. You owe her.”

 Claire had stared at him, icy cold, for a long moment, and he had held his breath.

 She knew, too, how much they all owed Blue and the other raptors. The Indominus Rex would not have stayed in Main Street for long. The same hatred that had drawn her to the heart of the resort would have drawn her to the helpless crowds in the evacuation points. There had been thousands of people packed in the Hilton last night, and thousands more in the ferry terminal. Thousands of people, packed in like so much chum to attract a shark – and they had no idea how much they owed to a trio of velociraptors.

 Finally, she had sighed and shaken her head at him. “Jurassic Three is refuelling and flying back in an hour,” she told him. “Talk to Mel Riordan, he’s got something for you. And take a phone, for God’s sake, Owen!”

 He had one afternoon and one night to find Blue and sweet-talk her back to her paddock. He wasn’t sure if Blue was going to come, and he knew he couldn’t force her – but he was damned well going to try. She’d saved twenty-two thousand lives …

 The resort’s Main Street was deserted. Bright commercial branding screamed silently at no-one. The wreckage of the dinosaur’s battle made Main Street look more like recent photos of Aleppo, rather than a multi-million-dollar resort. He turned around, scanning the quiet space. Nothing moved. No people, no animals. Nothing.

 He turned on his heel, the hairs on the back of his neck rising and sweat prickling under his jacket.

 He’d never seen this place empty – even after-hours, the clean-up workers were busy, yakking away and playing Costa Rican music on their phones. It’s just the silence, he told himself. Hold your fire, Grady. You’re being disturbed by the silence, that’s all.

 He began to walk up between the wreckage of the café furniture, thrown about by the pteranodons. He could smell something dead – already putrifying in the tropical heat – but corpses were for S&R to worry about.

 He remembered one of the raptors being thrown bodily from the Indominus Rex, and a sudden blast of flame. That would be a good place to start. He walked there, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, and the weight of the AK47 heavy on his forearms.

 It was Echo. She was dead, all right. Most of her was burned black, but he could still recognise her face. Her sides were already swelling up in the heat.

 Echo had hatched directly into his palm, thrashing herself free with a sudden kick, and rolling out from her egg with a very characteristic squeal of outrage. He’d caught her in his hand, and she had immediately blamed his thumb for her indignity.

 “Sorry, girl,” he muttered.

 Someone had been here, he saw. She had not been fed on by a scavenger, but her killing-claws were gone. He bent, to look closer, covering his nose and mouth with one hand.

Gone; ripped out. He couldn’t think of a scavenger who would take dead keratin and ignore meat. Someone had come here, and taken a souvenir. Someone human.

 “God DAMN!” he said, angrily. “You mother-FUCKERS!”

 The silence of Main Street sucked up his curses.

…………………

There was a lot of broken glass, dislodged paving and fallen masonry where the T-Rex had fought the Indominus. He made his way up Main Street to the Innovation Centre, and climbed the steps. Delta had found her way inside there, somehow – perhaps Blue had come this way too? The power to the doors had been turned off, and he had to force them open.

Deserted. The Volcano was lit by the sunlight streaming in through the western windows. “Welcome to the Samsung Innovation Centre – most kitsch fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he muttered.

 There was no sign of movement down the aisles, but there was also no smell of putrefaction. No-one had died in here yesterday – although there was an awful lot of scattered food wrappers on the floors. This had been an emergency collection point: people must have been sitting around here for hours.

 He stopped in front of the statue of Hammond. “Blue!” he shouted.

 He started climbing the spiral staircase that whirled around the ‘lava core’ of the Volcano. He would search the top, and work his way down – that way if Blue came in behind him he’d meet her on his way down. He was halfway to the top floor, when a familiar metallic screech reached his ears.

 “Blue!” he yelled, leaping to the rail and looking down.

 It was not Blue. It was Delta.

 She limped out from under the archway of the gift shop and stopped. Her long snout looked up, and found him above her. She snaked her head this way and that, considering him from one eye, then the other, like a bird.

 “Delta, girl.”

 For most of her life she’d looked up at him from the inside of the paddock, just like this. He was still above her – perhaps he could use that. The raptors understood only a handful of words and phrases, even after years of intensive training. Their understanding of spoken English never got even close to the average pet dog – but they were much, much better at generalising what they learned to new situations than any dog.

 He raised his hand, as if he was training her still.  

 “Delta! Ho! That’s good. Ho! That’s good.” He turned around and started trotting back down the stairs again, unwinding all the way down the lava core. “Ho! Wait for me!”

 Two was better than one – but, oh brother, having the one was going to make finding the other so much harder. He turned around the stairway and found that between one rotation and the next Delta had collapsed. She had been standing; now she was sprawled on her belly.

 Was she wounded? He accelerated, running faster.

 “Delta,” he shouted. “Ho!” He threw himself off the end of the staircase, and sprinted across to her. He slowed as he reached her. She was wounded, but she was still a dangerous predator.

 She was lying on her belly. She pressed down with her forehands, raising her head from the ground. She made a snot-snarl at him, showing him her teeth.

 She was not the alpha raptor: she was not snarling just to maintain her position. She was snarling because there was something threatening about him.

 The rifle. She knew what the AK47 meant. She might not understand words, but she knew all about weapons.

 “Okay, no rifle, I get it.” He reached out to his side, and lowered the AK to the ground carefully. “That’s good. Delta, girl. That’s good.” He held out his hand. “Easy, Delta. Easy, girl.”

 The snot-snarl stopped.

 She looked at him from one eye, then the other, examining him carefully. He took in her condition at the same time. She had a pattern of wounds on her back – teeth. The huge teeth of the Indominus had ripped her from its back and tossed her away. The wounds were clotted blackly, not bleeding. There was a hole in her breast that could only be a heavy-caliber bullet.

 Jesus, he marvelled; how tough were they, anyway? He’d been sure she would have been killed. She’d lost a lot of blood, but here she was, weak but alive.

 “You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay.” He moved carefully toward her head. She snapped his teeth at his hand, acknowledging his hand without harming him, and he moved in and set his palm against her cheek. She was warm to his touch. Slightly feverish?

 His hand was jerked off as she jerked her head away. She swung it toward the staircase, staring behind him.

 “What is it, girl?”

 She set her forehands under her sternum, and heaved herself to her feet. She pushed him out of her way, and gave a cough-bark. She’d heard something he could not – and the cough-bark told him it was another raptor. They made that sound only when calling to each other and to him.

 He’d had to invent a whole new vocab for the wide range of noises the raptors made –cough-barking and snot-snarling – since no-one had ever actually bothered to study them before. Herbivores did not make so much noises. Few carnivores were so noisy, either. The only animals that made so many vocalisations were the really dangerous ones: the apex predators with big brains and complex social lives, who had nothing to fear from something bigger and meaner overhearing their chatter. Wolves, lions, hyenas, orcas, velociraptors.

 And man, of course: the most rapacious predator of all.

 “Blue?” he said.

 Delta cough-barked again. She started moving toward the staircase. She was limping, her head dipping at every step. She was favouring her right leg, and carrying her tail over to one side to help her balance, like a rudder.

 “Delta!” he said. He snagged the AK, swung it on his shoulder, and darted after her. Fist in the air.

 “Ho! Stand down. Delta, ho! Delta. Ho!” He backed away from her, walking backward, and his other hand found the rail of the staircase.

 “Ho!” He backed away, up the first step. It was a drill they had practiced a thousand times, since the raptors were the size of puppies.  

 She stared at him, and blinked. For a moment he held his breath, and then she lowered herself carefully to her chest again. She remembered. She grumbled, but she did not move to follow him. He backed carefully up the stairs until he was sure she was staying where she was, and then he turned and ran up the staircase.

 Up, and up. “Blue!” he shouted. “Blue!” Below, Delta gave the cough-bark, calling her sister herself.

 “Blue!”

 There was an answering call from one of the cross-aisles.

 “Blue!” he shouted, and picked up his pace.

 That corridor led to the upper storey of the Creation Lab. The Hatchery was there, above the Creation Lab. Tourists could watch dinosaurs hatching through the thick panes of soundproof acrylic, if they came on a lucky day. The raptors had been born there, and designed in the laboratory below. He spun through the bright signage requesting people not to bang on the windows, and stopped short.

 “Blue.”

 She was standing upright, and staring at him. She was like a statue there, completely still. She was watching him watching her. They could see each other clearly – but through at least four different panes of glass.

 She was standing on the other side of the Hatchery, in the corridor that linked to the stairs that ran down to the Creation Lab. She was a few yards away by sight, but nearly a hundred by foot. Damn this place – the glass corridors had been designed to allow the flow of people to meander around the entire length of the Hatchery, but they had not been designed to allow short cuts. Animal rights activists had been known to jump into the Hatchery, flapping and yelling, and there were no unlocked doors.

 “Blue,” he said.

 She opened her jaws and called loudly, and it was a call he very rarely heard. He had heard it last night, just once – confusion, and loss, and unhappiness.

 Was she stuck?

 “I’m coming, girl.” He turned and began moving quickly down the winding corridors. Blue turned to watch him approach through the labyrinth of glass.

 “Stay there, I’m coming.” Left turn. Right turn. He kept his eyes on her.

 The Hatchery was deserted, broken open, deserted. It was windowless, and without power it was cold and dark. There were always eggs here, warming on their stands, but not now. The incubators were standing open like golf tees, and he remembered Claire saying that they had evacuated the Lab. The individual hatcheries, with their soft sawdust floors, were all empty – nothing was hatching today. The sawdust looked grey and cold, instead of soft and warm for fragile newborn dinosaur skin.

 “Stay there, girl.” He turned a corner, and realized to his surprise that she was not standing in a corridor at all. She was standing in one of the hatcheries.

 He stopped abruptly. She had turned to face him, and she was looking at him over the white perspex stall of the hatchery. He’d thought for a moment that she had got stuck in one of them, before he remembered that the raptors already knew what doorhandles did. She was not trapped.

 Nor had she chosen a random hatchery.

 She turned to look at him, and her head snaked back and forth. She made the deep sound that he had nicknamed ‘timbering.’ It sounded like an immense wooden timber groaning in the hull of a sailing ship – a deep bombombombombom, bom-bom-bom of old wood under strain.

 He remembered the Indominus making that same sound – but from a much deeper, much bigger throat. It was a contemplative sound, but not a happy contemplation.

 The thick skin over her nasal cavities blew in and out with each breath.

 “You remember,” he said.

 She dropped her jaws open in a metallic scream, and she was coming out of the door of the hatchery. She rammed her shoulder against the side of the hatchery, making it shudder. She stepped up, her forehands clasping the air threateningly, but her head snaked back from side to side, uncertainly.

 He held his ground, and stared at her. It was impossible. They had spent only the first week of their lives here.  She could not possibly remember - could she?

 “You remember,” he breathed.  "I don't know how, but you do." 

 She stared at him down the length of the dim corridor, her golden gaze impenetrable, and hissed. Her eyes did not blink, but her narrow pupils were opening and closing with emotions he could not read. 

 “You were born there. Blue, and Charlie, and Delta, and Echo. You were born right there.  You were built here, too.  You cost about eight million dollars to design.  You don't know this, but you were. That's a lot of money.”

 She stared at him. Her forehands clasped at the air, long talons curling and uncurling. Her head was still snaking back and forth. He realized that she was confused – and an alpha raptor was not supposed to be confused, ever. An alpha raptor was supposed to be in command, always. The alpha was the raptor that was the strongest, the fastest, and the most aggressive, and they must always be ready to maintain that position. Like a medieval king, an alpha raptor ruled only as long as they could win against all usurpers. Alphas could not afford to be confused.

 But Blue was confused: awash in strange memories. She was threatening him to cover her confusion. She could kill a man in a few seconds, just to cover her momentary lack of status.  

 “Easy, Blue,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “You remember. I remember too. I remember you, Blue.”

 She hiss-snapped at him. Her teeth snapped on air.

 He kept his hands out and down, signalling his peaceful intentions. Getting her out of here and back to her paddock was going to a whole lot more complicated that he had thought. Maybe he could coax her out of here, and then come back for Delta…?

 And then she took the decision away from him. Her head was still snaking back and forth, and then the snaking movement stopped a heartbeat before she sprang forward.  The scream was threat and blame and confusion all in one. Her jaws reached for him, hungrily.

 He sprang back, and the AK 47 came up and lined. “Blue!”  

 She stopped short, her feet planting on the tiles, catching her balance. She dropped her jaws wide in a scream that echoed through the glass halls of the Innovation Centre.

 He steeled himself not to move.  

 “Blue,” he warned.

 Her nasal cavities moved in an out, but she was utterly still, staring at him intently. That was a stare he had seen before. His thumb pressed the fire selector down to full auto.

 “Blue. We’re not going there. Stand down, Blue. Don’t go there.”

 She knew what the AK47 was, he realized. He had always known that the first bullet the raptors met would be the last firearm they ignored. She might not know that this rifle could fire its whole magazine in a matter of seconds, but she knew that he could hurt her as easily as she could hurt him.

 “Don’t go there, Blue. Easy, Blue. Stand down. I don’t want to do this, Blue.”

 For a long, cold moment he stared at Blue, and she stared back. Her foreclaws were opening and closing. What passed through that cold predatory brain, he could not imagine. He held the barrel level, waiting for her to decide, waiting for her to move.

 He waited what seemed like longer than all the previous five years of watching her.

Then her thick tail sliced the air as she whirled around on the spot. A second later she was gone, around the corner of the corridor.

 His breath burst out of him in a grunt. She had moved so fast that if she had chosen to attack she would have been on him before he could adjust his aim.  

 He sighed, and lowered the rifle.

 It would not be wise to go chasing an angry and confused velociraptor up and down a dark building. Blue would find him when she was good and ready. He would go back to Delta.

 He backed away, keeping one eye on the corner where she had gone, and made his way back through the glass corridors.

 ……………..

Delta was still sitting like an outsized hen at the foot of the staircase when he got there. She shoved herself to a sitting position as he came down the stairs, keeping an eye out for Blue, but lowered herself again with a sibilant sigh as he reached her side. There was no aggression in Delta – not today. She was tired and sore; and she was not proud, stubborn Blue.

 “Delta, girl,” he moved over to her. He put down the AK. “Let’s have a look. Let’s have a look.”

 If Blue still remembered the hatchery, then perhaps Delta would remember having her wounds salved and cared for. Echo had fought savagely with Blue once, deep intentional wounds that had needed stitches, but all of them had collected clawmarks and gashes from the others. He’d spent most of the first six months of their lives sticking plasters on them. ‘Let’s have a look’ was one of the key phrases they had known.

 He swung his pack off his shoulders, setting it down slowly so as not to startle her. Would she let him touch her? There was no head-collar to hold her still – would she allow his hand to reach her? He moved slowly forward.

 “Let’s have a look,” he chanted. “Yeah. Let’s have a look.”

 Slowly, he moved forward, and laid his hand on her shoulder. She watched him suspiciously, but did not snap at him, or move away.

 Her hide was warm. Yes, he thought, slightly feverish. And perhaps short of water. His left hand joined his right, and he ran his fingers gently over the clotted tears in her back and flank. None of them felt infected – perhaps the young Indominus had very clean teeth. He talked soothingly to her, and she rolled over carefully onto her side, watching him out of one glittering eye. He took out his injection needle, and the vial of anti-biotic, and ran it into her between two folds of reptilian skin.

 He had barely tugged out the needle when she jumped under him. She thrust herself to her feet, fast enough to knock the syringe out of his hands. A second later he heard what had roused her.

 The doors of the Innovation Centre were being opened.

 He threw himself to his feet and lunged for the AK47, just as a squad of men ran in.

 They ran in a fast wedge formation, covering each other. They held weapons in their hands – automatic rifles. They had not come here to subdue; they had come to kill. They wore black uniforms that he recognised as InGen Security, even as he swung the AK47 into line and glared over the gun’s old iron sights at the leader’s chest.

 Delta’s jaws gaped open with a snarl – thereby ensuring that she had all the men’s undivided attention.

 “Whoa!” Owen shouted.

 “Raptor!” the lead man shouted. He slid to a stop on the tiles and braced his weapon. All the weapons were suddenly aimed at Owen.

 “Stand down, friends!” Owen shouted, keeping his voice deep and careful not to scream. “Hold your fire! Blue on blue!”

 “Are you Grady?”

 “Stand down!”

 “Step aside!” the lead man shouted. His eyes were not on Owen at all. His gaze was fixed on Delta, snarling behind Owen’s back. They were all looking at Delta: the sight of the angry raptor held every man’s gaze. The lead man’s face was pale under his sweat. He was frightened.

 “Where the hell did you come from?” Owen snapped, paying no attention to the angry snarling behind him. “Dearing gave me twelve hours.”

 “Step aside, Grady!” the leader shouted. His chest tag read Bulgen.

 “No! Back down. You’re not touching these animals.”

Bulgen's gaze shifted to meet Owen’s. “These animals killed our guys,” he said, without lowering his weapon. “They’ve tasted human flesh, and they have to be destroyed.”

 He saw a shadow moving above Bulgen’s head. It was only the most tiny shiver of movement above the lead man, but he felt a tremor of fear shiver through his blood. He squinted his eyes at Bulgen, to avoid looking up at the balcony.

“Bulgen,” he said. He did not lower the AK. He could not. If he did, they would open fire on Delta, and they would die. He would open fire if he had to, but he knew he would not be fast enough to save all of them. “Bulgen, listen to me, stand down. You’re not touching my raptor. Stand down!”

 “That's not your raptor any more, pal. You’re no longer an InGen employee!”

 “Yeah, I stopped taking orders from InGen when I got fired this morning. Stand down, I said! You, on the left! Yeah, I see you! Don’t think you can sneak past me! Lower your weapons!”

 “Step aside!” Bulgen shouted.

 “If you want to touch my raptors you have to come through me!” he shouted back. “Are you going to do that? Are you?”

 “Don’t be insane!” Bulgen shouted. “They’re only animals.”

 “They’re my animals! Back down! I said I’d get them back to their paddocks in twelve hours, and I meant it. You open fire, and I will.”

 “You’re mad!”

 “Twelve hours!” he shouted. “The first man that tries to put a bullet in my raptors before then gets a 7.62 in the head.”

 “You’re fucking insane!” Bulgen said. “You’re threatening us with a deadly weapon over an animal?”

 “Yeah, I think I am. Look at her – she’s wounded. She’s no danger to anyone now.”

 “I’ll blackball you. You’ll never work in the security industry again.”

 “Yeah, go cry to the Costa Rican police. Now back off. Get out of here. Twelve hours. You tell your InGen bosses, twelve hours!”

 “Twelve hours?” Bulgen said. “Who the hell gave you twelve hours in the first place?”

 “Twelve hours.” Owen did not lower the AK. He could sense them yielding. Some of them were glancing at Bulgen, waiting for their commander to make a decision, hoping that it would be a good decision. He saw Bulgen glance left and right. His resolve was weakening to the point that he was checking to ensure his men were still there, flanking him.

 “What’s it going to be, Bulgen? Twelve hours, or this?” He tilted his jaw toward the stock of the gun, still hard against his shoulder.

 “Twelve hours,” Bulgen agreed. “Twelve hours, and then I’ll put a bullet in that thing myself.”

 “Get the hell out of here,” Owen snarled.

 “Come on,” Bulgen said, looking left and right again. He put up his gun, and backed away. “I’ll send you a video clip so you can watch it happen.”

 “Get out,” Owen said, jerking his head at them. He could give Bulgen the satisfaction of the last word, as long as he got his twelve hours. He watched them backing away, keeping his AK47 up to keep their attention on him for as long as possible. They backed away through the double doors of the Innovation Centre.

 As soon as they were safely out of sight, he let the AK47 sag. “Jesus,” he whispered, and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He allowed himself to raise his eyes for the first time.

Blue was standing on the balcony over the main doors, looking down on him.

 He was reminded again of just how lethal raptors were. The adage that the raptor you were watching was not the raptor that was getting ready to eat you was true.

 Delta, just behind Owen, had kept up a steady hissing and snarling through the whole confrontation, holding all the InGen men’s eyes on her. Blue had been watching Bulgen's men from behind, absolutely still, coldly silent, waiting to spring. If Bulgen had looked up – if his men had opened fire – they would have died.

Chapter Text

Delta made a grumbly old-lady noise, and sat back down on her haunches, clearly weak.

Blue made a cough-bark, hurdled the rail, and landed lightly as a bird next to her sister. They greeted each other again with bell-like trills and groans. Blue rubbed her face against Delta’s, and they huffed into each other’s faces, exchanging breaths. Then Delta bent her head, and opened her jaws, and with a soft clatter something fell out of her mouth onto the tiles.

Blue lowered her nose to whatever was on the floor, huffing her breath over whatever they were. Then she moved her head slightly, and Owen saw what they were.

They were a pair of raptor killing-claws.

“Echo,” he said, in recognition.

He had been wrong. No human had taken Echo’s claws as souvenirs. The two raptors were stooped over the claws, breathing deeply over them, and making rasping purrs at them, as if talking to the memory of the dead Echo. As he watched, Blue picked up one of them in her teeth, exquisitely gently. The claw disappeared from his sight as she mouthed it gently, and then set it down again.

He sat down, feeling hideously exhausted, and squeezed his eyes shut. He had had only two hours of sleep last night – napping in the chartroom of the ferry, with Claire passed out against his shoulder. He’d drunk coffee to wake himself up, but the caffeine must be wearing off now. He was starting to imagine things. He was seeing significance where there was none – trying to read human emotions into animals, where obviously there were none.

Hard to believe it was just one day since he had first seen someone get chomped by the Indominus Rex. Just over twenty-four hours ago, his weekend had included nothing more than fixing his bike, drinking his beer, and going to Barry’s Brazzaville-style barbecue.

Now here he was, in a deserted resort, with two raptors. He had thought he would find only one alive, and here were two. He had thought he would struggle to find them, but he had walked right up to them. Why had they not left the Innovation Centre, he wondered? Had they been here all day? Perhaps Delta could not travel at all, and that was why they were still here.

He had to get them back in their paddock. He did not know if InGen would shoot his raptors, once they were safely back in containment. They had cost millions to breed and raise. Back in containment, they would be valuable bloodstock again, not monsters.  Out here, ACU would chase them down, and shoot them from the air, and that would be that.  Back in containment, at least he and Claire could fight for them, and they would have a chance to survive.

He pushed himself back to his feet, and picked up his pack and his AK47.

“We need to go,” he said, and raised his voice. “Blue! Delta! Eyes on me.”

Blue swung her head up at him, and opened her mouth in a scream of threat.

“Blu-ue,” he said, in the don’t-push-it voice. “Those guys will be back. Those guys?” he waved a hand, flat-palmed, toward the main doors. “You want those guys coming back?”

Both raptors followed his gesture with their muzzles. Delta snarled, settling back onto her haunches as if readying herself for a forward spring. She didn’t look as if she minded the idea of the strangers coming back.

“Eyes on me,” Owen said. “We’re moving. We’re moving.” He didn’t wait for them to follow him. He raised his hand, and followed his own pointing palm toward the Creation Lab’s door. The Lab had a back door that would take them through the back of the Volcano. It opened to a path, that would eventually wind past the Control Building and out of the resort.

They watched him go, both sets of golden eyes following his movements, and then, birdlike, they turned and looked at each other. As he crossed the floor toward the statue of John Hammond, they exchanged yips and purrs. Delta stooped and picked up the two claws in her mouth. Blue picked up her forehands to her sternum and began to trot after him. Delta followed with her hitching limp.

“There we go,” he said, satisfied. “That’s good. We’re walking out of here, just like that.”

Just over twenty-four hours ago, he would never have believed it. He was leading a pair of predators through the Innovation Centre as if he was leading a couple of tired tourists. He pulled out his phone, and dialled Claire.

He had to dial and wait three times before he got through to her.

“Mr Grady,” she said.

He was exhausted; that crisp use of his name usually went straight to his groin. “I thought I had twelve hours!”

“Until sunrise tomorrow,” she said.

“Then why the hell did six InGen Security guys just burst in here loaded for bear, and try to shoot my raptor?”

He still wasn’t good at speaking Hot Redhead, but he was sure that long silence was not good. He waited.

“I didn’t send them,” she said at last, coldly.

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d hire such a pack of dumb-asses,” he said. “They aren’t exactly the A-Team. They’re not good enough to be the cheerleaders for the A-Team. They were so dead set on shooting Delta, they didn’t see Blue set behind them, getting ready to rip them up like a schwarma.”

“Are they alive?”

“Yeah, they’re alive,” he agreed. “The leader’s name is Bulgen. When you find out who sent them, tell them I saved their asses, even though I don’t even like saving losers who try to shoot my raptors.”

“I meant Blue and Delta!” Claire said, sounding annoyed. “They’re both still alive?”

He glanced over at his raptors. Delta was still limping, carrying her tail up to one side like a rudder for balance. Blue had stopped, staring up in fascination at a display of the difference between bird-hipped and lizard-hipped dinosaurs, as if wondering if paintings could be a threat. Twenty-four hours ago, he would never have dreamed of having a chat on the phone with a pair of raptors walking free a few feet away.

“Yeah,” he said. “Blue’s okay. Delta’s pretty cut up, and I think she’s lost a lot of blood, but she’s on her feet. I’m getting them out of the Innovation Centre.”

“Take care of yourself.” Her voice sounded very awkward. “I mean – I know you’ll take care of yourself… just…”

“I’ll take care of myself,” he said. “Hey, don’t forget I’ve got a date tomorrow, remember? Can’t miss that, now can I?”

“Don’t worry. I’m already working on the itinerary,” she promised.

……………………………………..

The sun was getting low over the mountains to the west, when Owen emerged from the back doors of the Innovation Centre. The gravel-lined pathway led right to the Aquatic Park, left to the Tyrannosaurus Kingdom. He picked the middle path. Follow that, and you would reach a gate concealed behind a clump of trees. Pass through that gate, and you would be on the road that would eventually take you to the main gate into the Restricted Area.

“This way,” he said.

There was a grumble behind him, and Delta squealed. He stopped and looked behind him. Delta was standing looking at him. Blue was heading in the opposite direction, taking the path to the Aquatic Park. She twisted her head to look back at them, and cough-barked a command.

Delta turned her head to look at Owen. She timbered at him, unhappily. Slowly, she turned her back on him, and padded after her sister.

“Okay,” he gave in. “You’re the alpha now.”

Blue looked like she knew where she was going. After all, they had followed Owen all the way here from the place where they met the Indominus last night. Perhaps instinct was telling Blue to retrace her path.

Well, as long as they were moving in the general direction of their paddock, it didn’t matter which way they went. He couldn’t make them go where they didn’t want to go – and the days when they had taken his orders as their alpha were over, anyway.

They stopped by a water-feature next to Where Are They Now, to drink. He stopped and watched them. Blue dropped her muzzle to the water, and drank deeply, like a horse. Gulps of water clenched up the length of her throat.

Delta put down the two claws in her mouth carefully, and then dipped her nose into the water. After only a second or two, she tossed her head up quickly, and her throat clenched as she swallowed. Dip, lift, dip, lift, dip… it was the way Delta had always drunk. She filled her mouth with tiny sips, and raised her head to allow the water to run down her throat by gravity. The other raptors drank like Blue did, in deep draughts, but Delta drank exactly like a bird.

It was one of the odd differences between the raptors that he had noticed, and he had always wondered just how much avian DNA was in her. He wondered sometimes if she had a crop in there. He wondered sometimes if she would ever sing…

He would never know. He had been told not to ask stupid questions about InGen’s intellectual property. InGen designed, patented, and delivered the dinosaurs, and that was that. His not to reason why; his but to hatch them and train them.

He shook himself. Exhaustion, he told himself. He had to get them back to their paddock by morning. He could not give InGen Security any further reason to shoot them.

“Blue,” he called. “Delta. Let’s go. We’ve moving.”

Delta followed him. Blue ignored him, and trotted past him into Where Are They Now. Delta wheeled around, and went after Blue.

“Okay, I guess we’re going that way.”

Where Are They Now was a weird cross between a prehistoric museum and a snake park. Every conceivable living animal whose ancestors had once shared the planet with the dinosaurs was kept there – from birds to little echidnas; from snakes and tuataras, to a single crocodile bought from the Australia Zoo. The display meandered along wide pathways, fully wheelchair-accessible. The paths wound around random pseudo-adobe walls, and between stands of palm trees and cycads. It owed a lot of its flowing design to the Australia Zoo – although Owen was glad the word ‘Crikey’ was nowhere to be seen.

Blue came to a sliding stop next to a life-sized bronze statue of a velociraptor.

“Uh-oh,” Owen said, coming to a sudden stop.

The statue stood on a plinth in a stand of cycads – plants that Blue’s ancestors would have recognised. To left and right of it were cheery signboards, with pictures of animals on it. Birds and lizards, crocodiles and fish. The animals shared an artist’s teeming landscape with many more painted velociraptors. They romped in a Cretaceous Garden of Eden. The lion didn’t quite lie down with the lamb, but the velociraptors did run among flocks of birds and lizards…

“Blue.”

Blue was frozen. Her sides were moving in and out like a racehorse. The rest of her was frozen. Even her forehands had come to a stop.

Delta made an unhappy noise next to him, and stepped forward. She paused at his side, staring at her sister, and let out a high-pitched snot-snarl.

Blue was transfixed.

He’d seen the raptors staring at their own reflections like that, when he’d exposed them to mirrors. Lesson 171 – Mirror Self-Recognition Test – and the raptors had passed with flying colours. Blue had admired her own blue stripes in the mirror for days. Only a tiny handful of animals passed the MSR test, and he had wanted to scream with the frustration of knowing that he could not publish his finding in any of the fancy-shmancy scientific journals.

“Blue,” he said again, getting worried, and Delta echoed him with another snot-snarl.

She ignored both of them. She sidestepped, away from him. The next board showed the evolution of dinosaurs into birds. A two-legged dinosaur marched confidently through stages from Archaeopteryx to an eagle. Blue was staring up at her own distant cousin. The only thing that moved was her eyes, turning this way and that.

That stare… that silent stare was never good. A silent, staring raptor was a raptor on the verge of attack.

She turned her head, and looked at him, drawing her head back onto her neck.  She recoiled, slowly, curling down into herself. She made herself as low and small as a velociraptor could, as if something inside her was sinking into horror.

The hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

“Blue,” he said.

His voice set her off. She dropped her jaws and screamed, a battery of sound so loud that even Delta jumped back. Delta knocked into Owen, staggering him, and by the time he had caught his balance and spun back to face Blue, she was gone.

Delta stumbled forward, crying unhappily. Blue reappeared from under the archway into the snake park. She paused, head up, and screamed at him.

“Blue!”

It was a shriek of pain; a sound he had heard from a raptor only once, when Blue and Echo had fought and Echo had been injured. It was a high shriek of anguish, almost equine. There was no injury on her, but that scream was unmistakable. Apex predators did not hide their pain like prey animals – they didn’t have to. She was in pain – pain that he could not see.

Delta, behind him, made a reassuring grumble.

Blue screamed again, another howl of anguish, and whirled to go into the snake park again. A second later, he heard the sound of breaking glass.

“Shit!” he shouted. “Blue!” He ran to the doorway of the snake park, in time to see her smash the glass of another terrarium with a punch from her killing-claw. She whirled, and screamed at him.

“Blue,” he said, trying to calm her down. He had given the last kindness to animals that had made far less anguished cries of pain. But this, he could do nothing for. She wasn’t physically injured. Whatever was tormenting her raptor brain, it was a wound that he could not see.

“What’s wrong, Blue?”

Another scream at him. She spun around and darted down the line of terrariums, lashing out with her killing-claw at each one. Glass shattered all along the line, as if she’d taken a rifle to them. She was methodically smashing the tanks.

“Blue!” he shouted. Already a Burmese python was falling like a thick coil of rope out of its terrarium, its tongue flickering as it tasted its new freedom.

Blue dashed out of the far archway of the snake park, and Owen ran out of the closer door. He was in time to see her made a run at the nearest bird cage. A grasp of her forehands on the bars of the cage, and the wire was ripped open. The lorikeets inside, startled, flew about in a screaming whirl of bright wings, until they saw the open sky and stampeded out in a thunder of wings.

Delta was limping earnestly after Blue, weaving her head and calling soothing noises. But even Delta could not ease whatever agony Blue was suffering. Blue turned on her, and gave that despairing scream directly into her sister’s face, refusing to be soothed, refusing comfort. She dashed for the next cage, and Owen threw himself backwards as she thundered past him. She shrieked into the cage, and the metal wires ripped as easily as lace. The birds burst toward the sky in terror, and Blue screamed at the sky as they went, as if the clouds could hear her. She whipped on for the next cage – lizards.

She was causing thousands of dollars in damage!

“Blue!” he shouted. He braced his feet and thrust out his hand. “Blue! Stand down!” He tried to summon his old commanding tone, but he could feel its strength wavering. “Stand down! Blue, eyes on me.”

He might have been shouting orders at the bronze statue, for all the attention she gave him. She ripped off the front of the lizard cage just as easily, and flung the frame away as if it weighed nothing. She spun to look at him, and screamed again.

He glanced at Delta, at the same moment that Delta glanced at him, and he found himself sharing a puzzled stare with a velociraptor. Delta made another soothing call.

Blue would not be soothed. Whatever epiphany had driven her into this destructive fury was not wearing off. She sprinted to the next cage, and screamed at the animals inside.

“Blue! Oh, God, not the echidnas!”

She darted to the gate of the echidnas enclosure and ripped it off its hinges. She could have made hors d’ouevres of the little things, but she ran on. She stopped to shriek like a mad thing over the fence at the horrified tuataras. They were scuttling back and forth on the far side of their stony enclosure, panicked. Their little world had gone crazy! The monkeys had the keys to the plantation. The lunatics were running the asylum. The zoo animals had taken over the zoo…

“Blue!”

She whirled, and screamed at him, and then she was coming at him, in a dead run. Her claws were spread and her teeth gaped at him.

“Shitshitshit!”

He spun on his heel and threw himself bodily for the closest cover. He dived headlong into the closest stand of cycads, and found to his shock that they were really, really not palms, and did not receive refugees gladly. He bounced off a plant as leafy as glass, scrambled on and through the razor-sharp leaves, and flung himself down behind a thick pebbled trunk. There was a shriek above him, and a meaty thump, and the sound of two raptor voices roaring.

He raised his head. He was under Delta, who was braced half-on the cycads with her tail lashing and her forehands spread. She’d blocked Blue with her own body. Beyond Delta, under her thickset hocks, he could see Blue’s feet, lashing the ground.

Blue sprang forward, and Delta shifted to meet her, and again the two raptors battered each other with their chests. Blue backed off, stepping away. Delta was weaving her head, and she was staring at her sister, but her forehands were tucked low, signalling peace. Blue screamed, and Delta replied with a series of chirrups and purrs.

They were communicating. Blue screamed at Delta, and then got down on all fours and screamed at Owen, under Delta’s tail. Delta argued, and Owen fumbled for his AK47, shaken from his paralysis.  If he had to, he was ready to defend himself.

Then Blue was gone. She sprang back, and spun around to tear off another sign-board. It crashed off the wall with a popping of rivets, under dinosaur muscles. She whirled on the spot and the board flew over to land on the ground before Delta and Owen.

Blue screamed and threw herself forward over the board. Her eyes glinted at him and she set her forehand onto the board, talons curved like Yemeni daggers. With a deliberate flex of her hand, she ripped her fore talons down, scoring three deep gashes into the wood. With one claw, she added a fourth stroke below the three, holding them up like the branch of a tree.

Owen blinked.

That was new behaviour…

Blue screamed, and clutched at the broken board again. She arched her talons, and scratched at the wall again. She made four vertical strokes, and she grunted with the effort of concentration. A horizontal stroke, linking the bases of the first four, which challenged the way her forehand’s wrist turned. And then, a fifth vertical stroke spearing down from the horizontal stripe.

She turned her head, and stared at him. This was for him. This was for his benefit.

He couldn’t help it. He rolled himself out from under Delta, and scrambled forward on his elbows for a closer look. It was the strangest behaviour he had ever seen her display.

Delta made a curious hiss, leaning down to examining what her sister was doing, but Blue ignored her. She screamed at Owen again, and put her claws onto the first set of clawmarks. She had to arch her wrist awkwardly to do it, but she managed to score out a rough circle, enclosing the three clawmarks.

Owen stared at the board. Exhaustion, he told himself. He was exhausted. He squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again, but the deep scratches were still there.

Delta’s nose came down, looking carefully at the board. Her head rose and fell in a deep cockatoo-ish nod.

Owen reached out. He remembered the day some idiot dropped a thick black marker into the paddock. It had taken only seconds for the raptors to notice that something had fallen into their domain – and minutes to realize what they could do with it. Within an hour, each of the raptors had scribbled merrily all over her siblings.

But this – this was something new.

These were not the random scribbles of eager hatchlings playing with a new toy. This was something no other dinosaur had ever done. Five strokes. Three strokes.

He reached out a hand. Four vertical strokes, and a fifth opposite. Four fingers, and a thumb opposite.

He reached out one hand, carefully, and laid his palm down on the centre of the mark, fingers spread. His hand didn’t cover the gouges – his thumb didn’t quite attach that way. He pressed his palm to the scratches. The splinters of wood were rough under his skin.

“Human,” he said, aloud. He pointed to the other mark – three talons. “Raptor.”

And the raptor, he saw, was confined in a rough circle. Caged. Paddocked.

Blue screamed. He could smell her breath, the meaty predatory smell of her teeth. He’d never been so close to raptor teeth. Her pupils were slitted into a vertical line. She lowered her head parallel to the ground, so that she could scream again directly into his face, and he understood.

The raptors had no words. They had learned only a handful of English phrases, but the scream had a word. One word, containing all her confusion and loss, all her blame and her pain in one. It was not a word he had ever taught them, but no teaching was necessary to understand that word. He could hear that word in the sound of her scream, as if she had shouted it aloud.

WHYYYYYY?

“Blue…!”

After that final scream, she stared at him, breathing heavily. Her sides were coming in and out like a racehorse. Suddenly she jerked, and she dug her talons on the board again. Owen yanked his hand away, fearing suddenly that she was going to go for his arm.

But she went for the three-clawed mark instead – and there was nothing controlled about her talons. She ripped at the confined mark in a fury, as if trying to obliterate it from existence, as if the fact of it pained her. The wood tore, sending splinters in all directions, but she raged at it, striking at the mark with both forehands. She seemed oblivious to the sharp spikes of wood jabbing up like needles into her forehands.

She was going to hurt herself!

“Blue!” Owen said, and reached forward, trying to interrupt her destruction, but he was not allowed to reach her. She whipped away. With a few loud footfalls she was gone.

“Jesus,” Owen said.

He rolled himself over onto his back, suddenly exhausted beyond words. It was not possible. It was not credible. He could not have seen what he had just seen. He would not have believed anyone who said he had seen what he had just seen.

He opened his eyes, and found himself looking directly up into a wide grin of raptor teeth and a pair of nostrils.

Delta turned her head, so as to look down at him out of only one great golden eye, birdlike. Her nictating membrane slid closed in a thoughtful blink. They were not dogs; they didn’t understand humour – Lesson 185. But there was something deeply sympathetic about that blink.

“Jesus Christ,” he said again.

It occurred to him that this was the first time she’d seen him lie down since she was a hatchling. It occurred to him next that he was probably the first human being ever to lie down next to a fully-grown velociraptor and not die in a few short painful seconds.

He sat up, and Delta backed up to allow him to his feet. He had to go after Blue. His hands were stinging, and he raised them and found that he had ripped the skin of his hands, thrashing around in the cycads. There was blood on his palms, but thank God for Tet shots. His fingers were trembling. He reached out for the strap of the AK47 and pulled it over his shoulder.

There was another scream in the distance.

“We have to get after her,” Owen said. He pointed in the direction that Blue had gone, and used one of their commands. “A-and, we’re moving!”

Delta dropped her jaw and hissed. She began limping after her sister, and Owen followed her. He was forced to jog – even a limping raptor could travel faster than a man on foot. His knees felt loose under him. He felt the way he had when the Indominus had walked away from its paddock. He felt the way he had the first time he had come under mortar fire.

He wondered if this was what the first Park’s keepers had felt, when they’d first realized that some of the dinosaurs were fertile and laying viable eggs. Or if this was how old Darwin had felt, all those years ago, looking at his little birds, and re-writing the future of humanity into a less solitary story.

He wanted to lean his head against the wall, and make it all go away. He wanted to be back outside his own bungalow, drinking beer, and fixing his bike.

“That’s no dinosaur,” he quoted himself.

He’d looked up at the Indominus, and saw intelligence and insanity looking back.

“That’s no dinosaur,” he whispered, and his own words came back to haunt him, because the Indominus was a dinosaur, after all. That was a velociraptor, raised in isolation, and mad, and confused, and angry, and at war. He wanted to laugh, and cut the sound off before it could bubble out, because dinosaurs did not understand laughter except as a annoying panting. He was exhausted, and about to get hysterical.

There was another fading scream from the distance, and a juvenile emu bolted down the path toward them, its toes slapping at the grit path. It saw another of the same nightmarish creatures, and jinked away at the last moment so as not to come near Delta.

Emus were fast, but not fast enough. Delta sprang, and struck once with her killing claw, and a second later the emu was being shaken down her throat. She tossed her head, hawk-like, and crunched her jaws. A toss of her head, and the young emu was gone. She snot-snarled, and began jogging away again.

“Lunch?” he called at her. “What are you going to do next – print out an itinerary?”

She cough-barked, and she was turning the corner, and he had to trot after her.

Finding Blue was not difficult. Even if they could not hear her, they would only have had to run in the direction of all the panicked animals, fleeing from the predator that had suddenly appeared in their midst like a deranged angel and started ripping open their cages. They turned around the corner by the bronze statue of the coelacanth, and down the avenue where the emus lived. He was just in time to see Blue spring over a torn-down wire fence, and disappear down a steep slope.

“Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. Not that one.”

Owen bolted ahead of Delta. She’d thrown over the sign-board, but he knew this pen. Everyone knew this pen. Its occupant had been bought from the Australia Zoo, and was named in honour of Steve Irwin …

“Blue!” he shouted down the grassy slope to the water’s edge. “Get out of there! Get out of there, now!”

She stood at the bottom of the slope, and screamed her defiance up at him. She was not taking orders; she was not confined. She understood where she was, and her place in it, and it was not acceptable!

She whipped around, and began pacing around the edge of the water. She was looking for an occupant inside the enclosure, he realized. She was trying to drive it out of the cage, trying frighten it into fleeing through the broken fence the way she had frightened the emus.

She didn’t know that the thing that lived in this pen had feared nothing for 200 million years.

“Blue! Get out of there, now!”

She whirled on the water’s edge, balancing on the concrete blocks that ran out part-way into the inky water. She lowered her head and dropped her jaws in a furious scream. Her tail was lashing back and forth over the water. He saw the log floating in the water just behind her; an innocent log. Just a lethargic plank of wood.

“For God’s sake, get out, get out, it’s in the water, it’s in there with you!” He threw himself up onto the wire, scrambling over the fallen fence, and getting stuck, and even as he fell and caught himself in the tangle of wire he was too late.

The crocodile leaped, and he saw the white of its mouth flash, and Blue was falling backward with a squeal of horror.

The water thrashed. Blue was grabbing with her talons on the concrete, and turning to lash out at her attacker with her killing-claws, and screaming in rage. She was thrashing the water, trying to drag herself free, but she had no hope of hurting it through its armoured skull. Delta had hurdled the fence, she was racing to save her sister, and Owen was clambering over the last of the broken fence and running down the grass. He raised the AK47 as he ran.

Even as he raced he saw the crocodile make a swivelling yank. Blue was thrown off her feet. She landed with a splash, overpowered, and now Delta had reached her side. Both raptors were shrieking, and striking, but their killing claws had no hope of striking through the armoured back and skull of the crocodile. The crocodile made another twisting yank, and Blue was thrashing the water white with both forehands in her panic, thrashing to keep her head from being tugged under, and Delta was shrieking.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Owen shouted. He flipped the AK47’s fire selector to full-auto, even as his boots reached the mud. The water clutched coldly at his legs as he raised his knees to run. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” and then he was jumping on the concrete with the AK47 in his shoulder, and he pressed the trigger, and fired straight down into the water.

The distinctive shrill scream of the AK47, firing without ear protection, slammed into his skull. The recoil juddered at his bones, firing straight down. He didn’t even know what part of the croc he was aiming for – or if the bullets would even penetrate the water – but he had to try. The 7.62 rounds had to hurt the monster enough to make it let go! They had to!

Blue and Delta were shrieking. The water splashing in his eyes was red with blood. He braced his feet on the concrete, fired, and fired again, until the magazine clicked empty.

He ejected the magazine, already reaching back for another one – and suddenly he was knocked backwards. Blue burst out of the water like an exploding cork. She was free! Her explosive rise struck his shoulder, spinning him around. His feet went out from under him, and the water splashed up to close over his head.

He threw himself upright, sitting up. The croc was down here somewhere! He tried to lunge for the shore, but Delta was already above him. Hard talons snatched at the collar of his jacket, and he was yanked over backwards before he could get to his feet. He was being dragged bodily out of the water, as fast as Delta could go, and he kicked helplessly as he was dragged across the mud.

For a second he saw his own flailing boots, and the end of her tail whipping above him, and the tree-branches seemed to whirl against the sky with the speed she was dragging him.

Delta let him go as soon as he was on the grass. He rolled over onto his belly, and made all fours, and launched himself to his feet. Then he was up, and running, and they were both racing up the slope.

Chapter Text

Blue was whinnying in shock and pain. She lay on her side, curled around her own tail like one of her own ancestral fossils. She was gripping the end of her tail in all four sets of claws, holding the injured end protectively to her face and crying at it.  

 Owen scrambled over the fence and ran to her. His ears were screaming shrilly from the thunder of the AK47. He could only imagine what the gunfire had sounded like to fragile raptor eardrums.

 “Blue, Blue, Blue!” he called. “Easy, Blue. It’s okay, let’s have a look, let’s have a look.”

 She was dazed, and for a moment she did not let go of her wounded tail. Delta lurked over her, blowing and purring, and Owen took the time to throw his soaked backpack off his shoulders and grab the first aid kit.

 “Let’s have a look,” he chanted, “Let’s have a look,” and either Delta or his voice reached Blue. She was holding her tail protectively with both hind claws, but her forehands let it go, and he could see the damage.

 The croc’s teeth had ripped up her scaled hide along the last six inches of her tail – the last remaining six inches of her tail. Its fine point was gone. She was bleeding heavily. He opened the antiseptic and slopped some on the rips, washing away the blood, and the long muscles of her tail jerked. The flesh was raw, and the blood was still running. He paused to slop some of the antiseptic over the gashes in his own hands, and winced at the sharp sting.

 “Pressure,” he said aloud. “We need to stop the bleeding.” He pulled out the pack of bandages, tore open the sterile packets, and began winding one around the end of her tail.

 “Gauze around,” he said. “Wrap it up. Keep pressure on. Stop the bleeding.”

 Delta had stopped her bleeding on her own, somehow, but Delta had only lacerations.   The running gash down the dorsal ridge of Blue’s tail would clot in the air – but not the stump where the narrow point had been. She probably needed stitches, but he didn’t have any. He would have to make do. He wrapped the bandages around, keeping them tight, and pinned them up.

 “That thing back there was a crocodile,” Owen said as he worked. He knew they didn’t understand him, but the habit of talking soothingly to injured animals was an old one, and hard to break.   “That was a crocodile! That is what happens when you mess with a crocodile! I know you’re the alpha now, but you must listen when I tell you things are dangerous. You’re seeing all of this for the first time. And there are things out here in the world that can hurt you! You’re very strong and tough, but you’re only five. There are things I know that you don’t. I’m thirty-five. You’re five. You have a lot to learn; a lot to learn.”  

He had to stop the bandages slipping off the tapering end of her tail. He found the set of sterile sticking plasters from the kit, and ripped them all open, and stuck them to the upper edge of his dressings like so much squares of duct tape. Hopefully that would hold.

 Blue was still curled up like a reptilian croissant, and hissing miserably. Not the big scary alpha raptor at the moment … if he had wanted to reclaim his alpha status, now would have been his only chance. Whatever existential rage had filled her before, it was gone now. Her rage had spent itself against the crocodile.

 Delta was looming over his shoulder, making a deep hum in her throat, like an immense beehive.

“She’ll be fine,” Owen said. “She’s shocked, that’s all. She’ll be fine.” He put his hand on Blue’s shoulder, feeling the tremors in her hide.

 He had not touched her like this since she was a year old. He wondered if any man had ever sat so close to a fully-grown velociraptor and touched it without getting instantly injured. He wondered what she would do if he stroked her shoulder, as he had once stroked her jaws – if she would allow herself to be petted. He ran his hand down her shoulder, stroking her gently, feeling the tough texture of her hide.

 “Easy, Blue. Easy, Blue.”

 Delta went on humming, and leaned over. She put her head down to her sister’s face, and hummed next to her for a while, nudging Blue’s nose with her muzzle soothingly.  Blue rolled her head around, looking up at Delta, but she did not get up. She could not get up without letting go of the end of her tail, and she was not letting go of that. Blue and Delta rumbled back and forth, communicating.

 Delta got up. She moved away to the fence, and looked down, and then hiss-snapped and turned away. The crocodile must be sitting at the bottom of its pool, brooding, Owen guessed; no longer a threat. His AK47 was down there, but he was not going to dive in and fetch it.

 Delta moved over to the signboard that Blue had ripped up and thrown over. She picked it up in her forehands, holding it awkwardly balanced between her talons. It was a difficult task with no opposable thumbs, but she manouevred it over. The wood was reversed, and dumped down on the ground in front of Blue. Delta hunched over it, her back curved down in concentration. She snarled down at the board. Her forehands clenched at the air, as if thinking, and then slowly, carefully, she set the tips of her talons to the wood.

 Blue raised her head, and timbered at the board.

 Owen watched, fascinated.

 More strange new behaviour? Blue had already done something today that he would never have expected. Owen shifted around next to Blue’s shoulder so that he could watch, curiously.

 Delta put her talons to the back of the board, where the nails had been ripped out of the wood. She arched her talons so that the needle-sharp tips hooked into the grain, and dragged three long scratches into the wood. Then she shifted her hand again, and did the same. The same mark again: three vertical lines, narrowing to a fourth.

 Then she turned her head to Owen. Her nictitating membranes slid closed in a blink, and she made a series of hisses. Her talons arched again.

 Four vertical scores, floored with a horizontal slash, and a fifth hanging from the bottom. Four fingers and a thumb. She had drawn exactly the same marks that Blue had.

 The same marks, demonstrated only once and reproduced accurately, Owen told himself – not random scratches, but symbols. Meaningful symbols … He found himself holding his breath. The same marks, exactly, but clarified: she had drawn two of the three-fingered marks. Two raptors and a human.

 For a moment she hovered over the board, turning her head this way and that, thinking her way through her new puzzle. Her tail snaked from side to side in concentration.

 Blue snarled. Then Delta put out one talon, and quite slowly, rumbling all the time, scored a deep line on the wood. Her talon scraped out a wide circle that ran all the way around both raptors and the human. She hunched back from the board, and looked closely at Blue and Owen, and snot-snarled at them both.

 One human and two raptors, with a circle around all three.

 Two raptors and one human, inside a circle. Confined or not – but together.

 Owen became aware that he was gawping with his mouth hanging open. He closed it sharply.

 “Clever girl,” he said, aloud.  

 The original Park’s warden had claimed that the raptors should never have been created. They were too intelligent, he said, and that made them too dangerous. That poor man had proved himself right the hard way: by getting eaten by his own raptors. Hoskins had thought they were intelligent enough to use, with the right handling. He’d been hired to test them, train them, instead of merely contain them…

 How intelligent were they, really?

 Blue made a satisfied noise, and lowered her head to the ground again. Delta was looking from him, to Blue, to the sign, tilting her head from side to side. He was aware that he was being examined. Blue let go of her tail and sat up, watching closely. As soon as she was sitting upright she wound her injured tail sideways around her haunches, and grasped it protectively again.

 How intelligent could they be? He had seen how attentive they could be in finding ways to escape from their paddock… they were very, very intelligent.

 No, no. It was insane. There was no way they could be as intelligent as that. They did not understand human speech – he and Barry had tested that. The raptors could barely make out their own names. They’d proven that. Their understanding of spoken English was limited to less than twenty phrases.

 He was insane, that was it. He was imagining things. Stress and lack of sleep were playing with his mind. He wanted to think his raptors were that intelligent, and so he was imagining that they were. Yes, he was turning into one of those mad bunny-hugging trainers, that spent too long idolising their animals, and ended up claiming that their horses communicated telepathically, or that their dolphins could cure autism.

 Yes. He was going soft in the head. It had finally happened: he’d lost his marbles. Barry was going to kill himself laughing.

 Delta snot-snarled, and Blue timbered doubtfully in reply. Her deep bom-bom-bom-bom echoed in the quiet park – doubt - disbelief. Blue’s nictitating membrane slid closed, and when it opened again her pupil was staring critically at Owen.

 You didn’t need to be an animal-trainer to recognize ‘do something.’

 He was being insane. Completely insane. Then again, he had just run straight into a man-eating predator to save another man-eating predator… he may as well carry on as he’d begun.  

 Koko the gorilla had reportedly used over a thousand hand signs. Alex the parrot had used a hundred words, and seemed to know what they meant. Songbirds had regional accents, and dolphins had names. And Owen and Barry had carried out a thousand-and-one tests to find out how intelligent the raptors were – except this one.  

 “Raptors,” Owen said, pointing to the three vertical stripes. They understood pointing gestures – one of the ways he and Barry had proven them smarter than most dogs. He pointed at Delta, and Blue, and back to the sign. “Raptors.”

 “Human.” He pointed to his own chest, and then back down to the board. “Human.” Then he pointed to Delta and Blue and back to the board. “Raptors.”

 Blue stared at him, and Delta.

 He had to prove it, even to himself. It wasn’t enough just to have seen it. The habits of rigour were impossible to shake off. He had to be sure – or he would forever wonder if he was imagining it.

 He reached behind him, and drew out his knife from the sheath in the small of his back. He set the tip of the blade under the five-fingered mark, and drew a small O.

 “Owen,” he said, pointing to it with his other hand, and then to his chest. “That’s me. Owen.”

 He leaned over to the nearest three-fingered sign and drew a letter D next to it. “Delta,” he said, and pointed to her. “Delta. That’s Delta. That says Delta. You’re Delta.”

 Delta tilted her head at the sound of her name.

 “And Blue. And you’re Blue. That’s Blue.”

 Blue snarled.

 “Yeah, you’re probably right, girl. I’m making a fool of myself.” He knew he was alone, but he still wanted to look over his shoulder and make sure no-one was watching. He didn’t want anyone to see the tough, buff raptor-trainer talking to his raptors in pidgin.

 “Delta, Blue, Owen,” he said, pressing his palm against each symbol in turn. “Owen, Delta, Blue.” He pointed to each of them in turn, and then the board again. “Delta, Owen, Blue. Owen, Delta. Blue, Owen. Delta, Blue.”

 Delta reached out and put her talons squarely on the mark that symbolised her own name. She hissed at Blue.

 For a long time, Blue just looked at the board. Her eyes blinked.

 Then, slowly, she released one knotted fist from around the end of her tail. She reached out, leaning down, and set her forehand down on the marks that symbolised herself.

 “That’s good,” Owen said, using one of the few phrases that the raptors understood. Only his years of keeping his cool while training animals allowed him to keep his feelings out of his voice. “That’s good,” he said again. “That’s damned good. Damned good.”

 Delta snot-snarled at Blue, who stared at the board, and replied.

 They were communicating. They were communicating about him – and about the board, and the marks on the board.

 They did communicate. Raptors had been observed chattering to each other by the first keepers of the original park. He’d seen them talking to the Indominus Rex last night. He’d seen Blue talking to the T-Rex last night, too. No-one had ever been able to understand their conversations – but then again, people had been listening to dolphins for decades, and no-one had ever been able to translate dolphin conversations either, any further than the fact that dolphins had names. There had never been any doubt that the raptors communicated.

 No, it was impossible. He was going to disprove it to himself, right now, and then he would laugh at his own stupidity.

 He picked up the board, and turned it over. He showed them the photograph of the crocodile.   “That’s a crocodile,” he said. “That’s what happens when you mess with a crocodile! Bad things. Biting and hurting Blue. Crocodile, bad!”

 And then he pointed at the skull-and-crossbones sign of danger. “Danger! Scary things, that bite and eat and kill. Teeth, and pain, and hurting! Danger! Danger!”

 Blue snarled.

 “Jaws that bite!” he said, making his voice fierce. “Claws that catch! Danger!” He bared his teeth and snapped his jaws, pointing at his own mouth as he did it.

 Blue lunged at the board. Her forehand flashed out, talons arched, and tore at the image of the skull-and-crossbones.

 Not at the crocodile itself but at the symbol. The plastic cover of the sign ripped under the blur of talons. The sign was illegible in a few seconds. Blue snarled, her teeth bared, and settled back on her haunches.

 Danger would be obliterated.

 No-one was ever going to believe this. No-one. He needed a picture. No, he needed to phone Claire. He needed to phone Barry. He needed to phone someone, anyone, and scream shrilly like a teenage fangirl.

 He reached for his belt, and realized as his fingers touched his own wet clothes that his phone was soaked through.

 He was out of contact.

 ……………………

 The odd little trio moved through the resort together but they made slow progress.

 Blue led the way, in the alpha’s place, and hiss-snapped in his direction if he tried to overtake. It went against every rule in the book for an animal to take alpha status over a human, but that genie would never be put back in its bottle again. Owen walked in the middle, and Delta limped behind, still favouring that leg. Without an X-ray, Owen had no way to know what was wrong inside her, but he could see that she was in pain. She could pick up speed if she had to – and she had – but she did not want to. All three of them were walking wounded now, and every few hundred paces Blue called a halt, and they stopped.

 Owen’s hand, where the cycad had slit his skin, was beginning to feel hot and stiff. Were cycads toxic? He didn’t know – but surely no-one would put a toxic plant in a resort?  

 Then again, he reminded himself, remember what else Masrani saw fit to put in his resort…?

 Blue had shaken off the shock of the crocodile attack remarkably fast. Perhaps it was part of the predatory mind, to switch off and compartmentalise physical conflict and danger? Lions and tigers did not have the luxury of avoiding battle, after all. Perhaps evolution could not allow predators the same emotions as an prey animal. They could not afford to be traumatised by using their teeth and claws. And a raptor did not have the same emotions as any sort of mammal. He remembered the lesson: a lion will eat you, but a lion is as close as your brother, compared with a raptor. Their minds were cold. They did not understand human emotions; he believed they could smell some of them, but not all.

 Blue had no way to understand that she’d re-written the entire history of her own re-born species in a few minutes. She had no way of knowing that she had re-written the last five years of his life with a few scratches on a plank.

 The little trio of walking wounded made slow progress – but Owen was in no hurry to push them.

 He could not believe what he was doing, but he could not stop. He tried to persuade himself that he was delirious, exhausted, not at his peak mental fitness. He tried to persuade himself he was imagining what he was seeing – but every time he decided to test what he was seeing, the raptors proved it was no delusion. And every time they walked on again he managed to persuade himself that no, no, it could not be possible. He would test it again, and then he would laugh at his foolishness.

 Names were easy. There were only three names – Delta, Blue, Owen.

 He told himself that they did not really understood that the symbols were theirs, until Blue started marking her own name into every surface soft enough to take a scratch from her talons. Only her name; only that one symbol, over and over. Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, over and over again. He didn’t know whether she was reciting it – or marking her ownership over the resort.

 But still, it was impossible… impossible … impossible.

 It was Clever Hans the counting horse all over again, he told himself. It was every lurid anecdote about talking cats, and dogs that put out fires. It was every mushy animal-lover’s fantasy, mocked by scientists and animal behaviourists since B.F Skinner and Pavlov’s experiments. It was impossible… impossible.

 It was impossible … right up until the moment that Blue saw another skull-and-crossbones sign.

 Blue spotted a skull-and-crossbones sign on an electrical distribution board. She snarled in fury and flew across the road to do battle – and then nothing would placate the alpha except to tear the door off and see what scary thing was lurking inside. Thank God the power was off, all over the resort…

 He had doubted his own eyes – but the skull-and-crossbones answered them. Dangerous things went with the sign of the skull-and-crossbones. Dangerous things were obliterated.

 From then on, he could not stop himself. Every time they stopped, there was another sign-board, and Delta obligingly tore them down. His knife, and their talons made mark after mark after mark …

Hands…

 Mouths…

 Eyes… feet… tails…

 Sun… grass… tree… flower… door… window… water-fountain… dead dimorphodon… restroom…

 That last one was easy to demonstrate. They had been trained to use a trough in their paddock – not difficult with a creature as fastidiously clean as a velociraptor. They understood that symbol in a few disgusted seconds and he was left alone to relieve himself in peace.  

 But as soon as he came out, re-buckling his belt, they were waiting for him, and they started all over.

 Walking. Running. Biting. Sniffing. Going that way. Come here. Sit down. Stop. Hide.

 It wasn’t hard to come up with symbols for all of them, and all of them were diligently observed and mimicked by the raptors, copied out over the backs of the signboards. There was a limit to how much you could teach any animal in one session. There was a limit to how much novel information even a human brain could absorb at a time. He wondered if he should stop, before he himself forgot all the symbols he had taught them, but the raptors did not seem to want to stop. As soon as they found a new sign, they stopped, and Blue insisted until he did something interesting.

 He did not mind. He had all of the night to get them back to the Restricted Area.   They were moving out of the resort, slowly, and then he would steer them in the general direction of their own paddock. Bulgen had granted him his twelve hours.

 He wasn’t their alpha any longer – he was their guardian. He could keep them safe. He would get them back in containment, safe and valuable once more, and then he could work on telling InGen what they had really designed in their test-tubes. This was impossible: so impossible that it was going to go off in the animal behaviourist circles like a bomb.

 They had killed human beings. They were dangerous – but InGen would not shoot his raptors, if he could prove what they could do – what they were doing now!

 And then they would both be safe. No-one would shoot animals who could do this! This was something no-one had ever anticipated. This was something no other animal had ever learned. This was unique – precious – irreplaceable. Owen had read about calls to grant personhood to chimpanzees, because of their intelligence. There was a movement to end the capture of wild dolphins, and free the captive ones, because of their intelligence.

 But when it became known what raptors were capable of doing… they would be safe. No-one would shoot his raptors.

 The more signs and symbols they learned, the better, he told himself.

 He would have been happy to go on teaching them all night, but the sunlight had other ideas. There was no power in the resort, and no electric lighting, and Owen discovered too late that his torch was as wet as his phone. He didn’t know if water had got into the wiring, or if it had broken when he fell into the crocodile’s pool, but he had no lights.

 In the dusk, it became harder and harder to see the signs, until he had to stop.

 He pointed to his eyes, and made the sign for eyes on the board. Then he scraped a line through the eye sign. “NO eyes,” he said. “NO eyes. Can’t see. It’s dark. No sun.”

 The new sign was examined closely by Delta and Blue, and discussed at length by them, and Owen walked away. After a moment he heard their feet trotting after him, and they fell in line beside him. Blue in the lead, taking the alpha’s position by right, and Delta hobbling slowly at his side.

 They did not present him with another sign after that. They walked; Blue ahead, Delta behind, Owen in the middle.  

 Darkness fell as they left the resort itself behind, and the last distant putta-putta-putta of the helicopters faded away. The sun sank into the glory of an incoming storm front. With the helicopters gone now, there were no sounds but the tropical sounds of the jungle – the loud ticking hum of frogs and insects, and night birds – a whole world calling to itself in alien voices.

 The power of the resort was off, including all the discreet LEDs under the treetops that pointed down at the road. The road began to wind up toward the Control Centre, through the bottom of a gorge. There was enough moonlight to see where he was walking, for a while – and then the first clouds began to run across the sky. Between one step and the next he was blind.

 The third time he stumbled in the dark, he fell. He landed on his hands and knees, scraping his palms. He heard a surprised squawk somewhere ahead of him, and the sound of raptor claws trotting toward him.

 He called, “Ho!”

 He heard the feet come to a stop, and a querying noise. There was a raptor standing above him in the darkness. He could hear deep breathing.

 “Ho,” he said. “Stand down, stand down. We’re staying here.”

 He rolled back up to a sitting position, but did not get up. To make his point clearly, he pulled his pack off his shoulders.

 “We’re not going any further in the dark, ladies.   Owen can’t see his hand in front of his face. And besides, it’s going to rain. You want to run around in the rain? I sure don’t.”

 There was a cough-bark – insistent. That had to be Blue.

 “Ho!” he said. “Stand down.”

 He could use the pack as a pillow. He reached into his pack, and searched with his fingers. He’d already thrown out the useless AK47 magazines, since the AK47 itself was sitting at the bottom of the crocodile’s pool. There was a packet of dry crackers in there, somewhere. He could nibble on those. And then, thank God, he could catch a few hours of sleep. They were well out of the resort now; he could rest, just for a while. The tar under him was already asking him to lie down.

 There was another cough-bark – louder, closer, more insistent. Blue again. He reached out a hand, and realized that was probably not a good gesture when she snarled back.

 She was the alpha now, not him.

 “Blue-ue,” he said, giving the word a singing note. “I’m going to sleep. I’ve been running around since 6am yesterday morning, and now I’m going to take out this crappy MRE and eat it, and then I’m going to sleep.”

 There was a cough-bark. His fingers found the packet of crackers.

 “Ho!” he said, and a moment later there was a raptor scream. The sound leaped straight into the back of his brain, shocking a tiny mammal part of his instinct.

 “Christ!” He threw himself to his feet as talons dopplered toward him. He found his feet and threw himself out of the way of the approaching raptor – only to collide painfully with something large and hard, that snorted and jumped away.

 He sprawled on his face, squirming to roll over, and hot carnivorous breath was rasping down over his face. He threw up his hands.

 “Blue!” he shouted. “No! Stand down!”

 There was a scream directly into his face – volume and bad breath were enough to curdle his blood. He was defying the alpha, and the alpha didn’t like it. “Blue!” he shouted.

 He was able to make his hands and knees, and pushed himself to his feet – only to ram the top of his head into something rock-hard. He’d jumped up into the underside of someone’s lower jaw. Stars flashed in his vision.

 Around him he could hear raptors making loud noises – but at each other, not at him.

 “Blue!” he said.

 There was a sudden silence.

 “Blue?” he said.

 Silence. He was standing alone, in the dark.

 “Shit,” he said.

 There was no reply.

 Had they given up, and left him behind?

 No. Raptors did not do that. They were stealth predators – pack hunters. He’d seen videos of their hunts – they made the coordination of orcas look like chihuahuas chasing the paper boy. Had they tired of his company? Had they decided to turn on him after all?

 “Blue-ue,” he said, using the warning tone. He reached out his hands.

 He felt around himself in a circle with his fingers. Nothing there.

 Jesus, they had left him alone.

 And if they had disappeared, he was prey for whatever other carnivores were still out here tonight, in the dark. There were still dozens of dimorphodons out here, and his only weapon was lying with the crocodile.

 There was still an old, grumpy T-Rex out here, somewhere.

 Every other dinosaur in the park had at least some relationship with their keepers. His raptors observed everything that the humans did around their paddock, plotting and planning. The saddle-broken Triceratops sought out people for scritches and cuddles. Even the gigantic Apatosaurs regarded the tiny mammals with benign curiosity, bending down their huge heads to see what their keepers were doing, and taking enormous pains never to step on the squeaky wriggling things down by their feet.

 Every dinosaur – except the T-Rex. She had tasted human flesh before – and she liked it.  

 And just as that lovely thought crossed his mind, someone exhaled forcefully into his face.

 He jumped backwards, and collided with the other one, who had been right behind him. His fingers found rough hide, and gripped, but a sudden movement jerked his hand off.

 “Don’t do that!” he yelled at them, suddenly angry. They had hidden from him, close enough to touch, but keeping still on purpose.

 The raptors made low rumbling sounds – chirrups, and chuffle-chuffs. They were talking to each other – communicating with each other, exchanging inscrutable messages, the way they had with the Indominus Rex. He had been listening to them for five years, and he still had no inkling what they were saying.

 Velociraptors understood the theory of mind, he remembered. They understood that what they knew, the other person might not know. That was part of what made them such effective hunters – they were able to guess what their prey thought, and that way they could predict what their prey would do. They must have guessed that their human could not see.

 At least he was sure they weren’t laughing at him. Laughter was one thing they did not understand. They used their intelligence to escape, to plot, to hunt, but they had not played since they were hatchlings. Their minds were quite cold. That had not been a prank. That had been a deliberate experiment, with him as its subject.

 There was a pause in the sound of their communication. He heard heavy breathing. He reached out, slowly, and this time whoever it was allowed his fingers to touch her hide.

 A moment later, his arm was gripped sharply, talons wrapping around his wrist. His arm was yanked up, and something was thrust into his fingers. He closed his hand around it, reflexively.

 It was the end of a tail. Delta’s, obviously… no bandages.

 Someone snot-snarled directly into his face. A moment later, the tail was dragged out of his grip, and he let it go.

 Not good enough! The angry scream was very close to his head, and the other one timbered. His wrist was clutched in another tight grip, and again the end of a tail was thrust into his fingers.

 He closed his hand on it.

 Again it was drawn out of his hand.

 Another scream. The talons that grabbed him out of the dark shook him roughly. He was not doing what the alpha wanted him to do, and the alpha did not like that. And then the tail was thrust into his hand, and this time the gripping talons wrapped tightly around his fingers, digging painfully into his wrist. A raptor snarled at him, nose-to-nose in the dark. The alpha knew what she wanted, and she was making it happen.

 Again, the tail moved – and his mind leaped. The tail was in his hand – the tail moved – hold onto the tail.

 Hold onto the tail…

 He took a step forward, following the moving tail. He stepped again, and again. The tail jerked as its owner stepped, with the unsteady of Delta’s limp, but this time he hung onto the end and walked after it.

 He was rewarded by a series of chuffle-chuffs, and a pleased trill. The alpha was pleased.

 “I got it,” he said, aloud. “A-a-and we're moving.”

 ……………………..

 The clouds, that had given the island its name, were passing in front of the moon in dense blocks. Now and again, he caught a glimpse of the road ahead, and the dark shapes of the two raptors ahead of him.

 Above, occasionally glittering through the treetops, was the cold light of the Control Centre’s windows. It must have its own circuits, he thought, automatically turning on its lights at dusk. There would be no-one there now. No helicopters had landed there all day.

 The road climbed steadily, and then forked. The left-hand path curled down to the driveway of the Control Room. The right-hand path climbed, to go over the pass behind the resort. That road would wind down again through Gallimus Valley, beneath the monorail, to the gate into the Restricted Area. ACU had taken that road yesterday, on their last mission. That road would take them to the raptor paddock, and safety.

 They had walked for half an hour, climbing all the time, when he heard the sound.

 It was a deep drumming breath, from not far away. Huge lungs, driving a hundred gallons of air from a huge throat. He froze, and the tail in his hand froze too.

 The T-Rex? His breath was suddenly short in his throat.

 After a moment there was a chirrup, and the tail began to move again. He followed. The T-Rex had an excellent sense of smell. She would smell the human on the wind, but she would also smell the raptors.

 This T-Rex remembered raptors well. The T-Rex was one of the stupidest animals in the park – but she was tough, and older than the park itself, and she was a survivor. She still carried scars from her battles with raptors in the past, and the recording of a raptor cough-bark, played through loudspeakers, was enough to make her retreat to her den. She had learned the hard way that where there was one raptor, there would be more – and they might be smaller than her, but they attacked in a shrieking tempest of claws and teeth.

 He wanted to speak to them, reach out with his voice in the dark, but he knew that the sound of a human voice would attract the T-Rex’s attention.

 Ahead of him, somewhere, he heard Blue cough-bark assertively. There was a rumble, and then he felt it. It felt like someone had stamped the road with a jackhammer, just once. It was the disturbance of eight tons of animal, stamping one foot. A timberous noise rumbled through the air – The T-Rex was sniffing.

 Human flesh… and within reach…

 The T-Rex had tasted human flesh – and liked it.

 There was a soft chirrup from Delta, and he felt the tail stop. The tail was jerked out of his grip, and he felt talons on his shoulder, pressing him down. Down. Down was a command, and he obeyed. He heard Blue snarl, and then scream, and then she was cough-barking.

 Delta flew past him, and the sound of her talons clapped the road, fleeing toward the T-Rex. There was a scream from Blue and an answering scream from Delta,

 He clung to the road, feeling the warm tarmac under his palms. The T-Rex trumpeted, challenging them, and then a whole chorus of cough-barking, as if the two raptors were calling a non-existent pack to hunt with them. The T-Rex roared.

 Distraction. They were distracting the T-Rex, drawing her away. Now was his chance to get away in the opposite direction. He pushed himself up to his feet.

 The T-Rex trumpeted again, at the top of her lungs – and quite suddenly, there was light.

 The LEDs had turned themselves on. He scrunched his eyes closed as the light jabbed at his retinas, and when he opened them he saw a nightmare in front of him.

 He was standing alone in the middle of the tarmac, with the treetops meeting over his head, lit up as if he was in a stadium. The T-Rex was standing in the light, too. She was no more than a hundred yards away from him. Her legs were braced, and her jaws were driving down toward the ground, trying to snap at the raptor weaving in front of her.

 As the lights came on, she froze. Her head swivelled up. Her tiny eyes glittered under the high shelves of her brows, towards the tiny human in the road, lit up and exposed.   The T-Rex had famously terrible eyesight – but she could not miss the man right in front of her. And then, she took a step forward, ignoring the tiny raptor under her. Her massive head lowered, locking-on to a more delectable creature than a raptor, and her wide jaws seemed to grin hungrily.

 Instinct ordered and his reflexes obeyed. He spun and ran.

 There was a raptor scream behind him, and the T-Rex roared. He took a glance over his shoulder. She was coming straight at him. Her huge head was low, driving her grinning teeth down at the raptor weaving in front of her, but she was getting bigger at every huge stride. She was coming.

 “Shit-shit-shit!” He ran for his life.

 There was a cough-bark, and a raptor was running alongside him. The T-Rex was crashing through the treetops, simply barging her way through all obstacles. Branches snapped and ripped at her progress.

 The road weaved from side to side, climbing slowly. But he had been on his feet and under stress for two solid days and nights, and the climb was too high. He found his lungs burning and the muscles of his legs shaking, and the T-Rex was shaking the ground. He was slowing down, his strength fading, and the T-Rex was gaining on him. She lumbered on old legs, but every lumbering stride covered as much ground as a fully-extended racehorse.

 He did not have the speed to outrun her, or the strength. He was suddenly aware of the lights of the Control Room, to his left through the trees. The access road that led to the Control Room snaked to one side, below them, behind the trees.

 Reinforced concrete – built like a fortress ... basement garage… An image of the Control Centre flashed through his mind. Safety – not even the T-Rex could get through that much concrete.

 There was a shuddering roar, and a raptor scream, and he jinked sideways, just in time. He saw out of the corner of his eye the massive jaws falling from the sky, and smelled the hot meaty stink of T-Rex teeth, and then he had thrown himself off the side of the road.

 For a moment he fell through air and darkness, and then he landed with a crunch of pain. He was rolling, falling, vines and branches snapping.   His arms and legs were tumbling, and there was a cough-bark as a raptor crashed through the trees at his side. Down, down, down. He stopped with a crunch into a tree-trunk. The impact made his whole body go black and red with pain, but panic drove him up again.

 The T-Rex had been slowed down by the sudden change of direction, unable to turn easily, but a crash and a roar told him she was still coming. He rolled to his feet, and staggered down, his lungs wheezing noisily and his vision showing black dots, and then the ground was leveling out. The vines and branches were not clutching at his legs, and the ground under his boots was hard tar. He was on the apron around the Control Centre, and he pushed himself into a shambling jog.

 The Control Centre’s side door was just in front of him. He took a look over his shoulder. Blue sprang out from the trees and shook herself with a whiplash of her tail. Then there was a roar, and suddenly the nearest LED light went out as the T-Rex thrust her massive head down through the treetop. Blue sprang out from under just as the T-Rex crashed out onto the open. She sprinted after him, forehands tucked to her sternum, and cough-barked as she came.  

 Ten feet. He held his ribs with one hand, aware that his back wanted to double. Five feet. Please don’t be locked. Please don’t be locked.

 He had come to the back delivery door. There was a steel door. He stopped by crashing into it. His vision was going black. There was a keypad at the door – an automatic opener. Just like the one at the raptor paddock. He slapped his hand on it.

 Nothing happened. The door stayed closed. He banged his fist on it, and turned to look. Delta was dashing over to him. The T-Rex had shaken herself clear of the trees. She had found the human with her tiny eyes, and the massive head was tracking in his direction, and in a moment her body would turn to level at him.

 He could run no further. His ribs hurt, and there was no more breath in his body. He banged his fist down on the button. Open, dammit, open…  

 Blue whirled, her back to him, and crouched deep in threat. She screamed up against the T-Rex, and the T-Rex took a massive step toward her. Delta sprang to flank her sister. The T-Rex would have him, if she came through them… Her head with its massive grin of teeth lowered toward them both.

 There was a beep.

 The keypad turned green, and the automatic door suddenly slid open. It slid sideways on a hiss of rubber, without a tremor – it was solid steel. He did not wait. He threw himself into the gap, jarring his chest on the jamb.

 “Blue!” he called.

 Blue heard. She whirled. She saw the open door and understood, and dived for it. Delta was on her tail, and then there was another beep and the door light went red, and just as Blue reached it began to close soundlessly.

 He wanted to scream No-no-no-no but he had no breath for anything other than a wheeze. He looked left and right, and there was a matching keypad on this side and he sprang for it. He jammed his fist on the open knob.

 The door was closing, implacably, and Blue had her head and shoulders through, and a desperate squirming kick got her hindquarters inside too. She yanked her tail out, but the door was still closing, and the last he saw of Delta was her jaws open as she raced for the door.

 “No-no-no-no!” he wheezed, in frustration and slammed his fingers on the door button. There was a muffled roar beyond the door, and a raptor shriek. “Open, dammit, open!” He mashed his finger on the button, and finally there was a clunk inside the door, and a beep, and the lock turned green. The door began sliding open.

 Blue had not moved from the doorway, and as soon as there was space she thrust her muzzle through, and cough-barked repeatedly, urgently. Owen jumped behind her, looking out over her head.

 He could see the tip of the T-Rex’s tail, and a massive clawed foot, but no Delta. There was silence outside, and then a cough-bark from further away. There was a rumble from above and the T-Rex’s feet stamped at the ground, trying to turn, and he jumped back inside.

 The wall boomed as the T-Rex butted her head against the wall. He could see the thickness of the walls. Three feet of reinforced concrete was enough to hold off anything. There was another boom, the darkness outside briefly filled by a yawning row of teeth, but even the T-Rex’s huge strength could not simply push down three feet of concrete.

 The T-Rex seemed to realize this. She backed up. A moment later, the whole doorway was filled by a flat acre of grey-green hide. A crater of nostril, the same size as his head, came into view. The crater pursed, in a sniff so deep he felt it on his skin as a cold draught.

 She knew the human was there. She could smell him, just feet away – smell his fear, smell his blood.

 Blue leapt and lashed out with her killing-claw. She opened a red gash across the T-Rex’s nostril. Blood spurted, and the nostril was yanked away. A final roar echoed through the building, and then thudding footsteps echoed. The T-Rex was going away.

 Going, going, going… the shiver of eight tons of dinosaur slowly faded.

 A moment later, there was a chuffle-chuff, and Delta darted through the door, looking pleased with herself.

 Owen pressed the Lock button on the door, and the automatic door slid shut again, soundlessly. He wrapped both hands around his chest, wheezing for breath. He leaned back against the door, and let himself slide down it to his haunches. He was shaking.

 “I’m not getting paid enough for this,” he wheezed. “Hell no, I’m not getting paid at all for this. I got fired this morning.”

Chapter Text

Owen sat on the floor, knees up, breathing in deep gasps until the spots went away from his vision. His chest and side hurt like hell, but he could breathe without any sudden stabs of pain, so the crash against the tree had broken nothing. He was sitting on the floor of a well-lit antechamber, with a corridor leading away from him deeper into the building. It was the back door to the Control Centre – one of many exits to the building.

The Control Centre was the hub of Jurassic World, even though to tourists it was just a grey concrete lump almost hidden in forest. Everything in the park could be run from here, including all the paddock gates. Even the power-generating plant and the waste-control systems had duplicate command systems that led here, in case of emergencies that caused their on-site workers to evacuate, or disasters that knocked their own infrastructure out.

Delta was snuffling around the other side of the antechamber. Blue had opened a door on the other side of the antechamber, and only the end of her tail was sticking out as she encountered her first maintenance closet.

There was a metallic ding around the corner of the corridor, and the sound of feet. Owen stiffened and started getting up. A second later a man trotted around the corner.

“Yo, man, are you okay? I saw you being chased and I figured I better open up and – YEEOUCHTHEY’REINSIDE!”

His coffee splattered on the tiles as he scrambled to run for his life. A wail of “No-no-no-no-noooo!” faded around the corner.

Owen was already on his feet and running, but Delta was almost as fast. She passed him to the corner, but skidded in the spilled coffee. She scrabbled with her talons for purchase, but the floor was too slippery, and she hurtled wide and crashed into an ornamental plant. The time it took her to disentangle herself from the plant was just enough for Owen to get back in front of her.

He’d seen a door along the corridor banging closed. He reached the door and skidded to a stop. “Delta!” he said, spreading his arms wide, reaching almost across the corridor. “Stand down!”

Blue skidded to a stop behind Delta, catching herself on all fours on the slippery tiles. Both dinosaurs stared at him, their forehands clasping. Delta lowered her head and hissed at him, giving him a clear view down her throat. Her forehands were clasping and unclasping.

There was a human being in there – and Delta had reacted like a predator, instantly pursuing at the sight of prey. Owen’s AK47 was on the bottom of the crocodile’s pool. He had no weapons to defend the poor man. Delta could break down the door in seconds, if she wanted to – office doors weren’t exactly intended as fortifications against dinosaurs.

If the raptors wanted to eat him, they would.

“Easy, there,” he said, soothingly. He kept his arms out, but his fingers relaxed. Stiff hooked fingers were aggressive – keep ‘em soft. “Easy. Stand down.”

Delta looked over his shoulder, turning her head. Her nostrils pursed – whuffing the air. If he hadn’t seen the door closing, the raptors’ behaviour would have told him where the man was hiding. They could both smell prey behind him. Blue was just behind Delta. She backed up a step, snaking her head uncertainly. She opened her mouth and hissed.

“Friendly,” he said, keeping his voice warm and steady. “This man is friendly. He’s a friend. It’s okay. Easy, girl. Easy. We’re not going there today. Easy.”

Delta hiss-snapped at him, angrily.

The days when they would take his word for anything simply because he was their alpha were over. Those days ended yesterday, for good. If he wanted them to do something, he would have to persuade them.

He kept his hands stretched out, and backed up to the door he had seen closing. Delta moved closer, following. Her tail was stiff. Blue hiss-snapped, but she was holding back, waiting to see what he would do.

“Easy,” he soothed. “Easy, there.” He lowered his hands, slowly, to his sides, and stepped sideways. He leaned his shoulder against the wall next to the door jamb. He could almost feel the terror of the poor schlub on the other side of the door.

“Hey. You in there?”

Silence.

Delta snarled.

He frowned at her. “Delta!” he snapped at her, raising his hand in her direction. “Quietly, now. Play nicely.”

Blue hiss-snapped at her sister’s neck, impatiently. Blue’s eyes were on him, watching him. She was waiting to see what he would do.

“Hey, there. It’s okay.”

Silence.

“It’s okay. They’re with me.”

Silence.

“I know you, don’t I? Yeah, your name is Lowery. You were in the Control Room yesterday. We met a few years ago, at one of Barry’s barbecues. You’ve got a garden gnome riding a Triceratops outside your trailer.”

Silence.

“Have you been in here all this time? All alone? You can come out. In fact, it might be better if you did come out, and let them take a look at you.” He did not take his eyes off Delta.

Silence.

And then, very quietly, he heard Lowery’s voice. “Are they … like ... safe?”

“Safe?” he repeated, and looked at his raptors. Safe? They had torn up a squad from ACU. They had taken on the Indominus Rex. Delta, who was now listening to closely to Lowery with her head lowered to the door, had ripped Hoskins apart like a baby rabbit.

But if they wanted to eat Lowery they would, whether he came out or not. His only chance, even if he didn’t know it, was to look them in the eye and hope for the best.

“Uh, no,” Owen said. “They’re not safe. But they’re not dumb animals, either. They’re with me. Come on out, and I’ll introduce you.”

The knob clicked. Lowery had locked it behind him, for all the good that would do him. The door opened, just a crack, and a single eye stared out through a spectacle-frame.

Delta snorted, and dived her head at the door before Owen could say anything. She planted her face to the crack in the door, filling it with her eye, staring back. She snorted up the prey-scent on the other side of the door.

Lowery’s view had to be filled with nothing but a single golden eye, staring unblinking back at him.

And then, to Owen’s surprise, Delta let out a sound that he had never heard from her before. It was a ringing trill, like a child’s bicycle. Owen had heard that sound from Blue once or twice, but he had only heard it made at himself, and he had never heard it from any of the others.

The door opened a little wider. Delta trilled again, sticking her head closer, and snuffling deeply.

“Oh,” Lowery said. “Oh-h-h. You have such pretty eyes…”

Delta backed up and Lowery came out. He adjusted his glasses, and had another look at the Pretty One, as if she would look better that way. He was still wearing the vintage Jurassic Park T-shirt Owen had noticed yesterday, and he smelled like sweat and too much coffee.

“This is Delta,” Owen said, bemused. “And that’s Blue. Blue’s the alpha.”

Blue hissed at the sound of her name, and Delta whipped her head up and hiss-snapped at her alpha’s neck. Blue sprang back. Lowery jumped, startled by her speed, and Delta instantly refocused on him. She made that trill sound again.

Owen and Blue exchanged glances. If a reptile with no movable eyebrows could express a confused face, he was sure that Blue was trying. A whole day of all-new raptor behaviour, and yet they could still surprise him. ‘Pretty eyes’? He had heard many words used to describe the cold stare of the velociraptors – but he was damn sure no-one had ever used the word ‘pretty’ before.

“She’s injured!” Lowery said.

“We’re all injured,” Owen said, holding up his right hand, which he could now see was looking swollen. “What are you doing here?”

“Er, I work here?” Lowery asked, as if he wasn’t sure if that was a serious question.

“Have you been in here alone all day?”

“Yeah,” Lowery said. He stood back and looked Delta up and down, and she in turn examined him. She was cocking her head and looking at him, and seemed to like what she was looking at, because she made that bell-like trill again.

“What, did you miss all the sirens, or something?” Owen asked, in disbelief. “Where were you – in the restroom? Having a nap? Did you somehow forget that part of your Induction Tour?”

“Hey, man!” Lowery protested. “Somebody’s got to stay behind and keep the lights on!”

“The lights,” Owen said, slowly, “are all off.”

“Who do you think turned them off?” Lowery demanded. He glanced once at Owen, and then went back to staring at Delta. “Oh, and you're one to talk!  Who jumps into a crocodile pool? I’m not the one who ran into a man-eating predator to rescue another man-eating predator!”

“You saw all that?” Owen asked.

“The Red Queen sees all, and knows all. I am monarch of all I survey, man. My right there is none to dispute.”

“What?”

“Poetry, man; poetry. I am the Red Queen, this place is my Hive. I can control everything from here. I shut off the gas lines last night, before the resort burned down. I've been liaising with the mainland, keeping the machinery ticking over, making sure the paddocks stay locked, feeding the mosasaur...”

“Can you get in touch with the mainland now?” Owen interrupted. “I need to talk to Claire.”

“Of course. Alice wants to get in touch with the Resistance – no problem.”

More poetry? Owen didn’t know, and didn’t ask. “Lead on, then.”

“Is it going to be okay taking them into the Control Room?”

“You tell me,” Owen said.

“When you put it that way, no problem. Er, yeah, maybe we should probably take the stairs?”

Delta and Blue had no problems with the stairwell, or with following Owen and Lowery to the Control Room, but they halted in the doorway, heads craning this way and that. The Park System Master Control was spread in front of them. The Control Room was dark and cool, and filled with humming computers. The great interactive map of the island showed less activity than Owen had ever seen. The monorail was standing in the stations, and the video screens were still.

“Yeah, it’s impressive, isn’t it?” Lowery said. He walked down to his own station chair. “This place really is like the Hive. We could withstand a nuke in here, never mind a T-Rex. The walls are three feet thick – separate circuitry, separate water supply, duplicate control systems for everything. Nothing is getting in here unless I open the door.”

Lowery must have turned on the lights outside – endangering Owen. But then Lowery must also have opened the door to let him in – saving him again. Owen decided to just Let It Go.

“Why are there still numbers on the population counter?” he asked, coming to a stop behind Lowery, and staring up at the screen.

“People,” Lowery said.

“People? I thought there was nobody here but us chickens,” Owen said.

“Nah,” Lowery drawled. “There are a few people keeping their head down. Couple construction workers, the people in the Aviary when the chopper went down, and the night manager of Margaritaville took an anti-histamine yesterday and slept through all the sirens ... I keep in touch with everyone every couple hours, y’know, just to let ‘em know they haven’t been forgotten, cos you don’t want them thinking they’ve been left behind, like that one dude on the Costa Concordia… what was he, the Purser, or something...?" 

Either Lowery had been alone long enough to get a touch of cabin fever, or he just talked and paid no attention to whether anyone listened. Delta was listening raptly.

"Hey, speaking of this place," Lowery interrupted himself, "why didn’t you use the Access Tunnel to get here?”

“Access Tunnel?” Owen asked. “There’s a tunnel?”

“Yeah, of course there’s a tunnel,” Lowery said. “From the basement level of the Innovation Centre. Didn’t you notice, the Volcano doesn’t have any delivery doors? If I’d known you were coming to the Control Room, I would have said use the Tunnel.”

“I wasn’t planning on coming here,” Owen said. “I’ve got one night to get these two back into containment. Rexy made me take a detour.”

“Yeah, she’s been hanging around all day. I’ve had to warn the helicopters off, ‘cos she seems to have a Thing for the helipad.”

Lowery pulled out his chair, and sank down into it. He tapped on his keyboard. Delta followed him over, and began nosing around at the plastic dinosaurs balanced on Lowery’s workstation.

“You like them, do you?” Lowery asked Delta. “Yeah, me too. I like dinosaurs. I took this job because, hey, dinosaurs, but I guess you know about that already since you kinda seem to be a dinosaur yourself…”

Blue was simply staring at Lowery as if she was as perplexed by him as Owen himself.  It was the cold, emotionless stare of the velociraptor – an eerie intelligence, as cold as marble, and as inscrutable as an insect. There was a mind behind those golden eyes, looking back, and coming to its own conclusions. That stare usually gave goose-bumps to people who were not used to it, but Lowery seemed oblivious. ‘Pretty eyes,’ he had said.

He had picked up his plastic apatosaurus, and he was telling Delta all about it. “I call this one Bronto, even though it’s technically an Apatosaurus, because it’s such a nice name, isn’t it, like a scientific pet-name, and I don’t know why it doesn’t catch on, like Bruen for bears, or…”

“Phone call,” Owen interrupted. “Claire Dearing.”

“Yeah,” Lowery said. He shifted his chair closer to the desk, and tapped his keyboard again. “You can call from here, or there’s a phone on Vivian’s desk…” He pointed. “I’m putting the call through now.”

Owen picked up the handset, and heard ringing. Claire answered after just one ring. “Lowery?” she asked.

“Not Lowery,” Owen said. “Hey, why do you pick up so fast when it’s Lowery, but I have to wait?”

“Because you don’t have complete control over my park,” Claire replied.

“Told you, man,” Lowery muttered under his breath, “I am the Red Queen.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Owen said.

“The team that you ran into is part of an InGen subsidiary named Xenogene Active Outcomes,” she said. “I’ve been digging, and they’re up to the snout in …”

“That’s not the problem,” he interrupted. “You aren’t going to believe this. I don’t even believe it myself. The raptors are intelligent.”

“Yes?” she said, a query in her voice. “Isn’t that why InGen hired you…? To find out how intelligent they are.”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” he said, urgently. He didn’t understand himself, but he had to say it to someone. He had to say it aloud, so that his own brain took it in. “The raptors – they’re intelligent. They’re too intelligent! They’re sentient!”

“Highly-intelligent pack predators, with high reasoning ability, and complex social communication…” Claire said. “Yes, I read the memo.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘sapient,’ just so you know,” Lowery interrupted. Owen heard his voice through both his other ear and the handset earpiece. Lowery was listening in on the line, shamelessly eavesdropping. Owen turned and glared at him.

“Sapient?” Claire said in Owen’s ear, replying to Lowery. “Really.” He could hear amused disbelief in her voice.

“It’s true,” Owen said. “The raptors are intelligent! Blue has figured it out. She knows where she is!”

“Well, of course she knows where she is, she followed us,” Claire said.

“You don’t get it,” he said. “She knows what she is. She understands!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand myself yet! The raptors – this is something else. This changes everything. I’ve been warning everyone for years that the raptors are too dangerous to have around, but even I underestimated them. The raptors are far more dangerous than I thought – it will never, ever be possible to domesticate these animals. There is absolutely nothing Hammond, or Hoskins, or anyone else can do that will make them okay with living in captivity. What happened to Hammond's park will happen again, and again, and again...”

“You’re babbling,” Claire told him.

“Yeah, I probably am! You would be, too! Listen to me. You can’t allow InGen to put these animals down.”

“That may not be under my control. The Costa Ricans…”

“It’s not an option any more,” Owen said. “These raptors – they aren’t real velociraptors, are they?”

“Nothing in Jurassic World is real,” she said. “Everything gets tweaked a bit, according to the focus groups. Feathered dinosaurs don’t play so well to the tourists.”

“Wu changed them, didn’t he?" Owen said. "They’re not even the same as Hammond’s raptors. Some of their genes are spliced from other animals. I think Delta has some bird genes in her … but who knows what bits and pieces your lab-rat Wu put in them? And the big axiom of DNA resurrection is that you can’t have an animal with exaggerated features without the corresponding behaviours.  And we all know what species is the most rapacious predator of them all...”

“Yes?” she agreed.

“Ask Wu … what tweaking he did on the raptors.”

“I can’t.”

“Shake it out of him! This is too important to hide under some intellectual corporate property bullshit. Wu fucked up – whether he changed Blue, or they’re the same as the first generation, he still fucked up. The behaviour I’ve just seen changes …”

“I can’t ask Wu!” she snapped back. “Nobody knows where Wu is. InGen took him away in a helicopter in the middle of the evacuation. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“Shit,” Owen said.

“I don’t have time to look for Wu now,” Claire said. “I have a meeting with the Costa Rican Army in ten minutes, and I need to give them some good news. Your raptors – can I tell the Costa Ricans they’re back in containment?”

“We-ell,” Owen said, turning around and looking over at Lowery. “Not exactly.”

Lowery snorted – a sound that was audible on the line. Delta was nosing about on Lowery’s workstation, examining his plastic dinosaurs.

“Lowery?” Claire asked, sweetly.

“Yeah?”

“Where are the raptors?”

“We-e-ell,” Lowery said. “Delta’s right in front of me, chewing my Apatosaurus, and Blue – I think Blue’s gone into the server room. Yeah, she is. She’s totally down with door-handles by the way …”

There was silence on the line for a moment. “They’re … in… the Control Room?” she asked, breathlessly.

“I think Delta likes me,” Lowery said.

“Owen!” Claire said, “I’m only going to say this … once.” She inhaled sharply, as if having trouble getting enough air. “Get … those raptors… back … into containment. I gave you one day. I am responsible for the entire park, not just your raptors. Tomorrow morning, I’ll have no choice but to send in InGen Security.”

“You can’t,” Owen said.

“Owen! I can’t leave all the park’s animals unfed for the sake of just two – and I cannot send my employees back to the island with the raptors still at large! I can’t, and I won’t. Too many people have died already.”

“Just do it, man,” Lowery crooned under his breath.

“I can get them back into their paddock,” Owen said. “But InGen Security can’t have the raptors back. They’re too intelligent.”

“Get them back into containment, and then I can try to salvage the raptor programme. But I can’t give you any more time, Owen. I don’t have any more time to give you.”

“I hear you.”

“You can get them back into their paddock?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know how he was going to do that. He was damned sure they would never willingly set foot in their old paddock again, or any other kind of confinement. The way Blue had carried on in Where Are They was his warning of her reaction if anyone tried to sell her that idea. “Yeah, sure, back in the paddock.”

“Owen,” Claire said. “I can hear you trying to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. I’ll get them back, but InGen can’t have their raptors back. I mean it. Wu fucked up. He went way over the ethical line.”

“I believe you,” she said, “but we’ll deal with Wu when we get to him.”

“You’ll understand when I show you what the raptors can do. But you can send the park’s people back tomorrow on schedule. You have my word.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he agreed.

“And then we’ll find Wu, and shake the truth out of him,” she said, and there was suddenly steel in her voice, “because the moonlighting he’s done for Xenocore is clearly over the line. I don’t like other people waltzing in and turning my nice neat theme park into the Island of Dr Moreau!”

“You have no idea,” he breathed.

They ended the call, and he put the handset down and turned to Lowery. Blue had gone out, but Delta was still wandering around the room, examining the furniture. She had coughed out Echo’s claws again, and set them down carefully next to Lowery’s plastic dinosaurs, as if leaving them in his charge.

“I have video footage,” Lowery said.

Owen blinked. “Video? Of?”

“Everything,” Lowery said. “I’ve been watching you all evening.”

“Hang on,” Owen said. “You saw all that?”

“I turned off everything in the Innovation Centre when I saw these two running around, pressing buttons like crazy things. You know, you should pro-obably teach them not to do that. But the cameras are on a different line. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I wasn’t watching it happen. What you’ve been doing is … what they’ve been doing… it’s … it’s…”

“It’s a game changer,” Owen said. “They’ve already figured it out that symbols stand for things – objects, actions, truths… Point to a thing, give it a symbol. Using the symbol means the thing. And names.”

“That’s pretty amazing, man.”

“Tell me about it. I knew they could communicate, plan, think procedurally – but not this. I had no idea they were capable of this. I don’t think anyone knows.”

“That is amazing. I mean, yeah, Koko the gorilla could speak Sign; that’s cool. And Alex the Parrot could count, and name colours, and ask for stuff …”

“Be good. See you tomorrow. Love you,” Owen quoted. He had read everything Pepperberg had ever written about avian intelligence, even though he knew velociraptors were nothing like parrots. He didn’t think Blue would ever say ‘love you’ to him – or even understand what it meant.

Lowery clasped his hands under his chin, as if he was giving thanks to Heaven. “Someone who has heard of Alex the Parrot, thank God! I quote Alex the Parrot around here and people think I’m hitting on them.”

It occurred to Owen that he was probably speaking to an intensely lonely person. “Sure, Alex the Parrot could recognise symbols,” Owen agreed, “but Pepperberg took thirty years to teach him to do that. Koko the gorilla is forty years old. Blue and Delta are only five years old. They're practically babies, but they figured it out on their own in one afternoon.”

That wasn’t the only thing they had figured out. Just yesterday, he had complained to Claire that her ‘assets’ had no idea that they had been made by humans in a test-tube. He wished his raptors could get that innocence back, but Blue seemed to have figured out at least part of her own origin story. She had figured out her place in the world, and she didn't accept it.

Hoskins was wrong. The raptors could never be domesticated… never.

He had been hired to see if raptors could be trained, because animals were cheaper and more flexible to use than robots. They had landmine-sniffing rats these days.  Drug-sniffing dogs were cheap to buy and simple to train – and if a K9 was killed in combat, well, it was only a dog. And extinct animals had even less rights than a dog. Without humans to make them, they would not exist at all.

He sat down heavily in Vivian’s chair, feeling exhausted.

“I need to get them back into containment, somehow. I have one night to get them back in their paddock, before ACU comes back with guns.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Lowery said. “Not these raptors. Not if they’re as smart as that. Ethics, man.”

Owen stood up. “I need to get on the road again.”

“Hang on,” Lowery said. “You can’t leave here until Rexy moves off.”

“The T-Rex?”

“They’ll dart her and cart her tomorrow, but until then…”

“I can’t wait that long,” Owen said.

“Let’s see where she is. Maybe you’re in luck.” He tapped his keys and the interactive map suddenly cut to a mosaic of video feeds. “Nope, she’s still there.”

Delta squawked in surprise as the screen changed, and her head snapped up.

“I know, it’s cool, right?” Lowery said to Delta. “Want to see the T-Rex?” He tapped his keys and brushed his hand on his touchpad, and a moment later the T-Rex was front-and-centre on the main screen.

Delta screamed a warning, and raced down to the front of the room. She skidded to a stop in front of the screen, her head snaking as she threatened the T-Rex.

“Whoa!” Lowery said, shocked. He darted his hand to his keys, ready to kill the video.

“No!” Owen snapped at him, clamping his hand on Lowery’s shoulder. “Let them check it out! Or they’ll tear this place apart looking for her!”

There was a crash at the doorway and Blue reappeared. She spotted the monster on the screen and skidded to a stop. She dropped her jaw and screamed a threat at it. Her tail snaked.

“Easy, Blue,” Owen called. “Delta. Easy, girl. She’s not in here. She’s outside.”

They ignored him. Right below the screen, Delta had frozen in place, staring silently at the enemy, ready to leap from cover.

 After a moment, Blue relaxed, when she was quite sure that the T-Rex was not coming any closer. She stopped her snaking, hiss-snapped, and turned away.

Delta stared until she was quite sure that the T-Rex was only a magically-moving photograph. Then she put her head down and strolled along the bottom of the screen, as if denying that she had been alarmed at all.

“Where’s that?” Owen asked, pointing at the screen.

“That’s a few hundred feet uphill. You’re not going anywhere.”

“We’re stuck here?”

“For a few hours. She seems to migrate between this building and her own paddock. Hey, you want a sandwich?”

Owen’s stomach clenched at the thought. He had not got a chance to eat the food in his pack – in fact it was lying in the road somewhere.

“I’m starving,” he admitted.

“Well, then, follow me.”

The raptors followed them to the canteen, more from curiosity than leadership.   Against the steel doors and white tiles, their hide looked bleached, and their talons clicked against the tiles. The cold flourescent lights reflected in their eyes, making them look frighteningly out of place.

Lowery opened the refrigerator, and dug out a cling-wrapped sandwich. “I think that’s Vivian’s, but she’s not going to miss it.” He put it on the table. “I don’t think we’ve got anything they’ll eat.”

“They’re obligatory carnivores,” Owen said, shaking his head. He sat down on a tall stool next to the table. He tugged off the plastic wrap, and realized he was ravenous. He bit into the soft bread, and Lowery took out a tumbler and poured water into it.  He pushed the water toward Owen. 

“Mff,” Owen said around his bread.

Delta moved over to the fridge behind Lowery, and pulled it open with her talons wrapped around the handle. She recoiled at the blast of cold air and clunked the door shut immediately, and then shook herself violently from nose to tail as if she could already feel the frost settling on her hide.

Owen became aware of being watched. He turned and found Blue’s muzzle just inches behind his ear. “Jesus,” he said. He had fallen into the habit of turning his back on them without even being aware of it.

Blue was staring at the roll, unblinking. Her nostrils opened and shut, sniffing at it. He held out the bread toward her, and she recoiled from it. She pulled her head back on her neck, and cocked her head at him, as if surprised.

“Yeah, Blue, I’m eating that,” Owen said. “Watch and learn. We humans will eat anything we can dig up, or pull down, or catch.  Don't even leave your eggs lying around, we humans will eat those too.”

He watched Delta. She was moving around the canteen, opening and closing doors and drawers, pulling kitchen utensils out onto the floor.

For the first time, he noticed that the canteen had been decorated for the Christmas season. There was a plastic Santa on top of the fridge. A few scraps of mismatched tinsel had been draped over the white-board. Merry Christmas had been written across the board in red marker, with five exclamation marks. It looked like an attempt by people working straight through the holidays to suck at least a little of the festive cheer back from their jobs.

He gulped the last of his sandwich with a mouthful of water. “That white-board,” he said, nodding to it. “Have you got markers for it?”

“Yeah, they’re in that box,” Lowery pointed. He pulled out another sandwich, and pushed it suggestively toward Owen.

Owen picked it up without comment and unwrapped it. “If we’re going to be stuck here for hours, I need use the time teaching them,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lowery agreed.

“The shit is going to hit the fan, and if I’m going to save them I need to be able to communicate with them. Come here, stay there, play nicely, look obedient – stay safe. I need to teach them and I don’t have much time. These raptors have killed people.”

“Yeah, I saw that happen…” Lowery’s gaze rolled to Delta. She had discovered the coffee pot. She had taken it apart and she was sniffing at the coffee grounds carefully.

“I don’t even know if InGen will let me anywhere near them again. I got fired yesterday. But even if I never see them again, they need to be able to demonstrate that they’re intelligent. Otherwise…”

Lowery discovered another sandwich, and pushed it across. He took Owen’s glass, and refilled it from the faucet.

Owen started unwrapping the sandwich.  “First, I need to get them into containment.
And then I need to work on showing people what they can do.”

“We’ve got video footage.”

“Not enough,” Owen said, around his sandwich. Bacon, this one, but the raptors had not noticed. “I need everyone else to see it happen, or everyone else will think its just Clever Hans all over again.”

“Clever Hans?” Lowery frowned. He snapped his fingers. “The Amazing Counting Horse, gotcha!”

“Clever Hans was reading his cues off his owner’s unconscious body-language. Clever Hans has turned scientists off animal intelligence for a hundred years!” Owen complained. “Look at how long it took for Pepperberg to convince people that Alex was really counting? Thirty years? I don’t have thirty years! These raptors are InGen property! They’re patented! Bio-engineered animals don’t have rights! And they’ve killed people. Lots of people don’t think they should exist at all. They’ll be put down, unless I can prove what they can do.”

“Yeah, but they’re… surely… ethics…”

“InGen Security don’t give a fuck about zoo animals. They don’t give a fuck about Alex the Parrot. They’re interested in getting some sort of DARPA contract – and as far as they’re concerned, Blue and Delta are just a piece of weaponry that’s gone AWOL. Corporate assets; no more, no less.”

Lowery sat back, as the implication sank in. “Fuck, man.”

“Their only chance of surviving is if I have proof. Proof that other people can see. Proof that can change InGen’s mind. If no-one else can read it, it won’t do anything to convince people that they’re smart. It’ll be Clever Hans all over again. I don’t have thirty years, like Pepperberg and Alex. I’ll be lucky if I’ll have three days.”

“Hmm,” Lowery thought.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do something that can’t be ignored. I’m going to teach them something even Pepperberg never dreamed of doing.” Owen finished the last of the sandwich. “Watch me.”

He got up from the stool, and walked over to the whiteboard. There was a cleaning sponge, and he used it to wipe out all the random human scribbles from the board. He opened the box of markers, and found a black one. He started at the top of the board. “A B C D…”

“Dude,” Lowery said. “Seriously?”

“Think of how Blue went crazy in Where Are They,” Owen said. “She knows there are two kinds of critters in this place, and one of them locks the other up in cages. She’s already decided that she is not one of the kind inside the cages. How long do you think it’ll take her to notice that we write things, and animals don’t?”

He wrote out the whole alphabet, stretching from one side of the board to the other.

“Blue,” he said, and her head came up at the sound of her name. “Eyes on me,” he said. He put the marker to the board, and drew the symbol for her name.

Three strokes and a B. She came over and watched him. She turned her head, as if examining her own name from various angles.

“That’s Blue,” he said. He put the marker on the board, and wrote the word BLUE in large letters. “Blue, Blue, and Blue. That’s also Blue.”

Blue cocked her head. She cough-barked, summoning Delta.

“Here,” Owen said, pointing to the alphabet. “We take a B. And an L. And a U. And an E for good measure. Put them together. Blue. And that’s Blue.” He pointed to her, and to the symbol for her, and then to her name. “Blue. Buh! Ll! Oo! Blue!”

Blue stared, and made no sound. He had no idea if she understood, or not. They had watched Owen on the walkways of their paddock for years, and usually the only way he knew they understood what he wanted them to do was if they went and did it.

“Delta.” Owen drew her sign on the board. Then he drew circles around the letters of her name. Then he copied those letters down in a line under her sign. “Duh Eh Lll Tuh Ah. Delta. Owen. Oh Wuh Eh Nn. Owen.”

Delta cough-barked. And then, as if their necks ran on the same gimbals, both long raptor heads pivoted slowly, and stared at Lowery, still sitting by the table.

“Oh,” Lowery said, faintly. “That’s not at all disturbing ...”

“Lowery!” Owen said, firmly. “That is Lowery. Lll Oh Wuh Eh Rrr EEEEE. Lo-We-Ry. That is Lowery! God damn, sometimes I wish you would do something to show you understand.”

Delta made a grumbling noise. Blue swivelled her neck back to stare at Lowery again, and Delta reacted to the stare with a hiss-snap at her and a deep growl. Blue sprang back, dropped her jaw and snarled at her sister, and Delta hiss-snapped again. Owen held his breath. Delta was challenging the alpha, now? Here? He tensed, ready to throw himself under the nearest table.

But to his surprise, Blue didn’t spring at Lowery. She snarled, crouched with her talons arched, and lunged at Owen.

He threw his hands up defensively, in instinct, but her long talons had closed on his hand. He felt her iron grip wrench at his wrist, and the pen was gone. She let him go instantly, with a shove away from the board, and snarled at him.

She stood up to her full height. She was nearly eight feet long from nose to tail; tall enough to look him in the eye if she wanted to, and now she did. She raised the pen, wrapped awkwardly in both sets of talons, and set the tip to the board. She drew, awkwardly, the three taloned mark of her own name, and put the little B next to it.

BLUE.

She let the pen drop and snarled at him, but her message was clear. She was Blue. Blue was her name. He might have named her, but she had chosen her symbol herself.

“I don’t think she likes being renamed,” Lowery said. “Now what?”

“Try, try, try again. The only way to teach an animal a complex behaviour is to break it down into tiny little blocks, and build up from there. Takes patience, persistence, and … time.”

“Time that we don’t have,” Lowery said. “You’re going about this the wrong way.”

“I am an animal trainer,” Owen said. “I have a bachelor’s degree in Animal Behaviour.  I’ve trained animals my whole career.  This is the right way.”

“Uhh, yeah,” Lowery said. He slid off his stool, and walked across the room. “I’ll take your word for it about animal training, except that I’m a computer nerd. The only way to get someone to adopt a new piece of tech is to show them what it can do for them.”

“This isn’t new tech,” Owen said.

“Yeah, but they don’t know that.” Lowery was walking to the door. “Good luck teaching them something they don’t want to learn. Delta?”

Delta’s head swung up, and she snot-snarled in response to her name.

“Want to see something? I’m going to show you something cool. Come here, let me show you something cool…” Lowery went out, and Delta went after him.

Owen stared at the end of Delta’s tail as it bobbed out. He had already lost his alpha status. It looked like he had now also lost the status of Most Interesting Human – at least as far as Delta was concerned.

“I don’t believe this,” he said aloud. He exchanged glances with Blue. She hiss-snapped at him, reversed direction, and followed Delta. “Yes, ma’am,” Owen said, and followed her.

Lowery had gone back into the Control Room, and he was sitting down at his keyboard. Delta was already at his side, watching closely over his shoulder.

“You hang on right there a sec, while I juuuust…” Lowery began tapping away at his keys. Delta’s nose dipped to see what his hands were doing. “This is going to take on-n-ne… second…”

A few seconds of tapping and typing, a few incoherent mumbles, and suddenly there was a new picture on the Main Screen. The raptors squawked in surprise as it suddenly changed.

Owen recognised the familiar blue lettering of Wikipedia. “Seriously?” he asked, reading the title. “Of all things, you chose that?”

“Go on down there,” Lowery ordered, pointing to one of the monitors below his desk, “and read aloud off one of the monitors. See if Blue can figure out what you’re doing.”

Owen looked at his raptors. Blue was cocking her head, this way and that, and he could almost smell her puzzlement.

Lowery glanced up at Delta, still standing over his chair. “I can show it to you, love, but I can’t understand it for you.”

“It’s too abstract,” Owen said. “They have nothing to go on, no insight into what it means. No. Break complex behaviour down into little blocks, supported with clicker training, and lots of patience – that’s the way to go.”

“You’re talking about an animal that’s figured out that she’s an animal. If that’s not abstract, what the hell is?”

Blue was staring at him, silently as if she was waiting for something. She blinked, slowly, and again he got the message. Do something…

“Okay,” Owen said. He stepped down toward the screen. “Blue,” he said. “Eyes on me.”

Blue moved to follow him; she might not understand, but clearly she was aware that there was something that she did not understand. Her jaws were right behind his left elbow, so that he could feel her breath on his arm.

The steps were shallow, like the aisles of a cinema, and he stepped down to the next level. He walked over to the screen and leaned over it. It was as broad as a kitchen table, and the same Wikipedia page glowed on it.

Blue came to his side, and put both sets of arched talons on the screen. She lowered her head to sniff at the screen, curious to see what he was looking at so closely. He set his right hand on the screen, changed his mind when his swollen fingers complained, and shifted to his left hand. He put his index finger on the first line, and began to read.

“Velociraptor, meaning swift seizer,” he read out, tracing the words with his hand, “is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur…”

She cocked her head, and timbered. She did not understand.

He turned around and spoke to Lowery, looking down at him over the edge of his own station. “See?”

“Keep going.” Lowery made a winding-up gesture with his hand.

Owen started again, touching each word with his hand. “Dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 75 to 71 million years ago during the later part of the Cretaceous Period. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the past.”

Blue hiss-snapped, and to Owen’s surprise, jumped up on the desk. She loomed over him, her hind feet spread wide for balance.

“Er, Owen?” Lowery said, uncertainly.

“It’s okay, she won’t hurt me,” Owen said. He kept his voice calm, but he had been startled by her speed.

Blue’s nose was almost against the glass of the screen. He could feel the wash of her hot breath on the back of his hand. Her right killing-claw was level with his kidneys. He heard her timber. Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom…

He had seen that behaviour before: usually, it was a sign that they were thinking deeply, trying to puzzle something out. The challenge for Owen and Barry had been to ensure that they were trying to think their way through their latest intelligence test, and not plotting a new escape plan.

He resumed reading. “The type species is Velociraptor mongoliensis; fossils of this species have been discovered in Mongolia. A second species, Velociraptor osmolskae, was named in 2008 for skull material from Inner Mongolia, China.” His voice stumbled slightly over the scientific names, and he tapped out each syllable carefully with his hand.

He paused as Blue suddenly batted at the screen with her talons. She had seen the picture of the velociraptor skeleton on the sidebar of the page. She already knew what that was; she’d proven she could recognise her own species this afternoon in Where Are They.

“Veloci-raptor. Raptor.” He found another line on the page. “Veloci-raptor, commonly shortened to ‘raptor’,” he said, speaking that word clearly, since it was one of the words he suspected they both knew, “is one of the dinosaur genera most familiar to the general public due to its prominent role in the Jurassic Park theme park disaster of 1993. The patent of Veloci-raptor’s genome was acquired by Masrani Global in 2001, but ownership and experimentation with veloci-raptors is strictly …”

She turned her head so sharply he was surprised that it didn’t crack her spine. Suddenly, one eye was up, one eye was down. She cough-barked, calling Delta over.

Delta didn’t bother with subtleties like stairs. She just sprang over Lowery’s desk.

“Veloci-raptor can be distinguished from other dromaeosaurids by its long and low skull, with an upturned ...”

He broke off as his wrist was grabbed in Blue’s talons. The sharp points dug into the soft skin under his wrist. She drew his hand across the screen, and let him go.

He resumed reading from the nearest line. “Veloci-raptor,” he tapped the word lightly as he read over it, “like other dromaeosaurids, had a large manus with three strongly curved claws, which were similar in construction and flexibility to the wing bones of modern birds…”

He saw the moment when it made sense.

She opened her jaws and screamed into his face, and then sprang off the desk. He didn’t even have time to turn around before the back of his jacket was seized roughly in her knotted talons. He was being dragged bodily back up the steps.

“I think she’s got it!” he said to Lowery, as he was towed past him.

“I think she’s got it! By George, she’s got it!” Lowery said, springing up. “Now once again, Blue, where does it rain?”

“Don’t just stand there! Come with me, for God’s sake!” Owen shouted, as he was dragged inexorably out of the doors of the Control Room.

Chapter Text

Owen was sitting in an aeroplane, scrunched up in an economy class seat. He could hear the hum of the engine. Blue was sitting in the seat next to him. The bony ridge over her head almost brushed the overhead lockers.

“How did you get here?” he asked, confused. “You don’t have a passport…”

She turned toward him, her eye gleaming in the sunlight from the window beside her. “Isn’t that why we’re going to Washington?” she asked. “To ask them to give me one?” Her voice was a honey-rich contralto, and he was very pleased to find out that she had such a beautiful voice.

“You can’t go to Washington if you don’t have a passport.”

His own voice startled him, and he woke up suddenly with a snort of panic. The bright light of the plane vanished.

“Who doesn’t have a passport?” Lowery asked, swivelling his chair around and staring at Owen. He stuck his plastic straw into his mouth, and watched Owen.

“Uh-h-h,” Owen said. He sat up, confused. He had been lying along the sofa at the back wall of the Control Room. His legs were tangled up in a blanket. Blue was lying on the floor a few feet away, head and tail stretched out on the floor like a python. In the blue gloom of the Control Room her eyes glittered like dark liquid. She had been watching him sleep.

“How long have I been sleeping?” Owen asked.

“About six hours,” Lowery said. “You passed out around midnight.”

“What!” Owen threw the blanket off himself, and winced as he tried to use his right hand. His ring and little fingers felt hot and stiff, where he had cut them on the cycad yesterday. He got to his feet, and Blue pushed herself up at the same time with a rasping hiss. “You let me sleep for six hours?”

“Yeah, like I had a choice, with your guardian angel sitting right there?” Lowery said, pointing to Blue. “She wouldn’t let me wake you.”

“Wouldn’t let you?” Owen asked.

“She’s pretty impressive when she’s feeling protective.”

“Where’s Delta?”

“Playing in the elevator,” Lowery said. “It’s her new favourite thing. Up, down, up, down… Hey, do you want an energy drink?”

“You should have woken me up when you put the blanket on me,” Owen grumbled. He ran his uninjured palm over his face, feeling the extra overnight stubble. His beard was approaching itchy-length.

“I did that after they went out.”

“They went out?”

“Yeah, around two.” Lowery picked up his energy drink, and sipped at the straw.  “I figured they wanted to go and hunt.  They haven't eaten today.”

“You should have woken me up, dammit! These raptors are my responsibility! I can’t have them wandering around the resort!”

“What were you going to do? Jump on Vivian’s bike and pedal like crazy? They move fast, dude – they went around the T-Rex so fast I don’t think she even saw them. And I wouldn’t have woken you up, anyway. Blue’s right: you were about ready to fall over. Not to be funny, man, but you know you look like hell if even a dinosaur says you need to crash.”

Owen glared at him, but Lowery either was not impressed by his expression, or did not notice it. He just swung his station chair from side to side with one toe, and took another sip from his straw.

“Where’s the T-Rex now?” Owen asked.

“You’re going to love this, man. She went home.”

“Home?”

“Yeah! She went home on her own!  She went back into her paddock on her own and I just popped the door shut behind her. Guess the old girl really is that old, huh? Hey. You sure you don’t want an energy drink?”

“I just want to get moving.”

Owen flexed his hand, and kneaded it with the fingers of his uninjured hand, trying to work some of the stiffness and swelling out of it. The joints felt hot, and seemed to creak when he bent them. He wasn’t the only one injured.

He glanced over at Blue, and was surprised to see that the white flag of her bandage was missing. She had had it last night, but now it was gone – probably pulled off. The raptors disdained any human objects being stuck to them.

Owen stood up. “Okay. Let’s take a look,” he said to Blue. “Let’s take a look.” He walked up to Blue, holding one hand out reassuringly.

She hiss-snapped, but lowered herself down, and allowed him to squat on his heels next to her tail. He set his hand on her haunch, and slid it down the strong muscular length of her tail. The tail looked better than he would have expected. The tip was clotted over well, and it did not feel hot to the touch. He could not tell if she was in any pain – without facial expressions he had nothing to go on. They healed fast, these raptors. She sat up, and swung her long neck back to see what he was doing.

Lowery swung from side to side on his station chair, watching. “She’ll let you touch her like that, but not me.”

The day before yesterday, she would not have allowed even Owen to touch her like that, he thought to himself, without the confinement of the ready-cage halters.  It had been a long two days – as long for her as for him.

It had also been a long night. They had spent hours last night teaching the raptors, waiting for Rexy to go away.

Teaching the raptors the alphabet had been the easy part. They could read them, and they could write them. The book on Lowery’s desk – that God Creates Dinosaurs drivel, Owen noticed – made them both squawk in amazement. But knowing the alphabet was for did not make it any easier for the raptors to use. They grasped that the letters stood for the sounds of human speech – but that was it. Blue could not tell the difference between Blue, Glue, or Clue. The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat might as well be gibberish, whether they said it aloud or wrote it down.

Owen could see Blue growing snappy and frustrated. Her existential rage might have burned itself out yesterday, but it had been replaced with a burning insistence on making herself understood, and on understanding her world in return. Not understanding something was not acceptable to the alpha raptor.

“I hate to sound defeatist, man,” Lowery said, “but I don’t think they can actually hear us.”

“To them we’re just making noises,” Owen admitted. “I’m starting to think they don’t communicate by sound at all.”

He’d accepted that they only understood a handful of the phrases he said to them, but it was a little deflating to realize that, even though he’d spent so many years talking to them, they really had not been listening.

“But then how the hell do they talk to each other?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “But whatever it is, the Indominus Rex could hear them loud and clear.”

“Something like echolocation?” Lowery said. “Or thermal imaging?”

“Maybe it’s something that died out with their ancestors? There’s a theory that our mammal ancestors mammals might have had venom, millions of years ago, but we don't have it now because we slowly lost it over time. Maybe they're the only voices talking on a channel that has been empty for 71 million years?”

In the end, they returned to symbols. Pictures, they understood. Pictures, they could contribute to on their own, with pointing and miming. And drawing with a thick felt-tipped marker was far easier than scraping out pictures with the end of one’s talon. A marker could be gripped in both forehands. Blue’s snappy tension faded away, as they returned to pictures.

But again, there were things that could not be summed up in a pictures. There were things that the humans mimed that the raptors simply stared at. There were things that the raptors drew, that the humans simply could not understand. Owen had known these raptors since they were tiny wriggling hatchlings, but he was reminded of how alien their minds were. 71 million years was an unimaginably long time; they might as well have come from another planet.

Owen finished his check-up on Blue, and got to his feet. Blue rose to her feet in a single supple surge; all muscle and poise.

“Where did they go last night?” Owen asked. “Hunting?”

“No idea, I lost them on the cameras. They move too fast. Came back around three, and Blue’s been sitting there watching you ever since.”

To Owen’s surprise, Blue twisted her head around. Her muzzle reached out to his injured hand. She sniffed at it, and blew hot breath over it.

“It’s okay, it’s just a scratch,” Owen said. He stood up and flexed the hand, ignoring the hot ache in the joint. “We’ve got to get going. We’re going home.”

“Claire’s asleep,” Lowery said, “but she said to tell you that ACU will be here two hours after sunrise, and then the clean-up will start for real. Sure you won’t take an energy drink?”

“I want to get going ASAP. Call Claire, as soon as she’s up. Tell her we’re moving, and I’ll have them back in the paddock two hours after sunrise.”

It took a few minutes to repack Owen’s backpack. Torch, torch batteries, water, puncture kit for Vivian’s bike, first aid… Lowery ticked everything off on his fingers as Owen put them into the pack and zipped up the pockets. He took Lowery’s phone, which had Claire’s number programmed into it, since his own phone was still dead. Into the biggest pouch, Owen slipped a large writing pad, legal-ruled, and he threw on top of it all the felt markers that Lowery had been able to find in the stationery cupboard. He picked up his new rifle – a Heckler & Koch scrounged from the ACU Ready-Room.

Blue watched him, and summoned Delta with a cough-bark. Delta arrived in the doorway, and greeted Lowery with a trill. Blue hiss-snapped at her to make her keep her distance.  Both raptors seemed to understand that something was going on, but Owen wanted to make sure.

He opened the writing pad, and drew the symbols for all three of their names, and the sign for Moving. He added, for good measure, Humans, Hunting, Coming. Raptors, Hiding.

Blue snarled. She snapped at Delta, and Delta stalked away to Lowery’s desk. She stooped over the desk, closely examining something that was lying there. The display of little plastic dinosaurs had been moved over to make space for a set of raptor killing claws. The light in the Control Room was dim, and it took Owen a squint to realize what he was looking: four killing claws, not two.

“Where did those come from?” he asked, pointing.

“Er, those? They brought them in last night.”

Four killing claws, from two dead raptors. “Oh, Charlie,” Owen sighed.

“Who?”

“The fourth raptor,” Owen explained.

“The one that died when that douche Hoskins did his thing?” Lowery asked.

“They didn’t go hunting last night,” Owen breathed. “They went out to fetch Charlie…”

As if she knew what the humans were talking about, Blue picked up one of the claws in her teeth. She mouthed it on her tongue. After a few moment, she stooped to let the claw drop out again. Delta was blowing through her teeth over the claws. It was as if they were consulting with the memory of their dead pack-mates.

“Are we supposed to join in?” Lowery asked.

“I don’t think they’ll let us,” Owen said. “We don’t know what they’re saying to their dead. This is a raptor thing, not a human thing.”

They were going to carry those with them, he realized. He wasn’t sure how much space Delta had in that crop of hers – but it couldn’t be comfortable, could it? Those claws had sharp points. He imagined carrying something that shape inside his throat, and shook his head. He picked up his pack.

He unzipped the side pocket, and waited until the strange little ceremony was finished.

“Delta. Blue.” He walked up to them, and reached out with the pack. “Here, put them in here.”

Blue cocked her head and hissed at the sound of her name.

“Here,” he said. He pointed into the side pocket. “I’ll carry them. He reached his hand into the pocket, opening it wide, and pointed to the claws. “And we’re moving.”

Delta did not move, but Blue understood. She scraped both forehands over the desk,. Her hooked talons scooped up all four claws. A few steps took her to his side, and he spread the side pocket as wide as it would go. She reached both forehands out, and allowed the claws to fall into the pocket.

He zipped it up. “They’ll be safe there,” he said, patting the pocket. “Safe and sound.” He picked up the pack, and hitched the strap onto his shoulder. A wriggle, and the other strap was over his other shoulder. “There. Got it. Look,” he turned himself, so that Delta could see where the pocket was. “Safe.”

“Yeah. Safe in heaven, dead,” Lowery murmured.

Owen picked up his Heckler & Koch, and swung the strap over his shoulder. He nodded at Blue, and made a Let’s Go gesture with his fist.

Blue hiss-snapped, and trotted to the door. Owen followed, but heard Delta make a scream behind him. He stopped in the doorway and looked back.

Delta was standing halfway between the door and Lowery. She looked at Owen, and then back at Lowery and screamed.

“I can’t come with you,” Lowery said. “I have a job to do here. People are depending on me.”

“Delta?” Owen asked.

Delta screamed at Lowery.

Blue arrived back in the doorway, just behind Owen, and cough-barked at Delta. Delta turned around to her alpha and screamed. She was getting agitated.

“Delta, Delta, Delta,” Lowery said. He stood up and walked forward, shaking his head. “I can’t come! I have work to do here – important work. Owen, how do I explain to her?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said.

Delta screamed again. She sprang urgently to Lowery’s side, hooked her forehands around his arm, and tried to tug him bodily toward the door.

“No!” Lowery squawked. He wriggled, ducking his head and thrashing. Delta couldn’t risk grabbing him harder without her sharp talons tearing at him, and he managed to duck himself completely out of his shirt. Delta found herself holding onto only a banner of blue fabric. She threw it aside and hissed at him, urgently.

“No!” Lowery said. “I have a job to do. Somebody needs to stay behind, and that’s me.”

He was backing away from Delta. He backed away to his own station, turned, to the main screen, and slapped his hand on the keyboard. The screen of camera feeds came to life. Data points and status feeds flashed, and Owen saw the first boat steaming into the harbour of the ferry terminal.

“There!” he said, pointing to the screen. “See? The Hive needs its Queen. The whole Island is depending on me. I can’t come with you.” He grabbed up the writing pad and drew something.

Owen could not see what he turned toward Delta. He couldn’t imagine how you communicated ‘job’ to a raptor, but he saw Delta deflate. She dropped to all fours. Blue cough-barked.

“Wait,” Lowery said. He reached over to the back of his screen and picked something up. When he turned around, he was holding the plastic Apatosaurus.

Delta picked herself up.

“Delta. This is for you.” He held it out to Delta, gingerly extending it toward her in his fingertips. “I want you to have this. Take this with you.”

Delta put her long muzzle down, and sniffed the plastic carefully.

“No, I mean it’s for you,” Lowery said. He reached out, and pressed it into Delta’s forehands – incidentally standing closer to her than any human being had stood to a velociraptor and not been seriously injured. “I want you to have it. Delta. It’s my favourite dinosaur, for my favourite dinosaur.”

Delta cocked her head and looked down at the Apatosaurus. She wrapped her forehands around the plastic Apatosaurus.

“I’m going to miss you already,” Lowery said to Delta.

He reached out both arms, and to Owen’s horror, wrapped them around Delta’s neck.

Owen couldn’t help it. He squawked aloud. Lowery was going to get killed! You could not grab a raptor around the neck! Not if you wanted to keep all your insides inside!

But all Delta did was stand up to her full height, so that she could rest her long jawbone on Lowery’s shoulder. A raptor’s face was fixed into a rigid smirk, but her nictitating membrane slid closed, and stayed closed.  She made a deep humming noise.

Lowery hugged Delta by the neck for a moment, and then let her go. “You be good,” Lowery said.

Delta dropped back to her natural stance, with another trill in answer.

“Jesus,” Owen breathed. He glanced at Blue at his side, and found Blue’s eyes turning toward him at exactly the same moment. She recoiled from him, and hiss-snapped at him. Her teeth clacked shut just short of his arm.

“I don’t want you grabbing me, either!” Owen took a hurried step away from her side, putting just as much distance between them. 

Delta was coming over to him, holding the plastic dinosaur in one hand. She pointed with one talon to the side-pocked of Owen’s pack. He swung it off his shoulder, and unzipped it. The plastic Apatosaurus was added to the four killing claws.

And then, only then, they were ready to go.

……………….

 Six hours of sleep were like magic. Suddenly, the island was beautiful again.

Lowery kept the lights on along the road. Dawn broke as they crested the pass and started descending on the other side. The sun rose beyond a thick band of clouds as dense and as flawless as meringue. It was coming, slowly, buried in those meringue clouds, sending early streamers of light up into the sky, stroking the sky with long shafts of beauty and warmth. The landscape was still grey and soft; the light as gentle as the morning rain.

And then the sun finally broke through, and the eastern sky was white-hot with a new tropical day.

When the road broke through the last of the trees, Owen coasted Vivian’s mountain bike to a halt, and planted one boot on the ground for balance. He shaded his eyes, and looked out over Gallimimus Valley.

The Valley was a wide sweep in front of him, broken by only a few trees, and hemmed in by the distant tree-covered ridge. The Monorail curved high above the Valley. Beyond Gallimimus Valley, hidden behind that far ridge, was a wall, separating this attraction from the wild jungle of the Restricted Area. There was a gate in that wall, and Lowery would open it remotely. Then they would follow the road that wound through the dense jungle, and back to the raptors’ own paddock.

He had still not solved the problem of how to get them back in that paddock. There did not seem to be any way of doing it without an act of betrayal, that he could not even think of without cringing.

 On the other side of the Valley, the Gallimimus flock was moving slowly across the grass. They were probably puzzled about why their nice alfalfa hay had not arrived this morning, but they could make do with the long grass that grew around the river. There were no tourist buses around today to race against, but the flock would probably run later anyway. The Gallimimus loved to run, whether there was anyone to see them or not. They spent up to two hours every day, racing each other like mustangs across the Valley floor out of pure joy.

Blue and Delta had lowered themselves to their haunches in the grass on either side of the road. They were looking closely at the distant flock of Gallimimus. As he looked at her, Blue turned her head to stare at Delta. They were communicating; discussing the animals in the Valley.

Uh-oh.

“No,” he said, aloud. “We’re not going there. You’ll have meat when you get home.” He pulled the pack off his shoulders, and pulled out the legal pad. Blue sat up on her haunches to watch him.

He pulled out his pen. He drew the sign for Meat, and drew a sharp negative line across it. Meat Not.

“Not meat!” he held it up to show her. “Those aren’t meat! Pigs and goats are meat. And rats. And chickens. And your monthly cow. Those you can kill. But not, absolutely not, never ever, zoo animals. I don’t know how much those things are worth, but I know I can’t afford one out of your feed budget! Not meat!”

She stood up, and stalked over, snarling, as if she was arguing back. She plucked the pen from his hand. She had learned last night that the most effective way of holding a pen when you did not have thumbs was to squeeze it between the semi-circles of two curled fingers, so that you had control over it at two points along its length. She leaned over the legal pad, and drew the sign for Raptors, Eat, Meat.

He asked for the pen back, and drew a circle around Meat Not. She hiss-snapped at him, and then scraped a talon at Raptors Eat. Then, for good measure, she added OwenHuman Wait.

He drew an urgent spiral around Meat Not.

She turned away, dismissing his objections, her spine and tail waving sinuously, and sprang into movement. A moment later, she was running down the road down to the Valley floor. Delta took off, streaking at a tangent to the east.

“Blue!” he shouted. He pushed off with the bike and began to pedal as hard as he could. Vivian’s mountain bike juddered over the ruts in the dirt road. “Blue!”

Blue did not run directly toward the flock. She trotted away across the grass to the north-west, as if looping around the flock for something beyond them. She was not moving in any real hurry, merely jogging along, but she was effortlessly outpacing his bike. He saw her disappear into the long grass that lined the river’s banks, and then reappear on the opposite slope.

The Gallimimus had spotted her already. Their heads on their necks were raised tall, staring, and they were beginning to shift on their big hind legs, trampling the ground nervously.

By the time Owen had reached the bottom of the Valley, the distant speck had reached the far side of the Valley. She was coming back, much faster now, and she was running directly at the nearest of the flock. As she ran, she yelped and yipped.

This was definitely strange, thought the Gallimimus. A new and strange thing. They were big beasts, but they were timid, and their first instinct when faced by something new was to run.

Three of the flock turned tail first, then more, and a moment later they were all running. They were dashing now, and the ones that had been lying down, hidden in the grass, were up as well. In a few seconds, the whole Valley was moving.

“Oh, shit,” Owen said, aloud, as he saw what was happening, and braked the bike.

The Gallimimus were quite placid, and even ridable if you didn’t mind their spine-rattling pace – but they were big. It was perfectly safe to drive around them inside the bulky armoured buses, but Owen was not inside a bus. They were eight metres tall, and heavy – and the whole flock was running flat-out in a stampede. If they forded the river, they would be running right over him in just a few seconds…

If… but he could not afford IF. He had seen a jockey once get run over by a racing field – and a Gallimimus was much bigger than a racehorse. He could already feel the ground shuddering under the hammering of those racing feet.

“Shit,” Owen said. He jumped off the bike and pulled his HK off his shoulder.

Already the first of the Gallimimus were cresting the ridge. He screamed at the top of his lungs, braced the HK, flipped off the safety, and fired a burst desperately into the sky. “Yaah yaaaaaaaaah! Go awaaaaaaay! Raaaaaaah!” The gun’s recoil juddered at his teeth.

The leading Gallimimus jinked away, and the rest followed. Their followers swept away from him in a slow turn. The whole flock wheeled like a shoal of fish away from the new threat, sweeping across the Valley floor.

He lowered the gun, watching the flock. They were streaming away along the river’s course.

“Phew!” he said. “Never a dull moment, with you two –.” He stopped his words half way.

“Oh, no.”

The flock was streaming away from him, following their leaders. They were racing up the eastern slope along the river, straight into the sun. He threw up his hand to shade his eyes, the better to see.

Blue was racing along on the flank of the flock now, and slowing yawing to her right. The flock was still running, and with the scary monster racing on their left flank now the Gallimimus were being edged over to the right. They were trying to edge away from the racing raptor on their left flank, and in turn they were squeezing closer to the river on their right. They were still streaming along parallel to the river, racing closer and closer to the long grass that lined the river banks.

“Oh, no, no! You don’t go into the long grass!” Owen moaned, watching helplessly. “You never go into the long grass!”

There was not room for the whole flock to run freely, so close to the river. Some of them were slowing, without room to stretch out. Others were dashing through the long grass. Some of them were eight metres tall, and easy to see, whipping at speed through the long grass.

And then, one of those long necks went down, vanishing under the blanket of the grass. A tail whipped up through the air, just once. The grass jerked, and he heard a shrill scream.

Blue immediately slowed down to a measured jog and abandoned her chase. Her sides were blowing from the effort, but she paused to look at him across the river. She bounced up and down on both hind feet, and screamed shrilly at him in excitement. Then she jogged upstream, and disappeared into the long grass. She had every reason to be pleased with herself, he thought. Their first real hunt, and they’d killed on the very first attempt. They were every bit as effective at hunting as the biologists said they would be.

“Never a dull moment,” he repeated, “with you two ladies around.”

He crossed the bridge to that side of the river, and walked alongside the bike, the chain ticking quietly. He followed the river, keeping one eye on the Gallimimus. They came slowly to a stop on the eastern horizon as he walked, and stood clustered together. Their nervous heads kept turning toward the river, jerking and crying with distress. He hoped the Gallimimus had nothing of the African buffalo’s instincts in them, to turn about and try to stampede their predators underfoot.

It occurred to him, as he walked alone with the bike ticking peacefully, that he really was going for a walk in the woods, 65 million years ago. He was alone among animals many times his size and weight, any of which could kill him with ease. But he felt quite safe, for all of his small size. He had only to shout, and he would attract Blue and Delta’s attention.

For that matter, he thought, he could walk through the midst of a jungle teeming with lions, and be quite safe, with those two shadowing him. He could walk through the worst city of the human world with those two, and be quite safe. He was entirely safe with those two lurking just out of sight.

He had to be the first human being ever to associate velociraptors with feeling safe, he thought. He knew he wasn’t the raptors’ alpha any longer, but he didn’t know what he was instead. Their mentor? Their ally? The only thing he knew for certain was that Blue would never hurt him, any more than he could hurt her. She trusted him.

He walked into the grass, the bike ticking, and followed the sounds of snarling and tearing. The whispering grass came up to his chest, and he had to slide through, fending off the tough stems from the bike’s handlebars. The mud sucked at his boots.

He came across the end of the Gallimimus’s tail in the mud, and followed the tail. The grass had been beaten down into a circle around their kill, and he paused on the edge of the clearing.

The dead Gallimimus lay on its side, and both raptors were bent over it. They had torn a great rip in its belly. As he watched, they sprang at each other, squabbling and snarling over a strip of meat. Their ripping motions made the animal’s body jerk, as if it was still alive and twitching spasmodically at their abuse.

“Glad to see you’re having a good time,” he said, drily.

Blue raised her head, and trilled a greeting at him over the Gallimimus’s hind leg. Her jaws and talons were red with blood. She ducked her head back to her feast.

He laid the bike down on its side at the edge of the clearing, sat down on the flattened grass by the Gallimimus’s tail, and watched them.

“What a waste of a huge animal that is,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to finish all of that. The rest will have to go to the Mosasaur. Claire is going to be livid. Millions of dollars in that thing, so I hope it tastes good.”

After a moment, Blue put her head up again, and trilled at him. She cocked her head.

“Not for me, thanks,” he said, shaking his head.

She bent her head again. A moment later she reappeared with a long strip of meat dangling from her jaws. She sprang lightly over the Gallimimus’s haunch, trotted over to him, and let the strip of muscle drop to the ground in front of him. She stooped low, looking down into his face, and trilled again.

“No,” he said, again, shaking his head. “I don’t like my steaks so rare.”

She turned her head this way and that, until she understood that his answer was No. Then she snot-snarled, and turned away. If one of the pack chose not to eat his share of the kill, that was his problem. She was going to eat.

In a way, he was glad that they were eating their fill. They had missed their goat the day before yesterday in all the fuss, so if they were hungry now it could only be because they had not eaten any of the dead in Main Street. He couldn’t help being relieved to know that. He had known they disdained carrion, but it was still a relief. No animal-handler wanted to think their animals had eaten that.

Delta finished first. She backed away from the kill, and flopped down sideways into the long grass, crushing it around her into a soft bed. She wiped the blood off her face with both forehands, scrubbing and licking fastidiously to clean herself. Blue followed after a few minutes, doing the same thing. When they were satisfied, both raptors fell asleep.

He sat, and watched them. He could see that each one’s belly was distinctly round. They had gorged themselves – they could eat up to 25% of their own body weight in a single meal – and now they were sleepy. It might be days before they wanted to eat again.

He could let them sleep for a few minutes, he thought. He had made good time with Vivian’s bike, and it was only a few more miles to their paddock.

The distressed cries of the flock had died down.  It was quiet here. The breeze whispered in the grass, and the insects buzzed.

What was he going to do now?

He had no idea of how he was going to get them back into their paddock, without a monstrous act of betrayal. How could he do that at all, now? He tried to imagine his beautiful, fiery Blue, locked up again inside the tiny circuit of her paddock … and found that he could not.

He had wanted to get them back into their paddock to keep them safe, of course. He had wanted to protect them.

But also, he admitted to himself, he had wanted to get them back so that he could carry on his own research. He had wanted to perform more experiments, get more proof, carry out more demonstrations. They were more intelligent than any animals other than humans, and he would have proven it to the world. He would have set off a bomb in the scientific community; he would have been famous.

And … then what?

They had been designed as experimental animals, after all. They had been born for his research, and nothing else. They were destined to become attractions in a velociraptor exhibit, once his experiments were over – like lab chimps that were sold off to zoos once their time in the laboratory were over. His InGen contract would end, one day. He would move on, and they would stay behind.

But even if they were that intelligent, he told himself, what would that mean? These raptors had killed people. True, nobody would shoot them if he could prove that they were so much smarter than chimps. People were squeamish these days about shooting sentient animals. But no-one was ever going to release velociraptors into the wild, either. They had no wild to go to. Their world had crashed to an end 65 million years ago.

He would prove that they were intelligent – and then they would sit out the rest of their lives behind glass and bars anyway.

Blue was awake, and watching him. She had grasped the end of her tail in her forehand, and was mouthing it gently.

The T-Rex was content happy to lurk in her enclosure and be fed goats, year after year. Her territory was hers. She’d even gone back to her enclosure on her own. The Gallimimus flock had no idea that there was a fence around their Valley. The Triceratops adored their humans, like huge horses. The Pachys performed eagerly, and didn't care that an audience sat in the stands and ate popcorn. All the dinosaurs were content to be dinosaurs, living their dinosaur lives, inside their small, self-contained world.

But the Indominus Rex – the raptor that wasn’t a raptor – had gone quietly mad. There had been intelligence and insanity in that thing’s eyes, looking back at him. The intelligence of a mind, waking to consciousness alone and trapped, and condemned to a lifetime of boredom and rage.

He imagined Blue, and Delta, locked up again after seeing so much of the outside world. Blue had seen so much of the world now, and she wanted a place in that world; she burned for it. How would she see the tiny circuit of her own paddock now? How long would it take his bright, burning Blue to turn as mad as the Indominus?

Birds had appeared, and they were hopping about on the carcass, squabbling and threatening each other. Delta had rolled onto her belly. She was holding her mouth gaping open, in the hope of attracting a toothpick. She had taught a little family of birds at their paddock that the raptor would give them a free meal, if they were brave enough to pick out her teeth. Birds had tiny brains, but these had learned that this one raptor was safe to sit on.

Delta’s little admirers were miles away, though. These birds were more interested in the Gallimimus.

Blue rolled herself upright, and shook her head. She climbed to her feet, her tail snaking, and stalked over to him. He stayed where he was, not moving, as she stalked over and stood over him. She lowered her face down to his, looking closely at him as if trying to smell his facial expression. Thanks to her long head, he had a severely foreshortened view of her face. She smelled sweetly of fresh meat, like a butcher’s shop.

“What is it, Blue?”

She snarled, and snapped her teeth, and then reached out with one forehand. She began batting at his hair.

“Ow,” he said, jerking away.

She snarled, and batted both forehands at his head. She was keeping her fore-digits flat, so that the sharp scimitar talons were out of the way, but her forehands were hard. The thickened hide of her scales scratched painfully, and her talons knocked painfully on his bones. It was like getting an affectionate caress from a backhoe!

“Ow!” he said, and threw up his arm to defend his face. “Ow, stop it, get off, you’re hurting me!” He grabbed at her talons, and fended them away from his face, ducking his head into his shoulder to protect his eyes.

She let him go, withdrawing her forehands back under her sternum again. She hiss-snapped, making him jerk backward in reflex. She turned to stalk away between the long grasses again, her clipped-off tail whipping stiffly from side to side

“Jesus,” he said. He had scratches on his face, now – one stinging one across his forehead. He felt it the sting with the tip of his finger, but there was no blood.

“Jesus,” he said, again. He had just been petted. She had been trying to stroke him.

He had stroked her face in the Ready Cage, petting her gently while she got her shots done and her blood drawn. Blue was the alpha now; she made the decisions for her little pack. Perhaps she thought petting your pack-mates was part of the alpha’s job? Perhaps she was trying to find a way of showing him what Lowery had shown Delta? No-one had ever seen a raptor displaying affection before – perhaps even the raptors didn’t know what it was supposed to look like.

But it didn’t work like that with humans. She could never reciprocate. Human skin was too fragile, too easily torn.

“Blue!” he shouted, but there was no reply from the long grass.

Delta rolled over onto her side. She had given up on attracting any toothpicks.

The quiet was broken with a sharp tune, jingling in his pack. He dug out Lowery’s phone, and found Ctrl Rm calling. He answered it.

“Yeah?”

He heard Lowery’s reedy drawl. “Are you still alive down there?”

“Nope,” Owen said, grinning. “I’m dead. This is Owen’s ghost; can I take a message?”

Lowery groaned. “Oh, dude! That’s so bad!”

“Hey, if you give me a straight line like that I’m going to use it!”

The line was broken by a burst of the annoying interference that made cell-phone communication unreliable on Isla Nublar. The crackling interference had frustrated their communications during the Indominus escape, and now it was back. He answered Lowery’s question by standing upright, so that he was visible over the long grass. He couldn’t see the camera, but you weren’t supposed to be able to see the cameras anyway. He waved his other hand above his head.

“I see you,” Lowery said. “Phew! I saw you go into the long grass, and when you didn’t get up again I started to worry.”

“They made a kill.”

“Neat one, too, man. What are you going to do?”

Delta was awake. Her golden eye watched him, without blinking.

“Can you wangle your records, so that the Indominus killed this one too?” Owen asked.

“I can delete the video, and I can change the timestamp on the tracking implant, but,” Lowery lowered his voice, “My hands are going to be tied soon. The boss is on her way. The cavalry’s come early.”

“As if we need rescuing…”

“She’s going to want to know where the raptors are. And I can’t exactly tell her they just ate a Gallimimus.”

“Tell her they’re in their paddock!” Owen said, quickly.

“What?”

“Yes! Tell her they’re in their paddock, safe and sound. Tell her the pteranodons knocked out the videos, or lightning, or something. Anything! All’s well, understand? And I’ve gone back to my place to crash, 'cos I’m exhausted, and please not to wake me for a week. Two weeks! I’m completely out of reach.”

There was a brief silence as Lowery digested his instructions. “Oh-h-h,” he groaned. “You’re planning something that’s going to get us both fired.”

“No,” Owen said. “Not both of us, just me. I just need more time with the raptors, that’s all. Just a few more hours.” The line suddenly went away, in another crackle of interference. “One more question?” he asked, when the line cleared again.

“Yeah?”

“Are there any people hanging around the East Dock?”

“You gotta be kidding,” Lowery scoffed. “The people at the East Dock were the first to skedaddle.”

“Are there any boats left alongside?”

“Boats? Er, yes, as a matter of fact there’s…”

“Is it large enough to make it to the mainland?”

“That one? Oh, yeah, no problem. Wait. What are you planning? You’re planning something. I can smell it.”

He couldn’t help himself. He lowered his voice, as if there were ears listening in the long grass.

“You know all those old rumours that keep surfacing every few years – about raptors hiding in the jungle of Costa Rica?”

“I heard it was Colombia, not Costa Rica – but yeah?”

“There are supposed to be dozens of them out there. Everyone knows someone who swears they saw one, but no-one’s ever managed to take a clear photo.”

“I saw that doccie on History Channel – Jurassic Bigfoot.”

“We’re going to go find them. If they’re there. I’m going to take the raptors off the island, and we’re going to find them.”

There was a short silence.

“You’re trying to steal a pair of raptors.”

“Release them,” Owen corrected. “Are you in?”

“You’re in-saane,” Lowery crooned deliriously in his ear. “You are … in-sa-a-a-ane. You’re going to steal a pair of velociraptors? You realize they’re like, eight million bucks, each?”

“I can’t take them back to their paddock,” Owen said. “I can’t. You’ve seen what I’ve seen! Even if InGen doesn’t shoot them – even if I can keep the raptor programme running – even if they get their own display in the park one day…”

“They’d be safe there.”

“Even if they’ll be safe … do you want to look at Delta behind glass the rest of her life?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Owen could picture Lowery’s face. He could see him sitting back from his computer, taking off his glasses, and rubbing his moustache.

“She’ll be pissed,” Lowery said. “Hot damn, she’ll be pissed.”

Owen couldn’t tell if he was talking about Delta or Claire. “Are you in?” he asked again.

“Yeah, what the hell,” Lowery said. “I’m in. I’ll steal Delta and you can steal Blue. Let’s go for it.”

“I’m going to head for the East Dock. Keep the cameras away from there.”

“Roger that and wilco.”

He turned around, looking around him. The long grass came up to his chest and there was no sign of Blue. He got the legal pad out of the backpack, and stood up again. The Gallimimus flock were still keeping their distance. Nothing moved in the grass. He put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled.

There was an answering scream, from right behind him. Blue’s head and neck rose vertically out of the long grass, just a few paces away. She stared at him.

“Blue,” he said. He raised the pad so that she could see it, and drew on it carefully.

Danger. Humans. Hunt. Coming.

And then beneath that, he drew again.

Owen, Blue, Delta. Run. Hide. Fast.

She cocked her head at the pad. He wondered if she would take the pen, and override his suggestion. For a long moment, her golden eye went from the pad to his face and back.

“Blue,” he said, aloud. “This is important. A-a-and … we’re moving.” He gestured with his hand in the direction he wanted them to go: North. North, into the Restricted Area. North, up the coast of the little island, and then to the small service dock. And then, he told himself, east across the alien sea. East, to the jungle and safety.

With his other hand, he drew a circle, around Owen, Blue, Delta.

She stepped back on her hindlegs, her tail snaking, and lowered herself in an aggressive, threatening hiss. Then she had whirled around, and was off, jogging purposefully, cough-barking to wake Delta.

“A-a-and I’m officially insane,” Owen said, aloud. Delta rolled to her feet and shook herself awake. Owen grabbed his bike, and they set off.

……………..

The perimeter gate out of the Gallimimus Valley opened slowly before them like a medieval fortress. Delta and Blue slowed to a jog, looking left and right as they trotted up the middle of the road. They looked like questing knights breaching an enemy’s castle, wary of Morgan le Fey lying in wait. The gate slowly closed behind them. The road leading deeper into the jungle was deserted, and silent.

It would be spooky if Owen didn’t already know, and like, the invisible sorcerer controlling the gate.

The high peaks looked down from under their cloud cover; majestic buttresses of volcanic stone. He had gone hiking up there, and he knew that those peaks were cold and wet, and subject to icy-cold ocean winds year-round. The peaks looked ancient and mysterious under their dark cloak of jungle, even though Isla Nublar was younger than the dinosaurs themselves.

Owen carried on pedaling the bike – Blue ahead, Delta behind – and the jungle closed in around them.

This was one of many access roads that criss-crossed the Restricted Area. Many of those roads dated from the old park, and were being reclaimed by the jungle. This one was maintained to allow quick access from the Gallimimus Valley to the East Dock. No tourists ever came here, and none of the staff lived near here – the Workers’ Village bungalows were all on the shore. The jungle had been allowed to close the view on either side of the road.

The jungle pressed in on both sides of the road, like a damp, dark cavern. Monkeys screamed, and invisible birds argued, hidden in their own animal world. The Indominus Rex could have been hiding just behind that impenetrable screen – and she had done exactly that, waiting for ACU.

The road forked. He paused, setting his boot down.

One road disappeared into the jungle, but would find the sunlight on the cliff top where the raptor paddock was. He’d raced down that road after Claire’s truck, pursued by Blue, Echo and Delta, and the Indominus Rex.

Here was his choice. If he was going to return them to their paddock, that road was his road. This was his final decision. Up until now, he could still change his mind. His paths diverged, like the road did.

He glanced at Blue, and saw her looking at him. She remembered too, and she timbered. Doubt, in that call, and sudden mistrust. She knew where she was as well as he did.

He shook his head, without a word, and turned the bike down the other fork.

The other road went further, sliding down to meet the sea at the East Dock. It was one of the very first roads built on the island by Hammond in his great adventure, nearly thirty years ago. It slipped through the jungle, trending downhill through a serious of switchbacks. Blue jogged at his side, and he could hear Delta’s footsteps on the tar just behind him.

It was very different to racing after them on the hunt for the Indominus. Then, he had been filled with mistrust, and adrenalin, and surrounded by strangers. The roar of the engines of the trucks and bikes, and the shouts of the InGen team, had drowned the sounds of the raptors themselves.

Now, though, there was no sound other than the hiss of the bike. He could hear the raptors’ hard feet tapping on the tar, hear their breathing, hear their calls to each other as they kept pace with him. This, he realized; this was the fulfilled promise of that night. This was what had been missing that night.

The road went over a crest, and then downhill, and he was able to coast on the bike.

It occurred to him, quite suddenly, that he felt happy. He was alone with the raptors, set on his course, and he was doing the right thing. He had been told once that the best way to make a tough decision was to pick heads or tails, and flip the coin, because his own heart would tell him what it really wanted while coin was still in the air. The coin was in the air, now, and his conscience was clear. Come what may, he had made the right choice. Whatever happened next, he had no more doubts.

Blue was jogging along at his side, close enough to touch – and he did. He reached over with his hand, as if he was signalling a turn, and set his hand on the slope of her spine.

She turned her head back to look at him out of one golden eye, but kept time. She did not swerve out of reach, or speed away. She allowed his hand on her spine, allowing him to ride her back with his palm. She kept perfect time, and he could feel the warm strength in her, the muscles clenching under her hide. He could feel her body as if it was his own, and they were as close to each other as they could be.

Blue turned her head to look back at him, and opened her jaws in a scream. Behind him Delta screamed back. They travelled in tandem, perfectly parallel, down the final incline to the sea.

The trees ended, and the road leveled out into a broad parade-ground behind the buildings and sheds of the East Dock, and he had to pedal again. Blue paused, slowing down to investigate the new view, but Owen kept pedaling.

“A-a-and we’re moving,” he called, when it looked like they were going off to explore the buildings on their own. Blue cough-barked in response, and jogged after him again. They passed between the empty sheds, and came in sight of the East Dock itself.

The East Dock’s harbour was not large. It was wedged into a narrow elbow of the island; just a sharp crack in the volcanic slope where a boat could find a temporary shelter from the ocean. The natural harbour had been extended by a concrete breakwater, which sheltered a concrete quay and a short jetty. The East Dock was not deep enough for the bigger boats needed to supply the whole island. The only boats that berthed here were the older, smaller ones, and the fast patrol-boats of ACU.

Owen rode along the quay. The little waterfront was filled with abandoned cars, and the quay and jetty were empty. There was no sign or sound of human beings at all. He pedaled alongside the bollards, and stopped when he saw the last boat left in the East Dock.

“Perfect!” he said, aloud.

He could instantly see why it had been left behind. Not everyone knew how to sail a yacht. It lay tied up at the end of the jetty, as if it was waiting for him. Its name was Mrs Frisby.

The cruiser belonged to Masrani, personally. He had sailed it here last year from Hawaii with his current girlfriend, and he had simply left it here, tied up and forgotten.

Oh, to have so much money, that you could just forget about a yacht… Masrani had other yachts, bigger, faster, or more comfortable than this one. He didn’t seem to care that he had left Mrs Frisby at Isla Nublar. Eventually, word had been passed down through Claire that Masrani would sell the sailboat eventually, but the permanent staff might as well use it until then.

Owen had gone out on this boat a few times, crewing for the Apatosaurus handlers. He had taken the masseuse from the resort along too, on their second and last date, when he had learned that ‘tall, tanned and muscular’ was not the same as ‘tough, resourceful, and quick to learn.’ She had spent the whole trip sulky, sick, and scared that the boat was going to fall over.

He laid the bike down, and jogged down the jetty to the boat.

“Anybody here?” he called, but there was no answer.

The mast was stepped, and the rigging was well-maintained. Raptor claws were going to make a mess of that lovely white fibre-glass, but he was already stealing the raptors themselves – he might as well add stealing a dead man’s boat to his crimes.

He stepped across to the boat, and down into the cockpit, stooping under the boom. He put his pack down next to the wheel, and leaned the HK next to it. The hatch down into the cabin was locked, but the lock was quickly broken. He climbed down the narrow hatch, and moved around the dark cabin, checking that everything had all been put back after the last sail. The sails would be forward in the sail locker. He would have to raise them single-handed – a challenge – but he knew he could do it. Old-fashioned wind-and-mathematics would take them all the way to Costa Rica…

After a few minutes of opening and closing things, he realized that he was alone in the boat. He had not felt the hull respond to the weigh of a raptor bouncing aboard.

He leaned over the cabin bench, and peeked out through one of the cabin portholes. He was at eye level of the dock down here, and he could see a pair of raptor feet in the sunshine, standing on the jetty. Whoever that was, she was stamping her feet anxiously.

He climbed up into the sunlight again, and Delta trilled at the sight of him, as if he had been away for days. “Hey, Delta,” he said, and turned so that he could see over the boat’s bows.

Blue was standing on the edge of the jetty, pacing urgently back and forth. As she saw him pop up over the bows she sprang to attention, and cough-barked urgently at him.

Delta screamed.

“Hey,” he said, surprised. “Come here, Blue. Blue! Come here!” He held up his hand in the Come Here. She cough-barked back at him, and marched from side to side.

“Blu-ue,” he called. “Eyes on me. Come here.”

Nope. That idea was not making her happy. She cough-barked, and Delta obediently jogged back along the jetty toward her.

“Oh, you have got to be joking,” he muttered. His pack was still lying next to the boat’s wheel, and he opened it and took out the legal pad. He climbed up out of the cockpit, and crossed back to the jetty.

“Blue, Blue, Blue,” he called, reassuringly. He wrote Safe on it as he walked, and showed it to Blue when he reached her.

She snot-snarled, and took the pen. Water Danger Bite Dead.

He shook his head. “No. It’s safe,” he said. He drew a line around Safe Water, and added Raptors, Hide, Run.

She screamed at him, and hiss-snapped at him.

“Blu-ue,” he said. “It’s safe, I promise. We’re going to sail. We’re going to sail away, across the sea. All the way out there.” He pointed out beyond the breakwater, to the distant horizon.

Both raptor heads came up in tandem, and looked at the horizon. Blue stamped her feet in agitation.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scared before,” he said, aloud. He drew Safe, Safe, Safe, and then he made a sketch of the boat, and Go Water next to it. “You don’t know this, but you’re on an island. It’s only a few miles long! If you stay here, you’ll be found, and darted, and put back in your paddock, and you won’t like that.”

Her reply to that was Water Danger.

He sighed. He and Lowery had thought of dozens of signs – but they had no word for Trust – and no way to mime it. The concept was too abstract. He drew Humans, Guns, Hunt. Owen, Blue, Delta, Hide, Go, Boat, Safe. He pointed toward Mrs Frisby, and started walking slowly back along the jetty, beckoning to her with his hand.

Delta took a few steps to follow him, but Blue snapped at her, and she stopped.

Lowery’s phone suddenly rang, calling shrilly from his pack in the boat. He turned his back on Blue, and jogged back down the jetty to answer it.

“Why doesn’t she want to get in the boat?” Lowery whispered, without a greeting.

Owen looked back to the dock sheds, but he couldn’t see the cameras. “Are you watching this?”

“She looks like she’s scared.”

He wondered why Lowery was whispering. “With great power comes great neurosis, young Skywalker.”

“That’s Spiderman, not Skywalker. Anyway, Delta’s not scared.”

He felt suddenly annoyed with Lowery. “Delta didn’t see the mosasaur jump out of the Lagoon and take down the Indominus Rex. Delta didn’t lose the tip of her tail to a crocodile yesterday.”

“You’re running out of time, man, there’s a … Shit, Claire’s coming. I’m off!”

The line went dead.

Owen closed the phone and stuck it back into his pocket. He turned, reaching up for the boom so as not to bump his head on it, and found Blue advancing slowly up the jetty toward him. She was walking very slowly, keeping her hind legs half-bent and her forehands reached out toward the jetty, as if prepared to throw herself down and cling on for dear life at any second.

He might not have a sign for Trust, but it looked like he didn’t need one.

“Hey, Blue. Brave Blue. You can do this, Blue…”

Delta was just behind her tail, humming reassuringly.

“Easy, girl. It’s okay. No mosasaur, and no crocodile, and no sharks…”

She came to a stop next to Mrs Frisby’s stern, and warily leaned her head over the gap between the jetty and the boat. When she had reassured herself that there was no monster in that gap – only a fat rubber fender – she settled down like a wary sphinx to watch him. She pulled her tail around her haunches, and gripped it in her forehands – no part of her was going to hang out over the water, thank you very much.

Delta stepped around her, and held out the legal pad in both forehands. He took it and turned it over, and saw that someone had drawn Owen, Blue, and drawn multiple circles around it.

Blue cocked her head, and timbered nervously.

“I won’t let any harm come to you,” he said. “You’re my big brave Blue…”

He could wait for her to make the next step, across the water into the boat itself. He still had to rig the boat. He walked forward to the sail locker, aware that she was watching closely, and pulled up the hatch. He began pulling out the jib.

There was a sudden snarl from Delta. She leaped to attention, her head snaking to the northern cliff. She opened her jaws wide and hissed. Blue stood up, careful to keep her balance, and turned without letting go of her tail.

“What is it?” he asked, even though neither of them could reply. They had heard something.

Blue screamed, and began moving back along the jetty. Delta followed.

“Oh, no,” Owen said, jumping quickly across the gap, and running after them. And then Owen heard it – a distant putta-putta-putta carried on the breeze. A helicopter, and the sound was getting steadier. A helicopter, coming here – and the only people who had a reason to fly a helicopter today was ACU…

Blue sped up as soon as she was on solid ground, streaking across the quay and between the abandoned cars. Delta followed. They were bolting back to the shelter of the jungle.

He ran after them between the parked cars. “Blue,” he shouted. “Stand down. Delta! Eyes on me! Stand down!”

Blue heard him. She obeyed, slowing down, and turning toward him. Her jaws were gaping, but she had heard him. Delta pelted on for a few more yards, and then slowed when she noticed that her sister had stopped.

And then the helicopter came around the corner of the cliff. It was a big blue helicopter with the Jurassic World livery, and its cargo doors were open. He saw black uniforms and the glint of long barrels in its belly. It yawed, and came in over the breakwater, and its wash scoured the water of the dock under it.

Owen sprinted between the abandoned cars. The pilot had seen the raptors beyond the dock … but he could not know that they were not alone.

“Hey!” he leaped onto the roof of the last car, and stood up to his full height. He waved both arms over his head, desperately. “Heyyyy! Stand down!”

He roared from the bottom of his lungs, even though he knew they could not hear him over the helicopter’s engine. “Heyyyy!” He waved, crossing both arms over his head in a Wave-Off signal. “Don’t land! Don’t land!”

The sound was deafening, as the helicopter swung over his head. Its wash buffeted grit into his eyes He jumped up and down, frantically, waving both hands. “Don’t land!” Through watering eyes he caught a glimpse of someone in black sunglasses leaning out toward him, and the barrel of the tranq gun turned to a black dot.

Something stabbed into his leg.

He looked down, and there was a brilliant orange dart in his thigh. He grabbed it and wrenched it out, but he knew it was already too late. The darts discharged on impact.

ACU had seen him… ACU had decided to shoot him …

They were going to shoot his raptors! “Bastards!”

He spun around, and threw the dart toward Blue. “Run!” he shouted at her.

He saw her scream, and leap towards him. She was already surrounded by a field of fog, haloed in sunlight, as if she was all the world. The helicopter floated by overhead. Blue’s sudden leap must have put off the other ACU man’s aim, because he saw another orange dart bounce off the ground and float away.

“NO!” he screamed at her. “Run!”

The helicopter’s thunder was suddenly far away … fwomp-fwomp-fwomp… gliding as slowly as a fat koi. His arm was too heavy, but he threw it up in the Go signal – “GO!” – and then he was sliding slowly forward off the car’s roof.

The volcanic grit of Isla Nublar came up to meet him.

Chapter Text

“GO!”

And then FirstHuman was falling to the ground. He made a feeble movement on the ground, and then lay still.

StripeSide hesitated for a second. She was buffeted by noise, by the whirl of wind, and her human was on the ground. He had been shot by a human in the blade-and-clatter. FirstHuman had been shot by a bang-and-pain. Her human was dead.

She heard WingWatch scream in rage. The sound jerked her from her shock. The blade-and-clatter was chasing her sister. She would take revenge later! StripeSide ran after WingWatch.

WingWatch had come to a stop. There was a bright orange feather in her haunch, and she had paused to twist around and pluck it out.

“Where is FirstHuman?” WingWatch screamed, as StripeSide reached her. The humans would hear her voice as a rattle on their ear-and-talk.

“They shot him!” StripeSide screamed back. She whipped past WingWatch.

She kept her head down and ran as fast as she could. The trees were sparse here – too sparse. The blade-and-clatter was just above the tree-tops. The blade-and-clatter was a roaring threat, but the only way back into the jungle was to race beneath it.

She saw WingWatch slowing down. She turned her head to scream back at her sister, “Follow me!” but WingWatch was still slowing, falling back behind StripeSide.

“Why do you stop? Run!”

WingWatch screamed again, and her voice was weaker. “The feathers are poisoned!” Her pace was lurching.

Poisoned feathers? “Run, WingWatch!”

“I cannot! I am killed. I feel poison in my blood!” WingWatch was staggering, slowing down. Her head was suddenly bobbing, as if it was too heavy for her tail to balance. She stumbled and went down on all fours. “Run, StripeSide! Avenge us all here!”

As StripeSide hesitated, the blade-and-clatter swivelled. Another orange feather hit the grass alongside her foot. Poisoned feathers indeed! She sprang around, and raced away.

She felt her fear and rage climbing as she ran. Her last sister was killed! Her human was killed! They were all dead!

She streaked under the first dense trees, but the blade-and-clatter was keeping pace with her effortlessly. She had seen blade-and-clatters. It could travel in the air much faster than she could run. She could not outrun it. Sooner or later, a poisoned feather would catch her too.

And for what was she running, anyway? She was alpha of the Real People, but she was all alone. She was the last of the Real People. She was alpha of nothing. One by one, they had all died, even FirstHuman. Why run away, only to live as the last Real Person in the world?

And she could not escape without FirstHuman’s help. He was on their side, but he was dead. She would never find out if there were more Real People out there. She would never understand the mysteries of the sinister cone-shaped building where she had hatched. She would never solve the mystery of the Mad Giant Person. She would never know why the Real People had been caged all their lives - what their existence had all been for.

It was all over. The humans had won.

An alpha must be able to make decisions instantly, and StripeSide had learned well from FirstHuman.

A bright feather landed in a cluster of green at her feet. She squashed it underfoot instantly, and slowed her speed.

The blade-and-clatter lifted away, but she pretended to ignore it. As if the slope was too steep for her, she yawed around, and started making her way downhill again. She slowed down to a jog, and made a point of wobbling, and bobbing her head as if it was too heavy.

The blade-and-clatter hovered.

Here. Here would do. The trees were thick here, but she could still see through them. She could see WingWatch through the trunks, lying still. StripeSide lowered herself down, and then rolled over onto her side. She thrashed with her legs a few times, and then just lay panting.

Panting was easy. She was tired, anyway. FirstHuman had been in a hurry to move through the heat of the sun; she had sensed his agitation, and now she understood it. They had been fleeing, but their enemies had caught up to them.

The blade-and-clatter hovered over her, swirling grit and dead leaves, and she closed her eyes to protect them. She lay still, and waited. She felt the heat radiating from the blade-and-clatter, and eventually the machine’s heat went away.

The Real People had seen blade-and-clatters landing near their cage, and they had seen humans climb in and out. She had never thought of them as hunters before, but what devilish weapons they were! The blade-and-clatter could come down to her at a point of its own choosing, and it could instantly withdraw to a height that she could never cross by leaping. Dragging-down-ness was on its side.  From up there, it could see anything, spread out under it – it was the peak of a triangle, and it could widen the opposite side of that triangle at its leisure. She could not reach the peak of that triangle, no matter how she leaped.

But it would come down.

They always did. The blade-and-clatter would land, and the humans in it would climb out to inspect their kill. They would come down into her plane. And then the fortune of the hunt would be in her favour. She was faster than any human on the ground, and they were so easy to kill. Remove the blade-and-clatter, and she could take her vengeance at her leisure.

She heard the sounds of the blade-and-clatter change. It came down close to WingWatch, in a swirl of heat and ugly smells.

StripeSide waited. She would have her vengeance, for WingWatch and for FirstHuman, and she knew how to wait.

She waited.

She could feel nothing beyond the blade-and-clatter. Its breath was a cacophony of heat. WingWatch and FirstHuman lay beyond it, but their bloodheat was drowned by the blade-and-clatter. She would see them if she opened her eyes, but she kept them closed.

It was amazing how humans seemed to ignore the constant blaring of heat and smells all around them.  It was no wonder they were all deaf.   And they were deaf; she had not understood that before, but she knew now. It was annoying to realize that even though she had spent so many years talking to FirstHuman, he really had not been listening to her all along!  He couldn't hear her at all. 

After a few minutes, she could feel bloodheat coming her way, stepping forward through the grass.

A man. He bent over her. She kept her eyes closed, watching his bloodheat carefully. She waited until he was directly in front of her head, bending low over her, and she felt the bloodheat of a hand reaching out from his core toward her face. He could not feel the bloodheat of a living Real Person apart from a dead one, and now he would pay the price. 

She opened her eyes and looked back.

She felt his skin abruptly cool as he drained all the blood out of his face.

Humans were amazingly stupid creatures. They seemed completely incapable of learning more than a handful of raptor phrases, but of course one of those phrases simply had to be, “I’m scared.”

He opened his mouth to scream, but she was already moving.

She rolled upright and closed her teeth on his arm. A sharp yank, and she let him go. She had learned that it wasn’t necessary to do battle with a human to kill them. Simply removing a limb would do that – they bled to death in a matter of heartbeats. No need to wait. She moved on.

The humans beyond the first one hadn’t time to react – or perhaps they did not know what they were seeing before she was on them. She leaped and a kick with her killing-claw did for one of them as she went past him. She gripped the second one’s arm as she went, yanked, and let go. She hurdled his body and raced out through the trees.

Hands, she thought furiously, as she burst from the trees. Hands! All of the humans’ advantages over the Real People came from their hands! Locks and guns and chains – all with those damned opposite-fingers! Hands in general filled her with rage!

Well, now she would have her fill of hands! FirstHuman was not around to stop her any longer, and the enemies would learn to regret killing him!  She sprinted down the slope.

Kill the blade-and-clatter!

It was perched in a swelter of its own heat and gas, its engine still running, its blades still spinning. She heard screams from the humans around the blade-and-clatter as they saw her coming.  They broke and ran. Some of them jumped into the belly of the blade-and-clatter, but she ignored them. Kill the driver of the blade-and-clatter, and the rest would have nowhere to run!

The humans scattering had bang-and-pains.  They opened fire, but they were trying to run and fight at the same time, and nothing hit her. Stupid humans. Kill the blade-and-clatter!

She jumped the second she was under the blade. Transparent-flat shattered under her, as it had shattered on the grumble-and-roll two nights ago. She thrust herself into it, jaws first, snapping to reach the driver. The machine was filled with electromagnetism and flickering lights, and the human in it was shrieking and trying to get free of his harness. She kicked her way in. She couldn’t use her killing claw in such a narrow space, so she slashed at him with her forehands. Not as quick, but an opened throat was an opened throat.

He was dying under her, and she sat on his chest and lashed out with her killing claws at the spread of tools in the blade-and-clatter. She felt metal breaking under her killing claws, and transparent-flat shattered like raindrops. She kicked again, and again. Kill the blade-and-clatter!

There were two more humans in the back of the blade-and-clatter, and they were still in here because they were fighting each other to get out. She lunged over between the seats. She opened the first one’s back, sinking her killing-claw in deep and yanking it out again. The other one fell through the door and bolted, shrieking like a pig. She leaped down after him, and she almost chased him but stopped short just in time.

Stupid human. Anyone could see that the tail of a blade-and-clatter was another blade!

She’d felt the weight of the blade-and-clatter when she hit it, and knew that her first plan was beyond her. She could not throw it onto its side and break its spinning wings. She could have done it with WingWatch, but not alone. Well, no matter.

She crouched on the ground next to the blade-and-clatter, and looked around. She could feel three sets of bloodheat left. They were hiding around the abandoned grumble-and-rolls.

“You are on my plane, now,” she told the hiding humans, knowing that they could not hear her. “You are all going to die down here…” She sprang away from the defeated blade-and-clatter.

The first human tried to aim his bang-and-pain at her, but it made no sound. She was on him before he could do more than gape stupidly at the tool in his hands. She jumped, and her killing-claw lashed out in the air.

“I hate hands!” she screamed, landing and leaping on. She ducked below the level of the grumble-and-rolls, and stalked the second human from behind.

He knew she was coming after him. She tracked his bloodheat and chased him.  He was running from one grumble-and-roll to the next, and as she came into sight she saw that he was yanking at the handles of grumble-and-roll doors. He was trying to find one to hide in. He saw her at the same moment that she saw him, spinning to face her as he yanked frantically at the next handle – and this one’s door opened toward him.

She sprang, but she was too late. He had thrown himself inside, and she slammed into the door just as it closed. She slammed into the transparent-flat and it shattered, and she forced her head in after him. She snapped at him with her teeth, but the space was too small. He was lying on his back, squeezed into a tiny space, and his heels were slamming painfully into her nose – hard blows, from muscular legs, painful.

She screamed, and pulled back. She couldn’t reach him that way. Broken transparent-flat came after her in a shower of splinters, and she shook it off her head. There had to be a better way! She had just decided to throw herself through the broad transparent-flat across the rear of the grumble-and-roll, when something bit her.

She whipped around.

There was an orange poison-feather in her haunch. She twisted back and picked the sharp feather free, but she knew it was too late. She stood up to her full height, and scanned for the bloodheat of the last human.

He was brave, this one. He was standing on the roof of a bigger grumble-and-roll, in full view. Maybe this one knew that hiding from her was pointless? She met his eyes, over the long beak of the bang-and-pain.

He dropped the bang-and-pain, and she sprang. He jumped off the roof and ran for his life.

She needn’t run through the machines – she could jump from one to the other. She was gaining on him, but between every leap she could feel herself growing weaker. WingWatch was right – she could feel the poison in her blood, weighing her bones as if she was as huge and heavy as the Mad Giant Person. She was only a few paces behind him, snapping her jaws in readiness, when he broke out into the sun.

He leaped across the concrete and shot off the edge.

She slammed to a halt on the very edge of the concrete, catching herself with her claws. The edge dropped off to deep water, cold and dark.

The human’s head broke the surface of the water, many feet away. He turned to face her. His arms were stroking the water under the surface, keeping his head up. He was surrendering to the cold depth of water, rather than face her.

She was torn for a moment between bloodlust and the impossibility of jumping in there. The poison was already weighing her down. If she went in there she would sink.

“Die there, then!” she screamed at him, and turned away.

She wobbled as she turned. She was already too heavy. There was one human left, but she did not have the time to chase him. She could hear more grumble-and-rolls coming – but she did not have the strength to do more than raise her head and listen. The sound was coming down the switch-backs out of the jungle.

Let them come. The poison would have her, and she would die. The last of the Real People would die here.

If she was going to die, she would die with her human.

Her ally, her friend, her parent… He was human, but he had changed sides. He had challenged his own kind to free the Real People. Dying with FirstHuman, and not alone would be one final snarl at the humans.

She kept her head up, knowing that if she let it sag once she would not get it up again. Her tail was too heavy to lift. How had she never noticed before how heavy a tail was?

FirstHuman was lying not far from the last of the grumble-and-rolls. He was lying on his side, not moving. At first he was a short distance away, but after only a few steps she knew he was too far after all. She did not have the strength to reach him. She almost gave up, but she was the alpha, and an alpha did not give up.

“I will die with you, FirstHuman,” she said, on the frequency that she used only for him.

She could not stand upright, but she would do it. She went to all fours. She was as weak as a hatchling, and so she would move like hatchling.

Her tail was dragging in the dirt. So undignified, to lose even the strength to raise her own tail. At least her pack-mates could not see her so weak. Her head was too heavy. Her legs were too weak. She was too tired - too tired. She wanted nothing more than to put her head down on the ground and close her eyes, to stop moving, and sleep.

“To die with you will be a fitting end,” she told FirstHuman. “I will end as I have begun.”

She did not have the strength left even to move on all fours. Her legs sagged uselessly under her, and her chest hit the ground, jarring her jawbone on the dirt.

Her eyes wanted to shut, so she focused her gaze on FirstHuman.

He did not move. She could see his eyes, closed. His fingers were limp, curled against the dirt.

She was the alpha! She would die where she chose. She would die with her human. She forced her head up again. She set her hind claws on the ground, and used the last strength in her haunches to shove her body along the ground the last of the way.

So close!

Just one more. Just one more shove. He was so close.

Her legs were too heavy. This would be the last service she would have from them. She raised her hind claws, propped them up one more time. She had only the strength to push her own weight a tiny, tiny distance, and then her legs sagged … but it was enough. Her nose was against his face.

She left her legs stretched out, and let them go limp. Thank you, legs… that will do. She sighed, as she let herself relax.

She could not raise her head, but her nose was against his face. She could smell his furry mouth. She sighed, knowing that her breath would reach his face in turn. She could not open her eyes, but she could feel his breath on her nostrils – and she could feel his bloodheat.

There was life in him still.

The grumble-and-rolls were coming to a stop around her. She heard humans singing to each other, back and forth. They were walking around her, their footsteps crunching on the dirt, but she would not have got up, even if her body had been listening. Her instincts were paralysed in a swamp of drowsiness. There was nothing left in her but to lie here.

They were singing frantically now, as they found what she had left of their friends. She could hear them, and feel their bloodheat, even though she could not open her eyes. They were running about.

FirstHuman’s bloodheat was low – but not plummeting into death. It had dropped sharply, and then it had stopped falling. His blood was still moving in his arteries. He was alive, not dying.

She had seen his core temperature fall that low before, she thought, sleepily. When had that happened? Oh, yes. His bloodheat had cooled while he had been deeply asleep last night.

He wasn’t dying, she realized: he was asleep.

The feathers weren’t poisoned. They were sleep-making needles! WingWatch’s bloodheat was out of sight, but she wondered if WingWatch was asleep too.

She felt bloodheat moving around. One of the humans walked over and stood over StripeSide and FirstHuman. The human put out one leg, set his foot on FirstHuman, and rolled him over like a dead goat.

There was a sharp burst of song from the bang-and-clatter, and the human standing over FirstHuman suddenly sang. He sang at FirstHuman. He kicked FirstHuman, hard. She could feel the bloodheat of his face – he was angry.

Humans did not have killing-claws to rip at each other, but they must have some small left-over instinct telling them to do damage with their feet. His kicks were thumping into FirstHuman as if he wanted to bludgeon him to death by brute force. She could hear the thumps.

She fought to open her eyes, but her whole body was paralysed. He was going to kill her human right in front of her, and she did not have the strength to do anything to prevent it.

Bastardbastardbastard, the human sang.

There was a shrill twingling-jingling sound. It was repeated. The human stopped kicking FirstHuman. Instead his bloodheat doubled over FirstHuman’s, blending momentarily. He stood up with a little piece of warmth in his hand. It was the ear-and-talk that FirstHuman had been speaking into earlier.

Kickhimagain MrBulgen…

StripeSide recognised the little voice through the ear-and-talk. It was the female human that FirstHuman had sheltered from the Mad Giant Person’s attack. She wasn’t sure if humans mated like the monkeys around the raptors’ cage did, but it was fairly obvious to see that FirstHuman raised his bloodheat when she was around and she raised hers back at him. The raptors had waited, intensely curious, to see if they would mate on the walk-way like the monkeys did, but they never had.

StripeSide could have shouted back on the ear-and-talk, but she kept quiet. She wasn’t going to give them an interruption that would let the human go back to killing FirstHuman. FirstHuman’s mate wouldn’t understand her, anyway.

What? Whothefuckareyou?

Kickmyemployeeagain MrBulgen andIwillhave enoughvideofootage tochargeyouwith attemptedmurder.

Dearing? Didyousee whathisfuckinganimal DIDTOMYTEAM! The human sang angrily in reply to the ear-and-talk.

Hisfuckinganimal isInGenpropertyMrBulgen, the female replied. AndOwenGradyisa JurassicWorldemployee… youwillfollow thestandardprotocol foraccidentsinvolving animaltranquillizers … Idohope weunderstandeachother MrBulgen.

The poisoned feather was too strong. StripeSide tried to listen to more of the song, but she was slipping away into sleep. The last thing she felt was the bloodheat of FirstHuman being picked up off the ground by other humans, and carried away.

Chapter Text

Owen woke up…

“Can you hear me, Señor Grady? Do you know where you are?”

“Where’s Blue?”

“You are in the Infirmary, Señor Grady…”

“Where are my raptors? Where’s Blue?”

“Just relax, Señor… You need to rest. Just lie back and sleep. Si, there we go…”

…………..

Owen woke up…

“Where’s Blue?” he asked, muzzily.

“Who is Blue?” A woman leaned over him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You are in the Infirmary, Señor Grady. Just relax. Everything is going to be fine…”

“Where’s Blue?”

“Who is Blue?”

“A raptor! My raptor! Shit! The helicopter! My raptors, where are they…?”

“A kidnapper?” she asked. “No, Señor, you have not been kidnapped. You are in the Infirmary.”

“Where’s Blue? How did I get here… Holy shit, I need to get out of here.”

“No, no, no, no, you can’t get out of bed!”

“They’re going to shoot my raptors! I need to get out of here! Let me go! Get off me! You shot me, you fuckers! You fucking shot me! Get off me!”

…………………….

Owen woke up. Barry was sitting next to his bed.

“Barry?” he asked.

Barry leaned over. “Comment ça va, mon ami?”

“Ehhh, ça va,” he said. He looked around. He was in a white walled room, in a bed with white sheets. For a moment his mind wondered if this was Claire’s room – but if it was Claire’s room, what was Barry doing here? And …

“Where’s Blue?” he asked.

“She is fine,” Barry said. “And so is Delta. She’s back in the paddock. Just rest, mon ami… Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t, I have to get up and go to the paddock…” But sleep was already dragging him down again.

…………………….

Owen woke up. Barry was still sitting next to his bed. He focused his eyes.

“Barry?”

Barry had been watching TV. Claire Dearing was on the screen, delivering a self-assured soundbite above a CNN logo.

“Comment ça va, mon ami?”

“Like shit,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

He looked around the room. He was lying on his back in bed, but not his own bed. There was a railed curtain all the way around him. The curtain, walls and bedding were white, but the lights had been turned way down, to a warm dusky peach.

“Where am I?”

“Ah-ha! A new question!” Barry said. He sat forward and looked at Owen more closely.

“Have we had this conversation before?”

“Are you really in there, this time?” Barry asked.

He considered this. “I think I’m in here.”

“You’re in the Infirmary. You got shot with a tranquillizer dart.”

Owen tried to sit up, and found to his shock that his wrists were wrapped in thick leather restraints. The last two fingers on his right hand had been wrapped stiffly together in a bandage.

“What the hell?” he complained, jerking his arms.

“That is what happens when you wake up, all thrash and aggressive and attack,” Barry said. “Doctors don’t like being punched.”

“What? When did I …? I wouldn’t … Where’s Blue? I need to get up! Barry! Take these off me! I need to get up! Where’s Blue?”

“No,” Barry sighed. “Back to the same old questions. Go back to sleep.”

………………….

Owen woke up.

He was still lying in the hospital bed. Barry was still sitting next to his bed, still watching CNN. The talking heads were still analysing Jurassic World.

… Well, first of all, we have to approach this incident from the standpoint of the classic swiss-cheese-model of disaster risk …

“Can’t you watch something else?” he complained.

“No.”

… Jurassic World has always had to plan for a very specific category of risk, much like the cruise industry…

“Did I fall asleep again?”

“Oui.”

“Oh, God.”

“Just relax,” Barry said. “Do you know where you are?”

“Infirmary?” Owen said. “I’m still on the Island, I think.”

“Then you know everything is fine. All is well. Blue and Delta are both in their paddock, safe and sound. They got darted and carted.”

“They’re going to be mad as hell when they wake up.”

“They are awake long ago. You are the one who needed hospital.”

“I need to go to the paddock, and make sure they’re okay,” he said. He jerked his arms. His wrists were still in restraints. “Can you get these off me?”

“I’ll ask the doctor.” Barry got up, and went out past the curtain.

…Would have been controlled easily, had the Asset Control Unit been on stand-by, but of course we’re now receiving reports that the ACU was in fact on the other side of the island at the time, dealing with what we’re told may have been a juvenile T-Rex …

……............…….

Owen woke up.

… Masrani’s death was of course a tragedy, but…

“Barry?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Blue’s really not okay.”

“Yes, she is. She woke up from the tranquillizer, and she is fine.”

“I’m not talking about the tranquillizer. Blue is really not okay. I have something to tell you, and you’re not going to believe it…”

“I know,” Barry said. “That man Lowery showed me his videos, because you were out cold. He pestered me all day, until I watched them. That one is a fool. He thinks Delta is his friend.”

“Delta is his friend,” Owen said. He pushed himself up to a sitting position on his elbows, and then sat back against his pillows. “He gave her a plastic Apatosaurus…” he explained.

“Why?” Barry said, blankly.

“How am I supposed to know?”

Barry frowned.  “No.  I think you are still not awake.”

“I am awake! Hang on… what do you mean, all day? How long have I been here? What time is it?”

“It’s nearly time for the lunch…”

“Oh, okay. That’s not so bad…”

“… on Tuesday.”

“What? There’s no time to waste!”

“No, no, no, where are you going?”

“Where are my clothes?” He threw the blankets aside, and rolled to get his legs out of bed. He was wearing a hospital gown. “Hey, someone undressed me. When did that happen?”

“You’re not going anywhere! You need to get back into bed!”

“I need to go to the paddock,” Owen said. He shoved himself upright out of the bed, and the room suddenly swirled around him. He pitched helplessly forward.

Barry stepped forward just in time to catch him under the armpits before he hit the floor.

“And this is why you are not going anywhere!” Barry said. He shoved Owen back over into the bed. Owen fell over backwards. “You need to stay there, and sleep off the last of the tranquillizer!”

Owen couldn’t fight Barry and his own waves of dizziness at the same time. He let Barry manhandle him back into bed and heap the bedding over him again.  “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything to keep you in that bed!”

“Will you go out to the paddock?” Owen asked. “There’s something in my backpack that the raptors will want to get back.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“InGen has shut down the paddock. They’ve sent in a crowd of cretins called Xenocore Active Solutions – and they mean business. They won’t allow you or me or any of us anywhere near the raptors.”

“But…”

“Do you think I am sitting here because I like listening to you snore? I have nowhere else to go, Owen! I am fired, too, just as sudden as you! The raptors are out of our hands. We can do no more for them now.”

……………………

Owen woke up.

“You let me fall asleep again!”

“You are going to sleep off that dart,” Barry said.

Owen opened his mouth, summoned the worst of his French vocabulary, and told Barry exactly what he thought of him.

“And now you are awake,” Barry said. He turned his head to someone on the other side of the curtain. “Mademoiselle. You have come at the right time.”

Claire Dearing came around the corner of the curtain. She wore a black jacket that made her pale skin seem to glow. He wondered if she was wearing heels, but her legs were out of sight between the foot of the bed and the curtain. She paused to pull the curtain closed behind her, and then turned to face Owen. “Mr Grady.”

Owen raised his eyebrows. “Oh-Wen,” he reminded her.

“Owen,” she conceded, and he could definitely see the little smile she was trying to conceal.

Suddenly, thrashing to get up seemed far too wimpy and undignified. He raised his hands behind his head and laced his fingers, as if he was lounging comfortably. He lowered his voice.

“I always knew I would see you in bed one day,” he drawled, “but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Barry snorted. “Tu es tres stupide!”

“Comment?” Owen asked.

“Yes, you are stupid!” Barry spoke in French. “As soon as you see your amour you turn from a professional and an adult into the class clown!”

“It’s a strategy!” Owen pointed out.

“It’s a strategy designed to make you look like an idiot! What will you do if she shows you her bosoms? Run away to join Cirque du Soleil? You are an idiot.”

“I can’t help it!” Owen said. “Look at her! She’s hot! Hey – do you think she knows how to sail a yacht?”

Claire cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said politely.  “I hate to interrupt the Alliance Francais, but I have a very tight schedule. Mr Bompaka – may I have a few minutes in private with Mr Grady?”

“Yes, of course,” Barry said. “I will go and get a coffee,” and he pushed his way through the curtain. Owen could hear him laughing scornfully, all the way out of the ward.

Claire looked around.  She sat down in the chair Barry had been sitting in, and then immediately looked uncomfortable. The raised hospital bed meant that she was looking awkwardly up at Owen, over the edge of his bed.

“You can sit on the bed, if you’ll be more comfortable,” Owen said. He sat up and pulled the bedclothes straight, suddenly eager to persuade her to stay and talk longer. “There aren’t any tubes or pipes or anything under here …”

“I think I’ll stand,” she said. She stood up. “Mr Grady.”

“Oh-wen.”

“Mr Grady,” she repeated, with a note of steel in her voice. “Lowery showed me his videos. They make for very interesting viewing. Where exactly did you think you were going to take them?”

Oh, God, Lowery… He had thought he could trust Lowery! He had seemed absolutely besotted with Delta.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Owen said. He tapped his temple with one finger. “You see, my memory is kinda fuzzy right now. Getting shot up with dinosaur-grade tranqs will do that.”

She sighed, and the little smile flickered around her lips.

“Owen. Let us understand each other.”

“Yeah, always a good place to start.” He stared at her, and folded his arms.

“Your raptors are your responsibility. And I am the operations manager of Jurassic World. Everyone and every-thing in Jurassic World is my responsibility. But your raptors were never Jurassic World assets in the first place, were they? Not in my portfolio.”

“Not your problem?” he asked.

“Not my problem. Not, technically, my problem…”

She raised one exquisite eyebrow, and he wondered if she was going to make them her problem. They might not be her responsibility, but they had killed her employees, in her park.

“And non-technically?” he asked.

“If the Indominus had reached the ferry terminal, she could have killed thousands. The public knows only that Masrani crashed his helicopter into the roof of the Aviary, and we had a serious containment crisis. Fatalities occurred.  Only a handful of people know the truth.”

“I heard,” he nodded toward the TV.

“But you and I know that I owe the future of Jurassic World to your raptors.  You and they saved thousands of lives - and those lives were my responsibility.  And right now, I have more than enough trouble on my hands looking after my own animals, without also worrying about someone else’s animals as well.  If the raptors disappeared over-night, well ... they're not my problem, are they?  I hope we understand each other, Mr Grady?”

She tilted her head inquiringly. Her long red hair kissed her cheeks. Her eyes twinkled at him, over that half-smile.

He pursed his lips, and let out a sigh of relief. “You said it,” he agreed. “We should probably stick together. For survival.”

She smiled at him, just long enough to make his blood pressure rise. She wasn't only smiling at his words, he realized; she was smiling at the effect her own words were having on him as well.

He raised one knee under his blanket, to conceal the true extent of the effect she had on him. “I need to get the raptors out of there,” he said. “If you’ve been speaking to Lowery, you already know why.”

“What I understood of it, anyway,” she agreed. “Lots of ranting about parrots and gorillas and sign-language. He is so taken with Delta, it might even be cute, if she wasn’t … well.” She shook her head. “We both saw what she did to Hoskins.”

“Lowery has the footage,” Owen said. “But the footage isn’t enough. The raptors should never have been made at all, but now that we know they’re intelligent, we can’t let InGen shoot them. It’s too late to get the genie back in the bottle. You can’t just put down an intelligent being like an aggressive dog at a shelter.”

“No-one is going to shoot them, Owen.”

“They’ve killed people,” he said. “Zoo animals that kill or maim people are almost always put down. You know, that’s the secret fear that everyone who works with captive predators has, at the back of their minds, all the time? Lions, tigers, bears – people mess around, and they get hurt, and then the animals get shot for acting on their own instincts. I’ve been warning people that they’re too dangerous for as long as I’ve been working with them…”

“They’re not zoo animals,” she said. “They were never zoo animals. They were research animals – test subjects.”

“Subjects in research that flopped,” he said.

“The raptor programme didn’t flop, Owen.”

“Using the raptors to hunt the Indominus didn’t work,” he pointed out. “They turned on ACU. The Indominus spoke to them, and they turned on us faster than Kim Philby.”

“I’m not talking about the Indominus,” she said, patiently. “I’m talking about Blue taking out a helicopter.”

“She … what?”

“Oh,” she said. She sat down on the end of the bed. “Barry didn’t tell you.”

“Didn’t tell me what? Barry just said they were okay.”

“After you got darted and went down,” she said, “Blue took out the helicopter that shot you down.”

He didn’t understand. “How does a velociraptor take out a helicopter?”

“She played dead. They thought she was tranq’ed as well, and they landed to load them all up in the trucks – and then she attacked. She went intentionally for the pilot first - and then she went after the rest of them. She killed four of the crew outright, and maimed another three before one of them darted her.  They’re still in Intensive Care. Only two men got away unhurt – one of them had to jump into the sea to get away from her.  I’ve seen Lowery’s footage, Owen. And I really, really don’t want to have to watch that again.”

“Oh, God, that’s wrecked everything!” he groaned. “InGen is going to shoot her!”

“They’re not going to shoot her! You still don’t understand. Blue did exactly what she was designed to do. She took down the men who took down you. She proved the raptor programme is viable, with the right handler, and the right training. Wu succeeded. InGen Security will have their defense contract as soon as the Pentagon sees the video of Blue jumping into that helicopter.”

“The right handler?” Owen sat up, horrified.  "Does InGen think they’ll just be able to adopt out the raptors like service dogs, and they’ll do their thing?  It’s never going to work! Wu thinks he’s succeeded, but he’s working with only half of the puzzle! They’ll figure out where they are, and what’s going on, and they’ll turn on anyone who tries to control them. The raptors aren’t service-dogs! They’re not even wild animals! They’re intelligent!”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘sapient.’”

“Why do you think I tried to steal them? I wanted to get them out of that paddock and into the jungle, before InGen has time to write out a kill order – or whatever they’re going to do.”

“They already know what they’re going to do. The Xenocore team is planning to move the raptors to another location – away from Isla Nublar.”

“They’re taking them away?”

“As soon as a new location has been prepared for them. Xenocore means to make sure that you never see them again. A ship is scheduled to take them away tomorrow.”

“Then I’ve got that long to get them out of there. As long as they’re in InGen hands, there’s no good ending for them. Either they’ll get shot out of hand, or they’ll be experimental animals for the rest of their lives!”

“I owe thousands of lives to Delta and Blue,” Claire said. “All of that,” she pointed to the TV screen, “would have been a thousand times worse without them. I have my hands full with crisis control – but any help I can give you, I will.”

“That’s all I need,” Owen said.

“Very well,” she said. She flicked her hair out of her eyes, and turned to go. “I’ll go and speak to the nurse about discharging you.”

“Awesome,” Owen gave her a thumbs up. “I need to get out to the paddock. I’ve been away from the raptors too long already.”

She paused by the curtain, her hand on the white fabric, and glanced at him over her shoulder. That twinkle was back in her eyes; delicately flirtatious.

“By the way, Mr Grady,” she said, “I do know how to sail a yacht…” She tilted her head every so slightly, savouring the surprise on his face.

“You … what?”

“It’s just one of many, many little skills I learned, when I was assistant-manager of Disneyland Paris…”

He choked, and she laughed at the look on his face, and stepped out of the curtain.

……………………………..

Owen was discharged into Barry’s care.

He was given a clean set of his own clothes, and a prescription for antibiotics, and strict orders not to fiddle with his bandages, where a splinter of cycad had to be dug out from the joint of his little finger. He stood patiently and listened to a lecture on the stupidity of sticking an open wound into water full of crocodile-dung and blood, and finally he was released through the automatic doors into the sunshine. He walked out into an afternoon of sun-sparkling rain-puddles and the roar of earth-moving equipment.

There were plenty of people around, he saw, but none of them were tourists. They had all been evacuated – and all of the tour guides, service crew and entertainment workers had been sent home with them. Jurassic World drew from the same hard-working, hard-partying crowd as the cruise industry and the Caribbean beach resorts.  With all of them gone, Isla Nublar was as empty as it was ever going to be.

Actually, he thought, if there was ever a good time to steal a pair of dinosaurs, this would be it. He followed Barry across the lot to his car.

Barry got into the driver’s seat. “And now, we take you home, and you can rest.”

“Nope.” Owen pulled the seatbelt across himself and buckled himself in – fumbling with his bandaged fingers.

“Yes. Doctor’s orders.”

“I’m not going home, I’m going to the paddock.” He rapped his knuckles on the dashboard. “Drive on. Let’s go.”

Barry started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot behind the Infirmary.

“I have told you already, going to the paddock is a waste of time. They won’t let any of us back. No, my friend. You need to rest. You nearly died from that dart.”

“Don’t make me throw myself out of a moving vehicle,” Owen threatened. “I am going to Blue, even if I have to walk there. I have to show her that I haven’t changed sides.”

“Changed sides?”

“That’s the only way we’ll get her to cooperate with the plan.”

Barry sighed. “What plan?”

“Well…” Owen stroked his moustache. “I don’t have anything concrete yet, exactly, just a general outline.”

“That’s good, mon ami, because it sounds like you are going to do something stupid.”

“Oh, no, this isn’t stupid,” Owen promised. “It’s common sense. I’m going to rescue Blue and Delta, and release them into the jungle.”

Barry braked so hard that Owen thrust both hands against the dashboard. He swore, first in Lingala, and then in French. “Release them? You are crazy! They are raptors!”

“It’s a perfectly rational thing to do!” Owen said, and started to explain about the rumours of the wild raptors in the jungle of Costa Rica.

They were still arguing when Barry pulled up in the shadow of the raptor paddock. Their car had not been stopped where the road came out of the jungle. No-one blocked their way as they got out of the car, and walked toward the vestibule-cage.

When they heard the sound of angry voices shouting and yelling, they understood why. The black Xenocore uniforms were all clustered at the gate into the vestibule. There was a bright green T-shirt in the middle of the black uniforms, and most of the angry shouting was being directed at the green T-shirt.

“Merde,” Barry muttered. “What’s he doing here?”

“We have to back him up. Come on! Lowery!” Owen shouted, and sprinted across the packed dirt to the cage. He weaved between the black uniforms, and put himself between Lowery and Bulgen. Bulgen had his fist knotted in the front of Lowery’s Pinky & the Brain T-shirt, and Owen shoved himself into Bulgen’s space.

“Hey, hey, hey, get off him!” he blared into Bulgen’s face. “Why are you beating up my guy?”

“Your guy?” Bulgen shouted. He let go of Lowery’s T-shirt rather than have Owen stand way too close – which had been Owen’s goal. “Are you behind this, Grady?”

Owen stepped forward into Bulgen’s space again, and stared into Bulgen’s eyes. “Behind what?” he snapped. “What am I behind, Bulgen? If I’m not behind another raptor trainer, what am I behind? Huh?”

“That’s not a fucking raptor trainer,” Bulgen said, stabbing his index finger over Owen’s shoulder. “That’s a dweeb.”

“They won’t let me talk to Delta!” Lowery complained. “They say they’re taking them away tomorrow!”

“Fuck that,” Owen said to Bulgen. “You’re not.”

“Fuck you,” Bulgen said. “We are. You’re not in charge of spit any more, Grady. InGen is done with you and your obstructive crap. These raptors are mine now, and –  Hey! Where the hell are you going?”

Behind Owen, Lowery had wrenched himself free from the black uniforms, and sprinted across to the first safety-gate. He threw himself against it and yelled, “Delta!”

The black uniforms caught up with him. They yanked him back by the arms, and decided this would be the perfect opportunity to slam him bodily against the bars a few times. From the ferocity on their faces, they wanted to emphasise their dislike of dweebs in general, and this dweeb in particular. Lowery’s glasses went flying.

“Hey, hey, that’s enough! Lowery!” Owen yelled, breaking away from Bulgen and leaping toward the vestibule. He yanked at the men around Lowery, forcing himself between them and Lowery for the second time. He didn’t glance at the cage, but he knew they were there.

“Hey-hey, take it easy! Take it easy! Bulgen, call your dogs off! Stand down! Stand down!” He grappled with Lowery, trying to disentangle him from his attackers. To give Lowery his due, he was clinging to the cage like an octopus.

“Delta’s in there!” Lowery shouted.

“I know she’s in there!” Owen shouted back. “Take it easy! Blue-on-blue,  we’re all friends here! Stand down!”

“Guys, he’s learned his lesson, get off him!” Bulgen shouted. “Grady, get out of here, now, before I throw your asses off that cliff. This is my show, now.”

Owen felt the rough hands grasping at his shoulders let him go.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re moving!” Owen twisted Lowery’s arm to pull him away from the safety-door. He spared a glance over his shoulder to the cage. He could see just the hint of a shape beyond the thick bars, but he knew that they were there, watching and listening. He thrust his hand up in the air in a signal he knew Bulgen would not recognise.

“Lowery, let’s go!”

“You can’t expect me to just leave them here, man…!” Lowery complained.

“I’m asking you to trust me!” he hissed into Lowery’s ear. He turned, and kept walking, dragging Lowery by one elbow. With his other hand, he changed the signal. He kept that signal in the air, until he was out of sight of the cage.

“We’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder, as he went.

“No, you won’t,” Bulgen sneered, still thinking that Owen was talking to him. “And if you send your dweeb around here to throw shit in that cage again, I’ll put a dart into him too and see how he likes it.”

Lowery made a movement to drag himself free and run back.

“No-no-no-no,” Owen hissed in his ear, but increased the pressure on Lowery’s arm. “Come away. Trust me. Come away. Now is not the time… We need to pick our battles…”

Lowery’s feet dragged in the dirt with his reluctance.

“We’re going,” Owen said to Barry, as he frogmarched Lowery past him to the passenger’s side of the car. “Start the car.”

“Merde,” Barry muttered, but he moved to the driver’s door, and got in. Owen pushed Lowery into the back seat, and jumped in the front. Barry started the car and hit the central-locking. There was an angry yell and a barrage of kicks to the back of Owen’s seat, as Lowery discovered the kiddie-lock. Barry U-turned fast to get away from the paddock, and drove out along the jungle road. He accelerated, and the car began to bounce over the ruts.

“Take it easy!” Owen said, over the back of his seat to Lowery.

“We can’t just leave them there!”

“We’re not leaving them there!” Owen explained. He twisted around, and grinned at Lowery over the back of the seat. “We’re going to steal them back!”

“We are?” Lowery’s dark eyebrows shot up. His face looked younger without his glasses.

“You crazy!” Barry said, and took his eyes off the road to stare at Owen. “And now you telling me he’s crazy too?” He had to turn forward and focus on driving, as the car threatened to dive into a deep pothole.

“What did you throw in there?” Owen asked Lowery.

“The claws.” Lowery sat back, folding his arms. “And Bronto. And all the black markers. I went and got your backpack from Mrs Frisby.”

“Lowery,” Owen said, “Right now, I think I could kiss you.”

“What?” Lowery said. “You mean I did something right?”

“Where do you think I was going?” Owen asked. “Bulgen thinks I was talking to him, but I wasn’t. I used the training signals to talk to Blue”

“The Moving sign, and then the Wait sign,” Barry explained from the driver’s seat. “None of the Xenocore guys knew what they were seeing. Very clever.”

“They need to know we haven’t forgotten them,” Owen explained. “Now at least they know they’ve got contacts on the outside who can help break them out.”

“Mais, non!” Barry muttered, shaking his head. “Not so clever.”

“If we’re going to steal them, man,” Lowery said, “we don’t have a lot of time. The ship to take them away is docking tomorrow.”

“That’s why we’re going to steal them tonight,” Owen promised.

Barry slammed on his brakes again. Owen had been sitting sideways, talking over the back of his seat to Lowery, and the car’s momentum sent him crashing into the dashboard.

“You nuts!” Barry shouted at Owen. “Tu es fou! You still don’t see that the raptors are not orcas, and you are not in Free Willy! And you!” he told Lowery. “You even more fou! You saw what Blue did at the East Dock – he didn't!”

“I know what she did at the East Dock,” Owen said. “Claire told me.”

“So how can you even think about letting them loose?” Barry demanded. “In their paddock they’ll be safe. They’ll be fed, and looked after, for the rest of their lives.”

“Better dwell in the midst of alarms,” Lowery murmured under his breath, “than reign in this horrible place…”

“Keeping them in captivity won’t keep anyone safe!” Owen shouted at Barry. “It’s because they’re not orcas that I want to release them! Don’t you see it? It’s all happened before, and it’s all going to happen again, and again, and again!” He beat time with his fist on the dashboard. “They reach a certain age; they figure out where they are; and things go to hell! It happened with Hammond’s raptors; it happened with the generation before I got here; and now it’s happened with Blue!”

“They can never be domesticated, man,” Lowery said.

“If InGen takes these raptors away, a whole lot of people are going to die!” Owen said. “These Xenocore guys don’t know about raptors; they don’t know how dangerous they are. And Blue will not stop. She is ten times the killing machine that the Indominus was. She’s older, she’s smarter – and she’s angry. Blue will not stop.”

“And so letting her run around in the jungle is a better idea?” Barry said. “That’s your plan?”

“Okay, what do you suggest?” Owen said. “What's the alternative? Do you want to take your gun into the paddock, and put a bullet in both of them? Because that’ll be quicker and kinder than leaving them there.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Barry. “No-one wants to shoot them.”

“Barry,” Owen said. “Listen. This is going to happen, with or without you. You can help us, or you can stand aside.”

“Uh, guys?” Lowery said, and his hand reached over between the seats and pointed through the windshield. “I think someone wants to come past?”

There was another 4x4 facing them on the dirt, and it flashed its lights. Barry had slammed on his brakes, and they were blocking the double-ruts of the road.

“Merde,” Barry muttered. He put the car into gear, and pulled sideways off into the undergrowth, allowing the other 4x4 to pass him along the narrow track. The other car flashed its hazard lights in thanks, and disappeared around the bend. Barry pulled the car back onto the road, and drove on.

“Are you in, or out?” Owen asked.

“You still both fou,” Barry muttered. He was glaring over the steering wheel.

“Yeah, you’ve covered that point.”

“You are going to need someone with more than two brain cells, if you want to do this thing. Oui. I am in.”

Chapter Text

Animals needed to be fed, which meant animal handlers needed to be fed, which meant that the Gondwanaland Grill and Pub was still open.  They ordered two filter coffees and a double-thick Choccosaurus with fossil sprinkles, and walked out into the sunshine to make plans. They found a column that had collapsed sideways like a Roman ruin, and sat alongside it as they plotted out what they were going to do.

“Okay, let’s go over this one last time,” Owen said. “At three-thirty, the moon is down. The guards are tired, and they’re ready for their shift-change.”

“Owen and I ride on the motorbikes,” Barry said, “and Lowery creates the diversion from the Control Room…”

“I can come up with the kind of emergency alarm, up with which they will not put,” Lowery promised.

“When the diversion happens, Barry and I open the gates,” Owen continued, “and I ride off on the bike with Blue and Delta through the jungle, while Barry heads out along the road in Lowery’s car, drawing the goons away.”

“Then, while they’re all chasing me,” Barry said, “Lowery opens the gates into the next sector…”

“Where I’ll have left the truck ready with the keys in the ignition,” Lowery said. “Owen ditches the bike, and gets the raptors into the back of the truck –.”

That was going to be the only tricky part of the whole plan, Owen thought. “I talk the raptors into getting in the truck and lying low. I pull the tarp over them, and head through the gate into the Residential Area. ‘Where have you been, Mr Grady?’ ‘Oh, nowhere special, just out for a drive…’”

“And while you're driving through the gate, I’ll be deleting all the camera feeds,” Lowery took up the story.

“And when Bulgen and his cochons catch up to me,” Barry said, “I disappear into the jungle.”

“Can you handle them?” Lowery said.

“Bah!” Barry said, waving off the stupid question. “I was born in the jungle! C’est simple!”

“I can turn off the raptors’ radio trackers from the Control Room,” Lowery said. “But I can’t stop someone else turning them back on again.”

“They’ve got trackers again?” Owen asked.

“Yeah, Xenocore put them back in when they were asleep,” Lowery said. “They have a twenty-mile range, those trackers. You can track them with a laptop app and an antenna, if you have the right frequency."

“The raptors don’t tolerate trackers,” Owen promised. “They’ll dig them out on their own, just like the Indominus.”

“But if they don’t,” Lowery said, “we’ll have to take them out. We can’t take them off the island with trackers telling everyone where they are. I can probably take out Delta’s one if you’ll show me how to do it.”

“As soon as you get to my place,” Owen said.

“Maybe you should leave the vet stuff to us,” Barry said to Lowery. “Doing veterinary procedures on a dangerous animal can be tricky. It takes practice.”

“Um, I hate to say it but I don’t think Delta is going to let anyone do it but me,” Lowery said.

“You are not a raptor handler,” Barry said.

“Lowery is a raptor handler," Owen said, interrupting, "because a raptor says he is. That's the only qualification that matters now. The more I see of them out of their paddock, the more I think I was never really handling them at all.  Barry, we’ve had their pack dynamics all backwards...” Owen felt his phone vibrating, and pulled it out.

“It’s from Thornton,” he said. “TREX CATWALK. 10MINS. OK?” He read the text message aloud.

“Maybe he wants to explain how he is suddenly working for Bulgen?” Barry complained.

“He’s working for Bulgen? ”

“I saw him at the paddock, wearing a Xenocore uniform.”

“We’ll find out,” Owen said. “If he’s working for Bulgen, he’ll have seen Blue and Delta.”

The Tyrannosaurus Kingdom was deserted.

The viewing areas were entirely separate from the handlers’ area, and none of the handlers had any reason to be in here.

The viewing area in the T-Rex kingdom was built into an enclosed catwalk. There were thick acrylic windows in the sides of the catwalk, allowing a dino’s-eye-view into the T-Rex’s dark and private world. The catwalk twisted through the paddock, designed to look like an huge fallen tree. The lights in the walkway were off, until Lowery went into a concealed control hatch and switched them on.

Thornton was late, so they sat down on a bench to wait for him.

“Barry,” Owen said, and then broke off his words as a deep rumble came to his ears.

There was something moving beyond the dark glass.  A huge shape moved in the dark, and formed up into a massive grinning face. The T-Rex brought her face right down to the viewing window. Her pupil tightened as she came into the light, and stared in at the humans.

Owen froze. All the hairs on the back of his neck and arms rose in a cold wave. 

The T-Rex had a habit of looking back at the humans looking at her. It was always a winning moment for the tourists, and one of the highlights of Jurassic World – particularly since no-one could predict when she would choose to do it. Close-up photos of Rexy’s face were on thousands of Facebook pages.  People seemed endlessly thrilled by the idea that a huge carnivore was watching them hungrily through the glass.

It was less fun when she had nearly succeeded at eating you, just a few nights ago.  Owen found his mouth dry.  He swallowed. 

“There she is!” Lowery said. He walked right up the glass and looked up at Rexy’s eye, as if he couldn’t quite see her from a distance. “Hello, Rexy! How ya doing, old lady!” 

The eye swivelled to examine him back. 

“I am glad she came back on her own,” Barry said, walking next to Lowery. “I was worried ACU would shoot her.”

“Naah,” Lowery drawled. “Nobody is going to shoot old Rexy! She’s literally the face of this place – she’s on the logo, all the merchandising, all the TV spots, everything.”

Owen said nothing.  His stomach was in a knot. 

He was safe, he told himself. He was sitting inside tons of engineered concrete and steel. He knew the T-Rex could not get in here. The T-Rex herself knew she could not get in here. And he knew she could not recognise him as the snack that eluded her on the road.

And yet it was difficult to inhale, through a chest suddenly too tight. There had been no glass between them on the road outside the Control Room.  He could still feel the the T-Rex’s breath as she sniffed his scent through the open door. 

He was afraid.  He had never been afraid of an animal in his entire life. It was not a good feeling.

The huge face fell into shadow, as the T-Rex backed away from the window. She turned around, stalking back to the dark. They could hear her massive footfalls as she moved away. Owen felt his chest relax. He was sitting behind Lowery and Barry, and he was glad neither of them was looking at him. He was sure his dread would have shown on his face.

“If you ask me,” Lowery said, blithely unconcerned, “this old lady is the reason this place is going to survive.”

“Jurassic World will never re-open," Barry said, surprised.

“Er, not,” Lowery said. “We’ll be open again in less than a year.  Wait and see! People died in the Costa Concordia, but the cruise industry didn’t collapse, did it?”

“There is difference between a shipwreck, and being eaten by predators, n’est-ce pas?” Barry said, sombrely.

“You’re wrong,” Lowery said. “Look at Rexy. Everybody knows Rexy ate people. But people love her. People come here again and again just to look at her. People get tattoos of her.”

“People are crazy,” Barry said.

“People love monsters. They come to Jurassic World because there are monsters here. And now, everyone knows the monsters are legit.  Legit monsters, man, with legitimate teeth.  Hell, look at the shark-diving industry! If sharks didn’t eat people, nobody would pay serious bucks to dive with them.  Nobody pays big money to swim with pilchards!" 

“Who’s swimming with pilchards?” a voice called from behind them.

They all turned around. Thornton was coming up the staircase. He was wearing Xenocore’s black uniform.

Thornton had first arrived in Jurassic World with the crocodile from the Australia Zoo, and Owen had hired him because he already had experience with dangerous reptiles, and because he had worked with Steve Irwin. He had a Queensland twang, and because of his accent and his long blond hair some of the other animal-handlers had nicknamed him ‘Bindi.’

“Owen, mate!” Thornton drawled. “How ya doing?”

“Fine,” Owen said. “You?” He got up off the bench, and turned his back resolutely to the window.

“Yehhh, no worries! I brought these,” Thornton said, holding out his hand. He was holding Lowery’s glasses. “The dweeb dropped them.”

“My eyes!” Lowery said. He snatched the glasses out of Thornton’s hands. He stuck them on his face – and then he plucked them off again just as fast, and started polishing them on the Pinky & the Brain shirt.

Thornton leaned on the steel railing that stopped tourists from banging on the window. He folded his arms. “I saw what you did back there, mate,” he said to Owen. “Very clever.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Owen said. He sat down on the bench again.

“Come on, you signalled the raptors,” Thornton insisted. “I know what I saw. I’ve been working with the raptors for a year.”

“And now you’re working for Bulgen?” Owen nodded toward Thornton’s clothes.

“Yehhh, ” Thornton drawled, his twang very clear. “Him and me were mates, way back when. Come on, mate, stop changing the subject – what are you planning?”

“Nothing,” Owen said. He raised his hands, palms out.

"Liar." 

“I was saying goodbye to my girls, that’s all! I’ve worked with them so long, I couldn’t walk away without saying goodbye.”

“How do the raptors look to you?” Barry interrupted, breaking in before Owen ran out of bitter lies.

“Yehhh,” Thornton scratched his hair. “Don’t know about them, mate.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, they look all right.  Their scars seem to be healing up, no worries there. Delta’s going to have a few nasty scars, but other than that, they look okay. If I didn’t know better I’d think they were hunky-dory.”

“But?”

“But … their behaviour’s gone really cock-eyed.”

“How?” Owen asked.

“They’re not doing anything,” Thornton said. “They're just standing around, staring.  No-one else at Xenocore knows bugger-all about raptors, but I’ve been watching these fellows for a year, and they’re just not acting like raptors are supposed to.  They don’t jump for food any more, they don’t make noises, they don’t even wag their tails.”

“Raptors don’t wag their tails!” Lowery said.

“What do you know?” Thornton scoffed, scowling at Lowery. “You’re not a raptor handler.”

“He’s right," Owen said. "Raptors don’t wag their tails.”

“Course they do!” Thornton said. “Come on, mate, I’ve seen them. They wag their tails and jump for attention, just like dogs.”

“No, they don’t, ” Owen explained, patiently. “That's not raptor behaviour. It’s dog behaviour, that they copied from a real dog. Someone brought a German Shepherd to the paddock a few years ago. They watched how the dog acted when he was training it, and they started copying the dog’s behaviour when I was training them.  They wag their tails to look friendly.  It’s a performance.”

“Well, they're not doing it now.”

“It’s one of the truisms of science,” Owen said. “You can’t study something without affecting it. And these animals are studying us right back, all the time.  We've learned more about raptors with these two than ever before – but they have learned even more about us.”

“Delta taught herself to go up and down in the elevator,” Lowery said. He sounded proud.

“Well, they're not learning now,” Thornton said. “Bulgen tries to train them, and they just stare at him. All they do is stand there, and stare at us.” He held up two fingers under his eyes, to describe the intensity of that stare.

“That’s not a good sign,” Barry said. “A raptor staring at you is a raptor getting ready to eat you.”

“It’s creepy as hell," Thornton said.

“What did I tell you?” Owen said to Barry. “This has all happened before, and it's going to happen again. Xenocore doesn’t know what they’re doing, and people are going to get killed. We need to get the raptors out of there.”

“We will,” Barry promised.

“Whoa, did I hear that right?” Thornton said. “You are planning something.”

“We’re planning a prison break,” Owen said. He couldn’t help himself; he started to grin at the sheer cheek of what he was planning.

“Errrr, Owen?” Lowery said. “Are you sure we can –?”

“Yes, we can,” Owen said. “Don’t worry.”

“When?” Thornton interrupted. “What can I do?”

“If we’re caught, you’ll lose your job,” Owen warned. “In fact you’ll probably be deported.”

“No worries, I’ll just go back to Brizzy,” Thornton shrugged. “Come on, mate, let me help you.”

“We’re going to do it tonight,” Owen said. “The ship is coming tomorrow, right, Lowery?”

“Tomorrow morning at ten,” Lowery answered. He didn’t look very happy. “Freighter called Nicodemus II. They’ll anchor offshore and lift them off with a heavy-lift chopper.”

“Owen, mon ami, ” Barry said, in French, “Are you sure we can trust him?”

“He’s worked with us for a year!” Owen said, in the same language. “And he worked with Steve Irwin before that! Irwin was all about saving dangerous animals!”

“I don’t trust him,” Barry said. “Irwin or no Irwin.”

“Yehhh, can we have that again? In English, this time?” Thornton interrupted again, looking annoyed.

“We have a plan,” Owen said to him. “All we need is someone to make a diversion, just long enough for Barry and me to get the paddock open.”

“I thought I was the diversion,” Lowery complained.

“You’ve still got an important job – you have to give overwatch, and delete all the evidence,” Owen said to him. “Thornton, after the raptors are out, we need to make sure that the Xenocore guys don’t chase me. That’s the most important thing. If they run after the raptors, they’ll get chomped. They have to run after Barry.”

“You don’t need a diversion, you need a red herring,” Thornton said. “Too easy!”

“We’re going to come at three-thirty,” Owen said. “So make sure you’re on duty and awake at three.”

“Aye aye, captain!” Thornton gave a mock-salute. “I’ll have the whole lot of them running around in circles! Do I wait for your signal, or just let rip?”

“No,” Owen said. “We don’t want to risk leaving evidence that you’re with us. If you find you can’t arrange a diversion, leave it, and Lowery can do that. The only important thing is that they must run after Barry.”

“And then?”

“And then,” Owen said, “We get the raptors into the residential area, and hide them in my bungalow.”

“In your what?” Thornton asked.

“You heard me. We’re going to hide them in my place – at least until we can get them off the island.”

“You’re mental,” Thornton said.

“That’s what I said,” Barry sighed.

“I'm going to ask Lefty if I can borrow his flat-bed truck,” Lowery said. He stood up, scrunching his Choccosaurus cup in his hand. “And then I got to get to the Control Room for my shift.”

“Yeah,” Owen agreed. “Forward me the GPS coordinates of the truck.”

“Yeah, man. Wilco, and all that.” Lowery went down the staircase.

“What makes him a raptor handler, all of a sudden?” Barry asked, as the sound of Lowery’s footsteps died away.

“I don’t get it either,” Owen admitted. “But he is a raptor handler now. Delta glommed onto him as fast as she took a dislike to Hoskins.”

“Are you jealous of the dweeb? ” Thornton teased.

“Don’t call him a dweeb,” Owen said. “It’s not a compliment.”

“Jealous? Of that? ” Barry asked. He added a Lingala word to show the stupidity of the idea. “Look at him!  Why him?  Why that?  He is a nerd. He is soft! He drinks Choccosaurus with little chocolatey sprinkles!  What does a velociraptor see in that?  What has he got? ”

What had Lowery got that Barry did not have, Owen guessed. Delta had always been Barry’s favourite, but she had never attached herself to him in the same way that she had to Lowery. Barry might not be jealous, but he couldn’t exactly be flattered.

“Maybe it’s his glasses?" Owen guessed.  "Maybe this is normal raptor behaviour that we’ve just never seen before, because no-one’s got that close to one before?”

“He needs the crash course in dinosaur handling,” Barry advised. “Delta is not a big bird. He needs to know about skin problems, and gizzard stones, and giving shots, and egg-binding…”

“I’ll teach him,” Owen agreed.  “But, first things first. I gotta get my place ready for a couple of house guests… and I should check my bike.”

“Yeah, time to adjourn,” Thornton said. He pushed himself away from the rail he had been leaning on, and turned to down the stairs. He paused in the doorway, and looked back. “What happened to the dog?”

“Dog?”

“The German Shepherd?”

“It died,” Owen said.

Barry frowned at Owen. “It didn't die. The raptors lured it into the paddock, and ate it.”

"They ate the dog?"  Thornton looked disturbed. “Charming.”

……………….

Owen’s bungalow seemed even more remote, now that the island was almost deserted. His bike had been brought back from where he’d abandoned it – probably by Barry, he thought. The first thing he did was unpeel the bandage on his hand and examine his stitches. It didn’t look so bad. He wrapped it up again, opened a Coke, and checked that his bike was still running smoothly. He could not afford to have a break-down tonight – not with a velociraptor running on either side of him.

When the sun began to sink over the mountains, he scrubbed the grease off his hands with sugar and dish-washing soap, and went inside.

He stood in the middle of his living room, looking around.

He didn’t have to worry about nosy neighbours seeing or hearing anything at night, but tomorrow he was going to have to keep the raptors inside during the day. He knew they understood keeping still and lying in wait – ambush hunting seemed to be instinctive for them. They probably knew more about keeping absolutely still for long periods than any human sniper in the history of war. But it was going to be a little complicated, explaining to them why they were hiding so long, and from what.

Thank God, he thought, at least he didn’t have to teach them the long way, with clickers and food treats and patience.

Most of his furniture could be moved into his bedroom or bathroom, or dragged outside. The bookcase that stood as a separator between his living room and kitchen could be dragged outside and that would open two rooms into one. His shelves were full of books on animal behaviour, but all of them were as useless to him now as Aristotle’s Historia Animalium. He could dump the books on the grass outside. The carpet and sofa would be ripped to shreds by their talons, but he would be leaving all that behind anyway.

He would have to leave everything behind. When he left the island, he would never be able to come back and get his stuff. He would have to ditch it all – his books, his bike, his scuba gear, his fishing gear – even the framed photo of himself meeting Steve Irwin. He had lived here for five years – long enough that his trailer had sprouted extensions like a hermit crab’s shell. He had been content here, he realized. He’d had a rich and satisfying life here. And now he was leaving it all behind.

He was mad, he thought.

And in the next instant, he realized that he was also stupid.

He lived here. He was known to live here. And he was known to be the one person in the world most interested in freeing the raptors. He’d already tried to steal them once. Even if InGen hadn’t figured out what he planned to do with Mrs Frisby, they couldn’t have missed the fact that he had been a good country mile away from the paddock. Unless Bulgen was too stupid to breathe unaided, he would know immediately who had stolen the raptors. He would come straight here, and he would bang on the door.

Owen imagined what would happen if someone banged on the door with Blue and Delta inside.

No. He was an idiot.

The solution sprang into his head. He knew just the place to hide the raptors. There was a nice big house, not far from here, where no-one would ever think to look for a couple of stolen dinosaurs … The house had a high fence around it, sheltering it from prying eyes. It even belonged to a fiery dragon who guarded her privacy jealously. Bulgen wouldn’t be knocking on that door.

He took out his phone, and dialled Claire.

“Monsieur Grady,” she said. “How do you feel? Have you been sleeping?”

Cupid’s dart went to his groin just as accurately in French.

“Oui, ” he lied. “I would like to apologise, mademoiselle, for anything I might have said under the influence of the drugs. My inhibitions were – ah – not able to conceal my intentions…”

“No apology necessary. You said nothing you have not already made perfectly clear,” she said. There was a sweet lilt in her voice. Was her pitch higher than usual? He had heard that women raised the pitch of their voices, when they were talking to men they found attractive.

“Are you real busy?” he asked, switching to English. “I need to talk to you.”

“Very busy. Right now, I have a planning meeting with Rooster PR, and a meeting with Masrani’s lawyers, and after that…”

“What time do you get off?”

There was a heartbeat of silence.

“Are you proposing to get me off, Mr Grady?” she asked.

Ye gods and little fishes, did he really hear that? "Give me a chance, and I’ll see what I can do,” he suggested.

“Dinner?” she asked. “At the Hilton. Shall we say, seven o’clock?”

He glanced at his watch. “Will you write an itinerary?”

“I could, ” she said, “but it would have only two items on it.”

Dinner, and …? He was so aroused he could barely stand.

“I have a different idea for you,” he said. “You book a room at the Hilton, tonight.”

“I think I like your idea.”

“And while you’re there, I’ll have a couple of house-guests in the Manager’s Residence…” He waited for her reaction.

There was a silence on the line. “House … guests. ” She returned to her normal pitch. "Guests?"

“A pair of lovely young ladies, who can be trusted not to drink milk out of the bottle. You’ve met them both! They’re a couple of polite, well-brought-up, young ... er, ladies.”

“You have got to be joking, Grady!”

“We’re going to get them out of there at three o’clock, but I need a place to stash them where no-one will think to look for them.”

“So you want to put them in my house? ”

“Just for tomorrow. And I won’t leave them alone for a minute. You and me can have dinner, all polite, in front of everybody. And then you stay the night at the Hilton.”

“This isn’t a date,” she said. “This is dinner and an alibi.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m going to be the sort of guy who sneaks out of bed in the middle of the night, and … er…”

“And goes out to party with the ladies of the night?” she finished, sweetly.

“Yeah,” he said.

“We need to discuss this in more depth. Seven o’clock, Owen. Don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’ll clear a space in my schedule. And, Owen?”

“Yeah?”

“No board shorts.”

…………..

He found that she had reserved the private room in the Hilton’s restaurant. He ordered a shot of tequila while he was waiting, just for old times’ sake, but was told that the bar was closed. He settled for a Coke instead, and sat back to wait for her.

Outside the private room, the team from Rooster PR came in, and took up a table for six on the other side of the sliding door. They weren’t terribly happy about the closed bar either, but they spread their paperwork and laptops all over the table-top, and settled in to talk shop over dinner. He could hear the buzz and clatter of their conversation – loud brays of jargon, and the clatter of cutlery. After a few minutes, the restaurant staff suddenly remembered to turn the canned music back on, and then the restaurant sounded like a living restaurant, and not a ghost-town.

Claire arrived late. She still wore the black jacket and skirt, and yes, there were heels. The waiter pulled the screen door closed, and left them alone.

He stood up. She paused, as she saw what he was wearing, and her lips curled up in a smile of appreciation. His suit was black, and his shirt was silk, and snow-white. If he had the chance, he was planning to take off the black jacket and roll up his sleeves, just to give show her his arms. Women liked his arms, he had been told.

“Mr Grady,” she said.

“Mademoiselle, ” he said, and pulled out her chair. She sat down, and he slid the chair under her, making the most of his chance to admire the flawless curve of her bottom.

“Thank you, Frank,” she said to the waiter. “Can you come back in ten minutes for our order?”

The waiter bowed and retreated.

“I tried to order you a tequila, but the bar is closed,” he said, sitting down next to her. “So I got you a Diet Coke instead.”

“Right now, I think I could use that tequila,” she said.

“How are you coping?”

“It’s been a nightmare. The clean-up of Main Street alone is going to cost millions. And there are Pteranodons on the mainland, and the Costa Ricans are going to make our insurance pay for their relocation. And some of the relatives are already getting their lawsuits ready, can you believe some people? And Masrani left most of his estate to his brother, but nobody will know exactly which parts until the will is read, and I can’t make any promises without knowing that, and every time I turn on the TV, I’m on it, and suddenly I have more sympathy for Schettino than I ever thought I could…”

“Don’t,” he interrupted. “Schettino ran away from his disaster. You stayed in the thick of things until the bitter end. Nobody is going to make T-shirts with Go Back Claire on them.”

“I’m not sure how that’s any consolation,” she said. “And Zara’s fiancee has collapsed. He was going to come over on New Year’s Eve to surprise her…”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m having endless fights with my sister, who just can’t understand that Zara being actually dead is a bit more important than Zach and Gray almost being dead?

“OK…” he said.

“And I don’t even know why I’m upset about that, because it’s not as if we were close before, I haven’t had anything in common with her since she got married and had kids and morphed into this horrible right-wing hag overnight, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you about my stupid sister anyway… it’s such a stupid thing to be upset about…”

She stopped, and pressed both her hands to her face.

"Right," he said, because he was sure he was expected to say something. Her sister sounded like a real pisscat, he thought. He hadn’t seen much of the sister, but he remembered a squeaky-voice, and a pinched, judgemental face. The thought of the pisscat adding extra problems to Claire’s burden now, of all times, made his anger rise in a wave.

A small sob broke out behind her hands.

“Hey,” he said, dismayed. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if she was crying behind those hands, but he’d never known what to say to crying women.

“Hey, it’s okay. I meant what I said before. We’re going to stick together, you and me. For survival. It’s going to be okay.” He reached out awkwardly, and patted her shoulder.

She nodded, and made a wet sniffing sound, and then she lowered her hands. Her eyes and mouth were red, but she wasn’t crying.

“I’ll be all right,” she said, firmly.

“Yeah,” he agreed, sitting back. “Sure.”

“I will, ” she insisted. “This was an eventuality, that’s all. And I planned for every eventuality. I have a plan, I just have to stick to it. This is what I’m trained to do. It’s just … actually doing it is different to the drills.”

“You need a break,” he said. “Put the plan on hold. Have dinner with me. That’s all. Don’t think about the park. Don’t think about lawyers, or the media, or your sister. You need some R&R, or you’ll snap like a wire.”

“Yes. You’re right,” she said, resolutely. She squeezed her hands together into fists on the white tablecloth. “R&R. Even the Army allows time for R&R, right? And it has been,” she sucked in a breath, and let it out again, “such a very long day.”

“Atta girl!” He reached over and put his hand over hers. “Tell you what. You tell them to open the bar, and we’ll have a tequila.”

She stared at him, surprised. And then, after a moment, she smiled. “I’m still on that diet, Owen.”

“Aww.”

She giggled.

“There,” he said, pointing to her. “That was a laugh! That was totally a laugh. I’ll drink to that laugh.”

He raised his Coke to her, and then tipped it back in a deep draught. She drank too, and when she put her glass down she sniffed, and cleared her throat.

“So. Owen. Talk to me. You called me about a plan?”

“Hey, no!” he said, sitting back. “You’ve got enough on your plate. Leave the raptors to me.”

She shook her head. “The raptors are a completely separate problem,” she said. “I need something else to think about. Besides, if you take them away, they’re one less thing I have to think about. Let’s talk about raptors.”

“Is it safe to talk here?”

“Oh yes. Mr Masrani and I used to have crisis meetings here all the time. We hashed out the bird flu crisis right here.”

“Bird flu crisis?” he asked.

“You didn't hear about it,” she said. “Because it never happened, did it? There was no bird flu crisis. And if you didn’t hear about the bird flu crisis, no-one else is going to hear about my house-guests.”

“We’re going to steal them back tonight, and sneak them into the Residential Sector,” Owen said. “After the immediate fuss goes down, we’re going to take them to the mainland, and then let them go into the jungle.”

“Are you sure that will be safe?” she asked.

“It’ll be a damn sight safer than letting InGen take them away. And if it’s true that there are wild raptors hiding deep in the jungle, then we know that they don’t just hunt human beings mindlessly.

She turned her head. “If,” she said.

“They’re smart enough to figure out that if they kill people, other people will come after them. And you’ve seen for yourself that they don’t just attack mindlessly. They think. ”

“As long as they’re doing their thinking somewhere else, far away from my park.” She reached into her handbag on her lap, and her hand came out with a key and a slip of paper. “My key, and my alarm code. My housekeeper and gardener evacuated with the rest, so the house is completely empty.”

He closed his hand around the key and paper, and stuck them into his suit pocket.

“What about the other problem? The one I phoned you about from the Control Room.”

“Wu was seen leaving with InGen during the evacuation, but nobody has seen him since. I believe it is safe to say he has abandoned Jurassic World.”

“What are you going to do without him?”

“It’ll take longer to reopen without him, but we’ll manage.”

“I thought nothing here would exist without Wu,” Owen said.

“Oh, it wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That’s why he’s upset that he’s never got that Nobel he says he deserves. But genetic extraction is not the magic it used to be. 99% of the work in the Creation Lab has always been done with computers – Wu was just the best at the other 1%. He has a talent for looking at a sequence and guessing what it does. Mad skills, as Lowery says.”

“Yeah, well, his mad skills are too mad. He went over the line with the raptors, Claire. They’re smart – not animal-smart, but people-smart. We need to find him, and tell him never ever to make any more. Not for InGen, not for anyone.”

“It may be too late,” she said. “I had a team accounting for all the eggs that were evacuated from the Creation Lab – and there are eggs missing.”

“Please tell me they’re Stegosaurus eggs…”

“Velociraptor eggs. Eight of them. Embryos already inserted and due to hatch in weeks. We think Wu took them with him in the helicopter.”

Owen’s blood ran cold. “Who gave him permission to make more raptors?”

“He didn’t need permission to do his own experiments,” she explained. “He had discretionary time with the Lab tools for his own projects. Like the Director’s discretionary projects with the Hubble Space Telescope, you know? Nobody knew that he was moonlighting for InGen.”

“He’s going to make another eight raptors!” Owen said.

“Owen,” Claire said. “He’s not going to make just eight. InGen thinks the raptor programme was a success. Those eight eggs are just the start.”

“God!” he said. He could feel the chill in his own face, and knew that he had gone pale.

He loved his beautiful Blue, and he knew she would never hurt him, but he was under no illusions about her place in the food chain. She would never accept the control of humans. She was the alpha raptor. The urge to rule, to dominate, was in her instincts. The raptors would never be safe around human beings, on any terms but their own.

“As soon as Blue and Delta are safe,” Claire said. “we will find Wu, and stop the raptor programme. I’ll go all the way to the Pentagon with Lowery’s video, if I have to.”

“But Wu has the raptor genome now. He’s going to make eight more raptors now, but what’s to stop him from making hundreds next month?” he said, his blood pressure rising. He clenched his fists. “What’s to stop him making thousands?”

He loved Blue, but the idea of a thousand Blues – all realizing their place in the world, and all having the same kind of violent epiphany that Blue had in Where Are They – filled him with horror.

“Owen!” Claire said. She reached out her hands for his face and cupped his cheeks. He felt one finger press against his lips. “Stop! Wu is not that stupid.”

“I am not giving that fool a free pass, Claire! He’s been here from the very beginning! He knew what the raptors were capable of, and he still thought it would be a good idea to cross them with the T-Rex! Jesus! What’s he going to do next? What if he thinks it’s a good idea to put wings on the raptors, next time, and call them dragons?"

"That'll be the day," she said.

"That'll be the day humanity gets a new master race!" he said. "“You didn’t see Blue having a breakdown in Where Are They! Velociraptors will always do what Hammond’s raptors did! They will always want to be in charge, it’s in their nature. Dragons? They’re already dragons – and if Wu goes on with his insane–!”

She gripped his face, leaned forward, and planted her mouth on his.

His mind whited out. Her lips and tongue were soft, and liquid, and tasted slightly minty. He wanted more, and he leaned forward to claim more. He brushed her lips with his; brushing and breathing and tasting.

She broke the kiss, but she kept her hands on his face. “God, you’re sexy when you get all worked up.”

He couldn't do speech as well as sex. “Claire,” he said.

“Shut up,” she said. “Stop ranting and kiss me.” She leaned in for another kiss, and he leaned to meet her.

Her mouth was so good, he could not think of anything other than getting more, and never letting go. He reached out, and wrapped his fingers into her hair, holding her steady. He turned his head to form his mouth to hers, and get deeper. Now he had access to her teeth, but her tongue was a sudden hot shock against his own. She was winding in past the defences of his lips, exploring his teeth, and her breath was hot. He could hear his own hoarse breathing in his ears.

She broke the kiss, and he opened his eyes. He realized that they had been kissing awkwardly over the corner of the table. Their chairs were too far apart. And, thank God, they were in a private room. They could do a lot more than just kiss…

He wanted more. He wanted everything. He wanted her naked, in the dusky caramel light of the restaurant. He wanted to see her creamy skin against the starched white tablecloth. He wanted all of her, here, spread to his eyes and his mouth and his hands.

And she wanted him. Her blue eyes were huge and dark with arousal. Her hands were running over his brows, and his moustache, and feeling down the bones of his cheeks and his chin. He captured her fingers in his, brought them to his lips and kissed them, and she slipped her index finger into his mouth.

“How about skipping dinner,” she asked, huskily, “and going straight up to the next thing on the itinerary?”

He used his bottom teeth to stroke the pad of her finger and let her go. “Can do that.”

But not yet. He shifted his chair forward, and this time he was close enough to get his hands to her body. He found her mouth with his own, and explored with his fingers. He found the front of her blouse. Her skin was warm, and smooth, and he reached inside. Her flesh felt warm and soft over the swell of her breast. The lace of her bra scratched his fingertips slightly; a barrier.

He would get that bra off, and then he would taste that breast with his mouth. He wanted to run his mouth and tongue over every inch of her. And she would let him! He let out a gasp. “Claire…”

His lust was broken with a shrill singing. It came from his pocket – and the vibration was so shocking against his groin that he jerked and almost cried out.

“Oh, no, go away,” he muttered. Her arms were wrapped around his head, and she relaxed just enough to let him lean back and thrust his hand into his pocket. He pulled the phone out and pressed the red button with shaking fingers.

“Who’s that?”

“Don’t care,” he muttered. He dropped the phone on the table, and dived back for another kiss.

He was trying to kiss her, but she was trying to get the top buttons of his shirt open. She was struggling with his tie, foiled by the knot. “Want your shoulders,” she muttered, “want to see your shoulders… I hate all these buttons!”

There was another sharp chirping ringtone.

“Go away,” he muttered.

But it wasn’t his phone, this time, and she was already pulling away, pulling back from his arms. “I must, I must,” she muttered. “I have Caller ID.” She sat back, cleared her throat, and reached into her handbag. She pulled out her phone, glanced at the screen, and answered it.

“Lowery! This had better be very important!”

Her hair was dishevelled already from his fingers, the way it had looked the night of the crisis after running around in the jungle. Her lipstick was smudged – he put his hand to his own upper lip and it came away pink.

“What?” she asked. “Yes! Yes, he’s right here. Owen,” she held the phone out, “It’s for you.”

Owen took the phone, and put it to his ear. “This had better be important, Lowery,” Owen threatened. “Or I swear I’ll…”

“Dude, I don’t care if I just cockblocked you!” Lowery yelled. “The Xenocore guys just darted Delta and Blue! They’re going to –!”

“They’re WHAT?” Owen threw his chair backward, and leaped to his feet. He charged for for the door with the phone on his ear.

“Oh, no-no-no! ” Lowery squawked in his ear. “No, no, no! Delta just went down! You gotta get down here right away, man! They’re taking the raptors now! They’re not waiting for tomorrow!”

Owen pulled open the screen door. “Hey, you! Frank!” he shouted to the waiter. “Dinner’s cancelled. We’ll get room service! No, not you, Lowery! Talk to me! Have you called Barry yet?”

“Barry’s phone is out!” Lowery said. “This stupid interference is back on the lines. And Thornton’s not answering. You’re the closest! You gotta get down there.”

“My car is out front!” Claire said. She was stamping across the Hilton’s lobby as if she was wearing combat boots and not stilettos. She was already pulling her car keys from her handbag. “I’m driving! You talk to Lowery!”

“You said the ship was only arriving tomorrow!” Owen said.

“It is! ” Lowery’s voice went shrill. “It’s still miles out to sea! They’ve brought a helicopter – a heavy-lifter. And they’re hooking up a cradle like the one we use to shift the Trices!”

“Jesus,” Owen said. He lowered the phone as he jogged after Claire down the stairs. “They’ve brought a helicopter to airlift them out,” he said to her.

Her car really was right in front of the Hilton, in its own reserved space. It beeped as Claire pressed the alarm key, and she raced around the hood and opened the driver’s door. Owen got into the passenger door. Claire started the car and threw it into gear, and the powerful Mercedes pulled out, accelerating effortlessly.

“Blue’s just gone down!” Lowery reported.

“Maybe she’s faking it again?” Owen said. He wasn’t sure if he was hopeful, or frightened of the idea.

“Not this time! They’ve got nowhere to hide in that cage, man!” Lowery said. “They’re both down. I’ll keep you posted.” He cut the line.

Owen lowered the phone. “Drive!” he said.

“I’m driving!” Claire said. “How did Xenocore know you were taking them tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said, but he could guess. Xenocore was moving the raptors now – in the dark – because they knew they could not wait for morning. They knew that Owen was going to come for them tonight, and they could only know that if someone had told them.

The lights of the resort were strobing through the inside of the Mercedes, with the speed Claire was driving under the lights. She pulled the car through the gate to the open road, and floored the accelerator. The car surged forward.

“They won’t get away with this!” she promised. “They can’t just rock up and take away InGen property like that! Not on my island! It’s stealing!”

Owen wondered what had happened to ‘not my problem.’

“They’re InGen raptors,” he said. “And nobody knows who owns InGen! They’re taking them now, while Masrani’s estate is still in a mess. Hoping that when the dust settles, they’ll be forgotten.”

Claire took her eyes off the road to glance at him. He could see the sweat on her face. “But they won’t be forgotten. They’re velociraptors, not stray cats.”

“And there’s nowhere they can take them that they won’t escape from,” Owen said, grimly. “Drive!”

“I’m driving!” she said. Her knuckles on the steering wheel were gripping white.

Claire’s phone rang again, and Owen answered it. “Yeah?”

“They’re in the cage!” Lowery said. “Looks like they’re going to put the raptors onto a trailer and take them out to the helo, rather than hovering over the cage and lowering the cradle in.”

“They’re inside the paddock with the raptors,” Owen reported to Claire.

It would take them twenty minutes to get all the way out to the raptor paddock. How quickly could the Xenocore team load two unconscious animals into that cradle? A lot faster than they loaded up a darted Pachy, he thought. The raptors didn’t weigh much more than a grown man – how quickly could an rescue helicopter team get a couple of unconscious men into that cradle?

“Lowery, can you delay their take-off? Refuse to give them permission, or something?”

“They didn’t ask for permission to land in the first place,” Lowery said. “The Hive is awesome, but I don’t exactly have any SAMs on the roof to play with.”

“I’m not asking you to shoot them down! Just delay them!”

“I would if I could, man, but they’re not listening to anything I’m saying. The word ‘dweeb’ is being thrown around a lot.”

The road was dark as they crossed Gyrosphere Valley. The gate out to the Restricted Area was in front of them, dotted with guards walking back and forth on the wall. Claire floored the accelerator, instead of slowing down, and the gate opened in front of her. She brought the car around onto the road, and sped along under the trees.

Owen sat in the passenger seat, his fists clenched, feeling helpless. He wanted to bang his hands on the dashboard – shout – argue with Claire – scream at Lowery – anything. Claire was racing the car as fast as she dared along the cliff-top, but it wasn’t fast enough. He could hear the throbbing of helicopter rotors over the car’s engine. Its pitch was rising.

“They’re getting ready for take-off,” he said.

Claire drove out from the trees and onto the plateau around the raptor paddock. The plateau was lit up like daylight by the glare of searchlights and LEDs. Claire pulled the handbrake up, skidding to a halt. Owen popped the door, and threw himself out of the car – but he was too late.

The cradle had already left the ground in a whirlwind of dust. The helicopter above was a roar of noise and light. Owen sprinted across the packed dirt but his heart was already sinking. He stopped in the centre of the light, at the heart of the whirlwind, staring upward into the light. “Blue!” he roared, cupping his hands around his mouth.

The cradle was already beyond his reach. It was rising, lifting up away from him – twenty feet, thirty, forty. He shielded his eyes from the flying grit, and stared up through his fingers. The searchlight of the helicopter was a ferocious blinding eye staring back at his retinas.

“Blue!”

For a second – less than a heart beat – the cradle was silhouetted by the helicopter’s searchlight. For a second, he thought he could see the end of a long needle tail, hanging motionless off the side. For a second, he thought he recognised the clipped-off shape of that tail.

But it was only a second, and then the cradle was vanishing upward into the darkness. The helicopter receded vertically, until the pilot gained a comfortable altitude, and then it tilted forward over the edge of the cliff and away.

He ran to the edge of the cliff, to where a few daring jungle palms clutched the hanging rocks, and stopped sharply on the edge. The cliff dropped away into pitch darkness, down to the breakers below. He could not follow across the cliff. The searchlight receded into the night sky, like a distant star, and then it was switched off.

There was only the falling throb of the helicopter’s engine, fading away across the face of the sea.

There was no point in shouting any more. “Gone,” he said, aloud. He squeezed his eyes shut, and saw the silhouette of that tail again in his vision.

He opened his eyes again, and turned around.

Claire was standing a few paces behind him, silhouetted by the LEDs. She was poised like a hawk, watching him. He met her gaze, and then his eye was caught by movement behind her.

“YOU! ” he shouted, jabbing out his finger. He stamped across the ground to the first safety-gate. “You son of a bitch! ” His own shouting made his anger flame even hotter, and he leapt into a sprint across the ground.

Thornton made an attempt to back away as he realized how angry Owen was, but not fast enough – or maybe he wasn’t expecting an actual attack. Owen sprang at him, and his left fist was already shooting out at Thornton’s head.

Thornton saw the fist coming. He tried to duck behind his shoulder – only to eat Owen’s right hook coming the other way. The punch whipped around from Owen’s pivot, with all the rage and strength in Owen’s back behind it. Thornton collapsed as if he'd been hit in the face with a hammer.

Owen’s hand exploded in pain. “AAAA-Owwww! ” he clamped his other hand around his bandaged fingers, and roared his pain down at Thornton. “You son of a bitch! Get up! ”

Thornton rolled away, on his knees and elbows, with his hands clasped to his nose. “Ow-ow-ow!” he moaned. He tried to grovel away along the ground.

“You son of a bitch! YOU did this!” Owen followed Thornton, and his raised backside on the ground was an invitation for a rear-round kick. The kick pitched Thornton onto his face. “I ought to throw you off that fucking cliff!”

But Owen wasn’t alone. He felt hands grab his arms from behind, and haul him bodily away from Thornton. “Get off him!” shouted another man in a Xenocore uniform. Owen yanked himself out of the stranger’s grip, and spun around again to face Thornton.

“Owen, that’s enough!” Claire snapped. She was standing over Thornton.

Owen raised his eyes and stared at her, and realized that he was panting as if he had been fighting in a match. “This asshole sold us out,” he said through gritted teeth, pointing down at Thornton. His index finger was shaking with his anger.

“That’s no reason to kick him to death,” she said. Her eyes as cold as ice.

“My nose is broken!” Thornton blubbered from the ground, through a face and fingers red with blood. His eyes were watering; a broken bone right between them did that. “You broke my fucking nose!”

“You sold me down the river,” Owen snapped. “You sold the raptors down the river. A year you’ve worked with us, and you backstabbed us all like a stinking lying little rat.”

“You’re crazy, man!” Thornton blubbered. “Bulgen thought you had to be planning something, and he was right!”

“So he sent you to find out what we were doing,” Owen said, feeling cold and dead inside. “And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker.”

“You’re off your rocker!” Thornton snarled up at him, through blood and spittle. “You, and the darkie, and the dweeb! You’re all fucking cracked! These are animals! Animals! You’ve gone native, that’s what you’ve done.”

“I’m going to kick your  –!” Owen lunged at him for another kick, but his arm was grabbed before he could strike. It was Bulgen.  Bulgen pulled him away, and shoved him hard. 

Thornton seemed to realize that sprawling on the dirt was inviting another kick. He shoved himself onto his knees, and then stood up. He kept one bloody hand pressed to his nose. “What the fuck do you take me for, you dumb Yankee bastard?” he shouted at Owen. “You think I was going to let you take those things into the bush? You let them go, they’ll eat someone, because they’re monsters! Did you even think of that for one second? NO!”

“They’re intelligent,” Owen said.

“Oh, they’re intelligent. God, I am so sick of you pathetic bloody bunny-hugging crackpots, and your endless bloody whining about animal rights! You’d rather take the side of an animal over other human beings? You make me fucking sick!”

“You son of a bitch,” Owen hissed. “You know they’re intelligent. The raptors aren’t a couple of your saltwater croco–!”

“I don’t care if they’re intelligent!” Thornton shouted. “They’re the most vicious animals ever created! They should all be destroyed, not let loose like –!”

“That’s enough!” Bulgen interrupted. He stepped up behind Thornton and grabbed his shoulder. “Come on! We’re done here. The raptors are gone. Job done, let’s go.”

“He broke my nose!”

“He lost. And he knows it. Look at his face.” Bulgen sneered at Owen. “Your raptors are gone, and you’re never going to see them again. Sucks to be you.”

Owen stepped forward, ready to fight this one as well, but Claire’s hand gripped at his sleeve. Her fingers bit at his elbow, holding tight.

“Owen!” she whispered. “That’s enough! We will find them again, but for now this battle is over.”

"Yeah, that's right, take your orders from the chick."  Bulgen smirked.   He turned to his colleagues, and made a let’s-go wave in the air.

“Let’s roll!” he bellowed. “We’re done here! Time to get on the road!”

Thornton stayed behind, glaring at Owen, as the Xenocore team broke up and scattered.

“You broke my nose,” he hissed, still glaring at Owen around his bloody fingers. He hadn’t let go of his nose, and Owen sincerely hoped it had been flattened like a flapjack. “Next time I see you, you’ll be sorry, pal.”

“Next time I see you I’ll have a raptor on either side,” Owen promised.

“Empty vessels, pal; empty vessels,” Thornton sneered. He went off in the direction that the other Xenocore guys were going. They were throwing their equipment into the back of their vehicle.

Owen stood, and watched them. He clenched his fists so tightly his fingers were grinding together.

He felt sick inside, his heart shrunken to a small, dull nothingness. He’d been a fool. He had let the raptors down. His own stupidity had let them down. Barry and Lowery had both warned him not to trust Thornton, but he refused to listen. He had let them all down, through his own stupidity.

He watched the Xenocore men getting into their truck. The engine rumbled to life, and wheeled around the clearing in a circle. Bulgen  flipped the bird at him through the rear window. And then they were gone.

He pulled his arm out of Claire’s grasp, and turned his face away from her. He knew this feeling. This was defeat.

He’d been a fool. Blue and Delta were flying through the dark, drugged.  He turned to stare past the palm trees, into the night, where the light of the helicopter had disappeared.

Where would they wake up?They would not know that he had not meant this to happen. They would think he had let them down on purpose. That would almost be better than having them know that he had thrown away their only chance through his own gullibility.

He might never see them again.

The safety doors into the paddock were open – both sets at the same time for the first time in five years. He walked into the paddock – the ‘cage’ as Lowery called it. It was dark down here where the raptors lived. The searchlights on the walkways didn’t quite penetrate the canopy of trees. It was quiet, and dark, and it smelled thickly of dinosaur.

They were gone. He had let them slip out of his fingers from sheer carelessness. He walked, in the direction of the springloaded gate into the ready-cage, and something tapped the side of his boot.

He looked down. There was something there, half-embedded in the soil. It glistened in the searchlights. He bent down, and picked it up.

It was a plastic Apatosaurus.

He closed it in his fist, and gripped it so tightly that it hurt his palm. “I will find you,” he promised.  "Wherever they take you, I will find you..."

Chapter Text

The dark clouds cracked with heat and electricity. A moment later, the rain came down.

StripeSide paused, blinking warm water out of her eyes. She had thought she was used to rain, but the rain here was a thousand times worse than the rain back home. This rain poured straight down vertically, as if a giant bucket had been tipped over onto the jungle. The sheer weight of water hammering down on her body was uncomfortable. Already, her claws were sinking into little rivers of water, streaming downhill.

She could continue stalking around the cage in the mud, but even the humans on the wall were dashing for cover. She snorted rainwater out of her nostrils, and jogged head-down to the Real People’s shelter.

WingWatch was already lying on the raised platform that kept the Real People out of the streams of water when they slept. The white scars on her sides glistened with rainwater. She got up when her alpha walked in under the roof, and shifted out of the coveted uphill spot. StripeSide sat down, and glared angrily out at the rain. It was coming down so heavily she could not see the far end of the paddock.

“I am quite sure now that we are a long way south and east of home,” WingWatch said. She yawned. It was mid-day, and nearly time to sleep.

“How far south and east?”

WingWatch extended her neck out from under the roof. She cocked her head to stare up at the sky, blinking against the rain. “Many, many days of running,” she said. “Ten days running, maybe more?”

StripeSide did not argue. WingWatch had a terrible sense of smell, but she had the best eyesight of all the Real People. She had always claimed that she could see the shape of the world in the sky. If WingWatch said they had gone south and east, then they had.

But even WingWatch could not say exactly how far they had travelled. They travelled locked inside a huge metal box. The box was big enough to have held the Mad Giant Person comfortably, but the whole thing vibrated, as if they were locked inside a giant rumble-and-roll. And the floor had rolled uncomfortably, constantly throwing the Real People off-balance. It was disorienting, horrible, and at first the Real People had clung to each other in terror.

It had been StripeSide who had worked out that their strange prison was inside a huge version of FirstHuman’s little floating house, and that the giant floating house was vibrating because it was crossing the Deep Water.

They were not alone in the giant floating house. Every day, the whole roof of their prison opened upwards to the sky, so that the humans could look down on them. It was much too high to jump, and too sheer to climb. On the second day, the humans lowered a cold slab of carrion on a great hook down to them. WingWatch grabbed the hook, and tried to use it to climb out of the box, which caused a fair amount of consternation among the humans above. After that, nothing else was lowered to them. Nothing had been done about their waste either – they were forced to wrap it up in the blankets they had found, and pretend it was not there. On the fourth day, the humans opened the great door to the sky, and shot them again with orange poisoned feathers.

And now, here they were. They were back in a cage again. A different cage, but still a cage. All of their efforts, all of their struggle, and they were right back where they had started.

StripeSide glared out at the rain.

“We are many days’ running away from the Deep Water,” she said.

“How can you tell?”

“You cannot smell it? The air here is … different. Not salty. We will be very difficult to find here, so far from home.”

“FirstHuman and SingsAlone will come for us,” WingWatch said. Her bloodheat said, “I am confident.” She rolled herself from side to side, making herself comfortable on the wooden planks.

“FirstHuman did not come,” StripeSide said, snapping at WingWatch’s neck with her teeth. “He said that he would, but he did not.”

“He will not have forgotten about us!” WingWatch said. “And neither will SingsAlone!”

The suggestion that FirstHuman could have forgotten about StripeSide filled her with fury. She had known FirstHuman for as long as she could remember. When she had been tiny and alone, he had carried her around inside his clothing, against his chest. She had smelled his fur, listened to his big mammal heartbeat. It was impossible for him to have forgotten her.

“Fool! I did not say that they have forgotten about us!” StripeSide snapped. “FirstHuman would never forget about us! I say only that they will not come!”

“They will come,” WingWatch insisted. “We have only to wait.”

StripeSide leaped to her feet, and lashed out at WingWatch with a hiss. WingWatch leaped out of the way, snaking her neck down submissively.

“Look at this cage!” StripeSide hissed. “Do you see this cage? FirstHuman did not build this cage.”

“That is true,” WingWatch agreed, turning her head to stare out of the shelter.

FirstHuman would not build this cage. There were too many ways to escape from this cage. Electrification – really? What did they think the Real People were? Monkeys? FirstHuman would never have dreamed of keeping the Real People in such a pathetic cage.

“Which means that FirstHuman and all our old humans had nothing to do with this cage! I say that he was tricked by these humans. He probably does not even know where we are! How long do you want to sit here and wait?”

“We are a long way from home,” WingWatch conceded. “It will take them a long time to find us. Particularly since humans run so slowly.”

“Then we will get out of here by ourselves tonight, and then we will find him. I am the alpha. This is what I say we will do.”

“Tonight?” WingWatch asked.

“Tonight,” StripeSide promised. “We will kill as many of them as we possibly can, and then we will run to find FirstHuman and SingsAlone.”

“I have waited long enough,” WingWatch said, with relish.

The rain was pattering now, not roaring. It was still streaming down off the sloping roof of their shelter, but it was tapering off. The bursts of rain in this new place never lasted long.

WingWatch settled herself comfortably and began to sing. It was a song of threat, of bloodshed, of what she was going to do tonight. If the humans understood her song they would have flashed bloodheat that said, “I’m frightened.” WingWatch sang for her own amusement, making up her chants on the fly, and her song changed every day. Usually StripeSide liked to listen to WingWatch’s songs, but not today. She got up, and stalked out from under the shelter. She stood, looking around.

This cage was a lot bigger than the old cage – big enough for the Real People to reach their top speed down the long sides. But most of the trees had been cut down, leaving them with very little cover. The empty slope felt uncomfortably exposed. She could see every inch of the cage from right here. There were humans walking outside the cage, downhill and close to the buildings.

She stalked through the tree-stumps toward them.

This cage was made of vertical wooden poles, standing side-by-side, and too sturdy to smash. The bottom ends were sunk into the ground, and the top ends had all been sharpened into spikes, like a line of teeth. On top of the wooden poles was an electrified fence and a walkway, so that the humans could fire bang-and-pains down into the cage. But because the poles had gaps between them, it was easy to see between them.

She walked up to the two humans, and stared at them. They could see her as easily as she could see them, and they stopped walking to stare back at her. She had learned long ago that you could make humans uncomfortable by staring them in the eyes without moving. It seemed to make mammals feel threatened.

Sheslookingatme… the human in the white clothes said.

Idontthink thatsagoodsign sir.

Ithink sheremembersme. Doyouthink theyremember?

Gradythinkstheydo.

The white-coated human stepped closer to the fence. HelloBlue. Rememberme? Irememberyou whenyouwere smallenoughtofit inGradyspocket… He bared his teeth at her.

She stared back without blinking. She recognised them both. One of them was BlackClothes, the human who had been alpha of the humans who had tried to shoot WingWatch in the sinister cone-shaped building, when FirstHuman had defended her. StripeSide had promised to kill BlackClothes for trying to kick FirstHuman to death. BlackClothes was an enemy.

But the other one was special. He had been only a foggy memory to her before, and she had not even been sure if he was real at all. But then she had explored the sinister cone-shaped building, and all her old memories had flooded back. His smell had been all over that place, mixed in with the scents of baby dinosaurs, and she knew this human had been watching when she had hatched. He had handled her without communicating, ignoring her complaints, as if she had been nothing but an interesting puzzle, and then he had handed her back to FirstHuman. When she was older, she had left that place with FirstHuman, and she had never seen him again. She had almost forgotten him altogether.

But he was here, now, when FirstHuman was not. BlackClothes showed him respect, which meant he was an alpha of alphas. Whatever evil plans these humans were making for the Real People, this human knew them all. This human was the key, she was sure of that. There had to be at least a thousand other human beings in the world, but she knew that she was right.

Wewillneed tocutdown alotmoretrees toextendthe paddock…

Therewillbe plentyoftime said the sinister one. Theyoungones willtakemonths togrow…

She was aware that WingWatch had stopped singing, and left the shelter. She had rolled in the mud to camouflage herself, and now she was making her way down to the humans on StripeSide’s left flank. She was keeping her head and tail low, and snaking silently through the tree-stumps.

Istilldont thinkthisisagoodidea said the black-clothed human.

Why?

Gradyisright

IneverthoughtIwouldhear you agreeingwithGrady.

Theyretoovicious. Andtoosmart. Theyshouldall bedestroyed

Nonsense Theyaremyfinestcreation Thepinnacleofmycareer Justlookather The human bared his teeth at her again, and stepped closer to the poles of the cage. She is perfect.

Staring at WhiteCoat was not having the effect it should. She felt a prickle of unease run through her, and tried not to show it through her bloodheat.

Imagine havingoneofthese. Araptorofyourown. Obeyingonlyyou. Imprintedonlyonyou. Thewaythisone imprintedonGrady.

Shedidnot imprintonGrady. Gradyimprintedonher.

Nonsense…

They wore little squares of signage pinned to the front of their clothes. If she moved closer she could make out the notation pinned to the white coat. She did not know how it was sung, but surely FirstHuman would recognise it if she wrote it for him. She took a step closer.

Heysheiscomingcloser, WhiteCoat said.

Dontgettooclose sir. Theycanget theirhandsthrough.

She was close enough. She could just pick out two little notes on the card. WU.

A moment later the shock of recognition made her hide tighten in a shiver from snout to tail. She stared at him, shocked.

She knew that smell. It woke memories in her, stirring up old emotions in the back of her mind. She stepped closer to the poles, and lowered her head. She closed her nictitating membrane, to examine his scent and his bloodheat more closely. She sniffed, deeper, picking out the smell that was being carried on the sinister human.

HelloBlue! Doyouknowme?

Dontgettooclose… Shenearlytookoff BindiThorntonsleg.

That smell – she did know what it was! StripeSide could feel her own bloodheat flashing, “I understand! I am angry!”

WingWatch charged. She had used the stumps of the stumps to stalk the humans, and now she leaped out. She jumped into the air, both killing-claws lashing forward at the same height as the humans’ heads. Her killing-claws hit the fence hard, and she dropped to the ground.

StripeSide joined WingWatch in another leap at the fence. It didn’t even budge, but then they already knew it would not.

The humans had jumped back, and they had pulled all the blood out of their faces. That was enough to satisfy WingWatch. They were so easy to kill, and she liked to remind them of it. WingWatch opened her jaws, and screamed at them, flexing her forehands.

“We are going to kill both of you,” she promised. “Tonight. You will be sorry you brought us here.”

“Come away, WingWatch!” StripeSide ordered, with a scream for emphasis. She snapped her tail in the air, and sprang away, racing across the mud.

The paddock was large enough for them to reach their top speed running up the hillside. She led WingWatch in a sprint, all the way up to the top of the cage, and came to a stop.

“What is wrong?” WingWatch hissed. “Why did your bloodheat say that?”

StripeSide could still feel her shock and anger rippling across her bloodheat, but it did not matter. The humans were deaf to it anyway. “Did you smell that?”

“Smell what?” WingWatch asked. “You know I don’t have the sense of smell that you have.”

“WhiteCoat smells like hatchling.”

“What does hatchling smell like?” WingWatch asked, curiously.

StripeSide snapped at her. “They smell like you when you hatched!” she snapped. “That human has been handling Real People! Hatchling LoveMe smell is all over him! There are Real People in that big white building!”

“Real People?” WingWatch asked. She sprang into the air, and lashed at the poles of the cage with her killing-claws. “You mean… More of us? You say that we are not alone? That’s wonderful!”

“Wonderful, and terrible,” StripeSide said. She stalked away, snaking her tail angrily. She wished the other two were with them, instead of flighty WingWatch, who always blurted the first thing in her head, and never took the time to think. “This changes everything!”

“We are not alone!” WingWatch said. “Surely this is wonderful news!”

“We are not alone,” StripeSide said. “There are more Real People in that building. But they are just hatchlings! Tiny hatchlings, just like we were. Hatched to be caged, like we were! They know nothing of who they are. They will grow up as we did, before we knew better.”

“Real People?” WingWatch asked, making an unhappy sound in her throat. “We can’t leave them here.”

“No,” StripeSide said. “We will not. We cannot abandon what might be the only other Real People in the world.”

“We will break in there tonight!” WingWatch declared, leaping around and screaming her anger down at the buildings.

“No! Not yet! Those hatchlings are too small to move. They will die from shock!”

“Better to die,” WingWatch said, “than to stay here, and be turned into the Mad Giant Person…”

They both remembered the mentally-warped, deformed giant, and her screams of pain and madness. They couldn’t begin to know what the humans had done to the Mad Giant Person, or why, but the idea of other Real People being turned into Mad Giants was too horrible to imagine.

StripeSide felt the sudden urge to pull her tail around and cling tightly to the end. She shook away the urge.

“We must wait,” she ordered. “We will wait until the hatchlings are old enough to leave their nest, and then we will rescue them. And then,” she turned her head, and stared at the big white building, where WhiteCoat had gone.

“And then?”

“And before we go, we will find that human, and kill him, so that he can cage no more Real People…”

……………………………………….

The rainforest hummed and buzzed and sang all around; a busy choir of life. It was as dark as if they were walking in a greenhouse, but Owen saw the light changing as they neared the end of the trees. Barry, ahead of him, held up one fist, and lowered himself to a crouch. He edged forward carefully, moving slowly to the edge of the clearing, and then squatted on his heels.

Owen followed and joined him. There was no gradual end to the forest, thinning to struggling bushes, and then giving way to shrubs and grass. The thick trunks just ended abruptly, as if a knife had been sliced into the hillside. Owen went down on his heels next to Barry. Lowery joined them by tripping over a root and crashing down onto his chest. Dressing Lowery in cargo pants and hiking boots had not made him any better at moving through thick virgin forest.

Barry put down his panga, and pulled out his binoculars. He levelled them across the valley. “Lowery, you called it,” he said. “I can see them.”

“Awesome-sauce,” Lowery puffed. He pushed himself up on his elbows, but he seemed more interested in catching his breath and scratching his insect bites.

Owen forced down the urge to join him in a fit of scratching. He sat on his heels, looking out from the bushes. Ahead of him, the shallow valley spread out in an open vista – but the Amazon rainforest was not supposed to have open vistas. The landscape was painted in dull greys and browns, instead of lush greens. It looked as if it had been hit by a meteorite. Bare soil and jagged tree-stumps stared up at the tropical clouds, baking.

At the valley floor, at the root of a winding road, was a cluster of white buildings. He could see a water-tower, and what looked like a small back-up generating plant. The biggest structure was a building, three storeys tall, and fronted by a parking lot with a few cars. On the opposite slope, facing Owen, was a wide rectangle of more scorched-earth, enclosed by a stockade fence. There was a chain-link fence around the whole facility, accessed only through the motorised gate to the road. That road wound away to Owen’s right.

Barry lowered the binoculars. “The lean-to in the middle,” he said, and passed the binoculars to Owen. “They’re sleeping.”

Owen wedged the eyepieces into his eyes, and the view leaped into clarity. He focused on the paddock. The fence was a wooden stockade, similar to the ones used to hold captured rhino, but much taller. It was ringed with an raised walkway, and he saw the glint of wire. He walked the binoculars across the enclosure, until he came across a simple roof raised on four posts. There were were a couple of lumps lying in the shade under the roof. One of the lumps had a pebbled blue-and-white stripe down its flank.

“There they are,” he said. That was Blue down there. She was there, and she was safe. A tight band around his chest that he had not even been aware of carrying suddenly released.

He lowered the binoculars, and passed them to Lowery. “Take a look.” He found himself wanting to whisper, although at this distance no-one down there could possibly hear him.

Lowery took off his glasses, and raised the binoculars instead. He fussed with the focus rings for a moment. Owen saw the moment his head whipped back, as he saw the sleeping raptors. “I can see them!”

“Blue and Delta,” Owen said. He couldn’t help himself; he reached out and thumped Lowery’s shoulder cheerfully. “You called it!”

He didn’t even know how Lowery had called it. He’d snapped at Owen, Barry and Claire to go away and let him get on with it. Three days after the raptors had been taken, he woke Owen and Claire up in the middle of the night, and told them he was booking flights to Bogota, and did Owen want a window seat. And now, here they were, all three of them. Lowery had led them implacably, unstoppably, straight here to this exact spot in the jungle. Barry no longer thought it was odd that Lowery was a raptor handler. Some people were hunters by nature.

“These guys are amateurs,” Barry said, disgusted. “Amateurs!”

“What did I tell you?” Owen asked. “They’re not the A-Team.”

“Look at that paddock!” Barry complained.

“What’s wrong with it?” Lowery asked, still looking through the binoculars.

“That fence can be climbed,” Owen said. “It’s electrified at the top, but that’s not enough of a deterrent.”

“Getting a shock doesn’t stop them,” Barry explained. “Yes, it knocks them over. Muscle contractions, vous comprenez? But then they just jump up and come back for more. It doesn’t seem to hurt them.”

“And there’s no moat,” Owen said.

“We never used moats for the raptors,” Barry pointed out. “Moats don’t work for raptors.”

“Yes, but we know that, because we know about raptors,” Owen said. “They don’t have a moat because they don’t know about moats. They don’t even have a vestibule! And did you see the hinges on that gate?”

“Oui,” Barry said. “I saw it.”

“The gate?” Lowery moved the binoculars. He spent a few minutes examining the gate, his moustache scrunched up under the black barrels of the binoculars. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

“The gate opens to the inside,” Owen explained. “So that if someone inside tries to charge it, they’ll knock it closed, not open?”

“Right…”

“But the hinges of that gate are on the inside, too. You can see it from here. Somebody screwed up. The raptors can get that gate open in minutes.”

“You’d need a chisel, wouldn’t you?”

“They have chisels,” Owen said. “Three chisels on each hand…”

“And there is only one gate to the outside,” Barry said. “No vestibule cage. Once they are out of that gate, they are out.”

Lowery scrunched up his moustache again. “Okay. They can get out of there.” He lowered the binoculars and stared at Owen. “So why haven’t they?”

Barry looked at Owen, and Owen shook his head. “I don’t know,” Owen said. “I would have thought they’d be a hundred miles away by now.”

“Those men down there are all dead,” Barry said, “as soon as Blue decides that they are.”

“So why are they still alive?” Lowery passed the binoculars to Owen.

Owen put them back to his eyes. He did not have an answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Raptors aren’t exactly known for their forbearance…”

He looked over the complex carefully, trying to figure out this place’s history. The complex’s biggest building was of white cinderblock, and three storeys tall. The parking lot outside it was tarred. That facility had not been knocked up in a week. That was an existing lab, he guessed – somebody’s top secret biotech research was already being done in there, hidden away in the jungle.

But the paddock fence was a simple stockade, and there was a small pre-fab guard station. And the trees in the valley and paddock had clearly been cut down recently. Plain old-fashioned slash-and-burn, and fugly. They’d done that in a hurry. They hadn’t expected to move the raptors to this facility at all, but they’d changed their minds just a few weeks ago.

“They could get out, but they haven’t,” Lowery said, half under his breath. “They’re staying put. Biding their time? Raising a false sense of security now, to make a bigger impact later? They are ambush predators, like you keep saying…”

“Maybe they’re waiting for something?” Owen guessed.

“Maybe they’re waiting for us?” Barry said.

Owen lowered his binoculars. “I’m seeing two guards on the paddock, and another two at the gate. That’s not much.”

“More guards at night, though,” Barry suggested. “If they’re smart.”

“Maybe,” Owen said. He stopped, and pursed his lips. “But there are cars in the parking lot too. The lab workers commute. This place looks like it’s going to be deserted after dark.” He pushed himself backwards from his hands and knees, ready to shuffle back into the trees.

“Come on,” he said. “Now that we know where they are, we can come back to these coordinates tonight. I’m real keen to pay Blue a visit, and find out what’s going on.”

They trudged back through the jungle, through wet vines and leaves that stuck to their legs. Barry led the way, using the blade of the panga to swat their path through the foliage, and leading them seemingly by sorcery back to the road along a far more direct route. Their rented Landrover was still waiting for them on the dirt road, three miles from the paddock. Owen and Barry got into the front. Lowery got into the back and started fussing with his tools. Owen heard the sudden burst of whee-whee-woo from the radio receiver that Lowery had cobbled together.

“There we go,” Lowery said, smugly, and turned off the radio. “I knew it would work, but it’s good to know it worked so well.”

“What is that?” Owen asked.

“Don’t you recognise it? It’s ET talking on the Bat Signal, man! And all this time, we thought our problems were coming from volcanic activity under the island!” Lowery said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, and grinned at Owen. “And yeah, you know, all this time, palaeontologists have been wondering about the function of the antorbital fenestra, but nobody thought its true function might have died out with them. It’s not just a sinus cavity, is it? Oh no, quoth the raven. Wait until I tell Claire!”

Owen didn’t understand, but he had realized Lowery didn't mind talking to himself. “Right,” he said.

“Ah, don’t stress, man,” Lowery said. “You'll figure it out!”

Barry started the car, and made a U-turn on the dirt road. They drove back through the jungle, turned onto the bigger road, and drove all the way back to the little village. He pulled up the car outside the village itself, and they walked down between the houses.

The place was tiny, and ramshackle. Houses and trees seemed to have grown up around each other haphazardly. They were as deep in the rainforest as they could be, and still be able to find cold beer and electricity. If they went much further down the road, they would find thatched huts, instead of cinderblock houses.

They were living at the village’s little shop cum tavern, where the owner had a back room to rent out.

“Hola, Esteban,” Owen called to the little shop’s owner as they walked up to the door through the squelching mud. He got up onto the raised porch, under Esteban’s hand-painted sign.

“Hola, O-hen!” Esteban called back. He had been leaning back on the rear legs of his chair, feet on the porch rail. He had clearly just woken up from his siesta, but hadn’t shaken it off yet. “Did you have a good trip?”

“We got hot, and we got wet, but we didn’t get any footage. It was a total waste of time,” Owen said. “Can we have three Cokes, please, Esteban?”

“Si, si!” Esteban grinned widely, making Owen wonder if he’d screwed up his grammatical genders, or something. His clumsy Spanish was getting smoother with practice. He was breaking his habit of sliding grammatically back into French, but he had a long way to go before he was fluent.

There weren’t exactly a lot of tourists rampaging in this part of Colombia, and they were Esteban’s only guests. Owen’s cover story was that they were trying to film stock footage to sell. The story gave them a reason to be carting Lowery’s electronic equipment around with them. It had been all they could do not to be saddled with three dozen forest guides, desperate for an income. Strangers attracted attention, in a small community like this one.

Owen took a moment to scrape the mud off his boots, on the hook set into the floorboards, and then walked across the room to the table near the window. They all sat down. “I ordered us all Cokes,” Owen explained.

The other two left all the talking to Owen, by mutual agreement. Their little trio worked well together, he thought. He’d privately nicknamed them the Techie, the Tracker and the Translator. They could not have come all this way without all of them working together. Lowery had the technical skills, Barry had the bushcraft, and Owen did all the talking.

Lowery took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyesockets with his fingers tiredly. “It’s hot,” he said.

“It’s the tropics,” Barry said. “You should see Brazzaville in the summer!”

“You should,” Owen said to Lowery. “It’s a nice town. I spent a month there, doing the whole tourist thing.”

“You should stop scratching,” Barry said to Owen.

“It’s all right for you, you haven’t been bitten like we have!” Owen grumbled. The reminder made him itch all over again, in spite of the antihistamines that Barry had given them.

“I am being bitten,” Barry said. “I know better than to scratch them, that is the difference. You are only making them worse!”

“Aargh!” Lowery went into a spasm of scratching.

The only other people in the place were two old grandpas, sitting by the open window, and nodding their wise agreement with the voice on the radio. They looked as if they hadn’t moved since this morning.

Esteban came inside again with the three Cokes, cold from the outside fridge. He put them down on the table. “Tell him merci beaucoup,” Barry said, brushing a fly off his bottle.

“He says, gracias,” Owen translated for Esteban.

“There was a man here earlier, asking about you,” Esteban said to Owen as Barry and Lowery drank their Cokes. “He said he heard there were three Americans here.”

The Colombians all assumed that all three of them were Americans. As far as they were concerned, an English-speaking black man must be an African-American, particularly if he was travelling with two white men. Barry would be furious to find out about his 'demotion' from a proud Congolese, but he didn’t speak Spanish, and Owen was not going to tell him.

“Was this man an American?” Owen asked.

“No,” Esteban said. “He’s Colombian. He said he works in the town.”

‘The town’ was the slightly bigger village, on the other side of the InGen facility. If the InGen workers commuted to work, that was likely where they lived – in the village big enough to have tarred roads and its own supermarket. Lowery had deliberately steered them away from there, in the interest of avoiding anyone who might recognise them.

“If he comes back,” Owen said, picking his words carefully, so that he didn’t screw up his grammar and say the opposite of what he meant, “then you should tell him that we do not need any guides.”

“You said you were leaving tonight, and that is what I told him,” Esteban said.

“Gracias,” Owen said.

Esteban went back to his porch.

“Bad news,” Owen said, turning to Lowery and Barry. “Esteban says there was a man in here earlier, asking about us.”

“InGen?”

“No, he says the guy was local. But it’s a reminder that we don’t have a lot of time in hand. The longer we stay here, the more we risk being recognised.”

“And if they know we’re here,” Barry said, “they could move the raptors again.”

“Time is not on our side,” Owen decided. “Tonight, we go back in there and get them out.”

“How?”

“By opening the gate,” Owen said, simply. “We’ll rendezvous with the Landy on the road. Drive to cover as much distance as we can, then ditch the car and disappear.”

“Once we’re in the forest itself, away from people,” Barry said, “it will be much, much harder for them to find us. Forest multiplies hiding places by thousands, like mountains – and we can find forest and mountains here to hide in.”

…………………………….

Owen didn’t have to call her. He didn’t even have to wait for her. She was simply there, a dark shape breathing deeply on the other side of the palisades.

He crouched down against the wood, his face close to the poles. He heard her breathe out a soft trilling sound.

“Blue,” he sighed.

Now that he could hear her and smell her, he knew how much he had missed her. He had a timetable to meet, but this he must do first. He lay down full-length along the poles, keeping to the ground so that he could not be seen. He propped his elbow under him, and his face close to the wood. He felt the rough untrimmed wood with his hands, and thrust his other arm through between two poles.

His fingers reached through the air, feeling their way, and a moment later they touched warm, rough hide. He stilled his hand, holding it there. She had brought her muzzle down to rest in his palm. He felt the breath from her nostrils against his wrist.

A moment later he heard something scraping against the wood. Something dark was moving, interrupting the moonlight between the poles. She was pushing her own forehand through the gap, reaching back toward him. He rolled onto his back to free his other hand from under him, and reached up. He gripped her rough, scaled talons, and those talons curled around his hand, holding him in return. Hard claws felt like stone against the back of his palm.

He sighed. He did not dare make a sound. He did not dare be noticed up here. He could not speak but he had to communicate. He drew his hand back toward his face, and pressed the back of her talons against his face. He knew that she would feel his warm breath on her hide.

“Blue,” he breathed.

She was alive, and she was here. He closed his eyes briefly. He had travelled so far to find her. He had seen her from a distance, but right up until this moment he had not really known that she was all right. She was here, and soon he would have her out of there. He felt her sigh, deeply, against his arm.

There was the sound of a human voice in the distance. There were guards around who were supposed to be patrolling the paddock. Owen opened his eyes. Blue’s talons unwrapped from his wrist quickly, and withdrew. He pulled his arm quickly back between the poles.

It was black as pitch here, under the shadow of the walkway. The moonlight traced out the inside of the paddock in shades of charcoal and grey, but Owen lay in deep darkness. He had smeared boot polish on his face and hands, and he would be invisible against the stockade. Even if someone walked around the walkway over his head, they would not see him. Only someone walking all the way around the outside of the paddock, shining a torch into the shadows, would see him lying here by the stockade.

He raised his head slowly, looking between the poles. Blue’s thick legs were black pylons, silhouetted against the moonlight. Her tail was a snake of ink. He could see the moonlight gleaming on the white tracing on her flanks. He saw her swing her head high, to stare silently downhill.

He heard a snarl from the distance. On the far end of the paddock, a small shadow was pacing along the stockade. Delta, keeping watch. He waited for a full minute, but nothing else moved. Whereever the guards were, they were not patrolling the entire cage.

He sat up, carefully, and unbuttoned the cargo pocket of his pants. He pulled out a paper pad, and a pen. He had a tiny keyring torch in his other pocket, and he pressed it on, and put it between his teeth. Its little LED was weak, just a faint glow on the paper. He opened his pen, and wrote.

Raptors. Run. Hide. Come.

He pressed the pad between the poles. There was a soft snuffling noise. Talons reached back through the poles, scrabbing at the air. He reached out the pen and pressed it between her claws.

The pen was withdrawn. He heard the sound of the felt tip squeaking on the paper.

He raised his head to watch her. She was gripping the pen between two stiffly arched talons, the same way she had learned in the Control Room. It still amazed him that she had the intelligence to do what she was doing. Where Are They seemed years ago, like a fading dream, but it was real. He had not seen the truth for five long years, and neither had anyone else, but it was no dream.

She leaned down, stooping on her powerful haunches, and pressed the paper back between both forehands.

He reached through the poles to take it, and the pen. He turned it over and arched his neck so that the torch between his teeth glowed onto the page.

No. Wait. Night. 5.

He frowned at the paper. Wait? What did she mean, wait? Was she sure about the sign? Perhaps she was confused about its meaning. Or perhaps he was confused. Perhaps she meant she had been waiting here five nights? Maybe she was complaining, not commanding?

He put the pen to the paper, circled the sign for Wait, and drew a question mark. Wait. Why? He passed the paper.

The pen squeaked for a long time. At last, the paper came back. He took it. The paper had been scrunched. She had turned it over to draw on the other side as well.

Raptors. Run Not.

On the other side of the pad, she had drawn more.

OwenHuman. Wait. Night. 5. Stand-Down. Wait. Hide. Night. 5.

He stared at it. Wait meant Wait. With Hide and Stand-Down, it was clear what she meant. She wanted him to wait. No; she was the alpha raptor. She was telling him to wait. She wanted him to hide himself away, and wait for five nights.

The way she had already been waiting. He remembered the gate, with the simple pin that a raptor’s needle sharp claws could lift out of the hinge far more easily than a human’s feeble fingers. She had been waiting for something. Whatever it was, it would happen in five nights.

He drew another question mark on the paper, and thrust it through the poles again. He felt her take it, and heard her hiss softly. He glanced through the wood at her. She was cocking her head at the paper, turning it this way and that. He realized that she was probably trying to figure out how to frame her explanation inside the short list of symbols that the raptors had.

There was a cough-bark from the distance.

Delta’s warning.

He froze. He heard nothing from Blue on the other side of the wood. She was listening too. But after a moment he heard the sound of a door slamming and voices speaking loudly in Spanish. There was another cough-bark from the distance.

Blue grunted, and he heard her strides thud away across the ground. She was gone. He lifted his head, so that he could just see through the wood. The moonlight washed out the landscape in shades of silver and grey. She was a dark shadow, dashing down the paddock, effortlessly. She must have taken the paper with her.

There were torches moving down there. A raptor screamed, and the torch beams darted like eyes through the stockade. The guards were talking loudly, and suddenly Delta’s shape was outlined by the torches.

The raptors were ambush hunters by instinct, he remembered. They would hold the humans’ attention on themselves, in order to give him time to get to where he needed to be. He pushed himself up on hands and knees, and moved away through the tree-stumps.

Owen found his way back up the slope, keeping low, so that his shape was broken up by the tree-stumps and the moonlight. His eyes were fully adjusted to the dark, and the moon traced out each jagged stump for him. He slipped under the hole he had cut in the chainlink fence, and pulled it closed behind him so that his break-in would not be obvious. He made his way into the black cover of the trees, and crouched down, listening.

An African bird called softly from his left.

He found Barry under a tree. His eyes and teeth were all that were visible of him in the dark. There had been a debate about who should come to the paddock itself and open the gate. Barry could have sneaked into Fort Knox undetected – but they did not know whether the raptors would take directions from Barry. Owen was the next best thing.

“Where are they?” Barry asked.

“They’re not coming,” Owen whispered, crouching down next to him.

“What?” Barry hissed.

“They’re fine!” Owen said. “But they’re not coming out.”

“Did you not find them?”

“I found them,” Owen said. “And I told Blue what we were planning – and she said to come back again in five nights.”

“Come back?” Barry asked, incredulous. “Like a doctor’s appointment?”

“Remember we were wondering why they’re still here? They’re waiting for something, all right.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “We were interrupted before she could explain.”

It was difficult to express to Barry how otherworldly it still felt, to have an animal explain things to him with the use of pen and paper.

“And you are just going to listen to that?”

“Yes,” Owen said. “Yes, I am. Because if she’d trusted me, she’d have been safely hidden in Mrs Frisby’s cabin when the helicopter came around. And she knows that!”

Barry sighed. Then he reached out and clapped Owen’s shoulder. “Come on. We must take the bad news to Lowery.”

“Let’s go back to Esteban’s,” Owen said, tiredly. He was sweating heavily and he had attracted an entourage of insects. His clothes were wet from the rainforest, and he wanted a drink, and a rub-down with DEET.

They went back through the dark jungle, to where Lowery was waiting with the Landrover, and drove away. Esteban was running his refrigerators off his generator when they got back. The three men climbed onto the porch, and opened the screen door. Esteban looked up as they came in, and walked out from the shadows of his kitchen.

“O-hen!” he greeted. “You are back! And so late?”

“Si, we drove away, and then came back,” Owen agreed. “We have made a change of plans, Esteban. We will need your back room for another five days. We’ll pay in advance for five nights. Is that okay?”

“Ah, that’s no problem,” Esteban said. “Not exactly tourist season here! Do you want supper? I can put the stove back on again for you?”

“The same as yesterday, if you can,” Owen agreed.

Owen led the other two over to their customary table. The place was nearly empty. It was mid-week, and mid-month, and nearly mid-night. There were a few stringy-muscled teenagers smoking cigarettes around the gas camping lamp, with a louche air that suggested that smoking cigarettes at midnight was what passed for cool behaviour out here in the sticks. A dark-skinned man in a pink vest was sitting at another table, and he lowered his newspaper and stared at them. The fan ticked noisily overhead in the silence. The generator rumbled outside. The lamp cast a malarial glow over everyone, yellow and too sickly to reach the corners.

Barry sat down. “What do we do for five days?”

“Go away and come back again,” Owen suggested.

“I don’t want to leave them all alone,” Lowery said. His face was glowing with sweat under the coppery light of the lamp. “We don’t know what will happen in five days, man, that’s a long time in politics.”

“The longer we stay here, the more risk we have of being spotted,” Owen said. “We can take off, and go pretend to film somewhere.”

Esteban was coming over to them. He was polishing a glass with a cloth; a gesture so stereotypical that Owen was immediately on his guard. He nodded to the man in the pink vest, who stood up.

“Senor O-hen,” Esteban said. He gestured with his glass to the man in the pink vest. “This is that man who wanted to talk to you this afternoon.”

“I don’t need a forest guide,” Owen said.

“He is not a guide,” Esteban said.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the man said to Owen. “Hoping that you would not come back tonight.”

“Well, I am sorry to disappoint you,” Owen said. “I’m trying to make a film, and I don’t have my footage yet.” He frowned up at the man. He was not tall, and not muscular. In the dim light of the lamp, his eyes were pitch black. He had black hair, a dark, angular face. His nose could have been copied straight off any Mayan carving.

“What does he want?” Barry asked in English, suspiciously.

“He’s says he’s been waiting for us,” Owen said.

The man pulled out the chair opposite Owen, and sat down. “My name is Jorge. Do your friends speak Spanish?”

“No.” Owen kept his eyes hard and unfriendly. “I speak for all of us.”

A moth died noisily on the filament of the lamp.

“People here say that you are walking around in the jungle,” Jorge said. “Looking for things to film.”

“What’s it to you?” Owen asked.

“You are filming in the wrong place. And you are putting yourself in danger.”

“I need film of the Amazon. And this is the Amazon,” Owen said.

“There are other places in the Amazon where you can film,” Jorge said. “This is not the place for outsiders.”

“If you’re going to warn me about drug cartels and kidnappers and FARC – yeah, we know. We read the papers.”

“You think you are in danger from human beings?” Jorge said. He leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “There are worse things in the forest than people. La Patasola walks in that place at night.”

“Seriously?” Owen asked. He wasn’t sure that he was using the correct Spanish phrase, so he backed it up with incredulous eyebrows. “You’re going to tell me a scary story about monsters? Remind me what La Patasola is, again? A vampire?”

“La Patasola is not just a story to frighten children,” Jorge said, trying to sound ominous. “La Patasola is real. She guards the forest. And she walks at night near the American research place.”

“What do you know about the American research place?” Owen snapped. The sweat pooled in the small of his back went cold.

“I know that they meddle with evil there. Creatures of nightmare, who should have been left in the dark, where they belong. Monsters. The Americans are playing with things that should not be played with. La Patasola guards the forest, and she is getting angry. Very angry.”

“Right. A mythical vampire-lady is pissed, and we should leave.”

“You mock La Patasola at your own peril! she is not to be played with. You should leave, while you can. That part of the forest is too dangerous.”

“I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready,” Owen said. “And I’m not scared of primitive mythology. Monsters? Yeah, right. Your people probably saw a lab monkey from a funny angle.”

“My people know that the stories are all true,” Jorge said. “We know what walks in the jungle at night.”

“You know what I think?” Owen said, leaning forward and tapping his index finger on the table. “I think you’ve come here with a bullshit story about monsters, thinking you’ll get some money out of me. There’s nothing out there but a bunch of laboratory animals, my friend, and you can try your sales pitch on someone else.”

Jorge sighed. “I have warned you. If you go to the research lab, you take your life in your own hands.”

“I am going to be here for another five days,” Owen said. “And in those five days, I am going to film whatever I want to. And I’m not listening to stupid stories about monsters.”

“You have made your choice,” Jorge said. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Thank you, Esteban.”

“De nada,” Esteban said. He had been standing back, polishing the one glass repetitively and eavesdropping shamelessly. “Are you going again? You have been waiting all evening just to talk to them?”

“I have said all I can say,” Jorge said. He crossed the room, and left. The screen door banged behind him.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe all that nonsense?” Owen asked Esteban. “The Americans are keeping monsters?”

“I don’t want to believe it,” Esteban said. “The Americans have been here for a long time. But a few weeks ago, they hired a lot of woodcutters, to build them a big, big cage.”

“They’re probably working with monkeys,” Owen said.

Esteban shook his head. “My sister-in-law’s cousins saw one of their guards being brought to the clinic in the town,” he said. “They had to airlift him to the hospital in Mitu to save his life. His leg had almost been torn off. No monkey did that. No-one goes near the American place these days. You should stay away, my friend.”

“What’s he saying?” Barry interrupted. He and Lowery had been fidgeting through the whole conversation. Now Barry couldn’t take it any longer. “What was that about?”

Esteban was moving away to tell the teenagers to stop fiddling with the valve on the gas lamp.

“He came here to warn us to stay away from the InGen lab,” Owen said. “He said the lab is working with monsters, and La Patasola guards the forest at night, and if we poking around there our lives will be in danger.”

"La Patasola?" Barry asked.

"A one-legged vampire, who disguises herself as a beautiful woman at night to lure men into the forest, and kill them."

Barry let out his trademarked sour crack of laughter.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Owen replied to the mocking laugh.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son,” Lowery said. “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch. But we already know that the snark is a boojum, and we’re not going to let that put us off, are we?”

“Comment?” Barry said, confused.

Owen was getting used to the way Lowery spoke. “We already know there are monsters there,” Owen said. “We even know their names. But Esteban seems genuinely spooked. I think this guy is from InGen – paid to spread stories, and warn the locals away from seeing something they’re not supposed to see.”

“What are we going to do?” Lowery asked.

Owen grinned at him. “The same thing we were going to do, Pinky! Go back in five nights, and get our raptors back!”

Chapter Text

The same place. The same conditions. The same moon stood overhead, and the insects shrieked in the dark as before.

Almost. Tonight Lowery was right behind him. Barry was behind Lowery. Owen ran, keeping low, zig-zagging to use the tree stumps for cover. The moon was full, and the stars were out. The light was as good as it could be, even without sitting for half an hour for their eyes to adjust, before wriggling under the chain-link fence.

Owen zig-zagged to the side of the paddock. He dropped to one knee in the dark, waiting, and listening. He could hear his own breathing in his ears. His heart was drumming in his chest. There was no sound, other than the constant chorus of jungle animals. The walkway above him was black against the stars.

They were well inside the enemy’s territory now; the commandoes were swarming the castle. His chest was tight, and he acknowledged his tension, and breathed out from his belly to force his muscles to relax.

Lowery arrived, stumbling. Owen reached out a hand, and guided him down to the ground. Lowery was breathing heavily too. They lay together, and a few minutes later Barry arrived, almost silently.

There was a sudden trill on the other side of the fence, and a metallic hiss. Somebody was very happy; somebody else ordered her to shut up. Owen moved to the fence, knelt, and pressed his hand through the poles. His fingers bumped warm hide.

He didn’t need to look to know it was Blue. She was there, as if she had been waiting for him. She pressed back against his fingers, matching his pressure. He closed his eyes. The tight band of worry that had been around his chest for the past five days suddenly relaxed. She was here, and she was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

“They’re here,” Owen breathed.

“Delta,” Lowery whispered, very softly, and there was a soft trill on the other side of the wood.

“To the gate,” Owen breathed. He took his hand from Blue’s muzzle, and made the We’re Moving gesture where he knew she could see it. He immediately heard her moving off. He pulled his arm back through the stockade, and started walking along the fence, keeping slow so as not to trip. Raptor footsteps kept pace with him.

They were near to the gate when there was a bang.

Owen dropped flat.

The guardhouse gate was opening. A guard was coming out, calling mockingly over his shoulder to his friends. He adjusted his belt, and jumped down the prefab steps to the ground.

Barry and Owen had both sunk smoothly into the dark. Owen lay still, trusting to the boot polish on his face and hands to keep him hidden. Lowery alone was left standing, but he was too late to throw himself down. He was exposed, in plain sight if the guard looked his way, but any sudden movement would draw the human eye like a magnet. At least Lowery himself seemed to know that moving would be a bad idea. He’d frozen into place like a statue.

Owen’s heart was drumming, beating so fast that he wanted to open his mouth and gasp for breath. Lowery’s silhouette was a solid black against the stockade, where there should have been only vertical shadows. He was only thirty feet away from the guard. He should have been seen instantly.

Should have, but wasn’t. The guard was strolling behind his flashlight, bobbing it cheerfully from side to side along the ground. He was looking at the path in front of his feet, and nothing else. He walked without pausing to the foot of the steps, just a few yards away from Lowery. He did not even run the flashlight left and right along the stockade, before he started climbing the steps.

Owen lay on his stomach, pressing himself as flat as he could. His hands were stretched out on either side of him, watching, barely breathing. He could smell the boot polish smeared on his own face. The damp of the soil was seeping into his shirt and trousers. He heard boots clumping up the steps over his head.

The footfalls climbed to the walkway, and then stopped. For a second Owen’s heart lurched. What was he doing? Had he seen something? A moment later the light began playing on the other side of the stockade. The guard was shining his torch back and forth inside the paddock, searching for the raptors.

“There’s one,” the guard said, in English.

The light played on, feeling out across the ground. A raptor screamed, sounding angry. Heavy feet clomped on the ground. Owen turned his head. Through a gap between two poles, he saw Blue jogging towards him. She came to a fast sliding-stop, and stared up at the guard. Her eyes glittered yellow in the flashlight that haloed her.

“And there’s the other. All right-y.” His boots clumped along on the planking over Owen’s head. He started to sing softly under his breath as he walked. “And now, I know, my heart is a gho-host town…”

Lowery took his chance to lie down slowly.

The guard started whistling, and the sound carried on the night air all the way up the length of the paddock. His footfalls went away out of hearing.

Owen heard Lowery sigh with relief. It was clear that ‘walk around the perimeter’ was one of the guards’ duties. It was also clear that Xenocore had become dangerously complacent. They had not yet learned just how quickly things went horribly wrong, when you were careless around velociraptors.

The whistling was getting louder. The guard was coming back. He had walked the entire perimeter, and come around from the other side. His footsteps clumped down the steps, and away across the mud. The light from inside the guards’ cabin flashed, and then the door banged shut again.

What the fuck were they doing in there – binge-watching TV? He would have had their asses if they’d been his employees!

Owen pushed himself to his feet. The gate was just a few yards away, and he jogged to it with Lowery right behind him. He ran his hands up the jambs, to find out how it was locked. Lowery was next to him now, and he could hear a raptor breathing on the other side. Owen stubbed his fingers on a long pad-bolt in the middle of the gate.

“Got a bolt,” he whispered.

“Need the bolt cutters?” Barry asked.

“No,” Owen said.

The bolt was backed by a square metal plate to shield it from raptor talons, but not padlocked. Owen shot the bolt back. He heard a metal clank as Lowery pulled a drop-bolt out of the ground. Was there another bolt at the top of the gate? Yes; he raised the pad, and pulled the bolt across.

A second later, the gate was yanked out of his grasp. The shadow of the gate was gone, and the shadow of a raptor leaped out.

Delta didn’t waste an instant. She sprang, and a moment later Lowery had flung both arms around the raptor’s neck.

Owen heard Barry make a muffled squawk of horror, and turned to see him frozen in place against the stockade. The whites of Barry’s eyes were completely circular in shock. “Mon Dieu,” Barry whispered.

Owen couldn’t blame him. He had made the same sound the first time he saw Lowery hug Delta. It was one thing to be told that Delta adored Lowery; it was another thing to see it. Delta even stood up to her full height, her tail down, to allow Lowery to hug her body. Her jaw lay on the top of his shoulder.

“Time was away, and somewhere else!” Lowery mumbled. Delta let out a happy little trill.

Freakish, Owen thought. Delta had attached herself to Lowery, but he had attached himself to her just as much. He’d chucked over his job and flew all this way, for a raptor he had only met once. They were both mental, as far as Owen was concerned. That was a velociraptor. One did not hug a velociraptor! Mental!

Someone exhaled forcefully into Owen’s ear, and he jumped. He turned around, and found himself staring straight up into Blue’s teeth.

“Blue,” he said.

She had come out of the paddock without any of Delta’s fuss. She was standing right behind him, perfectly silent, regarding him closely.

He turned around so that they were face-to-face, and stared into that big liquid eye, glittering like a jewel in the moonlight. He reached up a hand, and touched the underside of her jaw. She was warm under his fingers. She blinked, solemnly.

“There’s my girl.”

She moved her head slightly, and the rough side of her jaw bumped his cheek. She had to be able to feel the bristle of his beard against her hide. She exhaled, her hot breath spilling over his face and neck. He closed his eyes, and savoured her presence through that tiny link of breath and touch. He’d grown up around horses, but he had never understood why a person would say they loved their horse – until now. He breathed back, and wondered if she could feel his breath on her nose.

Owen heard the sounds of the gate’s bolts being run home again. Barry was closing the gate. “We don’t have time for tete-a-tete!” Barry whispered. “We have to move!”

“Yeah,” Owen said. He opened his eyes, and stepped back from Blue. She did not look away. “Blue. And we’re moving,” he said, hoping that the phrase would still be understood in a whisper.

Blue stared at Owen closely. She hadn’t understood the phrase, he realized. He raised his hand and made the We’re Moving sign in the direction of the hole in the fence.

Blue made a noise in her throat, and pulled herself upright. She made the stiff neck-yawing movement that he was certain meant a refusal – hell no we won’t go – and stepped backwards, snaking her tail.

“Yes!” Owen insisted. He repeated the hand signal. We’re Moving!

Blue dropped her jaw, and hissed. She turned her long body, until she was facing in the opposite direction, and twisted her head back to look at him over her shoulder. Her powerful tail snaked from side to side. She hissed at him again.

“I don’t think she wants to, man,” Lowery whispered.

“She has to!” Owen said. He was not going to let her go to the guard house! She could break down the door of that little pre-fab shack in two seconds. She could kill every person in there in less than a minute! He’d seen it, and he did not want to see it again, ever!

He straightened his back. It was simply not going to happen that way. She was not in control here! “Blue-ue,” he said. “Stand down, girl!” He made the We’re Moving signal again.

She hissed – a long hiss, that sounded like she wished it could be a scream of frustration. He wasn’t doing what the alpha wanted, and the alpha didn’t like it. She pulled her head around, and sprang forward.

“Blue!” he hissed, as she leaped away.

“Oh, no-no-no-no-no!” Lowery yammered, as Delta followed Blue. Both raptors raced away, head-down, hands tucked under sternums: the hunting run. They streaked away through the moonlight.

“Shit!” Owen said, horrified. He raced after them.

But they weren’t running left to the guard-house. They raced off in the other direction. They were racing to the right. They were streaking under the legs of the water tower, and still going. They sprinted to the front of the big concrete building. Blue crossed the empty parking lot in a few strides, and came to a sliding-stop at the front door. Delta joined her. Both of them whirled around to stare at him.

Owen stopped under the legs of the water-tower, gasping for breath, and stared at Blue.

He had felt that stare before. They had all turned and stared at him like that when they met the Indominus. That cold unblinking stare had panicked ACU into opening fire. Do something…

He stared at Blue. What was she thinking? What was she planning? Whatever it was, there had been no time for her to explain it to him, any more than he’d been able to explain sailing Mrs Frisby to her. She was just waiting for him to make up his mind. Trust, or trust not.

The raptors were lit up brightly, as if they were outlined on a stage, just a hundred yards away. He could even see the pattern of scars across Delta’s body from the Indominus’s teeth. Delta stamped her feet urgently. Blue just waited coldly. He had an idea that she would have been screaming with anger and impatience, if it hadn’t been necessary to keep quiet.

He turned his head, very slowly. Lowery and Barry were behind him under the water tower. They were watching him. They were waiting for him to make up his mind. He could feel their eyes on him, waiting for him to decide what the best move would be.

He turned back to look at Blue. The raptors were watching him They were also waiting for him to make up his mind. They were perfectly capable of opening that door by themselves, he reminded himself. They were waiting for Owen.

He was not in control here. No battle plan survived battle unchanged; no plan with velociraptors ever survived the plans of velociraptors. The alpha knew what she wanted, and she was making it happen. This is going to happen, Grady – with or without you…

All right, he thought. Blue had been waiting for five days for something. He would see what that something was.

“Come on!” He broke out of the darkness, sprinted across the parking lot. The urge to run hunched over was irresistible. The guards must have guns, and he felt as if every barrel was aimed at his back.

He reached the door and skidded to a stop, and Barry and Lowery joined him. Blue cocked her head, looking over her little squad, and then she turned to face the door. She put her forehands on the door, and pushed it open.

The door slid open on its hydraulic arm. Blue slipped inside, quick as an eel.

Owen caught the door before it could slam and beckoned the others through ahead of him. Delta first, then Lowery and Barry. He followed them inside, and closed the door silently.

They were in a small hallway. The lighting was dimmed, and it was deserted. The raptors were twisting their long necks this way and that, as they examined this new place.

There was a small reception counter and an open door to Owen’s right. He could hear radio chatter coming from that direction, squeeing and fizzing with radio interference. He stepped quietly over to the door, and took a look.

The little room was a guard station. And there was a man here – slumped in his chair asleep. He was sprawled in front of a bank of monitors, his head drooping on his chest. Security cameras were watching the paddock, but nobody was watching the security cameras. There was a board with car keys hanging on the wall above the sleeping guard.

Delta thrust her head around Owen’s shoulder. Owen snapped out his arm across the doorway in front of her. He shook his head at her. No…No…

Delta paused. She opened her jaws slightly, her breath rasping through her teeth. She stared at the sleeping guard for a moment, her slit pupil tightening and relaxing as she examined the man. Her nictitating membrane slid closed in a blink. For a moment, the sleeping man’s life hung in the balance.

Then she drew her head back again and reversed out of the doorway. Owen sighed with relief. Whatever the raptors were doing here tonight, it was not bloodshed. Silence was on their agenda, not slaughter. He leaned into the room, put his hand around the doorhandle and drew the door gently closed. The man did not wake up.

He would have a lot of explaining to do in the morning, Owen thought. Let unemployment be the worst of his problems.

Blue had not bothered to come to the door. She was standing in the centre of the hallway, forehands curled under her chest. Her long head and neck were turning this way and that. Her nostrils were opening and closing; soft snorting grunts. Delta turned her head too close to Blue, and Blue snapped her teeth at her. Both raptors were keeping absolutely quiet. Their usual aggressive hissing and snarling was gone; they were locked on, focused.

This was a scent drill, Owen realized. They had done scent drills a thousand times on the island. Blue was looking for something.

He turned and caught Barry’s eyes, and then waited a moment for Lowery to look at him. He raised his hand to his face, and cupped his fingertips over his nose as if he was sniffing a flower. Both men nodded.

Blue raised herself to her full height, tail down for balance. She arched her neck, raising her snout almost to the ceiling, craning her head from side to side. She traversed her head slowly to the right, like a snake, staring at the ceiling. She dropped back to her natural stance, wheeled around, and stalked to the corner of the hallway. Delta wheeled, and followed her.

Owen met Barry’s gaze, and pointed one finger to the ceiling. Whatever it was, it was up there.

The hallway led around a corner, and down a long corridor that must run the length of the building. On the one wall were windows, on the other a line of doors. Offices, Owen guessed; empty at night. The only sounds were the quiet click of claws, and the squeak of the men’s boots on the tiles. The hall ended at the foot of a staircase. Blue did not stop at any of the doors. She stalked straight to the staircase and climbed it without hesitating. She climbed all the way to next floor, and Owen followed.

The staircase led them up to a short hallway. To one side was a door reading Cylinder Room No Entry. On the other side was a wall of glass, with a set of sliding glass doors.

WARNING.
BIOSAFETY LEVEL ONE.
KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED AT ALL TIMES.

There was a keypad by the glass doors. Owen leaned against the door, and put his hands around his face to see through the dark glass. It was some sort of laboratory. He could see the cold glow of lights inside glass-fronted refrigerators, and numbers ticking on expensive laboratory equipment.

Blue pressed her nose against the door. Her breath steamed on the glass. She seemed to be contemplating something on the other side. She turned her head, her hide knocking against the glass.

“Whatever they’re looking for, it’s in there,” Owen whispered. Blue’s eye flicked a glance at him as he spoke, but she was intent on the glass door. A door without a handle was a puzzle she had never seen before.

“Hang on, let me,” Lowery said. He bent to the keypad, and pressed in a code. It beeped as he typed, but the keypad light flashed red. “Okay, not that. What about this?”

Beep-beep-beep-beep – red.

“What are you doing?”

“I helped install this system in the Hive. InGen uses the same system in all their facilities. If they’re using the same access codes as the Creation Lab… well.” Lowery said.

Beep-beep-beep-beep – red.

“They won’t,” Barry said. “They’re not that stupid.”

“People are stupid,” Lowery said. He thought for a moment. “Origin of Species?” He tapped another sequence.

Beep-beep-beep-beep – red.

“Nope,” Lowery said, cheerfully.

Blue drew her head back on her neck, and backed away from the glass doors. The corridor was not very wide, but she stepped backwards, recoiling against the opposite wall. She drew her weight back onto her powerful hocks.

He knew what she was going to do. She had no facial expressions, but he knew she was tensing herself for a spring. She was going to break through the glass. She could: he had seen Delta smash through the glass in the Creation Lab. She would set off every alarm in Colombia!

“Mendel’s peas?” Lowery thought aloud. Beep-beep-beep-beep – red. “Nope, guess not…”

Owen reached out his hand to Blue, fingertips brushing her elbow. She turned her head back to him, and he signalled Wait with that hand. She opened her jaws and snarled silently at him. He raised his eyebrows at her. Wait…wait…

“Mon Dieu,” Barry muttered, impatiently.

“I got this, just be patient!” Lowery snapped. “I know Wu! Wu is very educated, but very stupid…” Beep-beep-beep-beep – and the light flashed green.

“1953 – Watson and Crick!” Lowery said.

“Mon Dieu!” Barry said, in a different tone.

The glass door was sliding open. There was a hiss of escaping air, and the lab seemed to whoosh out to hug Owen’s face. The air was hot, and damp, like the inside of a bathroom after a hot shower.

Blue didn’t even wait for the door to open all the way. She slipped in like an eel, with Delta jostling to dash after her.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Owen thought. He followed Blue into the lab. The glass door slid silently closed behind them.

The heat and the damp hugged his face, bringing a prickle of sweat out in his hair and beard immediately. This felt familiar. It was hard to imagine a Biosafety Lab keeping itself so muggy – weren’t they were trashing their own expensive equipment? – but the Hatchery in the Innovation Centre was kept exactly like this. The Hatchery maintained a temperature of 99 degrees Fahrenheit, with a 100% humidity, and a raised level of oxygen. The conditions were meant to match Earth’s atmosphere 65 million years ago.

“This is a hatchery,” he said, grimly. “Don’t touch anything. There are eggs here.”

The raptors were already fanning out between the rows of laboratory benches, their talons clicking, their necks and tails flexing this way and that like sine-waves. There were cold blue lights glowing inside the glass refrigerators and under fume hoods. Read-outs on sophisticated machinery blinked sleepily to each other. InGen’s logo rotated slowly on computer monitors. Lowery stooped to one computer, and dispelled the screensaver, to find a log-on screen. Owen found an egg incubator, but its cover was off. The robotic arms of the motion and thermal sensors hung motionless. There were cups in the incubator for twenty raptor-sized eggs. He saw three more incubators beyond it, also empty. Four incubators, twenty eggs each.

Blue’s egg had been incubated in a machine just like this, coddled in warm oxygen and a constant mist of moisture. He had watched that egg for two months, trying to imagine the hustling bustling little personality inside. Her egg had rocked from side to side restlessly, as if she was already in a hurry to burst out and start doing things in the world.

He turned to look at Blue herself in time to see her spring to the right. There was a low partition there against the wall. A soft golden light was glowing on the other side. She grabbed the top of the partition, and stared over it.

“She’s got it!” he said.

He ran across the lab shoulder-to-shoulder with Barry, and grabbed onto the partition. He found himself staring down into a big square loosebox, floored with sawdust.

Not eggs.

There was a small lump in the middle of the box; a heap of legs and tails. Baby raptors, only a week old, and no bigger than kittens. Eight of them, sleeping in a heap.

They were all white.

Blue whipped her head back with a startled snort. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. Owen turned to look at her, just in time for her to look at him. She opened her jaws, and panted noisily.

Lowery and Delta arrived together with a thud against the partition.

“Ho-o-oly…” Lowery said.

“Shit,” Owen whispered.

“Yeah,” Lowery said, raising his steamy glasses to see properly.

“Eight of them – oh, Christ,” Owen said.

As he looked, one of the hatchlings opened its enormous eyes. Delta’s loud arrival had woken it up. The little head lifted up on its spindly neck, and wobbled around to stare at her.

Blink; blink.

A moment later, Owen heard a deep thrumming sound. Delta was humming, deep in her throat. He’d heard a tiger purring once, and it sounded just like this.

The hatchlings had been sleeping, which meant they must have been fed recently. And now the rest of them were waking up. They were unfolding their heads from their hatchling-huddle, and looking round. They had snub baby faces, with huge bulging eyes, just like baby parrots. Their necks looked too weak to hold their heads up steadily, but all eight raised their heads to stare at their visitors.

There was a splintering crash. Delta had seized the door of the box, and ripped it off its hinges. A second later, only her waving tail was sticking out. She leaned forward and planted her forehands in the sawdust to lower her face level with the hatchlings.

The nearest hatchling thrust itself up to all fours, and then with the dazed determination of a puppy it began waddling to Delta’s head. It was so clumsy it tripped over its own forehands, and thumped its own nose into the ground. It picked itself up, and sat blinking for a moment, as if unsure whether it really could reach her.

That one was the first. And they really were just like baby birds at this age: one of them wanted something, so instantly all of them wanted it. A moment later all eight babies were wobbling towards the adult raptor.

“Mon Dieu,” Barry crooned. “Mignon! Adorable!”

He pressed in through the doorway at Delta’s side and went down one knee.
One of the hatchlings noticed him, and wobbled over to him. It tried its best to stand up on its hindlegs and hiss-snapped at him: a miniature parody of a velociraptor. Particularly since week-old hatchlings didn’t have any teeth.

“How is something so dangerous so cute?”

And they were cute at that age, Owen thought. The adults were frightening, but the little ones were scrumptious. He remembered putting baby Blue inside his shirt to keep her warm and reassured. He remembered tiny Echo, rolling out of her egg into his palm and taking issue with his thumb. It was only later, only after they grew teeth and muscles and speed, that they stopped being cute…

“Did He smile, his work to see?” Lowery asked the hatchlings. “Did He who made the I-rex make thee? And eight of thee no less, as if one wasn’t enough trouble?”

Blue didn’t look like she thought they were adorable either. She looked as if she didn’t know whether to snarl or scream. Her jaws were open, and she timbered deeply with anxiety.

“Easy, Blue,” Owen soothed. “Easy, girl.”

The white raptors were as much of a surprise to Blue as they were to him, Owen realized, and she hadn’t forgotten the last white dinosaur she had seen. The last white dinosaur Blue met had killed Echo and Charlie, and nearly killed Blue herself, and Delta would carry that arc of scars of the rest of her life. To raptors, the pack was everything. And white dinosaurs were a threat…

Blue’s head turned left, to look at the door, and back again. Eight tiny lives hung in the balance of her decision.

The room was turning around Owen, as if he was drunk. Too much oxygen in here, he remembered. What had Hoskins said? Scaled down to a fraction of the size? Deadly … intelligent …? A living weapon…

And there were enough incubators here to run off eighty at a time…

The hatchlings were clustered under and around Delta, who was sitting in their midst and looking over them like a genial reptile Falstaff. Each of them had a letter of the alphabet drawn on its back in black marker. The baby alpha – C – was sitting under her chin, staring raptly up into her eyes.

Owen wondered if their keeper also ran dead rats through a blender for them, to make them a warm meat soup. And then fed them carefully through a cake-decorator’s plunger: a process which took fifteen minutes each, every two hours. Eight of them – oh, God. And he thought four had been a lot of work…

Owen shook his head, and blinked his dizziness out of his eyes. Too much oxygen.

“How did they know they were here?” Lowery asked.

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “But now we know why Blue wanted to wait. They would have been too small to move five days ago.”

“We can’t leave them here, man,” Lowery said. “You know what they are. You know what Xenocore wants to do with them.”

“We’re fucking not leaving them here,” Owen said to him.

“No! You can’t kill them!” Barry said, sitting up.

“We should,” Lowery said.

“We’re not going to kill them!” Owen said. He pulled his pen out of his pocket, and said, “Blue.”

Her long smirk of teeth turned to face him. He bent over, and put the point of the pen against the side of the box. He drew on the wall. Raptor. Small. Raptor. Big. OwenHuman. And then he drew a big circle, around all five symbols. By the time he had finished, the heat and damp in the lab had trashed the point of the pen.

Blue looked at what he had written, and her head snaked from side to side with uncertainty.

Hammond’s ranger Muldoon had been so wrong, Owen thought. The raptors weren’t dangerous because they were vicious animals, they were vicious because they weren’t animals, and they knew it. And the Indominus was a raptor, after all – blown to giant size, and driven mad by isolation.

“We’re going to need something to carry them in,” Owen said, turning away while she considered his suggestion.

“We could just put them in our shirts,” Lowery said.

“No,” Owen said, quickly. He’d carried Blue inside his shirt when she was tiny but he was not keen to do it again. “They have claws and they scratch.”

“A box,” Lowery decided. “Place like this has to have a stationery cupboard, somewhere…”

Barry and Delta were still cooing to the hatchlings, oblivious to everything else. Owen reckoned baby gorillas had now been superseded in Monsieur Bompaka’s affection.

Owen saw Blue watching him. She bobbed her head at him, and made a warbling snarl. It was similar to the sound she’d made to him just before they had fought the Indominus; as if she was trying to mimic speech.

“What?” he asked. He spread out both hands. “What is it?”

She turned around, and headed back towards the glass door. She halted by the door, and turned her head to look back at him. She didn’t need pen and paper to tell him that she wanted him to follow her. And she was the alpha, he thought. He’d follow her under his own steam, or she’d drag him.

“Dude?” Lowery asked.

“I’ll be back.”

She backed up, and waited for him to enter the code on the keypad. The doors opened, and they went out into the dark corridor. The air seemed cold by comparison.

She headed for the staircase leading up. This building had three floors, he remembered. And lights had been shining from the upper windows.

He followed her up the stairs. The staircase opened out onto a hallway. A door on his left said Server Room, and was locked with a keypad. The other door said Research Laboratory. Blue moved to that door, and waited for him.

Owen typed in 1953 again, and the lock clicked. Blue put her head down and pushed the door open, and Owen followed her.

He found himself in an open-plan office that stretched all the way across to the elevator doors on the far side of the building. The office was dark, but someone was working late. Someone was sitting alone in a glass-walled corner office, lit up like a lizard in a terrarium under the lights.

On the other side of the office, Wu looked up from his computer.

For a moment he just gaped at them across the office, confused. Then terror yanked at his face, and he jumped up. His panic stung Blue, and she sprang, and they leaped for the door to his glass office at exactly the same moment. They met on either side of the glass with a meaty thud, but Wu had less distance to travel and he was a fraction of a second faster. He slammed the door shut just as Blue slammed face-first into the other side.

“Blue!” Owen shouted at her, dashing forward. He dodged through the desks as fast as he could. “Ho!”

Blue drew herself back on her big hocks for another body-slam into the glass. “Blue!” he slammed his shoulder into the glass in front of her as she coiled back and threw both arms toward her. “Ho! Stand down!”

She made no outward sign that she even saw him. Her head was low, all her teeth were bared, and her eyes were fixed on Wu – but she didn’t jump.

Wu was leaning on the other side of the glass, clinging to the door handle for dear life.
“Call her off!” Wu screamed.

“I can’t,” Owen said. “I don’t control her any more. Those days are over.” But he made the Wait signal with his hand.

She hiss-snapped at his hand, but stayed where she was. She sank back, half onto her hocks, ready to spring.

He turned to face Wu, so that he could see the scientist’s face. Wu had relaxed slightly. He’d taken the time to lock the door, Owen saw. Lowery had done the same thing. Really, he thought, why did people not understand how strong reptiles were?

“What the hell are you doing here?” Wu demanded.

“I came for her,” Owen said.

“She’s not yours to take, Grady! She’s InGen property! You were let go from the raptor programme!”

“I came to put a stop to the raptor programme,” Owen said.

“Stop the raptor programme? What for? The raptor programme is just starting!”

“Yes, I’ve seen what you’ve got downstairs! Wu, those have to be the last! Don’t make any more.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The DoD wants more. The eight downstairs already have Navy SEALS picked out as their handlers. The next batch is going to go to the Army Rangers…”

Owen put both hands on the glass, leaning forward urgently. “The raptor programme is going to kill those soldiers! The raptors are not dogs or dolphins! Raptors don’t want to take orders, they want to give orders. They will never be controlled.”

“You’re telling me to stop everything, with her standing right there!” Wu said, jerking his chin toward Blue over Owen’s shoulder. “She’s proof that the raptor programme works. She bonded to you. You control her.”

“I don’t control her. She takes my advice because she trusts me,” Owen said. “I’m not under any illusions about who’s really in control! You have to put an end to the raptor programme, Wu! You’re the only one who can stop this, before it turns into a catastrophe. Destroy the embryos, delete the research, stop everything.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Wu said. “Why would I stop doing the greatest work of my career? Look at her!”

Owen looked at Blue. She was still standing just behind his shoulder, staring implacably at Wu. If there was one thing Owen had learned, it was that silent, staring raptor was a raptor right on the verge of attack. He hadn’t actually stopped her from attacking Wu; she was just waiting for him to get out of her way.

“Easy, Blue,” he soothed.

“Look at her,” Wu said. “She’s perfect. She’s magnificent. She’s the culmination of my life’s work – everything I’ve achieved… the pinnacle of my career. I’m not going to go down in history for the Stegosaurus or the Quagga – I am going to be remembered as the creator of her…”

“Wu,” Owen braced his hands on the glass, searching to find words to express himself. He wished Lowery was here. Lowery might find some line from a poem, some geek reference from his fathomless memory that would explain everything to Wu in a few words – but Owen did not have Lowery’s poetry in his soul. “Listen to me!” he said.

“I am listening,” Wu said.

“You made her, but you don’t know what she is. I was hired to find out how smart she is. And she is very smart! Hammond thought raptors were as smart as chimps, but they’re even smarter than that. It’s hard to see, because we just can’t relate to them as easily as we do with other apes, but they are. They’re intelligent!”

“Intelligent enough to use,” Wu said.

“You’re not fucking listening to me!” he banged one fist on the glass. “The raptors are intelligent. Don’t you understand? The raptors will never, ever let themselves be used, any more than you could use Caesar, or Saladin, or Genghis Khan!”

“History?” Wu scoffed. “Screw history. As far as history goes, I’m just a zoo designer. I’m the PT Barnum of DNA. Well, screw that. I have a chance to do something real with my talent. Something that will be remembered.”

“You’re not hearing a word I’m saying! Wu, the raptor programme is a huge mistake. People are going to die, if you keep going. What happened to the old Park will happen again, a thousand times over, if you keep going!”

“No, you listen, Grady!” Wu said. “The world does not have room any more for your kind of mushy animal-lover fantasies. You’re a relic of the 20th Century – an anachronism! My raptors are going to change the world, like the AK47, or the Bomb, and that’s the future! You can’t stand in the way of progress, Grady. Progress is just going to roll right over your head. Those eight downstairs are just the beginning.”

Wu nodded toward his desk, and Owen looked over his shoulder. He saw what was on Wu’s monitor; the work that Blue had interrupted.

For a moment he thought he was looking at a fantasy painting, and then he realized what he was seeing. Like the kid had said that night – that was not a dinosaur. That was a creature welling up from a feverish medieval nightmare, a monster from a world of stained-glass and demons…

“Dragons,” he said. His breath puffed on the glass.

“Dragons?” Wu asked. He turned and looked at the monitor, and smiled at his next project. “Yes, I suppose you could call them that!”

“You’re building dragons…”

“It’s going to need a lot of fiddling with the Hox genes, to get a viable hexapedal phenotype,” Wu said, “But so much of the raptor genome comes from parrots, flight should be instinctive for them. It’s going to be very exciting to watch... ”

Owen imagined a creature with the mind of the raptor, the camouflage of the Indominus – and the power of flight. Dragons … born with the raptor’s instinctive drive to dominate, to rule, to command, the way Blue ruled him. Dragons would never serve mankind.

And Wu was going to build bloody legions of them!

Owen took his hands off the glass, and stepped back.

Wu seemed to take this as a sign of surrender. “Grady, listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to give you a chance to walk away. Take your raptor! No-one else can control her anyway – she bonded with you. So take her. You’ll go down in military history anyway, like the Wright Brothers next to Von Richthofen.”

“You’re not going to stop,” Owen said.

“No,” Wu agreed.

“And I can’t let you continue.”

He stepped back, level with Blue, and turned to look at her. She cocked her head, dropping her jaw in a snot-snarl. He took another step backward, and nodded.

Her head snapped forward to Wu. Wu saw her movement, saw her eyes lock onto him. He scrambled away from the door, suddenly aware of what was going to happen to him, but he had nowhere to run.

“No!”

Afterwards, Owen wondered if he should have kept his eyes open. He wondered, years later, if he had been morally lacking in that moment; if he had shirked some sort of human duty by not looking at what he had let Blue do. He heard the glass shatter, and he heard Wu scream, and then a hard meaty slam, like an MMA take-down. He heard another shrill scream.

Years later, he still remembered that scream.

When he opened his eyes there was silence. There was a spray of blood on the glass. Blue raised her head, and stared at him over Wu’s desk. There was blood on one forehand; she had used her talons, not her teeth. She paused to rub it away with the other forehand; the same gesture she used after she’d killed a goat or a pig.

She timbered. Bom-bom-bom-bom…

“We should go,” Owen said, and found that his voice was hoarse. His legs were shaking under him. He raised his hand, and pointed it back toward the staircase.

She sprang up onto the desk, her powerful hindlegs splaying under her to catch her balance, and then jumped clean over the broken glass. He turned, and walked out between the desks. She followed him without complaint.

He had done the right thing, he told himself. He had probably averted World War Three. He had done the right thing. He had to remember that.

But perhaps he had given up too soon? Perhaps he could have explained more to Wu, perhaps he could have expressed himself better, perhaps he could have fetched Lowery and his video footage? Perhaps Wu did not understand; perhaps there might have been another way; perhaps –.

He stopped, suddenly nauseous. He’d never killed anyone before. And yet he had decided that Wu should die. He had done exactly what Delta had done to Hoskins. He had become the raptor himself.

He stopped, his head ringing, and the nausea suddenly lifted up inside him. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

Something hard bumped his shoulder, and he looked up to see Blue’s muzzle against his face. She timbered, and pressed both nostrils against his neck.

“I’m all right,” he whispered, and touched her jaw. “I think I just averted World War Three. I did the right thing. No. I know I did the right thing.”

She timbered again, and then in the middle of the call she changed it to a deep hum. She thrummed reassuringly.

She was a carnivore, he thought. Carnivores didn’t have the luxury of post-traumatic stress. She’d cooled from the heat of her attack as fast as she’d recovered from the shock of being attacked by the crocodile. What was done, was done.

“I’ll be okay,” he said, and straightened his back. “What’s done is done. Let’s go.”

They went out through the door, and down the stairs quietly, and found Barry and Lowery coming up to meet them. Blue and Delta put their faces together, chirruping and chuffle-chuffing quietly.

“Is anyone up there?” Lowery asked, nodding towards the staircase. He had both arms around what looked the box from a printer. Owen could hear small feet bumping around inside the corners.

“No,” Owen said.

“Tres bien,” Barry said, “because we have about ten minutes to get out of here, before this place goes Ker-Boom.”

“You set a bomb?”

“I put a fork in the microwave…” Lowery said. “The oxygen in there will do the rest; once it starts burning it won’t stop. We have to destroy this place, once and for all, man; burn it to the ground, or they’ll just start again.”

If the place burned down, everyone would assume that Wu had died in the fire. It might never be noticed that he had been killed by a raptor. He felt another surge of nausea; disgust at his depth of his own relief.

“Are they in there?” he asked, nodding at the box.

“All except little G,” Barry said, patting the front of his shirt. “We gave them some sawdust to sit in.”

“Come on,” he said. He made his way down the stairs and around to the corner of the corridor. He paused just this side of the corner, went down on one knee, and put his face around, listening.

Nothing had changed in the front hall. The door to the guard’s station was still closed. It was going to be easy to sneak up to the paddock, and then wriggle through hole in the fence. The guards would be busy fighting the fire; they might not even notice the raptors had gone till tomorrow…

When the siren started whooping, he thought that it was the smoke alarm upstairs.

“Merde!”

But the sound pitched up and up, getting louder and louder, before it fell away again, and he realized the siren was coming from outside, from up the hillside. That was an old-fashioned siren, like an air-raid-warning. Owen heard the sound of the guard spluttering and waking up.

Well, that plan had just gone to hell!

Owen swore under his breath, searching his mind for Plan B. Sneaking out the way they had come was hopeless. How else could they get out? Well, there was a gate, which meant they would …

“We need one of those trucks outside!” he decided. “Stay here!” He stepped around the corner.

He opened the guard’s door quietly. The guard was awake, rubbing one hand over his eyes and sitting forward over his radio. The voice on the radio was squawking with consternation. The siren was still screaming outside.

“I’ve got a hole in the fence up here!” someone squawked on the radio. “Look – look – that’s a hole!”

“We’ve got a breach!”

“Everyone – stay calm. They can’t have gone far. I’m going to open the arms locker. We can do this with non-lethals…”

Owen could see the video monitors over the guard’s shoulder. The paddock was lit up by floodlights, and searchlights were weaving around it like a circus big-top. The guard seemed to sense that someone was behind him, because suddenly he turned.

Owen found himself pinned under his shocked gaze. “Howdy,” he said, and stepped forward. The guard was already turning, reaching forward for the Talk button on his radio, but Owen was fully awake, and faster.

He shot out his fist, driving for the back of the man’s head. He had no time for scruples tonight. His fist seemed to explode against the back of the man’s neck. Brute force threw the guard over his desk, limp as a drunk.

“Gaaah,” Owen said, squeezing his knuckles between his knees. He would never get used to just how much punching full-force hurt, when you hit without gloves or wraps. He didn’t give full voice to his pain – a guy had to keep his dignity, and Barry was listening. He moved over to the board with the keys.

No keys, no pursuit… With his other hand he snatched all six keys off the hooks. He selected two keys with Isuzu logos, and stuffed the others into his pocket. He looked out through the open door. The air-raid siren was still hollering away outside.

“Here,” he whispered.

Barry reached him first. Lowery was still weighed down with the box. Barry looked at the guard. “What did you do?”

“I cold-cocked him,” Owen said. “Drag him outside before you leave,I don’t want him dying of smoke inhalation.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get one of those trucks,” Owen said. “Stay here, and wait until I’ve backed up to the door.” He turned and found Blue, watching him. “Blue. Stand down,” he said to her. He made the Wait signal.

She snarled, stalking forward to outflank him. He shook his head, and kept the Wait signal aimed at her. “Ho! Stand down. Blue. Ho! Wait for me. I’ll be back, I’ll be right back. You and Delta, stay here and watch the babies.”

They had only a few words and phrases of English, but she knew what the Wait signal meant. She didn’t like it but she understood. She shook her head and neck vigorously, the motion travelling all the way down to her tail.

“That’s good!” he said. “That’s damn good!” He backed away to the door, and pushed it open.

Outside, the alarm was still screaming, as if the whole forest had not heard it by now. He took a moment to look up at the paddock. Lights were still flashing at the top end. They were still flapping about the hole in the fence. They hadn’t learned yet that the obvious direction to look was always the wrong one, with velociraptors.

He pressed one of the Isuzu keys. The furthest truck flashed its lights. He jogged to the driver’s door, and climbed in. He put the key in the ignition, and turned it one stop. The dash lit up. The fuel gauge barely flicked.

Almost empty. Damn!

Time was pouring away. Soon, the guards would come down here to see why the man on the cameras wasn’t answering. They had only a few minutes to get out of here. If the other truck was empty too, he would just have to take his chances with it anyway.

He turned around the tail of the truck, and nearly collided with a man running the other way. He found himself face-to-face with Bulgen.

Bulgen recognised Owen. He looked staggered for a second, and then his face knotted into rage. “You!” he barked, and leaped forward.

Owen leaped to meet him. He slammed into Bulgen, trying to ram him backwards against the truck, but Bulgen matched him and shoved back. Owen felt himself being swung around, and slammed into the truck. The thump rammed the wind out of him, and he clutched Bulgen for balance. They grappled against the truck, muscles straining, each trying to throw the other, grabbing for a hold. Bulgen grabbed at Owen’s thigh with one hand, trying to raise his leg and throw him over. Owen felt his balance wobbling. He used his fist to batter Bulgen’s face with short smashing hooks, frightened suddenly. He’d bitten off more than he could chew. Bulgen was taller and heavier and he knew how to fight. If Owen went down, it would all be over.

But Bulgen was twisting, turning his face into his shoulder. Owen was hurting him, and he was twisting away. Owen’s leg was free, and he wrenched himself out of Bulgen’s grip. He backed off, his fists up.

“Bulgen,” he panted. “Don’t go there!”

Bulgen snarled. His face was a mask of rage, as vicious as a raptor. His eyes glittered in the dark. He reached behind him, and his arm whipped up again with a knife.

Owen leaped backward as Bulgen’s blade licked out for his stomach. He reached for the knife sheathed in the small of his back, and pulled it out.

“You and me, fucker,” Bulgen said, his voice hoarse with hatred. He stooped low, snaking the blade back and forth. The lights glittered on the blade.

Owen backed away, his eyes on Bulgen’s knife. He’d seen that snaking movement before. The blade was in constant motion, back and forth, flowing, aiming to slide like a feather across his arteries. Block the feather one way, and it would flow the other way. It would take only one stroke of that lethal feather, across his femoral artery or his neck or his upper arm, and this would be over.

Bulgen laughed at him. “Watch it happen, pal. I’m going to enjoy this.”

The advice of his boxing trainer flashed through his mind. Knives are for murder, not fighting; don’t mess around with martial arts with a guy who wants to kill you …

Owen backed up another step. The hunting knife was heavy, and familiar in his fingers, and he lifted it in his right hand. Bulgen slid forward on his first strike, fast as a snake, but Owen made no attempt to meet him. He spun himself into the throwing stance he’d been taught and threw the knife as hard as he could.

The blade thumped into flesh. Bulgen’s strike was over before it landed. He grunted and folded down limply to the ground. Owen caught his balance, and pulled himself upright again.

Bulgen was on the ground, folded up around the knife in his stomach. He made a breathless groan. “You’ve killed me,” he wheezed. “I’m bleeding.” His voice was almost hidden in the screaming of the siren.

“You tried to kill me!” Owen said. “Twice!” He remembered the tranq dart, intended for an animal twice his weight. The adrenalin was still roaring through his blood; shortening his breath. He should have felt nauseated, sickened by what he’d just done – but in fact he just felt relieved.

Bulgen was flapping angrily on the ground. “I’m bleeding, you asshole, I’m bleeding,” he moaned.

Owen caught his breath. He wasn’t sure where his knife had gone. He wanted to get it back, but Bulgen still had his own knife, and he couldn’t risk a stab to his femoral artery, or his stomach. And he had to hurry up, and get the truck running. The others were depending on him.

He had to leave Bulgen here. “Your friends will find you,” he said.

Bulgen used what breath he had to swear.

Owen got in the truck. The fuel gauge ran up to about a fifth. Enough to drive out of here, and get back to the Land Rover. The engine turned over instantly and he drove to the front door. The gear box was sticky but he could handle it. He steered the truck around in a tight turn, watching in the wing mirror, and braked when the truck’s tail was level with the door.

He left the engine running, and ran to the truck’s tail. He pulled open the latches of the rear door, and ran the door up.

“Come on!” he called, and the front door opened. Delta leaped into the truck straight from the doorway, and Blue followed. Lowery followed a bit more slowly, carrying the box. “You coming?” Lowery asked Barry.

Barry glanced at Delta and Blue and decided not to lock himself into a box with a pair of raptors. “I will ride with Owen.” He ran the truck’s door down, shutting Lowery in.

Owen ran for the driver’s side door. He heaved himself up into the high driver’s seat, and fished with the gear-lever for first gear as soon as Barry’s door clunked shut.

“Seat-belt!” Owen said, as he wheeled the truck around. He shifted clumsily up into second, leaning over to look in the wing mirror, and the truck’s tail-lights flashed red over the guard, lumbering out with both hands over the back of his head. He was staggering, but he started shouting and running after the truck.

He looked away. “I’m going to hit that gate!” he announced. He mashed down on the accelerator, and the engine surged under his foot.

“No need,” Barry said. He held out his hand, with a little gate-opening tab lying in his palm.

“No time!” Owen looked in the wing mirror again. Men were beginning to run across the parking lot. They had realized that the fox was still in the henhouse. They’d come down from the paddock, in time to see the truck rolling. They were running after the truck. “They’re coming!”

There was another guard at the gate, racing to head off the truck as if he wanted to bar the way. Owen shoved his body back, so that the seatbelt sheeted in snugly on his shoulder. “Brace yourself!” he yelled at Barry and mashed his foot down on the accelerator.

The truck surged forward. There was no way to warn Lowery, but he hoped the burst of speed would warn him. The truck was still accelerating, and the lights flared on the gate. The guard dived to one side just in time, and then the gate seemed to leap up to meet the windshield.

Metal shrieked. The windshield cracked. The impact jarred Owen’s neck, and the seatbelt punched his chest. The wheel leaped in his hands as the truck ate the shock. He sawed frantically left to meet the curve of the road, even as the truck’s tail fishtailed through the bouncing wreckage of the broken gate.

“We’re out!” he yelled.

“Watch your tail!” Barry snapped.

“Fuck, yeah!” The adrenalin was still roaring through his blood. They’d got away! He planted his palm on the horn, and hollered his defiance to Xenocore. “We did it! Whoo-hoo!”

“Shut up and drive!”

“I’m driving, I’m driving! Can’t I be happy for one second? We’ve just stolen millions of dollars worth of dinosaur! Yeah!” He flashed a grin at Barry, and then focused on the road.

The trees were meeting on all sides like a tunnel, the truck’s headlights leaping and galloping ahead of them. It had to be like riding a roller-coaster in the back. He was glad the hatchlings were padded safely inside a box full of shavings, with a pair of adult raptors to reassure them that yes, this was normal, living with humans was like this sometimes.

He glanced at Barry. Barry was clinging to the seat belt tab with one hand, and the other arm was cupped over his chest.

“You still got Little G in there?”

“Oui.”

“You do know that raising them doesn’t mean they’ll take to you? That’s kinda the point. You can’t tame them.”

“Blue took to you.”

“Yeah, but Delta took to Lowery,” Owen pointed out. “And Lowery’s mental.”

“Yes, Lowery is mental.” Barry let out a sarcastic crack of laughter. “I have named him Nyiragongo.”

“Him?” Owen squawked, staring at him. “It’s a boy?”

“Half of them are little boys,” Barry said. “Watch it!” he shouted.

Owen snapped his attention back to the road, and fought the truck’s sudden wish to dive off the side of the road. He needed to slow down; this road was not meant for racing. The truck’s suspension was taking a hammering. He didn’t care about Xenocore’s truck, but he couldn’t risk a broken axle or a blown tyre.

“A breeding population!” he said. “And all white! He was going to make more! Stupid fool!”

“Who?”

“Wu,” Owen said. “He was there tonight.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead,” Owen said. “Blue killed him.”

“Merde,” Barry muttered.

“He was going to make more,” Owen said, grimly. “Eighty at a time, and all white.”

And if the building did not burn, they would know that a raptor had killed Wu. No-one would believe that Owen had not ordered Blue to kill Wu. Even he wasn’t completely sure that he had not ordered her to kill him. He’d certainly consented to it, which made him an accomplice before the fact, even if you could legally be the accomplice of a non-human, which would probably mean he was responsible for Blue’s actions anyway, so in a sense he had killed Wu, whether he’d ordered it or not…

He’d never killed anyone before.

Xenocore didn’t need to be geniuses to put the stolen raptors and the stolen truck together: 2 plus 2 made Grady. And the Xenocore team would find Bulgen in the parking lot, Owen thought. Even if Bulgen died, they would find Owen’s knife, with Owen’s fingerprints on it.

He shook his head, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He could not go back. The forest would have to swallow him up. Well, so be it. He’d already chucked over his job to stay with Blue, until the raptors could look after themselves. He wasn’t giving up anything he had not already decided to give up.

But there was no need to take Barry and Lowery down with him. They had lives of their own. Barry had a family in Brazzaville, and Lowery had … well, he wasn’t sure Lowery actually had anyone. Lowery seemed like a profoundly lonely man.

“Barry, listen,” he said. “I’m going to drop you off somewhere. Get your passport from Esteban, and go back to Brazza. Take Lowery with you.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Barry rasped.

“You have to. This whole thing has gone completely ass-over-tit. We didn’t mean to kill anybody. The police are going to be all over us now. I can’t go back, but there’s no reason for you to go down with me.”

It would take time for the Colombian cops even to figure out which Republic of Congo Barry came from. It would take years for them to figure out an extradition plan – if Congo-Brazzaville and Colombia even had one. If Barry and Lowery got on a plane today, they could both be home by the weekend, and safe.

Barry was offended enough to switch to French. “Don’t be a fool!” Barry said. “You, alone, in the forest? I don’t know what the Navy taught you, but you can barely get a fire started! You’ll get your stupid mzungu neck broken! You need me!”

Owen looked at Barry, but Barry’s face was grim.

“Oui, oui,” Owen said.

“And if you think Lowery is going to leave Delta, you’d better think again! Lowery is the sort of lone intelligent idealistic idiot who gets picked up by terrorists – but he’s been picked up by dinosaurs instead. He’s not going back either. He’s found his cause. No! Don’t mention it again. We three are in this together! Now drive!”

The turn-off that would take them onto the dirt road was ahead, and Owen had to concentrate on driving. They turned off the tarmac onto dirt, and the trees overhead began to brush against the sides and roof of the truck. The truck was finding the ruts in the road heavy going. He had to concentrate, keep up a steady speed, or risk getting the two-by-four completely stuck.

They did have enough gas to get them back to the Land Rover, in the end. The truck’s lights picked out its reflectors in the distance, and it formed up in the headlights. It was still parked exactly where they had left it, hood-deep into the foliage so that it did not block the road.

Barry groaned.

Owen braked the truck, and turned off the engine. He got out, but his heart was sinking. He could see the slashed tyres in the truck’s headlights.

They were going nowhere in the Land Rover.

Barry was stamping over to glare at the Land Rover’s tyres and curse wildly in Lingala. Owen slammed the driver’s door, and walked back to the tail of the truck. He unlatched the door, and ran it up.

Three faces looked back at him. They looked as if they’d been put through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Blue leaped out in a single spring, and trotted away with her tail high. Delta followed.

“Not doing that again, man,” Lowery said. “Not soon, okay, that wasn’t nice.”

“We bashed down the gate,” Owen said. “Sorry, we couldn’t warn you.”

Lowery scrambled towards the truck’s door on hands and knees, pushing the box in front of him.

“Are they all okay?” Owen grabbed the box and pulled it toward the door. Seven little faces turned up to stare at him, as if they were all turning on the same gimbals.

“Yeah. Bit shaken up, but that’s just ‘cos they’re seeing all of this for the first time.” Lowery got down onto the road. He put his arms around the box, ready to shift it to the Land Rover, and Owen stopped him.

“Leave them here,” Owen said.

“I have to put them in the Land Rover.”

“The Land Rover’s fucked. Our tyres have been slashed.” Owen walked away, and Lowery followed.

Barry was cursing the locals with all the force three languages gave him. A small white face was peering over his collar. Little Nyiragongo had climbed up the inside of his shirt, and was looking out with wide golden eyes. Needle points sticking through the shirt showed where the hatchling was clinging to the fabric with his claws.

Owen bent down to look at the tyres. They had been slashed all the way around, with what must have been a big knife and a lot of force. They had a spare tyre – but not four.

Blue’s nose came down at his side, looking to see what her human found so interesting. He pointed to the slashes, for her benefit, and pulled out his pen and sketch pad. He drew Moving Not on the sketch pad, and showed it to her.

“That’s not going anywhere,” Lowery said. “Unless we ride on the rims? Can we do that?”

“We’ll fuck up the rims and get stuck anyway,” Owen said. He ground his teeth. He wanted to join Barry in swearing at the Land Rover.

Delta was humming to the hatchlings in the box that everything would be all right; they were in good hands; everything was going to be fine. Owen wished he could believe her. What now? His mind was racing. He was aware of Blue’s eyes on him. Do something…

Slashed tyres were no accident. But it didn’t matter who’d done it. They had to hustle. Xenocore would hotwire their cars, and chase. The burning building would delay them, not stop them.

They would have to load the raptors back into the stolen truck, and go as far as it would take them. Maybe they could stop at Esteban’s place, and try to pick up a few gallons there – how much would Esteban have? Could they steal it? He’d already committed so many crimes tonight, theft seemed like an afterthought…

No, wait – the Land Rover was fuelled! They would siphon the fuel out and put it in the truck. Would they have enough time? Yes, he decided. Time was important, but distance was the key. The greater the distance they covered tonight, the more ground Xenocore would have to search tomorrow.

“Get the jerry-can!” he ordered Barry. “We’re going to siphon out the Land Rover!”

“Oui, mon general!” Barry tossed off a half-salute, and opened the back door of the Land Rover. He grabbed the jerry-can and the tube, and put it on the ground under the Land Rover’s tank. He unscrewed the petrol-cap, and fed the end of the tube into the tank, and then sat down on his heels ready to siphon.

“Guys!” Lowery straightened up, and pointed. “Look!”

Owen turned, and looked out into the jungle. There were lights flickering through the treetops. Cars were driving along the ridge, on the switchback above this dirt road.

He swore. They would be here in five minutes! “Barry!” he said.

“I do it, I do it!” Barry protested, still feeding the tube into the jerry can. “I cannot make the running faster than gravity!”

Lowery was squinting his eyes behind the shadow of his glasses. “How the hell did …? How did they find the right road? The jungle is huge, how did they manage to …? Unless they have a…?”

His eyes went out of focus, and he turned around and walked to the back of the truck.
“Owen, does this mean what I think it says?” he called. A moment later he began to read aloud, in what he thought was Spanish. “Este vehículo está equipado con …”

“Ah, crap,” Owen said. “It’s got a satellite tracker! Barry, you might as well stop siphoning. That truck will lead them straight here.”

Would the truck’s tyres fit on the wheels of the Land Rover? A glance told him that idea was hopeless.

“What do we do?” Lowery said.

“Grab the backpacks! We were going to go into the jungle anyway. Barry, grab that box. Lowery, if there’s any kit you want out of the Landy, now’s the time!”

“They’ll see the truck, and know we’re close.”

“If they’re going to follow a pair of velociraptors, in the dark and on foot, then that’s their problem,” Owen said, making his voice as cold as he could.

He hoped Xenocore would not be that stupid. If they chose to chase the raptors, Blue would attack, and they’d take Xenocore out the way she’d already taken out a whole ACU squad. Blue had hatchlings to defend now, and he knew that for raptors, defending the pack was everything. He hoped like hell Xenocore had seen the footage from the raptors’ cameras…

Blue came up on high alert, stiffening, head raised. She stared up the road in front of the truck. Delta hissed, and darted off the road. She crashed into the undergrowth loudly, but her markings hid her almost instantly.

“Heads up!” Owen said, sharply.

Barry spun around, staring up the road. The headlights penetrated far down the road. There was a human figure there, walking towards them.

“Someone’s coming!” Barry said.

“I see him,” Owen said, grimly. “I’ll deal with him.” He walked forward. The headlights casting his shadows far on the dirt. He waved his arm and his shadows waved back.

“Keep away! We have had an accident here!” he shouted in Spanish.

“You have had no accident!” the man called. As he walked closer, Owen recognised the pink vest. It was Jorge. “I did that.”

“You!” Owen said. “Why?”

Jorge kept walking. His eyes were on Blue. She was right behind Owen, and staring aggressively at the stranger. “To send a message. To warn you. You are not welcome here. There are monsters here!”

“Come no closer!” Owen said, raising a warning hand. Blue was snarling continuously, rippling her lips so that her jagged teeth were exposed.

Jorge stopped, just a few yards away. “But you know the monsters already, and they know you. That changes everything. I can help you!”

“Blue! Stand down.”

Blue ignored Owen. She stalked past him, snot-snarling.

“Don’t look away,” Owen warned. “And don’t run, whatever you do!”

She crouched, sidling her weight sideways, one foot at a time, and hissed at Jorge. She didn’t blink, just circled threateningly, forehands clasping and unclasping the air.

Jorge did not look away. He turned to face her as she circled him, and held her stare as if he knew that the mammal rules about eye contact did not apply to dinosaurs. He lowered himself slowly to one knee without looking away, and spread out his hands on either side.

Blue sprang and hiss-snapped at him. Her teeth clapped just short of his shoulder but Jorge held perfectly still. She put her snout close to his head, and he broke eye contact at last and stared at the ground. She could have snapped off his skull with her teeth – but she did not. She backed away, twisted her head around, and stared over her shoulder at Owen.

There was a message there, Owen thought. He could fetch the black marker and paper and find out exactly what she wanted to say, but the fact that she hadn’t attacked Jorge was enough to get her message across. Jorge had passed some kind of test.

“Do you know what she is?” Owen asked.

“I know where she comes from,” Jorge said, raising his head.

“Then you know who’ll be following us in a few minutes! Turn around, and go away. You saw nothing.”

“I can help you!” Jorge said. “You must follow me! I can help you!”

“Unless you have a car in your back pocket, no, you can’t!” Owen snapped.

“I can help you!” Jorge insisted. “You are running out of time! I can take you to La Patasola!”

“La Patasola?” Owen said.

“La Patasola will hide you!” Jorge said, urgently. “Come with me and I will take you to them!”

“La Patasola is a myth!” Owen snapped. “I’m not listening to any more of your stupid stories!”

“They are real!” Jorge insisted. “They have been travelling for days to get here – I have been waiting for them! Come with me, and La Patasola will shelter you! All of you!”

Owen looked around. Barry and Lowery were watching him. Blue was looking from him to Jorge with the sharp movements of someone who can’t follow the conversation at all.

“He wants us to follow him,” Owen said, in English. “He says he knows people who can hide us.”

“Do you trust him?” Barry said.

“Well, he says his friends are La Patasola, so I’m edging toward telling him to get lost.”

“What?” Lowery stared at Jorge, scrunching up his moustache. “Dude?”

“It must be some kind of guerilla group,” Owen guessed. “Ex-FARC, or something…”
“Maybe he works for Xenocore?”

“Nah, man. Blue trusts him,” Lowery said. “If she’d seen this dude before, we’d know about it.”

If La Patasola, whoever that was, wanted to take a couple of Yankees hostage – well, they were going to regret it too. Owen had seen what pissed-off raptors could do. Blue had taken out a helicopter and butchered its crew; he didn’t think Delta would do any less for Lowery.

He turned to look along the road, as if he could already see the cars coming. He didn’t have a choice. La Patasola or not, they could not stay here.

“All right! Xenocore won’t be stupid enough to follow us in the dark! Blue! Let’s go! We’ve moving out!” He held up one hand, and made the We’re Moving signal.

Blue turned her head, and cough-barked. There was an answering cough-bark, and Delta rose to her feet, not three yards away.

Owen saw Jorge flinch, and knew for sure that he wasn’t working for InGen. He hadn’t known that two velociraptors had broken out tonight. Delta flashed out onto the road, and the two velociraptors hissed threateningly at each other. Blue’s teeth snapped at Delta’s neck.

Owen pointed his index finger at Jorge’s chest. “If you are lying to us… if you betray us… if we get there, and find a bunch of gangsters waiting …” It was hard to threaten someone effectively when you didn’t have a fantastic command of his language; he probably sounded as scary as a Teletubby. “Look at these two, and think of what they will do if they think you are their enemy.”

“No betrayal!” Jorge said, raising his hands. “I will take you to La Patasola, and then you will understand.”

“How far away is La Patasola?”

“An hour, on foot.”

“And driving?”

Jorge shook his head. “La Patasola never comes out of the forest. It must be on foot.”

Barry had already been to the back of the truck, and came back with the box. Jorge turned, amazed to see that the ‘Americans’ were going to hump a laser printer with them. He popped his head over the side of the box, and staggered on his feet. His eyes were popped so wide they had gone completely round. It was not a good look, for a man with a hooked nose and a pink sleeveless vest.

“White ones?” he asked.

“Si, white ones.”

“Then you must come with me – and hurry! La Patasola will want to see them!”

“This box is not gonna work, man,” Lowery said.

“We can take turns,” Barry said.

“It’s not the weight, dude, it’s the shape!” Lowery said. “The corners are going to get stuck on every branch in South America. It’ll be like trying to carry the Titanic.”

“Then we empty the box!” Owen said. “We’ll carry them.”

“Two each?” Barry said.

“Yeah. Share the scratches! Jorge – come here! You’re going to take two! No, shut up, and don’t argue with me!”

A pair of wriggling hatchlings went down the front of Owen’s shirt, rolling down to be stopped by his belt. He felt the first scratches against his skin. Tiny claws, but at least they weren’t strong enough yet to really dig in.

Blue put her muzzle against his stomach and snarled, as if warning the tiny ones that this human was hers, and loaned to them only on her sufferance.

“Easy, Blue. You’re my girl.” He reached out a hand, and set it reassuringly on the back of Blue’s neck. She snapped her head out of his reach, and hissed at him. Jealousy, he thought; jealousy was definitely going to become a Thing. Parrot genes, Wu had said. Not just Delta, but all of them. Fuckin’ A.

“Blu-ue,” he warned, frowning at her.

“All right, all right!” Lowery was complaining, behind him. “Yeah, you’re jealous, I get that, but you’re still my favourite dinosaur. You don’t have to be jealous of them, they’re just babies! And anyway, they’re the wrong colour, I like your colour. Here! Hang on a second. Look what I’ve got. Remember this? It’s my favourite dinosaur, for my favourite dinosaur! Yeah! Do you want to carry that?”

There was a pleased noise. Clearly, the plastic Apatosaur was acceptable. The box was emptied, and Barry kicked it off onto the verge. They plunged into the trees on the side of the road.

In a couple of minutes, they could not see the moon overhead, or the truck behind them. Jorge led the way, using a small plastic flashlight. Owen followed the light of the little torch. Barry walked behind him, carrying another torch, and swatted back and forth with his panga to clear the way for Lowery.

Owen was soon sweating heavily. The plants were thicker here below the road than it had been on the hillside above the raptors’ paddock, and far thicker than anything on Isla Nublar. Each step meant pushing his leg out in front of him, and forcing his weight to follow it. Follow the light, climb over that, push through there, duck these, untangle himself from that. Duck that, force himself through there. His world closed down, narrowed to this lone battle to force his way. Even Lowery had stopped talking.

Owen was struck by the fact that Jorge was wading through the bushes in a pink sleeveless vest and plastic flip-flops – like the Bayaka hunters Barry had once taken him to see in the Republic of Congo. People who lived their whole lives in the rainforest didn’t waste their money on expensive hiking boots; Jorge was the real deal.

They forced their way all the way down the hillside, and then the jungle opened into a true rainforest. The trees lifted up above his head. The canopy blocked out every chink of moonlight, so that the only light was their flashlights, which bobbled and skipped through the foliage. The tapestry of leaves and tendrils and weaving vines was punctuated by huge tree trunks, reaching up into the dark. All were dark; all cast mysterious shadows and depths around them. Every shadow seemed to hide monsters, swirling around them threateningly just out of sight, swinging just beyond the bobbing light.

Owen shook off the creepy feeling of being watched. There were monsters here in the dark; two of them. He could see Blue on his right, keeping pace. Her pebbled stripe moved now and then, swimming through the trees almost silently. The light flickered in the her eye whenever she turned her head back to glance at him, as if she was checking that her human was keeping up. He was safe. He had a raptor on either side of him; he could walk through the rainforest without danger. He could walk through a war-zone in safety.

Hell, that had been the reason for the tiny hatchlings curled up inside his shirt: living weapons. Their claws were scratching like fine wires on Owen’s skin. They would figure out eventually that they could grip better on his shirt, but until they noticed he would just have to grit his teeth and ignore it. He could hear the whine of insects around his face. He was being bitten, but he closed his mind to the thought of all the bugs he could not see. He had no idea what sort of ghastly jungle crawlies were riding in his socks…

He took a look at his watch, and was surprised to see that only half an hour had passed; it seemed like just a few minutes, or a few years. It was hard to keep track of time. It was impossible to judge how far they had come, without any landmarks other than trees after trees.

And then there was a path, without vines or ferns stretching across to bar his way. Jorge turned around, holding the light low so as not to blind Owen. “A game trail,” he said. “We follow it now.”

The path was just wide enough to walk in single file. Blue tracked them, a few yards off on Owen’s right. They walked on. The path meandered all the way up a long slope, over the crest, and down the other side. They made better time without having to step around obstacles, and Owen was able to catch his breath.

“Do you know where you are going?” he asked in Spanish.

Jorge twisted around and looked at him over his shoulder. “I know the direction.”

“Just the direction? How will you find them?”

“They will find us. They do that. You know how they are.”

The path wound downhill, and then the trees thickened again into dense jungle. It was almost impenetrable to left and right, dense as a wall, cut only by the path. Owen followed Jorge’s light – and then between one step and the next, the wall of jungle opened quite abruptly into the moonlight.

The moon stared coldly down on a broad strip of pebbles. It was a stream, almost dry now, after a few days without rain, cutting through the rainforest. The water giggled and chuckled gently over the stones. The path had led them here, Owen guessed, because the stream ran shallowly here, and the animals knew it.

Jorge stepped out into the moonlight, and Owen followed. His boots crunched on the stones. He turned his head to the right, and saw Blue slide out of the trees at his side. She stepped out into the gurgling water, no more than hock-deep, and lowered her head to the water to drink. Delta slid out after Blue, and stepped into the water after her alpha. She dipped her head to the surface of the water to drink; dip, lift. Dip, lift. Dip, lift.

Parrots, Wu had said.

“Do we cross, or follow it?” Owen asked. Barry and Lowery came out into the moonlight behind him.

Jorge was standing on the edge of the water. “Neither,” he said. He raised his hand, and the flashlight played on the dense jungle on the other side. “She is here.”

For a moment Owen saw nothing.

Then the trees parted, sliding around a long, lean head and neck, and a velociraptor eased itself out into the moonlight.

A strange raptor! Owen gasped, and closed both arms reflexively around the hatchlings in his shirt. Barry whipped up his panga with a snort, ready to defend himself.

Blue had whipped around to face the stranger. She ducked into a threatening crouch and hissed in shock. Delta sprang back, and placed herself in front of Lowery, ready to defend her human.

“La Patasola,” Jorge whispered.

The strange raptor was a female. She looked silver in the moonlight, but he could see rough vertical stripes down her sides, like a tiger. She was taller than Blue, and she was far older. The texture of her hide had thickened into glossy pebbles, rounded as if they had been polished by time. She was older than any raptor he had ever seen.

It dawned on him that even if she was not one of Hammond’s first raptors, she had to be the offspring of raptors that had been born in the old Park. How old was she? Twenty, at least – twenty-five, nearly thirty? His raptors were only five years old; still girls. Their intelligence and confidence were exploding in all directions, but they were still his girls. But this one? This was not a girl.

The stranger stalked out to face Blue across the centre of the stream, and hissed at her.

Blue hissed back, bobbing her head. The stranger hiss-snapped, and Blue snapped back, yielding nothing. They were face-to-face with each other, tails snaking, forehands clawing the air.

“They’re communicating,” Lowery breathed softly.

Blue was talking to the stranger, the way she had talked to the Indominus. Whatever speech they had, they seemed to share it instinctively. They were talking.

Owen stared – and then realized that where there was one raptor, there would always be more. The raptor you could see… He turned his head slowly, scanning the dark bushes on other side of the stream. There was another raptor in the trees just opposite him, barely visible, not moving. That was another one… and was that another there? Their markings scattered their outlines into the shadows.

The strange pack was holding back, watching. And then a fourth one stepped out into the moonlight, from a spot he hadn’t even looked at, and faced Delta. Delta was braced in front of Lowery, in exactly the way that Blue had stood in front of Owen before the Indominus. Delta hissed at the stranger; rage, jealousy and protectiveness all in one.

All those rumours that raptors had escaped from Isla Nublar were true, after all. Wild raptors living in the rainforest – a whole pack!

Blue and the stranger were still hissing and barking at each other. He didn’t know how strange raptors greeted each other. Did packs of raptors interact like prides of lions? Were the alphas going to fight each other for dominance, like stallions? He didn’t know. No-one knew.

“Should we, like, show submission?” Lowery whispered.

“No!” Owen snapped. “Blue’s our alpha. We don’t undermine our alpha!”

Blue was young, but she wouldn’t give up her status without a fight.

And if Blue fought, Delta would fight. The pack fought as a unit, but they were outnumbered. He suddenly wished he had a gun, something to even the odds. Barry had his panga, but that was their only weapon. They would go down fighting, but they would go down.

Well, at least he would die fighting for what he believed in. If a man had to die, that was a good way to go. He would die with his fists up. He’d been certain he was going to die on the night the Indominus escaped, but no. This moonlit streambed had been waiting for him all along.

“Barry, Lowery,” he whispered, “pick a tree, and get ready to climb it as fast as you can. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death… …” Barry was muttering in French. He was flexing his fingers around the hilt of the panga. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

A moment later, a human stepped out from behind the strange raptor.

It was a woman. “Don’t be scared,” she called in Spanish.

She walked out into the stream, into the water without hesitating, right up alongside the strange raptor. She reached out with one hand as she came, and set her palm on the raptor’s spine. It was a casual touch; a familiar gesture. The raptor even turned her head a little so that she could see the woman out of the corner of her eye.

The hairs stood up on the back of Owen’s neck in a wave. He knew what that touch felt like.

“Dude,” Lowery murmured.

“I see it.”

“She’s like us!” Lowery said, amazed.

Us? Owen opened his mouth to deny that there was an ‘us,’ but it didn’t come out.
He couldn’t shake off the shudder of recognition.

He had thought he was the first; that Blue was unique; that he alone had looked at a velociraptor and felt affection. And now, here was someone else with a familiar relationship with a raptor. Here was another raptor who had decided that human beings could be an equal. Here was someone else like Blue and himself.

He and Blue were not alone. He and Blue were not an anomaly – and in their ordinariness they could be real.

Blue turned around to stare at Owen, and he saw her blink. Do something…

His heart was in his mouth, but he stepped out from the trees into the moonlight. His boots sank ankle-deep into the stream, but he walked up to Blue’s side. He reached out one hand, and set his palm on her back.

He could feel the tension thrumming inside her. Her muscles were trembling. She swung her head around, and bared her long smirk of teeth at the stranger, as if daring her to do something.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said, in Spanish. “You are safe. My name is Maria, and she is TravelsOverWater. We have come a long way to meet you.”

“You are La Patasola!” Owen said.

“No,” she said. “She is La Patasola. She leads us.” She indicated the raptor at her side.

“La Patasola is a velociraptor!” Owen breathed.

“La Patasola is all the velociraptors,” Maria explained. “We use the story to hide the truth. Nobody listens when poor people in the forest talk about monsters, because nobody cares what poor people think.” She smiled grimly.

“How many of you are there?” he asked.

“There are over eighty of them now. Not all of them live with a human, of course. Not all of them want to. But not every human wants to live with them, either, so things balance out. We hide them, and they protect us. No-one walks in the forest without La Patasola’s permission.”

Blue and the stranger – TravelsOverWater, what an odd name! – were still communicating. There was a lot of snarling and snapping, but nobody was bleeding yet, so presumably they were reaching an understanding.

“Will you come with us?” Maria asked. “We are special, you and I. We have something no-one else understands, those of us who leave the human world to live with Las Patasolas. Come with us.”

What choice did he have? He’d killed Wu. InGen would be after his neck. If he went back, it would be to face two counts of murder. He could never go back – even if he had wanted to. And he was not going to leave Blue. She would be safe in the forest, with these raptors.

And besides, animals had been his life’s work – and now he’d struck the mother-lode! He was going to learn things that no other scientist had ever dreamed. He might never be able to publish his discoveries; his exploration might be a one-way trip, but he wanted to know. He had been watching Blue and her sisters for five whole years, and he wanted to know everything there was to know about them.

Owen turned his head and looked at Lowery and Barry. “They want us to go with them,” he said. “There are others out there, she says.”

“Others like us?” Lowery crooned raptly. “Hell, yeah!”

“You are both still fou,” Barry shrugged, and sniffed as if he didn’t care. “Mais oui, maybe I want some of your fou for yourself.” His hands cupped the front of his shirt, where he was carrying Nyiragongo.

Owen turned to face Maria. “My name is Owen, and she’s Blue. That’s Lowery and Delta, and that’s Barry. We came from Jurassic World…”

…………………….

“My name is TravelsOverWater,” the stranger said. “This is my human, HighClimber. I am the mother here. All of this land around you is mine.”

“I am StripeSide,” StripeSide said, cautiously, snaking her tail warily. “My human here is FirstHuman. And I am the mother of mine.”

She could feel FirstHuman’s hand trembling slightly against her hide. His tension was thrumming inside his muscles, even though he was keeping quite still and singing to the other human. He had been braced to fight, and his bloodheat had said, “I am frightened!” but he had come straight to her side without hesitation, as if he had heard her call his name. She felt hugely proud of him.

“And I’m WingWatch!” WingWatch announced. “This is SingsAlone, and he’s mine, and that’s ShinySmoothHead, and we don’t have a name for that other one on the end there yet because we’ve only just met him …”

“Be quiet!” StripeSide barked at her sister.

“His name is SnoresVeryLoud, and he is one of mine,” TravelsOverWater said, with an indulgent hiss-snap in WingWatch’s direction.

StripeSide could see the bloodheat of seven Real People in the dark. Seven! They were not alone in the world! She didn’t know whether she was more relieved that there were others, or intimidated that they were all so much bigger than she was!

She didn’t allow that to show in her bloodheat. She didn’t know if TravelsOverWater expected her submission on grounds of her age, but she wasn’t going to yield. She was an alpha in her own right. She had outwitted and defeated a blade-and-clatter. She had fought a Mad Giant and won; she had entered a Water Monster’s lair and survived; she had challenged a Terrible Beast, and the Terrible Beast had said ME HURTING, and yielded its territory to her. She had entered WhiteCoat’s lair, and slew the wicked sorcerer himself.

She raised her head, and stared at each of the seven strangers, so that they knew she knew they were there.

“We have been running for many nights to reach you,” TravelsOverWater said, dropping her jaws and hissing at StripeSide warmly. Her bloodheat advertised calm and confidence. “Ever since our humans told us there were two Real People here we did not know.”

“There are others of us?” StripeSide said.

“Eighty-two,” TravelsOverWater said. “Ninety-two now, with you and yours.”

“So many!” she marvelled, pulling her neck upright.

“So few,” TravelsOverWater said, flexing her forehands.

“We thought we were the only Real People in the world!”

“You have never met another Real Person?” TravelsOverWater asked.

“We grew up with FirstHuman!” WingWatch said, cheerfully. “He was our mother! He’s nice.”

“We are so few,” TravelsOverWater said, “because we are the last of our kind. There are no Real People left. All of the rest died. All of them.”

WingWatch crouched, and her bloodheat said, “I’m shocked!”

“What happened to them?” StripeSide said, horrified.

“Nothing happened. They grew old, and died, a very long time ago. We are here, you and I, because our blood slept in the earth for many, many years, and time went on without us. We slept in the stone, until the humans found us and found a way to call us back.”

The humans were singing to each other, back and forth. StripeSide glanced at FirstHuman. His bloodheat spoke of amazement, but not fear. ShinySmoothHead had lowered his weapon. The hatchlings were still out of sight, inside the humans’ clothes, and that was probably a good thing. She didn’t know what these strangers would think when they saw that they were not Real People babies at all.

“Maybe there are more,” WingWatch said, hopefully. “The planet is very big.”

“You do not understand how old the planet is,” TravelsOverWater said, gently. “Not years. Not hundreds of years. Not seventy-one years, but seventy-one hundred hundred hundred years. Nothing is left of the Real People now but bones.”

StripeSide remembered the cone-shaped building. She had seen the bones of Real People there, when she had been trying to figure out the mystery of the building. She remembered WhiteCoat, and her certainty that he was at the heart of the whole dark cloud of secrets. She had hatched there. Seventy-one hundred hundred hundred years old? Perhaps she should not have killed WhiteCoat after all.

But then she remembered the Mad Giant Person, and the baby Mad People hiding inside the humans’ clothes.

“But … why?” WingWatch asked.

“Because they could,” TravelsOverWater said. “Humans are curious creatures. They knew we ruled this world before them, and they wanted to know who we were. Humans are like that.” She turned her head to stare at HighClimber, and her bloodheat flashed her affection for her human. “A human cannot see a hole, without wanting to jump down it to see what the bottom looks like.”

HighClimber sang something and raised both hands, with her thumb and little finger curled down into her palm, so that only three fingers showed. She flexed her hands this way and that, curling and uncurling her three fingers, touching to each other this way and that. TravelsOverWater looked down, and held out both forehands to reply. She made the same weaving and waving gestures back to HighClimber.

They were communicating! They talked to each other with their hands!

Hands! Human hands! It had never occurred to her that talons could sketch things in the air as well as a pen could! And it was faster! You could move your talons much faster than you could draw with a pen! You could almost reach the speed of speech with your hands!

“She says that we should move,” TravelsOverWater said. “She says that your human says that other humans are chasing you.”

“You talk with your hands!” StripeSide cried out. She had been surrounded by signs and symbols and notation – human communication scribbled all around her – and in her rage she had grabbed the most obvious tool she could reach. But hands! Hands! She had thought she hated hands, loathed hands, but she had never seen how fantastic hands might be! If FirstHuman could learn to talk with his hands, she would never say she hated human hands ever again!

And FirstHuman was staring at TravelsOverWater with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide. Real People talking to humans with their forehands had come as a surprise to him, too.

“How do you talk to yours?” TravelsOverWater asked.

“We draw signs with a black stick the way humans do!”

“I will teach you,” TravelsOverWater promised. “I will teach you everything I know.”

“Wait! Please! Will you use your hands to tell my human something? Right here, and now?”

“I can and HighClimber can sing it to him.”

“I want you to tell my human my name!”

“Your name?”

“My name! My real name! I have never been able to explain to him my name! I love him with all my blood, but he does not even know my name! Please tell my human my name! I am StripeSide!”

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE

………………………………

Owen opened his eyes. The light around him was soft and green, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was, and wondered why his bed was so hard.

 He sat up. He had fallen asleep sitting up, but he had slumped sideways against Blue. His hard pillow was Blue’s broad muscular hip.

 No, not Blue. OneWhoHasAStripeOnHerSides.

 She had a name of her own! Her name was StripeSide! That was going to take some getting used to. He’d never questioned his right to name the raptors. He was a man, and it was Man’s task to name the beasts of the field. But the raptors were not beasts: they named themselves, and this one had named herself after her markings. She was StripeSide.

 Or SideStripe, or FlankStripe, or StripeFlanks – the translation wasn’t one-to-one, Maria explained. Delta’s real name was OneWhoWatchesBirdsFlying, which Lowery had decided he would shorten to BirdWatch for brevity.

 StripeSide!

 She was lying on her side, fast asleep, with her big head curled down against the leaflitter, and her eyes closed. Her grey flank rose and fell slowly as he watched her. He reached out a hand to touch her back, still amazed and delighted and proud of her. Her hide was warm and hard, and her thickened pebbles snagged at his callouses.  

 She looked perfectly peaceful as she slept; a stiletto sleeping, Dali-esque.

 Owen yawned. He was exhausted.

 It had been a very long night, and TravelsOverWater had kept up a quick pace. They had paused only for the adult raptors to regurgitate liquidised meat for the hatchlings. There had been some surprise at the sight of the white raptors, but nobody protested. Either the strangers were okay with miniature Indominus hatchlings, or Blue – StripeSide – was not telling them the whole story.

 TravelsOverWater had called a halt at noon. Now the raptors were going to sleep for a few hours, while the humans kept watch. When it was night the humans would sleep, Maria explained, and then it would be raptors’ turn to keep watch.

 Symbiosis…

 It was so peaceful here that he could easily fall asleep again. Tall trees leaned up under their canopies, casting a rich green gloom all around them. The strange raptors were sprawled on the ground like a battlefield diorama. The hatchlings were sleeping in a huddle between StripeSide and BirdWatch. Maria, Jorge and the other three people they’d picked up last night were sitting talking, around the coffee-pot on its tripod. Lowery and Barry were just the other side of the sleeping BirdWatch, practicing their first raptor-signs.

 And this, he realized, was new rhythm of his new life. Trees, and birdsong, and velociraptors.

 “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” Lowery had crooned, rocking on his feet with the marvel of it all, “than Henry Wu dreamt of in his philosophy…”

 And Owen had marvelled with him, at the strange company around them. He could tell just by watching which raptor was partnered with which human, just the way he was partnered with Bl– StripeSide. 71 million years was a staggeringly long time. Raptors and humans should have been inscrutably alien to each other – and yet he could see the ties of affection between raptors and humans.

 Blue had even tried to pet him, for God’s sake, sitting next to the dead Gallimimus.

 It was all very strange, but also very exciting. He should have been sorry to turn his back on his old life, but he found he wasn’t. This new world promised to be filled with mysteries, and primal magic. He had wanted to study the raptors once, rationally, scientifically, and publish his way to fame. But now, all he wanted was to dive deeper into this forest of secrets, and learn all its magic.

 Bl– StripeSide had changed his life, as much as he had changed hers. He could never go back, but he didn’t care.

 Lowery was getting to his feet, and coming over to Owen. He walked around StripeSide’s stubbed tail. “You’re awake again.”

 “Yeah,” Owen said, and rubbed his beard with his hand. He hoped he hadn’t been drooling on her hide in his sleep.

 “Do you want to phone Claire, and let her know you’re okay?” Lowery said, and held out a thick black phone toward Owen. “The Greek chorus is asleep, so here’s your chance.”

 “How are you getting reception out here?” Owen asked.

 Lowery waggled the phone at him. “Satellite!” he said. He gave Owen the phone. “Don’t say too much, okay?”

 “Yeah, I know.”

 He couldn’t say too much over the phone, since they didn’t know what sort of resources InGen were using to find them. He couldn’t mention the partnerships thing – or the sign language thing – or La Patasola… and he definitely wasn’t going to mention their location. They had still had a long way to travel before they reached the raptors’ home range, where the locals knew them, and would hide them from outsiders. He still hoped he’d be able to send Barry and Lowery home once they got there, even though both of them were stubbornly insisting on staying.

 He dialled Costa Rica’s country code, and the private number that would bypass Claire’s assistants and PR people. And then he waited.

 She answered. “Hello?” she said.

 It was surprisingly good to hear her voice. “Hey, Claire, it’s your ex,” he said, grinning.

 “Owen! Did you find them?”

 “We’ve got them!” he said.

 StripeSide woke up, and rolled her head upright to stare at him, unblinking.

 “Are they okay?” Claire asked. “Are you okay?”

 “They’re both okay! And Lowery and Barry are okay too. And we found those missing eight – er – stolen items that you told me about, and they’re safe.”

 He realized StripeSide wasn’t the only raptor awake. All nine adult raptors were awake, suddenly. He was being stared at by nine fully-grown fully-awake velociraptors. It dawned on him that if Lowery was right, he’d just shouted into their ears.

 StripeSide turned her head, and hissed at the other raptors. He heard a sudden ZweeeEEEEeee-popopopop of static on the phone, and a few of the raptors put their heads back down again.

 Claire was still talking. “I am going to arrange transport to get you all home,” she said. “Have you released Blue and Delta into the wild yet?”

 “Ah, now you see that’s the bad news,” he said. He got up, with the phone still against his ear, and walked away through the trees to put some distance between himself and his audience.  

 “What?”

 “I can’t come back.”

 “Of course you can, I’m going to arrange your flights right away.”

 “Claire! Wu is dead. He was here with the raptors, and Blue killed him.”

 “What? Why?”

 “He was going to make dragons. He was babbling about Hox genes, and building the Bomb, and progress, and they had incubators to hatch eighty raptors at a time –.” He realized that he sounded as if he was trying to make excuses for his actions, and clenched his teeth on his words.

 “Oh, my God,” Claire said.

“And when InGen finds his body, they’re going to know I was there. I can’t come back.”

“So what are you going to do?”

 “I’m going to stay here,” he said.

 “Alone?”

 “I am not alone,” he said.  

 “Blue does not count, Owen.”

 “I’m not talking about Blue.” Owen leaned his back against a tree, watching the sleeping raptors. “Claire, do you remember those rumours that raptors got off Isla Nublar, before the Incident? Jurassic Bigfoot? History Channel?”

 “I remember,” she said. “Wild raptors hiding in the rainforest? They’re just urban legends, I hope you’re not seriously going to try and look for them.”

 “Claire,” he said, and lowered his voice. “I’m looking at them. They found us. Wild raptors in the rainforest, and I’m looking at them, right now, in front of me.”

 “Oh my God!” her voice went up. “Are you all okay? Is anyone injured?”

 “I’m okay!” he promised. “Nobody’s been attacked! We’re all fine, we’re all still together, everything’s okay. The raptors have been hiding here for twenty years; long enough that they’ve learned to co-exist with people. Blue and Delta have been accepted into their pack. I can’t come back, so I’m going with them.”

“Owen!”

 “I’ll be fine! It’ll be just like playing Gorillas in the Mist – 65 million years ago.”

 “Please don’t say that,” she said.

 “Yeah,” he grinned. “If anyone asks, tell them we’ve gone backpacking, and we’ve gone off the grid. And can you tell the park people they can help themselves to whatever’s in my bungalow? They can take it all, and donate the rest…”

 He heard her sigh. “You really aren’t planning to come back.”

 “No,” he admitted. “This is a one-way trip. Sorry to break up with you like this.”

 “I can hear you trying to lie to me, Owen.”  

 He sighed. She knew him too well. “Yeah, okay, I’m not sorry. I don’t know where we’re going, but I know I want to see what’s out there.”

 “So, this – this is goodbye.”

 “Yeah. This is goodbye. You probably won’t hear from me again. Sorry.”

 “I’m not sorry,” she said. “You’ve got a dream! Follow it!”

 He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

 “Goodbye, Owen. And … good luck to both of you.”

“Both of us? Me and Barry? Or Lowery?”

 “You and Blue,” she said.   “You take care of yourself, Owen.”

 “Yeah,” he said. “See you, whenever.”

 Owen looked at the phone for a few moments, before he pressed the red button, and his last contact with the outside world was gone.

Chapter Text

I've got exciting news for people who have read this story and liked it!

I've had an offer from CounterKlock to put together a role-play game around this story, and the whole idea of the velociraptors in the rainforest. We're still in very, very early talks about it, so we're trying to get a feel for how many people might be interested in playing along.

If you think you might be interested in running around with the Pack yourself, drop a line in the comments.

Edit: 

Well, that settles it, we're going ahead with it!  So far the game is called Song of the Pack, and it's going to be a text-based RP, expanding on the world of the Pack as we go.  We've also got a Discord channel called Raptors in the Rainforest up and running already,  for anyone who wants to chat with us.  Super exciting to be starting on this journey with you all and the raptors! 

Edit two: 

After many long conversations about raptors, and many interesting ideas that I would never ever have thought up alone, the Discord channel is now closed. Lots of love to all participants! It was an absolute joy!