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.