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Chapter Text

     Claire no longer wore shorts when she went to see Karen, at least not ones that ended any higher than her knees. These visits were usually brief on the rare occasions that they came and typically involved arriving with two empty suitcases and leaving with two full. The successive years of hardship and outright illegal activity on Claire’s part made familial ties a fraying knot, especially when the financial strain was considered. First the destruction of the park and all the court hearings that followed which stripped both Claire and Owen of an income, then the DPG and collapse of the Lockwood estate which she had done her best to stay an innocent party in. Karen didn’t have an abundant household income either after the divorce. While Scott helped pay for the boys’ immediate needs both medically and psychologically after the park, once the resilience of teenage years took hold and they no longer required additional resources his part in care only extended to the split time that he had them– that, and their college requirements which Gray was partaking in and Zach was thinking about returning to.

     All the same, Karen helped where she could. Claire and Owen agreed that the best way to keep a low profile without looking like she was in complete hiding was for Claire to be seen from time to time, and who better to visit than her sister? Claire didn’t argue when it was suggested, at least not at the idea of continuing to see her family. Even if the boys had moved on from their experienced turmoil Claire was still trying to make up for her part in it and not lose them again from her life. However, not being followed back was something that she and Owen spent a long time figuring out. Eventually the solution came down to a networking arrangement of Franklin, Zia, an old Navy pal of Owen’s, and learning to drive an ATV. 

     She only told Karen as much as she dared for everyone’s own protection. The less Karen outright knew the better. If the wrong people came asking she could be honest in her answers about how much she saw Claire, how absent Owen was, and that, as far as Karen was concerned, Maisie didn’t exist.

     “I have a whole bag of clothes for you to pick through this time.” Karen slid a mug across the kitchen island to Claire, receiving a grateful smile in response. “Some of mine are in there as well so I won’t just be clothing Owen.”

     It was nice to have something warm in her hands other than campstove coffee or cheap tea. The warm scent of apple cider and bourbon reached Claire’s nose before she took a sip, a relaxed chill running through her arms. “Rock band t-shirts and cargo shorts can only get a girl so far, especially in the snow.” 

     She honestly didn’t mind the cargo shorts, though they were a little big on her since Gray wasn’t twelve years old anymore. They kept her cool while still providing enough protection in the woods and are what she would wear when visiting in the warmer months. Despite Claire’s vague glossing over whatever happened in the mansion the news is the news and reporters will dig as deep as they can possibly go. Karen had seen every trustworthy broadcast and tabloid tale. That didn’t mean that Claire was too keen on showing Karen all her scars. Any that had been obtained from the initial incident at Jurassic World had mostly healed to the point of a faded memory, but there was one that time would never weather away. Predator claws are long and the Indoraptor’s went deep. That scar was a purple starburst, shiny and indented and now usually covered when around anyone outside her tiny makeshift family. 

     Certain events had been guessed at which had made Karen furious with concern all over again. The death – murder – of Benjamin Lockwood had been uncovered and while the main culprit was long gone the courts assigned a conspiracy sentence to others. It was just another multitude of years in prison for men already spending several lifetimes behind bars, but the disappearance of his granddaughter was still a highly-speculated mystery which Claire, Owen, Franklin, and Zia had only superficially been absolved of. Evidence in the mansion pointed to Maisie Lockwood being another victim of a genetically engineered monster, and without an heir to the Lockwood estate the government could do whatever deals and deceit it wanted with the property, business, and assets involved. Maisie was never officially declared deceased because they never found remains, but for the most part the main media circus had stopped hounding Claire, and Karen by extension. Owen had lucked out completely by being the solitary man that he is. He was content not to come within three miles of a city with a McDonalds, which meant even farther from any potential reporters.

     Owen kept their own safe, Claire kept up appearances, and Maisie resented them both for a variety of reasons. 

     “There’s cash as well.”

     “Karen.”

     “Don’t.”

     “You can’t afford that!” Claire stood, about to make her way to the luggage to dig out wherever Karen hid the money but was stopped by her sister. She never considered her imposing until now.

     “I can afford it more than you can. Besides, I know not everyone can wear the old clothes of teenage boys.”

     There was that hint again, that almost accusatory, subtle, “I know” way that she spoke about Maisie without actually speaking about her. 

     Claire deflated, acknowledging as much about Maisie needing her own clothes but she felt helpless as well. “I can’t pay you back.” The admission stung. There was a time when Claire could afford to buy her a brand new house. While her bank account still read a number that anyone would have considered comfortable, the situation of the found-family meant that Claire’s assets might as well be frozen for as much as she could use them. Even if she had full access, it was unclear just how long they would be living in secret and Owen’s position as a glorified ranch-hand only brought in so much.

     Forgotten was the steaming mug of spiked cider, the take-out half eaten and piled into containers, the way the house smelled of cinnamon apples and fresh laundry. All that was left was a cloud of guilty emotions when Karen’s hands came up to grasp hold of Claire’s face, a palm on each side. “You helped pay for my divorce, you bought Zach his first car-”

     “It was twenty years old.”

     “Exactly what I asked for. You spent a whole year crashing on my couch and yes, I do consider that a good thing because I loved having you here! And whatever is going on now, whatever you’re hiding from, all I can hope is that hand-me-downs and a little extra money will bring my whole family back to me again, ok?” A tiny smile cracked through Karen’s watery eyes. “There’s too much take-out for just two people.”

     Claire didn’t expect the reluctant laugh that came through what had been a very effective pout. She wiped at her eyes and let herself be pulled into a full embrace. 

     “I can’t take it back with me, it won’t survive the trip.”

     “The money?”

     “The food.” 

     “Don’t worry about it.” Reaching over to grab the mug Karen pressed it back into her sister’s hands. “Gray is easy to convince to come home anyway, but free food is always an effective bribe.”

     “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

     Karen still lingered close, hesitant to return to her seat if it meant being further away from the person she sees least, even with Zach having his own life now. “You know how much I love you.”

     “I know”, answered Claire. “I love you, too.”

     She stayed longer than she intended this time, long enough for the street lights to greet the morning’s grey dawn. The suitcase which arrived with only an extra change of clothes left with a trash bag full of old clothes for them to pick through. The other, completely empty on arrival, now held cans and bottles, a loaf of bread, jars of preserves, and enough snacks and assorted candy for Claire to be a little distressed over.

     “You realize we’re in the woods with bears?”

     “I realize you’re in the woods with no real stores for several miles.”

     “So instead of vegetables you give me…Milky Way?”

     “A whole Halloween grabbag, actually. I know I can trust you to be responsible, let me give you reasons to indulge.”

     “You know most of this will be gone in two days?”

     “Then you don’t have to worry about bears.”

     They lingered out on the porch, headlights of a vehicle waiting in the driveway, the color of the car lost in the still low-light of early morning. What wasn’t lost was a fresh round of tears between the two.

     “Please don’t be another year.”

     “I can’t promise anything,” Claire said, apologetic and hating the response she’s forced to give. “I send texts.”

     “They aren’t the same.” It’s an old soft argument, one neither of them can help. “Are you alright to travel?”

     “I have several hours before I have to worry about driving. I’ll sleep in the car.”

     Caught up in the heartache and lack of sleep Karen was tired of saying goodbye. “If you just came out with everything you wouldn’t have to hide anymore.”

     “Karen.” It was a warning, but it was more than that. Her name became an apology, a lament, an answer, and an end to the conversation.

     The cold morning was silent then except for a few sniffs and the soft closing of a vehicle door. The driver was someone Karen hadn’t seen before but it seemed as if Claire knew him enough to trust him. She waited out at the end of the frosted driveway until the tail lights could no longer be seen then went back in. She knew any text Claire received wouldn’t be answered for days but she sent it anyway. She needed to keep that small, frayed lifeline alive.

     For Claire it was easier to sleep than to think about the tenuous grasp of normalcy she was once again leaving behind or to try to make conversation with a person she’d only briefly met due to Owen. The trip home was longer than her stay, it always was, and the poignancy of it all lasted longer each time she came back. 

     The text notification came through before she drifted off but she didn’t look at it. She’d save it as a reminder until she could safely respond. Until then she’d turn her phone off, tuck it in close, and sleep off her feelings. There was a pitstop still to make when she met up with Franklin and Zia.

Chapter Text

     Maisie resented Claire's freedom (no matter how small) and Owen's absence during the day. She was above the grade of home school that they had her alias enrolled in and had stopped caring about actually doing the work except for the foreign languages. After a while, though, not even the annoying little mascot of the language app could convince her that she wasn't a painfully bored captive.

     The calls of Blue didn't frighten her so much anymore though she always remained alert about the direction they came from, especially once she started to spend the majority of her days alone on her bike. Owen got to wrangle dinosaurs, Claire spent half her nights doing illicit activities with her "colleagues" so after Maisie's lessons she would often end up falling asleep. This left Maisie on her own, and with access to her own form of transportation coupled with the need to escape there was nothing that could keep her at the cabin. 

     When she first got the bike there was a steep learning curve. Not only had she never been on one but she also had the disadvantage of learning on uneven ground, but once she got the hang of it learning to ride on roots and rocks proved to be an asset. Her skinned palms and knees only lasted for as long as she was still learning. After that and once Owen upgraded her to a bike that could actually handle the terrain there wasn't a standard obstacle that she couldn't handle.

     At first she was happy enough to follow the rules, especially since they hadn't quite learned Blue's patterns yet, but eventually those rules were expanded and grew complicated with clauses about where and when and landmarks and time limits, all things that she more or less ignored now geographically. Time was the one rule she wasn't eager to break. She didn't like being outside in the woods after dark, not when the things that could eat her had better eyesight than she did.

     Claire was burning something when she got to the house that day and Maisie was annoyed that the woman beat her there -- she was sure she'd make it there before Claire. Unfortunately today wasn't a day she wanted to deal with a lecture and Claire had an annoying way of knowing when Maisie wasn't telling the truth. It was one of the few "motherly" things Claire was good at and it irritated Maisie to no end.

     “Hey!” Claire called out. There was no pretending that Maisie didn’t hear or notice. She stopped and pulled her headphones off. “Where you been?”

     “Nowhere,” Maisie said. She wasn’t about to admit to anything and needed something to change the subject. “What are you burning?”

     “Oh, nothing, just some old blankets. Are you sure you didn’t go past the bridge?”

     “That’s the look you give me when you think I’m lying”

     “Well, are you?”

     “No.” How did she always know?

     “Maisie, you’re literally looking anywhere but here,” Claire said, pointing at her own eyes.

     Claire had lied about what was burning and it was clear that Maisie didn't believe her any more than Claire believed Maisie about the bridge. They could both see through each other's bullshit and in a house that's so small the inability to have any sort of privacy, even that of a white lie or rebellious freedom, made tolerating one another an ever more difficult task. Four years ago all three of them were plunged head-first into an icy pool of "What do we do now?" without an inkling of how to effectively live with each other. Maisie had known them for all of a day when she ended up in their custody and had spent the first ten years of her life with a mansion to run around in. She had had a grandfather who knew her inside and out and Iris, her caretaker who might as well have actually been her mother. To add insult to injury, it wasn't too long before she discovered that Owen and Claire had been a split couple. Their arguments were more than those of long-term partners and Maisie ended up the subject of a good third of them. They didn't know how to be parents, they were still trying to learn one another. Eventually the two smoothed out the rough patches but Maisie was still trying to figure out who and what she was without having the opportunity to truly explore her place in the world. Did she even have one?

     No one told her these were questions she was supposed to share with people and she certainly didn't know how , so one more lie from Claire was enough to sour whatever good mood the logging mill had put her in.

     “Can we start over?” she heard Claire ask.

     Annoyance was turning to anger and both emotions were getting the better of Maisie. Words began to tumble out, harsh thoughts about herself and her living situation which seemed to draw Claire towards her even more. 

     “You’re the only you who ever was.” Claire thought she had found a way to connect, a special heart-to-heart moment to make sure Maisie knew that she saw her as her own person, but after Maisie’s rather repulsed expression she realized it was yet another “Mom’s words” failure. She might have lost the sentimental connection but sometimes humor is a better building block so she accepted the look and dug her heels a little more into the teenager’s eye roll.

     “What, was that, like, really corny?”

     “So corny,” Maisie relented.

     “Can we keep that between us?”

     “Can’t promise that.”

     And then the moment was gone, interrupted by a rumbling and the sound of heavy wheels crushing the underbrush. Owen’s relationship with Maisie was a little stronger than Claire’s, mostly because he didn’t try as hard. He didn’t poke and prod for connections and answers but he did still try to make sure she followed the rules set to keep her safe. The ins and outs of parenting a teenager were, in all honesty, lost on them both. How do you connect with someone who– for the safety of her life– isn’t supposed to have one? How do you build trust when having unanswered questions is a sort of act of defiance? 

     The days secluded would grow a little easier when they were all three present. Even though it was the same two people as the last four years it still gave Maisie something to do, some extra news to dig for from the outside world that she couldn’t hear about or discover in town. However, it was also a bit of a catch-22. Having Claire and Owen around made the cabin feel a little more like the family household  it was supposed to be, but it also meant that she wasn’t free to go across the bridge and explore. 

     Claire unloaded everything from Karen. They were all grateful to see that it was much newer things than the last delivery, which had been Zach getting rid of clothes he hadn’t worn since high school. Claire and Maisie both had items they could claim from Karen but Owen set his sights on the so-called “Halloween grabbag” that was in the other piece of luggage. Chips were hoarded or stored, candy was laid out, and a bag of assorted fun-sized bars that was very clearly actually from Halloween was opened without hesitation. Karen had listened this time: no more Mr. Goodbars. Last time they just kept getting thrown at one member of the house or another before Claire finally got tired of being on the receiving end of bad aim and tossed them into the fire when she’d find them.

     “You know the rules, now,” said Owen.

     “I know.” There was another eye roll in Maisie’s tone. “Closed in sealed containers, burn the wrappers.” 

     “We don’t need another Smokey roamin’ around.”

     “Smokey?”

     “Yeah,” Owen glanced up at Maisie, waiting for the recognition to hit. “Y’know. Smokey the Bear?”

     “You named the bear?”

     “I didn’t name the bear, it’s just Smokey the Bear!” His eyes sought out Claire’s, shock mixed with a desperate plea of…what, well, Claire wasn’t quite sure.

     “She didn’t really get out, Owen.”

     “You don’t need to get out, they had TVs. It’s Smokey the Bear! ‘Only you can prevent forest fires.’”

     “Why is a bear named Smokey trying to prevent forest fires?” asked Maisie, trying to process this new and obscure piece of information.

     Claire was trying not to laugh. “It’s an old ad campaign, Maisie. It’s been around since before I was born.”

     “But why is he called Smokey if he’s trying to stop fires?”

     “Well the name’s spelled different,” said Owen.

     “Maybe it’s a reference to the Smoky Mountains?” Claire suggested.

     “But it doesn’t make any sense,” Maisie protested.

     “It’s Smokey the Bear!”

     “Saying his name over and over doesn’t make it make any more sense.”

     Claire pulled herself out of the amusing but directionless conversation and instead sunk her teeth into one of the Milky Way bars, listening to the continuing banter of Maisie’s confusion and Owen’s insistence. The money hidden inside the zipper lining of the suitcase was tucked away safely. She’d split it up later between groceries and any new clothing items they still needed. Usually it went to coats and shoes. None of them managed to make it a year in their living situation without needing a new pair of shoes.

     By the time Claire slipped into bed that night Maisie was already sound asleep. She laid out slowly onto her stomach, stretching her back before curling in against Owen's side. 

     "What'd you have t'eat this time?" he asked. It became a common question whenever Claire returned from Karen's. Owen liked to live vicariously and without anything to report in the way of events the topic always came down to food. 

     "Mmm. Shrimp-fried lo mein, eggrolls, and Zhuo's had a new teriyaki on the menu."

     The pathetic whines that came out of him had Claire laughing into her pillow.

     "I'm sorry."

     "It just ain't fair."

     "Then Karen made bourbon cider."

     "Ooh." He clutched his heart, the words raspy and higher pitched  "I'm dead. I'm gone."

     "Fine, then, I get your truck."

     "You can have my truck if I get t'be the one visitin' your sister next time."

     Claire sobered a little. "I honestly think she would like that. She really hates all this.

     "Yeah, I know," he said. Owen leaned forward to kiss Claire's shoulder then laid back down, his head tucked just above hers. "And I know how much you hate it, too.”

     "I don't hate it."

     "But ch'ya don't like it, either. You miss her, and this sure isn' the life the Claire Dearing I knew woulda let herself have."

     Claire turned over to face him. "It's the life she needs to have right now. I'm not the same person I was when we first met, Owen. I'm not living only for myself anymore."

     "Yeah, I know. We both been through a coupla different kinds of hells and seen destruction. We're neither one of us the same, but it doesn't mean you don't need more than a camp stove and whatever this is."

     "Whatever this is," Claire repeated. She was tired of people saying that. Owen felt her hand slide up, her thin thumb smoothing down the stubble along his cheek. "I can do what we need to to keep Maisie safe, but I don't want to be 'whatever this is' anymore."

     Owen's stomach felt empty and a knot began churning within. Raptors couldn't produce the sort of panic he was now feeling. "Wait, wait, what're you sayin'?"

     She propped herself up on an elbow, trying to find his gaze in the lightless room. "I'm saying we have a lot to talk about when it comes to Maisie but we can't keep doing things like this . I miss my family and we can't make a difference out here. We need to go back and start making things right, but I don't want to do it as Claire Dearing, I want to do it as Claire Grady."

     The sweat that had broken out down his back was still there but the nerves had changed. "Claire-"

     "Marry me, Owen."

     "Um..." he gaped, his mouth trying to catch up to his mind. "I thought you didn't wanna think about that."

     "That was two years ago. Now I'm sick of waiting."

     "Then how come you didn't let me know!?"

     "I'm letting you know now."

     "Yeah, but can't you drop hints or something? I'm s'posed to be the one who asks. I don't even have a ring."

     "I'm taking it that's a 'yes.'"

     "Well, yeah, but that-" he was cut off by her lips, soft and insistent and tasting of chocolate and toothpaste. Whatever his thoughts were a second ago were forgotten so long as she kept that up. Her leg slid across his torso and she shifted to straddle him, laying herself out along his chest.

     "I want this to be a real family and we can legally fight for Maisie better married."

     Despite the pitch blackness of the room she could tell that Owen was smiling.

     "You don't gotta convince me, Claire, I woulda said yes a long time ago."

     "I thought you wanted to ask me ."

     "I love you and it leads to the same results, so what's it matter?"

     It continued like that, both the nitpicking and playful interactions until the day Blue’s infant showed up in front of Maisie, curious and hungry. Owen wasn’t about to let Maisie join him on an investigation of a new nest belonging to a deadly mother, but to Maisie it was one more thing she’d been denied. He wasn’t even leaving the woods.

     She stormed in one door of the cabin and out the other, grabbing her bike just to be stopped by Claire.

     “Where’re you going!?”

     “You can’t keep me here, you’re not my mother.”

     The cut of that wound echoed through her. There was no food bribery that could apply to this. Claire stood in silence as Maisie rode off, wrapping her shirt closer around her. There was a lot that she and Owen still had to talk about but Maisie just moved to the top of her list. This situation, the hiding and absolute seclusion had to end. Maybe Karen was right to an extent.

     Her mind continued to mull and whirl through problems and solutions until Owen ran through the house screaming about Maisie being taken. 

     “Who are they!?”

     “Poachers. I seen ‘em around, leader’s a real shit-heel. He must’ve recognized me, followed me here.”

     “Where is she?”

     “Go get the truck!”

     Everything dissolved. Solitude, isolation, careful networks of travel and a low-use digital presence no longer mattered. This is what they had feared, what they had waited for with dread for four years. There was a flame in Owen’s eyes that Claire recognized instantly. His territory, his being had just been violated. This was beyond Hoskins taking control of his work with the raptor pack so many years ago; in an instant this had turned personal for them both. A hand snatched out for the keys and Claire ran to the truck. They would drain every human and monetary resource they had left to get their daughter back.

Chapter Text

     Malta had turned into an absolute shit-show. From the moment that Barry said to “blend in” Claire knew a redhead in the black markets was going to stand out. She nearly said as much but couldn’t lose the opportunity to potentially find Maisie. The Maltese trading post was everything a “weapons” dealer could want and everything an activist could fear: cages, fighting pits, exotic meat, enclosures that were too small, and the unknown of where these animals would end up once they were purchased. La Tana dei Denti , or the Den of Teeth as Barry had translated, was a tight but thriving market of herbivores, carnivores, avians, and several creatures that weren’t easy to recognize. Negotiations and bets were taking place right and left, everything from whole-animal purchases to samples and parts, things harvested from both living and dead.

     Mills had once accused Claire and Owen of exploiting the dinosaurs, selling them off to tourist sight-seers as nothing more than animals in cages. The recrimination still left a sour taste in Claire’s mouth but this was entirely different. The debate over zoos had long raged even before John Hammond found his infamous mosquito in amber, but these were true animals in cages: trapped, compressed, confused, starved, bored, and scared. Jurassic World had never been perfect and suffered from its own share of criticism from animal rights activists, but the park had habitats specially designed and ever-changing to adapt to the animals’ needs. In la Tana dei Denti there was nothing but hard steel.

     Hard steel was all Owen now felt on the cargo hold floor of the battered plane he just purposefully crashed into. It was about thirty seconds before he realized that he was no longer standing and that Claire was under him. His body protested as he moved but he got back to his feet and pulled Claire up, an unnatural sound leaving the woman’s throat as she stood just to bend half over again.

     “Oh god, not that side.”

     Owen adjusted quickly, removing any pull from Claire’s left but he reached in to ease her arm away from her ribs. “You hurt?”

     “I fell off a balcony.” The response was a pained wheeze, and certainly not what he expected to hear.

     “You what?”

     “And then you fell on me.” She carefully raised herself back up, eyes watery, and gently pushed his shoulder around towards the front of the plane. “I can breathe, I’m fine. We need to sit.”

     “Claire-” But she pushed again so he relented, moving to find a seat. His own limbs were now screaming. Questions about who, what, and where could be asked in a moment, though the pilot answered his thoughts before he could voice them.

     “Kayla Watts. You’re welcome.” 

     Owen wasn’t sure yet that he ought to be thanking her. “You look like you fly for Biosyn.”

     Hostilities weren’t what they needed at the moment, especially towards a woman who just saved both of their lives and was taking them where they needed to go. Claire’s silence was guarded, gauging how both interacted and reacted to one another. Her hands were slow on the straps of the seat, distracted by two people who seemed very similar to one another and the burning pain radiating from her ribs. Their conversation ended with some sort of mutual understanding and Claire had nearly gotten herself fully strapped in when she noticed the blood on the floor.

     “Owen, you’re bleeding.”

     “Yup,” he said. His head never dipped down to search for the source but his hands were wrapped tight around the straps of his seatbelt and from her angle Claire could just see the side of his boot. It looked like one side had been exposed to a sanding belt, white lines cutting into the material from the sole to the top. His pants weren’t so bad, they had risen up in the slide which exposed bare leg, but what wasn’t torn now had blood seeping through it. “I’m really startin’ t’feel it.”

     She pressed the buckle on her chest to release the straps. “And your arm. Owen!”

     “I’m fine.”

     “No you’re not. Is there a first-aid kit on board?”

     Kayla waved with a vague gesture towards the back. “There’s gotta be, I transport carnivores. You go let her get you cleaned up, I won’t have you bleeding all over my plane. You already mangled up my hold.”

     There was a rummaging in the back and Owen didn’t move until he heard Claire call him once again after she had found the kit. With a grunt he pushed himself back up and partly limped towards her. The kit was more of a small suitcase and Claire was quickly taking inventory.

     “Damn.”

     “She transports carnivores,” Claire shrugged. “Sit down.”

     “When I’m done, you’re next,” he said. Owen grabbed hold of the cargo netting on the side of the plane and carefully lowered himself to the floor. 

     “What are you going to do, stick a band-aid on my side?” She began unlacing his shoe and slid it off, checking the rotation of his ankle “Does that hurt?”

     “Nah.”

     She pushed his pant leg up, her face scrunching with sympathy before she set to work. The outside of his leg initially looked shredded but as she began to clean and pull off bits of pant material it came to be only one main laceration and a large, stretched portion of burns. Her hands were as tender as they could be given the inevitable scrubbing that had to be done to clean the dirt away and the underlying tremble they both were experiencing as adrenaline slowly ebbed from their systems. By the time she had moved up to his arm Owen was shaking and it was harder for Claire to sit straight.

     “I saw you, you know,” she said.

     “Hm? Where?”

     “In Malta, in the streets, maybe ten minutes before the airstrip.”

     “I didn’t see you.”

     “It was just through a side-street, you were being chased. I have a question. How come you always end up on a motorcycle surrounded by raptors?”

     This brought on a laugh. Owen had no answer. It was crazy enough what he did during the fall of the Jurassic World park, but to end up in a similar situation again eight years later? She had a point. No one else has a claim to fame anywhere near that odd occurrence of motorcycle plus raptor. Hell, the closest he’d seen was the man on a scooter who got eaten. He leaned his head back and shook it, happy for the distraction away from the severe road rash. “I’ve got nothin’.”

     “Well I have something for you if you’re up for taking suggestions.”

     “Oh, yeah, and what would that be?”

     Claire lifted Owen’s hand up to his eyes, sliced in three lines. “You need to stop putting your hand out to calm the dinosaurs. You’re going to get it bitten off.”

     “She was scared and upset!”

     “Would you stick your hand in the face of an upset grizzly?” Claire waited. Silence met the question. “Exactly.”

     “It’s just a habit.”

     “Well form a different habit. I would prefer you to keep both of your hands.” She leaned forward when she was finished and placed a kiss against his lips. “A ring needs to be put on one of them.”

     “So you mean only use my right hand, then.”

     “No, that’s not what I mean.” 

     As Claire began packing up the medical kit Owen turned his head back towards the cockpit, very carefully getting back to his feet. “Kayla, was it? How much longer ‘til we get there?”

     “About an hour.”

     “Plenty a’time. Claire,” he held out his hand to her. “C’mere, I gotta look at your ribs.”

     She stayed down, hands raising then dropping quickly again in irritation. “You can’t do anything about it.”

     “Would you just let me see!? Damn.” 

     The movement was stiff for her, he could tell. She was now heavily favoring her left and without the current threat of danger pain wasn’t easy to ignore. Claire’s arm wouldn’t go up all the way, not without causing her enough pain to end up bent over again, so Owen helped to keep it out at her side as he lifted her shirt. It hadn’t been that long since the fall; the bruising visible was from whatever she fell onto and not yet the blackening of burst blood vessels and broken bones. Owen could see two parallel discolored blooms spreading along her ribs and Claire’s breathing was only half the capacity he was used to. He’s been by her side both asleep and in danger, screaming and laughing, he knew what her lungs were capable of. 

     “You fell off a balcony, or onto ?”

     “Off, and onto a truck,” she answered. 

     “What kind of truck? You’ve got lines here and here.” A soft finger glided just over the surface of her ribs, not quite touching but too close for comfort.

     “It had one of those round-top covered things over it with a metal frame.”

     “What were you doin’ on a balcony?”

     “The whol- stop!” She snatched hold of his hand which had just made contact to feel for movement under the skin and pushed it away. “The whole city is balconies. You told me it was Santos so I went after her. I managed to shock her inside this house but she marked me with the laser.”

     “Yeah, she got all of us, too.” Owen pushed on her right side, happy to see no signs of discomfort from Claire there and began to carefully push his way around until she stopped him again halfway, first in the front and then in the back.

     “Quit!”

     “I needa know you’re gonna be ok.”

     “I just patched you up!”

     “I mean with whatever comes. We could still be runnin’ miles and going through who-knows-what to find Maisie. If you can’t move or breathe you can’t keep goin’.”

     Her face hardened and she dropped her arm, forced her shirt back down, and deliberately took a large enough breath to make her eyes brim. “I’m going to the end.”

     “There better not be an ‘end’.”

     “You know what I mean.”

     “We’ll get her back.” 

     Owen leaned over to take care of the repacked kit. He wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to do with the used materials so for now he just shoved them into the corner with his foot. “That’s…totally sanitary. It’s fine.” The words were to himself. Claire had already gone back to her seat and was buckled in again. His eyes lingered on her as he returned to his. He wasn’t completely convinced that she was physically up for the task anymore. It wasn’t a matter of will that he doubted, it was the fear of potential damage that he wasn’t seeing. As long as they could stay together he could keep an eye on her, and if exposing their presence meant getting her medical care if it came down to it, he would do it.

     They had just long enough for Owen to start to give in to sleep when warning lights in the plane began to go off. Kayla had been a good pilot but apparently wasn’t the best at breaking through air security.

     “What is that?” asked Owen.

     “That’s the, uh… that’s the Arial Deterrent System,” Kayla said. “It keeps the airborne life away.”

     Claire leaned forward in the back. “Why is it blinking?”

     “Because dead-ass Denise in the tower just turned it off. We gotta get out of this airspace right now!”

     Everything happened quickly. The screeches outside from the quetzalcoatlus, its disappearance, and then a striking against the plane of an animal the size of a giraffe. Claire wasn’t entirely registering what Kayla was saying but within seconds Owen was in her face.

     “Claire, we gotta get you off this plane!”

     “What!?”

     “The parachute is going to open automatically, if it doesn’t you pull this lever. Do you understand? Claire ! If it doesn’t open automatically you’re gonna pull this lever here behind you, ok?”

     “Ten thousand feet!” Kayla’s voice rose over the din.

     “Hey. You’re the one who’s gotta go get her, you’re her mom. You’re her only shot.”

     You’re her mom . It wasn’t what Maisie had said before she was taken, but those words had come out of anger. Claire had spent the last four years trying to know Maisie, be what she needed. It hadn’t worked the way she had hoped but she wasn’t going to let the girl’s frustrations keep her away. Franklin chastised them for taking a person, kidnapping Maisie, but every corner they turned in Malta was someone screaming through the radio “It’s the parents”, and that is what she was. She had failed to protect her nephews but they had done everything they thought was right for Maisie to try to keep her safe. That wasn’t going to end in the air two minutes out from the tower. 

     “I’ll see you again. I love you.” Owen kissed her cheek then backed away to give her room. Her lungs were on fire, the seat straps against her chest felt like a crushing weight, but with a final nod between her and Owen she reached down and pulled.

     It wasn’t until the shute caught air and she had two seconds of drifting that she realized it may have been safer to stay inside the plane.

Chapter Text

     Two and a half hours to Sonora.

     "Who are you? Where are you taking me?"

     Forty minutes to an empty airstrip.

     "Why do you have her!? You can't hurt her!"

     Two hours to Denver.

     "I'm hungry." She demanded a window seat.

     Nearly three hours to Atlanta.

     Maisie had stopped midway through being dragged around the corridors of the airport, a warm, blissful breeze of cooking food reaching her from one of the back passageway doors. There had been a couple of times when she refused to move and they had picked her up and forcibly removed her but this time was different. They were all as hungry as she was.

     Nine hours, four bags of burgers, seven drinks, two milkshakes, and a sleep to Lisbon.

     "Can I watch movies on your phone?"

     Three more hours to Malta.

     It was hot by this point and she had seen people's phones change time zones several times. Maisie was losing track of the hours and the day of the week had completely thrown her. There were other people this time. As she walked the straight line from one person to another she glanced around at the commotion: animalistic screams came out of crates, Beta's cargo transport was being shifted, there were a few other SUVs scattered around, and a woman she locked eyes with. Maisie wanted to scream, ask for help, but if they were there to meet her captors then there was little chance that they would be on her side.

     A short car ride to another airstrip then a raggedy plane from the island to Milan, and now the car again. She was sick of planes and cars and travel. This wasn't what she meant when she asked to experience the world. The only good that had come of being kidnapped was the cinnamon roll place in Atlanta.

     “How are you doing, Ms. Lockwood?” 

     There were a few seconds where Maisie sat blinking, staring at the man in front of her. He didn’t have any particularly outstanding features, just a man as any other she might have seen in town, but his accent was distinctly different. All the same, it was someone finally speaking to her, and doing so with respect. Unfortunately for him, she had just been shuffled halfway across the world for about twenty-four hours not adjusting for time zones, which still had her head reeling when trying to do the calculations.

     “My tailbone hurts and I need to use the restroom.”

     He gave her a smile.

     “We can certainly find a place to let you relieve yourself, and if you would like you can sit in the front of the car,” he said, gesturing to the passenger side. “The seat is heated.”

     “Really?” she asked, guarded. What was the catch? Where did his hospitality end? “Who are you?”

     “My name is Abraham Runijo, I am the Public Marketing director for Biosyn.”

     At last an answer. There was no catch to her seating arrangement because she clearly wasn’t escaping, and apparently they were close enough now that there was no longer any need for secrecy. She spent a few more seconds sincerely considering moving to the front but the advantage of finally having someone who would speak to her was too much to forfeit. She stayed where she was but stretched out on the seat a little more.

     “What does that mean, Public Marketing director?” she asked.

     “It means that I am in charge of outside public perception of Biosyn. I consult on commercials, meet with people when there is a problem, study opinion trends on social media.”

     “Then I take it that I’m a problem?”

     How could he keep on smiling at her with what looked like genuine enjoyment? “No, Ms. Lockwood. It is my understanding that you will be the solution. ”

     “And what does that mean?”

     “I will let someone with more knowledge of that do the explaining,” Abraham said, holding up a placating hand.

     Maisie leaned forward, wanting to know just how far this warm reception extended. “Where’re you from?”

     “Bogota.”

     “Colombia?” Despite this subject being taught through old maps in the cabin Maisie had proven to be quite skilled at geography. It wasn’t a natural talent but an innate interest in anywhere and any place that the world had to offer her. Every new name that Maisie could find on a map was another set of secrets to uncover. Her schooling had taken her to the surface of Ypres, Berlin, Washington DC, Juno, St. Petersburg, the Sahara, Rome, and most recently Kathmandu, but it was Maisie herself who used to excavate through the vast shelves at home to find out what was underneath the great cities. For several months when she was eight one of the displays in the diorama hall went through a refresh, discarding old scenes and skeletons that had been made obsolete by scientific breakthroughs to be replaced by newer replicas. During that time was the Great Tome of Siberia that she’d pulled down from the top shelf one ladder rung at a time because of its heft. For her size it had been massive– surely at least as many stone as herself– and covered in enough dust to obscure the nameplate on the spine, but she lugged it with her to sit just outside the renovation boundary. It hadn’t just been about Siberia and Maisie assumed that the phrase was because it sounded more mysterious than simply “A Natural History of Russia.” There were words inside that she still probably wouldn’t understand but she got the key information. Maisie had spent a week of that time pleading with her grandpa and Iris both to replace the scene with olorotitans or camarasaurus.

     “Camarasaurus! We don’t have any big long-necks at all.”

     “For good reason. How do you expect to fit thirty feet of neck into the display case?” Her grandpa had that familiar sparkle to his expression, the one that meant he loved the idea but had to insist on the practicality.

     “Camarasaurus wasn’t thirty foot, it was twenty-three.”

     “And our ceilings inside are under fifteen.”

     She hadn’t won that argument despite her enthusiasm and the inclusion of her own hand-drawn rendering of what it could look like. She had kept the drawing, determined one day when she was in charge to have a full-scale sauropod skeleton in the hall.

     Images of the diorama hall the last time she passed through it shattered the scene in her mind. There was a new resident in that hall now, if it still remained the way she had seen it. The bones would have fallen away as the flesh decayed and scattered on the floor but that skull would haunt its replicated peers. The thought of owning her own small museum of specimens, fossils, and scenes still intrigued Maisie but half a life ago her grandpa had been right. Sometimes size dictates practicality. That hall had been too small for a sauropod and now this car was feeling too small for her.

     “You know Colombia?” Abraham asked.

     “Not as much as I know other places. It used to be under Spanish rule and called New Granada. It also has a large history of different indigenous populations over time. I know it had its own Revolutionary War but the only dates I remember are for the United States and Britain.” Her face curled with that admission. Locations she was good with, ancient archaeology she devoured, but modern dates were not her specialty.

     “The English education system is impressive. That is more than most know that I have ever met.”

     “It wasn’t England,” said Maisie. “It was Owen.”

     “Owen Grady? He taught you about Colombia?”

     “He taught me how to find database papers and out-of-copyright books.”

     “You have-”

     “And in- copyright books,” Maisie admitted.

     “You used the internet to pirate research materials?” Perplexed is the best word that Maisie had to use for his expression.

     “You use it to pirate endangered animals and manipulate public perception. Who’s the better person?”

     “We do not steal and sell illegally, Ms. Lockwood. The animals we have within our nature preserve are treated with care, kept in good health, and used for medical research.”

     “An animal in captivity is usually in poorer health than one left in its natural habitat. Poor health means a decrease in vitamins, enzymes, and biological waste that can be studied and extracted. It leads to a decrease in bone density, muscle mass, can hamper natural instinct and cause boredom if animals aren’t left to hunt and forage for their own food because those acts are natural stimuli, can cause extreme stress, and in the end premature death.” 

     Reliable facts and recitation for debate. She had learned that from Iris.

     “There are no natural habitats for dinosaurs, not in this time.”

     “If Biosyn sent you to get me it is because they are hoping that you can make them look better and I will cooperate. Outside public opinion, isn’t that what you said? Legitimate operations don’t have to kidnap people.”

     Abraham had his fingers folded over his lap, listening intently. “Neither do legitimate parents.”

     “If you need to kidnap me it is to get me away from the people who care about me,” Maisie wasn’t to be deterred or distracted by his comment. She could hear Claire in her head talking to someone on her phone in the cabin, a tangled web of Ifs and Whos and Whats torn out of a notebook and scattered around her on the ground a few months after she and Owen took her in. Maisie’s sentences were already laid out in her head like Claire’s papers, carefully planned and building towards a crescendo. “Divide and seclude, that is what is done to people who are considered dangerous or are around others who are a threat. If I am dangerous then you wouldn’t have told me where we are going or who you work for before we got there. I would have been blindfolded or tranquilized or already killed. That means you want me, alive, but I’m not the one you are afraid of.”

     “We are not afraid of anyone.”

     “Your men separated Beta from Blue because Blue is the one that was dangerous even though Beta was the one you wanted, and you just separated me from Claire. ”

     Analyze and deconstruct, she witnessed that from Claire.

     Thick fingers unfolded from their position hooked around his knee and reached into the breast pocket of his blazer.

     “Claire Dearing is not your mother,” he said in a matter-of-fact, apathetic tone.

     “You try telling her that,” Maisie retorted.

     He withdrew a pen then dug into the back of his pants pocket for a thin piece of white paper with a blue border and started to write on it. “And neither is she dangerous.” 

     “She sicced a killer raptor on her boyfriend with a hole in her leg…”

     Abraham leaned forward, peeled the sticker away from its backing, and slapped one side against Maisie’s collar bone. She pulled the edge of her coat out and looked down, trying to read the words upside-down. Currently emblazoned on her front in clear handwriting was a tag which read

          Hello, My Name Is…

           Biosyn Research

          care of Dr. Henry Wu

     The pen was tucked back into its respective pocket and Abraham opened the door, slid out of the car, then pat the top of it as he looked back down in. “Veida, I will be riding behind you for the return trip. Odio las adolescentes.”

     He had left too soon for her liking so Maisie lunged for the door before he could close it, nearly catching her fingers in the latch.

     “Wait!” But the door was shut. Maisie pulled on the handle to no avail, just as she had with every car she had been in in the last twenty-four hours. Sliding back she gave the panel a solid kick with as much weight as she could give, not looking for the release of the catch, just to make her mark of protest. If she had known that the conversation would have been so short she’d have started differently, said the important words before he was out of the car. 

     There had been plenty that Maisie didn’t understand about Claire and Owen and some things that she didn’t believe, but the longer she lived with them the more she understood their actions and expressions, the quiet movements of living by touch rather than words and their respective tones when words did have to be said. Much as anyone else would have she initially assessed Owen as the Survivalist, the one who would get you through any situation and take care of the dangers that occurred, but the longer she stayed around them, the more she sat back and watched, listened, the more she realized that they complemented each other but Claire was more of a driving force than most would give her credit for. She was stubborn, headstrong, focused. Maisie had to look up new words like tenacious , but there was a calculating nature to Claire that Maisie would have attributed more to Owen when she hadn’t known better. It was a patient rapaciousness for justice, equity. Claire would dig in her heels and gnaw at the vitals of a problem until she found the loopholes around it. Owen’s way was with actions, Claire’s was with words. Maisie had watched her go head-to-head with the U.S. and Costa Rican governments with a four hundred sixty-seven page exposé and a road map.

     Owen wasn’t usually much for words when he had a problem but he had a small collection of books that Maisie was surprised to find. Her favorite in the collection had been one by the original credited paleo animal behaviorist, Dr. Sarah Harding. Growing up, Maisie had tried several times to sneak the documents about the original park and the subsequent trip a few years later that led to San Diego but never could manage it, so hearing about Dr. Harding's observations first-hand was enough to make Maisie begin re-reading it the same night she had finished. The last fourth of the book was Harding’s observations on carnivores, particularly the Tyrannosaurus Rex. While the entire segment had fascinating pieces of information, Maisie thought the first line was the ultimate summary. She had tried to tell Mr. Runijo but he closed the door. She had tried to tell him but he had slapped the delivery sticker on her jacket like she was a package to mail. 

     Maisie slumped all the way out along the seat nearly to the full extension of her seatbelt, relieving the pressure that had been on her tailbone for far too long sitting the same way for hours on end. She folded the hood of her inner jacket up as a makeshift pillow and closed her eyes, trying to ignore her bladder and use whatever time she had left to sleep.

Chp 14. Paternal Instincts and Territorial Habits - T.Rex

There is no force in nature more devastatingly fatal than an angry mother.

Chapter Text

     There were flames and fear and falling; there was the rushing wind and swift rustle of branches like crashing waves in her ears; there was the hard thrum of her racing pulse echoing in her head and the jolting impact of wood, of water; there was the painful burning in her lungs from a lack of air; there was the sense of entrapment, banging on glass or belt buckles that wouldn’t break. There was screaming. It was her, it was Franklin, her, Zara, Gray, her, Maisie.

     Maisie. She had run as fast as her legs would take her to the stairs but Claire was pinned. How did a diorama smell so strongly of trees and soil? And then her thoughts were scattered, bursting out of her mind like a balloon and replaced only with the slow, deliberate sensation of her knee being torn apart. It wasn’t until she had a look at the placement later that she realized the claw sunk in above her knee, but the nerves of her leg were as disorganized as her mind. Is this fight, is it flight, is it death or time to rally? She hadn’t prepared for death in a mansion in mainland California. She had gotten halfway there in the gyrosphere on Nublar, water filling her ears and flooding every sense of her body: She felt it seep through her clothes, watched it rise up to their necks, distorting her sight and hearing and splashing unbidden into her mouth and nose. The pressure on her lungs to hold in what little air they had to make it to the surface was nearly at the breaking point. Salt irritated her sinuses.

     Maisie.

     She still smelled pine, even on top of the sunroof in the rain. She could feel the impact through the metal bars each time the indoraptor moved, like the drumming vibration with each step the two apex predators took on Main Street in Jurassic World. She could still feel it through her heels, her hips. It was a base speaker pounding in her heart and it hurt. It shouldn’t hurt.

     Her heels and toes were still vibrating but not with tremors, with the lack of blood-flow from dangling unsupported. She smelled petrichor and felt the wind on her face, the rain from her memory fading. There was no sea but there was pine, and soil, and the soft whisper of leaves brushed through a canopy breeze. The world finally came back to her, driving away the old nightmares of previous years and focusing in on the ground a few dozen feet beneath her.

     And then there was something more as her hands fumbled with the straps on her seat, a whisper of movement of the deer. She’d not yet had the time to completely process her safety before the clicking started, close, loud, and followed by hot breath. Her instincts fought themselves, frozen in fear and desperately wanting to escape but her attention was set on the oversized skull before her and her eyes locked onto an important feature: it was blind. Though close enough to reach out and touch, the creature had no real sense of her. There ought to be some sort of new smell but it was focused on the noise below, not her…and then the deer was gone.

     Time to go. Time to go.

     Luck or instinct, neither applied to her not screaming when she hit the ground. There was no air left to cry out with, no sense other than the white-hot pain clouding her vision and the ever-present impulse to run , but there was no running here. Claire’s fingers dug into the dirt beneath her, one arm reaching out in front of the next again and again, pushed on by the need to survive as the creature closed in. She was grateful now for the last four years in the woods, the knowledge that came with navigating the terrain and surviving an area occupied by bear and raptor alike. She was grateful for Owen.

     “Stay low, don’t make a sound. If they see you and they’re hungry you’re already dead, but usually they’re gonna hear you long before they see you. If they don’t hear you, they probably won’t see you. If they don’t see you, you get t’live another day.”

     She sank into the water. Claire wasn’t certain if she had been crying, she surely wanted to but couldn’t tell if she had managed to withhold or not, but now here beneath the water, once more relying on whatever capacity her lungs could manage to just endure, outlast, withstand , the final inhale before submerging feeling caustic and sickening, she was most certainly crying– at least as much as was physically possible.

     It was vibrations and the loss of a shadow that told Claire the creature had gone. Her teeth were clenched when she surfaced, body shaking as she clawed her way out and onto a log to rest, get her bearings. Which way was north? The time of day when she last looked at the clock on the plane, the direction of sunbeams through the trees. Every inch of her body ached as she pulled herself up to look over the fallen log. There was a stream of smoke rising in front of her roughly north-westish. She could get a more clear understanding of direction when there wasn’t as much light disbursement from the canopy, but it didn’t matter. There was a dark rise of smoke ahead and that was all she needed to follow. 

     “Whatever you do, don’t stick around too long. If you’re in the vicinity of a hunter you’re most likely in its territory. You don’t wanna be around when it decides to come back.”

     Whatever this creature was called it was either territorial or enjoyed the sport, either way Claire had no intention of staying to find out which. She made her way slowly up the incline of the log to stand and slid a hand along her face and hair to clear the algae and excess water. Malta may have been a disaster but they had made it through, but there was no considering Owen’s status of life this time; Claire couldn’t let her mind wander that far into the darker forensics of circumstances. The plane had been reduced to a trail of smoke and all that was left was to find Maisie.

     Maisie.

     There had been too many parallels recently to events of his past and getting two people out of a sinking vehicle underwater was just another, only this time he was one of the two. The control dash kept sparking as Owen pulled himself off the floor.

     “Your seats are shit,” he grunted out. He wasn’t sure how loud his voice was or if Kayla could hear him. There was a ringing in his ears and he couldn’t tell if it was within the plane or his own head, but the sentiment wasn’t one he wanted to keep to himself. The buckle on his seat didn’t hold when they hit the water and Owen was thrown forward onto the controls then backwards to the floor hard enough to rip off the pivoting armrest. One hand slid down to feel around on his stomach. If he’d had been a cartoon he swears you’d have been able to see the outlines of the buttons and switches through his back.

     “You good!?” Kayla called out from the pilot’s chair. She was still strapped in, eyes closed and catching her breath.

     “Sort of,” said Owen. “You?”

     “Sort of,” she repeated back to him. “I’m stuck.” She jiggled the buckle on her seat which proved to be reluctant to release its catch.

     “I gotchya, suck in.” Owen flipped out the knife from his belt and cut into the straps, releasing the crossbody first to give her time to prepare before he cut the lap belt. 

     Kayla dropped forward, anticipating any portion of her legs to protest but nothing came beyond the feel of solid surface beneath the soles of her boots. Upon the impact of the plane she had been thrown forward just as Owen, but unlike him her seatbelt had kept her in, stopping the full mass of her body from becoming a projectile though her hands had slammed forward from the control yoke and into the instrument panel. Metal tearing and electrical fires masked the snap of bone but the painful aftermath was the first thing that Kayla had become aware of and is what had assured her she wasn't dead. Her left arm was now tucked safely against her body as she moved out, earnestly trying not to think about the fact that she was walking "uphill" in her plane.

     "You're bleeding again," she said. The bandaging that Claire had done during flight didn't really seem to matter much now. Owen had a fresh trail of red forming a jagged path from elbow to fingertip.

     "Can't really do anything about it right now."

     Fair enough.

     "There's an escape hatch up there if you can get to it," Kayla gestured above them. Beneath their feet the ground shifted. "Please tell me you can get to it."

     “Uh…” He fixed his foot into a wedge of metal towards his right and jumped. It wasn’t so much that it was far above them but he had nothing to stand on to release the latch. It took a couple of tries– foot placement, aim, jump, repeat– before his fingers finally managed to catch the latch and the hatch sprung open. 

     “Alright, you’re up,” he said. Owen began to dip down and position his open hands on top of his knee but Kayla moved him aside.

     “You gotta go out first. I can’t pull you out once I’m up there but you can get me, can’t you?” She knew the answer already and was turning around. She couldn’t do the foot boost, not with only one hand, so she presented her back to Owen instead. “Climb up.”

     It had been ages since she’d done anything much like this. Flashes of her and her brothers climbing trees when they were younger to get to apples and peaches came to mind. She’d been the tallest one at the time, passing her older brother in height when she was seven even though he caught up again a few years later. She’d helped both of them up, letting them know which branches to target and stayed at the base of the tree with a basket. The children had a silent agreement with the Howes, the owners of the orchard. They had free reign of a few small baskets of peaches without payment and in return the family would bring back pies, jellies, a portion of whatever they made with them that year. It had started the year before her memory, when kids were kids and just took the peaches outright. Their dad had to sit them all down, six, eight, and nine year old children, to explain property, punishment, and reciprocity. Instead of punishment they went with reciprocity and returned to the Howe farm with an upside-down cake of peaches and cream. At eight years old that was torture for Kayla. It was her favorite dessert. 

     She wasn’t eight anymore but she still remembered her foot placement, how to help hoist another human roughly her size up, give them support until they were set. The hatch was only about a head-height’s further above where Owen’s hand would naturally reach with a jump so there wasn’t much work that had to be done other than staying steady. Getting out on her own part involved a strong hand from Owen and a little kicking until her elbows were above the hatch and she could provide more support for herself. 

     An odd temperature variance was happening down on the ice. Two forces were juxtaposed: there was snow in the air from a cold wind funneled through the valley and straight into the retaining dam they landed in, but the heat off the plane was moved with the same gusts. When the wind swept through the air became an acerbic oven of heat and fuel and ice; when the wind died down it was simply cold .

     Kayla looked to her left at what was now nothing more than a sinking ship. “That was my baby.” It wasn’t quite regret, but there was a hint of anguish in her words. How would she replace it?

     “The woods are that way,” said Owen, gesturing out to the south. There was still a high-pitched whine in his ears like incessant school bells. “We gotta find a way down from here.”

     “This pool is just on the opposite side of the landing strip. I’ve seen the back tunnels in here, we don’t hafta trek through the woods until we reach the space between outposts.”

     Frozen lakes weren’t something Owen ever really considered stable ground. Each pace was slow and methodical, shifting weight from one foot to the other and listening for cracks or waiting to see if the grip of shoes held. The travel was too slow. He had places to get to, people to find. He needed a distraction.

     “Where’d you learn to fly?” he asked.

     “Uh, Airforce. Legacy on my mama’s side,” said Kayla.

     Her tone was far more calm than what he was experiencing himself but he was happy to take whatever conversation he could get.

     “Yeah? I’m Navy. So how’d you end up doing this?”

     “Are you asking me out of sincere curiosity or are you trying to distract yourself?”

     “We launched my fiancé out of a plane into hostile air, my ears are ringin’, I can only hear half of what you’re sayin’, and I don’t know how thick this ice is. Yeah, I’m tryin’ to distract myself, but just t’be clear, any other day and I’d be interested.”

     “Y’know you don’t really have the best way with people.” Kayla watched him for a couple more steps then continued, willing to take the bait. Distractions weren’t always a bad thing. 

     Half a minute and a screeched warning was all it took to shift from methodical to urgent. It was clear that the ice wasn’t built up enough to support much weight but choices had to be made. Both of them were more willing to take their chances with the ice than with an animal on the hunt, but there was a moment of preservation, a silent understanding between the two of them in a face-to-face stand-off where the “fight” response won. The fog in Owen’s head cleared; the knife in his fingers was a familiar friend, a well-worn lifeline that was as comfortable in his hand as Claire’s had become.

     “What the hell is that?”

     “Pyroraptor,” Kayla answered. “I’ve seen them on manifests but never in person.”

     She had his right, he had her left. Close-range weaponry wasn’t exactly what Owen preferred when it came to dinosaurs but at least he had a partner. His hearing may be off but his sight was working well enough. Owen’s foot swept backwards, prepared to shift his weight until the raptor dove into the crack in the ice.

     “Nope!” The understanding was gone. Kayla spun around, holstered the taser, and made a bee-line straight for the ladder. As they approached the edge of the pool larger quantities of snow had built up enough to provide a more consistent grip on the ice, but between their weight and the cracks from the plane there were still large sections to traverse. Kayla jumped, aware of Owen just to her right. One foot touched down, then the other, but the figure in her peripheral sank.

     He felt the lurch, the give as what was ground broke underfoot. Instinct shoved his hands forward but there was nothing to grab hold of and he continued down. Military training prepares the mind for combat but not the body for a war with itself. His fingers registered the frigid shock before the rest of him and his muscles seized. The temperature was instantly painful to his extremities but a sudden relief to aching joints and the throbbing at the base of his skull. It was simultaneous trauma and bliss, a blow to his chest which eased the blow to his head.  Without a decisive response from his brain freezing was agonizingly tranquil: strife, peace, the need to breathe, and the desire to let go. A thousand years and a thousandth of a second all passed before a definitive tug pulled at him from above. Owen currently had no concept of time or space, just the blurred image before him and the memory in his muscles that he was running.

     Open air turned into a cramped space. The safety doors were closing before either of them were completely inside but it was just in time to keep them separated from the pyroraptor. It gnawed at the metal, claws scraping and teeth gnashing until Kayla pulled the taser back out and shoved it between the gate holes. The shock worked initially and by the time it recovered they were already on their way down.

     “You good?” Owen asked. He wasn’t sure what sort of response he would get. She never once during the entire time outside used her left arm, but for the moment she didn’t seem too bothered by it. Meanwhile his teeth were set in an uncontrolled chatter as he spoke, fingers only half responsive in his attempt to wring out the bottom of his shirt.

     “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m not shook at all, you?” 

     There was a muttered agreement to that, more processing than anything else. Once the hand passed over Owen’s face Kayla realized just where exactly his mind was. She reached down to pull another device from her pocket. 

     “Ejection seat beacon. We’ll find her.”

     “Ok.” There was still an unfocused quality to his response.

     “You really love her, huh?”

     “Yeah.”

     “I get it. I like redheads, too.”

     That was it, that was enough to pull Owen out of his own head and elicit a laugh. His neck tilted back as he took a long, deep breath, clutching tight to the signal responder as he took stock of himself. Around him the air was growing warmer even if it hadn’t yet dispensed through the soggy ice that his clothes had turned into.

     “What exactly were you planning on doing with a knife?” Kayla asked.

     “What were you planning on doing with a taser?”

     “Exactly what I did.”

     “The range is the same.”

     “But not the outcome. You gotta make sure you get in just right with a knife. At least with a taser it doesn’t matter where I hit, just that I do. What was your girl’s name?”

     “Who, Claire or Maisie?” he asked.

     “Well, now I got both. She doesn’t really look like you.”

     “Nah, but she could be her mother’s clone,” Owen replied with a hint of a smile. Kayla’s growing confusion was worth his silence. He’d keep the joke to himself. “What kinda taser is that?”

     “MX-760. It’s rated for moose. Why?”

     Owen glanced back down at the beacon as the elevator reached the ground floor and opened. The corridor was empty, a long cement hallway of pipes, safety markings, electrical boxes, and posted signs.

     “Gotta get me one when we get back.”

     “That’s the spirit.” Kayla stepped forward. “This is T1, terminal service passage. We needa go left.”

Chapter Text

     Twenty-nine years, a dozen and one lawsuits of varying sizes, a ten month consultation at the Smithsonian, eight thousand in therapy bills, a few additional degrees, two children, and a standing gag order was still not enough experience to make her feel like anything more than small. Dr. Sattler, a name that had been on dissertations, books, articles, new stories, a couple of office doors, and the side of a building was nothing beyond Ellie , just Ellie. She could still hear her mother calling her name to come in from outside as a child, or nights when she would wake hearing it echo in her head across the flora of an old visitor's center. The ones who mattered in her life were all allowed to call her Ellie, it was who she had always been and who she usually felt most comfortable in the skin of.

     There had been a brief time in her earlier collegiate career when she had begun to get comfortable owning the name Dr. Sattler, but it had been shattered by the aftermath of a weekend where hubris was devoured by nature. She had heard it too much in the hearings after "the event", spoken with cold directness or, towards the end, barely-checked disdain. For a while after that she would politely ask for an informal downgrade when people met her. "Ms. Sattler is fine," she always told them, even when she was married. It took years before she felt as though she had earned her name back from the lawyers and board members, from InGen. Even still, when she could settle into her work and lose herself among the people and research she dropped right back into being Ellie. Being small helped separate her from much larger events in her life. Being small was a comfort.

     Ever since the call from the Perez farm her body hadn’t quite felt her own. There was this feeling of growth happening that mirrored the events around her and it produced an unwelcome sense of anxiety. Had matters just been about corn and locusts and botany then she could have remained Ellie, but the messages from Ian Malcolm and his following invitation was driving her more and more into territory larger than her comfort zone. In half a day she had moved out of ‘Ellie’ or ‘professor’ and was forced back into the moniker of ‘Dr. Sattler’. She was becoming a giant wearing too-small shoes, longing to go back to the gardening gloves that would barely now fit on a finger. She had become looming, her shadow growing across the ground in miles that out-paced the wind and cast mountains into darkness, forced to duck beneath the sun. In a single breath she consumed the galaxies, exhaling nebulae and casting them out across the universe until they returned to strike her in the back like a soft breeze, carrying with them a familiar voice and the calming song of her name.

     “Ellie Sattler.”

     And she was small again, breathing in the hot desert air in a tent so hauntingly welcoming and familiar. She could almost feel the old hats and bandanas, hear the acoustic guitars and off-key singing in the cool evenings. She had passed by a picture of that time but decided not to linger on it. That photo was too close to her large self and she wanted to remain as she was so she grasped hold of the voice, the same now as it always had been.

     “Alan Grant.”

     There were no honorifics anymore, they didn’t need that between the two of them. They had passed through rain and thunder, lightning born on the wings of the court and a hurricane of teeth. It was almost a blessing to hear that he wasn’t happy when the conversation shifted that way. The admission had been all of a single sentence but enough to convince her to ask without any further preamble. It wasn’t as though she wanted him to be unsatisfied with his life but not needing to beg and plead worked in her favor. All it took was a giant locust and a solid “I need you” for them to be where they currently were, en route to Biosyn and apparently in dangerous airspace. 

     Ellie finally closed the laptop she’d been on for several hours while Alan had slept, letting it slide into a secure case that was remaining on the plane for when they returned.

     “Case work?” Alan asked.

     “Not quite,” she said.

     There was something more to her response, an aversion that he had gotten to know decades ago.

     “No…” he said slowly, piecing the years together. “Still?”

     Ellie removed her glasses and tucked them safely away, her lips pressed into a thin line. “You know how they say time heals all wounds? Well, that’s a lie. I don’t know how you can keep living and not be furious. ” 

     “Ellie. What am I supposed to do with that kind of anger? Where would I put it all? I can’t write it out in the world’s largest Tells-All, keep copying it over from computer to computer like you. I can’t hold onto that without a place to direct it so why not just let it all go? It’s gone, it’s done. Hammond’s gone, the kids are grown and have lives and families, you have a family. They’ve distanced themselves from all of that, why can’t you?”

     “They destroyed our names. ”

     “We all seem to have done pretty well for ourselves still,” said Alan. He had the same infuriating calm to him that he had when they last met up in 2006, less than a year after the opening of the new Jurassic World. Events had been far more fresh for Alan than for Ellie and yet he spent the whole evening trying to calm her down enough to, with any luck, not become an arsonist at the Masrani headquarters. For Alan anger had been a moot point. There was nothing that rage would get him so why expend the energy? He was too tired and so he just talked as he always had, even-paced and deliberate. Ellie, on the other hand, had been ready to go to war. It looked like she was still ready to go to war, she was just waiting for her opportunity. “If it all still matters to you so much why didn’t you break the gag order like Ian did?”

     “Not all of us can afford that kind of fine.”

     “I would have helped pay it,” Alan confessed. His shoulders rose in a welcoming shrug. “How long is that document now? How many volumes do you have ready to be published?”

     There was a slow inhale as she looked at the ceiling of the passenger cabin, recalling with simultaneous pride and guilt. “About twelve thousand pages across five documents. It’s not all words, there are images in there, too.” Her eyes caught Alan’s, registering the horror but he apparently couldn’t find words so she continued. “They include all of the testimonies from the court hearings differentiating between what was said and what I wasn’t allowed to say. I have things that other people have told me, you and Ian included. Vetted of course; I fact-check everything. Somewhere in the fourth document is where the new park began, that transition between InGen and Masrani Global, and now Biosyn. They’re all the same in the end. They want to be gods of their time, creating and creating and never once thinking about the tidal wave that will occur when the dam breaks, and it will break, it always breaks.”

     “You know who you sound like?”

     “Well he’s always been right, hasn’t he? I will stop writing when they can finally evolve beyond arrogance and power, but right now nothing has changed. The name is different but the outcome remains the same. It’s perpetual, Alan. We’ve never left the park and we never will.”

     It would have been a comfort if he had been able to contradict that statement but even for Alan reality was an unfortunate truth. Quite a while ago he had closed himself off to communication with curious minds and went as deep into the hills of Utah as any dig would allow him. The more difficult it was to access technology then the easier his life had become. Keeping a physical distance away from the invasive questioning kept him mentally detached from any of The Five Deaths even if it would only last as long as the funding did, or until he was forced to return closer to civilization to submit reports and samples. Alan had stopped hosting presentations, he couldn't even sign his own books without being taken back through the park gates. There was nothing that could make him understand how Ellie continued to voluntarily relive that weekend every day for almost three decades. Even in recent years when the data submissions were handled by interns or partners he couldn't escape. It was no longer his memories taking him hostage, it was the reality of a small group of unbelievably asinine individuals who opened the floodgate and brought the island to every other part of the world. Ellie was right, there’s no escaping perpetuity.

     "What exactly do you hope to get out of this? What will this trip give you that you don't already have?"

     Ellie smiled. The outcome to her was a path straight and clear and visible, all she had to do was walk it. “If I can obtain DNA from a fully mature locust inside the Biosyn facilities that matches the one I already have then I can petition for a criminal investigation of the entire company. I already have six farms that were wiped out by the infestation that bordered untouched properties who used Biosyn seeds. Right now the data points to an evolutionary preference or an aversion to different varieties.”

     “Like termites and high-density wood.”

     “Exactly. But with evidence, not only can I prove the conspiracy for a global market monopoly, but also the misuse of genetic responsibility as laid out in the Gene Guard Act.”

     Alan sat studying her face, his head caught in an ongoing nod as he thought. “That’s a lot to hang on an If.”

     “Our survival depends on it.” She had a confidence he wasn’t quite feeling yet.

     “I’ve always admired your passion, Ellie, but if we get caught then it’s us who get put on trial. What exactly is it you need me to do?”

     “Just go along with whatever it takes to get in.”

     The restrained annoyance Ramsay was feeling was growing by the half hour. Ian Malcolm was a shrewd-witted genius with all the tact of an overly-excited rooster. He was invaluable in his connections and foresight but had to be guided on a figurative leash towards discretion and outright secrecy. It was little wonder he had so many books, all the man did was talk. Ramsay admired Ian’s undeniably suave charm and the way that he conducted himself that was simultaneously polite and belittling. He knew no one else who could talk so freely in opposition to Dodgson and still be around for lunch, yet Ian had managed it for six weeks and had gotten himself an all-access pass with free coffee. By this point it was an art form.

     The issue now came with the Three Instigators, brilliant in their own fields and highly-respected within the scientific and philosophical communities but that in itself was a slight issue: they were scientists, not spies. Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant lacked as much finesse in their actions as Malcolm and Lewis Dodgson had always been highly suspicious of anyone who hadn’t been charmed directly out of college with a very accommodating salary and the enticement of the name BIOSYN on their resumé. They all needed time to talk, that was clear, and Dodgson needed to be distracted for them to do so.

     Ramsay’s eyes caught his target as a shadow on the upper floor peering down into the café. He gave a muttered word of excusal as their guests approached the coffee bar and he hopped up the stairs three at a time, coming to rest at the side of his mentor.

     “Sir, I’m a little concerned over the timing of our tour.”

     “Nonsense, it’s all been planned out,” said Dodgson. He was still gazing down on the scene below. 

     “Yes, but I’m afraid it won’t be long enough.” He could hear the steamer of the espresso machine running below. “You have two of the most revered paleontologists walking through Habitat R&D. They’re going to have questions.”

     “And you can, uh…” There was a wave of a hand, vague and flourished and not at all helpful in figuring out the man’s meaning. “Just…y’know…”

     “Sir,” Ramsay leaned forward into Dodgson’s line of view to get his attention and draw it back to the side, locking sight-lines to keep the man focused and relying on his hands to lay out the timeline. “It is already half-past noon. You are asking me to take them through Cold Storage viewing, Research Applications, and TerraDev in two and a half hours.”

     “Ramsay.” Dodgson reached up and pat his cheek. “It’s a field trip, not a job offer. Tease it. Their plane leaves at four. Oh, and - uh - come see me after? To talk and things…”

     That was all Ramsay could do, the conversation was over with another incomplete promise. All he had left was to hope that it was enough. He put his hands in his pockets and ambled back down the stairs, approaching them slowly. There were some legitimate concerns in the points of his distraction. They would be curious and, despite the impending global disaster, there were genuinely good things happening within the company.

     “Doctors, pardon me for interrupting. If you please, we really ought to get going. There’s little time to cover everything.” He gestured out to the side for them to follow him off to his left. “I want you to see the true core of what is happening here and the critical global needs that we are trying to help resolve.” 

     "I won't be completing my work through video documentation as I had originally planned. In fact, this will be my last entry log within the video record that you found this in. If there are others beyond me let it be known that I have not given them my permission or my blessings. That will also be recorded in my paper files.
     I realize that the trajectory of my research has shifted, but I feel as though I have already lain to rest with conclusive evidence that a clone is a clone only in the strictest genetic sense. What makes a person are their experiences, and no two people have the same ones of those."

     There was only a thin folder that Dr. Wu had let her see before going to speak with the white-haired man. Part of Maisie wished she had had every bit of paperwork that pertained to her mother. She wanted to see her work, her handwriting, her notes and scribbles in the margins, the sticky notes pressed to pages that had no clear meaning to anyone other than Charlotte, but she also knew the low likelihood that she would comprehend any of it. Instead she got two small documents paperclipped together. The first bore bold letters reading: 

Late-Onset (Adult) Pompe Disease

     The second document had no true title. It had taken Maisie a few minutes to understand what she was looking at, the page lined with abbreviations, medical cursive which was impossible to read, and results lines. The column of results had been spliced together through a literal copy-and-paste method which had then been reprinted. Maisie could see the faint shadowy boxes of the glued strips that had been cut from several different examinations. The dates listed ranged through every few months during the early years of Maisie's life. There were few things on that report that she could understand but the two most discernible features were the two most important: her name in tight script at the top and the last four results which all read "normal".

     "Maisie, my social little butterfly, is doing extremely well. I am ecstatic to say that with these last results her glycogen count is normal and her body is producing a strong amount of GAA on its own."

     The video then shifted back to Wu’s explanation of Charlotte’s work and his theories. Glancing behind her she eyed Dr. Wu still speaking with the other man so she spun back around and pulled the result sheet from the file, folding it up into a square to tuck into her jacket pocket. She had her answers, she had the missing pieces of the woman in her photo album, and she felt an odd sense of obligation at hand. There was no need to behave anymore, she’d already been caught, and among the plethora of other things that she had been taught throughout her life one lesson lined up perfectly between all of her teachers: whether from dinosaurs, bears, or kidnappers, she knew how to run.

     The decision didn't really take any thought, it was there driving her actions before she remembered to consider her options. Maisie slid from her stool and went straight to the crate on her left.

     "Hey, you wanna get out of here?"

Chapter Text

     “So how is it you know where you’re goin’?”

     They’d seen a few different waypoints by now, stopping at junctions to get their bearings and refamiliarizing themselves with the fire exit plans of the area.

     “I made the mistake once of askin’ to use the bathroom before I took out again, next thing I know I’m walkin’ a mile down a cement hallway very close to embarrassin’ myself.”

     Owen’s eyes flashed over toward Kayla, a laugh tugging at his face. “Were they playing you?”

     “No, it was just that far. They’ve usually got electric carts to use in these passages and I was left on foot. I finally got there, but found out between the people and the maps this whole place functions like spokes on a wheel. All the outposts are on the outer edge.”

     “How come we ain’t seen anyone yet?” Owen asked. The walk so far had been lonely, just the pair of them and the silent language of the signage on the walls. While not being reprimanded or taken into custody was to their complete advantage, there sat the unnerving question of why no one was around. He looked behind him for the dozenth time just to see empty space, the same as it had been since they entered the passages.

     Every other step taken sent a dull shockwave through the same ankle Claire had checked on the plane. He hadn't lied then but the last day was beginning to catch up with his body. The sense of hearing in his right ear kept shifting between ringing bells, echos, and a state that he could best describe as being under water. The most he could do was be grateful that his headache was fading.

     “Don’t know, don’t care. As long as it’s not another dinosaur I’d count my blessings. Where’s the beacon?”

     Every so often Owen would have to give the transmitter a forceful smack or raise it above his head like an old antenna to get the signal back through the thick concrete walls. Following the directional marker of the GPS blip they turned left down a slightly more narrow corridor with arched walls, the singular thoroughfare into the outpost closest to their destination. “When we get out of here we needa go north-east relative to us. It looks like she landed right between two of these towers, just further out. How’s your arm?”

     “Huh. I’d like to say fine ‘cause I don’t feel anything, but I don’t really feel anything.” Kayla refrained from looking at Owen as she answered. The severity of the injury was easily inferred so there was no reason to excessively fuss when it wasn’t causing debilitating pain. If they came across anyone then she had an excuse for what they were doing there.

     Ahead of them stood a wall marking the end of the tunnel and an enclosed ladder about ten feet before. Between the ladder and the wall sat storage crates and a golf cart hooked into a charging station. 

     "Where was that an hour back?" Kayla grumbled. 

     She held her hand out for the transmitter to holster it until they were up then grabbed hold of a rung at face-level, making off well enough with the use of her left elbow as a steadying guide in her ascent. It opened up into a small round platform above with the option to continue further or exit out a door marked with a 3.

     “Well, do we take the obvious choice?” Kayla asked Owen once his head appeared in the ingress. It was less of a question than it was a warning for preparation.

     “That leads out to the valley?”

     “Uh huh,” the tone was definitive.

     “What do we do if we open up right onto a dinosaur?”

     Her body pivoted around to get a better look at him and he could see the ‘stupid answer for a stupid question’, shit-eating-smirk of a response coming from a mile away. “We close the door again.”

     He deserved that.

     Once to his feet Owen checked his arm. The bleeding had dried up again a while ago and the trail down to his fingers had been smeared away from the water dripping out of his shirt as it dried. Being wet wasn’t his concern, it was drawing predators to him with the scent of blood. Most of his clothing was still very damp all the way through, but based upon the heat of the platform he should finish drying fairly quickly once they stepped out. As Kayla withdrew the transmitter again he carefully rotated the wheel lock of the door and pushed, waiting a second before leaning his head out to look around. A hot breeze whirled around the platform bringing in the scent of decaying leaves to the otherwise concrete and metal sterility. 

     The passage of time was evident in the forests of the valley compared to the air or even the retaining pool. Light faded quickly beneath the dense green awning and they had already wasted too much time walking through service tunnels. Based upon the angle of sunlight they wouldn’t have much of it left to do their search. 

     “Seems clear,” he whispered.

     “Let’s hope it stays that way,” Kayla responded. She stepped through after him, allowing herself a breath of reconsideration before she closed the door to the tower. “Plenty’a reasons why they’ve got air-tight doors on these things so let’s make this quick. If you think being out here in the day’s bad, it’ll get worse at night.”

     “With any luck we won’t be out here very long. Far as I’m concerned, from here on out we’re in combat mode. No talkin’ unless we need to, keep an ear out for anything .” With a side-step and a nod Owen motioned Kayla to lead the way.

     Stepping back now Kayla could see the rise of the tower start to recede behind them. She had witnessed the outposts before many times on fly-overs during deliveries when the sky was clear, especially in the winter when the deciduous trees shed their leaves. Biosyn had its control over the temperature in the valley through a vast series of vents so she’d never seen snow on the ground beyond a certain point in the mountains, but they couldn’t prevent the days from shortening or every leaf from changing. The outer reaches were prolific for pines, ash, oaks, and maples. She knew what to expect out of those parts; those were the areas of the valley she spent most of her time supplying. Among the extensive broad-leafs, aloe, agave, and ferns she didn’t know what to expect.

     Shadows grew longer. Every drop of a nut or twig snap not caused by themselves resulted in a freeze and perimeter search, back-to-back and each taking a 180 view to ensure they weren’t being hunted before they would move on again. Most instances resulted in a heave of breath and their continued advancement, but one left Kayla somewhat reserved. It began with the snapping of wood like the last two times but wariness quickly turned to alarm as the rustling continued, growing closer and multiplied by an increase in numbers. There was nowhere to hide, no tree large enough in close range so they dove into the ground cover.

     Hot breath rebound back into her face when it hit the soil. She shifted her weight a fraction more onto her right side to relieve the shooting pain that radiated through her arm from the pressure of an absent mind born from jeopardy. Everything went quiet, the stomping halted and slowly the birdsongs renewed.  When she remembered Owen again he was on his elbows with neck craned up, still majoritively hidden even if distracted. He looked calm, too calm for the danger at present so she followed his eye line. 

     Sixty yards out was a small herd: sway-necked, arch-backed, with a sweeping horn rising from the nasal bridge of each hadrosaurid. There were somewhere between nine and eleven that Kayla could count moving along a copse of plants they seemed to have a fondness for. It was life in slow motion, selecting with expert care the best grazes and sounding out their satisfaction in brass-like tones. Owen reached over to tap Kayla’s shoulder and pointed to the far right. Beneath the bushes with a more concentrated number of adults were two small chirping juveniles more interested in distracting one another than eating. They bound atop each other, taking turns at headbutts and maneuvers until one vocally complained of the escalated force. She didn’t have to be part of their species to understand children being told off by an adult.

     Parasaurolophus. Owen had the name half written in the dirt before she nodded her understanding. These were never in Malta, never on any manifest she’d seen and she was glad of it. Wherever they’d come from she’d like to think they’d never seen the inside of a cage. 

     With calm discretion they left the grazing herd, taking care to keep low until they were well away and out of danger of startling them. They couldn’t be more than ten minutes out from where Claire had landed but Kayla had already had enough time to form an easy decision. It was time for a career change.

     Their trek led them on a wide arc and darkness had set in by the time any outpost came back into view. Night dropped like a shroud, teasing the world beneath the trees by offering a glimpse through the canopy far overhead of grey-blue sky stained periodically with orange streaks. Whatever brilliant sunset the Dolomites offered the rest of the world was kept secret for occupants of the valley. From the location of the abandoned seat it was just as easy to head to the next tower over as it was to return back the way they came, and given the direction taken by the giganotosaurus after its meal they opted for the former choice. 

     Owen wasn’t certain at what point he realized that they were no longer alone, but the tantalizing safety of shelter had to wait. His body crouched as he slowed down, silently pushing Kayla lower with him until they came to a full stop within the bushes a short way out. Hair rose up on the back of his neck. In the surround of the outpost tower things were moving, soft cracks and whispered migrations he’d forgotten about from years ago. It was how the raptors stalked, how many of the medium or small carnivores hunted in their enclosures at Jurassic World. They were pack hunters: deliberate, patient, and adept. Owen had spent a long time analyzing the behaviors between modern wildcats and their more reptilian correlations to better understand his own safety. 

     They were lucky enough to be on the outskirts of the hunting ring but there was another shadow within, their subject of interest. While the pattern wasn’t always the same he caught on to this one when a figure sprung up from the brush across the way. Surround the prey, calculate reveals to corner, distract, then attack. Dilophosaurus were, in Owen’s opinion, what would occur if geese discovered they could actually murder someone. Without knowing their true number the only conclusion he could come to was that of being out-numbered even if they were to help. It was better to listen to survival instinct, allow the transition of lone wolf to sacrificial lamb and use the indifference of full stomachs to their advantage. 

     He raised a hand, ready to motion for Kayla to remain down until the feeding was finished when the inner clearing flooded with light. 

     “Can I ask what exactly it was you were doing?”

     "Only if I can ask what you've been doing," came Alan with the negotiations.

     With nothing to study but the backs of their heads Maisie used them as her concentration point when considering. They were part of the original team, two-thirds of a constant that had been referenced throughout the years of her life and who had somehow showed up when she'd been separated from everything else. For Maisie the expert crew that had been intended to sign-off on the original park was as much among the legendary tales as the park itself. They were ghosts of her memories, spoken about in hushed voices as if the people involved were more terrifying than the horrors of the disaster. It wasn't until her first year as The Grady Bunch that she learned about the lawsuits and settlements surrounding Jurassic Park and why no one connected with Masrani Global or Jurassic World were allowed to reference Doctors Grant, Malcolm, and Sattler. They weren't allowed to but they did.

     And now here the ghosts were before her made of flesh and blood and air, offering to dig her out of her own impending cataclysm just as they’d done with all the bones before her. With them she could breathe life even if her air was still as thick as tar. She still had a little to lose but more to gain.

     "I'm not allowed to tell you everything," Maisie said.

     Ellie spoke over her shoulder, offering a smile that was half hidden in the dancing light. "That's alright because neither are we."

     "Does that mean we agree?" asked Alan.

     "Agreed," she confirmed. "You were doing something with the giant bugs."

     "What do you know about the locusts?" Ellie inquired. She switched out her flashlight with Alan for the torch to give him a stronger beam as the lead and dropped back to walk with Maisie.

     "Not really anything except that someone's trying to fix it."

     A noise of dissent came from ahead of them. "Best way to fix something is to not make it,” he criticized. “No one ever learns."

     "But you're trying to fix it, too? Why don't you stay and work with them?"

     "It's a little more complicated than that," Ellie admitted. She turned around to check behind them, only returning her attention once satisfied that nothing was there. "The locusts need to be stopped but Biosyn has to be held accountable. We were getting evidence to prove their culpability."

     Maisie’s eyes narrowed on Ellie with skepticism. "Looked to me like you were getting attacked by giant bugs."

     "You know, she has a point.” Alan threw his thumb over his shoulder towards the younger girl's voice. “I never once called in a 'you owe me' for anything but I think I will for this one."

     "Yes, well, I owe myself, so get in line." 

     Nothing in her plans had truly equipped her for handling corporate espionage, enclosed swarms, or a wayward teenager. They had narrowly made it through the sublevel entrance and Ellie couldn't imagine that they had been very convincing with any of their lies so far. In fact current circumstances proved that they hadn't. Why else would the hyperloop stop but all other lights and electric power stay on? She could still hear the active humming when they left the pod which meant someone didn't want them reaching the end of the line. The end of their lives, however, well that was a different matter.

     “And what about you?”

     Alan’s voice tore Ellie out of her thoughts. There were dozens of other questions that Ellie had for Maisie, and dozens more that had been forming since the girl announced who she was. At some point, however, lines had to be drawn about personal privacy in matters of life, as well as prioritizing which to ask given their current timeframe. Granted, at the moment that time frame fluctuated along a sliding scale of urgent to eternal, but the question at hand was as good as any to begin with.

     “They kidnapped me and I was running away. I hadn’t gotten that far when I ran into you both.”

     “Biosyn kidnapped you?” questioned Alan. “To what end?”

     “That’s…classified.”

     “I have a related question,” said Ellie. “ When did they kidnap you?”

     “When?” Maisie repeated with uncertainty. “I don’t understand.”

     “How long have you been here?”

     “Hours.” 

     Alan gave an amused smirk. Her tone was one he’d seldom heard from colleagues but witnessed plenty out of the young tourists who would visit their dig sites. It was one only the teenagers could make, when they are young enough that an hour of their unwilling time is an unyielding torment but not old enough to understand how little that hour means in the collective of their life. It was a mathematical equation that usually summized in everyone around the individual in question being subjected to complaints for as long as they were there, or that individual refusing to be there at all. In Maisie’s case it seemed she opted for the latter.

     He had traveled a few more feet ahead of them than he’d have liked before he realized that Ellie had stopped.

     “What do you mean hours?” 

     "I…don't…" The thought trailed off with an open gesture.

     Alan could see where this was heading though it was clear from Maisie’s expression she couldn’t. “I think she’s asking where you’ve been for the last four years if it wasn’t here.” He suddenly found the questioning rounding onto him with a flash of blond hair.

     “Wait, you know about her?”

     “I avoid culture media, not the entire news,” he said a little defensively. The entire day had been confusing, it was nice to have at least one thing he didn’t feel behind on.

     “Well, they’re arguably the same these days,” muttered Ellie. 

     No amount of preparation could have given Maisie enough coaching to answer that question without getting Claire and Owen in trouble. Her only option was to stay silent, looking between them both and hoping one of them would be willing to relent. It appeared it would be Ellie.

     “Alright, just answer this: If we get out of here-”

     “When,” Alan corrected.

     “When we get out of here where do you want to go, back where you were taken from or do you need somewhere safe? Do you have somewhere that you call home?”

     ‘Home’ was a concept that Maisie never knew would become such a difficult struggle. Until recently she hadn’t known that ‘home’ could evoke bitterness and longing or be tied to anywhere but one place. Her first sense of home had been invaded by apathetic financial fervor which left a wake of broken glass and blood. Left behind had been a library of her own imaginary excavations, a mansion of memories, bedtimes, and a few locked doors. The aftermath of avarice opened into a parallel inverse of her life. Two parental figures became two strangers who did their best to be two parental figures again. Her explorative world with boundaries flipped which side of the walls it encompassed. Questions about the past became questions about her past. She had the answers to that now, other answers were still being uncovered.

     Her current guardians had always used the word ‘home’ in reference to the cabin Owen built that they had been living in for years, but Maisie had always called it a house. Neither of them ever seemed to catch on, but the first time she had attributed the word home to the place was in an airplane over the Atlantic Ocean. The word had slipped out unintentionally and she’d spent however long it took to fall asleep mulling over why it had come out at all.

     “Can I tell you something?” She took the expectant expressions as affirmation. “I had two people who raised me since before I can remember. My grandpa would tell me stories about the old park, or a little bit about my mother, or let me tell him stories about all the things I discovered during the day. Iris was my caretaker, but she was more the only sort of mother figure I knew. She took care of me when I was sick, reprimanded me when I did something wrong, helped me pick out new clothes and did my hair. They were my family and they were taken from me. My real mother was also taken from me. It doesn’t matter if it had been an accident or a disease, she was still taken. 

     “For a little while I didn’t have a home, I was just in a place that I had to be because there was no other choice, but everything I know now is back there . All of the pictures, the little bit left from my first home, my bike. One of them got it for me and taught me how to ride. He would also tell me stories or bring me books and let me read them out loud, and he’s really bad at teaching anything except history but he tries when he needs to if the other person is still sleeping or away. She’s the better teacher but I never told her that. She reprimands me, too, but not like Iris did. Iris would scold, Claire nags like-”

     Maisie came to an abrupt halt. She could feel her heart start to race, panic setting in from the release of Claire’s name. It didn’t matter that she knew the people she was with, she didn’t know what side they were on when it came to the law. A good share of the world thought that Maisie had been kidnapped, which by legal definition was true. There had been no point in denying it to the staff of Biosyn because they organized her capture, but she had tried her best not to out Claire and Owen to anyone else without knowing if her situation would be safe with them. Now she had failed.

     “A mother?” Ellie offered as completion. There was no perception of surprise to her or any true acknowledgement of the name that Maisie had disclosed. She had simply listened to what the girl had to say.  

     Several seconds passed where Maisie just stared at Ellie, attempting to reconcile what she thought would be a backtracking storm of explanations with the topic that Ellie was actually more interested in. Then came the acknowledgement of a word with a terrible amount of weight. It squeezed at her chest.

     “Yeah.” The young voice had turned into a solemn whisper. “Is that wrong?”

     While she may not have been prepared for biological theft, a few decades with children had certainly taught Ellie how to listen to emotions over words. It wasn’t a question about the actions of another person, it was a search for approval about her own feelings.  “Not as long as you’re safe.” Her strides lengthened to close the distance with Alan to switch out the torch and flashlight again, directing the beam to the cavern walls and ceiling. “Did you feel that? That’s an air current. There must be an opening up ahead.”

Chapter Text

     Some hours had passed since the smoke trail disappeared beneath the dense hills of foliage, or it may have been caused by the angle of the dam wall in relation to the terrain. Maybe it had only been a single hour, she had no clear idea anymore. All Claire knew was that the black rise of the crash had dispersed into the air and not come back which left her nothing to follow. After her compass was snuffed the only option she had was to continue as straight as she possibly could by way of the sun. As long as she kept it in the same spot on her left she should be able to maintain her trajectory.

     Each tree had become a point of salvation during her hike. They provided a natural hiding place if she needed one and more importantly a support system. She was no longer able to hold herself completely upright; her body began to unconsciously list around the same time the smoke disappeared and she had thought at first that it was simply her, that she had lost the beacon because she was favoring too much. After forcing her spine into a more natural position she quickly realized that that wasn't the case. For whatever reason her waypoint was gone.

     She hadn't made as much progress as she would have liked since escaping the chair and whatever animal it was that patrolled the area. After the initial fall from the balcony in Malta the pain had been consistent but manageable, uncomfortably bright with pressure but bearable even after having Owen's weight on top of her. Tolerability was nearly out the window after she dropped from the chair. Claire's ribs were a relentless, searing nuisance; they slowed her down, pulled when she stepped and phlegm rose into the back of her throat, but the nausea that rolled in waves stemmed from a sharp ache which originated towards her back at the lower end of her ribcage. During the height of each wave she would stop to rest, holding white-knuckled to a tree while her head spun until she drew enough air again. The sweat that followed would dry up just in time for the next round. If she were able to properly breathe she probably would have retched a while ago. Tiny victories.

     Hourly transitions weren’t something that Claire had been acutely aware of until a time occurred when she looked down and the details on the ground were growing more difficult to discern from their shadows. The colors of leaves began to blend into one another, textures became solid masses, and more than once she found herself walking through a fine abandoned thread remaining from the travels of a night crawler on its way to spin a home. Since the plane crashed her options had dwindled to a severely limited number. Even if retrieving Maisie remained the end goal, the issue became how to get there– wherever “there” was– and surviving the journey. Remote calls and bellows would echo periodically in the distance, never close enough to cause great concern but never far enough away to keep Claire from being keenly aware of where she was at all times in relation to the noises, but those noises always remained exactly that. She hadn’t encountered much in the way of life outside of a bird since she started following the smoke trail, nor anything since it faded, and as the sun disappeared so did the comforting calls of songbirds. Now the world was dark and silent, every small crack sounding like cannon fire without the underlying chorus of nature. Even the crickets and frogs seemed to understand the hostile environment and kept their ballads whispered. All she was left with were her thoughts.

     Despite its inconsistencies and struggles, Claire had experienced a more rewarding life in the last eight years than when she was running the second-highest-grossing theme park in the world. She’d had Owen, even if they had both been too stubborn to realize they were foolish for a while. She and the DPG were making legitimate strides towards vita-paleo conservation. However, desires were far more difficult to achieve when you were no longer at the top. She had thought that taking matters into her own hands with Benjamin Lockwood would be the answer and in a round-about way it had been. That decision saved the lives of twenty species, reunited her with Owen, and they attained Maisie. Yet a mere four years later and two of those outcomes had been erased.

     Claire understood the narrow chance she had of rescuing Maisie. Even if she beat the odds of finding her way inside and to the girl, getting out again without being caught would be miraculous and would only lead to facing the questions of how they would be able to leave. There was no airplane, no pilot, no Owen. Explaining details wouldn’t be easy. Myriads of words formed in her head as she played out the scene over and over again to be left in disappointment. No combinations of sentences that she could formulate would result in Maisie accepting Claire long enough to leave with her, but what hurt worse was that Claire also couldn’t find a single blame to make the sting any easier to take. Without Owen there was no real home to go back to, legal or not, so why come back at all? Their reckless retrieval mission had withered into a salvaged attempt at reconciliation. If she could achieve that, reunite with Maisie and address her sincerely then Claire would surrender to her decisions. After four years of compulsion Maisie deserved to have a choice. 

     The grey hour of evening had been swallowed by night when she realized that the stars shifting through branches ahead were actually lights. Claire’s tracks slowed as she approached, shifting her head and body to try to assess what she was seeing before anyone could potentially catch her first– though by now being arrested was better than another hour in the woods. The luck of loneliness would only hold out for so long.

     In front of her loomed the half-lit hulking shadow of a surveillance tower, even more lifeless inside than she had experienced for the last few hours. Part of her rejoiced in its solitude as it still gave her a fraction of a chance in finding Maisie, but the other part of her sank. Even if she found a way up, with no one inside there was a high rate of probability that the doors were locked. All the same, it provided a way to get off the ground and out of immediate danger of whatever might be stalking in the night.

     The platform had an enclosed framework surrounding the upper part of its ladder, the lower half retracted into the same space since it wasn’t in use. Advancing closer Claire could make out a box on the side and crossed her fingers. Five more minutes of good fortune was all she needed to be up. Moving faster now than she’d managed in a while she crossed the clearing and threw the box open. Red and green lights provided enough ambient glow to make out a set of arrows and she slammed her hand into the lower one to be rewarded with active work lights springing on overhead and metallic clanking as the ladder began to descend.

     Slowly.

     The bushes behind her snapped and rustled and she wheeled around in time to hear the high trill that followed. It shifted through the growth towards the right as Claire retreated, pressing her back to the bulk of the tower while the ladder continued its creeping descent. Her luck was out. The slow clatter was maddening.

     “Come on, come on,” she whispered. She tried to keep behind the tower as she inched towards the ladder. The best scenario was that whatever had been lurking was frightened off by the sudden light and sound. Worst case, well…climbing quickly would hurt but being eaten was a sight more painful.

     Tucked back into the underbrush, Kayla snatched hold of the hand that was relentlessly hitting her shoulder, nearly bending his fingers back in her annoyance. “I see!” she hissed out. From what she could count there were three hunters to the pack, hungry, intent, and most likely leading to an uneven match if they fought, but her real concern was where to go afterward. A platform wouldn’t be much safer than the ground, not when taking into account the sheer range of sizes of all the animals that occupied the valley. Even if the small ones couldn’t get to them they would put themselves at a convenient height for the large ones. Another short call of communication went out from their right. Of the three dilophosaurus she counted all were now visibly perched in anticipation with Claire at the scalene’s center. Kayla could barely hear Owen but she could read his lips, though it wasn’t necessary. His frantic dismay was explicit. “Go, go, go!”

     Dashing left and withdrawing her taser Kayla sprung for the one closest to them, perched just behind a jumble of chemical containers. Owen veered right, his initial target on a pad of moss-covered logs until the leader moved and he was forced to change course. It was faster than he was and Claire had fallen to the distraction of the other two. His knife would be useless here, Kayla had the taser, so all that was left to Owen were his hands and three weeks of experience in the most detested position Jurassic World had offered.

     Turning back from the two behind her caused Claire’s stomach to drop. Pressed tight against the tower she had nowhere to go despite her heels continuing to push back. She lost her footing within the loose topsoil, slowly slipping down until she was seated and nose-to-nose with scales. Fully grown dilophosaurus were nearly as big as she was though height didn’t matter, especially against three, and they had her pinned before she had known they were there. Its mouth eased open to relinquish a boastful hiss before frills rattled into extension. Claire never heard its scream over her own. Acrid breath washed over her face with an almost sulfuric undercurrent. Through a cone of teeth she could see the glands at the back of its throat pulse before the mouth suddenly closed around an aggregation of black ooze and its head twisted, the hand around it forcing it up. Owen pulled back on the throat, clamping down its jaws until Kayla could come around with the taser and send it on a stunned retreat. 

     There was a smell left behind that was difficult to describe but it had Kayla gagging as she peeled her gloves off. Between her skirmish with the dilophosaurus that she went after and the one that had just flung its head around to retreat she had black sludge splattered across them, and with a odor so strong a little was still too much.

     “What do they even eat?” Her sinus passages burned with the rank combination of asphalt and death. The gloves would have to be replaced.

     Beneath Owen’s arms Claire pulled him close, her body angled out so that her shoulders took the more direct point of contact. It had taken all of half a second to realize that the person holding a dinosaur in a necklock was Owen. Death after a crash like theirs was an easy assumption but she had been with Owen long enough, been through too much beside him to second-guess her own eyes whenever he’d appear. For whatever reason they both continued to survive. She had taken the low road of the embrace upon launching herself at him, forcing his arms above her shoulders rather than around her torso. He smelled of sweat and a lingering hint of fumes but felt like home and the evening hours erased themselves from existence the second she touched him. “I thought you were dead!”

     “Nah…” It was how he always handled his own safety, the quiet brush-off as if fatal instances were commonplace. The mortiferous had become monotonous, but as fate was inclined, it had also grown repetitious. Seven seconds was the difference between relieved release and sinking dread, that transition marked by a reverberating cry that was far too close for comfort. All three heads turned towards the direction of the roar. “We better get inside.”

     “Don’t gotta tell me twice.” Kayla was already moving. She had spent far too long on this suicidal hiking trip, she wasn’t all that fond of communing with nature to begin with. She reached up as far as she could with her right hand, over-extending to try to maintain contact with the ladder as long as possible before having to grip with her legs and reach again. Safety of shelter was the primary concern, then medical treatment if anything was available inside, and they were getting inside.

     "Who are you again?" Ian had been too preoccupied by the gate and the dinosaurs and being exposed at night to have been paying enough attention to something as inconsequential as names. Even now he was trying to keep one eye on the road and look out for any unwanted wildlife. Maybe he shouldn't be asking about anything he wanted to remember later.

     "Maisie," she said. "Lockwood." The addition was an afterthought. Just 'Maisie' really didn't explain why she was there, but her surname seemed to have a fair amount of weight to it.

     “Maisie, huh,” he repeated, distracted. “Lockw- oh, Lockwood! Right. You’re, uh- what’re you doing here?”

     “That’s a long story,” Alan piped up from the back. “Maybe we save it for when we’re out of here and safe.”

     “Are we going to the airstrip?” asked Ellie.

     “That’s the plan. If one of you wants to help me with the map there…” Ian nodded to a folded sheet shoved down into the center console. “We just left that circled part.”

     The map was a little unwieldy on her lap and it took some refolding and adjusting before Ellie was comfortable with navigating. Marked with a circle was the gate that Ian had rescued them through, and while they hadn’t been in the car a particularly long time it was impossible to even guess how far along the road they were with the distance key hidden somewhere in the many folds. “Well we haven’t come to the fork yet, so…” she kept studying until something came to the attention of her ear. Alan, Maisie, and Ian were already aware and hunched to look out the top of the windshield.

     The cloud coming towards them was like an enlarged mist of sparklers, the orange glow reminiscent of hot coals but these flecks of ash had a mind of their own. They didn’t float up softly with the wind but drove against it in a wave-like pattern that was very much alive. She was familiar with that hum, she’d heard it on a small scale across the farms of the American plains.

     “Is that-” Ellie already knew. “Oh my god. He’s burning the evidence.”

     Surrounding them were two plagues in one. In fiery death throes the locusts fell, careening off their once-intended course and colliding with plant life, rocks, dirt, and the top grate directly above the front seats. Ellie threw her arms above her head and the car erupted in commotion but there was little that Ian could do without taking his hands off the wheel. He swerved, corrected, shifted his body to avoid the raining pieces of insect but his view was disrupted by another dead ball of fire directly in front of the windshield. 

     Hands were braced wherever they could be as the car slammed to a stop. He felt Alan’s curled fingers indent on the back edges of his seat, Ellie’s left on the side below Alan’s, her right was braced on the door frame and Maisie had also wedged herself with door and seat back. As a whole they had all shifted right. It may have been an attempt to catch themselves, or maybe the car, it wasn’t clear, but all four occupants now leaned precariously with the bulk of the vehicle. To the left laid the road and growing patches of fire, to the right a steep slope. 

     “Shouldn’t we all…lean to the left or something?” It was all Maisie could think of. It certainly worked with bikes, it should also be true of a car as long as the rest of the physics were in their favor. With care they all shifted slowly, holding breaths and mindful of quick movements.

     She was nearly on top of Alan when her weight was forced to her own side again, along with everyone else's when the fight with gravity was lost. Directions had no meaning, lefts no rights and wrongs no corrections. The world consisted of branches breaking, strained metal and shattered glass thrown across their faces. Ian’s head slammed into the driver door. Alan instinctively reached out for something to hold onto and his arm flew out the broken window. He had enough mind in the chaos to know the gust of air on a single limb was wrong so he retracted it towards his body just in time to see the ground roll across his door. His hearing had become a trainwreck. There was no discerning the differences between what was breaking outside, what was breaking inside, or whose scream belonged to who. 

     Ellie felt the car leave the ground then crash down onto it again. Her neck flung from one shoulder to the other in the final flip before all was still outside. Inside her brain still reeled, her vision spinning while her hands were connected to the solid roof above. The disequilibrium made her want to vomit. Her whimper wasn’t something to be proud of, it came from a desire to speak while trying to keep her stomach down, but she finally got the name out. “Alan? Alan!” 

     A low grunt sounded behind her in answer; she could hear Maisie’s breathing ease.

     “How is everybody?” To Ian’s great relief the question came out far more casual than he felt. The responses he received were a blend of rattled uncertainty and groans.

     Loud crunching drove Kayla, Owen, and Claire all back against the base of the observation tower. At first all three had expected to see something big , whatever had belonged to the roar a few minutes ago, appearing through the trees. Human screams and spinning vehicle lights were the last thing any of them had expected to come bouncing down the hills. It came to rest upside down with the upper lights askew and axle broken. The bright beams from the headlights made it difficult for eyes to adjust enough to peer into the car but mewling and movement started to build from the person or people inside. There were at least two that Kayla could make out, maybe three different voices all sounding off wordless opinions of what they just experienced.

     From the back of her skull Maisie’s head was throbbing, each pulse of her heart drumming straight through to behind her eyes and she was about to close them when she caught movement from her right. Her vision was blurred which at first caused some concern, but after a few blinks it began to focus and she could make out three figures slowly approaching. Blurs shifted to colors, pale on top of dark, one form visibly taller than the other two, then colors became details and she could recognize the way they held themselves. 

     “It’s my parents!” Maisie began banging on the roof, crying out for their help as she wiggled in her struggle to get loose. She pushed on the back of Ian’s seat with her feet, gaining enough relief to get her seatbelt to unlock and she tumbled forward, glass biting into her hands and knees.

     “Listen,” Claire said. She took a confident step forward but behind her Owen hesitated. He was still hearing the crash of the vehicle echo around oddly in one ear, he couldn’t tell what Claire heard until he got closer. As they shifted around and the lights were no longer in his eyes he saw legs through the back window sliding through the opposite side and ending in shoes he knew all too well. “Oh my god! You’re ok.”

     “Alright, someone who’s on our side, great,” Ian proclaimed to himself, watching the upside-down reunion from his seat. “No one’s going to help us?”

     “Shut up and give me your hands,” Ellie said, reaching out to him. Using Ian as a support she lowered herself out of her seat, picking her way carefully through the broken car and out to then offer her own assistance. “Alan?”

     “I’m fine.” He sounded annoyed though was already halfway out himself.

     Once all three were standing Ellie could take brief stock. Ian seemed to be moving well, Alan was stiff and looked ready to tell someone off, and her neck and right knee ached. Limping around the overturned Jeep Ellie could see real faces for the first time, the confirmation of what she had already believed and what Maisie let slip in the old mines. She didn’t recognize the fourth person with them, but knowing that Maisie had been with Owen Grady and Claire Dearing for the past four years was more of a comfort than any of the other scenarios that had passed through her head watching speculative news reports. She was less familiar with Owen, but Claire was a welcome sight. She was too tired to reach out when the redhead approached but between them sat enough of a comfortable rapport that “thank you” was all-encompassing. Ellie was as much grateful to Claire for Maisie’s sake as Claire was to Ellie.

     “We gotta go,” Kayla said as she scanned the woods. They had been making far too much noise. “Gonna have to break a window to get inside that thing. Hope nobody’s afraid of heights.” With heights being the least of their concerns she allowed herself a smile, one that faded as quickly as it came as the ground began to tremble. Stepping out of the trees came the very form she had been afraid to see five minutes ago. They might have been able to escape it before but too much commotion had driven it to them, colossal and curious.

     “Don’t move,” she heard behind her from Owen and Alan.

     “That’s not gonna work with this one,” she whispered.

     “What is that?” Ellie asked from the back.

     “Giganotosaurus,” answered Alan. “Biggest carnivore the world has ever seen.”

     It stepped and they ran, ducking behind the Jeep though it tracked their every movement. Kayla used the time it took for inspection to reach through the window and grab a crowbar from inside. At least imposing dangers granted small boons, but they needed to move. As it swung around to their side she sprinted into the lead, guiding them all straight to the ladder and wasting no time in climbing, crowbar tucked beneath her left arm so she could use the same method to climb as she had before. Below everyone scattered in time to not be crushed by a foot and Kayla flinched back on the platform just long enough to know whether or not the framework around the ladder would hold against massive jaws, then she dove back down and reached for Maisie. She wasn’t certain if the high pitched screeches came from Maisie or her mother but it was inconsequential, time was all that mattered and with a few sharp words she got Maisie moving, freeing the ladder for everyone else to follow. 

     Circling around the platform in a line they were met directly by a massive head with pebbled skin. Kayla had spent a long time in the Amber Clave Night Market, she had seen limbs taken off by careless handlers and teeth the size of her palm, but these were the length of her forearm, serrated on the back side and embedded in a mouth that somehow smelled worse than the dilophosaurus. She felt fingers dig into her upper arm from someone beside her but her eyes never left the giganotosaurus until it turned, distracted by something below. She ran again, spiking the crowbar between the door and frame and heaving with the weight of three people. Kayla was half aware of the chaos occurring behind her, could hear shouting, roars, saw flashes of fire in the corner of her eye and the screaming noise of stressed metal, but the door popped open and she pushed inside, Claire and Maisie following on her heels. 

     Bodies dove inside one by one in frantic haste, three, four, and five, six and seven to follow half a minute later. Owen caught himself on his knees, heaving for air with a new ache in his shoulder. Peering up from the ground at the faces before him all bore expressions of horror. It was difficult enough to take from someone he’d seen it on many times before, but for it to be mirrored across five other people? He had to shake them out of themselves.

     “See?” he quipped, inserting what he hoped was a chipper attitude. “Not so bad.” Apparently that hadn’t worked, not by the continuously growing expressions, but the sudden crashing behind him explained everything. He dove forward towards the group to be grasped hold of by Claire, narrowly escaping the invasive head of the giganotosaurus as they both stood to retreat further back. She was at his side and then she wasn’t.

     Claire’s leg was pulled out from under her and she saw the floor rise up to meet her with a sickening smack. She was tethered, reaching desperately for anything to hold onto as she was pulled back by her ankle towards a hungry maw. Owen dove forward but Kayla turned around, moving with purpose straight for the dart gun secured on the wall. They didn’t need to escape, they needed to drive it off and she would pump as many tranquilizers into it as she could. She fired off the first, connecting between the beast’s eye and nose, but there was too much pandemonium to get another clean shot without being certain she wouldn’t hit someone by mistake. At her side she felt a tug and looked down in time to see the teenaged girl sliding her taser across the floor. It was taken up by Claire and she crawled around Owen’s knife strikes, swinging the electric shock directly into the creature’s left eye.

     Whether it was the single blow or a combination of them all the giganotosaurus withdrew. The movement was fast, then Claire realized she was being pulled back by more than one hand which doubled the perception of the dinosaur’s retreat. There was a body behind her which she collapsed onto, wheezing. 

     To her left on the floor laid Owen, legs sprawled out and hands on his face as he caught his breath. He looked up at Kayla, a single finger shaking at her with unspoken meaning behind it. All that came out was a single word of admiration and appreciation.

     “Tasers,” he managed to huff out.

     “Tasers,” came the agreement.

Chapter Text

     “Dad.”

     Zach’s call came from the front door, partially muffled behind a large, flat box half-propped up in his arms. It was taller than he was, only about two inches deep but heavy and without anywhere to really secure his hold; each time he tried to lift it above the lip of the doorway his hands would slide up, leaving the package still tilted against him on the ground. Another of similar size sat against the wall just outside the door. They hadn’t been there when he left and obviously Scott hadn’t been out between Zach leaving and returning. Under normal circumstances he would simply leave them until they absolutely needed to come inside, but the sky had been turning darker all morning.

     “Dad! I can’t get these on my own!”

     “Leave them and come here!” Scott called from inside.

     “It’s going to rain!”

     “It won’t hurt them, come here.”

     The voice sounded distracted. Zach leaned the package to one side, then the next, walking it towards the wall to join its twin. He let it drop carefully backwards then went inside, wiping his hands off on his jeans. 

     “What’d you order?”

     “Sheet metal,” said Scott. His eyes were glued to the television until Zach joined him, in which instance he tore his attention away just long enough to make eye contact and nod towards the front of the room

     The screen had a familiar, dramatic scroll running across it and Zach rolled his eyes at first. Every day was more “breaking news” about another dinosaur incident in one part of the world or another. The news was sensationalizing even the smallest of instances, dancing through every social media platform for the best videos of the day and recycling old ones if there wasn’t anything of significance. The public was still trying to figure out how to live with dinosaurs but he couldn’t understand why some people insisted on antagonizing them to the point of attack. That’s how most of the minor incidents started and yet the ones who suffered weren’t the offenders but the larger public or the dinosaurs. It was still a very grey area for Zach. Common sense and respect which told him to not provoke wild animals fought against everything that his experience at a certain theme park had taught him. They were dangerous, but they were also animals acting on instinct or in self-defense. For the most part they were no different than deer, rhinos, and mountain lions: if you left them alone they would leave you alone, and once in a while you’d hear a report of a hungry carnivore attack. However, just like any other modern wild animal when it got too aggressive, the dinosaur would be tracked, removed from the population, and everything would go back to the way it should be.

     “What, more compys with salmonella?” His initial reaction was irritation but that started to fade the more he really began listening to the report. “Wait, where’s this?” He motioned for his dad to turn the volume up.

     “An island off of Italy,” Scott answered. 

     “...entire city under strict movement regulations tonight as authorities struggle to get the situation under control. Sources claim that a massive underground operation involving the illegal sale and breeding of dinosaurs was disturbed and the animals released into the streets of Valletta. Incidents involving a botched crime-ring investigation by the Intelligence agencies of four different countries including the US lead to twenty-six dead and several dozen injured. That number continues to rise as the Maltese government struggles to find and capture every reported dinosaur that comes in. We warn our audience that some of the footage we will show may be sensitive for some viewers. Discretion is advised.”

     “Holy shit…” 

     Vertical images from cell phones flashed across the screen, some blurred and some leaving nothing to the imagination as to what happened to the subjects involved in the frame. Two large “rex”-looking predators were fighting in what appeared to be a city square while people scattered all around them, trying to find safe places to hide or clear paths of avoidance in which to run away; a small flock of hatchling pteranodons bounced around attacking a toddler; one man ran towards the ocean wall to escape a small baryonyx. The videos continued as the reporter’s voice came back into play overtop the now-silent images.

     “We have reached out for comment and more information from all organizations involved but have had no responses thus far. This marks the third major incident of carnage involving dinosaurs since the Lockwood Manor back in 2018…”

     Zach dove for the remote, snatching it out of Scott’s hands and rewound it seven seconds. This new video was of good quality and stable, not shaky like most of the others, taken from a position through the bars of an upper terrace overlooking rooftops and therefore a place of safety for the person who recorded it. Tracking through the image as clear as clouds in the sky was the figure of a red-haired woman sprinting for her life across the stone city canopy from a red-grey blur, a creature he knew the shape of all too well.

     “Holy shit!” Zach dropped the remote control and dug around in his pockets, frantically searching through the empty spaces. “Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone?”

     “Call your mom!”

     “Give me your phone!” The words came even as his fingers were closing around Scott’s cell on the side table, typing in the same passcode his dad had used since Zach was fifteen. Tap, swipe, call icon, two numbers, then his mom’s name. Zach pressed the green button harder than he needed to, set it to speaker, then circled around a three-pace area while it rang.

     And rang.

     And rang.

     He only stopped when Scott held out a hand to keep him still, which then resulted in Zach bouncing on his heels. “Answer!”

     The ring cut off part way through and the timer began counting. “Scott, I can-”

     “Mom!”

     “Zach?”

     “Mom, have you talked to Claire?”

     “Zach, I can’t really talk right now.”

     “Where’s Aunt Claire!?”

     Karen’s head turned once again to peer at the faces behind her, expectant, impatient, tired, stressed, and all waiting on her. Every eye in the room had been directed her way until she turned back around in which case they diverted, each individual suddenly finding something else to draw their attention. All but one, that is. After nine different people being introduced with names and job titles she had blanked on everyone, but this man she vaguely remembered as having a more prominent witness role in the court proceedings involving Jurassic World. 

     She turned back around and traveled a few more paces down the hall. She had no intention of leaving the sightlines of the agents, she wouldn't have been able to even if she'd tried, but some sort of privacy could still be demanded when talking to her immediate family, right?

     "Zach, listen to me," she spoke over his panicky tirade, lower and faster than her norm. "I can't talk. I need you to watch the house until I get home."

     "Where are you?" asked Zach.

     "When will that be?" Scott chimed in. Someone needed to have a level head and the ability to handle whatever needed to happen, and at the moment it was clear that that wasn’t going to be his son.

     Zach's face must have betrayed him because a second later Scott gave his shoulder a squeeze.

     "I don't know," she admitted. "But Gogi needs to be fed and Gray lost his key." 

     Her voice began to break and she turned the phone away to try to prevent the sniffs from being picked up by the microphone. Apparently it hadn't worked.

     "Mom, is Aunt Claire ok?"

     "I don't know," she confessed. "I don't know. But if she is, I'm going to kill her." She wiped at her eyes and took a steadying breath, turning to start back towards the room. "Will you please watch the house?"

     "Yeah," came the voice. It had been a long time since she had heard Zach sound so defeated. She'd hoped once, several years ago, that she would never have to hear him that way again. Not being able to fix everything for her children was her own personal defeat. "Yeah, I've got it."

     With a few steps and quick words she hung up, finding herself back in the wide board room that she had left. Micro conversations had begun in the short amount of time between the agents in the room. They had somehow gone from ardently awaiting Karen’s return to nearly disregarding her entrance. It was both aggravating and a relief. On one hand she had the time to listen to them, explore the top layer of each individual to know their place, their position, their names now that she was close enough to see the lanyard IDs again, and it granted her the blissful reprieve of not being bombarded with questions she sincerely couldn't answer. On the other hand, she had been on their time since they came knocking at her door with black cars and badges and a "Come with me" that had definitely not been a request. In a room of nine plus herself Karen was happy not to be the center of attention but she needed to know what was happening. Hearing the fear in Zach's frenzied call had been enough to stem the flow of her own brimming emotions. It was a natural instinct to stay calm for your children and that placidity was now redirected into action.

     Karen approached the task board at the top of the room, studying the security footage and video stills taken in an area she couldn't place.

     "Where is this?" she asked.

     "Yes," the voice belonged to a balding, skinny, middle-aged man with hard brown eyes and a seething demeanor. No skin tone could have hid the color that anger was turning his face. "Who would like to explain why Owen Grady and Claire Dearing were with our agents in Malta? Can you help me understand, Mr. Webb?” 

     “Don’t blame Franklin, sir, it was my decision to bring them on board." It was the same person Karen recognized, the one who kept watching her in the hall. She craned her neck forward a little to read Cruthers on his ID.

     "These two are on ours and the FBI's top surveillance lists and you decided to grant them freedom of movement on an international scale?"

     "They are the leading experts in the world on managing these animals."

     "And they've been involved in every major destructive dinosaur incident since the carnage of Jurassic World."

     "There has only been one other," said Karen. If she had to be there she would at least defend her sister as best she could.

     There was a visible shift in the room, every other person instantly thrown into discomfort. Fearing what might come from that statement Franklin interjected. "Director Fischer, let me explain the lead-up? If we are going to use outside resources then we should all be on the same page.” He made a brief gesture to indicate Karen. “When you put Agent Cruthers in charge you told him to make a team. That team included me, Daniels, Krill who went out on maternity leave and was replaced with Nakaoka, Clewman, Heave, and the two Beautons.” 

     At first Franklin directed his words to Fischer, but partway through he caught Karen’s eye and started pointing out names as he said them.

     “After our briefing with French Intelligence we knew we needed expert feet on the ground, and with Barry already heading the French team we had one clear option, so Lowery asked me to try to get hold of at least one of the two. Owen Grady has been off-grid for years but once in a while we get signals from Claire’s phone. Last week we did, we have records of that and we now know it was when she was visiting Ms. Mitchell. I called her to talk and she brought Owen Grady with her. You have the footage of that meeting from the CCTV of Java Jawa.”

     “What exactly did they agree to? What was so important in Malta?” Karen asked. “She’s been…I don’t know, call it hiding, I guess? Not quite, but almost. She’s been like that since the dinosaurs took over the mainland. She barely even talks to me and I haven’t seen Owen since Jurassic World. Why would they go with you?”

     “There was a crime ring we were trying to take down,” Lowery said, taking over. “You haven’t seen the news?”

     “Not since you came to my house.”

     “Right.” Lowery got to his feet, motioned for Fischer and Karen to back up, and flipped the board over where several other pictures were pinned. “This woman, Soyona Santos, is one of the leading operators in a black market in Valletta called the Amber Clave Night Market, nicknamed The Den of Teeth. We believe she’s just another pawn for someone further up the chain, but one of her lackeys who we had undercover agents with was named Rainn Delacourt.”

     “Was?”

     “He didn’t make it out, but Santos did. We have her in custody in Turin. Delacourt had been operating his own side hustle somewhere close enough to Mr. Grady that it was making his life difficult. He agreed to come help us in order to take Delacourt down, and we’re assuming that he and Claire have been living together.”

     “If that woman is in custody and Delacourt is dead then why am I here? Where is my sister?”

     “Because we need the insight of family,” said Fischer. “Both your sister and Mr. Grady disappeared from the Amber Clave pursued by atrociraptors.”

     “What are those?”

     “They’re what went wrong.” The words were a drained sigh out of Franklin, spoken through fingers that trailed along his face to deform it until they rolled off his chin.

     “Exit left pursued by a bear,” Nakaoka muttered.

     “But I don’t understand why you came to me. Why aren’t you out there looking for her right now? She disappeared being chased by a dinosaur! How do you know she’s still alive?” It had to be asked. She didn’t like to think it but it had to be asked. She needed the reassurance of doubt.

     Karen watched the exchange of glances around the room, unable to discern in which direction of fortune they leaned. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to answer. "Where is Claire!?"

     "Look," It was one of the Beautons. "There weren't any bodies left b'hind and the only blood was from a work truck 'bandoned at a private airstrip. It was smears from a cut, nothin'  that would've suggested anything delinquent. The last footage we have was your sister runnin' 'long the rooftops of the city and Owen Grady veerin' a corner three blocks down from one of the squares. The motorcycle he was ridin' was recovered a li'l over two hundred yards off the sea wall at that same strip, along with onna the raptors. Cycle, truck, and raptor but no humans. They had to've hopped a plane, now we wanna know to where."

     Karen threw out her hands. "How would I know?"

     "You're her sister," Fischer said.

     "Do you have siblings, Mr. Fischer?"

     "I am not at liberty to say."

     "Uh huh, and do you tell them every detail of your life, especially the dangerous parts?" His non-liberty was displayed through silence this time. "Then you'll understand me when I repeat this: Claire has never told me about the mansion, she never even told me all that happened in the park, it all came from my boys. I had to hear from the news that she was presumed dead. I had to piece together from several different sources that she had gone back to Jurassic World like an idiot, and when she called me to ask me to come get her do you know what her explanation was? Nothing. What did she tell me? That she was alive. That's all. 

     “You know, I had to get her from the hospital and drive her home and she still wouldn't tell me anything. Then, after I finally got enough information to form some kind of story for what happened, only then she would say anything, and you know what the words were? 'I punched that asshole with the cell bars.' I still don't know what that means! So no, I don't know where she is, I can't help you; every time she gets involved in something like this I end up having to play hospice while she spends a week on my couch, so I don't care what it takes, you bring her back alive."

     Taking to his feet Nakaoka went to a side table, wordless in his actions until he reached the woman with a bottle of water and gestured out to an empty chair. “No one warned you what you would be getting into before you came here.” There was a glower thrown out to the rest of the Malta taskforce on her behalf that Karen appreciated. “I’m sorry for that, but you are the most familiar with her than any of us. Between Agent Cruthers here and Agent Sembène with DGSE we have a sound profile on Owen Grady. If you don’t mind, we would like you to speak with one of our Behavior Analysts and then we can probably send you on your way.”

     “If reasonable,” added Fischer.

     Karen smirked. “I understand a warning without it being so heavy-handed.” 

     The director nodded in acknowledgement. “I like to make sure there are no misunderstandings.”

     Tact and grace seemed to be traits few and far between in her surroundings despite the reticence that most governmental agencies operated under. It seemed the conspicuous nature of the modern-prehistoric bled into its departmental oversight. Hours ticked by, sometimes slowly and sometimes several at once, only marked by the change of food or seating arrangements. She could mark the day growing dark outside by how many people were around between the board room and the bathrooms when they’d break. It was closing in on 10pm before Karen was escorted into another separate area of the building, the rooms she passed producing a somewhat erratically blended sense of doctor’s office and art-student dorm room. Another hour and a half of her life was demanded from the Behavior Analyst and Karen caught herself being inadvertently vague, and then calculatingly so as the woman pushed for information that was either beyond her knowledge or extended past the realm of disclosable privacy. 

     Clocks were blurred in her vision by the time they were done and she could barely keep up with her escorts on the way back. It didn’t feel like she was walking any differently but she found herself tripping on the smallest of elevation change: transition strips and chipped tile, anything with the slightest edge. A promise of a private couch to sleep on was given to her but she didn’t quite make it there or even back to the meeting room. Within a common area a corridor down was a small gathering of people working through the night, though none of them were presently working.

     Her head had the capacity for only one task at a time by now and as the television caught her attention she slowed to join the other gawkers. It took a few blinks to clear her eyes enough to focus. Double-letters converged to form words, soft colors sharpened into proper images, and for half a minute her body forgot how long she had been awake. A “Live” banner was pasted in the corner of the broadcast atop a mountainscape of fire.

     If Claire’s antics had taught her anything over the last decade it was to pay more attention to her family’s actions, and with her sister those actions included disasters, trials, laws, regulations, and fine-tuning her intuition to infer accurate events from the cardboard constructions of a “true” story. She pushed through the onlookers towards the back of a head she recognized, grabbed hold of his arm, and shushed down the startlement he was expressing.

     “Shut up and listen,” she hissed. “I’ve seen Lowery Cruthers before but it took me eight hours to remember why I recognized you and it wasn’t from some trial. I’ve seen your caller ID on Claire’s phone, you were part of the DPG and with her back on the island.”

     “Shh! Stop, not here.” Franklin pushed back through the small crowd to finish their journey into an offshoot break room where Karen was meant to sleep, set the TV inside to the same channel and locked the door. A hand shot out towards the broadcast while the rest of his body rounded on her. “Tell me that isn’t her.”

     “You know it is.”

     “Shit, why? ” 

     Her irritated fatigue was quickly building towards whispered outrage. “Giant dinosaur place, why else?”

     “No, I don’t mean why , I mean just…why. Why her. Why couldn’t she let us handle it?”

     “Handle what?” Karen demanded. Franklin had his hands in fists on the table now and his forehead resting on top of them. She leaned down at first, trying to find his attention and when he didn’t respond she grabbed his collar and dragged him back up enough to see his face. “You know, don’t you?”

     “I don’t know any-”

     “You know about the girl.”

     “Would you stop committing us all to perjury !?”

     It wouldn’t be correct to say that Claire spoke at length about her sister during their days in the loft offices of the DPG, but she’d been mentioned a time or two enough for Franklin to have gotten what he believed to be a fair enough idea about what she was like. That idea was in utter dissonance with the fingers that had a vice-like grip on his sleeve. Everything that Claire had, Karen possessed in double spades.

     “ What happened to that girl? ”

     “I wasn’t lying, alright?” Franklin pulled himself away, desperate to look composed as sweat was beginning to soak through his shirt. “They were after Delacourt because Delacourt took Maisie. They came to me, I told Lowery, and we expedited passports and shoved them on planes before anyone even knew they were in town. We told you everything that we know about what happened in Malta because the Italian team got eaten and the French won’t talk to us right now.”

     “Why not?”

     “Lowery thinks Barry knows something and was giving them a head start.” He spun back around, delivering another wild gesture towards the TV. “Apparently arson is added to the list behind kidnapping.”

     “No, no, you’re not allowed to do that. You sent them in there, you gave them the opportunity and the jurisdiction, it’s your responsibility now to get them out.”

     “How am I supposed to do that!?” Franklin’s voice cracked in his panic.

     “Your goal was to take down the crime ring, wasn’t it? To get to whoever’s giving orders to that woman?” Karen crossed the room in furious strides, her finger jabbing into the television hard enough to distort the picture. “The only reason for them to leave was if they knew something, and that something had to have led them there, to Biosyn. That means either Biosyn is your top brass or there’s something else there, either way it’s your next location.”

     “We can’t just barge in, they’re on Italian soil and are a protected entity. They’re like the Vatican.”

     “Your own operation and sanctioned agents– because that’s what you made them– lead you straight to this company and they’re on fire. Organized global crime or natural disaster, pick an excuse and figure out the rest!”

     Franklin spent a moment turning in circles, shaking out the rushing adrenaline of nerves before he fixed the tugs in his shirt and drew in a composing breath. “Right, right, right. My phone is in the board room.”

     “So is mine.”

     With a smooth jerk of the door he was out, nearly sprinting down the hallway with Karen following suit.

     “Where are you going?”

     “To wake up Director Fischer. Where are you going?”

     “To make sure someone actually fed my cat.”

Chapter Text

   There was glass scattered everywhere again, just as it had been in the mangled Jeep. It wasn’t the thin shards of a cup or house window, it was the thick, round polygonal shapes that ended up finding their way into hair, shirt pockets, and the space between the inside of a shoe and the back of a heel where it continued to wedge and rub and cut until blisters turned to blood. It reflected the forest outside in a thousand pieces of flame dancing in fractals across the floor. It also bit ruthlessly into Alan's underside so he pushed himself slowly up, forcing his joints to bend and support in ways they didn’t want to, not at this hour and in these conditions. He sat again, this time in an actual chair, and began to take stock of himself and his surroundings as he unlaced his shoes to clean out the grit inside.

   The tower was as provincially stocked as a guard outpost would be. Along a section of wall were guns though nearly all were tranquilizers and where the corresponding ammunitions were, well, if the guns were needed they would have to look. There was no food to be found though around a sloped corner was a half-sized refrigerator to house drinks or lunches for anyone on guard. There were small areas equipped for basic experiments or samples, whichever took place, a fire extinguisher— much good that it would do against the growing inferno outside— and a first-aid kit. That , at least, could be useful.

   Beneath his eye line and around him his companions began to collect themselves. Ellie had also gotten to her feet and was on her way for the kit that she had apparently discovered before him. The pilot– Kayla, did they say?– was at the shattered glass wall making sure there were no more immediate threats before continuing to her own business. Ian was beginning to explore their new terrain and make himself at home which left Maisie and her parents. They still held to one another after Alan had moved away, Claire deposited into Owen’s lap back-to-chest, clutching her sides as words of affirmation left her lungs interspersed with quiet asthmatic squeaks. 

   “You alright?” He heard Owen mumble to her.

   Alan didn't catch the response. He opened his mouth to speak before Ellie cut him off, dropping down into a chair she slid into his line of vision. She had a flashlight in her hands from the emergency kit.

   “You,” she stated. So it was Dr. Sattler currently. “How’s your vision?”

   “What?”

   “Your eyes, can you see? Are things blurry, dark, hard to look at?”

   “Ah-” Alan stammered. He had been observing but not observant, looking but not paying attention. In the dark corners of the room now, though there was nothing in particular to be seen, it was at least a relief to be focusing there rather than within the light. “No, no. I mean- well, it’s easier to look there rather than there -” he indicated the flames outside “-but that’s all. It’s just the fire, makes it hard to focus.”

   “Follow my finger.” She held it up before his nose and continued talking through her assessment. “Do you know where you are? Do you know who you are? Why are you here?” All questions he could answer and by the end she seemed pleased enough. It was when she turned to find her next patient that he finally interrupted her. “Stop, stop, slow down. Sit. Assess yourself.” Alan’s hand reached out to pull a flickering shard from her shoulder. “You’ve got glass in your hair. Are you hurt?”

   She was still taking mental stock of everything to work with inside the first-aid kit. “I already have. Superficial cuts mostly. There’s a deeper one under my elbow but nothing life-threatening.”

   “You’re holding your head too much to one side.” The statement was an accusation.

   Ellie relented. “It’s whiplash from the crash. I felt something pop on that last rollover but I still have feeling everywhere, no numbness.” 

   “Broken?”

   She huffed a smile. It wasn’t a sincere question. “I highly doubt it. I’ll let Biosyn pay for the chiropractor.”

   “Ian was the driver.”

   “Tempting.” 

   Neither had much noticed the younger couple gathering themselves until Owen appeared by their sides with bottles of water, still seeming somehow chipper and a little circumspect. 

   “Dr. Grant?” He said, depositing a bottle into Alan’s hand. “I’m, uh, I’m Owen Grady. Big fan, I read your book. Well, uh, book-on-tape.” 

   Alan repeated the name to himself, at first to familiarize his tongue to the sounds then again as his memory started to come around, churning up mirroring sounds from years ago. “Yeah, I know who you are. You trained raptors.”

   “You were at Jurassic World,” cut in Ellie, more for Alan’s sake than her own. There was more about the rebuilt park she knew than she wanted to know, partly from her own commitment to the ongoing testimony, partly from trials and public hearings, and partly from Claire herself, the little that they have interacted in the past.

   “Jurassic World? Not a fan,” came Ian’s understated opinion.

   Claire looked around from her new position tending to Maisie. Alan hadn’t even noticed the first aid kit had been taken. “There’s…a lot to be said about it,” she acknowledged, not exactly in agreement. 

   “A lot that was said about it. I was part of that if you remember. I was sitting in the court room while you were deciding to ‘liberate the dinosaurs!’” Ian’s hands waved around by his face in derision. “Not much to be said about it now.”

   “Ian,” warned Ellie.

   “No, no, I’m tired of no one listening to me even when they do ask my opinions.”

   “The court listened to you,” said Owen. He shifted a little to half block Ian’s eyeline from Claire. “They agreed to let the volcano take its course, they sided with you”

   “Yeah, the third time, maybe, but not the second time and definitely not the first time. The first time they gave us all gag orders to the tune of a quarter million which led to asinine people buying genetic and biological property from even more asinine people and repeating the same new mistakes in a park which was run on the backs of half-wits.”

   “Excuse me!” Claire’s voice rose above the rest as she went to stand but Owen was closer to Ian, though he had four hands on him before he could take more than two steps. It was standard morality only that made Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant pull Owen away rather than any notion of concurrence or dissent. 

   “Ok!” Kayla’s voice broke through the din and tension as she slid down the ladder from above, stepping into the middle of the throng. There didn’t seem to be much care about what she was interrupting, especially as it seemed to be close to a fight. “So, we good to find a way outta here?”

   “Yup.” Owen’s gaze was still leveled on Ian as he backed away. Everyone started to move again. Whatever had happened before her appearance from reconnaissance could wait until a more appropriate time.

   “There’s a helicopter out in the main complex. We turn the ADS back on, we go home.”

   Limping around the group Claire went for a map. She could let the others talk for a while as she visually searched their way through the complex. Visuals were always easier for her, it’s why she had preferred to spend so much time in the control room of Jurassic World where she could see the whole scope of the park at once rather than being a piece in her own chess board. She pressed her head to her forearm for two seconds, long enough to look as though she were only wiping away sweat as bile rose again into her throat and the blood drained from her face. 

   Focus .

   She was back to herself by the time Owen joined her at the maps, flipping through so he could look into the bottom levels. That didn’t help her. She flicked him a side-eye and flipped back. 

   “You sure you're good?”

   “Just tired.”

   “Liar. How’s your ribs?”

   “I’m still standing.” 

   “Yeah, sort of.”

   Claire let the comment fall away without response. They still had a job to do.

   ”Ok, it looks like all the systems run to the control room which is on the third floor.”

   “These outposts are all connected underground.” Owen was willing to let the matter go as well. He could watch out for her even if she wouldn’t verbally relent.

   Maisie was the only one among seven who didn’t groan as Owen slid the door open to reveal a ladder, which meant she was the second to descend since Claire would not allow the girl to go first without being able to see what was ahead. Darkness took her vision just a couple of rungs beyond the hole but the cool relief of the underground passage more than made up for it. They left the expanding oven of smoke and fire and dropped down— some much faster than others— into a sweet, cool oblivion of visual nothingness until Claire cracked the light.

   An empty tunnel stretched ahead. Owen’s good ear rang loudly in his head, searching for anything to register as a noise until they all started moving again in a stiff conglomerate, bent and angled most of them to one side or another, clutching or rubbing at various parts amongst themselves: Kayla still took great care with her wrist which was now visibly dark and swollen, and while she never once complained Owen had growing concern over just how much stress her clenched jaw could take before teeth started to crack. Blood trickled and oozed and in one instance flowed almost freely from several cuts and scrapes among the crew, especially the ones who had taken the Jack-and-Jill roll inside of the Jeep. While Claire had patched up Maisie’s head her hands had left bloody prints behind on the ladder for all to follow. The best they could say for her situation is that they had removed all the glass that they could find from the cuts even though Maisie still picked at a gash which ran deep across the heel of her palm. She played a close game of searching for the glass splinter buried somewhere inside while trying not to harm herself more than she had to, and that game led to a red trail all the way down forearm to elbow leaving behind droplets that speckled the floor in her wake.  Claire was so bent it wasn’t long before someone else grabbed the light from her to hold it up higher and she was filed in to be supported by Ellie as Ian Malcolm had Owen’s ear in revisited conversation, though a little less hostile than before. She only heard the tail end of the exchange.

   “I had a dog once,” Ian said. “Humped my leg so much I had a callus on my shin bone. True story.”

   “What the hell is wrong with you?” Kayla asked.

   Laughter hurt too much to do anything but double over in snickering pain under Ellie’s support so Claire had stopped walking, but somewhere ahead of her Maisie snorted loud enough for all of them.

   “I’m not you.”

   Betrayal should not have felt this delicious and alleviating. By no means had the plan originally involved swarming fireballs, evacuations, lockdown safeguards, or a disaster which would grow to become the problem of the Guardia Costiera. It had been Ramsay’s own miscalculations which in part led to their current situation– never had he thought that Dodgson would commit himself to murder by criminal negligence, or arson by malfeasance for that matter though he would let the United Nations decide if the latter was an appropriate charge. Destruction of evidence there was certain guilt of, there ought to be surveillance footage of that so long as no other crimes had taken place prior, but Ramsay wasn’t sure that any arson charges would stand when the fault was more building codes (however proper) than intent. That being said, intent didn’t seem to matter in ninety percent of the history of vita-paleo court cases. Well. He wasn’t a lawyer, he was the Head of Communications. A manager. Manage is all he could continue to do.

   Dodgson was long gone even before Ramsay could find himself in the control center again. There were no signs of life in the cameras, just the flashing warning lights of two dozen systems which had all been muted before their minders left. He had expected silence and lights, not the determined, educated discourse he happened to walk into. 

   “This is the same system we used at the park.”

   The voice was unfamiliar to him.

   “Great, so we can turn on the- uh- the thing and then we all get out of here?” That one he knew.

   The silhouettes numbered seven, he made the eighth. Seven people who had stayed behind including the expelled Dr. Malcolm. Their objective meant he could stay discrete for just a little longer to determine who was left and his own safety with them. If Dr. Malcolm were there it was a decent sign he would be at least marginally welcomed, but the inclusion of a voice he didn’t recognize caused a little disconcertion. Was it red hair or the reflections of warning lights? Denise? No. Caution was lost as he drew closer, giving way to gobsmacked astonishment, relief, confusion, and a myriad of questions.

   “What’s this, what’s Error 99?”

   “Not enough power.” There was no reason to keep hiding. He needed them, all of them. “In a breakdown all available power is seized by the primary system in order to keep running. We need all of that power to reactivate the ADS”

   “Wait, so the system’s safety feature is what’s going to kill us?” Dr. Grant asked.

   “How do we get more power?” urged Dr. Sattler.

   “Wait, who is this guy?” The question came from the only other person in the room that Ramsay was not on familiar grounds with. He still knew him, though, him and the redhead now that he could properly see them: persistent, relentless, tactical, stupid, headstrong. He’d give the Gradys all the credit in the world for what they have done and, fate willing, would love to sometime know exactly how they had done it.

   “Uh, well, we can’t,” Ramsay decided to answer the more pertinent question first and he crossed the distance to the control console. “But we can redistribute what we have if we just… just need to…” He couldn’t talk and think and look at the same time. His words were lost as his eyes scanned the system screen.

   “Shut down the primary system,” Claire finished.

   “Yes, exactly.” Finally, someone else who knew what they were doing and was on his side.

   “Where is it?”

   “Uh, next floor up.”

   Claire was moving before he finished his sentence then a swift blur of blond passed him as well. “I’m coming with you.” Ellie had already been in the process of deciding to join without Owen asking, then he caught her eye and the silent plea had been enough to complete her decision.

   At first Ramsay had thought it was settled, that the remaining would wait for their return, but conversations picked up behind him while he continued to search the screens for anything that wasn’t throwing off malfunction warnings. Ah. Great. The plumbing was perfectly normal. That’ll help.

   “We escaped down here.”

   “Where is that? Water treatment center.”

   Ramsay’s head panned across and up to find Owen. “Hydroelectric system sub eight.” Why did he respond? 

   “Give me eight minutes, I could find her.”

   “Wait, who’s this now?”

   “Beta.”

   “Blue’s baby.”

   “Velociraptor.”

   “What?”

   “A baby raptor?”

   “And you gave her a name. How about that.”

   “I made a promise we would bring her home.”

   “You made a promise to a dinosaur.” For once he agreed with Ian’s incredulity. This was getting ridiculous.

   “You’re coming with us, right?” Maisie pleaded. Ramsay’s expectation was to see her giving the most hopeful puppy eyes that had ever been witnessed outside of someone three years of age. Instead what he saw was the most unapologetic duplicate of her parents’ businesslike demeanors. Serious, intent, spurious when not condescending. 

   “Maisie, I…”

   “Please.” There was the spurious part. The word was neither question nor suggestion but an insistent request. It had been a long time since Alan was able to ignore anyone under the age of seventeen. He blamed Ellie.

   “I’ll be on channel five.”

   “We’re on three.”

   Radios were flung at Ian from front left and right. He set down the pack of nuts that had been left behind on the console and tucked one radio into his arm as he flipped the second to its proper channel, then the first, testing both before receiving parties were too far away to deal with bad signals. A third was expected, though where he’d put it wasn’t clear, but Kayla simply swept by with a promise of retrieval and another radio in her hand. She could figure out which channel she wanted to use. In Ian’s left ear was the hot breath of a sigh and whisper. 

   “Why do I have a feeling we’re going to lose another system?”

   “Chaos, my friend.” Ian responded. He reached back for the pouch on the console and tossed another peanut into his mouth.

   Out of three “doctors” in the group not a single one of them had any medical training but that wouldn’t stop Ellie from doing what she could with what she had. Between floors and before the whirring of banks of computer systems entered into hearing range it was only her and Claire. Aches had begun to make themselves known within the last hour, hours?, however long it had been, aches that were not previously there when she had crawled out of the flipped car. A few were irritatingly normal: sore heels, rubbing toes that by now may have formed into blistered swells, a tension in her shoulders from stress and lack of sleep, the micro cuts on her palms from the glass when she scrabbled out, but then there were other aches that she knew were more serious in nature: the stab in her head when she looked towards a light, the pain shooting through her neck whenever she tried to move too quickly or hit that one particular angle that made her see stars and sent a jolt all the way down her shoulder blade, the blooming bruises of two broken knuckles which had by now caused the middle and ring finger on her right hand to swell into purple stiffness. She had tried to tape them up in the guard tower but the pressure caused as they continued to swell had become too much so she had cut away her efforts with Owen’s knife halfway through the tunnel on the trek back. Accounting for the small aches of knees and hips and elbow and existence she still felt a grand view better than how Claire looked. They had paused more than once in the short distance they had come in order for Claire to recover from whatever ailments or injuries she suffered. She was pale, almost greenish every time a wave hit her and Ellie had to step aside for fear of being in the trajectory of her last meal.

   “You know,” Ellie eased after they moved on from the second stop, filling the gap of sound that was only broken by automated warnings. “When my kids were younger…I think my oldest was in fourth or fifth grade? They had decided it would be a good idea to play chicken on the monkeybars at school. They weren’t the only ones of course, kids are kids, but it was Charlie’s turn. They would swing across to meet in the middle and try to pull each other down with their legs.”

   Claire’s eyes sought hers in the half dark. “Where were the teachers?”

   Ellie laughed, the sort of laugh of time and experience, of having regaled the tale many times and had many years to think on it. “Taking care of some other sort of nonsense that comes with multiple classes of twenty-some kids all on the playground together. It doesn’t matter, kids get hurt just walking on the sidewalk, they don’t have to do something reckless, but that’s not the point.”

   “Then how do you know all of this?”

   “Oh, Charlie told me years later because he still laughs about it.” 

   “Why?”

   “Because of something else that happened simultaneously.” The air was growing hotter as the two approached the processing wing, the smell of warm electrical equipment bleeding into their sinuses, stuffing up the once-cool passages and increasing the promising head fog of exhaustion. “It’s Charlie’s turn and he gets pulled down, loses his grip, but apparently his opponent got caught up in Charlie’s overalls and got taken down with him. There’s screaming, there’s cheering, teachers come running, kids scatter, and Charlie hops up and darts away while the other kid is rolling around on the ground crying. However – and this is why he keeps bringing up the story– the call I got from the school was about my youngest, Hannah. During her recess she had been jumping puddles with her friends. One jumped, didn’t clear it all the way, and his feet slid right out from under him so he fell straight into the puddle and took Hannah down with him. Hannah was splattered, her friends were splattered, their shoes were all caked in mud, four sets of parents were called, but she was laughing so hard she wet herself. That’s the call I got, that my youngest needed to come home because she had soaked through her clothes.”

   “I don’t-” Claire started.

   “Just wait. I hadn’t been having a great day, now I had to deal with leaving work early to get my kids because why pick up one and have to turn around to get the other an hour later? Then have to take them home, clean whatever mess there was, I had nothing for Hannah to sit on in the car so ended up having to wash the seat as well, and Charlie can see that I’m upset. I’m fussing at Hannah for being a kid, fussing at Charlie for taking his time getting his things in the car, fussing at traffic because I couldn’t handle one more thing going wrong, and all the while I had no idea that Charlie had broken his arm in the fall. He had run from the teachers so he wouldn’t get in trouble and by the time I had picked them up he and Hannah were still cackling at their own antics that I didn’t see anything was wrong. It wasn’t until the next morning when he couldn’t cut his own breakfast that it came out in hushed giggles. I said

   ‘Charlie, why didn’t you tell me?’

   And he said. ‘Because, mom, you were already mad.’

   “It took me eighteen hours to figure out my son had broken something because he was afraid to tell me, afraid that I would be angry.” Ellie had stopped walking which had forced her companion to slow as well, halted in a corridor lit by the cold blue glow of emergency lights every ten feet. “I can’t pretend to know Owen Grady very well but I do know what you both mean to Maisie and I can’t imagine that, given her feelings, he would be angry with you for being hurt.”

   Silence stretched between them as Claire searched Dr. Sattler’s face in thought, trying to formulate a response that best fit her own justifications. There were many reasons to keep her silence, many different directions in which Owen may react though admittedly she was correct, Owen wouldn’t be angry. He would be concerned and given the situation which they were currently in that would be worse.

   “No, that’s not it,” she admitted. “Is that why you came with me?”

   “And no one should be alone,” she responded. “I’m a long-time mom. That wasn’t the first time my kids hid an accident to avoid confrontation.”

   “More broken bones?”

   “Hmm, more like broken windows. How bad is it?” Ellie returned to the topic at hand.

   “Uhm-” Claire spent a fair portion of half a minute searching around for people, cameras, anything that might be incriminating other than the only other person standing before her then finally relented. “You will have to tell me.”

   Turning her back towards her Claire slid her shirt up with all the care of handling a butterfly, delicate fingertips that could only push the fabric to her waist and never once touched her skin. Her arms couldn’t cross or go any higher so with silent permission Ellie finished the rest.

   “Oh my god.”

   On the expanded edges of what she could only call a bruise despite the insufficiency of the word were red fingers which continue to reach up, out, down, anywhere the subcutaneous bleeding could continue to spread. Within those grasping fingers was a multicolored patch of skin that stretched throughout Claire’s entire left side across her ribcage, spine, lower scapula, curving around the front beneath her sternum and beginning to dip beneath the waistline of her pants.

   “Am I gorgeous?”

   “If you like being the color of black cherry and a burnt hotdog then yes.”

   “That’s horrifyingly descriptive.”

   “How are you still standing?” Though the same care was used to lower her shirt Claire still gasped out a staccato hiss until the cloth settled. Her fists unclenched. 

   “Because I have to be. No time to sit or rest or throw up.”

   “Yeah, well, no offense but it doesn’t look like you'll win that battle much longer. Bathroom?” That was a delicate way of asking the real underlying question which Claire appreciated.

   “I managed while I was in the woods, it was still daylight.”

   “Was there blood?”

   “Mmm.”

   “You need a doctor.”

   Her agreement sounded as a grunt of air when Claire took her first step again then motioned down the corridor to another ladder just visible in the pale lighting. This time it was Ellie’s groan that held the weight of the unsaid.

   “Does not a single portion of this place comply with accessibility laws at all? Where are the elevators?”

   “I’m going first.”

   “If you fall I can’t catch you,” countered Ellie.

   “If I fall I won’t bring you down with me.” She took hold of the ladder at waist height, much lower than comfortably safe but unable to manage higher. Contrary to sense it had become easier to breathe by talking rather than concentration. Whether it was because of the distraction of conversation or the fact that it forced her to take in more air than she wanted Claire wasn’t sure but if it worked then it was a system she was happy to continue for now.

   “When you said your son keeps telling the story, why does it amuse him so much? Because of how he got hurt?” She eased down, rung by rung, inch by inch with her fingers trading off between being on the side of the ladder and gripping the rung as a hold.

   “No, because of how all the events unfolded in his eyes.” Ellie was just above her, nearly touching Claire’s head with her shoe at times to keep as close as possible despite how ineffective their current position would render her. “The last time he told the story I finally thought to ask if the other kid got hurt, and he said ‘No, mom! He’s over there writhing around on the ground crying because he scraped his knee, but I broke my arm because it broke his fall! And Hannah’s the one who gets in trouble because she laughed so hard she peed her pants!’”

Chapter Text

     “Green button, but not that green button.”

     “Don’t confuse them.” Ramsay grabbed the radio. “It will be a yellow button on a grid of six.”

     They could see the women from a monochrome side view staring at the inside panel, not moving. The radio was snatched back. “Green button, do you see a green button?”

     “Which green-

     “Fourth from the bottom.”

     “Woah, woah. Fourth one up?”

     “Third one down or fourth one up.”

     “Ian, be more specific! I should have checked him for a concussion.”

     Ramsay caught the flash of a rude gesture aimed at the security camera that he was certain Ian didn’t see. “Concussion?”

     “Yeah, we, uh…we rolled down a hill in that marvelous Jeep. Absolutely thrilling, you oughta try it. The car didn’t survive but we did.”

     “Alright, please focus. It’s this yel-”

     “Yeah, I got it.”

     “Ian!”

     Fingers squeezed against the side button again. “I don’t know how I could possibly be more specific than to say that it is marked with E1.”

     “Thank you!” Ramsay’s arms flew in victorious frustration as they were plunged into darkness. 

     And then light again.

     “It’s rebooting.”

     “No, it shouldn’t be doing that.”

     Two sets of hands began shuffling through manuals and blueprints attempting to find backups to backups to reroutes, anything that Ramsay wouldn’t normally be aware of. They no longer had the benefit of being able to see the women anymore since the computers didn’t auto-boot when the power was rediverted again which meant they were now left only with auditory communication. It would have been helpful to see what they were seeing again, to know what they were doing.

             Primary Power Grid -> Primary Generator -> Control Modules A7-AA24. 

             Primary Power Grid -> Power Distribution -> High Voltage Center

             Back Up Power -> Secondary Power Grid

     Ramsay had about had it with useless manuals. “I don’t care about the backups, where’s the Emergency Power section!?”

     “Is it not ‘Backup’?”

     “No, they’re not the same!”

     “Then why have we been looking in this manual!?” Dr. Malcolm’s voice rose to match Ramsay’s.

     “Because it’s the only one not in Italian!”

     Bound pages flew out of Ian’s hand and over their backs to land as a half-folded clump of a book somewhere in the soft-glow darkness. Around them the control room resembled a spaceship with lights of varying colors, blinking or steady or pulsing a slow rhythmic heartbeat that in any other circumstance might mesmerize and soothe his whirling mind until they suddenly stuttered and went out. For a moment Ramsay was confused until the electronic voice beneath them spoke.

     Arial Deterrent System: Active .

     The primary system was out along with the corresponding monitors.

     “Victory!”

     “Wait, what did they do?”

     “Does it matter? We got what we needed.”

     “Ok, Kayla, we’re good to go.”

     “Ah,” Ian mumbled to himself. “Channel three.”

     “Hey,” Owen’s voice crackled across on channel three. He had switched over. “Y’all coulda warned us about the fancy light show before it happened.”

     “Hey,” Claire answered back. “You c-” 

     Whatever was to follow dropped out with the soft pop of a lost connection. Ramsay counted the seconds patiently.

     “Uh, try that ag-”

     “-gonna need a little bit more than ten, everyone.” Kayla broke through Owen’s connection, overlapping to drown out the end of his and beginning of her own. “Just hold tight, I’ll let you know.”

     Ramsay sank down into a chair beside Dr. Malcolm, the hydraulic system bouncing under his uncontrolled descent and sinking a little further than he would have normally preferred but at this particular moment in time any chance to rest and stare at the ceiling was a welcomed one no matter the angle of his spine. The groups would reconvene, wait for Kayla’s signal, then escort themselves out of what had become within the last twenty-four hours a worldclass hangover of a day. He could hear the elevator called down to his right and he had just decided to close his eyes when another pop opened the radio air again.

     “-an anyone hear me, please!” It was Dr. Sattler.

     Ian was on it before Ramsay could spin the chair around.

     “Loud and clear, what’s wrong?” Rare was the occurrence when Dr. Malcolm was utterly serious, at least that Ramsay had seen.

     “We need help!”

     The radio dropped a bit harder than Ellie had intended, bouncing on its corner into a skidding pirouette near the toe of her shoe. Crackles and static again sounded through the tinny speaker but she ignored it and turned Claire into a stretched position on her back. She had collapsed inwards two words into whatever sarcastic message she had intended to respond with, falling from a bent position nearly onto her head had her shoulder not taken the brunt of the impact.

     It had been difficult to see what had really even happened. Claire initially had the axe, and then Ellie herself, closing her eyes against the blinding sparks of damaged electrics during their bout of cathartic inanimate violence. As she huffed to catch her breath Claire had taken hold of the radio, muttering Ian's name. Other voices fighting for dominance at the same time were what originally had brought Ellie back to herself. Her head pounded; every tiny glow of light hurt her eyes, sent a pulse straight back into her skull to pinpoint again behind the orbital sockets, and then a soft thump of fabric and flesh hit the floor to her left.

     "Claire?" She called. Ellie grabbed Claire's face, pushed her hair back and drew her thumbs purposefully across the woman's cheeks. Beneath the mostly closed lids were trembling irises half aware, half rolled backwards. She was fighting for consciousness. "Come on, Claire, talk to me. We have to get out of here."

     Radio . Thin fingers slapped around the floor until they closed around the familiar device. "Power Terminal Module E, Claire’s down."

     "I'm on my way." It was Owen. Good. He was probably the only one who could carry her full weight if necessary.

     "I'm coming, too." Ramsay's voice this time. 

     Ramsay met the Beta group just as the elevator opened, encountering a losing debate in full swing of Owen forcing a catatonic raptor onto Dr. Grant's back.

     “I said no ,” he protested with emphatic dismay. His tone betrayed the echo of fear in his eyes.

     Owen's attempt to wrestle the harness onto Grant was interrupted by a smaller hand which looped beneath Beta's neck. 

     “Let me.” Maisie offered Owen her back and stuck out an arm to allow him access to secure Beta. “We're wasting time and he already helped us enough.”

     “You're a rockstar, kid.” He spent long enough to make sure the baby was secure and to slap a kiss on Maisie's forehead then he was back in the elevator at Ramsay's side. “You know where you’re goin’?”

     “Yeah.”

     There was enough time through the thinning gap in the door for Owen to promise a quick return before it closed and they were moving. The fires outside had finally made their presence known through the air vents of the facility, a pungent irritation on the verge of burning sinus passages. There was no way they would make it out now without being known no matter how the rest of the night went. A wildfire the size of this one attracts national attention.

     “I know it isn't on the immediate docket,” said Ramsay. His long legs went to work before the doors could fully open, at as much of a run as the tight spaces would afford him. “But we need to think about getting stories straight for when we get out of here. Your mission was very different from mine yet here we both are.”

     “I don't even know who you are,” Owen said, guarded.

     “I'm the whistle-blower who recruited Drs. Malcolm, Sattler, and Grant.”

     “If you're the reason they're here then we'll talk later,” he promised.

     Their destination was only up a floor but power reroutes and locked doors now forced them up three floors, then down a floor, and then down again through a ladder portal which deposited them into a room banked with processors and an industrial cooling system which sounded as though it didn't have much more life left to it. As Owen landed the floor crunched beneath his feet.

     “What the hell?”

     Just behind him Ramsay touched down with a similar sound. He hadn't let go of the rungs yet so the first foot retracted upwards in a disgusted reflex. “How did they get in here?”

     “Over here!” Dr. Sattler's dark silhouette shifted a short distance down the aisle, not exactly visible at first until their eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Within that stretch laid the carcasses of several dozen oversized insects. 

     “What's with the crickets?”

     The men picked their way across, Ramsay decidedly more careful than Owen of not stepping in something undesirable.

     “Locusts,” he and Dr. Sattler corrected in unison. 

     He hadn't really cared, the question was only there to pass the ten seconds it took to get to their position and dip to a knee on the other side of Claire. “What happened?”

     She was on her side with her head in Dr. Sattler’s lap, awake enough that her hands gripped the floor with white-tipped fingers, breathing so steadily shallow it had to be done in concentration rather than any natural autonomic process. This close to her face Owen could smell an underlying sour scent every exhale, the smell of someone who had recently vomited. 

     “Claire, can you hear me?” Her top hand curled into a loose thumbs-up. “What's the matter?”

     After no more response than a squeak Owen sought Dr. Sattler.

     “She's injured, that's the most definitive response I can tell you, everything else is an educated guess. From what I saw before we got down here it's at least broken ribs, and she mentioned blood in her urine which usually points to renal damage. Both of those would explain what she looks like under her shirt. I'm not sure what else but when I tried to get her back up after the first time she collapsed she threw up.”

     “We need to get her out of here somehow,” said Ramsay. “Can she be carried?” 

     “The easiest is over-the-shoulder but I can't do that with broken ribs,” said Owen. “She told me she fell off a balcony before we left Malta. That all's been stewin’ around and getting jostled by who knows what since then, and we launched her out of a plane.”

     “You what?”

     “Point is, I can try to carry her in front of me but I can't do it for very long and we've got a ladder to figure out.”

     “You've been limping since we met you.” Ellie felt it was a necessary argument even though she didn't see much in the way of alternative options.

     An arm lifted from Ramsay's side to indicate a direction to his left through the wall of computers and somewhere beyond. “There's a secondary elevator shaft a few hallways over. The path is far more indirect but we won't have to worry about impassable obstacles.”

     “Help me up.” Quiet enough at first that no one could hear her Claire had to repeat the command. Still none of them moved immediately, each person internally debating how wise of a decision that was.

     “Help. Me. Up.”

     Injured or not Owen knew better by now than to ignore a direct order when Claire had made up her mind so he eased his arms beneath hers with the aid of Ramsay, then Dr. Sattler once she was free of Claire’s weight. The time it took to get her steady and find a decent way of supporting her without hurting her seemed excruciatingly lengthy but to Claire’s own addled delight the nausea seemed to have passed for the time being. Had witnesses been around to see them hobble along then Ramsay was sure they would have looked a sad, motley affair. Other than the call to let the others know they were returning the journey was completed in relative silence.

     Limp. Shuffle. Catch breath. Shuffle. Trade off supports. Falter. Hitch up. Repeat. The air quality grew worse as they grew closer. Ellie kept a sharp eye on the Grady couple while they shambled through the halls. Every time Owen and Ramsay switched to relieve Owen he favored his ankle more than the previous unburdened stint and by the time they had reached the service elevator both were sweating and Ellie felt guilty.

     “Let me have her, at least while we're in here.” She wouldn't let them protest, she simply ducked beneath Owen's arm and secured herself against Claire.

     “Miss Kayla?” The light voice across the radio was refreshing. It drew a smile from them all. Maisie, tired and anxious but outstandingly polite considering the circumstances. “Are you ready yet?”

     “Almost, sweet cheeks.”

     “‘Sweet cheeks’?”

     The only response from Kayla's end was a laugh.

     Even after the far elevator chimed open to admit the rescue group back into a subside of the control room Owen was still chuckling to himself. All it took was a second of locked eyes for Maisie to shift from earnest worry to sheer regret.

     “Oh no,” she muttered.

     “How ya doin’, Sweet Cheeks?” 

     “ Why ?”

     “‘Cause I need a laugh.”

     “It’s not going to be a Vegas moment, is it?” she pressed with innocent hope.

     “Oh, no, I’m taking this all the way ‘til you graduate college. I’ll have them stick it on your diploma: Maisie ‘Sweet Cheeks’ Lockwood.”

     She whipped around so quickly to find Alan Grant's position that her hair stung her eyes. “Can I come live with you?”

     “No.”

     She stayed put long enough for Owen to transfer Beta back to himself, then Maisie slid across the room to Claire’s side. Lain out across a handful of chairs Claire’s face pressed into the seat fabric while ragged breaths rasped in and out of her airways. She seemed to be quite unaware of the conversations around her.

     “How long’s it take to get from here to- hey!” Movement had caught Owen’s eyes, a shift of shadows and greys in the right recesses of the room which coalesced into a person, or perhaps someone who might have been one once. His demeanor was as much ‘person’ as he was in the empty lighting, nothing but a shadow, stoic and nervous, clutching his bag tight against himself.

     All eyes had leveled on Wu, guarded, accusatory, and a couple of pairs downright vengeful. The gun in Owen’s hands pointed directly at his heart. Henry had no doubt about the man’s aim, intent, or conviction if given a reason.

     “I remember you.” Alan pushed his way forward a little, finger outstretched.

     “Please,” began Wu. “You have to listen to me.”

     Dr. Sattler nearly shoved them all out of the way to view Wu better, to be the first in line at him. Hers were among the sets of eyes that were bent towards some sort of revenge. “You created an ecological disaster.”

     “And I can fix it.”

     “Why should we trust you? You’ve been present in every major disaster since the original park! You betrayed John Hammond, you-”

     “I did not betray John Hammond.” It was his turn to be defensive. Accusations had flung wildly his way for decades but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t defend himself where he felt unjustly accused. 

     “Uh, yeah, you kind of did,” said Ramsay. “Your safeguard? The Lysine Contingency? There’s not a single living animal on this earth that can manufacture its own lysine. It’s always dietary and there’s plenty found in the wild. You’re a biologist, you know this. It was an intentionally faulty design. Not even a design at all since you didn’t have to change anything because that’s the natural state.”

     “My name has been cleared of any wrong doing since those cases closed and I am a geneticist .”

     “Still biology.”

     “That’s like asking a neurosurgeon to do open heart surgery. Same field, two different specializations.”

     “Yeah?” said Owen. “And what about Jurassic World? Your engineering nightmare destroyed the park and twenty-dozen lives.”

     “I-”

     “Wasn’t him.” From behind the group rose Claire’s strained words, still half projected into the chair seat. “Masrani dug his own hole.” It was Maisie’s hands which offered her enough support to raise up onto her elbows. “He authorized everything, he started cloning illegally before the Gene Guard Act was relaxed.”

     “Is she alright?”

     “None of your business.” Owen dismissed him.

     “Masrani threatened Wu with culpability. Wu ran. I cleared his name for the courts.”

     “Wait, you what?” asked Owen.

     “You did?” It was new news to Henry. “Why?”

     She didn’t answer. Instead, her head sank back down onto the chair face up this time, her arms covering her eyes since her hands shook too much. “Doesn’t dissolve you from the mansion.”

     “I will explain and answer for anything you want me to answer for, but please let me fix this one mistake that was entirely my fault.”

     “How?” Alan prompted.

     “Charlotte Lockwood changed every cell in Maisie's body. It saved her life. If I can understand how Charlotte rewrote Maisie’s DNA, I can spread change from one locust to the entire swarm before it's too late.”

     Owen raised his gun again, completing the wall in front of Maisie that Ellie and Grant had inadvertently begun which the teenager gently slid through with a passing hand on his arm. She had been given answers and more questions. She was a genetic breakthrough but only just for the sake of living because her mother wanted her to be. There was no ulterior motive, no prize being sought or glory renown, she was just Maisie, thanks to Charlotte, and she could now do with that whatever she wished.

     “It’s ok. It’s what she would have wanted.”

     Footsteps approached behind them and Alan shifted in time to see Ian emerge from the main room, far more lit with an orange glow than their current tinted view.

     “Hey,” he called. He was looking over his shoulder back at the control panel well out of their view. “We lost water pressure, what did y-” Finally he had taken time to observe the room, moving across the faces and following gazes until he visually caught up with the others. “No. No, no, no, no. Him ? Not him, not him, it’s always him. Every-” he broke himself off again, too distracted by a sight directly right, pinpointed on Owen. “Is that a dinosaur on your shoulder?”

     “Yeah. Why?”

     “Why are you so nonchalant about that?”

     “I have air, meet me in the center.” Four radios buzzed through at once, echoing off one another in half-second delays.

     “No no no no no!” Ramsay dove for the closest one. “Hey hey, do not land in here!”

     “I have no choice, dude, the valley isn't safe.”

     “They’re not in the valley anymore!”

     “But the fire is!”

     He drew in a long composing breath through his nose then threw the radio at the window. “Damn it!”

     “Wait, wait, what’s happening?” asked Dr. Malcolm. “Who’s not in the valley anymore?”

     “The dinosaurs. In the event of something like this -” He threw a hand out dramatically towards the landscape beyond the windows. “-all biological assets are compelled by implant to seek sanctuary within the walls of the facility. The smaller ones are cordoned off into pens underground but the bigger ones are housed in above-ground spaces.”

     “You’re definitely going to tell me that the center holds the herbivores, right?” Malcolm already knew the answer.

     “Unfortunately not only .” Henry decided to be the bearer of bad news. “May I see a radio?” He advanced only as close as necessary, issuing a polite thanks to Dr. Sattler who relinquished hers. “What is the pilot’s name?”

     “Kayla.” Six voices responded.

     “Kayla, the center courtyard contains the oversized dinosaurs. They should be in a form of general sedation during this but we have never had to test it out before.”

     What followed was a string of colorful curses, some aimed directly at him and some at Biosyn in general.

     “I understand.” He did. It seemed as though they would soon be entering into that same space. “Take extra care if you see-” A moment passed where Wu considered, one corner of his mouth twitching as he considered the best options before him. He spoke again with obvious reluctance. “Edbird.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “Edbird Scissorhands.” Wu gave an exhausted sigh and refused to meet the eyes of anyone else around him.  “It’s blind which has caused extensive aggression towards sound.”

     This time he squeezed the call button off and on to drown out the incoming expletives.

     “Um, hello? Yeah, what the hell is Edbird Scissorhands?” demanded Dr. Malcolm.

     “It’s a therizinosaurus,” Ramsay obliged.

     “Yes, but no regular person knows what that is,” Dr. Wu said to him.

     “Theriz-what? What’s that?” asked Maisie.

     “See?”

     “Large beast,” said Ramsay to answer the question. “Claws that are over a foot long, mostly herbivorous but we’ve seen it hunt out small to mid-sized rodents when it wants. It’s been known to kill a couple of the parasaurolophus and deer if they wander too close but it never eats them. It’s only half-heartedly classified as an omnivore because we don’t think it intentionally eats the rodents, we think it’s searching for the large bugs that would exist during its time. Some of the staff here named it.”

     “Of course they did,” remarked Ian.

     Henry smirked but Ramsay grinned, childish, forgetting for a snapshot of time their situation in the face of a small piece of joy that his job had afforded him. Ian thought he saw a spark in his eyes which made him believe Ramsay had more weight in the chosen name than anyone else he would give credit to.