Chapter Text
viii.
Night falls fast and thick over the park, and Owen doesn't come back. Claire's not some anxious war wife waiting for her husband to come back, and she's not in the habit of standing around wringing her hands when there's work to be done anyway, but she is worried. There are people to move underground, nephews to reassure, rescue efforts to coordinate. She keeps busy. She doesn't think about the fact that Owen doesn't come back, and doesn't come back, and then he's there, leaning against the doorway into the Innovation Center, bloody and with heartbreak written across his face.
"Aunt Claire?" Gray says, sounding unsteady.
"Shit." Claire rushes to prop Owen up. He's heavy and Claire can feel his heart hammering through his ribs. "Owen, what happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," says Owen, and he's very clearly not. He's left a bloody trail leading out into the boardwalk and he's leaning heavily on Claire, breath labored.
"Did the Indominus...?"
"She won, yeah." Owen's expression wavers, like he wants to shut down but can't quite manage it. "The raptors are hers now."
Claire should panic--she's considering it very hard--but if she panics and Owen's like this, they're all going to die, so she swallows it and says, firmly, "Zach, there should be a first aid kit behind the Stegosaurus display. Could you get it, please?"
"Uh," says Zach, looking around.
Gray huffs. "C'mon," he mutters. "I'll show you."
Claire lets Owen lean on her, huffing and wheezing, as she guides him towards one of the benches in front of the hatchery. The lab is dark now, all the eggs pulled back into the depths of the lab. Hoskins' people have been removing scientists for a few hours now. Claire hasn't let them take any eggs, but she's sure some have disappeared into coat pockets and briefcases. A problem for another time.
Her current problem hisses in pain as he, with Claire's help, eases down onto the bench.
"You got away," Claire says softly, and presses a hand to Owen's forehead. "You're alive." Owen's mouth twists, bitter.
"Hoskins is gonna kill them," he says thickly. "They chose her. He'll kill them."
Claire doesn't know what to say. She doesn't really understand Owen. She didn't before and she doesn't now. All of his months in the wild have made him even more strange and difficult to understand.
She's also never had kids. She's never really wanted them or felt the urge to parent.
The Velociraptors aren't Owen's children, not really. He raised them, and he loves them, but they're not human children. They have claws and teeth and bloodlust. Everyone's been saying for years that they'd turn on him eventually, because that's what predators do. But Claire's not sure that matters to Owen much.
"What do you need?" She asks, because she doesn't know what else to offer. Gray reappears at her elbow, holding a first aid kit to his chest.
Owen smiles tiredly. "Blue got me pretty good. Pretty sure I've got a couple of cracked ribs, but there's not really anything I can do about that here. I need a compress bandage and some painkillers, if there are any."
"Got the bandage," Claire says, riffling through the kit. "No painkillers. There's some whiskey in the security office downstairs, though."
Owen debates with himself for a minute. "Good enough. We wanna get the kids down there anyway."
"Why?" Gray asks.
Owen looks the kid up and down. "The raptors are coming," he says.
They get to the security office very, very quickly. Zach puts himself in front of Gray and looks around every corner. Claire holds Owen up until he can slap the bandage on a truly nasty-looking wound on his leg.
"Can they get in here?" Claire asks. "All the doors are closed."
"Doors aren't really a problem for raptors," Owen mutters, examining the bandage. "It's why we use gates. Some of the doors in here don't have handles or have electronic locks, like here, but not all of them do."
Aside from Hoskins' crew, Claire, Owen, Zach, and Gray are the only ones in the building. Owen's still bleeding.
"They're comin' for me," Owen says, catching Claire's train of thought. "I can go, the bike's outside, I can lead them away--"
"No."
"Claire," Owen begins, but she's not in the mood to hear it.
"We stick together," she says. "If we split up, we're easier to pick off. Together, we've got a chance."
All three of them look at her, doubt and fear written across their faces. Claire takes a deep breath.
"Look," she says. "Owen, you know more about raptors than anyone alive. Gray, you're a tiny genius. I know the park, and Zach's quick on his feet. We can--"
"Kill them?" Owen asks, wry.
"No," says Claire. "Grant wrote that raptors--any dinosaur--is really hard to kill if you don't have heavy weaponry, and we have a rifle, a cell phone, and some Band-Aids. But we can trap them, right?"
Owen blinks.
"There's tons of stuff lying around we can use," Gray pipes up. "Raptors are smart, but we're smarter.
"Well," says Owen, "we've got nothing else to try, so why not? I might have an idea."
---
They set up traps very, very quickly, each of them trying not to think about the sharp-toothed death rapidly approaching. They're not calling to each other--they don't want to spoil the hunt, Owen told them grimly--but they're coming.
Within the hour, Claire thinks they're about as ready as they'll ever be. The building is empty except for them--she doesn't know where Hoskins' people cleared off to and she doesn't really care--and Owen's blood has been dropped and dripped in complicated trails throughout the building.
"Indy's gonna stay outside," Owen said. "She can't get in here, the building's too well-built. The girls will try and flush us out to her."
"So what do we do?" Claire had asked.
"Stay in the building," said Owen, and got ready.
They'd stashed the boys in the security office, locked the door, and gone up into the catwalks to wait.
Claire's not not afraid--she does want to live, if only to maul Henry Wu--but beside Owen, high up in the service rafters above the main atrium, she's not terrified either. Owen is warm and solid and just on the right side of feral, perched like a hunting bird, broad shoulders mantled, eyes trained on the darkened floor below.
Claire has a knife in one hand and a radio in her back pocket.
After a while, Owen whispers, so quietly it's little more than a ghost of breath against Claire's ear, "They're here."
Out of the darkness, four Velociraptors emerge. Claire's blood chills. She didn't hear them come in. The door to the outside didn't lock, but it had been closed. Their eyes gleam yellow.
The cast around, sniffing at the blood trails, and seem to consult each other. Claire holds as still as she can. If the raptors find them, they'll never get them into the traps.
Finally, Blue whistles and prowls off in one direction, taking the smallest raptor with her. The other two--Delta and Echo--peel off after an adjacent blood trail.
Owen waits for half a minute, tense, and then motions to Claire. They inch back into the service door and follow the web of catwalks through the building. The service catwalks don't go everywhere, just the areas that guests can see and need state-of-the-art lighting and projection equipment, but it should be enough.
Should be.
Owen's first and strongest blood trail will lead Blue on a merry, complicated chase through the building. She'll follow the freshest scent, Owen had explained, because she was the beta and it was her job to take care of threats.
"You're a threat now?" Claire had said, having difficulty reconciling the image of Owen with raptors nuzzling at his hands and his throat will being a threat, something to be hunted and removed.
Owen had only shrugged.
Now, Claire follows him to the leftmost edge of the catwalk, which dead-ends out over the hatchery.
When Simon had built the Innovation Center, he built it with miles of glass. Transparency, he said, would both impress the guests and keep everyone honest.
Claire catches a flash of motion across the hall from the hatchery, green scales moving past the open doorway into one of the smaller sub-labs pressed up against the hatchery.
Owen taps a finger against her wrist. Get ready.
Claire pulls her radio out of her skirt. Ready, she mouths.
Owen nods, cups his hands around his mouth, and barks.
The reaction is immediate. Delta and Echo swing back around, appearing in the lab doorway. They cast around, clicking to each other.
Owen barks again, and waves.
Delta sees him first. She shrieks, teeth bared, and charges into the room, Echo on her heels.
Delta's problem, Owen's told Claire more than once, is that she has maybe too much bird DNA spliced into her code. This makes her chattery, proud, liable to show off, and, interestingly enough, unable to tell glass apart from empty air.
She leaps straight into the thick glass separating the room she's in from the hatchery. The glass shudders and Delta topples backwards, landing gracelessly on top of Echo. Both raptors get tangled up in each other, Delta's leg pinning down Echo's tail, Echo's claws jammed under Delta's snout, and Claire says, "Now!" into the radio.
The door, one of the few electronic doors in the whole center, whooshes shut and the power lock engages.
"Did it work?" Gray asks, tinny over the walkie-talkie.
Claire smiles. Delta and Echo manage to disentangle themselves, snapping at each other, and they both rush towards the door. Their claws scrabble at it. The door stays shut. "Yeah," she says, nudging Owen, "it worked. Two down."
Gray cheers. Echo leaves Delta to fight with the door and prowls over to the glass window. She locks eyes with Owen, draws herself up to her full height, and barks three short, staccato barks.
The sound echoes in the quiet. From the depths of the building, another raptor barks back.
"Time to move," Owen says. "That's Blue. Let's go."
Now for the hard part.
Blue is Owen's smartest raptor. His oldest and cleverest girl. There's a reason she's held her position over her sisters for so long.
Together, Owen and Claire dart across the catwalk and back into the main atrium.
"You know what to do?" Owen asks.
It's a shitty plan, and Claire doesn't see how it's going to end well, but she knows what to do. She nods grimly. Owen gives her a crooked smile, a kiss on the cheek, and turns back around, disappearing into the service door.
Claire takes up a position by the biggest projector and gets ready.
After a minute, Blue and Charlie come speeding into the atrium, claws extended, both of them nearly black in the dim lighting.
Claire takes a deep breath and turns on the projector.
The projectors they have on the ground can create a full-scale hologram of any of Jurassic World's terrestrial species. The ones they have in the ceiling can, during special showings, create full-scale holograms of Jurassic World's airborne species.
A full-sized Pteranodon seems to burst from thin air, taking wing and surging down towards the ground.
Blue shrieks a warning and dives out of the way. Charlie bolts in the opposite direction, hooting in fear. During the show, the hologram repeatedly dives at the audience below. Kids love it. Raptors, apparently, do not. The Pteranodon makes its second pass, swooping down so low it almost skims the ground, before it rises back up and flickers as the image changes from projector to projector.
Howling, Blue leaps at it, but she misses and lands, following its progress with her claws spread and her tail lashing.
She--and Charlie, who's cowering in the corner, always skittish, always nervous--doesn’t see Owen slip silently from a half-concealed service door behind Charlie, holding a length of industrial-strength chain.
The Pteranodon makes another pass, rushing past Blue, and she turns to follow it.
Owen makes his move.
Charlie's not much bigger than he is, he'd explained, and she's been weak and sick for months. She doesn't stand a chance.
Owen wraps the chain, one end already fastened into a rough noose, around her neck and pulls.
Charlie squawks and her whole body jerks back. She stumbles, tries to turn around to slash at Owen, but he's already dancing back out of her reach. He hooks the other end of the chain around the iron- and steel-welded bones of the Apatosaurus, anchoring Charlie there, and rushes back into the shadows.
Blue's attention is torn between the hologram, her screaming sister, and Owen. The Pteranodon makes its final pass and Blue leaps; she falls right through it and lands on all fours, huffing in surprise. She watches the hologram fly up critically, decides it's not a threat, and focuses all of her attention on Owen.
Owen comes prowling out of the shadows, head slung low, the rifle across his back and a knife in one hand. He curls his lip at Blue, showing her all of his teeth. "Now, Claire," he calls, keeping his eyes fixed on Blue. Blue hisses.
Even though he can't see her, Claire nods. It takes her a second to find the right switch. Down below, Owen and Blue are circling each other, feinting and posturing. Blue shrieks and flashes all of her teeth, flexes her claws, and Owen hisses, darting in and out of her reach.
"Now!" She shouts, and throws the switch.
Light floods the Innovation Center. Claire screws her eyes shut and she hears the raptors shriek in surprise and pain. There's a crash down below, a raptor scream and a human yell, and Claire opens her eyes, wincing at the light.
She looks down in time to see Owen charge Blue and tackle her to the ground.
---
He wasn't ever going to trap Blue. She knows him too well. The other girls had weaknesses he could exploit, Delta's bird brain, Charlie's fear, but Blue's too smart to trap this easily, and too pissed off to go down without a fight.
On the upside, if he can beat her, she'll be his again. On the downside, she's a three hundred pound Velociraptor, strong and healthy, and he's got a bum ankle and broken ribs.
Claire, bless her, does her job beautifully. The lights come on all at once, sharp and piercing, and Blue jerks back instinctively with a noise of pain.
She's the most diurnal of his girls, and her night vision's the shittiest. It takes her forever to adjust to changes in light. She reels back, shaking her head, and Owen makes his move.
He gathers all of his strength and explodes forward, drops his shoulder, and body-slams into Blue. She goes down. She's not fast enough to slide out from underneath him before he gets one arm around her neck and the blade of his knife, sharper than any raptor's teeth, into her shoulder.
Blue yowls and kicks up instinctively. Her sickle claw grazes past Owen's belly, shredding his shirt but missing skin. She turns her head back and forth, snapping at him, and writhes.
He twists the knife. She saw Owen beat Echo, and she knows his game. She knows that if she wants to win, she has to get away from him. Owen doesn't intend to let her, but then what he intends and Blue does has always been a point of contention between them.
With a twist that can break the neck of a Gallimimus, Blue tosses Owen over her shoulder. The knife pops out and Owen just manages to hang onto it. He lands hard on his back, the breath leaving his body with a whump.
Blue regains her feet and shrieks.
Owen climbs back up to his, significantly more unsteady than she is, and shakes himself. His vision darkens around the edges.
Blue shrieks again and bobs her head aggressively.
Owen blinks.
She's acknowledging him as a challenger. She thinks he wants to be the beta. She looks fucking pissed about it too, but at least now she's not going to try and run him outside into the waiting jaws of her new best friend.
Blue feints and comes in from the left, teeth bared. Smart girl. He's right handed, and she knows it. Owen pulls all of his limbs out of her reach, turns on his heel--fucking ow--and plunges the knife into Blue's right shoulder, throws all of his weight behind it, and drags the knife downwards.
Warm blood bubbles up over his hands and he growls before he can stop himself, pushing the knife in to the bone. Blue screams, trying to pull away, but Owen wraps his other hand around the back of her head, braces his good leg against the ground, his bad against her side, and pulls.
Blue either has to fall with him or risk breaking her neck.
She falls, cut to the bone, and lands heavily. She lashes out with her sickle claw again and this time it does make contact, opening a six-inch gash down Owen's side, but it's shallow and he's deep in the bloodlust now. He barely feels it.
Blue's right arm is useless now, dangling limply underneath her. She rolls again and Owen lets her go, backing up to give her space. He's growling, low and continuous. Bright blood smears across the floor. This time, it's Blue's turn to get up unsteadily, pain making her slow.
Owen stomps forward, alpha written into the set of his shoulders. Submit.
Blue hisses, drops her head, and charges at him.
It's an uncoordinated move, lacking the raptors' usual grace and poise, but it's fucking effective. Blue slams into Owen like a freight train. The knife spins out of his hand and clatters to the ground a good distance away. She knows it’s his fangs, his claws; she'll never let him near it.
Owen twists and manages to land on his better side, but can't do anything to stop Blue from sinking her teeth into the meat of his arm and her claws into his chest. They're so close she can't use her sickle claws, which is the only reason Owen doesn't die.
Agony bursts behind his eyelids. He dimly hears yelling, Charlie shrieking, Blue snarling around the meat of his arm--
And then Blue lets go.
She jerks back, an angry hiss torn out of her throat, and then Claire is standing over Owen, a short length of iron filament in her hand and fury across her face.
Blue shakes her head, blood dripping from her jaws, and hisses. She looks between Owen and Claire.
"Thanks," Owen manages--words are difficult right now, all he wants to do is snarl--and manages to get back up. Pain hits him in waves, but he can stand, and Blue's wary now, not sure how to handle Owen and Claire together.
"Don't mention it," says Claire. "Where do you need me?"
"Don't let her bite me again," Owen says, and lunges.
Blue, because she's brave, and beautiful, and dedicated to the last, leaps to meet him. Owen ducks underneath her, sliding under the arc of her jump, and launches himself onto her back with everything he's got left.
They land heavily, Blue's powerful hind legs taking most of the impact, and she manages to stay upright, swinging her neck around to bite at him, but Claire's there with her iron and she clocks Blue hard along her jaw. Blue's head snaps back, and Owen throws his weight forward.
They overbalance, and go down again.
Owen jams his good hand under Blue's jaw, holding tight. He shoves his elbow on top of her throat and angles his body so that he's pinning her shoulders down. She kicks uselessly, but she can't get the purchase she needs to dislodge him.
She's pinned.
She goes still underneath him. She's beaten, and she knows it.
Claire presses the knife back into Owen's hands. He has Blue's throat at his mercy. He could ram it up underneath the base of her skull. Shove it under the soft skin of her underjaw and let her bleed out.
Blue's his firstborn. His favorite girl. She watches him with one yellow eye, just as bright and intelligent as it was the day she was born, and he makes a decision. Carefully, he pulls the knife away from her throat and makes a soft sound in his throat.
Blue breathes.
He makes the noise again, some cross between a croon and a warbling coo, a noise he's made a hundred times for her, for the others. Remember me? He’s trying to say. I'm your father. I'm your alpha.
And Blue, as Owen backs off, makes a curious, tentative peep.
Owen gets off of her and stands between her and Claire. He makes the noise again, and holds out his hand. His fingers are slick with blood, his and hers, but Blue comes to him anyway. She looks at him, then out towards the door, towards the boardwalk and the Indominus. She looks back at Owen, huffs, and presses her nose to his fingertips.
Owen grins.
"Uh," Claire says.
"Good girl," Owen praises, running his hands down the side of Blue's face. She lets him, tail flicking. Her arm's a mess. Owen's sure he's a mess too, but he doesn't really care, because Blue is his again. She's not going to try and eat him, and she's not going to get killed by Hoskins.
"What just happened?" Claire asks. Behind her Charlie, still tied up, hoots, like she's asking the same thing.
"Go see your sister," Owen says hoarsely. Blue noses his hands, snorts at Claire, and does, nuzzling Charlie and twisting her head around to examine her own injuries.
"What did you do?"
"We challenged her for dominance, and won," Owen says. He catalogues his injuries. His ribs hurt like hell, and his arm is swelling up already, but it's nothing fatal. The gash on his side bleeds sluggishly.
"We?"
Owen can't help but grin. Endorphins are kicking in, dulling some of the pain. "We," he agrees. "You helped, which means now you're the co-alpha."
Claire raises an eyebrow. She's smeared with dirt and sweat and blood. She looks like she wants nothing more than to sleep for two straight weeks. Owen thinks that he might adore her, just a little.
It's not just anybody who's got the guts to stand up to a rampaging Velociraptor, let alone win.
"Welcome to the pack," says Owen. He prods his bitten arm. "Ow."
"If you--we--are the alphas, they won't attack us, right?"
"Right," Owen says. He feels like he's walking on sunshine, or something equally ridiculous. He's probably lost more blood than he thought. "They might challenge us one day, but they've had so much upheaval that they're just gonna want to let someone else take charge for a while. Right, Blue?"
Blue chatters. She doesn't seem to particularly mind her useless arm, tucking it close to her chest. She head butts Charlie, who makes a plaintive sound at Owen.
"I got you, pretty girl." With Claire's help--Owen's arm is also pretty much useless--he unties Charlie and lets her nuzzle against him, anxiously reassuring her alpha of her devotion.
"Go ahead and get Zach and Gray," Owen says, a raptor on either side. "I'll go get Charlie and Delta. With the girls and a fast-ish car, we can get out of here and take the Indominus somewhere else."
Claire, to her credit, doesn't say, "And do what with it?" She looks Owen up and down. She looks at Blue and Charlie. She doesn't ask, "How are we going to kill it?"
She says, "I have an idea."
---
This is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing Claire's ever done. This is insane. This is absolutely, completely, totally batshit insane, and it's the best option that they have.
She doesn't take her nephews. She tells them to stay in the security office until she or Owen comes to get them, because the last thing she needs is to get her nephews killed. She hugs Gray and hugs Zach and tells them that they're very brave, then she grabs a road flare out of the first aid kid and goes to meet Owen.
All four raptors are out in the atrium now, milling around their alpha. At Blue's barked demand, they all to go Claire and very delicately nuzzle up against her hands and throat. She's not really a fan of having them so close to her, but Owen seems to think it's necessary, so she allows it.
Delta chirps.
"She'd almost had the glass broken when I showed up," Owen says. He's taken the opportunity to wrap what's left of his vest around the ugly wound on his arm. His shirt is ripped and bloodstained, but he's flushed, vibrant, and ready. "So, what's this idea of yours?"
Claire takes a deep breath and tells Owen.
They argue about it for a few minutes, but then they hear the Indominus roar somewhere outside and come to an agreement very quickly. Owen's bike is outside. Claire's in pretty good shape, and the distance isn't so great that it's insurmountable. Rexy is old, anyway. She's going to clock out at about fifteen miles per hour, max, especially in the dark.
Owen's going to go first.
He shows her which calls to use, which signals the girls will respond to, and leaves Charlie and Delta with her. He takes Blue and Echo, because they're the fastest, dashes outside, and shoots the Indominus twice with his rifle.
For a second, Claire thinks that it's going to take the raptors again. It beat Owen once before, after all. But Blue and Echo perform perfectly, leaping at the Indominus, biting at its heels, and dashing off with Owen as he swings himself up onto his bike and goes, heading for a blinking red light in the distance.
Claire, Delta and Charlie at her side, takes a deep breath and walks out into the boardwalk.
Everything is dark and tattered. The boardwalk is completely silent. Claire can hear the Indominus screaming in the distance, the raptors calling, the fading hum of Owen's bike, and then nothing.
She takes a deep breath, steadying herself, and makes her way out past ruined storefronts and overturned tables. At her sides, Delta and Charlie keep pace, scanning for threats.
We can do this, she thinks. We can do this.
None of them see the .50 caliber shoulder-mounted gun until it flashes, and then Charlie just isn't there anymore.
Blood mists over Claire's face and hair and clothes. Delta shrieks in surprise. And Charlie twitches once, her legs kicking, and then she goes still. There is a hole the size of a grapefruit torn out of her chest, and Claire knows that she's dead.
She spins around, searching wildly for the threat.
Vic fucking Hoskins emerges from the shadows, a man with a huge gun propped up on his shoulder at his side.
Delta stiffens.
"Hoskins," Claire says, fury bubbling in her throat, "what the fuck?"
"I told Grady that I was gonna put the raptors down if he couldn't make them useful," Hoskins says, lightly. He's not at all bothered by the fact that Charlie wasn't doing anything or that she was standing two feet from Claire. Delta hisses, lowly. "Now stand aside, Ms. Dearing."
"No," says Claire, stepping in front of Delta. "Hoskins, we don't have time for this, we need to get to Rexy, and we need to kill the Indominus--"
"The military is on its way," Hoskins says comfortably. "The Indominus will be dead by morning. It's a shame we have to scrap the project, but there's always next time, right?"
"Next time?"
Taking Claire's fury as permission, Delta darts out from behind her faster than she thought was possible. She lunges, first at the man with the gun, barreling him over and dipping her head down to worry his throat, and then at Hoskins.
Her muzzle is wed and dark. The man with the gun doesn't get up again.
Delta advances on Hoskins, claws outstretched.
Dimly, Claire remembers Owen telling her that Delta hates Hoskins. Delta snarls.
"Whoa, easy, girl." For the first time since she's known him, Hoskins sounds afraid. "Easy, easy. Dearing? Dearing, you wanna call this thing off?"
But Claire's frozen. Charlie's dead on the ground behind her. "Delta," she tries, but it's too late. "Delta, no--"
Delta surges forward in one smooth, terrible motion, and lays into Hoskins. Blood flies. Hoskins screams and screams and then he doesn't, cut abruptly, terribly silent.
"Delta!" Claire manages, finally remembering the sharp whistle that Owen said will call a raptor off its kill.
Delta looks up, a bit of intestine hanging from her mouth, and chirps. Claire's stomach rolls. She whistles again, trying to sound as commanding as possible, and Delta comes, stepping off Hoskins' body.
"We've got other things to do," Claire says, and swallows her disgust, her fear, and goes to Paddock Nine.
She calls Lowery. "You're still in Control, right?"
"Uh, yeah? Are you okay? Claire, it's radio silence, what's--"
"Shut up. I need you to open Paddock Nine."
"I--what?"
"Open," says Claire, slowly and clearly, "Paddock Nine."
"But that’s--"
"I know what it is," Claire snaps. "I need it opened. C'mon, Lowery. Trust me."
Lowery goes quiet, but the great door that keeps the Tyrannosaurus rex, the oldest dinosaur in Jurassic World, inside starts to creak open.
Claire lights her flare.
Later, Zara and Viv will show her news footage of this security tape, Claire standing there in front of the gate with a flare burning in one hand and a raptor at her side. At the moment, though, all Claire can see is Rexy's eyes, her teeth. All she can feel is the terrible weight of her shaking the ground. All she can hear is the roar and the blood pumping in her ears.
Claire turns, terror pounding in her chest, and runs.
She cannot run at fifteen miles an hour. She just can't. She's in high heels and she's bone-tired, but she has Delta to circle around and confuse Rexy, to slow her down, and all she has to do is keep running.
Delta shrieks and cries. The T-rex thunders. The flare shoots off sparks that burn Claire's hands and her legs and her skirt.
The first thing Simon Masrani built on Isla Nublar was a cell phone tower. More have sprung up over the years, but they've been having problems, lately, juggling the growing communications networks and the influx of guests. About a year ago, Claire greenlit a project to build a new communications tower. As of now, it's half-done and functioning, and the old tower's been blown apart. Behind the tower is a pit, deep and full of all kinds of broken bits of metal, where they're eventually going to put a Liopleuradon, and it's so deep that not even the Indominus will ever be able to climb out again.
They just have to get her in it.
Claire runs. It's half a mile from the boardwalk to the communications tower. A five-minute run, tops.
Claire makes it there in two, and she has time to see, by the light of the flare and the light from the top of the tower, Owen and Blue and Echo fighting with the Indominus, dancing around it, slashing at its feet.
She lobs the flare with everything she's got and it sails in a neat arc to land at the Indominus' feet. "Get clear!" Claire shouts, and dives to the side.
Owen and the raptors scatter.
Rexy, following the flare, barrels straight into the Indominus. The two titans right themselves, roar, and face off. Rexy's bigger but the Indominus is meaner. One eye is gone, a mess of black blood, but the other is enraged.
Blood flies and splatters. Claire stays where she is, panting. Adrenaline makes her shake and jerk. Owen limps quickly to her. He whistles at the girls, and they join in, leaping from the tower struts and the rex to land on the Indominus and tear at her back and neck. She roars, outraged, and tosses one of them off of her. The raptor lands and doesn't get up. The remaining two keep at her, distracting her so that she can't fend off Rexy.
"They know what to do," Owen says, watching the fight. And they do. They're herding the Indominus to the very edge of the pit where the old tower stood. She's hanging over empty space. The raptors on her back savage her one more time, then jump free.
The Indominus tilts her head back to catch one in the air, jaws open impossibly wide, and then Rexy surges forward and catches her by the throat.
The Indominus screams a gurgling scream, blood dripping down the sides of her mouth. She scrabbles at Rexy, her claws sharp and shredding, but Rexy has a hold on her now. There's nothing the Indominus can do to make her let go.
Rexy presses forward, shoving at the Indominus until there's nowhere for her to go but out. She slips down the sides of the pit trying to hold on, but gravity works against her.
She drags against Rexy's teeth in her throat, screams again, and dies.
Rexy lets her go, pulling away a chuck of white flesh and meat, and the Indominus falls, limp and dead, into the darkness below.
For a second, everything and everyone is quiet. Then Rexy tosses her head back, blood streaming and steaming up from her many wounds, and roars.
Owen flops down in the dirt next to Claire and presses his forehead against her shoulder. The raptors, who are not fond of Rexy in the slightest, dash over to their fallen companion, nudge her up--it's Echo, Claire notices, and she's moving stiffly and dizzily--to her feet, shriek insults at Rexy, and run off into the trees.
"Where are they going?" Claire asks.
Owen makes a noncommittal noise and doesn't lift his head. "Home, probably. That's their territory. Rexy won't follow them into it."
Claire tucks her nose into the crown of Owen's head for a minute, letting the warmth and the solidness of him calm her down, and says, "Moment's over, Raptor Whisperer. Come on. Let's go find my nephews and get you cleaned up. Evac's at first light tomorrow."
Owen groans. "Don't you ever stop micromanaging?"
She smiles briefly. "No," she says. "Now move." Later, she's going to have to tell him that Charlie's dead. He might know already--there are only three raptors in the woods now--but she'll have to tell him what happened and how senseless it was and how much it hurts, surprisingly.
But right now, they won. The Indominus is dead. They're alive. Tomorrow they'll get on a boat to Costa Rica and lose their jobs and spend the next couple of years fielding questions about how everything went wrong, how they tried to stop it, the company's future plans, et cetera. Tonight, they're alive.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." But Owen's smiling too, and together they limp back towards the Innovation Center, leaning on each other all the way.
---
The hangar on the coast is cramped and hot, but Claire has Zach and Gray tucked up against her and the reassuring sounds of people around her, and she's alive and they're alive and Owen's alive, so she figures she can put up with some discomfort for a while. Her hands haven't stopped shaking. She keeps seeing the rex in her mind's eye, feeling her stamp and shake the ground.
She cannot believe that they all made it out.
Zara called Claire twenty minutes ago from Puntarenas, sobbing. She'd been evacuated with the rest of the Control Room staff and hadn't known who all was alive or dead until Claire picked up the phone.
No one's seen Owen, but that's not surprising. He'd wandered off sometime after Claire had patched him up and she'd told him about Charlie. She thinks, irrationally, that maybe he's gone off to bury her.
She hasn't heard from Lowery either, or Viv, or whoever's now in charge of Masrani Global. Simon's sister Kala, maybe, or his nephew Ari. She knows that Viv will have uploaded that conversation she and Owen had with Hoskins to the Internet at large, but she hasn't heard any fallout. Cell service is spotty, though, what with the dinosaur fight that wrecked half the new tower.
"Aunt Claire," Gray says sleepily, raising his head up off her leg. "Is that Mom?"
Across the room, Claire's sister spots her sons and comes running, hand flying to her mouth. Claire lets them go. All three of them collide in the middle of the hangar, hugging each other and whispering. Karen's crying.
"You're okay," she says, and throws her arms around Claire's neck. "I was so worried, we heard on the news that people were dying and nobody knew where you were, and--"
Claire hugs Karen tightly and lets her babble. It's nice to let her older sister fuss over her every once and a while.
"Where are you going to go?" Karen finally asks, pulling back. She touches one of Claire's bruises lightly. "We heard they're closing down the park. For now, at least."
"I have no idea," Claire says honestly. "I don't know." She's not concerned about that, either. She's sure that she's still technically employed by Masrani Corp, but after everything she finds that she doesn't really care. She wants a shower and a nap and to spend time with her sister and her nephews somewhere that she's not going to die.
(Or she wants Owen. She hasn't decided, yet.)
"Well," Karen says, pulling her sons into a hug, one in each arm, "you're welcome to stay with us until you figure it out."
"Thank you," Claire says, and means it. She hates Minnesota, but it might be nice to spend a few days on Karen's couch. They can make cookies and celebrate a very weird Christmas. And she can shoot Karen's husband dirty looks over the turkey, which is a plus.
They stay together, catching up, Zach and Gray talking a mile a minute about the Indominus and how badass Claire had been, coming up with the plan to take it down, running against the T-rex and luring them both to the cell tower, where they were able to finally kill it. Karen alternates between indulging her sons and shooting Claire increasingly alarmed glances.
Finally, the ships arrive and FEMA staff usher them all out into the open. People glance around nervously, but there are so few pterosaurs left now that they don't dare dive down and try to pick a human out of the crowd. They wheel in the distance, content to watch. Somewhere on the island, Rexy roars. Claire, because while she's on Isla Nublar's soil she's still the Director, waits to get on the ship last, shaking hands and murmuring softly to frightened, exhausted guests.
There are only a few people left when Claire catches a flash of movement at the edge of the trees, and smiles.
Owen leans against a tree, bad leg propped up against his other knee, arms crossed over his chest. He smiles when he sees Claire. A new bandage is taped to his forehead and around his bitten arm. He's still pale, and he looks exhausted, but he's steady enough when Claire crosses the distance and hugs him. He's clean, for once in his life. He hugs Claire back, resting his chin on top of her head for a moment.
"You leaving?" He asks.
"My sister came," Claire says. "She's going to let me crash on her couch until Masrani Corp sends me somewhere else. What about you? Where are you going?"
Owen cocks his head to the side, eyes glittering. "I'm not goin' anywhere," he says. "Me and some of the other handlers--Sam, Barry, all of the Valley crew--we're gonna stay. Found 'em out in the Valley this morning trying to calm the trikes down. Someone's gotta take care of the animals until you convince InGen not to carpet bomb us all."
Claire sighs. She's not surprised, somehow. "And you think that I'm a workaholic," she mutters.
Owen grins and shrugs. From the trees, there's a soft chirp.
"Blue?" Claire says.
Blue slinks out of the shadows, coming to stand behind Owen. She chirps again, softly, and Claire can see the other two remaining raptors moving too, milling around, waiting for their Alpha to turn and join them.
"Yeah, well," says Owen. "So. If you ever get tired of your sister's couch. I have a cave floor? It's not much, but the view's great. You wouldn't be bored."
Claire grins despite herself. "Yeah?"
Owen nods, shoves his hands in his pockets. Delta comes out of the trees to circle Claire impatiently, nosing her hands for treats. Someone on the boat sees the raptor and screams. "We'll be here," he says.
Claire smiles. "I know." She looks back at the boat. She can't see her family, but she knows they're there. "If some of my staff is staying behind," she finds herself saying, not looking at Owen, "I probably shouldn't leave either, don't you think? It doesn't seem fair."
"No one's gonna complain if you leave," says Owen, but he's fighting a hopeful smile. Delta noses Claire again. Blue grumbles in the back of her throat. "Though if you stay, you might wanna get some better shoes."
Claire grins fiercely. She looks back at the boat one more time. She still has her phone. Karen wouldn't have to worry. She could come home for Easter. Karen is reliable above all else; she'll always be there when Claire's ready to go home.
Besides, she thinks she's earned a vacation.
"I think I'll manage," she says, scratching Delta's shoulder. Owen laughs.
"If you say so. Ready?"
"Ready," says Claire waves goodbye to whoever might be watching on the boat, turns on her heel, and runs.