Chapter Text
Owen’s gesture was simple, a faint shake of the head, but the regret in his eyes told Blue all she needed to know. He couldn’t help. At least, not right then. She didn’t understand what could be so important that it would make him leave them at a time like this, but she’d never understood what he did with the other humans that took up so much time. But as much as she wanted to chase the other three humans away and bury her head in his arms like a hatchling, she knew she had to trust him, just like he was trusting her. It was the same as always; when Owen had to leave, Blue was in charge. And now, that meant it was her job to take care of her siblings until he returned. She had to be strong for just a little longer.
As the raptor trotted off into the maze of steel, glass, and concrete, she felt a vague unease. The giant raptor was dead, and the other giant that looked a bit like the giant raptor but wasn’t a raptor wasn’t going to pick a fight any time soon. Besides, it probably wouldn’t stay in a place that smelled so strongly of humans. Most of the bad humans with thunder-sticks were dead – the pack had made sure of that – but more might come, and who know what else could be lurking inside the dark buildings? It would be best if they got out of this place and went home as soon as possible.
After retracing her steps to where the giant raptor had first attacked, Blue gave a pair of short barks, signaling the rest of the pack to gather. After a moment with no response, she followed it up with an “It’s safe” call. This time, she was answered with heart-rending cries of distress.
With a few exceptions, an injured animal of any species would instinctively hide any sign of weakness. To do otherwise would be like putting up a flashing neon billboard alerting any predators to an easy meal. This had been true hundreds of millions of years before the first dinosaurs, and would in all likelihood still be true hundreds of millions of years after. Even in social animals like raptors and humans this instinct was still present, and was what had kept Delta and Echo quiet while there was still a danger of attracting the giant raptor’s attention. But their voices had the unmistakable tone of an animal in so much pain that it bled through any façade of bravery.
For a moment, Blue panicked, head swiveling wildly from side to side, unsure who to go to first. Making a decision, she rushed to where Echo lay next to a large, shiny box and a destroyed window frame. As she approached, something stabbed into her foot, causing her to yelp and jump backwards. She approached again, more cautiously this time, and realized the ground was covered in shards of something see-through, like the blocks of ice they were sometimes given on especially hot days, but apparently very hard and sharp. With the amount of blood on the floor Echo must have been badly cut by the shards too, but her most obvious injury was even worse-looking and completely mysterious. All over the left side of her body the skin was discolored brown or even black, and in places the scales had been lifted into strange bumps… almost like bubbles. When Blue sniffed at the injury and nudged it with her snout, Echo squealed in protest, involuntarily lashed her tail, and seemed to stop herself just short of snapping at Blue. Evidently the wounds were extremely painful, and already had a strange, unpleasant scent, like sickness combined with… fire?
In fact, Echo had been thrown onto a gas grill during the fight with the I. rex, causing a mixture of grease and leftover gas to erupt into a fireball. She’d quickly skidded off the grill, and although even the brief exposure had inflicted serious burns, she’d been lucky enough to have her eyes shut and not breathe in any of the flames. But Blue had never seen an injury like this, and was completely confused and terrified by what had happened to her packmate. She was starting to regret letting Owen out of her sight.
Another shriek from somewhere behind Blue brought her back into focus. Right now she had to keep the pack together and alive until their alpha returned. She gave Echo a comforting nuzzle on her relatively unhurt face, then scanned the restaurant. Perfect! There were tables Echo could use to stay out of sight of any humans or predators that came looking for them. Blue pushed a couple over, throwing the chairs out of the way and sending the dishes left on top crashing to the floor. She gave a “come here!” bark and gestured to the rudimentary barricade with her head. Echo made a half-hearted attempt to get to her feet, but then slumped back to the floor with a soft whistling noise that was the raptor equivalent of a whimper. Their rudimentary language wasn’t as complex as that of dolphins, let alone humans, but “I can’t!” was an easy enough concept to communicate. It briefly crossed Blue’s mind that Echo might have been being intentionally difficult, but there was no way she’d still be lying on a floor covered with broken class if she could walk.
This was bad. Blue knew she had to check on Delta, but she couldn’t leave Echo here. Dragging the overturned tables to hide her would have been easy, but the sharp stuff covering the floor would still hurt Echo if she tried to move. Blue realized she would have to drag her sister to safety. There were two ways of doing so that she could imagine. The first was to wait by Echo’s side until she was calm enough to not try to kick Blue’s eyes out. Impossible. Blue could tell the only reason Echo wasn’t thrashing around in panic was because it was too painful to move; being manhandled without lashing out was out of the question. That left the second option: taking her by surprise. It worked surprisingly well. Blue was able to get a good grip on Echo’s tail the first try, and although the injured raptor screeched like a banshee and flailed wildly, only the backs of her legs were able to reach Blue’s head.
But as Blue limped out of the demolished restaurant, her head spun and her vision split into two ghostly images. She stumbled sideways and sank to the ground, panting. Now that the adrenaline from the fight was wearing off, every part of her body was starting to hurt at once. Her right arm and tail felt like they were being ripped off whenever she moved them, and her left sickle claw and two fingers wouldn’t respond at all. Every time she breathed, her chest erupted in pain like she was being slammed into the wall over and over again. But her pack needed her. She forced herself to her feet and staggered towards the source of the second set of distress calls.
Delta was nearly buried underneath the wreckage of a booth filled with plastic toys of some sort. As soon as Blue pulled away the debris, all concern for her own injuries evaporated. If anything, Delta was even worse than Echo. She lay on her side in a pool of her own blood, staring up at Blue with terrified eyes. Her breathing was so shallow and rapid it almost looked like she was shivering but not breathing at all. Two curved rows of deep puncture wounds ran up her side. Worst of all though, her left leg was bent and twisted at a nauseating angle midway between the ankle and knee. A huge wound had been ripped open at the break, and white bones were visible in the mess of blood and torn muscle. Blue had seen injuries like this before, but only on prey that the pack was in the process of ripping apart. Seeing her sister like this was surreal, like something out of a dream. Again, Blue had to fight the urge to flee, to find Owen or even Barry and drag him back.
She settled for making a distress call of her own, raising her head to the sky and letting out an earsplitting shriek. There. Owen had better have heard that. At the very least, Charlie would. She seemed to have ignored Owen’s whistle, but even if she had returned home (the paddock), the call would be audible. Blue’s call was different from Delta’s or Echo’s, with an inflection that indicated the pack was in danger, not just an individual – the closest human translation would be “Help me” vs. “Help us.” She knew she was taking a risk of alerting other predators, but while a lone, injured raptor might be an easy meal a pack was definitely not.
She crouched down next to Delta and pressed her forehead against her sister’s, cooing softly. Delta gave a weak chirp in response. Blue didn’t know it, but the sound was actually different from what a “wild” raptor on Isla Sorna would have used to comfort a frightened chick – unconsciously she was mimicking the voices of her human packmates. She moved her snout downwards, licking away the blood from one of the puncture wounds on Delta’s shoulder and rapidly opening and shutting her jaws a fraction of an inch as if she were pulling some soft material between her teeth. This was a legacy from Blue’s “ancestors” one hundred million years earlier; somewhere in the de-extinction process InGen’s Deinonychus, at the time classified as Velociraptor antirrhoppus, had lost their feathers, but the preening instinct remained. She would have done the same thing with Echo, but she’d made it obvious that her wounds were extremely painful to have touched… plus, the sharp clear stuff had hurt enough when Blue stepped on it; she didn’t want pieces of it in her tongue.
As Blue worked, both raptors grew calmer. Delta’s pupils were still partially dilated in the park’s dim lights, but when Blue first found her the color in her eyes was barely visible.
Time passed. Blue went back and forth between Delta and Echo’s hiding places multiple times, but there was still no sign of Owen or Charlie. At first her absence was mostly annoying, but now Blue was beginning to worry. There was no way she couldn’t have heard her distress call, and by now any surviving members of the fat human’s pack would have escaped. Unless Charlie had wandered off and fallen asleep, she had to be in trouble, or – no, Blue didn’t want to think about it. The humans did have those strange shiny sticks. The pack had seen them carrying them around before, but dismissed them as no more important than the coverings humans wore over their bodies. But in the battle at the clearing, the humans had pointed the sticks at the raptors, and they’d made deafening BANG!s and flashes of light, and the giant raptor had roared in pain. At the time, Blue’s pack was too frightened by the sudden sound to wonder what the thunder-sticks actually did, but it was obvious they were dangerous. But none of them had heard Charlie cry out, she just wasn’t with them when they went after Owen and one of the humans’ moving nests. But surely nothing could kill too fast for Charlie to make a sound…
Then Blue remembered something. There was another kind of shiny stick the humans had used on the raptors a few times. They shot what looked like teeth with feathers that made whatever they hit fall asleep, and every time they’d been used Blue had fuzzy memories of being in white, strange-smelling rooms with unfamiliar humans milling around and touching her with cold objects. Owen had always gotten them out, and had never seemed too concerned, so eventually they became less afraid of the white rooms, even if they were unpleasant… but now he wasn’t here. Charlie was on her own. The bad humans could have hit her with one of the sleep teeth, and taken her away. It all suddenly made sense! The teeth hurt a little, but in the chaos of the fighting one could have been mistaken for a thorn. Was that what had happened?
Blue knew she had to go back to find Charlie, but she also knew she couldn’t leave Delta and Echo. In their state they’d be helpless on their own. She hadn’t even tried to get Delta to the shelter; it was obvious she couldn’t walk. If the humans came back… A horrible thought crept over Blue. If the humans came back, it wouldn’t matter whether she was there. Even if she avoided the thundersticks herself, Delta and Echo were too far apart for her to protect them both at once, and moving either of them would only hurt them further. She looked around. There were plenty of things to hide behind, but the place was too brightly-lit. It would be impossible to separate one human from the rest of its pack.
Maybe she could just run to the clearing where the fight had happened and try to pick up Charlie’s scent. It wasn’t that far; if Charlie had gone home like Blue hoped, they could easily be back by dawn, and there were always fewer humans around at night anyway. Delta and Echo would be okay for that long, even if Owen or Barry didn’t return by then. They had to be.
Blue paced around the ruins of Jurassic World’s Main Street, looking and listening for the slightest sound or movement that might indicate a hostile dinosaur. There was nothing but the rustle of leaves and the flicker of fluorescent lights. Satisfied, she checked on her sisters again, giving them each a comforting lick. Echo reciprocated the gesture, but Delta just groaned and shifted slightly like she was half-asleep. Blue didn’t tell either of them to keep still and silent until she returned. She couldn’t, the thought was too complex for their simple language. All she could do as she sprinted into the darkness was hope they could understand anyway – or better yet, that they wouldn’t have to.