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hat_writes_stuffTitle: Pack Dynamics
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Jurassic World
Characters: Barry, Delta, Claire Dearing, Zach Mitchell, Gray Mitchell, Vic Hoskins
Word Count: 3,247
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Pairing(s): Gen
Warnings: Canon-Typical violence (both canons), Canonical human character death
Author's Notes: I wrote this because I needed to know what happened, but it didn't fit in with Found In Translation-- which is all third-person-limited, from Owen's point of view. I liked how it turned out enough to polish it up and post it.
Also, I felt like I owed Tigriswolf Hoskins' death scene.
Summary: “Where are they going?” one of the mercenaries asks, on guard.
“Delta likes Barry best, and she was getting hissy. He’s gonna take her for a run, I think.”
While Owen waxes introductory with the Indominus Rex, Barry and Delta (and Claire, Zach, and Gray) have a little adventure of their own.
Previous Part
Barry leads Delta back to the paddock, parking while confused mercenaries look on, then going up to knock on the driver’s side window of the emergency vet van that Ms. Dearing has laid claim to.
She startles, but that might be more because Delta is behind him, rearing up to peer over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Owen wants some information from the labs, everything they’ve got on the Indominus. He says you have access to everything?”
“I-- yes-- um, you know you… have a shadow?” She points, cautiously, toward Delta.
Barry lies, sort of. “It’s very… heavy, where Owen is. Blue is Owen’s girl, Delta is more mine.” He’s not sure how he’s going to explain that Delta is playing bodyguard, in a loose sense of the word.
“Is she… safe? Around the boys?”
“Right now, Ms. Dearing, I feel safer with her than without,” Barry confides, and Ms. Dearing’s expression goes very quickly from confused (and still intimidated) to steely. Behind him, Delta shifts, so either something in Ms. Dearing’s scent has changed, or Delta is a lot better at reading human expression than Barry would have given her credit for.
“Right,” Ms. Dearing says. “Why don’t we all head to the Innovation Center? Boys, can you fit through that window and climb up here so Delta has somewhere to sit?”
It turns out the two boys who evaded the Indominus and repaired an ancient Jeep can in fact slide through the window between the cab and the bed of the van, and Barry waits until they’re up front, and Delta is watching them curiously, to convince her to go around the back.
“Where are you heading?” one of the InGen private soldiers asks. He has a bald head and a full beard; Barry will remember him.
“For a little ride,” Barry lies. “I don’t want to run her all night, but I don’t want her to think all the food your men bring is hers.”
“She gonna be okay in there with the kids?”
“It’s a vet van, if she misbehaves, I can make her have a nap.” That’s true enough, and he will if he has to.
They let him go. Barry gets the doors closed behind them, then holds out a hand for Delta to butt against. She obliges, accepting that New Things are happening, but starts inspecting the shelves, because she’s ridiculously intelligent and highly curious. “Delta? Down.”
She looks at Barry like she’s crazy, like why would she sit when she has things to investigate, but he repeats, “Down,” more firmly, and she flops with a huff. Barry grabs a safety strap and knocks on the pass-through window the boys have just crawled through.
It slides all the way open, which… is probably not the wisest decision anyone could have made, but it’s the youngest boy doing the sliding. “We’re ready to go.”
The van starts, Delta hisses, and up front, everyone startles. “It’s fine, she’s like a goose, she hisses to tell the world she hates it. She’s never been in here totally awake before.”
“Got it,” Ms. Dearing agrees, and they get moving. Delta refuses to stay laying down, and Barry isn’t going to use up her good graces by insisting, especially since she’s behaving really well, otherwise, investigating things that rattle and move-- which eventually includes the scenery through the front window.
“Delta…” it’s not a warning tone, it’s just to try to get her attention. “Out of the way, Delta,” which she should know-- she does know, and just shoots him a dirty look. She’s not, after all, getting in his way.
And somehow, he has to convince a curious raptor that she really needs to pull her head out of the cab. She’s not being aggressive, now-- she’s had two good runs, so she probably needs a little time to get her breath back before she’s ready to get aggressive.
“Mister Martine, there is a dinosaur breathing down my neck,” Ms. Dearing says, and really, she’s holding up better than Barry might have hoped.
“I’m going to tell you to do something that sounds crazy,” he says. “Keep your eyes on the road, but tap your head against hers. Not a head-butt, not a nuzzle, just a sharp tap. When she looks at you, and she’ll look at you, don’t make eye contact, you’re busy. When she’s looking at you, try to tell her she’s an obstacle and a pain in the ass just by saying her name.”
Ms. Dearing takes a deep breath and nods, and when Delta shifts a little to figure out why Ms. Dearing is holding onto the steering wheel, Ms. Dearing jerks her head and gives Delta a good tap, just under her eye. Delta jerks back, surprised, and stares at Ms. Dearing, who sounds like Satan’s frostiest deep-freeze when she says, “Delta.”
Delta still wants to look out the windshield, but she sidles over a little bit, out of Ms. Dearing’s way. (Closer to the boys, but they scrunch out of Delta’s way with respect in their eyes.)
“What did I just do?” Ms. Dearing asks.
“You told her like an equal that you need her out of your personal space right now. And then you terrified all the men in this car with your voice, good job, Ms. Dearing.” Maybe they should try to socialize the pack to more women.
But Ms. Dearing lets out a little huff of a laugh and keeps her eyes on the road. “Okay. Tap if they’re in your way. What else do we need to know to… uh, take her for a walk safely?”
Barry is not going to tell Ms. Dearing that he wasn’t entirely sure Delta would respond to being nudged by a human the way she’d respond to being nudged by a sister. “She’s not a dog, so she won’t appreciate it if you reach out and pet her. If she wants you to touch her, she’ll invite it. I’ll tell you if she’s inviting it. If she does let you touch her? Head and neck only. Her mind is mostly avian, so she’s likely to interpret petting or stroking anywhere below the neck as flirting.”
“No flirting with the dinosaur, got it,” the older boy agrees, quickly.
“You don’t know her clicker signals or her hand signals,” Barry tells them, smiling, “so if you try to snap your fingers or gesture to her, you’ll probably just confuse her. And if you smile, keep your teeth covered. Every animal but dogs thinks we’re going to bite them when we show teeth.”
“That’s useful advice in a lot of situations involving animals,” the younger boy agrees, and he keeps looking at Delta with terrified wonder. The last time the boy was this close to a carnivore, it was the Indominus, so Delta must feel very different. She looks at the boys now and then, but mostly she’s watching the scenery whoosh past. Even so, Barry is impressed that there is any wonder at all in the boy’s eyes when he looks at Delta.
“Jurassic World is very educational,” Barry says, amused. “Also-- she knows her name. If you say her name, you’ll have her attention, whether you want it or not.”
“Dogs will chase you if you run even if they like you,” the older kid says. “Is she like that?”
“She is. Most fast predators are, but a lot of the big cats are lazy. I don’t know if we’ll need to run, but if we do, we’re going to try to run with her, not in front of her, so we don’t confuse her instincts. It shouldn’t be too hard, she’s very fast.”
“But you can’t be sure she won’t get confused,’ Ms. Dearing says. “She knows you, not us.”
“She’s a wild animal,” Barry agrees. He can’t tell anyone about Owen’s gift-- telling Barry about it was a tremendous gesture of trust, and one Barry won’t betray, even to tell Ms. Dearing that Delta has been instructed by her father-figure and big sister to protect all four of them. Especially since he’s also not sure if Delta would be devastated by failure or if she’d metaphorically shrug and move on with her life. “No human will ever be able to trust her completely, which is why we have to meet her halfway and be smart. She hasn’t been around women before, but she can smell you’re female, and that you’re related to the boys. If you stay between her and them as much as you can, she’s not going to challenge you.”
“… Are you kidding?”
“Predators do not challenge a mother with young if they have any other choice,” Barry tells her, and that is very true-- “At least on land. A female animal is at her deadliest with offspring to defend, even if she’s normally a meek little herbivore. You already told my girl here that you are not meek. She respects you, and we’ll do what we can to make sure we don’t have to test that respect.”
“I’m not their mother,” Ms. Dearing says, “I’m their aunt. My sister’s their mother.”
“If you have any biological ties to them, she can smell it,” Barry assures her. “Stay between her and the boys and she’ll think you’re protecting them, and that if she challenges you, you might tear her eyes out even if she wins.”
“I really might,” Ms. Dearing admits.
“She can probably smell that, too.”
No one stops them on the way to the Innovation Center, and because Delta wants to hustle, they all jog their way to the lab-- Barry has to whistle to keep Delta from wandering off twice, but she refocuses well when at the sound. They aren’t in any kind of proper formation, because Delta isn’t hunting with them, and Ms. Dearing is working at both leading them where they need to go and at keeping herself between Delta and the boys. Barry is honestly impressed; these three have every reason to be terrified of dinosaurs, especially carnivores, forever after the day they’ve had, but Ms. Dearing is commanding and focused, multi-tasking easily on what she needs to do and how she has to hold herself, and the boys hustle and neither ignore Delta nor show the wrong amount of fear toward her.
He could almost relax.
Then they reach the lab, and hear glass clinking.
“They evacuated the labs,” Ms. Dearing murmurs, but Barry can’t help but think it looks as though the place has been looted.
Also, the door to Doctor Wu’s private lab is hanging open.
“Guys,” the older boy says, looking at the same door they’re all staring at-- breaking the tension and the hush. “You know how in movies, when they go ‘the place has been ransacked,’ and then they go look in the next room and the bad guy is right there?”
“Zach,” Ms. Dearing breathes.
“Yeah, you’re Gray’s defense against the raptor, and he,” Zach gestures tightly toward Barry, “can kind of understand her, so I’m gonna go open the door.”
They hold their breath.
Zach opens the door.
And nothing happens. Zach goes in, and because they’re moving as a herd now, they follow him.
Wu’s lab is not so torn apart, to the point where the computers are still running. Barry ignores those, for the moment, attention drawn to a set of vivariums, each with an animal inside. They’re too small to keep a goldfish sane and healthy, which Barry notes is a running theme for the day, but then his attention is filled-- nothing strikes him as odd about the albino snakes, or the chameleon (aside from the fact that the chameleon is going to die because the humidity is wrong and there’s inadequate airflow), but one of the occupants is a feathered monitor lizard, another, an axolotl with a dorsal fin more suited to a betta fish -- animals that shouldn’t exist, but more importantly, should have Delta’s attention as potential snacks. “Where--”
But a door hisses open, and men in black uniforms are filling steel coolers with some kind of frozen samples from the back of the lab.
“What are you doing?” Ms. Dearing pipes up
“I’m afraid that’s above your pay grade, honey,” Hoskins says, lumbering out of the shadows. Ms. Dearing slips herself between Hoskins and the boys, and Barry puts an arm out-- between Ms. Dearing and Hoskins.
“Where’s Henry?” It’s not a demand-- Ms. Dearing asks it like she knows she won’t like the answer.
“Doctor Wu, he works for us,” Hoskins tells her.
Gray pokes his head from around… everyone. “That’s not a real dinosaur.” On the screen is a computer rendering of the Indominus Rex, full-body, in profile view.
It’s probably Gray’s first clear, un-terrified look at the Indominus; it’s certainly Barry’s. The boys must not have been filled in about how hybridized she was, but before Barry can explain what he knows, Hoskins simply answers, “No, it ain’t, kid. But somebody’s gotta make sure this company has a future.”
No. No. It is too much-- Barry has heard this pitch, dinosaurs as weapons, and it is always madness.
“Imagine-- that one? Fraction of the size?” Hoskins is smiling now, certain of himself. Barry is certain that if Hoskins comes much closer to Ms. Dearing and the boys, he’ll strangle the man himself. “Deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technology. A living weapon unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and it doesn’t even take much to bring it to heel-- you saw what Grady did out there. He can go on about ‘wild animals’ all he wants, but they respond, they get it. You see, millions of years of evolution, what’d we learn?” Hoskins looms closer, and Barry steps more centered, more of him in front of Ms. Dearing and the boys. He’s not ultimately sure why, Hoskins isn’t armed that he can see, but Barry is operating on some hindbrain instinct-- protect the herd, defend the pack, be prepared to die if it gives the young and the female a chance to run. He half wants to tell the kids to run for the open door, even if he sees movement from the corner of his eye. Better men who don’t know to menace children than Hoskins. Hoskins apparently doesn’t care that no one is trying to answer his rhetorical question. “Nature is the gift--”
Delta snarls, hopping into the room, arms spread forward in a clear threat display, and Hoskins swears.
Barry nearly has a heart attack, and actually pushes Ms. Dearing and the boys back, away from Delta.
He realizes, suddenly, that Delta’s jump brought her directly between himself and Hoskins-- he thought he’d lost her, but she must have hidden from the InGen soldiers. Now, she sees a more direct threat-- Hoskins, making her handler afraid, making her handler use his body as a shield-- and she advances on that threat.
Delta is not a friendly girl. She likes Barry better than she likes Owen, most of the time, but he wouldn’t trust her not to eat either of them on a bad day. Delta has always hated Hoskins.
Hoskins, though, has never understood that, and he’s never going to understand that she hates him because he refuses to learn how to treat her, how to talk to her. How to respect her. Delta rumbles and pulls herself up to her full height-- a more subtle threat display, to show herself as bigger than her opponent even if it’s not really true. “Easy,” Hoskins tries, trying to copy Owen’s tactics with the girls without understanding anything that’s actually behind them. “Easy, boy. Easy!”
Barry doesn’t understand the raptors like Owen does, but he speaks their language well enough. Hoskins backs into a wall, and Delta snarls, musing. Thinking. It’s a call to pack, in its way; before she decides for herself what she wants to do, she’s opening herself up to input from someone she trusts, to a human call for eyes on me! or a raptor screel of that’s a food.
Barry stays silent.
“Hey, hey!” Hoskins offers, “We’re, we’re on the same side, right?”
They’re not. They will never be. Hoskins wants to take warfare back to the Middle Ages, using animals like weapons, and Delta is one of the animals he wants to feed to that abyss. They are not on the same side. If Barry had Owen’s gift, he would tell Delta so.
Delta has Hoskins cornered. He must stink of fear, tucked against the glass wall. Barry thinks of Mrs. Hoskins, who went after her husband with a steak knife, once, and got a wolf bite for her trouble-- or for her desperation.
Owen proved, that morning, that raptors can be dissuaded from a human target, if not happily or, without a gate to close, safely. Barry could, perhaps, call to Delta, call her to him, tell her she’s a good girl for scaring away the big bad man, but he’d risk himself, Ms. Dearing, Zach, and Gray if Delta were disappointed at being pulled away from her hunt. He has no gate to put between them, and nothing to give Delta to bribe her away from her chosen prey. Everything that isn’t Delta or Hoskins is silent. The boys hold their breath, and Ms. Dearing has a tight grip on Barry’s arm. “Right? Easy…” Hoskins holds out a hand.
Delta takes the hand, with a vicious screel and a lightning-fast snap of her jaws, and Hoskins screams. She always did hate it whenever Hoskins touched her.
Barry herds his charges through the door, back the way they came.
He doesn’t want them getting in Delta’s way. He doesn’t want Gray seeing what she can do to a human body; the boy is too young for that.
They’re partway down the hall when Ms. Dearing stops him-- “Quick question, for legal purposes,” she says, breathless. “You couldn’t have called her off?”
Barry shakes his head. “Not off that man.”
“… ‘Not off that man’ meaning…?”
“He annoyed her, pestered her, constantly. Tell you all that later. And she saw we were afraid of him.”
“… She was defending us?” Ms. Dearing asks, and he wishes he could honestly say that Delta was, that her intentions were pure rather than seeing an opportunity and taking it.
“More importantly,” Zach says, “Are we going to be in her way when she’s… uh, done?”
“… She’s done,” Gray echoes, and shifts behind Claire.
Delta has tailed them, posture proud and muzzle bloody. She chirrs at them, inquisitively, watching Barry in a way that he knows should unnerve him. He knows it should terrify him-- no, he didn’t watch her do more than bite Hoskins, but the screaming has stopped. The man is dead or bleeding out without strength, and the animal responsible is standing in front of Barry, looking expectant. He half expects her to screech at him, the two-syllable airy burst that means run, prey.
There’s only so long it’s smart to keep her waiting. “Good girl,” he tells her, slow, sincere, and with his best enunciation. “Good girl, Delta.”
“Those files are going to be more important now,” Ms. Dearing says, taking hold of the boys’ hands. “I have to be able to prove that we didn’t just sic an attack raptor on someone we don’t like.”
Ms. Dearing’s phone rings.
And Barry notices, at last, that Delta is still wearing her bridle-mounted camera.
Next Part
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Jurassic World
Characters: Barry, Delta, Claire Dearing, Zach Mitchell, Gray Mitchell, Vic Hoskins
Word Count: 3,247
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Pairing(s): Gen
Warnings: Canon-Typical violence (both canons), Canonical human character death
Author's Notes: I wrote this because I needed to know what happened, but it didn't fit in with Found In Translation-- which is all third-person-limited, from Owen's point of view. I liked how it turned out enough to polish it up and post it.
Also, I felt like I owed Tigriswolf Hoskins' death scene.
Summary: “Where are they going?” one of the mercenaries asks, on guard.
“Delta likes Barry best, and she was getting hissy. He’s gonna take her for a run, I think.”
While Owen waxes introductory with the Indominus Rex, Barry and Delta (and Claire, Zach, and Gray) have a little adventure of their own.
Previous Part
Barry leads Delta back to the paddock, parking while confused mercenaries look on, then going up to knock on the driver’s side window of the emergency vet van that Ms. Dearing has laid claim to.
She startles, but that might be more because Delta is behind him, rearing up to peer over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Owen wants some information from the labs, everything they’ve got on the Indominus. He says you have access to everything?”
“I-- yes-- um, you know you… have a shadow?” She points, cautiously, toward Delta.
Barry lies, sort of. “It’s very… heavy, where Owen is. Blue is Owen’s girl, Delta is more mine.” He’s not sure how he’s going to explain that Delta is playing bodyguard, in a loose sense of the word.
“Is she… safe? Around the boys?”
“Right now, Ms. Dearing, I feel safer with her than without,” Barry confides, and Ms. Dearing’s expression goes very quickly from confused (and still intimidated) to steely. Behind him, Delta shifts, so either something in Ms. Dearing’s scent has changed, or Delta is a lot better at reading human expression than Barry would have given her credit for.
“Right,” Ms. Dearing says. “Why don’t we all head to the Innovation Center? Boys, can you fit through that window and climb up here so Delta has somewhere to sit?”
It turns out the two boys who evaded the Indominus and repaired an ancient Jeep can in fact slide through the window between the cab and the bed of the van, and Barry waits until they’re up front, and Delta is watching them curiously, to convince her to go around the back.
“Where are you heading?” one of the InGen private soldiers asks. He has a bald head and a full beard; Barry will remember him.
“For a little ride,” Barry lies. “I don’t want to run her all night, but I don’t want her to think all the food your men bring is hers.”
“She gonna be okay in there with the kids?”
“It’s a vet van, if she misbehaves, I can make her have a nap.” That’s true enough, and he will if he has to.
They let him go. Barry gets the doors closed behind them, then holds out a hand for Delta to butt against. She obliges, accepting that New Things are happening, but starts inspecting the shelves, because she’s ridiculously intelligent and highly curious. “Delta? Down.”
She looks at Barry like she’s crazy, like why would she sit when she has things to investigate, but he repeats, “Down,” more firmly, and she flops with a huff. Barry grabs a safety strap and knocks on the pass-through window the boys have just crawled through.
It slides all the way open, which… is probably not the wisest decision anyone could have made, but it’s the youngest boy doing the sliding. “We’re ready to go.”
The van starts, Delta hisses, and up front, everyone startles. “It’s fine, she’s like a goose, she hisses to tell the world she hates it. She’s never been in here totally awake before.”
“Got it,” Ms. Dearing agrees, and they get moving. Delta refuses to stay laying down, and Barry isn’t going to use up her good graces by insisting, especially since she’s behaving really well, otherwise, investigating things that rattle and move-- which eventually includes the scenery through the front window.
“Delta…” it’s not a warning tone, it’s just to try to get her attention. “Out of the way, Delta,” which she should know-- she does know, and just shoots him a dirty look. She’s not, after all, getting in his way.
And somehow, he has to convince a curious raptor that she really needs to pull her head out of the cab. She’s not being aggressive, now-- she’s had two good runs, so she probably needs a little time to get her breath back before she’s ready to get aggressive.
“Mister Martine, there is a dinosaur breathing down my neck,” Ms. Dearing says, and really, she’s holding up better than Barry might have hoped.
“I’m going to tell you to do something that sounds crazy,” he says. “Keep your eyes on the road, but tap your head against hers. Not a head-butt, not a nuzzle, just a sharp tap. When she looks at you, and she’ll look at you, don’t make eye contact, you’re busy. When she’s looking at you, try to tell her she’s an obstacle and a pain in the ass just by saying her name.”
Ms. Dearing takes a deep breath and nods, and when Delta shifts a little to figure out why Ms. Dearing is holding onto the steering wheel, Ms. Dearing jerks her head and gives Delta a good tap, just under her eye. Delta jerks back, surprised, and stares at Ms. Dearing, who sounds like Satan’s frostiest deep-freeze when she says, “Delta.”
Delta still wants to look out the windshield, but she sidles over a little bit, out of Ms. Dearing’s way. (Closer to the boys, but they scrunch out of Delta’s way with respect in their eyes.)
“What did I just do?” Ms. Dearing asks.
“You told her like an equal that you need her out of your personal space right now. And then you terrified all the men in this car with your voice, good job, Ms. Dearing.” Maybe they should try to socialize the pack to more women.
But Ms. Dearing lets out a little huff of a laugh and keeps her eyes on the road. “Okay. Tap if they’re in your way. What else do we need to know to… uh, take her for a walk safely?”
Barry is not going to tell Ms. Dearing that he wasn’t entirely sure Delta would respond to being nudged by a human the way she’d respond to being nudged by a sister. “She’s not a dog, so she won’t appreciate it if you reach out and pet her. If she wants you to touch her, she’ll invite it. I’ll tell you if she’s inviting it. If she does let you touch her? Head and neck only. Her mind is mostly avian, so she’s likely to interpret petting or stroking anywhere below the neck as flirting.”
“No flirting with the dinosaur, got it,” the older boy agrees, quickly.
“You don’t know her clicker signals or her hand signals,” Barry tells them, smiling, “so if you try to snap your fingers or gesture to her, you’ll probably just confuse her. And if you smile, keep your teeth covered. Every animal but dogs thinks we’re going to bite them when we show teeth.”
“That’s useful advice in a lot of situations involving animals,” the younger boy agrees, and he keeps looking at Delta with terrified wonder. The last time the boy was this close to a carnivore, it was the Indominus, so Delta must feel very different. She looks at the boys now and then, but mostly she’s watching the scenery whoosh past. Even so, Barry is impressed that there is any wonder at all in the boy’s eyes when he looks at Delta.
“Jurassic World is very educational,” Barry says, amused. “Also-- she knows her name. If you say her name, you’ll have her attention, whether you want it or not.”
“Dogs will chase you if you run even if they like you,” the older kid says. “Is she like that?”
“She is. Most fast predators are, but a lot of the big cats are lazy. I don’t know if we’ll need to run, but if we do, we’re going to try to run with her, not in front of her, so we don’t confuse her instincts. It shouldn’t be too hard, she’s very fast.”
“But you can’t be sure she won’t get confused,’ Ms. Dearing says. “She knows you, not us.”
“She’s a wild animal,” Barry agrees. He can’t tell anyone about Owen’s gift-- telling Barry about it was a tremendous gesture of trust, and one Barry won’t betray, even to tell Ms. Dearing that Delta has been instructed by her father-figure and big sister to protect all four of them. Especially since he’s also not sure if Delta would be devastated by failure or if she’d metaphorically shrug and move on with her life. “No human will ever be able to trust her completely, which is why we have to meet her halfway and be smart. She hasn’t been around women before, but she can smell you’re female, and that you’re related to the boys. If you stay between her and them as much as you can, she’s not going to challenge you.”
“… Are you kidding?”
“Predators do not challenge a mother with young if they have any other choice,” Barry tells her, and that is very true-- “At least on land. A female animal is at her deadliest with offspring to defend, even if she’s normally a meek little herbivore. You already told my girl here that you are not meek. She respects you, and we’ll do what we can to make sure we don’t have to test that respect.”
“I’m not their mother,” Ms. Dearing says, “I’m their aunt. My sister’s their mother.”
“If you have any biological ties to them, she can smell it,” Barry assures her. “Stay between her and the boys and she’ll think you’re protecting them, and that if she challenges you, you might tear her eyes out even if she wins.”
“I really might,” Ms. Dearing admits.
“She can probably smell that, too.”
No one stops them on the way to the Innovation Center, and because Delta wants to hustle, they all jog their way to the lab-- Barry has to whistle to keep Delta from wandering off twice, but she refocuses well when at the sound. They aren’t in any kind of proper formation, because Delta isn’t hunting with them, and Ms. Dearing is working at both leading them where they need to go and at keeping herself between Delta and the boys. Barry is honestly impressed; these three have every reason to be terrified of dinosaurs, especially carnivores, forever after the day they’ve had, but Ms. Dearing is commanding and focused, multi-tasking easily on what she needs to do and how she has to hold herself, and the boys hustle and neither ignore Delta nor show the wrong amount of fear toward her.
He could almost relax.
Then they reach the lab, and hear glass clinking.
“They evacuated the labs,” Ms. Dearing murmurs, but Barry can’t help but think it looks as though the place has been looted.
Also, the door to Doctor Wu’s private lab is hanging open.
“Guys,” the older boy says, looking at the same door they’re all staring at-- breaking the tension and the hush. “You know how in movies, when they go ‘the place has been ransacked,’ and then they go look in the next room and the bad guy is right there?”
“Zach,” Ms. Dearing breathes.
“Yeah, you’re Gray’s defense against the raptor, and he,” Zach gestures tightly toward Barry, “can kind of understand her, so I’m gonna go open the door.”
They hold their breath.
Zach opens the door.
And nothing happens. Zach goes in, and because they’re moving as a herd now, they follow him.
Wu’s lab is not so torn apart, to the point where the computers are still running. Barry ignores those, for the moment, attention drawn to a set of vivariums, each with an animal inside. They’re too small to keep a goldfish sane and healthy, which Barry notes is a running theme for the day, but then his attention is filled-- nothing strikes him as odd about the albino snakes, or the chameleon (aside from the fact that the chameleon is going to die because the humidity is wrong and there’s inadequate airflow), but one of the occupants is a feathered monitor lizard, another, an axolotl with a dorsal fin more suited to a betta fish -- animals that shouldn’t exist, but more importantly, should have Delta’s attention as potential snacks. “Where--”
But a door hisses open, and men in black uniforms are filling steel coolers with some kind of frozen samples from the back of the lab.
“What are you doing?” Ms. Dearing pipes up
“I’m afraid that’s above your pay grade, honey,” Hoskins says, lumbering out of the shadows. Ms. Dearing slips herself between Hoskins and the boys, and Barry puts an arm out-- between Ms. Dearing and Hoskins.
“Where’s Henry?” It’s not a demand-- Ms. Dearing asks it like she knows she won’t like the answer.
“Doctor Wu, he works for us,” Hoskins tells her.
Gray pokes his head from around… everyone. “That’s not a real dinosaur.” On the screen is a computer rendering of the Indominus Rex, full-body, in profile view.
It’s probably Gray’s first clear, un-terrified look at the Indominus; it’s certainly Barry’s. The boys must not have been filled in about how hybridized she was, but before Barry can explain what he knows, Hoskins simply answers, “No, it ain’t, kid. But somebody’s gotta make sure this company has a future.”
No. No. It is too much-- Barry has heard this pitch, dinosaurs as weapons, and it is always madness.
“Imagine-- that one? Fraction of the size?” Hoskins is smiling now, certain of himself. Barry is certain that if Hoskins comes much closer to Ms. Dearing and the boys, he’ll strangle the man himself. “Deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technology. A living weapon unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and it doesn’t even take much to bring it to heel-- you saw what Grady did out there. He can go on about ‘wild animals’ all he wants, but they respond, they get it. You see, millions of years of evolution, what’d we learn?” Hoskins looms closer, and Barry steps more centered, more of him in front of Ms. Dearing and the boys. He’s not ultimately sure why, Hoskins isn’t armed that he can see, but Barry is operating on some hindbrain instinct-- protect the herd, defend the pack, be prepared to die if it gives the young and the female a chance to run. He half wants to tell the kids to run for the open door, even if he sees movement from the corner of his eye. Better men who don’t know to menace children than Hoskins. Hoskins apparently doesn’t care that no one is trying to answer his rhetorical question. “Nature is the gift--”
Delta snarls, hopping into the room, arms spread forward in a clear threat display, and Hoskins swears.
Barry nearly has a heart attack, and actually pushes Ms. Dearing and the boys back, away from Delta.
He realizes, suddenly, that Delta’s jump brought her directly between himself and Hoskins-- he thought he’d lost her, but she must have hidden from the InGen soldiers. Now, she sees a more direct threat-- Hoskins, making her handler afraid, making her handler use his body as a shield-- and she advances on that threat.
Delta is not a friendly girl. She likes Barry better than she likes Owen, most of the time, but he wouldn’t trust her not to eat either of them on a bad day. Delta has always hated Hoskins.
Hoskins, though, has never understood that, and he’s never going to understand that she hates him because he refuses to learn how to treat her, how to talk to her. How to respect her. Delta rumbles and pulls herself up to her full height-- a more subtle threat display, to show herself as bigger than her opponent even if it’s not really true. “Easy,” Hoskins tries, trying to copy Owen’s tactics with the girls without understanding anything that’s actually behind them. “Easy, boy. Easy!”
Barry doesn’t understand the raptors like Owen does, but he speaks their language well enough. Hoskins backs into a wall, and Delta snarls, musing. Thinking. It’s a call to pack, in its way; before she decides for herself what she wants to do, she’s opening herself up to input from someone she trusts, to a human call for eyes on me! or a raptor screel of that’s a food.
Barry stays silent.
“Hey, hey!” Hoskins offers, “We’re, we’re on the same side, right?”
They’re not. They will never be. Hoskins wants to take warfare back to the Middle Ages, using animals like weapons, and Delta is one of the animals he wants to feed to that abyss. They are not on the same side. If Barry had Owen’s gift, he would tell Delta so.
Delta has Hoskins cornered. He must stink of fear, tucked against the glass wall. Barry thinks of Mrs. Hoskins, who went after her husband with a steak knife, once, and got a wolf bite for her trouble-- or for her desperation.
Owen proved, that morning, that raptors can be dissuaded from a human target, if not happily or, without a gate to close, safely. Barry could, perhaps, call to Delta, call her to him, tell her she’s a good girl for scaring away the big bad man, but he’d risk himself, Ms. Dearing, Zach, and Gray if Delta were disappointed at being pulled away from her hunt. He has no gate to put between them, and nothing to give Delta to bribe her away from her chosen prey. Everything that isn’t Delta or Hoskins is silent. The boys hold their breath, and Ms. Dearing has a tight grip on Barry’s arm. “Right? Easy…” Hoskins holds out a hand.
Delta takes the hand, with a vicious screel and a lightning-fast snap of her jaws, and Hoskins screams. She always did hate it whenever Hoskins touched her.
Barry herds his charges through the door, back the way they came.
He doesn’t want them getting in Delta’s way. He doesn’t want Gray seeing what she can do to a human body; the boy is too young for that.
They’re partway down the hall when Ms. Dearing stops him-- “Quick question, for legal purposes,” she says, breathless. “You couldn’t have called her off?”
Barry shakes his head. “Not off that man.”
“… ‘Not off that man’ meaning…?”
“He annoyed her, pestered her, constantly. Tell you all that later. And she saw we were afraid of him.”
“… She was defending us?” Ms. Dearing asks, and he wishes he could honestly say that Delta was, that her intentions were pure rather than seeing an opportunity and taking it.
“More importantly,” Zach says, “Are we going to be in her way when she’s… uh, done?”
“… She’s done,” Gray echoes, and shifts behind Claire.
Delta has tailed them, posture proud and muzzle bloody. She chirrs at them, inquisitively, watching Barry in a way that he knows should unnerve him. He knows it should terrify him-- no, he didn’t watch her do more than bite Hoskins, but the screaming has stopped. The man is dead or bleeding out without strength, and the animal responsible is standing in front of Barry, looking expectant. He half expects her to screech at him, the two-syllable airy burst that means run, prey.
There’s only so long it’s smart to keep her waiting. “Good girl,” he tells her, slow, sincere, and with his best enunciation. “Good girl, Delta.”
“Those files are going to be more important now,” Ms. Dearing says, taking hold of the boys’ hands. “I have to be able to prove that we didn’t just sic an attack raptor on someone we don’t like.”
Ms. Dearing’s phone rings.
And Barry notices, at last, that Delta is still wearing her bridle-mounted camera.
Next Part
