Chapter Text
When he was first contacted about a job at Jurassic World, Owen studied all the texts on raptors, both old and new. Dr. Alan Grant had the most information on raptor vocalizations and behaviors, but the few paragraphs included by Eric Kirby, the kid that was once stranded on Isla Sorna, were the best for what Owen needed to know.
“Somewhere in my first week on the island,” Kirby wrote in Alan Grant’s newest book, “I ran into the main velociraptor pack. I managed to get away by crawling into the vents of one of the InGen buildings that was left behind, but even then I noticed the way they looked when they tried to surround me. Their eyes were cold, calculating. The closest raptors didn’t make a sound, and I didn’t even know they were behind me until a bird shrieked above us.”
Owen has read all the texts. He knows the basics of every type of dinosaur on both islands. He’s ready to tackle this project. He’s always had a way with animals, he used it as a kid to show off then in the navy to train dogs and dolphins. He is good at what he does, and he’s confident in his abilities.
Then the first egg hatches.
It’s the sixth batch, but Owen insists on being there for each hatching despite Dr. Wu’s disapproval. Owen has seen dozens of velociraptors die at this point.
He watches as sharp claws pierce the outer shell of the egg, slowly tearing open the material. The animal moves slowly. She’s just a baby, he knows, so her muscles aren’t at their best, but even now he’s sure those claws could rip out his throat with no effort.
With his breath caught in his throat, he steps closer to the egg. He’s in one of Wu’s lab rooms. It’s set up to be almost a nursery, with an incubator and some shelves full of tools and preserved meat. There’s a chair in the corner, though it doesn’t look too comfortable.
A yellow eye peers out from the gap in the egg. Owen stares back at it, unblinking. He smiles as a noise comes from the egg, a raspy chirp that sounds a lot like a lesser form of what Dr. Grant called the ‘help’ cry. He wonders if a human throat can make that noise. He’s always been good at replicating animal cries, but a velociraptor is a little different. He knows he can do a rough approximation of the ‘koh’ cry, the one they use to call to each other and a bunch of other things, he used to try it out when no one could hear him.
Wu said specifically not to touch the raptor, to handle it with safety tongs. Owen ignores that advice immediately.
With careful hands, Owen gently picks pieces of egg out of the hole and holds the egg still as the raptor chirps again, her actions rocking the shell and cracking it in a few places. He grins and watches as the raptor creates a big enough gap to fit her whole head through.
Oh, she’s beautiful.
Her scales are soft yet distinct with pronounced eye ridges and the most wonderful blue color streaking down her neck from around her eyes.
This one, his mind thinks. This one is mine.
His fingers reach out to touch without his brain’s permission, and he carefully avoids poking at her mouth. Her teeth peek through her lips. They look sharp.
Slowly, she exits the egg. Her limbs seem to be too heavy, and she falls flat on her face as Owen removes his hand from the equation, wary of claws and teeth. He chuckles, a grin pulling at his lips.
She’s absolutely adorable. He was going to call her Bravo, but that blue streak is really getting to him. He’ll call her Blue.
He helps her up and definitely does not swoon when she chirps against his skin. There’s a chirp bubbling up his throat, but he pushes it back down. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself or make the baby freak out ‘cause he says the wrong thing in her raptor language.
That yellow eye blinks up at him, and her snout twitches against his hand. Her lips part to reveal her teeth once again.
“Ah ah ah, none of that now, Blue,” he chides instinctively, the pointer finger of his other hand coming down to stroke her nose. “No biting your alpha, okay?”
She chirps again. It sounds like an assent, but Owen thinks he’s reading too much into that. She’s just a baby ( also an animal, Owen’s subconscious screams at him).
He feeds her pieces of meat from the pouch that Wu left him. He’s careful to correct her any time she tries to bite his fingers instead of the food, just a quick verbal correction along with a gentle nudge. Soon she’s not snapping at his fingertips at all.
Another egg, Delta, starts to shake. All four eggs hatch within the next few hours.
Delta, the second born, is a wonderful teal color with a personality that’s already emerging. She’s almost feral in the beginning, and Owen has to pull her teeth out of his skin more than once. As her sisters hatch, she’s calm enough to watch everything proceed with her wary yellow eyes.
Echo, the third hatched, is brown and orange, with barely visible blue stripes across her back. She takes after her name immediately. Her calls ring in Owen’s ears, a mix of the ‘koh’ alert cry and the chirping warble of a coo. She’s needy, always clinging onto Owen’s shirt with her claws and teeth.
Charlie, the last born, is the most like the dinosaur toys that Owen grew up with. She’s a light green with greenish-black stripes across her back from her head to her tail. She’s constantly bobbing her head up and down in a miniature threat display, but Owen knows it’s not just a threat. She’s excited to be with her sisters and her alpha.
By the end of the night, Owen has done most of the work required to imprint on them, and he’s even picked up some of their calls.
Blue, his little blue-striped raptor, won’t let go on him, her claws in his ripped shirt as he settles into the only chair in the room. His raptors are walking around now, leg muscles strong enough to hold them up. Blue tucks her head into his armpit and whuffles. A purr vibrates through her body with just enough growl to remind him that these are vicious predators. He can’t help but hold her to his chest just the same.
Charlie and Echo settle at his feet, jaws placed carelessly over his ankles, and Delta uses her claws to scale his pant leg and settle in his lap.
Strangely, he feels more at home here than he ever did in the Navy or when he was a kid. He shouldn’t think about that too hard. He’s always connected more to animals than to humans, he knows that, but it’s still odd to relate so much to these tiny creatures who can kill him without a shred of remorse.
Velociraptors
Four months later, Owen and his girls are a cohesive pack. They’re big enough now that he can’t carry them around everywhere. If he has to guess, they’re probably the size of fully grown golden retrievers, and their voices have deepened and roughened enough to send a chill down any sane person’s spine. Owen is not sane. He calls back to the raptors with his own modified calls. His human throat will never be able to truly match the raptors’ speech, but he can approximate them well enough.
They live fully inside the paddock now, with Owen sleeping in the side cabin. InGen hates it when he interacts with his raptors without bars in between them, so Owen makes sure to do it as much as possible. He loves to piss Hoskins off. It’s one of his favorite pastimes, especially when he has to work hard to stop Delta from taking a bite out of the man.
Owen understands these animals in his bones. He doesn’t even have to try. Barry, on the other hand, has more trouble understanding the long-extinct velociraptors.
“How did you get ‘when is Hoskins leaving,’ from a head nod?” Barry asks, exasperated. “They are raptors, Owen, wild animals. I know they are smart, but I doubt that they have a sense of time in the way you are implying.”
Owen snickers and locks eyes with Delta, the raptor in question. She twitches her tail and breathes out loudly, her way of saying [stupid humans] with an [amused] undertone. His grin grows wider.
“I hate it when you have secret conversations with them,” Barry says under his breath.
Owen hears it, of course he does, but he doesn’t reply. People generally freak out when he does something he shouldn’t be able to do, like hear a whisper or see a small detail that anyone else would have missed.
“Then maybe you should learn to read them,” Owen snarks back, grin widening as his friend groans. Delta chuffs [amused] more forcefully this time.
Charlie and Echo burst from the bushes behind Delta, making the girl snort and wave her tail in velociraptor superiority. The two warbling raptors push each other and slip in the mud beneath them.
“What are they saying now?” Barry asks. For all the indifference and disagreement he has about raptor intelligence, he’s never given up on trying to understand them. Owen loves that about him.
Owen cocks his head and listens, “Echo is baiting Charlie about a lizard that she caught, but Charlie is focused on getting Echo to the ground, so she’s not really listening.”
Barry shakes his head and mutters under his breath in french.
“How do you know Echo is talking about a lizard? Is there a specific word in raptor to imply a lizard?”
“Nah,” Owen smirks, “she’s just excited about her catch, which makes me assume it's a lizard. Echo loves chasing lizards around the pen.”
That's not the whole truth, and he thinks Barry can see that. Owen knows things about his raptors that he shouldn’t be able to, things like the fact that Echo warbling in this exact pitch combined with the hint of the smell of stale blood in the air means she just had a snack, and the fact that one particular grunt of hers tells him that it was a lizard. He’s tried to teach Barry what he knows, but his friend just doesn’t get it. Owen has resigned himself to being alone in his peculiar understanding of his raptors.
Tyrannosaurus Rex
A year into the raptor project, and his girls are big enough that Hoskins won’t let him touch them anymore. They’re not allowed to leave the paddock, and Owen’s not allowed in. He hates Hoskins with a passion after that.
Barry tells him to calm down, to not make any rash decisions, but it’s been weeks since Owen’s been allowed to touch his girls. He needs to see them, to be with them without any barriers in between them.
He bribes Lowery in the control room to hack the cameras that watch the paddock and arranges all the raptor paddock workers to be in the park for the night.
At midnight, Owen opens the cage doors.
His girls come racing out, calling out with a chuff-shriek that means [alpha]. Blue is at the head of their formation. She embraces him first, front claws wrapped around his waist and jaw resting on his shoulder. He can feel her hot breath on his neck. The human in him should tremble in fear, but the alpha in him rumbles with pride. He runs his calloused hands down her scales, settles them on her long neck to dig his nails in just enough.
He greets his girls one by one, careful of their sharp claws and teeth.
When he’s ready, when the moon is at its peak, he steps back and calls out a sharp ‘koh!’ His girls respond in kind, then they are off into the forest, disappearing into the trees and blending against the greens and browns of foliage.
He runs beside them. Some primal instinct inside of him roars with satisfaction, and without his permission a shriek of [victory, pack] escapes from his throat. His girls shriek back at him, [alpha, pack, victory!]
They move through the jungle as one. The raptors are slower than they could be to match pace with their alpha. They weave through trees and dart past bushes.
They’re outside the main park, but Owen has made it his job to know everything about the ins and outs of the geography. He knows his way through the jungle surrounding this side of Jurassic World.
He leads his pack on instinct with Blue at his side, Delta at hers, and Charlie and Echo falling behind them.
It isn’t until he stands with heaving breaths, head tilted up to glance through the metal bars, that he realizes where they are. He took them to the outside of Rexy’s enclosure. Why did he do that? Probably because he knows the path by heart, hopefully not because the raptor mentality inside of him is calling for a fight.
His girls tip their heads back and sniff, long and deep. They know where they are. They’ve heard Rexy’s bellowing roar before, but they’ve never been this close to her cage. Echo chitters and turns to Owen with an [old one, territory, fight?]
He snorts, shaking his head, [no fight, no win], and faces back to the cage.
If he sharpens his hearing and vision, he can just sense Rexy’s presence staring back at them. She’s vicious and old enough to be rightly confident in her place on the island. She steps forward, and the ground shakes when her foot hits the dirt.
Her face peers down at them, jaws open to show rows of sharp teeth.
She steps closer, presses her snout to the bars. Her nostrils flare once, twice. Hot air billows through the bars and ruffles Owen’s hair.
He steps back but keeps his posture strong. His girls follow his lead.
Rexy snorts, a tinge of [amused] in her breath, and turns away to lumber back into the trees of her pen.
Huh. Owen knows he can understand animals better than most other humans, but he thought his understanding of the raptors’ language was due to time and experience. But then how can he understand Rexy? It could just be that his raptors and Rexy are genetically similar enough that he can make that leap, but Rexy’s speech is different. Her words are in her breath, in her eyes, while his raptors speak with their voices and their posture.
Blue’s teeth gently tug at his arm, jerking him back to the present. [Home?]
“Home,” he replies out loud.
They turn as one and race back into the forest. Owen pushes away his human thoughts and immerses himself in the raptor mentality. He is the alpha, he is a raptor, he is a human. He is a mimic.
At the border of trees facing the raptor paddock, Owen stops. He whistles to direct his girls in, but Blue stands next to him as her sisters enter the pen.
Her snout nudges his neck, sharp teeth so close to fragile skin, and she purrs a question, [okay?]
He breathes, in and out, then nods.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
She nips at his neck gently, teeth not breaking skin, and leisurely walks back into her enclosure, Owen following. He closes the gate behind her, runs his hand down her scaly snout through the bars. Her breath hits his face.
[Alpha human], Blue snorts, making his palm pause in between her nostrils, [but alpha also raptor].
Of course she knows what’s bothering him. Blue has always been more perceptive than her sisters. Her grasp on human culture and language is more in depth than most human children.
[How both?] he asks with a chuff-whine.
[Alpha is alpha]. That seems to be all of what she has to say, as she snorts one last time before trotting into the swath of trees that fill the enclosure.
Owen sighs. His forehead drops to rest against the metal bars of the gate. It’s so simple to Blue. From an animal’s point of view, Owen is who he is, but from a human point of view Owen is an aberration, an anomaly. He shouldn’t be able to do what he can do.
No, he draws back and shakes his head. He shouldn’t waste his thoughts on shoulds or woulds, he is who he is and he cannot change that.
He retires to his bungalow with his swirling thoughts.
Mosasaurus
His girls aren’t big fans of water, besides Charlie. Owen and Barry have a bet going on whether or not Wu spliced some fish DNA into Charlie’s genome, but Owen insists there’s no fish DNA at all. He’s done some research, and the Green Iguana fits her perfectly.
Anyway, tangent aside, Charlie absolutely loves everything to do with water. It’s one of the reasons Owen never took the pack through the park to see the mosasaurus when he was introducing them to all the other dinosaurs. Socialization is important, but that is a risk Owen will not take. Charlie would just jump in and be done with it.
But it’s been about a year since he last had to worry about one of his raptors having enough lack of wisdom to jump into the Mosa tank. Maybe that’s why he forgets.
The park is shutting down for the next three days for maintenance. Normally this wouldn’t affect Owen, but he has decided to make it his problem. It’s been too long since he was able to go out and about with his girls. After the stunt he pulled to visit Rexy, Claire has had the cameras of the paddock reinstalled and banned Lowery from accessing them, then sent an angry email to Owen and Barry. So he hasn’t been able to really run with his girls in months.
He’s at his breaking point. He needs to see his pack, touch them and run with them, without InGen and Claire breathing down his back.
He emails Simon Masrani with a request: to run a scent-hunting hide and seek drill in the empty park. Look, Owen knows that Claire and Hoskins will say no, so why not skip the middlemen? He puts it eloquently in his email, this would be the best opportunity to see how trained and isolated raptors react to foreign dinosaur scents and appearances.
Then, the day before Jurassic World’s shut down, Claire Dearing sends a park-wide email telling everyone to make themselves scarce on the third day of maintenance at the threat of death by velociraptor.
(He receives another email from Claire, this one with many curse words and warnings about how insane he is and how his death is imminent. He ignores that one.)
The one requirement from Masrani is to avoid the aviary. It’s a good rule, as Owen isn’t too sure that his raptors would let the pteranodons and other birds fly around without trying to catch them and eat them. Delta in particular is a surprisingly good jumper.
“You sure you don’t wanna come with us, Bar’?” Owen slides his knife into the sheath at his back and twists to face Barry. His friend is frowning, eyebrows raised.
“Unlike you, I am not insane.” He sighs when Owen gives him a look. “Fine. Unlike you, I am not freakishly adept at communicating with the raptors.”
Owen grins and nods, glancing back to the paddock. His girls are patiently waiting behind the gate. Charlie is hitting Echo with her tail and snorting each time Echo fails at biting it. Blue and Delta are being perfect ladies.
“Have fun with the girls,” Barry says. He’s already backing up towards his ATV, and he shoots Owen a grin. “I’ll be in the air conditioned control room making sure that no one catches you doing anything too inhuman.”
Owen barks out a laugh, his girls echoing it. His grin grows.
He turns to them, hands on his hips, “Alright, ladies! Where do we want to go first?”
[Small ones!] Echo screams into the air. Her shriek makes Charlie bat at her with her tail once more.
“You wanna see the compys first? We can do that. Anything else on our must-see list?” He is already planning the best route to take them where they’re going to go in his head.
Delta croaks out an [old one.]
“Alright,” he nods, moving towards the control panel. He flips some safety switches off and presses the button to lift the gate. “I’m sure Rexy will be happy to see us. Y’all ready to go?”
His girls nod and shuffle on their feet, tails swinging with excitement.
“Then let’s go.”
He’s using his bike today so his girls can run full speed. They haven’t gotten to stretch their legs like this since they were babies, and Owen appreciates the wind in his hair as he rides between his girls.
They burst into the park at full speed, and Owen pulls to the front of the pack. He leads them through deserted streets and past abandoned shops in the direction of the t-rex enclosure. He hopes he doesn’t scare the guys in Control too badly. No, who is he kidding, he loves scaring the tech nerds and security guys.
He rides up the cobblestone roads with his girls at his back. They’re close now.
He hears a squawk from behind him, [play!]
Owen glances back, letting his bike slow, and groans as he catches sight of an excited Charlie wagging her tail so hard she’s about to fall over. His youngest girl races past his now stalled bike without a second thought.
“Charlie,” he calls. No reaction. “Charlie, get back here right now or I swear to god I won’t hose you down for two weeks!”
She doesn’t stop moving. What is she running towards? There shouldn’t be anyone out in the open, and his phone isn’t ringing to suggest that his raptor is running into any staff, so what is she doing?
He takes off after her, full speed again, and feels his pack do the same behind him.
[Water], Blue shrieks over the sound of the wind. [Charlie-sister, play, water].
Oh shit. Owen totally forgot about the Mosa tank.
He pushes his bike to a higher speed and prays that they can get to his girl before she makes the rash decision of jumping in. His youngest girl has never been great at decision making when it comes to water.
They pass Rexy’s enclosure and hear her roar, the sound vibrating Owen’s body violently. He pushes down the instinct to roar right back.
Wait a minute. That might work.
Charlie is just ahead now. She’s still a few meters away from the edge of the pavement leading into the lake, but the curve of her neck says she’s preparing to jump. Owen takes a deep breath in and exhales it all in a shriek of sound.
[STOP]
Charlie falters in her run, tripping over her feet and tumbling across the pavement to come to a rest right before the Mosa railing. She twists her head up to watch Owen approach on his slowing bike.
She peeps, [water?]
[No water], Owen snort-chuffs. He swings himself off of his bike and stretches his tense muscles. [Bad Charlie].
[No bad], Charlie heaves herself to her feet and whines low, her tail wagging slowly. She’s pouting in raptor body language. [Charlie water].
Owen scowls and warbles, [Water have big one, big one eat Charlie].
Her affronted squawk makes him chuckle. She skitters away from the railing to hide behind Owen and Blue, dodging Echo’s tail as she does so.
[No eat], she chitters to the water, her snout barely peeking through Blue’s legs.
Owen sighs. Sometimes he overestimates his girls. He forgets that Wu designed them for accelerated growth without taking account of mental maturity. They may be as tall as him with claws sharper than any blade, but they are still only a year and a half years old. Research suggests they’ll reach full maturity around five years of age. Almost there , he reminds himself.
A low, vibrating rumble makes his hair stand on end. He crouches lower without thinking, his teeth bared in a useless snarl. Blue does the same at his side.
[Little], the rumble says. It’s warped by the echoing of water.
Owen relaxes slightly, the tension leaving his posture as he stands fully and smiles. Blue shrieks a warning ‘koh’ beside him. Delta and Echo surround Charlie, letting their tails box her in, their own ‘koh’s calling out.
The Mosa won’t understand English, but it seems like she understands Raptor. Owen straightens his shoulders and walks forward, ignoring the chittering-shrieks of his pack behind him. He steps right up to the railing.
There she is. The Mosasaurus looks up at him from the depths below. Her big eye takes him in. He feels Blue step up next to him cautiously, and watches as the Mosa opens her mouth just the slightest bit to let a low rumble out again. This one has no meaning other than being curious.
[No harm], he calls in a shrieking roar. His throat is definitely going to hurt after today. [Little ones leave big one].
The Mosasaurus tilts in the water, just slightly, and drops her lower jaw further to let out a gentle bellow, [Little].
Owen cocks his head. Is that the only word that carries over into her language? Interesting.
[We leave now], he calls.
He meets Blue’s eye, and they back up together.
The concept of time is always tricky to convey to an animal, even in their own language. Raptors are smart, especially his raptors, but they sometimes struggle with it. Blue rarely struggles, but she’s an anomaly, like Owen. She probably knows enough English and French to fill a novel, just as Owen knows some animal languages like the back of his hand.
The Mosa bellows something like a goodbye, and Owen swings himself back up onto his bike.
“Now, is that enough action for one day, or do we wanna see some more dinos?”
All four raptors chitter their excitement at the idea of more exploring, even the normally unflappable Blue. Charlie is back to her normal self. Her tail is high and her forelimbs are flexing, claws gently raking against the scales at her front.
“Do we wanna double back to see Rexy? Or are we done with big animals for now?”
[Small ones!] Echo shrieks.
“Alright, compys it is then.”
He starts up his bike again, the roar loud enough to drown out Echo’s squeal of excitement, and leads them out of the Mosa viewing area, towards the gentle giants petting zoo.
Compsognathus
The compys are nothing special in Owen’s opinion, but Echo is obsessed with the little brats.
The pack approaches the glass enclosure. Owen hangs back with Blue as Delta and Charlie pad forward, Delta slightly behind because she hates the compys since she’s not allowed to eat them. Echo is already pressed right against the glass, warm breath fogging it up.
Echo chirps softly, almost a peep.
There’s movement on the other side of the glass, and Owen watches as a few small green heads appear from the foliage. They approach the glass slowly. It seems they are ignoring their instincts in the face of a chirping lizard. People think he’s crazy for trusting these four apex predators with his life, but the stupid compys are the real insane ones. They look at a foreign apex predator and decide, hey, why don’t we approach that.
Blue snorts, eyes fixed on Echo’s rapidly wagging tail.
“I know, Blue, I know.” Owen rests a hand on the back of his beta’s neck to scratch at her scales. “Your sister is weird.”
Echo is so involved watching the curious compys that she doesn’t reply, but Blue snaps her teeth in agreement with him.
“Delta,” he calls. Delta and Charlie’s heads swing around in unison to stare at him. “Do you have any suggestions for the next stop on our tour? Charlie and Echo have gone, you’re next on that list.”
At his side, Blue chuffs, but he ignores her.
Delta cocks her head, yellow eyes unlinking as she thinks, then, [fly?]
Owen barely refrains from facepalming. This isn't a surprise. While Charlie has always been water oriented, Delta has always been bird oriented. He and Barry think Wu added avian DNA to her genome. He wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly sports feathers one day in the future.
“We can’t go to the aviary today, but we could stand outside if you want.”
Delta lets out a mournful ‘koh,’ her head and tail swinging low.
Owen raises an eyebrow at the display. He smiles as Blue snaps her teeth in Delta’s direction, this time more in amusement than agreement.
“Let’s give Echo some more time with her friends,” Owen chuckles. Blue mimics his laugh, bottom jaw bobbing up and down. “Silly lizard.”
He laughs again as Blue turns to stare at him, affronted.
Pterosaur
“You know,” Owen drawls to Blue, “they’re not even considered dinosaurs.”
She snorts and gives him a blank look.
“I mean, yeah, they’re so modified that we can’t even be sure they’re similar to the original clade of pterosaurs, but pterosaurs from back then aren’t called dinosaurs either. A dinosaur is a creature descended from the orders Saurischia and Ornithischia. Pterosaurs aren’t from those, so they aren’t dinosaurs.”
Blue snorts again. [Why talk?]
He glares lightly at her, “This is important information, clever girl. Just because you don’t fully understand English doesn’t mean my words aren’t important.”
She shakes her head and chitters, [Blue understand, alpha boring].
He gasps dramatically at the squeals of laughter that Charlie, Echo, and Delta let out. Delta looks over at him from where she’s standing close to the aviary glass and snorts loudly to convey her amusement.
“Betrayed, by my own beta,” he murmurs.
His girls chitter. Delta turns back to the glass and taps her long sickle claws against her scales. Blue leans so her jaw rests on Owen’s shoulder. They watch Delta stare at the flying creatures inside the glass dome with poorly covered hunger. She curls her neck back, and Owen whistles sharply before she can pounce to break the glass. Delta whines but pulls away.
“We done now? I bet Claire is halfway through a panic attack with how long we’ve been out here.”
His girls perk up and shuffle into a line in front of him, heads bobbing up and down in agreement.
“Blue, was there anything you wanted to see before we left? Now’s the time.”
His beta taps her hind claws against the ground in thought. She lets out a rough ‘koh’ and strides past him towards the fence that separates the park from the forests. That’s a definite no.
“Alright then,” he turns his bike to catch up with Blue. “Let’s go home girls.”
When his pack is settled safely back in their paddock and he has let Control know that the park is safe to return to, he collapses onto his couch, beer in hand, and sighs. His muscles ache from the ride.
He knows that if he checks his email he’ll get an earful about his lack of concern for his own safety from Claire and Hoskins. He does not check his email. Instead, he switches his phone to silent and turns on his tv to watch reruns of a crappy comedy show from the 90s.
Life is good.
Indominus Rex
Owen’s had a bad feeling lately. It’s like he’s constantly on edge these days, like there’s a threat to him and his pack but he can’t see it yet. He hates this feeling. His girls feel it too, he’s sure, as they spend their days growl-shrieking at the paddock workers and patrolling their territory.
His girls are almost three years old. Their birthday is in about a week, and Barry has a surprise party planned full of raptor-safe cake made by the veterinarians on the island.
He has to run drills with his girls these days to demonstrate to InGen that his research is paying off, which can be fun but usually isn’t. Hoskins is barely bearable on a good day, but after each drill he’ll come up and slap Owen on the back like they’re good friends, and it takes everything in him not to bare his teeth and claw out Hoskins’ insides.
Hoskins is finally letting up on the idea that raptors can be used as weapons, thankfully. All it took was an intern falling into the enclosure and getting his arm ripped off (they reattached it. The intern was being an idiot and pretending to be Owen as if the raptors were cute, harmless puppies.) Owen hates Hoskins slightly less now for the new worldview.
Owen sits on the dirt near the gate of the paddock, outside so the workers won’t panic. Barry is sitting in front of him. His friend is regaling him with an old war story of his father’s, gesturing animatedly and making his voice lower to accentuate his father’s accent. It’s times like these that Owen doesn’t think he could love Barry more.
He’s in the middle of laughing at one of Barry’s jokes when his phone rings. Barry pauses to allow Owen to get his phone out and check who it is, smirking as Owen groans and shows him the caller id. Claire.
With a glare at the screen, he sets his phone to vibrate and ignores the call. He isn’t the greatest fan of the women, especially after their failed date and the way she talked about his raptors like they were nothing more than robots.
Before Barry can pick back up on his story, his own phone rings. It’s Claire. Despite the silent protest that Owen makes, Barry answers the phone with a fake smile on his face.
“Ms. Dearing,” he drawls, “so nice to hear from you today. Is there something you need? Oh, you need Owen. I’m afraid he cannot come to the phone right now. Why? That is a good question.”
Owen exhales slowly, glares, and holds out his hand for the phone. Barry hands it over with a bright smile.
“Claire,” he says through gritted teeth, “what’s so urgent that you had to call Barry over it?”
“Mr. Grady,” she ignores the scoff he lets out at that, “I have a proposal for you. And by proposal I mean a demand from Simon Masrani himself.”
He sighs. “What do you need?”
Apparently Jurassic World created a new dinosaur, and Masrani wants Owen to come and make sure its enclosure is secure. Owen disapproves, but he has no choice. He hops on his bike and takes off at the instruction of Claire to meet her there.
He pulls up to the enclosure with dread rising in his gut. It’s small for what Claire was vaguely describing to be a large dinosaur. He has a really bad feeling about this.
Claire leads him up into the viewing center, talking about the newest ‘asset’ all the while. There’s a security guard in the corner that waves to him, so he waves back. It’s good to keep a healthy relationship with security in case Owen needs something from them in the future, also he really hates it when security guys threaten his raptors.
Then he looks out into the paddock.
His heart skips a beat, and every instinct in his entire being tells him to run, to escape, to take his raptors and flee into the restricted zone of Isla Nublar.
“Mr. Grady?” She must notice his pause, his hesitation. “Owen?”
He can’t see the new dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, but he can feel her. It’s in the way his hair stands on end and the raptor mentality in him roars to be set free and fight the threat.
Claire seems to ignore his lapse in reaction as she turns to the guard, “Where is she?”
He presses a few buttons and shoves the rest of his donut in his mouth. The alarm flares to life. The screens around him turn red with warnings of a missing heat source. Owen catches all of this, but he doesn’t take his attention off the inside of the enclosure.
Claire is freaking out, muttering to herself about claw marks and tracking the creature from the control room.
Owen holds out a hand in a sharp motion, and she and the guard fall quiet.
“She’s here,” he rasps. His throat is better suited for a loud ‘koh’ at this point, but he holds it back. “She’s still inside.”
“What? Owen, that’s impossible. The scanners say there’s no heat signature in the enclosure.”
He barely pushes back a snarl, “Then she’s modulating her body temperature. I’m telling you, she’s still in there. She set a trap with the claw marks, she wants us to go in.”
“That’s insane, Mr. Grady,” Claire snaps. “It’s an animal, it doesn’t set traps.”
The guard hesitates, “Why do you think it’s a trap, Grady?”
“‘Cause it’s what my raptors would do.”
Oh. That’s part of what is setting Owen’s hair on end. The Indominus is part raptor. He can feel it in his bones, smell it in the air, and it makes him even more tense.
“I will not entertain this crazy idea any longer,” Claire growls. It’s a very human growl, not impressive. She takes out her phone and taps at it aggressively, then holds it to her ear, “I’m calling Control to check where her tracker is.”
Owen hears a subtle tremor in her voice. She’s scared. He almost wants to laugh at that, scream at her that this is what she’s in charge of, this company that plays God. He doesn’t. He turns to the guard and meets scared eyes.
“Can she hear us in here?” he asks. He needs to know, just in case.
The guy nods slowly, consideringly, “I think so, yeah. She can see us because of her heat pits, and Rexy can hear through the viewing area’s glass, so why not?”
Claire is muttering into her phone, eyes anxiously scanning the inside of the enclosure. He watches as her face falls and pure fear enters her eyes. Her legs tremble where she stands.
“What? What is it?” Owen steps closer to her.
“The-- the tracker. The tracker isn’t working. Control says it’s been destroyed.”
That isn’t good news, but Owen is sure the creature is still in her cage.
He has a bad idea.
People already think he’s insane, so what’s a little more? He can’t possibly damage his reputation further by doing what he’s about to do, so he might as well do it. Oh god, Claire might actually kill him if this works.
“Claire, don’t leave. Your ‘asset’ is still in there, I promise you, and I know how to lure her out. If you leave now and start setting off alarms all across the island, Jurassic World will never recover. I need this job.”
She’s shaking now, but she bites her lip and stays where she is, phone clenched in her hand at her waist. She nods.
Okay, he can do this.
He steps up to the glass, close enough that his breath fogs against it, and brings his hands up to cup his mouth. He breathes, in and out, until his posture is strong once more. He pushes any trace of fear from his mind. He is Alpha.
[KOH, KOH], he calls as loud as he can. Instinct says to warble for his pack to hear and come to aid in the upcoming fight, but he can’t do that. He needs to connect with the Indominus. This thing doesn’t have any good relationships, he needs to forge one with her without the pack behind him.
Silence as the tension builds. Then, there, a rustling in the trees. A red eye peers out at him from between the leaves. That red, so different from his girls’ yellow, holds an intelligence that Owen has only seen before in Blue.
A loud roar echoes through the open space, vibrating the glass so harshly that Claire takes a few hasty steps back.
[DAD], the roar says in a rough mix of basic raptor and t-rex. [SAME, HELP, CAGE]
Something in Owen breaks. He swallows roughly and presses his palm to the glass. His breathing is shaky as he exhales the breath he had been holding, but he hears Claire begin to breathe normally behind him, sure that her asset is where it’s supposed to be.
The big, bad monster is mentally a baby, while, judging by the height of the red eye, her body is just bigger than Rexy’s.
Rage pours through his veins at that realization. His vision darkens, and he feels a growl build in the back of his throat. He turns to Claire, turns his back on the poor child that just wants to feel safe. His nails dig into his palms at his sides.
“How dare you,” he grits his teeth, keeps the shout out of his voice if only to stop the Indominus from thinking he’s mad at her when he’s not. “She is a child! What gives you the right to play God like this, huh? What gives you the right to trap a poor child inside a cage she can’t even properly run in?”
He’s seething, he knows, and he watches as Claire flinches before pulling herself up and setting her jaw, her eyes hard.
“This is my job, Mr. Grady, and if I am not mistaken, it’s yours as well. You will not speak to me that way.”
In the back of his mind, he sees that glint of guilt in her eyes. He knows that she’s starting to realize what she’s done, what she’s made, and she feels so guilty for it. At this moment, he doesn’t care.
He turns his back on her, hackles raised, and faces the Indominus once more.
[Safe], he calls in a gurgle-shriek. [Alpha protect baby].
She rumbles, and that red eye is fixed back on him.
[Safe], he calls again. [Safe].
The room trembles as the red eye moves. What he thought were leaves previously now change color and shape to form the white scales of the Indominus Rex, and the brown of bark fades to a light gray of osteoderms on her back.
Oh, she is beautiful. She needs a name , he thinks to himself with a low hum as he watches her fully emerge from the trees.
He hears Claire gasp behind him, either from the rough sounds that came from his very human throat or the sight of the full Indominus Rex. He ignores it without thought. His attention is on the beautiful creature in front of him.
[You, name?] he asks in a modified ‘ka-koh.’
She tilts her large head and blinks. [NO]
He could name her Indy, it would go with her species, but that doesn’t feel right. He could give her a name starting with A, especially if she doesn’t end up joining his pack. There’s Foxtrot, the next letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet. That one feels better.
“Foxtrot,” he whispers, then chitter-roars, [Foxtrot].
She blinks in reply and drops her jaw to bellow a loud [YES]
“Owen,” Claire’s shaky voice interrupts the silence that comes after such a loud roar, “please tell me you are not communicating with it.”
“That would be lying,” he mutters absentmindedly.
She audibly inhales, exhales, then says, “What the hell is happening?”
“Well,” he glances back at her while keeping his body facing Foxtrot, “you put a super-intelligent animal in an enclosure that might have fit her when she was in her egg, then you proceeded to keep her isolated both mentally and physically until she determined her only way to interact with the world is to attack it in every direction.”
The guard clears his throat, “I think what Ms. Dearing means to ask is: what the hell just happened?”
“Ah, that’s a more complicated question.” He turns back to meet Foxtrot’s red eye. “The short answer is that through my work as an animal behaviorist and my time with my raptor pack, I learned the basics of raptor speech. It turns out that the Indominus Rex is part raptor, so my knowledge came in handy.”
“What did she say?” Claire’s voice is faint. He almost feels bad for her… almost.
“She was scared,” he knows his voice is soft in the way it only gets when he’s talking about his raptors, but he can’t help it. “She can’t even break into a sprint in this tiny ass cage, and she acted out because of it. She’s mentally a child. All her words are basic and said in an odd accent, she had no socialization to prepare her for life.”
Claire swallows hard, “That’s… I don’t know what to say to that.”
Her words bring his anger back, and he sets his shoulders and raises his chin as he spins on his heel.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he demands. “You are going to get on that fancy phone of yours and call Simon Masrani. Whatever plans you had for her are over until I say otherwise, and I do not plan on saying otherwise at any point in this lifetime.”
She chews on her lip, nods.
“Next, you will order an extension to be built onto the raptor paddock. This one will be big enough for Foxtrot here to sprint at full speed in every direction, no arguments.”
She closes her mouth with a click and nods, scowling.
“Within the next day, you, Masrani, and InGen will authorize me to take my raptors out of their paddock and visit the Indominus Rex, without an armed escort. Trust me, Ms. Dearing, the Indominus won’t have any chance to escape while my pack is around.”
“That will be difficult to authorize,” Claire says, a far-off look in her eyes. He lets her think without interrupting her. She focuses back on him with a grim smile, “I’ll pull some strings. What else?”
“Not much. I don’t really care what happens after that as long as nobody messes with me or my girls, including Foxtrot here.”
She licks her lips, nods again, “I think I can make that work.”
“Good.” He turns back to face his new girl. Her scales are fading back into the greens and browns of the forest, and he grins. “Hey there, Foxtrot. You’re gonna be okay soon, I promise.”
The Pack
Introducing the raptors to their new sister goes way easier than he could ever have imagined. All it takes is a barked ‘koh’ from their alpha for Foxtrot to try to imitate it. Blue immediately steps up, body in the alert pose. She recognizes the raptor scent in the air. There’s more to the scent though, and she turns to Owen, head cocked.
[Little?] she asks in a barked warble.
[Baby], he replies in a chitter. [Big, baby].
Blue barks out a low ‘koh,’ and then she and her sisters are locked in a stilted conversation with a super-intelligent baby raptor hybrid.
It takes an hour of calling to each other through the high concrete walls for Blue to get frustrated. She gets close to ramming one of the walls before Owen pulls her back. She doesn’t seem to understand why Foxtrot is caged. Her sisters don’t either.
[Humans fear baby, baby big, baby sharp], he tries to explain. His throat is sore from all the shrieking and barking, but he continues on. [Alpha make humans move baby to pack home soon].
She snorts in derision and shakes her head from side to side frantically, [stupid humans].
He nods, “Stupid humans.”
It takes a week of working nonstop for Asset Containment to construct a shelter strong enough to keep the Indominus in. It’s not as tall as it should be, yet, but it’s big enough for her to run in. In that time, Owen brings her pack to visit their new sister every day.
Owen and his raptors escort Foxtrot to the raptor paddock personally. They have a hard time getting her mind to focus on the trail and not the new sights, smells, and sounds that come with being outside of her enclosure, but they manage it. His girls are three years old now, they’re basically professionals. Getting her into the new paddock is much more difficult.
He ends up staying in the new paddock for two days as Foxtrot gets used to the open space and to being around the raptors up close. Barry calls him crazy but provides him with clothes and food all the same.
[Baby safe], Delta chitters softly into Owen’s bare side as they lounge in the middle of the new area. His shirt tore early that morning from an overenthusiastic Echo. [Pack safe].
He hums, [baby safe, pack safe].
Foxtrot waves her long tail, hitting a few trees as she does so, and turns to bellow at them with Charlie hanging onto her rocky back with sharp claws. The youngest raptor has been sulking since it set in that she wasn’t the youngest in the pack anymore. Her sisters have been distracting her with playtime for the last few hours. It turns out that Foxtrot makes a great jungle gym.
Foxtrot’s roar echoes through the forest, [SAFE]