She is falling.

Water rushes around her, sucking and pulling her through the shattered glass until she is on the floor.

People are screaming. Raptors are screaming. Everyone is screaming.

There is a mask over her face, tubes down her throat.

She panics.

She claws at the mask, yanking the straps from her skull. There are other straps and other tubes, wires, needles under her skin. She pulls them all out, violently freeing her skin from their touch until none are left. She stills, curling into a ball as guns crack and glass showers over her in glittering shards.

The air is sweet and bloody. She tastes it, savours it, and pulls it greedily into her lungs.

The room smells of red, of metal, of blood.

This place made us, she thinks, this place controlled us.

This place is being painted with red.

The noise shifts, moves, and soon the screaming and guns are outside. The raptors are still shrieking. Defending, hunting, attacking. They will be free, even if freedom is not something they truly understand.

The humans are prey. The humans are running. The humans are afraid.

Good, she thinks, let them tremble.

The floor is cold and wet under her cheek, and broken glass presses against her skin threateningly, but she waits until the sounds are further away before pushing to her feet. She slips and slices her hand open on her old container trying to stay balanced.

A low hiss shivers in her chest. Blood runs down her palm, her arm, dripping to the floor. Enough of her blood has been spilt in this room. She plucks a stray shard from the wound and licks the blood away.

Engines roar, people scream, something explodes.

She laughs.

The bodies are still warm, some still move. She finds one, and knows its smell, its shape, and nudges it onto its back.

"Six," the doctor coughs, blood foaming in the corners of his mouth. His stomach glistens from within the slit over his belly, intestines hanging in ropes beside him. "Six, help me. Please."

"No," she says, and he wheezes. Never has she spoken to him, them, though she could. "I will not."

Her voice is low and ill-used. She can make other sounds, like the raptors, more easily.

"You-You," he reaches for her, shredded labcoat stained red, "I made you. You are mine. I order you to help me."

She sets a foot over his chest, talons curling down. She could hook them over his ribs and pull them out, if she wanted to. Watch his heart flutter before ripping that out too. It must be an ill, shriveled looking thing.

"I am me," she says, "I am my own."

She hates.

He is dying. She will not help him.

"Wait, don't-" the rest of his words gurgle, red drip, drip, dripping from his mouth. He splutters, reaching, stretching for her as she steps away. She watches as him struggle.

The doctor dies, spluttering and choking, and she is glad.

She tears a strip from the clean part of his coat and ties it around her hand.

More bodies are in the next room, two still moan and cry. She ignores them. Their faces are remembered, their faces will be forgotten.

She comes across the cages. The raptors are smart, they have broken free, and incidentally, freed her. The body of a guard is mutilated and torn at her feet, uneaten. They would have known his face too, would have seen his hand over the buttons that open the cages and the manacles. She takes the keys from his belt.

The screaming has finally stopped, and the thunder of helicopters roars overhead. The raptors may enjoy their freedom for a while, or they might come back and feast. She does not know what they will do, so she runs through the hallways, locking doors behind her as she goes.

She remembers which keys go where, as she has been walked through these halls many times. Sometimes with a collar around her throat and two guards over one, sometimes muzzled, sometimes so tired she can hardly walk.

Her room, her cage, is at the end. The others are empty, where once they were full. She is the last.

The number six is bold on her door, stark and black like the ink on her left shoulder.

There is a bed in the room. A dresser with uniform grey and black clothing within. She takes off the stretchy clothing they make her wear when she goes into the tank, and puts on the softer clothing. It sticks to her skin, but it will dry. She will grow still - the doctors said that she grew so fast - so she leaves the cages behind and collects items from the quarters of those she hates. The doctors, the scientists, the humans.

There are bags and suitcases, open and left strewn around half-full. She fills one and carefully packs the rest away. She will come back as she needs too.

Then, she leaves.

She is free.

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It is raining, storming, howling, when she steps outside for the first time - ever.

It is wonderful. A dream.

The grass feels good under her feet, and so too does the rough bark of the trees against her hands. She walks, trots, runs. Wind pushes around her, eggs her on as she runs faster and faster. This is different from a treadmill. Better.

There is a man called Tarzan in one of her books. He would use the trees to travel, swinging and jumping and climbing, high and safe. So she goes up, claws her way into the trees, leaping from branch to branch, keeping her scent from the ground where the raptors might pick out her trail. They are smart, she knows, and now the people know how smart they are too.

A roar shakes the air. It is long and heavy, bruising her ears, but she laughs and chases the sound. Higher and higher into the trees she goes. This dinosaur is big, she knows.

The raptors are not the only ones free.

The last of the people are piling into cars and trucks, and the great spinosaurus chases them. Her snout is long and full. Full of teeth, full of blood. Guns do little but annoy her, and she chases the people towards the aviary.

She watches from a distance, safe in a tree, and waves goodbye.

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She makes her way to the herbivore pens, and fumbles with the buttons until she finds one that unlocks the gates. The gates open, and she watches as they slowly lumber from the pens and explore. Drawing draughts of new smells into their lungs, cautiously spreading out of their pens. Lightening startles them, urging them into movement, and they leave their cages behind.

They bray and bellow when she tries to come closer, so she climbs back into her tree and watches from a distance.

"Now we are all free," she says to no one.

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Storms wash the ground clean and tear more of the fences down. She finds an observation room tucked up in the fork of a giant tree, hides from the bigger storms, and finds that she likes this cabin. It is not metal and white, but wooden and comfortable. She makes it hers, fills it with whatever she likes.

She knows how to read, because the doctors wanted to know how smart she was and taught her, and finds books that will teach her what plants can and cannot be eaten. Survival books, they are called.

She will survive out here, just as before. The others like her died, one after the other. Defects, they were called. But she had been strong.

She hates.

She learns.

Time passes, and the dinosaurs begin to change. Some of the girls become boys over time, and then many small dinosaurs join the herds. She grows like they do, bigger, stronger. She hunts, she plays, she lives.

The short tail above her rear grows longer, heavy with muscle. She runs faster, leaps from the trees like the monkeys who chitter and hiss at her. The raptors did return, she discovers, making their nests near one of the creeks, so she stays out of their reach.

She sees them sometimes, grey shadows leaping underfoot, and calls down at them if they are not hunting. They don't know what to make of her, and warn her off with rumbles and flashes of teeth, but they do not attack. Not even when she climbs to the lower branches and croons calmly.

The humans had wanted her to talk with the raptors. It is part of why they made her, they said, we know you understand them, we know you can make their sounds. Control, is what they wanted.

She refused.

When she starts hunting larger prey, she is sure to separate a portion from her own with the pocketknife she found in the cabin. This portion, she drops from the trees. The raptors eat her offers. Again and again, she does this, and over time they do not snarl and bark when she bounds through their territory without bothering to hide.

The alpha never lets her near the nests, and she does not mind this. The raptors protect their young.

Eventually, she begins to run along the ground again, though never near the nests, and sometimes sees shadows glide through the forest. They don't attack. The raptors just watch, and she finally gets to explore again.

The island is big and dense, scattered with the touch of humans, and she follows the roads to where they lead. One leads to the other side of the island, curving back towards the center. The road becomes a path, a path that takes her through a ribcage, but after tapping the bones she finds that they are fake. Hollow and plastic. It leads her to a clearing full of buildings, the largest is an entrance hall she thinks. Inside, there are paintings stretching over one of the walls.

This was supposed to be a research facility, she knows, a park for academics and scientists. Unlike the other park, Jurassic Park.

She remembers a lot of the things the people said when they thought she was not listening.

There is a smaller laboratory in another building, the adjoining stables full of bones and rotting things. A functioning facade, she thinks with a hard click of her claws against the floor, nothing like what they were doing in the place they made her.

She finds another room called a Gift Shop, and laughs at the things within. There are piles of soft, squishy things. Toys, she learns, and maybe she remembers having something like this when she was very little. After finding a bag, she stuffs it to the brim of the soft toys. They are dusty, but she likes them.

She drops one that looks like the raptors to the pack on her way back. They sniff it and dance around it, unsure what it is, before the younglings charge in and tear it to shreds.

There is no meat within, only a white fluff. She laughs as they whine and claw it from their mouths.

In apology, she give them a whole dryosaurus the next day – sans one limb for herself.

The alpha eyes her, and snorts, biting off a section and sniffing the innards before letting the young near it.

Time passes, and everything grows.

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She nearly gets eaten by the spinosaurus one day.

The big girl finds her chasing a flock of compsognathus. One moment, she is bouncing around the squawking group and flicking their green hides with the backs of her talons, the next a snout full of teeth is snapping shut a hair from her nose.

She rolls to the side, bursting into the fastest sprint she can manage. The spinosaurus roars and gives chase. Her heavy steps shudder in the ground, her hunger taints the air. Big, dangerous, beautiful.

She changes direction and lunges for the nearest tree, scrambling up using her claws before the spinosaurus can turn around. Her legs are strong, and she bounds up and up and up.

"Missed me," she laughs, legs and tail swinging as her breath comes hard and fast, "I will call you Alice."

Alice roars and snaps her teeth.

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The same day that Alice tries to eat her, she slips and falls from the trees.

It would not have been alarming, had she not fallen near the raptor nest.

Instead of scrambling to her feet, she slowly looks up, and the alpha is no more than an arm length away. Her eyes are yellow and watchful. She slinks closer, head high and neck arced.

She shivers, croons in her throat and keeps her teeth hidden. No challenge, no aggression.

The other raptors circle, clicking curiously and sniffing, even as they keep the young away. They have never been this close to her before.

The alpha sniffs, snout pressing to her temple, and she holds still, trembling.

With a huff, the alpha backs off and lazily settles down by her nest.

The other raptors investigate now that their alpha has deemed her not a threat, and she carefully sits up. Noses bump against her, teeth flashing when they chitter, and she cautiously chitters back. Bored, some go back to chewing on bones, and when she stands, they merely watch her leave.

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She comes back, and they remember her.

She smiles.

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The alpha only chuffs when she drops in to play with the young now. The other adults wriggle and play with her, perhaps thinking that she is a raptor too, only a very strange looking one with a human face. The regular pack members sometimes leave with her, run with her, chase fish through the shallow creeks or herd the compsognathus in circles until they wobble and fall over.

She is not pack, but she is a playmate.

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A raptor, she calls her Sickle, trots along at her side as she goes back to the laboratory, the real one.

The building is slowly being reclaimed by the forest, vines twisting through the hallways like veins. She has come to collect the clothing she had hidden away; that which she wears now is tight and uncomfortable.

She hates this place.

"I was made here," she says, laying a hand over the raptors neck. The scales are hard but warm. She loops her arm over completely and presses her face into that warmth. "You were made here."

They were not born, she knows. They were made. In tubes, in needles, in computers.

One, an attraction. One, a weapon. Both, experiments. Both, treated like things.

A skeleton in a labcoat with the hem torn off lays in her path. With a snarl, she kicks the skull across the room. It skids into a wall, clunking loudly in the quiet. Despite being nothing but bone, she can still see those cold eyes staring at her.

She rumbles, tapping her killing claws against the tiles, and turns away.

Sickle sniffs at the bones, snorting, and moves on. She follows the raptor into the next room, and scowls.

Sickle clicks her teeth, nose pressed to one of the few glass containers left unbroken. Within is an embryo of another like her, but dead. Defective, they had said. Spines sprout from a misshaped, humanoid face. One arm is huge and twists over on itself. The body is small.

Sickle croons, tilting her head and peering at her. She realises that a high whine is building in her throat, and forcibly stops the noise. A tightness sits in her chest, and she finds a warm wetness sliding down her cheeks. It is not blood that comes away on her fingers though, but salty liquid.

She hates.

She smashes the glass with a rock and gently wraps the body in a blanket once the liquid has drained. She buries it at the base of a tree, tapping Sickle's snout when she gets too curious and noses the disturbed dirt.

"I am sorry," she says, "I will call you Dawn."

She carves the name into the tree.

Sickle stays with her, and when she tries to leave, the raptor grabs her shirt with her teeth and pulls. She pulls and pulls until they are back with the others. The young squeak and circle her feet, jumping into her arms when she crouches. Sickle croons and settles down to sleep.

The alpha chuffs, watching her with the young but making no move to separate them.

She laughs, and sleeps with the younglings sprawled over her that night.

It is warm.

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A hunt goes wrong.

The ceratosaurus disturbs the herd as she stalks a young gallimimus that wanders a little too far from the fringes. The sudden roars and bleats give her little warning, and then they are upon her.

She runs, ducking, dodging, leaping. A triceratops nearly skewers her, and she has but a moment of time to think that she will make it, when a tail slams into her side. She careens forward, landing wrong and something in her chest cracks.

Pain swallows her senses, pulls her apart with cruel hands until she cannot breathe. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. A shriek is strangled in her throat, for she has not even enough air for that. She shudders and whines, darkness clouding until she blacks out entirely.

When she wakes, it is quiet. Eerily so.

Fear is a bitter, sharp taste on her tongue. The grass planes are open, she is exposed here, alone, weak. She calls for help when she cannot stand on her own. It may work, it may not. The pack tolerates her, but she is not one of them.

The alpha responds, her call ringing out from the silent forest.

She nearly chokes on her own relief.

Sickle is the first to find her. She stamps her feet and flicks her tail, barking in distress. The others slide through the grass, circling and searching for danger. They smell her blood, and Daisy, the beta, slips closer. Her snout hovers over the skin scraped in the fall

She keens, stomach clenching and lungs hiccupping. Broken ribs, she thinks, or maybe fractures.

A scream blisters from her when Daisy bumps her chest. Sickle lunges forward and snaps at the beta, forcing her way in between the raptor and she. It starts a fight, the two raptors snapping and hissing at each other.

The alpha barks once, loud and sharp, and the pack skitters back. Slowly, the alpha comes to her side, nosing her arm until she slings it over a strong neck.

"I think," she gasps once she is on her own two feet and not threatening to vomit all over the raptors hide, "I will call you Queen."

They try and herd her back to their nest, but they do not have medical books and first aid kits. She leads them to her cabin with a few encouraging chirps. Only after she has slowly made her way up the ladder and is inside do they leave.

She had left this morning before the morning dew had even evaporated, and now sunset turns the sky orange.

There are books about bones, books about healing, stacked in one corner. She flicks through them, reads, and hopes her lungs have not been pierced and the breaks are clean. It is agony to feel the bones and press her fingers over the purpling skin, but she has to know what and where. Two breaks, she guesses.

The diagrams and descriptions are enough, so she binds her chest like the instructions say, stops herself from vomiting long enough to secure the bandages, and tries to sleep.

Agony greets her in the morning, in the night, all the time. She eats even if she feels no hunger. She had raided the kitchens and vending machines, and lives off of the food from these places even though they are too sweet or salty. The raptors cry out for her sometimes, and her replies are strangled and weak, but they hear them.

Days go on, the full moon thinning into sliver through her window, then growing round once more. Some of her hair falls out in clumps. Eventually, she can move without crying out, without doubling over and feeling short of air. Taking deep breaths still hurts.

She climbs down for the first time in an age, feeling weak and wobbly, but determined. There are piles of rotting flesh to greet her. Some very old, some perhaps fresh as yesterday.

A giddy feeling burbles within her, like bubbles. Laughing hurts, but she does it anyway.

Later, she will bury or burn the rot. Later.

She bathes in a creek, rubs her skin with sand until it is pink and clean before reapplying the bandages, and picks fruit from the bushes. The berries are tart, not quite ripe, but she is starved for something other than dried meat and candy. She finds the bitter soy beans and gorges herself.

She is thinner now, once strong limbs soft and ill-used from her wound. She will get strong again, once the bones are whole and healthy.

She makes her way to the pack, and calls out once she is near the nests. Their responses are immediate and send those happy bubbles racing around her chest again.

Sickle is the first to find her again, then the younglings stampede in after her.

She sits and welcomes them into her arms, tapping their snouts when their teeth pinch a little too deeply. Sickle's breath pushes her hair everywhere, and she chirps at the chittering young while the other raptors take their inspections. Queen clucks a lot.

After a while, Queen calls for a hunt. Most of the raptors leave with her. Sickle stays, and together they guide the young back to the nests. She has done little, but she is tired, and goes to sleep amidst them.

When she wakes, it is to the others returning with meat for the young. Daisy drops a hind-leg, clicking and nosing the young from their sleepy pile. They swarm the food with chirrups and bird-like peeps.

She is surprised, even remembering the offerings scattered around her tree, when Queen drops a hunk of flesh before her. The raptor does not move until she picks at it curiously. It smells like gallimimus. Her mouth waters.

The raptors watch her as she collects some wood for a fire and pulls a lighter from the little leather pouch she keeps strapped to her hip. The smoke startles them, as do the little flames. She soothes them with a croon, and only keeps the flames long enough to cook the meat. Uncooked meat upsets her stomach, she has found, nor does the texture appeal to her.

Full and happy, she leans against Sickle and goes to sleep.

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Bones heal. Dinosaurs grow.

She grows too, until she is taller than even Queen. Her tail stretches longer and longer, until it is the same length as her legs, and she can run so fast now - almost as fast as the raptors. The hatchlings that were once many are now only few, and have grown like her. Jinx, River, and Night, she calls them. They learn her human words, know the words are individual to them, and respond.

There are no humans for her to talk too, but still she talks. Her words are her own.

Alice chases them sometimes. The raptors are too fast, and she can climb into the trees, dart through the branches even quicker with her tail for balance now. Alice sulks and stomps off with an empty stomach every time.

She tries dropping a portion of her kills to the spinosaurus, just to see if it works. It doesn't. Alice eats the meat, then still attempts to eat her. Still, she will feed the big girl from time to time.

The pack is her pack. They run, they hunt, they play. Together.

They are free.

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The ocean is wide and blue, glittering. The other island is out there. Jurassic Park, she had seen painted on the walls, on the toys she has lined up neatly in her cabin. A place to explore, a place outside of time.

A place of death.

There are two islands, she knows. Her island was not a nice place, a park, a zoo where animals roamed free. She wonders what Jurassic Park is like.

Jinx bumps her elbow. Sickle nips at her tail. They still want to play. She has stopped and stared at the ocean for too long, and they grow bored.

Sickle purrs and rubs her jaw along her arm. Giving in, she scratches the raptor under her chin. Sickle rumbles deep in her chest, content for the moment. Jinx snorts and takes off after the birds further down the beach. The gulls squawk, bursting into panicked flight. Jinx screams in delight.

She feels it before she sees it. A heavy thum thum thum pressing in on her ears. She knows this sound. Her chest squeezes.

"Jinx!"

The raptor halts and looks back, confused, shuffling her weight from foot to foot and flexing her long fingers.

Barking her distress, she pushes Sickle into motion and bolts for the cover of the forest. Jinx darts in after them, safe in the shadows, just as the helicopter rounds the bend. It is black, with InGen stamped on the side.

More soon follow, many more. The thunder of them all hurts her ears.

She hates.

A hiss trembles from her lips, teeth bared into a snarl.

They are back.

She has to find out why.

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The pack squabbles in distress when they return, perhaps sensing the storm of fear and anger sitting in her chest, and call after her long after she has climbed into the trees to shake them.

Queen calls out once, not angry, not commanding. She is not pack, so they do not force her to stay - but they want her to, and something behind her healed ribs softens.

She runs on.

Alice sleeps in her den, does not wake when she vaults over the sleeping spinosaurus via the trees. She runs on, past the brachiosaurus herd and around the triceratops. The gallimimus see her and panic, but she hardly pays attention to their honking.

The first helicopter circles the herds from high up. Watching. Preying. She can see people looking down through binoculars, through the open doors on the sides. She stays in the trees, keeps herself hidden. She will not let them make her a number again. Or the raptors.

She hates.

She runs.

She has not come to this portion of the island for some time, as the tyrannosaur pair stalk their territory carefully and their sense of smell is far better than Alice's. The pack does not come here, too. There is another pack of raptors that calls this place theirs, larger in size with rusty, orange hides. They moved into the old visitors centre some moons ago. Long after she had emptied the gift shop, at least, as these raptors try to eat her, like Alice.

They are vicious.

They were made in the laboratory she calls a façade, a lie, she thinks, remembering rows of broken shells with fragile skeletons in them.

She heads around their territory, watching the tall grass for hungry eyes and flicking tails. She runs, on and on.

Eventually, she comes to a cliff, stilling when she hears the roar of cars and trucks.

Below, is a clearing, full of the other herds. They are all panicking, of course. A sneer curls her lips when the humans work through the herd like the pack, singling their targets out and closing in. Little bikes weave through the dinosaurs, then the trucks come in, people spilling from them waving guns and nooses.

She hates. Feels it fill her like fire, fill her mouth with ash and dust.

"This is wrong. This, this is so wrong."

Crouching at the voices, she watches as two more humans dart under her tree and peek over the cliff edge. One takes photos, the other mutters obscenities. A lot of obscenities. She likes how sharp some of them sound and remembers them.

Her old guards had like words like that. Especially when she fought, kicked at her cage, shrieked like the raptor they had spliced into her DNA.

The herds cry and panic, but these two seem distressed by the calls, seething against what their kind is doing to the dinosaurs.

She does not know what to make of them, so when they leave, she follows.

They lead her to a small campsite set near another cliff edge, though this one marks the edge of the island. There are three more humans waiting. One is a man who gestures with his hands a lot, another man sighing and talking with him in a mild tone, and a child.

She stares at the child. She was that small once too.

This girls does not have claws though, nor tail nor spikes nor the eyes of raptors. She is human, they all are.

Yet, she does not hate.

"They're trapping them like wild horses and not dinosaurs," the woman raves, pacing. "They have no idea what they are dealing with. We have to stop them."

"And, uh, how do you propose we do that?" the man in dark clothing says in return. "We have nothing but a radio that doesn't work, your lucky backpack, and Eddie and his special dart full of shellfish poison."

"Kelly could cook them all dinner. Knock 'em all out for a week."

The child huffs and folds her arms over her chest. "Not funny, Nick."

Nick chuckles and ruffles her hair as he walks past.

She is confused. The raptors treat their young like this, gentle touches and play, but humans don't.

Not with her, at least.

I made you. You are mine.

"Hey, not to be rude, honey, but shut up for a second. Do you hear that?"

"What, Ian?"

"The birds," he says, eyes dark and flicking everywhere at once, "the birds are silent. That usually means something dangerous is around. Eddie, please be an action hero with that special dart of yours."

This Eddie already is peering around, rifle following where his eyes seek. The child is pulled behind the man in black, Ian she thought he was called, and they retreat closer to the metal caravan.

She could say hello, she muses, claws drumming softly against the bark of her perch. It would be interesting to talk with someone that could talk back. They would fear her though. She is not human.

She stays in the tree, hiding from even the birds, and settles in to watch.

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The people she chooses to watch are interesting, and different from those she has known.

They released the trapped dinosaurs upon the men that captured them, caged them, treated them like things.

They saved the hatchling with a broken leg.

But the hatchling hurts, and called for its parents.

They have come.

The tyrannosaur roar, long and deep, and fill the stormy night with their wrath. The people scream, dangling over the cliff, and Eddie tries to save them. She isn't sure when she decided to climb down from the tree, but she has. There is broken glass under her feet, but no breathing tube in her throat, no people in white coats bleeding out on the floor.

They might not be good people, she tells herself as she stands out in the open like an idiot.

The man in the car yells as the roof is torn free, metal shrieking, but Eddie does not try to run, he stays.

He stays, and one of the tyrannosaur opens its maw great and wide-

It takes her a second to realise what she has done, and by then it is already past the point where she can leave without being seen, as the rock sails true and hits the tyrannosaur square in the eye.

The mother pulls back, away from the car, and bellows. Her eye spasms from the rock.

"No point in turning back now," she mutters before letting her own roar shake in her chest. It is a bold sound, not unlike the sound her claws make when she drags them over metal, and full of challenge. Her teeth are bared.

The tyrannosaur turn their giant bodies towards her, uncaring of the car squealing back and forth between them. The caravan is pulled back another inch. She lets out second challenge, louder and shriller than the first. They take a lumbering step forward, and she snarls, but her mouth pulls up into a wild thing, a flash of teeth that used to scare the man who drew her blood.

"Fuck," she says, because the guards said that when she bit them and it seems fitting.

At least when Alice tries to eat her there is only one giant carnivore snapping at her tail.

She breathes. She runs.

They give chase.

She runs and runs and runs until her lungs heave and burn, until her ribs ache where they were broken. Still, she runs, even when the tyrannosaur stop following her.

That was stupid. So stupid. Yet, she can't stop smiling.

She laughs and scales the nearest tree. The rain washes her skin free of sweat and mud. Her heart bounds in her breast, nearly louder than the thunder of the storm. Up, up, up she goes, until the branches are almost too thin and bend under her weight.

She can see a line of people far away, lights dotting their silhouettes like stars.

Helicopters once again fill the sky the next night.

She waves goodbye.

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Seasons pass. Alice grows bigger, her sail tall and giving her away when she tries to hide in the water. Herds flourish with young growing into juveniles, and little ones cluster in fresh nests soon enough. The touch of humans fades from this island.

But, Sickle and she are exploring one day, and they find a boat.

It is new to this island, nothing InGen about it. Blood is streaked over the deck.

The low tide and lack of rain has partially beached it, so they manage to leap aboard with little issue. She does, anyway. Sickle lands in the blood and slips over, sliding over the deck and falling over the other side.

She laughs when the raptor squawks and stubbornly tries to climb aboard again.

The boat is wide and old, a small fishing trawler she thinks. She finds a dead gallimimus in the storage space below, nooses still around its neck and ankle. A dozen compsognathus rouse weakly from three cages strapped down on the other side. There are two dryosaurus in a cage, already dead.

She hates.

Smashing the locks is easy, watching the little green dinosaurs eagerly swarm over the gallimimus carcass is not. A tightness grows in her chest when she sees that they have eaten their fallen already.

Growing ill and unsettled by the sight of the cages, she returns above deck and explores the cabin. The key is still in the ignition, switched off. She takes it, and will add it to the ring of keys she keeps in her cabin. After digging around she finds a dusty, stained manual for this boat.

After finding some rope aboard, she leashes the boat to the largest tree she can reach. The tank is three quarters full, and there is a map tucked between thin, shiny books with naked humans in them.

The map has her island circled in red. There are words in another language scrawled beside them. A list, it seems. She recognises the scientific names of several dinosaurs.

There is another island circled as well. Bigger. The other island, the park.

She will keep the map with her keys.

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The other pack attacks them during a hunt one day.

River is killed almost immediately, and Daisy is dead before the others can help.

Queen screams, and the pack is at her back.

In the end, she remembers little beyond the storm of fury and pain that fills her blood, sends it roaring in her ears. Her skin is slick with red. It is her own. It is her packs. It is her enemies.

She hates.

Sickle keens, nosing Daisy - who doesn't respond, never will. She curls her arm over the raptors neck and cries. She knows what it is now, crying. Queen stamps her feet and calls her pack together. Those that remain answer the call, and go home.

She stays.

One eye is swollen shut and the lacerations over her skin burn, so it takes longer than it should to dig the graves. It is not something raptors do. She is not a raptor, and she has to remind herself this sometimes. Nor is she human.

She is both. She is nothing. She is new.

For each hatchling that falls to illness, or simply does not survive, she digs a grave. Stones mark their little lives, names scratched in white.

She has dug many graves, scratched many names into stone with her claws. It is better than leaving them to rot in the open.

Sickle returns when the sun begins to descend. The raptor does not understand, though she prowls a wide circle around the graves and watches the forest. The last of the graves get dug shortly before nightfall, and her pack is put to rest.

Five stones. Five names.

The other pack is left for the birds. The scavengers. The insects.

Sickle croons, cautiously approaching and rubbing her jaw along her shoulder. Soft growls purr in her chest. She pushes Sickle away.

"I wasn't strong enough," she says, even though the raptor does not understand. "They're gone."

The long gouges that ribbon down Sickle's grey hide are stark and red still, but scabbed over already. The raptors were faster, stronger, than her, even though the rust-coloured raptors had been heavier with muscle. They had more than two fangs, mouths that could open wide and tear prey apart with ease. Her little claws were nothing, her teeth blunt and useless. Feeding the pack was one thing, defending it another.

Sickle rumbles, tensing and shivering, little clicks resonating in her throat.

"Goodbye."

She runs.

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Stronger, she thinks as she stitches the wounds shut in her cabin, hissing at the pain, she needs to be stronger.

She goes back to the place she was made.

The guards had knifes strapped to their belts, she remembers, and seeks out their bones. What she finds is rusted and useless. The security room though…

She would grin, but she hurts too much. The slice over her swollen eye sings with every breath. Her stitches are uneven, but hold the skin together.

The key for this room is not one she has used before, having never needed to come here, and it takes some jiggling before it works. It is worth it though.

The guns she cares not for. Loud, cumbersome, useless. Knives are better. She finds them scattered over a shelf, spilled over the surface as if a desperate hand had scrambled for one and knocked the rest askew.

Some have straps attached to their sheaths, and she ties one to her thigh, another her arm. These will be her fangs.

There are books here too.

The chair creaks and puffs a cloud of dust into the air when she sits and thumbs through a book on how to use knives, another for weapon maintenance. Knives, unlike fangs, need to be sharpened. She finds the tools and takes them too.

She should have come here sooner. Instead of playing, chasing the compsognathus, teasing Alice, she should have been getting stronger. Learning. Growing.

A pack is only as strong as its weakest member.

Humans are weak. Raptors are strong.

"I am neither," she says, voice trapped in this room amidst the dust and bones, "I am me."

Saying that used to mean more.

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Sickle is waiting for her outside.

She hisses a warning when the raptor steps closer. Confused, Sickle wriggles and clicks her killing claws against the dirt. She feels like crying when the raptor warbles cautiously, head tipping to the side.

"No," she rumbles, filling her chest with the deep sound until it spills out and forces a wall between them. "I do not belong with you. Not anymore."

Words don't mean much to one that does not understand them.

Sickle was always a little too bold, and ignores her warnings until she can press her snout against her chest.

She cries, winds her arms around the raptor and keens softly.

"I will get stronger," she promises, "I will come back."

Scales are warm, and she presses closer until their pattern is imprinted on her skin like the tattoo on her shoulder. Sickle's heartbeat is strong. She will miss her.

When Queen calls the pack home, Sickle returns alone.

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She bathes quickly, gathers her things, and leaves. She runs on and on, noisy and rushed. Alice spots her, and chases, snapping at air until she gets bored and lumbers away.

She goes to the dead packs territory.

The nests are trampled when she finds them, dead raptors already bloated and swarmed with flies strewn nearby. Perhaps this is why they attacked Queen's pack, perhaps not.

They are dead. It does not matter.

But, she checks the eggs, to be sure there are none that survived. A hatchling deserves a chance, even if the adults have hurt her so deeply.

There are none, though, and she moves on.

The forest becomes a clearing, a small one, and a building sits on the far side; backed with a cliff, and surrounded by high fences. None of her keys work on the gate, but she does find a hole and worms through it.

There are no bones in this building, only dust and echoes. The aviary sits below, nestled in the valley, shadowed by the cliff and half buried in early morning fog. The birds are quiet. She briefly wonders how many human skeletons are in there. Remembers Alice chasing them here, hearing some of the people with guns screaming to hide in with the birds.

It doesn't matter.

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Her wounds become scars, her fangs become dangerous, she becomes stronger.

She finds a dead man in a tree.

A cord is wrapped tightly around his neck. Red stretches above him, a sheet with Dino-soar printed on it. The smell is of set-in decay, skin beginning to stretch from bloating.

She finds footprints in the earth below him. Smaller than hers, but hers were once that small too.

Why do people bring children to this island?

The scent only just lingers on the small orange, squishy thing a few feet away. A pile of old vomit is swarmed by insects beside it.

She picks out the tracks and follows.

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She finds a boy in a tree. Not dead. Sleeping.

No. Not sleeping. Crying. She can hear the hiccups in his breath, see the shudder of his shoulders.

He is small, filthy, covered in scratches.

And crying.

Tightness knots in her chest. Her mouth presses thin.

She should leave.

She throws a rock at him.

With a cry, he flails and nearly falls from the tree.

"Who's there?" he calls, voice shuddering. "Help. Please, I need help! Anyone?"

She does not know if he will be afraid of her. He should.

She throws another rock. He twists, scrambles down the tree. She throws another, and he follows the sound.

She smiles.

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The boy settles in one of the old water trucks after gathering supplies from the small outpost she lead him too. He learns not to question her presence over the next few days, but he does learn to pick it out.

"You know," he says one day, mending a tear in his jumper, "the birds go quiet when you're around."

She sniffs, remembering the last person to say that, and waits for him to go to sleep. She sets down a dusty blanket with bundle of food bars outside his little truck. He starts leaving wooden carvings in the spot she leaves things. This goes on for some days, until he breaks, and so does she.

"Can you...Just, come out, please? I think I'm going crazy. Just…just come out. Please. I-I-I need to know if you're real."

He starts crying. Folding down and pressing his hands over his eyes.

"I promise I won't look. Just. Just sit with me."

The tight knot in her chest winds and winds until air scrapes down her throat drily. Swallowing, she listens to him crying, sniffling. She huffs, banging her forehead against the tree a few times before beginning to hop down.

She lets the pebbles click and clack under her feet. He stops breathing, but does not lift his hands from his eyes. Sitting down beside him is harder than she thought it would be. There is still an arm-length between them.

"You're real," he breathes, voice breaking, "you're real."

She blows a snort through her nose. Of course she is real.

"I'm not crazy."

The guards called her crazy sometimes, when she spat and growled and hissed at them.

He breathes out carefully, pulling his hands away and scrubbing at his face. His eyes stay shut.

"Who are you?"

For how often she talked to the raptors, to Alice, to the fire she cooks her food with, she finds it near impossible to actually talk to someone, a human, who can understand what she says.

Is this fear?

"Wait, no, you don't have to ta-"

"I am me," she says, sounding far calmer than she feels.

"You can talk. Oh my god. Can I look then?"

"No," she growls. "Why did you come here?"

"The truck? It was you that lead me here."

"The island."

"Oh." He sniffles, hugging his legs and resting his cheek on his knees. "My uncle was trying to, I dunno, bond with me. Thought seeing some dinosaurs would be pretty cool. We hired these guys to pull us along behind their boat, parasailing." He sighs, long and sad. "Something went wrong. Now I'm here."

A sad, little laugh crackles in his throat.

"I still haven't seen any dinosaurs."

This close, she can smell his tears. "There used to be raptors here," she offers, hesitantly, "but they're dead now."

"What-" he jerks, twisting up and eyes open. He blinks, stares, forgets his fear. "You have a tail."

She isn't sure what makes her curl a little, bring her tail closer around, but she does, and she growls a soft warning.

"And claws. And your feet-" he stops, and looks at her, all of her. "My name is Eric."

It is her turn to blink.

"What's your name?"

She frowns, confusion burbling in her chest. "You are not afraid?"

"Is that why you hid? Nah, you bring me food and blankets, and that knife. You're cool." Scooting around, and faces her fully and grins. "Name?"

"I am me. I have never needed a name."

"What do I call you then? Hey you with the tail?"

"It doesn't matter. Get your things."

She stands. He scrambles to follow.

"Why?"

His eyes are still red from crying, afraid and a little wild. She looks down and snorts how Queen so often did when the younglings played a little too rough.

"Do you want to stay here alone, or with me?"

She doesn't run this time. He follows.

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Compared the living with the raptors, living with Eric is…weird.

He is soft. He is quiet in a different way from the raptors, who are only silent when hunting. He has things called nightmares that wake her sometimes. He tells her about a chicken that crossed the road once. She did not understand, even when he explained what jokes are.

He reads her books, treats them with care, and tells her about Jurassic Park.

"It was on the other island, Isla Nublar," Eric says, chewing on his stale chips. He refuses to eat dinosaur meat. "They tried to cover it up, but when a t-rex smashes half of San-Diego people start calling bullshit and demand real answers. They go looking for proof."

"Like you."

"Yeah," he sets his chips down, rubbing the residue between his thumb and forefinger, "like me."

She goes to say something, but feels heavy footsteps through the ground. Soft trembles, calm steps. Big girl comes.

"You're smiling. Why are you smiling? Did you pretend to give me wild chicken when it was really compy again?"

"Alice is coming." She nudges him to his feet and pushes him to the observation floor above. A window spans the entire wall, circles the room completely. They will see.

"Who is Alice?'

She laughs, quietly since she knows how good Alice's hearing is. "A dinosaur."

They crouch behind an upturned desk, for Alice's sight is also acute, and wait. Eric holds his breath when he feels the tremors, and only exhales when the trees begin to shift. Alice ambles from the forest, lazily snapping at the birds she disturbs into flight. She rubs against one of the trees, nearly snapping it in two, and continues on once the itch is satisfied. Even through the giant fence, they can see her bulk clearly.

"She's gone," she says once it is safe to talk, and Erin giggles. It isn't a sound she has heard before, only read about in her books, but the noise seems to fit the word.

"She was huge," Erin grins. "I can't wait to tell-"

He falls silent, and she wonders what she did wrong.

Eric retreats into one of his bouts of sadness for the rest of the day. He is better when he is out on the island exploring with her, wild and happy and curious about everything. Here, he thinks too much and reads the silence instead of her books. She does not like it when Eric is sad.

He doesn't speak again until dinner.

"I miss my mum. Do you miss yours?"

She licks her teeth, tongue lingering over her canines. "I do not have a mother. I was made. Not born."

"Wait, like the first dinosaurs?"

Rumbling softly, perhaps too quietly for his ears, she says, "How else do you think I was created? A human fucked a velociraptor?"

"Pretty sure that wouldn't work." His cheeks redden. "The, um, the dinosaurs here and on Isla Sorna, they were made using frog DNA to make them viable."

"I don't eat bugs."

"Frogs eat more than bugs."

She hisses softly.

"Fine. No frog. But…why are you here then? Why did they leave you here, alone?"

For a moment, she hears glass shattering, sees the fluid rush away from her body as she falls, feels dozens of needles and monitoring pads rip from her skin. People are screaming. She smells blood. A mask is strapped over her face.

She blinks, and she is back. "The raptors escaped during a storm. The island was abandoned."

"And you?" he pushes, exasperated and curious. He devours her books like she did, thumbs through the still legible notes from the cabinets pressed against the walls. Eric is a curious thing.

"I do not know," she answers, tail flicking. He is used to her tail now, doesn't accidentally step on it anymore. "Once, they said I was worth a lot of money, so they did not put me down when I was sick."

Eric frowns, brows twisting up and mouth pulling down. He does that a lot. "After listening to Hammond on the news…I dunno. Something doesn't feel right." He thinks for a while, then declares, "Right. We're going exploring tomorrow."

She hums, clicking her throat inquisitively.

"You are gonna take me to their labs."

Eric appears determined, stalwart, so she does not refuse.

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Walking through the trees with Eric is slow. He fears falling too much to bound along like her, though he also lacks a tail for balance and claws for grip.

After a while, growing impatient and pained at their pace, she carries him on her back and runs the rest of the way. Eric shrieks a lot.

"Quiet," she grumbles after leaping between two trees and he cries out, nearly strangling her with his forearms. "This is the packs territory. They will hear you and come looking."

And she is not ready to return to them yet.

He tries to be quiet after that, muffling shrieks into her shoulder when he cannot. They make far better time like this.

The building is undisturbed, the dirt free of tracks and lingering scents. She does a quick perimeter check before calling Eric down from the tree.

He sees Dawn written on a tree. The scratches smooth and no longer pale, but still visible. He looks at her, and does not comment.

She hands him her keys, and they go inside. It has been some time since she was here, yet the hallways remain bitterly familiar. She guides Eric to the offices, to the laboratories, and waits.

"There are a lot of bones in here," he says, wide-eyed and a little green.

She sneers at the skeletons draped in rotten labcoats and body armour, but gathers them and dumps them in closet.

When she asks Eric what he is looking for, his reply leaves her even more confused.

"I read these books by a guy called James Patterson," Eric says, taking a moment to blow dust from a folder, "they were about a group of people who did genetic experimentation on humans and animals."

A warble burbles in her throat. She hops down from a desk and trots closer, waiting.

"There were these kids, with wings and powers. It was pretty cool. Can you camouflage? Read minds?"

She snorts. "No."

"Woulda been cool. Anyway, these kids…they were made to be, like, weapons, super-scouts, stuff like that." He fiddles with the binders peeling cover, avoiding her eyes. "That isn't something Hammond would have approved."

She isn't sure what to think. She knows that she is dangerous, but she hardly obeyed her creators. Too smart, they snapped, too wild. Un-trainable.

"I just think that," he swallows, finally meeting her stare, "that if I can find proof of what they were doing here, I can bring this to him if-when I go home. You can come with me. He'll keep you safe from, from people like this."

He smells nervous.

She has read about cities in her books. Tall buildings called skyscrapers and lights that never dim. Cars and crushes of people and noise. Endless noise. It does not sound appealing, and she hates the idea of being around so many humans. Humans judge, the poke, they pry. Eric is one, one of many, but he is different. Eric is...kind.

Outside of this island, there are thousands, millions, billions.

She breathes.

"I am not human."

"Maybe," he shrugs, "but you're you. You're one-of-a-kind."

It pulls a little laugh from her. Eric grins, and goes back to pawing through dusty notebooks.

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"Is your name Six?"

"No," she rumbles, hating that word, that number, "I do not have a name."

Eric huffs, not bothered by the sound of her displeasure, and blows his cheeks out with how heavily he sighs. "What can I call you then? 'Hey you with the tail' isn't working. It's a mouthful."

Groaning, she rolls to her other side and ignores him. He begin listing names alphabetically, and she gives up trying to sleep by the time he begins working through the G's.

"Fine, pick a name and go to sleep."

Eric rubs his hands together. "Jane," he declares, looking proud and pleased and…happy, "how about Jane?"

"As in Jane Doe?" That's what they called unidentified corpses in crime novels.

"I was going with Tarzan and Jane," Eric explains, buzzing with so much glee that she can't help but smile. Even if she is still perplexed by his behaviour most days, he is kind always. "It fits. If we swap the genders and replace apes with velociraptors and throw a little James Patterson in."

Jane, she thinks, is my name Jane?

When the light is too dim to read without squinting, Eric carves her something new. When she first brought him here, he had grinned when he saw the little cluster of sculptures in a neat row on a shelf.

Sleep is far off now, so she watches as the wood is shaped into a raptor. Blocky, exaggerated, and simplified like the squishy toys in her old cabin. He puts it on a string for her to wear around her neck.

She wears it with pride, but he is the only one to call her Jane.

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Eric is decent enough at tree walking now that she fears not leaving him alone. He knows the reach of Alice's jaws, and makes himself a wreath of vines and leaves to disguise his scent and presence.

He does not return one afternoon.

She paces, rumbling and warbling as the evening grows darker. Her tail lashes a from side to side.

Night folds over the island completely.

She runs.

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She should have waited at home, for after finding many trails and a body mauled by the pack, she hears Alice roaring and follows the obvious trail the spinosaurus has left behind.

Alice bellows, rams against the doors to her home. A segment of the fence is broken, a gaping weakness.

She freezes, prepares to burst from the trees and call Alice away like she did the tyrannosaur, but Alice gives up with a low growl. She stomps off, jaws snapping irritably.

She waits until even the footsteps fade. She runs.

The doors are locked, so she climbs up to the roof and slips through one of the broken window panes.

"Eric," she calls, distress nearly twisting it into a keen. "Eric?!"

She hears other people, but does not stop herself from leaping over the railing and searching for the boy.

"Holy-"

"What the fuck?"

"Stay back-"

She ignores the man who pushes a struggling Eric behind him and darts around until she can see Eric properly.

"I'm fine," he blusters, unresisting as she spins him around and inspects a scrape on his palm, "I'm fine, really."

She blows a harsh breath through her nose. "You smell like smoke."

"Oh my god," a man with an odd hat says, low and horrified.

"Tail," the younger man beside him wheezes, "tail."

Eric pushes her hand away when she tries to nudge him behind her with a soft growl towards the new humans. "Stop it, they aren't InGen."

"Oh my god," the man with the hat says again.

"Eric, baby, what is going on?"

"Mum," Eric says, and she blinks in realisation, unbending from her aggressive stance. The women is fair, afraid, and she and Eric have the same nose. "This is Jane. Jane, these are my parents, Dr Grant, and Billy."

"Dr Grant?" she flicks her tail, aware that many eyes snap towards the motion. "From Jurassic Park?"

His eyes are wide, unblinking. "What the hell did Hammond do this time?"

Eric watches her, steady, serious. "I think we should sit down and talk."

"The raptors are hunting us, staying still would be a very bad idea," Dr Grant goes stiff, shoulders tight with anger, and the man beside him, Billy, shies away. Their eyes come back to her though, watching, staring until she feels her skin crawl.

"Jane?"

She resists shifting when Eric turns a pleading glance upon her. With a grumble, she says, "Alice is stalking a perimeter. She knows you're in here. Queen wouldn't let the pack come here, not without reason."

The people ripple, eyes darting to Billy. Billy appears about to cry.

"Is there a reason for them to hunt you into another predator's territory?" she rumbles, dangerous and low. She may not be pack anymore, but…

But.

"I took two of the eggs," Billy admits, flinching when her dual claws slam down against the metal floor. She hisses, low and hollow.

"Hey!" Eric shouts, darting forward before she can lunge for the man, pressing a hand to her sternum. "It was a mistake, we can fix this."

There is nothing even remotely human in the way she snarls, baring her teeth, tail lashing from side-to-side. Eric is undaunted, the others tremble. Good, let them. Let them quiver and shake in fear. She is not human, she never will be. Humans take and take and take-

"Jane," Eric lets a thread of worry into his voice, but it is not for himself, for the others, for his family, "please."

She looks down at him, this boy, her friend. Her only friend.

Letting out a breath that likely rumbles a little too loudly for Eric to be pleased with, she subsides.

"Give me the eggs," she says, flat and hard like the metal underfoot, "I will return them."

"Are you insane?" Grant steps forward, eyes darting to her feet and hands. It is almost as if he cannot meet her gaze, fears it. "They will not hesitate to kill you."

"Queen will not let the ones too young to know my call harm me. If I call, they will come."

"You can communicate with them?"

Grant looks breathless. The fear has dwindled in the face of awe.

She doesn't know what to do with that.

Uncomfortable, she tries to roll the tension from her shoulders. It does not work, unsurprisingly.

"In case you have not noticed," she says evenly, holding herself tall, "I am part raptor. They were my pack once. They will recognise me. The eggs?"

Grant seems to shake himself, slipping the small bag at his hip free and passing it over. It feels absurdly light, and after checking that the eggs are indeed within, she slings the strap over her shoulders.

"Don't let them do more stupid things," she tells Eric. He laughs, looking brighter and happier than he has since she found him curled up in a tree. "I should be back before midnight."

He is leaving, she knows.

She will not stop him.

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Outside, she spies Alice dozing, trees hiding her mostly from view as her sleepy eyes remain on the doors of her home.

She had left through the back door, scaling the cliffs, until she is well away from Alice's sight. Then, she runs until Alice cannot possibly hear.

She takes a breath, and calls them.

Her barks ring out into the emptiness of the forest. She does not call for help, but she calls out her distress, and they respond.

As always, Sickle is the first to arrive.

The raptor circles the tree, wriggling until her whole body trembles, excited warbles singing in her chest. She hops a circle around the trunk, calling her down.

Mindful of the fragile eggs, she climbs down and quietly waits for the raptor to approach how she sees fit. Still warbling, she sniffs her chest, her hair, the bag. The bag earns a sharp snap of her jaws, but when she pulls out the eggs and gently sets them down, Sickle croons, nosing the shells.

"Oh, Sickle," she breathes, pressing her cheek against the raptors warm muzzle, stroking Sickle's neck, feeling the scars she had not been able to prevent, "I missed you."

The rest of the pack slips around them. Some chitter and bark, curious and wary of her but seeing the eggs and wanting to come closer. Queen approaches first, white hide clean and beautiful.

Sickle steps back, clicking and chuffing as the alpha checks her eggs.

"Hello, Queen," she says, remaining still and unchallenging.

Queen rumbles, and moves from sniffing the eggs to her. Hot air pushes through her hair, deep draughts pulling her scent into the raptors lungs.

The alpha steps back, taking one of the eggs carefully into her mouth. Another raptor, one she does not know, scoops the other egg up. Most of the pack are young, only half grown, but it means the pack is still strong. They have recovered from the attack, and the loss.

Queen and the other take off. All but Sickle and Jinx follow them.

The raptors whuff and dance around her like they are hatchlings again. She laughs, slings her arm over a warm neck and pressing her face into Sickle's warmth. Jinx rubs her jaw along her shoulder, purring.

"I am stronger," she says, nuzzling into Sickle's rough cheek, "but I think I can become stronger still."

Less harsh than the first time, she pushes Sickle away, towards the pack.

"Go," she says, kinder and softer. This is a word they know. Sickle watches her, long fingers flexing.

After stroking their jaws, pressing firmly so that they feel it though their thick skin, she nudges them away again. Jinx trots off, calm and easy.

Sickle lingers, watching for a few heartbeats, and then she goes.

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They are eating when she returns. Not the gallimimus, she notes with a little amusement, but the pheasant and ramen soup Eric makes sometimes when she digs through the old vending machines and finds unspoiled goods.

Grant and Billy are thumbing through the notes Eric had carefully brought here from the labs, and only startle a little when she drops in from the second floor this time. Eric's mother spills her water and Eric's father chokes on his food.

She smirks, a little, and Eric rolls his eyes.

"Everything go okay with the pack?" he asks, holding out a bowl of the soup. It is plain, without the flavour packets. It never tastes like chicken, no matter what the bright lettering says.

"Fine." She sets the bag down by Grant before accepting the bowl. "How are you planning to get home?"

"We did have a plane. It crashed." Eric's father mutters, scrubbing a hand down his face. There are dark rings under his eyes. "And the spinataurus thing ate my satellite phone."

"No idea, basically," Eric translates with a shrug.

His mother snorts into her drink.

The food smells good, the bowl warming her hands, but her stomach feels too tight to accept any of it. "Can any of you navigate a boat?"

They look surprised by this, and finally Billy hesitantly clears his throat. She barely refrains from rumbling at him. "I've done some sailing, powerboating. Do you know what kind of boat it is?"

She stares levelly at him, long enough that he flinches when she does speak. "A fishing trawler. The manual is behind you, the yellow book."

"Even if we can't sail it," Grant rubs his thumbs along the rim of his hat, "there may be a functioning radio on board."

"Sounds like a plan," Eric's mother says with relief.

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They all try to sleep. Eric is snoring quietly, but his mother has yet to drift away. She stares at him, gently running a hand through his hair from time to time. She cries silently for a while.

Eventually, stands and walks over to her.

"May I?" she gestures to the table she sits on. The humans were adamant about having someone on watch. She is too restless to sleep yet, so she watches until another wakes to take over.

She makes a soft noise in her throat, nodding.

After she gets comfortable, the woman folds her hands together. A fine tremor winds through her fingers, she notices.

"Are you afraid of me?" she is quiet in respect of those that sleep below.

"No. Not anymore. I wanted to thank you, for protecting my baby."

Her face twists in very human confusion. "Eric is not a baby."

She is surprised when a delicate laugh falls from Eric's mother. "To me, he will always be my baby boy, even when he is grown and has babies of his own," she says, brushing hair from her eyes, "and he will get to do that one day, thanks to you."

She isn't sure what to say, so she says nothing. Curling her tail tighter around herself, she waits.

Eric's mother eyes her tail. Not with fear, not with repulsion, but with sadness. "Eric told us about-about everything. He wants you to come with us."

She has kind eyes, surrounded by freckles. There is a softness to her voice that she has not heard before.

"Will you? For what you did, you will always be welcome in my home." She reaches out, but thinks better of it and settles her hand back into her lap. "It might be difficult, at first. But Dr Grant thinks that Hammond, the man who founded all of this crazy dinosaur stuff, would never have agreed to…well…"

"To making something like me?" she finishes, brows rising. She is picking up too many of Eric's mannerisms. But, it seems to help communicate with these people.

"Well," her hands lift, make a funny flipping gesture, and fall back into her lap, "yes."

She has nothing else to say to that, lets silence wrap around them. Yet, when Eric's mother stands words tumble from her before she can stop them.

"Eric's mother," she says, and the woman stills, perhaps out of sheer surprise. "I did not have a mother, and never wanted for one, but I am glad that Eric had one as kind as you to raise him. To raise him still. He is a good person."

"Call me Amanda, please," she sniffles, though tries to be quiet about it. "Goodnight, Jane."

"Goodnight, Amanda."

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"There is ferry, or something, down there," Grant says, peering through binoculars and pointing at a grey square down below, "it would be safer to ride that to your boat, at least."

"We would need to cut through the aviary to make it before nightfall," she says, perturbed with the idea of it, "and that is not a good idea."

"Aviary? They made giant birds too?" Eric's father blurts, the hair on his upper lip twitching. "Insane. All of them, insane."

"We're on an island full of giant lizards, and it's the oversized birds that's the final straw?" Amanda crosses her arms and twitches a brow up.

"You ran a perimeter this morning, right?" Eric says, nudging her ribs with his elbow. "Alice still around?"

She nudges him back, two knuckles digging into his shoulder. "Got bored waiting for us and went after the herds."

She rifles through her books, searching for one of the maps she had found that shows the island in detail. The people press close so that they can all see the map, their proximity nearly has her shrinking away. Hiding her unease, she smooths the map over the table; it creaks threateningly under the pressure of her hands. Billy stares at the list of dinosaurs with a bleak glare.

Using a talon, she marks where they are, tracing their possible path as she speaks. "We can take the long way down to the river and double back for the barge. Or not double back and continue on."

"And what do you think we should do?" Eric's father asks, honesty in his tone, "You've been here longer than any of us. I'd say you know the island and its inhabitants better than anyone else alive."

"A fair point, Mr. Kirby," Grant tips his head, and all eyes are on her.

Eric snorts into his hand when she remains frozen. She flicks his nose and huffs.

Raptors don't ask for opinions. This is weird.

"Alice likes to hide in the water and surprise her prey. All of this," she circles a portion of the island, including her home on the very edge and the river snaking through the aviary and beyond, "is hers."

"And your boat?" Mr. Kirby nods.

"Up here." She taps a spot a good days walk ahead. "Alice rarely goes up river. Depending on your pace, we'll be there sometime after dark."

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The humans make an abominable racket when they walk.

Where she softly pads over the undergrowth, they manage to find every twig and crunchy leaf possible with their heavy boots.

She wants to run. She wants to leap through the trees.

Instead, she has to walk.

It's agonizing.

"Go for a run," Eric says, laughing and cheerful. He nudges her towards the denser forest. "We'll be okay. I know what to listen for."

"Call if you need me," she says, and with a grin, she runs.

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Eric calls for her. Shouts. Screams.

She runs back, heart beating against her ribs and the place where they were broken aches acutely.

Sound alone identifies what is happening. A dilophosaurus attacks the humans. Only they have such a trilling call, such a high note to their cries. It sounds fully grown. She runs faster, and sees Billy dart forward, shielding the others.

"Run!" Billy is shouting as he swings a branch at the snapping and snarling dinosaur. "Get out of here!"

"Billy-" Grant shouts, scooping up his own branch, but his next words are drowned by her challenging cry.

She has a fang in hand as she leaps for the dilophosauruses exposed side. It shrieks, bucking and snapping at her. She digs her claws in, blood spraying her with wet warmth as she climbs higher and slams her dagger between its ribs.

It shrieks again, and pain explodes over her tail. Jaws clamp down on her flesh, and she feels her whole spine ache as the dilophosaurus yanks her away. It lets go, and she lands heavily, rolling and scrambling to her feet. Lungs seizing from such a landing, she sucks down air and lets another challenging rumble build in her chest. She moves between the predator and its prey. She will not let Eric be hurt.

The dilophosaurus hisses, crouching and snarling. Its teeth are red, red with her blood.

Raptors shriek, and then Sickle and Jinx are suddenly there, pouncing on that which hurts her.

For a moment, she is stunned, then, with a grin, she charges.

The dilophosaurus is twice as large as the raptors. Her raptors are strong though, and they prevail.

It ends with her dagger buried to the hilt in the dilophosauruses eye, and she stumbles away with painful, heaving gulps of air. She presses a hand over her ribs, feeling the uneven bumps of the breaks.

Sickle and Jinx are a little battered and breathless, but otherwise fine.

"Eric?" she calls. "Amanda? Dr Grant?"

"Up here," Eric calls.

They are all in a tree, high enough to avoid snapping teeth, and watching with variations of horror and amazement.

"Holy shit," Billy breathes, a camera in hand. Grant has a hand on his shoulder, his knuckles white and eyes wide.

A nose presses into her shoulder, warm air gusting over her skin. She turns and rumbles, cradling Sickle's head with her hands. "Thank you," she says, and smiles when the raptor rumbles in return. Jinx chitters and pushes in for her own pats and gratitude. "And to you as well, Jinx."

Jinx warbles, tilting her head so that her hand press deeper. She laughs.

Sickle sniffs at the bite on her tail. It hurts, so she warns the raptor off with a low hiss, drawing her tail closer to herself and inspecting the wound properly.

"You okay?"

Grumbling and scowling at the punctures, she replies to Eric with, "Fine. Needs to be stitched though."

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It takes a while to convince them to come down from the tree, their eyes glued to Jinx and Sickle as they eat their kill. Eventually, after Eric wriggles away from his mother's grip, they clamber down after him, breathing sighs of relief when the raptors merely go about their meal. This isn't their territory, and they have their food. Her presence helps.

They move along, Amanda and Eric helping Mr. Kirby along as he limps.

"You can communicate with them," Grant appears to have trouble breathing, "oh my god."

"You say that a lot," she says, sniffing out one of the shallow creeks that feed into the river. Alice was determined some days, and might chase fish upriver if she was in the mood. Best to avoid the deep water and stick to the shallows.

"It's just…all we had was bones, and while bones tell us a great deal, it doesn't compare to seeing this. That. Even what I saw at Jurassic Park doesn't compare."

She side-eyes him. "Eric read your books. Saw your interviews. You called them genetic monstrosities, not dinosaurs."

"Most of the dinosaurs I've encountered have tried to eat me. Forgive me if I'm a little biased."

She snorts, tail twinging when she flicks it.

"Will they come after us?" Billy trots up to Grants side, and whatever wall that was between them earlier seems to have crumbled with a stern if trembling don't you ever do that to me again from the elder, "The raptors, I mean."

"Probably," she splashes into the stream while the others stop and fill their canteens, "they must have stuck around when the others went back to the nests."

"Aw," Eric props his face into his hands, "they miss you."

She splashes water at him before ducking under and scrubbing her face and hair. The cold makes her wounds sting at first, then numb.

"-ould sleep up there," she hears Billy saying when she resurfaces. "It's high enough, and Mr. Kirby sprained his ankle. We should kip out and take a breather, make the rest of the trip tomorrow."

Looking to where Billy gestures, she sees one of the trees that grows out rather than up. Where its branches spread out from the truck, a platform has been built in. It is like her old cabin, though unfinished. She thinks the doctors and scientists wanted to release the dinosaurs into these wilds and observe how they behaved. There is no other reason for why so many of these little buildings dot her island.

Sickle slips from the woods behind them, quietly observing the oblivious humans before trotting into the creek beside her. Jinx is not far behind, and only when her playful splashing grows too loud does someone notice their new company.

Billy gets his camera out again, but Grant grabs his belt and pulls him away. They dart to the tree and scramble up.

Ignoring the people, she washes out the scrapes on the raptors sides, cleaning the blood from their muzzles and claws while crooning soothingly. They hardly flinch under her hands. When she is done, they settle down under a tree for sleep.

She climbs up the tree, and finds that Eric has a needle and thread ready. She grimaces, and he does the same. "I can do it myself," she says, not liking another's hands sewing her skin together. Pain from people is different.

"Your stitches are horrible and uneven," Eric rebuts, not appearing pleased with himself but determined. "Please?"

She rumbles.

"Sit," Eric demands, jabbing a finger at the space beside him.

She sits, though not without a loud huff.

It hurts, a lot, but she has sewn her own wounds together before and endures it with a grimace and a clenched jaw.

"Done," Eric declares at last.

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Sickle and Jinx rouse sometime in the night, and she climbs down the tree and curls up between them to calm the two. They purr, and it is like being buried beneath a clutch of younglings again. She smiles, and lays her hand over the snout of Jinx when she lays her head over her hip.

This is home, she thinks, they are my home.

She knows Eric wants her to leave, and so to do the others to a degree – though not for the same reasons.

She can't go.

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There is a slight commotion when they wake and find her asleep with two raptors curled around her, but after Eric sighs and deals with the drama, they are on their way again.

"They killed Udesky," Billy rubs his jaw, watching with undisguised intrigue as the raptors chase butterflies and dart circles around them, "they set a trap. They chose to kill him."

"You stole their young," she explains, snapping her teeth and flicking her tail. The bite sings with pain, and she settles. "They were protecting their pack, their home."

He shuts up, and goes back to walking beside Mr Kirby, whose limp is gone. Good. The raptors would have sensed the weakness, become curious.

"It is the mistakes of others that lead to people dying on these islands," Grant muses aloud, a bitterness souring his tone. He shakes his head, and sighs. "Hammond would never have approved of weaponising the predators, let alone the labs playing with human DNA. Eric showed us the paperwork, what's left of it anyway."

"My home is here," she says, quietly so that Eric will not hear, "I am not human."

He is quiet for a while, and she appreciates silence. All predators appreciate silence.

"No matter what you decide," he eventually says, hiking the pack stuffed full of books and salvaged reports higher on his shoulder, "I will be taking these straight to Hammond and having a long talk. People might come here, I just want to warn you."

She snorts, a warning rumble building in her chest. "To find me? To finish the work they started?"

"Absolutely not," he remains calm, though she can see his pulse jumping wildly in his throat, the sweat building on his skin. It smells acrid, like fear. "Hammond will want to do right by you."

"And what will that entail?" Disdain colours her words. "Another lab, another cage, more people prodding and poking and looking at me like I am a thing. I am me, and I will not be a number again."

The tattoo is still glaringly visible on her shoulder. Grant glances at it, lips thinning and paling, before he meets her glare head-on.

"Hammond is a good man. Misguided and occasionally naïve, but good. He has the power to protect you and this island."

"How?" she snorts. "People have come here before, tried to steal the dinosaurs or hunt them for sport."

Sickle darts across the path, squawking as Jinx nips at her tail. They are only visible for a second, slipping like shadows through the trees. Grant stumbles, eyes wide. Billy must have his camera out again, for she hears it clicking.

"They're playing," she mumbles.

"Right." He clears his throat. "InGen came back here once, Ian told me. Did they know about you?"

"I don't know," she hums, "Ian, you said? Black hair, talks a lot, tall?"

Brows lifting, Grant peers up at her and nods.

"They survived then." She scratches her jaw, remembering the screaming man in the car who did not abandon his friends. Eddie. "Good."

"Wait, did-Ian said he heard a raptor when the t-rexes were attacking the caravan. Was that you?"

"It was." She flicks her tail at his expression. "What?"

He starts laughing. Long and heavy, until he bends over and has to stop walking.

"I think you broke him," Eric comes to her side while Billy asks the man if he is alright.

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There is a round of cheering when they fiddle with the radio and get a signal. A voice on the other end responds, then more voices, and Amanda cries into Eric's hair.

A rescue is coming.

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Instinctively, she growls when the thum thum thum of the helicopter grows. They cannot hear it yet, and warily peer around when they hear her rumbles. On the shore, Sickle and Jinx chitter, hearing the helicopter and remembering her distress the last time.

She doesn't hate. It is strange, to hear that sound and not feel the heat in her blood. It means a rescue for her friend. Safety.

"The helicopter will arrive soon," she says, a heaviness settling in her chest as she looks at Eric, "I can hear it."

They breathe sighs of relief and start to eagerly watch the skies.

Eric watches her though, and Amanda notices. She bites her lip.

"You're not coming with us, are you?"

His voice cracks. It has been a while since she has seen him cry.

She shakes her head. Cannot speak, for her throat works and is too tight for words.

Eric's chest shudders with his next breath. He darts forward, and she takes an unsure step back, but freezes when his arms curl around her torso. He is crying, tears leaking into her shirt as his arms wind even tighter.

"What are you doing?" she is stiff in his arms. Amanda looks very sad and the others shuffle awkwardly when she glances at them for clues.

"It's called a hug, it's how people say goodbye to someone they care about," Eric chokingly explains, and she tentatively pats his shoulder, "I'll miss you, Jane."

The helicopter grows louder, though still unseen, and she tenses despite wanting to soak up this last moment with her friend. Her only friend. Perhaps her last friend. Her chest aches, though not like when the bones were broken. This is a different kind of pain, one that drove her from the pack when half of them were killed. Grief, she thinks it is called.

His arms tighten, then slacken. Eric pulls away, and she misses him already. The others are watching, some sad, some happy. Grant nods at her, and Amanda waves with a kind smile.

She smiles, tweaks Eric's nose one last time. He manages a wet laugh.

"Go," he says, "run."

She does, calling the raptors to follow.

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Time passes.

The scent of human fades from the observation building. The bite on her tail becomes a ring of pale scars. She is alone some days, and finds that it is not as easy to be alone as it once was. It is not a home anymore, just a place, shelter.

She misses Eric. She misses talking and having someone talk back.

Sickle and Jinx stay with her most days, until the call of the pack pulls them away.

One night, when she is running her hands over and over the little wooden carving hanging around her neck, she leaves.

She gathers her most treasured things, and moves back into her cabin. The pack starts to circle her tree one day, Sickle calling her out with barks to come play. The other raptors don't know her, and it takes many snaps and growls for them to learn she is not prey, not an enemy.

Queen greets her with a rumble the soft press of her snout along her jaw, and that's that. The rest of the pack falls in line, settling and calming.

"I am strong now," she says, feeling curious hatchlings tumble into her lap once the alpha has made her acceptance known. "My name is Jane."

Queen purrs. Sickle croons and the others come closer to investigate their new pack mate.

Jane smiles.

Jane is home.

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Time passes, dinosaurs grow.

Jane visits the boat one day, even though she feels an ache in her chest at the sight of it. She comes around, and sees her name painted on the side. It smells chemical, and is bright red. Nervous and curious all at once, she climbs aboard. In the cabin, there is a metal case with Jane written on it as well.

She stares at it for a while, claws clicking a steady click click click against it while she thinks. Her heart threatens to re-break her ribs.

She opens the box

A bright yellow phone is within, along with a small bundle of books, and a letter sealed in a plastic slip.

She stares at the last for a while too.

My dear Jane, the letter reads, my name is John Hammond.