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...
'Mrr... my head...'
Pain was what greeted me first in the wisps of that good night. Like a bruise to the flesh, it drummed into my skull until I dared whimper, or fed it attention. I winced beneath my breath, gradually drawing a talon toward the back of my skull to feel for it.
But there was nothing there. Just a patch of untouched scales and a dull, endless throb was all that remained. It seemed to follow the rest of my body, too; no spikes, no cuts, no bruises -- nothing marked me as I remembered it. But I still felt it all the while, forcing me to writhe uncomfortably.
"Nrrr..."
I couldn't do much else to silence the pain, so I returned my claw back to my underbelly, and breathed out a shaky sigh. 'This is temporary,' I thought to myself. 'I hope.'
I didn't seem injured. But I didn't feel like myself. Most of my senses were muffled, as if underwater, and my thoughts were soft and echoed. I felt out of place. Out of time.
What happened to me?
Upon opening my eyes, I was greeted by a long strip of asphalt stretching into the fog. Tall pine trees rose up from each side of the dark road into infinity; their points cut out by the thickness of the strange fog. A quick look back to the road sparked a memory into my head from a nightmare not too long ago.
'I'm back here?' I thought.
My nostrils flared to taste the wind; all I caught was a burnt-metal aroma that came from behind me. That, and a flickering orange glow that cast my disproportionate shadow downwind. There was something else here, there had to be.
I growled softly, rolling over to my stomach and lifting my head. Just down the street in the other direction was just what I feared to see; an overturned truck aflame in the distance. The blackened chassis succumbed to the whispers of the bloom, crackling quietly like a fireplace would to bark. Golden spurts of red and yellow morphed up into the sky, licking the fog and filling it with smoke and death.
Then my eyes noticed something else; a silhouette was sitting there amidst the flame, watching it churn in what I supposed was utter fascination. I casually stumbled to my feet and began to walk, letting my curiosity drive me on a hunt to know the unknown. Stronger wafts of smoke continued to flood my nostrils, further ruining my chance to seek the creature. And the heat of the flames were starting to prick at my scales, that is, in a comforting way. So I walked closer.
Not long after did the shape turn into a form I could distinguish from the shadows. Thin hair laced the human-like scalp and over the shoulders, and an oversized shirt limply hung from its underarms. The lower region, its pants, were torn and bloodied, but that didn't seem to faze the creature. Nor did it flinch once my presence was known; a little click of my toe-claws did nothing to gather its eyes. So I edged closer, enough that my snout could clip a fragment of hair if I wished it. My claws idly coiled around the figure to the front, until my eyes finally faced the human's hidden eyes.
Those blue, crystal eyes. I recognize those eyes...
The girl blinked from her stare, turning to me with no fear in her eyes. And then she began to smile.
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Click dribbled his fingers along the tiled grounds, hoping that something out of line would pop out to him. For about thirty minutes he had been struggling to find a way out of this dinosaur cell, searching nubs and little crevices here and there. And every so often his hopes would drop, for each second wasted was another opportunity for something terrible to unfold.
For INGEN standards, this was catastrophic.
All of a sudden, one of his fingers brushed over a shifty white tile, an unclean cut marked through the crease of the polished rock. Looking up at the window to ensure nobody was watching, Click reached over for the glass shards that once held his Advil, and began prying into the rock.
"Come on..." He hissed, chipping further, deeper, cutting into the undergrowth just as the glass sliced through his fingers. Click hissed and clenched, watching his hands begin to bleed the harder he pushed. Until finally, just as his hands started to hurt, the tile bulged upward. He dropped the glass and pushed his hands until the space, growling as he lifted with his feet to unveil the massive mess of wiring hidden beneath it.
"Fifth-generation-cage my non-scaly butt, Lewis," said Click. He continued to lift the tile, unaware of a strange taped piece lodged to the underside of the tile. The moment the rock was fully removed from the space, the tape snapped.
And the lights went red.
Click whipped his head to the ceiling. That terrible machine was back, ready to gas the poor human that cowered beneath its reign. The male groaned.
"I take it back."
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"I... know you," I snorted aloud, staring into that mesmerizing blue glow rounding her iris. "I think." I drew an inch closer, bowing my head to take in her scent. Beyond that haze of smoke and flame lingered a musk that I recognized all too well, and the deeper I inhaled, the more I began to question.
"You carry my scent," my head tilted, tail flickering about as my curiosity rose. "My eyes..." I felt her hand suddenly press against my snout, sealing my nares and drowning her scent back into nothing. I shuddered to the touch; she was cold, far colder than any human I could track. The crusted lines of her smooth hand were void of color, too, as if left out to dry for some time.
"It's okay if you don't remember," the girl then said.
Her hand lowered. Once again my eyes focused into hers, looking beyond that frame of silken black hair to seek a world of sapphire and cyan. I had seen similar wonders in the puddles marking the streets. Or in the rivers and streams that roll by me. Even this lived in that portrait in Wu's office back at the fallen INGEN lab. And with her sad smile...
I turned to the flaming car, then whirled back to her. My heart sank even deeper once the pieces merged together.
"I 'do' know you."
The girl's face lit up. I took a shaky step backward, letting the fear flood my wanton spirits. "A-Am I dead?"
Autumn Wu blinked. "Do you want to know?"
I swallowed away my whimper and shook my head. Autumn sighed.
"That's okay." She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. "I don't know the answer anyway. I'm just here."
"Doing what?"
The girl lowered her eyes. "Waiting for someone to help me."
My stomach fluttered a second time. I turned my eyes to the flaming car, watching a burst of fire flood out of the windows and into the sky. I wanted to ask where I was so badly... but I was too scared to know her answer. Surely someone would've come by now had she been telling the truth. But she knew, as I knew, that may never come to pass... because this wasn't the real world we thought it to be.
"What happened?" I asked quietly.
Autumn's smile slowly drew away. Her eyes lowered to her hands against the asphalt, feeling the soft thrumming echo of the blazing car ahead of her.
"I was driving and then..." she hesitated mid-breath, blinking as if confused for some reason. "T-Then I..." She broke off from her tries, quickly pursing her lips to force back a painful whimper. "I don't... remember anymore."
She sank a little bit deeper into her knees, shaking her head quietly.
"I'm stuck here," she whispered. "I thought dad was going to find me by now."
I took a cautious step toward her, eying the raging flames ahead once more in thought. I guess I was stuck here, too. Turning back to her, I crouched a little lower and flickered my tongue, letting the questions run free in hopes to pick her mind.
"What do you remember?"
Autumn's eyes sank to the floor. "Dying."
There was a short pause in her dark sentence, a snort, then an exhale.
"I remember losing something, too..." Autumn continued quietly. "I remembered lying here, looking at the sky... at the stars. And I remember... falling asleep."
The girl pushed back her hair, sniveled once, then turned to me.
"I remember waking up, too. On the ground. Cold... and wet... and tired. And I was crying... because I didn't know how to walk anymore."
My nares sealed up the moment she began speaking upon the second half of her memories. But these weren't hers. No, Autumn wasn't talking about herself anymore.
"I called for dad but... he didn't understand me. He put me somewhere... somewhere dark and-"
"Empty," I growled at her in surprise. "And dirty. And there was nothing there but a scrap of meat and a couple loose chains hanging from the ceiling."
Autumn nodded. "You remember?"
I took a fearful step backward. Those were my birth memories. Only now could I see why I kept having visions of this place. Our eyes... our scent... our voice -- they were one and the same. W-We were both... the same. But how?
"C-Can you stay with me? Just for a bit?" Autumn placed a hand against the asphalt beside her. "I've always wanted to sit beside a dinosaur."
"You're not afraid of me?" I wondered aloud. Unfazed the girl chuckled to herself.
"I don't want to be afraid of myself."
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*cough-cough!*
Click quickly shredded a piece of his shirt from his arm and covered his mouth and nostrils to try and filter out the smoke. But it wasn't working; he could sense his vision distort and blur, and his poor lungs were straining for a breath of oxygen. Click kept trying wire after wire (blue, green, yellow, orange); nothing was turning off that gas diffuser.
"Argh!" *cough-cough!*
Click readjusted the glass in his weakening hands, going for the last three wires. He tried for purple first; nothing again. He went for the next, only to reel back and retch in disgust at the horrid moisture collecting in his throat.
*cough-cough-cough!*
Cursing Lewis's name, Click reached for the red wire, but his strength was already worn out. Even with this glass knife, he couldn't sever the tie. His eyes bulged out in desperation, throat hyperventilating as the gas covered his body in a thick blanket of gray. Click slumped to his stomach in pain, reaching for the wire for one last attempt.
"B-Break, break, break..."
He continued to slice at the wire, each pull and push growing slower and slower. His eyelids started to grow heavier by the second, and his muscles started to relax. The glass finally slipped from his reddened fingers.
Then everything went dark.
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Paperboard in hand, Henry Wu trotted from the control room to the hallway dividing him from the imprisoned indoraptor trainer. He looked behind his shoulder, ensuring Lewis Dodgson wasn't looking for him, then quickened his pace to reach the room's control panel.
"Alright, Tom, I-" Wu reached the and froze. Rather than an empty space, the doctor's eyes fell upon a swarm of white gas flooding the entire room from top to bottom, and a flickering red alarm light flashing from within. He dropped the paperboard.
"Oh no."
Henry rushed over to the side wall and slammed the ventilation button. The fog in the room slowly started to dissipate, drawing up into the ceiling above. And what was left in its place... was nothing.
Nothing but glass shards, human blood, and a partially opened metal door at the far end of the room. Wu's stomach lurched.
"Hey," a voice said from behind. The scientist spun around; a bloodied fist whacked his cranium, knocking Wu over a chair, and right onto his back. Click huffed, pulling the shirt tear from his maw and throwing it to the floor at his feet.
"I quit," he huffed. He turned around, just as a soldier walked into the room and darted right, nearly being shot by one of their electric guns. Click lunged into the male challenger, breaking the gun from the soldier's hands, and fired into his chest. Another shot went outward, striking a second arriving soldier, before he rushed into the video control room and fired into the ceiling. Lewis, and every other scientist not aware of him, flinched hard, turning to him in fear.
"Tom?"
Click growled, pointing the gun at him.
"Woah! O-Okay, okay." He slowly raised his hands. "T-Tommy-"
BANG!
An electric projectile struck the doctor, electrocuting him to the ground. Every doctor in the room burst to their feet in fear as Click loaded another into the canister.
"Somebody better tell me where Seven is," snarled the Marine, raising the weapon to them all. "Because I'm not asking again."
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I was sitting now. Not like I had much of a choice, or a different place to go. And I didn't want to leave the girl who's life had tied to mine, it didn't seem fair. So I settled beside her, watching the flames dance across the upside-down vehicle, in awe at the dark spectacle toiling before my very eyes.
"I like your frills," her hand rubbed down my spine and against the pointed needles, relaxing me from the soothing touch of her cold hand. "What do they do?"
"Oh, I'm... not sure," I rumbled, embracing her petting motion. "They flare up when I'm in danger. And they rattle, too."
"Like goosebumps?"
"What?"
"We have something similar on our skin. Though people barely use it because... well..." she smirked. "I think you know."
I nodded in shallow agreement, soon motioning to her claws. "It's odd you don't have talons."
"There's no need," said Autumn gleefully, turning her hand palm-up for me to examine. "Other than show, that is. But humans have thumbs... we can hold anything."
"And your missing tail?"
Autumn lifted her feet. "Two feet for balance. And we sit... a lot. So there's that."
I rumbled quietly. "Strange how we're so different... and yet, nearly the same."
"Of course," Autumn cooed. "Then again... that's what most monsters can't see."
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Never did Click expect to hold a scientist hostage to find a dinosaur. But it was the only way to get what he risked his life for. Dead or alive, he didn't want this company to take any part in turning Seven, or breaking her into something far worse than evil. He knew by experience what the last eight years have done to the world. Now he wanted it to end... permanently.
Click held the end of the gun against the male and female scientists' backs, constantly reminding them what would happen if he was led astray. They marched, together, down several sets of stairs and past a collection of science labs, some labeled with weird dinosaur names that Click had never heard of before.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"Test projects," said the scared female scientist. "We... were trying to create the perfect hybrid."
"As if you didn't learn your lesson sooner," scowled Click. "How many did you make?"
"Successfully?" the male swallowed, trying to walk ahead of the gun. "Twenty."
Click tightened his grip upon the electric gun, eying a few opened egg shells and bubbling formulas as they wandered on by. "And, where are they now?"
The female turned to her male counterpart before answering. "Dead."
Click's eyes widened. "You... killed them?"
"No. Something else did."
They traveled down one last staircase and into a long, dark hallway stretching a great distance ahead of them. Click swallowed fearfully, keeping his eyes peeled for anything that would move in his general direction, and continued to guide the scientists forward toward where they were keeping Seven. After a few steps they turned toward a door and pressed both of their key cards against a metal door. The first set swung open, allowing all three to walk into an entirely new hallway. A second use of the keys opened a second set of doors, bringing them all into a space with four rooms. And one of them was lit. Drawing away, Click looked toward the window of the enlightened one, making out the frame of a bloodied white creature lying upon a surgery table. Click gasped.
"Seven-?"
A figure suddenly burst from the shadows and slammed Click into the wall. The marine shrieked in surprise, struggling to break free from the darkened figure, and watching his two sources of direction sprint off to freedom. Click tried kicking, striking somewhere on the leg, then leaped backward just as the male lunged into the spotlight.
"Hey, Tommy," Jameson growled.
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I lifted my head to a strange thud echoing the darkness, as if something had struck a wall. But Autumn didn't seem alarmed, let alone interested.
"I wish I was a hybrid," Autumn suddenly chortled, turning to me. "Then I can think for both sides."
I flared my nostrils in surprise. "It isn't as pleasing as you think."
"It wasn't so beautiful in my skin, either," Autumn grunted miserably. My eye-ridge raised.
"But your species has everything you could ever want," I grunted. "Food, water, a roof above your heads. You don't need to survive like I do..."
The girl nodded in slight agreement. "Maybe that's true. And I was grateful that I had so much..." she trailed off. I dipped my head toward her.
"How lesser could it be to a life of a hybrid?"
Autumn looked to me and sighed. "I always felt trapped out there," she whispered. "And lost... and lonely. Being human is... a different kind of survival. The one that's impossible to win... unless everything is handed to you on a silver platter."
She cradled her legs into her arms, reburying half her face into her skin. "Everyone tells you to be something you don't want to be. And everybody hates you when you do. People demand perfection. They want order. They'll work you all your life, and end you just to feel something. We're the most animal thing there is in this world. Nothing's as easy as hunting, sleeping, and living -- whatever you do is never enough. And you're never, ever happy..."
"Sometimes..." Autumn hiccupped off briefly. "Sometimes, I feel like... whatever I did isn't going to change anything. When you're born, you know exactly what you're meant to be. And I envy you for that. I wish I could run free... into those chaotic forests and jungles where no person has stepped. Smelling a hundred scents. Being scary and beautiful altogether. And still have enough humanity to know right from wrong. Good from evil. The best of both worlds."
My nostrils flared in reply. "But the world despises hybrids. We're monsters."
"So are we," Autumn grunted. "But you're the first creatures who've recognized that. You've challenged the terrible things we've done to this world... which is why you have to win."
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"Figured you'd get out eventually, idiot-!"
"Oh, shut-up!"
CRACK!
Jameson grunted, flopping onto his back and skidding a distance across the ground. Broken nose, they both felt the blood on their skin when it happened. But before Click could finish the fight, Jameson scrambled to his feet and snagged the weapon, redirecting the next shot into a window that shattered into pieces. Somehow he managed to rip it out of Click's clutches, and quickly dodged one of Click's punches.
"One day you'll learn when to quit!" He snarled, catching Click's next swing and punching Click hard enough to drop him. Click quickly gathered the gun, but he didn't have enough time to use it. Lifting his feet, Jameson kicked the stunned Marine off his feet, and right into another room. A quick lunge to the door pad helped seal the deal for Jameson, and the door slammed shut, cutting Click off from the rest of the world.
And his only chance at getting to Seven.
"No!"
Jameson briefly wiped the blood from his mouth then gathered a walkie-talkie from his side. "Intruder at Room 44B," he announced. "Come quick."
"James-" Click shook his hand at the handle. "Jameson, open the door!"
He didn't budge. Jameson just stared through the little square window at his former friend, watching him trying his hardest to escape. He didn't look the slightest bit impressed.
"Open the-!"
BANG!
Tom flinched, looking behind him at another door swarming with soldiers. He rushed to it, gathering a metal object from one of the tables in the room, and slammed it into the card reader, briefly severing the tie between the men outside and his location. But even that brief second of peace wouldn't serve him any good; Click was still trapped.
And there was nowhere left to go.
BANG!
Running back, Click began to panic, jutting at the door handle, then slammed into it. Panicking, he aimed his gun at the opening, and fired several rounds into it's bent. Nothing happened. In a last ditch effort, Click began punching his fist into the window to try and break it, but even it barely made a crack in the surface.
BANG!
"Maybe today will be that day."
Click punched the door again, then drew toward the window. "I won't stop until this ends, you hear me! Open the door!"
The male shook his head. "You aren't going to stop this."
"I will," he hissed. "They've killed enough people already... you've seen it. They took Janet... and Zara... the ones you love are gone because of them!"
Jameson's eyes dropped, losing focus on the male on the other side of the gate. He clicked his tongue to the roof of his maw, then brushed his thoughts away with a wordless snort.
"You know I'm right," Click went on. "The money won't matter if everyone's dead!"
"You're not going to change my mind, Tom," he growled quickly. "So stop trying."
BANG!
Click whirled his head, noticing the door starting to budge forward. He pressed into the door in panic, watching sparks starting to fly from the edging at the base.
"She cared for you, you know," Click snarled, kicking at the door again. "She protected you!"
Jameson said nothing.
"James-" Click slammed onto the door. "J-Just be human... for once in your life!"
"She's dead, Tom," The male huffed blinking back to focus upon Tom's mortified eyes. "Now, let it go."
Click shook his head. "You people won't put her in the ground. So, I can't."
"I figured," whispered Jameson, who's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "So be it."
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(AGH! I really tried to make this chapter smaller. I merged two together in order to keep my sanity alive, but clearly this was too much [I was going over 4000, and it's already midnight]. I really didn't want to make a part two to this chapter, but I might have to because there's still plenty I have to throw in before I get back to Indy and Red.)
(Still, I want to thank you guys so much for still reading this story! It's been two years of writing and, while still hanging on by a thread, you're all here supporting me. I'm blessed to have you guys in my reading journey, so thank you)
(I just don't want to go over 70 chapters [we're nearing 58 now, yikes...] )