For the first time in four days, the humans let me out of the darkened shed.
And like the parents of an unborn runt, they welcomed me into their sweet little world they amusingly called Colfax.
As suspected, I didn't know what Colfax was.
Nor did I necessarily care.
But the humans seemed to act belonging in this quiet and insignificant town. It was like a second home of theirs, and they treated it kindly like any ordinary hatchling to a nest.
I'd soon learn that Colfax, California was so much smaller than what was previously exaggerated. In fact, it felt far smaller than the entire estate where INGEN tried to sell me. The town was a miniature maze of expanded main streets and cobblestone, but its walkways were as complex as the heart that drives it. The streets were its veins, paved with dark blackened stones that smelled of dried tar and sticky muck, and the people that inhabited it from within reflected the cells of the elderly organ. Small vehicles, I recognized as cars and trucks of plenty, zoomed by the house where the family lived, though despite their noisy exertions the town remained voiceless but undoubtedly alive.
A second large pavement for the vehicles existed a bit further away from the house the humans resided in, roaring at times when the winds were subdued to being muted like mice. Multiple vehicles zoomed past the brown empty desert in a frantic rush of liberation from the toxic heat that poured against their metallic chassis. In turn, I described it as a landmark rather than a pointless human build, a view that meant nothing truly important besides panic and need; yet a representation of my current dominant soul consuming my older internal rage.
To me, being an indoraptor trapped and controlled once again by filthy, blood-sucking humans sounded horrible, if not that then another type of internal torment I cannot say. It was a word that the humans nicknamed deja vu, a term I learned from the older female human who'd visit me when night would fall. If my old self was awake and uncontrolled in the presence of this monstrous human bondage, they would most certainly end up as fresh-kill within a matter of minutes.
But they seemed clever enough to notice the dangers and threats that I posed to them, and regardless focused upon ensuring my survival rather than themselves. Their hospitality was unique and quite amusing no less, and it somewhat encouraged me to do the impossible; spare their very lives.
The day I was freed from the shack it was the little girl and her taller sibling -- named Emma -- who helped untie my restrained legs and help me to my feet. I felt unsteady at first, due to my time on the floor and these newly healed injuries that toiled at the muscle. The wood ached my knees and joints, causing bubbly cracks and groans to shift between the ball and sockets of my own skeleton.
Though throughout the entire time I struggled to move, it was hard to keep ignoring the mere thought of the humans who aided me. For example, I was still very hungry, starving even, and my primal instincts had never been higher. Their meat-scented skin and fleshy aromas wafted into my nostrils at times, causing me to growl or sometimes click my talons together like the chimes of hanging glass, but abiding by their instructions I followed them outside without a problem.
And ignored this primal need.
Strange how such an innocent family decided to support and defend a damaged killing machine, I would wonder to myself. Any other human would realize my colors and appearance and destroy me upon sight. If only they knew the truth, which I wasn't so sure of, they'd think otherwise before sharing custody of me. Or perhaps shoot me dead the first time they ran into an indoraptor.
But I was interested in them to conclude. It was unlike them to do this. I thought they'd know what I am, what I've done, and what I've become.
I thought the whole world knew that I was dead.
I thought they knew that I was a monster.
The family was all outside when I had reached their backyard, and not a single one of them showed any scared emotions.
Was it because I was hurt? Limping towards my destination like a hobbled broken twig?
Perhaps it was the tremors from yesterday morning that made the earth's mountainous face writhe in terror?
Or maybe bravery defined the entirety of this group of unacclaimed humans, and it shocked me to the core to think this as I limped to the center of the blazing sunlight, lowering my body to the green grassy earth just to rest. I was menacing, cruel, dark, vicious and deadly. So many words could describe who I was, and what I was. But the words seemed to define my past actions and my old life, and to them I think they saw me as equal as a newborn sun, just lost that is -- hiding underneath the horizon of the sullen planet.
So many scents immediately surged into my snout when I broke from my thought world: from the sweet wet mildew of the green summer grass that tickled the scales beneath me, to the huge dust scented atmosphere above my body that circled the area.
A hand patted the back of my scales, causing me to grunt as I turned, looking at the little girl that I had almost eaten days earlier. She was completely unfazed by my size and appearance, and just rubbed her hand against my side with small coos and some soft innocent breaths.
"Belle," I croaked in dinosaur, and the little girl just smiles from the strange sound. If only she could understand me as I understood her.
As I nuzzled the playful little human, any and all thoughts of torment, violence, and rage submerged into oblivion, and my heart pounded in a strange feeling that made my jaws curl and my eyes gleam.
Another new feeling, I thought to myself, scraping my nostrils into the fabric that covered her flesh. It's not sadness since I'm not leaking rainwater. Soon I will discover what this new feeling means.
My nuzzling upon the little human had slowly brought forth a power all dinosaurs have, an ability to understand their prey, its purpose, and its character, both inside and outside.
Belle's breath was a bit awful, to begin with, as all human scents were, but within her jaw, I could see the birth of strange new teeth, sanded down unlike my own. But it too was sprouting from the pink flesh and glowed in the darkness that it had been banished to, invisible unless her lips did part or her voice squeaked words. She seemed different from the humans I knew, so much different. What I saw in humans used to be greed, desperation, and destruction, partially because of all the pain I endured being created and born and being tortured during a selling at the mansion.
She was the opposite.
Fun-loving, kind and considerate, she blossomed like a blue flower in the grass despite her recognizable youth and spoke of words most men couldn't even bear to say. Her bright brown tendrils fluttered in the wind, catching small dents in her sky drenched shirt and stroking her lips live snakes. Her eyes were cold and quiet, and as similar to my own pupils, hers was bright, allowing a perfect view of her contracting pupil from the sunlight trembling above.
I sniffed her again, hearing her giggle in surprise as I pressed my snout on her soft belly and abdomen while she held tightly the ridges above my nostrils.
She was slower, as I realized, less intelligent no doubt, and not as strong as I would've anticipated. But Belle was a new breed of her ravenous kind, and even if we couldn't speak a synced language, we felt connected somehow.
It wasn't fate or destiny. Nor was it hope.
She just felt like a part of me I didn't want to give up on.
After a few minutes had died from the small nuzzling and playing of the two of us Emma and father returned after a weird moment of timeless staring, motioning towards me in trusting assistance. But my instincts said otherwise.
The first gut reaction when I saw the man was a snarl and a hiss and the second was a bare of my teeth as I rose to all fours. But I wasn't necessarily leaning my attention toward Emma, but rather toward the man. And it wasn't because I hated him, nor was it because the humans who had hurt me were all males.
It was because of Wu.
The way he walked toward me as I was tortured by electricity and tormented by science.
The way his eyes never showed grief upon the damage of life, but rather his dark joy from the forced metamorphosis of it.
The way he'd stare down upon me without a smile or a frown.
The way he made me know fear and controlled me with it.
Emma glanced at me, moving closer, then put her hand on my snout to lower my raised side lips. I turned my head in a slight gasp, glancing into her eyes as she caressed me.
"If you could hear me, you don't have to be afraid of him," she muttered containing her smile through each stroke. "He's my dad. Trust him, we'd never hurt you."
But I would if the need comes to be. If only you could understand me, human.
I stared at her for a few more seconds, then turned my head to the father who was now much closer than before as my head swirled with thoughts and images of what could happen if I attacked. But perhaps I should listen instead of getting myself killed, and as he arrived at my location I just watched him, never lifting my lips or curling my claws.
Something inside me didn't see my action to let him touch me as mature, but rather wrong. It was like I forgot how to play my own part in my own story.
Like I was not the indoraptor I was destined to be.
And it still felt wrong to think this way.
The father pressed his hands on my wound, making me hiss as waves of pain rippled my body before he parted the white bandages to look at the swollen bloody flesh still present on my side.
"He's still pretty weak," the father chirped, pulling his hands back and wiping any excess liquid on his thighs. "And he's burning up. He could rest inside the house for the time being."
"Inside the house?" the sister's eyes widened from his idea. "I-I don't think that's safe."
"If he could trust you into trusting me and your sister, then I think it's safe to assume this possibility," rasped the father, standing up quick. "He needs help, Emma. Keeping him in the shed won't do him any good, especially after that quake. And anyone else we contact will most likely hurt him. It's for the best."
Emma glanced down at me, eyes glowing softly through her silent stare before she had nodded in agreement, putting her hands underneath my underside as support.
"Okay."
She turned to me, hair waving in the wind and using her strength brought me to my mid-height on all fours. In pain I lifted my body, the front of it bent toward the ground and my rear tail extended outwards, much alike to a Spinosaurus. When I settled in this position she waved her hand towards the building before me.
"This way."
I obeyed her quietly and without thought, dipping my head as I used her for support- limping toward the flat building before me that the humans called home. Their cage was moderately big, cascading over me in its dim shadows as I wandered in, and deep into its interior, the air changed forms, where warm and dry became cold and moist. She led me to a white carpet on the ground in front of a TV where she laid me, then petted me a little bit as I blinked speechlessly in her hand.
"He's calm now," She muttered standing up. "I'll go then. I have to finish packing for the school trip to Palo Alto."
"Don't be long now," Her father called, and within moments of speaking Emma had vanished from my radar, and soon the father would too, wandering outside to get Belle then strolling to his room in aching fatigue.
And when the silence settled around me, I lowered my head, still blank and unsure what think about and began to nap. I believed that napping didn't seem all that terrifying.
I was wrong.
◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥
Thoom!
Crash!
My yellow eyes widened softly as the heavens painfully cried above, and like a raging waterfall, the droplets pounded against my wettened scales, pitting the fleshy surface like bullets from above. The darkness howled with the winds, curling the trees and shifting the earth below, throwing dust and earth in every direction. The rain poured endlessly down over the earth with a thunderous roar, disturbing the once dominate the sound of emptiness by its loud gregarious booms.
For a long moment, as I stood there, bending on all fours, I imagined this horrible storm to be that of a nightmare, a void of all the death and destruction still left inside me. There was no craving to escape it, nor was there a ladder to pull myself free from it.
It was inside me.
It was me.
A loud crash and flash of light snapped my attention from the blackened world around me, and as I lifted my eyes a growl vibrated deep within my pink throat, my own claws curled strangely with the lust to kill. Before my two beady eyes stood two humans, one who reeked of darkness; a clone nonetheless and a worthless intimidator to my creation, and beside her was her protector, a man who I knew had no intentions of protecting her, but did it out of the goodness of his own heart because she was young. Another stood behind me, pointing a gun toward my quaking hide with her breath calm and her mind focused, not on saving the girl, but saving her love.
And I had no remorse for this ungrateful love. This triangular hatred over my own flesh was unbearable and toxic, and his determination to end me strengthened my bloodthirsty desires. Men's heart seemed to darken only against me, perhaps because of what I was supposed to become, not because of what I am.
The ground felt like glass beneath me, shuddering and groaning with the weight of my arriving failure. Even the rain itself padded lightly against the brittle material and yet it continued to tear itself apart. In fact, it cracked at times when my claws pressed against it, webbing outwards and stretching down below toward an all too familiar skull looming below.
A skull painted of death, deprived of its own eyes and motionless; a representative of what I was soon to become.
Another flash painted the skies and shook the earth, followed by another crashing boom as I roared, snarling angrily and pounding myself forward. The glass shattered beneath me mid-way through the walk, and before I could submit to my destiny my claw latched onto a sagging piece of metal, breaking my fall and surfacing my body back onto the roof.
Those ungrateful humans, I thought, vicious jaws snapping at them when I had gained safety once again, they'll pay for what they did to me, they all will!
Then came a noise. A noise I could never forget, not even to this day. It was a screech, a raptor's screech, and as I turned my head I already felt a pang of worry consume my heart. I had defeated her a couple of times, but she never gave into my victories.
Not even now.
Even with two jagged horns laying below, she never hesitated in attacking me. Her face showed now kindness, no thought, no sorrow or grief.
Just untamable rage. No words were spoken.
It was just pure rage, a feeling I may never understand.
She shrieked.
And I roared back.
And as soon as she collided against my spine the glass beneath me buckled with ease and snapped into a million pieces.
And I fell.
I never screamed. I never had time to. I had no chance to say goodbyes, no chance to apologize or realize the truth. I just saw the darkness swallow me as Blue tackled me, tearing me down as we fell.
And through the dream I imagined the Triceratops awakening, eyes glowing coldly as it curled his horns to meet my body.
Seconds later, the pair of bony swords struck me.
And I jolted awake.
For several long minutes, I laid there in the light, terrified beyond belief as my heart thrashed wildly within my chest. My claws trembled on the ground as I relieved the pain from my death, feeling the throbs on my side worsen before it too subsided into nothing. The sun had now vanished to the other side of the sky, straining against the utter darkness consuming the east, and while I watched it glow my breathing rate began to finally steady.
The nightmares were growing worse, not that I had one last night, but ever since I've changed it seemed like the darkness was consuming my mind rather than my actions themselves. The exterior part of me became the interior, vice versa for my internal desires, and I felt odd and uncomfortable being in this unusual position. If it wasn't my choice to be considerate or non-threatening, then what was I allowed to do?
I have a question, I thought to myself.
Go on, my mind responded. I'm listening.
Everything filled with life has a purpose, right?
Yes.
Then what's mine?
Your purpose? My mind coughed, then rumbled. You're purpose is clear is it not? To hunt, to slaughter, to rave upon this earth. Of course it's also revenge my dear friend, the lust to kill! The thirst for blood to spill upon InGen, and all the world! You must make yourself the dominant creature you were born to become! Let those humans rot inside of corpses' shell for what they've done to you. They deserve no judgment once you've finished them.
I just sighed and growled, Is that it? That's all I am?
If you insist more, I have plenty of alternatives.
Can't I serve peace?
Peace?! My mind spat. Peace is overrated and ungrateful-
Are you going to lecture me again?
-One could say it's a curse! A force of nature to hold our desires back, he went on. It's a servant's word for tamable disputes. You're not tamed, Ripper, so stop acting like your a human's pet!
A snarl had built inside my chest the moment he started his argument, and it wasn't long before I retorted back with a tremendous roar; I am no PET!
Then finish your task! My mind thundered back. Because the humans that are caring for you seem to be drag you by the tail out of the darkness that you were born within. They're stripping your strengths away into ribbons and making you one of them. The past will never rest until you kill him, Ripper. Then your destiny will be fulfilled. But until then, wake up! It's time for you to start acting like a dinosaur, and not like a man.
Silence gripped my heart when his voice vanished once again. No tears were shed this time, for his words sparked a great fire inside my blackened heart. But no matter where my voice transpired to follow, my purpose had a limit, and truly this thirst for a better life was out of the question for the time being.
But I was confused. More confused than I've ever been. Was it right to do this? Was it wrong? Truth be told, my voice didn't seem to match my heart. And that became a massive problem.
I have a job to do, I growled slightly, lifting my head and glancing at the window to my right and left where the door stood, my pupils widening from the darkness soon to come. Let's just hope I don't forget.