FIC: Never Let Me Go (Jurassic World, Owen Grady & the Raptor Squad, PG-13)
TITLE: Never Let Me Go
RATING: PG-13 (violence)
FANDOM: Jurassic World
CHARACTERS: Owen Grady, the Raptor Squad
SUMMARY: Pre-film, Owen and the Raptor Squad tend to each other.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for thisissirius’s 2015 yuletide. Thanks so much to Carla for the beta.
A lot of Isla Nublar was uninhabited, just open jungle. Grady had explored the island not long after moving there; every day he had off he’d drive his bike further and further from Jurassic World, further into the wild, untethered world of Isla Nublar’s jungle.
When the raptors were old enough, Grady proposed taking them on a fieldtrip. The idea was met with some hesitation.
“Not only no,” Claire said, “but never.”
Eventually Grady wore her down-kind of his M.O. with women, but why mess with success? The raptors were loaded onto a transport vehicle and driven out into the jungle miles away from the park.
The raptors were about three feet tall then-mentally and physically comparable to human toddlers. Their top speed was around 20 miles an hour.
“All right, ladies,” Grady said, “here are the rules.”
The raptors bobbed in place as Grady walked before them, fingering the pack of freeze dried beef liver on his hip. He believed in positive reinforcement, which meant the clicker, and treats. The raptors responded well to it.
“We come in as a team,” Grady said, “we work as a team, and we leave as a team.”
Some of the higher ups at the park, Dearing in particular, had been skeptical about InGen’s training initiative, but the raptors had come along just fine. Grady had been with them since birth; they imprinted on him like ducklings, and, with consistent training, they had become teachable. They were smart.
“Blue!” Grady said, and tossed her a piece of beef liver. She caught it in her massively powerful jaws.
“Charlie! Delta! Echo!”
The raptors snapped down their treats, and then bobbed, waiting for orders.
There were deer in Isla Nublar’s jungles. Raptors were pack hunters; up until now, Grady had given the pack beef carcasses, which they fed on as a group. But the raptors were growing; it was time for them to hunt as a team. Grady produced a rag soaked with deer scent. The raptors craned forward, interested, and Grady let each of them smell the rag.
The raptors bobbed excitedly. Grady adjusted the strap of the rifle across his back; he held up his hand, whoa.
“Wait,” he said.
The raptors bobbed, their talons clicking against the ground, but they stayed. Grady mounted his bike.
“Okay,” he said, and the pack was off.
***
Charlie had hatched first. Grady had been at Jurassic World for six months before hatching day, getting the paddock ready for the new arrivals. Grady remembered Dr. Wu calling him to tell him today was the day; Grady didn’t remember the ride from the paddock to the lab, but he remembered running-running-up the stairs to the incubators. He had been training animals for many years-first Malinois for the police, then dolphins for the Navy-but he had never before met the animals at birth; it had never been necessary like it was in this case.
The incubator was round, about the size of a coffee table. It was cold in the lab; Grady had never been there before, and hadn’t anticipated that; his skin pricked up with goosebumps. Maybe from the cold, maybe from the excitement. It was hard to tell. All four eggs had cracks in the shells, but the one directly under the light was the furthest along, a small, clawed foreleg scratching at the outside of the shell.
For all the world, Grady wanted to take the egg in his hand, to crack the shell and let the nestling out. But it was important that they do it on their own, so he waited.
The dinosaur who would become Charlie-Grady wouldn’t give them proper names until they had established a pack order, a few weeks after they were born; for now, the dinosaur’s name was VR016-pushed off a great hunk of shell. Grady could see the animal’s eyes now, focusing and refocusing like a camera lens. The powerful hind legs pushed, and the egg cracked some more; the animal’s tail unfurled, and for the first time the creature stretched its limbs.
“Hey, little guy,” Grady said, and the velociraptor looked at him. Grady could see his reflection in the animal’s eyes, and he smiled.
***
The pack shot through the forest, Grady and his bike taking up the rear. They had done some basic hide-and-seek drills in the paddock, where the raptors would scent off things like cow’s blood and the payoff was little bits of high value treats, but this was a game on a whole new scale. Grady’s hopes for the first field test were low; as long as they obeyed basic commands in the bewilderment of a new place, it would be a success. But the raptors’ instincts had taken over; they were hunting something.
Vegetation whipped at Grady’s arms and face as he watched the raptors weave in and out of the jungle foliage, their tails acting as rudders helping them make tight turns, their posture low, heads down, arms ready.
The raptors began to slow, and Grady felt a tingle down his spine. He stopped his bike, killed the engine. With such slow movement, the raptors became invisible in the under forest. Grady walked along beside them, listening for them moving through the foliage, adjusting his gait accordingly.
The trees began to thin, revealing a small glade. Grady could see a doe, graceful neck bent to reach the sweet summer grasses. He stopped in the shadow of the forest, tucking himself behind a tree trunk to watch the animal. He could not hear the raptors moving.
All of a sudden, the doe’s ears pricked; she raised her head, and seconds later bolted in the opposite direction, running for cover. It was too late. Grady watched as Blue jumped out from the plants and the shadows, talons extended. The doe went down, and in a blink the other raptors were there, on top of its stilling body.
Grady emerged from the jungle, the weight of the rifle on his back. The raptors looked up at him; Echo cocked her head as he approached.
Grady nodded. “It’s okay, girl.”
They ate.
***
A now ex employee of Jurassic World-Grady had seen to that-closed the gate at the wrong time and caught Delta’s foot. This was a bigger problem than a human with a broken limb; weak predators were routinely ostracized or killed to keep the pack at peak performance.
Barry helped Grady separate Delta from the rest of the pack. While the other girls were distracted with some guinea pigs-a favorite snack-Barry shot Delta with a tranquilizer. They were fast acting; Delta wavered for a moment, her balance unsure, and then fell.
“Quick, now,” Grady said. They brought up the gate and hurried into the paddock; they lifted Delta onto a stretcher and took her back out the gate.
The examination room was cold, metal, and smelled like antiseptic. Delta was moved to the examination table; she was strapped down, muzzled, and left to wait for the vet.
Delta’s drugged breathing was slow, labored. Grady stood beside her, running his hand slowly over her ribcage.
“That’s a good girl,” he said. “That’s my good girl.”
Delta’s eyes squeezed shut.
The vet entered the room, squinting at Delta’s chart.
“We need x-rays,” she said. “I’ll get somebody to help me position her.”
“I’ll do it,” Grady said.
The vet frowned. “I’m sure you’d prefer a vet tech did it; these animals are very strong, and dangerous even with the tranqs-”
“I said I’d do it,” Grady said, and he did.
***
They put a pin in Delta’s leg, so she was able to move it quicker than if it had been in a cast. She limped.
“Maybe we should keep them separated while she’s healing,” Barry said.
Grady frowned. “Not my first choice. We’ll see how the rest of the pack reacts to her; we’ll separate them if there’s trouble.”
They let Delta back into the paddock. The other raptors approached her cautiously, their heads tilted. Blue sniffed at Delta’s injured leg; her tongue slithered out of her mouth and poked gently at Delta’s surgery scar.
Grady left the gate and went up on the platform to watch the animals’ interactions more closely. The other raptors circled Delta, but their movements were still slow. Grady turned when he heard Barry’s boots on the grate of the platform.
“What are they doing?” Barry asked. “Are they going to reject her?”
Grady shook his head. He went back to looking at the raptors.
“They’re not acting aggressively,” he said. “They’re curious.”
The raptors continued to circle Delta, but they were no longer sniffing her wound. Their bodies lowered; they were in hunting stance. Barry reached for the tranq gun fastened to the wall of the platform; Grady put his hand up.
“They’re not going to hurt her,” Grady said. “They’re protecting her.”
***
The raptors were still newborns; nestlings, they were called. The problem with making test tube babies of extinct species is that there was no mother to care for them.
Wrong.
“You know you’re crazy, right?” Barry said.
Grady looked up from his project: a crib with heating pads running under the mattress.
“This’ll keep them warm,” Grady said, completely missing Barry’s look.
“You just can’t have velociraptors living in your trailer,” Barry said. “Think of what Dearing’s going to say.”
Grady rolled his eyes. “If it doesn’t affect profits, she couldn’t care less.”
He replaced the crib’s mattress and plugged in the heating pads. After a moment, the mattress was as warm as a little piece of toast.
“See?” Grady said. “I’m a genius!”
“A crazy genius,” Barry said.
Grady grinned. “But a genius nonetheless.”
***
The raptors were fledglings now, able to leave their heated crib and the papoose around Grady’s neck. They were each about a foot high; Grady fed them lamb and salmon and little white mice.
They followed him everywhere, in a trail like little ducklings.
***
Another fieldtrip with the raptors, this time to the north of the island, a stretch of unpopulated wilderness Grady had only been to on his own.
“Nice change of pace, huh, ladies?” he asked as he loaded them off the transport vehicle.
The hunt for the day was peccaries, a wild pig about the size of a Labrador. Grady produced a rag soaked with scent, and the raptors sniffed it eagerly and then looked up at Grady, waiting for permission to go after their prey.
“Okay!” Grady said. “Let’s go.”
They tore off into the woods, becoming near invisible under coverage of the foliage. Grady followed on his bike, keeping pace until a great, unseen force rammed into the motorcycle, throwing Grady from the bike and throwing the bike against a tree so hard that the motorcycle molded around the tree’s trunk.
Grady looked up. There was a dinosaur twice Grady’s height towering over him, its scales green as the jungle’s under forest, a knobby crown of bone atop its head.
Pachycephalosaurus, Grady thought, followed immediately by, oh shit.
The pachy bent, lining up its spine. Grady knew that these dinosaurs’ spines locked in that position, so that they could pound anything out of oblivion with their bone crowns. Grady tried to run, but there was such pain in his legs and abdomen that he found he could only hobble through the uncooperative bush.
The thing would have him for sure.
Grady was bracing for impact when a roar cut through the jungle. Echo, talons drawn, launched herself onto the pachy at full speed. The pachy roared, and tried to buck Echo off, but her teeth were in his neck. Charlie jumped on after, attacking the pachy’s underbelly.
Blue and Delta emerged from the shadows, approached Grady. Their heads cocked, they sniffed at him. He sank to the ground, the pain growing intense. The raptors began to circle him, heads down-hunting stance.
They circled around him the same way the pack had around Delta when she’d returned from surgery. They protected him.