Zara wakes to feel herself floating in water. She's disoriented and her skin is burning but she feels her heart pounding and she starts swimming as quickly as she can for the emergency ladders that line the walls around the lagoon as Jurassic World. She cough as she swims but she doesn't dare slow down to catch her breath. It's dusk already or possibly dawn but there's no way for her to be sure.

When she does find the ladder and scramble over the side, she finally lets herself throw up on the ground. She throws up shark skin and unintelligible things she doesn't want to think about. She pressed her back against the wall and looks around for danger. Zara's already been eaten once today by dinosaurs after nearly eating eaten by a third time. She's getting progressively closer to death and she's pretty certain the third time will be successful.

The park is deserted. She picks her way carefully through the Main street that looks completely demolished. The buildings are crumbling in part and the closer she gets to the central office, the most blood stains appear. The electricity is still on. The park generators had solar panels and wind turbines installed in every place they could get away with. Whatever wasn't used by park operations was siphones into the back up generators or channeled into the electric fences, increasing the vultage.

Even the park's theme music was still playing softly on the main speakers.

A loud shriek comes from her left and Zara has to muffle down a scream.

There's a raptor on the ground. She's covered in injuries, blood leaking on the pavement and soft sad chuffing.

Zara knows she should probably kill it. She should take one of the fire extinguished and hit the raptor in the face until there's no chance of it moving ever again but frankly she's exhausted and she did not claw her way to her Executive Assistant job at Jurassic World for the money. She did it for the deep love of dinosaurs that had been passed down from every generation of her family down to her.

She sorts through her mental rolodex of the dinosaurs. Light green with slightly large stripes and no blue around her eyes. Delta then. "Cheers love," she says. "You're having a worse day than I am.

Zara can't help but sigh at the pitiful whimpers. She remembers when Delta and her sisters were small enough that they were carried around in baby slings, making happy chirps whenever the interns slipped them tiny bits of food. Delta had a fondness for hot sauce. Louisiana hot sauce on bits of hamburger meat. The other raptors couldn't stand it and Zara used to sneak them to Delta until the girls were deemed too mature to be allowed to roam outside the paddock. Zara rarely has time to- had time to visit, she reminds herself.

Still.

Zara nearly died once today and it was awful. The least she can do is make death a little kinder for her favorite dinosaur.

She goes into what's left of the Dino Grill. She finds a couple of dishes still left under warmed from the evacuation. She takes all the meat she can find and a bottle of hot sauce on the table.

Zara stands a couple steps away from Delta and throws a sauce covered piece of meat. Delta's nostrils flare when Zara tosses it over but it's not close enough to Delta to reach. Delta makes another sad wail and Zara steps close enough that she can lob tiny sauce covered chunks right into Delta's mouth.

Delta stops wailing the minute the first one lands and after a few more pieces she shifts into a combination of happy trills and distressed snuffles. Zara sits down beside Delta and sighs. "I know, Delta. I know it hurts. I promise, it'll be much better in the morning." Zara's not a vet but she's fairly sure Delta won't make it to tomorrow morning.

Zara gets up and starts to walk away again but Delta starts wailing again, high and distressed. Zara turns around and the wailing stops.

She shouldn't. She really shouldn't but...the sat phone will still be there in the morning and it's not as if the Command Center is going to be much safer than the remaining rubble. Zara curls un in the doorway of the back entrance to the dino grill. The air is warm enough and if she curls up into a tight ball, she can probably get some sleep. Zara's exhausted and it feel a bit like a dream. like she's going to wake up back inside the mosasaur.

She wakes up to Delta nosing her in the face and somehow, she's too tired to feel remotely surprised. "If you're going to eat me, please make it quick and let it happen before Maragaritaville starts playing again in the park speakers."

Delta lets out an inquisitive chirp and nudges her again, but upwards, as if trying to get her to stand.

Zara slowly stands up. She feels stiff from the horrible sleeping position, and her neck is just awful but she hasn't been eviscerated which is pretty huge for the raptors. Out of all the pack, Delta had mauled seven different handlers so far and had made a point of trying to terrify certain staff members until they either quit and changed to another Dinosaur enclosure.

Yet, Zara trusts her. If Delta hasn't killed her yet, then that is a clear sign Zara can trust her a little.

Delta scrabbles a bit at the dirt, then slowly, and with many low wailing sounds, manages to get up on her own feet. She's panting heavily but she's got just enough strength in her to step towards Zara.

Zara stays perfectly still. Delta doesn't bite or swipe at her, she just nudges Zare with her snout towards the Command Center and chirps.

Zara takes a cautious step in that direction. Delta follows and then nudges her again.

"I'm sensing a pattern," Zara says. "Alright, but I'm only going because I was going to go there any way." Delta chirps in response and nudges Zara a little harder.

Together, they slowly stagger towards Zara's last hope of rescue.