Alarms blared as I continued to sprint down the hall. My claws clicked on each footstep, air hissing through my sharp teeth as I rounded another corner. In a split-second, my senses locked onto yet another target running from me. With my powerful legs I pounced and landed squarely on him, pinning him to the floor, claws puncturing his skin. The look of horror on his face was short lived as I clamped my teeth onto it and twisted, breaking his neck.
The pure rage which was driving me at this point was more or less controlling me. It was as if I were on a murderous autopilot; I could do no more than sit in the backseat and be forced to watch. It wasn't disgusting me however, which I could only attibute to the strength of the anger I was feeling inhbiting any other emotions.
The facility I was in seemed endless as I ran and lept down another corridor with no real direction, just a panicked urge to escape. It wouldn't be for long though, as I heard a whizzing sound, a sharp pain in my thigh and then my face on the floor. Non-deterred, I struggled tirelessly to get back onto my feet, yet the harder I tried, the more futile my efforts became. The last thing I remember hearing before I blacked out once again was a calm voice.
"Sorry about this, buddy..."
-==-
Funnily enough, that was one of the best naps I'd had. It seemed so at least, as when I finally opened my eyes all anger had mysteriously vanished. Still drowsy, I steadily looked around. I was restrained once more. Great, I wonder what they're planning this time...
Before I could ponder any longer, the voice I heard before rang out again, averting my gaze to the still blurry figure a few feet in front of me.
"Rise and shine. You've been out for six hours... out like a light."
Vision coming back to me, I began to make out who was speaking. Tapping his fingers on a silver dart gun, a dark-haired man stood nonchalantly, smiling cockily as if I was his friend or something. He was dressed like some sort of park ranger and covered in dirt; obviously not one of the scientists who were experimenting on me earlier. The room we were was dark and musty, a small trickle of water dripping from a hole in the corner and a lamp flickering intermittently on the ceiling. Wherever we were, it wasn't the facility; and I was glad of that in the very least.
Human habits evidently still present, I spoke. Well, I tried to at least. All that came out was a sort of hissy chirp. The man chuckled.
"I'm afraid that won't work, buddy. Raptor voicebox ain't built for the alphabet."
Bemused, he stepped up to me and began undoing the restraints that were binding me to the bed I was in. Once I was free, I basically fell to the floor and stumbled around for a moment. I clearly wasn't one-hundred percent awake yet. Looking away, the man called out.
"Blue? Come here, girl."
To my surprise, another raptor, which I had assumed was 'Blue' and was female, emerged carefully from the shadows, walking slowly towards me and cocking her head in curiosity. As it walked into the dim light, I could see her more clearly. She was mostly grey in colour, with a long blue patch running from her eyes to the tip of her tail. A number of scars decorated her head and torso, and she had a slight limp in her left leg. Even from such a short anaylsis, I could she had been through some hell at some point. Guess that made two of us.
Despite being about as equal to her as I could be in the circumstances, I froze a little in fear as she came close to me and began sniffing my muzzle curiously. Almost instinctively, I found myself doing the same, inhaling the very strong and unique scent she seemed to eminate.
"This is Blue. She's a lot like you... or perhaps the other way around."
Again the man laughed for a second, before his grin vanished.
"Sorry. I don't mean that in any disrespect. I can only imagine what you've been through today."
Looking about the room, he seemed to think for a second before putting a hand to his chest and smiling once more.
"I'm Owen, by the way. Used to run a lot of things on this island, until everything went to hell... twice. The most important thing is that we're here to help you. No more needles and labcoats; I can promise you that much."
I nodded nervously; one of the few forms of human communication I could still muster as I was now. Owen walked over to a computer and began typing as Blue backed up slightly and let out a friendly chirp. I say friendly, as I somehow was now able to understand the normally inelligible noises she was making.
"I like you. You smell nice."
Something along those lines at least. Cocking my head slightly to the side, I chirped back in a positive tone to indicate my appreciation.
"Over here Blue." Owen said from across the room, Blue spinning her head around in alert.
"Let's show our friend here the gear."
She walked over to him, where Owen was holding some sort of headset. Patting her gently on the muzzle, which made her chirp affectionately, he slowly lowered the headset onto her head until the mouthpiece was resting just below her eye. He then moved his hand to what looked like a projector on the table and switched it on, the wall ahead of it illuminating in a rectangle of deep blue.
Owen gestured at Blue as she looked at him expectantly.
"This is what we call a cerebral interpreter. It's something I managed to grab from InGen when everything went down a few years back. Put simply, it allows intelligent animals, such as Blue here, to talk."
I cocked my head again, this time in a certain degree of surprise. He stepped back for a moment and pointed at Blue as she continued to stare at him.
"Blue, report."
Promptly she chirped, seemingly in acknowledgement before looking forward in an expression of concentration. Within a couple of seconds, white text began to appear word by word on the wall.
BLUE IS READYOwen then looked at me and spoke again.
"As you may have noticed, Blue did not open her mouth just then. The clue's in the name - cerebral interpreter. It interprets thoughts. What you can see here is what she thought translated into plain English so us humans can understand it."
He pulled a scrap of meat from his jacket pocket and held it above her. Snapping her jaws, Blue practically tore the meat from his hand and swallowed it quickly.
"Good girl!" Owen said, smiling at her and patting her on the back.
Walking back over to the table, he switched the projector off and pulled out some sort of speaker from his bag, placing it carefully on the table directed towards me. I moved closer in curiosity, glancing at Blue as she looked back. There was something particularly eye-catching about her.
"Now, text on a screen is all well and good... until you need to communicate quickly. And nothing beats actual speech for that. See, when we first got these things they were still in prototype. What you just saw was the limits of their capability; slow and text only. With the help of some friends... well, let's just say we gave them a bit of an upgrade."
Owen shouted out to Blue once again.
"Blue, phrase!"
Blue appeared to focus again, and to my amazement, the speaker almost instantaneously blurted out in a female synthesised voice.
"Brown prey jump over Blue. Blue eat brown prey. Blue like eating because brown prey tastes nice."
Owen laughed and patted Blue on her back again, causing her to trill happily again.
"It's a work in progress... not the tech that is, more her ability to form this stuff in her head. She is a raptor after all."
Picking up another headset which was lying on the table, he walked over to me and slowly placed it on my head, switching it on and stepping back again.
"Now, while Blue is limited by her - forgive me girl - limited intelligence, your human mind should still be intact. I'd probably be a pool of blood on the floor if not by now, but there's only one way to find out. You should be able to speak a bit more.. eloquently than her if you concentrate hard enough. Go on, try and speak your mind."
Concentrating in the same way I had noticed Blue doing it, I thought hard about a sentence in my head and surely enough, it crackled out from the speaker.
"I could really do with the bathroom right now, if such a thing applies to me anymore."
Owen grinned like an idiot like this, obviously bemused by my humour. I tried to smile as hard as I could with my reptillian mouth but found it easier to simply do a happy chirp instead. Blue, while initially clueless as to why Owen was laughing, understood my chirp and purred. She was an adorable thing really, and boy did she look good. I spent a good few seconds admiring her markings again before I snapped out of it and shook my head. These foreign instincts were powerful and I really needed to be careful.
"Now that we can talk, how about we get to figuring out how this happened to you?"
I nodded and looked down at my scaly arm, contemplating as I clenched my claws. Whoever did this was certainly going to pay.