Author's note: Okay, I know the previous chapter was a bust, but I hope this one is more fun :)
The first question Claire got asked at the post-incident press conference the Masrani PR team organized even before the wheels of her plane touched the US soil was, "How did you let it happen?"
Before her, she had a sheet of paper with everything she was allowed to say, courtesy of the numerous lawyers overwhelmed by the sheer amount of madness they were about to face. The answers that ultimately looped in on themselves, empty words that provided no actual information. She'd recognized the tactic – she'd used it more times in the past than she could count. In fact, it was one of the things she used to be exceptionally good at – she did, after all, manage to sell the park to just about every investor the company ever set its eyes on. Piece of cake!
Except it was different now. People died. She watched them die. Because of her. Because of her mistakes. There was blood on her hands she knew she would never be able to wash off. She couldn't close her eyes without seeing ACU team being torn to pieces, without hearing the screams of the terrified people running down Main Street, chased by the Pteranodons, without remembering how she thought her nephews were dead.
So, how did this happen?
The truth was plain and simple – they got greedy. Not only did they bite off more than they could chew, but they also didn't stop trying even when they started to choke. The truth was, it was a miracle it didn't happen sooner.
She didn't have answers for them. She had excuses. Excuses that meant nothing in the face of the tragedy that took lives and traumatized people in the way settlement cheques or apologies couldn't fix. Excuses that felt foul and bitter in her mouth, stuck in her throat and blocking her air.
I'm sorry, she wanted to say. I'm so sorry.
The cameras kept flashing in her face, but the worlds wouldn't come out. The crowd started to swim before her eyes,and the next thing Claire knew, she was dry-heaving over the sink in the women's restroom while one of the other company representatives – the one who hadn't been there, the one who hadn't seen what they had done – swept in and took over the microphone before the reporters had a chance to start building a news story about a public breakdown of the Operations Manager of the park. Former Operations Manager, Claire reminded herself.
She started at the woman looking back at her from the mirror – her face pale, her skin feeling too tight on her bones, her eyes haunted and looking for an escape. The problem was they didn't just let it happen. They were still letting it happen, and she wasn't sure they knew how to stop…
xoox
They took the bike. It was faster, Owen claimed, and Claire didn't even think to protest.
"They get sick all the time," he told her earlier as he shed off his motor-oil-murky-lake-water-stained shirt and put on a clean one while she simply pulled a blouse and a pair of jeans over her bathing suit. "But it doesn't mean anyone knows what to do about it."
Of course, they didn't, she thought, holding onto Owen while the bike revved and roared beneath them, jumping on the potholes as it zipped through the forest, the trees on either side of her blurring into a never-ending green stripe. It wasn't an exact science, and even though first John Hammond and then Simon Masrani threw sufficient funds into the dinosaur healthcare – what good what it do to the park if the animals started dropping like flies? – it still was like playing a Russian Roulette. What saved one of them killed the other.
Owen sped up, recklessly swaying into the curves of the road, although still not daring to go as fast as he'd want to. Not with Claire sitting behind him, the warmth of her body soothing the growing panic washing over him, making it easier to breathe through the ice holding his insides in a tight grip. There was no point in bringing her over with him, but she said she'd come and he selfishly didn't protest.
The handlers were already at the paddock when he threw the bike into park, sending a spray of sand and gravel into the air. He propped it on the kickstand and headed for the cage where two vets were kneeling beside sedated Blue.
Claire pulled out the phone and was dialing Lowery to get a full report and not just the snippets she managed to pull out of Owen who didn't bother with consistency when Barry's car pulled up and parked by the vet truck. He scanned the paddock and the surrounding structures, eyes briefly pausing on Owen, before heading over to Claire who hung up the phone and watched him approach with a sinking feeling that the bad just took turn for the worse.
"Claire," he threw another nervous look at the cage. "There's more."
"More what?" She blinked, confused.
"ACU just spotted a Stegosaurus showing similar symptoms." Barry swallowed. "And they think there might be an animal or two more they've dismissed earlier. They've headed out to check on them now to make sure."
Her heart sunk, and it was only now that Claire realized how much she hoped it was a mistake.
She nodded if a little numbly, willing her mind for shift into action gear – they needed to locate the sick animals, figure out the cause of the disease or whatever it was, and try to isolate them to stop it from spreading. Then they need to find a remedy – the process that involved anything from doing an inventory of their medical supplies to having to order something from the mainland. For a moment, it felt overwhelming – the volume of work to be done in the shortest period of time possible making Claire's head swim. She started making a mental To Do list without even realizing she was doing it, reaching for the familiar and comfortable, her response to chaos, to needing to have the situation under control.
"Has this happened before?" She asked, even though she was pretty certain she knew the answer – just because she hadn't been as involved with this side of the park life before, having to primarily liaise with the business associates of the company instead of its truly money-making aspect, she doubted she'd have remained unaware of the animals' health issues.
Barry shook his head. "Not to several of them at once." He met her eyes, and she knew he hated the idea of asking what he was about to ask. "If it gets worse, you know what we'd have to do, right?"
Claire turned and found Owen kneeling by his raptor.
"I do."
A flu of some sort, the vets told them. Or an infection. They weren't sure without running the tests, and those might take a while. Granted, they had a mobile lab right here – she wished InGen hadn't taken Wu's equipment, but it was a pointless regret now. It wasn't like she could summon it back with the power of her will. It meant a delay though, and it frustrated Claire more than anything else.
Owen's face was crowded with worry when his hands closed around hers clasped around the thick bars separating them from one another, the warmth of his body both soothing and disconcerting – she could all but feel the fear radiate off of him, and her fingers itched to reach out and smooth the crease between his brows.
"I'm going to stay here until she comes to," he told her in a low voice while the vets behind his back packed their field bags, talking quietly to each other.
"Owen," she started.
"It's okay, she'll be out for a while." He glanced briefly at Blue, still out cold behind his back, then at Claire again, his voice strained. There was nothing okay about it, but she couldn't bring herself to mention it.
He reached through the bars and cupped her cheek with his hand, disregarding the audience. It wasn't like no one knew about them, seeing as how Lowery didn't even think twice before dialing Claire's number to fins him.
Without breaking eye contact, Claire tuned her head and brushed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, trying not to think of what she was seeing in his eyes – the helpless panic and pain she knew she couldn't take away – and hating the gate between them.
"Take care," she asked him quietly before stepping away from the cage.
It was not her game.
xoox
Of course, she knew what Barry was talking about.
There were protocols – InGen's protocols that she had no control over – for the situation like this. If the cause of an infection or a disease couldn't be identified or contained, and the animals couldn't be cured, they were to be put down – for the safety of the people and, in many cases, their own benefit. It never had to be done before – not during her time in the park, but she knew those orders were still in effect and would have to be applied had the situation warranted it.
Which brought her to her next order of business.
"Dr. Grant?"
"Ms. Dearing." If her phone call caught Alan Grant by surprised, it sure didn't sound like it. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
She had a speech. She had a long list of arguments. She knew how to ask for something without making it sound like she was asking for anything. She knew exactly how she wanted this conversation to go.
Instead, she blurted out, "I need your help," thus swiping her carefully cultivated negotiation techniques under the rug.
"I'm listening." If anything, he sounded intrigued, and Claire took the fact that he hadn't hung up on her – that he'd picked up at all – as a good sign. Albeit a suspicious one, but good nonetheless.
"I'm on the island," she breathed out, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and held her breath, wondering if he was going to throw his phone against the wall or do something else equally poetic.
"If you need my help getting off of it, I'm afraid I don't do that anymore."
Okay, this caught her by surprise.
"No, no. It's not that." Claire assured him quickly. "I need your… professional opinion."
There was a pause on the line, long enough to make her think he'd decided to end the call. And then he spoke again, "My professional opinion is that you need to pack up, take your friend, and get the hell away from that island, but I'm assuming it's not what you were going to ask."
"My… friend?" She frowned.
"Last time I checked, Mr. Owen Grady was heading in the general direction on Costa Rica." A pause – a curious one. "He spoke highly of you, so I assumed…"
"Yeah. Right." Claire cleared her throat, her gaze landing on the calendar on her desk. It had been three day since Blue got sick. They'd located five more dinosaurs in the past 72 hours that didn't feel quite so hot either. And so far, they had nothing – except Dave Harris reminding her on an hourly basis that those animals were a contamination threat. Last time she checked, Owen slept in the raptors' paddock. At this point, she was willing to grasp at straws. Hell, she'd even call Ian Malcolm if she had to (not that she thought he'd help). "What I wanted to know… When the first park opened, did John Hammond or maybe Henry Wu mention anything about the animals being susceptible to, I don't know, viruses?"
For a few moments, all she could hear was the tapping of a pen or a pencil on a notepad – a restless and nervous habit she wasn't unfamiliar with. The Alan Grant let out a long breath.
"John Hammond and Henry Wu were geniuses in the direct meaning of this word. They did what no one else could even imagine. But they were not gods, and even though they managed to bring to life the closest thing to a dinosaur, I'm not sure they were ready for the repercussions."
"Is that a no?"
"It's a no, I'm afraid." He admitted, and maybe she was reading too much into it, but she could've sworn she'd heard regret. "The thing is, Ms. Dearing, those islands were a perfect place for some of the species and not so much for the others. The climate, the diet, anything you brought on your shoes and clothes from the mainland – all those facts could've contributed to the health problems of the animals. They are not fragile – far from it – but they're hardly indestructible either." Which was exactly what she'd figured out on her own. "My second best advice would be to talk to Dr. Wu."
Claire sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Well, he's not really available these days."
"So I've heard." She could've sworn she heard a hint of a bitter amusement in his voice.
"The second best?" She prompted him then.
"The first would be to tell you, once again, to get away as far away as possible from that place."
Yeah, well…. She tried that the first time around, and look how it ended. Apparently, trying to get away from this island before it was willing to let go of you was just as effective as attempting to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube.
But maybe if she'd actually finished what they'd started, she'd be able to move on with what was left of her life.
For now, however, she had no idea where to even begin. It wasn't like there was a manual ling around that she'd somehow overlooked. Or a map. Or a checklist of all stages of trauma she had to go through before everything started making sense again. For all Claire knew, this might never end and maybe she'd be left in the suspended state, not here, but not quite there either, for as long as she lived.
She wanted to ask Alan Grant about how he managed to leave this place behind, move on with his life and never look back – well, never was a strong word, but he'd managed to stay away for nearly a decade, and that, in Claire's opinion, was something. The questions rolled on her tongue, ready and eager to spill out, her mind reeling. Dealing with the press, with the curious bystanders, with the haters who thought that what Hammond had done was unacceptable, and the fanatics who wanted to find a way to get to the island – he'd gone through it all. If anything, it proved it wasn't impossible.
But she swallowed them and pushed them away, both because it wasn't the purpose of her call, and also because she wasn't sure she wanted to hear his answers. She feared he'd say there was no way out of it, that a part of her would always be missing. And her life was terrifying enough already.
Instead, she steered the conversation into a familiar territory, and then thanked him profusely before hanging up, uncertain whether it was a good or a bad thing that she was left with more questions than before this talk.
xoox
It was a dinosaur figurine that broke her. A small Apatosaurus barely the size of Claire's palm, exactly like those that used to line Lowery's workstation and crowd just about every surface in Gray's room. She found it in the corner of what used to be one of three souvenir shops after meeting there with the construction crew to discuss the progress of their work and which structures were to be kept intact and which needed to be demolished completely.
Someone must have missed this toy during the clean-out.
Claire stared at it for a long moment. In those three shops, they had the figurines of nearly every dinosaur that ever walked the Earth, not just those that inhabited the park, and at some point, she had personally approved the orders for each and every single one of them. Not because she had to – God knew, there were people who actually had it in their job description – but because she wanted to do it right. Because it mattered.
It seemed so stupid now. So pointless. So small and petty and shameful.
She looked at a dust-covered piece of plastic in her hand, and saw her dreams, and her plans, and her ambitions, and even John Hammond's vision. She saw the park the way she – they - wanted it to be, but also the guilt that would be looming over her, the weight of the lives taken away because of her, for the rest of her life. Not the successes she could've been rightfully proud of, but the mistakes she wished she knew how to unmake.
Her fingers curled around the figurine as she pressed her other hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes tight, her body shaking with sobs.
xoox
Owen found her sitting on the steps leading to his bungalow a few hours later. The porch light was on over her head and a half-finished glass of wine sat forgotten beside her.
"What are you doing sitting outside?" He asked.
"I wasn't sure if it was a good time. If you'd even come here or stay at the paddock."
He frowned. He might have just had the longest day – the longest three days – of his life, but he'd have to be dense and blind not to notice that something was off. There was an edge to her voice and he hated the way she didn't seem to be able to look at him. And even though the light was falling from behind her, concealing her features, Owen could've sworn her eyes were red from crying.
A million questions formed on his tongue, ready to roll off of it and bounce off the walls she'd already built around herself, wearing them like an armor. Against what, though, he'd yet to find out.
He propped the rifle he was carrying against the side of the stairs and sat down next to her.
"Claire? Is everything okay?"
"Of course." She said without missing a beat and brushed nonexistent wrinkles from her pants, her gaze focused on her lap. "How's Blue? Is she doing better?"
"She's not getting worse." Owen said honestly, which was a relief and a prolonged torture all rolled into one.
She stayed quite for a while, and even though he itched to demand the answers – like, before he actually jumped out of his skin – he allowed the silence only interrupted by the chirping of cicadas in the dark to hang between them.
"Do you think it's happening too fast?"
Owen blinked. "What?"
Claire bit her lip nervously. "This. Us."
His brows drew together as he turned to her, studying the pale outline of her profile, his whole body suddenly in a vice. "Okay, what's going on?"
"Nothing. Nothing's going on." She insisted. "I was just… thinking."
"Well, there's your problem right there." He joked, but it came out halfhearted and humorless. His attempt to get her to return the quip fell flat and unnoticed.
She shook her head and let out a small sigh. "I'm serious, Owen."
"Now you're scaring me."
"I just… I'm not good at this," Claire admitted if a little hesitantly. "At being with people. At—knowing what to do."
"No one is." He shrugged, hoping she could hear him past the hammering of his heart.
"That's not reassuring."
She finally turned to him – for the first time since the conversation began, and if he was any good at reading people, he could swear she was this close to running for the hills. Which, in this place, wasn't necessarily a metaphor. He'd seen it before – the panic, the fear of losing control. And, as far as he was aware, there was nothing but chaos about the two of them.
He moved closed until their thighs and elbows touched – a small thing, but it somehow settled the discomfort he was feeling until this moment. Or, at least, was starting to.
"Look, from where I stand, there's nothing wrong with being each other's crutch. I can do all this on my own, and so can you, but I want to do it with you." He held her gaze, wanting so badly to reach for her, brush his fingertips to the freckles on her cheeks.
Claire swallowed. "You say like it's so simple."
"We both know it's not," he pointed out, as his stomach dropped and his breathing tightened in his chest. "Do you really want to end this?"
She didn't turn away, her eyes huge and uncertain.
"I don't know what I want, Owen."
"That's bullshit," he objected without hesitation. "You always know what you want. You just don't always like it, but that's another story."
"It scares me," she whispered, confessing quite possibly her biggest secret.
"I know." He said, unable to hold back from tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "But we're figuring it out. And the good thing about it is not having to do it on your own."
Claire looked away then, staring straight ahead now. "I talked to Alan Grant today."
"Okay," he said cautiously.
"He said to go easy on antibiotics. Their immune systems might not respond well to them."
Owen nodded. "Noted."
He watched her pick on a loose thread that escaped the seam of her pants.
She cleared her throat again. "He also said you sounded interested the last time you talked about his job offer."
"I wasn't uninterested." He corrected her, and then his frown deepened when her words kicked in. "Wait, is this where all this is coming from?" Owen scrubbed a hand down his face, shook his head. "If you don't want me to leave, I won't."
Claire pursed her lips together, her voice strained. "Don't put it on me."
"Not putting anything on you, Claire." Letting out a long breath, he looked down at the knot of his hands clasped together and hanging between his knees. "Grant's offer is my back-up plan, I guess. For when you get sick and tired of my…" He trailed off.
"Snoring." She offered helpfully, the corner of her mouth lifting up. "Leaving your tools all over the house. Putting empty carton of milk back in the fridge."
"I don't-" Owen darted a quick look at her. "I was gonna say my excellent physique, but look at you, you already have a list. I should've known you already have a list."
"It's not a list," she protested with a huff.
He shrugged. "All I'm saying is - everyone needs a back-up plan. It doesn't mean anything."
She turned to him again, head tilted slightly. "And what do you need now?"
"You."
He cupped her cheek with her palm, allowed his thumb to run over her lower lip before leaning in and pressing his mouth to hers. She kissed him back, lips opening up to him, her fingers curling around his wrist, running down his arm. She smelled faintly of coconut and almonds, familiar, almost intoxicating scent, stirring the things inside of him he didn't know how to name.
Inside the bungalow, Owen's hands slid under her top, desperate, hungry for the feel of her skin against his, for the way she was melting in his arms, making him go crazy, unable to tell where she ended and he began. His fingers trailed down the straps of her bra, down the flat plane of her stomach, around her waist, under the waistband of her pants while her hands fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. She grunted in protest when she found an undershirt beneath it, making him laugh – a low, rumbling sound, rising from his chest and echoing in every cell of her body, breathless, her lips trying to kiss all the skin she could reach.
Claire's shins brushed against the edge of his bad – how did they get there? Did they even move? – and she let out a slow, long breath when his lips travelled down her check, along her neck, to the sensitive spot behind her ear he knew would leave her on the brink of falling over the edge, the touch of his hands making her feel like she was going to dissolve without a trace, lighting sparks under her skin, too much and not enough all at once.
He lowered her down, hoverive over her for a moment, taking in her eyes the color of seawater in near complete darkness, the soft curls she'd long stopped trying to keep straight fanned over the pillow, her slightly parted lips, his heart pounding in his chest so fast he thought it would break his ribs on its way out.
Gorgeous. His.
Owen's mouth found hers again, drinking her in – there was no other way to put it, his need for this, for her, so raw and primitive it almost hurt. Breathless, he kissed his way down her neck, her chest, her stomach, her skin smooth and ghostly pale and glowing in the moonlight spilling into the room through the half open curtains, marveling in the sound of her soft gasps, whispered encouragement. His lips curved into a possessive, satisfied smile at the sharp intake of her breath when he brushed a kiss to the inside on her knee, making his way up along her thigh.
"Owen…"
Fingers interlaced, he slid their hands over her head as his body filled hers, his lips capturing her half sigh, half whimper, the kiss deep and slow and soothing and full of promises he didn't know how to keep, the words he couldn't yet find. The words he didn't even know existed. Claire went still for a few moments, her lips quirking into a smile against his mouth, before he started to move, first slowly, savoring the feeling of belonging, of such deep and utter contentment he didn't think he could handle it, and then picking up pace, needing her so bad he thought he was going to lose his mind.
Her hands slipped from his grasp to thread through his hair, skim over his shoulders, down his back, her lips ghosting over his law line, her breath hitching in her throat under his every touch, at the sound of his voice whispering her name like a prayer, until the world zeroed in on the two of them, exploding into a million colors, bright and brilliant. Too much and not enough…
Owen buried his face into her neck, breathing in the scent of her, wishing there was enough light to see her eyes. Wishing there were words to tell her she was his entire Universe.
He rolled over onto his side, his breath still short and ragged, his body wonderfully spent. She turned her head, and his lips were right there, kissing her softly and sweetly now that the storm had passed, the raging fire sated to a slow burn. His fingers tangled in her hair as Claire scooted closer, forehead resting against his, a smile he could feel more than see playing on her face.
"I can't believe we've wasted so much time," he said quietly, the touch of his breath to her skin making it tingle. "We could've been doing this for years. I wanted to do it since the first time I saw you."
"Even when you yelled at me because Hoskins wouldn't get off your back?" Claire asked.
"I wasn't mad at you, I was mad at him," Owen explained sheepishly. "And I apologized."
"Even after our date from hell?" She went on, clearly amused.
He chuckled. "Is that what we call it now?"
She couldn't help but scoff. "Come on, you've been there."
"Even more so then," he admitted, pecking her on the lips again, and then one more time. "I wanted to see what the real Claire was like. The one without checklists." His heart took a dive from ten thousand miles above the Earth, somehow forgetting the parachute. "You and I, are we good?" Owen asked in a low murmur, caressing her face, brushing the strands of hair from her forehead.
"I don't know, are we?" Claire giggled, kissing him again. "I'm not even sure I can think straight yet."
A jolt of elated possession zinged through him. He pulled her closer until every curve of her body fit against every curve of his, their legs entangled, faces not even an inch apart. And he still couldn't get enough of her, still wanted more even though he couldn't tell what more was. Up until now, Owen didn't even know it was possible to need another person so deeply, so desperately.
He stroked her bare shoulder absently, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her skin. "I'd never hurt you, you know that, right?"
Claire felt her heart skip a beat, grateful all of a sudden for the cover of the night that hid a shadow of uncertainty that flickered across her face.
Not intentionally, she wanted to say. Everyone always says that, she wanted to add. It was not right and it was not fair, but that was how life worked – most of the time at least, and she didn't want to lie to herself. But she couldn't bear the idea of being this goddamn rational, not now when her whole body was so attuned to his she could feel his heartbeat as if it was her own, their chests rising and falling in sync.
"I know," she whispered. "About earlier… it's been a weird day."
"'S'okay." Owen let out a long breath, then lifted her chin and kissed her again, not oblivious to the slight change of mood, but more than willing to look the other way for the time being. "I'm not going anywhere, Claire. Not until you tell me to." And added as an afterthought, "Probably not even then."
She found his hand, intertwined their fingers together. He raised it to his mouth, kissed the back of her hand – one knuckle at a time.
"Tell me what else is on it, on that list of yours," he asked after a while when they'd finally found themselves again, their breathing evening out, their heartrates no longer going through the roof.
She brushed her lips to his collarbone. "What list?"
"The one with all the reasons for you to dump me for Lowery."
Claire snorted – half at the idea of leaving him, half at the idea of ditching him for Lowery. "Let's see," she drawled, her voice mischievous. "You leave your socks everywhere."
He let out a short laugh. "Now you're just flattering me. Come on, give me the real stuff."
The way you make me feel safe, she thought, having to swallow the words before they slipped out. The way you calm the storms inside of me. The way you can put together the parts of me I thought I'd lost forever. The way you look at me when you don't think I notice. The fact that I'm not tearing at the seams when I'm with you.
"Your excellent physique," she said at last, throwing his comment back at him.
"I'm feeling so objectified, Ms. Dearing." He pulled the sheets over them and kissed the top of her had.
Claire laughed – the sound like sunshine, filling him with golden glow, shooting the sharp edges, molding together the cracks running through his entire existence with pure, untamable bliss. This was probably what drug addicts felt, Owen thought. Except his addiction had green eyes that reminded him of everything from summer foliage to deep sea and a dusting of freckles that was enough to drive him insane.
His job, his life choices came with a certain territory. He'd learned to jump on command, drop and roll and run into the fire without thinking twice. It wasn't fearlessness – it was instinct drilled into him, the only thing that guaranteed his survival. It was hard to get scared if you pushed the thoughts of what you were doing away and let your body to do what it knew how to do best. Sometimes, he didn't feel right about it. Other times, he didn't allow himself to feel anything at all. It was easier that way.
With Claire, it was different. He was scared of losing her. Which made him want to kiss her deeper, to hold her longer, to savor the moments he wasn't sure were his to keep.
There were things in his past, memories that kept him from believing that what was happening between them was real. That he was worth of it, of feeling like he'd grown wings. It was as terrifying as it was overwhelming, the intimacy and closeness and a sense of commitment he'd never experience before, making the idea of waking up to find out it was just a dream so much more terrifying. There were words rolling in his tongue for quite a while now, things he wanted to tell her but couldn't bring himself to say out loud, things he wanted to thank her for – as if the words of gratitude could express how much it meant to him that she kept fixing the parts of him he didn't even know were broken.
These days, life was only making sense when she was within his arm's reach, when he could bury his face in her hair and breathe in her scent that never failed to ease the tight knot in his stomach. He'd faced death more times than he could count, but the one thing that truly terrified him was not knowing how to exist without her.
"Hey, I should go," Claire muttered, pressing her lips to the pulse point on his neck.
"Stay," he asked, flexing his arms around her, nuzzling his forehead against her hair.
"Have you fixed the shower?" She asked pointedly.
"It's fine," he insisted with a small wince.
"It's got no pressure, Owen."
"Okay, so it can't work under pressure. You, of all people, should be understanding." He wiggled his toes, ticking the sole of her foot, feeling her go all mellow against him.
"Ha-ha." She rolled her eyes nonetheless, then sighed. "I've got a conference call in the morning. If I stay here, I will be late for it."
"You won't. I'll drive you." He offered, pressing a long kiss to her mouth. "Don't go."
Claire weaved her arms around his neck, her body stretching along the whole length of his. It wasn't like she didn't know it was a losing battle from the start. "Talk about working under pressure."
xoox
"You have got to be kidding me." Claire stared at him like he had just grown a second head.
"It was your idea." Owen pointed out with a shrug.
She gaped at him. "How did you get that from what I said?"
He resumed his pacing around her office, shedding the jungle and dirt on the pristine floor from his mud-caked clothes and boots. She chose not to think about it before her brain exploded.
"Okay, Grant's. Whatever." Owen ruffled his hair, making it stick out at odd angles. "He's right – no one knows those animals better than Hammond and Wu, and since it's been kinda hard to communicate with Hammond lately, that leaves us with Wu."
She sighed with exasperation and glanced almost longingly at her unfinished report. At least it wasn't giving her the mother of all headaches. "You seriously plan to go to Sorna, walk in the lab and ask him for a medical advice?"
He stopped and looked seriously at her. "If I have to."
"This is crazy." She shook her head.
"What else am I supposed to do, Claire? There were six sick animals, and one of them died last night. Blue can be next. They're not responding to the medication we have at our disposal." He swallowed as if the words had a trouble coming out of his mouth, getting stuck in his throat. "That Stegosaurus we saw on Sorna… It had to have the same thing, whatever the hell it is. Which means they know of it. Which means they're probably doing something to prevent the spread of the virus."
Which was one hell of a stretch, and she was tempted to remind him of that. Except how was she supposed to shoot his wild hope in the face when he had nothing else?
"No. It's too dangerous." She said after a brief consideration, pushing herself up and walking around her desk. She leaned against it and folded her arms over her chest. "We don't even know what lives there."
"They would die if we do nothing." His voice dropped. His gaze grew pained. "Claire, InGen's gonna kill them. They'd kill Blue."
"How would us dying help anyone?"
What if something happened to you, she wanted to ask, but fount it impossible to say it out loud – partly because it would make her fear more real, and party because she didn't want to her his answer, if there even was one.
"So, what are we supposed to do? Just sit back and wait?"
"I could bring more vets," she suggested as a compromise.
"And by the time they'd get the clearance, there'll be no one to treat." He said what she already knew, which only made her frustration grow deeper. "Is you find anyone stupid enough to want to come here, that is." Owen added. "I watched three of my other raptors die. I can't-"
"Claire!"
They both whipped their heads around when Lowery burst into her office, breathless and frantic, and so un-Lowery her heart sank. Who said foreboding wasn't a thing?
"He knows," he breathed out.
"Who knows what?" She asked cautiously, exchanging a quick look with Owen whose frown deepened.
"Harris knows about my snooping around." Lowery pushed his glasses up his nose, gulping for air. "He knows I hacked into InGen's system. Well, not me. Someone."
Her face fell. He might have as well pulled the rug from under her feet.
"What did you say to him?" She demanded.
"Nothing! Are you crazy? I don't have a death wish." Lowery rolled his eyes. "And your boyfriend has a raptor that attacks on command."
"Hey!" Owen protested.
Claire waved him off. "I'm pretty sure she doesn't need a command."
Lowery ignored their banter entirely. "What I'm trying to say, Harris is on the way here. I guess they had some kind of alert or whatever. I thought I'd warn you, and using a phone didn't feel safe."
"Now that's a lot of paranoia," Owen mumbled.
She rubbed her forehead, thinking, then pointed to the door. "Both of you – out."
"Like hell!" Owen reacted instantly. "I'm not gonna leave you alone with him."
"What's he going to do? Bite me?" She snorted, feeling the answer that was about to slip out of his mouth with her very skin. "I can deal with Harris. Having you here is like waving a red cloth in front of a bull."
"Bulls are actually colorblind," Lowery piped up, "so it's not the color that makes them charge, it's the movement of the…"
"Out!" She repeated firmly.
"Claire…" Owen started, but she pointed sternly at the door, her lips pursed into a thin, stubborn line. "Fine." He returned the glare, hoping it hid the worry he tried really hard not so show.
"We don't have time for this," Lowery hissed, pulling the door open and sneaking a peek through the crack before slipping out into the empty hall. Shaking his head, Owen pulled her for a quick, tight kiss before following him out of her office.
Once alone, Claire closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. This day was so much fun she wasn't sure she was going to deal with it all.
She was in the process of pointlessly shuffling the papers on her desk when her door opened again.
"Ms. Dearing? A word?"
Apparently, knocking was too mainstream these days.
She plastered a polite smile on her face. "Mr. Harris, how can I help you?"
He walked in, looking about as pissed off as she supposed he would. "There was a system breach. Someone bypassed the Firewall and accessed the company data base."
Claire frowned (or at least she hoped she did). "Have you informed the security?"
"The things is, I think it was security." He studied her, his eyes boring into her face.
"What are you saying?" She tiled her head, not breaking eye contact and hoping to God she appeared to be more composed than she actually felt, a million questions buzzing in her head. Did he know about the cameras? About her visit to his office? Did she trigger the alarm when she opened the data base from his computer? Had she closed it properly?
Harris quirked an eyebrow. "Have you asked any of your Control Room friends to do it?"
Claire's jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
"I have, and that was a serious accusation."
"Do I look like I'm joking around?" He scoffed. "Have you?"
"I certainly have not!" She exclaimed, offended. "And now that we're on it, do you have any proof to support your wild implications?"
Harris's eyes narrowed. "Meaning, there can be proof?"
"Meaning, you have nothing," she stated calmly.
"Well, whoever did it hacked into classified files. You know what it means, right?"
"I do, which is exactly why I suggested you contact the security instead of wasting your time here." Claire reminded him, her heart ponding somewhere in her stomach by this point. Could they have traced Lowery's activity back to him? She wasn't as tech savvy as he was, but she knew he'd be careful enough to leave no bread crumbs. And yet… "You look tired, Mr. Harris. Have you been getting enough rest lately? This job can be exhausting." She added. "Have you thought of maybe taking a day off?"
"What is this? Your idea of a diversion?" He snorted.
Claire folder her arms on the desk before her. "Maybe I'm genuinely concerned."
Harris leaned over it, his jaw set tight. "If I find out that you or your boyfriend are behind this, Ms. Dearing-" he snarled.
"I really don't see what my personal life has to do with any of this," she interjected him coolly.
"This is not over." He straightened up, a smug, knowing smile crossing his face. "I don't need to remind you that you only have 48 hours before the species still showing the symptoms are terminated, do I?" He told her as a last parting remark and marched out of her office, slamming the door behind him.
Claire slumped back in her char and rubbed her temples, feeling the migraine begin to pool behind her eyes. She reached for her phone.
"Hey, it's me," he said when Owen picked up only after half a ring. "Talk to Barry. If we're going back, someone needs to watch the goddamn boat."
xoox
The problem with carefully constructed plans was that they seldom went the way you wanted them to. You could think of every possible mistake, every small thing that could go wrong, and then end up caught in the impossible.
It hit Claire a few hours into their second venture to Sorna when she and Owen found themselves face to face with two angry and most definitely hungry Velociraptors.
They still were a few miles away from the old compound and the laboratories ("How do you know where to go?" She asked him at some point. "Gut feeling," Owen responded with a cheeky grin, and added, "Also, old maps," when she scowled at him), when they ran into the local inhabitants of Site B.
And now she was staring at neat rows of razor-sharp teeth and swaying tails, not knowing how to breathe, frozen with fear. The raptors in the park never struck her as particularly friendly, but these two looked deadly. Wild. She could so easily imagine their teeth tearing into her flesh, the sound of it so clear her head. And she wondered what it would be like – to die, to feel the life drain out of her body. Would she feel it or would she be too paralyzed to even notice?
"They're not trained, are they?" She asked faintly.
"No, they're not," Owen responded. Standing slightly before her – between her and the beasts – he tried to keep his gaze on both dinosaurs at once, his shoulders so stiff she could see his muscles rolling under his shirt. "Stay back," he told her in a whoosh of breath, careful to keep his voice low lest the dinosaurs take it as a threat. "I won't let anything happen to you, Claire."
She seriously doubted he was in a position to make such promises.
Carefully, she reached for the Glock Owen gave her tucked into the waistband of her khaki shorts and pulled it out slowly, both comforted and unnerved by the weight of it in her hand, by the smell of metal and gun oil. Owen held his own rifle in front of him, his grip on it so tight he was close to leaving finger-shaped dents on it.
A branch snapped somewhere in the forest behind them.
The raptors charged.
Claire pulled the trigger.
To be continued...
A/N: I know I haven't been consistent with updates lately. Somehow, this story ended up on the back burner. I plan to keep going with it, or at least try to, but if that changes, I'll let you guys know so that you're not left hanging.
But for now, reviews are more than welcome because they are love :) Hope you're having fun!
