AN: LAST CHAPTER! Well, sort of. Tomorrow you'll get the epilogue and Tuesday you'll get all my notes on this (seriously. I have like nine pages worth of plans), so if you're a complete writing nut, I think you'll enjoy that. Thanks for sticking around the past month, guys. I've been writing like crazy and it's been a heck of a lot of fun.
Claire sat with her head buried in the crook of Owen's neck as Blue mangled Hunt's body. She couldn't see what Blue was doing, but hearing it was just as bad. She could feel Owen's fingers brushing lightly across her back, trying to comfort her as he watched Blue.
"Blue," Owen said, his voice quiet but commanding. "That's enough."
Blue clicked her tongue at Owen and Claire heard the unmistakable sound of claws against flesh.
"Blue," Owen repeated. "He's dead. Leave him be."
Blue growled, a low sound that would've scared Claire out of her mind if Owen hadn't have curled his arms tightly around her, his fingers resting on either side of her waist.
"Come on," said Owen, and Claire heard Blue take a few cautious, slow steps toward them. "That's it. Get over here."
Claire felt Owen's body relax and knew that Blue must have moved to stand beside them. "We're safe?" she whispered, her voice muffled against his skin.
Owen ran his hands through Claire's sweaty hair. "We're safe. Just one more person to confront, and this whole thing will be over."
Claire laughed shakily, not sure if she was relieved or terrified that they had won.
She looked up over Owen's shoulder, startled by what she saw. The sky was pitch-black but the massive lights placed around the pavilion gave the illusion that it was midday. The T-Rex was still fighting it out with help from the pterosaurs, and even a few stegosaurs had joined in. Claire saw a baby triceratops charging one of InGen's smaller, less-lethal dinosaurs. She smiled slightly, her face lighting up in pride. Their dinosaurs were winning an impossible battle. Instinct over technology.
"Where's Wu?" Claire asked, searching for him in the darkness. "I can't see him."
"He'll come," Owen assured her. "And then all Hell will break loose."
…
Wu came to them just like Owen said, for which Claire was thankful because neither she nor Owen could walk. They simply sat huddled up beside Hunt's almost unrecognizable body with Blue standing strong above them, Hunt's blood dripping out of her mouth. Owen was stroking Blue's flank gently, letting her know she had done what he needed her to do.
For once, Wu wasn't perfectly calm and composed and that gave Claire a weird sense of accomplishment. Finally, finally, he saw the sheer power of the animals he had brought back to life. They were more than sequences of DNA: they were actual, living animals.
"You," he said, pointing a shaking finger at the three of them. "Hunt. Dead. Velociraptor."
Blue snarled at him and glanced down at Owen, silently asking if she needed to kill him, too.
"He's fine, Blue." Owen said, looking up at Wu with narrowed eyes. Blue turned an impatient circle, obviously thinking that Wu was not fine.
Wu watched the exchange between Blue and Owen curiously, like he was trying to figure out a math equation to explain their relationship.
"Guys?" the voice floated out from nowhere and Claire instinctively flinched, almost smacking Owen in the face. "Are you okay?"
It took Owen and Claire a moment to figure out that the voice belonged to Lowery, and it was coming from the forgotten walkie-talkie Owen had shoved in his back pocket.
Claire pulled it out. "We're-" she broke off, unsure of what to say, "alive."
"Good, because I heard some screaming over this thing, and I wasn't sure what was happening, and I'm pretty sure that all our tech is coming online-".
"Lowery!" Claire said, snapping her fingers over the walkie-talkie. "Not the time."
Wu looked at her bemusedly and Blue hissed at him, reminding him that she could kill him if he made one wrong move. Wu hastily took a step back, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I've never been this close to a full-grown velociraptor before. I remember when she was born; she burst out of her shell so hard that fragments flew all across the lab."
"I was there," said Owen tiredly.
"And you've stuck with her ever since," said Wu.
"Hunt's dead," said Owen, breaking off Wu's distracted rambles. "Project K is over, Wu. Call off your dinosaurs."
"You never gave up on your raptors, even though they could've killed you," said Wu. "If I asked you to give them up, would you?"
"There are no them, anymore, Dr. Wu. It's just Blue and me. And I'm not intending on selling her as a weapon; she's a friend."
Wu took a deep breath and pulled out a small black remote control with a solitary purple switch on it. Written on the back were the words: Project K: Emergency Shutdown. It looked exactly like the one Claire had used to kill Alice, but Claire assumed it was for all the dinosaurs, just in case something (like a massive battle) happened.
"We don't have to give this up, you know," said Wu, staring intently at the remote in his hand. "The possibilities I've created here…just think about what we could do with these dinosaurs. Think about how much money we could make, how much fame we could have."
"Think about how you're forcing animals to become weapons. Think about how you've taken their lives away and turned flesh into technology," said Claire, gesturing to the various dinosaurs in the pavilion, still fighting it out. Claire saw the T-Rex, somehow still alive, wrestling with the last remaining hybrid; all the other hybrids had been taken out by the pterosaurs.
"I have a buyer," Wu argued. "As you know, he came to me with this idea and I developed these assets, created these creatures-"
"Parasitosaurs," interrupted Lowery, his voice crackling through the walkie-talkie.
Wu rolled his eyes. "Claire, Jurassic World is over. The Indominus Rex destroyed you, and Project K could build this place up again as a high-tech weapon facility. We'd be the most in-demand company in the world."
"I don't care," said Claire. "We didn't bring dinosaurs back to cause mass terror."
"Right," said Wu sarcastically. "We brought them off to showcase them in an amusement park, because that's so much better."
"It is, actually," said Claire. "Giving people the chance to see something that existed before they did? That's powerful."
"No it isn't," said Wu, his frustration evident in his tone. He pointed to a tree that grew near them, leaves glistening in the moonlight. "That tree existed before I did. That means nothing. Life is a cycle, Claire."
"What does life being a cycle have to do with Project K?" Claire asked, shifting her wounded leg slightly. Owen glanced at her in concern but Claire shook her head. Tending to her leg could wait.
"Give it up," said Owen. "End it. Flip the switch."
"Did you ever figure out what the K in Project K stood for?" asked Wu, turning the remote over in his hand. When Claire and Owen shook their heads, he smiled serenely. "Project: Kill."
Claire wondered vaguely if the kill was referring to the shock-switches that were planted in InGen's dinosaurs or the fact that InGen intended to use the dinosaurs to kill people.
"Flip the switch," said Owen again. Wu glanced back down at his flesh-robots, a strange fire in his eyes. Blue took a threatening step forward and he leapt back like a scared cat, never having faced any of his dinosaurs when they were fully-grown.
"I made this," he said in a defeated tone. "I made her." He pointed to Blue, who snapped her teeth at him, clearly disapproving of Wu's involvement in her life. "You're asking me to destroy it?"
"You already destroyed it when you agreed to work on that stupid project for money," said Claire. "Flip the switch. End this."
Wu took a deep breath and took one final glance into the pavilion, observing his specimens for the last time. He slowly pressed the purple switch on the remote control, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so. Claire heard Bridgette's shout of disagreement echo across the pavilion before seeing InGen's entire army of dinosaurs drop like giant flies, the earth quaking as each one fell. The T-Rex roared tiredly and set off in the direction of Paddock Nine, ready to finally return home after several weeks' adventure. The pterosaurs circled up in a massive dinosaur tornado, swirling around and screeching loudly. They flew away over the forest, heading towards the broken aviary.
"In with the new, out with the old," Wu muttered, flinging the remote to the ground. It smashed into tiny pieces, black plastic flying everywhere.
"We told you," said Owen. "The 'old' are good enough. Forget about the new and let these animals do what they do best: live."
"Jurassic World will fail without me," warned Wu. "You'll never get this park up and running again."
"Yes, we will," said Claire. "Life finds a way."
"Take that, you scary science guy," yelled Lowery, whooping in triumph. He started to sing a victory song that sounded suspiciously like We are the Champions. His words sounded loud and clear through the walkie-talkie. Claire and Owen couldn't help themselves, bursting into laughter as they pictured Lowery dancing across the control room, thankful that InGen was finally beaten.
AN: I know this is a bit shorter (sorry), but I'm currently writing this on the road and I really wanted to end it with that "Life finds a way" quote, so here you have chapter 25! The epilogue will be up tomorrow.
Also, for those who asked, my tweet was about me always jogging to Awesome Mix Vol. 1 from Guardians of the Galaxy, and James Gunn was super awesome and chose to favorite it.
Review!