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Action is starting to pick up now! Dinos in every chapter.

Not mine, posted for funsies, not making any money on this.

As always, this is crossposted with the same name to AO3.

No amount of reassurance could convince Claire that nothing was wrong at this point. It had definitely been far too long since they had last heard back. At least if she had gone with them, she would know. Not that it would help for the second highest ranking person in Masrani Corp to be caught breaking and entering at a competitor's warehouse. What she would not give for a punching bag right about now.

Lowery was still working away on his station, Joan and Michael were, somehow!, taking a nap on the couch. It annoyed her that they were able to sleep at a time like this. Logically, she knew she was of no use right now, there was nothing for her to do, but sleeping seemed a step too far.

Her phone pinged and she pulled it out to find a message from Barry. Michael and Joan popped up at the sound. She opened the message and saw what looked like a video attachment. "Lowery, I'm emailing you a video - pull it up on the screen," she muttered, sending the email off.

A few seconds later, Lowery pulled up the video and hit play. Owen and Lennie were holding each other as something growled in the darkness in front of them. It took her a minute to notice the claw, but once she did she was able to make out something in the shadows with red eyes. It looked like the Indominus, but…worse. A shudder ran through her at the memories.

"What the hell is that?" Joan whispered. When Claire turned toward her, she saw the younger woman clinging to Michael, sheet white.

"No idea," Claire said. "Whatever it is, it can't be good."

"It's in the warehouse," Michael muttered. "If it gets out…."

Claire pursed her lips and suppressed another shudder as the video repeated on the screen. It looked contained, but so was the Indominus. And this thing was not contained on an island. It was in a warehouse on the outskirts of a populated city. And the odds were the bars she saw in the video were not the best containment for the beast. Asset Containment could not control the Indominus, and it was not likely Sacramento law enforcement was equipped to deal with whatever the hell it was.

Whatever was going on at that warehouse, Lennie, Owen, and Barry were their best hope of stopping that thing.

Even when the door slammed behind her, Lennie barely registered it. She had been in a daze since leaving Owen. Now she was just staring at nothing, trying to process it all. None of it felt real, none of it made sense. Owen could not be….

She wrapped her arms around her middle, physically trying to hold herself together. They had only just finished the cabin, really only just started their life together. Part of her wished they had not wasted so much damned time on Isla Nublar dancing around it. Despite nearly a decade of friendship, they had barely been together three years! It was not long enough. The idea that she would never hear his exasperated voice telling her not to run off, never hear him tell her he loved her, never feel his arms around her…it hurt so much more than she ever could have thought it would.

"Lennie," Barry called.

"Yeah," she breathed, not moving from where she was. The ring moved into her peripheral and the tears immediately started flowing. Barry wrapped his arms around her, whispering soothing things in French as she leaned on his shoulder to cry. She was not sure how long she spent crying before she choked out,"The ring…is it…was he…." She sniffled, unable to finish the sentence. The tears flowed again at the use of the word 'was'.

"Oui," Barry confirmed.

"Never would have thought he would be the type to want to…." Even finishing that sentence somehow felt…final, and she was not remotely ready for that.

She felt Barry shake his head. "He didn't. Owen would do anything for you, though. I told him it was stupid to not talk to you first."

Lennie laughed lightly at that thought. "Pretty on par for Owen, though," she muttered. Pulling back, she finally took the ring and inspected it. An engraved line ran around the centre of the ring, resembling the outline of the mountain range where their cabin was. On the inside a small house and a hammer were engraved, with the inscription 'As Many As You Want'.

The inscription made her laugh through the tears pricking at her eyes again. She sniffled as she stared at the engraving. "Owen." It took her a minute of fighting the sorrow to realize Barry had been calling her name. The sympathy in his eyes when she finally looked up at him nearly broke her.

"We need to escape," he said. "Owen…he wouldn't want…."

Shaking her head, she said, "I know." After a minute she looked up. "We need to find Owen."

Barry pressed his lips into a fine line. "There's no -."

"I can't leave him, Barry."

"Je comprends," he said. "Mais he would not want you to risk your life for -." He cut himself off abruptly.

It was obvious to her what he had censored. "For his body," she whispered, unsuccessfully trying to blink back tears. To his credit, Barry kept quiet while she processed the words and controlled her sobbing.

"Je suis désolé," he muttered.

"I know," she said. "But I can't leave him. I can't." Finally she looked up at him. "Please?"

Barry scrubbed at his chin, then spun around and kicked the wall as he released a soft litany of curse words in French. After a minute he turned back to her and looked her up and down, before his gaze settled on the ring still in her hands. "You should put that in a safe pocket," he muttered.

"Does this mean…?"

He sighed and put his hands on his hips as he glared at her. "Owen would kick my ass."

Lennie smiled. "If there's one thing Owen understands -," she cut herself off and the smile faded, "-understood, it's my capacity for stubbornness."

"It was one of the things he loved most about you," Barry muttered.

A few tears flowed freely at that. It was hardly news to her, but hearing it out loud like that right now hurt. Securing the ring in one of her pockets, she wiped at the tears and looked up at her friend. "What now?"

Walking around her, he went to the door and bent down near the hinges. "Now we escape."

The first thing Owen noticed as he woke up was the pain in his chest. The second thing was the loud clanking and the familiar growling. His eyes snapped open and he saw he was back in the hallway where the Indoraptor was being kept. He searched for the source of the clanking and saw the door to the cage was being opened. A small slot that would not have been big enough for the Indoraptor to escape through, but was big enough for…well, for a person to fit through was sliding apart slowly. He did not even want to think what they had been feeding the damned thing.

Fuck.

He closed his eyes again just enough for the nearby guards to not realize he had woken up, and he waited for them to approach. When they did, he reached out and grabbed the guy's keycard and pushed up onto his feet, twisting the guard into the opening cage door. The growling became frenetic and was quickly joined by pained screams and gurgling.

Lennie and Barry were nowhere to be seen.

The other guard shouted and reached for his gun, but Owen charged him and slammed him up against the wall, triggering the door to close before he punched him square in the face. "Where are they?" he asked.

Instead of answering, he groaned, clearly dazed still from being hit in the face. Owen pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back against it. "Where the hell are they?"

Again no answer.

Owen did not have the time to waste, so he knocked the guy out by slamming him back against the wall again. He quickly bent to take the guy's hat and took off down the hall. His chest still burned and he reached up to where the pain was. Only then did he realize it was where he had kept Len's ring. His hand grazed the spot and felt nothing but his own pained chest. There was no box, no ring.

"Son of a…," he grumbled quietly.

Had one of those assholes taken it? Owen growled. If that asshole he had fed to the Indoraptor had it….

No time to think about it now, he had to find Len and Barry. In the back of his mind he wondered why they had not been dragged to the Indoraptor like he had, but in some ways he was grateful; he wanted to keep Len as far away from that thing as he could.

For now, the best he could do was trace his steps back to where they had been taken and try to track where they had taken Len and Barry from there. Either that or find someone who was willing to talk. Honestly, he was not fussed either way as long as he found them. Then they could focus on dealing with the Indoraptor. He cringed at the stupid name. Indoraptor. Sure the thing was fucking terrifying, but Indoraptor? Come on.

Len was probably right, the only solution would be to nuke the damned thing. Not that setting off a nuke outside Sacramento was a good idea. Hell, that aside, he was not willing to risk Blue.

He groaned in frustration as he thought about everything they would need to accomplish. Rescue Len and Barry, rescue Blue, find out what the hell Mantah Corp was up to, stop the horror movie monster….

He was starting to wish he and Len had told Jerry to go to hell and just gone home. They could be relaxing in front of the fire right now instead of him running for his life, frantically searching for her while nursing at the very least a bruised, if not broken, rib.

Biting out a curse, he pushed ahead and focussed on first finding Len and Barry.