When she got the one word text, the word "Ready" lighting up on the screen, Ruby was beyond ready. She had been ready for a while now, adrenaline running high, manicured fingernails tapping on her desk as she stared at the screens. If Gabriel and Charlie hadn't been so busy discussing the tour tomorrow, they might have noticed her extreme case of nerves.
As it was, she had to stand up and clear her throat loudly to get their attention. As soon as they both focused on her, she crossed her arms. "I'm going out to the vending machines. You want anything?"
It was obvious that they hadn't been expecting her to ask that, because they both just kind of stared at her as if she'd grown a third head for a moment before Charlie answered. "Um…no thanks?"
Ruby rolled her eyes and sighed. She wasn't surprised Gabriel wasn't even going to give her the time of day, not after all the explosive arguments they'd had. "Fine. Just so you know, I'm starting up a debugging program. It might knock a couple minor systems offline, phones, cameras, that kind of thing. They won't be off long, don't worry," she said, turning away from them before she even finished talking.
She made sure they were back to their conversation and not paying attention before leaning back over her station. She put one finger on the enter key, and one finger on her phone; at the same moment, she pressed the enter button to start the program, and pressed the button on her phone to start the stopwatch.
That done, she grabbed the fake shaving cream canister and tucked it in her jacket, picked up her phone, and headed out the door.
It wasn't a far walk to the security doors leading into the embryo storage. The hallways of the science wing were deserted, all of the scientists having been evacuated to the boat, which made this that much easier for her; normally she hated bad weather, but this storm was going to help her make millions of dollars, so she couldn't really complain.
Her heart was hammering against her ribs as she watched the security camera sweep across the hallway; she looked at her phone, watching the last few seconds tick down, and then the camera stilled, the red light going out. At the same time, the metal locks in the doors automatically slid free and stayed in the open position.
Right on time. She was a computer genius, there was no question.
She pushed the first heavy door open, and then slid the second glass door open, shivering at the rush of freezing cold air from inside the chamber. Her hands trembling with excitement and nervousness, she took out the shaving cream canister and unscrewed the base, then pulled the embryo racks out of the liquid nitrogen bath.
She grabbed a rag from a side table, using that to pluck the tiny vials out of the storage rack, one from each level of it until she had twelve in the canister. She closed the storage, screwed the shaving cream canister shut, and smirked as she headed for the door, tucking the canister back in her jacket.
So far, so good, and ahead of schedule, too.
It took two long minutes to walk all the way to the vehicle bay, but she didn't have to worry about being seen, not with the cameras out and nearly all of the staff evacuated. She grabbed a numbered key off the wall and headed for the Jeep with the same number, jumping in and slamming it into gear, taking off with the squeal of tires.
All she had to do was make it down to the dock, and she would be millions richer.
Back in the control room, the first sign of something not quite right was the alert on Charlie's screen that the cameras and locks had shut down.
"What the hell?" she said with a frown, going back to her workstation, her fingers flying across the keyboard. Gabriel just shrugged, busy digging through the bowl of candy again.
"She said some minor systems might fail when she ran the program. Probably nothing," he said, though he didn't like the fact that the cameras watching the tour cars and the cameras inside the tour vehicles had all gone dark. Now all they had to go on was the GPS signal that showed them exactly where the cars were along the track. They were still moving, at least, so the tour program didn't seem to be affected.
But moments later, when the alarms for the power to the fences began to go off, it became a hell of a lot more than 'nothing'.
"Charlie," Gabriel started, but Charlie was already on it, sliding her wheeled chair from one end of her workstation to the other, red hair falling over her shoulders as she leaned forward to stare at the monitors.
"I don't know. It's not the weather. Something's wrong," she said, and then she stood up and jogged over to Ruby's station, waking up the monitor and pulling up the programming console. Her confusion only deepened when she found that it was password protected; she entered one password, then another, and then a third, and each time the same message returned, "Access Denied" in bold letters on the screen.
"I told her not to lock down her programming console," Gabriel said with a frown, watching over Charlie's shoulder as she tried two more passwords. When those failed, the console suddenly went entirely black, and the only thing on the screen was a bright green message that read "Too many login attempts. This program is shutting down until owner retina scan is initiated."
"Shit, what did she do…?" Charlie said with a worried look, moving back to her own workstation. Gabriel tried to pull up the GPS tracking on one of the computers, but nothing came up.
"Charlie, is the tour program down?" he asked, his stomach sinking a little and she tapped at the keyboard and winced.
"Tour program, phones, fences, cameras, locks…they're all down," she said, and Gabriel cursed and took a few steps away. This would not look good at all on the evaluation of the park; his customers were stuck in cars in the rain in the middle of the park, and the fences were down. He could only hope that none of the dinosaurs figured that out before they could get the systems up and running again.
"Where was the last GPS signal sent from?" he asked, his tone tense and frustrated.
Charlie pulled up another window, and then she hesitated. "Uh, they were…approaching the T-Rex paddock."
Gabriel cursed again, looking up at the sound of footsteps; if it was Ruby, there was going to be hell to pay. But instead, Meg stood in the doorway, her flight jacket slung over her arm and her hair dripping wet.
"Wanna tell me what's going on? Because all the forecast systems I use to plan my flights are down. If I don't send that info to my guy on the mainland in the next half hour, he's not going to take off till tomorrow after the storm. You know I hate being stuck on this God-forsaken rock without a helicopter," she said, and then she seemed to take in their stressed expressions and tense stances, Charlie barely glancing up from her work.
"We've got issues with half the park systems right now," Gabriel explained, gesturing to the workstation. "Fences and locks are going to be a little more important than your forecasting programs."
"The fences are down? Aren't there like, thirty failsafes on those things?"
"33," Charlie corrected, looking affronted that Meg had guessed three short. "But all the failsafes in the park mean nothing if the programs are sabotaged from the base programming."
Meg's eyebrow arched. "Sabotaged? Excuse me?"
"Ruby's missing. She said she started up a debugging program before she left, but she locked down her consoles. We can't get in to see what she did," Gabriel explained darkly, just as Sam and Benny stepped into the control room, soaking wet and looking confused.
"You guys know all the locks are out and the fence lighting system isn't functionin'?" Benny asked, and Gabriel snorted. Meg shifted her weight with an amused snort.
"It's all down, Lafitte. Ruby fucked every system she could get her hands on. It's not the fence lighting system, it's the fences," she said, crossing her arms, and Benny whistled low.
"That's…a bad situation, brother."
Gabriel held up his hands, seeing that things were quickly spiraling out of control here; Sam looked like he was about to panic. He had to keep everyone calm and make sure Charlie got those fences back up. He couldn't lose this park over one bitter now ex employee. "We'll get the fences back up, Charlie's working on it now. Benny, Meg, you two go catch that boat and get off the island, we've got this covered."
Benny nodded and gave Gabriel a smile. "Stay safe. I'll see you after the storm passes," he said before he turned and left in a hurry, which was no surprise; the boat was leaving soon, and Benny had a wife and a newborn baby on the mainland. He wasn't in the business of taking risks right now.
Meg, though, lifted her chin and stood firm. "You kidding? I'm not leaving. Bunch of computer geeks trying to handle this, you'll all get eaten for sure," she said.
"Nobody's getting eaten," Gabriel snapped.
"Where…where are the tour cars? Did they get back to the garage?" Sam asked with a frown, and Charlie and Gabriel's silence was enough to answer that question. His frown deepened into something more like concern. "Where did the cars stop, Gabriel?"
Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, then shrugged, trying to buy himself time to try and figure out an optimistic way of telling Sam that his brother was currently stranded by the T-Rex paddock. When he took a moment too long, Charlie gave him a glare.
"They stopped near the T-Rex paddock, Sam," she said, and his eyes went wide, looking between Gabriel and Charlie in disbelief.
"They're stuck by the T-Rex pen with the fences down?" he asked, beginning to pace. "We…we have to go get them. We can't leave them out there."
"And we can't go running in there without a good plan, either, unless you just want to end up in the same situation," Meg said. "I'll go find Bobby. If anyone knows how these lizards are gonna act with the fences down, it's him."
"Keep an eye out for Ruby. She's the only one who can reverse this easily," Gabriel said, and Meg nodded, leaving the room quickly. Sam's hands tightened into fists and he swallowed hard, and Gabriel tried to give him a reassuring grin.
"Don't worry, Sam. We'll have the fences up in a few minutes here. Charlie's a wiz at this shit," he said, but Sam didn't look comforted in the least. He shook his head with an incredulous laugh, giving Gabriel a look of disbelief.
"Your brother is stuck out there in a hurricane, with useless fences and 8 ton dinosaurs," he said slowly, eyes searching Gabriel, as if looking for some sign of concern. "And you're not worried? Really?"
"Even if the rex does take a stroll, as long as they stay in the cars, they'll be fine. Why would a dinosaur care about a couple of cars?" Gabriel insisted with a dismissive gesture, though the words sounded weak, even to his ears. Sure, he was worried about Cas; worried Cas would tell the investors and press about his awful experience too, sure, but definitely worried about Cas too. Mostly.
Charlie bit her lip, eyes scanning the nonsensical codes on the screen even as she worked. "Hang in there, Sam, I'm going as fast as I can," she said, though the smile she gave him was forced. It wasn't hard to see that every moment the fences were down, she was getting more and more anxious.
"Either way, as soon as Bobby gets here, I'm going to take a car and pick them up," Sam insisted, which Gabriel had been expecting; but Bobby would probably be willing to go along, and bring a few of the big guns. He had to get Sam to at least wait until they'd gotten Bobby here. He shrugged and turned away, back toward the darkened monitors.
"Suit yourself, big guy."
Castiel was almost thankful for the distraction when the cars suddenly pulled to a halt, the instruments and touchscreen going dark. He didn't think Crowley would have ever shut up otherwise; he'd been going on and on, trying to convince Castiel to do some kind of publicity tour for the park.
Castiel's own agent had to beg him to get him to agree to book signing tours. He hated too much publicity; he hardly did it for himself, let alone for his brother's dinosaur park that would be getting plenty of publicity on its own. No, he planned to write up his evaluation, sign it, hand it over, and be on his way, back to his quiet, nondescript townhouse.
"What the hell?" Crowley said, wrinkling his nose at the dashboard of the car, as if it had personally offended him by stopping. Castiel just raised his eyebrows and poked at the touchscreen a few times, but the car was dead in the water. Literally, because the rain was coming down hard, and there was at least an inch of water on the road.
"Hiccup in the power?" he guessed, knowing that the cars were run from the program back at the control room. Without that program running, it wasn't a surprise that the cars would stop.
"Glad the bloody fences have backups. Looks like they didn't bother to backup anything else," Crowley snapped, crossing his arms and leaning back in the passenger seat. Castiel sighed, looking out the windshield, but there wasn't much to see. Between the sun just on the edge of setting and the thick, tall foliage, it was pretty dark out there.
He thought he remembered that there should have been lights on the fences, but he was probably wrong. After all, when they were going by the exhibits, the fences hadn't been the first thing on his mind; he'd been busy looking for any signs of dinosaurs beyond the fence.
"Can't believe we're stuck out here," Crowley complained again, and Castiel laughed softly and shook his head.
"Relax. The park Jeeps run on gasoline, right? They'll send someone out to get us if the power stays out too long. They won't leave us out here all night," he said, opening the armrest between the seats and tugging out the brochures he found there. At least he could do a little light reading while they waited.
A few minutes later there was a light knock on the window, and Castiel jumped in surprise before cracking the door open; it was Dean, holding his jacket over his head as a makeshift umbrella.
"Everyone okay up here?" Dean asked, and Crowley snorted loudly.
"Just peachy. Having a grand time, let me tell you," he said, but Dean ignored him, focusing on Castiel. Castiel felt his heart skip like a flat stone across water, and he smiled in return.
"We're alright, Dean, thank you," he said, and Dean nodded, hesitating for a few long moments.
"Good. Yeah, Jo and I are playing cards till it comes back on. Let me know if you need anything, alright?" he said, finally deciding the rain was too much and pushing the door closed. Castiel watched in the side mirror as Dean went back to the other car and slid inside.
It was too bad that they lived so far apart, him in New York City and Dean in Chicago- well, when he wasn't on digs, anyway. It had been a long time since he was this genuinely attracted to someone who was bothering to show an interest in him in return.
It made him begin to wonder what the weather and housing market would be like in Chicago. He didn't have to live in the same city as his agent, technically.
He went back to idly flipping through the brochures, which were obviously rough drafts of the finished products. The paper was dull and the pictures were missing, empty squares set aside for them to be added later, but the information was still there. He flipped to the one about the stegosaurus, remembering the look on Dean's face when he'd seen it, and the strange texture of its rough skin under his hand.
If anyone else had asked him to pet a dinosaur, sedated or not, he would have laughed it off. It was disturbingly difficult to say no to Dean, though, not when he looked so…joyful. That had to be the word for it. And now that he thought about it, it fit; after all, Dean had been studying these creatures all his life, knowing that he would never get to see them in person, that his findings and his imagination would have to suffice.
Now, he was seeing them alive and up close. It had to be beyond anything he and Jo and Sam could have ever dreamed.
A low vibration suddenly broke him out of his thoughts. He glanced over to where Crowley was evidently trying to doze, but the man hadn't stirred; maybe it was his imagination. He went back to the brochure, reading about the family structure of the stegosaurs.
But it happened again. Just a momentary, low vibration, and he dropped the brochures back into the armrest, straightening up a little.
"Did you feel that?" he asked, and Crowley cracked one eye open, practically radiating disinterest.
"Feel what?" he asked, but then it happened a third time, and this time Crowley obviously felt it. The lawyer paused for a moment, then shrugged. "Probably the power trying to come back on. Would you relax? Spending this weekend with you is going to give me hemorrhoids."
Castiel ignored the jab, instead watching out the side window facing the paddock fence, squinting to try and see anything through the dark. He wasn't sure at first what was wrong with what he was seeing, but then he realized what it was; the goat was gone. The rope was hanging limp from the tether, swinging in the wind.
"…What happened to the goat?" he asked, and Crowley turned to look, just as something moved.
It was like a wall of flesh on the other side of the fence. Dark, brown and green mottled skin blended in perfectly with the trees and brush, but something that big moving through the plants was impossible to miss. Castiel's heart was somewhere in his throat as he leaned down a little to see more.
He got the T-Rex's head in his line of sight just as the massive animal was swallowing the goat down.
He thought he'd been ready for this; it wasn't like he didn't know it was coming. He knew that eventually he would be seeing the T-Rex, he knew from drawings and movie special effects what it would probably look like, but all of that was out the window as the dinosaur's head swiveled to look at the cars. Long white teeth stood out against the animal's dark skin, the rows of teeth easily visible even when its mouth was closed, and Castiel couldn't breathe. He couldn't even think.
There was a T-Rex fifty feet away from him.
"Bugger this," Crowley suddenly said, flinging the car door open and jumping out, water splashing up as he hit the ground running. Castiel tried to call him back, but the words fell on deaf ears as Crowley crossed the road to the small wooden building containing the bathrooms.
The T-Rex was moving toward the fence now, and Castiel held his breath, despite knowing that the fences were electrified. Every step the T-Rex took shook the ground a little, and it stopped right by the fence.
Castiel slid into the passenger seat, then grabbed the door Crowley had left open and pulled it shut. The T-Rex locked onto the noise, looking from one car to the other- and then, it stepped forward, pushing against the fence.
And the fence began to give way.
It wasn't just the tour program, not just the general power. Everything was down. The fences weren't working. And now, with a loud creak and groan, the fence was bending, the electrified cords snapping harmlessly. Castiel felt his stomach twist into knots as the cords broke away, and then the T-Rex was stepped out of the paddock onto the road, walking between the cars.
"Shit. Shit," Castiel gasped out, scooting back into the driver's seat, watching over the back of the seat as the T-Rex paused.
Then it roared, and the sound made Castiel clamp his hands down over his ears. It was unlike anything he'd ever heard before, and it was loud enough to shake his bones and leave him a little dazed. By the time he looked up again, the T-Rex was moving toward Dean and Jo's car.
Maybe it would ignore the cars. Maybe it would go find another dinosaur to eat or something, and they could wait safely until Gabriel sent someone out to get them.
Of course, they didn't have that kind of luck.
The T-Rex nudged its snout against the car, the whole thing shaking with the push, and though Castiel couldn't see into the car, he knew Dean and Jo had to be panicked. The T-Rex nudged the car again, harder this time, and the whole thing rocked on its wheels.
It was like watching a dog with a puzzle toy, pushing with its nose, trying to get the treats to fall out- but in this case, the dog was an eight ton dinosaur, and the treats were Dean and Jo, trapped in the car as the T-Rex leaned against it. The T-Rex roared again, the sound uncomfortably loud even from where Castiel was.
The T-Rex wasn't giving up easily. It stepped back and then lowered its head, and Castiel took in a sharp breath as it head-butted the car, and this time the car tipped over onto its side. Another push and the car was on its roof in the mud, and the T-Rex was planting its foot on the exposed bottom of the car, pinning it down. The roof of the car sank into the mud and sharp cracks split the air as the skeleton of the car gave way under eight tons of dinosaur.
Castiel couldn't just watch anymore. He had to do something, anything; he couldn't sit here and watch Dean and Jo get killed. He needed something, a plan, a weapon, anything to give him any kind of edge.
If it were even possible to have an edge over a T-Rex, that is.
He crawled into the backseat and then leaned over to look into the back of the SUV, pushing aside papers and bubble wrap until he came across a silver metal case. He fumbled with the clasps on it, then yanked it open, his mind racing as he prayed that there was some kind of weapon in the case, preferably a really big gun. Bullets or tranquilizer, he didn't care, as long as it worked.
Unfortunately, there were no actual weapons, which didn't really surprise him. There was a flare gun tucked beside the other miscellaneous supplies in the case, and he grabbed it, knowing that a flare gun against a T-Rex would be like a carpet shock to a human. It was all he had, though, and he slid to the door and shoved it open, stepping out into the rain. Mud sucked at his shoes, making it difficult to move, and cold rainwater puddled through his shoes.
The T-Rex was chewing on one of the tires, torn rubber hanging from its teeth, and for a moment Castiel was certain that he couldn't do this, that he would be crawling back in that car in a panic. But then he thought of Jo and Dean, trapped in the upside down car; he steeled his nerves and ran a bit closer, mud tugging at his shoes with every step.
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly, rain already soaking through his clothing as the T-Rex started lifted its head. Castiel didn't wait any longer; he gripped the flare gun tight, aimed, and fired. The flare struck the massive dinosaur in the side of the neck, a bright light sparking against dark skin, and the T-Rex swung its head around and focused in on Castiel.
Well, he'd wanted its attention, and now he definitely had it.
He dropped the gun and took off as quickly as his feet could carry him through the mud, making a break for the small building that Crowley had disappeared into. It was the only shelter that even looked slightly sturdy, which, to be honest, wasn't sturdy at all and he knew it. He heard the T-Rex growl deep in its throat and the ground vibrated again, thundering footsteps behind him, and he didn't look. He knew it was right on his heels, that he needed to focus and keep running, or he would never make it.
It didn't matter; he didn't make it.
He was mere steps from the building when something slammed into him from behind, and the wet smell of rotting meat hit him, and something in him knew that the smell was the T-Rex's breath, from raw meat stuck between its teeth. Something sliced through the flesh of his right leg, and he was thrown forward, hitting the door of the building and falling hard.
There was a loud crash, and Castiel clutched his hands over his head, trying to protect himself as the world seemed to crumble around him. There was a gust of wind, and he lifted his head expecting to see a wall, only to see a few free-standing bathroom stalls and sinks. Two walls of the wooden building had been knocked down, run into headlong by the rushing T-Rex.
Through the haze of pain, Castiel struggled to keep his head up, and he flinched as a massive foot landed next to his body. This was it; the T-Rex was going to finish him off, because he knew that his right leg wasn't going to work, probably was ripped to shreds. He couldn't even move it.
But then, he saw movement. Crowley was cowering by one of the sinks, backing up against one of the two remaining walls, holding his hands up as if he could defend himself from the dinosaur.
Castiel winced and ducked his head when the T-Rex's mouth came down, teeth snapping closed on Crowley's torso and lifting him into the air. Tortured screams turned into guttural whines, then there was a sharp snap, and the noises cut off abruptly. Castiel felt dizzy and sick, the pain was overwhelming, and something landed next to him that he knew he didn't want to open his eyes to see.
Not that he could've. It was all too much, the pain, the cold, the knowledge that the dinosaur standing over him would likely be eating him next. With the sound of bones snapping over his head, he gave in and let the darkness take him.