Ruby was not about to admit that she was lost.

She knew that she was, of course, but if there was one thing that she was an expert at, it was a stubborn refusal to acknowledge her mistakes and admit she was wrong, even to herself. So as she pulled up to the open metal gate that should have led to the paved road to the dock, she simply froze when she saw that it led into thicker foliage around the dirt road.

She was right, she had to be. Maybe she'd forgotten this extra gate; maybe this dirt road was the one that connected to the paved road. It had to be. In all the excitement, she'd just forgotten.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the empty, pitch-black road behind her, the only movement the jerking and shuddering of leaves as the rain pummeled the vegetation. No, she couldn't go back the way she came.

That would be as good as admitting that she'd been wrong.

She turned back forward and let out a harsh breath, shoving her foot down on the accelerator pedal, as if blaming the car for the predicament. The wheels spun and then the Jeep jerked forward onto the narrow path, ferns and bushes scratching and clawing along the outside of the vehicle, and probably doing a hell of a number on the new paint job.

She didn't care; it wasn't like she worked for Gabriel anymore. By now they would have figured out that she hadn't been running a debugging program. She needed to get off this island before she was found, and meet up with her contact. She checked her watch; she still had four minutes. This path would meet up with the paved road anytime, and then she would be mere seconds out from the dock, for sure.

She jumped in her seat and gasped when her cell phone rang shrilly, the sound cutting through the monotonous drone of the rain. She cursed and lifted her hips, regretting the decision to wear tight jeans today, because getting her phone out of the back pocket wasn't going well.

And then, her foot slipped off the pedal. She fumbled and tried to recover, but when she slammed her foot down on the brake in a panic, the Jeep skidded and nearly tipped over. The front two tires slid off the road into the rugged dip in the terrain alongside the dirt, her head nearly smacking into the steering wheel as the car jerked to a stop.

"Fuck!" she snapped, forgetting her phone for the moment and putting the Jeep in reverse before gunning it. It was no good; the wheels spun helplessly in the mud, and she slammed her hands down on the steering wheel, her heart racing with both frustration and anger.

"You've still got this, Ruby," she muttered, trying not to think about how she was giving herself a pep talk in the middle of a dinosaur infested jungle. She opened the door and jumped out, her shoes getting sucked into the mud almost immediately. Luckily, every employee had to take a basic road safety course to work out here- and that course included learning how to use the wench on the Jeeps.

The rain was coming down so hard that she was soaked within seconds of being out of the Jeep. She ran to the rear of the car and began to unwind the cable the metal rough against her skin as she stepped backward across the dirt road to one of the thick trees on the other side. She pushed through the ferns around the tree, pulling the cable tight around the tree and securing it.

Movement to her left made her pause, and though she expected whatever it was to already have moved away, it hadn't. A dinosaur the size of a large dog stood a few feet away, tail swaying back and forth, head tilted in curiosity. It looked like the travel size version of the big raptors kept up near the center.

"Shoo!" Ruby hissed, but the dinosaur just continued to stare, making a low chirping noise in the back of its throat. She didn't know what kind it was, and didn't particularly care, either; it didn't look like one of the dangerous ones, but she still didn't like it watching her.

She stepped toward it and kicked hard, her shoe hitting the raptor square in the chest and knocking it off balance. The dinosaur let out a screech and loped away into the ferns, and Ruby smirked.

"Fuckin' overgrown lizards," she muttered, turning back toward the Jeep, her hair and clothing plastered to her body and soaked through. She was nearly across the road when she heard that same odd, soft chirping sound, and she looked up and froze.

Another raptor was there, standing by the bumper of the Jeep, shifting its weight and sniffing the air. It didn't look scared, even after the kick she'd given the other one.

"Get out of here!" she yelled, waving her hand at it to try and get the creature to back away, but it only took one small step back, eyes still focused on her.

She didn't even see the one dart in from the side- she only knew she'd been fooled when she felt something clamp down on her right arm, teeth slicing through skin and muscle like a hot knife. She shrieked and tried to yank away, but only succeeded in tearing more flesh from bone. She used her free hand to shove at the dinosaur's nose, her skin slipping across the rough, wet snout.

That was when the other one jumped in, and she fell to the ground hard as it sank its teeth into her thigh. Sparks exploded in her vision as pain took over, pain like she'd never felt before, and she tried to defend herself with her one good arm- the other was nearly chewed off, the raptor's grip unrelenting.

By the time the third and fourth raptors joined in the meal, pain had turned to a numb, distant feeling, and she heard someone screaming. It was an awful scream, guttural and ragged, and God, was that her? It was her, she was screaming, and she couldn't stop it, couldn't fight off all the raptors at once, and her arm wasn't just not working, it was gone. Her arm was gone.

The last thing Ruby saw was a ragged chunk of flesh and cloth hanging from the mouth of one of the dinosaurs, just before a set of jaws closed down on her throat.

"Crowley's dead," Sam said as he walked into the control room, still dripping water from his hair and clothes. Charlie looked up wide-eyed, but Gabriel just looked exasperated at the news of his lawyer's demise. Exasperation quickly turned to dismay, though, when Gabriel looked past them and evidently noticed that they hadn't brought anyone back with them.

"What about the others? What about Cas?" he asked, and Sam had to pause for a moment- because he was pretty sure that was the first time that Gabriel actually sounded concerned about his brother. Maybe the fact that someone had actually died was finally starting to make the situation sink in.

"There were two sets of footprints leadin' out to the treeline. One of 'em had to be the girl's. Shoes were too small for the guys," Bobby explained, leaning back against one of the desks. "So we probably got two survivors and two eaten."

"Unless someone was being carried," Charlie offered up, and Sam let himself cling to that a little more than he probably should have. Maybe one of them was hurt, was being carried; maybe it wasn't just two of them left.

It was a long shot, but he had to hope for the best, or he would completely lose his nerve.

"They're idiots if they're lugging around someone who can't walk. Especially someone leaking a bloody trail for the dinos to follow," Meg said, having collapsed into Ruby's chair and pulled her hair back into a messy, wet bun. "God knows I wouldn't be dragging around a dinner bell with me."

"Well then, I guess we're all glad you weren't out there," Sam snapped. All he could think about was all the times that Dean had kept him safe, protected him, even from the smallest of things; when the school bully decided Sam was his new target, Dean had him changing his mind with one well placed punch. When their dad got drunk and angry, Dean was the one who told Sam to go in his bedroom and lock the door and not come out till morning.

Dean had always been his shield. Now Dean was the one that needed protecting, and Sam wasn't there. If he'd only stayed with the cars instead of with the vet, he could have been there, could have helped somehow.

Now, he was stuck in a sturdy building while his brother fought through a jungle with dinosaurs on the loose.

He turned his attention back to Bobby. "You're a game warden, right? A hunter? You can follow their tracks. We should let them stay here and work on the systems, and we'll get some weapons, go out and find Dean and the others."

Bobby shook his head. "How many times have I got to tell you, boy? Our biggest rifles ain't gonna do shit against that T-Rex. And if the raptor fence goes down, they could bring you down before you even have time to aim," he said sternly. "Goin' out into those trees would be suicide. We need to stay where we have the advantage and hope they make their way here."

"If one of them is injured, they'll need our help!"

"There ain't no proof there's three of them left! We got two tracks, and we know they had a powwow with a dinosaur that could swallow somebody whole. I'm not takin' chances based on what you're hoping, kid," Bobby said, and Charlie cleared her throat, pushing back from the console.

"So, uh…do you guys want the bad news, or the bad news?"

Gabriel groaned. "Is there a lesser of the two bad news? Because start with that."

Charlie pointed to the computer. "Whatever Ruby did, it was a self cannibalizing code. Which means that after she ran the code, it self-destructed as soon as it was finished fucking up the system. And that means I can't get this park running again without Ruby."

"Well, she's long gone by now. So what's option two?" Meg asked, arching an eyebrow. Charlie ran her fingers through her hair with a sigh.

"The other option is shutting down and rebooting the whole damn system."

Sam frowned; he knew that couldn't be a good thing. Systems this big weren't meant to be entirely shut down; portions were taken offline for repair and maintenance, but shutting the whole thing down was asking for the worst. "And how likely is it that the system will bounce back from a full reboot and still be functional?" he asked, already dreading the answer.

"Um…in theory, everything should reboot safely into the starting mode."

"In theory?"

"Well, this isn't the kind of thing we test! You're never supposed to do this. This is not an ideal situation," Charlie said, throwing her hands up helplessly. Gabriel stood behind her for a moment, staring at the screens, deep in thought.

"Charlie, keep working on this," he finally said, and then he looked up to Bobby, Sam, and Meg. "You three, go to the armory shed and load up every weapon you can. It's not far and it's all open ground up to the last 50 feet."

Bobby seemed to consider it for a moment, and then nodded. "Yeah, we can do that. Most of the carnivores won't come into the main complex anyway. Raptors are the only ones that brave, and as far as we know, they're still secure. T-Rex will stick to her territory and the other carnivore paddocks are along the river."

"Let's do it, then," Sam said, eager to get his hands on something that could protect them. Here they only had Bobby's gun, and he had the feeling there wasn't enough ammo in that to bring down anything bigger than a raptor, anyway.

"Be careful, you guys," Charlie piped up, and Sam could see the exhaustion in her eyes, the worry, and the slump to her shoulders that said she was nearly drained. "It's still a bit till sunup. They'll have the jump on you till then."

Meg just snorted. "I've worked war zones, honey. Nothing gets the jump on me anymore," she said, following Bobby out of the room. Sam paused, and then turned back to Charlie and Gabriel.

"If anything goes wrong, you guys barricade yourselves in here, okay?" he said, and Gabriel rolled his eyes, grabbing a couple two way radios off the desk and tossing one to Sam.

"You don't have to tell me that. I'm not planning to get eaten. We'll be on channel 2," he muttered. Sam sighed in frustration, turning to follow the other two out, switching the radio to channel two as he walked.

The Jeeps were still parked out front, and the rain had slowed considerably since their last outing. It felt like the rain had just turned into humidity, making the air even thicker than usual, like breathing oxygen that was half liquid. Bobby got into the lead Jeep, and Sam slid into the passenger's side, his thoughts not on their current task at all.

He made a decision, then; if Dean and the others- because he refused to believe Dean hadn't made it- weren't back at the center by sunrise, he was going to look for them, whether Bobby came along or not. He'd take a rifle and go by himself if he had to, even though the extent of his gun knowledge was the two or three times their dad had tried to have 'fatherly bonding time' by taking them hunting.

That lasted until the first time John actually killed a deer, and Sam had a sobbing breakdown that lasted until their mother had taken him to a petting zoo to show him animals that weren't foaming at the mouth and dying.

Somehow, though, he felt he'd have an easy time killing these things- a raptor wasn't exactly as sympathetic as Bambi's mother.

"Looks like the Trikes took advantage," Bobby said, snapping Sam out of his line of thought. He followed Bobby's gaze to the field just beyond the lodging buildings, and his throat caught at the sight, the lights from the center bleeding out enough to light up the scene.

Seven Triceratops were grazing peacefully in the open field, taking advantage of the shrubberies and tall grasses they hadn't had access to before; and one of the Triceratops was obviously new to the herd, a baby, sticking close to one of the adult's side. The fact that it wasn't biologically their baby didn't seem to have bothered the herd much; they still were in a misshapen circle around their youngest herd member, ready to mount a defense should anything come to pick off the weakest of the herd.

In all the horror, he'd really forgotten the majesty of this place. If only Gabriel and his scientists had been content to settle for the herbivores, Sam could have spent the rest of his life here, just watching the dinosaurs all day every day. The amount of knowledge that could be gained from this was staggering, even if these weren't truly dinosaurs- just a close genetic clone of what had been.

"This place could have been so amazing," he said softly, suddenly feeling a spike of regret that the children Gabriel wanted to come here would never get to see this. It was a damn shame.

"Place loses its magic when you watch your friend get gutted," Bobby said, and Sam winced, remembering that Gabriel had said they'd had two deaths here. One of those must have been Bobby's friend. Maybe both.

"Why did you agree to come here?" he asked, not accusingly, but genuinely curious. Bobby gave a halfhearted shrug.

"Hunted everything there was to hunt out in Africa and India. No challenge there anymore," he explained, and then he smirked. "After a while, you just get sick of dragging rich people out into the brush and letting them shoot at a canned lion and think that they've actually accomplished something. Bunch of delusional idjits."

Sam stared in shock. "People paid to shoot at a caged lion?"

"Not really a cage. More like a few fenced in acres of brushland. The more they paid, the better the animal they got. So the wannabe 'pro hunters' from the U.S. came in and bagged an Impala and thought they were the shit. The super rich came in and went for a lion or rhino just to put the picture on their wall and feel like a badass. And then they got to pretend it was charitable just because the meat went to local villages. Stupidest thing I ever saw, but they dropped four thousand for the lesser game, and thirty thousand for a lion. Had one bastard pay 96,000 to get us to help him bring down a Golden Wildebeest. The real show-offs tipped thousands to us guides. Made great money."

Sam couldn't help but laugh. The whole thing sounded ridiculous; what kind of pride was there to be had in shooting a trapped animal? Even if Sam didn't like the idea of hunting, he could still understand those who did it on equal footing to the animal, taking on the challenge of outsmarting it, and then being able to use every bit of meat and fur for food and other things. But to just do it to have a picture to hang on the wall? He couldn't grasp it.

"But you didn't come here to hunt," he said, raising an eyebrow. "What made you decide to switch it up?"

"A deal," Bobby said, though his tone was bitter, his words full of regret. "I said that I'd come here and work for Gabe if he had his scientists clone one bull T-Rex for me to hunt. Was gonna use the biggest paddock, go in on foot by myself with a Hannibal rifle and some .577s, and bring it down. Would have been the last hurrah, the biggest challenge. Give me a good finale to retire from hunting with."

"You changed your mind?"

Bobby was silent for a few long moments. His eyes had that far away look, when someone was there in body, but their mind was off in another time, another place. "Changed my mind," he said, and his tone gave no room to prod farther. Sam let it go, leaning back in his seat as they pulled up to a small paved footpath that led into the trees. Down the path he could see the armory shed, the door lit up by two sconce lights on either side- but the ferns and trees encroached on the path on either side, giving it the feel of a dark, foreboding tunnel.

Bobby had his gun at the ready as he jumped out of the Jeep, and Meg pulled up behind them and got out as well, leaving her car door open and the engine running, just in case.

Bobby motioned toward the building with the muzzle of his rifle. "Go on, start loading things up. Strap a gun to you first thing. I'll stay on the path and keep watch."

Meg nodded, motioning to Sam, and they jogged down the path, Bobby following a little bit behind them. The inside of the shed was dimly lit, but there were cases upon cases of ammunition, and the racks along the wall were filled with rifles. Sam grabbed one and checked to make sure it was loaded before slinging it over his shoulder, Meg doing the same before she started to pull the other rifles off the wall, cradling them in her arms.

They worked silently, and after carrying out a couple of loads, Sam began to relax. Wouldn't take much longer now, and then they'd be out of here, and well armed, too.

Charlie was at a loss.

"Gabriel, I can't guarantee that the system would come back up at all. I'm not sure this is a good idea," she said with a sigh, leaning back in her chair and staring at the computer screen with laser focus, as if the lines of code would suddenly start cooperating with her for once. "If the system doesn't come back up, we're screwed."

"I hired you because you're the best, Charlie. You designed this system from the ground up. It'll work," Gabriel insisted, sitting on her desk beside the bank of monitors. For once, he wasn't eating any kind of candy- that's how she knew things were really serious. Nothing but the worst disasters could distract Gabriel from sweets.

But she knew he was right. They didn't have another choice at this point; shutting down the system and rebooting it was the only way to clear out the mess that Ruby had left in the coding. The only alternative would be to go through every single line of code in the system and correct it one by one.

Somehow, she had the feeling that individually reading two million lines of code would take a little longer than they had to spare.

"Fine. When they get back, we'll try it," she finally said, though she didn't look very confident in the decision.

Gabriel shrugged. "Just go ahead. Sam said they have most of the weapons loaded. They're armed, they're fine," he said with a smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring, but to her it just looked sleazy. "System will only be down for ten seconds, anyway. It's gonna work."

Charlie didn't like the idea one bit, and it must have showed on her face, because Gabriel rolled his eyes. "They're fine. Go on, do it. The sooner we get the systems up, the sooner we can call the mainland and get a chopper out here."

Charlie's stomach certainly didn't agree; she felt a little ill over all this, but at the same time, they needed to get off this island, pronto. "Fine. But if anything goes wrong, it's on you, buddy," she said, pushing her chair back and walking to the locked grey panels along the wall. She tugged her lanyard out of her shirt and used the tiny key on the end to unlock the panel, opening it up to reveal only three large, black switches.

"Here goes nothing. Wonder if I should scream Leroy Jenkins," she muttered, and then she snapped the first switch down. The computer screens went dark, followed by all the control panel lighting when she flipped the second switch. With the third switch, the lights finally went dark.

The ten second wait seemed to drag on forever. Gabriel fumbled for the flashlight on the desk, turning it on so they had at least a little light for the moment. Once the long seconds had finally passed, Charlie pushed the main switch back up-

And nothing happened.

"Shit," Charlie breathed out, looking around the room for any sign of electronic life. She caught sight of something on the screen, in the upper left corner, and she nearly tipped her chair over in her attempt to sit down and roll up to the desk.

"It worked!"

Gabriel looked around the room. "Um…it did?"

"Yes!" Charlie said with a bright smile, pointing to the two words on the screen, 'System Ready', followed by a blinking cursor. "Look, see? The shutdown worked. The reboot must have tripped the breakers, but it basically worked."

"But…nothing's on."

Charlie rolled her eyes. "Easy to fix. I'll just go down to the maintenance shed, flip the breakers, and we'll be good to go," she said, standing up and moving past Gabriel to get to the door- but she didn't get far. Gabriel grabbed onto her wrist with a frown.

"Hell no. You're staying here. Bobby is already out there, and he's armed. I'll have them do it on their way back," he said, picking up the radio. Charlie pouted, but didn't argue- then, she went pale, and she clamped her hand down over his on the radio before he could press the button.

"Gabe…"

"What?"

"You might want to tell them that the raptor fences are off."

Dean knew he couldn't let them sleep forever, especially not with Castiel in this condition; they couldn't afford to waste any time. He'd kept watch after they'd both basically passed out, even though there wasn't much to see other than the impenetrable darkness and the leaves and bushes just past their alcove. And he was fairly certain that even if the T-Rex found them, it wouldn't be able to reach them in here.

Even so, he stayed awake and stared into the foliage until the rain finally began to let up. If one dinosaur was out, he had to assume all of them were, and the smaller raptors were plenty small enough to fit in here.

He ignored the part of him that wanted to let the two of them rest, instead standing up and moving over to where Jo and Castiel lay sleeping. He had to hunch over to avoid hitting his head on the rocky ceiling until he knelt between them. He shook Jo awake first, albeit gently.

"Jo. Hey," he said softly, not wanting to send her into a panic after what happened earlier. He imagined she could lay a mean punch on him if she thought he was a dinosaur hovering over her. Luckily for him, though, she blinked a few times and sat up slowly, wincing and rubbing the small of her back. He knew the feeling; he'd slept in some inhospitable places before, and getting up from that never felt good.

"We gonna start moving?" she asked, and Dean nodded, shifting over to look at Castiel's leg. He wanted to get a look at it before he woke Castiel, because the guy was more perceptive than most- he would know just by looking at Dean's face how bad the damage was.

"He's awfully pale," Jo said, her voice hushed as Dean tugged the bandage back a bit. He immediately winced at the sight of dirt ground into the wound, but even more concerning was the noticeable redness to the skin surrounding the wound. It looked worse than before.

"Fuck," he muttered, replacing the makeshift flannel bandage and sitting down heavily on the ground. Jo took in a deep breath.

"Infected?"

Dean just nodded. His throat felt too tight to speak, and right now all he wanted to do was lie down and wait to be found, preferably by humans and not dinosaurs. But they couldn't; he had no idea how long rescue would take to get here, and Castiel needed help now.

"Cas," he said, the name nearly breaking in his voice as he shook Castiel's shoulder. It took longer for him to come around than it had Jo, but he eventually did seem to fully come back to the waking world, but not without a pained look as he shifted.

"Where are we going to go? We can't go back on the tour road, that'll take us right through the T-Rex's space," Jo said, and Dean bit the inside of his cheek, thinking hard as he helped Castiel sit up.

"The map…in our rooms," Castiel said, his voice sounding even more than usual like he'd been gargling gravel. Dean was surprised that Castiel was fully awake and coherent with that kind of injury at all. He tried to remember any of the details from the map, but honestly, he'd been more interested in the amazing water pressure in the shower than the brochures lying around.

"East of the T-Rex paddock is the river," Castiel explained, swallowing hard, his face lined with pain. Dean couldn't imagine how much pain he was in; his leg was torn open to the bone, and it wasn't like they had morphine lying around here. Castiel held out his hand to Dean, meeting his gaze. "Give me your knife."

Dean didn't bother asking why; he just got out his pocket knife and flipped it open, holding it out to Castiel handle first. Castiel took it and shifted to put a little space between them, then began carefully dragging the tip of the knife through the dirt.

"Visitors center is here," he said, finishing off a square and then drawing a line south and away from it. "Tour road is here, and the T-Rex paddock is on the west side of it, here."

"Right," Dean said, watching as Castiel tilted the knife to make a thicker line to the east of the tour road, running parallel to it north to south.

"This is the river. It shouldn't be too far east of here. And the river leads out to the ocean, of course."

"The dock," Jo said, she and Dean finally catching on. "The docks were just south of where the river hit the ocean. There are tons of buildings down there, and probably cars and first aid kits."

"So we go east till we hit the river, and then follow that south to the docks," Dean agreed with a bright smile, leaning in and giving Castiel a quick, messy kiss right on the lips. "You're a genius, Cas!"

And okay, maybe that wasn't the best moment to finally make a move, but Jo was rolling her eyes with exasperation and Castiel was blushing an interesting shade of red. Luckily, they had no time for him to be kicking himself over his spur of the moment decisions.

"Do you think you can walk, Cas?" Jo asked, and Dean stood up, glaring at her.

"He's not walking. I'll carry him."

"Dean, you can't carry me that far. I can walk," Castiel insisted, taking Jo's offered arm and slowly standing up, only putting weight on his good leg for the moment. Dean wanted to argue, wanted to insist on carrying him, but he knew Castiel was right. Dean had been running on adrenaline last night when they fled; if he tried to carry Castiel all the way down to the docks, it would triple the time it took to get there. If Castiel could manage walking, he needed to try it, for as far as he could manage.

Of course, that also meant that once the infection hit his blood, the exertion would make it spread through his whole body that much faster. Either way, they had to move fast, before the dinosaurs caught them- and before the infection overwhelmed him. They were cornered by shitty situations, and Dean hated it.

Castiel put his weight on the bad leg, and a look of sheer agony shot across his face- but he quickly fought to look less pained. Dean wasn't stupid; he knew Castiel was trying to be strong for them, but how long he could last on sheer mental will alone was anyone's guess.

"Alright. Let's go," Castiel said, stubbornly taking the first steps out of the alcove and into the foliage. The sky was just beginning to lighten with the promise of sunrise; this was normally the time Dean would be gathering the workers on the dig together, going over yesterday's work and the new assignments for the day. That way everyone would know what they were meant to be doing by the time there was enough light to work.

He missed that desert heat already.

He walked alongside Castiel, steadying him through the more uneven terrain, and Jo walking ahead of them to try and scout out the easiest path to follow. Castiel was doing damn well, considering the condition he was in, but every time he put weight on his bandaged leg, Dean could see every single muscle in him go taut and his jaw clench.

They walked in silence for a while, but eventually Dean decided to try and lighten the mood, at least a little. "Hey Jo," he called ahead, though he kept his voice as low as he could so it wouldn't carry far. "Why don't you tell Cas about that awesome new dinosaur you found back in June?"

In return, he received a rather crude gesture; she didn't even look over her shoulder at him. "I fucking hate you, Winchester."

Dean laughed softly, and grinned at Castiel's curious look. "See, Cas, in June we were working on this Trike nest. It was all eggshells and footprints, nothing really exciting. But then Jo here found a skeleton."

"Dean, I swear to God I will punch you in the dick if you don't shut up," Jo said, shoving another fern aside, but Dean just smiled wider and continued, gripping Castiel's elbow to help him over a fallen log. He would probably pay for this if they made it out of here- no, not if, when- but he really didn't care at the moment.

"It was a tiny dinosaur, like a Compy…you know, a little scavenger type; except it had a really cool crest on its head. Jo was going crazy, talking about naming it Ellenosaurus after her mom, getting ready to draft up journals about the new discovery. Big deal, you know?"

Castiel actually managed a strained smile. "Somehow I think I know where this is going."

"Oh, yeah. You should have seen the look on her face when she trenched the skeleton out and found tool marks all over it and realized it was a fake. She didn't speak to me or Sam for a week. Even sent other interns over with messages and questions instead of talking to us."

Jo snorted. "You're both bastards. My mom will never serve you the good beer at the bar again," she muttered, and Castiel laughed softly.

"Dashing her dreams, Dean. That's harsh," he said, though not seriously, and Dean was too busy grinning to reply. He wanted to do anything to get Castiel to laugh a little, to think of something other than the pain.

He was so busy staring at Castiel that it was Castiel who had to pull him to a stop so he didn't run into Jo. She had stopped abruptly between two trees, staring down at the ground in front of her with a look of concern. Dean made sure Castiel was leaning against a tree and resting, and then he moved to see what she was looking at.

"That's not from a T-Rex," she murmured, and Dean felt his stomach sink as he studied the massive footprint in the mud in front of them. It was the same basic three-toed shape as the T-Rex, but the toes were much shorter, and there was an arch between each toe, almost like…webbing. Claw marks at the point of each toe only confirmed what Dean was beginning to fear, but he was hoping with everything in him that for once he'd be wrong about a footprint.

"Dean, what is it? I don't know this one," Jo said, looking up to him for answers, and he wanted nothing more than to blow it off. To let her keep thinking that all they had to worry about was a T-Rex.

"That's because you've probably never seen this print before. Only two fossils of this have ever been found, and they were mostly destroyed during World War II," he said, kneeling down to get a closer look. Close up inspection didn't change what he already knew, though.

"But what is it?" Jo asked, staring at the print, probably remembering all the textbook references about the depth of the footprint being able to help estimate the size of the animal that made it. And this footprint was damn deep.

Dean sighed. "Frying pan into the fire, Jo," he said, shaking his head in disbelief at their bad luck. "Evidently the Spinosaurus figured out the fences aren't working, too."