Pythagoras was leaving a light trail of blood behind him as he was helped into the welcome center, which he didn't really notice as his mind began working, trying to find an answer to a problem where parts of the equation were still missing. He would have to wait until Ariadne and Jason got back to figure out what had really gone wrong, but he supposed he could still work on how to get the five of them out while he was stuck here.
As Icarus snatched a first-aid kit from the wall, he brought Hercules up to speed on what went down at the tyrannosaurus encasement. How different it all sounds, Pythagoras thought, being told as opposed to when it was happening. None of it sounded real, but rather otherworldly in nature. As if it was something which might have happened several ages ago, but not several minutes.
Icarus's hand brushed the wounds with a delicate and swift movement, his skin barely touching Pythagoras's flesh as it grazed over. Py followed the other man's hand with his eyes, watching it grab swabs of antiseptic wipes to try and clean the wound. Icarus was muttering something that the paleontologist didn't catch because all his focus was on the wandering hand.
"Pythagoras?" Icarus said in that way people do when they had just asked a question that was awaiting an answer. His hand stopped moving, but Pythagoras's skin still tingled where it had been touched.
"Yes? Sorry. I was listening. Well, I wasn't, but I meant to be. What?" Pythagoras stumbled through his words as he somehow strung them along into a sentence of relative coherency. His skin felt bothered and his body temperature was slightly warmer than it had been before Icarus had started. Icarus quirked a smile and looked down for a moment. Just one. Then he moved back to what he had been saying before.
"What now? You seem to have been right about everything so far, the dinosaurs acting weird, crossing the fence, everything, so I'm asking you: What should we do?" Hercules had stopped attempting to untangle a mess of ace bandage from the first-aid kit to look over at Pythagoras. The professor had an expression which seemed to be a mix between expectation and worry. Pythagoras worked in a museum, and while he was inarguably intelligent, rampaging dinosaurs were not his forte. But the way Icarus looked at him, like he could never be convinced that Pythagoras wouldn't know what to do, settled just the right way inside his soul.
"Right then," Py said. "First we wait until Ariadne and Jason get back. That's… Yeah, that sounds good for now." Hercules nodded and handed the un-wrapped bandages to Icarus, who returned to caring for Pythagoras.
"Then we'll wait for them. In the meantime I need you to sit up for me." Pythagoras did as he was told while Icarus's hand gently slid around Py's waist with the bandages, circling his midriff until he came back to his chest. Pythagoras wondered, just for a moment, if the warden's fingers were intentionally drifting over the small of his back just close enough to skim the skin, causing small shivers to curl up his spine each time. Experimented with the idea that Icarus meant to run his hands over flesh instead of bandage, though he acted like it was an accident. Debated, for one second, whether Icarus was altogether closer than he needed to be specifically for the reason of being close to Py.
Then that moment ended. Just as the bandage finished going on and Hercules administered a dosage of pain-killers to his past student, and alarm rang out on Icarus's phone, which was right now in Pythagoras's pocket.
"Do you mind if I?" Icarus half asked as he slid his hand into Pythagoras's front pocket to retrieve the phone. Py could feel a smidge more blood seep out of his wounds as his stomach tightened at the unexpected action. As soon as he reached in Icarus had pulled the phone out but the warmth of where Icarus's hand had been on his thigh lingered afterwards.
"Shit." Pythagoras remembered Icarus saying this before. Before everything fell apart.
"Is she coming?" Hercules asked.
"I don't know." Icarus answered, still staring at his phone. "But there's just been a breach in the Raptor Containment Unit. That means at least one, if not all, the raptors are loose."
"We're gonna need more guns then!" Hercules said, at least offering some kind of solution while Pythagoras became more puzzled with each new occurrence. "Jason and I only took two from the basement when we found them. We should go get more!" He motioned Icarus towards him and the two appeared to be setting off towards a staircase. "You just… Keep watch!" Hercules said, turning around for a second before continuing on. At least he was trying to make Pythagoras feel less useless.
In the silence and solitude Pythagoras sat thinking about all the issues surrounding what had just occurred. The other raptor got out by digging, which didn't set off Icarus's alarm, so the only way the raptors could have gotten out was if their encasement itself was damaged, and the only way they could have done that, in a way that was likely in this scenario, was through the help of an outside force. Like a gigantic tyrannosaurus rex. But why would that dinosaur damage the raptor containment unit? If it wanted to eat there were plenty of other, more easily accessible dinosaurs to devour. No, it wanted them loose, but why would it free the raptors when it ate the other one?
Either way, fighting didn't sound like a good idea by any means. The only way out, it seemed to Pythagoras, was to get out. Dealing with the living dinosaur problem was an issue for another time when lives, particularly his friends, were not at risk. Pythagoras racked his brain for a way off, but his options were limited. If there were boats here they would be too slow to make a journey to the mainland without any food or water. Cars, trains and buses were ruled out immediately, which left only the airborne options. They had arrived by plane, and there were helicopters at the landing sight. Those were definitely the best option, but they were only useful if someone knew how to fly them.
"Icarus!" Pythagoras called out down the staircase his friends had trotted off several minutes ago. "Do you know how to fly-" he began, but was interrupted by a loud bang against the door. Pythagoras was about to call out to ask if it was Ariadne or Jason come back from the lab when a set of claws sliced through the wooden door. It took seconds for the velociraptor to tear it's way through. Pythagoras took the same amount of time to stand up and rush to hide behind a counter.
Trying to quiet his breathing, Pythagoras sat in absolute silence as he heard the unpleasant sound of raptor claws delicately scraping the floor. From what he could hear, the raptor was just moving around, exploring her surroundings. Nothing in her manner indicated that she was aware of anyone's presence in the room. Then the sound got closer. And closer. Then it stopped right on the other side of the counter.
Pythagoras felt an odd sense of separation from reality as he slowly turned his head up to look above him. The raptor's face was directly above his own, leaning over the counter to see him. And they just sat there for a few precious seconds. Py didn't move, and neither did the raptor as they stared at each other. But the moment passed, and instinct kicked in and Pythagoras took the raptors pause of confusion and ran with it, standing up as fast as he could and booking it towards the stairs. No longer stagnant the raptor screamed and chased him, catching up in a few steps. It was the same as before, him running, and her chasing. She was definitely going to catch up, and certainly going to kill him. She wouldn't make the same mistake as her sister. There was no Jeep to ram her over. Except this time, Pythagoras wouldn't make the same mistakes as before either. This time, he wouldn't look back.
It killed him to do it, but as he approached the stairs he made a sharp turn. Icarus and Hercules and weapons were down there, but he would not make it to the bottom of the stairs in time. Instead he ran, his lungs aching from the exertion, towards the display of chairs and tables set up for the enjoyment of what would have been potential customers. Taking a breath too deep for his wasted lungs Pythagoras reached the first chair in the circle around the table, yanked it up, and spun around, putting his whole body into the motion as the chair smacked the raptor directly in the side. A crack sounded as the raptor hit the floor from the unexpected hit. She stood up but Py hit her again, this time square across the face. She seemed stunned, if not injured, having not expected him to react in such a way. This time, with a vengeance, she screamed forward, tearing her claws through the metal chair, throwing it out of Pythagoras's hands. Her other arms extended, ready to slice through Pythagoras when gunfire sounded. The raptor turned directions and immediately began rushing towards Icarus as he shot more and more rounds. Pythagoras though perhaps she knew she wasn't going to survive the gunshots but thought she could make it to Icarus before she died. She didn't. The raptor fell just short of reaching distance from the game warden, leaving a trail of blood and partially destroyed organs from Pythagoras to Icarus.
The second she fell Icarus was by Pythagoras.
"Are you hurt? Did she get you?" Icarus's hands were all over him, running over his chest to check for injuries before coming up to rest on the side of his face. "You're okay, right?"
Pythagoras kept steady, staring at him in silence before remembering to answer.
"Yes!" He blurted out finally, reaching his hand up to Icarus's, partially to give it permission to be removed, but also perhaps to feel it against his own. "I used the chair." He said uselessly. Hercules approached the chair Pythagoras had used as a weapon and gave it a once-over.
"Not bad!" Hercules exclaimed. "Of course if I'd been here I would have killed her with it. I've got strong upper muscles. It runs in the family. But good work for someone of your… stature." Pythagoras shot him a look, Hercules grinned, and Icarus's hand was still holding onto Py's when the door slammed open, allowing the entrance of Jason and Ariadne.
"Tyrannosaurus DNA!" Ariadne said as soon as she was visible, moving closer to the trio. "The raptors have tyrannosaurus DNA in them!"
"And it looks like Pasiphae was the one who gave the lab orders to add it!" Jason added, handing Pythagoras a flash drive that must have held all this information and a print copy of the evidence in a paper file; one to look at now and one to keep for later.
"Why would she do that?" Icarus asked, peeking at the papers from over Py's shoulder as the paleontologist sifted through them. "What would be the purpose?"
"Attention! Glamour! Danger! Who cares, she was a looney!" Hercules said, not bothering to look at the papers because he wouldn't have understood what they were saying anyway, and instead getting in front of Pythagoras. "Any bright ideas yet?"
The room went silent to listen to whatever Pythagoras had to say. If he were anyone else, he might have said it made him feel powerful. But it didn't. It made him feel responsible; for their lives if anything went wrong; for their pain if any of them got hurt.
"I think the best course of action is to leave the island. We now have a t-rex and, um, how many raptors are loose?" Pythagoras asked Icarus.
"We had five. Now we have three."
"There's raptors loose!" Jason cut in. "Wait, what? When!?"
"Icarus will explain later," Py told him. "But that's still four dangerous dinosaurs running around the island. One raptor came in here," he continued, pointing to the dead raptor lying in a mess of red ooze. "But she came alone, which likely means she was a scout. The others will notice if she doesn't come back, so we should be leaving, probably now and head to the landing strip for the planes. Can you fly a plane?" He turned to Icarus again.
"No," he answered. "But I can fly a helicopter!"
"Perfect. Then, we should go."
He didn't have to ask twice. There was a general nod shared between everyone as they headed back out the door they had all came in, Jason high-fiving Icarus for his raptor kill while they walked, which Pythagoras wasn't sure was in the best taste, but as long as they were both happy.
The Jeep was just as it had been before, the back seat almost completely gone with only tufts of cushion left on the crushed metal where the seats had once been. Blood spatter was everywhere, from the rims of the windshield where the raptor got hit to the sprinkle of red fluid in the back that had spilt when the raptor was bitten into.
"Pythagoras, help me navigate," Icarus told him as they reached the car. "Hercules, you're look-out in the back. If you see something, shout."
"He can handle that!" Jason shouted, having over-heard the conversation from his position over by Ariadne's motorcycle. There was a polite giggle from Ariadne, and a full out laugh from Pythagoras.
"You're laughing now," Hercules grumbled. "Just see if I give you any warning if I see one. Wait and see." He huffed the last bit as he gave up opening the disheveled door and simply rolled himself over the side and flopped onto the floor of the car. Icarus casually opened the door for Pythagoras and shut it for him when he was seated. Py couldn't help smiling at the custom as he got Icarus's phone onto the map app.
Icarus started the Jeep as Ariadne's motorcycle roared to life. The scientist did a circle back to where the Jeep was and pulled up to the side.
"If we leave the island, what is going to happen to the dinosaurs? We can't just leave them here." Ariadne asked, having had a little time to think over the escape plan. It was Icarus who answered her question this time.
"Actually," he said. "I've got a friend in the National Guard. If I tell her what the situation is, she'll listen. We give her these files, and she can prove it to anyone. Us, the National Guard might not listen to. Her? Definitely."
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear. There is a code in these dinosaurs where a certain chemical combination will instantly kill them. I downloaded it onto that flash drive. I'll make it, they take it, end of story." Ariadne explained. Jason's hands were wrapped tight around her waist, and one of Ariadne's hands had slipped from the handlebar to find a place on his arm. Py tossed a subtle look at Jason as Icarus and Ariadne worked out details. Jason shrugged with a smile and took her unoccupied hand off his arm to put into his hand instead. Ariadne willingly let their hands fold together as she finished up her business with the Game Warden.
"Then we're all ready to go. I'm following you." Ariadne ended, pulling her hand gingerly from Jason's to return to the handlebar. Icarus sought confirmation from Pythagoras, which was given with a nod, before the five of them drove off.
We're almost there, Pythagoras thought. Get to the helicopter, get in, and fly home. Go back to working in my museum. Go back to reality. Go back to 65 million years in the future.