Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~ Isla Sorna, August 8th, 2014 ~

Bobby Singer thought it had been unbearably hot in the Kenyan summers, sun beating down on the dry savannah grass like God holding a magnifying glass to that particular swathe of land. He thought he’d been through the worst that heat could offer, a heat that sucked everything dry, left the grass dry and the animals thirsty enough to brave the few sources of water remaining.

He realized how wrong he was the first day he stepped off the helicopter and into the oppressive, pea-soup thick heat of Costa Rica.

It clung to every thread of his clothing, making the light cloth feel ten times heavier against his skin and damp at almost all hours. If he wasn’t careful about washing everything out often enough, the scent of mildew quickly became unbearable. Not that anyone was going to complain; everyone here was going through the same motions, trying to adjust to the almost foreign atmosphere of the thick rainforest on the island. Some had been here longer than others, and Bobby and Rufus longer than most.

Not that they taught the new guys all their tricks; it was kind of vindicating to see the cocky newcomers suffer as much as they had.

Rufus was obviously at the end of a long day of work. It was easy to tell, with the blotches of sweat darkening the collar and underarms of his tan shirt, the marks of a day spent toiling outside in the South American heat. The dark-skinned man had his hat in his hand, fanning himself with it as if it would help any; they both knew it wouldn’t. Even with the sun close to the horizon, the heat was still stifling. His Hannibal rifle sat across his lap, loaded with .577 Tyrannosaur bullets, enough to stop an elephant in its tracks.

It probably still wasn’t enough for some of the things that were behind the tall electric fences.

“I don’t like this,” Rufus muttered, probably the fourth or fifth time he’d said it since they’d settled down on this fallen log to wait. Bobby just scoffed, leaning his own gun against the log with a careful respect for the prized possession.

“We done over a dozen rehearsals, it ain’t gettin’ any better,” he said, leaning forward and setting his elbows on his knees as he watched the other workers mill around. Many of them didn’t even speak English, something that Bobby had always been nervous about- no matter how cautious they were, miscommunications couldn’t happen. Just couldn’t. Not here.

“Gabe said with his systems we’d never have to get within a dozen feet of the carnivores,” Rufus continued, as if he hadn’t even heard Bobby speak. “And this is the third time we’ve had to move the Utahs to a new enclosure. ‘Bout time we just shot them all dead. Can’t keep upgrading their accommodations every time they get a claw through the fence.”

Bobby shrugged, but he was inclined to agree. The Utahraptors were nine feet of hide thick as a crocodiles, claws that could split bone open like butter, and a mouth full of teeth made to tear through muscle. Of course, they had plenty of animals like that on this island- the problem was, the Utahs were smart. More clever even than the Deinonychus and their teamwork, or the Compys and their evasive cunning. The Utahs knew their advantages, and they were getting to know their enemy.

Getting to know them a little too quickly.

The first cage, they’d underestimated the raptors climbing abilities. The slatted metal gates at the end of the enclosure ended up being a convenient ladder, and only the quick thinking shot of a smart handler had prevented an escape.

Of course, that handler was then fired for destroying company property. Gabriel gave them all dart guns and the Hannibals, but they were under strict orders to only use the dart guns unless there was a dinosaur presently trying to gnaw off their arm. Too expensive to do another cloning, too much money spent on the potent, proprietary growth hormones; it was very obvious that the millions that went into each dinosaur here were worth much more than the life of a handler or two.

They’d been lucky thus far. Even when the raptors managed to find a weakness in the second enclosure’s fence, they’d managed to catch on to the situation before there was an actual escape. And now here they were, the third transport of the raptors to a new, more secure home. Each raptor had been heavily sedated and moved to individual containers, specially made to be transported by truck to the new enclosure, one at a time.

It didn’t help Bobby’s anxiety that the move had been delayed due to concerns about the container latches. The raptors were supposed to be just waking up when they were moved, still drowsy and disoriented. But with the delay, they now had seven containers of fully awake raptors to move, and the head of the project refused to consider a delay to try and sedate them all again. The rehearsals were foolproof, he said. It wouldn’t make a difference how awake the animal was.

Bobby had a gut feeling that he was wrong. At the same time, he didn’t have the authority to call off the move, leaving them in this less than ideal situation.

“I swear, even one claw comes out of that container and I’m gonna start blowin’ lizard heads off. Don’t care if they’re 20 million a pop,” Rufus said, setting his hat back on his head and moving his other hand to grip his gun. Bobby didn’t try to talk him out of it. Wouldn’t do any good.

“So long as everyone sticks to the program, we can pull this off,” he said, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of it more than convince Rufus. Rufus just snorted.

There was the rumble of the truck coming down the narrow path and someone yelling in Spanish, and the workers who had been waiting among the trees now moved closer to the side of the road. Bobby took a deep breath and stood up, grabbing his gun and slinging the strap over his shoulder. Rufus stood up next to him, batting insistent mosquitoes away from his face as they stepped past ferns the size of Volkswagens to get to the side of the well-worn road.

The rumble slowed, and the back-up tone started to signal as the truck backed down the short path to the gates. The gates to the new enclosure were massive, made out of solid steel almost a foot thick, heavy latches for the container to each side of the hydraulic door that would lift once everything was hooked up.

“Keep going! Yes, yes, a little more…there, stop!” the project head called out, his accent thick as he halted the truck about a foot from the gate. This was what they’d rehearsed, the series of calls and procedure coming next, though Bobby’s job in this move was easy; stand by and be ready to shoot, while fully aware that he would lose his job the second he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t bothering with a dart gun- he would leave that to all the other bleeding hearts standing around working security. He would be the last line of defense, and more than willing to pull the trigger on one of these animals if anything went south.

“Lower!” the project head called out, and the truck gave a hiss as the container lowered to ground level, flush with the giant tires supporting the payload. Now, with the container on their level, Bobby could see movement inside- just shadows, given that the sun had nearly set, but the floodlights above the gate occasionally lit up a swatch of brownish-green hide, or the shine of a wide green eye, pupil down to a slit in the flash of light.

Bobby had been this close before, but he still felt his pulse speed up, his heart hammering slightly harder against his ribs as he caught the creature’s eye. It was only for a moment, the creature pacing the container unhappily, but it was enough to give him a chill. Then the raptor was moving again, the thud-click of every step loud on the metal container floor. Foot, claw. Foot, claw.

Before this, he’d thought the scariest thing he’d ever see was that hippo coming at his jeep full-tilt, bellowing and flashing massive ivory teeth. Now, being on this island, that same hippo seemed like an angry housecat.

“Bring it on back!” the project head yelled to the driver, and the truck began to inch its way backward, closing the distance until there was the metallic thud of the container pressing against the gate. There was a violent, guttural hiss from inside the container, and more than one man stumbled or jumped back from it.

Bobby just tightened his grip on his gun, feeling the sweat dripping down his back, plastering his shirt uncomfortably to his skin.

“Close the latches!”

Two men moved forward like clockwork, one on each side of the gate, pulling down massive metal bars and slotting them into the brackets on the side of the container. The hinges were folded around the brackets, and the men each yanked hard at the bars, making sure they were set into place, holding the gateway and the container together without a millimeter to spare.

With that done, they moved back and gave a thumbs up to the project head, who called out for the container door team. Three men moved forward, gripping the side of the container door facing the gate and slowly sliding it out, the metal grinding and leaving a deep groove in the dirt. Once the door was pulled free, they stepped back and signaled to the project head as well.

Now all they had to do was open the gateway, and if the past could be trusted, the raptor would eagerly run from the dark container into the trees and brush of its new enclosure.

“Prepare the gate!” the project head yelled, and Rufus gave the container a sour look before moving to the ladder at the back of it. He climbed to the top, where the metal was solid and thick, and walked to the front where the gate sat closed. He threw open one latch, then the other, then put his hand on the heavy black lever, waiting for his cue to start the hydraulics to pull the gate up.

“Open gate, all hands ready!”

Rufus pulled carefully and slowly on the lever, the gate hissed and began to rise, and then everything went to shit.

There was a sudden loud pop, like one of the guns had gone off, but then a rip and an even louder hiss than the hydraulics followed. The whole truck tilted violently to one side, sending workers scattering, though Bobby held his position- he knew it couldn’t tip over entirely.
He saw a flash of claw before the realization set in- the raptor had clawed a huge tear in the sidewall of the tire beside the container. The metal of the latches groaned and broke free, not made to support the full weight of the container and the leaning truck, and the container dragged through the dirt to the side, pulled by the weight of the truck as it tilted.

Bobby saw Rufus fall, and he was running to the gate before the man even hit the dirt, ignoring the yells and panicked orders being flung around. He got there, seemingly, just as the raptor did- he grabbed onto one of Rufus’s hands just as the man let out a piercing scream, and was nearly yanked free of Bobby’s grip.

“Shoot it!” Bobby yelled, but the men were already on that, at least three darts being fired through the gaps in the container. Darts that would take a few minutes to set in. They didn’t have a few minutes; Bobby got a better grip on Rufus’s arms, the man’s legs hidden by the shadow inside the container doorway, but Bobby could feel the raptor pulling. Rufus was screaming, a brutal, agonized sound, his voice breaking with each new pull of the raptor’s teeth.

“The rifles! Shoot it! Fuckin’ shoot it!” Bobby yelled, unable to get to his own gun without letting go of Rufus, and that wasn’t an option. People were screaming about moving the truck, dropping the gates, but no guns went off. No one would fire, not when no one could even tell what was going on, not with their jobs on the line.

Rufus had stopped screaming by the time the raptor leapt forward, finally coming into Bobby’s line of vision as it dug its claws into its twitching kill. It snapped its jaws at Bobby, barely a few inches from his face, and the hunter fell backward as a foul scent of rotting flesh and the tinny scent of fresh blood hit him. He was being dragged away, then, hands grabbing at his arms as he tried to get back to Rufus, even if it was too late, even if the sleepy raptor was digging its teeth in, the clear crunch and grind of teeth on spinal cord somehow heard even over the yelling.

He stopped fighting the worker’s hold when the raptor looked back up at him, eyes focused right on his- and if Bobby didn’t know better, he would have thought the creature was taunting him, Rufus’s blood bright red on its snout.

~ San Jose, August 10th, 2014 ~

The only reason she sat outside was because the inside of the tiny restaurant was obnoxiously decorated; Ruby didn’t want to be bombarded by bright pink and yellow lights while she ate, especially not when the floor was black and white checkered and the tables and chairs red and white. It felt like she’d damage her retinas if she spent too much time inside.

So even though the heat was still a bit much for her liking, she sat outside at one of the small tables under the red canopy emblazoned with the words “Soda Tapia”, next to a Coca-Cola label which was nearly just as large. The canopy did little more than block out a little of the midday sun; shade didn’t do much good, not around here.

She sipped at her drink impatiently, checking her watch more than once until she saw a familiar face over the crowd, the man sticking out like a sore thumb. Even back in the States he would have stood out, with his height, his pale skin and sunken cheeks, and the intense look on his face.

“Hey, Alistair!” she called out, lifting a hand to wave at him, and she could nearly feel as well as see the intensity of the glare he shot at her as he made his way over to the table and slid into one of the chairs.

“You really think that’s a good idea, idiot girl? This city is where all of Novak’s workers come when they’re off the island, and you want them to know just who you’re sitting down to lunch with?” he said, the nasal, slimy tone of his voice making her skin crawl even more than it did over the phone. She shrugged and went back to sipping at her drink, undeterred by his anger, and unwilling to show her discomfort and give him the edge.

“They don’t care. Half of them don’t even speak English, and none of them know or care who you are. Don’t get a big head, you’re just a messenger,” she said, looking pointedly at the backpack and briefcase that he set beside his chair. “Did you bring them?”

Alistair paused for a moment, staring at her as if he expected her to wither under his gaze, like most others would; unfortunately for him, Ruby wasn’t most others. Her dark eyes continued to focus on him expectantly, waiting until he finally rolled his eyes and opened the backpack. He tugged a white paper bag from it and held it out with two fingers, as if it contained something overtly disgusting.

To Ruby, it was worth a whole damn lot, and part of her payment, too. She grabbed the bag and opened it as quickly as she could, and nearly moaned when she reached into it and plucked out a golden French fry.

“Do you know how hard it is to find quality, real French fries around here?” she asked around the first bite, leaning back in her chair and savoring the taste. Alistair ignored her question, his expression doing little to hide his disdain as he waited for her to finish mooning over a bag of fried food.

“How does it feel, anyway? To know you’ve got nearly a billion dollars worth in technology and research riding on one woman?” she said around the second fry, giving Alistair a grin, soaking in the power she held at this moment. It was intoxicating, knowing that she had an entire company basically serving her hand and foot to keep her happy enough to make deals.

In response, Alistair just sneered, reaching down and lifting the briefcase onto the table, dropping it with a thud that made people at nearby tables jump in surprise. Ruby licked the salt from her fingers before leaning forward, trailing one hand across the leather of the case.

“I wouldn’t open that here, little lady. Your advance, one point two five million. You’ll get two million more for every embryo that makes it off that island and to our labs intact and viable,” he said, keeping his voice low as she pulled the briefcase into her lap, her smile widening.

“Believe me, I’ll get you the embryos. You worry about your end of the deal.”

“What’s your plan? Novak’s no idiot, I’m sure he has security that will make the White House look like a daycare.”

“Security that I designed and that I run. Don’t you worry, I have an eighteen minute window. Eighteen minutes of complete security and communications blackout. I’ll be off the island before they’ve even figured out I ran the program,” Ruby said, crossing her legs as she set the briefcase by her feet. “Eighteen minutes, and everything that Novak has developed will be in your hands. Since you couldn’t buy Tran off him.”

“Tran doesn’t even know what he signed up for,” Alistair snapped, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “Novak plucked him right from the PhD program, spoiled him with a team and a lab complex, and the boy thinks he has it made. Novak’s no better than us; he’s not in this for the science. He’ll stop caring about Tran the second he’s wrung the boy’s mind dry.”

Ruby laughed, waving off a waiter who paused to offer her a refill. “Jealous,” she said, raising her eyebrows at Alistair. “You just wish you’d seen his dissertation sooner and gotten to him first.”

“It would have made things…so much simpler. But either way, we’ll skip the catch up.”

“Cheat, you mean,” Ruby taunted, popping another fry into her mouth and watching the man thoughtfully. “They said you were bringing me a way to get the embryos to the mainland preserved…?”

Alistair nodded once, reaching again into his backpack, this time pulling out a pink can of ladies shaving cream and setting it on the table. Ruby arched an eyebrow before picking it up, surprised at the weight of it as she turned it over delicately in her hands.

“Twist the bottom,” he said, and she turned it upright and gripped the bottom, the can emitting a low hiss as she did. The outer metal skin of the can slid off, revealing two slender, circular racks, made for holding the tiny test tubes the embryos were kept in, eight slots on each row.

“Clever. I’m impressed.”

“Try using it.”

She gave him a skeptical look, but then slid the can back together, took the lid off, and pressed the tab on the top down- white shaving cream filled her hand, just as if it were a normal can of shaving cream. “I’m very impressed,” she added, leaning over to plop the white cream down on top of a piece of pie on a nearby dessert tray.

“Get this done right, Ruby. If we go down, you’re going down with us,” Alistair said, the threat clear in his voice- he obviously didn’t mean just in the court system, and she knew it. She wouldn’t doubt for a second that they would simply have her killed if she fell through on this.

It didn’t bother her, because she wasn’t going to fail. She’d worked too hard on this, and put too much into the fantastic ‘retirement plan’ for when she disappeared after this was over. All gambling debts and loans paid, money piled up high in some foreign bank, and a new identity; she would be free to do whatever she wanted.

And it didn’t hurt that she would be taking Gabriel Novak down a few notches in the process. That bastard would regret every snide comment and every time he turned her down for a raise.

“Don’t you worry. You just have your guy at the docks at the agreed upon time. I’ll handle the rest, and you’ll get your dinosaurs,” she said, frowning at the mostly empty bag of French fries. She looked up at Alistair again, raising her eyebrows with a smirk.

“Oh, and have your guy bring some more of these. Don’t get cheap on me, Alistair.”

Chapter Text

* Isla Sorna, August 10^th, 2014 *

 

If Crowley had his way, Gabriel’s office would have nothing but a desk and his paperwork in it.

Of course, Crowley didn’t often get his way. So Gabriel’s office was filled with distracting knick-knacks, pointless objects acquired simply for their odd appearance, and that damned fish tank. The tank spanned one whole wall, floor to ceiling, and behind the glass the fish watched his every move. They were like something out of the abyss, dredged up from the very bottom of the sea, teeth so large and curved that the fish’s mouth hung open like a broken screen door.

They were some kind of expensive, extinct fish. If Crowley had his way, they would have stayed extinct.

Their black eyes, large as saucers, followed his path across the room, where Gabriel was sitting with his feet propped on the desk, twisting a pen in one hand and the other holding the phone to his ear. Behind him the floor to ceiling windows looked out over an open field, where the dinosaurs with the boomerangs on their heads- Para-whatevers- were grazing by the water. Crowley didn’t care what the scientific name was, as long as they made money for the company and didn’t kill anyone.  The boomerang-heads, as Gabriel described them, were like big dumb cows. Harmless scenery.

 Gabriel was either unaware that Crowley had come in, or he didn’t care, but Crowley wasn’t in the mood to be polite (not that he was ever in that mood in the first place). He certainly wasn’t in the mood to stand there and listen to Gabriel trying to sweet talk one of his many conquests, as it sounded like he was doing.

“No, baby, I promise! I’ll come to the mainland next week. We’ll go out on the town, make it special, just you and-“

Crowley leaned across the desk and grabbed the phone from Gabriel’s ear, ending the call and tossing the phone on the desk. As Gabriel sputtered indignantly, he also dropped a heavy file on top of the phone and jabbed one finger at it, staring at Gabriel accusingly.

“Did you see this?”

“What, a file folder? Yeah, I tend to use those,” Gabriel said with a shrug, being his petulant self, especially with his phone call rudely cut off.

“Don’t play coy with me, Novak. I know they sent you a copy. Did you even read it?” Crowley asked, shoving Gabriel’s feet off the desk. They fell to the floor with a thud, jerking Gabriel forward in the chair.

“Yeah, I saw it. So a guy got on the chewy side of a raptor, this shit happens! We drop some cash on the family, they’re happy, we’re happy, on with dino-land,” Gabriel said, rising from his chair and walking around to Crowley’s side of the desk. “Come on, even in zoos they’ve got people getting walked on by elephants, and you know what they do? They hand the elephant a paintbrush and send it right back out to the ‘paint with the fuckin’ elephants’ kids’ program. Maybe some elephant anger management therapy.”  

Crowley rolled his eyes. “This is not a zoo, and that is not an elephant. There Is no precedent here, which means every mistake matters. You know that as well as I do. This lawsuit has your investors scrambling for assurances that I can’t give them!”

Gabriel was infuriatingly calm. As Crowley’s voice rose, the young CEO sat on the edge of the desk and began digging in the bowl of candy sitting on top of a stack of files, finally plucking a Tootsie Roll from among the rest and unwrapping it with a smirk. “You and those investors. You’re always so fuckin’ worried. How many times do I have to say I’ve got this entirely under control? It was one guy. One little blip in a transfer. It’s nothing.”

“Nothing, eh? Well this steaming pile of nothing has at least two of your investors talking about jumping ship before the whole damn thing goes down,” Crowley said, and that seemed to get Gabriel’s attention. It at least wiped the smirk off his face. He fought to swallow the candy quickly, narrowing his eyes at Crowley.

“They can’t pull out of this. There’s a contract.”

“They very well can if they feel like you can’t guarantee the safety of the workers and visitors on this island. They’re under the impression that you can’t control your critters, Novak. And unless you can prove differently, I can’t keep them under my thumb until the park opens.”

Gabriel groaned and rolled his eyes, standing up again and pacing over to the aquarium. The fish followed, coming closer to the glass, fins barely twitching to keep them in place as they watched.

Fuckin’ creepy fish.

“What the hell do they want me to do, then? Gabriel asked, turning back around and throwing his hands in the air. “I can pay off the family, with enough zeros tacked on that funeral will become a party. We’ve got state of the art systems here. What more do they want? Dinosaur whisperers?”

 “Of a kind.”

“Well, call up Cesar Millan and tell him he’s gonna need some bigger leashes,” Gabriel snapped, the sarcasm practically dripping from his voice as he crossed his arms over his chest. Sometimes, Crowley wondered how such a child got so far in this business, and then he remembers seeing the numbers on the accounts that his mommy and daddy left behind when they passed.

 Spoiled rich kid. He still wonders if he’s shot himself in the foot, taking on this client.

“Experts, Gabriel. They want experts, and I’m not talking the guys who do maintenance on the ferris wheel at Six Flags. They want bonafide dinosaur experts signing off on this project.”

Gabriel arched an eyebrow and laughed. “They do realize that all the ‘dinosaur experts’ that aren’t on this island are sitting in piles of dirt staring at bones, right?” he asked, moving to the decorative stand near the office doors, the centerpiece of the room- a fully reconstructed skeleton of a small dinosaur. Compy-something. Crowley honestly couldn’t care less.

“They don’t care. They want the Winchesters. Old enough to know what the hell they’re doing, popular enough in the industry that their opinion will make a difference. Though honestly, I don’t think you’ll get those two out here,” Crowley said, watching one of the fish hover right behind Gabriel’s shoulder, fins rippling in the still, dark water.

“Why the hell not? I pay for half their digs!”

Crowley snorted. “Because, Gabriel, not everyone is willing to fall at your feet and be a good little lapdog for you, unlike some of these brown nosers out here. The Winchesters are diggers. You call them and tell them you want them to drop everything and fly to a foreign country to see a nature park without telling them why you need them there? I can imagine how that would go. And if you did tell them, the pile of non-disclosure agreements would be enough to scare them right off before they step foot near a plane.”

Gabriel drummed his fingers on the stand next to the skeleton, seemingly deep in thought, but Crowley knew that look. It was the look Gabriel always got when he was told he wouldn’t be able to do something. And that, right there, was exactly what Crowley planned. He knew that the Winchesters would never agree to this insanity if he went, a lawyer representing Gabriel, because the Winchesters were not business people. They liked things face to face, personal.

 “I’ll fly out there myself and get them to come,” Gabriel said stubbornly, and inside, Crowley was high fiving himself. Normally Gabriel wouldn’t even think about going out and begging a few paleontologists to come to the park, but given the push of a challenge, it was inevitable; Crowley had walked him right into it.

It was genius, in his opinion.

“So what else? We grab a couple bone experts, drag them out here, make them ooh and aah, pay off the family, that good enough? Or do the investors want my balls in a vice while they’re at it?” Gabriel continued, walking back behind his desk and dropping down in the chair. Crowley took the opportunity to sit in one of the chairs opposite, slouching back in it and hiking up one ankle to balance on the opposite knee. At least this way he couldn’t see the mutant fish staring at him.

“They want a big name,” he said, earning a roll of the eyes from Gabriel.

“I am a big fuckin’ name.”

“A likeable big name. Someone who has a positive pull with the public. Someone who, if they’re photographed lined up at an ice cream shop, by the next month that ice cream shop will have twenty more stores. They want someone outside the industry to vouch for what you’ve got going on here, someone who the public trusts,” Crowley added, pointing at the thick file on Gabriel’s desk. “Someone whose popularity will be enough to overshadow that lawsuit going public, should it happen.”

Gabriel swiveled his chair back and forth, a pen already in his hand, being twirled idly between his fingers as he thought. Then, a slow smirk appeared on his face.

“How about a New York Times bestselling author with a heart of gold?”

Crowley just stared for a moment, waiting for the punch line. It didn’t come. “You have got to be joking.”          

“Why would I be joking? My little bro is perfect. His books sell by the millions, he donates to save the starving baby whale charities and shit like that, people love the guy. If he says the place is awesome, they’ll believe him.”

“And just how are you going to convince him to come? Have you completely forgotten Kenya?”

Gabriel waved a hand dismissively. “Kenya was a fluke, come on. That wasn’t even my fault. He knows that.”

“Gabriel, he still won’t go within fifteen feet of a swimming pool. He’s a neurotic mess, and I don’t doubt he holds you responsible for a good chunk of that,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes in an almost mockery of Gabriel’s earlier eye-roll. “Come up with someone else. Someone who preferably will be willing and not blackmailed into coming.”

“I won’t blackmail him. He loves me, I can convince him,” Gabriel insisted, leaning forward on the desk. “Gimme one shot. I’ll swing by his place after I snag these two Winchester guys, and if I can’t convince him, we’ll come up with someone else then. Have a little faith, Crowley.”

“Oh, that’s rich, telling a lawyer to have faith in a megalomaniac CEO.”

Gabriel nearly pouted. “That’s a strong word to use. I prefer to just go with heavily narcissistic.”

Crowley stared at Gabriel for a few long moments, going over it in his mind. Even if Gabriel didn’t manage to convince Castiel to come to the park, that would still leave them a few days to find someone with equal clout. There were always actors and actresses looking to jet off to some exotic locale; if it came down to the line, he could pull enough strings and wave some money under some noses.

“Fine. You get one shot. One visit. If he doesn’t agree, then we’re going with someone I pick,” he said, and Gabriel pumped his fist in celebration, earning an exasperated look. “This isn’t some pre-opening festivity, you know. Your investors have serious doubts about the safety of this park. If you don’t get three signatures on that paper, you’ll lose half your funding, at the least.”

“Right, right,” Gabriel said, nodding, though it was obvious he was back to not taking it very seriously. “I got it, Crowley. I’ll impress them, don’t worry. I’ll give them the tour of their lives,” he added with a grin, and Crowley shook his head and sighed before heading back to the door. As he pulled it shut behind him, he could already hear Gabriel back on the phone with whatever bimbo he’d been conversing with, apologizing and sweet talking.

He had a bad feeling about this, but no time to dwell on it. The investors were waiting to hear the game plan, and Crowley needed to sell them on it.

 

 

*Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, August 12^th, 2014*

 

“Right here. See the difference? This part is the vertebrae, and the spine runs along here, down to the tail.”

 Jo didn’t look convinced, but Dean wasn’t surprised. It was one thing for these students to sit in a perfectly clean classroom, staring at neatly excavated pieces of bone all day. It was a completely different ball game when you dropped that student in the middle of a desert and expected them to immediately be able to tell the difference between dozens of layers of rock and sand substrate and the bones they were looking for. Jo was lucky, though, because this was the perfect dig to learn on.

“Okay. I think I see it. So the hip should be somewhere around here,” she guessed, pressing dusty fingers to one of the areas in which they hadn’t gotten to bone yet.  As soon as Dean saw a full arch of backbone, he’d called the excavation to a stop and called in the big guns.

“Right. Hip here, ribs are going to be all along here. What I’ll have you doing is trenching out the area about a foot north of the spine, all the way up around the head, give it about 12 inches of clearance all the way around.”

Jo looked up at him, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, but pieces of hair already rebelling and falling into her face. Her skin was slightly reddened, the result of forgetting to put on sunscreen again after she’d sweated it all off in the midday sun, but she still looked just as alert and lively as when she’d showed up that morning with donuts and coffee for everyone. 

 “Why aren’t we doing at least a partial excavation here? Isn’t this a little big to block and send back to Chicago in one piece?” she asked, and Dean chuckled, standing up before his knees started screaming at him for squatting down so long. Jo followed suit, standing and wincing when her back audibly popped.

“Jo, how many complete Utahraptor skeletons have been found?”

“Complete? None.”

“Exactly,” Dean said, pointing down at the exposed sections of spine. “This looks like it might be complete. And if it is, man, we’ve got it made. I’m not taking chances on this one, not so late in the season. Not enough time to be choosy about what condition it’s in. We’ll trench around it, block it out, jacket it in some plaster, and get it to the lab before the weather changes on us. A lot easier on the specimen than trying to excavate and properly preserve, catalogue, and pack it one piece at a time.”

 Jo smirked. “The museum’s gonna love the shipping fees on this.”

“Nah, we’ll just have the FedEx guy come pick it up. 9 foot tall raptor skeleton trapped in a couple tons of rock and dirt, not a problem.”

Jo tilted her head back and laughed, and Dean smiled; she really was pretty. If they had met in a bar he may have started hitting on her, but instead, they’d spent the summer covered in dirt and dust and passing tools back and forth while he showed her how useless all her textbook learning had been for field work. She was more like a little sister now, carefully taken under his wing.

Also, her mother was slightly terrifying, so there was that.

“Dean! Jo! Come over here!”

Dean turned and stepped carefully over the ropes they had strung around the section of rock that hid the fossil from view, Jo following closely as they made their way to the small white tent, stepping around the people working on other parts of the dig. Sam sat at a rickety fold-up table inside the tent, bent over the laptop in front of him. The tent was barely big enough for the table and the ground penetrating unit behind it, just enough protection to keep the equipment from getting battered with dust.

“Got somethin’?” Dean asked, leaning over Sam’s shoulder to see the laptop screen. The loading bar at the bottom of the program was nearly full, crawling its way steadily to the right.

“I imported all the data from all three locations and it’s compiling now. If this thing is as good as they claimed, we should have a 3D shot of the entire skeleton,” Sam explained, already looking way too excited about this. This was why Dean let him handle the computers and fancy equipment; Dean would rather be out there working on preserving this thing and getting it ready for transport.

But he had to admit, having a full 3D picture of exactly what they were dealing with would be really nice. They would not only know if it was a full skeleton, but also find out a lot quicker where they needed to trench.

“Don’t get used to this fancy shit, Jo. Most of the digs you work at you’ll be lucky to have secondhand chisels,” Dean joked, and Jo raised an eyebrow.

“What makes this dig so special?”

“Hell if I know. Novak Industries has a boner for the Field Museum, for some reason. I’m not complainin’,” Dean said with a shrug. For the past few years, their program had flourished, most of it in thanks to Gabriel Novak. The dude ran nature parks and theme parks, but for some reason, he’d showed up at the curator’s office one day and asked to fund their digs. All he wanted in return was to have real-time access to their research.

Given the number of zeroes on those checks, it didn’t seem like much to ask.

And now this behemoth, the ground penetrating radar system.  A rep from Novak Industries had brought it directly to the dig site, saying it was a ‘bonus’ for their hard work. Dean thought it sounded like bullshit, but Sam was already salivating over the $20,000 piece of equipment, and it would look bad enough to return a gift- even worse, return it with drool stains from a techno-geek.

It was a big deal. Digs sometimes had GPR units, but they were temperamental, and the results weren’t that useful. To Dean, it just looked like grey and white smudges and dots on the screen. Somehow, Sam could make sense of the crap and plot it out to approximate points on the ground they were working on.

This thing, though, this was brand new, and evidently created by a team Novak hired, considering the bold “Novak Industries” logo emblazoned on the side.  You supposedly rolled the machine to three different spots on the ground near the fossil, ran the machine at each location, uploaded the results to a computer, and the program that came with it would compile it into a clear-as-day 3D image of the subsurface.

Dean had his reservations, but he was nearly as curious as Sam was.

The bar hit the end and the picture came up, and Dean’s breath caught. It was a top-down angle right now, and even just from that he could see that they’d hit the jackpot, both with the dig and the machine. The skeleton looked complete; from the well-defined skull all the way down to the massive claw on each hind foot. It looked like the bones of the arms had deteriorated a lot, but if they were careful, they could still reconstruct the broken pieces.

“Wow,” Jo whispered, leaning forward as Sam dragged the mouse across the picture, tilting it downward and then around. Every angle was crystal clear, white bone against dark grey rock, and Sam let out a low whistle- over the machine or the fossil, Dean didn’t know. Probably both.

“Damn, this guy needed a dentist. Check out the pitting below the teeth there,” Dean said as the skull came into view, focusing on pockets of missing bone where infection had likely set in. It was a full grown Utahraptor, and without the presence of other injuries, he felt pretty safe in guessing that it died after the infected teeth made it impossible to eat properly. Not a pleasant death.

“How tall do you think it is? 8 feet?” Sam asked, and Dean shook his head.

“Looks more like nine, if the feet are where I think they are out there. Might be closer to ten.”

“Dude, stop exaggerating, it’s not ten.”

“And here I thought boys were experts in exaggerating size,” Jo said, but before Dean could smack her for the comment, the sound of a helicopter cut through the air. And it sounded close.

“What the hell…?” Dean muttered, straightening up and stepping out of the tent as the sound got even louder, wind cutting across the ground from the direction of their mess tent. The thing had to be landing in the clearing back there, and making a damn mess while it did.

 “Cover the site!” he yelled to the confused workers, and Jo immediately grabbed for the tarps they saved for covering the fossils at night, starting to hand them out. Dean left her to it; he had a bone to pick with a pilot.

He stalked around the mess tent, and sure enough, the helicopter sat in the clearing behind it, winding down but still making a ridiculous amount of noise. Dean started to yell some choice words at the guy, but the pilot just shook his head and pointed. And when Dean followed the gesture, he saw that the door to their motorhome was standing wide open.

The motorhome was off-limits- that was where he and Sam stayed on digs, where they kept all the important crap that shouldn’t get covered in dirt and grime. And someone had just hopped out of a chopper and barged into what amounted to their house?

Yeah. Whoever this was, Dean was probably going to punch them.

He jogged to the open door and was up the steps in record time, and when his eyes adjusted from the bright light outside, his fists clenched. Some short asshole had helped himself to a bottle of whiskey, and was presently sitting on the counter beside the sink, sniffing it like some kind of wine.

“You know, you should buy better shit than this, being stuck in the desert,” the guy said, and Dean stormed around the island and grabbed the guy by the collar of his shirt.

“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in here?” he snapped, but the guy didn’t even seem fazed. He chuckled and reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding the whiskey, patting Dean on the arm.

“Just checking up on my investment, Dean-o. I can see you’ve been spending the money on plaid shirts instead of decent booze,” he said with a smirk. “Gabriel Novak. Nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester.”

Dean let go of the guy’s shirt like it had caught fire under his hands. He opened his mouth, tried to speak, but nothing came out, and hell. Really? He’d just assaulted Gabriel Novak.  The guy who was funding this dig. And every dig for the past three years.

“Jesus Christ, you couldn’t…I don’t know, call ahead? Give us a heads-up?” he managed, just as Sam stepped inside, Jo not far behind him.

“Okay, who’s the jerk-“ Sam started, and Dean cleared his throat. Loudly.

 “Sam, this is…Gabriel Novak,” he explained, and he was pretty sure Sam’s face went a few shades paler.        

“Oh, I…I didn’t mean ‘jerk’, I just…”

Gabriel laughed, hopping off the counter and reaching out to shake Dean’s hand, then Sam’s. “Nah, go ahead, call me every name in the book. I interrupted your digging, after all, but not without damn good reason,” he said, catching sight of Jo as she stepped out from behind Sam. “Who’s the lovely lady?”

Jo snorted, shaking his offered hand. “Don’t flatter me, I’m covered in dirt. Jo Harvelle.”

“She’s doing her graduate work, she’s been interning on our digs all summer,” Dean explained, still in a state of shock. What was a millionaire doing in the middle of the desert in Utah? Why now? He figured if the guy ever showed up in person, it would be with an entourage and a whole lot of expectations. This dude just stole their shitty whiskey.

“Well. I don’t want to take too much of your time, so let’s get down to business, shall we?” Gabriel said, grabbing three more glasses and pouring whiskey for the three of them, as if he weren’t the guest here. “I love your work. I do. Your research has been instrumental in some of my endeavors, to say the least.” 

Sam looked skeptical. “What kind of endeavors?”

Gabriel waved a hand at him, like a pesky mosquito. “I’m not going to smother you with details here. That’s why I have scientists. I hire them to explain shit to people for me so I don’t have to do it. And really, I’m here to reward your stellar efforts.”

Dean took the offered glass of whiskey- he had the feeling he’d need it for this. “Thought the GPR unit was our reward,” he said, his tone holding a note of suspicion. If Gabriel noticed, he didn’t bother acknowledging it.

“The GPR unit was just a bonus. This, though…what I’ve got for you today, it’s a true reward. A break from all your hard work. A sort of…vacation for you two.”

Sam laughed. “A vacation? All due respect, sir, but we’ve got a raptor to get out of the ground before winter hits, and then we’re needed back at the labs-“

“Yeah, yeah, you’re busy. I know. But this isn’t your average vacation,” Gabriel said, waggling his eyebrows at them. Dean kind of shuddered; he could do without the suggestive sleaziness from this guy. “I have a new park opening. A sort of nature preserve, off the coast of Costa Rica. Bought a whole island chain for it, it’s a paradise, I’m telling you.”

“What kind of nature park?” Jo asked with a frown, tugging the band from her hair and letting it fall free across her shoulders- along with a shower of dust from it.

“The kind that you’ll like. It’s right up your alley,” Gabriel said, but Dean was already shaking his head, leaning back against the counter.

“Not a good time, man. We’ve gotta keep this site on schedule, we can’t afford to waste time and get this thing damaged,” he said, leaving out the unspoken ‘and I am not sitting on a plane for hours on end thank you very much’.

“Already have you covered. I talked to the head of your department, and he’s got replacements coming in to wrap up your dig and get everything sent back safely. Guys with as much field experience as you.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so eager to give us a vacation?”

The CEO’s honey brown eyes seemed to light up at that, almost mischievous. “Because while you’re having the best vacation of your lives, you’ll be doing me a favor. See, I have to deal with investors who have ridiculous expectations. They’ve got their lawyers up my ass about the new park just because I don’t have any outside opinions on it yet. So, all I need is for you to fly down for the weekend, enjoy yourselves, and then sign a paper saying how totally awesome it was before you leave. Easy stuff. The investors are happy, the lawyers are happy, I’m happy, you’re happy.”

“Why would your investors care what we think about a nature park?” Sam asked, barely beating Dean to the question. Something was off here. They were paleontologists; they should be bringing in biologists, zoologists, the scientists that would really know their shit about Costa Rican ecology. Not them.

“The investors said ‘experts’. They didn’t say what kind. I like you guys, so I picked you. You’ve been working too hard anyway, you could use a break,” Gabriel said, and then he winked at Jo. “You should come, too. It’d be nice to get an opinion from the fairer sex.”

Dean sighed and set down the whiskey, cutting Jo off from what would likely be an insulting comment in Gabriel’s direction. “Look, we really can’t. As much as we appreciate the…completely weird offer, we have a ton to do here-“

Gabriel was ignoring him, and instead had pulled out his checkbook and flipped to a blank check, jotting down the Field Museum Department of Paleontology on the line. Then he wrote 50,000 on the cash line, raising an eyebrow at Dean.

 “I’m serious, this is a really bad time to just be taking off from the dig, and the labwork-“

Gabriel added another zero at the end. Dean’s eyes went wide, and he glanced uncertainly at Sam, who looked just as torn as he was. That was…a hell of a lot of money, for them to come spend a couple of days on an island. That could fund their digs for the next year, maybe two.

Gabriel smirked, then lowered the pen again, and with one careful swipe turned the 5 into a 9.

The silence was thick enough to hear a pin drop, then Sam laughed nervously.

“When does the plane leave?”

 

 

*New York City, New York, August 13^th, 2014*

 

Castiel was dead tired.

He dragged his suitcase up the short walk to his door, the rumble of the rollers obnoxiously loud on the quiet street until he lifted the suitcase up the three steps. He unlocked his door with a sigh, then pushed it shut and went to the alarm panel to turn the alarm off.

Except…the alarm wasn’t going off.

He stiffened as he heard a sound from the kitchen, and he left the suitcase by the door, instead moving as quietly as he could to grab a poker from the fireplace. He was certain that whoever it was, they could probably already hear his heart beating, the way it was pounding against his ribs in time with the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

There was light streaming from under the kitchen door, and he edged toward it, adjusting his grip on the poker before he shoved the door open and stepped through. He started to swing at the figure by the fridge- until the man turned, and Castiel saw his face.

He barely managed to stop his swing in time, and even then he would have hit Gabriel in the face had the other man not stumbled back in surprise. He was holding a beer, and looking at Castiel with some mix of amusement and pride.

 “Nice swing, little bro!  Though, gotta say, I hope you don’t greet all your guests with a poker to the face,” he said, and Castiel dropped the poker heavily on the counter, fear being quickly replaced by anger.

“What are you doing here? How did you even get in?!” he demanded as Gabriel opened the beer and took a swig.

“Relax, I had a copy of your key made last time I visited. Just in case.”

“And the alarm?”

“Had Charlie sync my phone up with your security system. I can turn off your alarm from Costa Rica, bro.”

Castiel just stared for a few seconds, and then he laughed in disbelief. He clenched his jaw and grabbed the beer from Gabriel’s hands, slamming it down on the counter, and then grabbed Gabriel by the shoulder and pushed him toward the door.

“Out. Get out of my house, Gabriel, and I’m changing my locks, and my alarm, and I swear to God I will not hesitate to hit you in the face if you show up again-“

“Wait, wait! Come on, Cas, I need to talk to you. Gimme ten minutes. Five, even,” Gabriel said, twisting free of Castiel’s grip and giving him a pleading look. He held up his hands, as if trying to calm an angry dog, and Castiel just glared.

“You didn’t even come to the hospital, Gabriel. I was in a Kenyan hospital in a coma for four days, and you couldn’t even spare an hour? And now you show up here, three years later, and you want to talk?!”

“I did send flowers…”

Castiel tensed and closed his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temples and just trying not to lash out and punch Gabriel in the face. “Gabriel. Get out. Now.”

“Five minutes, Cas? Please? Come on, I’m in a bind. I need your help,” Gabriel said, and Castiel opened his eyes, for the first time that night seeing something other than a smirk on Gabriel’s face. He actually looked worried. Castiel ran his hand down his own face with a sigh, and then he leaned back against the kitchen counter.

“Five minutes. That’s all you’re getting.”

Gabriel clapped his hands together and grinned, reaching again for the beer sitting on the counter. “Thanks, bro. Listen, I know I haven’t been around lately, but I’m telling you, I have a damn good reason. A really damn good reason. As in like, world changing.”

“World changing,” Castiel repeated dryly, giving Gabriel a look. It didn’t seem to discourage him.

“Yeah. And I need your help. Just for one weekend, and believe me, you’ll love it.”

Castiel turned away and opened a cabinet, pulling out a bottle of vodka and a glass. “You know, I seem to remember you saying that before you stuck me on a boat with a completely insane tour guide who proceeded to get us capsized by a hippo.”

“Come on, Kenya was a fluke. It was three years ago! I’ve matured. I’ve grown. Learned from my mistakes,” Gabriel insisted, earning another humorless laugh from Castiel, who was pouring himself a generous amount of vodka. And then, after a pause, pouring a little more. “Look, this is different. It’s an island, off the coast of Costa Rica, and I’ve got it turned into this amazing preserve-“

“A preserve?” Castiel repeated, voice rough from just having taken a long drink from his glass. “So you’re saying you show up here three years after nearly getting me killed touring one of your nature preserves because you need me to tour another nature preserve?”

“This is different! No hippos, for one thing. And no boats involved. And no tour guides, either!” Gabriel insisted, eyes bright with excitement. Meanwhile, Castiel could already feel his stomach churning over all this. “I learned from that. Safety is the number one concern on this island. State of the art systems, top of the line.”

Castiel stared into his glass, then took another long pull off it; he definitely wasn’t drunk enough for this. “What the hell is in Costa Rica that you felt inspired to make a preserve for? Boa constrictors? Monkeys?” he asked, stalling the inevitable. Gabriel gave him a mischievous look.

“If I told you, then you wouldn’t be surprised, Cas.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had enough of your surprises already for a lifetime. The answer is no,” Castiel said, reaching for the bottle again, only to be stopped by Gabriel’s hand on his arm. He sighed, looking back up at his older brother.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t really important, Castiel. I’ve got investors on my ass. They want expert opinions on the preserve or they’re gonna yank the rug out from under me. I’ve already got a couple scientist-types signed on, but they want someone more influential. And I thought, hey, what’s more influential than the guy selling millions of books every week?” he said, and Castiel fell silent for a few moments. He should say no. He should say hell no, and kick Gabriel out on his ass. Hell, when he was in the hospital, Anna jumped on a plane and spent a day and a half getting there to be with him; Gabriel was in the same country and evidently couldn’t be bothered.

“Just a couple days, Cas. You fly out, you relax in a tropical paradise for the weekend, watch some pretty animals, sign a sheet of paper that says it’s totally a cool place, and that’s all. Really. I know I screwed up and I know I don’t deserve your help, but my back’s against a wall here,” Gabriel continued, his voice softer now. Castiel set down his glass and shook his head, wishing the vodka would kick in quicker.

“Even if I wanted to, Gabriel, I have meetings all weekend with the reps for the European branch of the publisher, we’re working on getting translations sorted out.”

 “I know. I called your agent and got her to reschedule.”

Castiel looked up with a glare, and Gabriel shrugged. “What? I knew you’d use it as an excuse, and hey, even if you don’t go you get the weekend off now. Win-win.”

Castiel sighed again. “Gabriel, you are the most narcissistic, presumptuous, self-important asshole I know.”

“…Is that a yes?”

Castiel closed his eyes again and shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this.”

He opened his eyes again to see Gabriel smiling brightly, tugging a paper out of his jacket. “You won’t regret this, Cas, I promise. This is going to be one of the best weekends of your life! Here, that’s your flight info, and I’ll be meeting you at your last stop to take a helicopter the last leg.”

“You made reservations already. Of course you did,” Castiel said, taking the paper with a wince. He’d played right into Gabriel’s hands, he was sure, but there was no time to say he’d changed his mind. Gabriel was already headed for the door.

“Well, gotta run, lots of stuff to get ready for you guys! No mosquito nets and tents this time, Cas, five star resort all the way! You’re going to love this,” he said with a wink, and then he was gone, and Castiel heard the front door open and shut again. He slowly turned around and leaned forward, slamming his head against the counter with a groan of frustration.

“I am a colossal idiot.”

                  

Chapter Text

*~~ Juan Santamaría International Airport, August 15^th, 2014 ~~*

 

 

Dean was going to fire Sam. He was going to fire Jo, too. No severance packages, no unemployment, just a boot in their ass as he kicked them out the door onto their asses.

Well. Not out the door right now, considering they were 35,000 feet in the air. Not that it wasn’t still tempting.

“Dude, you’ve eaten so many of those that if you shake hands with someone who’s allergic to peanuts in the next five days, they’ll keel over dead,” Sam said with a grin, referring to the crumpled, empty bag of crappy airplane peanuts currently crushed in Dean’s hand. Dean didn’t even like peanuts, let alone crappy, stale airplane peanuts, but they’d cut him off from the whiskey after two shots. Sam didn’t want him to be drunk when they landed and met Gabriel at the chopper.

Right now, Dean didn’t care, and wanted to be spectacularly drunk for the rest of this torture.

“Shut up, Sam, or I will push you out of the chopper,” he threatened in return, though it was hardly an effective threat given that his voice was a tense mutter and his hands were still clutching the arms of his seat with a death grip. By the end of this flight he would have carpal tunnel in both of them. Or arthritis. Something.

Jo smirked, though she didn’t raise her eyes from the book that was settled in her lap. It was one of Dean’s that he’d leant her, the pages dog-eared and the cover battered from both multiple read-throughs and surviving multiple dig sites. It was the newest thriller out by Castiel Novak, and Dean had a brief moment of wondering if the last name wasn’t coincidence, if he was related to Gabriel. Seemed unlikely though, a billionaire CEO and a New York Times bestselling author being in the same family.

Then again, he and Sam both turned out to be giant nerds for dinosaur bones. Although Dean would swear till his dying day that he was way cooler than Sam; paleobotany seemed really freaking boring. At least Dean dug up dinosaurs. Sam got excited when they found a full leaf impression on a dig.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, telling flight attendants to prepare for final approach, and Dean took a deep breath. It was almost over. Maybe once they got back from the island he could convince Sam to rent a car and roadtrip back with him. That sounded infinitely better than getting back on an aluminum tube of death.

He turned up the music on the IPod Sam had let him borrow for the trip, trying to drown out the escalating whine of the engines with Metallica, and closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see the amused looks on Sam’s and Jo’s faces. Fuck them. It was a fucking aluminum tube of death with wings, and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.

Only when he felt the jolt of the plane’s wheels striking the pavement did Dean open his eyes again, swallowing down the lump in his throat and taking in deep breaths as he looked out the window. He didn’t know what he expected, maybe something more subdued and stucco, but this was not it at all. The airport was all concrete and glass, the roofs arched and bright red over the industrial-like façade. A line of creepily-matching red taxis sat lined up at the largest building, almost like they designed the taxis to match the roof.

Past that, though, he could see the hazy, dark outline of low mountains through the heavy mist that hung around them like a curtain, and past the asphalt runways there was green everywhere, dotted by buildings that stuck out garishly on the side of the mountains, most of them below the fog that hid the peaks from view.

“It’s gorgeous,” Jo said from the other side of Sam, leaning forward in her seat to see out the window, the book sitting open straddling her knee to keep her place.

“Gorgeous and probably full of giant snakes and spiders the size of your head,” Dean pointed out, not feeling charitable to the locale while his stomach was still trying to twist itself into knots. He didn’t know if the chopper would be any better, considering he’d never been on one, but he didn’t have high hopes. It seemed to be just a slightly smaller aluminum tube of death, but with death blades on the top.

 The airplane finally slowed to a stop next to the terminal, and Dean heaved a sigh of relief, fingers already scrabbling at the buckle on his seat belt. (Why did they even have seat belts? If the plane crashed you were fucked. And the seat belt wasn’t even long enough to strangle yourself with on the way down. Useless.) Trapped in as he was at the window seat, Dean could only wait and bounce his leg impatiently as the passengers in the front cabin gathered their things and filed out.

The jetway wasn’t airtight against the side of the plane, so the first taste they got of Costa Rican weather was the blast of hot, sticky air as they stepped off the plane. Jo wrinkled her nose and was already reaching into her pocket for a hair tie, and Dean suddenly found himself missing the dry heat of Utah- this heat was tropical, thick and oppressive. Like it was trying to gather enough moisture in the air to drown you by just breathing.

“Here’s to hoping the place we’re staying has air conditioning,” Jo muttered as they stepped off the jetway into the terminal, and also into the blessed air conditioning of the airport. Dean wondered if the air conditioning for the whole airport had strained their budget- because judging by the garish, retina-scarring green pattered carpet, they didn’t put a huge amount of money into an interior designer.

“You never complained at the dig,” Sam pointed out, and Jo snorted.

“That’s because if someone complains about being hot on a dig, you sneak into their hotel room and dump ice water on them in the middle of the night,” Jo pointed out, giving them both a look. “Plus, that is not the same kind of hot as this hot.”

Dean nodded, hitching his backpack up higher on his shoulder. “Gotta agree with you there.”

“Where are we supposed to meet this guy, anyway?”

“He said they’d have someone at the baggage claim to help with the bags,” Sam said, weaving as conspicuously as the giant he was, past tourists in wide brimmed hats and sandals and families wrangling their overly excited children. The three of them stuck out in comparison, in their work boots and beat up jeans and shirts- it wasn’t like they’d had time to go home and properly pack some normal clothes, so they’d combed through the clothes they had on hand and tried to pick the items that weren’t torn or had dust ground into the seams. Easier said than done, when you’re on your ass in the dirt half the day.

They had just turned the corner to the baggage claim when a man in a dark suit spotted them, immediately locking on and making his way through the crowd toward them. Either this was their guy, or they were about to get offered drugs to smuggle through for some local mafia, because the guy was creepily overdressed.

“Well, I almost didn’t believe Gabe when he told me I wouldn’t need a greeting sign to find you three, but it seems he was right. The moose gives you away,” the man said with a low voice tinged with a British accent, and Dean could practically feel the eye roll that Sam wanted to give him but was holding back out of politeness. “Fergus Crowley. Just Crowley, for you. I’m the private attorney for Novak Industries,” he continued, shaking each of their hands in turn.

Dean could already tell he wasn’t going to like this smarmy dick.

“I’m Sam. That’s Dean, and this is Jo Harvelle, one of our interns,” Sam said, luckily handling the introductions for them while Dean was still imagining that his hand felt slimier after this guy touched it.

“A pleasure. Must be a pleasant change from your everyday dirt and bones,” Crowley said, and Dean almost laughed.

“You know, I think I prefer the dirt and bones so far.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the shrill dinging sound that signified the baggage carousel starting up, and Crowley turned and whistled to a woman and a baggage handler standing by the doors. The woman took her time in putting her phone away before she sauntered over, her brown hair falling in thick waves around her shoulders.

Okay, she was kind of hot. Dean could get on board with this.

“Are these our dinosaur experts?” she asked Crowley, not shy about giving them each a long once-over, arching her eyebrow at them. “Somehow I expected more Jack Horner and less male model in bad clothes.”

Dean could just tell Jo was about to say something, but Crowley beat her to it. “Don’t let Meg here bother you too much. We didn’t hire her for her charm,” he said, and Meg smirked, locking eyes with Dean. And when she locked eyes, it was like a freaking staring contest from hell; Dean was suddenly focusing less on how hot she was, and more focusing on if she might be Novak Industry’s hitman or something.

“Meg Masters. I’ll be your pilot on our little jump to the island,” she elaborated, but Dean was still unconvinced that she didn’t have a side job where she stole kidneys for a living. She definitely didn’t look the part of a helicopter pilot.

“Is Mr. Novak already on the island?” Sam asked, and Crowley snorted.

“Please, just call him Gabriel, he doesn’t do well with honorifics and certainly doesn’t deserve them. And no, he’ll be meeting us at the helicopter with our other guest for the tour. He flew in earlier today,” Crowley explained, leading the way over to the moving baggage carousel, which now had quite a few bags circling on it. Crowley and Meg stood off to the side chatting as Dean and Sam stood by, grabbing their bags as they slid by.

“Well, that’s kind of more what I expected with big business,” Sam said, throwing an uncertain glance toward the pair before hefting Jo’s duffel bag off the carousel and onto the floor.

“He is a lawyer. I think they only come in flavors of sleazy and super sleazy,” Dean said, and Jo groaned.

“Please, do not talk about that guy’s flavor. You’re giving me mental pictures I could go a lifetime without seeing,” she said as the baggage handler who’d been with Meg took Jo’s duffel from the floor and set it onto a waiting cart. Dean winced and grabbed the next bag, a large duffel that would be identical to his were it not for the lack of duct tape wrapped around part of the strap. He slid Sam’s duffel across the floor to the baggage handler, who put that on the cart as well.

“Well, I doubt he’ll make us spend much time with a lawyer if he wants us to enjoy the vacation,” Sam pointed out, watching the bags go by, everything from hot pink suitcases to hastily duct taped cardboard boxes. “Wonder who the other guest he mentioned is, though.”

Dean shrugged. “Probably some stuffy academic. Who cares?”

The final bag came around, and Dean grabbed it and hauled it off the belt, sliding that one over to the baggage handler as well. Crowley seemed to notice that they were stepping away from the throng of people standing around the edge of the carousel, and he tugged out a wad of the local currency, pulling 2 10,000 notes from the bundle and holding them out to the man. “To the helipad, my friend, and make it fast. Rápido,” he said, and the man took the bill and nodded, and he was off through the crowd like a bullet. Dean could already see the headlines; toddler gets run over by baggage cart, baggage handler says ‘totally worth it for the tip’.

“Well then. Shall we?” Crowley said, and Sam frowned a little.

“We should stop and exchange some money while we’re here, shouldn’t we?”

Crowley laughed and clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder, starting to lead the way. “You won’t need any. You’re a guest, you’ll get everything you need pro bono,” he insisted, and Dean and Jo shared a wary look before following. They were going to be on a private island; he was probably right.

“So, what kind of park is this?” Jo asked Meg, who was trailing behind them as if to make sure they weren’t going to bail. Meg smirked, her hands tucked in her pockets as they walked.

“Can’t say. Lawyer up there had me sign so many non-disclosure agreements that I think Novak owns my soul by now,” she said, her voice like a purr, smooth and rich. “But I can tell you that when you leave, you’ll wish you could have stayed your whole life instead of three days. Hell, I’m not a nature person, and I put up with the bugs and humid-ass climate to go out there.”

“I thought this was a nature preserve,” Dean said, getting an uneasy feeling. There was something big here, a puzzle piece they weren’t being shown yet. “What the hell is in a nature preserve that would make me want to camp out in this crap?”

Meg laughed and tossed him a wink. “I guess you’ll see when we get there, won’t you?”

Dean wasn’t happy with that response, but he didn’t ask any more questions, knowing that he wasn’t going to get more than vague answers. Nothing about this made sense, though; every time Novak Industries had opened a park before now, it was a media frenzy. It was all over the news, showing clips and highlights from private tours, and every detail hashed out in the spotlight. If this park was so great, why hadn’t they heard about it by now? It was surely close to being ready to open if they were doing private tours, and yet there had been no press on the subject. Nothing.

The whole thing was making him feel uneasy, and he could tell by the slight frown on her face that Jo was thinking the same thing. Sam was up front talking to Crowley about something, but the space had widened between them and the chatter of people around them and the intercom above made it impossible to hear what they were saying. Maybe Sam would find out more than they did.

He nearly groaned when the automatic doors slid open and they were once again blasted with a blanket of humid, hot air, but they didn’t have far to go; a blue van was parked outside, sticking out like a sore thumb among the endless red taxis, and the logo for Novak Industries was plastered across the side of it in stark white lettering. The driver was already at the back door, sliding it open and waiting until Sam, Jo, Dean, and Meg had climbed in before he shut the door and walked around; Crowley settled into the front passenger seat, twisting around to look at them.

“Won’t be a long ride. Don’t get comfy,” he said as the van pulled away from the curb, cutting through gaps in the taxi traffic that Dean wouldn’t even try to make in a Smart Car. Meg was back on her phone, fingers tapping at the screen, either texting or playing a game; Dean couldn’t tell from where he sat on the bench seat in front of her.

“How long is the chopper ride?” Sam asked, and Meg rolled her eyes, glancing up from her phone only for a moment.

“Do yourself a favor, sasquatch, and don’t call them choppers. You sound like a five year old,” she said, swiping her finger across the phone’s screen. “It’s a 2 hour flight, normally, but I’m damn good and the weather’s clear, so I can cut fifteen minutes off that.”

Dean winced and slouched down in his seat. Two more hours of being way too far above the ground for his liking. Gabriel was rich enough, he should have built a bridge or something.

And there was another thought. Surely they weren’t going to take all the guests out to the island like this, by private helicopter; but people could hardly drive out there.

“How are people going to get to the park? I mean, it’s going to have a lot of visitors, right?” he asked, and Crowley met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Helicopter or boat transportation is included in the eight thousand dollars a night price tag,” he said with a rather pleased look, and Dean didn’t even have to look to know that Sam’s and Jo’s jaws dropped at the same time his did.

“Eight thousand dollars a night?! Who the hell is going to pay that to see an island?”

“Oh, a whole lot of people, Winchester. A hell of a lot,” Crowley said, looking back forward as the van pulled to a stop beside the helipad. “Believe me…we have no worries about filling the rooms. In fact, I do believe we’ll be booked up a couple years in advance, at least. Might have to extend the park to the other islands.”

Dean was glad they had to get out of the van, because otherwise he was going to tell Crowley exactly how much bullshit that sounded like. No one paid eight thousand dollars for one night on an island unless there were orgies involved or something. He gave Sam a look of disbelief, and his brother could only shrug. Meg was already making a beeline for the helicopter, the machine itself a dark navy blue like the van, complete with the Novak Industries logo across the side.

A sleek black car pulled up behind the van, and Gabriel was stepping out even as it was still rolling to a stop, the usual bright smile plastered on his face. “There’s my favorite group of bone diggers! Have a good flight?” he asked, and Sam elbowed Dean before he got past opening his mouth to say he’d rather have a colonoscopy than get back on another plane.

“It was fine, thanks,” Jo said, and Dean’s attention was drawn to the person getting out of the other side of the black car. He looked familiar; dark hair that looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, blue eyes…he was sure he’d seen the guy before. Of course, he wasn’t sure how he could forget if he had; that was a face he’d remember. He usually went for people of a more female persuasion, but the closer the guy got, the further his Kinsey scale was tipping.

“C’mere, Cas! This is Castiel, my little brother. He’s going on the tour with you guys,” Gabriel said, pulling Castiel in close with an arm around his shoulders. Castiel was obviously not too happy about it, but he indulged the shorter man.

Then, the light in Dean’s head went on.

“Wait, Castiel Novak? As in, the writer?” he asked, suddenly realizing why the guy looked familiar- some of his books had his headshot on the back cover. And while enough to give him pause, the headshots didn’t nearly do justice to the real thing.

Castiel smiled, almost looking shy. “Yes, the writer. Though for the next three days I suppose my title is guinea pig,” he said, shooting Gabriel a look, which was promptly ignored.

“Don’t let Cas bring you down. He hates vacations. Workaholic,” Gabriel said as the helicopter motor began to growl and the rotors slowly began to turn. Crowley was just watching the baggage handler put the rest of the bags into the chopper, so it seemed like it was almost time to go.

Jo held up the book from her bag almost sheepishly. “Reading your newest right now, actually. It’s really good,” she said, and Castiel seemed genuinely pleased that someone was complimenting his work. The smile made Dean’s breath catch; he took in every detail, the crow’s feet that got accentuated when he smiled, the way his shoulders seemed to relax.

Yeah, this guy just dropped a boulder on the ‘homo’ end of his Kinsey Scale.

“Stop makin’ his head bigger. Cas, these are the paleontologists I mentioned. Dean and Sam Winchester, and Jo Harvelle,” Gabriel said, gesturing to each of them in turn, and Dean found himself impressed that the guy remembered Jo’s name after only meeting her once. Castiel shook each of their hands, the smile back to one of those polite smiles that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. Dean would have to get him to smile for real more often on the trip, he decided.

“Well, enough talk about literary achievements, let’s get this show on the road,” Gabriel said, stopping and patting Sam on the shoulder. “Be sure to duck, skyscraper. We’re gonna need your head to stay attached to your shoulders for the weekend,” he teased before heading for the chopper, not having to duck at all himself.

“What, swallow a lemon?” Dean said to Sam as he passed him, seeing the sour look on his face from the teasing, which Dean was more than willing to join in on. That’s what brothers were for, right?

He’d been distracted from the impending flight by the mystery of the park and the fact that he was basically a starstruck teenager, but now as he grudgingly walked toward the helicopter, he could feel the anxiety setting in all over again. The rotors buffeted the air in rhythm now, the wind pushing at him as he ducked slightly to get to the door. The motor was too loud to be heard over, but he climbed in and took a seat, away from the window this time. There were two bench seats in the chopper, one facing forward and the other towards the back, so Dean had Sam and Jo on each side of him, and across from him Castiel was settling in between Gabriel and Crowley. He looked about as thrilled to be here as Dean was, but Dean had the feeling it wasn’t because of the helicopter ride. It didn’t take much to notice the tension between Gabriel and Castiel, like Castiel was just trying to tolerate his brother, and it left Dean wondering if there was more to the story.

Crowley pulled the door shut, and evidently they had some damn good soundproofing in this thing, because the sound of the helicopter was cut down to over half of what it had been. It was quiet enough to speak at a normal level and not struggle to hear each other, though the air was so thick with tension that Dean wasn’t sure there would be much conversation on the flight.

Dean’s leg was already bouncing with nervousness, his hands tightening into fists and relaxing over and over on his knees as he tried to tell himself that this was different. That it was somehow safer than a plane. It wasn’t helping much; the three across from him had already taken notice of his nervous tics.

“Guess I should have had her stock this thing up on whiskey, huh?” Gabriel said, and Castiel snorted softly.

“Wouldn’t that have been nice,” he muttered, already pulling a beat up notebook out of his bag and tugging the pen free from where it was clipped on the spiral. Well, at least they seemed to have two things in common; a need for alcohol in stressful situations, and a dislike of technology. Though he couldn’t imagine that he wrote his books entirely by hand, that would take a really, really long time.

“Don’t mind Dean. He has this thing about flying,” Jo said, earning a glare from Dean even though she was just saying out loud what everyone else had already likely figured out.

Still. He was still going to fire her and Sam when they got back from the trip. Fire them with extreme prejudice.

His whole body stiffened when the helicopter lifted off the ground, and no, he definitely did not like this better than the plane, because he could feel it moving. At least a plane felt somewhat sturdy; this thing seemed like a strong gust of wind would send it spinning. The feeling was lessened when they got higher in the air, but Dean still kept his fists clenched tightly and closed his eyes, letting his head drop back against the wall with a thud.

This fucking park had better be fucking worth it, he thought, opening his eyes long enough to get jealous of everyone else, who seemed to be taking the flight in stride. Hell, Gabriel was probably in one of these every day. Castiel was already jotting things down in a messy script that Dean wasn’t even sure he would be able to read if he saw it right side up, Crowley had pulled out a laptop, Sam was trying to get Gabriel to talk about the park more, and Jo was eagerly looking out the window, probably trying to memorize every detail so she could tell her mother every detail tonight.

Jo and her mother were incredibly close, as Dean had found out. Jo’s father had died when she was young, and her mother became a widow and single mother trying to run a popular bar and grill all on her own. Despite that, she’d always been an amazing mother to Jo, making time for her and making sure she stayed on the right path, even when she was at her worst from the anger of having lost a parent so early.

Knowing that, it was easier to understand why Jo walked away from the dig at the same time each evening to call her mother and fill her in on everything. It made Dean miss his own mother, who’d passed while he was getting his PhD and Sam was just in his first years at college. It had been several years, but the loss still stung, and he didn’t think his dad would ever be over it even though he’d known it was coming.

That was the only good thing about the way she’d gone; cancer at least gives you time to say your goodbyes.

Once Gabriel’s phone rang, there wasn’t much conversation other than the obnoxiously loud one-sided one coming from the CEO. He was evidently talking to someone about merchandising for the park, and how he wanted the logo changed. More red, he insisted. Dean eventually managed to tune him out and close his eyes again, just waiting for it to be over.

True to her word, it was just under 2 hours when Meg turned her head and announced that they were getting ready to land. Dean opened his eyes and looked out the window reluctantly; on one side the ocean stretched out for endless miles, the sun making the blue color of the water seem even more vibrant; they were low enough that he thought he saw something moving under the waves, a dark shape, like a dolphin. Maybe a shark. On the other side the island took up most of the view, though this side of the island seemed to be mostly made up of jagged cliffs and crashing waves. The helicopter dipped down, though, heading right for those cliffs.

“Might want to buckle up; the landing can get a bit rough,” Gabriel said, and it was obvious he said it just to torture Dean, the way he stared at him and waggled his eyebrows. Dean tried to be as casual as everyone else as he reached for the seatbelt, but he fumbled it so many times that Jo eventually rolled her eyes and reached over, snapping the buckle in place and pulling the strap tight. Dean didn’t bother to thank her; he totally could have done it on his own.

The helicopter lurched suddenly, and then the cliffs rose on each side as it dropped down into a ravine. Dean’s stomach lurched right along with the helicopter, and he concentrated on breathing, counting the breaths in his head as the helicopter dropped toward the ground. Luckily, it was only a few seconds more of the wind battering the helicopter before it set down lightly on the ground.

Dean let out a sigh of relief; he’d cheated death twice in one day. Good enough for him, now he wanted off this thing.

The air was just as hot and humid here as it was on the mainland, though here it had the heavy scent of salt added to it; the helipad was quite literally between two cliffs, open to the ocean on one side and a dramatic waterfall on the other. He heard a distant noise that sounded like the horn on a boat, so they must have been fairly close to some kind of dock. He hadn’t seen one on the way in, but it could have been hidden in the cliffs like the helipad.

“Okay, I’m starting to like this place,” Jo said as she hopped out of the helicopter, craning her neck to see the top of the waterfall as the helicopter’s rotors began to slow. Castiel was studying the area too, but with a definite frown on his face, as if he’d already made the decision to hate it.

Maybe he knew more about the park than they did, being Gabriel’s brother and all.

Two navy blue open-top jeeps were waiting on the road beside the helipad, the keys sitting in them, which made sense when he thought about it for more than two seconds; why would you steal a car on an island? You wouldn’t get very far.

“Pile in, everyone! Time for your introduction to the park,” Gabriel said, hopping in the driver’s seat of one jeep, while Meg climbed in to drive the second one. Crowley was talking to Castiel about the possibility of writing a book about the park after the tour, leading him over to the first Jeep, so Sam, Jo, and Dean hopped into the second one with Meg, Jo getting in the front seat next to Meg.

Poor Cas. He looked about as thrilled to be talking to the lawyer as Dean had been about the plane ride.

As the jeep pulled away, Dean did a double take at Sam, who instead of curious or excited was instead frowning deeply. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, nudging Sam with his elbow, and Sam shook his head.

“Nothing, just…I could’ve sworn that tree back there was some kind of Gingko tree.”

“Yeah, and? China has a shit ton, they probably brought it here for scenery.”

“But, Dean, that…that wasn’t a normal Gingko tree.”

Dean snorted. “Now you’re going on about mutant trees? Cause I don’t know if it was in your paleontology books, but there’s only been one kind of Gingko since the Cretaceous period.”

Sam laughed weakly, running his hand through his hair. “Yeah, you’re right. I just didn’t get a good look at it,” he said, though he didn’t seem convinced of his own words.

Leave it to Sam to be freaking out over a tree.

They turned the corner and Dean’s eyes widened; in front of them were massive steel gates attached to what was obviously an electric fence, stretching into the trees in both directions. And this fence was serious business- not only was it about 25 feet tall, but there were signs in Spanish and English reading “10,000 volts”. As if the massive voltage wasn’t enough to scare people away from the fence- seriously, that was probably enough of a shock to kill an elephant- each sign also had a skull and crossbones on it.

“Jesus. Who are they trying to keep out?” he said with a nervous laugh as two workers slid giant locks out of place and opened the huge gates so the jeeps could pass through.

“Not trying to keep anyone out, dino-boy,” Meg said from the front, her smirk evident even in her tone, and Dean and Sam shared a look. Was this some kind of weird Survivor-type deal? Like, full on Lord of the Flies? That would be just Dean’s luck, really.

They weaved through thick trees and ferns on a dirt path, and with every turn, Sam was looking harder at the trees and plants they passed. Evidently his curiosity got the better of him, because eventually he reached out and snagged a giant leaf from one of the trees as they passed by, and now that it was up close, Dean could see just how big it actually was. Bigger than a normal sheet of paper, that was for sure, and he didn’t know if that was normal for Costa Rica or not.

“Dean, this is impossible,” Sam said, fingers tracing the branching veins in the leaf’s surface before turning it over. “This is definitely Gingko, but it…it looks like it’s an apodes, like the one we found on the Stego dig…”

Dean snorted, blinking in the sunlight as they pulled out of the thick trees and into a mostly open field. “Like I said. Extinct.”

“I’m not wrong about this! I’ve studied these things for years, Dean, I wouldn’t mistake this for something else, I know it,” Sam was saying, but Dean had stopped paying attention around ‘years’, because that was when the ground trembled underneath them. Literally trembled.

“Was that an earthquake…?” Jo asked, just before it happened again, this time with a heavy thud accompanying it, like a body hitting the grass. Both Jo and Dean looked toward the sound, back and to the left, and about that time a tree came striding out of the foliage.

No, not a tree.

A leg.

“How did they get an extinct form of gingko? Where did they even find this? Where- what, Dean?” Sam said as Dean grabbed at his brother’s head blindly, unable to tear his eyes away as the creature took another step, and Sam had obviously finally looked up because he wasn’t talking anymore.

No one was talking. They were all staring at the Brachiosaur calmly strolling past the jeep, every step making the ground tremble again. Meg leaned forward on the wheel, relaxing like she saw this every day, and meanwhile Dean was hopping out of the jeep without even bothering to open the door. He took a few shaky steps toward the dinosaur, met by Gabriel, who was looking rather smug and proud, his hands on his hips.

“You…you have a dinosaur. That’s a dinosaur,” Dean finally gasped out, vaguely aware that Castiel had left his jeep too, and looked as shocked as the rest of them, though Crowley was just lounging in the jeep, unconcerned with the massive extinct animal on his left. “Is that real?!”

“Oh, she’s real, Dean-o. This is the first Brachiosaur we cloned. I named her Missy. She looks like a Missy, don’t you think?” Gabriel said, but Dean was beyond being able to reply. Sam and Jo were beside him now, stunned into silence as the Brachiosaur abruptly reared up, using its tail to prop itself up as it tore branches from the top of the trees. And when she dropped her front legs back to the grass, it shook the ground enough to nearly knock him off balance.

It was beautiful, and definitely warm blooded, brown mottled skin over a body with legs as thick as massive tree trunks. “That’s a…28 foot neck?” he asked weakly, and Gabriel shook his head.

“30 foot.”

“Gabriel, what did you do?” Castiel asked, though like everyone else, he seemed unable to look away from the dinosaur that was contentedly munching leaves some 40 feet above their heads.

“I did what every kid always wants to do when they grow up. I brought dinosaurs back,” Gabriel said proudly.

Sam was slack jawed as he took a couple steps closer. “How fast are they?”

“Well, with the right motivation, the TRex clocked in at 30 miles per hour.”

Dean finally tore his eyes away from the dinosaur- the fucking dinosaur, what the hell- to stare at Gabriel in shock. “…did you say TRex?”

Gabriel grinned mischievously. “Come on, what’s a dinosaur park without a TRex? Of course we have a TRex. Her name is Betty.”

Dean suddenly felt dizzy. He felt Sam’s hand on his back, pushing him toward the ground, and he went with it and plopped down heavily in the grass. The Brachiosaur was moving forward again, the trembling of the ground shaking Dean right down to the bone as he fought off the dizziness and shock, looking up again when he heard Castiel’s deep voice mutter an “Oh my God…”

With the Brachiosaur out of the way, he could now see the massive lake down the hill from where the jeeps were parked, and gathered at the side of the lake was a herd of at least ten Parasaurolophus, the curved crests atop their heads giving them away immediately. He heard that sound again, the boat horn, but it wasn’t a boat horn, it was a fucking Brachiosaur, the call so loud that he’d heard it all the way back at the cliffs. If he looked past the Parasaurolophus, he could see the low slung, wide, armored bodies of what were likely a couple of Ankylosaurus, wading in the shallows to drink.

Dean pinched himself hard enough to bruise, but it wasn’t a dream, because the air was just as thick, the field was brightly lit, Jo and Sam were both just as shocked silent, and there were fucking dinosaurs eating their goddamn lunch in front of him.

“Now see, aren’t you all glad you came?” Gabriel said, his voice practically dripping pride as he slung an arm around a shell-shocked Castiel. “Welcome to Jurassic Park, boys and girls.”

Chapter Text

Somehow, Gabriel managed to get his shell shocked guests back to the Jeeps. Castiel was still in a daze as his brother threw an arm around his shoulders, steering him back in the direction of the vehicle, his showboating in full swing.

“Didn’t I tell you, Cas? Didn’t I?” he asked with a grin, opening the Jeep door for Castiel. “Life changing. You could never regret this trip. First people outside my company to see a living dinosaur!”

Castiel looked over his shoulder at the Brachiosaur, the massive creature now stopping at a different tree, plucking entire branches from the top of it as easily as if they were single leaves. Its mouth moved much like a cow as it chewed, aside from the occasional loud snap of a branch between its teeth, and it didn’t seem concerned in the least about the humans and the cars close by its feet.

Why would it? Not only was it far too big to be worried about anything human-sized, but it had no instincts toward humans. No built in need for caution within the species. Modern animals had learned, for the most part, that humans were to be feared, despite their size. Dinosaurs had never had the chance to learn that.

“Gabriel, how…” he started, but Gabriel just pushed him toward the Jeep, and he climbed inside clumsily.

“I’ll show you everything. Promise. For now, let’s show you where you’re staying,” Gabriel said, hopping back in the driver’s seat and glancing over his shoulder at the other Jeep. Castiel followed his gaze, not surprised to see the paleontologists pointing at the dinosaurs by the lake and talking; he couldn’t hear them over the Jeep’s motor, but he imagined he wouldn’t be able to keep up anyway. These scientists, after all, probably knew more about dinosaurs than anyone else.

Till now, of course. Gabriel’s team had likely learned a lot. And maybe some of it the hard way.

“So the electric fences, they’re for the ones that are dangerous? Like the T-Rex?” he asked, leaning forward and bracing his arm on the shoulder of Gabriel’s seat. Gabriel nodded, steering back onto a dirt road and into heavier brush.

“Like I told you, Cas, top of the line security. We developed our own computer systems for it from the ground up,” he explained, though somehow, Castiel didn’t feel much better. “Electric fences, double gated computer activated steel entry points to every road that runs by the paddocks, camera systems that track the GPS trackers we implanted in every born dinosaur, hell, we even have a bunker full of safari game weapons and tranquilizers. You’re safer here than in your house back home.”

Castiel snorted. “Not sure I’d go that far,” he said, and while Gabriel’s system did sound impressive, it still ate away at him, a gnawing doubt that he’d flown right into a giant steel trap. He wanted to be optimistic, wanted to be as excited as the scientists in the car behind him, but while the beauty of the animals wasn’t lost on him, their danger wasn’t either. He hesitated, then finally decided to not dance around the most pressing question.

“How many casualties so far, Gabriel?”

Crowley snorted and rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, you bloody wanker. You’re in the most innovative theme park in the world, dinosaurs are walking around, and you want to talk death tolls? We’re going to make a fortune off this place, one way or another,” the lawyer said, tapping away on what looked like a miniature spreadsheet on his phone. Probably already calculating ticket prices.

“It’s okay, Crowley. I owe it to him to be honest, at least,” Gabriel said, though he hadn’t lost any of his confidence at the question. He’d probably expected it. “We’ve lost two people, Cas, and in both situations protocol weren’t being followed. If they’d stuck to the guidebook, there wouldn’t have been a problem. And anyway, those were employees working in unusual circumstances. It’s not like we’re going to let the guests get cozy with the carnivores.”

Castiel still didn’t feel convinced, but he didn’t say so, not right now. Not when he was still reeling over what he’d just seen. He needed time to think, time to make sense of all this.

The Jeep rounded a corner and pulled up to a row of low-lying huts, each looking for all the world like a cheesy tourist-trap version of an old thatched roof cottage. Castiel got out as the other Jeep pulled up behind, and he watched the three scientists hop out of their vehicle, his eyes settling on the one with golden-brown hair and startlingly green eyes.

He’d always kicked himself for being a bit unrealistic by having such attractive protagonists working in scientific jobs in his novels, but perhaps now he could claim some basis in truth, because Dean didn’t look like someone who spent all day in dig sites and museums. Sure, there were the rugged clothes and the plaid, which somehow suited him, and dirt still under his fingernails, but it all somehow fit together into a highly attractive package.

And when Dean looked up and met his gaze and smiled, it was all he could do not to break out the notebook and start waxing poetic about a ruggedly handsome paleontologist to star in his next novel.

“Alright, kids, come get your keys,” Gabriel said, breaking Castiel out of his thoughts.

“These are our rooms?” Sam asked, both eyebrows raised as Gabriel handed him a card key.

“These are the crème de la crème. These are the top dollar rooms, called our luxury cottages. One bedrooms here, two bedrooms down the road a little ways, and some doubles mixed in,” Gabriel explained, handing out the rest of the card keys. They were plain white, probably a placeholder until they made fancier keys. “Buy one of these for a night, and you get a private Q and A with a certified Jurassic Park scientist! ‘Course, you guys are getting the full Monty. You get to see the labs up close.”

“The full what…?” Castiel said with a frown, and Gabriel laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, bro. Look, the visitor’s center is that huge building at the end of the road. I’ll give you an hour to get settled and wash up, and we’ll meet on the steps out front of it, cool?”

The group split up, with Gabriel, Meg, and Crowley driving on down the road, leaving Castiel and the three scientists standing by the huts. It seemed, for a moment, that no one really wanted to walk away, the craziness of the situation hanging in the air between them, but no one willing to break the silence for a long few seconds.

“Wow, your…your brother is somethin’ else, Cas,” Dean finally said with a soft laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners with his smile. “I would ask if you knew what he was up to, but I saw your face when that Brachiosaur showed up, so…”

Castiel shook his head and let out a deep, slow breath. “No. I had no idea,” he admitted, thinking back over the past few years. Gabriel had mentioned something on the Africa trip, some kind of project he was working on with a PhD student in genetics and microbiology, but he hadn’t thought anything of it then. Gabriel was constantly working on new projects; every year it seemed he came up with a new grand plan for a blockbuster theme park.

Castiel should have known something was different this time when there were no grand openings for three years straight. Then again, he’d spent those three years trying to forget Gabriel existed.

“I’m going to take a shower. Five minutes out here and all my clothes feel sticky,” Jo complained, giving a mock salute to the boys as she walked to the door of her hut. It didn’t take long for Sam and Dean to follow suit, and Castiel turned and made his way toward the hut that had the number five carved in the door. The card reader was a brown, flat panel set into the door, and he fumbled a few times before figuring out which way to hold the card in front of it until he heard the beep of the door unlocking.

He sighed with relief when the cool air inside hit him, and he closed the door quickly, shivering as the sweat rapidly cooled on his skin. His suitcase already sat at the foot of the king sized bed, and to the left of the door was a couch and chair both facing a massive flat-screen TV. He strolled across the light wooden floors and past the bed, where a counter and wall squared in a full kitchen. At first he wondered how in the world they expected the guests to cook for themselves on an island with no stores, but then he saw the sign hung above the sink.

Don’t want to eat with the masses? Contact Guest Services on your phone to schedule complimentary in-room meals cooked in your kitchen by one of our Five Star Chefs!

(Please call at least two hours in advance, and have any food requests ready. Otherwise our chef will cook the menu of the day.)

The more he looked, the more he saw how much went into this; there were tour options listed in a leather bound book on the desk, the TV listing showed that eventually guests would be able to tap into webcams in various exhibits along with normal TV, and nothing in the room felt cheap. The floor was genuine hardwood, the sheets on the bed felt like silk, all the furniture looked meticulously hand carved, and that was before he even got to the bathroom. Massive whirlpool tub with lights and private TV aside, the toilet had more buttons on it than the remote control- though the picture on each button made less sense than a hieroglyphic to him.

For the moment the toilet felt more dangerous than the dinosaurs.

Castiel was well-off, but he had the feeling this kind of accommodation would be out of even his price range. But of course Gabriel was going to show them the best of everything, including the best of the guest rooms, if he wanted them to sign off on the park.

It hit him, suddenly, the weight of what Gabriel had said at his house; he’d said the investors were worried and wanted outside opinions. The investors weren’t worried because they were afraid the park wouldn’t do well- they were worried about the park safety. That’s what all of this was about, had to be.

Nothing to be done about it now, though. Dinosaurs or not, he was here, and the helicopter wasn’t picking them up till Monday morning. Gabriel had unwavering confidence in the systems, and if he was right about the two deaths being employees not following protocol, maybe he was right. Maybe.

Probably not.

Castiel sighed and washed his face and hands before dropping back on the bed- memory foam mattress, of course- and closing his eyes. He still had some time before he had to meet the others, and the moment of quiet was blissful after spending so many hours with Gabriel, who had to fill every moment of silence with something. It wasn’t completely quiet, though; in the distance he could hear the foghorn like call of the Brachiosaur, and another call in return, more distant and eerie.

It reminded him of laying under a mosquito net in the tent in Africa, and hearing the yowls and soft roars of the lions carrying on the wind. The guide had said the roars could be heard up to five miles away, that it was like a phone call to other lions in the area- letting their pride know where they were, and letting outsiders know to stay away. The roars sometimes seemed to go on and on, and then there would be hours when they wouldn’t make a sound.

He found himself wondering if any of the dinosaurs here would have the same nighttime chatter. And if a lion’s roar up close was enough to make him cringe- what would a T-Rex be like?

One thing was for sure; the rifle their safari guide had carried would be useless. He’d freely admitted that up against a rhino or angry elephant, the rifle would just be a noisemaking tool to hopefully spook them into backing off. He couldn’t imagine what kind of firepower they carried here, if they expected to be able to slow down an eight ton dinosaur.

He turned his head and opened one eye to look at the clock; he still had fifteen minutes, but sitting alone with his thoughts was proving to be a bad idea. He had resolved to give Gabriel a chance on this, and psyching himself up for the worst wasn’t going to help. He stood and stretched, then braced himself for the island heat and made his way slowly to the visitor’s center.

Dean had the same idea, it seemed. He was sitting on the top step, folding and unfolding his sunglasses in his hands, and he gave a small wave and smile when he saw Castiel. Castiel made his way up the concrete steps and joined the scientist, sitting beside him on the steps and looking out at all the huts and buildings meant for guests to stay in.

“Plague Strain was my favorite,” Dean said after a few moments of companionable silence, and Castiel looked over at him. The paleontologist shrugged and hooked his sunglasses in his front breast pocket. “Had me washing my hands fifty times a day for weeks, though.”

Castiel chuckled, that strange mix of pride and embarrassment settling in that he always felt when someone praised him. His publicist always said he needed to learn how to take a compliment without talking himself down. “Thank you. Though I have to admit, I liked the ending better before they suggested that I change it.”

“What was it before?”

“Everyone died.”

Dean laughed, tilting his head back as he did. “Yeah, I can see why they might not have liked that.”

Castiel smiled, just a little. “Extinction events aren’t very popular with my publisher, no. Aside from the obvious one that already happened,” he said with a halfhearted shrug before giving Dean a curious look. “So, you a meteor theory type, or volcano theory type?”

“Hybrid theory,” Dean said, the quick answer of someone who’d been asked the question many times before, and Castiel paused, sensing an explanation was coming. “Gradual climate change and a few major volcanic eruptions kicked off the party, the meteor just crashed it. The coup de grace, I guess.”

“Makes sense.”

“Be glad you got the cliff notes version. Sam could go on for days about fractured crystals and impact ejecta. He sometimes forgets not all of us read dissertations for fun.”

“He’s your…brother, right?” Castiel asked, vaguely remembering them both being introduced as Winchester. Dean nodded.

“Yeah, younger. Wouldn’t know it from his altitude.”

They fell silent as another low, almost sorrowful call stretched over the trees, and the call in return seemed to match it, as if the two dinosaurs were having a conversation across miles of trees and fields. It was like a melancholy song of sorts, worlds different from the confident bursts of sound from the lions. The lions’ sounds had been efficient tools of communication, logical and bold; the sounds from the Brachiosaurs were more like entire dramas being held 30 feet above everything else, layers of depth to them that sent a shiver through Castiel.

“What do you think about…all this?” Dean asked, his voice low as he made a vague gesture in the direction of the sounds. “Think this can work?”

Castiel sighed and slid his fingers through his hair, Gabriel’s confidence pitting itself against the dread that seemed to cling to Castiel’s every thought here. “I don’t know,” he admitted, leaning forward and setting his elbows on his knees. “Gabriel can be…overconfident, at times. I suppose I’m waiting until I see more of these systems he has set up,” he added, tilting his head to look at Dean. He felt like a high school kid with a crush all over again, his stomach unsteady and his mind trying to convince him that every word out of his mouth was stupider than the last. “What about you? Aren’t you afraid this makes your job…obsolete?”

“Don’t you mean extinct?” Dean asked, his smile widening for a moment before he looked back out at the trees and shook his head. “Nah, I…I don’t think so. I mean, there’s plenty of stuff other than dinosaurs that we find when we’re digging. Sam is a paleobotanist, kid goes crazy over prehistoric plants. Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.”

“There is a ten foot tall rainforest flower that smells like rotting flesh when it blooms,” Castiel pointed out; while he certainly wasn’t a botany aficionado, he still appreciated the utterly strange. But Dean grimaced, giving Castiel a look.

“Yeah, you’re not really selling it, there,” he said, and then his expression turned curious. “You don’t know what The Full Monty is, but you know all about flowers that smell like dead things?”

Castiel felt himself blush a little, and he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I don’t really keep up on pop culture. It’s distracting,” he explained. He was probably going to make Dean think he was a complete freak. That seemed to be the pattern, once people got past talking about his books. A few minutes into normal conversation and it seemed they were starting to wonder how many times he was dropped on his head as a baby.

“So, what, no TV? Internet?” Dean asked, leaning toward Castiel a bit.

“Haven’t owned a TV for years.  I have the internet, but only because if I don’t answer my agent’s emails promptly, she calls my phone nonstop. She’s a somewhat scary woman.”

“Sounds like my boss at the museum. I mean, my bosses boss, technically. The curator,” Dean said, swatting at a mosquito. “She’s one of those people who would skewer her own grandma to raise attendance.”

Castiel would have laughed, but someone called Dean’s name, and they both turned to see Sam and Jo heading up the steps. Jo had switched into shorts and a flannel shirt knotted in the front to expose a lean midriff, and Castiel couldn’t say he blamed her, given the heat.

“Sam thinks they used preserved blood from mosquitos trapped in amber. That theory was debunked years ago, I told him,” Jo said, and Sam rolled his eyes.

“As if you’d come up with any better ideas.”

Jo crossed her arms defiantly. “Frozen flesh is a lot easier to extract genetic material from than mosquito blood!”

“When was the last time you dug up a T-Rex in the arctic?”

“The arctic now wasn’t the arctic back then!”

Dean managed to stop laughing at them, just for a moment. “Guys. Hey, you two, stop it,” he said though a grin, shaking his head. “He said he was going to show us the labs. We’ll find out in like, an hour. Can you avoid strangling each other till then?”

“He’s still wrong,” Jo said with a huff, and Sam shot her an exasperated look, just as Gabriel strode up to the group.

“Alright! We ditched the lawyer and the bitch, so how about that tour?” he said, clapping his hands together and wiggling his eyebrows at them. Castiel couldn’t say he was sad to see Meg and Crowley go for now, but he still snorted in disbelief and shook his head, standing up slowly. He wasn’t surprised to see Dean and Sam share a look that clearly said they were just tolerating Gabriel’s antics, and he couldn’t blame them.

Gabriel led them into the massive lobby of the visitor’s center. The roof was arched glass with a metal frame holding it up, letting in all the light from outside. A huge staircase curled up and around one side of the lobby, around the huge pedestal in the middle. On the pedestal was the centerpiece; a full skeleton of a T-Rex, standing tall with its jaws open.

It was a sudden reminder, like a slap to the face, of just how big those teeth were. Castiel wasn’t sure he wanted to see one of those alive and walking around, however fascinating. He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, as Gabriel led them past the gift shop and up the stairs, swiping his card to get them into a staff hallway.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in here. Decorations kind of come last when you’re trying to get dinosaurs herded around the park,” he explained, leading the way past several doors till he got to a set of double doors that were propped open. Stepping inside was like stepping into NASA’s control center- multiple monitors at each desk, a bay of security camera monitors, rows of servers with blinking rows of lights down an entire wall, and a scale model of the entire park taking up a large table in the middle of the room.

“Guests! Hi!” a cheerful voice said, and a redhead popped up from behind a bank of monitors, flipping the microphone on her headset up and out of the way. The woman at the other station, a brunette, rolled her eye and turned away, obviously not interested.

“Charlie, this is my brother Castiel, the guy whose home security system you hacked for me,” Gabriel said with a grin as Charlie moved to stand behind him. “And these three are the Paleontologists here to ogle the dinosaurs, Dean, Sam, and Jo. Guys, this is Charlie, my head of computer systems for the park, and the grouch over there is Ruby, head of security systems.”

Ruby just gave them a halfhearted wave without even turning to look, but Charlie was nearly bouncing with excitement as she shook each of their hands in turn with both of hers. Her hair was straight and pinned back at the sides, falling down just past her shoulders, and she had delicate, pretty features. It obviously wasn’t a formal business environment in here, though, judging by her t-shirt with a strange red and white ball on the front, and her cargo pants that were slightly worn out in places.

“You have no idea how great it is to see some new faces. I’ve been on this island 340 days out of the last year looking at the same people every single day,” she said, having to crane her neck to look up at Sam. “I’ve been running and re-running the whole tour protocol for days, you’re going to love it!”            

“You only have two people running your control room?” Dean asked with a frown, looking around the room- but he was right. The room was stuffed full of fancy equipment and monitors, but only two desks.

“Only need two. My two girls here are geniuses. They designed this entire system from the floor up to be able to run with minimal staff. Hell, if we all dropped dead, the park could run its own basic security and support for nine days without anyone touching a thing,” Gabriel bragged, and Charlie turned one of the monitors toward them and brought up a screen full of what looked like red and green squares, each with a number in the middle.

“This is the skeleton of the whole thing, right here,” Charlie explained, sitting on the desk beside the monitor and giving it a poke. “Even if the rest of the system overloads, this protocol is designed to feed straight off the solar powered backup generators. It keeps all the fences, locks, gates, and camera systems going. The only way this system could shut down is if it was purposely turned off for some kind of maintenance, but I haven’t run into maintenance yet that couldn’t be done with the system live.”

“Gabriel said you have GPS tracking on the dinosaurs,” Castiel said, and before he could even finish the question, Charlie hopped up and went to the bank of monitors on the wall, pointing to one that looked like a mess of slender colored lines and moving dots with numbers by them.

“Every dinosaur has a tracker implanted when they’re first hatched. Each tracker is assigned to a certain paddock, and if the system senses the wrong sensor in the wrong paddock, every alarm in this room is gonna go nuts,” she explained as Jo stepped closer to take a better look at it. Castiel paused to look at the screen next to it, which was a radar view of the coast of Costa Rica and the islands. Off to the southwest of the island chain a storm was churning over the ocean; they were probably watching it in case it headed this direction.

“And what if one of the trackers stops working?” Sam asked, and Charlie laughed.

“Now that is one of the few things on this island that is not my job. That’s why we have the dudes out there with the heavy-duty tranquilizers. They deal with bringing the dino down long enough to have Benny extract the failed tracker and implant a new one.”

“Benny?”

“The veterinarian.”

Dean chuckled. “Where did you pick up a dinosaur vet?” he asked, and Castiel moved over to the wall of security cameras to get a closer look. Most of the camera showed nothing but empty hallways, employees working, or trees; a few were focused on the open fields they’d driven through on their way here, but the cameras weren’t made for detail. He could see the Brachiosaurs and the smaller dinosaurs moving around the lake, but the other dinosaurs seemed to prefer the most densely forested areas.

“Well, technically Benny has been working for zoos for the past fifteen years. We just asked him if he’d like to try his hand at some experimental veterinary medicine,” Gabriel said, jerking his head toward the door. “Come on, I know you guys want to get to the exciting stuff. It’s lab time.”

Charlie pouted. “My stuff is the exciting stuff. Why does Kevin get all the cool toys and pretty people?” she asked, and Gabriel patted her on the head.

“Because Kevin is making us the dinosaurs, kiddo. Don’t worry, we have these four all to ourselves all weekend, you’ll see them again.”

It didn’t take much encouragement to get the four of them back out of the control room, and while Charlie called out a goodbye, Ruby continued to pretend they didn’t exist, typing away on her keyboard silently. Castiel already didn’t like her much; not only for the blatant rudeness, but also just because he had one of those bad feelings about her. He liked to believe he was a decent judge of people.

“So, what’s your plan if something manages to get off the island?” Jo asked as they walked, and Gabriel scoffed.

“Please. There’s only one dinosaur we have that’s a strong enough swimmer to even worry about them making it to the mainland, and she’s pretty damn big. We’d definitely notice her if she decided to jump bail.”

“What is she?” Dean asked, and Gabriel smirked.

“That’s for tomorrow’s tour, Deano. Tomorrow you see all the big bads.”

He stepped up to another set of double doors, but this one required another swipe of his card key to get through, and a strange smell of chemicals hit them as the doors slid open. The room beyond was white, almost unbearably bright, and the platform they stepped onto overlooked the whole laboratory. It was a labyrinth of glass rooms and large machines, and the scientists moved around like ghosts, dressed in white scrubs with white covers over their shoes, and the women with matching white hair covers.

“This is where we make baby dinosaurs,” Gabriel said, taking the steps two at a time down to the lab floor. Castiel and the others followed, none asking questions yet; for his part, Castiel felt like he’d just stepped into some kind of sci-fi movie, with futuristic looking machines and scientists who only glanced up from their work for a moment, if at all. It was quiet except for the whirr and buzz of the machines and the soft swish of covered shoes moving across the floor.

One of the white figures, however, did take notice of them and came over to greet Gabriel with a hug. “Hey!” the young man said with a bright smile, holding a clipboard to his chest as he looked over the newcomers. “Gabriel, been a few days since you checked in!”

“You know lawyers,” Gabriel said with an exaggerated eye roll, stepping out of the way. “Kevin, this is my brother Castiel, and our three Paleontologists, Dean, Sam, and Jo. This is Dr. Kevin Tran, the mastermind behind this whole concept.”

Castiel raised an eyebrow; the kid couldn’t be a day over 25, and he was running a laboratory that was breeding dinosaurs?

A buzzer suddenly went off behind Kevin and he turned, his smile widening. “Oh, you guys have perfect timing. Come here, quick,” he said, motioning for them to follow him around two of the massive machines to a table that looked more like a giant, shallow bowl. A bright light burned hot over it, and in the bowl was a thick layer of hay and grass- and in the grass were seven giant eggs. Dinosaur eggs.

And one of them seemed to be moving.

“I couldn’t have planned this better, right?” Gabriel said, elbowing Kevin before he pushed Dean and Sam toward the nest. Dean leaned forward with his hands on the edge, watching with wide eyes as the mechanical arm attached to the edge of the table swung around to grip the wiggling egg gently.

Castiel, for a moment, couldn’t even focus on the egg; he could only focus on the childlike wonder on Dean’s face. It was nearly contagious. The bright light of the heat lamp seemed to bring out the freckles scattered across his skin, and Castiel resisted the urge to just start counting them.

“It’s hatching? Right now?” Sam asked, taking the gloves that Kevin was handing each of them. Castiel just shook his head; baby or not, he didn’t plan on turning a dinosaur park into a petting zoo. He’d leave this to the scientists.

“Right now. You can help it, if you want. Takes them forever on their own sometimes,” Gabriel said, and Dean focused back on the egg, where a slender crack had finally begun to form. He reached forward with surprisingly steady hands just as the crack widened and the creature pushed up, tiny nostrils barely visible through the crack in the egg.

“Oh my god,” Jo whispered as Dean carefully pried up a piece of the egg, and the dinosaur’s tiny head poked out the top. It made a soft, grating screech of a noise, almost like a strange bird, one small clawed hand clutching clumsily at the egg. Dean worked gently, probably holding his breath, prying away each piece of egg that the baby broke free. The dinosaur was coated in some kind of pink slime, the substance bubbling at its nostrils as it took short, labored breaths; it must have been hard work for the newborn to break out of its own egg.

“This is amazing. I can’t…Dean, are you seeing this?” Sam asked breathlessly, and Kevin chuckled behind him.

“We didn’t lose any of the seven in this batch yet. I’m really happy,” he said, already marking things on his clipboard as he watched the baby dinosaur claw its way out of the egg.

“But how?” Castiel blurted out, curiosity getting the better of his patience. “Where did you find the genetic material for cloning?”

“It’s all about where they died,” Kevin explained, his enthusiasm for the subject obvious as he leaned back against the nearby counter. “Dinosaurs that died in the peat bogs were always better preserved than fossils found in normal sediments. And ancient peat bogs became what are, today, coal veins.”

“Those veins can be incredibly hard to access,” Dean pointed out, the first time he’d spoken since he started helping the baby out of the egg.

“Yeah. Believe me, it’s not easy. And we can’t just go carving our way through to get to the fossils, either. We work with a deep ground penetrating radar system to find the fossils, and then we use specialized drills to dig small channels to where the fossil is,” Kevin said, pausing at times, probably to make sure he was explaining this in layman’s speech. “If we just dig it straight out and expose it to the elements, we take the risk of destroying the most valuable material before it even gets to the lab. So instead, we use those drill channels to inject a liquid nitrogen chemical mix directly into the fossil and the ground around it. The fossil is porous, so it’s the best way of preserving it. After that, we dig and isolate the specimen and ground around it, and put it to soak in a liquid nitrogen chemical bath all the way here, to the lab. Between the coal vein and the lab, there’s as little exposure of the specimen as possible. We’ve been able to save good amounts of the preserved genetic material that way, though it’s obviously degraded.”

The baby was halfway out of the egg now. It screeched again, tiny claws grasping at Dean’s thumb as he pulled away the final pieces of egg, revealing a short tail. Kevin handed him a white rag, and Dean carefully began wiping the slime off the infant.

“If it’s degraded, then how can you possibly develop an embryo from it?” Jo asked with a frown. “Cloning is still a delicate science as it is. I mean, with living animals, let alone extinct ones.”

“The base DNA isn’t actually that different from some modern animals. We’ve had great success using some frog and amphibian DNA to bridge the gaps and damaged parts. Even crocodile,” Kevin said, pointing to one of the machines, where a woman stood going through what looked like endless lines of code.

“But how do you keep track of the ones born out in the park?” Castiel asked, getting that uneasy feeling again. He wanted to be excited, wanted to be thrilled hearing the process that was bringing these creatures to life again, but something was bothering him. Something other than the obvious dangers.

“There aren’t any born out in the park. They’re all chicks,” Gabriel said. “Another stroke of genius from my little prodigy here.”

Kevin chuckled. “Not really prodigy. All of them are initially female when formed; it actually takes an extra chemical added in at the right time to make them male. We simply deny them that.”

“You can work with the chromosomes like that?” Sam asked as Dean lifted the mostly cleaned off baby dinosaur into his hands, cradling it carefully. The reptilian eyes were finally beginning to focus, watching Dean with a stare that was…almost intelligent. Like the dinosaur was already taking in its surroundings and thinking.

That was silly, though. It was minutes old, harmless. For now, anyway.

Castiel paused when he saw Dean’s face. The paleontologist was frowning now, staring down at the creature in his hands not with wonder anymore, but with concern. Castiel took a step closer to him, standing by his shoulder. “Dean, are you alright?”

Dean licked his lips and looked up at Kevin, brow still furrowed. “What species is this?”

Kevin glanced at a different page on his clipboard. “This clutch is…Utahraptor.”

“You…bred raptors?”

Kevin paused and lifted his gaze from the clipboard. “…Yes? Is that a problem?”

Jo and Sam were already taking the baby from Dean, stealing moments with it themselves, talking softly to each other about bone structure and the skin temperature. Castiel wasn’t paying attention to them right now; he was paying attention to the way Dean almost looked angry now.

“Show me,” Dean demanded, turning to Gabriel.

“That’s not part of todays tour, we have dinner planned-“

“Show me.”

That time the tone in Dean’s voice got everyone’s attention, and Gabriel looked a little surprised, then he shrugged. “Guess it can’t hurt. The raptor enclosure is the closest paddock to the visitor’s center anyway,” he said, and Dean flinched at that information.

Kevin took the baby raptor over to the hatchling incubator and the scientists threw out their gloves, following a less-than-happy looking Gabriel up to the door. Sam and Castiel stuck close to Dean, both of them looking concerned, while Jo walked ahead to ask Gabriel more about the fossil preservation.

“Dean, what’s up with you?” Sam asked in a hiss. “This is fucking amazing! Did you see that?!”

“Yeah, I saw it. It’s a raptor,” Dean said, his voice tight and expression tense. “Soon to be nine feet of claws and teeth and way too much brain for its own good.”

“You’ve heard all about their security systems.”

“It’s a raptor, Sammy. Still don’t like it.”

“What’s so different about a raptor?” Castiel asked, and Dean snorted, shaking his head.

“What’s different is that with raptors, we know just enough about them to know that we don’t know enough,” Dean said. “They’re apex predators. On their own, they already have all the tools to cause major damage. They’re fast, strong, and those claws aren’t just for show. All the evidence points to high intelligence. But what we haven’t been able to figure out yet from the fossil record is the extent of their teamwork. Hunting in packs.”

“There’s no evidence of it, Dean-“ Sam started, but Dean shot him a glare.

“There’s no evidence against it, either. And if these things hunt in packs, if they work together, then I’m not sure I even trust these fences.”

“Stop being overdramatic. I’m sure they planned for the worst.”

Castiel almost laughed. “Gabriel plans for exactly what he knows will happen. Nothing more, nothing less. And he doesn’t like to think of what the worst might be,” he pointed out as they stepped outside again. Gabriel led the way behind the visitor’s center on a narrow dirt footpath, winding through trees and brush for about half a mile until they saw tall concrete walls through the trees.

“This is a temporary enclosure. We’re building something bigger and better for them as we speak,” Gabriel said, walking past the steel gates set into the concrete to the other side of the enclosure, where there was a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs there was a bearded man with a rather large rifle slung over his shoulder, wearing khaki clothes and a low brimmed hat. He didn’t particularly look happy to see them.

“Bobby! How are you?” Gabriel said, but Bobby seemed to be having none of his shit. He grunted and nodded toward the four following Gabriel.

“Bringin’ the tourists around to see the raptors? How damn thick is your head, boy?” he said, his voice gruff and low, and holding no fear of his employer. Gabriel, in turn, completely ignored the disrespect.

“That’s Castiel, my brother. These three are the paleontologists here for the inspection, Sam, Dean, and Jo. This is Bobby, our most experienced game warden,” he said as they reached the top of the stairs. From this vantage point they could see through the electric fences that topped the concrete walls, down into the exhibit; but right now, all Castiel could see was plants. For nine foot tall raptors, they seemed rather good at hiding and staying quiet.

“Paleontologists, huh?” Bobby said, seeming to deem that worthy of at least a little respect, and a handshake. “S’pose you know what you’re gettin’ into here, then.”

“Didn’t know there were raptors,” Dean pointed out, looking down into the paddock. “How smart are they?”

“Dolphin smart, at least,” Bobby answered without hesitation, one hand never leaving the strap of his gun. “Problem solving intelligence. This is the third paddock we’ve had ‘em in. First one they kept attacking the fences.”

Jo frowned. “But the fences are electric.”

Bobby nodded. “Yep. They never attacked the same place twice. They were testin’ every inch of that fence, lookin’ for a weakness. And if someone walked too close they walked away with one limb less, pretty often.”

Castiel turned an accusing stare on Gabriel. Gabriel had insisted only two deaths; and maybe it was his own fault for not being more specific, but he figured it would be a given that he would want to know the rate of limb-loss-by-dinosaur as well. Gabriel just shrugged.

“And that’s why we moved them to a new pen. For safety,” the CEO insisted. “They’re smart, but we’re smarter.”

“So they hunt as a pack, then,” Dean said to Bobby, ignoring Gabriel’s desperate words to calm them. Bobby nodded.

“As a pack, with a matriarch. The big girl,” he said, staring down into the trees. “Used to have nine raptors. Big one came along, killed all but two of the others and took control. Don’t take ‘em long to grow; lethal by eight months, full grown by two years. With the growth hormones our lab rats feed ‘em, they hit full height by a year old.”

There was a click, and then the sound of a motor, and a crane slowly lifted over the fence at one end of the paddock- and hanging in the tarp on the end of the crane was a cow. A living, full sized black and white cow.

Bobby had pulled his gun free from his shoulder and now held it in both hands, chambering a round with a determined look on his face. “Feedin’ time.”

Sam eyed the gun uneasily, but he and Castiel moved to the wall with Jo and Dean, leaning to look down into the exhibit. The crane began to lower the oblivious cow, its ears and tail twitching as it lowered to the ground, only half hidden by the trees.

The motor stopped, and Castiel held his breath until he finally heard movement below. It was almost too fast to follow; one raptor burst from the bushes, kicking up a foot and slicing the massive killing claw on his foot down the front of the cow’s chest. It split flesh and muscle as easily as butter, and the cow lurched forward just as another raptor darted to its side and kicked violently.

The cows steaming guts spilled free to the dirt along with shreds of the bright blue tarp, and Castiel fought the urge to gag as that seemed to kick off the feeding frenzy. Three more raptors darted in, burying their snouts in the gaping holes in the cow’s hide, clawed feet slipping in the spilled guts as they tore into the still struggling animal.

It took nearly a minute longer for the cow to finally stop moving. It only took about two more for there to be nothing left but a skeleton and ragged chunks of flesh. The raptors were ravenous, leaving nothing in their wake that was edible, and the sound of teeth grinding against bone sending chills down Castiel’s spine.

He shouldn’t have watched, but he couldn’t look away. The way the raptors moved around each other and systematically tore the animal apart was like a macabre dance, aside from the occasional snarl when one raptor encroached on another one’s bite of food.

He felt ill, and he wasn’t surprised when Jo stumbled away and braced one hand on her knee, the other covering her mouth. He caught Dean’s eye, and somehow without saying a word, they managed to understand exactly what the other thought: these creatures shouldn’t have been brought back.

Gabriel clapped his hands together and laughed nervously. “So, uh…who’s hungry?”

Chapter Text

Dean couldn’t tell what was food and what was supposed to be decoration.

He wasn’t the only one; he could see Jo and Sam share a glance beside him as the white-coated servers set their food down in front of them, each looking at their plate with what seemed to be an equal mix of curiosity and apprehension. Of course, Jo also looked a little disgusted, but that was probably from the raptor feeding they’d just walked away from, and he couldn’t blame her. It was hard to put that out of his mind when it had happened less than an hour ago.

If he was being honest, he might admit it would be hard to put out of his mind for the rest of his life.

Castiel and Crowley seemed right at home with their place settings, though Castiel wasn’t doing much more than nudging the food around on his plate, probably feeling about the same as Jo. Meanwhile, Gabriel moved from each of the three screens to the next, punching the buttons on the remote in his hand to switch the slides on each screen.

“We’re still working on the Pteranodons. They’re a tough one, you know,” he was saying, pulling up a picture of what looked like a massive bird cage covering part of the island. “But as soon as the scientists say the word, we have a company waiting in the wings- no pun intended- to come in and create a custom exhibit for those lizard birds to fly to their heart’s content. There’ll be protected paths for families to walk through the aviary.”

Another picture, this time concept art showing one of those paths, curved metal bars arching over the people’s heads as a Pteranodon flew above.

Dean should have felt excitement, but instead he just felt a little ill.

Stupid raptors.

Gabriel pressed the button again, this time showing art of a raft going down the river that split the island, dinosaurs lazily drinking at the banks as the boat passed. “And of course, eventually the boat tour will open up-“

He was cut off by the sound of Castiel choking violently on whatever it was he’d been trying to eat at that moment. Gabriel, instead of looking worried, actually seemed more annoyed that he’d been interrupted.

“Oh, relax, Cassie. I promised I wouldn’t shove you in a boat, and I’m not going to. The river ride won’t be ready for another two years,” he said, already changing the screen to show a Jeep driving a family through the same field where they had first seen the Brachiosaur.

Castiel gave him a rather pointed glare, and Dean looked between the two, wondering what he’d missed- there was obviously a story there, but neither of them seemed to be interested in elaborating, and Crowley was already ignoring them to move on to the next subject.

“And the best part is, we could charge separately for each attraction,” Crowley said with a smirk, probably already counting up the dollars in his head. “Two hundred for the bird dinosaurs, two hundred for seeing the baby dinosaurs, two hundred for the safari, and people will pay every last dime to drag their little brats to see the dinosaurs. And then we have the merchandise.”

Castiel’s fork clattered to the plate, loud enough to make everyone at the table jump- and then, the writer chuckled darkly, one hand pressed to his forehead.

“The lack of humility before nature being displayed here…astounds me,” he finally said, and Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, we’ll already have to put up with those bloody wankers at PETA, and you’re throwing a fit-“ he started, but Gabriel held up a hand, dropping into the seat at the head of the table.

“No, no. Come on, Crowley, we brought them here for their opinions. Let Cas have his say,” he said, looking amused as he swiveled back and forth on the spinning chair like a preschooler. Dean wanted to roll his eyes but he refrained, watching Castiel instead as the dark haired man seemed to gather his thoughts.

“Do you honestly not see the risk in what you’ve done here?” he finally asked, but evidently he already knew the answer, because he continued on without a break. “You have an amazing genetic power at your fingertips, and you’re wielding it like a child who found his dad’s gun.”

Gabriel snorted. “Give me a little bit more credit, bro. What, you honestly think that, knowing what we could do, we should have let the opportunity pass by because of some pointy teeth?”

“You were so damn preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should!” Castiel snapped, shaking his head. “You have animals out there that have no equal on this planet right now. Animals that have no fear of humans, and no natural predators.”

“And they’re on an island, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“They don’t need to leave the island if you’re bringing the buffet here, Gabriel.”

“Wait, wait,” Sam said, holding his hands up, his brow furrowed in that way it always was when he was thinking way too hard about something. “Look, this is…what you’ve got here is amazing. It’s groundbreaking.”

Gabriel sighed. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

Sam laughed, barely. “You have plants in this building that have been extinct for 65 million years. We have no way of knowing what kind of defense mechanisms any of these plants had back then,” he said, gesturing to the flowering fern in the corner of the room. “You picked them because they look good, but there are plants that excrete poison on the surface of their leaves. Plants that release different mixtures of gasses in the air in the process of growing. And we can’t know that until something goes wrong.”

Gabriel groaned and rolled his eyes. “Come on, I picked you guys because you, of all people, can appreciate what we’ve done here! Are you telling me the only person on my side is the fuckin’ lawyer?” he complained, earning an exasperated look from Crowley. Jo shrugged.

“I think it’s…amazing. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same myself,” she pointed out, her food still barely touched. “But making it into a theme park, it’s…it’s just not safe. Humans are unpredictable on their own, and when you add in animals that we know nearly nothing about…”

Gabriel didn’t seem affected by the criticism anymore. He smirked and stabbed his fork into the fish on his plate, stuffing a chunk of it in his mouth and not bothering to finish chewing before he started talking again. “Just wait until you take the tour,” he insisted, swallowing and grabbing his glass of wine, doing a mock toast. “Guaranteed, when you finish that tour tomorrow, you’ll be groveling your apologies at my feet for ever doubting me.”

Dean could tell Castiel was fighting the urge to laugh, but not because he found it funny. He was frowning deeply, shaking his head, his worries not having made a dent in his brother’s bravado.

Dean didn’t think anything would discourage Gabriel at this point.

 

*~~~~~~*

It had long since fallen dark, and Dean was never going to get any sleep.

He had explored everything in the room, read every brochure, enjoyed the Jacuzzi tub for far too long, and he was still shifting restlessly under the thin blankets. He wasn’t sure which was more effective in destroying his ability to sleep; the debate at dinner, the memory of the raptors’ screeches as they fed, or the knowledge that in a few hours he’d be seeing more living dinosaurs.

Either way, sleep wasn’t happening right now. He groaned in frustration and shoved the blankets down, grabbing at the t-shirt he’d left slung over the top of his duffle bag. He shoved his feet into his boots without bothering to lace them up, grabbed his key, and headed outside.

The day had been nearly unbearable, between the heavy blanket of humidity and the temperature that was about ten degrees too high for sentient life. But the night was actually comfortable and warm, if a little humid, and perfect for the walk he needed to try and get his mind to slow down. It took him a few moments to place what was bothering him, though; there was nearly no noise from birds or bugs, like they put up with on some dig sites.

Maybe the native wildlife saw what was going on and fled en masse. He couldn’t really blame them; if he were the size of a bird, he’d run like hell from a raptor, too.

…Come to think of it, compared to the T-Rex, he would pretty much be snack sized.

He found himself looking up at the visitors center, and out of curiosity, he climbed the stairs and pressed down on the massive door handle. It actually swung open; evidently, with no tourists on the island yet, they weren’t really worried about things getting stolen. He stepped inside the rotunda, his breath catching when he saw the T-Rex skeleton, backlit by dim construction lights that stood around the platform. Behind that a tarp flapped weakly in the slight wind, the back of the rotunda not yet In place, giving way to the thick foliage behind the building instead of a solid wall.

He could have spent hours studying that skeleton, figuring out how much of it was actually complete, and how much had been fabricated to fill in the gaps. He stopped himself, though; he was on vacation, and tomorrow he would be seeing the real thing.

A real fucking T-Rex. He wasn’t sure if he was excited, terrified, or both.

He turned away from the skeleton and instead made his way into the gift shop, which seemed to be mostly finished. The merchandise lined the shelves neatly, dinosaur models and toys and lunchboxes and books, things he would have killed to have as a kid. The cables for the checkout computer hung loosely over the edge of the counter, the only sign that the place wasn’t quite ready to have customers wandering around, picking out their expensive trinkets.

Then again, this stuff would probably be pocket change to the kind of clientele that could afford to come out here.

For a moment, Dean entertained the idea of getting a grant from the museum to take some kids out here once a year. Take the kids who showed a real love for science, have a contest or something, and take the kids who would appreciate it the most but couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t imagine how that would have felt when he was twelve years old, still keeping shelves of dinosaur figurines carefully arranged in alphabetical order by their scientific names, if someone told him he could go see the real thing.

He smirked and shook his head, picking up a plush stegosaurus and tugging fondly at the plates alternating vertically down its spine. Stegosaurus had always been one of his favorites.

“You too, huh?”

Dean jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the toy at the sound of a voice in the otherwise silent room, but he would recognize that voice anywhere, even if he’d only met the guy that day. He turned and gave Castiel a half-hearted glare that turned into a laugh.

“What, can you teleport or something? Scared the shit out of me,” he said, dropping the plush toy back into the bin. Castiel just hummed in reply, sliding his fingertips across the cover of a coloring book on display.

“My apologies. To be fair, I didn’t expect that anyone else would still be up,” he said, stopping by a rack full of plastic dinosaur toys. Dean caught sight of a basket full of plastic dinosaur eggs and stepped over to them, picking one up and tossing it Cas’s way.

“Here. Catch,” he said, picking up another of the eggs and cracking it open at the seam in the middle. As he’d suspected, there was a tiny stuffed baby dinosaur inside; his was a Parasaurolophus. He lifted his head to watch as Castiel opened his, and a small T-Rex fell out, the plush baby already equipped with a mouth full of felt teeth.

“I would have loved this place as a kid,” Dean said, and Castiel smiled, just a little.

“You still love this place. You’re just a little more logical about it now.”

Dean huffed and shook his head. “Wish I didn’t have to be. I wish we could just sit back and watch the dinosaurs and enjoy this place,” he said, snapping the egg closed again. He’d had that moment of magic, when they first saw the Brachiosaur, when nothing else seemed to matter but the magnificent animal in front of him.

The reality of the danger here hadn’t hit him till he’d been holding that baby raptor in his hands.

“I suppose I’m biased,” Castiel said, closing the plush T-Rex back in the egg and tossing it gently back to Dean. “I’ve been subjected to Gabriel’s grand schemes before. It didn’t go well.”

They walked out of the gift shop into the rotunda, the distant bellow of a Brachiosaur carrying across the wind as they sat down on the edge of the T-Rex platform. Dean studied Castiel in the dim light; the man looked tired, stressed. More than simple worry about being here.

“What happened?”

Castiel hesitated, running his fingers through his dark hair, making it more unruly than it already was. “Let’s just say that…it’s better on a safari to avoid antagonizing the wildlife.”

“That…doesn’t sound like it ended well. Why did you agree to come here?”

Another Brachiosaur answered the first call, further away and lower in pitch. Castiel smiled weakly and gave a half shrug. “I suppose I’m a bit of a pushover when it comes to family. Believe me, when my sister hears I came here, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Dean quirked an eyebrow. “How many siblings do you have? And how come he only invited you? Hell, if I pulled off something like this, I’d be inviting everyone I knew.”

“I have five siblings. Other than Gabriel, I have a sister named Anna, and three brothers named Michael, Lucifer, and Samandriel.”

“…Lucifer? Seriously?”

Castiel laughed, eyes crinkling up at the corners, and god, Dean would never get tired of seeing him smile. “He goes by Luc,” the writer said, leaning back on his hands. “And anyway, he only invited me because evidently his investors wanted someone with some…influence on the public. Or something. That, and I don’t think any of our other siblings would agree to come. They aren’t as tolerant of his…fanciful endeavors.”

Dean smiled and shook his head. “You know, when I read your books, I honestly thought you sat there with a thesaurus open while you wrote them. I was obviously wrong,” he joked, and he could see Castiel’s cheeks redden a bit, even in the low light. “Not that it’s a bad thing. Just not what I expected from someone who writes sci-fi and crime thrillers, you know?” he added quickly, hoping he hadn’t just shoved his foot in his mouth, as per usual.

“No, I…I get that a lot. My editor scolds me about my prose being overly formal at times,” Castiel said, and Dean relaxed a little, until those blue eyes focused on him again. “Enough about me. All I know about you is that you dig up dinosaur skeletons with your plant-obsessed brother and a pretty blonde. Which, by the way, would make for a very unique set of protagonists.”

“Nah, it would be boring. We sit in the dirt all day trying to carve rock out of rock,” Dean joked. “I mean, there’s not much to tell. We grew up in Kansas and always wanted to dig up dinosaurs, so that’s what we ended up doing.”

Castiel fidgeted a little, looking away from Dean and back toward the gift shop. “So, if…hypothetically, for book research, I might want to come out and visit one of your digs…?”

Dean’s stomach did a flip; he felt like he was fifteen years old all over again, sitting next to his crush in the cafeteria. “Hypothetically, I think you would be incredibly bored, but also incredibly welcome,” he said, and he caught Castiel’s shy smile before the writer stood up.

“Well, I suppose I’ll at least try to get some sleep,” he said, the tarp snapping behind them with a stronger gust of wind. “It was nice talking with you, Dean.”

Dean smiled brightly. “Yeah, you too, Cas. Try not to stress too much tonight.”

 

~~ Isla Sorna, August 16^th, 2014 ~~

Breakfast was infinitely better than dinner had been.

Either the chef had noticed that his five star French cuisine hadn’t gone over great, or he’d just gotten lazy, but breakfast was served in the giant, empty restaurant, and it consisted of bacon, eggs, and pancakes with maple syrup. Dean was in heaven, making up for the lack of eating last night by helping himself to seconds and thirds of the bacon and eggs.

“Dean. It’s not going to disappear if you eat too slow,” Sam said, looking slightly embarrassed for his brother, but Dean really could not care less when there was still bacon to be eaten.

“Dude, I haven’t had a real breakfast in months. Deal with it,” Dean said, earning a soft smile from Castiel and an eye roll from Jo.

It had been nice to sleep in, too. Gabriel insisted that vacation meant not having to get up before ten, so breakfast was ready right at 10:30, which Dean could definitely get used to. In his line of work, they had to make the most of every moment of daylight and good weather; they were usually up with the sun, and still up a couple hours after it set.

“Are you kids ready?” Gabriel’s voice said, obnoxiously loud in the huge room. He stepped up to the table and leaned on the back of an empty chair, stealing a strip of bacon off Castiel’s plate. Or at least, he tried to- and he earned a loud smack across the back of his hand for the effort. Dean shoveled the last of the eggs into his mouth before he stood up, and Gabriel was still pouting at Castiel as they made their way out front.

In front of the visitors center sat two SUVs, brightly colored with the Jurassic Park logo emblazoned on the sides. Dean immediately noticed something amiss- one, no drivers were hanging around, and two, each steering wheel had a strange set of clamps on the center and arching around the edges. He frowned and opened the door to one of the cars, studying the contraption.

“What’s up with this?”

“Another stroke of genius from Charlie,” Gabriel explained, leaning on the side of the truck. “No drivers needed. They run off a combination of GPS and sensors underneath the roads. You just sit back, and the tour audio will load as you approach each exhibit.”

Castiel didn’t look impressed. “You’re just putting people in cars and sending them out on a tour full of dinosaurs without any guides?”

“Well, if they really want to jump out and tangle with deadly electric fences to try and pet a dinosaur, I doubt a guide is gonna stop them either,” Gabriel pointed out with a shrug. “Besides, Cas, I thought you didn’t like having a guide.”          

There was that moment again; the glare from Castiel and the impish look from Gabriel that spoke volumes about something they weren’t sharing with the class. Nonetheless, his attention was diverted when Crowley sauntered up, still in a perfectly pressed suit and sunglasses. Dean had kind of been hoping the lawyer wouldn’t be along for the tour, but it seemed his luck didn’t go that far.

“Hey, Dean, why don’t you take the other car?” Sam suddenly said, giving Dean a push away from the open door and back toward the second SUV. Before he could argue, Sam and Jo were sharing a conspiratorial look and climbing into the back of the first SUV, and Crowley in the front. Dean had turned and made it halfway back to the other car before he realized their plot- this meant he’d be in an SUV with Castiel for the tour.

He wanted to kick them and hug them at the same time for being nosy brats.

He took a deep breath before climbing into the car, Castiel already settled into the backseat next to him, giving Dean a nervous glance and smile. “Excited?” he asked, and Dean let out a sigh.

“Yeah. I guess that’s a word for it,” he said, rolling down the window a little when he saw Gabriel waving to them.

“Get comfy, we’ll get the cars moving in a few minutes! Dean, no deflowering my baby brother in a company car!” he yelled, and Dean felt his cheeks heat up, and he make a point of flipping Gabriel off before rolling the window back up. Luckily, he wasn’t alone- when he caught a glimpse of Castiel, the writer was just as red faced as him.

“I apologize for my brother’s immaturity-“

Dean laughed. “Please. Don’t worry about it,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “If I tried to apologize for everything my brother did, my apologies could make an entire manifesto.”

Castiel chuckled and looked back up at Dean. “So…dinosaurs?”

Dean’s stomach did another flip flop, and he licked his lips and swallowed hard.

“Yeah. Yeah, dinosaurs.”

 

*~~~~~~*

Gabriel was nearly vibrating with nervous energy as he skidded around the corner into the control room and threw an arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “Hey, red, everything ready to go?” he asked, and she didn’t miss a beat in her typing, even with the brunette hanging on her like that.

“We’re ready to roll. The basic program worked like a dream for all the test runs, and I’ll have the system compiling a full list of any bugs we run into along the way.”

“That’s my girl,” Gabriel said with a grin, ruffling her hair a little before turning to Ruby, who was snacking on some potato chips and staring at the camera monitor above one of her screens. “Hey Ruby, can you troubleshoot those bugs as they come in?”

Ruby gave him a look of disgust. “Well, yeah, if you want the whole system to grind to a near halt because I’m changing code while the program is running,” she said with a shrug. Gabriel snorted and shook his head.

“Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.”

She gave him a mocking smile. “Just for you, darling. Pay me more and I might even throw in some coding for facial recognition.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to pay you more if you didn’t spend all your days off at casinos,” Gabriel pointed out, and the forced smile turned into a sneer as she turned back to her monitors.

“I’ll debug the fuckin’ system when the cars get back. Unless you want me overloading the system,” she snapped, and Gabriel rolled his eyes, turning around when he heard Charlie beckon him over. He moved to see the monitor she was standing in front of- the tropical storm that they’d been watching the past few days.

“It doesn’t look like this one’s going to turn south, boss man,” she said, tapping her capped pin against the monitor, which was showing a loop of the tropical storm’s direction over the past 24 hours. Sure enough it was sliding steadily to the northeast, not even losing any of its distinctive shape as it barreled closer to the islands.

“How long do we have? And how bad is it?”

Charlie hummed. “We’ll get the first waves of it just after sunset, according to the radar forecast. And it’s no hurricane yet, but it’s not messin’ around, either. We’ll have at least high winds and some good downpours,” she explained, and then she gave him a hopeful smile. “But it is moving fast. By morning it should have completely blown through.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the storm, as if he could intimidate it off its path. “Can we fit in the tour?”

“As long as we don’t run into any snags, we can probably get most of it done. But really, we shouldn’t be risking more people than we have to. Not with that lawyer hanging out.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Charlie beamed. “I’m suggesting a test run. I set this place up to run on absolutely minimum staff for up to nine days. Send everyone else home on the boat leaving later this afternoon. You, me, Ruby, Meg, Bobby, and our tourist pals can say and ride out the storm here in the staff rooms at the visitors center,” she said, and Gabriel thought about it for a few moments.

It would show Crowley and their guests just how much faith they had in their systems if they went down to skeleton staff for the weekend. Not only that, but he’d actually look like a decent person, not making the rest of his staff sit on an island in a near hurricane. It would be a win win and proof that his systems and security were foolproof.

“Alright, do it,” he said with a nod. “Sent out the word that all nonessential staff is leaving on the five o’clock boat for the mainland.”

Charlie immediately pulled up the email system, typing out the alert at near unbelievable speed, and marking it as high priority before sending it off. Gabriel pulled up the tour route on the main camera monitors, zooming in on where the two tour SUVs were sitting before throwing a glance to Charlie.

“Ready to start the program?”

She gave him a thumbs up. “All systems are go, captain!”

He smirked and turned back to the console, pressing the microphone button for the vehicles. “I hope you’re all ready, because you’re about to see some fuckin’ dinosaurs,” he said, and then he pointed at Charlie, giving her the cue.

Three keystrokes, a few beeps, and the SUVs began to roll toward the massive gates arched over by the words “Jurassic Park”.

 

 

                 

                 

                   

Chapter Text

Dean and Castiel had been busying themselves with the touchscreen in the dashboard when the car suddenly began to move. Dean nearly fell back into the seat from where he’d been leaning up between the front seats, and Castiel laughed, sitting back in the seat.

           

“Welcome to Jurassic Park. Please sit back in your seats, and keep all windows and doors closed at all points during the tour. Thank you,” a familiar voice said over the speakers in the car, and Castiel and Dean shared a look.

 

“Is that…?”

 

Gabriel’s voice jumped in, and Dean could tell the man was grinning just from the tone of his voice. “Yep, little bro. The narration was all recorded by the man himself, Morgan Freeman. We spared no expense,” he said, and Dean’s eyes narrowed.

 

“You can hear us?”

           

“Look up, Dean. Higher. Higher, higher…there. Wave to the camera!” Gabriel said cheerfully as Dean’s eyes finally locked on the partially hidden camera in the ceiling of the car, just above the windshield.

 

Castiel frowned, then reached over the front seat and popped the glove box open, tugging a small first aid kit out of it. Dean raised an eyebrow at him as he searched the box, coming up with a rather large Band-Aid.

 

“Castiel, don’t you dare-“ Gabriel’s voice said, but he trailed off as Castiel leaned forward and covered the camera lens up with the bandage. They heard some cussing and a frustrated sigh, and Dean couldn’t help but laugh, giving Castiel an appreciative look.

 

“Thanks. Feels less like a skeevy candid camera now,” he said, and Castiel smiled.

 

“Last thing I need is to know he’s watching me all day,” he added, and Dean heard Gabriel scoff.

 

“I can still hear you guys!” he whined, and Dean was sorely tempted to start making some rather pornographic noises, but his attention was drawn to outside the car. They’d pulled onto a narrow path, thick foliage lining the sides of the road and brushing against the side of the car, and straight ahead there was a massive gate.

 

It looked like wood, but it obviously wouldn’t be wood, just a convincing replica material. The gate had to be three stories tall, with the words “Jurassic Park” arching over the top in red letters. As the car in front of them approached the gates they swung open smoothly, and Dean wondered what kind of motors they had hooked up to those doors to automatically open them. They were massive, and had to weigh thousands of pounds.

 

“You can’t say he lacks a flair for the dramatic,” Castiel pointed out as they drove past the gates, and Dean swiveled in his seat to watch as they closed- and heavy steel bars slid into brackets on the back of the doors, keeping them tightly shut.

 

They were locked in with the dinosaurs now, just one fence between them and a whole lot of teeth and claws, their safety squarely put in the hands of Gabriel and the control room.

 

Maybe this was a good time to take up praying.

 

It was a bit of a drive to the first paddock, though it was a comfortable silence, both of them taking in the scenery. It was probably fifteen minutes through trees and grasslands before he could see the fence coming up close to the road, the foliage getting thicker on either side of the path, and he felt his heart speed up with excitement.

 

“The first dinosaur on our tour is the Deinonychus. These small raptors are now known to have joined up in loosely knit groups to bring down prey much larger than themselves,” the narration said, and Dean looked out the window, straining to see anything in the foliage past the fence.

 

“So, like the travel size version of the Utahraptors?” Castiel asked softly, looking out the opposite window. Dean nodded.

 

“Much smaller, with more feathers.”

 

“Feathers?”

 

“Yeah. The movies and books like to leave that out. Evidently the idea of giant vicious lizards having feathers doesn’t add much to the intimidation factor,” Dean explained, sure for a moment that he saw something dart through the ferns. He scolded himself though, sure that his imagination was just running overtime. He was on an island full of dinosaurs, after all.

 

“Guess they’re not as interested in us as we are in them,” Castiel said, leaning back in his seat. Dean sighed in disappointment as the cars pulled away from the fences, into a more open area. He’d really wanted to see them, even for a moment- but if the map on the screen was to be believed, there would be a lot more chances. He could count at least eight major paddocks, and those were just the ones big enough to show up on the island map.

 

“Reminds me of going to the zoo as a kid…you know. And the tiger was always behind the trees, or around the corner,” he said with a chuckle, and Castiel frowned at him.

           

“I’ve never been.”

 

“…You’ve never been to the zoo? Not even as a kid?”

 

Castiel shrugged, looking a little embarrassed now. “We were told it wasn’t a productive use of our free time,” he said, looking back out the window, and Dean felt a pang of regret for having upset him, even the slightest bit. “We had a schedule to keep.”

 

Dean snorted. “Well fuck that,” he said, and Castiel looked back at him, seeming amused by his spirited response. “You and me, Cas; when we get back to the mainland, I’m taking you to the zoo.”

 

Castiel laughed in disbelief. “Aren’t we a little old for that…?”

 

“Hey, you’re never too old to go and watch them make an elephant paint a picture for you.”

 

“They make the elephants…paint?”

 

“Man, you have really got to get out more,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Like I said, as soon as we hit the mainland, I’m dragging you to the zoo.”

 

Castiel smiled, just a subtle lift at the corners of his mouth, but for him it may as well have been a grin. “It’s a date, then,” he said, and then his cheeks reddened as he realized what he’d said. Dean may have teased him, if the Morgan Freeman didn’t decide to be such a cockblock at that moment.

 

“The next exhibit on our route is one of Jurassic Park’s finest. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is truly one of the fiercest land predators to ever live; its name even means ‘tyrant lizard’,” the narration said as they pulled into a wider section of road and the cars slowed to a stop. To the right was a massive section of electric fence, bright warning signs hanging on each section, and beyond the fence were more trees and ferns, though not as thick as some of the other exhibits.

 

To the left was some brush, and a small building marked with bathroom signs; evidently, they expected people to need those kinds of facilities at this particular exhibit.

 

He really couldn’t argue with that.

 

“Think it’ll show?” Castiel asked, looking out the window on Dean’s side at the exhibit. Dean snorted.

 

“Might have better luck if they strapped raw meat to the top of the car.”

 

“Careful. Gabriel might actually take that suggestion.”

           

“Alright girls, stop gossiping,” Gabriel’s voice said over the speakers. “Hang tight, we’re going to give the big girl some motivation.”

 

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this…” Dean muttered, turning back to the exhibit and watching carefully. There was a mechanical ‘whirr’, and then something began to rise up from the ground in the exhibit.

 

A goat. A goat tied to a platform that had evidently been set up for feeding, able to be wrenched up anytime the T-Rex needed fed.

 

“Seriously? That thing is like…an animal cracker compared to a Rex. He’s feeding a 40 pound animal to a 7 ton eating machine,” Dean said with a laugh, dropping back in the seat as the goat bleated miserably. Castiel watched it for a few moments before relaxing himself.

 

“Well, it’s not like we won’t hear it coming, at 7 tons.”

 

“Yeah, just listen for Sam’s girly screams,” Dean said with a snort.

 

“I’m totally telling him you said that,” Gabriel said over the speakers, and Dean cursed.

 

“I’m gonna cut every wire in this damn car until you go away, Gabriel,” he snapped, and there was laughter from the speakers, then silence again.

 

Now all they could do was wait.

 

It was a comfortable silence again with Castiel, neither of them feeling the need to fill the space with chatter; instead, they rolled the car windows down and enjoyed the cool breeze that was starting to pick up, probably from that storm they’d seen on the monitors. It was a welcome relief from the sticky heat. Dean looked ahead and saw that Jo, Sam, and Crowley had the windows of their car lowered too, and Jo’s sandals stuck out one window, feet crossed at her slender ankles. Knowing her, she was probably using Sam’s thigh as a pillow while she read a book.

 

The T-Rex obviously wasn’t hungry. By the time the cars started moving again the goat had lain down and was casually eating some weeds. Gabriel insisted over the speakers that they’d swing by again later, that the Rex seemed to like the evening hours better anyway.

 

“Maybe if they brought her something bigger to eat, she’d actually show up,” Dean said, leaning against the door and dropping his head against the now closed window, the glass cool against his temple. And, after a few minutes of driving, that position was what allowed him to catch sight of something sticking above the tall grass, maybe a fourth of a mile off the side of the road.

 

And that something looked really familiar.

 

Without hesitating, he opened the car door and jumped out, glad that the cars moved agonizingly slow through the park. He heard Castiel say his name in surprise, but he was already stepping into the grass, the thing he’d seen now hidden from view as he stepped down into the field.

 

“Hey, Dean, wait! What are you doing?” Castiel asked, catching up and walking beside him.

 

“I thought I saw something-“

 

“Dean, I thought mom got the lesson about not jumping from moving vehicles in your curriculum somewhere,” Sam interrupted as he caught up, though he looked more amused than upset, Jo not far behind him. Behind them, though, Crowley looked downright pissed.

           

“You’d think dinosaur experts would know that it’s a bit dangerous to leave their vehicle in a dinosaur park,” he snapped, smoothing down his suit jacket and wrinkling his nose at the grass as they pushed through it. Dean ignored him, because he could see over the grass again, that familiar shape, right on the other side of the grass…

 

He stepped into the clearing, and for a moment, he forgot how to breathe.

 

A Stegosaurus lay partially on her side in the shorter grass, the plates on her back sticking up just enough that Dean had spotted the tallest ones over the grass. Her breathing seemed labored, her eyes dull, and she didn’t seem to notice their presence as she huffed out a breath and groaned.

 

“Jesus…” Castiel gasped out beside him, and then someone stood up behind the Stegosaurus, a man in khakis and a polo, with a beard and gentle blue eyes.

 

“Don’t you worry, friends, I got her sedated. It’s safe,” he said, the heavy Louisiana accent clinging to every word as he stepped around to the dinosaur’s belly. Dean didn’t need any more encouragement; one of his favorite dinosaurs was right in front of him, alive and just like he’d always pictured it, and he found himself not caring about the risks anymore.

 

He stepped forward and reached out, sliding one hand down the Stegosaurus’ side, the skin rough and bumpy under his hand. He grinned and pressed the other hand to her side, almost certain right now that he was dreaming, but this would be too real even for a dream; he was almost pushed backward by the sheer force of her just breathing in.

 

He knew Sam and Jo were already seeing her up close too, and he turned to look for Castiel, finding that the writer was watching him with a fond look and a soft smile. He motioned for Castiel to come closer, and the smile turned into a look of apprehension.

 

“No, I…I’m close enough here,” he protested, and Dean shook his head, stepping over and grabbing Castiel by the wrist, tugging him over to the dinosaur’s side.

 

“Someone offers you a chance to safely pet an extinct animal? You do it,” he teased, putting his hand back on the Stegosaurus, memorizing the feel of her. Castiel shifted his weight nervously at first, then reached out and lightly touched her side, his touch feather light at first before he finally pressed his hand down.

 

“She feels kind of like an elephant,” he said, and Dean smiled brightly, catching Castiel’s eye again. And for one second, right then, he didn’t even care about the damn dinosaur. Not when Castiel was smiling at him like that.

 

“What’s wrong with her?” Sam asked, breaking Dean and Castiel out of their own world they’d been in.  The man in khakis, who Dean could only assume was the vet, crossed his arms.

 

“Don’t know surely yet,” he said, watching as Jo knelt down next to the Stegosaurus’ head. “She’s lethargic, disoriented, got labored breathing…seems to happen every six weeks or so.”

 

“Did you see these?” Jo asked, one hand on the dinosaur’s muzzle, just behind the animal’s beak-like snout. She pointed in its open mouth, and Dean leaned over the sprawled front legs to see- and sure enough, there were yellowish brown blisters on the dinosaurs tongue. The vet nodded.

 

“Yeah, those happen every time, too. We’ve run blood a few times, but it’s not exactly like runnin’ blood tests on a dog, you know? Don’t even hardly know what we’re lookin’ for,” he explained, and Sam came around to where Jo knelt. Dean knew that face; Sam was obviously deep in thought, and ready to solve a puzzle.

 

“Can I see your light?” he asked, and the vet handed over the penlight, watching over Sam’s shoulder as he pointed it right at the animal’s eye. “You said you sedated her?”

 

 “Yeah, we did.”

 

“These are dilated, though,” Sam said, and the vet leaned in closer to get a better look.

 

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “So busy with the blood tests, missed the obvious there.”

 

“It’s got to be pharmacological,” Dean said, beginning to understand what Sam was getting at. Castiel raised an eyebrow at him, watching as Sam stood and began searching the area with an expert eye.

 

“Pharmacological?”

 

“Probably local plant life,” Dean explained, one hand still pressed to the Stegosaurus’ side. “Either one of those extinct plants they stuck here, or maybe a modern plant the dinosaurs wouldn’t know to avoid.”

 

“Is this West Indian Lilac?” Sam asked, crouching down nest to a shrub that was flowering purple. The vet nodded, only glancing up from the dinosaur for a moment.

           

“Yeah, got those around here. The dinosaurs don’t eat ‘em, though.”

 

Dean was already moving to where Sam was crouched down, hand touching the disturbed soil around the plant. “Are you sure…?”

 

“Pretty sure, brother.”

 

Sam stood, brushing the dirt off his hands. “One way to find out,” he said, turning and giving the vet a determined look. “Can we see its droppings?”

 

There was a groan from behind them, and Dean didn’t have to turn to know it was Crowley. “Please tell me we’re not going to let him dig around in shit,” the lawyer said, but he got soundly ignored as the vet pointed to another part of the field, closer to the trees.

 

Castiel didn’t look thrilled, but he followed as Sam, Dean, and the vet made their way to the patch of ground. “So I’m assuming you’re the veterinarian Gabriel mentioned,” he said, and the vet chuckled and nodded.

           

“That’d be me. Name’s Benny Lafitte,” he said, tugging out a pair of long plastic gloves and tossing them to Sam, who had found a rather sizeable pile of…well, shit. Dean wrinkled his nose, fully prepared to let his little brother handle this part.

 

“How’d you get roped into this, anyway?” he asked Benny.

 

“I was workin’ at the San Diego zoo. Specialized in the big cats,” Benny said, watching as Sam dug through the dung. Castiel looked vaguely ill as he watched on; the smell was incredibly pungent, even for poop. “Gabe came bargin’ into my clinic one day, asked if I wanted to come work on a specialized game preserve. I mean, he wouldn’t tell me what animals I’d be workin’ with, but with the money he was offerin’, I would’ve been an idiot to say no. And you know, I would’ve said yes anyway, even if I knew what all this was.”

 

“Can’t blame you,” Dean said with a half smile, just as Sam stood up with a sigh.

 

“No berries. That doesn’t make any sense, though. She has all the symptoms of Meliatoxicity,” he said, snapping the gloves off and dropping them into a plastic bag Benny held out for him. “You said this happens often?”

 

Benny nodded. “Like I said, every four or six weeks, she’ll come down with this. Within a few days she’s pulled a 180, back to normal.”

 

Dean looked back at the Stegosaurus, watching as Jo stroked its head, much like she would a sick dog to comfort it. Every four to six weeks…what did an animal do every four to six weeks that was different than normal?

 

It hit him while they were walking back to the dinosaur, and he came to a sudden stop. “Gastroliths,” he said, and Sam, Castiel, and Benny all gave him odd looks, but he was already jogging back to the area where they’d seen the West Indian Lilac.

 

“Dean?” Castiel said, obviously confused, but also curious. Dean smirked and leaned down, grabbing a handful of small, smooth stones from the dirt near the plants.

 

“Gastroliths. We’ve found them in nearly every Stegosaurus dig site. They swallow small rocks to aid in digestion, and when the rocks are no longer rough, they regurgitate them and swallow new ones.”

 

“Every six weeks,” Sam added, grinning as the light bulb went on over his head. Dean held out his hand, and sitting among the smooth stones in his hand were undigested and partially digested West Indian Lilac berries.

 

“She’s not eating the plant. She’s eating the berries that fell off the plant and landed in the dirt and rocks.”

 

Benny laughed. “Boys, you’re hired. I’m keepin’ you out here,” he said, just as Crowley joined them, snapping his cell phone closed.

 

“Gabriel wants us back in the cars. He needs to get us back to the center before the storm hits. So let’s move, ladies,” he said, and Sam got one of those kicked-puppy looks on his face.

 

“If it’s alright, I’d like to stay and help Benny with the Stegosaur,” he said, looking at the veterinarian, who gave a smile and a shrug.

 

“Sure. I still need to draw some blood and do a few odds and ends. I can take you back in my truck when we finish.”

 

“I don’t care if you walk the thing back on a leash. I’d just like to not get this suit wet in a torrential downpour,” Crowley snapped, turning to Castiel. “Cassie, darling, ride with me on this leg. I have some business to talk with you,” he said, and Castiel didn’t look happy, throwing a helpless glance at Dean before nodding reluctantly.

 

Dean nearly fell over when Jo threw her arm over his shoulders and gave him a bright smile. “Don’t worry, Dean, I’ll ride with you so you won’t be lonely,” she teased, rubbing her knuckles on his head before following Castiel and Crowley toward the cars.

 

Dean turned and gave Sam a look. “Be careful, okay? Don’t stay out here if the weather gets shitty. And, uh…wash your hands before you eat anything,” he said, and Sam raised an eyebrow.

 

“I’ll be fine, Dean. I’m a big boy now, I can handle it,” he said, following Benny back over to the Stegosaurus. Dean watched him go, then sighed and followed the other three back toward the cars, letting out an unhappy huff when he saw Castiel sliding into the front passenger seat of the front car.

 

Not that he didn’t like Jo, but he spent 15 hours a day with Jo in the digging season. He didn’t like anyone after spending that much time with them, usually.

 

He jumped into the driver’s seat of the second car, ignoring the weird device hooked up to the wheel as Jo joined him, getting into the passenger seat. As soon as the doors closed, the cars began to move, pulling to the first turn-around point and using it to turn the other direction on the invisible track.

 

He was beginning to realize why they were calling the cars back; the clouds were rapidly gathering, and the ferns and tree branches were whipping in the sudden stronger winds that had begun to fire up.

 

“You really like him, don’t you?” Jo asked, and Dean tried to fight down the slight blush, to no avail.

 

“He’s a pretty cool guy, yeah,” he said cryptically, but Jo saw right through it, pulling her hair back into a ponytail with a knowing grin.

 

“Pretty cool? Is that code for ‘I want to ride that ass like the last ark out of the flood?” she asked, and for that she got a smack to the shoulder.

 

It was going to be a long ride back.

 

 

*~~~~~~~*

 

Ruby popped the last French fry into her mouth, watching as Gabriel glared at the camera feeds like they’d personally offended him. Or maybe stole his candy stash. Either one could result in that look.

           

“Don’t feel bad, Gabe. We’ve still got two whole days. This storm will have all blown over by morning,” Charlie said, far too cheerfully for Ruby’s taste. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her monitor, checking the lines of code she’d prepared for what had to be the hundredth time.

 

She couldn’t be too careful. After all, there could be no test run of her programming here; she had to get this right the first time, or she’d be absolutely screwed.

 

“But what if the next time we send them out, it’s like this again? Two no shows and a sick dinosaur, Charlie. It’ll be a disaster,” Gabriel moaned miserably, and Charlie patted his shoulder and dropped a Tootsie Roll into his hand.

 

“Here. Eat some candy, you’ll feel better,” she said. “This is the very first tour. We can’t expect it to be perfect. If you’re really worried, we can skip the Rex’s morning feeding tomorrow, so when we bait her on the tour she’ll be hungry enough to jump for it.”

 

That idea seemed to ease Gabriel’s anxiety a little. He relaxed as he chewed the candy, and then he nodded.

 

“Right. Yeah, let’s plan on that. I don’t want them leaving without seeing the two biggest main attractions,” he said, just before Ruby’s phone started ringing, the obnoxious jingle immediately fraying her nerves; she’d been meaning to change that ringtone for forever.

 

She put the phone to her ear with a sigh. “Ruby Cortese,” she said, the words short and clipped.

 

“Hello, Ruby,” the reptilian voice drawled at the other end of the line, and she immediately straightened up.

 

“Hold on a sec,” she said, standing and heading for the door. She gave Gabriel and Charlie a shrug. “Family stuff,” she said, and they just shrugged it off and continued talking as Ruby stepped into the hallway and walked far enough away that she wouldn’t have to worry about being heard.

 

“Alistair,” she said, glancing around for any employees, but she was alone for once. “I told you never to call me before five.”

 

“Change in plans,” he said, as usual, straight down to business. “The storm is moving in quicker than anticipated. With Gabriel having all his non-essentials off the island by 5:30, the best we can give you is an 18 minute window.”

 

Ruby took in a sharp breath. “Are you kidding? I’ve run this simulation a hundred times, Alistair, and the best I’ve done is twenty. You’re asking me to shave two whole minutes off that? Do you realize how exact this has to be?”

 

He chuckled on the other end of the line. “I do realize, and I trust you to be able to get the job done. Especially if you want your money,” he said. “You’ve got 18 minutes from the signal. That’s all we can give you, Ruby. Our guy has to leave the dock at the same time Novak’s ship does or someone is going to get nosey.”

 

Ruby was surprised her grip wasn’t breaking the phone. She paced, her jaw clenched as she tried to think of where she could possibly shave time off her carefully planned process.

 

“I should ask for a bonus for your ridiculous demands,” she snapped, but Alistair didn’t seem bothered.

           

“You’ll still get them for us. I know you will, “ he said, and that dangerous edge was back in his voice, the hint that if she didn’t, things would not be going well for her. She swallowed hard and nodded.

 

“I’ll get the damn things. Just have your guy at the dock on time, and give me every second you can,” she snapped, and then she hung up before Alistair could make her even madder.

           

Two less minutes. She could manage that, surely- thirty seconds here, twenty seconds there, just a little bit quicker on everything she’d practiced. She could do it.

 

She had to do it.

 

Chapter Text

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.

           

            

Chapter Text

“Go fish.”

 

Dean sighed and reached for a card, ignoring Jo’s triumphant grin in favor of studying his hand. Okay, so it wasn’t the most comfortable situation to be playing cards, but there wasn’t much else to do stuck in the back of an SUV in a torrential downpour.

 

But now that he was getting his ass kicked at Go Fish, he was seriously reconsidering their form of entertainment.

 

He noticed a couple of times that the deck of cards balanced on the seat slid to one side, then the other, as if the car moved just a little- but he didn’t think anything of it. Not until he caught Jo looking out the windshield with a frown, and he followed her gaze to see Crowley sprinting toward the small building containing the restrooms, the passenger door of the front car left hanging open.

 

“What’s up with him?” Dean said with a frown, and Jo shrugged.

 

“Maybe he really had to go. Lawyers are full of shit,” she said, and Dean would have scolded her for the awful joke, but he was distracted. He was watching as Castiel’s silhouette moved across the front seats of the other car, reaching out and pulling the door shut.

 

He was just beginning to wonder if he and Jo should go and join Castiel in the other car when there was a loud, metallic groan. Jo spun around in her seat to look, her ponytail nearly hitting Dean in the face as he leaned forward to look at the fence, a pit of dread forming in his stomach.

 

The huge metal fence was swaying; and pressing up against it was the massive form of the T-Rex, easily identifiable even in the dark.

 

“Dean. Dean, the fences aren’t on,” Jo whispered, her voice weak. Dean nodded, forcing himself to keep breathing, because otherwise he was just going to keep holding his breath as he heard the fence give way and the cables snap.

 

The T-Rex took two heavy steps outside the enclosure between the cars, and the sound that followed was unlike anything he’d ever heard. It was like an elephant trumpeting right beside his ear, but with a depth and friction to the roar that was bone jarring. He didn’t even realized that he’d covered his ears in a panic until he saw that Jo had done the same thing, wincing from the sheer intensity of the sound. And by the time they lowered their hands, he could see the solid, muscular legs of the T-Rex moving over toward their car, coming up to Dean’s side and pausing there.

 

“Jo, over, get over,” he said, pushing her as far as he could toward the window on her side of the car, scooting away from where the dinosaur’s nostrils were flaring, fogging up the outside of the windows. The T-Rex tilted its head, and for one moment that seemed to last full minutes, Dean made eye contact with it.

 

And he was sure it saw him, too.

 

The T-Rex moved and nudged its muzzle against the car. The whole vehicle jerked, wrenching a startled scream from Jo; Dean could see where the metal of the door had bent inward with just that small nudge. This car was like a tin can to the eight ton animal; it was crumpling like paper with every blow.

 

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Just stay still, she’ll get bored with it,” Dean insisted, though he didn’t believe his own words, and he doubted Jo did either.

 

He suddenly remembered a friend growing up in Kansas who had a Border Collie- the dog was so obsessive about food that they had to hide its kibble in a tiny plastic puzzle box, and the dog had to move the panels on the top with its nose to expose the different partitions of kibble. That dog could sit there for hours, shoving the sliding plastic pieces with its nose, checking and rechecking every nook and cranny of the puzzle box for bits of kibble he’d missed.

 

Dean suddenly felt a whole lot like kibble.

 

The T-Rex’s nose shoved forward again, and this time the impact was hard enough to rock the car back and forth dramatically, tires coming off the ground at least a couple of feet. Dean fell into Jo and heard a sharp smack as her head hit the window, but he didn’t have time to check and see if she was okay- the frustrated dinosaur was roaring again, and up close the sound made his ears ring and ache, and he flinched and scrambled to get upright again.

 

The next hit came too soon. This time the momentum didn’t stop, and Dean went tumbling into Jo again, their limbs tangling as the car creaked and finally tipped over hard on its side. Jo’s elbow slammed into Dean’s chest, and he tried to force air back into his lungs, his hands sliding on the cracked side window, which was now pressed against the muddy ground.

 

The car shuddered again, and Dean knew what was coming. “Jo!” he tried to yell, tried to warn her, but it came out choked and breathless. He saw her lift her head, caught a glimpse of wide, terrified brown eyes, and then the car lurched again. Dean’s head smacked against the window as the car flipped violently onto its roof, and for a second, all Dean saw was static, like the snow on an out of range TV channel.

 

For that moment, he thought he would pass out. The sound of Jo’s scream was distant and muffled and sparks were exploding in his vision, his head throbbing as he pulled himself back from the brink. He completely snapped out of it, though, when he felt cold, watery mud sluicing around his hands and shoulder that were pressed to the roof of the car.

 

He forced himself back to awareness just as the car groaned above them, and them the seat jerked downward, and Jo had to duck down so it didn’t hit her on the head. Muddy rainwater was pouring in the broken windows, and he could only see one large clawed foot from where he lay, so he could only assume the T-Rex had its other foot on the bottom of the car. They were going to be crushed or drowned if they didn’t get out of here. He could hear metal snapping over their heads, and the frustrated grunts and huffs of the T-Rex as she tried to tear the car apart to get to the humans inside.

 

Jo was just starting to try and kick out one of the cracked windows so they could crawl free when Dean heard a loud whistle over the pounding of the rain on the car. Seconds later the seat lifted up a few inches, as if the pressure was gone from it, and then Dean heard heavy footsteps moving away- along with a growl.

 

“This way!” he said, grabbing Jo and tugging her toward the side the T-Rex had been on; while closer to the dinosaur, this window had popped free entirely, and he crawled through the freezing mud and out onto the road. He looked up just in time to see the T-Rex collide with the small building, and one glance toward the front car confirmed his fears.

 

The driver’s side door was open. That whistle had been Cas.

 

He helped Jo crawl free. Her skin was smeared with dark brown mud and bright red blood, but she didn’t look like she had any major injuries, and more pressing matters were at hand, anyway. Dean’s mind was already working, trying to think of everything he’d ever guessed about dinosaur behavior, anything that could be of use. Running wouldn’t do any good; the T-Rex had excellent eyesight, and could follow a scent for miles. They needed a distraction.

 

“I t-think it ate Crowley,” Jo said weakly, her whole body shaking, whether from the cold or the shock he didn’t know.

 

Wait.

 

The T-Rex just ate. And it had been so curious about the car, nosing it, pushing at it…it had seen the cars, but never had a chance to investigate them, till now.

 

“I have an idea. Tell me when it finishes eating,” he said, stumbling to his feet, shoes sliding in the mud as he rushed toward the front car. He dove into the front seat, praying to any god who was listening that these weren’t custom made for the program, that they were modified, mostly normal electric cars.

 

He tore the plastic off the console underneath the steering wheel, for once not regretting his brief foray into juvenile delinquency as he sorted through wires and found what he needed.

 

“Dean, it’s done. It’s looking around,” Jo said from where she stood outside the car, and Dean tried to make his shaking, wet hands move faster.

 

“Almost done,” he said, and he heard a low rumbling noise from the T-Rex, then footsteps.

 

“Dean, we have to go!” Jo said, grabbing his shoulder- but at the same time, the engine roared to life and the headlights came on. Dean slid out of the car, then reached down and shoved the piece of plastic he’d removed from the console down against the floor and forward. It wedged tightly against the pedal, and the car’s wheels spun in the mud as Dean jumped clear. The car lurched forward and took off with a grind of protest from the engine, but it did what he needed it to do.

 

He grabbed Jo and pulled her down to the ground underneath him just as the shadow of the T-Rex fell over them. Just when he was expecting teeth to slice into them, he felt a rush of air go by, and he looked up to see that the T-Rex had walked right over them and was now pursuing the vehicle as it raced down the road.

 

It had worked. He took a gamble, assuming that curiosity would win out once hunger was satisfied, and he’d gotten it right.

 

At least the lawyer had been good for something.

 

“Cas,” he said, his voice breaking as he stumbled to his feet and rushed back over to the destroyed building. Ignoring the bits and pieces of lawyer that the T-Rex hadn’t found palatable, his eyes searched the broken wood and wind blown fern leaves covering the ground until he finally saw pale skin through the mess. He rushed to Castiel’s side, dropping down next to him and pressing a hand to the writer’s back, fearing the worst.

 

“Cas? Cas, come on, man, wake up for me,” he begged, shaking Castiel a little with one hand as he brushed debris away from his body with the other. Castiel shifted and moaned under his hand, just as Dean caught sight of the dark red blood soaking the denim of his right pant leg. Too much blood. Even if Castiel was awake, he wasn’t going to be walking.

 

Dean tore his flannel over shirt from his shoulders; it was soaked and muddy, but it would have to do for now. He found the tear in Castiel’s pants, a long rip starting just below the knee, where the blood was darkest on the denim. He wrapped the shirt around Castiel’s leg and pulled tight, earning a pained moan from the unconscious man.

 

“It’s going to come back,” Jo said, having caught up to him, but looking pale faced and ashen at the sight of what was left of Crowley. Dean set his jaw with determination.

 

“We’re not leaving Cas,” he said, carefully turning Castiel over onto his back. He was definitely out of it, eyes only opening for a few moments before he was out again. They would have to inspect the damage later, because Jo was right; the T-Rex considered this paddock and the area around it to be its territory.  It would come back and defend it as soon as the car ceased to be interesting.

 

He slid one arm under Castiel’s knees and the other behind his shoulders, bracing himself and lifted the slender man bridal style in his arms. “Let’s go. That way,” he said, nodding his head away from the paddock. Jo nodded and started jogging toward the trees, and Dean made sure Castiel’s head was pillowed against his shoulder safely before he followed as fast as he could manage. They needed to get as much distance between them and this paddock as quickly as possible.

 

They ran until they physically couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. It seemed like forever, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes, not in their condition. Dean finally saw a low outcropping of rock, just enough space under it for a makeshift shelter, and he called out to Jo and jerked his chin toward it.

 

Relief washed over her features as she moved to the outcropping and ducked underneath, and Dean followed, carefully laying Castiel down on the dry ground before sitting down himself. The water was dripping off the outcropping so quickly that it was almost like a thin waterfall was shielding them from sight back here. Castiel’s eyes fluttered open again, but his gaze was unfocused as he blinked and took in short, harsh breaths.

 

“Dean…?”

 

Dean was already moving to Castiel’s side, close to his injured leg, ready to see the damage. “I’m here, Cas. We got away, we’re all good.”

 

Jo snorted. “Except for the lawyer.”

 

“He doesn’t count,” Dean muttered as he untied the flannel and pulled it away from the wound. He was suddenly glad for his need to carry a pocket knife with him everywhere- hey, they came in handy for a lot of things- and he flicked the knife open and carefully cut away the denim, peeling it back from the wound and wincing when Castiel tensed and made a choked, pained noise in his throat.

 

“Relax, I’ve got you,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, even as he studied the wound and nearly all the hope drained from his face.

 

Just below Castiel’s knee was nearly eight inches of shredded, torn flesh, as if one of the T-Rex’s teeth had caught the flesh and just ripped upward. Maybe it had; he couldn’t think of what else could have done this kind of damage. If he had more light, he was fairly certain he would be able to tell that the hints of lighter color in the wound were actually glimpses of the bone showing through the destroyed flesh and muscle.

 

“That b-bad, huh?” Castiel said, his voice even rougher than usual, every word on the verge of cracking. Dean forced the frown off his face, because Castiel had to have some hope. Dean wouldn’t let him give up, wouldn’t let him down. He shook his head and turned the flannel to the clean- well, the cleaner side, wrapping it back around Castiel’s leg.

 

“It probably feels worse than it is. You’ll be fine, Cas,” he said, and he could feel Jo’s eyes on him, because she knew, too. She knew as well as he did that if Castiel didn’t get help, and soon, he was going to die.

 

“Liar,” Castiel said with a breathless laugh, but it quickly turned into a ragged sob as Dean yanked the flannel tight again, whispering an apology as he did. Castiel couldn’t afford to lose any more blood.

 

“I mean it. You’re getting out of here, understand?” he said, reaching up to touch Castiel’s face gently, trying to get him to focus through the pain. Castiel leaned into the touch and nodded, his chest rising harshly with each ragged breath.

 

“What now?” Jo asked, her knees pulled up tight to her chest as she shivered. Dean looked out at the rain, weighing their options.

 

“We have to wait until the rain lets up. We won’t last in that,” he said, his stomach churning with anger at himself, that he couldn’t do more for Castiel or Jo. “They said this storm was moving fast. We’ll start walking again as soon as the rain gets lighter.”

 

Jo nodded, breathing into her hands to try and warm them. Dean was cold too, his fingers were partly numb, but all the same he was willing to share what little body heat he had to spare.

 

“Come here,” he said, scooting closer to Castiel, who was unconscious again. He pulled Jo in close and then lay on his side on the hard ground, keeping his back pressed close to Castiel to try and share the same warmth with him. He wrapped his arms around Jo, rubbing her back gently. She pressed her hands to his chest to try and warm them up, and he could feel her shoulders moving minutely with tears that she was trying to hold back. She was a tough girl, the type to not cry in front of anyone if she could help it.

 

He kissed the top of her head, holding her until she finally fell asleep. He stayed awake, listening to every sound of the forest beyond their hiding place, waiting to hear the inevitable sound of heavy footsteps and that mind numbing roar.

 

*~~~~~~*

 

Sam was on his feet the moment Meg turned the corner into the control room, looking soaked to the bone and thoroughly frustrated. Behind her was Bobby, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his khakis dripping on the floor- but his stormy expression was enough to draw Sam’s attention.

 

“Ruby’s not in the building. But there is a Jeep missing from the garage,” Meg said, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Ruby had probably taken a Jeep to get down to the boat after she started whatever program had brought down the system.

 

The question was still why, but they couldn’t take the time to look for the answer to that right now.

 

“Are the raptor fences still up?” Charlie asked Bobby, and when he grunted an affirmative, her shoulders sagged with relief.

 

“Lucky for all of you, they’re the only fences still up. And only ‘cause I insisted they run on a separate breaker in the system,” Bobby said, focusing on Gabriel, who had gone unusually quiet in the crisis. “I heard your people are out in the cars?”

 

Gabriel nodded. “My brother. And Dean, Crowley, and Jo,” he said, leaning back against Charlie’s desk. The redhead was flipping through a thick manual on her desk, one hand turning pages, the other on the keyboard.

 

“We have to go get them,” Sam said, looking at Bobby pleadingly, and the man nearly laughed.

 

“You’re kidding, right? We’d only be putting ourselves on the menu. We need to wait till the fences are back up. If they stay inside the cars, they’ve got a shot.”

 

“No. No, I’m going, with or without any of you guys,” Sam snapped, pointing toward the door. “They’re sitting by a useless fence with a T-Rex on the other side, and you want to wait and see? I don’t think so. I’m taking a car, and I’m going to get my brother.”

 

He turned to walk out, but the hunter’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, the gruff, quiet exterior hiding a grip of steel. Sam pulled free and looked back at him, waiting as the man stared him down, one hand still set on his rifle.

 

“You ain’t takin’ no for an answer, are you?” he asked, and Sam snorted.

 

“No. I’m going. I don’t care if it has to be alone,” he said, and Bobby sighed.

 

“You’ll need someone out there who knows these animals,” he muttered. “I’ll go with you, keep watch. But we’re goin’ straight to that paddock and coming straight back. No field trips and no heroics.”

 

Sam nodded once, not waiting for Gabriel’s opinion on the subject, because right now he really couldn’t care less what Gabriel thought about anything. Bobby followed him into the hallway, and they both paused when they heard footsteps running to catch up to them.

 

“What, you boys think you get to have all the fun?” Meg said with a smirk, falling into step next to them.

 

“You sure you want to come?” Sam asked, though he didn’t slow down. The longer they put this off, the more danger Dean was in.    

           

“Oh, don’t give me a ‘girls in survival situations’ stereotype lecture. I’m coming along. We’ll take two Jeeps; they’re only made for four people, after all, and we’re aiming to bring all four of them back, plus three of us,” she pointed out, and Sam had to admit, she was right. Two Jeeps would be easier and safer.

 

They picked two hard cover Jeeps that were ready to go, and Bobby drove the first with Sam in the passenger seat, Meg following in another Jeep. Bobby didn’t feel the need to try and make conversation, and Sam certainly wasn’t in the mood, either; plus, he was watching out the window for any sign of escaped dinosaurs. The ride was silent and tense, especially when they found that every gate they pulled up to was already open.

 

“Someone manually opened these gates. They ain’t made to stay open; they default to being closed when they lose power,” Bobby said, his voice low as they pulled through the giant wooden gate. Once past that bottleneck Bobby sped up considerably, so it only took half the time of the tour cars to get to the Tyrannosaur paddock.

 

Their headlights lit up a scene of twisted metal and scattered debris.

 

“Dean!” Sam yelled before he was even out of the car, and he fumbled to turn on his flashlight as he ran to the overturned car, dropping to his knees in the mud. He shined the light in the passenger compartment, but it was empty, only shattered glass and mud inside.

 

That didn’t mean they were safe, though. He stood up and yelled Dean’s name again, earning a hush from Bobby, who had his gun at the ready. Sam ignored him, trying to find the other car, but drawn inevitably to the ruins of the half demolished building.

           

He slid to a sudden stop when he nearly tripped over a leg- a leg that wasn’t attached to a body. And judging from the black fabric and the fancy, shined shoe, he knew who it once belonged to.

 

“I think this was Crowley,” he said, his voice thick with the urge to throw up, and he heard Bobby snort and move something off to his left.

 

“Yeah, I think this was, too.”

 

“Boys! The other car!” Meg yelled over the rain, and Bobby and Sam gratefully took the excuse to get away from the carnage, running to catch up with Meg. She was nearly past the paddock, and Sam caught sight of the other car, rammed up against the edge of the tunnel leading away from the fences. The roof of the car was half peeled away, and the front was a crushed mess.

 

But, once again, there was no sign of Dean, Castiel, or Jo.

 

“You think they got away?” Sam asked, looking over to Bobby, who was pulling a piece of plastic free from where it was wedged in the footwell of the driver’s seat.

 

“Someone got a chance to rig this car. They might’ve gotten out of here while the rex chased the car,” he pointed out, tossing the plastic aside. Sam felt a surge of hope- the only body parts they’d found were obviously bits of Crowley, and there was no sign that anyone else had been eaten- unless the T-Rex swallowed them whole. He pushed that thought out of his mind the moment it crept in.

 

Sam looked down at his feet, his light shining on the footprints Bobby’s boots made in the deep, sticky mud- and he realized he’d been so busy looking for bodies that he missed the obvious. He ran back to the road by the paddock, sweeping his light over the ground until he found what he was looking for.

 

There were definitely two distinct sets of footprints, leading through the mud from the wreckage of the building into the trees behind it. Bobby joined him and added his light, frowning a little as he stared at the footprints.

 

“One of these are the girl’s. Too small to be Castiel or your brother,” he pointed out, and Sam had to agree. So Jo and one of the guys had gotten away, but which one? Was it Dean or Castiel who had made it out?

 

That pit was back in his stomach, and deepening by the second.

 

“We should follow the tracks,” he blurted out, and Bobby reached over and smacked him on the back of the head.

 

“Did you listen to a word I said back there, y’idgit?” he snapped. “No field trips, no heroics. We need to get back and help Gabriel and Charlie get this place running again. Two of them are alive, at least, and you should be thankful for that much. You won't be doin' your brother any favors tryin' to find him in this mess and gettin' yourself killed.”

 

Sam wanted to argue. He wanted to grab that gun and go searching through the forest, find his brother, because he didn’t want to think about if he found the survivors and Dean wasn’t one of them.  Or if Dean was one of them, and Castiel hadn’t made it; he couldn’t imagine how much that would hurt Dean.

 

But he also knew Bobby was right. They wouldn’t do any good stumbling around out here; the best thing they could do was help get those fences up and running again before more of the dinosaurs figured out they could escape.

 

The decision was out of his hands, though, when they suddenly heard a roar- and it sounded far too close for comfort.

 

He and Bobby both turned and ran for the car. Meg was already climbing into hers, and just as Sam grabbed the door handle, he heard the trees shift and branches break- and he turned to see the T-Rex just in the tree line, its reptilian eyes locking on them, dark skin shiny from the rain.

 

“Go!” he yelled at Bobby before he was even fully in the car, and he yanked the door shut as the car peeled out. Meg’s Jeep pulled ahead, and Bobby wasn’t far behind.

 

But neither was the T-Rex.

 

She roared again, and Sam flinched at the sound, which was followed up by the rear of the car suddenly jerking to the left. Bobby struggled to keep control of the car on the slick, muddy roads; it was hard enough without eight tons of dinosaur trying to knock you off the road.

 

Then Sam looked in the side view mirror- and it was full of teeth, right above the sticker that practically mocked him with the words ‘Objects in mirror are closer than they appear’.

 

Those teeth were fucking close enough, thanks.

 

“Faster!” he shouted, turning to look behind the Jeep just as the T-Rex’s head smacked into the side of it again. The car jerked and nearly went off the road again, but at the last second the tires bit into the dirt and regained traction, and when Sam looked in the mirror again, the T-Rex was slowing. Evidently they weren’t worth chasing all the way back to the main gate, just worth chasing long enough to force them out of what she considered her territory.

 

Sam let out a slightly giddy laugh, the fact that they’d just had to run from a T-Rex finally sinking in. And they’d been in a car; how had Dean and the others felt, trapped and on foot next to that thing?

 

“Think Gabriel will have that on the tour?” he asked, only half joking- there was a heavy hint of bitterness in his tone, because for just a moment, he imagined Gabriel actually thinking it would be a good idea.

 

He wouldn’t put it past him.

Chapter Text

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.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter Text

Sam and Meg were gathering a few extra boxes of ammunition when the lights in the shed suddenly turned off, like someone just flipped the light switch. The only light left was the dim early morning sunlight streaming in through the open door, enough light to work by, but just barely.

“Must be trying the shutdown,” Meg said, watching the bare light bulb over their heads- but it didn’t come back on. The seconds ticked away, and she scoffed and grabbed another box of bullets.

“Maybe she just has to reboot some things from the computer,” Sam said, though he somehow knew that wouldn’t be their luck; that they would be stuck on island with roaming dinosaurs and no power. It seemed to fit with how the rest of their day had been.

He was just following Meg back onto the path when his radio crackled to life, and he stopped to reach down and grab it off his belt just as Gabriel’s voice came through. “Sam, you there?” the voice said, though it almost didn’t sound like Gabriel. There was none of that innate humor that his voice usually seemed to hold.

“Yeah, I’m here. What happened?” he replied, meeting Meg’s gaze; she was watching him expectantly, waiting for the news, her hair hanging heavy and damp in the humid air.

“The shutdown worked. Kinda.”

“…What do you mean, ‘kinda’? The lights are still out over here.”

“Well, that’s what I mean by ‘kinda’,” Gabriel said with a nervous laugh. “We’re back on factory settings, but the shutdown tripped the breakers. Everything will have to be switched on manually from the maintenance shed.”

Meg cursed and shook her head. “Like a fuckin’ Saw movie in this place,” she muttered, and Sam couldn’t help but feel like she was right. Every time they seemed to take a step forward, there was another hurdle to overcome. A hurdle that probably involved teeth and claws.

“Where’s the maintenance shed? I’ll take a Jeep and go do it,” he said, his heart beating faster at the thought of being out here even longer than he already had been. Their chances of survival got less and less the longer they stayed out here in the dinosaur’s territory. In the buildings they had the advantage, with heavy doors and stairs that the dinosaurs wouldn’t know how to contend with quickly.

Out here, they were in the dinosaurs’ element.

“Don’t go alone. Take Meg and Bobby,” Gabriel said in a rush, and Sam heard Charlie in the background; he couldn’t make out what she was saying, but she sounded pissed, whatever it was. Gabriel appeased her with a muffled ‘alright, alright’ before his voice became clear again. “Yeah, all three of you go, and have the weapons handy. The, uh…the raptor fences got knocked offline from the shutdown.”

Sam’s heart dropped to somewhere in his feet, and his grip loosened on the radio, almost dropping it completely. He remembered the first day they’d been here, watching the cow get torn apart by massive claws and curved teeth, the deadly focus the raptors had when blood spilled on the ground. It was something you didn’t forget. And judging by how Meg just went pale, she was well aware of the new stakes now, too.

“Sam? Sam, you there?” Gabriel was saying when Sam finally managed to swallow past the painful lump in his throat, and he shook his head as if to snap himself out of it. The raptors could already be out; they didn’t have time to stand around and worry. They needed to move.

“Yeah, I’m here. We’re going. I’ll radio you when we get there,” he said, already moving, Meg not far behind as he headed down the path toward Bobby. Bobby was still manning the halfway point, gun at the ready, and his frown deepened when he saw Meg and Sam approach.

“Well, don’t you two just look like Christmas morning,” he said dryly, and Sam wished he could have laughed.

“The raptor fences are down. Everything’s down,” he explained breathlessly, nodding toward the Jeeps. “We need to go. The shutdown tripped the breakers; we have to get to the maintenance shed and start up everything manually.”

The words that came out of Bobby’s mouth wouldn’t even be appropriate for a trench full of hardened Marines. His demeanor changed completely as his eyes swept through the trees, and Sam hoped to God that this man was just as good of a hunter as he seemed to be.

“Let’s go. Load those up and get in, I’ll cover you,” he said, and Sam didn’t hesitate to jog past him, going to the open back of the first Jeep. He slid the boxes of ammunition in and shut the door, ignoring the trembling of his hands as he tried to move quickly- but his mind kept going back to just how quickly raptors appeared out of the foliage once their prey was in sight. And that wasn’t even prey that they had to be sneaking around for- it was trapped.

Later he may have written it all off as extreme paranoia, but unfortunately, his concerns were validated the moment he started walking toward the other truck to help Meg get her supplies put away.

“On your six!” Bobby suddenly shouted, and the gunshot and the angry screech that followed were loud enough to leave Sam’s ears ringing; it took him a few moments to comprehend the words, to realize what was happening, and by then Meg was stepping past him with a rifle at her hip. He turned and took a step back when he saw the raptor, the animal having stumbled into the side of the Jeep. It was struggling to right itself, blood streaking down scaled skin from a wound to its side.

It was hard to really realize how big the raptors were until you were on equal footing with them. Sam wasn’t a small man by any means, but the raptor easily towered over his six foot frame; it was at least eight feet tall. Meg fired off another shot that struck the raptor’s chest, and the animal stumbled again, its eyes focusing in on the petite woman with ruthless intent.

“Meg!” Sam yelled, grabbing her by the back of her shirt and yanking her back just as the injured raptor lurched forward. It sent them both staggering to the ground, but it had the intended effect- the raptor’s jaws caught the end of her rifle instead of her, and the gun was torn from her grasp. Another gunshot went off from Bobby’s direction, and the raptor fell against the Jeep again, this time wailing weakly but not able to get back to its feet.

Sam helped Meg up, and she dusted herself off as they turned toward Bobby- but both of them froze when they saw the crouching raptor behind the hunter. Meg was the first to move, yelling out a warning even as she rushed forward to knock Bobby out of its path- and the raptor’s jaws closed on her midsection, tearing a gurgling scream from her throat.

Sam could have sworn his heart just stopped entirely. It felt like lead in his chest, solid and heavy.

He fumbled for his rifle as Bobby recovered and started firing, but by the time Sam started shooting, the creature had Meg pinned down with one massive clawed foot. Despite the animal’s thick hide, even it couldn’t stand up against bullets for that long- Sam’s and Bobby’s rifles were emptied of bullets by the time the raptor limped away from her, and then fell.

Bobby didn’t waste any time before running back to the Jeep to grab more weapons, and Sam rushed to Meg’s side, kneeling in the blood soaked dirt next to her.

It didn’t take more than a glance and the unbearable, sour stench of blood in the air to know that anything they did would be useless- he hadn’t even known blood had a smell, not till now when it was so thick in the air, nearly choking him. Meg was clutching at her stomach, but it was split open straight across with almost surgical precision- just like they’d spilled the guts of the cow, he tried not to think- and her hands were covered in shiny red blood as she desperately tried to hold the slick loops of intestine inside her body. But there was nothing left to hold them, the skin torn away, and he nearly gagged as he looked up to her face instead.

“Don’t think…the c-company health plan covers this,” she choked out, her teeth and lips stained red, her eyes struggling to focus as she managed to smile up at Sam. He pressed his hand to her forehead, his throat tight and his eyes burning as he tried to pull himself together. She was dying, and he couldn’t do anything.

“Hey, don’t worry, we’ll…we’ll get you back to the center, and…” he started, the words trailing off as she gave a half laugh that almost had a wet sound to it.

“Don’t bullshit me,” she muttered as Bobby came to her side. His expression was little more than a deeper frown than usual; he’d seen this before, Sam knew. The raptor made a low whine where it lay yards away as it kicked feebly, and Meg dropped her head to the side to look at it.

“Bobby…give me a gun,” she said, her voice weak and breaking, and Bobby didn’t question her. He tugged a handgun from his belt, and she held out her hand for it, her skin still soaked in blood nearly to the elbows. He calmly used his sleeve to wipe some of the blood off her palm, and then he curled her hand around the gun silently, making sure she could actually grip it before he let go entirely.

She let her arm fall to the side, her elbow touching the ground as she aimed the gun right at the raptor’s head. Her hand was shaking so badly, though, that she couldn’t keep aim, and Sam reached over and wrapped one of his hands around hers on the gun, holding her steady.

He wouldn’t begrudge her a final act of revenge, if that was what she wanted.

The gun went off, and the raptor’s head jerked to the side; it twitched a few times, and then went still. The only sound now was Meg’s ragged breathing, each breath wet and loud as she let go of the gun and looked back up at Sam with a quickly fading smirk.

“G-Give ‘em hell for me, boys,” she said, every word a struggle as Sam stroked her hair gently, not bothering to hold back the tears now. One more breath, two, then the jungle was silent around them again, save for the steady drone of insects; her eyes went unfocused and distant, losing that spark of defiance that she’d always had every moment he’d known her.

“We gotta go, boy. There’ll be more of those things,” Bobby said after only a few moments of silence, and Sam looked up to find the man holding out a loaded rifle to him. He looked down at Meg’s still form one last time before he stood and took the gun almost numbly from Bobby’s hand. The sudden flood of anger that hit him was almost enough to make him physically flinch- anger at these damn animals, and anger at Gabriel. Gabriel, who’d invited them into a bloodbath. Who had acted like nothing could go wrong on his watch.

Sam was fumbling for the radio on his belt before he even thought about it, and Bobby grabbed his blood-stained hand and took the radio from him, giving Sam a pointed look, as if he knew exactly what he was thinking- and telling Sam without words that now was not the time.

“Gabe,” Bobby said into the radio, and it was a few long moments before the radio crackled to life in return.

“Bobby? You at the maintenance shed?”

“Ain’t left yet,” Bobby said as he started walking back toward the front Jeep and motioning for Sam to get in the passenger side. Sam paused for a moment, having been ready to follow in the other Jeep, but then he realized that Bobby probably wanted them to stick as close together as possible till they got back to safety.

Sam didn’t know if an eight foot tall raptor could stop a Jeep, but he didn’t want to find out alone, either.

He got in just as Bobby was turning the Jeep on and filling Gabriel in. “We got ambushed, two raptors. Meg’s dead,” the man explained, and the pause on the other end of the radio was so long that he was halfway through raising it to speak again when an answer finally came through.

“She’s dead? You…are you sure?”

Bobby rolled his eyes, pushing the gas pedal so hard that the tires spun in the dirt as the Jeep lurched to life. “One of your god damn science experiments spilled her guts on the ground, I’m pretty fuckin’ sure, Gabe,” he snapped, and then he shoved the radio back at Sam, who took it and stared at it for a few long moments. The vicious anger in him was ebbing away, leaving him drained and exhausted, his sight lingering on the quickly stiffening, drying blood on his hands.

The radio remained silent, and Sam wasn’t surprised in the least. Maybe what Bobby said had been out of line, because even if the raptors were here because of Gabriel, Meg had still been Gabriel’s friend; but right now, Sam couldn’t bring himself to care about the possibility of hurting Gabriel’s feelings.

Not when he was imagining watching Dean bleed out like that instead of Meg, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

“Ruby had cameras set up on every inch of this island,” Bobby said, finally breaking the heavy silence in the vehicle. “Once we get the power turned back on, we can use the cameras to find your brother and the others. Dependin’ on where they are, we might be able to grab some guns and go pick them up.”

Sam swallowed hard, wondering if instead they would find what was left of them; he pushed that thought down, boxed it in tight, and locked it away. “Thanks, Bobby,” he murmured, gaze locked on the trees by the road, waiting to see any signs of the other raptors.

Bobby scoffed. “Don’t thank me. Charlie woulda offered it even if I hadn’t.”

It wasn’t far to the maintenance shed, and thankfully, there was a shorter path through the trees to this one than there had been at the armory shed. Both of them had their guns held ready when they got out, but the jungle was still and quiet around them, the sun finally beginning to break through the trees and give them the slight advantage of light. Aside from the snapped branches and the puddles, it was as if the storm had never happened.

“Let’s go,” Bobby said, moving at a brisk walk to the shed door and luckily finding it unlocked. Sam followed him inside the dark room and pulled the door tightly shut behind them, and Bobby fished two small flashlights out of the large pockets on his khaki pants. He tossed one to Sam, and with both switched on, Sam found that this wasn’t really a room- more of a platform that led down the stairs into pitch black.

They were silent as they moved down the stairs to a metal catwalk, suspended a few feet over pipes and wiring that ran both below and above the path.

They both jumped when the radio hissed to life again, but this time, it was Charlie’s voice on the other end. “Hey, guys…?”

Sam lifted the radio, nearly sighing with relief; Gabriel was the last person he wanted to speak to right now. “We’re here, Charlie.”

“There’s something in the hallway up here. We’re staying out of sight of the windows,” she said, and Sam remembered the large windows taking up a good chunk of the wall between the control room and the hallways. And what was out there was probably a raptor- and even safety glass wouldn’t hold up long to that much muscle and claw.

“Is there another exit? You can’t stay there,” he said, sharing a glance with Bobby. “That glass won’t hold up, Charlie.”

“Yeah, there’s…there’s a back door. We’ll try to get to it without being seen,” Charlie said, her voice impressively steady for someone who was talking about trying to sneak away from a dinosaur. “I’ll call you when we get somewhere safer.”

Sam took a deep breath. “Right. Be careful. I won’t radio you until I know you’re safe, okay?” he said, not wanting to start talking in the radio at a time that would draw a raptor right to Gabriel and Charlie. Charlie answered in the affirmative, and the radio went silent again.

“Back door should end up taking them out near the kitchen,” Bobby said, opening a chain link door to a small room at the end of the path. “Alright, keep watch. This’ll only take a second.”

Sam frowned, but turned back to watch the way they’d come, anyway. “I shut the door on the way in. They can’t follow. Not unless they’ve figured out how to open doors,” he pointed out with a nervous laugh, but Bobby didn’t answer, instead opting to get to work opening the panels that lined the wall.

Somehow, his silence to that wasn’t very reassuring.

He watched the empty catwalk, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Bobby flipping switches and pumping levers multiple times, probably working up a charge; he was glad that someone here knew what they were doing, because he would have been at a loss, staring at all those controls.

“Alright…here goes nothin’,” Bobby said, moving to a large bank of controls that had a lever on one end, a button on the other, and a label in between each. There had to be thirty rows of them going all the way down, and the first few listed were ‘Visitors Center’, ‘Dock’, and ‘Tyrannosaur Paddock’, all the way down to the last one, ‘Perimeter Fence’. Evidently this would turn each system on, one by one.

And sure enough, when he flipped the switch and pressed the button a few rows from the top, the lights finally flickered and began to come back on, lighting up the stark grey surfaces around them. They finally had power again, and that meant that once he got back, they had to get to the control room and get those damn cameras running.

“Back in business,” Bobby said, pressing the last button. The whole control panel was lit up like a Christmas tree now, red, green, and yellow lights all activated, some blinking. Sam had no idea what most of it meant, other than that all the location buttons were now lit up green; it was good enough for him. He led the way back onto the catwalk, but after only a few feet Bobby grabbed his shoulder, pulling him to a stop and shushing him.

“Listen,” he said softly, and Sam held his breath, at first only hearing the hum of the machinery around them. Then he heard it- a rhythmic tapping noise, an irregular clicking that didn’t sound anything like the pipes or consoles.

The radio hissed over it, and Charlie’s voice came through. “Sam, we’ve barricaded ourselves in the freezer, but I don’t know how long the door can hold. They can open the doors, Sam,” her panicked voice said, and the realization set in just about the time a dark shape came crashing down from the piping hanging from the ceiling.

Sam went down hard and his teeth slammed together painfully as his head hit the metal floor. A pain shot through his arm as he shoved at the thing on top of him, then Bobby was there, slamming the butt of his rifle down on the raptor’s head over and over till it screeched and stumbled back. Sam crawled toward Bobby and used the railing to struggle to his feet, dizzy and feeling nauseous, and trying not to think about the feeling of something slick and warm dripping down his right arm.

He was still clinging to the railing to stay on his feet when Bobby fired a shot, and the sound reverberated painfully through the space. The raptor, a slightly smaller one than the others, hissed and leaped, and Bobby stepped to the side just in time to leave the raptor landing hard right at the chain link door to the control room. Bobby gave the fallen raptor a kick and a shove with his boot, and then slammed the chain link door shut behind it, sliding his rifle in the handles to try and slow the raptor down. It hissed and clawed at the chain link, which was already starting to pull loose, but by then Bobby was grabbing Sam’s good arm and dragging him toward the exit at a run.

Sam ignored the fierce ache in the back of his head and the sharp pain in his arm, focusing on getting to the exit as quickly as his feet would carry him, ready every step to feel something hit him from behind and dig its claws into his spine. It didn’t happen, though, and they burst out into the sunlight, Bobby slamming the door shut behind them. It wouldn’t keep the raptor in once it was free of that room, but every little bit helped in slowing them down.

But they may have been safer inside. There was one raptor on the hood of the Jeep, its head now swiveled to focus its eyes on them, and another stood near the Jeep, flexing its claws as if preparing to leap. Bobby wrenched Sam’s gun away from him and fired two shots, hitting one and missing the other as he ran to the back of the Jeep and wrenched it open.

“You go on ahead, take the Jeep. We can’t lead more raptors back to the only safe space we got. One’s enough in there. I’ll stay here and keep ‘em from followin’ the Jeep, I can pick ‘em off,” he said, tossing Sam a gun and firing off another round at the raptor that had been edging closer. The other jumped off the hood with a growl, landing hard in the dirt.

“What? No, I’m not leaving-“

“Did that sound like a request, boy?” Bobby snapped, throwing the key to the Jeep at Sam, and Sam fumbled to catch it. “Go. I’ll take care of these three and meet you guys back at the center.”

Three? Sam thought, but then he caught sight of it, a third raptor that had just edged out of the trees. And there might be more among the trees, too. If they both got in and drove to the center, there was no telling how many raptors they would be dragging in tow.

Bobby was offering to be the bait to keep them here and probably die in the process; they both knew there would be no ‘catching up at the center’. He’d strapped at least five guns to himself, but that would be nowhere near enough to fend off nine foot tall dinosaurs all the way back to the center on foot.

“Go, damnit!” Bobby yelled, shoving Sam toward the driver’s side door and firing off a shot at the raptor at the front of the Jeep. It reeled at the hit and then ran for Bobby, taking three more bullets before it fell in the dirt- and even then, it was struggling to get up, hissing and snapping.

Sam yanked the door open, got in, and pushed the pedal to the floor. He silently cursed Gabriel again, this time for not having vehicles that were strong enough to ram the raptors- even the one on the hood had left deep dents in the metal with its weight alone.

His last glance in the rearview mirror was of Bobby firing on one advancing raptor, then turning to shoot at the other that was trying to circle around behind him. Their attention was definitely on the lone human, and not the retreating Jeep, which is exactly what Bobby had predicted. Sam clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the wheel, telling himself that there was a chance that Bobby might actually make it back. He was a hunter, he was smart. He could do this.

It didn’t feel any better to lie to himself.

Charlie’s voice crackled from the radio again. “Sam, the door isn’t going to hold much longer!” she said, and he pulled the radio off his belt, moving with new determination despite the pain.

“Hang in there, Charlie, I’m almost back. Just hold it off a few more minutes,” he said, pushing the Jeep as fast as it would go.

Even if he couldn’t save Meg and Bobby, he would damn well make sure everyone else got off this island safely, one way or another.

 

*~~~~~~*

 

To say it was slow going would have definitely been an understatement. Dean and Jo were careful to move at a pace that Castiel could keep up with, and even then Dean was falling back to help him over the rougher terrain they encountered, despite Castiel’s assurances that he could make it just fine on his own. To add to that, they didn’t have a lot of light yet to see by, though the sky was growing lighter by the minute.

He could see Jo staring into the trees with apprehension clear on her face; he didn’t blame her, not after he told her exactly what kind of footprint she had found. The average person may have accused him of overreacting, being more worried about some other random dinosaur when there was still a T-Rex out and about- but Dean knew the T-Rex wasn’t a problem anymore. The T-Rex knew what called this patch of jungle home, and the unofficial lines had been drawn. She wouldn’t cross those lines unless she wanted to declare war.

T-Rexes weren’t as vicious a predator as some people assumed them to be. The rex would defend her territory, and would certainly take advantage of helpless animals- or lawyers- that happened to stumble too close, but for the most part, they liked to scavenge. It was self preservation at its finest; the T-Rex had sharp senses and massive jaws, but they usually put both to use by finding the carcasses of other dinosaurs. They didn’t like to resort to combat for food, and they certainly wouldn’t pursue a few small prey animals into the territory of a vicious predator.

Because Spinosaurus was the very picture of what people believed a T-Rex to be.

It was an effective, vicious hunter on land and in the water, and though its diet was mostly comprised of fish- and a lot of it- it would also take advantage of land animals that were available to snack on. Dean couldn’t imagine that there would be nearly enough fish in the river that split the island to sustain an eight-ton dinosaur, so not only would the Spinosaurus be ready to defend its territory, but it would be hungry. And unlike the T-Rex, he didn’t doubt for a second that the Spinosaurus would cross boundaries without hesitation to chase down a meal. It didn’t mind a battle for food.

He was pretty sure they would be safer in the T-Rex’s territory, but it was too late to find their way back. The fastest way out of this predicament was south along the river, to the safety of the docks. Even at their slow pace, it could only be another hour or so of walking to get there.

He’d run out of stories to entertain Castiel with, and he was too out of breath to continue telling them, anyway. The air was so thick it was like breathing in soup, it was oppressively hot, and he definitely wasn’t used to taking long hikes through jungle terrain.

He couldn’t imagine how Castiel was feeling, counting all of that and then factoring in the festering wound on his leg.

He took another long look over at the writer, who was limping heavily but still stubbornly moving forward. He was pale, and every step was coupled with a sharp intake of breath from the pain, but he hadn’t complained once. Dean was pretty sure if it were him trudging through this mess with a torn open leg, they would have gagged him to shut up his whining.

“Dean, look,” Jo said, stopping a short distance ahead. She’d still been trying to pick out the easiest path through the jungle to make things easier on Castiel. Dean glanced at Castiel to make sure he was steady on his feet, and then he jogged up to Jo, following her gesture through the trees.

They had come to a tree line, and past the end was a massive open field, the grass about ankle high. There were two Brachiosaurs near the far end, but in the middle there were at least eleven or twelve Stegosaurus- and, from what he could see, two very young looking Stegosaurus grazing near the adults. To their west, the river still coursed south toward the ocean and the safety of the docks.

“Think they’ll attack if we cross too close? I don’t see any way of crossing the river here to keep a good distance,” Jo said softly, and Dean took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Jo was right; following the river would take them within a hundred yards or so of the Stegosaurus. He had no idea what kind of reaction they would have to a few humans walking past them; maybe if there were just adults it would be less of a worry, but if the adults were protective of those babies, there was a good chance they might go on the offensive if they thought the babies might be at risk.

Dean did not want to meet the business end of those spikes, but at the same time, going around the herd would take a lot more time- and be a lot harder on Castiel. They would have to take the risk.

“We’ll just stick close to the river and make sure they notice us. If they don’t think we’re trying to sneak around, they’re less likely to think we’re predators and go into overprotective mother mode,” he said, which sounded a little like bullshit even to his own ears, but Jo accepted it with a simple nod.

When Dean turned back to help Castiel again, though, the whole plan changed.

Castiel was only a few feet behind them, leaning against a tree with his eyes shut- and just past him stood a massive dinosaur. It was mostly in silhouette in the dim light, but the six foot sail down its back made it easy to see how screwed they were. It hadn’t attacked yet, but that wouldn’t last- curiosity at the humans wandering in its territory would quickly turn into curiosity of ‘I wonder how these things taste’. Dean did not have any plans of being a free sample.

“Cas, run!” he yelled, seeing no sense in subtlety as he grabbed Castiel’s arm and pulled. Castiel’s eyes flew open and it only took one glance at those massive, slender jaws before he was stumbling along, and they broke out from the trees just as the Spinosaurus snorted and growled, rushing after them.

They couldn’t outrun it, and with Castiel injured, they were definitely sitting ducks. They needed to put something between the dinosaur and them, and the river wouldn’t work.

He had another idea, though. Probably one of the stupidest he’d ever come up with, but it was all they had.

“Jo! Run into the Stegos! Run into the herd!” he yelled, one hand still secured tight around Castiel’s arm in case he fell. Jo, being so trusting of him, didn’t question the order- at least not out loud- and led the way right toward the peacefully grazing Stegosaurus.

Dean glanced over his shoulder just in time to duck as the Spinosaurus lunged for them, and its teeth snapped together where his head had been seconds before. Castiel stumbled and his leg nearly gave out, but amazingly he kept going, kept running as Dean pulled him along even faster. They were almost there, almost.

And now the Stegosaurus had noticed the chase that was almost right on top of them. The effect was immediate; the adults bellowed and the babies were herded toward the center of the pack, the adults beginning to converge toward them to form a defensive circle. Jo raced past one Stegosaurus and veered to stay clear of another, and Dean saw the one he and Castiel were about to pass shift its massive weight.

“Down!” he yelled hoarsely, yanking Castiel to the ground with him, and they hit the grass just as the Stegosaurus’s tail sliced through the air over their heads, the spikes aimed right for the Spinosaurus that was coming up right behind them. The Spinosaurus dodged backwards and snarled at the Stegosaurus, but the herbivore was unimpressed and ready to take another swing.

Dean pulled Castiel up, but the writer’s leg gave out almost immediately, and Dean winced at the agonized sound that came from Castiel as he nearly fell back to the ground; Dean grabbing onto him tightly was the only thing that kept him from hitting the ground again. They couldn’t stop here, not now, because as soon as the Spinosaurus backed off, all the attention would be on them- and they were mere feet away from the very toddlers these massive dinosaurs were currently protecting.

“I’ve got you, Cas,” he said, and this time Castiel didn’t protest when Dean slid one hand under his knees and one under his shoulders and lifted him with a grunt. Castiel wound his arms around Dean’s neck to try and relieve some of the weight on his arms, and Dean was already moving, dodging a swinging tail and taking a chance. He went for a small break between two of the adults, flinching at the bellow one of the Stegosaurus on the other side of the circle let loose at the Spinosaurus.

Jo had paused not far from the circle to make sure they made it through, and now she started running again, Dean pushing his burning muscles past the limit as they raced for the trees. He felt like his heart was going to give out, just break down from the stress and strain, but he ignored the feeling. They couldn’t stop; it just wasn’t an option, not until they found somewhere safer.

It was a partial relief when they finally made it into the trees on the other side; they weren’t safe yet, but at least now they had some cover. He glanced back and saw the Spinosaurus still doing its dance with the Stegosaurus, both angry but not willing to actually land a blow- the Stegosaurus out of self preservation, and the Spinosaurus merely because it was heavily outnumbered. Dean turned back and kept walking at a fast pace, forcing one foot in front of the other until he finally heard Jo call his name softly.

She pointed out a huge tree whose roots formed a sort of half-hideaway beneath the trunk, and he gratefully stepped inside. Castiel was shaking as Dean set him down, but he was still conscious; Dean wasn’t sure how long that would last, though. Castiel looked like…well, he looked like death, but that was a comparison Dean didn’t want to make. Not right now.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his throat raw and burning from being so out of breath and yelling on top of that. Castiel managed a half shrug, leaning back against the wood and letting his eyes fall closed again.

“Been better, I think,” he said, his voice quiet as Dean sat down by his leg. He carefully pulled back the makeshift bandage, now completely unrecognizable for the flannel it had been, since it was so soaked in blood now.

Dean cursed softly. The wound was so hot that he could feel the warmth of it just by holding his hand over it. The skin around it was bright red and inflamed, and there was yellowish stuff mixed in with the blood that was most definitely pus. Jo only looked over his shoulder for a moment before looking away, her throat working in what was obviously a bit of nausea, though to her credit she hid it well. It wouldn’t exactly be encouraging if they started losing it in front of Cas.

“I should go and get the supplies from the dock,” Jo suddenly said as Dean replaced the flannel. Castiel’s leg had started bleeding again from all the running around, and Castiel really couldn’t afford to lose any more blood. That finished, Dean gave Jo an incredulous look.

“Absolutely not. We’re staying together. Running around alone out there is suicide,” he said, and Jo laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh that had any humor in it.

“We’re killing him by dragging him around, Dean!”

Castiel snorted, but didn’t bother opening his eyes. “Right here, thanks.”

“I can go on ahead. It’s not far to the docks, maybe an hour. I’ll find a first aid kit and bring it back,” Jo continued, ignoring Castiel’s words.

“You wouldn’t make it back at all, Jo! The Spinosaurus isn’t the only thing out there. As far as we know, all the fences went down. You really think you’ll be better off by yourself than in a group if a raptor shows up?” Dean asked, standing up and turning to face her.

“I honestly don’t think it would make that much of a difference. We’re no match for them whether there’s one of us or three,” Jo pointed out, and Dean sighed and shook his head.

“Even if you did manage to get there and back with supplies, that’s still two hours. Either way it’s going to be tough on him. One hour of walking or two hours of sitting around and hoping that you’re not getting eaten? I’m not seeing a huge benefit to you leaving,” Dean said, and Castiel cleared his throat loudly. His eyes were open now, and he looked quite irritated with both of them.

“If you two keep talking about me like I’m not here, I will personally deliver you to the biggest carnivore I can find,” he said, though the mock threat came out the opposite of intimidating; his voice was wavering and weak. “Do I get a say in this, or are you going to keep debating for me?”

Dean felt his cheeks heat up, and he looked down at the ground in embarrassment. They were being assholes, both of them. Jo was looking a little sheepish too as she bit her lip.

“Sorry. Just…” she started, but she cut herself off and shook her head. “You’re right. It’s up to you, Castiel. I mean, whatever we do, it’ll affect you more than either of us,” she said softly, and Dean nodded in agreement.

“Yeah. Your pick, Cas.”

“My opinion is that we keep moving. I can still walk. I’m not just going to sit around and wait for someone else to come up with a miracle,” Castiel said without a moment of hesitation. “Just…give me a few minutes here, and we can start moving again. I’ll manage.”

Jo frowned. “Are you-“

“Don’t even ask me if I’m sure. You know the answer to that,” Castiel cut her off, leaning back and closing his eyes again. “Now stop fighting and give me at least thirty seconds of peace before we have to do more running and screaming, if you don’t mind.”

Dean couldn’t help but smile. By all rights, Castiel should be the one angry, the one freaking out and making demands- but here he was, fighting infection and pain, and still able to be the voice of reason in a ridiculous situation. He made his way over to Castiel and sat down next to him, and Castiel shifted slightly to lean his head against Dean’s shoulder. Jo sat down a few feet away, watching out the gap between the roots where they’d come in here.

“Been thinking about my next book,” Castiel murmured after a few moments of silence, and Dean raised an eyebrow, taking Castiel’s hand in his own and intertwining their fingers, squeezing gently.

“Yeah?”

Castiel nodded. “It’ll be about a handsome paleontologist who gets trapped on an island full of rampaging dinosaurs.”

Dean laughed. “Handsome, huh?”

“I know, it’s unrealistic,” Castiel said, smirking a little. “I mean, everyone knows that paleontologists are all old guys with bad hair always covered in dirt. My credibility will take a hit.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I’m always right.”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, you two are disgusting.”

Dean smirked. “Maybe you can give the old, dusty paleontologist an annoying assistant,” he said, and Jo gave him a look. Castiel chuckled, but only for a moment before he winced. Dean squeezed his hand, and Castiel relaxed against his shoulder once more before speaking.

“An annoying assistant and a brother the size of a moose.”

For the first time in a while, Dean thought of Sam; he’d probably made it back to the Visitors Center before all of the trouble had gone down, and that was at least a comforting thought, knowing that his brother was likely behind closed doors and safe.

With Castiel fading away right in front of him, he didn’t know how much more he could handle.

He rubbed his thumb gently along the smooth skin of Castiel’s hand, listening as his breathing evened out. He was going to save them both, Castiel and Jo. He didn’t care what it took.

 

Chapter Text

They didn’t get to rest for long; Dean wouldn’t let them. Time wasn’t on their side right now, between the dinosaurs on the loose and Castiel’s condition worsening by the second. After a few minutes of catching their breath, Dean was shaking Castiel’s shoulder gently to wake him up.

 

It took twice as long for him to wake up completely as the last time, even after only a few minutes. That only reminded Dean of the dire stakes of the situation, and he stood up reluctantly before offering Castiel his hands.

 

“We’ll need to move quickly, but don’t make too much noise,” he said to both of them as he helped Castiel to his feet. Castiel swayed at first, and Dean paused and gave him a questioning look, worried that walking would already be out of the question. Castiel seemed to steady up a bit, though, and he finally focused in on Dean and nodded.

 

“Okay. Yeah, I’m ready,” he said, and though Dean knew that was likely a fib, he let it go for the moment. He would be staying by Castiel with every step as it was; if he fell, Dean would catch him.

 

He gave a nod to Jo, and she peeked out of their hiding place and took a long look around, moving forward when she was seemingly satisfied that there was nothing nearby. Dean followed, one hand at the small of Castiel’s back as Castiel limped out. The limp was notably worse than before, every step looking like it was the last one he could manage, and Dean stayed close as they began to trudge through the jungle once again.

 

Every snap of a twig or shift of leaves had them on high alert; any moment Dean expected a narrow snout to shove through the trees, teeth to snap down on one of them. He tried to watch their surroundings and keep an eye on Castiel at the same time, never more than a couple of feet away, ready to step in at any moment should he start to fall. Hours earlier Castiel would have complained about Dean’s fussing, but he was obviously out of strength to argue about it.

 

Dean didn’t know how much longer Castiel could keep putting one foot in front of the other before his body finally gave out on him.

 

It wasn’t very bright yet, the sun still trying to creep over the horizon, but he still caught sight of something stark white off to their left. “Jo,” he said, and she turned around fast, obviously expecting a dinosaur of some kind. She let out a held breath in relief, working her way back to them as Dean helped Castiel sit down on a fallen log.

 

What he’d seen was barely three feet away, but well hidden in a dip in the terrain and surrounded by bushes. Dean knelt and pushed the leaves aside, and he heard Jo’s breath catch as she caught sight of the dozen or so bright white eggs sitting neatly in a muddy nest. They were huge, probably about the same size as an ostrich egg, but more oblong. They definitely weren’t the eggs of any native species around here.

 

“That’s impossible,” she breathed out, and Dean frowned, trying to remember their tour of the science labs, what Kevin had said about their cloning process.

 

“He said they were all female…how could they make that big of a mistake?” Jo asked, and Dean shook his head slowly.

 

“They didn’t. The dinosaurs are breeding.”

 

Jo gave him a deadpan look. “…look, I know you men are into the whole lesbian porn thing, but I was pretty sure you understood that penis plus vag equals baby,” she pointed out, and Dean laughed and shook his head.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Look, what kind of DNA did he say they used to fill gaps in the dinosaur DNA?”

 

“Frog, uh…amphibian, and maybe crocodile, I think?”

 

Dean nodded, already beginning to suspect what was going on- but it was so farfetched, such a strange idea, he wasn’t even sure he could convince himself to believe it. “Frog DNA. There are…some frogs that can change sex spontaneously in a same sex environment. If the influence from that DNA was strong enough…”

 

“You’re saying the dinosaurs had a spontaneous sex change?” Castiel asked from behind them, his voice rough, and Dean chuckled.

 

“Well, it doesn’t sound very believable when you put it like that, but…yeah. Given the right conditions, it’s possible. I mean, how else do you explain this? It’s not like they wouldn’t have noticed if one of the dinosaurs was male,” Dean pointed out, and then Jo stood up and looked around at the trees.

 

“You know, probably not a good idea to sit and chat over a nest of eggs that probably has a mother hanging around,” she said, and the excitement of the discovery drained out of Dean in an instant, remembering the Stegosaurus swinging their spiked tails at the Spinosaurus, vicious in protecting their young. She was right, and they needed to put distance between themselves and the nest before the mother returned.

 

“Yeah, let’s go,” he said, moving to help Castiel stand up again as Jo took the lead. At least it was getting easier and easier to see as the sun rose; they weren’t stumbling around blind anymore.

 

It didn’t feel like they’d walked much farther before they came upon something other than trees- the perimeter fences was in front of them, stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions, the sunrise finally beginning to shine off the metal cables. The lights at the top of the fence were still off, much like they’d been at the T-Rex paddock, and Dean hoisted himself up onto the platform.

 

“Here goes nothing,” he said, praying he was right, and Jo’s protests died in her throat as he reached out and touched the wire. Nothing happened; the power was still off to the fences. Strangely enough, that was a good thing for them right now, because there was no break in any part of the fence that he could see, and he definitely didn’t want to drag Castiel up and down this fence line just hoping to find a lucky break.

 

“Cas…you think you can make it up and over this if we help you? We’re almost there,” he asked, though his stomach twisted at having to ask more of Castiel after everything he’d already been through. Jo didn’t speak up this time; it seemed they’d both taken the scolding they got earlier to heart, and Dean was going to let him decide his limits for now. That didn’t mean he couldn’t help him, though.

 

Castiel looked up at the nearly 30 foot tall fence with some mixture of dread and resignation, but it was obvious that he understood the alternative was out of the question. “I can manage,” he said, and Dean reached down, Jo helping from below to get Castiel up onto the concrete platform.

 

Then, something roared from the trees- not very close, but close enough that they definitely knew they had to get over this fence, and quick.

 

Jo followed Castiel onto the platform, and they each started the climb up the fence, one on each side of Castiel to support him and keep most of the weight off his injured leg. The top was tricky, but they managed to get onto the other side, slowing down a little now that they were on the ‘safe’ side of the fence.

 

But the safe side of the fence didn’t feel so safe anymore when they were fifteen feet off the ground still, and the green light began flashing, setting off a loud buzzer. It was enough to nearly startle Castiel off the fence, but he managed to hook his arms on the cables as Dean and Jo helped him get steady.

 

“Shit. They’re turning the fences on,” Dean said, looking down at the ground below. There were thick ferns and bushes at the base of the concrete platform, and the platform was only about three feet wide; if they could manage to jump past the platform, the foliage would break their fall.

 

“Dean, please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Jo said, following Dean’s gaze to the bottom of the fence.

 

“We don’t have a choice, Jo, this fence is going live any second,” Dean said, looking at Castiel, who was breathing hard from the work of getting this far. “Castiel. Cas, buddy, I need to know you can do this. I know it sucks, but we’ve gotta jump. You’ve gotta aim for the bushes, okay?” he said, dread settling in his stomach like a lead weight as Castiel looked down at the bushes. There was real fear in his eyes, the kind Dean had only seen when there were dinosaurs on their tail.

 

“I’ll jump with you. We’ll go together, okay?” he said, and Castiel met his gaze, trembling all over- whether from the fear or the pain or both, Dean didn’t know. But Castiel nodded, and Dean gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile before looking past him to Jo.

 

“Ready, sis?” he asked, and she nodded too, though he knew that she liked this idea about as much as the idea of getting fried by a dinosaur fence.

 

“Okay. On the count of three, push off as hard as you can,” Dean said, knowing that this would not be a pretty landing, but they didn’t exactly have time to go over a safe stunt landing and how one would execute it into a bunch of plants.

 

Harrison Ford never had to leap off an electric fence into a bunch of ferns.

 

“One…two…three!”

 

Dean shoved away from the fence just as Jo and Castiel did the same, and mere seconds before the warning buzzer stopped and the air around the fence crackled with flowing electricity. They’d leapt just in time.

 

He closed his eyes when he felt for sure that they might hit the edge of the concrete platform- but the next thing he knew he was slamming into twisted branches and leaves, Castiel’s arm pulled from his in the fall and his breath shoved out of him forcibly. He was pretty certain there were twigs that had actually skewered him, and he gasped harshly for air, trying to right himself in the tangle of bushes.

 

He dropped onto the grass beside the bush, pain flaring through his hip and arm where he’d taken most of the impact. He pulled on a rather stubborn twig and quickly found out that it was stubborn because it was pierced through the flesh of his left arm, and he closed his eyes and tried not to think as he yanked it free.

 

And yeah, okay, he whimpered a little at that, because it fucking hurt, okay?

 

“Cas,” he choked out, still trying to force his lungs to let him breathe as he sat up and looked for his friends. Jo was standing up and stumbling free of the bushes, clutching her right arm to her chest with a pained expression, but he didn’t see Castiel, not at first. Not till he struggled to his feet and took the few steps back to the bushes.

 

Castiel didn’t look conscious. He was still laying tangled among the branches, his breath coming in shallow gasps, and Dean immediately worked to pull him free and lay him down on the grass. Nothing looked broken, just some new scratches and bruises, but the impact had hit him harder than it had Dean or Jo. He’d already been compromised before the jump.

 

Castiel was at the breaking point. The scale was tipping, and not in his favor.

 

“Let’s go,” Dean said, shoving the pain aside and lifting Castiel carefully into his arms. Jo nodded, still cradling her arm close, and Dean’s worried expression deepened. “You alright?”

 

“Yeah, it’s fine. It’s not broken,” Jo insisted. “Just landed on it wrong.”

 

Dean had to take her word for it. They could take an inventory of injuries later; right now, they needed to get to the docks, and the smell of salt was tantalizingly thick in the air proving that they were definitely close. He started up the hill, feeling Castiel trembling in his arms and throwing prayers to any god or angel who might be listening. Maybe the angel of Thursday would throw in a blessing for his namesake.

 

They were within sight of the dock buildings when Castiel finally came to. He was confused at first, disoriented, and it obviously took a minute before he even seemed to comprehend what was happening.

 

“Hey there,” Dean said with a weak smile, basking in even the small amount of relief that Castiel had woken up at all. “Perfect timing, we’re almost there. Can you stay awake for me?”

 

Castiel nodded, though Dean wasn’t sure if he even understood the question. And judging by the warmth of Castiel’s skin even through the clothing, a fever had begun to set in.

 

Jo led the way down the abandoned dock and into the first building, which looked like half of it was supplies storage, and the other half was a small kitchen. Dean laid Castiel out on one of the tables, wishing he had something to put down to cushion the hard metal for Castiel, but there was no time. He pressed his hand against Castiel’s forehead and winced- he was burning up with a fever.

 

Jo was already tearing through the cabinets, sending dishes and pans clattering to the floor as she searched. “Here!” she finally shouted, hauling a white box from one of the lower cabinets and handing it over to Dean.

 

“Great. Fill that pitcher with water, then see if you can find any cold compresses,” he said, nodding toward a pitcher sitting beside the sink, and Jo was on it without a moment of hesitation. Dean opened the box and began digging out anything that looked helpful; he wasn’t an expert or anything, but he’d had plenty of people get injured here and there on dig sites. He knew the basics, at least.

 

Bandages, antibiotic ointment, aspirin, bandages and tape were all put out on the table by the time Jo returned with the pitcher full of water. Dean carefully peeled the soaked flannel away from Castiel’s skin and tossed it aside, his throat going tight as he got his first real good look at the damage.

 

He was beginning to wonder if they weren’t better off trying a field amputation; but he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even begin to imagine it. He would do the best he could with what he had, and the first order of business needed to be getting all the dirt and pus cleaned out of the wound.

 

“Cas, I’m gonna get started cleaning this, okay? I won’t lie, this is probably gonna hurt like hell,” he said, and Castiel nodded, though at least he seemed…present. Like he was finally in tune with what was going on, for the moment. Taking advantage of that, Dean grabbed a cup and tore open a packet of aspirin, dumping the pills out and helping Castiel sit up a little. Sure, aspirin was a blood thinner, but they had the bleeding stopping for now, and the fever was just as pressing of a concern at the moment.

 

“Here. Swallow these for me. It’ll get that fever down,” he insisted, dropping the pills into Castiel’s hand. Castiel stared at them for a few moments before finally putting them in his mouth, and Dean tilted the cup of water to his lips, making sure he got down a long drink before he helped him lay back down.

 

He grabbed the gloves from the kit and snapped them on, not wanting to just put more dirt from his hands into the wound, and then he carefully tilted the water pitcher over Castiel’s leg until the water flowed steadily. Castiel let out an agonized wail and his fingers slipped against the slick surface as Dean moved the pitcher downward, flushing the dirt out as best he could. He was just happy Castiel hadn’t jerked his leg away from the pain.

 

“The cold compresses aren’t very cold. Power was out too long,” Jo said as she returned to his side, and Dean had figured as much, but it never hurt to check. Jo took one of Castiel’s hands in hers, and laid her other hand gently on his forehead, trying to give him some measure of comfort in the pain.

 

It took two more full pitchers of water to finally feel like he’d done the best he could getting anything foreign out of the mess of torn muscle and flesh, and by then Castiel was gasping harshly through his nose, his jaw clenched and his hands gripping the edge of the table and Jo’s hand with a white knuckled grip. Despite it being her injured arm he was grabbing at, she didn’t complain; she continued gently stroking his hair as Dean sorted through the supplies, hands shaking as he tried to decide what to do next.

 

The antibiotic ointment couldn’t hurt, even if it was too little too late, he imagined. It was tricky applying it to the wound, but he worked quickly, finally setting it aside when he finished and taking a glance at Castiel’s face. He wasn’t going to stay conscious much longer; his eyes had fallen closed again, and his grip on Jo’s hand had gone slack.

 

“Jo…I need you to go find a car,” Dean said, hating sending her away alone, even if he knew they were outside the main fence now. “Find one with a full tank and bring it up to the door here. We’re going to make a break for the Visitors Center. That’s where everyone will be, and that’s where the helipad is.”

 

Jo frowned. “Wouldn’t it be safer to wait here, outside the fence?”

 

“Maybe if we knew they know we’re out here. They probably think we’re dead,” Dean pointed out, remembering what had been left of Crowley back at the paddock. Would there have been enough left for them to identify every piece as the lawyer? Or did they think all four of them died on that road? “We can’t afford to sit still and hope someone brings the rescue to us. We need to go to them,” he continued, shaking his head. He couldn’t worry about that right now. He needed to concentrate on the things he knew he could change.

 

Jo sighed. “Alright. I’ll be right back. I’ll honk when I pull up, you can bring him straight out.”

 

Dean nodded and pulled Jo in for a half hug, kissing the top of her head. “Be careful, Jo,” he said, and though he expected her to tease him for it, she just smiled before she headed for the door.

 

Dean wrapped the wound carefully in two layers of clean, white gauze, taping it in place securely; but he couldn’t help but feel that the efforts just came too late. Castiel’s skin was uncomfortably hot to the touch, and he was completely out now, not even stirring when Dean shook him or said his name. Shivers still wracked through his body as Dean lifted him again, holding the man carefully against his chest for only a few seconds before a horn blew outside.

 

He carried Castiel to the door and pushed it open with his shoulder, and Jo stood by an open top Jeep outside- and in her hands she had a stack of rifles. “These were in a cabinet in the garage. I borrowed them,” she said, opening the door to the backseat and getting in to help Dean lay Castiel down on the seat. Jo cradled Castiel’s head in her lap, setting the rifles on the floor- but not before slinging one over her arm and handing one to Dean.

 

He took the rifle and ran to the driver’s side, getting in and swiveling in his seat to look at Jo. “Make sure he doesn’t get knocked around. I don’t know how good these roads will be,” he said, and she nodded with a forced smile.

 

“Just be ready to gun it. I am not getting snatched out of a car by a T-Rex because you inherited your grandma’s driving,” she teased, and Dean smiled and turned back to the front, putting the Jeep in gear and pulling away from the building with a screech of tires.

 

 

*~~~~~~*

 

 

Sam was trying not to imagine the worst as he skidded to a stop in front of the Visitors Center. He was trying not to imagine the raptor crouched over Gabriel and Charlie, their bodies torn open like Meg’s had been. He was trying not to summon those mental pictures, and failing miserably.

 

He went to the back of the Jeep and opened it up, and then proceeded to load up on as many weapons as he could possibly carry without feeling like every step would be setting off a gun. With the extras slung over his shoulders and one held at the ready, he climbed the stairs to the center, finding the front doors ajar.

 

He refused to be caught off guard this time. He edged into the lobby, the T-Rex skeleton enough to have his heart beating faster as it loomed over him like a ghost of what he’d seen the night before. He didn’t see any raptors, though, so he began to move toward the kitchen as quickly and quietly as possible.

 

When he looked carefully around the corner into the dining room, though, he saw that the situation was more dire than he’d thought. Two raptors stood by the remains of what had once been the breakfast buffet, and they appeared to be squabbling over a pan that still had some sausage spilling out of it.

 

He saw his opportunity- they were snapping at each other, and when they weren’t fighting they had their heads buried in the pans, and the kitchen door was directly across from him.

 

He just might be able to make it.

 

He moved achingly slow across the room, freezing anytime one of the raptors lifted its head from the pans of food. It felt like hours of inching his way across the gaudy carpet, but in reality it was maybe a minute before he reached the safety of the kitchen and shut the door behind him, barricading it with a spare rifle as Bobby had done before.

 

…Okay, maybe the kitchen wasn’t so safe, because the raptor at the freezer door had turned and was now staring him down.

 

He didn’t even give the animal a chance to get close. He fired off six shots in quick succession, each one slowing the raptor’s charge a little more until it finally went down hard, sliding almost all the way to Sam’s feet. It was still screeching and snapping at his feet, and he aimed right at the raptor’s skull and fired one last shot.

 

“Sam?” Charlie said, peeking her head out of the freezer, and the look on her face became one of sheer joy when she saw him. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and took off at a run, stepping over the dead raptor and tackling Sam in a tight hug.

 

“Oh my god, I’ve never been happier to see a heavily armed man in my life,” she muttered against his chest. Gabriel had followed her out of the freezer and was now studying the dead raptor with what looked like regret- regret over making it in the first place or regret that it had to be killed, he didn’t know.

 

“Where’s Bobby?” Gabriel asked, and Sam shifted his weight uncomfortably, holding out a gun to Charlie. She took it and held onto it like a lifeline.

 

“He, uh…he stayed behind. To make sure all the raptors didn’t follow me here,” he said softly, and Charlie went pale as Gabriel’s face fell. He silently took the gun that Sam offered to him, and looked like he was about to speak when something hit the door to the dining room hard. The gun held, though, but he knew it wouldn’t last.

 

“Is there another way out of here to get back to the control room?” he asked Gabriel, and Gabriel shook his head.

 

“One door in and out. And that door isn’t really a good choice.”

 

“Who says we have to use a door?” Charlie asked, and then she slung the rifle across her shoulder and hopped up onto one of the long food prep tables. She reached up and prodded at a ceiling panel until it popped free. “This ventilation system runs through every room in the building. I can get us there.”

 

Sam gave her a skeptical frown. “Will I even fit in there?” he asked, and Charlie paused, giving him a helpless shrug.

 

“Maybe…?  But the alternative is Vam Damme’ing your way past two raptors,” she pointed out, and Sam had to admit, she had a point.

 

“Let’s try it,” he said, helping Gabriel up onto the table as the door shuddered with another blow. The gun slipped a little; it wouldn’t take much more of this abuse before it gave way.

 

Gabriel helped Charlie pull herself up into the ceiling, and then Sam shouldered his gun and climbed up on the table, having to bend down a little to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. He gave Gabriel a boost into the ventilation shaft, and then pulled himself up and into the narrow shaft just as there was a massive crash and the door slammed open.

 

It was impossible to be quiet or sneaky in the ventilation shaft. The thin metal popped and groaned with every shift, and Sam could hear the clicking of the raptors’ claws below him, and catch glimpses of movement when they came across the grated tiles that were equally spread along the bottom of the metal shaft.

 

He was about to call ahead to Charlie to move faster when the grated tile in front of him- the one Gabriel was currently crossing- suddenly lurched upward, shoved by a raptor’s nose. Gabriel dropped with a scream, barely managing to catch his fingers on the edge of the metal, and Sam reached down and grabbed onto his arms, pulling as hard as he could.

 

The raptor had fallen after its jump to dislodge the grate, but it was recovering, struggling to its feet on the slick floor. Gabriel hauled himself up into the shaft to his waist, and Sam reached down and grabbed the man’s legs, pulling them out of reach of the raptor just as it leapt and snapped at him.

 

“Go, we’re good!” he yelled ahead, and they started moving again, Sam carefully crossing over the gap to follow as the raptors paced below. But they couldn’t follow when the shaft led past the wall and over a different room, and Sam relaxed a little, though he looked carefully through every grate they passed over.

 

When they finally dropped down into the control room, it was blissfully empty, and the windows and doors were still closed and intact. Charlie rushed to the nearest computer and began typing, and Gabriel and Sam moved to the doors and windows, dragging over whatever furniture they could find to barricade the weak points. They knew it wouldn’t be long before the raptors tracked them down, and anything to slow them long enough for the bullets to hit home would be a blessing.

 

“Can you bring up the cameras, Charlie?” Sam asked as he moved back to the computer to see what she was doing. Her fingers were flying across the keyboard, her face a mask of concentration.

 

“One thing at a time, Sam. Phones and door locks first,” she said, her eyes scanning the screen- Sam was good with computers, but even he didn’t have the first clue what he was looking at. A few more keystrokes, and the phone at the end of Charlie’s desk beeped to life. Another few buttons pressed, and the door locks snapped into place.

 

“We are good to go!” she said proudly, and Gabriel was already grabbing the phone, stabbing the numbers on the keypad with his finger.

 

“Alright, let’s get the cameras up and running,” Charlie said, bringing up a new screen as Gabriel waited for someone to answer the phone. Finally someone picked up, and he sighed with relief.

 

“Roberto, we need an emergency chopper at the center like, yesterday. Evac for three people,” he said, and Sam shot him a pointed glare. Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Okay, evac for three or six people. Something like that. I don’t care how, just get a damn chopper here.”

 

There was a short argument about refueling- evidently the helicopter pilot didn’t want to fly into an emergency situation when the helicopter would need to refuel to make it back- but with some clever threats of lawsuit and some well placed bribes, they came to a quick agreement.

 

“How long?” Charlie asked.

 

“Hour and a half. And once he lands he’s only keeping the chopper touched down long enough to do a hot refuel. Anybody who’s not in the helicopter when it’s fueled up is getting left here,” Gabriel explained, and Sam shook his head.

 

“I’m not leaving without the others,” he said, and he meant it. He would sit here with a stack of rifles and hold the raptors off till the last bullet rather than leave Dean, Castiel, and Jo alone on this island.

 

“Cameras are up,” Charlie said, getting to her feet and going to the bank of monitors along the wall. Sam followed, going from one screen to the next, looking for any signs of non-reptilian life. At first, none of them were having any luck- until Charlie pointed to one of the middle screens. “Here!”

 

Sam was at her side before she finished the word. On the screen was a long dirt road, and he could see a Jeep hurtling down the road at a fast clip. “Can’t we get any closer in?” he asked, and Charlie squinted at the monitor.

 

“Jeep 014,” she said to herself, the number emblazoned on the hood of the Jeep. She dropped down in her chair and began typing again, pulling up screen after screen. “Every car is equipped with a custom GPS unit. If I can key it in, I can set the cameras to automatically focus it when the vehicle crosses into their view,” she explained, and Sam waited impatiently as the Jeep drove off the view of the camera.

 

Gabriel was eerily quiet, clutching a bowl of candy as he watched Charlie work. It was like with his whole fantasy world crumbling down around him, he no longer knew what to do with himself.

 

“There,” Charlie said, getting up and going back to the wall of cameras. One of the monitors had a tiny green square lit up in the corner, and that camera went black before turning on again, this time focused in on the moving vehicle.

 

Sam let out a breath that he felt like he’d been holding all night. Dean was driving the Jeep, and Jo was sitting in the backseat behind him, and they both looked alright- scratched and bruised, but alive and alert. As the camera swiveled to follow the Jeep’s motion it was easier to see down into the open top, and Sam took in a sharp breath when he saw that Castiel was laying across the backseat, his head in Jo’s lap, one leg heavily bandaged and his eyes closed. It was impossible to see more detail than that, but it hadn’t looked good, and he could see Gabriel staring over at the screen like he’d seen a ghost.

 

“They’re alright,” Sam said a firm nod, looking over at Gabriel. “They wouldn’t be bringing Castiel back with them if he wasn’t going to make it. He’ll be alright,” he insisted, but Gabriel didn’t answer him, didn’t even bother acknowledging that he’d heard him at all.

 

“They’re still an hour out. This might be close,” Charlie said, watching as a new camera locked on to where the Jeep was.

 

“Maybe I should go meet them. Help them with Castiel,” Sam said, but Charlie shook her head.

 

“If they don’t run into any huge trouble, they’ll need the most help when they get here. The helipad is on the roof, and the stairwell to the roof is down the main hallway. No way will the raptors miss six people running down that hall,” she explained. “We need to save our bullets. They’ll make it. They’ve made it this far on their own.”

 

Sam wanted to believe her. Now that he knew Dean was alive and okay, it was a little easier to hope; he just had to trust that his brother could get Jo and Castiel through this last leg of their journey.

 

He couldn’t help them now. He could only watch until they drove up to the doors of the center, and hope no dinosaurs took interest in the Jeep along the way.

Chapter Text

“Can you make this thing go any faster?”

It had to be the third time Jo had asked, and Dean took a deep breath, keeping himself from snapping at her. He knew she was just worried, and probably afraid too, and snapping at her wouldn’t help in the least.

“I have the gas pedal on the floor, Jo. Just…try and get him awake, if you can,” he said, and that much was true; he was pushing so hard on the pedal that it would probably leave an indent in the floor mat. These cars were built for rough terrain, not for racing.

He heard Jo saying Castiel’s name, probably shaking him, because he hadn’t woke up since before they got in the car- and that was worrying both of them. Awake and alert was better than unconscious, obviously, especially if there was a risk the ‘unconscious’ part might be permanent.

But it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. They were so close, about halfway to the visitors center, and they would meet up with the others there. Hopefully everyone had stayed locked up tight and safe in there.

“Hey, Cas…can you stay awake for me? We’re almost there, okay?” he heard Jo saying, and he breathed a sigh of relief- Castiel was awake. It was an improvement, if a small one.

He wasn’t ready for it when something exploded from the trees by the front of the car. He slammed on the breaks with a loud curse, and the vehicle went skidding, the side of it slamming into the wall of flesh that had blocked the road in front of them. He looked up in time to see the Spinosaurus stumbling from being struck, and he knew this was the only chance they would get- he shoved the gas pedal to the floor, and the wheels spun before finally biting into the dirt.

It was a narrow squeeze between the Spinosaurus’ chest and the edge of the trees, and the front right corner of the windshield was snapped off, nearly ending up in the backseat.

“Jo! You guys okay?” he yelled, still pushing the car as fast as it would go- in the rearview mirror he could see the Spinosaurus turning, starting to move with a frustrated roar.

“Yeah, we’re…we’re fine, Dean!” Jo shouted back, but she definitely didn’t sound sure of that. He had to take her word for it, though, because the Spinosaurus was gaining on them, growing larger in the mirror with every moment.

“Incoming!” he yelled, and he could see Jo twisting to see the dinosaur in the mirror. After a few moments of shuffling, she grabbed the gun and stood up in the back, taking aim at the massive animal and firing off two shots.

It didn’t even seem to notice. Its charge certainly didn’t slow, and even going as fast as the car could manage, it was nearly on them by now. He heard one more gunshot, and then the car was yanked to a stop so sudden that Dean jerked forward and slammed into the steering wheel.

It took a moment for him to regain his bearings, and by then warm blood was dripping down his face from his forehead, his head was throbbing, and he couldn’t seem to stop his vision from swimming.

Jo hadn’t fared any better. She was lying against the console, having been thrown forward between the seats, and she was struggling to get back up. Dean stopped her, though, because when he turned to find her he spotted the Spinosaurus, still trying to free its teeth from where it had bitten down on the right side of the backseat and yanked the Jeep to a dead halt from 30 miles an hour. Evidently it hadn’t been the greatest of ideas, but it was quickly pulling free.

Dean did the only thing he could do- he slammed his foot back on the gas, the wheels spinning in the dirt again, hoping to get a head start away from the dinosaur when it pulled free.

Jo was struggling to get her rifle up and pointed when the Spinosaurus suddenly snarled in rage. Dean turned just in time to see Castiel kick at it again, this time the heel of his shoe striking it right on the eye, and the dinosaur finally wrenched free with a roar that vibrated Dean to the core. The car finally lurched forward, leaving the Spinosaurus behind for the moment.

“We can’t outrun it!” Jo said, sitting on the console between the front seats facing backwards, her gun raised and ready; for all the good it would do, anyway.

“Yeah, I kind of know that!” Dean snapped, and then they passed the sign with the shape of a T-Rex skull on it, the arrow below pointing off to the left.

And he got another one of those ridiculous, stupid ideas.

“Hold on!” he yelled, yanking the wheel to make the sudden turn and nearly sending Jo into the console again, earning a glare from her.

“What are you doing?!”

“Something stupid, just keep an eye on Cas!”

“Not goin’ anywhere…” Cas muttered from the back, his voice barely audible over the sound of the engine. And now, Dean could hear the heavy footsteps behind them again, and another roar from what was probably an incredibly angry Spinosaurus.

Dean imagined that it wasn’t often a prey animal kicked a Spinosaurus in the eye and got away from the encounter in one piece. He couldn’t help but feel a little pride that, despite being a writer, of all things, and having one leg torn open and infected, Castiel somehow found the strength and presence of mind to use his good leg against a fucking Spinosaurus.

He was pretty damn certain that Castiel was way too good for him.

“Do you actually have a plan? Because it’s kind of catching up!” Jo asked, and Dean glanced back again. It was almost caught up, and he pushed down harder on the pedal, even though it was already to the floor. The path ahead of them was empty, and for once he didn’t want it to be empty. He wanted that path to be full of angry dinosaur, right about now.

“Working on it!” he said, and the footsteps were right behind the car now, and Jo screamed and fired-

- just as the T-Rex stepped out of the trees in front of them.

Dean had to slam on the breaks to keep from running right into the dinosaur, and he heard the Spinosaurus snarl behind them.

For a moment, they were stuck sitting in the path between a furious Spinosaurus and a very confused T-Rex. Then, the T-Rex seemed to get with the program, and she stomped one foot down and bellowed out a roar that seemed to shake the whole Jeep. Jo clamped her hands down over her ears with a wince, and Dean had to make a conscious effort not to do the same.

“Come on, come on…” he muttered as the T-Rex shifted and the Spinosaurus snarled.

Then, all hell broke loose.

The Spinosaurus lunged forward and to the left of the Jeep, its right leg smacking the vehicle as it moved by them and snapped at the T-Rex. The T-Rex responded in kind, taking two massive steps forward and snapping its jaws at the Spinosaurus. The Spinosaurus responded by closing the gap between them and using its head like a battering ram, knocking the T-Rex off balance.

Dean covered his head, sure that the rex was going to fall right on the Jeep, but it managed to miss the car and stumble into the trees. With the Spinosaurus on the left and the T-Rex recovering by the tree line, this was the only chance they would get, and Dean took it.

He accelerated down to the floor again, and the Jeep jerked forward just as the Spinosaurus moved toward the T-Rex again. Its foot clipped the back of the Jeep, nearly sending it into a fishtail, but they pulled away just as the two behemoths clashed again.

Dean wasn’t about to stick around and see who won, but when he looked in the mirror right before taking the curve, the Spinosaurus had its jaws clamped down on the T-Rex’s back.

“Jesus Christ,” Jo said, her voice breathless as she looked back at Dean. “You couldn’t have warned me?”

“Wasn’t really thinking about it at the time,” Dean pointed out, wondering if his heart would ever get back to beating at a normal rate. “How’s Cas?”

Jo crawled back into the backseat, and Dean held his breath for those few moments of silence that followed.

“He’s okay,” she finally said, and he let out that breath in a rush. “He’s out, though,” she added after a moment, but that much he’d expected. Since he’d been lying down, Castiel probably took less of a beating in the sudden stops and starts of the car, but it had still probably been a lot to deal with on top of everything else.

It felt like the longest fifteen minutes in his life, driving between the T-Rex’s territory and the visitors center. Every moment he was waiting for one of the two behemoths to step out of the trees, this time with nothing to distract them from the tasty humans in the car. Their luck held this time, though, and the Jeep screeched to a stop at the base of the wide steps to the visitor center. He parked right behind another Jeep, one that looked pretty beat up, though maybe not as bad as theirs; not a T-Rex level encounter, that was for sure.

When he looked up at the center, however, his stomach dropped and his throat tightened with dread; the doors were halfway opened. He’d been hoping the visitors center stayed secure, and it obviously hadn’t.

“Shit,” he said, hopping out of the Jeep and handing his rifle to Jo. He couldn’t carry Castiel and maneuver a rifle at the same time, and leaving Castiel in the car while they checked things out was absolutely not an option. Jo seemed to understand that, throwing his rifle over her shoulder, her own gun still held tightly in her hands as she hopped out of the Jeep.

Dean opened the back door and climbed in, immediately pressing his hand to Castiel’s forehead. His skin was pale, damp with sweat and way too hot, definitely hotter than it had been back at the docks, and as Dean scooped him out of the seat, he barely got a mutter in response.

“Come on, Cas, just a little longer,” he pleaded, carefully getting out of the car and nodding to Jo. She led the way up the steps, leading with her rifle through the open front doors and into the massive lobby.

Nothing much looked out of place. The T-Rex skeleton still took up most of the room, the stairwell arching up and behind it. He didn’t see anyone, human or dinosaur, and Jo took the stairs slowly, her finger on the trigger.

“Think they went somewhere else?” she asked softly, and Dean shook his head.

“Nowhere else to go. Unless they have an emergency bunker somewhere,” he pointed out, but he highly doubted that. Gabriel didn’t have a single doubt that there would be problems; he probably would have laughed off the idea of an emergency bunker.

Probably wasn’t laughing now, though.

They turned the corner into a long hallway, and standing halfway down it was a raptor, its head nearly hitting the ceiling when it straightened up and turned to look at them.

“Shit,” Dean choked out, his grip tightening on Castiel as he took a step back. There wasn’t a point in running, though; they wouldn’t be able to outrun it. The raptor was already stepping toward them, nostrils flaring as it closed the distance, and Jo fired off a shot and missed.

The next trigger pull resulted in the click of an empty gun, and as she fumbled to get Dean’s gun off her shoulder, the raptor broke into a run right toward them.

The next gunshots that tore down the hallway weren’t from Jo; they were coming from the other direction, on the opposite side of the raptor. The raptor jerked and turned, stumbling as it tried to shift around in the narrow hall, and that was enough time for three more shots to ring out. The raptor let out a screech and fell, and on the other side of it stood Sam, looking bloodied and bruised but also pretty damn angry.

“I am so sick of those things,” he said, motioning for then to follow him. “Quick, this way. There’s more of them, but we have the control room barricaded,” he added, and Jo stepped over the twitching raptor, Dean following more carefully to not jostle Castiel too much.

Sam fell into step beside him, giving Castiel a concerned look. “What happened? How is he?” he asked with a frown, and Dean snorted.

“Would you believe me if I told you a T-Rex bit him?” he said, the whole thing sounding ridiculous put into words like that. “He’s got a bad cut on his leg. Really bad. It’s already infected, Sam. Please tell me you guys have got a way off this island.”

Sam nodded. “Chopper is coming in really soon. Trick is, we’ve got to get to the roof, and that involves going down the main hall. No telling how many raptors are still in the building.”

“How much ammo we got?”

“Your gun, and three others. Only two of them have full clips though. It might not be enough.”

They turned the corner and got to the door of the control room, and Sam knocked twice, looking both ways down the hall until there was the sound of metal scraping inside. The door cracked open, and Sam held it for Dean to carry Castiel in before he and Jo followed.

Dean was surprised when he only saw Gabriel and Charlie in the room. Both of them looked unharmed, unlike Sam, but he’d expected there to be more people here.

“Clear off a table,” he demanded, and Charlie and Jo moved to shove monitors and books off an unused station. Charlie pulled off her jacket, rolling it up and holding it in place as a pillow as Dean laid Castiel out on the table.

Gabriel looked pale and a little ill as he stared at Castiel. If there weren’t raptors down the hall, Dean would have taken the time to tell Gabriel just how much he held him responsible for this, responsible for Castiel’s condition, but this wasn’t the time for it.

“Where is everyone else?” he asked, and Charlie bit her lip and shook her head.

“We’re all that’s left, Dean. Us three and you three.”

Well, fuck.

“How long till the chopper gets here, Charlie?” Sam asked, checking to see how many bullets were in his gun as Charlie checked the time on her phone.

“Ten minutes, tops. We need to get up to the roof,” she said, and then she walked over and grabbed two guns, handing one to Gabriel and throwing the other over her shoulder.

Then, something hit the door hard enough to nearly knock it open. The heavy bookshelf shoved against it was the only thing that likely kept it closed.

“We need to distract them,” Dean pointed out, and the room fell silent for a few moments before Charlie lifted her head.

“Gabriel,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “Did we keep the archive footage of Benny setting the Gastromimus’ leg?”

Gabriel frowned. “Yeah, we didn’t delete any of it, why?” he asked, but Charlie was already at the computer, typing fiercely.

“If I can route the audio from that footage through the intercom system in the dining room, the raptors should converge on the sound of the injured dinosaur instead of us,” she explained, and Sam smiled with relief, looking over her shoulder.

“Good idea. Just hurry, the pilot said he wasn’t going to wait.”

Gabriel had moved closer to Castiel’s side, and Dean very nearly growled when he noticed, putting himself between Gabriel and Castiel before he could get any closer. “Don’t you fucking touch him. You’ve done enough to him,” he snapped, and Gabriel went from looking a little sheepish to downright angry.

“I’m his brother!”

“Yeah, well, you sure don’t fucking act like it!”

“Shut up!” Charlie snapped, her finger hovering over the enter button as something slammed against the door a second time. “When I press this, we have to haul ass. So get ready.”

Dean immediately turned away from Gabriel, shoving down the anger and ignoring the throbbing from the cut on his forehead. He would have loved nothing more than to punch the shorter man in the face, to tell him exactly what he thought of his theme park, but right now he needed to focus on Castiel.

Castiel, who was shivering and muttering something that didn’t even sound like English. He was so far gone, his skin burning, and Dean lifted him up as carefully as possible, cushioning Castiel’s head carefully against his shoulder.

Gabriel watched every move, and Dean thought he could read a good amount of guilt in his expression as he watched.

He hoped Gabriel felt fuckin’ guilty.

“Ready?” Charlie asked, and Dean looked around at their beat up group of survivors. Charlie and Gabriel looked exhausted, both of them clutching rifles like a lifeline. Jo looked like she’d stepped right off the poster for some Tomb Raider movie, all determination and smudged in dirt and blood, but still somehow put-together. Sam looked grim but ready to move, and Castiel…well.

Charlie pushed the button, and the scratching and banging at the door stopped after a few moments. Dean could distantly hear the awful wail of an animal in pain, but he knew that wouldn’t fool them for long. Sam and Gabriel pulled the bookshelf away from the door, checking outside before letting Charlie and Jo step through, the girls taking point as Charlie led the way through the halls to the roof access. Sam and Gabriel walked in the back, protecting the only two of the group who had no defense.

Sam kept throwing Dean those sidelong looks, the looks that screamed ‘are you okay’ and that Sam wanted to talk about ‘feelings’, but right now all Dean wanted to do was get Castiel on that helicopter and to a hospital as quickly as possible. He didn’t know how long a person could survive with this kind of wound and infection; 24 hours? Less? It had only been half a day and he was losing this fight.

And really, who knew what kind of fucking bacteria a T-Rex had in its mouth, anyway? They could carry some sort of prehistoric tetanus or something. (And yes, maybe the scientist part of his logic was getting a little lost after all this shit.)

“Guys!” Sam suddenly yelled, and Dean turned to see a raptor behind them in the hallway, nails clacking on the polished floors and lip curled into a snarl. It let out a harsh noise, and Sam fired at it just once, maybe hoping to scare it off.

No luck.

“Keep going!” Dean said, knowing they couldn’t try to stand still and fight it out here in the hallway. They needed to keep moving, shoot when they had to, and get up to that roof. Sam walked backwards behind them, shooting again when the raptor got close, and it fell back a little-

Until two of its friends joined it, anyway.

“Here!” Charlie said, yanking open a door to a stairwell, and Jo made sure Dean stepped through with Castiel first. Sam was last to come through, firing the last few shots in the gun before yanking the door shut and sliding the rifle through the handle.

“It won’t hold. Let’s go,” he said, just as Dean heard the distant sound of a helicopter somewhere above them. He took the steps as quickly as he could, the sound of the raptors slamming into the door reverberating through the whole stairwell, until there was a massive crash just as they opened the door to the roof.

“He needs to refuel, barricade that door!” Gabriel demanded, already heading for the fuel pump as the helicopter touched down, but there was nothing to barricade the door with up here- the helicopter supply racks were too big to move, as were the air conditioning units. Jo and Sam pressed their backs to the door, and the pilot leapt out of the helicopter, looking around in confusion.

“What’s going on? What’s the emergency?” he asked, eyeing Castiel, and Dean walked past him to the helicopter.

“Dinosaurs. Open this up, I need to lay him down,” he said, and the pilot opened the door, giving Dean a look.

“A dinosaur broke out?”

“Not a dinosaur. All the dinosaurs.”

The pilot looked a little sick, but was quickly distracted by Gabriel yelling that the pump was ready for refueling. Dean climbed carefully into the helicopter, folding one of the emergency stretchers down from the wall and laying Castiel down on it carefully, brushing his hair back from his forehead before he got back out of the helicopter.

Now, at least, even if he didn’t make it off this island, Castiel would be safe as long as the helicopter got off the ground.

The wind from the blades of the helicopter was vicious, but he ducked and ran over to where Sam and Jo were struggling to hold the door to the roof shut, and he pressed his hands against the door between them. With every shove of the raptor all three of them were pushed back, even using all their strength to hold it shut, and Dean kept one eye on Gabriel and Charlie and the pilot, waiting for them to say the helicopter was ready to go.

He hoped it was damn soon. They couldn’t hold this door shut for much longer.

The door shoved open again, and this time one of the raptors stuck its head through the gap, a shrill noise leaving it as it focused in on the humans. Dean, though, decided to take a page from Castiel’s book- he backed up and kicked the raptor in the face three times before it finally yanked back and the door slammed shut again.

“So sick of these god damn dinosaurs!” he snapped, bracing against the door again, and Jo let out a strained laugh, her boots braced on the concrete as she pushed backwards against the door.

“Guys, we’re good!” Gabriel yelled, and Dean watched to make sure the pilot, Gabriel, and Charlie all climbed safely in the helicopter. He looked at Jo and nodded.

“Go on. Once you’re in we’ll make a run for it,” he said, and she looked like she was about to argue, but an equally stern look from Sam made her nod instead. She pushed away from the door and sprinted for the helicopter, climbing inside and turning to wait on them.

“On three?” Sam asked, and Dean had a flashback to clinging to that fence with Castiel and Jo, getting ready to jump. Before Castiel had started to fade so fast.

“Yeah. On three.”

Sam counted down. On three, they both shoved away from the door, and Dean sprinted as fast as his feet could carry him, and even faster when he heard the door crash open on its hinges behind him.

“Come on!” Jo was screaming, reaching out and grabbing onto Sam’s hand, yanking him up and into the helicopter. By the time Dean reached it he had to jump, because the pilot was already starting to lift off, and he barely scrambled in before it was too far off the ground.

Not too far for eight foot tall raptors, though.

One leapt and planted its feet on the skid, and the helicopter jerked dangerously to the side, nearly sending Sam sliding back out the door. Dean did the only thing he could think of to do- he hauled back and punched the raptor on the nose.

It screeched and its feet slid back and dropped off the skid, and the raptor went plummeting to the rooftop, the helicopter righting itself and pulling away and out of reach. Dean grabbed for the side door and pulled it shut, breathing hard as he stared at the metal, as if he couldn’t believe that they had done it. That they were safe.

Most of them.

“Cas,” he gasped out, rushing to where Charlie was sitting on the edge of the stretcher watching over him. She moved aside when Dean got there, though, and he sat down in her place, grabbing onto Castiel’s hand and putting the other on his forehead. He was absolutely burning up, and it had been so long he’d been running this fever.

“Cas, hey, wake up,” he said, shaking Castiel’s shoulder to try and get him to come to, even for a second. There was no response, and he tightened his grip a little, shaking him again.

“No, come on, Cas, you’ve gotta wake up for me. We’re going to a hospital, okay? We’re almost there. Just a little longer,” he pleaded, but nothing changed, the hand in his didn’t tighten its grip. He leaned down and set his forehead against Castiel’s, closing his eyes for a few moments; the silence in the helicopter was overwhelming, with no one willing to chime in with what they surely thought.

Dean knew better. Cas would make it.

He had to.

Chapter Text

~~ San Jose, Centro Internacional De Medicina ~~

 

Sam was probably the only reason Dean didn’t end up in a Costa Rican prison that evening.

 

The helicopter had gotten permission to land right on the hospital’s helipad, considering the injuries involved and the high profile individuals involved- turned out mentioning the name ‘Novak’ in any country got you catapulted up the totem pole fast enough to make your head spin. So by the time they landed, it was pandemonium.

 

He got pulled in one direction, despite trying desperately to convince them to let him stay with Castiel. They were steadfast, though, because that wound on his forehead that he’d been stubbornly ignoring evidently required four stitches to close. (He discovered this when the nurse was holding his head in both hands and the doctor was coming at him with a needle and thread.  He was too distracted to summon up his two years of high school Spanish to try and understand the few words he knew.)

 

As soon as they were done, though, he was back in the hallways and asking any nurse who passed him where he could find Castiel. At first he got utterly stonewalled, every one of them saying the equivalent of ‘the dude is a celebrity and if we so much as breathe his name we could get sued out of existence’. Eventually, he badgered them enough that the excuse turned into ‘you’re not his family, so go sit and spin on it, thank you very much’.

 

Which was where Sam saved him from prison time, because he was seriously considering body slamming this doctor into the wall if he heard the words ‘not his family’ again. Sam grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away, muttering something about not making a scene when there were already rumors about crazy dinosaur inflicted wounds going around.

 

Charlie was waiting in the same hallway outside of their surgery ward, because that was the closest they could narrow it down; one nurse had at least felt bad enough for them to let it slip that Castiel was in surgery. Charlie had also bummed some change off one of the nicer nurses and loaded Dean and Sam up with food and bottled water from the vending machines, and though Dean didn’t really feel hungry, he knew he needed to eat and drink before he passed out. He was still running on adrenaline, and the crash was going to be bad enough without being dehydrated and half starved.

 

Gabriel was missing entirely. None of them had seen him since two very large men with Novak Industries badges met him at the helicopter and followed him away in a hurry.

 

So not only did Dean get to worry for hours, but he also got to deal with the seething anger at the fact that evidently Gabriel hadn’t even stuck around to find out if his little brother was okay. If Sam were in Castiel’s place, Dean couldn’t imagine how torn up he would be; he certainly wouldn’t be off somewhere else.

 

He wondered if Gabriel had even told the rest of their family what was going on. Castiel had other siblings; he’d at least mentioned a sister and two other brothers. Did they know yet? Had they known what Gabriel was doing down here? Did any of them even know Castiel was visiting?

 

Dean buried his face in his hands with a groan. If he didn’t get some news soon, he was going to go absolutely insane.

 

He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Charlie giving him a reassuring smile. “It’ll be alright. He didn’t last that long out there just to give up now,” she pointed out, and while it was little reassurance at the moment, he appreciated the effort. He gave her a weak smile in return, but she was looking past him now with a frown, and Dean followed her gaze to see one of the massive goons that had led Gabriel away from the plane standing in the doorway.

 

“Winchester?” the man said, and Dean slowly stood, already suspicious of this. The man approached and held out a piece of paper, a rather important looking form with a stamp on it, but the only words not in Spanish were his own name. Gabriel’s and Castiel’s names were on it, too.

 

He looked up at the guy for clarification, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Give that to the doctor here. It will give you all the permission you need to be privy to Mr. Novak’s current condition,” he said, already turning to leave. Dean grabbed him by the arm, only thinking a split second after that this guy looked like he ate babies for breakfast and killed soldiers for dinner, and grabbing him may not have been the best idea.

 

“Where’s Gabriel?” he blurted out before he could lose his nerve. “That’s his brother in there, and he sends you? What the hell?”

 

The man tugged his arm away firmly. “Gabriel sends his best wishes and his sincere regrets. Unfortunately, he has quite a situation on his hands regarding the security of the island, and it needs to be addressed immediately.”

 

“No fucking shit,” Dean snapped, and Sam tugged him back before he got himself into trouble for the second time that day. The man wasn’t fazed; he turned and left before Dean could drill him any more.

 

“Fucking assholes!” Dean snapped, which probably wasn’t the best thing for the haggard looking doctor to walk in on, but the second Dean saw him he was back on best behavior. Well, decent behavior. The doctor called for ‘Novak’, and before he was even done saying the name, Dean was shoving the paper at him insistently.

 

“I’m here for Cas. Castiel. How is he?” he asked, the words coming out in a rush as Charlie stepped up beside him. The doctor looked over the form and seemed satisfied, clipping it under the other pages on his clipboard before he started to speak in heavily accented English.

 

“The infection is…severe,” the man said, pushing his glasses up on his nose, though they slipped right back down seconds later. “We removed the dead tissue and have started a heavy regiment of antibiotics and fluids to combat the dehydration, but he will need to remain in intensive care for the time being. We managed to salvage his leg, but the muscle damage will likely be permanent.”

 

Dean didn’t like the sound of any of that. He clenched his fists so tight that his nails bit painfully into his palms. “He’ll make it though, right? He’ll be okay?”

 

“I can’t determine that just yet. The next 24 hours will be critical in deciding that,” the doctor said, and Dean wanted to scream, wanted to shake the guy until he just talked straight to them. He didn’t want any of this ‘wait and see’ bullshit, he wanted to know exactly what was going on here.

 

The doctor was already moving on from that, and even though Dean could tell he was trying to seem sympathetic, it definitely wasn’t working. “One person can go in and see him. And since Mr. Novak’s brother isn’t here, that leaves only you who are approved to do so. I’m afraid the rest of you will have to wait here,” the man continued, and Dean was already nodding, trying to rush him through the very expected words.

 

“Let us know how he is, okay?” Sam said, grabbing Dean’s arm before he could walk away. “And if you’re in there for more than four hours, I swear to God I’ll find a way to drag you out and get some food in you. You need to eat more than vending machine crap.”

 

“Okay, okay,” Dean said, trying to manage a smile for Sam. “I’ll be fine. You keep Charlie out of trouble and try to get in touch with someone back home.”

 

“…What do I tell them?”

 

Dean paused. He hadn’t thought of that. “Just…tell them the place lost power during the storm and we had to cut out early. We’ll fill them in when we get home. We can’t dump this on them over the phone.”

 

Sam nodded, and Dean finally followed the doctor into the ward, the doctor using his ID card to buzz them both through. He pointed Dean toward room number 322 in the small, circular ward, every room within view of the nurses’ station in the middle.

 

When he got to the doorway, he had to stop and clench his fists, taking in a sharp breath at the sight.

 

Castiel was nearly as pale as the white sheets he was laying on, and between the IV and all the sensors hooked up to him, it was a mess of cords draping off the sides of the bed. A clear mask covered his face, fogging up with each breath, and the steady beep of the heart monitor would have been irritating if it weren’t so damn reassuring.

 

“Cas,” he whispered, grabbing a chair from beside the wall and dragging it over to the bedside. He dropped down into it and took Castiel’s hand in his own, careful to avoid the IV taped to the back of his hand.

 

It didn’t seem real that just 24 hours ago Castiel had been healthy and unharmed, making small talk as the tour failed to produce dinosaurs to watch. That felt like weeks ago, not yesterday. And now he was second-guessing every single step he’d taken, whether they should have tried to walk back to the center instead of to the docks, whether they should have risked the cleanliness of the water and tried to clean out the wound sooner; so many ifs, and none of it able to make a difference now.

 

“I’m sorry, Cas,” he said, and of course there was no response, just the continued beeping of the machine standing by the bed.

 

He couldn’t keep running on adrenaline, though, and now that he was finally coming down from it, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He must have slept for a few hours, his head on the edge of the bed and his hand still gripping Castiel’s lightly, before Sam woke him and shoved a sandwich and some water at him. Dean was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to have food in here, and he wasn’t sure how Sam convinced them to let him in, but he didn’t question it. After checking to make sure Castiel was still alright, he devoured the sandwich in what had to be record time.

 

“One of Gabriel’s people stopped by again. Gave me a number to call, said she can have a private jet ready to take us back to the States in twenty minutes.”

 

“I’m not leavin’ without Cas.”

 

“Yeah, I figured. I told her that,” Sam said with a soft laugh. “She said they’re going to move him back to a hospital in the States as soon as he’s stable. The press is starting to get wind that something big went down at the new Novak resort. It’s only a matter of time before this whole thing breaks open, and none of us want to be here for that.”

 

Dean nodded and looked back at Castiel, for the first time beginning to wonder just what was going to happen to them once word got out about the island. It was inevitable, really, and Dean didn’t feel ready for it. The last thing he wanted was for some nosy reporter to be asking for the whole story on this.

 

Hell, there would probably be lawsuits and all kinds of craziness that he would want no part of.

 

“I’m gonna go stay with Charlie. Her mother is flying down to take her home, I don’t want her to be sitting alone till then,” Sam added after a few moments of silence, and Dean nodded.

 

“Yeah, go ahead. Not like I’m goin’ anywhere,” he pointed out, though the joke fell flat. Sam took another long look at Castiel before squeezing Dean’s shoulder tightly.

 

“He’ll be okay, Dean.”

 

“Yeah…yeah, I know.”

 

And then he was alone again, watching for any sign of life from Castiel, listening for any change in the now familiar sounds from the machines around him. It wasn’t long before he dozed off again, though he’d been trying his hardest to stay awake this time.

 

When he woke up again, it was to someone squeezing his hand, just barely. He shifted and winced at the pain in his neck from sleeping in that awkward position, but it only took a few moments for him to realize what woke him, and then he was bolting upright so quickly that it made him dizzy.

 

Castiel was awake, his blue eyes a little dull, but definitely focused on Dean. Dean couldn’t help but grin and let out a huge sigh of relief, scooting forward to the edge of his chair and holding Castiel’s hand just that much tighter.

 

“Hey,” he said, rubbing his thumb lightly across Castiel’s knuckles. “About time you woke up. I was about to start worrying,” he joked, earning a weak, barely-there smile from Castiel.

 

“Where are we…?” Castiel asked, his voice quiet and gritty; he was probably expecting the worst, expecting to be in some infirmary on the island still, raptors clawing at the door.

 

“Back on the mainland. We’re safe, Cas,” Dean said, and even though the writer was heavily drugged, Dean could still see lines of tension leave him when he heard that.

 

After all, the last time Castiel had been conscious, they’d been trying to evade a Spinosaurus in a Jeep.

 

“S’Jo…” Castiel started to ask, but he didn’t even need to finish before Dean was nodding.

 

“Jo is fine. Sam and Gabriel and Charlie, too. All safe,” he said, deciding that he would tell Castiel about the others later; about Meg and Bobby, and about Gabriel’s prompt disappearing act. “The doctors saved your leg, you know, but you’re gonna have one hell of an awesome scar to show off. Gonna have women falling all over you when you tell ‘em a T-Rex tried to take a chunk out of you,” he teased, and Castiel smiled again, though he already looked half asleep.

 

“Don’t want them,” he muttered, and Dean felt Castiel’s hand squeeze his weakly.

 

“Right, because you owe me a date first, remember? I told you I was gonna drag you to the zoo, and I fuckin’ meant it. You’re gonna get back on your feet, and we’re going to the god damn zoo to see some normal animals.”

 

“No lizards,” Castiel murmured, and Dean laughed. Yeah, Castiel was going to be just fine.

 

“No lizards. We’ll steer clear of the herpetology section. Maybe spend extra time in the petting zoo. Haven’t heard of llamas and goats getting murderous lately.”

 

Castiel hummed a soft reply, but he was already drifting off, his eyes falling closed again. Dean leaned forward and brushed Castiel’s hair back, and then stood up long enough to press a light kiss to his forehead.

 

“Don’t worry, Cas. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”

Chapter Text

*~~ One Year Later, Hell Creek, Montana ~~*

 

The sun was directly overhead by eleven o’clock that morning. It was the kind of dry heat that seemed to suck everything out of you, the kind that had Dean doing the rounds with a plastic bag full of bottled water, making sure everyone was drinking twice as much as they thought they needed. Because inevitably, they were always wrong.

 

Luckily, his seniority had suddenly gotten a whole lot more valuable on dig sites once word got out that he was that Dean Winchester, the one that was on the island when the dinosaurs escaped. While at first he’d been loathe to bring it up, he’d adjusted to the strange kind of celebrity that he and Sam dealt with now.

 

It was irritating, though, to have to put up signs in every lecture and every appearance that he was not going to take any unsolicited questions about the events on Isla Sorna. Otherwise, he’d never actually get any teaching done.

 

It was the end of the digging season, so the newbies on this dig had long gotten over their initial star struck attitudes and buckled down to work. And true to form, they’d had a big break near the end of the season- one of the new interns, Jess, had literally stumbled over a vertebrae the size of a car battery.

 

Now Dean was just waiting on Sam to get back with the GPR images, and making sure none of his team passed out from the heat in the meantime.

 

“What do you think it is?” Jess asked him, her hair pulled back in a messy, low ponytail, tendrils of curls escaping here and there. Dean paused for a moment, because he thought he knew, thought he had an idea, but…he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Especially not about this.

 

“Don’t know. According to you, it’s a speed bump,” he pointed out, and she grinned and gave him a shove.

 

“Asshole.”

 

“You know it. Hey, Jo warned you.”

 

“Well, Jo also said that if I can put up with you, I’d get to pick your brain about all the exciting stuff.”

 

“I feel used, Jess. Used and abused.”

 

Jess rolled her eyes just as Sam came out of the GPR tent, a paper held tightly in his hands and a frown on his face. He made his way over to Dean and hesitated before holding out the photo, a printout of the top-down view of the GPR.

 

“Jess, can we have a minute?” Sam asked, and Jess smiled.

 

“Sure. Are we still on for tonight?”

 

Sam blushed, looking a little sheepish. “Yeah. Seven o’clock, right?”

 

“Right,” Jess said before winking at him and heading back over to one of the roped off areas, getting ready to set back into work. Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam, who just sighed.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“I didn’t say anything,” Dean said with a smirk, finally looking down at the photo. His heart seemed to stutter a bit in his chest, and the smirk fell off his face as he realized that he’d been right in his guess; the skeleton below their feet was very obviously a decently well-preserved T-Rex. He would recognize that skull anywhere; he’d had more than a few nightmares with this dinosaur starring front and center.

 

“It’s your call, Dean,” Sam said, giving Dean a meaningful look. Sam hadn’t had nearly the close encounter with the T-Rex that Dean and Castiel had; they had a deal about raptors, that any raptor digs would get handed off to another team, something that Sam greatly appreciated. They hadn’t had the same deal about the T-Rex or the Spinosaurus, because really; how often do you run into those digs, anyway?

 

Evidently fate was sitting back with some popcorn and laughing right about now. Of all the times to dig up a T-Rex, it had to be now.

 

“Business as usual unless I call it off, okay?” he said, taking a deep breath, determined to not let those nightmares get the better of him. Sam nodded and headed over to the group working on some bone fragments nearby, the stuff they’d actually been working on when Jess discovered the vertebrae.

 

But Dean wasn’t the only one who needed to make this decision.

 

As if on cue, he heard the distinct footsteps behind him, that halting rhythm that he’d come to recognize anywhere. He turned and smiled when he saw Castiel headed his way from the mobile homes parked nearby, his hand curved over the top of a wooden cane that he leaned on with each step, and a canvas bad slung over his shoulder. He was obsessive about keeping his notes and in-progress works on him all the time like that.

 

And every day, there was a little less pain on his face with every step. A year ago they weren’t sure he’d ever be able to use his leg at all, even minimally; and here he was, walking around with little more than a cane for support and the occasional painkillers when he had a rough day.

 

“Hey babe,” Dean said, tugging Castiel into a kiss and ignoring the catcall from somewhere behind them. “I was just about to come find you.”

 

Castiel arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, licking his lips nervously before he held out the picture. “We, uh…found out what Jess stumbled on out here. If you’re not comfortable with this, you know, you and I could head out early. Let Sam handle things here.”

 

Castiel looked down at the photo, and Dean held his breath until Castiel let out a chuckle. “My favorite,” he muttered, holding the photo back out to Dean. “I’ll be fine, Dean. Promise,” he added with a smile. “This is a big deal for you, right? Not like there’s a T-Rex under every backyard in Montana.”

 

Dean laughed. “I guess not. But you’re more important to me than a dig, you know that.”

 

“Mmhmm. The engagement ring kind of tipped me off to that,” Castiel pointed out, and then he dug into the bag slung over his shoulder, taking out a thick paperback. “The final covers are in from the publisher. Wanted your opinion before we sent it to print.”

 

Dean took the book from him, the cover black and sleek, and a very familiar skull and torso of a skeleton outlined in red behind the title. The T-Rex skull and claws loomed over the words, a rough font in white spelling out the words “Jurassic Park”.

 

It was their story, his and Sam’s and Jo’s and Charlie’s, all compiled into what had to be the most fiction-esque non-fiction book in a long while. It was every actual event written out, with only the names changed- not that it mattered much. Even with Castiel writing under a penname, anyone who cared to do a Google search could find out the real names of everyone involved. The whole thing had blown open; Dean had spent a third of his time the past year at his dig sites and the museum, and another third in courtrooms and depositions, going over every little detail of what had happened over and over. For some reason no lawyer was satisfied just reading his written account of the events.

 

The rest of his time had been spent getting Castiel moved in with him in Chicago, and making him attend his physical therapy, do his exercises, and take his medications. It was rather like trying to convince a cat to jump in a bubble bath.

 

Gabriel had disappeared entirely. Just up and vanished. The only clue they had that he was still out and about was the fact that Castiel’s bank account gained four million dollars overnight about two weeks after getting home, and another 2 million anonymously got donated to Dean’s department at the museum.

 

Evidently, he thought that dumping money on a problem would make himself feel better without actually having to face the consequences of his actions.

 

“It’s good. It looks good,” Dean said, breaking out of his train of thought and running his thumb over the raised letters on the front of the book cover. Castiel’s smile brightened a little.

 

“Open it up, Dean.”

 

Dean glanced at Castiel for a moment before opening the book, and on one of the first pages was the dedication: “For my fiancé, the man who carried me through hell and helped me learn to walk again, in more ways than one.”

 

“I know, it’s girly and cheesy and all those things you hate,” Castiel said with a half-hearted shrug, but Dean let the book fall closed and pulled Castiel in close, kissing him on the forehead.

 

“I think I can tolerate it this time,” he teased. “It’s about time for my break. How about we head back to the RV?”

 

“You say it’s time for your break every time I come out here.”

 

“I’m the boss, it’s one of the job perks. Are you complaining?”

 

“Your employees will. Especially if we don’t keep it down like last time.”

 

“Entirely your fault. You’re loud.”

 

“Not that loud.”

 

Dean grinned. “That a challenge?” he asked, and then Castiel yelped in surprise as Dean scooped him off the ground, carrying him back toward the mobile homes.

 

“This is why I have a cane, you know. So I can walk. And beat you with it when you don’t let me walk,” Castiel complained, but Dean obviously had his mind on other things.

 

Not that Castiel was complaining.

 

After all, Dean more than made up for it once they got inside.