Jurassic Wildflower (A Jurassic World AU)

Chapter four

Anna did return the next day, and the day after that. Before Rose knew it, a week had passed and Anna was returning for the eighth time, looking somewhat sheepish as she stepped through the heavy door into the raptor paddock. She glanced around at the trees, and Rose felt pleased that Anna was taking her advice about being cautious seriously.

"Welcome back," Rose said dryly. "Don't worry, the raptors are in the training arena. We're going to meet Luke there."

"Okay," Anna said slowly. She took one last look around, and Rose wondered for a moment whether she had spotted the flicker of Scorpio's feathers in the bushes too.

"It's quicker if we cut through the enclosures," Rose said quickly. "But that does mean going through Karli's area, are you cool with that?"

Anna seemed to seriously consider it for a moment, then she nodded slowly. "Yeah, let's go."

Rose nodded and started into the bushes at a brisk walk, she could hear Anna following – a little less gracefully, she thought – at her heels.

Without the distraction of the raptors, it only took a few minutes to cross to the far side of the enclosure. However, without the raptors, Rose found she was slightly more nervous about facing Karli. The Giganotosaurus had just been fed, so with any luck she wouldn't care about the humans in her area.

Rose whistled to Archy, summoning the Archaeopteryx to hover close to her shoulder. If Karli made a move, his bright feathers would distract her and she would likely chase him rather than them. Rose had done this before, and Archy knew how to avoid the snapping jaws of the large dinosaur, so he would be fine.

She twisted the wheel in the middle of the metal door and pushed it open with her shoulder, breathing deeply. She could hear Anna forcing her breathing to slow down as well. She glanced back, and Anna offered a weak smile.

"Just walk fast," Rose said. She pointed to the only other visible door in the enclosure, the one that led to the secret enclosure. "If I say run, head for that door and lock it behind you, don't wait for me, got it?"

"Yep," Anna said, sounding somewhat queasy.

"We'll probably be fine," Rose said. "I'm... 60% sure we'll be fine."

"That's not as reassuring as you seem to think it is," Anna muttered.

Rose shrugged. "At least the odds are above fifty. Let's move."

She straightened her spine and made a b-line for the forest on the other side of the enclosure, where the door to the outside was. Archy circled above her head, his sharp bird-lizard eyes rooted in the forest. She saw Anna looking around again, mostly towards the lake, and realized she was probably looking for Onyx. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted the Baryonyx's crocodilian snout just visible above the surface of the water.

As soon as they were under the tree cover, Rose was on high alert. She could hear a low rumble not far away, but couldn't see any hints of Karli's deep, red-brown scales between the trees. The path through Karli's paddock was not as defined as the one in the raptor enclosure, and after ducking under the seventh low-hanging vine, Rose drew her knife and a made a swipe at a thorny branch in her path. The sharp, curved blade severed the branch easily.

"Where did you get that knife?" Anna asked, keeping her voice low. She had quickened her pace slightly so she was walking close to Rose's side.

Rose flexed the blade, then slashed at the pair of criss-crossed vines in front of her. "It's the sickle-claw of a Utahraptor. I carved the handle myself." She showed Anna the intricately carved handle, made from an old bone and bound to the blade by a strong length of twine. "Raptor claws are made to pierce through scales, muscles and ligaments, so vines don't stand a chance." She flipped the knife, then flicked her wrist and sent it spinning through the next several vines in their path to lodge in a tree trunk several feet away.