"Going once, twice... Sold! Congratulations to the gentleman from Russia for securing this terrifying marvel of evolution!"
The atmosphere in the auction hall was electric. Thunderous applause rippled through the room as the Indoraptor's transport cage began its slow, chanical retreat.
Ding!
The sudden, out-of-place chi of an elevator rang out. A late buyer?
The security guards turned their heads, only to find the tardy attendee, the Stygimoloch.
"Aunnng—"
Vision blurred but aggression dialed to the maximum, the grumpy "bone-head" ignored the Indoraptor in the center of the hall. It burst from the elevator and charged straight at a guard whose expression of shock was only halfway ford!
Human, have a face-full of skull.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
The unlucky guard was launched into the air, soaring over the crowd before crashing down amidst the frantic shrieks of the billionaires.
Owen followed a second later, dropping from the elevator's ceiling hatch. He hit the ground running, tackling another guard who was scrambling to level his rifle at the Stygimoloch.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness as a rifle discharged blindly. The heavy gunfire was the breaking point; the buyers, who had been content to watch the chaos from their seats, finally lost their nerve.
Pandemonium erupted. The Indoraptor lunged toward the source of the gunfire, slamming against its bars with animalistic fury.
As the crowd scattered in every direction, the Stygimoloch charged through the fray, gleefully providing the tuxedo-clad elites with "Three-Second Aerial Tours" and "Multi-Month Fracture mberships."
With a lead leg kick and a sweeping strike, Owen moved like a blur, cutting through the security detail like a man possessed.
"ROAR—"
At so point, the Indoraptor's gaze drifted away from the rampaging herbivore and locked onto Owen. Its eyes narrowed, its head swiveling in perfect synchronization with Owen's movents.
As the cage continued to retract out of the hall, the Indoraptor pressed itself against the leading edge of the bars, appearing almost loath to leave Owen behind.
It was a predator that knew how to pick the strongest prey.
While Owen held the Indoraptor's attention, the Stygimoloch chased a few of the faster runners past the cage and out into the transport corridor, disappearing into the depths of the manor.
ZZZZZT—
Unable to reach the manual release, Owen reached out and ripped the power cables straight from the wall.
Sparks showered the floor. Deprived of power, the heavy security gates of the transport tunnel groaned and slamd shut, catching the rear end of the Indoraptor's cage in a crushing vice.
"ROAR—"
In an instant, the last of the hall's ambient lights died. Absolute darkness swallowed the room, save for the stark white spotlights behind the Indoraptor's cage, which cast long, distorted shadows across the auction floor.
A mass of buyers was trapped. The white lights, intended to highlight the dinosaur's massive silhouette, now projected the Indoraptor's shadow across the walls, a gargantuan, flickering specter that felt like a noose tightening around their necks.
Silence began to descend, broken only by the sound of wealthy socialites scurrying into the shadows, desperately hoping that if they couldn't see the Indoraptor, it couldn't see them.
There were other exits, but...
"Dammit! Where did Mills go?! This door needs a passcode!"
Mills, having sensed the shift in the wind long ago, had already evacuated, leaving Eversoll and the rest of the buyers to rot in the hall.
The only way out now was...
"ROAR—"
The black Indoraptor looked even more nightmarish in the backlighting. Incensed at losing its primary target, it turned its focus toward the huddling shapes in the dark.
Its gaze was cunning, reflecting a chilling, almost human sense of playfulness. It seed to say: If you're brave enough to crawl past my cage, I might just let you live.
…
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Outside, the screaming hadn't stopped. Buyers who thought they had escaped were quickly introduced to the Stygimoloch's "Double-Strike Experience."
"Move the dinosaurs out! Now!"
Wheatley, realizing the auction had gone south, scread orders for the transport trucks to depart.
A recently auctioned Allosaurus was forcibly separated from its pack leader and shoved into a shipping container. The truck lurched forward, pulling onto the road alongside another vehicle carrying an Ankylosaurus.
That's a dino I haven't seen before!
The Utahraptor, who had been lurking in the forest, spotted the new arrival. She leaped onto the Allosaurus container, but her luck had run out. The driver caught a glimpse of her snarling visage in his side mirror.
"Holy—!"
Panic-stricken, the driver jerked the wheel. The semi-truck swerved violently, its cab slamming into the side of the parallel truck's container.
The second truck couldn't withstand the shifting weight of the Ankylosaurus. It tipped, the entire rig flipping onto its side with a deafening crash.
The container broke loose, and the sound of heavy tal being hamred from the inside began to shake the entire steel box.
"Damn it..."
Wheatley sensed the tide turning and began to back away toward the manor.
BANG!
"AUUNNG—"
The un-sedated Ankylosaurus smashed through the container doors and trotted out, letting out a thunderous, territorial bellow.
Within seconds, she locked eyes with Wheatley, the man who had once tried to take her teeth. Without a mont's hesitation, she charged!
"Crap!"
Wheatley's composure shattered. He spun on his heel and bolted back toward the interior of the villa.
"ROAR—"
Hearing the commotion behind it, the Indoraptor turned and hissed at the outside world. Its cage sat directly in the path of Wheatley's desperate retreat.
"What now?!"
In the past, Wheatley would have looked at those teeth and thought, I've got to have one of those! But now, with one arm already broken, he had no room for trophies.
The sound of whistling air reached his ears; Wheatley dropped instinctively, narrowly avoiding a bone-shattering strike from the Ankylosaurus's tail club!
CRACK!
The heavy club slamd into the Indoraptor's cage instead. The impact shifted the massive iron structure, and the walls flanking the cage shrieked as the tal ground against stone.
The Indoraptor suddenly went quiet. Looking at the warped gate of its cage, a terrifyingly human smirk spread across its snout.
"Ao-roar—"
It hissed, taunting the Ankylosaurus.
"Aunnng—"
The Ankylosaurus bellowed back, squaring off against the strange predator on the other side of the bars.
It needs just one more push.
"ROAR—"
The Indoraptor threw itself against the bars, its claws lashing out as it feigned an attack.
"AUUNNG!"
Startled by the sudden aggression, the Ankylosaurus acted on instinct. She dropped her center of gravity, swung her body with a force that could break a Rex's leg, and hamred the tail club directly into the Indoraptor's cage.
BANG... SNAP!
This ti, the sound of shrieking tal was followed by the structural failure of the transport rails.
The Indoraptor's cage was hamred clean into the auction hall, sliding off its tracks and flipping onto its side.
A single scream rang out from the crowd, only to be cut short as the last of the spotlights flickered and died. The hall was plunged into a dead, suffocating darkness.
Clink...
The sound of sothing tallic hitting the floor echoed through the silence. Did soone drop sothing? A piece of jewelry, perhaps?
But the sound was too heavy for that.
A long, black, clawed hand slowly reached out and gripped the twisted, mangled bars. The cage door was gone.
———————
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