Project Blueprint was as clandestine as clandestine got—no questions asked, no info in, no info out. The type of research they were working on was not the sort which the average person needed to know about. The fewer eyes and ears, the better.

But the lab wasn’t funded by an organization with bottomless pockets. Far from it, in fact. So when they were deciding on how much to spend on security versus equipment, the heads of Project Blueprint had come to the conclusion that less, in this case, was more.

Rather than a massive, sleek, chrome-walled base bristling with electrified razor wire fences and patrolled by hordes of scowling goons with vicious guard dogs, the area that Blueprint was based out of was innocuous. Six enormous but slightly run-down buildings which had been built decades ago, empty-looking and surrounded by a simple chain-link fence with a barbed-wire top and a lone guardsman were all they needed. The place gave off an aura of a factory or industrial center hit by economic woes, long since picked clean—not the place where any enterprising eyes or local hooligans would test themselves on. A network of cameras, fed by a hidden generator (complete with a backup), completed the event.

Alain Nellis—who usually just went by his last name—was the guardsman for the place. A bright-eyed man definitely getting along in years, he made up for his physical unimpressiveness with a shrewd head. He had a prosthetic leg and a matching false hand on one side of his body from being caught in a factory explosion some years back. He’d been able to retire from the compensation afforded to him from the accident, but as the years crawled on, the old man had realized how bored he was, so he’d found a sedate job mostly just to entertain him rather than anything. In the years he’d worked security for Project Blueprint, there had only been two security incidents, if you even wanted to call them that—a mean dog wandering onto the property one year, and a group of spray-painting teens playing hooky the next. In both cases, Nellis had chased them off pretty easily. But even beyond its slow-going nature, the best perk of his job was that he got to bring his dog.

Bells was a German Shepard; she was a few years old and both devoutly loyal and impeccably trained. She mostly dozed on the floor of the guard station, occasionally begging her master for treats, or rolled in the half-dry grass outside, her tongue lolling with delight; she always made sure to accompany her owner on his rounds, and though she wasn’t a violent dog, she knew how to stand her ground. Her sharp, fierce bark was a more effective deterrent than Nellis himself.

The day that the Incident occurred went like any other, at first. Nellis decided it was time for him to do a late afternoon patrol and, with Bells at his heels, the old coot made is rounds.

Despite his age and his lost limbs, Nellis was brisk for his age, and on his walks, he often found himself spurred on by his dog’s boundless energy. Bells would sometimes go tromping off, barking with delight at anything that caught her eye—a butterfly, a weed wavering in the air, the dappled light of the sun being covered by the clouds—though she would always return at the first whistle from her master. Today, she was happy to trot along in his shadow, her tongue lolling from her mouth and the tiny bell on her collar (which was where she got her name) jangling as she went.

Nellis trooped his way around all six buildings, finding exactly what he expected to find: nothing of note. Early on he’d alleviated his boredom by trying to fix up the place, but it turned out that was counterintuitive—Project Blueprint preferred their buildings dilapidated and underwhelming.

As he finished his patrols, Nellis shook his head at the memory. Ah well. Thankfully, there were other ways to pass the time here than upkeep. Checking in on the cameras, just in case, he was satisfied—then, hitting a secret switch, he went down the revealed staircase to the real lab.

The buildings above were decoys, designed to divert and distract. The real work all went on underground. Here, the sparse but well-maintained labs had everything necessary for work—bright lights, a sound system which the workers could use to easily communicate with each other and with Nellis, and security doors.

Nellis made his familiar way to the break room, greeting the woman he found there. “Hello, Fran!”

Fran glanced up, smiling at him. She was the project’s lead, an intelligent woman in her early thirties who had arrived straight out of a biology doctorate. She had olive skin and floofy, coal-black hair which she kept loose, and usually wore a lab coat over a crop top and matching capris.

“Nellis,” she said smoothly. “And Bells!” She bent, giving the German Shepard much-deserved praise and pets. Nellis had quickly befriended all of the staff workers, and Bells was everyone’s favorite. Even now, the German Shepard was delightedly luxuriating in Fran’s pets, her tail thumping against the floor.

Fran was a certified genius, and an effective leader—but her perfectionist tendencies could get the better of her sometimes, as could her paranoia about security. Nellis probably received at least one well-intentioned inquiry a month asking him to investigate “suspicious noises” which, more often than not, turned out to be creaky old pipes or a particularly loud-mouthed pigeon. The others on staff had whispered to him that Fran was boy-crazy, but her controlling tendencies and paranoia had driven away boyfriend after boyfriend.

As Nellis and Fran chatted good-naturedly, the door opened and another woman entered the break room: Sarah, Fran’s chief—and only—research assistant. About half a decade younger than Fran, she was a quiet, timid young woman with strawberry-blond hair which she kept in a long ponytail. She wore a lab coat in imitation of her boss (in fact, a lot of what Sarah did imitated Fran; the younger woman idolized her and wanted to emulate Fran’s success and confidence and way with men) but instead of a flirty crop top, she instead wore a modest, floral-print blouse over a knee-length, pale blue skirt.

As Nellis chatted with Sarah (Fran continuing to lavish attention on Bells), he reflected that Sarah was also extremely intelligent. A biologist like her boss, she played coy with her expertise, though over the years she’d let enough slip here and there for Nellis to deduce that it was based on genetics. Nellis chose not to pry any further than that.

As he walked away, his dog positively glowing from the attention she’d been given, Nellis thought once again how he didn’t know what, exactly, Fran and company were doing in the labs. He and Bells had never had cause to go that far in, and Fran had gently but firmly insisted that it was in his best interest that he not find out. He sometimes wondered if the workers he had gotten to be so friendly with here were up to something unethical.

In fact, he needn’t have worried at all. Project Blueprint wasn’t unethical—though it was, potentially, quite dangerous. Sarah was a geneticist, and Fran a cloner; together, they were working on bringing back raptors.

The true name of Project Blueprint was the Raptor Docility Project. Fran’s employers were adamant about bringing back dinosaurs, but with any danger posed to humans minimized. (They had, it seemed, learned their lessons from pop culture.)

With Nellis gone, Fran and Sarah turned the discussion to the dinos, only to be interrupted by the last person there—their freckled, slightly short intern, Zachary. (Almost everyone called him “Z”, for short.)

“Oh, um, hey Z,” Sarah stumbled over herself as he came in. “You just missed Nellis and Bells.”

His nose wrinkled with distaste. “Aw, man! I can’t believe it! I’ll just have to say hi on my way out.”

Fran folded her arms. “Z. Did you catalogue Sunny’s behavior today?”

“H-huh? I mean… I, uh, will! Soon!”

Z, a young man of about Sarah’s age, sat firmly at the bottom of the food chain. He was the lab’s errand boy—do this, run there, buy that. What was worse, he was often forgetful, and at times lazy, meaning that Fran typically ended up chewing him out—as it looked she was about to do right then.

Her sigh could have sheared iron. “The idea is to catalogue the raptors’ behavior after lunch. It’s almost dinnertime, Zachary.”

He tried not to wince. She only used his real name over his nickname when she was truly ticked. “D-did I say soon? I meant, uh… right now!” He turned and headed for the enclosure, Fran’s lips thinning behind him and Sarah surveying him with sympathy.

Sarah knew that Fran didn’t hate Z, far from it—in fact, she was quite fond of him. (After all, if she really disliked him, she could have just fired him.) She just wished he would get his act together. Sarah felt extra sympathy for Z because he’d broken up with his longtime girlfriend almost a year prior and had been heartsick ever since. Unlike his bosses, Z didn’t bother with traditional lab gear. Today, he wore a solid-color polo and simple cargo shorts. Sarah held a secret torch for him that was obvious to both Fran and Nellis; but between Z’s heartbrokenness and Sarah’s own insecurities with guys, it seemed a doomed attraction.

Z made his way to the enclosure, pulling out a notepad to catalogue Sunny’s behavior. Flipping open the viewing window, he observed the raptors.

There were four of them, two males and two females. They got along very well, coordinating their efforts. By some stroke of fate, all of them boasted a different color, and the lab had assigned them informal nicknames depending on their hue.

Sunny, the yellow raptor, was the “beta male” of the pack, for lack of a better term. He was a strong beast, but subordinate to Flame, the red male who indisputably led the pack. Their counterparts were Bluebell, the azure-scaled alpha female who was extremely crafty and intelligent, and the beta female, Pinky. (You could guess what color she was.)

Currently, Sunny was using a special device the lab had developed in order to help alleviate his… special concerns. You see, Fran and Sarah had reasoned that since most big animals that were docile towards humans were mammals (dogs, cattle, and so on) they might try splicing in some mammalian traits. The effect did end up with the raptors acting more docile—but they were also significantly smarter than any dinosaur had a right to be, doubtless poaching some brainpower from their mammalian predecessors. The mammalian influence was also probably responsible for the pack structure they displayed.

But there were other, unforeseen effects. Many of the raptors had quirks of a sexual nature. Pinky, the beta female, was extremely sexually active, displaying herself frequently for both of the males in the pack as well as, to a mix of discomfort and amusement, Z himself whenever he interacted with them. Sarah, perhaps projecting some human qualities onto the dino, had even claimed that Pinky was a bit of a romantic.

Bluebell, in contrast, was in an almost constant state of heat and got wet super easily. Z and all of the scientists had observed that the juices she produced in that state seemed to have an effect on the other raptors, and Z privately thought that even being around them was something that made him dizzy and light-headed. Getting a sample was proving difficult—this had only recently manifested, and Bluebell’s extremely high intelligence made it hard for them to corner her while she was wet.

Sunny was physically the strongest of the four, but was constantly distracted with the fact that some quirk of genetics had made his internal testicles extremely overproductive. It wasn’t until the lab had built a special machine for him to rut (which they used to collect his seed) that he was able to find relief; he spent almost a full hour a day cumming into it. In fact, that was what was he was doing now.

As he marked down Sunny’s activity, Z took note of the final raptor, Flame, stalking about the enclosure. Curiously, Flame was the only raptor in which none of them had observed some sort of sexual quirk, which seemed odd considering it was present in the other three. Fran and Sarah had concluded that he had a hitherto-undiscovered quirk, and Z agreed with their suppositions. The main noteworthy thing about Flame was that he was the most aggressive of the raptors, but even that was explained by his alpha male position, and he was still significantly less aggressive than a normal one would be. The Docility Project was coming along nicely.

Glancing up from his notes, Z saw that Flame had noticed him watching through the window. The red raptor looked intrigued, right up until he saw that it was Z looking in; then he lost interest. All of the raptors had a favorite human; Pinky enjoyed presenting herself to Z, after all. But even by those standards, Flame (who seemed quite smart, if a little bit shy of Bluebell’s intellect) was downright obsessed with Fran. He always perked up when she was the one interacting with the raptors, and though he’d never tried to attack her, he often crowded her personal space and got right up to her. It seemed he’d momentarily thought his favorite human had been the one watching him.

“Sorry buddy,” Z said, though the raptors couldn’t hear him through the soundproof glass. “Not today.” As he shut the window shutter and walked back to Fran and Sarah, he idly wondered what, exactly, was Flame’s obsession with the head scientist.

In fact, though neither Z nor any of them knew it, they would all find out very, very soon.

As dusk meandered its way into evening, a nighttime repair crew settled into a power plant a few blocks away. As they worked, a small accident resulted in a loss of power for the surrounding blocks—including the lab space utilized by Project Blueprint.

Of course, the lab had a backup generator present for such an event. But when they’d first set it up, some worker had gotten their wires crossed. The backup worked just fine for the ground-level buildings and the camera system utilized by Nellis, but the lab itself was off the backup’s grid. So when the accident at the power plant happened a few hours after Z checked on Sunny, the entire subterranean facility was plunged into darkness.

Later on, when she learned what had happened there and its cause, Fran felt righteously vindicated that what had befallen her and her team was in no way their fault. They hadn’t made any mistakes at all; they weren’t responsible.

But that was for later. On the night the power fell, the scientists found themselves trapped in an underground bunker with a group of highly intelligent, genetically modified raptors—raptors whose predatory nature had been made “docile” by replacing it with a massively increased sex drive, and who were obsessed with the humans who were all they knew in the world.

And with the opportunity afforded by the blackout, the cunning intellects of Flame and Bluebell were ready to make their move and seize their prizes.