Storming the Labyrinth

The blond-haired, casually-dressed, fourteen-year-old Liz Brown was flung forcefully into a cushioned office chair.  It was the kind with wheels, so it slid back a few inches until it hit the desk of Mr. Oliver Drok.  Standing over Liz was Mr. Drok himself, no longer in his informal cowboy clothes and wearing a more well-to-do but still semi-casual suit.  They were in his office, and he was now in control.
     “You have questions,” Drok stated, “now ask them.”
     Liz answered with a stubborn silence.
     “Very well,” the man continued, turning sideways but keeping his eye on her.  “I am the CEO of SkyGen Incorporated, soon to be the next big name in genetics technology.  Our genetically adapted dinosaurs will make us famous.  Everything is going according to plan… The raptors are under our control due to the human minds we uploaded to them, and there is…another project underway that is even more daring.  This round of Survival Maze was the last we needed before revealing our secrets to the world.  However, you almost ruined it.  You had the chance to escape, and you gave it up in favor of siding with those raptors.”  He paused for a moment before continuing.  “What am I, a villain giving a monologue?  I had hoped to get some input from you, but you’re stubborn.  It doesn’t matter, I—”
     Alarms shrieked to life all around them.  Shouting at Liz not to move, Drok stormed out of the office.  Liz waited a moment, then hurried out after him.  She knew she was in a building somewhere inside the Maze still, probably near the end, but she had no idea where to turn.  SkyGen’s compound was almost a maze in itself.  The blaring alarms did nothing to help her find her way either.  Then another, more deadly sound started filtering through the noise—gunshots.  Some kind of fight was happening?
     Liz rounded a corner and froze as she entered a scene of chaos.  Three people, who appeared to be scientists, lay dead in pools of their own blood.  A fourth still stood, holding a pistol with a shaky hand and firing shot after shot.  Weaving back and forth between the random gunfire was one of the sinuous raptors Liz had met before.  It leapt on the fourth scientist, knocking him to the ground before cutting his throat.  It looked up from its victim, right into Liz’s eyes.  She had met the raptors before, but…she had never seen them kill before.  She was terrified.  The raptor broke eye contact, gestured with its head to the door behind it, and raced off past her down the hallway she had come down.  Whatever their new intentions, it seemed the raptors were still trying to help her.  But why?  It didn’t make sense to Liz.  Either way, she needed to escape before Drok discovered her missing.  She ran through the other door, avoiding the blood on the floor as best as she could.
     Liz ran through what she knew about SkyGen in her mind as she ran.  It was a genetics company, but not a very famous one.  So far all of its achievements had been undermined by that of the rival Gizric Corporation.  She supposed that was one of the reasons Drok was so determined to have complete control over his company’s experiments.  This technology, though, had to be several years more advanced than anything the rest of the world had.
     Her thoughts were interrupted as she came across another bloody mess.  It seemed as though the raptors intended to wipe out all of the scientists working in the facility.  Luckily the dirty work had already been done in this room, and the raptors had cleared out.  Liz steadied herself and moved carefully to the other side and out into the next corridor.  More gunshots rang out behind her.  She needed to find a way out of the compound quickly, before she got caught in the crossfire.
     Another pair of raptors raced past her, their feathers coated with blood.  Liz avoided them by sticking close to the wall.  She definitely didn’t want to touch them.  A large room opened up in front of her.  Completely unnerved, she was caught off-guard as a strong arm grabbed her around the neck and pinned her.
     “I didn’t think you’d stay long,” Drok’s voice said from behind.  He pulled Liz to the center of the room.  She felt his pistol press against her head.  “Come quietly with me and you won’t get hurt.”
     Liz realized that Drok was moving towards a pair of large doors—probably the main entrance.  He was going to escape!  Just as they passed the center of the room, raptors burst from the other doorways and surrounded the pair.
     “Now, now,” Drok scolded, “you wouldn’t want me to hurt the little lady, would you?”
     Seeming not to care, the raptors advanced menacingly.  Then a new surprise—the main doors smashed open and the demon-like Allosaur, Jazo, rushed in.  The raptors scattered around him.  Liz felt a wave of relief; Drok’s bullets would be much less effective against Jazo’s thicker hide.  But it dawned on her that Jazo was not attacking Drok—he was attacking the raptors!  Not only that, but his leg appeared to be totally healed, even though it had been broken earlier that day.
     Liz’s confusion grew.  The raptors respected Jazo, and Jazo helped save the lives of the other dinosaurs.  Why would Jazo side with Drok?  None of the raptors made any move to attack the Allosaur; they respected him too much.  But Jazo had saved her as well, hadn’t he?
     “Listen to me, Jazo!” Liz shouted.  “Please, you saved me once before, can’t you save me again?”
     “Idiot girl,” Drok whispered in her ear, “Jazo only listens to me!  He won’t help you now.”
     But the demon-dinosaur hesitated.  He looked at Liz, at Drok, at the raptors, then back at Liz.  Behind her, Liz felt Drok shiver.
     “Enough of this!” Drok exclaimed angrily.  He shoved Liz away from him and pulled what looked like a remote control from inside his coat.  He pushed one of its few buttons, and both the raptors and Jazo cringed like a loud sound had hurt their ears.
     Something was happening to the raptors in front of Liz’s eyes.  They were convulsing, collapsing on the floor in fits.  More importantly, some seemed to be growing.  Their bodies lengthened; muscle expanded quickly, their heads lengthened; and a new pair of arms and several extra eyes sprouted on them.
     “The second-generation raptors,” Drok explained breathlessly, “have a special code bound into their DNA, which I had not planned to release so early.  They’ve mutated into hexaraptors, SkyGen’s own powerful creation.  Kill the rest,” he told them.
     Climbing shakily from the floor, the new hexaraptors leaped on the remaining raptors, the first-generation ones that didn’t have the mutation code, and slaughtered them.  Jazo, looking increasingly more horrified, backed out of the room and vanished.  The hexaraptors surrounded Drok and Liz, blood from their former comrades still dripping from their claws.
     It was too much.  Liz fell into swooning blackness.