by David Lewman
“Be good,” she said. “There. See? We’re friends.”
Claire smiled at Owen, amazed and amused at her own attempt to make friends with a T. rex. He ran his hand along the dinosaur’s neck until he found the jugular vein. “Got it.”
Claire nodded.
Owen handed Claire the huge syringe with a tube and a bag attached. She reached to where Owen’s hand was, but couldn’t follow the jugular vein all around the T. rex’s gigantic neck. “I can’t feel it,” she whispered.
Owen took her hand and moved it onto the vein. “It’s right here. Like a throbbing boom-BOOM. There.”
The T. rex moaned. Owen looked at the position of her head and her neck. “Okay,” he decided. “You need to climb up there.”
Claire looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “I am not climbing up on a T. rex’s back!”
“You’ll be fine,” Owen reassured her. “It’s like riding a bull.”
“I didn’t grow up in a rodeo or wherever you came from!”
The T. rex snorted, loud as a car backfiring. Owen beckoned for Claire to move.
Her face became determined. Pulling herself up with her arms, Claire climbed onto the dinosaur’s back. “Okay,” she said. “I did it. I’m on the T. rex.” She couldn’t believe it.
“Good job,” Owen congratulated her. “You’re making this look normal.”
Claire ran her fingers along the vein and tapped the spot where she thought the syringe should go. “There?” Owen nodded. She tried to insert the needle, but the dinosaur’s skin was too thick. She tried again, but still couldn’t puncture her hide. “I can’t get the needle in!”
“Don’t worry,” Owen said. “She’s asleep.”
Claire raised the syringe and slammed the needle in. Blood flowed into the tube. The T. rex made a loud, huffing sound.
“Shh,” Owen said. “Easy, girl…”
Suddenly the T. rex swung her head, pinning Owen tight against the side of the container! The T. rex’s eye slowly opened. Owen’s face was right next to the gigantic eyeball. He could see his own reflection in it.
“You okay down there?” Claire asked.
“Mmm-hmm,” Owen managed to say.
Outside the container, a passing guard noticed the open door. He slammed it shut—CLANG!—and locked the door.
Inside, the loud clang roused the T. rex. She began to fully wake up, much to Claire’s and Owen’s alarm. “Stay there!” Claire whispered to Owen.
“Okay,” he said, unable to move.
Claire pulled the full blood bag free and stood up on the T. rex as she shifted under her. Jumping up to the container’s roof, she squeezed herself through its opening.
The T. rex’s eye focused on Owen, glaring. The dinosaur snapped at him, but in the tight quarters of the cage, the predator wasn’t quite able to reach him with her teeth. So she tried to slash him with the claws on her back leg. Owen dodged the attack, but he still remained trapped, and the T. rex was growing angrier.
Claire leapt down from the top of the container, unlocked the door, and opened it.
For Owen, there was only one path to the door: through the T. rex’s jaws.
As the most powerful predator in the world opened her mouth wide, Owen dove. SNAP! The sharp teeth just missed him, and he tumbled through the door and out onto the deck. Claire shut the door and locked it. They both were breathing hard.
* * *
“Did you see that?” Owen asked. Claire nodded. “Please tell me you got the blood.”
She lifted the full bag, showing him. They both smiled.
* * *
In Lockwood’s mansion, Maisie slipped into her grandfather’s bedroom. He was in bed with his eyes closed, but when he heard Maisie, he opened them. “Maisie, what are you doing up?”
“There was a man here today. With Mr. Mills.” She frowned. “I didn’t like him.”
He patted her hand. “I’m sure it was some business about the sanctuary. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Maisie shook her head vigorously. “No! They’re going to sell the dinosaurs! They’re bringing them here!”
For an instant, a shadow crossed Lockwood’s face. But he hid his concern, saying, “I’m sure you misunderstood. The animals are on their way to the sanctuary right now.”
Maisie looked her grandfather right in the eyes. “I know what I heard.”
“It’s late,” Lockwood sighed. “Why don’t we talk about it in the morning?” He kissed her head and gave her a hug.
But on his face was a look of anger and betrayal.
How many times do you have to see the evidence? How many times must the point be made?
—Dr. Ian Malcolm
Zia started the transfusion of T. rex blood into Blue’s vein. Claire applied pressure to the Raptor’s wound, taking over for Franklin, who was grateful to be replaced.
“Owen, restrain her leg so we can get in there,” Zia said. “Claire, swab the wound when you can.”
Owen tethered Blue’s leg. Zia inserted a probe into her wound.
“What’s that for?” Franklin asked, grimacing.
“Since we don’t have X-rays,” Zia explained, “this is the only way to find the bullet.”
“You’ve done this before, right?” Franklin asked.
“Yes,” Zia said. “Shh.”
“With a live animal?”
She shot Franklin a glance. “We operated on scale models at school. There aren’t many actual dinosaurs running around Syracuse, New York.” The probe hit something. “There it is!”
Zia slowly pulled out the probe and measured the distance from the bullet hole to Blue’s upper thigh, where the bullet had lodged. Then she prepared a lethal dose of anesthesia in a syringe.
“What’s that for?” Franklin asked.
“Their bones are hollow,” Zia answered. “If the bullet struck a bone, there’s nothing we can do. We’ll have to put her down.”
“In that case, I’ll do it,” Owen said firmly.
Zia used a scalpel to cut down to the bullet. “Lot of muscle tissue,” she murmured. The others watched, tense. Had the bullet hit the bone?
“Okay, here we go,” Zia said, picking up the forceps. She steadied her hand, reached in, and pulled out the bullet. It was intact.
Zia exhaled and peered at the incision.
“It missed the bone,” she announced. “She’s going to be fine.”
They all smiled, relieved. Blue shifted gently, waking up.
“Shh! Blue!” Owen said, calming her. “Shh. Easy. It’s okay, girl. We got you. We got you.”
Under Owen’s touch, Blue calmed down.
* * *
Early the next morning, Maisie snuck to the keypad beside the service elevator and punched the code she’d memorized by watching her grandfather. The door opened, and she got in.
Down in the lab, she stared at all the displays and equipment. She’d never known all this was down here. Drawn to a video monitor with a baby Velociraptor on the screen, she smiled and pressed the PLAY button.
On the screen, Owen was in a pen with four baby Raptors: Echo, Delta, Charlie, and Blue. “Eyes on me,” Owen said.
The little Raptors followed the piece of beef jerky in his hand, moving their heads in unison. Owen moved the treat closer. One Raptor snapped at it.
“No.” Owen corrected. “Delta, no.”
As he tossed treats to the three other Raptors, Delta hissed. “You know the rules,” Owen said. “Come on. Play nice, ladies.”
The video cut to a shot of Owen speaking directly to the camera. “Day 148. We’re experimenting with socializing the Raptors. They’ve formed a protective unit, like a wolf pack, so when they sense weakness or injury, they assume dominance.”
Maisie watched, fascinated, as the video sho
wed Owen pretending to be injured. The baby Raptors instantly attacked, climbing all over him. He shook them loose, noting that Blue seemed to be hanging back a little bit.
“Day 187,” Owen said into the camera. “Exciting breakthrough today. I’m pretty sure one of the Raptors is showing high-level socialized behavior.”
The video showed Owen working separately with young Blue. He pretended to be injured, but Blue didn’t instantly attack. She watched. Then she approached, looking concerned.
“Her name’s Blue,” Owen’s voice narrated. “This one’s special. Look at that. She’s concerned for me. Her head’s tilting. She’s craning forward. There’s increased eye movement. That’s empathy, like you’d see in a mammal. We weren’t sure Raptors would ever be capable of this level of bonding….”
As she watched Owen on the video, Maisie smiled. She liked this man.
Now he showed young Blue that he wasn’t really hurt. “Hey, I’m all right, Blue. See? Just fine. I’m great.” Blue relaxed and looked at him. There clearly was a connection between the man and the dinosaur.
“I have something special,” Owen said on the video. “Just for you, pal.” He reached into his pack. Blue looked alert. He pulled out a dead rat. Blue grabbed it and ran off happily.
Behind Maisie, a man’s voice said, “You sure she’ll live?”
Someone was coming!
Change is like death. You don’t know what it looks like until you’re standing at the gates.
—Dr. Ian Malcolm
Maisie shut off the video and hid. Mills and another man came out of an office.
“We have blood samples if the Raptor dies,” Mills replied.
Dr. Henry Wu looked angry. “That’s not good enough. The Raptor is a behavioral specimen. We need her in good health.”
“What do you want me to do, Henry?” Mills snapped. “I didn’t shoot her!”
Wu stopped and gave Mills an exasperated look. “You don’t have the least understanding of what I’m doing here. Do you see the complexity of creating an entirely new life form?”
“I see the complexity of paying for it,” Mills countered.
Maisie wanted out of the lab. She spotted the spiral stairs leading down to the dinosaur containment cells. She sneaked toward them. Just then, Wu pivoted and strode toward the stairs. Mills followed him. Maisie hurried down ahead of them.
“All your money will have been wasted if I don’t get Blue here in good health,” Wu said as he headed down the stairs, his shoes clanking on the metal steps. “To get the next iteration under control, it needs to form a familial bond with a closely related genetic link.”
“English, Henry,” Mills said.
“It needs a mother,” Wu stated plainly. “Blue’s DNA will be part of the next Indoraptor’s makeup. So it will be genetically coded to recognize her authority and assume her traits. Empathy. Obedience. Everything the one you have now is missing.”
“And how long is that going to take?” Mills asked, following him down the stairs.
“Science is rarely a sprint, Mr. Mills,” Wu replied. “It’s a marathon.”
Maisie reached the bottom of the stairs and looked for a place to hide.
“A marathon sounds expensive,” Mills said. He and Wu were almost to the bottom of the stairs. Maisie hurried into a dim corridor.
The one that led to the Indoraptor.
“You must remember this is all uncharted territory,” Wu argued. “A wolf, genetically, is barely distinguishable from a bulldog. Within that gray area is…art.”
Maisie kept backing down the corridor, retreating from the men, unaware of the genetic monster at the other end of the hall.
“I’m just asking if you can do it,” Mills said sharply.
Wu looked at Mills coldly. “I can do it.”
The two men strode off in opposite directions.
Maisie heard a rattling sound behind her. She peered into the darkness, frightened but curious. She could hear something sniffing, as though it was trying to pick up her scent. She turned and looked down the hallway to see if the men were coming.
A scaly black arm stretched through the bars, its long, sharp talons reaching—
Maisie took a step forward. The claws came down, combing through her hair. She wheeled around, startled, and found herself face to face with the Indoraptor. He growled, eyeing her. Frozen in fear, Maisie stared into his piercing, predatory eyes.
Someone grabbed her arm. Maisie screamed.
It was Mills. He angrily hauled Maisie up to her room and locked her in.
* * *
At night, the cargo ship carrying the dinosaurs arrived at a dock near Lockwood’s estate. Owen, Claire, Franklin, and Zia were in the back of the truck holding Blue.
Claire heard the sounds of arrival. “We’re here.”
“Where?” Franklin asked.
Before she could answer, they heard someone open the driver’s door of the truck and climb in. It was Wheatley. He slid open the hatch between the cab and the back compartment to ask Zia about Blue. “Got a heartbeat?”
“Yeah,” Zia answered coldly. “Do you?”
He scowled. “I need blood samples.”
“Take your own samples,” Zia said defiantly.
Wheatley’s mouth tightened. He shook his head and closed the hatch. Zia gave Owen, Claire, and Franklin an urgent look that said “Get out of here right away.”
Owen and Claire slipped out of the back of the truck and around the side. But just as Franklin was climbing out, a crewman rounded the corner and spotted him.
“What are you doing?” the crewman barked.
Franklin stared. He couldn’t think of a lie.
Zia stuck her head out the back of the truck. “I needed a second pair of hands. He volunteered.”
The crewman eyed Franklin suspiciously. “Deck crew?”
Franklin searched his brain for the answer a real worker on a ship might give, and “Aye, aye!” was the best he could come up with.
The crewman looked him over skeptically for a brief moment before saying, “Come on. We’re loading out. Follow me.”
Franklin’s eyes widened. “You mean we’re leaving the ship? Right now?”
The crewman stopped and stared at Franklin. “That’s what ‘loading out’ means,” he said sarcastically. “Get moving. Come on!”
He turned and walked away. After hesitating for a second, Franklin had no choice but to follow him, trying to pass himself off as some kind of worker on the ship. From underneath the truck where they were hiding, Claire and Owen watched his feet go.
Franklin was not happy….
“Wait here,” Owen told Claire. “I’ll get Franklin.”
But before he could go, the truck’s engine started, followed by the engines of all the other vehicles in the ship’s cargo hold. Owen realized they both needed to get out from under the truck. “Go!” he said.
They scrambled up and hurried back to the truck they’d originally driven onto the ship. They got in, and Owen started the engine. “We’ll get Franklin and Zia back,” he reassured Claire. “Don’t worry.”
Claire peered out the truck’s window. “Where are we?”
The caravan of trucks carrying dinosaurs rolled down a ramp onto a World War II–era military dock, long abandoned. They drove away from the coast, uphill into a foggy redwood forest, on their way to the Lockwood Estate.
* * *
Lockwood lay in his bed, hooked up to an IV drip. As he glared at Mills, he looked weak but very angry. “Did you think you would get away with it? In my own house? Why would you do this, Eli? I’ve always treated you well.”
Mills looked at him coldly. “You entrusted me to guide your fortune into the future. I have.”
“Pick up that phone,” Lockwood said, nodding toward a telephone be
side the bed. “Call the police. It’s easier if it comes from you.”
Looking as though he was accepting his punishment, Mills reached for the phone. But then his hand went past it. “I’m not the only guilty one here, am I?”
His hand continued to Lockwood’s morphine drip. He turned the dial up to a lethal dose, and then looked away from the dying man.
* * *
Mills had locked Maisie’s door as he was leaving her room. With him gone, Maisie looked out the window, thinking about her grandfather. She could see the headlights of the truck caravan moving in the valley below the mansion. She wiped away her tears and got a determined look on her face.
She found a hairpin and a piece of paper. She slid the piece of paper under the door and positioned it below the lock. Then she pushed the hairpin through the keyhole until the key on the other side of the door fell onto the paper. She carefully pulled the paper into the room, picked up the key, and unlocked the door.
But when she opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hall, she saw a guard Mills had posted near her room. She silently closed the door. Then she turned and looked at her window. It was the only way out.
* * *
Owen drove the truck through the woods, following the other trucks. Ahead, they saw elaborate metal gates. “I’ve been here,” Claire said. “This is Lockwood Estate.”
“Lockwood must have an awfully big garage,” Owen said, thinking of all the vehicles in the caravan.
A man waved them through the gates, but as they passed, he recognized Owen and Claire from the island. He was one of Wheatley’s men.
He urgently spoke into his walkie-talkie.
The trucks ahead had reached the mansion and unloaded the dinosaurs into underground containment cells, which lined a vast subterranean facility located beneath the estate. An Ankylosaurus limped out into her cramped concrete quarters. There was some hay on the floor. A trough held carrots and celery. The Ankylosaurus roared angrily. Other dinosaurs wailed and growled.