by David Lewman
In Blue’s truck, Zia checked the Raptor’s eyes with a flashlight. Blue woke up and kicked one leg free of its restraint. Zia was happy to see her recovering from her surgery so well.
The truck stopped at the top of a ramp. Wheatley jumped out and greeted Mills. “The hunter-warrior has returned with meat for the fire,” he said, grinning.
Mills wasn’t amused. “Show me.”
Wheatley led him around to the back of the truck and pulled the canvas flap open. Mills saw Blue…and Zia.
“Who is she?” he asked accusingly.
“We needed a vet,” Wheatley explained.
“I want sanitized tools and chemicals to disinfect her wound,” Zia said bluntly.
Mills looked at Blue’s wound, expertly treated by Zia. Wheatley closed the canvas flap.
“Give her what she needs,” Mills said.
“What about what I need?” Wheatley asked.
Mills shot him a look. “You’ll get your money if the animal lives.” He strode off. Wheatley pounded the back of the truck and it drove off toward the containment cells.
Owen and Claire’s truck was near the back of the caravan, which had come to a stop. Claire looked at a dark crossroad. “There’s a town twenty miles from here.”
Owen followed her gaze to the road and said, “We could go get help. Shut this whole operation down.”
He thought about it for a moment, then turned the steering wheel, pulling out of the line of trucks. But when he started to turn onto the crossroad, he saw three armed men pointing their guns at them. He hit the brakes.
Out of nowhere, Wheatley stuck his arm through the truck’s window and pressed a gun to Owen’s temple. “You should have stayed on the island and taken your chances with the volcano. Better odds.”
* * *
Wheatley and his men took Owen and Claire to one of the concrete containment cells meant for dinosaurs and locked them in. Through the cell’s metal bars, they could see the mother Triceratops and her baby in the opposite cell. The pair huddled together, and the mother moaned.
“Claire…,” came a voice through the bars.
She turned and saw Mills. He said, “You have to let me apologize. I had no intention of bringing you into this. He insisted we have the Raptor—”
Claire lunged at him! Owen held her back, but she still managed to deliver a few solid boot-kicks to the bars. CLANG! CLANG!
“So this is it, huh?” Owen asked Mills. “I mean, you’re a smart guy. You could probably start a foundation. Cure cancer. But instead you, what? Sell endangered species?”
“These animals were going to die,” Mills countered. “I saved their lives.”
This made Claire furious. “You betrayed a dying man! For money!”
Mills’s eyes turned cold. He stepped closer to the bars. “I admire your idealism, Claire. But we both exploited these creatures. At least I have the integrity to admit it.”
“I’ve never—” Claire started to protest.
“You authorized the creation of the Indominus Rex,” he snapped. “You sold a living thing, in a cage, for money. How is it different?” He turned to Owen. “And you. The man who proved Raptors can follow orders. You never thought about the applications of your research? How many millions a trained predator might be worth? You two…you’re the parents of the new world.”
BAM! Claire punched Mills right in the mouth through the bars!
He stumbled back, holding his bleeding lip. Wheatley laughed almost good-naturedly and offered Mills his bandanna.
“How do you want to end this?” Wheatley asked Mills. “As far as anyone knows, these two burned up on Isla Nublar.”
“Leave them here,” Mills said, walking away. “By sunrise they’ll have the place to themselves.”
* * *
Maisie opened her bedroom window and crouched on the sill, looking down to the ground two stories below. She took a deep breath and stepped out onto a stone ledge. As she carefully moved along the ledge, she saw long black cars driving up to the mansion.
Mills and Eversoll stood at the entrance to greet the buyers as they arrived for the dinosaur auction. Eversoll, who’d done business with the buyers before, whispered details about each man as he walked up the stone stairs to the front door.
As one man walked by, Eversoll said, “Development representative for Aldaris Pharmaceuticals.” Then he continued as more men passed. “Proxy for Gregor Aldrich, Slovenian arms dealer. Consultant to the Saudi royal family. Horse buyer for Rand Magnus, the oil magnate from Houston—”
“What’s his interest?” Mills asked. They weren’t selling horses.
“Strictly personal,” Eversoll said. “His kid wants a baby Triceratops.” He greeted the horse buyer with a friendly handshake. “Glenn! How’s Janet?”
Someone slammed a car door. Up on the ledge, Maisie was startled and slipped! She regained her footing, but a tiny plastic T. rex fell out of her pocket onto the flagstones below.
Eversoll took a Russian mobster aside and spoke to him confidentially. “Listen, you don’t get what you want, come see me. I’ll pull something from the back.” He switched to Russian. “I know what you want, Anton.”
“You never disappoint me, Gunnar!” Anton answered in Russian. “Let’s have some fun!” He went inside.
Eversoll turned to Mills. “He’s only interested in carnivores. Wants two of them.”
“Why?” Mills asked.
“Cage match. Five thousand dollars a seat and pay-per-view.”
Mills noticed Maisie’s plastic dinosaur by his feet. He looked up at the house but saw nothing unusual.
“They’re hungry,” Eversoll said, smiling. “I can tell. Lockwood’s going to have a very good night. Will he be joining us?”
“Unlikely,” Mills answered. He checked his watch. By now, the morphine should have done its work. But he had to be sure. “Excuse me.”
He went inside.
Maisie pulled herself over a stone wall onto the roof. She ran across to a window. Through it she could see her grandfather sleeping in his big four-poster bed. She raised the window and climbed through, dropping onto the floor and running to her grandfather’s side.
“Wake up, Grandfather, wake up!” she said.
There was no response.
“Grandfather, get up!” she pleaded, grabbing his sleeve. “You have to see!”
Maisie shook his arm. He stayed still.
And then she understood.
She fell silent.
She didn’t know what to do. Where to go.
CREAK. She heard footsteps in the hallway. She looked back at the open window on the other side of the room, but realized she couldn’t get out before the person came in. The bedroom doorknob turned.
Too many lines have been crossed. Genetic power has been unleashed…which of course is going to be catastrophic.
—Dr. Ian Malcolm
Maisie bolted to the dumbwaiter in the wall near the bed. She managed to scramble in and slide the door shut before the person came into the room. Through a tiny crack in the dumbwaiter door she saw Mills enter.
He stood there for a moment, looking across at Lockwood’s body, certain that the overdose of morphine had killed the sick old man. Then he crossed to the medical equipment next to the bed. He flipped a switch, and the equipment hummed to life. A monitor lit up, casting a green glow. The heart monitor showed a flat line—no heartbeat.
He thought he heard a noise in the room. He cocked his head, listening.
Mills turned and walked toward the part of the room the noise had seemed to come from. The only thing there was the dumbwaiter in the wall. He slid open the small door.
Empty.
* * *
In the dinosaur containment cell, Owen struggled to pick the lock with the multipurpose pocket tool he alwa
ys carried with him. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get the lock to spring open.
Claire looked past him through the bars at the dinosaurs imprisoned all around them. An Allosaurus slowly stood, unable to reach her full height under the concrete ceiling. The dinosaur was cramped in her cell, but Claire still thought she looked beautiful and majestic.
“Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur?” she asked.
Owen paused a moment in his attempt to pick the lock. Though he didn’t answer, she could tell by the look on his face that he did remember that moment.
“The first time you see them,” she said, “it’s like a miracle. You’ve read about them in books and seen their bones in museums, but they’re still like myths. You don’t really believe they could’ve existed. And then you see your first one alive, moving, looking back at you. It’s…breathtaking. I just wanted to help bring that feeling to more people. I never—”
“I know,” Owen interrupted. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is.”
“No. This one’s on me. I showed them the way. I trained the Raptors.”
Claire looked at him. “Would you have come if it weren’t me asking?”
Owen pulled another tool out of his pocket device and tried fitting it into the lock. “Look,” he said, “we’ll talk about it later, okay?”
“If there is a later,” Claire replied matter-of-factly.
“There will be,” Owen said confidently. “I’ve got a cabin to finish.”
Claire smiled. “You gonna have a hammock? I love a hammock.”
“Sorry, hammock’s for the dog,” he said. “But I’ll consider getting a second one. Maybe.”
From the next cell came a loud, low groan. OOORRROOOAAHH!
“What was that?” Claire asked.
OOROOOGHHUNH! Another groan, followed by the sound of something big stirring in the straw on the floor and then slowly standing up.
“Whatever it is, it’s alive,” Owen said. He stopped trying to pick the lock on their cell’s door and walked over to the wall where the sounds had come from. Looking up, he saw a small, metal-barred opening between their cell and the next. He jumped up, grabbed the bars, and pulled himself up so he could see into the next cell.
The cell was identical to theirs: concrete with steel bars. But the floor was lined with straw, and there was a trough with hay, carrots, and other vegetables. The cell’s occupant was ignoring the food, pacing back and forth, huffing angrily.
“Well, look who just woke up!” Owen said.
It was a Stygimoloch—Stiggy for short. The herbivore was compact and built like a linebacker. There were short horns over her nose, and spikes sticking out from the back of her head. But the first thing anyone noticed about a Stiggy was her dome-shaped skull. It rose high above her eyes, like the crown of a bald man’s head. Owen knew that the skull’s bone could be up to nine inches thick. Stiggy liked to butt her unbreakable skull into an attacker’s body.
And that gave Owen an idea.
He let go of the bars and dropped back down to the floor. Then he smiled at Claire and said, “We’re getting out of here.”
* * *
In an underground luxury garage, chairs were set up for the dinosaur auction. Buyers filed in and took their seats. Eversoll stood beside a large concrete platform fitted with heavy rails leading to a wide steel door.
“Gentlemen,” Eversoll said. “No photographs, please. All sales are final. Let us begin.”
* * *
In their cell, Owen gave a loud, sharp whistle. The Stygimoloch didn’t like the high-pitched sound. It turned and rammed the wall between the two cells with its bony head. THUUUNNK!
“What are you doing?” Claire asked Owen.
“Escaping,” he explained.
He whistled again, and Stiggy slammed into the wall again. THUUUNNNK!
“You sure about this?” Claire asked.
It’s as if we have been genetically designed to repeat our worst mistakes.
—Dr. Ian Malcolm
In the garage, the auction was under way. A large, steel door at the back of the stage rose, revealing an Ankylosaurus in a cage. “Bidding starts at four million,” Eversoll announced.
In seconds the bids had reached eight million. And the bids kept coming. Eversoll’s eyes lit up. Mills watched in the background, thrilled.
BANG! Eversoll brought down his gavel, ending the bidding auction. “Sold!” Eversoll called. “To the gentleman from Indonesia for eleven million.”
A guard pulled a lever. The Ankylosaurus’s cage backed out of the room. Out on a loading dock, the cage rolled into a truck. A man shut the back door and locked it. The truck revved, and it drove off into the night.
Another cage was rolled into the garage for the auction. This one held a juvenile Allosaurus.
Mills and Eversoll had planned to start the bidding at four million again, but they’d learned from the auctioning of the Ankylosaurus. Why start low? “Bidding will start at eight million,” Eversoll said. Almost immediately, he got bids of ten million, eleven million, twelve….
* * *
THUUUNNNK!!! Stiggy slammed her skull into the concrete. Fragments crumbled from the ceiling. She had almost broken through.
“Stand back,” Owen warned.
“Believe me,” Claire said, “I will.”
He whistled again. SMASH! Stiggy crashed through into their cell, disoriented, coughing on dust. But she quickly got herself set to fight. She stared at Claire, who was backed up against the wall. The dinosaur prepared to charge.
“Uh, Owen?!”
He whistled one more time, and Stiggy wheeled on him. Owen stood right in front of the cell’s door. Stiggy charged at him, but Owen grabbed the bars in the door and swung himself up at the last moment. WHAM! Stiggy broke through the door.
Out in the corridor between cells, the dinosaur realized she was free. She brayed, setting off roars from the other dinosaurs. Then she ran down the hall, disappearing around a corner.
“You’re welcome!” Owen called after it.
In the distance, Stiggy brayed again.
Claire and Owen hurried out of the cell and headed down the corridor. As they passed a dim hallway, Claire noticed movement. She found the door to a dumbwaiter, slightly open. She gently opened the door. Maisie was crouched inside, crying.
“Lockwood’s granddaughter,” Claire told Owen.
“Hey there,” Owen said. “Looks like you could use a friend. You want to come out?”
Maisie shook her head. Claire squatted down to get on the girl’s level. “My name’s Claire,” she said. “Do you remember me?” Maisie nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Maisie.”
“Maisie, this is Owen.”
“I saw you on the video,” Maisie said. “With the one called Blue.”
“You like dinosaurs?” Owen asked. She nodded. “Come on out. I’ll tell you all about Blue, okay?”
She carefully climbed out of the dumbwaiter.
“Wow,” Owen said. “You made it all the way down here. You must be pretty brave.”
Claire brushed the hair out of Maisie’s eyes. “We need to find your grandfather. Can you take us to him?”
Maisie shook her head, and started crying again. She suddenly flung herself into Owen’s arms and hugged him desperately. Surprised, Owen tried to comfort her. “Shh, we got you. We got you. Don’t worry….”
Claire watched Owen hug Maisie. She liked this gentle side of him.
“How about we just find our friends and get out of here?” Owen asked. Maisie nodded in agreement.
* * *
In the garage, the auction was bringing in millions of dollars. Eversoll and Mills were thrilled. Dr. Wu watched disapprovingly. A Stegosaurus went for twenty-one million dollars.
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Just above, Owen and Claire pressed their way through a tight service tunnel full of pipes and electrical conduits, followed by Maisie. They could hear Eversoll’s voice. Following the sound of it, they found a grate in the wall. Through the grate, they could see everything going on in the garage below them. The caged Stegosaurus was rolled back out of the room. Owen ran to a window to see where it was going.
The cage was wheeled into a truck, which pulled away from the loading dock. “Once the dinosaurs are taken away,” Owen said, “there’s no way to track them.”
“We need to save them,” Maisie said.
* * *
They went back to the grate where they could see the auction below. Eversoll was saying, “And now, a special treat for the truly discriminating buyer! We’d like to preview a new asset we have been developing. We call it…the Indoraptor.”
An elevator rose from the level of the containment cells up to the garage. In it, the Indoraptor paced in his cage. Once the cage reached the garage level, it was rolled past the steel door onto the cement platform, lit from behind. The bidders saw the silhouette of the powerful Indoraptor and gasped.
“The perfect weapon for the modern age,” Eversoll continued. “Built for combat. Tactical response more acute than any human soldier.”
The cage rolled forward into the light. When the buyers could fully see the Indoraptor, they whispered to each other, excited. Inside the cage, the Indoraptor paced back and forth like a tiger, making aggressive eye contact with the men in the audience.