by Tess Sharpe
I shrug. “Whatever else you know, I can find out on my own,” I say. “Unlike you, I won’t get distracted from research because of the crew team.”
A muscle tic jerks in his jaw, and I meet his eyes, projecting an icy disinterest that makes it jerk again.
“You better get back to your sucking up,” I say, nodding toward Mr. Masrani’s car.
“This isn’t over,” Wyatt says, a threatening note in his voice.
“It really is,” I reply. “Even if you insist on talking like a movie villain.” My little joke makes me smile, which seems to be the last straw—he whirls around, stalks to Mr. Masrani’s car, and gets in.
I wait for them to drive away; then I wave at Mr. Masrani, just because I know it’ll piss Wyatt off. I’m about to grab my tablet to go through the list of names I got out of Wyatt, when a truck pulls up next to mine. I look over and smile when I see that Bertie’s inside.
“Hey, Claire,” she says. “Are you on assignment today?”
“I got excused early,” I say.
“You’re free, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to help me out? I’ve got some heavy lifting to do, and Sarah tweaked her back, so I’m down a woman.”
As eager as I am to get to the list, helping Bertie is just as intriguing. Plus, I definitely owe her since she’s taking our Gyrosphere idea seriously. The list will have to wait.
“I’d love to.” I grab my bag and get out of my jeep and into her truck. She backs away from the command center, and instead of heading toward the herbivore habitats, she takes the other way—toward the carnivore paddocks.
I don’t want to hope. They’ve kept us away from the carnivores our whole internship so far. I get it, I do, but…
“Where are we going?” I ask as we drive down the road, the landscape thickening from manicured jungle to wildness in a blink of the eye.
Bertie grins. “We’re going to see Rexy.”
“Seriously?” I almost squeak the word. “The T. rex?”
“Yep. It’s my turn to feed her.”
Every single hair on my arms rises at the thought of her. Rexy. I didn’t realize that’s what they call her. I’ve heard her roar, but seeing her is another story. How close will we get to be to her? Is it safe?
Does it even matter, if I get to see her?
I mean, of course it does. My mom will freak if a T. rex bites a chunk out of me. But Bertie wouldn’t let me come if there were even a sliver of a chance of that happening.
“It’s lunchtime for her,” Bertie explains. “Today is a little special, because it’s the day we’ll be giving her the treated meat. We add a mix of amino acids and other nutrients monthly to make sure we’re keeping her healthy and strong.”
“And she eats it fine, not bothered by the change in taste? Or does that matter?”
“Taste definitely matters. She has her preferences, just like any animal. But our scientists have done a great job at masking any difference in taste,” Bertie says. “Now if they could only figure out how to make a cough syrup that doesn’t taste gross…”
I laugh. “That would be quite the scientific achievement.”
Bertie takes a right, the light around us darkening as the jungle deepens and the road becomes the only spot of civilization in the wild. We’re getting farther and farther away from the populated—well, the human-populated—part of the park.
“We’ll stop at the quarantine paddock first. That’s where her meat is prepped. We can take a little tour, if you want, before we go to her paddock.”
“Is the quarantine paddock where the Raptor will be held when she’s transported from Sorna?” I ask.
“Where did you hear about the Raptor?” Bertie asks. “Is the island rumor mill already spinning?”
“I ran into Mr. Masrani after my lab assignment,” I say. “He was hyped up about it.”
Bertie smiles indulgently. “He always is,” she says. “Every single time a dinosaur is transported from Sorna to Nublar, after they’re settled in and left alone to adjust, he holds a champagne toast up at the very top of the educational center. Everyone is required to go.”
“That sounds fancy.”
“It’s a nice little tradition,” Bertie says. “A time for all of us invested in these animals to come together and celebrate.”
“Have you ever worked with the Raptors on Sorna?” I ask as she steers around a clump of vines that haven’t been trimmed back from the road. This part of the park is so dense and thick—and isolated. Which makes sense. You don’t want dinosaurs in quarantine getting all excited by people smells or noise from Main Street.
Bertie shook her head. “The Raptors are part of a special program within the park. I’ve done some observing and brainstorming with the trainers, but a lot of what they’re doing right now is classified—and even I don’t have the clearance to know.”
“There are a lot of secrets here,” I say, thinking about Izzie and the throat infections.
“With discovery come secrets,” Bertie says. “As well as the threat of them getting exposed to the wrong people. People who might want to exploit or harm our dinosaurs.”
We pull up to the paddock, which has a large sign that says QUARANTINE in front.
The quarantine paddock also has a two-story building in front of the towering cement walls that close off the space from the rest of the jungle. The walls are so high it seems like the clouds might brush the tops of them on a stormy day. It’s imposing, this paddock. It’s all about security and reinforced cement and steel, and it’s such a contrast to the wide, open spaces and beauty of the Gyrosphere Valley. There’s no nature here, no sense of wildness merged with science.
This is human engineering at its finest—and maybe at its most protective. This is a place designed to keep people from getting in—and dinosaurs from getting out.
“There are herbivore quarantine paddocks too, but this place was made specially for the carnivores,” Bertie explains as we get out and go inside. The building is like the other training centers, with a break room to hang out in and a room full of supplies on the ground floor.
“What’s on the top floor?” I ask.
“Sleeping quarters,” Bertie says. “Once there are regular hatches on Nublar, the caretakers will need to be with the baby dinosaurs from their first moments so that they’ll associate us and our scents with home and friend. It’s a round-the-clock job when you’re working with the young ones—helping mold them. Though sometimes I think working with the herbivores…it’s changed me more than it’s changed them.”
“They put things into perspective, don’t they?” I ask.
“They do,” Bertie says. “Come on, I’ll show you the yard before we load up the meat.”
She leads me out of the supply room and through a long tunnel with spooky yellow light. There’s a wheelbarrow full of what looks like aloe leaves in the middle of the tunnel, blocking the way, and Bertie sighs, rolling her eyes. “The vets are always leaving a mess,” she said, grabbing the cart and wheeling it toward the end of the tunnel.
“Will you get the code for me?” she asked. “Seven zero three one.”
I punch it into the keypad next to the door for her and the reinforced door clicks open. I hold it so she can get the wheelbarrow out of the tunnel and then follow her into the yard, which is slightly shadowed by the huge walls. Here, the ground has been leveled and stripped of all plants. It’s just dirt and enormous metal walkways that crisscross the yard above our heads.
I tilt my head up to look at them. They look almost like cages—to protect the humans from the dinosaurs.
Bertie catches my gaze. “Obviously, we do most of our work with the herbivores in their habitats, but with conditioning and treating the carnivores, there have to be some very strict precautions. The walkways protect the caretakers a
nd vets and allow them to move freely above the yard to observe and direct when the smaller carnivores are running around. There are two holding pens that are connected to this yard, there and there.” She points to the end of the training yard, where two steel doors—the kind that slide up, not out—lead to the pens. “That’s where our Raptor will be spending her first night on the island.”
“You don’t let her run around?”
“It’s best to keep any animal that’s undergone sedation and a boat trip quiet for the first twenty-four hours on land,” Bertie says. “Otherwise, you’re dealing with a lot of dinosaur vomit.”
“I’m not sure I can think of anything grosser—or scarier—than a dinosaur with motion sickness,” I say.
“There’s not enough ginger pills in the world,” Bertie joked. “So there’s also an emergency hatch over there.” She nods to the indentation in the cement on the wall opposite us. “It rises when triggered.”
“But what if the dinosaur gets out?” I ask, alarmed.
“There are layers and layers of protection and protocol to prevent that. The engineers are finishing up construction on a mini-paddock next to ours now. So if the hatch is ever opened when there are guests in the park, the dinosaur will just end up in another controlled environment. No threat to anyone. The emergency hatch is just in case of a natural disaster—bad weather out here can be deadly. And so can fires.”
“And what about over there, across the yard?” I point. “That’s definitely not an escape hatch.” On three sides of the yard, there are large, thick cement walls closing us in, protecting us, but the north wall is a fence. A really sturdy-looking fence, with a big gate at the center, but still a fence that bisects the space. I can see walls on the far side too. Another controlled environment. But beyond the fence is thick jungle, not carefully flattened dirt like in the training yard.
“That leads to the paddock itself,” Bertie says. “We’ve got about twenty hectares of space, divided between the training yard and the attached paddock. We’re in the training and treatment yard. It’s where the trainers and vets do their work with the dinosaurs. The paddock is where the dinosaurs who are in quarantine live and recover. They heal and adjust faster if they’re in familiar surroundings.”
“So the whole setup is dual purpose,” I say.
“Yes. The trainers use the yard to get the dinosaur adjusted and to keep recovering dinosaurs from getting bored. You can hit a button, the gate to the paddock rises, and they’re rewarded with a controlled run through the jungle. You drop meat at the very end of the habitat, which is a good chunk of space, and you see how long it takes them to sniff it out. It’s like a game.”
“A dinosaur gold star for a job well done,” I say.
“That’s a good comparison,” Bertie says. “I’d raise the gate and let you look into the paddock, but it’s going to take the two of us to get all of Rexy’s lunch loaded into the truck, and we shouldn’t make her wait.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Maybe another time.”
We go back through the tunnel that leads to the supply house, and we spend the next twenty minutes using a wheelbarrow to cart Rexy’s special lunch from the big fridge out to the truck. It’s a heavy, bloody load of goat parts. I have to grit my teeth and swallow a few times while we load it because, well, gross. By the time we’re on the road again, I’m feeling kind of grubby, but all that fades when we head to the area where Justin and I heard the roar and arrive in front of her paddock. It’s bigger than the quarantine paddock. The walls are even higher.
Number Nine. It’s there in white on the walls, and just looking at it sends adrenaline shooting through me like a firecracker. Bertie gets out of the truck and goes to the left side of the paddock, where a keypad is. She punches in a number and the door slides open to reveal a freight elevator—and a huge cart with brown stains on the bottom.
Blood from Rexy’s last meal. The shiver that goes through me is part fear, part anticipation, and all deep, thrilling excitement.
The first live dinosaur most people ever saw was a T. rex. When it got loose in San Diego, it changed the world.
It changed me. And now I’m minutes away from seeing one live. Seeing her. One of the oldest dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. One of the originals.
Bertie and I load the goat meat into the cart, push it into the freight elevator, and close the door.
“Okay, one last thing before we go inside,” Bertie says, pulling a small aerosol bottle out of her pocket.
I frown. “Hair spray?” I ask.
“It’s a scent masker,” she explains. “We’ll be safe where we are, but it’s an extra precaution I like to take. Not only do you smell like a human, which means food, but you’ve been helping me load goat meat, which is her favorite. Dr. Wu’s team whipped this up for the trainers and vets a while back. It makes your scent blend into the other scents of the jungle so it’s harder for them to pinpoint it. It’s not perfect, but it’s a useful tool.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, watching as she sprays her face and her clothes and the rest of her exposed skin. Then she hands the bottle to me and I do the same.
The mist has no odor, and it’s absorbed almost as soon as it hits my skin.
“Great. We’re good to go now. We go up this way,” she says, jerking her head to the door next to the freight elevator.
I follow her up the stairs, our footsteps echoing hollowly against the solid walls around us. The stairs lead up to what I can only describe as a viewing booth. The wall that overlooks Rexy’s paddock is transparent, and there’s a clearing right below us within the labyrinth of a jungle that makes up her habitat. I’m surprised at how dense the jungle growth is for as far as I can see. I would think she’d need more room—but maybe she just knocks trees down at her pleasure.
“How does the meat get down there?” I ask, stepping toward the polymer. I don’t dare put my hand on it, but I want to. I want to press my nose against it and search for her until my eyes bug out.
“We have a drop system,” Bertie says. “When she’s not getting her meds, she gets live, whole meat.”
I wince at the thought. Poor little goats.
Bertie goes over to the screen on the other wall of the viewing booth. She presses a few buttons and I watch as an automated crane dumps the contents of our cart into the clearing. Bertie walks over to a box set in the corner, pulls out a red stick flare, and walks over to stand next to me.
I barely glance at it. My eyes are glued to the pile of meat in the clearing—and the jungle that borders it. I wait to hear a rustle.
“What’s the flare for?” I ask.
“Visual aid. She associates the flare with food, so lighting one makes it easier to get her to come out of the jungle.”
“Does she hide?” I ask.
“It’s not exactly hiding,” Bertie says. “You have to understand, Rexy is one of our oldest dinosaurs. She’s seen a lot. Experienced even more. And for several years, she had free rein of this island.”
“Do you think she feels trapped?” I ask, feeling wistful for her.
“I don’t think it’s that,” Bertie says. “She has her space. Her behavior is more…withholding. Like she’s decided we need to earn her respect.”
“So she’s pulling rank,” I say.
“Well, if there is a queen of dinosaurs,” Bertie says, “it’s probably her.” She holds out the flare. “Want to do the honors?”
I take the flare from her, my hand closing around it. “What do I do?”
Bertie guides me to the very end of the wall, where she presses her hand into the bioscanner. There’s a beep, and then right above the scanner, a metal shutter no bigger than a paperback book rolls up. A breeze hits my face and I let out a shaky breath, looking out at the paddock through the hole Bertie has exposed in the wall.
I pull the cap off the flar
e and toss it through the opening. As soon as my hand is clear, before the flare’s even fallen to the ground next to the meat, the shutter rolls down again and locks with a beep.
I dash back to the window, and this time, I do press my hands against the glass, peering out into the jungle, and with every breath, I feel my chest get tighter and tighter.
I start to count in my head to make it easier. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three…
Thump.
I flinch.
Thump. Thump.
I can hear her coming before the trees even begin to move. Her heavy footfalls, crushing whatever gets in her way.
I breathe in, my hands still pressed against the glass. The trees shake, but no birds fly away.
Did she eat them all? Or do they just know better not to encroach on her empire?
I think I know what to expect when the trees part and bend as she tromps through them. When she emerges into the clearing, I think I’m ready. But those fuzzy pictures from San Diego…they did nothing to prepare me.
She’s enormous. The ground shakes with each step she takes, lured by the red light of the flare. She bends, swinging her head down, saliva dripping off her jaws and onto the meat. She noses at it, like she expects it to start running, and when it doesn’t, instead of chowing down, she swings her head back up.
And suddenly, she’s looking right at me.
My breath stutters in my lungs as she moves toward the window. My knees lock, and I’ve never felt smaller in my life. This is different from being around the herbivores. There’s a benevolence to the ones who live in the valley, a slow sweetness that makes me feel comforted, even if their size is intimidating.
Rexy isn’t sweet or slow. Rexy is queen. And she knows it.
In her face, I see wisdom. Calculation. Curiosity.
And so many teeth. Her lip curls in a snarl, exposing them further as she rumbles the noise out, and she’s so close her breath fogs up the window between us where my hands are pressed. I can feel the heat of it through the glass. It sends a wash of terror through me, but I still can’t move. I won’t. She’s too close. I can see every marking. Every scar. Every single thing that makes her unique and special is right there, just a foot away.