MAY 2021

"We are informing you that the West Side highway from Sacramento to Redding is currently blocked due to the passage of a group of Triceratops. Caution is advised and drivers are invited to take an alternate…"

Owen changed the station on the radio to prevent himself from hitting the wheel in frustration with his closed fist. Maisie squirmed on the backseat, sitting across from Owen so she could see him better.

"We'll get there soon Owen, don't worry," she said and smiled reassuringly despite the fact that she herself had a hard time believing it.

But Owen smiled in return when he looked at her in the rearview mirror then focused on driving and trying his best not to throw them in a ditch. "I know, sweetheart. We're just going to take another route." He swerved to the right, catching a smaller road.

They didn't speak for the next fifteen minutes and it hurt Owen to realize that if Claire had been with them, she would have tried to make some small talk to avoid this kind of awkward silence. The radio was now a mix of static noises and bits of songs that were cut every single time they hit a bump in the road, making the whole care lift up ever so slightly. Maisie used to enjoy those kinds of bumps and Owen always made sure to hit them to make her laugh, much to Claire's disapproval, as she held on tightly on the headboard. But now, both of them were too lost in their own thoughts to even notice those bumps.

Despite the fact that Owen knew that returning to the DPG wasn't a good idea, he could not have predicted what would happen once Claire left. She was the president of the Dinosaur Protection Group, of course she had to go back at some point and she had spent an entire year with just him and Maisie (while occasionally meeting with Zia and Franklin and seeing Karen and the boys). It was high time for her to go back to her work, to try to salvage the unsalvageable.

Claire made it look so easy. She came in, called a few people, started organizing work sheets and meetings and things were good for a while. A few dinosaurs had been shot due to how dangerous they were, like the Baryonyx during the first few months following what everyone called the Release. Claire had changed the focus of her association a bit and while her goal remained the protection of dinosaurs, she also wanted people to be aware of them and to know how to protect themselves. He had seen so many of her campaigns on the internet (thanks to Franklin), guidelines on what to do when you encountered that type of dinosaur or another and the government actually tried to listen.

Another year had passed and they were about to box-in the T-Rex (Blue remained hidden, the clever girl, and only hunted middle-sized animals from time to time) when the Indoraptor made its return. Or rather, another genetic hybrid that Henry Wu had probably created. More hybrids appeared from that moment on and the whole continent quickly fell in red alert. People started buying bunkers and end-of-the-world supplies like it was Black Friday every day.

All the work Claire had done was thrown out the window the moment the first hybrid massacred a hundred people in a small town in Nevada. And just like that, the end of the world was upon them. Again.

Claire had gone ahead to one of the camps that had been built, where people prepared expeditions to capture those dinosaurs. A lot of different people worked those camps: military, hired guns, veterinarians… Zia had made it her permanent residence and Franklin only dropped by. It seemed to be all about survival and Claire wanted to make sure the people shooting at the dinosaurs knew the difference between the real ones from Isla Nublar (well, as real as they could be) and the genetic hybrids. The government just gave the green light to shoot on sight any hybrid, but allowed the other ones to be spared, seeing that very little carnivores were left.

Claire had been at that camp in California for about a month when Owen said screw the world and wanted to meet her. One month with her was too long. He didn't like how exposed she was, how people treated her and how little her efforts were appreciated. Not to mention the danger she was putting herself in by being in the field. But things had changed and she had been forced to shoot a hybrid Allosaurus one time. She also wore boots everyday now and knew how to handle a gun (Owen had also showed Maisie how to shoot one just in case). Things were definitely changing.

Owen and Maisie were on their way to help her out, the camps could always use more hands to stop the proliferation of the hybrids while the government investigated and tried to stop whoever was making them. To Owen, it all felt like a giant field test, as if someone had released those hybrids on the population on purpose to see if they could be used in warfare.

The silence in the car only grew as they made their way to the camp, changing roads whenever Owen could see trouble in the distance. People were wary of dinosaurs in general now and who could blame them when a Triceratops came rushing through their garden and almost trampled them. Owen had seen his fair share of people killing dinosaurs in smaller cities where the government laws weren't always respected and where the police couldn't do much against animals like that. He lost count of the carcasses he saw on the side of the road, of the car wrecks that had horn-like or teeth-like holes in them, of the remains of people he saw. He did his best to shield Maisie from all that horror but despite her PTSD, the girl was doing surprisingly well.

Owen took out his phone and called Claire, but as expected, it rang but she didn't pick up. They were fifteen miles from the camp when they got stuck on a closed off bridge and had to take yet another detour.