Chapter One
Tara let out a sigh as she slipped through a metal door, the ground rumbling around her as a massive beast retreated further into the paddock. She punched in a few buttons to the door lock next to her. The door shut with a slam and the click told her the lock successfully engaged. She looked to the guard that motioned her in from the window as he took his seat in the corner once more. He waved to a walkie on a near-by table and she picked it up, thumbing the button that allowed her to speak. "Tara here, what's going on?" she asked.
"Claire wants you in the control center, get here stat," the familiar voice of Vivian responded. Tara sighed again, setting the walkie down again. She looked back to the guard, debating about asking him for more information, but resigned herself to ignorance. Her attention shifted back to the glass window, into the paddock. She used to dream about living in the environment, seeing how tall she really was compared to everything the dinosaurs lived amongst.
Now, she dreaded leaving it. The world of the park didn't interest her. She hated having to entertain the children, to give information that no one listened to or cared about. To them, these were animals like any other. With the right amount of respect, they would be harmless. Some even sought to try domesticating the reptiles, and many asked her about the possibility of the notion. And it was frowned upon to say anything but the usual niceties of 'well, anything is possible, isn't it?' or 'we tamed cats and dogs, so it's worth dreaming about'.
All she really wanted to tell them was that these beasts would eat them for breakfast and still be hungry, so even if taming them was possible, taking care of them would be another story. Humans and dinosaurs were just not meant to live together, which came as an almost irony in her life.
She slipped out of the security room and into the crowded streets of Jurassic World. Part of her expected the VIP golf cart ride to the control room, but she had no such luck. Instead, she made her way through the crowd of people, ignoring the children that pointed and called her out as 'that T-Rex woman' and the slightly older kids who mentioned the shade of her eyes.
She attempted to keep her gaze on the ground, letting her dark bangs fall in her face as she walked, and kept to herself as she jogged her way up some stairs and turned left. If she was Claire, they would have given her the decency of picking her up, or at least given her one of the vehicles to travel down the road on. Even Owen had a motorcycle to travel around the park on. Then again, that lucky bastard didn't have to come near the crowds of people. The Raptor paddock wasn't even an open exhibit yet.
She stopped outside one of the gates to the back road that led to the control center. "Badge," the guard responded. She looked up at the man before rolling her eyes and fishing through her pockets for the flimsy thing. She pulled it out and showed it to the man. The guard eyed it, about to ask why it looked like one of the exhibits stepped on it and possibly tried eating it, but instead opened the gate.
She shoved the laminated object back into her pocket and headed out onto the road. The silence that greeted her, and the lack of human bodies, came as a wave of relief. The tension she didn't even know her muscles held seemed to run away and tilted her head to either shoulder, stretching her neck a bit. She knew there should be more urgency in her steps, that she should walk a bit faster than she was. Vivian sounded fearful when she talked to her on the walkie, but she remembered the woman sounding the same way when she talked about one of the handlers that somehow got stuck in the aviary some months back.
It didn't take her long to get the control center anyway, probably only about fifteen minutes. Again, she flashed the tattered badge to allow her in, and moved into the room. All eyes fell to her for a brief moment before looking back to the screens, where a red dot moved across it, leaving a trail of dashes behind it. "What got out?" she asked, making her way over to the red head in the obnoxiously white outfit.
"The Indominus Rex," the woman answered. Tara shook her head some and pushed her brows together.
"The what?" she asked. The other woman closed her eyes, a heavy breath laced with impatience forcing its way out of her lips. Tara arched a brow and tilted her head slightly; Claire was never one for showing any sign of de-composure. Tara looked back to the screen, turning her body away from the other woman and directing her attention forward. Whatever this Indominus Rex was, it certainly could move quickly.
"It's part T-Rex," Claire finally answered. The other woman paused before scoffing. She looked back to the woman in her white skirt before laughing a bit and shaking her head. The true test of her new purpose. It also stood as another sign that these people didn't understand the nature they were messing with. The red head went to speak and Tara put her hand up, shooting her a serious look.
"Whatever you're thinking, whatever is running through your head, the answer is no. Clean up your own mess." Claire sighed and Tara almost giggled, waiting for the woman's fists to clench and her foot to stomp like some spoiled child who faced a rejection. She looked back to the screen. Maybe she should take this whole situation more seriously. After all, Claire was breaking down, that red dot meant something had escaped it's enclosure, and she had no idea what an Indominus Rex was.
"We need your help, Tara. This is part of why you…" the woman let her sentence trail off, her attention darting around the others in the room. Tara looked to Mister Masrani, almost grinning. Even that man didn't know exactly what they did, but they certainly didn't want everyone in the control center to know. She looked around at the rows of workers, wondering if any of them knew what they'd done. Maybe that blonde girl, the one in charge of communications.
She looked back to the red dot moving across the screen and then back to Claire. She leaned a bit closer to the woman, sniffing at her neck before the woman leaned away. Both of them were about to speak when the elevator doors opened. The security guard demanded a badge from someone, saying someone couldn't enter without. Both of the women standing in the middle of the room turned to look over, watching Owen walk by.
He demanded to know what happened, shooting down Claire's arguments with talk about how intelligent that 'animal' was. Tara could barely hold back her laugh. It was those 'animals' that they sought to understand so much, that they sought to be able to communicate with and control, yet the spoke down about them all too often. She was about to interject when Vivian pointed out that this Indominus Rex was close to the beacon and chatter began to form over the radio with the ACU. All eyes turned to the screen.
Tara took a few side steps, moving closer to Owen. Her brows pushed together and she looked to him. "Are you covered in motor oil?" she asked. He passed her a quick glance before returning his attention to the feed in front of them.
"Don't ask," he muttered. She eyed him.
"Shame. You're about the only one who might give me answers," she retorted. She let out a small sigh and waited. The live video feed flickered onto the screen, showing the armed forces carrying non-lethal weapons. Tara tilted her head, taking a few curious steps forward.
"They're carrying non-lethals?" Owen pointed out.
"We have thirty-six million riding on that asset, we can't just kill it," Masrani countered. Owen whispered something about the men dying. Tara found herself anticipating what was going to happen. She'd watched one encounter with the ACU in the field previously, when one of the smaller carnivores got out of containment. If she recalled correctly, it was one of the metriacanthosauruses, a dinosaur around the size of a human but much stronger and faster.
They'd used non-lethals back than as well. One man lost his arm and another very narrowly kept from getting bitten in the neck. Something told her this fight was going to be much different, much worse all around, especially if that dinosaur was being sponsored for as much as it was. Whatever it was, was something quite special, and she was curious to see it.
Owen started pushing for them to call off the mission and Claire began to lose her composure even more, telling him that he wasn't in control. She couldn't help her small scoff at the woman in white. "Looks to me like that thing is," she responded. The dirty look the red head gave her didn't escape her, but she didn't care. She was too enthralled in the screen in front of them to give her look a chance to bother her.
One of the men on the screen picked up a large chunk of flesh, a small beacon flashing blue embedded in it. The conversation at that point was lost on Tara, her mind racing to fill the missing pieces of the puzzle. And then it appeared.
A dinosaur much larger than a T-Rex came out from the trees, its color changing from that around it to the greyish-white of, what could only be assumed, its natural color. The commander cried out that it could camouflage and Tara whipped around, facing Claire. "What did you create?!" she shouted. No one listened. Everyone just watched in half curiosity and half horror at the scene unfolding in front of them as monitor after monitor flat lined.
The audio caught cries of terror and pain, words of "I don't want to die here" and "someone save me". And then, just as quickly as the panic and the shouting started, all went quiet, except for the continuous screech of flat lined heart monitors. Tara turned toward the screen again, surprised that even one of them survived and wondering how long it would be before that monster hunted them down and killed them as well.
Owen turned, facing them Claire and Masrani, telling them to close the park down. Claire objected, stating that they would never reopen and Owen pointed out that this genetic hybrid was learning things for the first time. Of course, neither of the two heads of the park understood what they were getting into, or what they had accidentally unleashed, and Owen's arguments fell on deaf ears. He approached Masrani, leaning in to speak to him in private. Tara watched as Owen entered the elevator and made his exit, everyone else waiting for orders or a plan. Claire took a moment before ordering everything north of the resort be closed off, stating it was a real world phase one.
Tara moved a bit closer to her, listening to the chatter of Vivian giving commands to everyone around the park. Claire fixed her gaze on Tara. "That's no T-Rex," Tara stated. "You can't expect me to be able to do anything with that."
"Everyone has to do their part," the red head responded. Tara shook her head.
"There's a line, and this is where I draw it. Owen has told you people a million times that there is no controlling these things. Even if there was some way I could dare get near that without getting eaten, if it's a Rex, it lives off of family ties. I'm not its family." She turned to face the screen, watching the captures of families and guests. "The only way to stop that, is to kill it."