A/N Thank you so much to everyone who followed/favourited or reviewed my first chapter. This gets the ball rolling in terms of the plot. I hope you continue to enjoy my take on Jurassic World.

CHAPTER 2

Allie hurried up to the school gates just in time to see the first few children begin to trickle out.

She wasn't the only parent waiting who was wearing business-clothes; the school was built for the children of employees of Jurassic World and in amongst Keepers and shop workers she could see a few of her colleagues; Jim from Control was there with his wife to welcome their triplets through the gates and a woman she vaguely knew from finance was simultaneously trying to snap demands to someone on the other end of her phone and look amongst the crowd of children for her own child.

Allie braced herself for Keira. She felt like she was rolling the dice every time she collected her daughter from school. For a six-year-old who looked so angelic, there was too much of Owen in her for comfort. Often, Keira was accompanied by a teacher who would complain about hair-pulling or paint spilling or hyperactive-behaviour. If Allie left Keira alone in a room for longer than two minutes, she would usually conjure up some kind of mischief...like pulling all her make-up out of her make-up bag and drawing on the walls with her lip-stick and eyeliner. Or smashing her favourite necklace with a hammer so she could get at the 'pretty jewel' for her rock collection.

Allie looked almost jealously at the triplets who followed Jim and his wife like a dutiful line of baby ducks to their car.

Keira, characteristically and predictably, was one of the last ones out of the school. Allie sighed as she bent down to her daughters level. "What've you got on your face?" she said, exasperatedly, as she scrubbed at what looked like dirt on her forehead.

"Me and Max had a mud fight!" Keira said, brightly. "It was so fun!"

"I'm sure it was. You know what's not going to be fun, Keira, getting the stains off the new top Mommy bought you," Allie said, looking at the white blouse that had been pristine when she'd sent Keira to school, and was now more brown that white.

Keira scuffed at the ground with her toe. "Soorryyy."

Allie sighed, taking her daughter's hand and leading her to their jeep parked at the furthest end of the car park. "C'mon. What else did you do at school today...beside mud fights?"

"Mrs Robertson taught us what a noun is and I have a homework project!"

"Oh yeah? What do you have to do?" Allie asked, smiling at Keira's enthusiasm. Getting her to do math or spelling sheets for school was a nightmare, but when there was some kind of creative assignment to do, Keira was unstoppable. It was the one thing Mrs Robertson had to say about Keira on parents evening that was actually positive.

"We have to choose a dinosaur in the park and make a presentation about it with posters and stuff."

"Sounds fun. You gonna do the Mosasaurus that Mommy's been working with?"

Keira shook her head, and with an innocent bluntness only children possess, said: "No, Mom. I want to go and see the Velociraptors."

"Great," Allie muttered to herself as she opened the door to the car and helped Keira into her carseat.

Keira heard her, but was still too young to understand the sarcasm. She grinned toothily. "I know! It's gonna be so cool!"

Allie got into the drivers seat and started the car, peeling it off the curb. "Mom?" asked Keira from the back. "Why is there so much candy in the car?"

"Er -" Said Allie, scrabbling with one hand to hide the half-finished jumbo pack of M&M's with out taking her eyes off the road.

"Can I have some?"

"No, we're going to be making dinner soon and junk food's bad for you sweetheart."

"Then how come you eat so much of it?"

"Because Mommy eats her feelings hon, which is stupid and you should never do it."

The tinted glass automatic doors slid open smoothly and Allie rushed into the boarding room the next day, only just on time as usual.

Claire, who had been shuffling papers at the head of the meeting table, walked over to the slightly older woman, smiling.

"I seriously don't know how you do it, Allie." She said, as Allie pulled out spreadsheets hurriedly from her bag. "I mean, raising a kid, being a wife and being our head of Marketing? Your work with the Mosasaurus was amazing. We made 1 million in ticket sales yesterday alone and bookings for our hotels over the next quartile have gone up by - "

"- Yeah, well," Allie cut her off, flustered, as she pulled her wavy hair into a more official looking ponytail, "I think Brian and Keira would attest to the fact that I'm not always the World's Greatest Wife or Mom."

She looked at Claire's pristine powder-blue dress out of the corner of her eye and her toned arms and remembered how she'd stood for five minutes in front of the mirror that morning after her shower looking at the gathering flab round her stomach and the wrinkles forming at the corners of her eyes.

There was only four years age difference between herself and Claire, Allie thought to herself...how did she look like she could be her mother?!

"What's the focus of briefing today?" she asked, quickly, to distract herself.

"Mister Masrani would like to talk to us about our new project."

"What?" Allie asked, loudly. Everyone at the table turned to look at her and she collected herself quickly. "I mean...we just closed up the Mosasaurus project - surely we should be pushing marketing for that for the next few months instead of starting something new?"

Claire forced a smile and for a second Allie thought that even Claire looked tired. "We've always got to be bigger and better, Allie. Otherwise, the company will stop growing and people will stop coming."

Allie lowered her voice. "Yeah but nothing can keep on growing forever, Claire." She murmured, remembering her words to Owen. "There are boundaries. You've got to draw the line somewhere and be content with what you have."

Something in Claire's face visibly flickered, but before Allie could figure out what it was, Masrani strode into the room and everyone took their seats.

Masrani was eccentrically dressed - wearing a white suit with a light pink shirt, grey tie and silver loafers. By comparison, Dr Wu hovered impassively in his plain white lab coat a little behind him.

"Ah, hello!" Masrani said, examining the twelve head-of-departments collected round the table. He rubbed his hands together as if preparing for a big sports game. "A big well done to the team who worked on the Mosasaurus project. It has - unquestionably - been a 'huge' success." Masrani grinned at Dr Wu who barely twitched his lips in response. "- And to think it came out of a petri dish -" Masrani continued, "- is truly incredible."

Claire stood up from her seat, pressing a button on the laptop on the table in front of her. Instantly, an image was projected onto the wall of a strand of DNA. She pressed a button on a small controller she was holding and the lights dimmed around them.

"As Mister Masrani said, the Mosasaurus has been a huge success. To date, it is our biggest asset...However, though it is our largest aquatic dinosaur, the T-Rex is still the biggest land-mammal on the island. Our research is beginning to indicate that our visitors feel the T-Rex is a bit...dated."

"No way!" muttered the man sat next to Allie under his breath. Allie thought his name might be Lowery, and when she glanced at him, she saw the notepad in front of him was covered in doodles of dinosaurs and that he hadn't been taking any notes. She sighed internally.

"The Mosasaurus has almost doubled our visitor numbers and to keep that kind of consistent growth, we need new attractions, and - as the Mosasaurus has proved - we need bigger, more impressive dinosaurs. However, there is obviously a dilemma," Claire continued, pacing round the table leisurely, "in that making a land mammal as big as the Mosasaurus is impractical both in terms of space and security. So, Dr Wu has created an asset that has, as Mister Masrani says, the 'thrill factor', with out compromising on size." She smiled ruefully as a few people round table chuckled or rolled their eyes at the over-used quote.

Claire pressed a button and several more strands of DNA appeared on the screen - another click made them separate and move, all inter-linking to create one different DNA molecule. "We have used the DNA from other animals to compliment that of our new dinosaur to give it attributes that make it bigger, better...scarier."

Allie frowned, looking up from her notes. "I'm sorry, Claire," she said, looking at Claire with her eyebrows raised, "you said Dr Wu has created a dinosaur...which means...you've already created it?" Allie looked round the darkened room at the people sat at the table. "I thought this was a consultancy team? We've been told nothing about this."

Claire opened her mouth to reply, looking upset that Allie was annoyed, when Dr Wu spoke up.

"Your position in Marketing does not put you in a need-to-know position, Mrs Dwyer. Your job is to persuade the public to see our dinosaurs once they have been made. You are in no way involved with the process of the actual creation of the dinosaur."

"I'm sorry," Allie fired back, "but when did certain information with in this company become need-to-know?"

"Please can we save all questions for the end of the presentation?" said Claire, quickly, as the tension in the room began to rise. She pressed the button on the controller and a picture of a tropical fish appeared. "As an example, we used certain genetic attributes from the cuttlefish - which allow it to camouflage itself - and gave them to our dinosaur. Effectively, this means our dinosaur can adapt its colour to suit any background."

"I'm just saying, that's awesome," Lowery cackled, laughing until Allie shot him a look - at which he quickly said, "I mean, that's so dangerous, why would you do that?"

Claire shrugged. "Our visitors love dangerous animals. The more dangerous they are, the more exciting they are." She pressed another button and a video of two small dinosaurs in a pen in one of the labs appeared. "This is a live-feed of the two dinosaurs which we are currently keeping in lab A. We have called them the Indominus Rex -"

"Why?" asked a man called Ron, sitting across from Allie.

Claire smiled ruefully. "We thought it would be easier for children to pronounce. With Dr Wu's current projections, they should be big enough to have their own exhibit - which we are just finishing building - by mid-June. We're hoping to reveal them to the public by August the 13th so we need a marketing campaign ideally finished by May."

"You're joking, right?" Allie asked, bluntly. "You gave me five months to put together a marketing campaign for the Mosasaurus."

"May only has to be a few posters we can put on the side of buses etc.," Claire said, firmly, "in June we're hoping to release a promotional video for TV and cinema and we've been shooting footage for a documentary we'd like to release around Christmas this year." She smiled encouragingly at Allie. "I know you can do this, Allie. All you and your team need by May 1st is a tagline and an image for the posters."

Allie sighed, heavily, looking down at her notes. "I guess we could do a series of posters each focusing on its different attribute - so for it's ability to camouflage itself you could have something like: 'you can't see it, but it can see you.'

Masrani, who had been standing in the corner of the room, laughed with delight. "Yes, I love it!"

"He's right. That's great," smiled Claire. "You've got a team of ten people behind you. You've done three projects like this before. You'll be fine."

But Allie ignored her - her attention suddenly focused on the webcam video of the two dinosaurs that were several floors below them, underground in the laboratories. A scientist approached the side of the cage and threw a live mouse in and Allie watched, sickened, as one of the Indominus Rex's sudden turned its skin white to match the floor - stalking towards it until its mouth clamped over the mouse's back and it ripped out it's spine with one forceful shake.

The video suddenly cancelled out, moving on to a cost-analysis graph. Allie looked at Claire sharply, who's face was fixed into a tense smile. She'd clearly seen what had happened on the screen, but moved on professionally to talk about the expense of their newest 'asset'.

Allie could hardly listen. All she could imagine was going home from work that evening to Brian and Keira, and Brian asking her, like he always did, how work had been.

And the only thing Allie could think of replying with at that moment was: I've got a really, really bad feeling about this.

A/N My inspiration for Keira actually comes from my older brother. The necklace thing is a true story; when he was a kid he really did have a rock collection and my Mother really did have a lovely, expensive necklace that he smashed with a hammer.

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