Chapter 1: Suburban Night Interrupted
The hot night air engulfed Dr. Timothy Heming as he exited the black car. Briefcase in hand he took a deep breath, readjusted his black baseball cap, and made his way across the pavement. He arrived at the front door of the house, placed the suitcase to his side, just out of sight, and finally rang the doorbell. His pale, haunted, blue eyes faced down while someone came to the door, and once it opened they shot up and pierced their way over the men whom now stood at the doorway. The first, a dark skinned man with a bald head, he did not know but he had heard of, and the second he had known since he was a fat volunteer boy annoying men digging up bones. A smile crossed his bearded face, "Hello, Owen. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
The brown eyed zookeeper looked Dr. Heming over, eyes eventually stopping on his black cap. "Hemingway?" Timothy smiled with a courteous nod, "It's been years." Timothy's smile grew to the side, more a monstrous smirk than a true smile, "Since you went into the navy, as a matter of fact, Owen. So, may I come in?" Owen nodded, and gestured with the hand that carried a drink.
"Yeah." He gestured to his friend, "Barry, this is Hemingway. Hemingway, this is Barry." Timothy took the other man's in his, it was supposed to be a friendly handshake but Timothy's hands were ice cold from the trip over and so clearly left a rather unfriendly mark with Barry. Dr. Heming's piercing eyes could see it, easily, so he decided not to waste his time with pleasantries any longer.
The man in the black Cap reached down and pulled up the black and brown striped suitcase, "Not a suitcase." Said Owen immediately upon seeing the thing, "Y'know I take back what I said, stay outside man. I've seen more than enough suitcases lately, and I know what they mean." Timothy's smile seemed almost cruel now, "Oh now, Owen, I don't know what you mean. What does a simple suitcase mean?"
"Something Bad." Hemingway smiled at this, Owen's simplicity with these kinds of things had always been something he loved about the man. "Well, you're not wrong there." Timothy said, "The subject matter within is actually quite horrible, and I need your help." He turned to Barry then, "I need all the help I can get."
Owen sat backwards on one of the dining room chairs now, his arms crossed beneath his chin on its backing. Some time had passed since their initial conversation, but not much. There was a game playing out on the television, but it was muted now and no attention went its way. "So this company, Biosyn," Barry reiterated, "is going to attack the people on Isla Nublar, and you're working for them, but you want us to help the other people?"
"-And" Owen continued for Barry, "We're only getting about ten of our own guys to do this?"
Timothy nodded, "That's the short of it, yes." He undid the fastenings of the suitcase itself then, but did not open it just yet. "You both were there, and so was Claire." He added quickly, "That's supposedly why I want you three for my team. I've made all the excuses I could without drawing suspicion for it," he went on, "but these Biosyn people are insane. If not for Dr. Wu and myself I'm sure they would have tried fusing Dinosaur and Man, and even now I can't say for sure that they have not."
"Biosyn," said Barry, "How fitting for a company that commits sin with biology." Hemingway looked the bald headed man over, "I didn't know you were a religious man."
"I'm not." Barry retorted, "Just not a stupid man."
"Either way works for me," Timothy had a crease travel through his brow before continuing, "though it might be better if you were actually religious. It'd certainly help keep Jackson off my case. In fact, it'd help keep our real goal a secret."
"How so?" responded Owen, "and don't think I'm letting the fact that you just said you want to take my wife to this death trap just slip by Tim. Cause I'm not."
"… Understood." Timothy Heming carried on, "Jackson is this up-and-coming Universal Minister, I'm not sure how he did it exactly, or where the funds came from, but somehow he's in charge of the Ethics Department in Control of the island. Guy's got a whole team of Ministers and Lawyers making sure the people on the ground are remaining 'ethical' which basically is just an excuse for 'trolling' through everything you've been working on at their leisure." Timothy ran a hand over his light beard, "If we had some religious nut to back us though, Jackson would just spend all of his supposed checkup time with us talking to them about how we're doing, which means limited interference in our real plans."
"I'm not the guy." Barry said, "We'd have to find someone else."
"Are you just going along with his plan?" Owen looked at his friend incredulously, brown eyes wide, "Really?"
"To save people from what we witnessed?" Barry turned on his friend, and pulled the neck of his shirt down revealing some scar tissue, "Don't forget I know the price of revealing this kind of information to someone Owen." That seemed to put the ex-navy man in his place, he stood up and turned to face the open backyard of the home he and his wife had made here. "Not fair, bringing that up man." There was obviously something here, in the relationship between these two men that Dr. Timothy Hemingway had not known. For all intents and purposes he'd expected his childhood friend to stand beside him, not this scar chested man he'd not once met before. He could see Owen standing there now, staring at the yard the same way he had stared at his front porch that day so many years ago and he knew the man's answer, he did not need to ask.
Dr. Timothy Hemingway opened the striped suitcase itself now, it clicked and rattled, inner mechanisms allowing it to open properly. Cold smoke emanated from within, there were thick petri-dishes inside, and sealed black-bagged documents simply marked 'Top Secret: Site B, 1994' Owen turned to look at his childhood friend, "Worse of all, however, I know that Henry Wu knew exactly what the Indominus Rex could do." Timothy lifted one of the documents from the case and unsealed it, bringing out the old paperwork within. "Each of the Dinosaurs In-Gen created for their original park was purposefully dumbed down, like Rexy's frog eyes, or the old Raptors' singular coloring." He and Owen locked eyes for a moment and they could see the intensity within each other now, "but each of the Indominus' traits as well others were found in the Dinosaurids created on Site: B." He handed the papers to Owen, "This was the original Carnotaurus."
Owen looked through the papers now, it was full of stats and figures, measurements of the growing animals, a list of what had been used to fill the DNA gaps, far too many graphs to care for, and a pair of pictures. The first was clearly a Dinosaur, a white baby theropod lying on its belly, the second however looked like a picture of the same room but without the dinosaur. Something was odd about it, however, it took a moment but then he saw it, there was an eye staring at the camera, in the exact same spot as on the other photo. "They could do it too." Owen said, "They could change colors just like her."
"Better than her actually." Came Dr. Heming's reply. "However they were slow ambush predators. Here." He handed over another document, "This is the Parasaurolophus of Site B." Owen passed the Carnotaurus papers to Barry and looked through this document. Unlike the predatory Carnotaurus there was a casualty notice on the plant eaters paper, first page. He flipped to the full report, as an adolescent when men approached to put a tracking implant into the Dinosaur she'd screamed, so loud and sudden that the man's ears and those of nearby staff popped instantly, the one who was to insert the implant later died of internal hemorrhaging. The man in the black hat unsealed the next document, but Owen interrupted "Are you telling me that each of these Dinosaurs had some freaky superpower?"
"Not all of them. More than enough to pick and choose deadly genetic combinations though, that's for sure." Dr. Heming looked his friend over again, "You remember how Dr. Sattler used to talk to that one student, about what Dinosaurs could do, back at the dig?"
Owen turned to the blue-eyed man, "of course I do."
"For Barry's sake, I'll explain." He turned to the man shaking his head at the papers he was reading through, "They argued off and on about this subject, again and again. Apparently this guy was some sort of weird species nut, he loved lizards that shot blood out their eyes or snakes that mimicked spiders with their tail, electric eels zapping things, the stranger things in life like that." He took a breath and handed the next document, unopened, for Owen. "He loved dinosaurs because of the theories of what they were capable of. They're still around now, only much less popularized. Scientists postulated all sorts of weird things back in the day, that a Parasaur could use its horn as a snorkel, or that a Dimetrodon could absorb energy from the sun like a plant. All these strange little super powers, quite a few of which we really do see in the animals alive today." Barry took a sip of his beverage, probably some beer but Timothy was unsure, and listened as the scientist continued, "Dr. Sattler used to argue that they were animals not monsters. They couldn't do all these strange things, and yet… When manufactured in the lab it seems that all anyone has to do is put a shred of DNA from something with these kinds of traits into the creatures for them to obtain it."
"You think that Dinosaur DNA just picks up on the abilities of whatever it's introduced to?" Barry let out as he leaned in his seat, "If that were the case, why didn't the T-Rex come with an eighty-foot tongue?"
"Uh, Barry…" Owen handed him the next set of papers he had been given. "Turns out, the first one did."
Barry took the paper and skimmed through it, a dread realization clawing its way over his face. "That's not the worst of it either." Dr. Heming pulled out the last document in the still larger pile, "This is the first Dinosaur In-Gen ever created… It has the most actual dinosaur DNA of any that were made, the only other things used being a deep sea anglerfish and a spider wasp."
Owen took the document in hand, "The first Dinosaur In-Gen made." He unsealed the black bag and pulled out the papers within, he looked at the name, "Troodon… According to official reports the first one In-Gen made-" The front door opened then, Owen put the papers down and Barry stood up. Hemingway clicked something in his shirt off, "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?" demanded Owen of the man who walked into his dining room unannounced.
The powerfully built man spoke to Timothy first, "Thanks for unlocking the door for me Doctor, and for wearing that wire." With both hands the man clasped hold of his ruined hunting hat, "Now, according to Hammond the first Dinosaur In-Gen ever made was a Hadrosaur…" he lifted the hat from his head and pulled it down, allowing the scars across his face to be seen clearly, "According to Hammond the Velociraptors never tore my good friend Jophery Brown apart," He took a deep breath and focused on the man whose house he had just entered unannounced, using his childhood friend as a way to get to him, "and I never made it off that God-forsaken island alive." The scar-faced man unfocused his eyes so they could take in Owen and Barry both, his pastel blue eyes were just as vicious and cruel as the pair of them remembered the Indominus Rex's being. "Good evening gentlemen, my name is Robert Muldoon."
