Howard Rossiter set the phone back down with a click as he sat back in his chair and sighed. Looking up at the ceiling at his office for a brief moment, he rubbed his brow in exasperation. Shaking his head, he took a deep breath, really forced himself to. It really was frustrating, it was. He could feel himself growing impatient, even tense but not quite. Not tense yet. There was still time. There was always time to get things right….and that he would. He would make sure that things were all right before this was over. Before the end of today. And then there would be no more delays, none to interfere in his design.

The monitor on his desk showed a map of the park, with each zone clearly defined. Against the south-west side, he could see that the defined area designating where the sonic fences were was flashing red. They were out of commission as far as his sensors were reading. There were dots scattered throughout the zone adjacent to it, the one containing the Carnotaur. He knew what these must be…these were the Triceratops exploring their newfound territory. There was also a scattered group of dots moving swiftly in Zone 4, and he knew it must be the Parasaurs scattering. Damn. This could be a problem, he thought as he considered the implications of this.
Animals in Zones 1 and 5 were now overlapping…

If it were just the herbivores moving into another herbivore zone, that would not be a problem. He could just go out and get his security to herd them back in again. But he was faced with another issue as well…the Carnotaurus. Unlike the Rex in Zone 2, it was more difficult to track due to the fact that it was able to camouflage itself. He shook his head, thanking some stroke of luck that it had been a nearby grassland area that the Carnotaur could escape into and not Zone 2. First of all, it was a forest and so it would be almost impossible…second…he would rather his men not go into Zone 2. There was a reason that meal deliveries there were given via heli-drop these days.

But he had to go fix things in Zones 4 and 5, especially since he knew Tembo and his hunting party were still out there. That reminded him. They had lost communication with them a few hours ago, and they had never showed. He was worried, he knew as he picked the phone up again. A lot of things could have gone wrong. He knew how dangerous the Carnotaurus could be, and that was why he had taken extreme precautions in advising his security team… There was a chance Tembo may have underestimated the animal, but he doubted it. The man was an experienced hunter, and renowned. If he had not been assured by his research that Roland Tembo was the sort of hunter who could give his endorsement to the game park, he would never have extended the invitation. No, Tembo was his way into selling the park to the rich who would come here to take the trophies no one could take anymore, he knew.

If not Tembo then…."This is Mr. Rossiter," he said picking up the phone, dialing the control room. They would know more about the situation since all of the live feeds went into that room from the cameras. "I need the feeds from last night sent up to my office." He needed to review them, try to find out what had happened. "In addition, send the data about animal movements from last night in zones 4 and 5 to my office as well." It might provide a clue, maybe where to begin. "Five minutes? I can wait. But no longer," he said curtly as he hung up the phone and stood up. He stepped away from his desk, and looked out onto his office. He felt like he needed to walk around and stretch his legs, especially after everything.

"Where did things go wrong?" He asked himself under his breath as he shook his head again and looked down next to his desk. There was a low cage in the side of the office that stuck partially out. It appeared almost like a terrarium or Vivarium, but instead of a turtle or snake there was a small lizard-like creature inside. The Procompsognathus he had shown Tembo-cloned from the specimen recovered in Ismaloya. It had been easy to clone this creature, since unlike Hammond he was not attempting to recreate something long dead…but something that was still very fresh. It was a clone of a clone so to speak, and it was very much alive. He bent down, as the animal craned its neck to look at him, giving a soft and low chirping as it did so.

Rossiter sighed as he took a small bag out of an alcove alone the wall, and it was filled with small bits of cubed meat. His scientists had told him that this animal was carnivorous, but it ate dead things, so this should work for it. He reached for the top of the glass case very carefully, as the small animal leaped up as it so often did, trying to nip his fingers as he came close. He dropped the pellet inside, and closed it up, watching with slight disgust as the animal turned around, and began nipping at it. Well, he had to keep it fed, and here was the one place he could do it. Well, technically at the facility that they cloned the animals in, but here there was really no place to keep it.

The Compy would quickly be lost in the wilderness, even with it being secured to one zone. And the lab did not have space for it either, he figured…since they would be distracted by something like this. Curious too, Rossiter thought for a moment, forgetting for a second as he placed a hand on the glass. Instantly, the animal turned from the pellet, craning its neck to see where the disturbance was coming from. Even as he watched, it stared back at him as if there was no gulf in the millennia that separated them. And it was alone, he knew, with awe. There might be more of its kind still, he knew that. But they were deep in the Costa Rican jungles, far from civilization and no one would ever see them. And with luck, no one would ever suspect them of still existing, it was a secret he intended to keep.

Here, it had to be so far away…and where it was, it could not even have the free range of its fellows down there either. Fit only for one thing, he thought-being a trophy, a display. And it was proof for him that he could contain nature in a way that Hammond had tried and failed to do. Just as he held this animal in its cage, so also would these larger animals stay. No matter how screwed up things were in Zones 1 and 5 due to the Carnotaur were, he was sure that things would be all right. He had full control of the situation. So he thought as he took a breath, as the Compy suddenly jumped forward, stopped by the glass. Startled, Rossiter stepped back, but grinned to himself as the animal squealed in frustration. It was powerless, and he had the advantage. Right now, when things were starting to veer sideways, he had comfort, a small bit knowing he had the advantage.

He turned, ignoring the creature's shrill chirps as it leaped in agitation. Looking instead out of the window, he could see the grasss rolling in the breeze as there was a low rumble in the distance. There were clouds on the horizon, a storm coming in he saw. Should not be an issue, but he needed to be sure that things went to plan. A storm…he did not want his first visitors to report an unpleasant experience in the first hunt. They still had not reported back, and he needed to review the feeds of the tapes to find out what had happened. At least he wanted to before sending his staff out there, into the wild. It needed to stay as untamed as possible, his artificial wilderness…

The possibilities for him right now were seemingly limitless, and it felt like such a huge rush, just knowing that he was still in control, or some semblance of it. As long as he still could retrieve the hunters, everything was going to be okay. Even the setback involving the fence outages could be easily repaired, he believed and he truly believed they could. Right now, it was only a matter of sending a team in, corralling the animals that had overlapped, and then working on the fences before the dinosaurs could recover. It was a simple enough plan, but it would work, he thought as he tapped the glass semi-impatiently, really just feeling that he would prefer to have some of this complication out of his life…it seemed that there was quite enough sometimes. But other times…maybe not so much. Maybe it was just a hiccup, a small one to stir the pot before he had it made, at the least he hoped that it was so. Because he did not appreciate failure…and this had been an expensive experiment to say the least. Although if played off right he would make his money back and then a lot more.

And that was this was about really, making a lot of money. Enough to recoup his losses and potentially one day come out of the shadow of the semi-legal business he was dealing with here. He was not under any illusions as to why Hammond had decided to build his little zoo on an island the first time after all. It was convenient, and easy to hide, and it was in a country with very little regulation. That had resulted in increased freedom, which Rossiter had tried to emulate, although his experiment this time was much closer to the states. That was one of Hammond's errors in the long run, he had calculated…that the travel expenses would add up, to even more then the admission price. By making the trip shorter, he would thus cut down on the initative expense…and bring himself closer to his prospective audience.

He felt himself start to get distracted, and he was really being absorbed into his thoughts, as he noticed a slight red beeping that was slightly getting louder. That would be the phone, they got the feeds up probably. He turned and walked back to his desk, getting the feeds up as he settled himself again. He noticed the feeds were tagged 'urgent' but for some reason, it was still being processed. He frowned, it was only like that when the people down in security thought that there was something wrong with them or they were glitched in some way. Strange, there should not be anything wrong with these, he thought. They had been damned expensive to install, and he had made sure to get the best of the best and not waste any money. But the animal movements were here, and that should tell him what he needed to know, or at least he hoped it would. Clicking on it, he felt himself grow uneasy, almost as if he was on the brink of something. Odd, no reason for him to think that way, least of all now he thought to himself.
As he scrolled through the animal movements, he saw that the animals outside of zones 4 and 5 had not changed in any way since the last checkup. At the least, their tags were still active and transmitting. That way he would know whether any of the animals died of natural causes or if any clients were to take any of them down if for any reason one of the radio tags was not active. Now zones 1 and 5…he took a look down and paused. The feed did not lie as it panned down near where the fence was, and he could see… There were two of them there, two large grey hulking bodies lying prone on the fence line unmoving. There were also visible wounds on each side of the animal, but it did not appear as if it was the immediate cause of death, these wounds could have been caused by the Carnotaur he knew.

And there was the Carnotaurus now, raising its head again staring at the camera defiantly. But it had not killed the two dead triceratops, Rossiter thought as he looked again, trying to figure it out. What could have possibly gotten them that way he wondered. That was annoying specifically because the trikes were meant to be one of the attractions that would help get people in here-they had the potential certainly to be one of the bigger trophies that they had to offer. So what had killed them? He wanted a damn answer as he panned the camera to the side and saw…the car on its side, dinged and scratched all over. It looked like it had been through a junkyard and then gone for another pass. What on earth had happened here….and then he saw the tire tracks very distinct…and the reason that they were so distinct. The grass all around and leading up to the car had been stamped flat.

He sat back in his chair, his hand on his chin thinking about it with deep breaths. What had happened here…the car had startled the trikes…and had started a stampede? It made sense now, somewhat. The animals charging through the fence at once, had been too much for the fence to handle, thus why the fence had shorted out. But for two of the Trikes, their sonic tags must have shorted out within them, caused a stress breakdown that might have induced some reaction in them, he wasn't sure. That was two trikes dead, but it could be worse, he thought before realizing…what that crumpled thing by the jeep was. It had something he could barely make out…he squinted as the camera panned in. What the hell…he thought as he clenched the edge of the desk, one hand reaching for the phone.

Ah shit. Ah shit shit shit. That was not…that was possibly the worst thing that could have happened on the first excursion into his little park, and yet it had happened. He shook his head in disbelief, really furious that it could have happened here. He was hoping it wasn't Tembo, because then there went his first chance at getting the word out. He had the phone to his ear, ready to call the men in…at least to get security there to get the Carnotaur away from the bodies at least until they could retrieve the corpse and figure out the cause of death and who it was. That would be best, he thought as he already began to dial the number for security. He was preoccupied with it, and he did not even notice when there was a pop up on his computer screen, and he noticed as if in a daze that it was the computer feeds from last night. He didn't know what to think as he clicked on it, and by now he was sort of tuning out the chirps of the compies from the other side of the room.

The screen was dark at first, but that was because it was from the camera closest to where Tembo's group had made their camp he As the camera refocused, he saw the tape was playing, and he could hear the vague dial tone of the phone in his ear as the playback rewound and it started. It began rather innocently enough, or relatively so he figured with the blind and the caracass plainly seen as well as the car nearby. He was wondering where it had gone wrong, what could have made them get in the car and looking for the outline of the Carnotaur before he realized that was not where he should be looking. No, he was looking at the exact wrong area, and when he saw it…his eyes widened in shock, and disbelief. It went against everything he had thought about his park.

Even as the video kept on playing, he was already dialing the number for security as fast as he could. "Get your damn asses in gear," he said, his voice just barely controlled with anger and confusion. It really was beyond unacceptable he thought as he shook his head, watching the proceedings on tape. He had no idea how the hell this had happened on his watch. But it would be fixed soon enough, and a full investigation committed to make sure that this would be resolved. He had no idea but he had it in mind that he would know. And when he knew, there would be hell to pay he was sure of that he was sure. If Muldoon could not stop him from opening this park on time, nothing else would. Not even additional dinosaurs that had appeared out of nowhere. They would be found, subdued and their origins traced. And then he would do what he did best.

Find out exactly how to use them in the park. At whatever cost.