One of the mobile veterinary units pulls up in the back parking lot of the Innovation Center, largely empty as the evacuation process continues as best it can. It slows down to a crawl, though never actually comes to a complete stop. The passenger side door opens, and Henry Wu steps out. Turning back to the driver, he says, "Thanks," absentmindedly before shutting the door and walking over to the entrance.
He steps into the hallway on the first floor. An uneasy swirling sensation fills his belly, as if afraid that he might be caught carrying a piece of valuable contraband. The tension is only exacerbated by the complete absence of any other personnel; the starkness and silence weighing on Wu like the pressure at the bottom of a deep ocean trench. He does his best to conceal it, walking at a casual pace and wearing the most unassuming face he can muster. But there's no hiding the increased pace of his heartbeat, or the beads of sweat gathering on his palms.
When he arrives at the control room, he notices all the control staff hard at work organizing the evacuation. But there's no sign of Claire anywhere. Going up to Vivian, he gently asks her, "Um…excuse me?"
She only looks briefly at him before going back to her screen. "Oh hi Dr. Wu."
"Yeah, hi, I was just wondering…was there any particular reason I was brought here?"
"Uh….yeah, Owen said he wanted to talk to you," she says, still distracted.
Wu feels a lump in his throat plummet down into his gut. He remembers vividly the concerns Owen brought up shortly after the Indominus hatched. He feigns disinterest as he asks her, "Oh, where is he?"
"He's out with Claire right now," Lowery says. "They're searching for her nephews, they're still out in the park apparently."
The elevator doors open and Hoskins enters the control room accompanied by several armed soldiers. "Where's Dearing?" he asks to no one in particular.
"Frickin' broken record over here," Lowery murmurs under his breath before continuing, "She's out in the park with Owen Grady, they're looking for her nephews."
Hoskins' face scrunches up and he holds his arms up in a questioning manner. "Well then what the hell's going on in here? Who's in charge?"
"I mean…no one…not right now, at least," Lowery says with a shrug. "Not until Claire gets back."
"Well, just so everyone knows, I was able to bring in some more fire and man power in from the mainland," Hoskins says. "I'm heading out now, make sure to deliver the message to Dearing if she gets back."
"Actually," Wu says, sidling over toward Hoskins, "Mind if I have a word, privately?"
"Uh…sure," Hoskins says unsure. "Move out, men," he calls to the soldiers. They board the next elevator, and depart on their own. Hoskins and Wu wait for the next one for the sake of privacy. "What's going on?" Hoskins asks.
"I think….I think Grady suspects something…" Wu says quietly.
Hoskins pauses for a moment. "'Suspects something?' What the hell does that mean?"
"I-I don't know, exactly," Wu says. "All I know is that he requested I be dropped off here instead of evacuated with the rest of Asset Development."
"That doesn't mean anything," Hoskins says.
"You don't understand. Grady was already suspicious of me when the Indominus first hatched. I tried to just hand wave his concerns, but I'm not sure he ever fully bought it."
"Did he ask you anything?" Hoskins asks, beginning to realize the danger. "What did you tell him?"
"He questioned me about all the Indominus' unique abilities. I tried to pass it off as just filling in gaps in the genome, but he was smarter than I gave him credit for. He didn't believe that I'd use a bombardier beetle just to fill in some sequence gaps."
"So what, do you think he's gonna try to question you?" Hoskins asks.
"That's what I'm thinking."
"Okay, so just lie," Hoskins says.
"Can't you just take me with you?" Wu says with clear desperation.
"No room," Hoskins says. "Besides, are you sure out there is where you wanna be?"
Wu berates himself silently for not thinking of that. "Fair point."
"Come on, man up. Show some spine. If he comes at you, just fucking lie."
The elevator doors open, but only Hoskins steps out. Sighing, Wu just says, "Good luck."
"Same to you," Hoskins says.
"Alright, so – tell me exactly what happened," Claire says as she climbs over the crumbled remnants of the concrete wall, back into the Gyrosphere valley.
"Well, Zach and I were in the Gyrosphere," Grey says as Owen helps him climb up a block of concrete, "and then, all of a sudden, the thing tells us to go back."
"So why didn't you?" Clair asks, half frustrated half curious.
"We tried," Zach says, with plenty of frustration of his own. "But the damn thing only goes five miles an hour. We were on our way back when you called, remember?"
"Right, right," Claire says. "Sorry, I've had a lot to keep straight in my head. So, what happened after I called you?"
"All the dinosaurs started freaking out," Zach says. "They all started running past us, and then one of them kicked us."
"Holy smokes," Owen says, keeping his language deliberately PG. "What did that feel like?"
"Zach threw up," Grey says, smiling.
Zach shoves Grey by the shoulder. "Anyway, we kept getting bashed around until we hit this wall."
"But the gyrosphere didn't break through the wall, did it?" Claire asks, not willing to believe that it could.
"No," Grey says. "When we hit the wall, we saw this…well, I don't actually know what it was. I've never seen a dinosaur like it before."
"Yeah, that's the new one," Claire says, her voice dripping with guilt.
"What did it do?" Owen asks.
"Well, there was also this Apatosaurus," Grey says. "And the two of them got into a big fight. And then, the other dinosaur, like, spat acid or something at the Apatosaurus, and then he jumped on her and they both crashed into the wall!" Grey says, miming the action with his hands and arms."
"A combined 100 tons of dinosaur? Yeah, that'll do it," Owen says as they approach the jeep. Zach and Grey take their seats in back as Owen gets into the driver's seat, Claire in the passenger's side beside him. As he starts the jeep up, Owen asks, "And how did she get you two out of the gyropshere? Those things are meant to hold up against things stronger than that thing."
"So, you remember how I said that the thing spits acid? Well, it spit up all over, like, the rings around the gyropshere? You know, that, like, hold the glass? So then, when he started pounding on it, the rings….like, dissolved, and the glass fell out."
Owen bites his bottom lip, trying his best not to curse in front of the kids. Fuck, she is smart… He starts up the jeep, and backs up slowly away from the gigantic carcass still lying in the path of the wall. Turning around carefully, he speeds through the valley, doing his best to avoid any dinosaur corpses still scattered around the fields.
On the South side of the island, just a short drive from the hotel complex, the Jurassic Thrill Zone sits silently in the dark. Even on a normal day, it wouldn't be at all active at 2:45 in the morning. But there is something even more ominous about it as its games, food stands, and giant mechanical rides stand quiet and deserted in the dark. Normally, the larger coasters and rides would still be alight, but with the entire island on emergency power, their frivolous nature denies them the energy. Even the nearly 600 foot tall Asteroid roller coaster is invisible under the shroud of night.
As if out of nowhere, two harsh beams of light cut through the shadows, traveling through the center of the park, up the streets that were teeming with tourists not a day earlier. The service van rumbles past a curricular ride called the Egg Spinner, and through an open gate at the back by the Pteranodon flyers. The road leads outside of the Jurassic Thrill Zone proper, and toward the entrance into an underground bunker. The van pulls to a stop, and Simon Masrani climbs out of the driver's side, followed by an armed ACU soldier.
The two of them make it to the bunker and open it up manually with a key. Before them, a long, wide stairway leads downwards into the storm shelter. At about 4 times the size of a typical high school gymnasium. The shelter is filled with cots running in rows from one end to the other. On the opposite end from the stairway, tables offer the guests bottled water and granola bars. When the crowd of about 2000 people sees Masrani and the soldier approaching, they all stand at attention. Those closest to the stairs begin shuffling toward them at an excited pace.
"Alright everyone, alright, please! Settle down!" He says, trying to shout over the din of the crowd. "Let's try to make this go as quickly as possible!" The peoples' desire to leave the island is overshadowing their better judgement. They can't all be accommodated at once, yet they still push and shove to make it onto the next convoy. They've already been through this several times. Wanting to get this over with quickly, Masrani looks at the line of people closest to him. He selects an elderly woman, her son and his wife, as well as their two young children. In addition, he selects two young women, and a middle aged man and woman. Together, they add up to the sum number of total available seats in the transport van. He does his best to ignore the groans and obscenities hurled his way once the others learn that they're staying in the shelter for another 20 minutes at least.
"You can't possibly expect me to climb all these stairs?!" the old woman cries to Masrani.
"Well…" Masrani begins nervously, not sure what the best immediate solution is. But the soldier takes the initiative upon himself, and sweeps the old woman off her feet, carrying her easily in his arms.
She does not appreciate his gumption. "How rude!" she says, though she makes no demands to be let down.
They proceed up the stairs and to the vain, the old woman letting forth a stream of complaints at Masrani along the way.
"What kind of business do you think you're running here? You charge two arms and a leg, my family and I have to spend nearly an entire day stuffed into a storm shelter! Do you have any idea how stuffy it is in there?! Your park doesn't care at all about seniors, and you can be sure that I'm going to tell all my friends about this, and write a deservedly awful review on yelp!"
Masrani would offer some kind of standard, disinterested apology, but she doesn't give him the opportunity. Her family tries to get her to stop, but she refuses, even as she's deposited into the van with the rest.
Her rage-filled ramblings continue as Masrani drives back through the amusement park. "The service at the hotel was miserable, the staff at check in didn't smile once while I was there, and it took them fifteen minutes to get our luggage up to our room. And there weren't nearly enough towels in there. I use three towels per shower, and I told them that when I booked my reservation back in July! And I don't like that so many of the staff don't speak English right, I can barely understand them over their accents!"
Masrani grips the steering wheel, biting his tongue as she continues unwaveringly.
As he turns around a corner past an arcade, only to find the road blocked. Though it had been clear just minutes before, the path is now obstructed by a 20 foot tall mass of fat and feathers. Its black and white striped feathery coat would have been otherwise invisible if not for the van's high beams. A fat, pot belly is balanced on two squat legs, a high, camel-like hump sitting over its hips. The arms are over 7 feet long, and both end in hands bearing sharply curved claws. Its skinny, swan-like neck is capped by a comical-looking duck-like bill.
Masrani comes to a halt as the van approaches the dinosaur. Sensing their approach, it lazily toward them, sniffing their air. A Bright red wattle dangles over its snout as it stares at the van, and Masrani and the soldier exchange frustrated looks.
The woman calls out from the back. "We're slowing down! Why are we slowing?!"
"Mom, please!" the woman next to her says, to no avail.
"I want to get off this island! My family and I want to get off this island!" she continues to yell.
"Ma'am, please," the soldier says, craning his neck around to look at her. "Our path is currently obstructed."
"Then do something! We want to get off this island!" she says.
"Not exactly a helpful suggestion," the soldier says quietly to Masrani. The women sitting just behind him catch his voice, and snicker. "Should I shoot it?"
"If you shoot it, then there's no chance of it moving," Masrani says. "Let me try something," he says, putting his hand to the horn. When the van honks at the dinosaur, the dinosaur – to everyone's surprise - actually honks back. Like a goose larger than an elephant, it opens up its wide, flat bill and utters a deep, projecting honk. Far from scaring the dinosaur off, the van now has its full interest.
"Why are we still sitting here?" the crone calls from the back. "Why aren't we moving?"
Ignoring her, Masrani says to the soldier, "Well shit, that didn't work."
"Maybe if I fire a few rounds into the air, that will scare it off," the soldier says, getting out of the van. He steps out onto the paved road, the dinosaur failing to notice him, its attention still fixed on the van. It continues honking, as if trying to get a reaction from Masrani. The soldier steadies his rifle and aims upwards and forwards at the sky above. With a squeeze of the trigger, a single shot shatters the night air, leaving an obvious impression on the dinosaur. It stops honking, and turns its head quickly in the soldier's direction. It looks left of him, then right of him, as if unable to fathom where such a sound could have come from. However, the one thing it doesn't do is move out of the way.
"Come on," he groans, taking another shot into the empty sky. Once more, the dinosaur's head swivels all around him in search of the sound's origin. When this still fails to do the job, the soldier sighs and says to himself, "Third time's the charm."
He never fires the third shot. Before he can apply enough pressure to shoot, he is enveloped first by a steaming hot darkness, and then by total nothingness just a second later. From the driver's seat, Masrani struggles to realize what's happening. The dinosaur in front of him lets out a terrified braying before waddling off down another street. Where the soldier had been standing, now he sees the huge, bulky skull of the Indominus, the soldier's legs still sticking out of the end of her snout. Horrified screams fill the van. Masrani has no idea where the Indominus came from – it just seemed to have materialized out of the surrounding blackness.
The soldier's legs, severed entirely at the shin, fall meekly to the ground as the Indominus lifts her head and turns its attention to the van. Only now does Masrani finally remember where he is, and shifts the car into reverse, slamming his foot down on the breaks. The car begins to speed backwards, but before it can gain enough velocity, the Indominus reaches forward, slamming her three-clawed right hand down on the roof of the van. The claws cut easily through the roof, one of them just narrowly missing the middle-aged man's balding head.
Masrani keeps his foot on the gas pedal, the car struggling to move backwards as the Indominus pulls forwards. The opposing forces give out as the car blasts back, the Indominus' claws slashing toward the hood. They not only catch Masrani by the back of his head, sending him flying head-first out of the windshield, they also manage to get ahold of the vehicle's engine and wrench it right out of the van.
The dead van collides into a nearby restroom, slamming through the small building and scattering bricks and bits of porcelain everywhere. Those sitting in the back seat – including the old woman – feel the backs of their heads collide with the back windshield before falling unconscious. Those still aware of what's happening around them are unsure of whether to try and flee or stay put.
For the moment, the Indominus leaves the van alone, instead moving over to Masrani and standing over him like a dog contemplating a lame rabbit. Masrani's face is covered in bloody scrapes, and the back of his head now bears a deep gash. He is too dazed to find the energy to stand up, and can only mange to stare back up at the drooling, toothy maw of the monster standing over him.
Though broken teeth and gory drool he mutters a single word with a gurgling voice. "P-please….please."
The Indominus responds by stepping forward and placing her foot down on his back. She doesn't simply crush him in a single motion, but slowly unloads her several tons of weight upon him. Bile and blood spurt out of his mouth before his ribs snap and his internal organs turn to jelly. She removes her foot from his flattened corpse before turning to look at the disabled van.