Before they went to the lower levels, Dearing borrowed a radio from a J-SEC officer and she immediately contacted the control room to inform them that she and Grady were alive, a news that the technicians received with relief, and to ask them Young's and the boys' locations.

"Zara is not at the Administration anyway," Krill replied. "She was spotted taking the elevator down to the monorail station. She had to be in or around the Center during the attack."

Dearing heard Krill swallow.
The technician was nervous and considering what just happened, she would have been surprised that she was not.

"Claire, may I ask you a favor?" Krill asked.

"Sure."

"Find her please. Lowery and I are so worried about her…"

"As long as I am here I will look for her, I promise."

About a minute and a half later, as they went down a wide staircase, Cruthers recontacted them:

"We got them! They are in the holograms' hall, near the big alcove."

"Thanks, Lowery."

They reached the Center's basement and headed to the holograms' hall, passing among the hundreds of people who had sought refuge there. They previously had huddled together while waiting for the end of the attack but they were still massed against the false rock of the tortuous corridors' walls.

The hologram's hall was an area with several alcoves of different sizes and each with a stage.
In front of the alcoves, there was a console on which the user could choose the species of which he wanted to see a holographic representation, actually based on the Pepper's ghost technique. A hidden projector projected the image of the animal on a mirror horizontal to the ground and then on a tilted tulle canvas, so thin that it was invisible to the public's eyes but dense enough to capture the projected light while the heart of the illusion rested on the depth that existed between the back of the stage and the hologram. Concealed speakers played each species' specific sounds.
The hall was usually completely darkened but emergency lights had been turned on for safety reasons.

Like Cruthers had told them, they found Zach and Gray near the console of the central alcove, where the holograms of the largest creatures could be projected.

"It's them!" Dearing exclaimed. "Zach! Gray!"

Hearing their aunt's familiar voice hailing them, the boys looked up and scanned the crowd between them. They finally saw Dearing's dishevelled red hairs moving in their direction.

"Claire!" They shouted.

They weaved in and out between the other survivors and when they met her, she took them in her arms.

Zach was somewhat surprised to see Owen Grady accompany his aunt.

"Where have you been?" Gray asked.

"Searching you. I even tracked you on foot through the Reserve…"

She suddenly noticed that Zach had a long cut that barred his left cheek.

"Zach, what happened to you?" Dearing worried, looking at him with wide eyes and inspecting the wound.

Zach saw that the lower part of her pant's right leg was bloodstained.
He considered this to be more serious than his own wound.

"Gray saved me from some friendly fire," he told her. "You weren't spared either it seems… We're alive, that's what matters. Where is Zara? We didn't see her."

"I was going to ask you the same question," their aunt said. "Let's try to find her."

"Mrs Dearing!" Someone hailed.

She turned to the voice and realized that it was a J-SEC officer.

The latter seemed to be out of breath, he had to run to fetch her.

"You must go to the meeting room as soon as you can," he said. "The board as summoned you."

Dearing froze on the spot and paled. For her, those words sounded like a death sentence.

X

As they parked in the Administration's car park, some ashes started to fall on Burroughs.

Even from the city, the Sibo's rumblings were audible and the volcanic plume then reached a height of fifteen kilometres.
From the roof of the Administration, one could even see lava rivers flow down the slopes and the distant reddish glow coming from the volcano's surroundings, those of fires ravaging the jungle of Sector Seven and threatening to spread towards the South.

Waiting near the entrance of the bridge leading to the Administration's entrance, Sembène had waited for the arrival of Grady, worried about the state of his friend.

"Owen!"

"Barry! Are the girls safe?"

"Still frightened by the eruption but they are safe and sound. We locked them in the holding building. Luckily, it resisted to the earthquake."

"And you, you're alright?"

"I'm one of the few to which nothing happened today."

Like Grady, Sembène was supposed to be on a day-off, but as soon as the news of the metriacanthosaurs' attack had reached him, he had rushed to the keepers' office to know more about it and get ready if the keepers' help was called upon. He had learned that Grady had left his bungalow to help Dearing in search of her nephews but when Mount Sibo began to show signs of an imminent awakening, Sembène had driven to the achillobator's paddock and told his co-workers to join him there so they could put the raptors to safety.
They narrowly had succeeded since the achillobators refused to obey, it was only when the quetzalcoatluses flew over the paddock that the four predators had rushed inside the holding building and stayed agglutinated for minutes in the back of their cage, trembling at each of the Sibo's manifestations and looking intermittently at the ceiling above them.

Sembène noticed that Grady's T-Shirt had a tear on its right side and that there was blood stains around it.

"You're wounded!"

"It's nothing. I will treat it as soon as I will have some free time."

"If you say so."

"After the meeting, I will have to go back to the paddock."

Sembène shook his head.

"Owen, you need some rest! Have some and treat your wound please because I don't know what will happen in the upcoming days but we will need you in full possession of your faculties," he begged him. "The guys and I will take the first watches."

"Ok mother hen. Thanks. At the slightest problem, call me anyway, please."

As Sembène returned to his vehicle, they crossed the bridge and began to climb the steps leading to the door, but during the climb, Dearing moaned in pain because of her calf.

"This calf needs to be treated and dressed," Grady said. "Let's go to the infirmary first, the board can wait."

Once inside the building, they headed straight for the infirmary.

There were already wounded on the few beds that were there and treatments were then provided by the replacement nurse, the chief nurse being busy elsewhere.

Grady then invited Dearing to sit on one of the chairs in the waiting room and pulled up her pants' leg, revealing the wound.
Some of the Indominus' lingual papillae had thrusted themselves several centimetres in the flesh and half of one was even still in it. Blood was no longer flowing but had coagulated, leaving trails all around the calf.

From his backpack, Grady took out a first aid kit which he opened on the floor. He grabbed a splinter forceps and delicately, he extracted the lingual papillae's half.
Before he put it down, he looked at it:

"If it had been whole, you could have used it as a hairpin. A little keepsake…," he joked in a low voice.

Despite the extraction's pain, Dearing gave him a faint smile.

He then went to a nearby sink to moisten a piece of tissue and while he was doing that, the nurse came to treat Zach's cheek.

Grady returned and washed the wound to remove impurities, dirt and dried blood, then he dried it before using an antiseptic and wrapped a bandage around it.

"Thank you," Dearing said, warmly taking his hand.

"Let's hope that there will be no complications…"

"Do you want me to have a look on yours…?"

"It can wait. We have to go to the meeting room."

"Put her there!" They heard the chief nurse say.

The latter, a tall, slender and moustached young Costa Rican man, entered backwards in the room, guiding two J-SEC officers that were carrying a stretcher on which laid the lifeless body of a raven-haired woman.

When they passed in front of them, Dearing gasped as she recognized the body: It was Young's.
Tears began to flow from her eyes.

"What happened?" She asked them, noting that there were no injuries other than some claw marks on her face.

"She was found down the stairs that lead to the monorail station. She must have been climbing them up when she encountered one of the harpactognathuses that had entered in the building. We think that it made her lost her balance and that the fall broke her neck," the chief nurse told them. "My condolences."

The officers went to the only free bed and laid Young's body on it.

Dearing knelt down at the foot of the bed and began to mourn the death of her assistant.
Grady and Zach, also saddened, consoled her.

One of the officers approached Dearing. He was holding a small object in the palm of his hand.

"She had this in her hand when we found her," he said.

He handed her a black flash drive hanging on a silver chain.
Dearing had already seen said flash drive before as Young frequently used it at work and outside.

She took the flash drive and the two officers along with the chief nurse left, leaving them with the late assistant but a few seconds later, one of the control room's technician, Daniel Connors, a well-dressed and groomed man in his early thirties, came to fetch Dearing:

"Claire, the board…"

"I know! Leave me in peace five minutes for fuck's sake!" She yelled at him.

"They said at once," Connors insisted. "And it was two minutes ago. I offer you my condolences for Miss Young, what happened is tragic, but with all due respect ma'am, I advise you to go to the meeting room immediately."

Despite the situation, he had the nerve to behave like a cock of the walk and his mere presence enraged Dearing. Reluctantly, she left the infirmary, followed by her nephews and Grady.

"Personally, I wouldn't give much for your post…" she heard him whisper, thinking she was far enough.

Dearing turned briskly, gave him a death stare and said:

"Shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up…"

Connors fell silent and while watching her head to the meeting room, he readjusted his tie and swallowed.


See you next week for the next chapters.
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Have a nice week.