Dearing stepped in the rotunda of the Discovery Center, deserted and now ruined.
Pieces of the vault had fallen and a part of the northern facade had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole above the high relief through which ashes and embers pushed by the wind passed.
The latter fell gently around Dearing, like snowflakes.
As she reached the centre of the hall and began to skirt the model of the island, Dearing stopped when she saw the balustrades' busts suddenly come to life.
She looked up at them and voices began to resonate in her head, speaking in an unknown language, very ancient and forgotten, guttural and discordant. She did not understand the words at first, but the more the busts thus telepathically spoke to her, the more she understood them and her mind translated their words.
"Decadent ... Hypocrite... Despot ... Murderer..." They accused her.
Faced with their incriminations, she preferred to turn away from the busts, lowering her gaze to the rotunda itself, and saw many bodies littering it, those of humans and park's animals, all victims of the disaster.
Among them, she recognized the apatosaur whose body they had seen in the meadow, the girl she had seen disappearing into the beak of a quetzalcoatlus amidst the smoke, and Katashi Hamada, lying in the same position as in the corridor of the old Visitors Center, his begging eyes turned towards Dearing.
"Murderer..." The voices repeated.
As they continued to speak, oppressing Dearing more and more, small puddles of blood appeared here and there on the island's model, mainly in places where attacks had occurred, and in the disaster's chronological order.
At the same time, the summit of Mount Sibo exploded, releasing its black plume.
The island burst into flames from north to south while blood was flowing down to the rivers, which were tinted with red, and by the Rio Iris' mouth, it was a thick stream of blood that came out, falling on the rotunda's floor before flowing towards the platform and form a large pool of blood at its foot.
Dearing ended up being attracted by it and she walked up to its edge.
She suddenly began to hear the pounding of claws on the marble behind her but her limbs refused to answer her brain's commands and she couldn't look away from the pool of bool.
She saw her reflection then it faded and the one of the Indominus appeared instead.
Dearing froze.
She heard a rumble behind her and felt a hot breath on her neck.
Turning around, Dearing ended up with the snout of the Indominus over her and frightened, she fell backwards in the pool, and while her clothes reddened as they absorbed the blood, she crawled backwards until her elbows and her neck touch the platform's steps.
The Indominus slowly moved forward, her feet treading the blood, and towering over Dearing, she looked at her in the eyes and said, in a deep cavernous voice that echoed in the rotunda and seemed to be the deformation of one that Dearing recognized more than all others:
"I am coming for you, mother!"
Her throat rumbled and she opened her maw to roar on Dearing.
She barely had time to scream that the Indominus closed her jaws around her waist and she felt such pain as her bones were crushed and her flesh shredded that she awoke with a start, almost jumping off the couch.
It was shaking and sweaty that she sat.
As she recalled the nightmare, she noticed a glow that come from the hallway and was filtered through the blinds, that of the emergency lighting.
The building's auxiliary generator had been started.
Thus, there was enough light so that she could discern the shapes of the furniture as well as those of the items near her, including the bottle of rum on the coffee table.
She grabbed the latter and drank a few sips.
She tried to forget the nightmare but did not succeed since the words of the Indominus were haunting her.
She hadn't called her mother for nothing, it was the result of her subconscious and therefore of information that she had received at some point.
She thought for a few moments and remembered first what Grady had told her once, soon after the birth of the achillobators. He had said that at birth, many dinosaurs, just like modern birds, considered the first being they saw as their mother and she had stood just in front of the Indominus when she opened her eyes for the first time, after having been put out of the vat.
It was thus not impossible that the Indominus had saw Dearing as her mother.
This was a perfectly rational explanation for this part of the nightmare, but it wasn't enough.
Deep down, she knew that there was another one, that she hoped with all her heart that it would prove false but she had to be sure.
The answer to his interrogation had surely to be in the document protected by the riddle. She needed the answer to the latter.
In the memory of two brothers, that death had taken too soon, I stand between the bookstore and the Old Union and am a place of meeting. What is my nickname?
Given its structure and content, Dearing deducted that the riddle could be a intended to a trusted person: Person.
A meeting place? Thought Dearing. Where had Wu met Preston? At Stanford University!
The riddle was about an element of the latter that was used as a meeting place, but this university was big, there had to be quite a number of those, not to mention the fact that she knew it only by name and reputation.
She thought first to ask Wu's right-hand man for him to answer it but she changed her mind since in the case he would have already had access to this document, he would immediately know that she is trying to use him in order to access to its content and that he would therefore resist.
Wishing that there were other former students of Stanford on the island, she recalled that one of the control room's technicians, none other than Daniel Connors, had also studied there.
