Anguirus111 Note: Jake's revolver is identical to Vash's from Trigun. I just think it looks cool. This is a short chapter, because this is the beginning of the end for Isla Sorna.
Maisasaur Pit: The dinosaurs were peacefully grazing when suddenly mechanical beasts came from out of nowhere and surrounded them, severally frightening the beasts as the clustered together in a group unsure about this new threat. Smaller beasts advanced out of the larger beasts and approached the group. The maiasaurs had had some interaction with these creatures before and advanced towards them cautiously. Suddenly all of the creatures pulled out small rods and little pieces of metal flew from them. Instantly, the dinosaurs all fell one by one, each mowed down by the flying metal. All save one, felled by a dart.
"Alright load it up!" shouted Jake.
A large semi-tractor trailer appeared and the workers immediately lifted the drugged creature into the back as other maiasaurs appeared. Jake looked at them and wondered if they felt the same way he had looked at that raptor when Jeffrey had died.
"Let's go," said Jake advancing towards them with his rifle and modified revolver in his hands. The others nodded and followed suit as each of them opened fire while the maiausaurs fled.
"May God turn a blind eye to what we do today," thought Jake solemnly as more and more dinosaurs fell by their feet. When it was all over, the meadow ran red with blood and spent shells as fifteen massive dinosaurs laid dead at their feet. Jake looked around at all of the destruction before looking at his revolver. Inside was a single shell remaining. Jake spun the barrel before snapping the gun closed and holding it to his head, but as much as he wanted to pull the trigger, he couldn't. He just stood there in silence before groaning. He lowered the gun and pulled on the trigger, the gun clicked empty. Jake just shook his head and headed back to the vehicles as nearby a couple members were dousing the dead corpses with gasoline. One of them threw a match and the whole lot went up in flames. A couple moments later the vehicles exited the fence. The others sat in the trucks unsure of what they had done, but truly believed that what they were doing was correct. Jake meanwhile took out a radio.
"Cut all power to the maiasaur fences and redirect it to the tyrannosaur paddock," he said into it.
"Check, got it," said Sam on the other end. Jake shut off the radio and opened up his ELE packet. At that exact moment 5 teams of ten members each were fanned out across the island each taking on a different species of dinosaur as the power to those fences was diverted elsewhere. As that was happening, each was gathering a single specimen for testing, which was why the semi-truck ahead of them was joined by four others before each split up, with those with larger animals headed for Embryonic Administration and the smaller ones towards the Operations Building.
"Hey Jake," said Sam again over the radio.
"Yeah?" asked Jake as the truck made rounded a turn and moved alongside a fence beyond which brachiosaurs were drinking some water.
"You've got an incoming fax," said Sam. Jake narrowed his eyes confused before shrugging.
"Alright I'm coming in," he said finally. He hit the side of the truck and it rumbled to a halt as Jake hopped out.
"Continue with the mission, I'm going to hoof it back to base," he said to the driver who nodded. An instant later the truck headed off leaving Jake alone. As he advanced down the road he distantly heard gunshots in the distance and an occasional dinosaur roar. As he did, he couldn't help but notice the heatwave that had descended on the island for the past day and a half, ever since they had made their decision to execute E.L.E.
"Almost like descending into Hell," thought Jake with a smirk as he wiped his forehead. As he continued down the road, his vision suddenly became very blurry thanks to the heat as in the distance a small figure appeared coming towards him. As the blurry figure began to take shape, it took the form of a velociraptor. Jake looked at it wide-eyed before he swung up his rifle and fired. But to his dismay the creature kept coming on a slow but steady path before him. Jake fired again but again to no avail as the dinosaur showed both no sign of slowing down nor made any attempt to evade his attacks. Jake pulled the trigger again but this time the barrel clicked empty.
"Shit," said Jake looking at the thing before discarding the weapon. He then pulled out his handgun and aimed it at the creature.
"That won't solve anything," said the creature. Jake sighed and shook his head.
"Why must I always hallucinate during trying times?" Jake shouted at the heavens. He sighed and started walking towards and past the beast. But as they were side by side, the beast reared back its hand and slapped him.
"The hell was that for?" Jake demanded of his hallucination.
"I told you not to do this but you went ahead and did it anyway, you bastard," said the raptor.
"You have no right to judge me," said Jake. "I'm the one being forced to make the decisions around here, not you. You can hate me sure but you have no right to judge me."
"But at what cost?" asked the raptor morphing into Jeffrey. "At what cost?"
"I don't speak to abominations," said Jake coldly. "My friend would never be criticizing my decisions he would respect that I am doing the best job I possibly can."
"Jake," said Jeffrey. "I know I can't stop you, but there's one thing you should know."
"What?" Jake demanded. "And then please leave me alone I don't have time for this, not anymore. So go ahead, say what you're going to say and then leave me alone."
Jeffrey sighed. "You're right about one thing what happens here on this island right now is going to have lasting repercussions, repercussions that are going to last your entire life. Can you handle that?"
"Hindsight is 20/20," Jake responded despite himself. "I will never know the consequences of my decision until I make it and not even you can know what my future holds."
"Oh I know," said Jeffrey morphing back into the raptor. "I've known ever since I saw your face that day, that day that I died."
"Are you a hallucination or my conscience?" asked Jake confused.
"I'm you; you that's being repressed," said the raptor. "I am both your inner peace and your utter anger and if you don't start listening to me we're all going to die."
With that it dissipated leaving Jake alone. He narrowed his eyes in thought as a vehicle pulled up besides him. Steve exited and walked towards him drinking some water.
"You okay?" he asked out of breath from the heat. Jake shrugged.
"Just seeing things," he said simply. "So what's up, I was still on my way."
"This was kind of urgent," said Steve handing him a fax.
"Are sending an HR representative to your island to assess morale issues-Ingen," said Jake reading it. "So?"
"So?" Steve exclaimed. "We could be in deep shit for this!"
"Unlikely," said Jake heading for the vehicle. "They're just trying to find out what's going on here."
"Do you think they'll stop us?" Steve asked as Jake got into the truck and started it up.
"I doubt it," said Jake as Steve got in on the other side. "If they were really worried about what we're doing here then they'd have swarmed the island en masse and fired all of us. But their hands are tied in so many ways that they could never untie themselves from this one."
"How so?" asked Steve as the truck rumbled down the dirt road.
"A: Ingen is covering up the DRP project, meaning that if we were doing inhumane things to the dinosaurs to reveal that would reveal the project and Ingen isn't willing to do that. B: We made, patented, and own these dinosaurs so they're ours to do with as we please. C: I hope they do try something because I don't want to be here when the fences finally fail," said Jake flipping down the forward visor.
"Speaking of which," said Steve reluctantly.
"Yeah?" asked Jake as he turned around a bend in the road and emerged into a convoy of other semis who honked at him. Steve produced a manilla folder full of papers and calculations.
"I have worked this out every possible way, used every possible variation of ELE and calculated all possible ways to divert and conserve power and I have come to the conclusion that given the manpower we have available to us there is no possible way that we are going to successfully maintain power until the completion of ELE. In fact we aren't even going to be close," said Steve. Jake sighed and closed his eyes briefly as he collected his thoughts.
"How long?" he finally asked.
"A month maybe less," said Steve.
"And if we strain our resources to the max?" asked Jake as his jaw tightened.
"If we divert power to just the carnivore fences, the last one will fail in a month a half," said Steve. Jake's eyes narrowed.
"And you're sure about this?" he asked. Steve nodded solemnly.
"Gerry showed me a computer program Ray created in the event ELE had to modified somehow and it's results are pretty much 100 accurate," said Steve. "Like you said over the broadcast back to San Diego, we're all going to be dead within two and a half months," said Steve. Jake pulled into the base as the semis that came with them stopped outside the main gates and began offloading their cargo into special cages that were then wheeled into the main bases towards the Operations Building. Jake stopped the truck in front of the building and he and Steve got out and advanced towards it.
"Are you going to tell anybody?" asked Steve.
"I don't know," Jake responded as they pushed into the building which was bustling with activity for the first time in a long while. "I'm just making this up as I go along."
A cart was wheeled into a room behind a gigantic metal door and animal roars were heard emerging from it. Jake leaned into the room where Gerry he saw hard at work dissecting one of the animals.
"Hey, Gerry!" Jake shouted over the various drills and machinery in the room. Gerry looked up at him through blood stained goggles and a blood soaked labcoat.
"Yeah?" he asked. Jake jerked his head towards the exit.
"We need to talk," he said before ducking out. Gerry nodded and followed suit. He left the room and walked down the hallway with Jake and Steve as they entered into Jake's office.
"Don't spill blood anywhere I just had the place steam cleaned," said Jake looking at Gerry's red aura.
"I've heard that one before," said Gerry sitting down on the couch on the other end.
"As have I," said Steve sitting down in a chair in front of Jake's desk. "Back when we first started information gathering on ELE."
"How things have changed," said Jake.
"So what do you want?" asked Gerry taking off his goggles. Jake propped his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair.
"Has Steve apprised you of our power forecast?" Jake asked as he waved his hand trying to cool himself off before punching the air conditioning unit that worked for a few moments and then died.
"If you mean the fact that we're too late in implementing ELE then yes," said Gerry. "So what do you plan on doing about it? Clearly we have a few options, all of them bad."
"Obviously," said Jake nodding. "But I do have a few ideas. Before Nublar crashed, I sort of developed a backup to the ELE plan."
"What sort of backup?" asked Gerry interested.
"Well it's not so much of a backup plan as it is a plan of defense," said Jake opening up his safe. "I called it Project HSWS."
"HSWS?" asked Steve. "What does that stand for?"
"Project Holy Shit We're Screwed," said Jake producing a floppy disk. "It's a defense plan against the dinosaurs where essentially we chop the island into segments and a fallback plan with various positions. With a little luck we should be able to survive long enough for Ingen to get off its ass and come and rescue us."
"And how does this plan end?" asked Gerry.
"We're all crowded into the Workers Village with all power devoted to the perimeter fence and we're all equipped with every weapon we can get our hands on," said Jake. "Every building will have multiple escape points and if worse comes to worse we flee like hell out of the Workers Village which will be primed with dynamite, plastique explosives, seismic survey charges, whatever we've got all set to explode once we get as many dinosaurs herded into the Village as possible. We blow it, hopefully most of the carnivores die, and then we survive for as long as we can on our own until we evacuate," said Jake booting up the disk. "That being said I kind of wish we hadn't blown up every boat save one."
"Worse comes to worse I think I can get John Brown to bail us out," said Jake. "There's a Pacific Pharmaceuticals branch in San Jose and they have helicopters for field work. I just hope he's up high enough in the corporate ladder that he'll have that kind of pull in the company. Otherwise we're all going to have to practice our swimming lessons."
"Although we did rebuke Rebecca's suggestion we may have to plan our evacuation route through Nublar," said Gerry reluctantly.
"What?" Jake exclaimed. "Why not through Indigo?"
"Because Indigo has nothing," said Gerry. "No food, no power, no working phones, it has absolutely nothing. We won't be able to survive there for very long, but Nublar is close by and it has all of those things."
"You're right it has a lot, but it has one thing Indigo doesn't and that is dinosaurs," said Jake. "Real live dinosaurs and somehow I don't think we want to run from this island only to begin running again."
"Three raptors and one t-rex are a lot more manageable than what we have here," said Gerry. "At least there we'll have a fighting chance. And don't give me some schtick about wanting to die here than live there we'll drug you if we have to in order for you to come along."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Jake. "In the meantime Steve I'd like you to start implementing these escape plans and brief everyone on it. Tim should be able to multitask making that computer program for me and switching over the power to where it's needed."
"Yeah what is the deal with the program he's making anyway?" asked Steve. "He said you designated it top priority and wouldn't tell me what it was."
"Classified, don't worry about it," said Jake getting up. "You need me I'll be around."
"Doing what?" asked Steve. Jake shrugged.
"Preparing for our guest," he said and with that he left.