San Diego, California: Several minutes of heated discussion between Peter Ludlow, legal representative Daniel Ross, Samantha Brown and Ed Ross who were still on Nublar, and the InGen Executive Board about a variety of business related topics related to the theft of the embryos had caused Jake Whitacre and Henry Wu's eyes to glaze over. Everyone else over the terminals had long since signed off which was why Samantha and Ed were taking the call in the VIP dining lounge. But Jake and Henry were effectively trapped since they were in the same room as Peter Ludlow and he hadn't exactly dismissed them to leave.
But after hearing a Board Member pull out a chart and start discussing financial numbers, Jake about nearly lost it. He rubbed his face vigorously and got up and Henry followed suit.
"Where are you two going?" Ludlow demanded immediately. Jake and Henry took to look at him tired.
"This doesn't have anything to do with us," Henry said truthfully. "We need to head back to the hospital for a final checkup to make sure we're healthy enough to be fully discharged."
"Yes, but where are you planning on going after that?" asked Ludlow pointedly. Jake and Henry look at him curiously.
"Beats me," Jake admitted while showing a smirk. "Just putter around town I guess. Maybe go visit a petting zoo." The scientist continued in a thinly veiled reference to InGen's Kenya facility. He mainly said it to see what Ludlow's response would be. For his part, Ludlow look at him dimly knowing that answer had been on the verge of ignoring his question altogether.
"Very well," he relented before adding, "But I'm afraid that in light of this incident that once you return back to Site B we'll have to put a complete lockdown on our facilities on Sorna and in Kenya. No gets in or out without express permission from the Board."
A look of pure anger and disbelief crossed the faces of the two scientists at being denied access to the Kenyan facility which had been their home for the entire beginning of the Dinosaur Recovery Project.
"Whatever you think is best," said Jake refusing to give him the satisfaction of annoyed sarcasm as he then left the room with Henry trailing after him.
"He's not going to stop us is he?" Henry had to ask as they walked down the hall. Jake shook his head as they entered into the elevator.
"Not a chance. We may not be able to go there right away but we will get there before the fences fail," Jake promised. "In the meantime we have plenty of work to do on Sorna."
The elevator deposited them on the ground floor and the two walked through the lobby and past Stephanie Sandelder who glared daggers at them for embarrassing her in front of the second in command of InGen. The two ignored her and strode right out the doors.
"Do you think we should visit Hammond?" Henry had to ask as they walked to the nearest bus stop. Jake sighed.
"Do you think we should visit Hammond?" he asked back pointedly. Henry looked down at the sidewalk a little downtrodden.
"I thought I did," he began as he looked back up. "But now I wouldn't even know what to say…or where to even begin."
Jake nodded his head in complete agreement and clapped his friend reassuringly on the shoulder. Both winced at the physical pain it caused them as they were still very much on the mend from their ordeal on Nublar. When the bus came, the two boarded it and spent the entire ride back to the hospital completely in silence, lost in their thoughts.
Hammond's Loft: John Hammond, CEO of InGen and still proud of the company he had built, was reading the latest reports about the stolen embryo canister. Inside he was seething over the loss of his precious dinosaurs and his blame primarily resided on Dennis Nedry for the initial and Peter Ludlow for not securing the missing canister while he had the chance.
And to a smaller extent he blamed himself for not being where he needed to be as CEO of his company. If he had been there, things would have been different he told himself. He had made a mistake with Jurassic Park, he admitted that, but he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
But right now was a perilous time for his company. Jurassic Park was about to be demolished and the workers of Indigo were soon to be transferred and merged with those on Sorna. If he was to pick a time for his return, this wasn't it. He had to wait and bide his time and learn everything he could about what had become of his company in his absence as well as where it was going.
The dinosaurs had waited in patience for 65 million years to return to the world at large. He could afford to be patient as well. So when he struck, it would be fast and deadly accurate like the Velociraptors.
Next Day, Indigo: Daniela St. Ives entered into her office and collapsed on her chair in a huff. She had just given what she knew to be one of her final speeches on the island to her workers about their transfer to Sorna in only a few days time. And so she was reviewing her notes on the merger as the sounds of ship horns reached her ears.
Spinning around in her chair, she saw the Anne B. and the SS Venture pull into port. These would pretty much be the last ships inspected on this island and Daniela gave a wistful sigh as she looked out at them. She took out her camera and snapped a photo as a keepsake memento and then went back to reviewing her notes. Several minutes later a knock was heard at her door.
"Mail," said Daniela's secretary as she brought in a bag that had come in on the boat and placed it on her desk. "This is a lot more than you usually get." The secretary partly observed partly complained having had to drag the thing over to her.
Daniela shrugged. "There was some information I needed from the San Jose location that I figured I'd get now before we merge since I don't know what kind of authority I'll have over on Sorna. Or what will become of the San Jose location for that matter."
The secretary just nodded her head, not entirely caring since there was always secretarial work that needed to be done on the islands, and then returned to her desk outside. Inside, Daniela immediately opened the bag and pulling out various envelopes and folders that were full of papers. Those being all the transfer orders that had passed from Costa Rica to Nublar and Sorna over the past several weeks.
Jake and Henry had originally intended on being the ones to figure out who had authorized the transfer of every member of the non-senior staff from Nublar but they became wrapped up in some enigma involving genetics and hadn't been able to focus on the search any longer. But it was still a vital question to helping understand the full story of what had happened that weekend during the tour when Jurassic Park fell apart. And so Daniela had silently vowed to answer that question along with how Nedry had been allowed to smuggle an embryo canister onto the island without being noticed.
Mysteries just tended to abound with these islands, it came with the territory.
Sorna: "What is that?" asked Doc Thorne confused as he looked at a tall cylindrical metal silo that had various antenna and devices covering it that seemed out of place in the jungle surrounding it. "I think that's about the third or fourth we've seen on our tour."
Lori Ruso turned to regard the structure that had paint falling off of it and looked like it was slowly rusting away.
"I think its weather sensing equipment," the Head of Production figured since she wasn't completely sure. "Since we get a lot of storms out here and we're so far west of civilization we can't afford to wait to hear about it on the Costa Rican weather channel because by then it will already have hit us. Sam said we have these scattered across the island to give us a better view of what's going on around us."
"But you're not sure?" Thorne had to ask as he picked up his binoculars and took a closer look at the device.
"Well, no," said Lori as if that should be obvious. "They've got nothing to do with my job. Sam could've told me they detected earthquakes and I'd have believed him. He has no reason to lie to me."
Before Thorne could ask to go see it up close, Levine butted in.
"Who cares about some stupid tower?" he asked incredulously. "I want to see more dinosaurs!"
Lori turned to look at him like he was an impatient child but she nodded her head.
"Okay, let's get going. The T-Rex area is coming up just ahead," she agreed. Levine took off like a shot leaving the rest behind as Gutierrez slow followed after him along with Lori. Thorne stayed behind briefly as he sketched the tower in almost exact detail and then pulled out a map of Sorna and made a note of where this tower was in relation to all the others. He then put both away and followed after the group so they wouldn't notice he was absent.
Nublar: With the dinosaurs finally liquidated from the island, the majority of the workers were taking a well deserved break that morning before the Anne B and the SS Venture arrived. When they arrived, the mercenaries hired by InGen would depart and be replaced by construction workers and equipment that would begin taking apart the physical structures on the island.
But while many of the workers celebrated or rested, one was hard at work. Nicolette Stefrassa, the head of strategic planning on Sorna, was in Henry Wu's office by herself working on his computer. Her breakfast was sitting on a tray beside her as she rarely preferred social gatherings in the company of others, especially with those she didn't know. And so she ate a piece of food here and there as she scanned all the reports she could on the work that had been done on the island so far and what was yet to come.
Next to her was her clipboard and notepad with a large of amount of notes scrawled on the yellow pages of everything she had observed since her time here on the island. And next to it on the table was a mysterious thick report with a blank white page on the front of that gave no indication of what it contained within.
As Nicolette read a new piece of information, she cracked open the report and flipped through the typed pages where various handwritten notes had been added to them. After finding a particular typed line, she wrote down what she had found out and read it in conjunction with other notes on it and other pages.
Shaking her head in disappointment, and perhaps a tinge of fear if she admitted to feeling that emotion, she was about to return to the computer when she noticed a pair of shadows outside of the room. Even despite the door locks that should only open for certain security keys, of which Samantha was currently on her way back to Isla Sorna and Tim was too tied up with work to be coming in here, she still quickly minimized all the programs that were running and powered off the monitor and hid behind some furniture in the room.
After a few moments of mumbled talking, the shadows moved off and Nicolette cautiously returned to her seat. Turning back to the computer she noticed a program running that she had barely paid any attention to when she first started using it. She had .mainly come in here for solitude as Jake and Henry were back on the mainland. That it had already been logged on had been in her favor as it would provide a cover for the work she was doing. While she did hope Jake and Henry recovered soon, the truth was no one would be looking at this computer as long as they were gone and it helped cover her activities from prying eyes.
But as she looked at the program that was running she noticed Mr. DNA in the middle of two DNA strands that were being compared. Looking at the DNA strands and the descriptors that labeled each one, her eyes widened and she immediately cracked open her report and turned to the conclusion section and underline several sentences multiple times along with a single note she wrote in the margins.
It's started. They know. Get to Kenya.
Worker Village, Isla Sorna: Sheila Matula was outside of the Operations Building toying around with one of the Tour Vehicles that were intended to be the future of transportation on the island. Already track had been laid to all the major destinations such as Embryonics Administration, the Hammond Administration Building, the Field Clinic, the Veterinary Building and various other major areas and more was being laid to the more fringe and remote locations on the island.
But the only way the program would work would be if the tour vehicles could work properly and so that was why the female programmer found herself sitting in the driver's seat of the SUV with her portable terminal plugged into the central console which in turn was remotely connected to the tour program present on the Sorna mainframe. Working on things this way was much more work than just simply sitting at her terminal in the Control Room, but Sheila needed to be out here to clear her head and try not to think about her sister's betrayal.
That her employer Pacific Pharmaceuticals had made off with InGen's most vital property was what really drove her over the edge. Cassie had sworn that she was here to find evidence that Nedry had been bribed by Biosyn to bring them embryos but she'd mentioned nothing about being part of a crew who intended on stealing the embryos for themselves. If that meant her sister had lied to her face about her reasons for being there or that she'd been truthful and her main goal was to acquire information on Nedry and simply omitted the other part, Sheila couldn't bring herself to find out. And so she listlessly and automatically went about pressing various buttons without much awareness of what she was doing.
She was so deep into her funk that she barely registered a pair of fingers being snapped to get her attention. Looking over dimly, she saw Dr. Roberta Carter standing just outside of the vehicle. Her unexpected presence managed to clear the cloud that was hanging over Sheila's head…at least for the time being.
"Hey Bobbie, how're ya doing?" she asked with a slight smile at seeing the doctor in much better shape than she'd heard she was in.
"Been better," Bobbie admitted as she was bandaged in various places. "But I've seen much worse around here and back when I was interning in Chicago for County General Hospital. Being a doctor is not for the faint of heart."
Sheila nodded her head as she noticed something on her display and typed in a line of code which brought up more data scrolling up the screen.
"They fix the clinic?" she asked next, curious. Bobbie nodded her head.
"Those raptors did some damage in there along with the ceiling caving in but it wasn't anything maintenance couldn't put back together," she began. "Hey look, Sheila can I ask you something that's a little private?"
Sheila blew a giant bubble with her gum and then it popped and she brought it back into her mouth.
"Go nuts," was the response as she jotted down some notes about what she saw on her terminal screen compared to the vehicle's video console.
"What do you remember about the day the raptors attacked the clinic? More specifically how it ended?" Bobbie had to ask. Sheila blinked as she tried to remember an event which had only occurred a few days prior. With everything else that had happened in the interim, it felt like much longer.
"Just that there was a lot of chaos and confusion, the rescue team ran into the building, and there was an explosion," she answered truthfully. Bobbie nodded her head.
"You don't remember the PA system going off or anything?" the doctor asked next. She couldn't remember if it had or not but she had a gut instinct that something had been said over the intercom system.
"Not that I can recall. I do remember Samantha Brown saying that she had a plan to get you out of the mess you were in but I don't know what it was. She had some hush-hush conversation with Pete Ludlow and so the connection got knocked out for about five minutes or so and came back on after everything had happened," Sheila revealed, a little distracted by the tour program.
Bobbie looked at her curiously. "The system can do that?" she asked, slightly suspicious. Sheila nodded her head as she popped another bubble.
"Standard stuff," she pointed out. "It just doesn't really get used around here much because we don't have much dealing with the Executive Board. I wouldn't be surprised if more information blackouts occur in the future as they try to figure out what to do with this island."
"Right," said Bobbie nodding her head as she rubbed her eyes. Perhaps she was just jumping at shadows. "Thanks. Anyway, what are you doing out here?"
Sheila looked at her with a melancholy grin. "I just thought I'd work out here in the fresh air and not some stuffy control room."
That statement caused some confusion for Bobbie. Tim and Sheila usually hated field work and preferred to be left alone in the Control Room to their own devices. Although, it was not like she'd gone very far since the Operations Building was right next to them. But since she'd been so zoned out earlier…
"Well if you ever want to talk about it, let me know," Bobbie offered, figuring it was worth a shot. She wasn't a psychologist by trade beyond basic training but she was the only one on the island who could provide such services. ...Unless you were Jake who just tended to dispense unsolicited advice to the nature of your problem that rarely helped.
Sheila gave her a mild look of resentment before it passed and she nodded her head.
"Maybe," she replied, not entirely shooting down the idea.
THUMP THUMP THUMP
Before any could say anything else, a Sikorsky Helicopter tore through the air above them and landed on the helipad above the Operations Building. Kevin and Jennifer had gone to pick up Samantha that morning and had just returned with her. After a lone figure disembarked, the helicopter took off headed for the airstrip.
"We should probably head in," Bobbie told Sheila. A meeting was planned for the senior staff with the InGen Board Member about what had happened on Nublar the previous day. Everyone but Lori would be there as she had intentionally led the tour group as far away from the Village as she reasonably could so they wouldn't find out what had happened.
"Right," Sheila agreed as she made some final keystrokes on her terminal and then unplugged it. The vehicle slowly started to move away as she hopped out and headed down the road before making a left into the parking garage as the two headed into the Operations Building.
Tyrannosaurs Area: The team stood staring out at the trees beyond the fence and not seeing a single dinosaur.
"How many are there?" Levine asked, curious as nearby Martin Gutierrez had his notebook ready to record everything he could about these creatures.
"Six, I think," Lori guessed. Gutierrez nearly dropped his pencil at that.
"Six?! Are you sure? Isn't that a little excessive?" he had to ask. Lori shrugged as she looked at the trees.
"I'm only responsible for seeing they get made. I'm not responsible for ordering them so I can't really answer much on that end," she pointed out.
"In that case, can you speculate on why there are so many? I thought all you had to do was just clone a new one if you needed it," Thorne asked trying a different angle. Lori thought about it for a few moments as the occasional dinosaur roar was heard from the distance.
"Well you have to remember that while we can clone them that doesn't mean they'll suddenly go from baby to adult overnight. I think the official line was that if one of those things keeled over on Nublar or wherever else we also had a Jurassic Park, it would be easier to have a full grown one ready to go so we wouldn't disappoint the tourists," she explained. "I mean it's not like we can just find these things anywhere, you know. Zoos have enough problems keeping their animal exhibits stocked and so do we."
"So they're not all fully grown in there?" asked Levine. Lori shook her head.
"Various ages," she answered.
"They ever get into a pissing match with each other?" Levine asked next, hopeful. Lori laughed at that.
"Rarely," she told him. "It happens sometimes when they're eating from the automated food troughs near the center of the area but rarely lasts long."
"Why's that?" asked Gutierrez curious why there weren't more fights.
"Women are better behaved than men," Lori said with a big smile. Levine groaned and rolled his eyes at that.
"Out of curiosity," Thorne began. "Coming from a manufacturing background, where mass producing identical product is the key to survival, I've noticed some clear variances in the dinosaurs within a given species. Is that natural, wastage caused by the cloning process, or some other factor?"
Lori nodded, impressed by his observance. Levine had noticed this too but didn't want to be the one to broach the subject in favor of playing the fool and was glad Thorne had brought it up.
"That's a good question. During the whole process of discovering dinosaur DNA and constantly reviewing our techniques, we came up with a number of ways to better refine the whole operation. This was to provide better and more accurate results both with the cloning process itself and with finding out what the original DNA strands were supposed to be before we introduced frog DNA to make up for the missing pieces," she began. "Because of those changes, we began assigning the batches we cloned product version numbers to be able to distinguish them in case we should ever need to. One might be version 1.1, another 2.4, 3.7, etc. depending on the species and when it was cloned. While there is the occasional genetic variance amongst a batch, the differences are mainly due to product improvement."
Gutierrez felt slightly ill at hearing animals referred to in such mechanical terms but it made complete sense to Levine and Thorne.
"How come they don't come near the fences?" the head of the Becky Doll Corporation asked. "Can't you lure them out here? I read they could do that on Nublar."
"This isn't a carnival side show attraction," the Head of Production said dimly at that notion. "We don't need to see them unless we need to see them. But if you want to view one up close I'll let you in there and you can run up and down the area and see if one will chase you. Back in the day when we only had two or three, sometimes a few workers would do that during off hours to kill time," she revealed. "It ended pretty quickly when one of them got eaten."
That killed Levine's mood and most of the team's appetite. Lori was about to suggest they move on when the ground started shaking.
THOOM…THOOM…THOOOM
Levine's eyes widened with each boom and his expression got more and more excited as Lori looked at the fence curiously before looking behind her and calculating where they were and which way the wind was blowing.
"Ah," she said knowingly.
"What?" asked Gutierrez a little fearful despite the electrified fence in front of them.
"Sometimes when the wind is right they get a whiff of the Spinosaurus," she answered. "They tend not to be on good terms with each other even though none of them have ever crossed paths," she answered before running off. "If you're staying, you might want to cover your ears!"
She was gone down the road as Gutierrez followed suit while Thorne followed at a brisk walk. Levine meanwhile was left awestruck as a Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared, the top of its body poking out from the trees, as it got as close to the fence as it could without touching it. It then took in a deep breathe and let loose with a huge deafening roar.
Operations Building: After a couple minutes of walking, Bobbie and Sheila entered into the auditorium where Sam Stone, Gerry Harding, and Carly Carlson who was here because Jake, Henry, and Lori were elsewhere and hadn't looked like she'd slept in days, were waiting.
"Where's Nicolette?" asked Bobbie curious about the absentee as they both took a seat. If anyone knew how to be punctual, it was her.
"I think she's still on Nublar," Sheila guessed. Probably giving the workers there an earful she thought. Samantha Brown entered into the room and instead of taking her place on the stage on the podium she instead chose to sit on the edge of the stage.
"Is everyone here?" she asked. Sam looked around and nodded his head although he was a little surprised how small the staff had gotten over the period of less than a week.
"Unless you want to remote in those who aren't here," the Head of Operations suggested. Samantha shook her head.
"No, I've already spoken with Nicolette and Tim and will speak with Daniela and Lori when I get the chance. Right now I'm only here to speak in-person about what happened yesterday. Which as I'm sure you're all aware was that a container of dinosaur embryos was taken from the island yesterday by a hostile force," Samantha began as she laid it all out in formal terms.
"This container being whatever it was that Nedry originally planned to smuggle the embryos with?" Gerry asked. Since the Veterinary Clinic had to be more centrally located than the Workers Village, he'd been left a little bit out of the loop of everything that had been going on lately.
"That's right," Samantha confirmed with a nod of her head. "That container had the fifteen species that were currently being displayed on Nublar. I have a list here of what they were but that's not really important," she continued before turning her attention to the female geneticist. "Carly, I hate to put you on the hot seat, but I've heard from Jake and Henry and I'm curious what your thoughts are about how much of a danger having loose embryos is for our company. Call it a second opinion," the Board Member requested. Carly shifted uncomfortably in her seat that not wanting to say something that might be different than her bosses' view of things.
"I'm not really sure what I could add that they couldn't," she admitted even though she had no idea what they'd said. "By now the embryos are no longer viable and with the heat on Nublar, it's probably done a real number on their genetic code."
"That's what they said, please keep going," Samantha insisted.
"Well the only other thing is that whoever was here trying to get those embryos must've known a lot about our operation. And since the embryos aren't viable that means no immediate dinosaurs to breed to make your own stock," Carly continued as she thought more about it. "I'm not aware of any current operations similar to our own so whatever gains whoever took the embryos made, it would've been very small. Not enough to catch up to where we are now anytime soon. And that's even with Jurassic Park having gone to pieces."
Samantha nodded her head and gave a reassuring smile to Carly. "That's exactly what Jake and Henry thought. And that's our conclusion as well. But all the same we're going to do our best to try and recover those embryos from whoever took them." She finished, all the while wondering that if what Jake, Henry, and Carly had claimed was true why someone would take them in the first place.
"So then what does that mean going forward?" asked Sam needing to know for the future of operations on the island. Samantha sighed, now having gotten to the main reason she was here.
"That's where the bad news begins," the Board Member began. "Now that Jurassic Park is finally going to be demolished and everyone from Indigo is coming here that means InGen can now finally turn its attention back to what started this mess in the first place: Nedry's attempt to smuggle embryos off the island. That means we'll be questioning people of interest over the coming weeks and months."
That drew concerned glances from the staff at each other about having to deal with this on top of everything else.
"Is this the equivalent of a witch hunt?" Gerry asked pointedly. Samantha shook her head.
"That's not what it's intended to be but I don't blame you if you think otherwise," she confessed. "We want to believe that Nedry acted alone in his actions. But we can't run the risk that he didn't. We got lucky that those embryos are no longer viable but without a working Jurassic Park we're still not out of the woods if a viable embryo were to be stolen at some point in the future.
That, unfortunately brings me to my main point for being here today…" Samantha continued, somewhat downtrodden. Her change in demeanor got the group's full attention as they each sat up to listen to what she had to say.
"Because of what happened with the embryos being stolen, because we don't know if Nedry was acting along, because of the danger of losing a viable embryo, it means that some changes are going to have to made around here," Samantha began sadly. "The first of which is that as soon as Jurassic Park is demolished and Indigo's staff comes here, Site B will be placed under permanent lockdown procedures for the foreseeable future."
Protests erupted across the room at that before Sam got up and held his hands out to quiet them.
"For those of us who haven't read the employee manual in awhile," said Sam for the benefit of those who hadn't and were just reacting to the term 'lockdown'. "What exactly does that entail?"
Samantha sighed more deeply than before. "It means that no one will be allowed off this island without first going to the management staff of Sam and-if she wants to be included-Daniela, who will hear your case and then choose whether or not to send it San Diego where it will then have to have the expressed approval from the Board of Directors. And you wouldn't be allowed to take anything with you that wasn't approved either. That means no more of your unscheduled trips to the United States or Costa Rica and no vacation time either. Plus all communication with the outside world that isn't InGen San Diego is also restricted without prior approval. For anyone who wants onto this island, they have to be cleared by the Board of Directors. "
Angry protests now came forth from the senior staff.
"This is bullshit, you can't keep us prisoners here! What happens if we want to resign?" Bobbie demanded. Samantha shook her head.
"You can quit if you want and we will let you leave," she admitted. "But I have to warn you that anyone who quits now will be viewed very suspiciously by the Board of Directors. And it won't get you out of questioning." She added. That got the attention of the Staff and helped quiet some of the outbursts, although grumbling could still be heard.
"How is this even allowable?" Carly found herself asking, feeling out of her depth amongst the rest of the senior staff. "I mean we're all Americans here don't we have rights?"
"Yes and no," answered Samantha noncommittally with a bob of her head. "For starters, this isn't the United States it's Costa Rica. But before you took this job you were asked to review the employee policy code before signing it. Part of those policies included the possibility of a lockdown of Sites A, B, and C should certain circumstances arise. They have."
Gerry Harding shifted in his seat upon hearing that. "Yeah, if the Board decides to lock them down on a whim," he mentioned under his breath. Whether that was true or not, Samantha chose not dignify that comment with a response. Sheila meanwhile had been silent for most of the ordeal as besides Carly, she was the youngest one in the room by a few years.
"How could you do this to us?" she asked quietly of the Head of Human Resources feeling betrayed. It was obvious that Jake despised the entire Board of Directors for things reasonable and unreasonable. But for the rest of the staff, they tried to keep a more level headed mind at being given orders from individuals who were miles and miles away and never seemed to fully understand what was going on here.
But the one Board Member they all respected, even Jake if begrudgingly, was Samantha Brown. She was the one who stood up for them whenever the Board had unreasonable ideas in mind for the staff. She was also the one who tried to make their lives as comfortable as was possible being on a tropical island far away from home where amenities were somewhat scarce and communication often wasn't possible thanks to the non-disclosure agreements they had signed.
"I tried my best to argue against it," Samantha admitted, downtrodden about the whole thing. "I told Peter and the rest of the Board that Nedry had to have acted alone and that there was no way anyone on this island could have had anything to do with it. But he still overruled me. I considered threatening to resign to get him to back off but if he called my bluff you'd all have been much worse off," she further confessed without a hint of aggrandizing in her tone. The staff was each a little touched by her devotion to them.
"But I think we all have to face facts on one important issue," the Board Member continued in all seriousness. "Things are only going to get worse around here leading up to the unveiling of Jurassic Park: San Diego. Those dinosaurs aren't going anywhere and every day you get closer to the day those fences fail is going to seem like the longest day of your life. Supplies are going to run low, increased isolation coupled with lack of steady work is probably going to drive some people stir crazy and cause tempers to flare, the temperature will probably rise also as we get further into summer, the tropical storms are only going to increase as well. That plus whatever else is going to go wrong in these next couple of months is something you and everyone else have to be physically and mentally prepared for," she warned.
Things along those lines hadn't even occurred to any of the staff until Samantha brought it out into the open. That was why it had become completely quiet in the room.
"Now there is one silver lining," Samantha went on with a mild smile. "Per company bylines, as long as this island is under lockdown, no one here will be affected by layoffs. Call it slight compensation for what I just mentioned."
That at least got some slight relief out of the group.
"But make no mistake about it," Samantha concluded again completely serious. "In the coming days, this island is going to turn from a lost world into a living hell."