The Fortress, Mt. Watson, Isla Sorna: The two sides regarded each other silently as Jake and Henry hadn't seen Laura Sorkin in some time.
"What, you're not happy to see us?" asked Jake feigning being upset. "It shouldn't really have come as a surprise that we'd be up here at some point with the Lockdown in effect."
Laura pinched the bridge of her nose as she had to acknowledge that fact. "No, I suppose you're right. I just kept hoping it would have kept being delayed."
"Well, it's not all bad news," said Jake with a mild grin to Laura's confusion. "We found your missing Troodons."
That new did surprise the female scientist.
"So where are they?" she asked, eagerly. Jake's expression dropped at that.
"Nublar," he responded. Laura leaned back in her chair upon hearing that. Then she remembered what had happened to Nublar in recent weeks and her head lightly dropped.
"How'd they get there?" she demanded lightly knowing it was too late now to do anything about it.
"No clue," said Henry maneuvering the microscope to the side so he could look at what Laura was studying.
"Damn," she said annoyed to no end. "So once again a clerical error has ruined YEARS of research!" Laura concluded throwing her hands up in the air in frustration.
"Hey, I take offense to that statement," Lori called out from behind them. The trio turned to look at the other arrivals. Laura meanwhile regarded them with interest as this location saw few visitors and she'd only really been expecting Jake and Henry to make an appearance at some point after the Lockdown went into effect. That one of the new bodies was Lori Ruso wasn't much of a shock and neither was the young techie whom Laura only recognized from her setting up the uplink during the July 4th barbecue. The final arrival, Nicolette Stefrassa was a complete surprise. Laura held a similar regard to the actuary as the rest of the staff did, one of distrust. Turning around, she mouthed 'what's she doing here?' to the two scientists who could only shrug helplessly as they had no idea.
Deciding it wasn't a mystery she was up to solving, she got up to greet the new arrivals.
"Ruso, it's certainly been awhile," said the scientist shaking her hand. Lori nodded as she looked around at the equipment left behind with tarps and plastic covering them with a fair amount of dust on them. "We should be putting on barcodes on the eggs to prevent things like this from happening."
Lori snorted at that. "Like I told you when you first suggested it, Hammond said it doesn't look natural. He spared no expense to make everything as close to how it should've been 65 million years ago."
"Right, right," said Sorkin rolling her eyes knowing it was a lost battle. "It's good to have you back up here with us in the Fortress."
"Like old times," the production specialist agreed nodding her head as she continued to look around. "I don't suppose you have a current equipment inventory list?"
Laura glanced off at the door to the vehicle bay. "David might have something. We do keep track of the equipment we use but as for the rest of it… Beats me."
Lori nodded her head and left, eager to get underway. Identifying and cataloging the genetics equipment was something she was looking forward to doing having been stuck guiding the inspection group around for the past several days. She was someone who truly enjoyed her work.
"Nicolette, I trust you can show yourself around," said Laura sounding cold but knowing that was the other woman's preference to be left to her own devices with as little small-talk as possible.
"Thank you," the blonde-haired woman agreed and then walked off into the complex without another word.
"I don't believe we've formally met," said Laura next as she approached Sheila who was standing in the back timidly. "I'm Dr. Laura Sorkin."
"Sheila Matula, I'm one of the head programmers on this island," the young woman answered as she shifted her things in her hand to shake.
"And what brings you up this way?" Sorkin had to ask a little perplexed. "We've had no computer problems to my knowledge."
"That's not exactly why I'm here," Sheila clarified.
"Oh?" said Laura questioningly. "Then why?"
"I, um-," began the programmer helplessly until the sound of Jake clearing his throat could be heard. Upon hearing that, Laura's blood went cold as she finally put two and two together.
"No," she swore before whirling to face the two scientist as Sheila retreated to where she hoped the Cray was. "You two are not doing this to me!"
Jake shook his head in disagreement. "You've got no choice, Laura, we're shutting you down. You've got one week to clear out."
"That's bullshit!" said Laura refusing to mince words. "The Fortress is not on the rest of the island's power grid we are not taking energy away from anyone!"
"Except you're getting supply drops every week. Supplies we need as we hunker down as well as saving the gasoline for the trips up here," Henry clarified knowing there was no rebuttal.
"I can't just leave my experiments!" the female scientist shouted next.
"That's why we're giving you a week rather than pulling the plug now!" Jake groaned at her impetuousness. "In one week the power is being cut to this place whether you're out of here or not. But it doesn't have to be all bad. Henry and I will be here for the duration and help you finish up some things here as well as see if anything can be crated up and started up again at Embryonics Administration."
Lori had heard the heated arguing and swiftly made her way back into the main research room and led Sheila away as she had become a little "deer in the headlights" not knowing what to do. Usually everyone got along in the island's staff with arguments hearing and there but nothing to this level. It was clear from Jake and Henry's previous comments on the way there that there was some bad blood between Dr. Sorkin and them but nothing on this level.
"You two know damn well we can't just move our experiments on a moment's notice!" Laura continued to protest. I've got some several months along that are just now beginning to produce results. What I learn could catapult the Dinosaur Revivification Process years into the future and I…," Laura trailed off as she saw the two other members of the arrivals leave the room and then her expression turned from heated anger to serene tranquility. "…I want you two to cut the bullshit and tell me why you're really here."
Interior of the Island: The observation team were clustered near the protoceratops from earlier as nearby, Dr. Frances 'Frankie' White was retching behind the boulder they'd original spotted her. Next to her, Dr. Roberta 'Bobbie' Smith was reassuringly rubbing her back. Gerry and the DRT Team had stayed for a little while but then left once they'd ascertained the previously missing female scientist wasn't in any danger. Besides, as Gerry put it if a dinosaur's life was in danger he would know exactly what to do but human anatomy was a little out of his league to be offering Frankie any advice. Marty meanwhile had told Frances that he would be needing to speak to her for an extended period of time once they returned from their tour of the fences surrounding the perimeter of the island. With Robert Muldoon gone, Dr. White was the closest thing the island had to a game warden even though she was technically subservient to Gerry Harding.
"I told you that you belong in a hospital or the clinic," Bobbie commented. "You've definitely got sunstroke and heat exhaustion so it's no wonder you can't keep anything down right now."
"But I should get better now that you can keep me hydrated and fed right?" asked Frankie. She'd been reluctant to return to society as she'd always felt like an outsider amongst her fellow man and would rather stay with the dinosaurs whom she felt more comfortable around.
"You need an I.V. in you and plenty of rest, but you'll live. Although, you're going about this the hard way," Bobbie continued as she watched the team looking intently at the nest but unable to get close to it as the protoceratops kept gently warding them off by keeping one of them between the team and the nest at all times.
"Hey, the hard way makes it all the more fun," said Frankie with a sly grin before she again heaved up her latest M.R.E. all over the ground.
"How come there are babies with this group?" demanded Levine concerned as he looked at the babies running around his legs.
"They're not babies, they're juveniles," said Frankie a little hoarse but otherwise seemed to be getting better. "And before you ask, the babies are not tattooed because we wait until they hit maturity before applying the identifying marking so it doesn't stretch out and become unreadable. We introduce them to the various herds after a few weeks in the nurseries before they permanently imprint on us."
"And that works well?" asked Thorne curious. Frankie shrugged as she stood up and leaned against the boulder.
"The raptors sometimes eat their new juveniles but otherwise it works for the most part," she remarked before slowly drinking from her canteen.
"And you've never seen them breeding?" Levine asked further. Frankie held out her hands in defeat with another slight grin.
"No, but I usually don't travel with a herd long enough to find out," she confessed. "The eggshells you see crushed are done by them out of misguided attempts to free the embryos when the eggs don't hatch when they should. Nothing living ever emerges but they'll move onto a new site and do it all over again."
"Seems kind of stupid," the Becky Doll owner grumbled to himself.
"No one ever accused these dinosaurs of being intelligent. They're not dumb but with few exceptions none of them come anywhere near the level of human-thinking."
"Case in point, Alicia, being the exception," said Bobbie mischievously as she chuckled into her hand. Frankie nearly spat out her water upon hearing that before holding her stomach since she was in such pain from losing her lunch and now hearing such an absurd idea.
"Sure," said Frankie sarcastically while shaking her head annoyed at that comment.
"Who's Alicia?" Levine had to ask.
"An urban legend," Frankie said ruefully. "One that will never die it seems!" she remarked further while glaring at Bobbie.
"Maybe you've noticed amongst all the more popular predators we have on this island, that there is one particularly glaring omission," Roberta began, quizzing the team on the animals on the island.
"Allosaurus," said Levine after a few moments. "One of my favorites."
"Exactly," said Bobbie with a nod of her head. "Well, rumor has it back during the very early days of Site B they managed to dig up just enough DNA to clone a single Allosaurus. They named her Alicia. It was raised to juvenile status but when she was being moved to her paddock on the island, she escaped and fled into the jungle. At the time we didn't have the motion trackers everywhere and she wasn't chipped so after a few weeks of searching they never found her and gave up. To this day you'll sometimes hear a worker who was out in the less heavily traveled areas claiming they heard a roar they didn't recognize. So…"
Frankie visibly cleared her throat to cut in. "It's all a vicious lie Jake came up with to torment me! Every time I go on one of my lengthy excursions I usually get stopped by some employee asking me to either go looking for or to watch out for Alicia in case she comes out to get me. Arghhh!"
Bobbie now laughed hard at Frankie's frustrations over the whole affair.
Levine mulled over that before looking out into the jungle just beyond the clearing and wondering what else might be hiding out there. He shuddered briefly but then remembered that if trouble was lurking out there, the protoceratops probably would've bolted long ago.
"Can we check their sexes?" was the next thing Levine said as Thorne looked at him speechless.
"Don't let me stop you but they wouldn't like that very much," Frankie cautioned him. "Because don't let their size and gentle demeanor fool you because their beaks are strong enough to slice right through your leg if you make them mad."
Levine turned white upon hearing that as he looked down at the creatures he'd originally thought as dinosaur equivalents to cows.
"Maybe we should move on," he suggested as he slowly backed away from the herd. Bobbie nodded her head, also eager to get going.
"Bye girls!" shouted Frankie as she raised up her hand. Levine tensed briefly wondering if the loud noise might agitate the creatures but instead they merely honked and resumed their business tending their nests.
Levine could've sworn he saw the trees shift after they honked from some large unseen creature hiding amongst them.
Location Unknown, Isla Sorna: A giant warehouse the length of a football field was hidden off the beaten path amongst heavy groves of jungle forest that was not on any official Site B map. There were even no markings from the main road to show where to turn off onto the dirt side-road.
Nevertheless, a single vehicle approached it and stopped in front of the large double doors. From the vehicle emerged Sam Stone and Daniela St. Ives.
"So how many of those warehouses exist?" Daniela asked still forlorn about having to come into the interior of the island to see this.
"There are four main warehouses at key locations around the island. But inside each emergency bunker are other party favors locked in secure cabinets and lockers in case someone inside needs to fight their way out to safety. Of those who know about these places, now that Muldoon, Arnold, and Nedry are gone, it's now You, Jake, Henry, myself, Dr. Graves wherever he currently is, and me," Sam stated casually as he walked up to the smaller person-sized door inside of the larger hanger door. He produced his keycard and swiped it in the reader before pulling out a key and also inserting it into the door lock and twisting it.
He then swung the door open and stepped in with Daniela and then shut it behind them. After a few moments, he flipped the lights and what Daniela saw caused her to pale visibly. As Sam and her walked down a row of 'party favors' for 'Elle' she read some of the names on the canisters.
"MORO-12, MORO-709…," she began rattling out loud. Sam nodded his head.
"You set one of those Moro-12s off without a gas mask and you'd be dead before you even realized you'd pulled the pin," he remarked. As they passed the canisters she saw racks upon racks of Randler Shoulder Launchers with accompanying shells. And those were just the devices she did recognize.
And then she looked up past the racks and saw several larger objects that caused her to pause in her tracks before she stumbled a bit and have to steady herself on a nearby rack of assault rifles.
"Where did you acquire all of this stuff?!" she had to ask. Sam shrugged.
"Jake, Henry, Graves, and Muldoon acquired it but they didn't say from where and I didn't ask. Arnold inspected all the electronic components and Nedry set-up the warehouses security systems," Sam filled in as he looked at the vehicles are the far end of the hanger.
"And there are people on this island who know how to use all this stuff?" Daniela asked next, still in disbelief about this whole situation.
"Yes," said Sam bluntly. "There are workers all over the island who know how this stuff operates and those that don't can be trained. More specifically, Lori can operate most of this stuff, although she doesn't know about this place. Jennifer doesn't either but for her part she can fly anything with wings or blades. But more importantly the DRT Team led by Tactical Sergeant Michael Wolfskin…"
Outer rim of Isla Sorna: Gerry Harding was driving the Humvee through rougher territory as he headed for the outer perimeter fences. In the back, the DRT team, led by Tac. Srgnt. Michael Wolfskin, was un-phased as they were reviewing their briefing materials about the whole operation. In the front passenger's seat, Martin Gutierrez was unsuccessfully trying to interview them despite the vehicle rocking back and forth. It wasn't that they couldn't hear him, the entire team had introduced themselves at the onset of the assignment, but then they'd largely ignored him.
"Give it a rest, Marty," suggested Gerry as he drove the vehicle down a small ravine. "They're busy with more important things right now."
Marty briefly bristled at that comment. "They are under orders to answer my questions so I can make a comprehensive report on the stability on this island."
"And they will as they see fit," Gerry responded as he swerved around a fallen tree. "But their answers probably won't be as helpful as you might think. The DRT team is usually not around when any incidents occur, they're primarily there…to clean up the mess afterwards."
Marty slightly blanched at that before quickly gathering his composure and looking again at his foldout topographic map to see where they were and where they were going. As he did so, his hands briefly brushed across the location for Mt. Watson.
Lower levels of "The Fortress": David Banks was elsewhere as was Nicolette Stefrassa while Lori Ruso led Sheila Matula on a tour of the building. Since the structure was circular it made for curving hallways and sometimes oddly shaped rooms. But at the moment the duo was down in the small gym coated with dust and spider webs looking at an empty pool that surprisingly wasn't dirty at all.
"I may not miss much about this place but I sure regret leaving this behind," said Lori wistfully with a mild sigh.
"What is it?" asked Sheila confused.
"The hot springs Jacuzzi," Lori answered as she remembered fonder times. "Hammond said we couldn't have this here because 'sparing no expense' was for Nublar only but we got this installed right under his nose."
Lori snickered at that as she looked around the room once more before heading for a nearby locker and popping it open to rummage through it.
"Where do the hot springs come from?" asked Sheila clueless. "We're a little high up for that aren't we?"
Lori briefly stopped looking through the locker to look at the programmer.
"Kid, don't you know anything about this island's makeup?" the Head of Production asked with a slight shake of her head. Sheila shrugged.
"Not really," she had to admit truthfully as she shoved her hands into her pockets sheepishly. Lori snorted at that-programmers always had their heads in cyberspace-before going back to looking through the locker.
"The island is chiefly run by geothermal power caused by this central geographical location," began LuRo with information Sheila already knew. "Because Mt. Watson is actually a dormant volcano."
It took a moment for what Lori said to register with the programmer.
"W-what?" asked Sheila dumbfounded before looking around the place nervously. She'd never really bothered to find out more about the island beside the technological aspects covering it.
"I don't think she's going to go anytime soon but you can sometimes feel the floor wave under your feet slightly every so often," Lori said as she reached into the back of the cabinet. Sheila looked down at her feet and found her feet now frozen to the ground.
"Oh, just relax," said Lori chiding her. "It'd take something big to set off ol' Watson here. Ha, ha, I got it!"
She pulled out a cardboard container and ripped it open producing a white object.
"Hello new pool filter, welcome back hot springs!" said LoRu ecstatic. She hopped down into the empty Jacuzzi and put in the new filter and then got back out and twisted the crank to get the water going. Initially some grubby water flowed out but then cleaner boiling water emerged.
"We'll just let this run for a little while and then enjoy the benefits later," said Lori still pleased as she wrote in "working Jacuzzi" on her clipboard of equipment still located at the Fortress. That and everything else she'd observed so far in the gym…observation was one of her keenest skills.
The two emerged from the gym and headed down the curving hallway before Lori stopped and made for the stairs.
"We're not going the entire loop?" asked Sheila curious. Lori shook her head.
"The bottommost hallways doesn't complete an entire loop. Down that way is a special room that only Wu, Whitacre, and Graves can access along with another entrance to the room on the other side," she explained.
"What's in it?" asked the programmer interested in the hidden room.
"Probably just frozen embryos or classified data concerning the Dinosaur Revivification Process," LoRu figured dismissively. "Whatever it is can't be that important since Jake and Henry rarely come up to this place anymore. Now let's go so I can show you the computer lab."
"I'll be up shortly," said Sheila distractedly. "I want to at least go look at the door."
Lori wasn't entirely sure what use looking at a door could be but waved it off. "Fine. I'll be upstairs at room 31A. Don't take too long I've got a lot of work to do."
"Right," Sheila acknowledged with a curt nod of her head as she headed down the hallway alone. Reaching the doors at the far end, she was surprised to find a pair of heavy metal doors without any distinguishing features on them. Knocking on them slightly and listening to the reverberation she was surprised to discover they were in fact blast doors. She wasn't entirely sure if the heavy metal shielding extended for the whole room but if it did, that meant the entire room could likely survive even the volcano erupting. And looking at the room's location, it occurred to her that the room was even one of the few of the Fortress embedded into the mountain itself, which was even more curious.
Turning her head to the side of the entrance, she was surprised to find two powered down computer screens on either side of the entrance rather than a single entry point for the security door system. Even more perplexing was that there was no keyboard to input data. Her curiosity getting the better of her, Sheila ran her hand across the screen and was again startled by a new revelation-the terminals were touchscreens. Touchscreens were still a relatively new development in the terms of commercialization. And most needed an extra peripheral like a touch-pen to work effectively. But there was no sign of that here and in fact from the looks of some smudges on the screen, fingers had been used as the point of contact.
This point of entry system was radically advanced compared to anything on the rest of Sorna and even Nublar. Whatever it was protecting was more than run of the mill embryos. And so Sheila contemplated the situation while remembering in the back of her mind about meeting up again with Lori.
"Oh, what the hell," she said to herself and reached out and pressed the power button on the terminal. At worst she could feign innocence over the whole affair if alarms started going off. But to her disappointment, pressing the power button failed to get the screen to display anything. Perplexed since the system was definitely getting power because the power button was lit up in standby mode. She pressed the button a couple more times and still got nothing before a change in light to her left caught her attention.
Looking over, she noticed that whenever she pressed the power button on this terminal, the power button on the opposite terminal briefly lit up for the same duration she was pressing the power button on her end. After a couple more goes, realization dawned on her.
…Both terminals had to be powered up simultaneously in order for the system to load.
"Son of a bitch," said Sheila softly, both impressed by the system and dismayed by her inability to crack its secrets. Clearly she couldn't even get started without another person present.
Sighing whimsically to herself to avoid being further frustrated, she ran her hand across the surface of the blast doors as she skipped across the hall to the other terminal. But before she could get there, she felt a raised impression on the rough surface that was too specific to be a random occurrence in the metal. Feeling a burst of inspiration, Sheila pulled out her notepad and laid a sheet down over the raised surface and rubbed her pencil along it to make a rubbing of it. The act of rubbing the pencil furiously ended up stealing all of her focus on the world around her.
"What are you doing here?"
Sheila nearly jumped out of her skin upon hearing a new voice cut into her concentration. Turning around she began breathing heavily in shock as she focused on the person behind her…Nicolette Stefrassa.
"Man, Nicolette, you almost gave me a heart attack," said the programmer wheezing heavily. Nicolette raised an unsympathetic eyebrow before regarding the doors behind her.
"I'll ask again. What are you doing here? Why aren't you with Ruso?" she requested all- business.
"I-uh-she…," Sheila stumbled over her words before straightening up. "I went to the bathroom and then took a wrong turn. Where is the computer lab?"
Nicolette considered that response for a few moments as her expression revealed no secrets as to what she thought about what had just been said to her. Inside Sheila was another story as her heart was beating rapidly after telling that lie.
"Upstairs, Room 31A," the Head of Strategic Planning stated as she turned and pointed at the stairs.
"Thank you," said Sheila courteously as her insides metaphorically collapsed to the floor in relief. She was heading to the steps when a thought occurred to her.
"Wait, you've been here before…back when this place was still being staffed?" Sheila inquired. Nicolette regarded her with her usual cold demeanor.
"I've always been here on Site B," she stated succinctly with a look that the young programmer she not be asking her anymore questions. Sheila gulped, gave a mild wave goodbye, and rushed up the stairs. Once she was long gone, Nicolette turned to regard the doors in front of her. No one was around to see her normally steely expression soften as she tentatively reached out and placed her right hand directly on the indentation Sheila had done the rubbing.
After a few moments, her hand closed into a fist and she pressed hard against the door, her fist trembling from both the external pressure and the internal pressure from tightly clenching her hand. A few more seconds of that and she pulled back her hand and she pulled back her hand and regarded the new indentation on her knuckles before loosely dropping her hand to the side.
Nicolette Stefrassa spun on her heels and marched off forcefully in the opposite direction of the mysterious room.
Upstairs, Sheila was still relieved at both not being called out and apparently getting the wiser of Nicolette. Reaching into her inner pocket she retrieved the paper she had impulsively shoved in there to avoid being caught red-handed. Looking at the rubbing she regarded the writing on it with complete and utter confusion as it was only three letters long:
E.L.E.
Further upstairs: "You are going to have to pull out of this place, experiments or no experiments," Jake insisted. The three scientists had moved to Laura's office to avoid accidentally being overhead by anyone else.
"I don't mean that," Laura scoffed dismissively with a wave of her hand. "I've been expecting you up here ever since Nublar fell apart and the initiative to conserve energy. I'm just surprised it took you so long to finally shut me down. That heated argument out there was just for show for the others. If you two are here together on a personal visit all the way up here that means something more is going on."
Jake leaned back in his chair as Henry leaned forward. Laura was many things but she was definitely no fool to the bigger picture.
"We've encountered some discrepancies with the lysine contingency," the Asian scientist remarked not willing to waste time. Laura closed her hands together in front of her face while resting her elbows on her desk.
"Interesting," she admitted. "What kind of discrepancies?"
"Hyper-locomotion and complete lack of response to external stimuli upon lysine deprivation," Jake told her. That did surprise the scientist as the same thing had happened to her beloved Troodons.
"That isn't normal?" she had to ask. Both scientists shook their heads.
"As you know they're supposed to slip into a coma and die. But not all the subjects on Nublar did so we tested it here and got that result," Jake continued.
"Cause?" Laura asked, the scientist getting the better of her disdain for the lysine contingency.
"We don't know," Henry reluctantly revealed. "So far our investigations have not yielded any results yet. Nor has a small team we also have working on it."
Laura considered all of this new information before a suspicion crossed her mind.
"You don't think I'm responsible do you?"
"No, but it would be a lot simpler if you were," said Jake apathetic to reminding her of her previous crime. But Laura didn't take any offense to it, she still had no regrets over what she'd attempted to accomplish several months earlier.
"So then what do you want from me because I couldn't possibly-,"
"We want you to restart your experiment into counteracting the lysine contingency,"
"And then of course there's…wait…WHAT?!"
Plains of Sorna: The vehicle containing the investigation team continued along the dirt paths as Doc Thorne continued driving. The sun was beginning to set in front of them, the end of an eventful day.
"It's a very smooth ride," Frankie complimented, while also glad she no longer had to walk everywhere.
"Thank you," Thorne said with pride. Bobbie Carter was in the back reviewing notes from her medical support staff as Levine had taken to staring out the window with his binoculars hoping to spot some more dinosaurs before they had to call it a day.
"So tomorrow we'll see the Spinosaurus finally and then some oviraptors, stegosauruses, and…," Frankie said about the upcoming itinerary since as the animal behaviorist she knew the location of all the pens and dinosaur roaming habits on the island. Levine was only vaguely paying attention as some creatures darting about in far off long grass caught his attention. He continued observing them trying to get a better look at the mysterious creatures before one hopped up onto a rock in full view and honked briefly. Annoyed at what he saw, Levine put his binoculars away and sulked.
"I didn't know you also had wild turkeys on this island," he ruminated out loud. Bobbie and Frankie turned to look at him suspiciously.
"There aren't any wild turkeys on this island that I'm aware of," said Bobbie as he Frankie turned to look out her window at the creatures in the brush.
"You don't?" said Levine skeptically as he pointed out the window. "Then what's out there in the long grass?"
Frankie finally spotted what he was referring to and laughed briefly into her hand.
"Oh, those aren't wild turkeys," said corrected of the Becky Doll owner.
"So what are they then?"
"They're velociraptors,"