Chapter One
Day of the Incident
THUNDER BOOMED throughout the air like the roar of an enormous animal. Mia Martinez was getting nervous at the size of the incoming storm, but she was adamant about completing her work. She dutifully scribbled notes on her report, listening to the patter of raindrops on the roof of the Ranger's Office.
Dr. Harding stopped at the doorway, interrupting Mia's rhythm. "I wish you would reconsider," he said, "Mr. Arnold says it's going to get pretty bad."
She sighed. Mia appreciated the fatherly care that Harding showed her – his calm, soothing demeanor and thick mustache had earned him the nickname of the 'Dinosaur Dad' around the Ranger Station. In this moment though, she found it irritating. She was a professional and wanted to be treated as such.
"I appreciate the concern, but I'd rather look after her." She gestured to the clipboard on the desk. It was an incident report – paperwork that was filled out any time the Rangers medicated, tranquilized, or otherwise interfered with any of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. It was meticulous work, but it was necessary. Keeping a record of anything done to or with the animals was paramount to understanding them. Mia quite liked it. She found it rewarding to be as organized as possible, and Harding usually let her fill out all the paperwork.
He nodded and slipped his sunglasses into the chest pocket of his khaki shirt. "Don't work yourself too hard. And pay attention to Mr. Arnold's announcements."
She sighed again. "Yup."
Harding's demeanor suddenly switched gears. "Try to take another reading tonight and check her again in the morning. Make sure her heart rate doesn't drop below twenty-five or so. She probably won't give you any problems but if she does, call the mainland and notify me immediately. We've got diprenorphine doses on standby." He shifted his weight as he thought. "That woman, Dr. Sattler – she's a keen eye about that Indian Lilac."
Mia thought she heard more than just admiration in Harding's voice – but then again, he was always enamored with cleverness.
Dr. Sattler was part of John Hammond's strange endorsement team: the park staff hadn't been filled in on many details, but Harding had let the Rangers know that because of some investor politics, Hammond had needed to bring in a group of professionals to endorse the park. Those professionals had included a paleontologist named Dr. Grant, a mathematician named Dr. Malcom, a lawyer named Gennaro, and a paleobotanist – Dr. Sattler.
When the endorsement team crossed the Triceratops enclosure, they saw Dr. Harding attending to one of the animals. Sattler had optioned to stay with Harding and rode back with him to the Visitor Center. She had caught that the sick Triceratops was ingesting West Indian Lilac berries, mistaking them for gizzard stones – rocks that animals such as birds swallow to help digest their food. Once the rocks have eroded and smoothed, the animal regurgitates them up and finds new ones.
The sick Triceratops had been given a tranquilizer dose – or as Harding called it, 'chemical immobilization' – to sedate it enough to inspect it. He wasn't particularly fond of injecting the dinosaurs but realized the necessity of it. Harding favored etorphine, a type of rapid-acting opioid – but he used a less potent dosage. Slightly under-dosing meant the animal would not fall into sleep, but rather what he called 'the lazy state.' Mia wondered if he preferred this method after accidentally euthanizing too many dinosaurs previously. Instead of using a reversal agent to bring the animal back to physiological normalcy, Harding let the dinosaurs metabolize the drugs naturally. This meant keeping a closer eye on them for a longer period time after sedation, to ensure a safe recovery – and Mia would have to travel out to the enclosure several times to take the dinosaur's vitals.
"Yeah, she seemed nice," Mia said, "Do you think we'll have to supplement gizzard stones to keep them from eating the berries?"
"Yes, probably. Unless we can remove all instances of lilac from the enclosures." He thought for a moment more. "I'll see you in a few days."
Harding shuffled out the door and sprinted in the rain. Mia continued to work on the report, pausing a few moments to listen in awe at the sheets of rain coming from the sky. The tropical storm was nearly at full force now – the sky was pitch black. The thunder rolled in huge waves, and Mia thought that it felt like the floor and the concrete walls vibrated more intensely with each one.
She hurriedly finished the incident report, tucked it away with her other paperwork, threw on her park-supplied yellow raincoat, and ventured into the warm, storming night.
The Worker's Village was only a short walk from the Ranger's Station – which itself was tucked behind the Visitor Center. She kept her hood up – Wow, it's really coming down now – and followed the dirt path.
She wasn't surprised to see that the Worker's Village was empty – most people would probably elect to go to the mainland, Costa Rica, and wait for the storm to pass. They would probably return in a few days and resume work.
Mia thought her coworkers, or Jurassic Park staff in general, seemed indifferent. Even Dr. Harding, the lead veterinarian, had left because of the storm – despite that there was an extremely sick Triceratops to take care of. True, it was a cyclical illness: this wasn't the first time one of the Triceratops had gotten sick, and they had likely found the root cause of the problem, but her point remained.
She walked up to the door to the Lodge, a tall concrete building with tribal flair – windows flanked with bamboo frames and a staccato roof – and typed her employee number into the keypad. With a green light, the door unlocked, and she swung it open.
Even Dr. Wu, the genetic mastermind behind the process of creating dinosaurs, seemed to be less interested in the animals once they were alive. He would jump at the chance to modify the genes of the dinosaurs. Instead of supplementing gizzard stones, or removing the lilac berries, Mia thought he would probably be more akin to modify the genetic code so that the animals didn't need to use gizzard stones. She thought this felt wrong; she didn't like the fact that the genetics lab employees saw the dinosaurs as pieces of programming that could be changed to better fit the park's purposes. They were animals and deserve ethical consideration – whether they were created in a lab or not.
The inside was laid out like a hotel without a lobby, with eight rooms on either side of the main hallway. Each room had its own keypad, and at the end of the hallways were stairwells that led up or down. She reached the second floor, found her room, and entered.
John Hammond himself may not be safe from irresponsibility. He was often very protective of the dinosaurs, even questioning Muldoon or Dr. Harding about tranquilizer and medication doses. Mia had a sneaking suspicion that this was rooted more in monetary reasons than ethical ones. Each dinosaur cost millions of dollars to incubate – and once they hatched that cost would only increase.
If they hatched, she thought. The success rate for incubation was extremely low – as one could imagine, the patchwork of genetic code greatly reduced the lifespan and hardiness of the animals. None of them were 100% genomes. Each animal had a myriad of DNA mixed with it to fill gaps – Dr. Wu preferred to use amphibian and reptile DNA to complete the code. Sometimes an animal would simply die in the egg, others would hatch but fall fatally ill or mysteriously die before reaching maturity. This made the average cost of each animal even greater – to make up for all the failed attempts. No wonder Hammond was so protective of them.
She quickly took off her coat, hung it near the door, and took off her khaki work shirt – tossing it into a pile of dirty clothes in the corner of the room. She threw her raincoat back on over her green tank top and rummaged in her backpack, pausing to watch the occasional lightning cast shadows of tropical leaves across the room.
She took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, shoved them in one of the cargo pockets on her pants, and walked back out the door.
She stepped outside the front door of the Lodge, turned toward the door to light her cigarette, then pushed herself into the corner – underneath the small overhang to avoid getting wet.
She took a drag as she watched the gigantic drops of rain pound on the leaves and jungle around the building.
I should quit soon, she thought as she took another drag. Smoking was a bad habit she had picked up while in college, and being such a naturalist, she found it a bit hypocritical. At the time, she told herself that she would quit when she graduated with a Master's in zoology – but Dr. Harding has recruited her before she could finish school. He promised that she would never need to go back and finish if she took his job offer, and he was right. The minute she learned about what was happening here on Isla Nublar, she threw all her academic goals out the window. Learning about animals was no longer interesting – not even remotely interesting – compared to learning about the behaviors of actual dinosaurs.
She was saddened by the non-disclosure agreement she had to sign, however. In order to work here – before she knew about anything – she had to sign contracts that kept her from telling anyone about it. Her family had encouraged her love of animals, and when she was a teenager, they had moved from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego. She enrolled in California State University after graduating high school, and even participated in research studies for San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species. Her parents always figured she would end up working at the San Diego Zoo – and joked that one day, she would own it.
They would be speechless if they knew she was tending to and researching dinosaurs. She desperately wanted to tell them. Instead, she conveyed that she couldn't tell them anything – but that she was very happy and working on exciting animal research. As long as she was happy, they were happy.
Mia heard something in the distance – it sounded like the Tyrannosaurus.
She finished her cigarette, snuffed it out and pocketed the butt. She reached to enter her number into the keypad – but noticed that the usual red light was off. She typed her number – once, twice, three times – nothing happened. She looked up, struggling to keep her eyes open against the falling rain.
Are the lights out? She hadn't noticed amidst the lightning – but yes, the entire Lodge was in darkness. She began to feel the urgency of panic – reached for the phone on the wall near the door – and pulled it to her ear.
Nothing. There wasn't even a dial tone. She looked at her surroundings frantically – not even the lights to the Visitor Center were on – at least not the outdoor lights. Then she heard it again.
It was the Tyrannosaurus, and it sounded closer. That's impossible, she thought, unless something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
