Chapter Nine
MIA STOOD ATTENTIVELY as Kelly gave his explanation. He told her the truth – but he left out all the names. Keeping too many secrets from her could end badly, and he knew that. He wanted her to trust him and his men so that she could lead the way to an escape – and Kelly knew the easiest way to gain trust was with a little bit of truth.
She let him finish before she spoke a word, and she began to let her guard down. She looked around the floor with her eyes, finally pointing to the crumpled pack of cigarettes in the corner. "Give me those."
Kelly slung his rifle to his side and picked the pack up, tossing them to Mia. "Now it's your turn."
She took a moment to light a cigarette, exhaling the first drag before she spoke. "How do I know you're not lying?"
He shook his head in disbelief. "Because my friend was just fucking killed by those things. I don't know about Mathews or Davies –" he glanced over at them, "huh guys? But I don't care about the money anymore. I just want to get off this damn island."
Mia nodded. "Good." She crouched, leaning against the far wall. She explained what InGen had created. "Jurassic Park. A zoological amusement park featuring real, living dinosaurs." She quickly and simply told them of the power outage the previous night.
As she explained, she felt the dawn of realization. Now that she knew their side of the story, she put it together. Someone must have killed the power last night to steal the frozen embryos. They never made it to the Anne B., however. They must be on the island still or must have gotten attacked. Had they really been so stupid as to turn off the fences? Why would they have stolen the embryos on Isla Nublar? The cloning done here – birthing and rearing animals that were already on the island – was done as an attraction to investors and eventually visitors. Dr. Wu spent some time here, but most of his time was spent on Isla Sorna. That was where Mia really had wanted to work.
Isla Sorna was a bigger island, nearby, that was also owned by InGen. It was the behind-the-scenes workhorse of Jurassic Park. The real cloning – the real science – happened there. They had several dozens of species on Sorna, or as InGen called it – Site B. The staff cloned, incubated, hatched, and raised the animals there until they had survived to a certain age. Once it was clear the animal was viable and was not going to mysteriously fall ill or die unexpectedly, they would be shipped to Isla Nublar via a cargo ship. This process made it slow to approve new dinosaurs – so several of the species on Sorna were not present yet on Nublar. Mia had wanted to transfer to Sorna soon – she couldn't stand the idea that there were different, new dinosaurs living so close by. She wanted to see them all. Now, she wasn't so sure. They were only animals, but they were unpredictable animals. There was so much about them that was unknown.
Her mind now racked with possibilities. Why had the raptors been contained last night? Why had they been loose this morning? Maybe the endorsement team – or however many of them were left – accidentally turned the Raptor Pen off. The only way that could've happened would've been if they cycled the power to the whole park.
That's it. They must have shut off the whole system and restarted it. That would explain why the power was on now, and if the power was off for a period – the raptors would have broken out then. Those idiots!
True to her word, she began to help dress Davies' wound. She could tell that Kelly was getting impatient. If these men really were mercenaries, or guns-for-hire, would they kill her to tie up loose ends? She turned to him. "Can we trust each other?"
Kelly shifted his weight and patted his pockets. He pulled out a stick of gum and shoved it into his mouth, chewing vigorously. It was a habit he had developed while in the Service – it was a quick way to burn nervous energy. More often than not, it would've been a bad idea to bounce his foot up and down or twiddle his thumbs. Chewing gum was usually a less noisy, less noticeable alternative. "The way I see it – you probably had to sign a non-disclosure agreement when you started working here, right?" Mia didn't say anything. "Right. And to turn us in, you sorta have to spill the beans on InGen." He looked around the bunker. "So however, you've planned to get off the island – now you just have a few passengers."
"Unless I took you straight to InGen."
Kelly patted his rifle. "I think that'd be foolish."
"Or I could tranq you," she patted her own gun, "and hand you over."
Kelly smiled, then chuckled. Their entire plan had hinged on InGen having a functioning facility. They had no extraction plan. InGen was the extraction plan. What a stupid mistake. He sighed. "Yep, or that." He leaned back against the wall. "Well shit, I guess we'll go wherever you want and figure it out from there. Let's just get away from these monsters."
Mathews looked up from Davies, whose wound was finally cleaned and bandaged. "Earlier, you said 'more predators that just that one.'"
Mia looked up, not understanding. "Yeah."
"Singular. But there were two."
Mia's face looked confused. "No, there's just one raptor."
This caught Kelly's attention. "He's right. There were two of 'em."
Mia shook her head. "You're confused. They're very fast. There's only one left-"
Kelly interrupted, "There were two. The brown one, and an orange one."
"Orange?"
"Ish. Lighter colored. Black stripes."
Mia did not understand. "No there were three, and two are dead…"
Mathews was getting upset. "Look lady, you're the expert and all that shit but there were two. The orange one killed our friend."
Mia racked her brain trying to think. How could there be another one? Orange? She tried to remember each time the Ranger team was called out to the raptor enclosure before Muldoon moved them. Each time, they found remains. Sometimes more remains than others. It was all accounted for. There couldn't be another one. It was impossible. She sensed the agitation in the room and was wary to rile up men with guns. "I just want to clarify," she talked slowly, "there was the brown one that came from this direction – the Visitor Center."
"Yes." Kelly nodded.
"And there was a second one – orange in color – where was it?"
Mathews started to say something, furious – but Kelly interrupted him. "It was to the side, in the jungle. It must have leapt out to ambush us."
Mia's eyes widened. The detail was too accurate. The raptors mostly hunted that way – one exposed itself to get the prey's attention, then the others would move in from the sides for an ambush. There must be two. But that's impossible. "You're sure it was the same species?"
Kelly shrugged. "Only saw it for a second and I was a little preoccupied if you hadn't noticed."
"I understand, and I'm sorry about your friend. I am." Mia felt bad that it took her this long to apologize. "But this is extremely important. Aside from the colors, did it look the same as the brown one?"
Mathews nodded. "We didn't see much of it. It was about the same size, maybe a little smaller. Same face and everything."
Mia slumped back. "I need to think." There were a lot of examples of variation in patterns and markings in species, but mostly it related to genders. Sure, each of the raptors had slightly different markings – but each one was a brown color, with dark mottled markings on the back and a lighter underbelly. If this other one was orange with dark stripes – that's quite the departure from the previous patterns. They hadn't noticed any distinct difference like this when the animals were shipped over from Isla Sorna, so it must have happened gradually as the animals lived on Isla Nublar. How had nobody caught on? Why did the animal change markings? Usually such a distinct, vivid difference was only present in males of a species. They used brightly colored markings as a way of courting females to breed. All the dinosaurs were females, though. They were engineered that way as a precaution against breeding.
There weren't a lot of cases of animals that were able to change gender – mostly fish, and it was noted to happen in chickens. DNA of those animals weren't spliced into the dinosaur DNA though, only reptiles and amphibians. She grabbed her head as she tried to think of her biology classes in college.
Kelly eyed Mia, then turned to Davies. He helped wipe some of the blood off Davies' arm. The man was breathing heavy, probably from shock. He was testing his finger function – the bite hadn't taken anything vital away. He could still open and close his fist, it just hurt like hell.
He had, however, dropped and left his firearm in the clearing. That was stupid, and quite unfortunate.
Mia shook her head in frustration. "They must be changing sex."
"Uh… that can happen?" Kelly asked.
"Very few cases… but we know nothing about these animals. And their DNA is patched with other species. Maybe it's because they're clones. Maybe they could do it in life. I don't know."
"You're saying there's a breeding pair of those… whatcha-call-its."
"Velociraptors. It would explain the coloration differences. Sexual dimorphism." She remembered Harding's report from the last time the pack leader killed a raptor. He had noted all that was left was a finger, some tail flesh, and other miscellaneous pieces. He had also noted that the skin was a pale orange. Mia felt like she might vomit.
"So, what does that mean for us? Does it change anything?"
"It means they're probably breeding on the island. It means there's still a pack of raptors. And it means we're in more trouble than I thought."
