Whoops - I forgot on the prologue, but I want to extend thanks to Camazotz who I've had a few really in-depth discussions about JP and JW and definitely made me think deeper about how some of this will play out.

Chapter 1

As the elevator doors closed, giving her a few moments of privacy, Claire allowed her shoulders to droop, head hanging down. Recently, every day felt like a struggle. The third year anniversary of the Jurassic World incident was quickly approaching, which meant the topic was starting to spike in the news again. She had hoped that the DPG would be able to benefit from the increased coverage, but so far they weren't pulling in as many donations as they had planned and hoped for.

And if that wasn't enough, who knew what the hell was going on with her and Owen, as things between them had been off kilter for months now, and she still wasn't sure if their last fight had actually ended with them breaking up (and she was too afraid to ask). On top of that, Karen had been on her case about traveling East for a visit. And, of course, also about Owen.

Work had always been her refuge. A place where Claire felt self-confident and competent. She had worked her way up the ladder at Jurassic World, from intern to Operations Manager. She had commanded respect from not only the thousands of employees, but also politicians, celebrities, and highly successful CEOs. She wasn't used to feeling at a loss; at not knowing what the right next move was or how to turn the tide in her favour.

But lately, work was just another stressor. And she was realizing, that even though she lived in a vibrant city and was no longer limited in her main everyday interactions to only those who worked with her, she didn't have friends outside of work. And at work… Well, she considered Zia and Lowerly her friends. But, besides them, most of their staff were interns, and she often felt like the only grown up in the room. This was not a feeling she cherished.

She used the brief moments in the elevator to just be. To take a few deep breaths and to not have to put on a false smile or pretend act. For those few moments, she let the world press down on her, and her body responded accordingly.

The second the elevator dinged and the doors started to open, however, she was standing tall, confident smile across her face, ready to face the world. Her smile slipped, briefly, as the elevator doors, again, barely opened wide enough for her to squeeze through. She really needed to make it a priority to talk to the building's landlord and see about getting that fixed. She'd ripped a shirt on it last week trying to get out.

She slipped into the organized chaos of the office. The main area consisted of a giant room with scattered desks, all cluttered with computers and craft supplies (they spent a surprising amount of time creating posters and leading rallies). A short hallway at the back led to the single bathroom, a tiny cramped kitchen (term used loosely, as all it held was a fridge, sink, coffeemaker and some snacks), and a single office space with a door. Hers. If she was going to be the only adult in the room, then she needed that escape. Not that she actually used it all that often.

Her schedule was pretty chaotic. She spent a lot of time on the phone trying to reach anyone with any influence. And then followed up most of those phone calls with in-person meetings. Recently, many of those meetings had required her to be in DC and there was a part of her wondering, not for the first time, why she didn't just place the DPG headquarters there. It would've been a lot more convenient. Except for Owen. And the dinosaurs.

Not that being closer to Isla Nublar had helped in anyway. No one had been allowed on the island for years now. That was, of course, another thorn in the side of the DPG. It was hard to continue to convince people they should donate to their cause and that their cause was worthwhile, when they couldn't provide any real updates as to how the dinosaurs were faring. Or even how the island itself was faring. It had been hit by a few hurricanes (thankfully only category 1 or 2) since the travel ban had been put in place. The lack of access had also meant they really weren't able to do much but lobby on the dinosaurs' behalf.

The island was located on the Ring of Fire, which is badly named since it was a horseshoe shape and not a ring. The Ring of Fire generally traces the outlines of the Pacific Ocean on both the east and west sides, crossing over at the north end and is known for the number of earthquakes and volcanoes located within the region. Nublar wasn't immune from that, boasting its own Volcano — Mount Sibo. Claire wasn't expecting any problems from the volcano, as it had been dormant for thousands of years, and in the entire time she'd been on Nublar, there had never been even an inkling of that status changing.

At least Silicon Valley was still teeming with people with money to burn. She may not be tech-focused, but she was starting to learn the lingo, and was getting good at pulling money from their hands.

Dodging her employees, she made her way first to Lowery, dropping off his Coke Zero, before moving on to Zia who was busy talking on the phone.

"As a matter-of-fact, I do have the dinosaurs' best interest in mind. I'm a paleo-veterinarian," she heard Zia say, watching her friend roll her eyes. "That's a real thing," Zia paused, giving another eye roll. "No, I haven't seen one with my own eyes. You know, not everyone can afford to spend their life savings…"

Zia started waving frantically at her, and Claire willingly traded Zia her double espresso for the phone.

"Oh, um… Hello. Hello, um…" Claire looked questioningly at Zia.

Zia whispered back: "Congresswoman Delgado."

"Congresswoman Delgado. I'm Claire. I'm the lead organizer here." She paused, listening, before adding, "Of course, but if I could just get a moment of your time?" Claire nodded again, as she turned away from Zia and Lowery, wandering to the other side of the room. Vaguely, she heard Lowery teasing Zia about her phone handling skills and Zia bantering back. The friendships she had with Lowery and Zia were part of what made working at the DPG worthwhile. Some days, it was the only part. At Jurassic World, her job had isolated her from so many of the other employees, as she was almost everyone's boss. It had actually been what had drawn her towards Owen when she first met him because she wasn't his boss, and they had been able to develop a friendship. Her enduring friendship with Lowery was one of the few silver linings from the fallout of Jurassic World.

"Great. Thank you. Um.. So, our mission here at the Dinosaur Protection Group is to secure federal funding for a safe, natural…" Claire continued to give her normal DPG spiel. She's said it so many times now, she swore she could give it in her sleep. As she finished, the congresswoman still sounded noncommittal. "Can I ask you a question?

"Go on." The congresswoman encouraged.

"Do you have kids?"

"Two girls."

"Okay. So, your kids, an entire generation, has grown up in a world where dinosaurs are living and breathing. But soon, they're gonna have to watch them go extinct. Or not. If people like you make a difference." Claire crossed her fingers tightly, tense as she waited for a response.

A moment passed, and then, "Set up a meeting with my office and we can talk." As the call was transferred over to the congresswoman's assistant, she turned back towards Zia and gave her a thumbs up. Zia responded with two fists raised in victory.

After hanging up with the assistant, appointment made, Claire headed back over to Zia, carrying her own coffee cup.

"Cheers!" Zia toasted, holding up her cup, as she approached. Gently tapping cups, Claire grinned back, and settled onto a chair beside Zia's desk.

"How are things going today?" Claire looked around the room. Zia's background was as a paleo-veterinarian, but at the DPG her role was much more second-in-command. There were not a lot of daily paleo-vet activities to be done with the dinosaurs still on Isla Nublar and the island still under quarantine, barring outside access. The DPG had been trying to get an exception to that rule for over a year now, but had had no luck.

"Normal," Zia shrugged. "There's another rally being planned in a couple of weeks, so some are getting a jump on the posters. We really need some new information. It's getting tough to continue to try and raise money, hell, to even get people to care at this point. There hasn't been any video footage from that island in over a year. People are starting to think that the dinosaurs are all probably dead already."

"I know," Claire sighed. "I'm working on it, I really am."

"I know you are."

"Hey, I've got an in-person meeting scheduled with Delgado. Maybe this will be the in we need," Claire gave a hopeful smile. "You never know."

"Let's hope," Zia agreed.

"You will see a dinosaur with your own eyes," Claire promised, getting up from her seat. "I'm going to make sure of that."

"Even if it's illegal?" Zia raised an eyebrow in question. She'd been pushing Claire on this for a few weeks now. That if the government wasn't going to cave, that they may have to take matters into their own hands.

"We're not there yet," Claire shook her head. "But… let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

Heading back across the room, she heard her phone ringing. Picking it up, the screen said "No Caller ID." While not common, it also wasn't rare that she got calls from people she didn't know. She was always handing out her phone number, wanting potential donors to be able to reach her. Answering the phone she said, "Hello?"

"May I speak with Ms. Dearing?"

"Yes, this is Claire Dearing."

"Good morning, I'm calling from Mr. Benjamin Lockwood's estate. Would you mind holding for a second?"

"Yes, of course I'll hold," Claire nodded, even though the caller couldn't see her do so. As she waited, she thought back over what she knew about Mr. Lockwood. She had met him a few times over the years and knew he had been an associate of John Hammond's. She wondered why he was reaching out to her now.

x x x

The next day, Claire took a short flight up the coast to a small regional airport. A chauffeur was waiting for her, and drove her the rest of the way to the Lockwood Estate.

Pulling through the gates, she looked around in awe. Knowing it was an estate, she had expected it to be large, but this was even bigger than she had imagined. The house, if you could call it that, looked more like a castle. Stone walls that reached up high into the sky. The lot itself was flawlessly landscaped, each bush perfectly trimmed, the grass mowed, and the driveway edged. Obviously a lot of time, money, and care was spent on the property.

Climbing the steep steps to the front door, she rang the bell, shifting nervously. The door opened rather quickly, an older woman standing there with perfect posture. "Ms. Dearing. You're early. Would you like to step in."

"Thank you," Claire smiled at her, stepping over the threshold. Entering the grand lobby, she could see a wide staircase stretching up to the next floor. The walls were adorned with big, heavy oil paintings, the type and style you often saw in museums. Well, museums and homes of those with old money.

"I will inform Mr. Mills that you've arrived," the woman told her, before leaving her alone in the lobby.

After examining one painting, she spun slowly in a circle, her eyes catching on a portrait of John Hammond.

"John Alfred Hammond, the father of Jurassic Park." At the sound of the voice, Claire spun around again, this time to see a man descending the staircase. He continued, "But of course you knew that. Hello, Claire. I'm Eli Mills." He held out his hand as he approached and she shook it. "I work for Ben Lockwood. We actually met once, seven, eight years ago, and you don't remember.

"Of course I remember," Claire smiled at him. In her line of work she had developed a strong ability to never forget a face. Or any important details about them. "Haven't you run his foundation since…"

"Since college, yeah. You remember?" Eli looked ecstatic that she did. His mannerisms reminded her of some of the DPG interns, who would look up at her in awe on their first meeting. She knew they were remembering the reports, video and pictures after the fallout of Jurassic World. The security camera shot of her standing in front of Paddock 9 as it opened, followed by her leading the T-Rex away with the flare held high, had been shown ad nauseam. But Eli wasn't in his early twenties. If her memory served her correctly, he was only a few years younger than herself, placing him in his early thirties.

"Yes," Claire nodded.

"Wow. Cool." Claire barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Eli continued, "He wanted someone young and idealistic to spend his fortune and … I use to be both."

Eli laughed, and Claire laughed politely with him.

"Follow me," Eli gestured towards her, as he headed out of the lobby, entering a room that would look more normal in a museum than in a house. In the center of the room was a large triceratops fossilized skull. The room also consisted of a few more dinosaur skeletons (some complete), while the two sides of the room boasted dioramas, depicting scenes from the age of the dinosaurs. In one, she could see a brightly coloured Dilophosaurus.

"Let me give you a bit of history," Eli started, as he led her into the rom. "This is where it all began. Before the island, Sorna, Jurassic Park, all of it. Hammond and Lockwood built a custom lab in the sub-basement, extracted the first DNA from amber right beneath our feet."

"That's incredible. What they did here was a miracle. I still believe that," Claire remarked, her gaze still travelling the room. The ceiling was made of glass, filling the room with natural light. Above the dioramas, running around the circumference of the room on the second floor was an almost library, walls covered in books, with a small hallway or catwalk in front that looked down over the dinosaurs below.

"So do I, Claire. So do I," Eli was nodding at her, large grin still on his face. "And I still believe it matters what happens to those animals. There is something Mr. Lockwood would very much like to talk to you about, Claire. You can call it a favour for an old friend."

"You're gonna to help them? You're gonna save them?" Claire questioned, hope rising in her voice.

"No, Ms. Dearing. I'm going to save us. We could both use a touch of redemption, couldn't we?" Claire turned to see Mr. Lockwood approaching them. He was sitting in a wheelchair, but seemed strong enough to manage maneuvering it on his own. As he got close, he added, "Lovely to see you again."

"And you, Mr. Lockwood," Claire reached out and grasped his hand with hers.

"This was John Hammond's dream. To let these creatures live in peace," Lockwood said, looking around the room. "For the dinosaurs to be free. No fences. No cages. No tourists. Just as Mother Nature intended. John said it best. 'These creatures don't need our protection. They need our absence.' When we were young, we both shared this passion, John and I. What fools we were, trying to run before we'd learned to walk. As all young men do, I suppose. But we learned. Unfortunately, in the end, it drove us apart." Lockwood looked down and off to the side for a moment, before his gaze met hers again. "Life teaches us some very hard lessons, doesn't it, Claire?"

"Yes," Claire whispered her agreement. The past three years could be summed up as a series of very hard lessons. And it didn't feel like the universe was done with her yet.

"Sir Benjamin," the woman who had let Claire into the house had approached the group silently from the side.

"My bloody medicines," Lockwood cursed with annoyance. "Will you excuse me, Claire?"

"Of course," Claire nodded.

The older woman took control of the back of Lockwood's wheelchair, turning him to leave the room. Lockwood motioned for his caretaker to halt and looked toward Claire, "Eli here, will help you with the details. We will save them. What a gift for our children."

"Thank you," Claire gave him a large smile, watching until he turned away, before directing her attention back towards Eli. "So, what do you need from me?"

Eli led her out of the room as they were talking, taking her upstairs into his office. "As Ben said, we're really interested in doing what we can do to help save the dinosaurs. I know you've been working on this with your group, the D.P…?"

"The DPG – Dinosaur Protection Group," Claire reminded him.

"Right," Eli gestured her to one side of a large table, as he moved around to the other. The shiny black surface lit up as he touched it, and Claire realized it was actually a large touchscreen display. "We've been doing some of our own independent research into what's been going on on the island since the unfortunate closure of Jurassic World." Eli dragged a map of Nublar from a corner, before stretching it out at the corners, growing it to a much larger size. "We know there was damage sustained during the Indominus escape here, here, here, and here." Eli pointed to various points on the map. Claire recognized them as Paddock 11, part of the fence on the gyrosphere territory, the aviary, and main street. "Of course, the dinosaurs have had three years to wreck more havoc, so we don't know what else has been destroyed since then. Some of the animal enclosures remained intact following the events, and it's unclear if they would've been able to get out, or if the food supplies available to them would've been enough."

"Right." Nothing Eli was saying was new to Claire. This was all stuff she and the DPG had figured out on their own. It was part of the reason Zia was pushing so hard to get them back on the island. They should've had remote access to the camera systems from off island, but something had malfunctioned within the weeks following the incident, and as people had not been allowed to return to the island, it had been impossible to fix. The DPG was running their entire campaign based on assumptions. They assumed the Mosasaurus was dead — the animal lived in an enclosed lagoon that couldn't sustain a large enough fish population to keep it alive. The T-Rex had survived for years after the original Jurassic Park incident and so they assumed she would continue to be fine on her own. They also assumed the Gentle Giant petting zoo dinosaurs were probably some of the first to succumb, between any injuries sustained from the pteranodons and being easy pickings for any escaped carnivores, like Blue (assuming she survived). "We've come to the same conclusions."

"We had hoped to be able to get some men on the island," Mills admitted, looking down at the map. "We've been petitioning the government to do just so, but haven't been successful."

This surprised Claire. She hadn't even heard rumours of anyone else attempting to get on the island.

"The best we've managed, was to get a drone to do a few flyover passes on the island," Eli brought up a folder. From the names, it was clear it was a mix of images and video. He opened a bunch of the images, spreading them across the table top. "We've been able to confirm sightings of some of the animals, like the Brachiosaurus," he pointed to a specific image. "But not all of them. For example, we've been unable to confirm whether all four raptors died or not." He pulled up an old image, an image Claire recognized from reports she had read back on Jurassic World, showing the four velociraptors spread in a semicircle.

Leaning over the table, Claire dragged the image closer to herself, looking at it intently. She'd spent enough time listening to stories, and looking at old pictures and videos with Owen after the incident, that she was able to identify the individual raptors. She tapped on each one on the photo as she spoke. "Charlie died during a firefight with the Indominus. Echo was tossed into a fire pit during the final battle, I'm sure she died. Delta got slammed into a wall, and our best guess is that she died, too. We never saw her move again. Blue," Claire paused, finger resting on the dinosaur. "Blue is the only one that we think is likely to be alive."

"Blue. Oh, I didn't know she had a name," Eli looked at where she was pointing. "Well, that may clear up some of our data. There's a couple of shots from the drone that we think show a velociraptor. If Blue is the only survivor, it must be her."

"What are you hoping to do?" Claire asked, tucking away the information about Blue. For once, she'd have something positive to share with Owen about his favourite dinosaur. Not that she was sure he'd want to know it. He'd been bitter about her starting the DPG, insisting that they'd be better off making a clean break. "Nothing good can come of that now. We should let it all go," he'd said.

"What you're trying to do, save them," Eli looked at her eagerly.

"Well, we'd be happy to join forces," Claire put out hesitantly. Looking back down at the table top, an uneasy feeling started to creep over her. Why hadn't they approached the DPG earlier? It's not like they wouldn't have known what she and her team were trying to do. They'd done all they could to be as transparent and open as possible. Chasing every possible media lead, to get their cause in front of people.

"Excellent," Mills clapped his hands. "I know Ben will be happy to hear that. We've heard you have a paleo-vet on your team. After all these years, I imagine some of the dinosaurs could use a check up."

"Yes, Dr. Zia Rodriguez," Claire nodded slowly. "But we can't get onto the island. We've also been petitioning for access. We've wanted to do a headcount. See if we can't reactivate the cameras and tracking system."

"You think the tracking system will still work?" Eli looked surprised.

"If we can get it back online, yes. The implants are powered off the movement of the dinosaurs, so they should all still be functioning. Well, assuming the dinosaurs they're implanted in are still alive."

"Oh, wow, I did not know that," Eli nodded happily. "That would be very useful indeed."

The meeting had continued on for a while longer and Claire had found herself reluctant to give any further details on the DPG's activities. Not that most of what she didn't say couldn't be easily found on their website. But the uneasy feeling hadn't left. Instead, it had grown more intense over the course of the meeting. She couldn't put her finger on why or what exactly was bothering her. But something was.

As always, I'm so grateful you took the time to read. I really hope you can spare a couple more moments to drop me a quick review. Comments, suggestions, criticism, or even just a random line about how your day is going. :)