Chapter 2

Claire had arrived home late the previous afternoon. She had debated going into the office, but decided she needed some time by herself to think over the meeting before she discussed it with anyone else. She wasn't sure if she was blowing things out of proportion or not. Was she overthinking things? Reading into Mills' actions stuff that wasn't there?

Today was a new day, however, and she was ready to talk it over. She already knew what Zia was likely to say. Even though she hated it, her gut instinct and Zia were likely right.

Similarly to how she arrived most days, she brought in drinks for Zia, Lowery and herself. This morning she'd also picked up a couple dozen donuts for the office. She was feeling the need of a sugar rush. After placing the donuts in a communal area (but rescuing their favourites first), she headed over with the donuts and drinks, dropping off Lowery's before handing Zia hers and sitting down next to her friend.

"So?" Zia looked at her expectantly.

"What?" Claire feigned ignorance.

"Oh, come on," Zia groaned. "What happened? Is he going to donate? Is it big? Something else? Well?"

"It was… interesting," Claire replied.

"Huh?" Zia leaned back in her chair, eyeing her friend closely. "Interesting good or interesting bad?"

"Just… interesting," Claire hedged. She took a bite of her donut, to buy herself some time. "The conversation with Lockwood was nice. He's interested in saving the dinosaurs. Gave a line about redemption and then repeated one of Hammond's famous lines – you know the one, about how dinosaurs need our absence." Claire pulled another piece off her donut, chewing slowly. "It was his young associate, Mills, that I'm not so sure about."

"Mills? I don't think I've heard of him," Zia stated, crumpling up her napkin, her donut inhaled in just a few bites.

"Eli Mills. He runs Lockwood's foundation. Well, I think 'runs' is the right word. He's been working for him since college. I think he's probably your age. I've met him once before. I thought he was just a normal guy, maybe a tad too idealistic the first time I met him. Not so much anymore."

"What did he do? Oh, don't tell me – he hit on you!" Zia groaned.

"What? No. No, no, no," Claire shook her head. "Nothing like that. At least," she paused, looking thoughtful. "I don't think he was hitting on me. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's just, as we were talking, he brought up that they've been trying to get on the island."

"Wait," Zia held up a hand. "Why does he want to go to Nublar?"

"I don't know. The whole thing was odd. He was talking about wanting to save the dinosaurs and how they've managed to take a drone over the island and get some pictures and videos. They think they've got shots of a velociraptor."

"Blue's alive?" Lowery turned around and butted into the conversation. He had been pretending to work but mostly just eavesdropping. His excitement and abrupt movements caused his glasses to slide down his nose, and he pushed them back up with an annoyed huff.

"I don't think any of the others survived," Claire nodded. "So, if there's one on the island, it must be Blue."

"Oh wow, Owen's going to–" Zia started, only to be cut off by Claire.

"No!" Claire stated firmly.

"We have to tell him," Zia disagreed and Lowery nodded in agreement with her. "He'd want to know."

"Not yet, not until we know for sure," Claire persuaded. "I don't want to get his hopes up."

"What else did Mills say?" Zia asked.

"He seemed really interested in the tracking system. And talked about wanting to get a paleo-vet on the island–you specifically," Claire nodded her head at Zia.

"I'm down!" Zia agreed immediately.

"They don't have permission any more than we do," Claire reminded her. "No one's going to the island."

"Have you ever thought–" Lowery started before cutting himself off.

"Thought what?" Zia asked. "Come on, spit it out."

"I mean, how do we really know that no one else has been on the island?" Lowery asked in an almost whisper, as if he didn't want anyone to overhear. "I mean, it's a pretty big island. It's remote. It's not like it's surrounded by armed guards or anything. And the whole security system is down, so you wouldn't get caught on video."

"Oh, there's the inner bad-boy I knew was in there all along," Zia joked. "Look at that Claire, even Lowery is willing to go to the island illegally. How can you say no, now?"

"Wait, what?" Lowery's gaze jumped between them. "That's not what I said."

"You keep a pretty close eye on all the internet chatter around the island and Jurassic World, right?" Claire asked Lowery, ignoring their bantering.

"Well, yeah, sort of," Lowery nodded. "I mean, as part of the social media part of DPG, I, and others, are always trying to monitor what people are talking about. But, we're not digging into the dark web or anything. Just the main public news."

"What have people been talking about? Anything much about Nublar?"

"We sort of lump people into four groups. The first are your basic followers. You know, the people who will retweet or like stuff you post. They may throw a few dollars towards us, but they aren't ones who will start anything. The next group are the info-gatherers. We like this group. They're probably as invested in this as we are, but are unable to be part of the DPG for time, money, location, family or whatever reason. These people are ones who are really actively promoting what we're doing. They'll give us good suggestions and supply us with the knowledge and skills we may be missing. For example, if we mention we're trying to edit a video or something, someone will be right there to offer help. The third group are the trolls. That groups pretty self-explanatory. And the fourth, well, the fourth we call the conspiracy nuts."

"Conspiracy nuts? That doesn't sound good," Claire said. "Are they like the trolls?"

"Not exactly," Lowery hedged. "They're sort of like them, but they're harder to dismiss. Some of their theories are really outlandish. They're the kind of people who are the reason that our president is still going around talking about how dinosaurs never existed, and what we made are completely fake animals that were likely animatronic."

"How did that guy get elected again?" Zia mumbled under her breath.

"What about the other theories?" Claire asked pointedly, ignoring Zia again.

"Some of them are kind of interesting," Lowery admitted. "It's easy to go down the rabbit hole with them. There's been some chatter about Dr. Wu and what he's been up to since his disappearance. I've seen people making connections between him and something happening in Costa Rica. And I've definitely seen people pontificating about how there are ways to get on the islands. I mean, people have been on Sorna twice now and that's even farther away."

"Okay, we really need to go," Zia implored. "Who knows what mess people may have made on Nublar?"

"I don't think anyone has actually gone," Lowery replied. "If they had, I think there'd be news. I mean, what are the odds that no one would be injured?"

"Well, we know people have at least been close to the island," Claire reminded them. "Mills and his guys have had a drone fly over. The island is too far away for them to have done that from Costa Rica. They would've had to, at minimum, had a boat out there."

"Why wouldn't they just fly a helicopter over the island?" Zia asked. "Wouldn't that be easier?"

"You can't get as low in a helicopter," Lowery replied. "If they were looking for anything specific, like the dinosaurs, you'd want to be closer to the ground. Need to be able to look in between trees. A drone would give you that."

"Come on, Claire. Please?" Zia begged. "If Mills is up to something, he probably has the resources to be on island if he wants to be. Let's go take a look. Just a quick one."

"I don't know," Claire was still unsure. She wasn't sure that she even wanted to step foot back onto the island, much less take anyone with her. Not with all the dinosaurs loose. Not without knowing what she'd be stepping back into.

"You said the tracking system should still work, right?" Zia asked, before continuing without waiting for a reply. "So let's get it up and running again. If we know where the dinosaurs are, we can make sure we don't run into them. And, besides, we don't need to go looking for any of the carnivores. We can probably do most everything right from the control room."

"Well…" Claire looked unsettled at the thought. The tracking system sure would help.

"Think of how good it would be to have those cameras back up. Think of how much it will help the DPG to be able to show recent pictures and video. To maybe even livestream what's going on right from the island," Zia was leaning forward now, hands waving about with excitement.

"How are we going to manage all of that, the two of us?" Claire looked at her skeptically. "I mean, I can probably get the system back up, or at least log in. But if there are any problems…"

"So we go the three of us," Zia replied.

"The three? Who's your third?" Lowery asked.

Zia just stared at him, her look getting more intense as he didn't clue in at first.

"What, me?" Lowery shook his head in disagreement. "I mean, I loved my job there, but I'm not crazy. Those dinosaurs are legit and I don't think they'll be happy to see people again–except maybe as food. Chicken fingers, but human sized."

"But we'll need you," Zia replied. "If there are any technical problems we're going to need you right there, not a phone call away."

"I don't care. Take someone else," Lowery backed away from them.

"It's not like we'd be going try to be bait," Zia dismissed his concerns with a shrug, before turning to look back at Claire. "It's settled – the three of us will go."

"You don't try to be bait with dinosaurs," Lowery mumbled. "You just are."

"Wait a second," Claire held up a hand. "This is still all illegal, remember?"

"Right, illegal," Lowery jumped on the words. "I'm not doing something illegal."

"As if everything you do on that thing," Zia waves at Lowery's laptop behind him, "is legal."

"Claire…" Zia just looked at her friend, putting on her best puppy dog expression.

"Let me think about it," Claire sighed. She stood up, tossing her now empty coffee cup in the trash, along with her balled up napkin.

Zia followed her as she started to move away. "You are going to have to talk to Owen," she reminded Claire in a low voice, not wanting others to overhear. Claire had confided in Zia some of what was going on between her and Owen, but even if she hadn't, Zia knew things had changed. While Owen had never been exactly common around the DPG offices, he would come around now and then to take Claire out for lunch or pick her up after a long day. But it had been months since that had happened. "You can't go back to the island without letting him know first."

"I know," Claire nodded, hand going to the back of her neck. She could feel her shoulders rising with tension. "Let me see what I can figure out first. Preferably none of us are going back to that island."

"Hey!" Zia faked outrage. "I thought you were on my side. That I was going to get to see them."

"I am and you will. I just was really hoping it wasn't going to require us doing something illegal to make that happen."

x x x

A couple of days go by and Claire managed to push her meeting with Mills to the back of her mind. He hasn't followed up with her and her schedule had been packed with other DPG meetings with potential investors. That morning she'd had a meeting pitching why supporting DPG would be a great idea to some investor groups in San Francisco before catching the BART back over to Oakland, where she was now heading into the office for the afternoon.

The moment she stepped foot over the threshold Lowery was by her side. He was trying to act all nonchalant, like this was a normal occurrence (it wasn't), but she had known him for almost 10 years now and didn't fall for it. She let him hover beside her as she went about hanging up her coat and greeting a bunch of the other employees. Then, exasperated, she headed towards her office at the back, catching Zia's eye as she passed her desk and gesturing to her friend to follow them.

Once inside her office, Claire settled behind her desk, pulling her laptop out of her bag and opening it up. Zia dropped into one of the two chairs facing her desk, while Lowery hovered by the door. He looked around carefully into the hallway. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, he shut the door behind him before sitting in the chair next to Zia.

Now that he was seated, Claire could see that he'd been tightly clutching a tablet. "What's up?" She finally asked when he didn't immediately offer anything.

His gaze shifted around the room carefully again, looking for what Claire had no clue, before he carefully placed the tablet on the desk, pulling his chair closer. "Something's definitely going on," he whispered. "Look what I found."

Both Zia and Claire pulled themselves closer to the desk, leaning forward to get a good view of the tablet. On the screen, there was a picture of a couple of Triceratops – an adult and a baby. They appear to be grazing in an open meadow or field area. Claire thought, if she squinted, that there might be a Brontosaurus in the background, but she couldn't be sure.

"I've seen tons of pictures of Triceratops, what makes this one special?" Zia asked. "Looks just like any other tourist shot from Nublar."

"Right, looks like," Lowery agreed, nodding at Zia. "But it's not."

"Why?"

Lowery looked over at Claire who was studying the picture intently. She pulled the tablet towards herself. There was something about the picture. Something was gnawing at her that there was something wrong. She was just struggling to put her finger on it. She was racking her brain, flipping through her mental catalogue on the Triceratops and Jurassic World. Slowly, she reached out a hand, her finger tapping lightly on the baby Triceratops. That was what was wrong.

"Figured it out?" Claire looked up and Lowery was looking at her with a gleeful expression. "It's got to be recent…"

"Someone clue me in," Zia leaned even farther forward, looking at the baby Triceratops under Claire's finger. "What's wrong with the baby? I mean, the picture isn't the best but it looks fine to me."

"It shouldn't be there," Claire said slowly. "Where did you find this picture?" She turned to Lowery.

"It started floating around social media late yesterday. I've been trying to trace its origins. Looks like a brand new twitter account posted it as it's first post."

"Why shouldn't it be there?" Zia was starting to get annoyed. It was clear that there was something significant about the picture to the other two, but she wasn't following.

"All the dinosaurs on Jurassic World were bred," Claire started explaining slowly. "Brought to life in a lab. We stuck with the original Jurassic Park plan of making all the dinosaurs female. They weren't all female, some of the ones we brought over from Sorna were male. But all the ones we bred were female."

"Right, so?" Zia didn't understand how this had anything to do with the picture. "You still bred new dinosaurs, so there would've been baby Triceratops. I mean, I know I've seen pictures of baby Triceratops before. Weren't they part of the petting zoo?"

"They were," Claire nodded. "When dinosaurs were born on Jurassic World, depending on the breed, they spent their first few months in what we called the nursery, away from any visitors. The 'Gentle Giants' would then get moved to the petting zoo for a few years, before we would then introduce them to the adults." Claire looked down at the picture again, tapping her finger gently against the baby. "This Triceratops is too young to be with the adults. This picture can't be from Jurassic World…"

There was silence for a few moments. As the weight of the information sunk in, Zia sat back in her chair, her mouth falling open.

"My thoughts exactly," Lowery was nodding in agreement. "I'm not sure how many people would understand the significance of this picture. But it's got to be recent. You know what that means Claire…"

"Yeah," Claire sighed heavily. "Two things. People have been back on Nublar and," she swallowed heavily, "the dinosaurs are breeding."

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. Comments keep me motivated and on track to finish this.

I think I'm far enough ahead / have planned enough, that my current plan is to post twice a week - Sat / Wed. It's looking to be 15-17ish chapters (give or take a few, depending how things how play out). Some scenes end up so much shorter than I expect, and others way longer when the characters have stuff they want to say.

Owen makes his appearance next chapter and in Chapter 4 we're off to Nublar!

As always, I'd love to hear anything you want to share. Drop me a comment in the box below. :)