Notes
Hypothetical Casting:
Karl Theobald as Jeremy Rankin.
Soundtrack suggestions:
Viggo and his companions reach Isla Nublar with their boat :
- He's Here for Us – Michael Giacchino, Rogue One: A Star Wars story (Up to 01:54).
The Cryptoclidus scene :
- The Witches of Lake Enara — Lorne Balfe, The Musical Anthology of His Dark Materials.
The divers reach the Mosasaur Lagoon and the Indominus' body :
- Submarine homesick blues — Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The Xiphactinus' and Mosasaurus' attack :
- Feeding Frenzy and The Deadliest Sea of all time – Benjamin Bartlett, Sea Monsters.
The acrocanthosaurs attack the Sommers :
- A sight for tyrannosaur eyes and This title makes me jurassic - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
-o-
The storm was raging off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It was raining buckets, thunder rumbled almost continuously and the ocean was rough.
Riding the waves, a black speedboat cut through the dark waters, lifting up splashes. Aboard, partially sheltered from the wind and the rain by the roof of the cockpit, seven hooded people were seated, preparing themselves to accomplish the mission they had been tasked with, a mission which consisted in recovering an important item on an island located a few kilometres away.
The latter eventually appeared amidst a flash of lightning, as a dark mass on the horizon, and as the speedboat headed for its south-eastern coast, its passengers heard a rumbling in the sky, different from that of thunder, and another lightning flash definitely betrayed the presence of a helicopter nearby. The hooded individuals looked at the aircraft as it overtook the speedboat, heading also towards the island.
Dirty looks were cast at it and swear words were uttered among the group but its leader, Viggo, a middle-aged brown-haired Dane, had a more impassive attitude and he just watched the helicopter disappear in the middle of the inky sky, where no star shone. Then he turned to his colleagues and gave them a barely perceptible nod to inspire confidence in them.
As the lightning bolts came one after the other, the island got closer and close and its hills and mountains rose. Squinting, the group even made out buildings. To the south, in the shadow of a mountain that overlooked the coast, stood a complex which was made of a pentagonal building and three docks; to the north, a peninsula jutted out into the ocean; between, a ridge line covered with houses and what appeared to be gardens stretched out, overlooking a long sandy beach.
Iago, the Costa Rican sailor the team had hired due to his knowledge of the surrounding waters, steered the speedboat towards a cove located between the complex and the beach and hidden from the latter as well as from the marina adjacent to the complex by the landscape and the dense tropical vegetation.
The speedboat slowed as it approached the cove and looking to port, the passengers saw several boats docked at the marina, including yachts, but they were far from being numerous enough to fill it. The marina was a sorry sight and actually, a large proportion of the boats that were moored there had deserted it. Beyond the marina, one of the towers built on the nearest wharf was half-ruined. An entire section of the wall had collapsed, leaving the interior of the structure visible. When they were close enough to the shore, they saw that a grey sprinkling still covered the vegetation here and there.
After having a look at the small red cross on the island's map that he was holding in his hands, Viggo raised his eyes and directed his gaze beyond the bow, the entrance to an underground canal, blocked by a steel gate. Next to the entrance was the end of a dock that ran along the north side of the canal, continuing past the gate.
The speedboat stopped beside this end and the group's hacker, an African American named Hudson, disembarked and opened a panel attached to a concrete wall built into the rock wall, revealing a terminal to which he plugged his tablet. As the rest of the team watched him, the call of an animal was heard amidst the storm and they turned their heads to the north, where the call came from. This call was neither that of a monkey, nor that of some big cat. It was deep and sounded like a mix between a bovine bellow and a whale song.
"I'm in the system," the hacker announced a few moments later.
He tapped on his tablet for another moment or two and the gate finally opened, swinging upward. Hudson closed the panel and came back aboard the speedboat that entered the tunnel. Its spotlights penetrated the total darkness that reigned there while the entrance gate was left wide open.
The team removed their hoods and the ponchos they were wearing, revealing the wetsuits everyone but Hudson and Iago were wearing.
With signs, Viggo ordered his colleagues to be on the look-out and he, Hudson and three other members of their team took pistols or rifles, lined up along the starboard, and lit the dock with their weapons' lights. He looked at each of them. In addition to Hudson, there was Arno, a tall, muscular Swiss with thick blond hair, a square jaw, and hard eyes; Rhys, a short, stocky, pot-bellied Scottish man with a red beard and a big nose; and Selena, a tall young blonde Californian whose wetsuit accentuated her slim and shapely figure. Behind them, the last members of the team, a young red-haired woman named Trish, also American, and her assistant Michael, a bald man equally young and who also turned to be the tallest member of the team and one of the burliest. They were busy doing a few final checks on the diving gear and a container that had the size and the shape of a suitcase, with handles on both sides.
The tunnel continued for several hundred of meters, curving along the way, and they passed in front of the entrance of a passage. After a turn, the speedboat faced a lock, closed. Coming from beyond the lock, a draught brought the smell of salt water to their nostrils. Thanks to the boat's spotlights, they noticed that the water level was the same on both sides of the lock.
"They didn't tell us fibs, the earthquake damaged their flood control system," Trish said in her raspy voice, similar to that of an older woman and which sharply contrasted with her youth.
"It will make our job easier," Hudson added.
The hacker grabbed his tablet again, tapped away, and the first lock gate opened. The speedboat moved into the lock itself, Hudson first engaged the closing of the door behind them and then the opening of the one in front of them.
Once this second lock gate opened, they proceeded and came out of the tunnel at a cove surrounded on either side by thick groves that stood on now-submerged terraces. The group's lights first passed over a school of dead fish, floating on the side at the surface, and then among the trunks and the foliage, which was also still covered with the same grey sprinkling they had seen on the coast. Volcanic ash.
The group's eyes focused on a gap between the two groves. It opened onto a much larger stretch of water, a lagoon of about twenty hectares. Another lightning ripped through the sky and its glow revealed constructions on the opposite shore of this lagoon and beyond, including a set of bleachers, a promenade that overlooked the northern edge, and what looked like to be an artificial mountain. This was Jurassic World's Lagoon and the island was Isla Nublar.
Four days earlier, on Christmas Eve, the famous theme park had collapsed in fire and blood during an apocalypse that Costa Ricans nicknamed La Larga Noche, the Long Night. Receiving up to nearly twenty thousand people per weekend, the park was now nothing more than ruins haunted by creatures of another age.
Iago stopped the speedboat, turned off the lights, and Viggo congratulated him with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
"We're in. Excellent work, Iago."
The whole team, except Iago and Hudson, put on their diving gear. Viggo, Arno, Rhys and Selena slipped into the water first, amphibious assault rifles in hand, and after making sure there was no danger nearby, they waved to Trish and Michael. The latter two hoisted their container over the edge of the speedboat and let it float on the surface while they immersed themselves. Then taking the container by its handles, one on each side, they then joined their four colleagues who spread out around them, as an escort.
Swimming ahead, Viggo led the group forward, towards the gap and once they passed over the now submerged fence that stood at this level, they disappeared under the surface, moving like shadows. They passed by a carcass that floated near the surface, that of a six-meter-long marine reptile whose general shape evoked that of a dolphin, an Ophthalmosaurus. One of the divers noticed that much of the abdomen had been ripped off, leaving only the bite marks of a large predator...
From the speedboat, Hudson could make out a few distant lights in the northwest, about a kilometre away, at the park's administration building that overlooked the city and the Lagoon from the top of its promontory. The InGen corporation, once the master of this island, only controlled a few small enclaves within this fallen kingdom, including the Administration, and the men of the small garrison it had left did not even dare to go out at night in the ruins of the dead city of Burroughs that bordered the Lagoon, afraid of falling into some ambush and being dragged into the darkness by the predators that prowled there.
A hooting sound caught the attention of both men. An uninitiated person would have believed in the nearby presence of an owl or a swan and though their knowledge of the animal world was more limited than that of other people, Hudson and Iago both knew it was unlikely that the sound was made by some ordinary bird. Pistol in one hand and flashlight in the other, the hacker and the sailor warily scanned the lush vegetation around the cove, on the lookout for any new manifestation from the hooting creature. As it seemed to have moved away, the two returned under the sheltered part of the speedboat, and while Hudson kept an eye on the footage from the divers' GoPro cameras, Iago beheld the ruined park under the storm.
A little further to the northeast, the helicopter seen earlier by the speedboat's passengers had landed behind the Grand Nublarian, the largest hotel in the park, and two of its passengers had left it.
The latter, Jack and Hannah Sommers, two black-clad young people with brown-blond hair, had reached the bottom of the hill occupied by the hotel and had stopped under the arcade at the entrance of the casino and a nightclub called The Chicxulub, both located under the hotel, within the hill itself. Between them and their destination, located under the imposing volcano-shaped Discovery Center, a relatively large pond stretched out and just like the Lagoon, its level had risen, so much that the siblings had their feet in water and that their path was flooded.
To reach their destination, located at the level of a wing of the center that was topped by a dome that depicted Earth at the end of the Jurassic, two paths were possible: Either they took the long stone bridge which cut the pond in two parts of very unequal size; or they skirted the pond by the south, walking by a series of shops under tree-filled terraces before reaching the opposite end of the road, not far from the objective.
"Which way, sis?" Jack asked Hannah.
Hannah looked at the flooded bridge. The road it made up to the center's wing was more or less in a straight line but there, they would be in the open and if they were spotted, they would have no hiding place or not the time to reach one. Although it was longer, the path past the shops was perhaps safer.
"The one under the terraces."
"Okay".
They put on the hoods of their raincoats, Jack pulled out a pistol and they made their way to the dock along the south side of the pond, trotting as quietly as possible through a greyish water, still tinted with ash. While Jack glanced quickly inside the shops in order to detect any eventual nasty surprise that would be lurking in their dark corners, Hannah stared straight ahead, watching the edge of the terraces and the path in front of them. At the level of the Zoo's trees, north of the pond, white birds suddenly flew away, letting out screams, and having heard them, the siblings slowed down and looked in the direction of the opposite bank for a moment before resuming their journey but as they were about to reach the point where the bridge and the quay met, Hannah stopped.
"Jack…" She whispered in a worried voice.
Her eyes were fixing a gazebo fifty meters from their position, built on top of an outcrop that overlooked the pond. He wondered what worried her about this kiosk but then, looking up at its roof, he knew what and a shiver ran down his spine.
Perched on the roof like gargoyles on top of a cathedral, huddled together with the wings folded against the body, three pterosaurs rested. Jack and Hannah were too far away to see them clearly but they noted that they were the size of a large eagle, had a spotted coat similar to that of a leopard, and that the elongated snout that ended a crested head was that of a predator.
The Sommers looked at the pterosaurs and then at the rest of their path and noted that whatever they did, they had to pass nearby. Quietly, Jack checked the magazine of his pistol and noticed that he had a sufficient number of bullets, if ever the situation turned sour. He and his sister exchanged a determined look and stepped forward to resume their journey, moving slowly, sliding over the slabs instead of taking long, sonorous strides.
They reached the end of the quay and the beginning of the bridge that cut across the pond, and took the latter, beginning to skirt the gazebo's outcrop.
Suddenly one of the pterosaurs lifted its head and saw them. It snorted but its agitation was not to the taste of one of its congeners who snapped at it, urging it to keep still and not disturb their rest anymore. The first pterosaur hissed in frustration as a response but calmed down. The third had seen the Sommers too, but unlike the first, he remained quiet and just watched them pass below and reach the quay at the base of the dome-topped wing.
The Sommers reached their destination, the exit door of the Discovery Center's IMAX cinema. It had been locked but Jack took out some lock picking tools from the backpack his sister was carrying and after several attempts, as Hannah continued to watch the trio of pterosaurs, he managed to open it.
They rushed inside, closed it behind them, and with their flashlights' beams, they swept the hundreds of seats and the gigantic hemispherical screen of the dome.
As they walked up towards the upper part of the room and the cinema's entrance, Jack contacted the one that was overseeing the mission from the helicopter.
"Rankin. We're inside," he announced in his microphone.
"Good," the voice of a middle-aged man answered in their earpiece, speaking with a British accent. "The servers are at the back of the lab and the building's back-up generator is one level below. A stairwell connects the server room to the generator room. Jack, be careful when you will restart it. The less you will use it, the longer it will take for InGen's men to realize that you are there. However, your sister needs as much time as possible to retrieve the data she is looking for. If you get caught, there is nothing I will be able to do for you and if you come back to the helicopter empty-handed or with the wrong data, the boss has the right to not honour the terms of your contract. And if you ever have to flee, I will tell you to avoid the tunnels. Not only it's easy to get lost there but many predators have turned them into their lairs. You would never leave them alive... Contact me once you will have the data. Rankin, over."
"No pressure…," Hannah said once Rankin ended the transmission.
"Go in an abandoned theme park by a stormy night, just after an apocalypse, cross a ghost city where all kinds of nightmarish predators lurk, break into the center, find the laboratories, turn on the power, retrieve the data and get out before you get caught! Super easy, barely an inconvenience!" Jack said ironically. "Limey jerk!"
"If things go south, I say it's better to get caught by InGen's goons than to be eaten."
They left the cinema, took a back door to their right and soon ended up in the section of the building occupied by the laboratories, into which they entered. Following the directions on a map that Hannah held in hand, they walked through it, passing in an area hidden from the visitors, who could observe the laboratories and some of its activities from a gallery that overlooked it.
"I hope the data is still there…," Jack said.
"According to Rankin, they initially thought about deleting the data. Then the insurgency happened and the geneticists had to flee and it didn't cross the mind of anyone else during those four days. I'll bet that they will do it only when InGen will pack up and leave this island for good."
Within this backstage area, they found the room that housed the servers and a nearby stairwell door. They went down said stairs, reaching a mechanical room and found, as expected, the building's emergency generator. As Hannah opened its panel, revealing an array of breakers and switches, Jack looked around the room and saw another door. He moved closer.
"Hey, where do you think it leads?" He asked his sister who was busy charging the generator.
"To the tunnels I think..."
To his relief, he noticed that it was closed, but he was quick to block and barricade it with various items found in the room, including full boxes and a broom. Then he began to nervously check every corner of the room.
"What are you doing?" Hannah asked.
"Protecting my back. I've seen too many movies where characters in those kinds of places and in our situation get killed like the worst dumbass."
Once he was done, he walked over to the generator's control panel and had a look at it.
"Okay, it's not rocket science," he whispered, noting that each switch was associated with a specific system.
He saw the one associated with the servers. Then he and Hannah synced their watches, started a countdown, and she hurried back to the servers and unzipped her bag to pull out a tablet and a cable. When the countdown came to an end, Jack pressed the servers' switch and one level above, the servers began to purr soon after. Hannah connected her tablet to them and started looking for the data they came for. Jack went up the stairs soon after.
"I swear, playing Ethan Hunt on a post-apocalyptic island full of dinosaurs... It was a job for only two people on Earth: Us," he complained. "Luckily, InGen's security sucks as much as that of the Empire from Star Wars."
"Well said. It's like being in Rogue One with all those servers and the data to steal. Problem is, they all died in that movie..."
Gradually swimming down towards the dark depths and always following the direction of the north-west thanks to their compasses, Viggo and his companions continued their crossing of the Lagoon and their lights illuminated large rocks soon enough. As they passed by one of these, Selena had a recoil and shivered when she saw a cluster of tentacles retreating into the darkness.
"You're okay Selena?" Viggo enquired.
"I saw some tentacles..."
"Meh, you must have seen a squid or a big cuttlefish," Rhys said casually. "No need to wet your pants."
"You must have seen a Titanites giganteus," Trish said.
"A tita what?" Selena asked.
"A giant ammonite," the scientists clarified.
"What's an ammonite?" Arno asked.
"Have you read the file that Michael and I had made?" Trish worried
"Uh…," Selena started.
"No," Arno answered bluntly.
"There was a file about the creatures we might encounter?" Rhys asked.
"Are you doing this on purpose?!" Trish asked, irritated.
"Well I started but there were a lot of complicated words… And I don't like reading," the Swiss mercenary replied.
"And what does this kind of beast eat?" Rhys asked with a certain curiosity.
"No human-sized prey if that's what you want to know," Michael replied. "And they are not aggressive creatures."
"Shit…," the Scotsman swore. "I wouldn't have said no if one took Selena."
"Hey!" She protested.
"A pity, it could have been like in a Hentai," Viggo whispered.
"You were saying Viggo?" Selena asked, thinking she misheard.
"Uh… no nothing, just that it's a pity that this mask is like a ventail," he lied.
"I think this was the first time we've heard you on this mission, Michael," Rhys said. "You're not usually talkative and hardly speak, except to Trish, but you didn't say a word there. You have the willies?"
"There is a bit of that and by not speaking I tire less quickly and I stay more focused," the assistant explained.
"Yeah, well if we all stayed quiet like you, hello boredom," Rhys said. "By the time we reach the objective, that you take the samples, that we make the return trip and that we pass the decompression stages, we're here for a good half an hour, if not three quarters of an hour. And three quarters of an hour is quite long in a place like this, gloomy as a cemetery."
"That said, it is literally one," Trish pointed out. "There must be corpses all across the Lagoon. And the rest of the island is no better ... After the recent apocalypse, the animals of the park are experiencing a Mad Max-like situation."
"Only the strongest and the most cunning ones will survive," Arno said, words that saddened Selena.
"According to some assessments, more than a thousand people lost their lives to the disaster," Trish told them. "I think that the whole truth about the fall of this island will never be known."
"Then again, those idiots built their park on an island with an active volcano," Rhys pointed out.
"Yeah, they could have built in Florida like Disney and Universal did", Viggo added. "Michael is right about staying silent for a better concentration. Some should follow his example. We were told to watch out for the mosasaur."
"The mosasaur? Isn't it the giant fish-dinosaur thingy that had a Seaworld-style show?" Rhys enquired.
"It's not a dinosaur but a squamate," Selena corrected him.
"Who cares if it's a dinosaur or a squatate?" Rhys retorted. "It could be a giant aquatic unicorn or a mutant muskrat that it wouldn't change anything."
"And besides the mosasaur, what else?" Arno asked.
"If the information we received are correct, it's the only truly dangerous species we are likely to encounter as the others are still contained in their respective lagoons, which are not in our way," Trish stated. "If it can reassure you, I think that the risk she'll hunt us is minimal given the feast she had at Christmas."
"Ah, I am reassured," Selena breathed.
"We'll see if Trish is right," Viggo said.
"It's lame! This place sucks!" Arno complained. "I wanted some brawl..."
"If you want some brawl, you can just go to the surface and pick a fight with the carnivores that are lurking around," Rhys suggested.
"It would be really cool if we were left alone on this mission," Viggo said. "If we come across the mosasaur and that she decides to vary her menu, we're screwed so let's keep a low profile and avoid messing around. I know this place was a zoo a few days ago but now it has become some sort of a war zone so don't behave like a bunch of kids on a field trip at the local aquarium."
The sandy bottom of the lagoon, along with some sort of rail, appeared beneath them and right ahead, at the end of their lights' beams, a huge mass loomed out of the ground. Viggo led them towards this mass and a school of fish that came from it swam past the group.
"Hey Michael? Do you like fish sticks?" Rhys asked the scientist's assistant.
"Yes, why?"
"Can you repeat the phrase I love fish sticks at a quick pace."
Michael played the game.
"I like fish sticks. I like fish sticks. I like fish sticks…."
But as he repeated the phrase, the words eventually mingled, he slipped and ended up saying:
"I like fish dicks".
But as he realized his slip, Rhys laughed,
"You like fish dicks? What are you? A gay fish?!"
"Oh boy... What a drag...," Trish sighed. "And you just stole a joke from South Park".
The gigantic dark mass took a clearer and clearer shape, until they had some kind of a small underwater mountain before their eyes, as tall as an apartment block. Just like the rocks seen earlier, it was built by Man.
They entered the mountain through a rectangular opening at its base. This opening was crenelated by what was the remains of a long bay window, and they walked past a cafeteria's counter. Going deeper into the heart of the submerged building, they reached a large hall dominated by several balconies and which resembled quite a bit, in terms of shape and size, to that of a shopping centre.
As the group cautiously moved into the hall, a lull in the middle of the storm allowed moonlight to reach the Lagoon of Isla Nublar and dimly illuminate what was once the Great Hall of Mount Thetis. To the north-west and the north-east, two gigantic acrylic panels once stood, each towering over a small hemicycle, but in their place, remained only two gaping breaches that opened onto crushing darkness. While a part of the divers felt like they were swimming amidst the ruins of Atlantis, others had the impression of being the protagonists of a science fiction work that were exploring a derelict space station. Like the cafeteria bay window, the acrylic panels had both yielded following some event and a surge had flooded the whole building, mixing and scattering every item inside and light enough to be carried away. Thus, many chairs, tables, and even shop shelves littered the floor, while plushies, toys and books among other things floated here and there.
They had almost reached the middle of the hall when a high-pitched cry, similar to a moan carried away by the wind, sounded.
"What was that?" Arno wondered, on the alert.
"A mermaid?" Viggo said in a strange tone, that Trish would have called dreamy.
The group got their answer soon enough. From the northwest, passing through the gap left by the viewing bay of the Western Interior Seaway's lagoon, came a small group of broad-bodied animals with a long neck, a small head and flippers as limbs.
Seeing them slowly swimming towards them while making clicking sounds and letting out high-pitched vocalizations that sometimes sounded like whistles, Viggo, Rhys and Arno lined up in front of Trish and Michael and prepared to repel the attack. Unlike her three comrades, Selena kept her calm.
"Stay calm, they're harmless," Trish reassured them. "I think they're Cryptoclidus".
"How do you know they're not a danger?" Rhys asked her.
"When the park was open, you could dive in their lagoon as part of a guided tour," the scientist explained. "There are pictures on the internet if you don't believe me."
"I did when I visited the park a few years ago. With the guide, we even fed them with small fish and squid," Selena told them.
"A fat lot of good that does to me...," the Scotsman retorted.
Riding a ray of moonlight that penetrated into the mountain through the gigantic breach, the Cryptoclidus reached the middle part of the hall and while they described tighter and tighter circles around the divers and continued to let out vocalizations, the group could observe them lengthily.
The body of these animals was as big as that of an American manatee, and their short, broad skulls were lined with long needle-like criss-crossing teeth. Though their fragile constitution prevented them from hunting human-sized prey, they could inspire dread in some people, and their ghostly colouring didn't help. While the upper part of the body was dark grey and sprinkled with white-girded dark spots and that the underside was pure white, the rim of the mouth was black, with badly-defined dark streaks that ran between it and the front flippers.
When the described circles were very narrow, they went down to swim close to the floor and the furniture strewn over it. One of them passed only at one meter or two from the group and it looked at them curiously. Trusting Trish a little, they had let their guard down a bit but the mercenaries were still a little nervous, except for Selena. She had moved forward a few meters and the plesiosaurs noticed this soon enough and, being more interested by her than the other humans, they converged towards her. One of them swam so close to her that it brushed past her body and she reached out her arm towards its side.
"Look, they're harmless," she said while petting it.
"Yeah, they seem to behave a bit like dolphins…," Viggo noticed.
As Rhys chuckled at his observation, the Cryptoclidus moved its long, flexible neck to give their colleague a gentle head butt and she swam a few meters up, towards the other plesiosaurs.
"What is she doing?" Arno worried.
"I was watching a documentary about dolphins the other day," Rhys began. "And well, they are twisted bastards whose behaviour is closer to that of some ghetto scum than Flipper the heroic dolphin, saviour of the widow and the orphan! They're in gang bangs, bestiality and all kind of shit, including masturbation with dead fish..."
"Spare us that kind of details, Rhys!" Trish interrupted him.
"Some even tried to rape female divers!" He continued. "So Selena, I would advise you to watch your arse!"
But she ignored him, doing nothing but floating six meters above the floor and gently swinging her flippers as her eyes followed the different individuals. For several seconds, the Cryptoclidus continued to swim around her, like ghosts dancing in the ballroom of a haunted castle or palace. From her companions' point of view, Selena seemed bewitched by their vocalizations. They sounded like a beautiful but sad song, a lament about the abandonment of which they had been victims of. But as if to put an end to the moment's magic, the light of the moon disappeared and was then replaced only occasionally by that of the lightning in the sky.
Suddenly, a loud, low-pitched roar sounded, coming from a tunnel in the east, the one that led to The Reef, an underwater hotel, and whose entrance overlooked the hall. Looking towards the origin of the sound, the rest of the group lit up the stairs that led to this entrance and then the latter, where, amidst a flash of lightning, they saw the long jaws of the gargantuan creature that had remained hidden in the tunnel's darkness without their knowledge. Viggo turned his gaze to the middle of the room where the Cryptoclidus and Selena had frozen.
"Selena!" He shouted before rushing towards her.
Bursting out of the tunnel like a dragon from its lair, the monster rushed towards the plesiosaurs, using its long and bilobed tail as a propeller, and its mere sight struck the divers with terror.
"God almighty…" Arno swore as the Cryptoclidus scattered and Viggo swam frantically towards Selena, still as a statue.
In the eyes of the Swiss, the predator, which he knew to be the mosasaur mentioned earlier by his companions, evoked the mix between a crocodile and a whale since it had the jaws and the skull of the former and the barrel-shaped body, the smooth skin, and the size of the second. He looked at the beast then at Selena and finally at Viggo.
He's not swimming fast enough… It's too late for her.
But to his surprise and relief, the mosasaur went down when it was almost on Selena and instead chased one of the Cryptoclidus which had reached the bottom.
As the squamate caught up with the plesiosaur, the latter quickly turned to change direction, returning to the eastern part of the hall. But in doing so, he passed right over Arno, Rhys, Trish and Michael, bringing the mosasaur straight towards them.
"Watch out!" Viggo shouted.
Where Arno and Rhys flattened themselves to the floor, hoping the predator wouldn't crush them on its way, Trish and Michael hurriedly moved aside to take refuge behind the cafeteria counter, dropping their container in the process. Although the Cryptoclidus was nimble, he wasn't particularly fast, unlike the mosasaur who easily caught up with it before it could leave the hall, grabbing the unfortunate animal between its jaws and then slamming it against the floor. But as its teeth sliced the plesiosaur's body in half and Rhys stood up unlike Arno, its tail made an abrupt lateral movement that created a sudden displacement of water that carried the Scotsman towards the cafeteria.
Still in shock, the divers preferred to wait for the mosasaur to devour the Cryptoclidus and leave the hall, looking for the others and disappearing into the utter darkness of the lagoon east of the mountain.
"Are you still alive guys?" Hudson's voice asked them in their earpieces as, stunned, he had witnessed the mosasaur's attack.
"It wasn't after us," Viggo told him as he and Selena swam back to the bottom. "I am whole. Selena as well, though she probably had the fear of her life."
"I feel like I was hit by a train. I almost got my skull smashed by the container," Arno growled.
"Nothing broken, thank you," Michael replied.
"I'm fine too," Trish added. "Have you seen the receptacle?" She inquired with undisguised concern.
"I think I wet the inside of my suit...," Selena confessed in a weak voice.
But from Rhys, the answer he got was:
"Godfucking bollocks!"
"Where are you Rhys?"
"I'm stuck, dammit! And I don't even know where I am!"
As Arno helped Trish and Michael find the container amid the mess created on the mosasaur's wake, Viggo and Selena set out to find Rhys and they found him soon enough.
"Hurry up! I'm starting to feel like puking..."
He was floating upside down, with a table leg stuck between his back and his rebreather, and swinging his bandy legs, a sight that sparked a scornful chuckle from Selena.
"What are you laughing at, you tart? It's your fault if I'm in this situation. If we hadn't lingered with the Clitoclidus, we'd be swimming now in the former mosasaur lagoon," Rhys muttered as Viggo gently lifted him to keep the table leg from hurting him or damaging the rebreather.
"Blah blah…," Selena sighed while imitating a speaking mouth with her hand.
Disentangled, Rhys put himself on the right side and the three of them joined the other part of the group. They had found the container, much to the relief of the scientist and her assistant.
"Rhys is right," Hudson said. "Though Iago and I are supposed to be safe in the cove, it doesn't mean that we're chilling with a cocktail in hand. We're just as in danger than you underwater so if you could avoid fluttering around, it would be great. The sooner you reach the objective and take the samples, the better, and the faster we will be home."
"Yeah, we lingered here a little too long," Viggo said. "Let's move!"
They headed to the opening left by the great viewing bay in the west and left the hall and the mountain.
"I think she's going to leave us alone for tonight after that," Trish said about the mosasaur.
"I hope so," the Dane replied. "It would be another source of worry gone."
They swam even deeper and reached the sandy bottom of the former mosasaur lagoon.
"He's a funny one Hudson!" Rhys complained. "We're just as in danger than you underwater... Twaddle! In addition to the eventual predators, we have all the risks inherent to diving. Why that big coward didn't came down with us instead of probably playing Candy Crush on his phone? Iago would have been enough to keep the boat."
"Because he's the only hacker in our group and if he croaked during this dive due to an accident or some kind of bullshit, the others would be in trouble, unable to leave the island," Viggo pointed out.
"So what? If we can't go from below, let's go above. There are roads that lead to the marina. We steal one of the remaining boats and that's it! Sayonara InGen, the dinosaurs and this shitty island!"
"Are you sure you would have been able to walk such a distance or even run to escape a predator with your bandy legs?" Selena sneered.
"Do you know what my bandy legs tell you?!" Rhys retorted.
Meeting nothing but a few fish on the rest of their journey, they continued for about two minutes before the beams of their lamps illuminated the pale and half-devoured carcass of what looked like a large predatory dinosaur. It was over sixteen meters long and had an enormous skull with a moderately narrow snout and a voluminous cranial box.
"Here she is… The Indominus rex," Viggo announced.
"Masrani's Bane...," Trish added in a voice that mixed dread and admiration.
"Holy shit, that beast is bloody Smaug!" Rhys exclaimed, as he thought that the Indominus looked more like a dragon than a dinosaur because of the crown of horns that adorned its skull and the shape of its teeth at the back of the mouth, particularly curved towards the back, like those of snakes.
"More like Smaugette, I've read that she's a female," Viggo corrected him.
"To think that even without the earthquake and the volcano eruption, this beast would still have destroyed the park by itself," Hudson shuddered after recontacting them.
Although she was killed on Christmas Day, the body was in a bad state, as dislocated as a puppet. Of her long neck, nearly only the vertebrae remained as most of the flesh had been devoured. The forelimbs were missing, probably devoured by the mosasaur which, according to Trish's deductions, was also the creature that had ripped off chunks of the thighs and the tail, and a large part of the abdomen in order to reach the viscera while the entire body had traces of the action of various aquatic scavengers, mainly fish.
As the group made their way to the gaping cavity in the abdomen, Arno's gaze was drawn by a large steel bolt, similar to that of a ballista, which pierced the monster's palate, sticking out between the two small twin crests atop the snout. He also noticed that the left part of the creature's face had been burnt to the third degree.
Trish swam towards the cavity in order to look inside the body but suddenly, she quickly moved back and a shark came out of the Indominus' body. A little over three meters long, it was a medium-sized shark and quite similar to a Grey reef shark in terms of general shape and colour but its snout was not as streamlined as the latter's and was more flattened, giving it a look that could be described as repulsive.
When it passed by Trish, the shark half-opened its mouth but didn't attack and turned. However, it ended up swimming straight towards Arno, who had just picked up a sword broken at one third from the guard. Thinking he was attacked, Arno punched the shark's snout.
"Down!" The Swiss growled.
Changing direction, the shark opened its mouth and snapped its jaws before leaving without further ado.
"Did you really needed to give that shark a sailor's punch?" Viggo asked. "I remind you that we are not here to look for trouble with the wildlife."
"Yeah, it didn't do anything to us and was just feeding on the carcass. It was gratuitous spitefulness!" Selena scolded.
"It gave me a dirty look," Arno pretended. 'And I don't like sharks."
"Another one traumatized by Jaws...," Trish muttered and whose reaction had been more out of surprise than true fear.
Arno grunted and Trish and Michael put their container on the bottom.
"Okay, Michael. Let's get down to it," the scientist said, looking at the Indominus' bursted abdomen.
Viggo turned to his comrades.
"Guys, let's set up a security perimeter around this carcass and keep your eyes open."
The four mercenaries set up said perimeter and the two scientists opened the container and took out some tools in order to take samples from the Indominus.
"To be honest, I would feel safer with a shark suit and some chemical repellent," Michael confessed.
"I asked the number two, believe me, but he refused because he said it was tonight or never," Viggo told him.
"On that point, I think he was right. The storm is hiding our operation and after tonight, it will be too late. Remember what the spy reported about the incineration of the bodies," Trish reminded him. "They will try to get the body out of the lagoon in the coming days."
"Yeah. If you want my opinion, the number two didn't want to increase our budget," the Dane said, skeptical. "He's really stingy".
"Yeah, worse than a Jew!" Selena said.
"Hey, the other prig is anti-Semitic!" Rhys laughed. "My ribs!"
"But I'm not an anti-Semite! It's an expression," her colleague explained to him.
"No but I know! I'm pulling your leg, you muppet. And even if you were, I would care about it as much as I cared about my first slippers."
"Um, guys?" Trish called them out. "You remember that I'm Jewish?"
"Oh boy... If we can no longer make fun of our colleagues...," the Scotsman grumbled.
"Avoid talking too much," Viggo told them, annoyed by their bickering. "We must save oxygen".
"What a phony excuse," Rhys retorted. Those rebreathers have good autonomy. I know this because I was the one who chose the models. Arno was too busy ogling the saleswoman's knockers."
"It's true that she was… very charming," Viggo recognized. "Too bad we were in a hurry because I would have stayed longer to take a longer look at her… uh, her… her fanny... her fanny pack," he stammered.
"Her fanny pack…," Trish repeated incredulously. "Of course…"
Rhys, who stood by the Indominus' mouth, was busy gazing at her teeth while thumb-sized fish gnawed at the flesh by the jaws.
"Those teeth must be worth a fortune on the black market," he said. "Do you imagine? It would be like selling Osama Bin Laden's beard! I… We would be rich!"
But Trish put an end to his dream.
"Except that we can only carry a limited weight. Priority is given to the piece of rib that's being cut and the samples of flesh and skin."
"However, nothing prevents you from taking a few," Viggo said. "But you will carry them all alone and if you are slowed down, it will be your fault."
"You're a pain in the arse, you bunch of killjoy! You better not leave me alone in this hole or I swear I'll cane your balls or your cunt," Rhys growled.
A few meters from him, Selena suddenly swam forward, attracted by the reflection of some shiny object half buried under the sand and that her rifle's light had lit. She leaned towards said object and noticing that it was a red gem, she uncovered it a bit, revealing a silver ring adorned with two snakes, wrapped around the gem. She reached out to retrieve it but it wasn't the only thing she pulled out of the sand as the ring was still on the index finger of a woman's hand and Selena moaned out of disgust at the sight of the severed forearm that floated in front of her. She removed the ring from her hand, let the forearm sink, then put the ring on her own index finger and looked at it.
"This ring suits me well," she said, noting that it was just the right size for her fingers.
"Hey! I saw the gem first!" Rhys suddenly called out to her while swimming towards her. "It's mine!"
"By which right? It's too late for you!"
"Give it to me, you slut!" He ordered her as he rushed towards her arm.
She brutally pushed him away.
"Keep your hands off, you dirty dwarf! You wouldn't even be able to fit one of your big fat fingers in!"
"You know what my big fat fingers tell you?!"
"Rhys! Selena! Have some discipline please!" Viggo yelled at them. "The entire Lagoon must be hearing you! Shut up before the neighbourhood comes to complain for night time disturbance!"
But the two did not obey and began to fight. Viggo then turned to Arno, who was silent and alert.
"Arno, please..."
Arno sighed and joined his two quarrelsome comrades. He separated them by pushing them aside, grabbed Selena's arm, then pulled the ring off her finger forcefully, raising her a small cry of pain.
"Ow! It hurts, you ape!" She told him off.
But he ignored her and she and Rhys watched him swim to the Indominus' head, disappear behind, to only come back a moment later, without the ring.
"Problem solved," the Swiss declared.
"Thank you," Viggo said. "Swap positions with Rhys."
Arno nodded and the Scotsman finally obeyed, heading towards the posterior end of the corpse. Meanwhile, Michael was sawing off one of the ribs and Trish putting pieces of flesh and skin in small plastic bags that she put in the container.
"Hey, what kind of shark do you think it was?" She asked her assistant.
"I would have said a particularly large Grey reef shark but the snout doesn't match. And none of the other modern species that InGen has put in those lagoons matches either. It's neither a sand tiger, nor a blacktip, certainly not a hammerhead..." He finished sawing the rib and put it in a glass tube which he placed inside the container.
"The parcel is wrapped!" Trish announced.
"Copy that," Hudson's voice replied. "I tell Iago".
"Okay, guys. We're leaving," Viggo said.
"The money is ours!" Rhys exclaimed enthusiastically.
He and his fellow mercenaries spread out around the two scientists and their precious container, and they escorted them towards Mount Thetis, oblivious to the danger lurking nearby, a danger other than that of the mosasaur.
Two jeeps adorned with InGen Security's logo pulled up on Obelisk Plaza, just in front of the steps at the foot of the Discovery Center's entrance, and a squad of men in ponchos came out, guns and torches in hand, and rushed towards the large breach that stood in place of the front door, located between two life-size stone statues of brachiosaurs.
When he saw beams of light sweeping the rotunda in the heart of the building, Jack, who was on the lookout at the entrance of the laboratories, knew that InGen had finally realized that there was an intrusion. How exactly he didn't know. Perhaps one of the control room technicians who had remained on the island discovered that someone was copying some of the data from the servers and he or she had therefore raised the alarm. Jack did not wait to be found and hurried to join his sister whom he warned.
"Hannah. The pigs are showing up!" He hissed into his microphone.
"Shit… I'm still downloading," her voice answered in his headset.
At the end of the path once taken by the park visitors, he reached the door, closed it behind him, and met his sister in the servers' room.
"Come on, come on…," she repeated, tapping the edge of her tablet, as the download progress bar was not moving fast enough to her liking.
"How long?"
"A few minutes."
"We don't have a few minutes. They'll have us cornered like rats by then. Put down your tablet and help me barricade the door."
She put the tablet on the floor and followed him to the only door that gave access to that part of the lab.
"But if we barricade that door, we won't be able to get out, you smartass," she pointed out to him as they brought a table up against the door. "Unless you plan to leave by the tunnels?"
"I don't know. We need to let the download finish. We'll decide later."
Above the table, they placed a few chairs and then they returned by the servers and Hannah took her tablet back in hand. The download was still not complete.
"There they are," Jack whispered.
Beams of flashlights swept across the lab and Jack, hidden like Hannah from InGen's men thanks to the layout of the premises, drew his pistol and looked back to the door they had barricaded.
As expected, the doorknob moved but the door remained close and InGen's men became agitated. They knew the intruders were still there.
"Show yourself and surrender, you Biosyn scum!" One of them roared.
"How do they know that we indeed work for them? It's not written on our foreheads", Hannah muttered.
Then they began to knock the door down. Jack turned back to the waiters and Hannah, whose pale and sweating face was fixing the tablet's screen.
"Hannah… Hurry…"
The sound of shattered glass brought Jack's attention back to the barricade and he removed his pistol's safety.
Shortly after, the barricade yielded and InGen's guards rushed into this part of the lab. But when they turned to enter the server room, no one was there and the stairwell's door was open. They carefully walked down the stairs and reached the back-up generator room. As they searched it, they saw that the door that led to the Depths was wide open. Two of the men stepped forward and pointed their torches into the darkness before exchanging an uncertain look.
"They went to the Depths. I'm afraid we've lost them," one of those who came down reported to another team that had just arrived as reinforcements.
"What they will see there will push them to go back here," said the leader of this second team. "We'll stay in the area to pick them up..."
But the wanted intruders were much closer than they thought and they had heard their short conversation. The Sommers, hidden behind an air vent, waited for the guards they had duped to walk away before beginning to crawl through the pipes.
"Guys? Do you remember the amount we were promised?" Rhys asked his companions as they were about to reach Mount Thetis.
"One million seven hundred and fifty thousand, I think," Viggo replied.
"So, if we exclude Iago… If we divide one million seven hundred and fifty thousand by seven, the result is… Two hundred and fifty thousand!" The Scotsman calculated.
"How many months of salary is that?" Selena asked.
"Almost ten and a half years!" Rhys exclaimed after a brief calculation in his head, before mumbling.
"But that's awesome, isn't it?" Selena said, surprised by his annoyance about it. "Earning overnight the equivalent of ten years."
"No, my nose is out of joint because Hudson, that prick, will have the same amount as us while he spent three quarters of the mission doing bugger all!"
"And he spent the remaining quarter plugging in cables," Arno said.
"Oh, drop it guys!" Hudson retorted in their earpieces. "Hacker is not an easy job, you know. Without me, the mission would have been much more complicated."
"We'll talk about this later," Viggo said. "Stay strong, and above all watchful! We're not out of the woods yet..."
While conversing, they had begun to ascend towards the large observation bay and the hall beyond, and the two scientists carrying the container felt in their arms the consequences of this ascent of the lower slopes of Mount Thetis because the container had a tendency of dragging them towards the bottom.
"It's not too heavy?" Viggo asked the scientists.
"Oh, it could be worse…," Trish answered. "Fortunately, Michael is strong."
"We should have attached balloons to this thing," Rhys said. "We could have thus let it go up to the surface once in the southeast lagoon, and the boat would have picked it up. It would have saved you some effort and you would swim easier, and the whole group faster."
"The thing is, if the boat leaves the cove, is that its chances of being spotted by any eventual InGen guard posted on top of the buildings on the northern edge would increase considerably, and they would corner us before we could escape from the island," Hudson aroused.
They reached the bay and passed over its hemicycle. As the mosasaur's attack on the Cryptoclidus was still fresh in their minds, they did not intend to linger inside the mountain and those to the scientists' right glanced suspiciously at the entrance of a tunnel in the south.
Seeing a Sand tiger shark swimming peacefully further in the hall, Michael thought of the shark that had surprised them at the Indominus' carcass and he shared his thoughts about it with Trish.
"I've been thinking about the shark's identity," Michael said. "What if it was a de-extinct species?"
"Yes, of course! Trish exclaimed. "They had several of them. Let me remember the list… Hybodus, Ptychodus, Squalicorax…" She listed. "And I think that's all."
"We can already strike Hybodus and Ptychodus off. The shape and especially the size don't match."
"Only Squalicorax remains," she concluded.
"Thinking about it, it might be one, but I don't remember which lagoon they inhabited."
As they left the building through the cafeteria bay, they thought about it but when Trish remembered a moment later where the Squalicorax lived before the disaster, she paled.
"Oh shit…," she said in a low voice. "I just remembered which one. It's…"
"Hell's Aquarium…," Michael finished, as he had remembered too.
"If it could have left it, then…," she began.
"Maybe its friends too…," she finished.
"And what do those friends look like?" Asked Arno, who had listened to their conversation with interest.
"I think you really should have read the file we made," the scientific assistant replied.
"What else lived in that lagoon? Tell us!" Rhys begged them.
They had stopped where they had planned to begin to start going back to the surface, to a stage six meters below the surface. After this, the plan was to swim for a minute at this depth before going up three meters and continuing at this level up to the gap before the cove and they would thus emerge only by the speedboat. The purpose of all this was to prevent decompression sickness, something they couldn't allow to have on this island.
"Oh you know, nothing interesting," Trish said in a half-sarcastic half-nervous tone. "Small species of mosasaurs and lovely predatory fish called Xiphactinus..."
But hardly had she uttered this name that a thunderbolt illuminated their surroundings for a short time, during which they saw a sinister shadow moving nearby, and which wasn't that of the mosasaur, nor that of some other marine reptile, but rather that of a fish. Darkness fell again and they raised their weapons, whose lights chased only a tiny fraction of the first.
Their beams swept over the bottom of the lagoon for long seconds, then one met the elongated body and the greenish back of a huge fish. Its silvery sides had thin black stripes and the fins' tips were reddish but what stood out was its size. The animal was as big as a Great white shark, and its slow but steady swim seemed to be definitely that of a predator.
Before the light's beam met its head, the creature retreated into the darkness and with dread in their hearts, the group looked around.
While Viggo was thinking about a plan to get out of this trap, Arno heard something swimming near him and pivoting in order to determine what, he let out a scream. Coming from above, a bulldog-like head swooped down on him and panic and confusion struck the group as more of those heads emerged from the darkness.
Their screams, followed by the sound of their weapons, reached Hudson's and Iago's ears and the two men were stunned when they watched the cameras' footage. They saw some sort of gargantuan fanged tarpons attacking the group and when Hudson, who had taken a look at the file created by Trish and Michael, saw that the lower jaw of those fish was prominent and protruded further forward than the rest of the face, he recognized the species. Xiphactinus, one of the most nightmarish predators of the Cretaceous seas.
Once the surprise was gone, they scrambled to help the group. As Iago restarted the engine, Hudson entered the command to open the lock gates in preparation of their retreat. The doors opened and the speedboat left the cove, while the divers were suffering the Xiphactinus' merciless assault.
Arno's body laid in the sand, torn to shreds by several bites, and Rhys had just been grabbed by one of the fish which, thanks to movements from its lower jaw, was gradually swallowing him.
Protecting the container, only Viggo, Selena, Trish and Michael remained. The two scientists had drawn the pistols that were given to them at the beginning of the mission and the four were barely repelling the predators' attack. One of them, riddled with several darts and bolts, had crashed into the sand while another, wounded, had retreated but there were more coming and the group would be short of ammunition if the assault thus continued. Protecting Trish and Michael with Viggo, Selena frantically looked around, looking for a good target. As one of the Xiphactinus seemed to rush towards Viggo, she aimed at it, intending to shoot it in the eye, but another of the predators came behind her and tore her head off with its jaws. The weapon fired anyway, but the bolt did not pierce the Xiphactinus' eye but Viggo's chest, hitting him near the heart, and the bodies of the two mercenaries were quickly torn to shreds amidst a cloud of blood.
When Selena got killed, Trish had abandoned the container and started fleeing the scene, hoping that Michael would do the same. She turned to him and saw that he was still carrying the container.
"Drop it! Save yourself!"
He listened to her, abandoning their precious cargo, and frantically flapping his flippers to join her, but he too was grabbed and carried away under the helpless eyes of his colleague.
Being the last survivor, seeing no shelter nearby, and the Xiphactinus seeming to have an insatiable appetite, she had only one solution. Get back to the surface as quickly as possible, hoping that the boat would arrive on time. Although she greatly risked decompression sickness or a barotrauma by doing this, certain death awaited her if she remained at the bottom. She dashed towards the surface and the Xiphactinus began to follow her, all but one, the one who had swallowed Rhys and which was choking on it. But while they could have been able to rush on her with a few flutters of their tails, they scattered for some reason. Trish didn't wait to know what and hurried to reach the oncoming boat, even though she suffered from a pain in the chest.
When she reached the surface, Hudson and Iago reached out their arms to hoist her aboard and removed her rebreather before laying her gently on the bottom, with her head protected from the rain by the cockpit roof. As Iago took his place back behind the latter, Hudson leaned over Trish and removed her mask. She was out of breath and from the corner of her mouth, a bloody foam was trickling down.
She tried to speak, with a voice even hoarser than usual, but the words made were unintelligible.
"What's happening to her?" Hudson stammered, very worried.
"Pulmonary barotrauma," Iago replied. "We must leave this place!"
The speedboat set out again and headed for the cove, leaving a trail of foam behind. But as they were crossing the lagoon, something suddenly struck the speedboat with such a tremendous force that it toppled it over and projected its passengers into the water.
Opening his eyes seconds after the impact, Hudson looked around for his two companions. Iago was nowhere around him but in the dim light of the speedboat's searchlights he saw Trish, sinking.
He wanted to dive to save her, but Iago's arm held him back and the sailor pointed at something with a horrified look. The hacker turned and saw the mosasaur rushing jaws wide open towards the speedboat, about to swim between the scientist and the two men at any moment. No sooner did the sailor and the hacker begin to move away, heading for the gap and the cove, that the mosasaur reached the speedboat and bite off an entire section of it.
During the struggle between the reptile and this inanimate prey, Trish was struck with full force by its tail and projected straight into the darkness. If the tail blow hadn't killed her instantly, drowning or some opportunistic carnivore still lurking around would.
While the marine squamate was busy tearing the boat to pieces, the two men swam frantically, with all the energy they could muster.
"We're almost there!" Iago yelled, as the gap was only a few meters away.
Behind them, the water began to bubble and glancing over his shoulder, Hudson saw the back of the mosasaur and the top of its tail fin breaking through the surface. As it approached them at a frightening speed, Hudson let out a cry but he and Iago passed over the fence unknowingly and it was a sudden loss of speed from the reptile that told them this. Hudson turned and the exhaustion from the flight dragged him underwater for a moment. During the latter, he noticed that the space between the top of the fence and the surface was too narrow for the mosasaur to swim over the first one without scraping its belly. It attempted to fight its way through by striking the fence with its imposing snout. The fence bended but didn't yield. Hudson, who was only a few meters from the jaws, promptly turned and went back to the surface.
Iago had not stopped and had outdistanced him, swimming not towards the submerged dock at the entrance to the tunnel, just below a staircase that led to the upper part of the lock and blocked by a fence, but towards the lock itself. As the mosasaur turned around, Hudson hurried to catch up with the Costa Rican.
But a few seconds later, the mosasaur rushed back, rammed the fence head first where it had bent, and brought it down.
With a few flutters of its tail, it then swooped on Hudson and cut him in half between its jaws, letting his upper body sink.
As the hacker's lower body was swallowed, Iago entered the tunnel, reached the lock, and passed the first gate. The water bubbled again behind him. He swam twice as hard, finished the crossing of the lock and passed the second door, passing into the canal. He felt the vibration produced by the jaws' snap behind him but he didn't stop.
Behind him, the mosasaur had stopped, unable to continue further. The canal was not deep enough for its enormous body. As her prey was now out of reach, the reptile swam out of the lock, not without difficulty, and returned to the lagoon, grabbing Hudson's upper body on the way.
Further in the canal, Iago found a ladder and climbed it. Once on the dock, he crawled to the wall opposite of him and sat against it, shivering, trying to get a grip on himself. His companions were gone and his boat had been sunk. How would he leave this island and return home?
His lighter had of course been wet and he panicked for a moment at the thought of wandering blindly with only the random and distant lightning's flashes as a source of light, which moreover could only illuminate the ends of the tunnel. Then he remembered a trick taught by a relative long ago.
He turned the lighter over and rubbed it against the wall, while spinning the spark wheel directly on the surface. He rubbed it like that for about thirty seconds, and to his relief, a flame erupted when he tried to relight it again, giving him some reassurance.
Where do I go now?
He looked to his left and began to walk along the dock in that direction, remembering the outward journey and the entrances of other tunnels they had seen. Those tunnels were the only exits he had. Iago wasn't sure about what he was going to do once he would be out and he was seriously considering to surrender to InGen's men. If he decided that, he would also take the opportunity to warn them that they had opened the canal and that it would be wise to close it. It was out of the question to see the monsters of Isla Nublar's Lagoon again on a future fishing expedition or close to the mainland's beaches. He would have closed it himself, but he didn't know how. Hudson would have been able to do so however...
Tip.. Top..
His blood ran cold at that sound of footsteps, light, like a bird's. But a large one, judging by the noise created by the movement, as audible as that of a person advancing as quietly as possible on wet ground. He was not alone on the dock.
While holding his breath, Iago squinted, trying to better discern what stood beyond the area lit by his lighter. He saw only one shape in the darkness, that of a bipedal animal with a long tail, a slender body and neck, and a narrow head topped by two large twin crests.
As cold sweat beaded from his forehead, he saw that the head was turned towards him and that the animal towered over him, as it had the height of a tall man. Iago knew his time had come and the last thing he heard was a rattling sound.
After long minutes of navigation in the pipes, the Sommers came to an air vent that appeared to open into a corridor, not far from the rotunda according to Hannah's estimations. They were relieved to see that it was located at ground level and after listening carefully to make sure there weren't any InGen guards nearby, Jack kicked the grid. It yielded, he slipped out of the pipe and quickly stood up, pistol in hand. He indicated to Hannah that the way was clear and she also left. Looking around, they found a sign that pointed the direction of the rotunda and followed it.
But hearing voices coming from that direction, they slowed down and began to walk along the wall to their right. In the rotunda itself, they saw two guards, standing next to the broken gigantic model of the island, their eyes turned towards the laboratories' entrance.
Using as cover the massive columns that demarcated the colonnade that surrounded the rotunda, the Sommers moved quietly toward the entrance to a shop further away, hidden by the darkness while the guards talked.
"The board hired a mercenary company to help us clean up the island. It's led by Ken Wheatley."
"Ken Wheatley? Never heard of him."
"I know someone who worked with him. He's not a joker and sometimes an asshole, but he takes care of his men. Let's just hope the board doesn't try to take him for a ride. I'm aware that it's a time of crisis but one must still have a minimum of principles... We know how it ended up when they took the grey guards for idiots and used them like guinea pigs...
"Yeah, a fucking insurgency. Short but bloody. Have you heard the rumors? That the Slayers were literally slaughtered by the insurgents and not by the Indominus and the Pack. To think that there were guys we knew among those who were with them. Since the result of the shooting that took place here wasn't a pretty sight, I can't even imagine the slaughter it was in the Cartago Valley."
"Wasn't it in those parts that Sylvester claims to have seen those famous Chupacabra-like dinosaurs yesterday, the ones with the gleaming eyes?"
"What, those we supposedly exterminated all those years ago after blaming the proceratosaurs but who reappeared after the eruption as if by magic? Oh don't listen to Sylvester, he's one hell of a mythomaniac. He must have taken some mushrooms, again."
The Sommers safely made their way to the shop and went down to its lower level, heading towards a large breach in its patio door. They left the building there and immediately reached the nearby bushes, in order to hide from the guards on the plaza.
"You might laugh, but I miss the roar of the old T. rex," one confessed wistfully amidst the pouring rain to another.
"I don't know if you heard the news but they found her body this morning in the mountains," the other replied seriously.
"Oh crap…," the first said, saddened. "Damn, everything is falling apart…," he added, looking at the abandoned city around him.
Crouching between the bushes and the center's frontage, the Sommers reached the entrance of a tunnel dug under one of artificial mountain's spurs, and whose gate had been destroyed by some colossal force. But there was a problem. One of InGen's men was looking towards the tunnel. If they came out of the bushes, he would see them immediately.
Jack and Hannah feared for a moment to wait a long time in the pouring rain before they could continue but another guard hailed his colleague and asked him to come and join him. When the two had their backs turned, the Sommers left the bushes and entered the tunnel.
On the other side, they turned left and ended up shortly after on a restricted parking lot that stretched just next to the high walls of an enclosure, whose door was wide open, and which itself adjoined a blockhaus-like building. Hannah took advantage of this moment of respite to contact Rankin.
"Rankin, we've got the data."
"Ah, about time! I was getting impatient ... I thought you were caught."
"It was close. We're at the parking lot near the Tyrannosaur Kingdom, but InGen has a few men in the area. You can't land there."
"Then go to the plaza behind the Mosasaur Stadium," he ordered. "It's about five hundred yards southwest of your position."
"Copy that, we'll recontact you there", she answered before ending the transmission.
"Five hundred yards? Oh come on…," Jack whimpered while looking at the storm around them.
Out of the corner of their eyes, they spotted a few bicycles, abandoned under a tin-roofed shelter, and went to take each one.
Just as they were about to leave the parking lot, the InGen jeeps they had seen in the square suddenly appeared on their left.
The Sommers, frozen on the spot, thought they had been spotted, but the jeeps continued without stopping and disappeared soon enough. Jack sighed in relief before raising his head when he thought he heard a rustle amidst the thunder.
The siblings finding the hasty departure of InGen's men suspicious, they decided to not linger and headed southwest, traveling on service roads surrounded by dense vegetation. Since some of the directional signs were still covered by ash, they had to ignore them and instead remembered to continue to their left at each intersection, since the south and the Lagoon were on that side. They thus passed under a monorail station, came to the western end of the Promenade and turned right, rolling straight towards an archway that rose above the road that led to the plaza and the stadium mentioned by Rankin.
The Sommers stopped on the plaza's rim and abandoned their bicycles.
"We're there, Rankin," Hannah announced.
"Okay, we'll pick you up," he replied.
As they waited for the helicopter to arrive, they scanned the surroundings. Behind them, in the middle of a strip of trees, was the monorail, which skirted the square and linked the Promenade in the north to the Aquatic Park in the south; to the west, opposite of the stadium, was a food court near which a themed playground stood; to the south, beyond the playground, the lightning flashes revealed the slopes of a roller coaster while opposite, next to the stadium, one could glimpse the low wall of an enclosure that contained a rocky outcrop and a beach, that of the Hesperornis. The plaza itself was nearly empty since there was only an abandoned mantellisaur-drawn tram, whose team had probably fled into the jungle.
The helicopter's lights appeared in the northeast but as they watched it land, a loud boom echoed over the sound of the storm, that of a falling tree, and leaves fell from their trees. Worried, the Sommers decided to leave the trees' cover and walk towards the helicopter. The vegetation of the strip of trees rustled, making the siblings look behind their shoulders. They saw nothing among the thickets but they nevertheless hastened their pace. It was then that a fiftyish balding man with slightly protruding ears that was sitting inside the helicopter, Jeremy Rankin, began to frantically move his arms, telling them to hurry, but without shouting however, as he was afraid of drawing the attention of something nearby. But Jack and Hannah suddenly felt a sort of vibration in their bodies that sent a chill down their spines and frozen them on the spot, like if anchors tied to their feet were sinking into the ground, and Rankin paled.
When the Sommers turned, a lightning bolt illuminated a large and sturdy bipedal dinosaur that was towering above them, with its head at a height of almost four meters. The beast's skull was long and narrow, with turquoise-coloured spots by the ears, orbits and nostrils, while the body was overall dark yellow with a greenish hue. Its most remarkable feature was the long hump that ran down its neck and back up to the anterior end of the tail, and long red vertical marks ran down from its top, towards the belly. Its relatively short but sturdy arms equipped each with three clawed fingers told the Sommers that the animal in front of them was not a Tyrannosaurus but another species of large predatory theropod. An Acrocanthosaurus.
The dinosaur was looking at them with an inexpressive reptilian gaze and was keeping its mouth half-open while large drops trickled down its well-rounded sides. Its throat started to quiver. No sound came out of its mouth but the Sommers felt a vibration similar to the one that had frozen them. Then the predator let out a crocodilian throaty growl.
The Sommers, aware that Jack's pistol was not going to be of any help against such a monster, eventually succumbed to fear and ran for their lives, rushing towards the helicopter which was already taking off.
"Wait!" Jack yelled, thinking that Rankin was abandoning them.
But the mercenary unrolled a ladder and its end touched the ground while the Sommers, chased by the Acrocanthosaurus, narrowed the distance between them and it. Hannah, the faster of the two, reached it first and jumped to grab the rungs. She climbed a few of them and turned to see where Jack was. He was trying to grab the base of the ladder but the acrocanthosaur was preventing him from doing so by snapping its jaws behind his back, distracting him.
But as she was looking at her panicked brother, Hannah was surprised by a second Acrocanthosaurus, bigger than the first, that burst out of the darkness behind her, jaws wide open and about to grab her, and she was only saved only by a sudden move from the helicopter. The acrocanthosaur snapped its jaws in the air and, as it had poorly planned its attack, it accidentally crashed into the other predator who immediately growled. Taking advantage of the confusion, Jack reached the tram in the middle of the plaza and disappeared into it, only to come out at the opposite end a moment later, while the two predators had barely stopped biting each other. However, the first individual had set off in pursuit of the ladder and Hannah, preventing Jack from being immediately rescued.
"The other side! Go to the other side!" She shouted at him, pointing at the bleachers, her voice almost carried away by the wind.
Jack then rushed towards the stadium, and the wide ramp that allowed guests to access the feeding show area. The second acrocanthosaur followed him and with a head butt, it hurled the cart that Jack had just skirted. Though the animal wasn't a fast runner and was rather made for hunting slow and large prey like sauropods, it was catching up with him. Jack gathered his remaining strength, reached the ramp and launched himself on a final run to the catwalk where a host stood during the feeding shows, taking care of not tripping on the way. The weather had indeed made the ramp slippery and this worked against the theropod who was about to catch up with Jack. In order to avoid breaking a bone due to a fall, the Acrocanthosaurus slowed down and cautiously walked up the ramp, letting Jack outdistance it. Seeing the ladder waiting for its prey just beyond the walkway straight ahead, the dinosaur growled, in vain. Jack made it to the top of the ramp, rushed to the end of the catwalk, climbed the guardrail, and jumped on the ladder before the acrocanthosaur could catch him.
While holding tight on the rungs, Jack looked up and saw his sister at the top of the ladder. But as the helicopter was ascending, the ladder suddenly began to wriggle, destabilizing the Sommers who barely grabbed hold of the rungs while Rankin was staring in their direction with wide eyes. The acrocanthosaur had grabbed the ladder between its teeth, just below Jack. The ropes tightened and some sort of a tug of war took place between the dinosaur and the helicopter. The former's situation was precarious. Indeed, the catwalk cracked under his feet, threatening to collapse if it stayed too long.
Rankin helped Hannah to climb into the aircraft, then he pulled out a dagger and began to unhook the ladder. Hannah looked at him with wide horrified eyes.
"Are you out of your mind?!"
"We're all going to die if I don't cut it!" He replied urgently, alluding to the sound of the helicopter's stabilization system's alarm.
If this tug of war didn't stop soon, they were going to crash and this whole mission would have been for nothing.
"No, Rankin! Wait!" Jack yelled as he tried to climb the ladder as quickly as possible.
Luckily for them, the ladder snapped where the Acrocanthosaurus held it with its teeth. The dinosaur promptly backed away and the catwalk collapsed before it, tumbling down into the lagoon below. Still hanging on, Jack was tossed around at the end of the remaining section and he turned his head to watch the Acrocanthosaurus growling out of frustration by the base of the bleachers. As they flew over the Lagoon and its now submerged barrier reefs, flying towards the opposite end and the coast, Jack let out a long sigh of relief.
"Jack!" Her sister called him, still worried.
He looked up at her and Rankin.
"Don't stay there! Climb!" She urged him.
He looked down and noticed that the Lagoon and its dark waters were only a few meters below his feet. He knew that it might be better if he climbed, just to be sure. It was out of question to fall into the water like the worst idiot when he had just been saved. But no sooner had he finished thinking about this that the mosasaur leaped out of the former Oxford Seas' lagoon with its mouth wide open and swallowed the end of the ladder and Jack with it.
The section bitten by the mosasaur yielded almost instantly, but the traction exerted by the marine reptile during that short moment destabilized the helicopter, making Hannah fall.
She barely clung onto the aircraft's skid, wrapping first her arms around it, then her legs, while they finished flying over the Lagoon and were about to pass over the Eastern Residential District of Burroughs. Hannah hurried to climb back into the cabin, sobbing during the process.
She eventually passed her arms over the edge and put them inside. Rankin knelt down and put his hands on hers. She gratefully nodded and saw out of the corner of her eye that her backpack secured in a compartment. Returning her gaze straight ahead, she saw a strange glow in Rankin's eyes and shuddered. The mercenary's hands closed around the young woman's wrists and he said to her:
"Sorry love, but this is the end of the road for you."
He lifted her arms and pushed her out of the aircraft. Hannah's back hit the skid first, raising a tremendous pain, then she fell straight into the rough ocean. The surface hit her at full force, knocking her out momentarily, and she began to sink. When she regained consciousness, she swam to the surface and sought the shore. A few hundred meters from her position, she saw, among other things, the small bay at the entrance of the underground canal. She wanted to swim in that direction but her strength was abandoning her, and the waves were pushing her hard. She was never going to reach it.
Before losing consciousness, she noticed that the canal's gate had been left wide open. Jaws then closed on her lower body, but Hannah's numbness was such that she barely felt the teeth sink into her flesh. Her face sank under the water and darkness greeted her, preventing her from realizing that a Xiphactinus had caught her.
While moving, it swallowed her whole, and the predator was soon after joined by two other Xiphactinus. The trio then moved away from the island, swimming towards freedom.