CHAPTER 8 – GENESIS OF FORT KNOX

It took almost half a year to get the right provisions in place for their...prison.

Fort Knox, we called it. We had it built from the base out of solid concrete, and ten thousand volts ran through every cable on her, surrounding them from every angle. And the living quarters were equally generous; a wire covered pit smothered with ferns to protect them from the sun, and so we didn't have to look at their ugly faces. Floodlights were in place, two guards on duty at all times; the works.

That's how we'd envisioned it from the start. It was a bitch to build, but nobody complained; those bastards needed to be housed in a hole so deep that they'd never get out.

We thought it was impenetrable. And it was built to be that way, albeit the other way around. Inescapable would be a better word.

Turns out all they needed was a walking vat of lard and a lightning bolt to undo it all, but at the time, it was one hell of a prison.

Noah Cox, 1997

Noah Cox

May 18th, 1992

Velociraptor Holding Pen, Visitor Area, Isla Nublar

"How you doing in there sir?" the artificial voice boomed over the loudspeaker.

"Dandy," called Cox, shielding his eyes from the harsh quartz floodlights which bore down on the deep pit of Fort Knox. He ran his hands over the smooth concrete wall which extended twelve feet above his head, and he frowned at it. He jumped upwards, but succeeded in only raising himself only a few feet off the ground.

They had completed the entire structure earlier that week, and the evaluative process had begun to clear it for use; there was no point putting the Raptors in place if the thing didn't work. But how do you test it out, apart from calculate the Raptors jump heights, their strength, and then build the structure to compensate for it.

So they were trying something original; they locked Cox up in it. And he had to get out.

He had been in here for almost half an hour, and for the life of him he could see no way out. He was surrounded on all sides by foot thick solid concrete walls. The door was held shut by a pneumatic vacuum sealed system. The only feeding apparatus that entered the pen came in from above through the electrified fence roofing. And even if he got past that he'd have to get past the thick steel wires – also electrified by ten thousand volts – which were angled inwards to prevent anything climbing on them.

He frowned as he looked up at the watchtower positioned above the pen, where the floodlights streamed down from. It was also up there that several work crewmembers and engineers looked down at him, smiling at him.

"You convinced?" the loudspeaker said, the voice resonating in the enclosed space.

"...Yes."

"You sure you don't want us to turn on the fences, give you a real challenge?"

"Only if you want fried Ranger on the menu this evening," another voice said in the background of the loudspeaker.

Chuckling voices and muffled laughter filtered down into the pit, and Cox shook his head. "Alright," he murmured, "you've made your point."

There was a pneumatic plunk, and the thick concrete door of the pit rose slowly upwards, revealing a small recess in the structure, measuring six foot square, before there was another, identical concrete door. Cox stepped forwards into the recess and the inner door moved back down, resealing. He looked up at the three bright lights which glowed above him; red, orange, and green, like a traffic light.

The light switched from red, to orange, and then rapidly to green. There was an electronic buzzer, and the outer door slowly slid upwards, revealing dark palm trees swaying in the wind. Cox stepped out into the night, the visitor centre looming over him, lit up like a Christmas tree. Construction scaffolding and construction crews covered it like locusts; the sound of hammers was loud in his ears.

Looking out over the pond, and into the distance, he could just about make out the fencing being erected around the safari lodge, the glass walled pyramid structures just visible, poking above the tree line.

Cox walked around to the side of Fort Knox, and pattered up the steps onto the viewing platform, where he joined Muldoon. Although only a Ranger, Cox was pretty much Muldoon's second in command. At thirty two, six foot two, with a wiry build, his thick curls of hair which fell down over his face made him look far younger and more innocent than he actually was.

"How is it?" he said to Muldoon, who stood in half-darkness, staring down into the pit, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"Impressive," Muldoon grunted, "expensive. But still, not good enough."

Cox laughed, looking down into the pit as the floodlights shifted slowly towards the door of the structure, and a forklift lumbered into the empty space, and began dropping heavy bags of compost and soil onto the bare concrete floor. Parked at the side of the road twenty feet away was a large lorry, the back fully loaded with imported ferns which had been selected for tactfully covering unsightly objects.

"What's wrong with it?" he said, gesturing to the military-like installation before them.

"The structure is sound, the design is flawless. But the system..."

He was referring to Nedry.

The guy had built the shoddy system, which was full of problems, but he hadn't done half as good a job as he could have done. He'd heard something about a payment feud with Hammond had been going on for years.

"It needs some alarms, a separate independent tracking system, and backup generators, something else. Something more," Muldoon muttered. "We need to know where they are at all times."

"I'm sure that can be arranged, Robert," Cox said, putting his left hand into his pocket, scratching his chin like Muldoon with the other, frowning. "But it'd take a lot longer. It'd delay moving the Raptors in here."

Muldoon nodded. "Yes. But it's worth the wait."