Life Found A Way

Chapter 16

After we spent time with the Brachiosaurs we still had to keep moving so we carefully and cautiously climbed back down the tree. Lex who was still horrified her shirt was soaked, and face all wet. She didn't say anything but just look straight ahead in a daze. Poor kid.

"Dad, where are we going?" I asked, as the kids starting to walk ahead of us.

He blew a breath, "Well try and find out way back to the visitor centre but we have to be careful Katie. These animals are roaming free now, we could bump into anything."

Ahead of us we could hear the kids arguing and Lex was making a lot of noise. We could be attacked at any moment.

"Lex! Talk low!" she didn't need to ask why because the look on her face said it all.

Tim chuckled, "Oh, great. Now she'll never try anything new! She'll just sit in her room and never come out and play with her computer…."

"I'm a hacker!" Lex wiped off some goo off her face.

Tim looked at us then, "That's what I said! You're a nerd! They don't call you people hackers anymore….they call you people nerds!"

"Guys please."

"I prefer to be called a hacker! Not a computer nerd." She said back.

Dad looked at me, "They are really not going to shut up are they?" Tim and Lex continued arguing. Dad stopped as we climbed over a fallen tree. I stopped and walked back to see what he found. My eyes widened, there were millions of tiny footprints and eggs that have cracked.

"Dad, what kind of dinosaurs were in those?" I whispered not wanting to be those eggs we seen in the lab only yesterday.

The kids were beside us, currently not arguing Thank God! "You know what this is? It's a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding."

Tim took the shell from him. "But….my grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls."

"Amphibian DNA."

Lex looked confused as she looked at the broken shell. "What's that?"

"Well, on the tour….the film said they used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur's genetic code and blended it with that of frogs. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female, in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right! Look, life found a way!" Dad looked amazed, and we saw those tiny footprints lead off into the jungle.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

BACK IN THE CONTROL ROOM.

The mood in the room was hopeless. Ian had his wounds bandaged, by Ellie. He was in real pain, hangs around with Ellie and Muldoon, hoping for some development while Ray was still at the computer terminal and looking a mess, he doggedly sorts through the computer system's lines of code. They blip by, reflected in his glasses. He turns and stares up at John with a look of absolute incredulity on his face.

"No, no, no, that's crazy, you're out of your mind, he's absolutely out of his mind…"

Ellie didn't get what was going on. "Wait a minute. What exactly does this mean?" John turned to her, the twinkle back in his eye.

"We're talking, my dear, about a calculated risk, which the only option is left to us. We will never find the command Nedry used. He covered his tracks far too well, and I think it's obvious he's not coming back. So shutting down the system…"

Arnold interrupted, "I will not do it. You'll have to get somebody else, because I will not."

"Shutting down the system is the only way to guarantee wiping out everything he did. If I understand correctly, all the system will come back on their original start-up modes correct?"

Arnold lit a cigarette. "Theoretically, yeah (yes), but we've never shut down the whole system. It may not come back at all."

"But would we get the phones back?" Ellie asked, her hands on her hips.

"Yeah, again, in theory, but."

"What about the lysine contingency? We could put that into effect!" Muldoon asked.

She turned to him, "What's that?"

"It's absolutely out of the question." John snapped. He walked away from the group. Ian sat listening while the others debated what to do.

"The lysine contingency. It's intended to prevent the spread of the animals is case they ever got off the island, but we could use it now. Dr. Wu inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. Animals can't manufacture the amino acid lysine. Unless they're continually supplied with lysine by us, they'll go into a coma and die." He said it all in a rush.

"How would we cut off the lysine?"

Arnold wiped sweat of his brow while the cigarette was now in his mouth. "No trick to it. Just stop running the program. Leaving them unattended."

"How soon before they become comatose?" Ian spoke up.

"It would be totally painless…they'd just slip into unconsciousness and they die."

"How long before they slip into unconsciousness?" Ian asked again.

"About…seven days, more or less."

Ellie couldn't believe it. "Seven days?! Seven days?! Oh, great. Oh good clever." She mumbled the last bit to herself.

"That'll - it'd be a first; man and dinosaur all die together. John's plan." Ian joked and raised his hand.

John slammed his hand on the table. "PEOPLE ARE DYING!"

There was a moment in which no one dared to speak. John regained himself and turned to Arnold. "Will you please shut down the system?" Arnold swallowed and got to his feet.

"You asked for it…" He walked slowly across the room to a red metal box on the wall. He took a key from his belt, unlocked the door, and opened it. There was a row of four switches inside. He flipped them off, one by one, leaving only a single lever left. His hand hovered over it . . . and he flipped the lever.

"And you got it."

Every monitor, every terminal, every fluorescent light shut out, plunging them into near-darkness. They just sit in eerie stillness for a moment. "How long will this take?" Ellie asked.

"Bout thirty seconds."

They waited in tense silence. John adjusted the wilting silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He noticed Ian staring at him, his eyes full of disapproval.

"I think perhaps I'll just sit down. I don't suppose you think all that much of me now, do you?"

Ian felt bad. "You're all right, John You're okay. It's just you don't have intelligence. You have "thinktelligence." You think narrowly and call it "being focused." You don't see the consequences. You're very good at solving problems, at getting answers but you just don't know the right questions."

"Ian…" Ellie warned, now was not the time for bickering. Ian stopped and looked at her.

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

He nodded to her, "Yes." Then turned back to John. "It's not a criticism, by the way."

Finally, Arnold turned back to the box. He flipped the row of safety switches back again, then hesitated by the main switch. "Hold on to your butts."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Sorry this is only short, but I have been away for the last few days and I will be going back again on Wednesday… I see some people have voted and so far, it's a tie between a new Jurassic World Story, which probably be up in October or later because that's when the dvd comes out, and the other story is the sequel to this. Someone has voted for me to just write An Adventure To Remember. So keep voting everyone!

Sarahmichellegellarfan1