This chapter is meant to basically introduce some of the key characters in the story.

Old Friend, New Friends, New Enemies

A clear starry night was above the S.S. Miller as the ship docked in the harbor of a Costa Rican island with its precious cargo. Daren and Kevin watched on from the dock as the ship pulled in carefully. Kevin shouted orders in Spanish to the dock crew on what to do when the ship had finally docked. Daren only watched on as the men scrambled and struggled to lift the only three crates on top of the ship hull. The other cargo lay in the cargo bay.

"Hey, don't drop the crates!" Kevin shouted in English at a few crewmen who had just stumbled with one of the wooden boxes.

"Don't worry. They're reinforced just in case that does happen." Daren reassured his long time friend. Kevin looked to Daren, even though he had to look slightly upward at him, and raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure? Do really want one of those things getting out?" Kevin asked.

"Good point." Daren said. "Watch the crates!" He yelled out to the crewmen.

"What's all the yelling for?" Daren and Kevin spun around on the spot to see two girls dressed in green button up shirts and khaki shorts looking at them with raised eyebrows.

"Argh! Can everybody do that but me?" Daren said trying to raise one of his eyebrows, but failed miserably. The two girls just giggled at the facial expressions he made in his attempts to raise one eyebrow. Kevin shook his head at his friend's goofiness and turned his attention to the girls. Both were blonde but one was more petite and shorter than the other, but both had slight hourglass figures. The more petite one with blue eyes, who stood about 5' 8", Kevin didn't know, but he did know the one with hazel brown eyes, she stood equal height with Kevin at 5'10".

"Glad you could make it, Samantha. I see you're already in uniform. Sorry about the short notice."

"How many times do I have to tell you, call me Sam, and don't worry about it. I had to pick up my research from my apartment anyway." Sam smiled. "I hope you don't mind, but I brought a close friend of mine who would also like a job. I couldn't stop her after I told her what I was going to be doing and who i was going to be working with." Sam gestured to the girl next to her who was still giggling at Daren's struggle with his eyebrows. Kevin noticed the shorter girl also had shorter hair than Samantha. Sam's hair was naturally straight and almost reached the middle of her back, in contrast to the unnamed girl who had naturally curlier hair that reached just past her shoulders. The girl snapped her attention to Kevin when she noticed him looking at her.

"Oh, uh sorry. My name's Jessica." Kevin was about to introduce himself but Jessica beat him to the punch. "I already know who you are. You're Kevin Jordan, world renowned medic. You can heal just about any living creature…people included." She said beaming brightly. "Sorry about earlier, but I was sort of distracted by your friend there." She pointed and laughed at Daren who was still fighting with his face by pulling on his dark brown hair.

"It's fine that you brought someone along." Kevin said to Sam. "As long as Daren is okay with it. This is all his idea anyway."

"When do we get to meet him anyway?" Sam asked. "From what you've told me he has to be some kind of genius or mad scientist."

"That's him." Kevin plainly stated gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder to Daren.

"Seriously, where is he?" Jessica questioned.

"That's him." Kevin said again.

"That's the guy I'm going to be working for?" Sam said as her jaw dropped in shock.

"Daren we have company, remember?" Kevin called to him.

"Huh, oh yeah. Name's Daren Phoenix. Pleased to meet you." He said to both Sam and Jessica.

"Uhhh, my name's Samantha, but call me Sam. I hope you don't mind, sir, but I brought my friend Jessica who also wanted a job with your research company." Sam said trying to compose herself.

"No, problem. The more the merrier." Daren smiled.

"Really? No interview or anything? I got the job?" Jessica said surprised.

"Sure, I don't see why not." Daren shrugged. "Now if you guys excuse me I have to- oof!" Daren was tackled by Jessica in a hug mid-sentence.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Lisa said excitedly squeezing Daren tighter.

"You're…welcome." Daren said in a high pitched voice. Jessica released him from her grip.

"I've always wanted to work with real live dinosaurs. Mfff lff mff." Daren, Kevin, and Sam had all slapped their hands over Jessica's mouth to prevent her from saying dinosaurs, but were too late. Everyone on the dock had stopped working and stared in the direction of the four.

"What did she say?" One of the workers asked. "Did she say dinosaurs?" All the other workers and crewmen then exchanged looks. Then a second later, they all began to scream and run around in panic, dropping the crates to the ground. One crate cracked open.

"The locals are superstitious." Kevin said slightly annoyed at Jessica. "They only cooperated with us because they thought we were transporting precious metals." A primal screech rang out through the thin air night. A creature 2 meters in height walked out of a fallen crate. It stumbled a little since it was still under the influence of a sleeping drug. On its inner toes were two six inch retractable killing claws. It yelled out again as it hopped onto the deck of the ship, and tried to pounce on the panicked men but the influence of the drug was too great for it to accurately grab anyone.

"Just great. They let the velociraptor loose. Let me go talk to the captain before this gets out of hand." Daren said as he calmly strolled down the ramp to the ship.

Sam grabbed Kevin by the collar of his shirt and shook him while saying, "He's going to get himself killed! Do something!"

Kevin swatted her hands away and took a step back to regain some of his composure. "He'll be fine."

"How can you say that! Isn't he your friend!" Sam nearly screamed at Kevin.

"Yeah, but if I tried that," Kevin calmly pointed to Daren who now was slowly walking onto the deck of the ship, side-stepping panicking men and ducking below the pouncing raptor with ease. "I would probably be dead."

"I'm going to help him before he gets hurt." Sam started for the ship, but her hand was grabbed by something that stopped her. She turned around to see Jessica holding her hand clasped between both of hers. Her face held a terrified look, as if begging Sam not to go. Sam yanked her hand away from Jessica and ran off to the ship.

"Captain Brandon!" Daren yelled through an open window into the captain's quarters of the ship.

"I'm awake, I'm awake!" The sleeping captain jump to his feet out of his reclining chair. "Oh, it's just you Daren." Brandon returned to his chair. "What's going on?"

"There's a velociraptor loose on the deck of your ship." Daren said it as if it was something that happened every day. Brandon just huffed and slowly stood up. He grabbed a large rocket-like gun and headed towards the door near the window Daren was at.

"Let's get this over with." Brandon said and kicked the door off its hinges. The 6'4" captain stepped onto the deck. His greenish-blue eyes searched for the bipedal predator amongst the screaming men. "Where is the damn thing?" He kept scanning the crowd. "And when did I get a female crewmember?"

"What?" Daren gazed in the same direction as Brandon and saw Samantha running towards them from farther down the ship's deck. The raptor was on her heels. "Found the raptor." Daren silently laughed to himself. "At least she has guts…unlike some people I know!" He shouted the last part to Kevin who was still far on the docks with Jessica.

"I want to live!" Kevin shouted back.

"Can somebody please shoot this raptor already!" Sam yelled out running towards the two guys. Brandon lifted the gun, and took his sweet time aiming.

"Aren't you going to shoot?" Daren asked.

"Yeah, but this is kind of funny." Brandon replied.

"Shoot it, shoot it, shoot it, shoot it!" Sam shouted. Thanks to the dinosaur's dazed state, it kept falling over while chasing after Sam, but she was beginning to lose steam and the raptor was gaining ground. Brandon finely decided to fire after a couple of more seconds of thought. A net flew out of the rocket-like gun. Sam ducked to avoid it, but the velociraptor was caught in it the instant it jumped to attack Sam. Four spikes on the net dug into the ship's deck, locking the dinosaurs against the ground. Daren then took out a remote from his back pocket and pushed a button. The trapped raptor was electrocuted until unconscious. Sam, who didn't stop running even after the raptor was down, ran up to the two men with her eyes closed saying thank you over and over again.

"Thank you!" She shouted one more time before tackling Daren to the ground in a hug.

"Uhh…your welcome…I guess." Daren said cautiously patting her on the head. "Now can you please get off of me." He looked down to Sam. Her face was buried in his chest, and she was panting heavily. She shook her head, 'no'. "Some help here, please?" Daren pleaded to Brandon.

"Hello! Guy that used the gun here!" Brandon said, annoyed at Sam. She kept her face in Daren's chest and said nothing. "I'm going back to sleep. Wake me when you've unloaded the carnotaurus." Brandon said and returned to his captain's quarters. Kevin and Jessica ran up to the two on the ground.

"You two okay?"Kevin asked although he already knew the answer. Sam finally let go of Daren and stood up. She just nodded her response.

Daren rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "Okay, now that this little fiasco is over with, can we please unload that carnotaurus?" Everyone nodded. " It's going to be down in the cargo hold since people would have freaked if they had saw it. Kevin can you go check down the docks to make sure there are no other boatman are around to see this thing when we bring it up?"

"Sure." Kevin took off down the ramp and headed down the docks out of sight.

"How are we supposed to unload the carc…carntal…carno?" Jessica struggled to pronounce the name.

"Carnotaurus." Daren offered.

"Yeah. How are we supposed to unload it if no one is around to help?" Jessica pointed out.

"I called a helicopter before you arrived here to bring in some employees from the research facility to help unload." Daren said. A helicopter flew over them at that exact moment. "Right on time too." 12 men slid down 4 ropes from the helicopter, and hurried into the cargo hold.

Daren, Jessica, and Sam began to have idle chit chat while the men were down in the cargo hold. A couple of minutes later a man came jogging up to Daren.

"Sir, the carnotaurus is not in its cage." The man said. Instantly Jessica and Samantha began to think the worst.

"Use the thermal goggles. It's a chameleon type dinosaur. It's probably blending into the background." Daren instructed.

"We did. No heat signature is coming up on them." The man said. Without a word, Daren sped off into the cargo hold and put on a pair of thermal goggles. He saw nothing in the cage that belonged to the carnotaurus. Daren started examining the cage in great detail.

Kevin was halfway down the docks, making his way back to the cargo ship. No other boats were around. Kevin paused to look at the starry sky in all its glory. Then something weird happened. He felt like he could feel someone breathing on him, heavily. He turned around. Nothing was there, but a floating eyeball. "Wait, what?" There was a large floating eye looking down on him. "I'm going as mad as Daren." Kevin said to himself, but he rethought his statement when the floating eye was soon accompanied by a semi-visible dinosaur body. The barely visible bipedal stubby-armed creature had a small horn above each eye, and both eyes were focused on Kevin. It started growling in a low rumble as it lowered its head level with Kevin.

"Nice carnotaurus. Good carnotaurus." Kevin said shaking with fear. "You aren't thinking about eating me are you?" The chameleon type predator let loose a roar right in Kevin's face. "I guess that means yes. AHHHHHHHH!" Kevin sprinted as fast as he could down the dock towards the cargo ship. The carnotaurus was not too far behind him either.

"So you're telling me it got out, but it's nowhere to be found on this ship at all." Sam questioned. A worried look marked her face.

"That's right." Daren responded. A roar was heard in the distance and soon after so was the scream of that of a little girl. "I think Kevin just found it." Daren assumed.

"We have to do something!" Jessica screamed out. Sam and Daren turned to her and gave her a curious look. Jessica's cheeks turned red in a blush. "You know…because he…uhh…could get hurt, or worse." She said looking away from the two.

"You do remember what happened last time someone tried to do something?" Daren looked to Sam.

"No comment." Was all Sam said.

"But, but, but…" Jessica stammered.

"Some help please!" Kevin yelled as he ran by the ship and out of sight. Soon after, the carnotaurus passed by as well in a semi-invisible state.

"See he's fine." Daren waved his hand dismissively.

"No I'm not!" Kevin yelled as he ran by the ship again but going in the opposite direction. The carnotaurus roared while getting closer to Kevin.

"I really do think we should help." Sam spoke up.

"I know, but I find this kind of ironic. Last time he let that dinosaur chase me for an hour, and it was in the jungle." Daren chuckled. "Besides, I figure he's got a few more laps in him before the thing catches him."

"You know I'm going to get you back for this later!" Kevin shook his fist while making another pass by the ship and out of sight again. The dinosaur had gotten even closer.

"WHAT! YOU'RE LETTING THIS HAPPEN BECAUSE YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY!" Jessica shouted at the top of her lungs. "WHAT KIND OF FRIEND ARE YOU!" She grabbed Daren's collar and shook him violently. Her face was red with fury.

"Helping me would be better than getting mad at him!" Kevin skidded to a stop at the ship ramp to catch his breath, but immediately resumed running when the carnotaurus took a snap at him and bellowed in anger when it missed.

"The 'best' kind." Daren fell over out of dizziness. He suddenly laughing loudly at his own comedy.

'BANG, BANG, BANG' Gun shots rang out through the night air. The carnotaurus let out a cry of pain as it tumble to the ground, turning completely visible as it fell. In the process, it head butted a screaming Kevin into the air and sent him sailing directly onto the ship deck with a thud. He landed directly at his rescuers feet.

"Finally." Kevin said standing to his feet and coming face to face with a really upset Brandon.

"Can't a captain get some much deserved sleep around here? And can anyone explain why the damn invisible, loud ass dinosaur is out of its cage?" Brandon asked enraged. Daren slowly started to raise his hand. "NOT YOU!" Brandon spat out. "Your laughing is louder than that damn thing's roar!" Brandon pointed to the downed carnotaurus. "I'm going to go back to sleep, and if you guys wake me up again I'm kicking someone's ass!"

"Is the-" Kevin began, but Brandon cut him off.

"No, it's not dead. This is a tranquilizer gun." Brandon stormed off into his captain's quarters. Kevin walked over to Daren with an expression suggesting that he was about to kill his long time friend. He stared Daren directly in the face for minute, but soon began to double over laughing. Daren joined in on the laughter. Sam and Jessica only glanced at each other in confusion.

"That was almost as funny as the time I let that thing chase you through the jungle." Kevin said. "You know I'm going to get you back for this." After a few more seconds of chuckling the guys stopped laughing and Kevin asked, "How did it get out in the first place?"Daren's smile instantly turned to a serious stern face. He quickly tossed an object over to Kevin. Kevin fumbled to catch it. When it was in his grasp he realized just how heavy it was, and that it was made of metal. It was the lock to the carnotaurus cage!

"Sabotage." Daren said.

"Impossible. It's not broken." Kevin said as he took a closer look at the lock.

"I know. That lock is nearly impossible to break. That means someone had to know the lock combination to get it off. And only founders of Research Jurassic Park know combinations to the larger carnivore cages." Daren explained.

"You don't think that Larry-" Kevin started.

"Wanted to destroy your dreams like you did mine, Daren." A figure emerged from the shadows of the cargo hold with armed men surrounding him. The man was 6'2" with blonde hair and wore a dark red shirt with the Research Jurassic Park logo on the left side of his chest, and khaki shorts. He made a few hand singles and the armed men surrounded the group of four. "I couldn't pass up the opportunity to let out the carnotaurus amidst all the chaos with the raptor."

"Hi Larry. I see you kept the old uniform." Daren said with a bitter tone. Larry strode up to the group of four and stepped directly up to Daren. They were of equal height.

"This uniform is all I have left of her. And of a Jurassic Park she dreamed of. One that could have existed without you!" Larry glared into Daren's green eyes and he glared back.

"Blaming me for something that was unpredictable isn't going to bring her back." Daren said bitterly. No one spoke then. The palpable fury between Daren and Larry collided through their glares. Jessica broke the silence.

"You…you…you jerk." She stammered. Larry snapped his attention to the two females of the group. "You could have hurt Kevin." Jessica said with tears rolling down her cheeks. Larry gave her a twisted smile and began walking towards them.

"You didn't tell me you were employing such lovely and beautiful scientists, Daren." Larry said, completely ignoring Jessica's comment. "You should introduce me. Especially to this one." Larry had stopped in front of Sam. "At least before you get them killed too." He said grabbing her hand and brought it to his lips. Sam yanked her hand away from Larry just before he could kiss it. Her face held a look of disgust. Daren's anger peaked and he moved to hit Larry, but the armed men lifted their guns and forced him to stay put. "She's feisty. I like that in a woman. Here's my card if you ever want to ditch the idiot and work for a genius." Larry said holding out a business card. Sam looked to Daren and Kevin. They nodded to show that it was fine. Sam reluctantly took the card and pocketed it without taking a single glance to see what was on it. Larry turned back to Daren. "I'm sure you want to know why I let loose your carnotaurus, and why I'm here. Well, simply put, I just want to ruin everything you hold dear, and destroy your dreams. Just like you did to me, buddy. So you can be sure that when havoc ensues on your island, or someone close to you dies by some carnivorous dinosaur," Larry glanced over at the two girls then turned back to Daren, "I'm probably the cause." Larry started heading for the ramp of the ship and motioned the armed men to follow him. "See around…buddy." He walked off the ship and out of site with his men in tow.

"I can't believe he still blames you for that." Kevin said.

"It partly is my fault." Daren stared off in the direction Larry had left. "But there was no right decision in that situation either. I just wish we had known then about the abilities dinosaurs possessed like we do now. We could have prevented the situation from ever occurring." Daren said in a sorrowful tone.

"You know just as well as I do that stuff was bound to happen that you nor her were prepared for." Kevin pointed out.

"Sorry to interrupt, but what was all that about?" Sam asked. "That guy kind of creeps me out."

"Long story." Both Kevin and Daren said.

"We've got time. You can tell us while we get the carnivores back in their places." Jessica said while wiping the tears from her eyes.

"You still want to work for us even after all of this?" Kevin raised an eyebrow which didn't go unnoticed by Daren.

"Yes. We aren't going to let some jerk with a grudge ruin the opportunity of a life-time for us. Besides I'm pretty curious in finding out what these abilities of dinosaurs are that you were talking about." Sam said. Jessica nodded in agreement. "Is that going to be a problem?" Sam asked jokingly while putting her hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow. Daren noticed this too.

"Seriously! Why can't I do that?" Daren complained as he returned to his struggle to raise one eyebrow as he had tried to do earlier. He only succeeded in extracting giggles from the girls and sighs from Kevin as they watched the many faces he made in his failed attempts.