Owen wasn't at the control room when Alan and Ian arrived. Alan didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved. In all honesty, he wasn't ready for this. Maybe he never would be. Not that it would stop him, but having a little more time to prepare couldn't go amiss.
"Owen and Barry went looking for the uncontained raptor," Lowery, the man who seemed to be in charge of the control room told them when they asked. "Of the park's four raptors, three were killed in the Indominous Rex incident. The fourth one, Blue, has been AWOL since helping the T-Rex and the mosasaurus kill the Indominous. She responds to Owen, even obeys him to an extent, so Owen's gone to try to bring her in alive."
"Right. Well, it's imperative that we speak with Mr. Grady as soon as possible," Ian said. "The one raptor and the T-Rex are the only predators unaccounted for?"
"Oh, the rex is accounted for. She's not in her paddock, but we know where she is. We're keeping close tabs on her until we can bring her in. There are still some pterosaurs and dimorphodons on the loose. Nine pterosaurs and eighteen dimorphodons. Owen's ordered live ammo to be used on them, so we've made pretty good progress taking them down. But they're at a big disadvantage in wooded areas like where Owen and Barry are searching right now, so they're not a major issue for the moment. Especially not since it's Owen. The next one that attacks him'll probably get a roundhouse kick to the head. Since, you know, Owen's like the Chuck Norris of Jurassic World."
Alan raised an amused eyebrow at this assessment of his son. Ian muttered something about Lowery having a man-crush, under his breath so Lowery couldn't hear him. Alan barely even caught it.
"Do you know when they'll be back?" Alan asked.
"Probably not until the sun's about to set if I don't call him in sooner," Lowery said. "Owen wants to find his raptor, and until it's found and either killed or captured, we'll be working with one hand tied behind our back on the reclamation effort. Owen put a couple people on roofs with long scope rifles to take out any flyers they can, but that's all we feel safe doing until the raptor's brought in. Except feeding the non-free range animals, but that's done for the day."
"You said you can call him in sooner. You mean in case the T-rex starts heading his way?" Alan asked.
"Yep. See the map up there. That red dot is the rex. The white ones all the way over there are Owen and Barry. The others white dots are our snipers on the roofs. Well, they're not really snipers, except one, who was in the army, but they're acting as snipers now. Pretty cool, huh?"
Alan looked at Ian who he could see evaluating this set up in his mind.
"Kid knows his stuff," Ian finally decided. "Good call, having them use live ammo on the flyers."
"He ticked a lot of people off with that, but Owen wouldn't back down," Lowery commented.
"A good thing too. Any idea what a nightmare it would be for you folks if those things lived long enough to learn to avoid people with guns?" Malcolm asked. "You'd never reopen."
"Owen said something like that."
"Kid was right."
Alan felt a surge of pride for his son's instincts. Even if he worked with velociraptors, it looked like he had a good head on his shoulders. He had to, to have worked with them this long and not get eaten, Alan guessed, but that pride was still there.
"Would it be acceptable for us to go out and meet Owen and Barry, if we were armed?" Alan asked.
Ian shot him a look.
"If there's only one raptor unaccounted for, chances are low that it will find us before we meet up with Owen," Alan reasoned. "And as long as we're not out in the open, the pterosaurs and dimorphodons won't be a problem."
"In theory, no, but things never go how you expect them to," Malcolm cautioned.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Alan said.
Ian peered at him intently and seemed to read the situation. Alan didn't want to have his reunion with his son in front of such a big audience. And here, at the operations building, was where most of the thirty people who'd been flown back into the park were congregated.
"Well, as I said, it is imperative that we speak to Owen as soon as possible," Ian said, "And not over a radio, preferably. So, Dr. Grant's question stands. Would it be acceptable for us to arm up and head out to meet him?"
"Uh, I guess. It's no more dangerous than what Owen and Barry are doing, and you guys are the ones with the most experience with this kind of stuff," Lowery decided. "Let me just let Owen and Barry know you're coming."
When Lowery tried to raise Owen and Barry, however, all he could get on the radio was static.
"Of course. Communications failure. That's how it always starts," Ian muttered.
Alan gave him a dark look. "If that's how it always starts then isn't that too predictable to be chaos?"
Malcolm opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again scowling when he was unable to come up with a ready retort.
"We must be due for a storm," Lowery said. "Tropical thunder storms play merry hell with all wireless and radio reception on the island. We've weathered hundreds of them since the park opened and it wasn't lack of communication that caused the Indominous Incident."
"Can you pull up the weather? See when the storm's scheduled to hit?" Alan asked.
Lowery obeyed, stating, "We might not have conclusive data. Small thunder storms pass through here all the time, this being a rain forest and all. But, oh, there we go. Looks like we've got a good hour or two before it starts."
"And it's messing up your communications already?" Ian asked.
"Magnetism, man. Charged particles are already in the atmosphere, getting worked up. You're a doctor, shouldn't you know this?"
"Weather has nothing to do with mathematics except to provide a perfect example of chaos theory in that weather cannot be accurately predicted –"
"Oh yes it can-"
"For more than a few days in advance. Men have been trying for centuries, but still haven't managed. Computers were originally invented to try to predict the weather, but fail just as spectacularly as the almanac, which –"
"I'm going to take a gun and go out to meet Owen," Alan said, cutting off what would have become a very, very long rant on chaos. "He needs to know about the storm coming. You should bring in your guys on the roofs too. If you can call them in."
Ian followed him after trading a few parting shots with Lowery. Then they armed up and headed toward Owen's bungalow, using a tourist map that Lowery marked for them with a few service paths that were only for employee use, thus were left off of the map for tourists. The route that he marked for them, he assured them, was the one that was most likely to intersect with Owen and Barry's path, assuming they were doing what Owen said they were and checking the raptor enclosure, then going to Owen's bungalow. And one of the others at the control room assured them that they weren't likely to deviate from that plan, unless something happened. Owen was a dependable kind of guy who did what he said he was going to.
"I'd feel better if we were driving," Ian said, following just behind Alan, and scanning everything as they passed, watching for the loose raptor.
"Raptors can outrun a car on these winding roads. It wouldn't make much difference," Alan said.
"It would be a little protection from it, at the least. So, what do you think?"
"Of what? Your car idea?" Alan asked.
"No. What do you think of your son so far?"
Alan glanced at him sideways for a brief second before going back to scanning their surroundings. "He seems like a good man."
"I think so too. You can be proud of him at least," Ian said.
"No," Alan said bitterly. "I don't think I have the right to be proud of him. I didn't contribute to him becoming a good man. It's not my place to take credit for his accomplishments."
"Well, that's a very selfless and noble way to think, but also a very wrong way to think," Ian said. "Even if he grew up without you, he's still your son, and now that you both know it, you need to be proud of him. He might not need your approval, but there's still a part of every kid that wants their mom and dad to be proud of them."
"That's assuming he wants anything to do with me," Alan said.
"He will."
"And you figure that how?"
"Everything we know about him points to him being a rational, level-headed, open minded young man who goes out of his way to do the right thing," Ian said. "There's no way someone like that won't at least hear you out. And there's no way he's not going to feel something about the fact that you dropped everything and came down to find him the moment you learned about him."
When Ian put it like that it was far too easy to hope that this might go well. But a certain fact remained.
"You've never met his mother. I have a pretty good idea what she's spent his whole life telling him about – ah!"
The attack came from above. Above. The raptor had climbed up into a bloody tree! In its drop, it took Alan and Ian both down.
Alan saw the gun skitter out of Ian's hands, but he'd managed to hold onto his own. He quickly rose to one knee and aimed, but the raptor was too fast, and seemed to know exactly what guns did. Her tail whipped around, knocking Alan's aim off, then she darted in and pretty much tackled it out of his grip.
Ian was swearing a blue streak as he got back to his feet. He started to go for his gun, but a growl from the raptor stopped him. Alan froze, assessing the raptor in front of them, trying to gage its next movements.
The raptor, Blue, didn't attack or go for the kill, even though she had the clear advantage. She did move closer to Alan as he got back to his feet. Keen intelligence glittered in her eyes as she got closer, and she cocked her head from side to side, sniffing delicately, almost like a cat.
Ian moved toward the gun again, but Blue growled once more, stopping him. Satisfied, when he froze, she turned her attention back to Alan and sniffed him again. Then she started barking. Or doing the raptor equivalent of barking. At Alan.
Alan stared, wondering what was going on. He realized at the exact moment Ian seemed to.
"Alan. I think she knows. I think she can smell that you have much of the same genetic makeup as Owen."
"I think so too," Alan said. He was careful to keep his voice low and calm.
He had heard about animals, dogs and cats in particular, being able to single out relatives of their owners. There were too many instances to count when an animal would latch on to their owner's sibling, parent, or child after their owner died, even if it never met their owner's relative before. They just knew, presumably because they could smell it on them.
Blue barked at Alan again and appeared to grow frustrated when she didn't get the response she was looking for. She bared her teeth at Alan, who took a step back.
Then, before Alan could figure out his next move, he appeared.
"Whoa! Whoa! Blue! Blue, right here! Eyes on me!"
Blue's head snapped up so fast, Alan was surprised she didn't get whiplash as she spun toward the man who'd just sprinted out of the jungle. She immediately lost interest in Alan and leapt toward the newcomer, stopping only a few feet away to bark at him.
"Hey Blue. Atta girl. That's my girl. Say, did you miss me?" Owen asked.
Blue cawed at him in answer.
"Yeah, I missed you too. Here, see what I've got for you. Ready? Catch." Owen tossed a large cut of meat into the air, at Blue, but Blue ignored it. Instead, she darted forward toward Owen, and for a horrible second, Alan thought she was going to kill him.
But Blue stopped short, regarding the hand that Owen had quickly stretched out again toward her, his palm facing her in a stopping motion. Then, very gently, Blue stretched her neck forward, touching her snout against Owen's hand.
Alan heard a sharp intake of breath from Ian beside him. By the time that noise was over though, so was the moment. Blue had backed away and circled around to retrieve the piece of meat from where it landed. While she was distracted by the meat, Owen moved so that he stood between the two doctors and the raptor, never taking his eyes off the predator.
And Alan, well, he never took his eyes off Owen. His mind went back briefly to the first time he'd seen a living triceratops, the dinosaur that had been his favorite as a child. He remembered thinking that she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, but she didn't even come close to the sight before him now. The first time he'd laid eyes on his son.