Chapter 2

"Okay, Grape, let's try this again," Owen said as he stood in the temporary outdoor paddock with the two young raptors. "I know you can do this."

He held out a treat, shaking it a bit to get the raptor's attention before walking over and holding it up above a box on the ground. The task was for Grape to walk up a ramp and then across a log that was suspended a few inches off the ground to the box. It wasn't a difficult task, all things considered. And definitely one that the raptor should have the coordination and ability to do on her own. However, Grape had always been a little bit hesitant about walking over the suspended log and Owen wasn't quite sure why. While Olive would just dart across in a second, Grape would get up to it, and then pause. Today, Owen had been carefully guiding Grape across it, hoping to build up her confidence. She'd done it a few times, but always with him holding the treat just in front of her as a lure. This time, he was hoping she'd do it on her own.

"Let's go, Grape," he encouraged her. She was still just standing on the ground, having yet to move. At the words, she let out a little chirp, looking up at him and then over at the treat and then back to him.

"You know how to do this. Just climb up and you'll get it." Owen pointed to the ramp. "Let's go."

Olive had been off to the side, mostly ignoring them. She'd already done the task a few times, and so Owen had been trying to work solely with Grape, as much as that was possible. However, as Grape chirped again, Olive wandered over, joining in. Owen watched as the two appeared to have a conversation, their chirps getting increasingly heated.

"Grape, this is the last drill of the day. Let's just get it over with," he interrupted them. "Up you go." Once again, he pointed at the ramp, and once again Grape ignored him. "Last chance," he told her. "If you don't do it, then Olive will get the treat."

At those words, Olive spun around, racing towards the ramp. Grape immediately chased after her sister, barreling into her, and knocking her off the ramp.

"Whoa, girls," he said, although he didn't try to intervene. No one was hurt, and Olive was already back on her feet. Grape was now standing on the ramp, squawking at her sister. Olive started up the ramp again, causing Grape to move up it, as she backed away from her sister.

Owen watched, wondering what they would do when Grape got to the top. Was she going to race at Olive again? Or would Olive try to get past Grape, so she could get across the log first?

At that moment, Grape suddenly seemed to realize what was happening as the ground leveled out below her, as she was now standing on top of the first box. She looked over at Owen, and then at Olive and then focused on the log.

"C'mon, Grape," Owen encouraged. "Just a few steps across it. You can do it."

Olive had used Grape's distraction to get onto the box as well, and was now trying to push past her sister so she could get to the log first. Grape, however, clearly didn't want her sister to get her treat. She took a couple of steps forward, standing at the end of the log, before tentatively stepping onto it.

"Good job," Owen praised. "You're almost there."

Hesitantly, Grape put one foot forward, and then the other. Then she took another step. And then, before she could take a third, Olive grew impatient, and raced forward, barreling straight into Grape. Grape flailed for a moment, before tumbling the few inches to the ground. For a second, Owen was stunned, and then he felt a tug, and looked down to see that Olive was trying to pull the treat from his grasp.

"Whoa, Olive, what did you do that for?" he chastised her, trying to pull the treat away. "That wasn't nice." He looked over at Grape, who was picking herself up off the ground, squawking indignantly. "Are you okay, Grape?"

Olive just kept her grip on the treat, yanking on it as she tried to get it free. Giving up, Owen let go, instead turning to Grape and crouching down a bit. He reached into his treat bag and pulled out another. "Here, Grape," he offered it to the other raptor. "That was a really good try. I'm really proud of you."

Grape continued to chitter, throwing snarls towards her sister.

"Yeah, I agree, what Olive did wasn't nice," Owen said. "But you can still have a treat." He wiggled it, hoping to distract her. For a moment, he thought it wasn't going to work as she continued to chirp angrily, before she finally turned her attention fully to him stepping forward and accepting it. He waited until she'd finished eating it, before standing back up.

"Okay, girls, that's all for today," he told them. "I've got some other work to do. Do you want to stay out here a bit longer?" The two of them were ignoring him. Olive had hopped off the box she'd been standing on and was now attacking a rubber ball, and Grape had wandered away. Both of them, however, were as far from the entrance as they could get, which was a feat considering how small their temporary paddock was.

"Okay, I'll take that as a yes," he said. He gathered up the few items he'd brought in for their training, before moving towards the exit. Because the whole structure was temporary, they didn't have the double gated entry system out there, and so he had to make sure both raptors were well distracted before he could slip out.

After he'd closed the gate behind him, he stood there, looking in on them. They were continuing to play, neither paying him any attention. He used the opportunity to just observe them. Unlike Blue, Charlie and Echo's paddock, the temporary one for Grape and Olive didn't have any solid walls, which meant that anyone nearby could watch the raptors. The location of the temporary paddock was also such that people moving from the lab buildings to the main cafeteria area would end up walking relatively close by. More than once, some of them had come a big closer, choosing to watch the raptors for a bit.

This had turned out to be both good and bad. It was good, because it meant that Grape and Olive were getting more exposure to other people, which was important since they were still destined to become an attraction over on Nublar. However, it was bad in that it often made his exercises with them more difficult, as they'd get distracted by someone passing by, or a random noise. The paddock he was losing confidence in his ability to get built had been designed to help him with both of these issues. It wasn't going to be solidly closed in, but it was going to have three solid walls that would provide a bit of privacy, with just the fourth wall being more open so that he could still have people come by and act as an audience.

It had been three days since his meeting with Kathy, and he was no closer to knowing if the paddock was ever going to get a go-ahead. Three days in which he'd alternated between venting to Claire and asking her to look and see if she'd seen anything new about construction plans. He was now counting down the days until Claire was coming over for a visit. He both wanted to witness her meeting with Kathy and also be as far away as possible when it finally happened.

Immediately after he'd had his conversation with Kathy—although conversation made it sound a lot more pleasant than it was—he had texted Claire the single line "I was right." He hadn't had to wait long for a reply, Claire quickly sending a question mark, before a second message of "Uh oh. What happened?"

Owen hadn't wanted to get into it then, so he'd just told her he'd tell her later and for her to let him know the moment she had time. She'd like the message and then followed up with a simple, "I love you."

The rest of that day he'd spent trying to distract himself, focusing on trying to catch up on everything that had happened since he'd been gone. He knew if he let himself have too much time to think, he'd probably get angry and do something stupid, like storm into Kathy's office.

In the couple of days since, he had managed to get a little calmer about everything, but only a little. He had officially ruled out the compys habitat as possible for the raptors, as it was just too small. As he'd told Claire, with the amount of work he'd need to do to feel comfortable using it, they might as well just build the paddock he'd asked for. Besides, he'd also reminded her, these won't be the last dinosaurs that will need an outdoor paddock here. It'd be good to have another space. He was pretty sure he'd convinced Claire, although she had reminded him (more than once) that she wasn't the one who needed the convincing.

Yesterday, he'd been able to mostly put it out of his mind, because it had been a whirlwind of activity as he and Barry had tried to work out a new plan for Grape and Olive, before Barry had headed left for his vacation. Barry had actually offered to hang around a bit longer, but Owen had told him to go. Maybe, if Barry was lucky, Owen would have a solution by the time he got back.

Of course, for that to come true, Owen was probably going to have to actually interact with Kathy again. The one thing he had managed to do successfully the past few days, was avoid her. At first it was because he was worried he'd start yelling the moment he saw her, and then it was because he no longer was sure what he'd say to her. He'd thought about trying to come up with a different solution. That if he could come up with something new, he could bring that to her. But so far, he was stuck. The best solution, in his opinion, was to just do what they'd initially planned. And he still didn't have a good understanding of why Kathy was saying no. She hadn't even had a different plan for the site. She just said that everything was being looked at. It left him mostly just feeling lost. He liked to take action, and he hated being stuck waiting on others.

A chirp brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked through the fence to see that Grape was looking up at him.

"What do you want, Grape?" he asked.

She let out a couple more chirps, before turning and walking away. After a few steps, she paused, and looked back at him, as if to see that he was still watching. She then started forward again, approaching the ramp from earlier. He watched as she confidently walked up it, stopping on top of the box. Again, she looked back at him, this time letting out a couple more chirps.

"I'm still watching," he reassured her.

Then, to his surprise, she took a tentative step out onto the log. He stayed quiet, not wanting to spook her. Her crossing wasn't particularly confident (and was definitely not fast) but hesitantly she made it, letting out an excited squeal when she stepped off the log onto the second box.

"Grape!" he exclaimed. "You did it!" Owen glanced around, wondering if anyone else had seen it. The one guard (Cam) who had been hanging out by the paddock as he'd worked met his gaze. "Did you see that, Cam?"

"I did, way to go, Grape," Cam said. Grape let out a few more excited chirps, almost dancing in place in her excitement.

"I hope we got that on tape," Owen said, looking over at where there was a security camera attached to one of the nearby buildings.

"I'll ask James to pull the clip for you," Cam replied.

"Thanks," Owen said. He returned his attention back to Grape. "I think that deserves a treat. Would you like one?"

Grape quickly scurried down the ramp from the box she was on, heading straight towards him at the words. Olive, who Owen had somewhat forgotten about in his excitement, quickly joined her sister, both of them clamouring up at him. Reaching into the treat bag, Owen extracted a couple of treats and handed them over.

Stepping back from the fence, he turned his attention over to Cam. "Is it okay if I leave them outside for a while? I don't want to coop them back up yet, if I don't have to."

"Sure," Cam replied. "I can keep watch. How long are you thinking?"

"Just a few hours," Owen said. "I need to go and do some work with the others for a bit. Actually, if it's possible, until I can sort out an actual outdoor paddock for them, I wonder if this could work as a temporary solution. Not full time, obviously. But I could bring them out in the morning, and they could stay out all day. Not perfect, but better than them spending most of their day inside."

"That I can't comment on," Cam said. "You'll have to run that by Austin. He'll have to see if we have the staffing for that."

"Right," Owen nodded. "I think actually, I'll go do that first."

o-o-o

"Bye," Claire said, waving cheerfully as she left the meeting of the Edmontosaurus group. However, the moment her back was to them, the large smile she'd had pasted across her face slipped away. However, she forced herself to maintain her posture. She managed to wait until she'd finally left the research institute and was heading back across the paths towards the control building to let her shoulders slump.

She wished she felt as enthusiastic as the group had been. That she could share in their excitement, with the launch date creeping closer and closer. But she just couldn't muster it. Part of her wondered if she was just dealing with the struggle of getting over the post vacation lulls, that period when you regret coming back. Except, she had been pretty excited to return. She'd loved the time away, and especially the amount of time she and Owen had been able to be together, but she had also missed work. She'd missed feeling needed and being excited by the challenges it presented.

Although… maybe that was it, she mused. While she'd definitely had a ton of paperwork, emails and other things to catch up on since she'd been back, none of it, so far, had presented any level of challenge. Everything had just been routine. Crossing T's and dotting I's type of stuff. It had been why she had been looking forward to this meeting, because she'd hoped that there she'd find some actual problems. Something that really would require her expertise and take her more than a couple of seconds to solve.

But, while the team had definitely been on pins and needles and were antsy about everything, there really were no big issues. Things were moving along on schedule and everyone knew what they needed to do. All they'd really wanted her for was exactly what Zara had mentioned—just to confirm that they were on the right track. While it was nice to know that they valued her opinion, it also had felt wholly unnecessary, and mostly a waste of her time (not that she could or would ever tell them that).

As they were finishing up when she'd mentioned that she was going over to Sorna in a couple of days to check on a few things, and was there anything she could or should do to help out, there really hadn't been much suggested. They had things under control. In the end, they decided to send the documentary crew that was going to be filming the launch over with her, so the crew could scout out the area and have a better idea of what equipment they'd need to bring and what kind of shots they'd want to get. While yes, the crew would need an escort and couldn't be left unattended on Sorna, it wasn't really a task that required her. Still, she'd accepted, as at least then she'd have something more specific to do on her trip, besides meeting Kathy.

As Claire continued along the path, she pulled out her phone to check her notifications. Maybe something had happened that would require her attention. An email or text or something. But, as she unlocked it and started skimming through the messages, nothing urgent jumped out. It was mostly just updates about various projects. Projects that she was kept in the loop on, but not ones she had any day to day responsibilities for.

Sighing, she tucked her phone away. There was nothing there that couldn't wait until she was back at the office. She should try to enjoy the walk back instead. It was a beautiful August day, warm but not stifling, with a nice breeze. The type of day she used to wish she could be outside in, instead of cooped up in meetings. So why wasn't she enjoying it now that she could?

Grumbling, Claire told herself to knock it off. To get out of her head and just be for a bit. To focus on the benefits. And that there were benefits to the changing nature of her job. With Zara taking on more responsibility, there was going to be more time available for Claire to take on new projects. What she needed was to just figure out how she wanted to use that time. To find something that really did need her knowledge and expertise. Sure, the Edmontosaurus project had been her idea, and she would continue to be involved with it, but they didn't need her to keep it going. She just needed to figure out something that did.

When she finally started up the steps to the control building, she couldn't help but feel a bit relieved. She knew when she walked through those doors, there would be multiple people wanting a few minutes of her time. While their requests would be easily dealt with, the volume of them would keep her busy and out of her head for a bit. It would be a nice distraction.

As she pulled open the door, she ran directly into Zara who was on her way out.

"Whoa," Claire said, coming up short, stepping back to hold the door open so Zara could leave.

"There you are," Zara just exclaimed in response, skidding to a halt. "I was just coming to find you. We need you down in control." She turned around, heading back into the building. Claire immediately followed after her.

"Control? What for?" Claire asked. "Did something happen?" She almost felt guilty at the little bit of glee that shot through her at the thought.

"Yeah. It's one of the Apatosaurus," Zara said, punching the down button for the elevator repeatedly. "It collapsed."

"Was anyone hurt?" The Apatosaurus were some of the largest dinosaurs at Jurassic World. While they were herbivores, their sheer size made them deadly.

"No, it's not one of the adults. It's the young one." Zara answered as they stepped into the elevator. "The one from Sorna."

"I thought that one was at the petting zoo."

"It was," Zara confirmed. "That's where it collapsed."

"Shit," Claire couldn't help but swear. It was bad enough when dinosaurs got sick out in their paddocks. But at the petting zoo? Where there had probably been a ton of kids and families around?

"Exactly," Zara nodded.

The elevator doors opened and the two of them stepped out into the control room. As normal, it was abuzz with energy, although there was clearly a heightened sense of emergency.

"Oh, thank god," Lowery exclaimed, having looked up and spotted them.

"Fill me in," Claire demanded, striding directly to his side. As he started to explain the situation, Claire felt herself finally relaxing. It was true that most of the challenges she dealt with these days were easy, but it was also true that there were still a lot of challenges. There would always be something else unexpected around the next corner. She just needed to remember that.

o-o-o

Sitting at his desk, Owen tried to keep his attention on his phone. He was dialed into a call with the Wild Raptor Research group that was still primarily based over on Nublar. Because Sorna's internet was still rather shaky, the call was audio only, and Owen found it tough to stay focused. There was nothing specific for him to look at to follow along with, nor was there anyone sitting with him that would make him feel like he needed to at least appear to be paying attention. Instead, he was alone in his office and his mind was on everything but the phone call.

Tomorrow Claire would be coming over and would finally meet Kathy face to face. He'd done his best to continue to avoid her, but it wasn't completely possible, and none of his interactions had gotten any better. He knew that Claire was expecting that she'd have no problems with Kathy, but he wasn't so sure. And he was wishing he could be a fly on the wall when they actually met. As it was, he and Zia (who was more circumspect about Kathy and her role than he was, but also wasn't entirely thrilled by her), were waiting eagerly for lunch tomorrow when they could grill Claire on how the meeting went.

"Owen, do you agree that's a good next step?... Owen?"

"Um, doing what?" Owen had no clue what they were talking about. In fact, he wasn't sure how long he'd zoned out for, and how much he'd missed.

"That we need to actually go out there," Muhammad (the lead researcher) explained. "That we're reaching the limits of what we can learn without actual observation."

"Yeah, I agree with that," Owen said. "Do you have some proposals on how you want to go about it?"

"We've got a few ideas. The first being just a scouting mission, where we go out to some of the locations we've seen that they visit frequently. Another is to look into setting up a location where we can observe from."

"Building something?" he clarified.

"Well, not a building or something like that. That'd be too disruptive."

"Yeah, we can't do that. Construction is also hard enough to do right here at the main compound. But, I think what's more important, is that we can't move on any plans without bringing in the ACU. Even though I don't go into the paddock with Blue and the others, there is still always security around when we train them. There's no way we can send anyone out without an ACU team."

"Right," Muhammad agreed. "You've got connections there, right? You could sort that out?"

"Well," Owen started, before pausing.

He did have some connections — he was more friendly with the ACU than anyone else on Sorna. However, while he was excited to be involved in the wild raptors project, he also didn't have much time for it. He'd been hoping that he could more just hear about what was happening and be kept in the loop. Organizing security or planning out observation studies was not what he wanted to do. Nor what he had time to do. But, he'd also agreed to be the head of the project, which meant that he was the person that everyone came to in order to get final decisions made. He was starting to realize just how much work being in that position could be. Making decisions had always seemed easy, but now he was realizing just how much he needed to know about what everyone else knew.

"I do, but I think we need to bring them in earlier. We'll need to balance out their requirements against what the goals of the project are. It won't be as simple as we tell them what we want and they just make it work. They have only so much capacity too, and we may need to bring more of them over for this project, depending on how long it may last."

There was silence after Owen finished, no one speaking up. But he knew what was happening. That no one wanted to speak up, because they didn't want to be given more responsibility. Still, Owen wasn't going to let it all end up on his plate.

"Shahab, this is your area, right?" Owen asked, calling out another of the researchers who was on the call.

"Security?" Shahab answered hesitantly. "I haven't worked with the ACU before."

"Not security," Owen replied. "Field research."

"Oh, that. Yeah, that's me."

"Great, then let's make you responsible for putting together a team to come up with a plan on what research should happen. I'll connect you to Austin, he's the head of the ACU here. I'm sure he can delegate someone to join your team, or maybe even do so himself. Do you think you can come back next week with a proposal?"

There was a few seconds of silence (likely stunned silence, if Owen had to guess), before Shahab spoke up. "Yeah, I suppose I can do that."

"Okay, then that's set. What else is on the agenda for today?"

"Um, that was the last item," Muhammad said.

"Well, then I guess we can end it here," Owen replied. He knew he should probably ask if anyone had anything else they wanted to bring up, but honestly, he didn't care (nor did he want to end up stuck on the call for longer). "Same time next week?"

There was a random overlap of agreements.

"Great, I'll talk to you then," he said, before quickly hitting the end call button. Sinking back in his chair, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Why had he wanted this job again? Surely he could've found a way to be kept up-to-date without having to actually be responsible for anything.

Poor Claire and Owen. Both so busy with work. Owen realizing he may have gotten himself in a bit overhead, and Claire just wanting to be challenged. Although, really not as bad as things could be (personally, I find it much worse when work is boring). Anyway, as always, open to any thoughts you have to share.

I am still hoping to post next Thursday, but I'll also be travelling and so it may end up being Friday, depending on how things work out. See ya then.