Chapter 4

"Oh my god, Claire," Owen said, staring at the document on his computer screen.

"It's not that big of a deal," Claire replied, which made him wonder if she was looking at the same thing he was.

"Not that big of a deal," Owen repeated. "Have you looked at this? Her plans are massive. We'd need to double the size of the whole compound to fit everything in."

"And?"

"What do you mean 'and?' You've been the one saying forever that we were limited by size."

"And you're the one who's wanted it to be bigger."

She was right about that, not that Owen was going to admit it, not now. Not with Kathy's future expansion plans for Sorna staring back at him.

"That was before we found the wild raptors."

"What do they have to do with anything?"

"When I–I mean, previous discussions have all been based on the idea, the belief, that the only dinosaurs on the island were the ones here. But now we know there are wild ones. If we want to keep them wild…"

"What does making the area bigger have to do with that? You guys have been there for a few years now. It hasn't caused any issues yet. They haven't shown up. It doesn't seem to be affecting them."

"Right, but the key word there is yet. We've been lucky so far. And probably partly because of our size. The bigger we get, the more noise, the more construction, the more, well, everything, the less likely we'll stay lucky. We don't want them to come by. We don't want them to realize we're here."

When he paused, Claire didn't say anything immediately, but Owen waited. When another moment passed without her replying, he frowned, before listening closer, suddenly realizing he could hear typing.

"Are you multitasking?" he asked. "Claire, this is important."

"Sorry," she replied, the typing stopping. "I'm just… it's just the damn protestors. I'm still trying to figure everything out."

Owen frowned. "Are there new problems? I thought your press conference cleared it all up?"

"I wish," she scoffed. "No, we're still getting a ton of media inquiries. And questions are now happening by guests and all over our social media, and on review sites. It's… I don't know what it is, exactly. But… I'm still just trying… Something is…" she trailed off and sighed.

"Not right?" he supplied.

"Yeah. I mean, of course it's not great with protestors and the hit we're taking from it, which was mostly expected. And the timing super sucks with the launch of the Edmontosaurus project next week, but… I don't know what it is. Something about it is bothering me, and I'm just trying to figure out what it is."

"I would think the whole thing would be bothering you," he offered.

"That, too," she agreed. "I just feel like I'm missing something. But, distract me. What's your issue with her plans? I thought you'd be happy that Kathy's finally made some decisions. There's a spot for Grape and Olive's paddock. Getting this approved means they'll be able to start on construction for it."

"Yeah, that part I am happy about," Owen conceded. He scrolled through the document again, finding the page that had the layout drawn on it. "Although I'd like to point out that her suggested location is like 20 feet away from where we were going to build it before. She really couldn't have just let us build it?" He knew he sounded bitter, but he didn't care. He was bitter.

"What's your issue with the rest of it?" Claire asked instead, choosing not to take his bait (which he had to admit was probably wise).

"Mainly with how big it is," he repeated. "I thought the goal was for this place to be about research. To focus on InGen and the Research Institute. But looking at this, there's like eight new paddocks planned. And new housing. And labs. And offices. It's practically a whole new Jurassic World."

"Not really," she said. "There won't be any guests, for starters."

"And thank god for that," he said. "But… are there big expansion plans on Nublar? Where are all these dinosaurs going to go? I thought you said there were capacity issues there?"

"There are," she agreed. "But dinosaurs do die, Owen. I mean, that's the whole reason behind the compys, remember? We need replacements."

"Replacements just sounds so… cold," he said.

"You know what I mean."

"I guess I'm confused as to what the purpose of this place will be. I'll admit there are benefits to there being more than just my team here. And I understand the logic behind moving some of the new species development here. But I don't get this plan. It's not just that it's big it's… did you look at the layout? Everything's close together. Right now, my girls are closer than I'd like to the rest of the compound. But we make do. But the field that separates them? That'll be gone. I mean, there'll be a small spot for a helicopter landing area, but most of it'll be developed. That's going to put the girls right beside buildings and construction and noise. At that point, we might as well be back on Nublar. Actually, we may be better there, because there isn't anything else near their paddock there."

"Except that their paddock was like a quarter the size."

"Right. But the size won't help if there is development on all sides."

"Owen, I really think you're stressing out for no reason," Claire said. "This is a long term plan. This is looking 5 or 10 years down the line. Not what will be built starting tomorrow. It's looking at where we want to eventually get to."

"The raptors will still be alive in 5 or 10 years," Owen pointed out, although even as he said it, he was questioning himself.

They didn't actually know for sure what the lifespans were. It was mostly based on some educated guesswork from the raptors who'd been found after Jurassic Park. But captivity didn't always have the same effects. For some animals, they lived much longer, while for others it was the reverse. All the raptors that had died of natural causes since the original Jurassic Park had lived at least part of their lives completely on their own. Blue, Charlie and Echo were actually probably the ones who'd spent the longest in captivity.

"Ignore phases two and three of the report," Claire's comment brought him out of his thoughts. "Long term planning is always a bit of a shot in the dark. It's not a sure thing, but it's giving us something to talk about and start to potentially plan towards. Focus just on what she wants for phase one. There really shouldn't be anything much there for you to be upset about. It's mainly just the two paddocks and some additional housing."

"And some more offices," he pointed out, scanning over the images.

"Right, but all of that helps you. The paddock for Grape and Olive. And the extra housing and offices is so that finally some of the wild raptor team members can relocate over there."

Why'd she have to be so reasonable?

"I know you're right but–"

"But you just want a reason to be able to keep complaining about Kathy," Claire answered for him. "I told you she's fine. You'd get along with her if you gave her the chance."

For a moment, Owen was tempted to tell Claire about the conversation he'd had with Kathy the afternoon after she'd left. So far, he'd managed to keep his mouth shut, because he wasn't really sure how she'd react to knowing that Kathy had asked him about their relationship. Or the comments she'd made. And he still wasn't sure if he was reading too much into it, but asking Claire that seemed like the wrong move. He hadn't even told Zia about it.

"Ugh," is all he said instead.

"Hey, before I forget, I have some good news," Claire offered.

"Oh?"

"The Edmontosaurus launch. I'm coming back over for it. So I'll see you next week."

"Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and you'll be able to stay for your whole visit."

"Don't jinx it," Claire said, although she laughed. "But let's hope so."

o-o-o

Claire wished her biggest issue right now was how big Kathy wanted to make the Sorna compound. She'd love for that to be the problem she needed to deal with. But as she hung up with Owen and she returned her focus to her laptop because unfortunately for her, it wasn't.

It had been two days since the protestors had been cleared out of the ferry terminals, and they hadn't made another peep—yet. But she really thought there should be an emphasis on the yet. She was sure they weren't done. So far, she hadn't been able to convince anyone else. Everyone else thought it was probably a one and done event. And that they could all move on now.

The only other people who didn't want to drop it, was the media. They were the one group she wished would let it go. Of course, they fact that they hadn't had helped her in her own research, as they also dug into this new group. The group was, ironically, calling itself the DPG - the Dinosaur Protection Group. Except, instead of focusing on protecting the dinosaurs, their focus was on protecting people from the dinosaurs.

She'd known from the moment she'd seen their banners and the questions they were raising, that this wasn't going to be simple to deal with. It was the train wreck phenomenon. People couldn't look away when death was mentioned, especially if there was a chance it had been bloody and gruesome. And since they were blaming the dinosaurs, everyone's imagination had been running wild.

Claire had gone out and made a statement that day. She'd even attempted to answer questions, although that hadn't gone particularly well. There had been too many potential mines and so she had ended up repeating that she had no comment or no information to share in response to many of them.

Then, as if that hadn't been enough, some of the families who had ACU members who had tragically died in some of the previous incidents, had decided to go public. Technically, they couldn't give any details, as they had signed NDAs as part of their settlements over the deaths. But, they didn't have to actually say anything specific. Just their presence and their admittance that they had family members who had worked at Jurassic World and who had died while working there was enough.

The only good part of her press conference was that her presence had been enough to get the group of protestors to finally concede and go away. That had seemed like a win at first. Claire no longer thought it was, though. She believed that that had been their plan. That they just needed to get her out in front of the press. To get an official acknowledgement from Jurassic World about what they were saying. That once they had got that, that would have been enough for their first "outing." Which made her think there was going to be more. She just didn't know what, or when. And the whole thing had her on edge.

It didn't help that there really wasn't much information about the group. They now had a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, but those had popped up after the protest, once they seemed ready for others to join in. But they had to have been organizing somewhere else beforehand. She just couldn't figure out where. Maybe Telegram or Signal or one of the other encrypted platforms people seemed to use these days. But how had they found each other? It wasn't like it had been just five people. No, it was too organized, too big.

Which also raised another question—how were they funded? Their protest was not cheap. They had all had to get themselves to Costa Rica, to start. And, from the information the media had gathered about the group, none of them were from there. That meant international flights and travel. Which also meant hotels. And not just that, they'd all had tickets for the Jurassic World ferry, which meant they had all bought at least a day pass to the park (also not cheap). How had they managed? The whole operation, Claire had worked out, had easily cost them over one hundred thousand, minimum.

There was one other part that was bugging her most of all. The part she hadn't admitted to anyone, partly because she didn't want anyone to validate what she was thinking. If she'd thought they'd tell her she was crazy, maybe she would've raised it. She'd like to be told that, but she was pretty sure she wasn't being.

The thing was, their banners, their questions? How had they known to ask them? How had they known the number of deaths? Everything they had done was too… accurate, for lack of a better word. They knew too much. Jurassic World had done a masterful job of keeping the majority of the details about the Indominus and the Indoraptors quiet. All incidents, really. Those hadn't been the only ones over the years, just the biggest. All employees involved, all settlements that had happened, everything had been wrapped up in NDAs and other legal wrangling. It wasn't public knowledge, on purpose.

Even the whole thing at Lockwood Estate, with the kidnapped raptors, they'd been able to be kept under wraps. So how did these people know about everything?

If it had just been the numbers, maybe Claire could pass it off as they were just making a lucky guess. After all, it was not really that unexpected that in a place such as Jurassic World, with the history from Jurassic Park, and the fact that the animals in question were gigantic and could kill without meaning to, deaths had happened. It wasn't an entirely rare occurrence at regular zoos and big game parks.

No, the thing was, Claire had been following all their social media accounts. She'd dug into the conversations, looking at the profiles of those who followed, or liked or retweeted. She read all the comments she could. She had tried to find connections. To try to unlock who was actually part of the group, and who was just joining in now. She hadn't been very successful in any of that, but what she had found were what she was calling (to herself, anyway) breadcrumbs. Little bits of info that would get dropped into conversations. It would look organic, and if you didn't know the truth, if you were just one of the many people just finding these accounts and following now, you wouldn't know if it was someone speculating, telling a real story, or making something up on purpose. Which she was sure was the whole point. They wanted to keep people on their toes, to question everything.

The thing was, she did know what had happened during the past events. She had been involved firsthand in all of them. And so while others may read the stories and odd comments and just dismiss them, they were all too real for her. Which led her back to her biggest concern—how did they know so much? Who was involved? Who could've told them?

There weren't a lot of people who knew what had actually happened during each event. Her first thought had been the family of someone who had died. That seemed the most logical. Except, the family of those who had died would no longer have any information from the park. They wouldn't have known about incidents that happened after. Even if they had friends who had remained at the park, it still didn't seem like a close enough connection.

The previous evening, she'd actually tried to make a list of everyone she thought would know enough, but the list hadn't been very long. And a lot of the people on it, she'd immediately dismissed. She knew whoever was sharing the info wasn't herself or Owen. And she would bet her life it wasn't Zara, Zia, Barry, Lowery or Masrani. Or Dr. Holt or Dr. Barnes or any of the other scientists or veterinarians that had been involved at any level.

In fact, there had only been two names that she'd come up with (okay, sort of three) that would know a lot, but she found it hard to believe it could be any of them. After all, they were either in prison or under house arrest. She was pretty sure their internet use would be monitored, if they had any. No, she was pretty sure it couldn't be one of them. Could it?

o-o-o

Once again, Owen found himself on a conference call with the Wild Raptor team. This time, though, it was more exciting. The call hadn't been scheduled. In fact, he hadn't been expecting to talk to the team for another few days. But, they'd found something.

A couple of the researchers were responsible for poring over all the tracking data that they had been collecting from the few wild raptors they had tagged. While they had been doing so, they'd made a couple of discoveries.

The first discovery Owen didn't consider as big of a deal as the researchers did. It was about how the raptors lived as what they were calling family units. They didn't actually know the biological connections between the raptors, but from the few they had managed to tag, they had noticed that they normally seemed to be tracked as two separate groups. Sometimes, they would all be found in the same place, but that was rare. As they didn't have camera feeds, just location data, at the moment, they were left to speculate as to why they would meet up. Some of the theories so far had been that the raptors were more social or that they may team up for a larger kill. In Owen's opinion, the data seemed to support the second theory more than the first.

However, that wasn't what he was excited about. Well, not exactly. No, the thing that had him and others on the call excited, was the possible implications of that second theory. They had been believing, up until now, that the raptors were the largest animals on the island. Before they had found the wild raptors, that spot had used to be held by the pumas. Owen (and the others) knew that it wouldn't take many raptors to take down a puma. After all, Blue, Charlie and Echo had done so on their first (and only) outing.

So, if the raptors had teamed up for a larger kill, what had they killed? There had to be something else on the island, something they hadn't discovered yet. And, given the species that were known to inhabit Costa Rica and nearby areas, it didn't seem likely that it was just a "regular" wild animal. No, those were all too small.

"Are we really speculating that there are more dinosaur species loose there?" Shahab asked, the question bringing Owen's attention back to the conversation. "I mean, we are, right? And, well… It just seems crazy, doesn't it?"

"Not as crazy as thinking there's some other undiscovered species here," Owen pointed out. "If it's going to be something, a wild dinosaur actually makes more sense than, well, pretty much anything else. As odd as that is to say."

"Wow," Allison stated, a few others on the call chiming in with their own expressions of amazement.

"So, how do we figure out what may be here?" Owen asked, when no one else spoke up.

"I think this goes back to what we were saying last meeting," Muhammad said. "We need to be there. And to go out there. We can't do everything off GPS data. We need some visual information. So either being able to get out there in person, or getting cameras out there, or something. It's unlikely we'll get anything any other way."

"I haven't put together a full proposal yet," Shahab spoke up. "But I've been thinking a lot about trail cams. If we could get a few people out there, we could plant a bunch of them and collect some data that way. Less intrusive than physically being out there and watching, but a way to still get some eyes on what's going on."

"That's a good next step," Owen agreed. "It would also help us have a better idea of where we may want to observe from in the future."

"The thing is…" Shahab started before almost immediately trailing off.

"What?" Owen asked.

"Well, resources. Do we have a budget for this? Because we don't have any trail cams. And the ones we'd want, they aren't cheap."

Fuck. Owen wasn't sure how to answer that. Even worse, as the head of the project, he probably should know the answer. In fact, maybe he had been told the answer, and he just didn't remember. But, he didn't have the time to look it up, as they were waiting for a response right now.

"Make sure you include the costs in the proposal," he went with. That would buy him time to look into it. "Put a couple of levels in. What you think we need at a minimum, what would be good, and what would be best."

"Sure, I can do that," Shahab agreed. "I've been looking at the data to try to map out locations. I'll add that all in."

"Great. We can figure out–"

"Owen!"

He cut himself off, turning to the door as Barry burst into their shared office, looking panicked.

"What?" Owen demanded, already rising from his chair.

"There's something wrong with Grape," Barry said. "You gotta come quick."

"I gotta go," Owen said hurriedly into the phone, not even bothering to listen for any replies before he hung up on them. Barry had already turned around and left, and Owen hurried after him.

"What happened?" Owen asked as he caught up to his friend as Barry was pulling open the doors to the building. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Barry said. "I was over with the girls, when Cam found me. Xavier, I guess, was radioing for help. Was saying something was wrong. I came to find you, since I knew you were in your meeting."

At Barry's words, Owen picked up his pace, the two of them almost running across the yard now, headed for Grape and Olive's temporary outdoor paddock.

As they rounded the final corner around one of the buildings, they found Zia having an argument with three security guys.

"I have to go in," Zia was demanding loudly. "I can't figure out what's wrong from here. You have to let me in."

"It's not safe," Xavier was countering. "Olive won't let you get to Grape. Look at her."

"What's going on?" Owen cut in, as he and Barry skidded to a stop. He looked past them into the paddock. Grape was lying prone on the ground, while Olive was hopping around her, screeching frantically.

"We don't know," Zia answered. "And they won't let me go in to assess her."

"It's not safe," Xavier repeated.

"Because of Olive, I know," Owen interrupted, before it could all be stated again. "But I'm here. I can take care of Olive."

He didn't give them a chance to answer, instead heading straight for the gate. It was only as he was reaching out to unlock it, that he paused momentarily. Dammit, he didn't have any of his gear. Claire was going to kill him. Still, he unlocked it anyway, heading straight into the paddock without another thought.

Olive glanced over at him, but she didn't leave her sister's side.

"Olive, you're going to need to give Zia some space," Owen said as he entered the paddock. He wasn't surprised when he heard Zia following after him. "She needs to see Grape, so she can figure out what's wrong."

Olive just continued to screech, occasionally nudging Grape with her snout, but her sister didn't move.

Owen carefully crossed over to her, making sure she could fully see his movements, so he wouldn't surprise her. The last thing he needed was her turning around and attacking him. And his best bet to prevent that, was to make sure he was very deliberate and obvious with his movements.

"Olive. Can you back up a bit," he said, as he neared her. But Olive didn't. She did, however, turn her attention more fully to him. "C'mon, Olive. Let's give Zia some space."

Still, Olive didn't move.

"Owen…" Zia said softly from behind him. "I really need to be able to get to Grape."

"I know," he replied, without taking his gaze off Olive. He gave one more plea. "Let's go, Olive. Just a few steps to the side. You can still watch." Still, she didn't move.

Cursing silently, he did what he knew was probably a stupid move, but he couldn't think of any other solution. And he knew they didn't have time to wait. Moving quickly, he lunged forward, grabbing Olive around the stomach and lifting her. He kept his arms outstretched, trying to keep away from her now flailing limbs, as she squawked even louder than before.

He moved them away from Grape, although he kept himself turned so he could see Zia bent down at Grape's side. Of course, the moment he looked away from Olive she used the opportunity, twisting in his grasp. He managed to hang on to her, but she managed to get her jaw around his forearm.

"Dammit, Olive," Owen exclaimed, the feeling of the sharp teeth puncturing his skin almost enough to have him drop her. "Let go!"

She didn't.

"Olive!" Owen barked sharply, but she just continued to bite him.

"Here, Owen," Barry said, and Owen looked up to see that Barry had joined the two of them in the paddock. And, unlike Owen, Barry was wearing gauntlets and other protective gear and had brought a treat bag. He dropped the bag, reaching for Olive.

Owen was happy to transfer her over, although it wasn't that easy, as Olive still didn't want to let go, but eventually they managed it. The moment his arm was free, Owen winced, the little punctures all stinging at the same time. He didn't have time to focus on them. Instead, he picked up the treat bag that Barry had dropped, and pulled out a couple to give to Olive. She was calming down a bit, as Barry was able to hold her tighter, protected from her claws and teeth. She took the treats, although Owen would swear she was glaring at him.

He didn't give her any more attention though, instead spinning around and falling to his knees next to Zia.

"What's going on?" he asked. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Zia said, her voice frantic. "And I can't tell that anything's wrong. Her heart rate seems normal. She's breathing steadily. But she's not waking up. Why isn't she waking up?"

"What do you need?" Owen asked. "Should we take her to the lab? Are there tests you can run?"

"Yes, I mean, I guess so, although I'm not even really sure where to start. Maybe a CAT scan? But I can't do that here."

"Then let's take her to Nublar," Owen said. He reached into his pocket, only to realize he hadn't brought his phone with him. It was still lying on his desk after he'd ended the call earlier.

"Here," Zia pulled out her own phone and handed it over. "Wait, you're hurt."

"I'm fine," he brushed aside her concerns, although he had to admit when he looked at his arm, it didn't look good, blood dripping down it. He ignored it, instead dialing Claire.

"Zia?" Claire answered, sounding confused. "What's up?"

"Claire, we need the helicopter," Owen said immediately. "Something's happened to Grape."

"Owen?"

"The helicopter," he repeated. "We need to take Grape to Nublar. Something's wrong."

Dun dun dunnnnn. And now stuff starts to really happen. Claire's got protesters. And Owen has to figure out what's wrong with Grape.

If you're enjoying this (or even if you hate it, but have somehow made it this far), please send me a comment. I'd love to hear from you.