JURASSIC PARK

3 - In the Days Leading Up To

Had two years already passed? It sure didn't feel like it. It seemed like it had only been maybe a handful of months, at most, to Pet. She was utterly bored and frowned, flicking a layer of peeled skin from her arm into her desk's trash can.

Behind her, Jophrey shook his head. "Do you have to do that, here?"

Muldoon glanced over to the hybrid, his chin resting in his hand. "Molting again, I see."

The hybrid snorted and balled up another skin flake in her fingers. "You'd think by now, after being here for as long as I have, I'd get used to the weather and the constant rain."

Jophrey shrugged. "It is called a rainforest for a reason."

Pet continued peeling away at the discolored patch of skin on her arm. "Ugh..." A chime came from her computer that momentarily grabbed her attention away from her arm. "Hey look, an e-mail...and from Hammond? What does he want?"

An 'I know something you don't know' smile stretched across Muldoon's features from behind his hand. Pet suspected him being up to something and cut her gaze down on him.

When the curiosity of what was going on was too much, she read the message out loud. "Sorry for the late delivery, but happy seventeenth birthday." Pet clicked on the attachment and tilted her head. "Why on Earth did Hammond send me a scanned copy of a business invoice?"

Jophrey lounged back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. "No idea. Maybe you should read it and find out why."

Pet's careful watch darted between the two people's mischievous expressions. Whatever it was, something was definitely up. She zoomed in on the image and read the contents under her breath. "Blah, blah, blah yeah, yeah, yeah fifty-thousand dollars for a year to be paid to..." Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped in speechlessness. "This is a joke, right?" Pet's blue-green eyes broke away from the screen to rest on a now widely smiling Muldoon. "Hammond is funding Dr. Grant's excavation? For fifty-thousand dollars!? Why?"

Jophrey continued. "Why not?"

"Why not?" Pet was flabbergasted. "I mean, what in the bloody dazes does he have to offer Hammond or In-Gen? Why fund the dig?"

Muldoon rested his arm on his desk. "It's not so much as what the dig has to offer the company as it is the gesture of funding it for a special reason."

Pet cocked a smile of shock and felt her chest seize with a rush of emotion. In the past few years, it seemed Hammond was trying more and more to gain her trust. Even though she had her moments of despising the man, there were times she wanted to hug him. One of those moments being right now. The surge of emotion began overflowing within the hybrid as pools of tears formed in her eyes.


Over the course of the next several months, teams were back and forth between the two islands for their respective reasons. For the game warden on the two islands, it was to see to the safe transfer of small, medium and more significant, adolescent animals. A large ferry was specially designed to allow the more massive dinosaurs to be secured to the bow of the boat while several different sized pens lie below. In some species' cases, they were created on the primary island, seeing how the safety of their transporting couldn't be guaranteed or the species, in general, was too large for transport. Such species were the Tyrannosaurus and Brachiosaurs.

Things seemed to be going well enough, given the delicacy of the situation. Anything could happen, and because of that, everyone stayed on high alert. None more so than Muldoon. It was enough to drive Pet crazy at times, though she could understand his reasoning. He kept stressing the unpredictability of the animals, especially with the carnivorous species. Never could be too cautious, he frequently stated. His stress on caution was only further enforced when a startling event occurred, involving the raptors one day.

It was feeding time as the team shoved a large, animal containment crate into position to release three cows into the Velociraptor Valley paddock. Muldoon was standing nearby and watching the cows trample out of the container and into the paddock after being prodded in the haunches with tasers. Once clear of the crate, Jophrey slammed the gate closed and latched it. Moments later, several young raptors charged out of the overgrowth and attacked the cows with their attack shrills piercing their ears.

Muldoon held his rifle closer to his chest and counted under his breath. "One, two...three, four, five...There's the Big One, making that six..."

Pet flexed her clawed grip on her rifle's stock, studying the man with curiosity. "Something wrong?"

"Yeah...where are the other two raptors?" The two looked at each other in question, Pet shrugging. "Something's not right."

They soon learned why when flying over the enclosure in a helicopter to see the Big One challenging another smaller raptor. She had the smaller one pinned down; sickle claw dug into the abdomen of the other and jaws clamped around its throat. Not long afterward, only five raptors were counted. Things went from grim to worse when the raptors began attacking the fences near the feeding team. Hammond did not like the news of the occurrence. When the fifth raptor became unaccounted for, it didn't take much to persuade Hammond to quarantine the remaining four raptors in a small, electrified pen initially intended to be used to monitor sick or injured dinosaurs. And so, the preparations were made, no one expecting things to turn into a nightmare shortly afterward.