ADAPTATIONS
11 – What's at Stake
Three-o-clock rolled around, Grant pacing around the trailer. Following his talk with Derek, he was now extremely paranoid. What if InGen did show up to the unveiling? And not just the unveiling, but to the dig site, too, to see what else John Hammond was funding? No, he was thinking too much into it. That's all. In the past years of Hammond funding him, never once did anyone from InGen show up to ask about his funding. So why now? That's because in the past, there wasn't a volatile human-raptor hybrid out of their watchful eye and careful control. Until now. They already came by his dig site, once, to poke and pry about her mysterious whereabouts two weeks before she showed up at his door step.
Grant worried that by letting Veronica attend the unveiling, he'd be putting her at extreme risk of discovery. Then again, by not letting her attend, he knew she would be devastated. She had already been forced to a very limited life in the past because of InGen's tight control over what she was allowed to do. Now that she was out from under their thumb, she was able to experience what she wasn't to before. He didn't have the heart to upset her, though he felt she would understand completely once it was explained to her.
Grant stood there, hunched over the table and head hung low. He couldn't think. The office trailer door opened, the voice of the hybrid softly speaking to him. "Hey Alan, I-" but the man's jumping at being startled sent her backwards in her own fright. Had it not been for Derek behind her, catching her, she would've fallen down the trailer's stairs. The two people looked to the other in calming themselves. "Jumpy, much?"
"Yes, no." Grant cleared his throat. "What is it, Veronica?"
Derek looked around Pet to see the stress worn scientist. The hybrid proceeded into the trailer with the plastic bin in her hands. "I was bringing back the cleaned fossils." She sat them on the kitchen cabinet as Derek strode in behind her.
Since her back was turned, she didn't see the thumbs up-thumbs down the younger man gave to Grant in question to their conversation, earlier. Grant knew he couldn't avoid the inevitable discussion with the hybrid and spoke. "Can you please close the door, Derek?" Derek knew what was coming and not only closed the door but locked it too.
Pet stopped what she was doing and studied the senior scientist worriedly. "Is…something wrong?"
Grant inhaled a breath and collected his thoughts in what he hoped would be an understandable explanation. "As you're already aware, the museum fossil unveiling is coming up."
Pet slowly nodded. "Yeah…I know this… Why?"
"I've been doing some thinking on it. I'm worried someone from InGen might attend the ceremony."
The words slapped the hybrid in the face. "InGen?! What would they be doing there? They don't give a shit about a museum presentation! They're so run down in the mud, right now, they'd be stupid to try and show their face at such a public event!"
"It's through John Hammond's funding that I was able to even keep my dig site out of Dr. Burke's hands." Hearing the name stirred a mix of emotions in Pet. At least Burke survived his injuries from the T-Rex and was back at tackling the paleontology world. Then again, to hear her favored Dr. Grant almost lost his prized excavation to the other scientist bothered her a little, though Burke wasn't a bad guy. Grant continued. "My concern is that Mr. Hammond's continuous funding of the site might make someone curious as to why."
Pet shifted her weight to stand on her other booted foot. "Are you asking me to find somewhere else to go?" The idea of leaving the dig site broke her heart, but knew it was something she would have to do in a worst-case scenario.
"I'm saying, I don't think it's safe for you to attend the unveiling." Just as Grant predicted, the news was crushing to the hybrid.
Regardless, she kept her best face forward and nodded in acceptance. "I didn't think about InGen being a threat, but I guess it makes sense." She tapped her dulled claws, looking more like long manicured fingernails, on the bar top and nodded again. "Thank you for being honest with me." Pet bit out a forced smile through thin lips and left the trailer.
Derek knew the decision wasn't easy for the older man to make and felt guilty for being the one to bring up the topic earlier. "Who knows, maybe they won't show up, at all."
Grant heavily sighed. "It's a chance I'd rather not take for that just in case."
Derek rolled a new-found thought in his head. "Are you doing this for Pet's safety, or because you're worried about legal repercussions from InGen and possibly losing your sandbox should they find out she's here?"
Grant opened his mouth to answer, but quickly closed it. He didn't know how to answer. "Both, I guess," slipped out before he realized the words were on the tip of his tongue. "I've already put so much time into this site, Derek. Damn near five years, to be exact. This area, it was a Velociraptor nesting area millions of years ago. Two fossils I excavated, one back in nineteen ninety-four at another location and another in nineteen ninety-six from this site, have already been cleaned and prepared for the museum unveiling. This one that we're working on, now, is the second for this site.
"There's still a third waiting to be dug up and who knows how many more from there! I've sacrificed damn near every penny I have just to keep the vultures from ripping this place out from under me. This dig site…my sandbox, as you call it…it's what I do. When people come in and out of my life, this...this right here always stays with me." Grant shook his head. "I can't risk losing that because of one person with a target over her head."
Derek understood the older man's feelings, but was disappointed at the same time. Maybe he was just biased in regards to Pet's happiness and felt it unfair she was being swept under the rug yet again. While he barely knew her compared to his uncle and almost died at her hands -okay maybe that was an exaggeration- he couldn't help but care about her.
Derek nodded. "I get it. But think of it like this…she's risked her life for people; Robert, me, you, Dr. Sattler and several others. And yet, all she really wants is to be treated like a normal person and given a chance to live a life InGen constantly denied her.
Grant cocked his head and cut his eyes down on Derek. How many times did this already dead horse have to be beaten into a fine dust? "Can you be any more indecisive? You bring her here to hide her for her protection only to turn around advocating she be allowed to live her own life." Speaking of beating a dead horse, he couldn't really say much. He was right there with his own stick.
Derek scoffed. "I never said I didn't want her to go to this shindig of yours. I remember asking if she was being allowed to go before I went out and bought her a damn near three-hundred-dollar dress and it be for nothing." Grant mentally imagined his hands wrapped around the other's neck in frustration. "For the record, you were the one who brought up the whole InGen party crashing bit, not me."
"You've made your point," Grant growled.
"Not trying to make a point, Doc. Just trying to figure out where she ranks in the list of things so I'll know who I can trust with her well-being."
A sly smiled played at the scientist's otherwise tense lips. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you love her."
"Love her? Eh, kind of but not romantically. Respect her? Definitely. Scared of her? You fucking bet! She terrifies the hell out of me! I've seen her viciously kill people as a means of self-defense." Grant's expression became slightly horrified. "Well, not personally seen her maim and maul someone, but saw the aftermath of her wraith. Hell, she even tore my ass up pretty good, once." Derek pulled back the collar of his shirt to show the pink scars standing out in contrast to the rest of his lightly tanned skin and held up his arm to for that scar to be seen, too. Then he held up his hands to show the claw slash scars across the tops his knuckles. "But I've also seen her risk her life to save me not once, but twice. One of those times she was just a kid and going up against a tiger. A tiger! I don't know how many times she's saved uncle Rob-"
"I get it," Grant interrupted. He still kept trying to shake the mental image of the hybrid disemboweling someone. He never forgot how she tore into the T-Rex that night at Jurassic Park. Hearing the younger man's tales of her butchery only bore further weight on him with how potentially dangerous that pretty little face could be. "I've made my decision. There's too much at stake."
Derek trudged back to Quarantine with heavy steps. Even though Grant wasn't allowing her to attend the unveiling, Derek decided he would buy the dress for the hybrid anyway. If anything, he could always take her out for a nice evening so she could enjoy looking like a princess for once. While she liked to keep the persona of the tough girl act up front, she was still a girl and what girl didn't want to dress up and look pretty occasionally?
He opened the trailer door to find both her and his uncle in a game of Scrabble. Derek chuckled. "Scrabble? Really?" Pet shrugged. "Who's winning?"
Pet assembled the word 'sarcastic' onto what he guessed was his uncle's 'treasure' word. "I'm getting my ass kicked," the hybrid grumbled.
Derek studied the many words, some big some small and some he wondered were even words at all. "Well, Scrabble is an old person's game anyway." He gave another chuckle and patted Muldoon on the shoulder.
Grey eyes darted between his selection of words and those present on the board. "I can still put you in your place, boy."
Derek went to the fridge and got out a soda. "Remember, I carry around a small armory of various caliber pistols everywhere I go at any given time."
Muldoon built the word 'planetary' between Pet's sarcastic and previously assembled word 'puzzle'. "I have a human-raptor hybrid that, as I recall, gave you quite the ass whooping even with your having a rifle and small armory on your person."
Derek and Pet locked gazes as he swallowed a gulp of his soda. His attention shot to her still booted feet and felt moderately relieved that the real threatening part of her was at least limited in functionality.
Pet patted the available seat space right next to her and smirked. "Care to join us?"
"I don't trust you. You bite. And scratch. And claw. And have a tendency of turning someone inside out, too."
"Maybe." Pet innocently placed the word 'envy' onto Muldoon's 'planetary'.
Derek shuffled over to the booth seat and sat on the end, eyes intently watching the hybrid. "Only because your boots are still on and your claws are filed down."
Pet's sneer grew. "I keep my boots loosely laced so I can toe them off at a moment's notice."
Derek said nothing as he reached behind him and unholstered his pistol tucked into the back of his pants and laid it on the table beside him. "Care to see who's quicker?"
The two people grinned menacingly at the other, though they knew the other was merely jesting in their threats.
