ADAPTATIONS
28 – Coming Clean
"Damn it!" Raged Derek, slamming his phone down on the dining room table and startling Terrence sitting across from him. The older man jolted at the unexpected tangent and accidentally spilled his spoonful of chili on the table top. "This isn't good."
"What?"
But Terrence was ignored as Derek stormed out into the mid evening day to find his uncle still sitting at the patio table. A collection of beer bottles littered the ground between him and the latest arrival. Derek spoke up. "We've got a problem. My old boss in Cali, Mike, said someone called back in July looking for me. The person didn't say who they were, but…and this coming from Mike... they had an Indian accident."
Roland studied the bounty hunter questionably. "Sounds like that Masrani jackass who called me."
Muldoon sobered up a bit hearing the news. He couldn't even begin to count how many beers it took him to get that way. "Your boss didn't give any details, did he? Say where you are? How to find you?"
Derek tossed his hands in the air. "From what Mike said, all he told Masrani was that I was in the middle of nowhere with you, which is all I told Mike. Thankfully he didn't tell him my phone number."
Since Roland was soberer than Muldoon to fully comprehend what was said, he questioned. "Please tell me you weren't stupid enough to tell your Mike friend your exact location."
"I'm not that fucking stupid!" Derek snapped back. "I've been a bounty hunter since I was seventeen. I'm used to chasing runners and know how to think like them to avoid being found. I think of it like this…If I was being paid to hunt myself down, what would I not want myself to know to better find me?"
"Robert was right about you," Roland praised.
Muldoon groaned. "Don't encourage him. It'll only make him more insufferable."
Derek's frustrated expression changed to eager curiosity. "Uncle Rob was saying good things about me?"
"I didn't say they were good things…just that he was right." Roland's grin broadened as Derek's faltered. "You are full of yourself." Derek grumbled and trudged back into Quarantine. The door was slammed shut and Roland resumed talking to Muldoon. "We need to tell the girl and Dr. Grant should a representative from InGen decide to return and do another investigation."
November, and Simon Masrani was still no closer to finding the hybrid now than he was earlier in the year. His once excitement was dwindling into exasperation as he stared blankly at the black disk case he had on a corner and spinning with his fingers. Just as he had tried multiple series of password combinations using the hybrid's serial number and experiment classification number, he had also tried many countless more password combinations by adding 'Pet' into them. All were failed attempts just like the others. It was why he finally decided to ask for some assistance from the one person he thought would know something.
Quiet knocking echoed off his closed Palo Alto office door, making the billionaire's mindless spinning of the disk case come to a stop. "Come in."
His lovely doe eyed, blond-haired assistant opened the door and stepped inside. "Sir, my apologies for the interruption, but Dr. Jacobs is here upon request to speak with you."
Simon sat the black case down and waved his fingers to motion his assistant allow his visitor entry. The ecru dress suited woman stepped aside and allowed the geneticist entry. "You wanted to speak with me, sir?"
A hand was waved at the two chairs in front of the cherry wood office desk, Jacobs silently doing as suggested. His hands were folded in his lap and nervously working over the other. Simon saw this. Was Dr. Jacobs possibly afraid of him? Or his authoritative position? "Relax, Doctor. You are not in trouble." Jacobs' tense posture eased a little. "I asked to meet with you concerning this." He tapped the tip of his middle finger on the case. "On this disk is very important information Mr. Hammond entrusted me with. I do not know the precise details of what is on this disk, other than information pertaining to I-10HY." Jacobs shifted anxiously in his seat. "I seem to have run into a bit of a problem trying to access that information. It appears the disk is password protected." Jacobs stared at the disk with wide eyes behind his thin frame glasses as though it were a rabid animal about to attack him. "Aside from John Hammond and Robert Muldoon, you are the only other person who has the most knowledge about…her."
Jacobs cleared his throat and spoke. "Sir, I am not sure how much more I can help you. I've told you everything I can about her. And please, please don't ask me to try and recreate her. Shortly after her creation, I destroyed all my notes regarding her creation." Simon arched a brow and rested his elbows on his chair's armrests, his hands steepled before him. Jacobs struggled with himself on how to explain it. "I didn't want my research and experiment notes ending up in the wrong hands."
This was not how Simon imagined this conversation going, but was intrigued by its direction nonetheless. "What wrong hands would that be, Doctor?"
"Biosyn, sir. They have always been a thorn in InGen's side."
"I-10HY was an extremely secret experiment with the strictest of security clearances to access it. How would Biosyn happen across your notes? Then came InGen's upmost executive employees as well as zoo and Jurassic Park personnel having to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding her."
Jacobs choked out, "Me," and quickly swallowed before his nerves got the best of him. There was a knot angrily clawing inside his stomach and it was making his lunch disagree with him. Dark eyes slimmed down on blue ones in bafflement. "Mr. Masrani, for the past twenty-three years I've carried a burdensome weight of guilt I have been desperately trying to rid myself of." Simon's brows creased, next, in growing uncertainty of what he got himself into by arranging this meeting. "There's a reason why her specimen label is the number ten. She was the tenth experiment of this type. There were nine before her, but they didn't make it past the second month of development. I was originally charged in trying to recreate a Velociraptor from the prehistoric DNA sample I was given." Jacobs' low lip quivered. "Had I not given in to Biosyn's business proposition of creating something else, it would've been me getting the credit for creating the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park and not that schmuck Dr. Henry Wu."
Simon held up a hand to silence the geneticist and sat up from his lounging in his chair to lean across his arms folded atop his desk. "You're saying InGen's rival company, Biosyn, paid you to create I-10HY?"
The scientist desperately tried to keep a professional composure. His hand was shaking as he tried to adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "That's right. But," he continued, halting whatever the billionaire was about to say, "when I realized she wasn't some ruthless killing machine I imagined her to be and what Biosyn wanted, I did everything I could to protect her."
"What were you originally trying to create, Doctor? After what I read in the extensively detailed reports from Jurassic Park's employees and guests about the disaster, Velociraptors are already ruthless killers. What could you possibly have wanted to do to make one more dangerous?"
"Give it human based intelligence…sir." Jacobs gulped again. "No one had an exact idea, just speculation, of how intelligent Velociraptors were…not until their recreation and observation at Jurassic Park. However, there was scientific proof of how deadly the animal was. There have been excavated fossils showing this. What Biosyn wanted was a perfect soldier; an animal with the ability to kill as effectively as a raptor with the ability to think and reason like a human." Jacobs shook his head. "Whether Pet is what they wanted or not, I wasn't going to risk them making more hybrids like her. With that, I destroyed my notes and whatever scientific miracle that happened resulting in her creation. She was just a child, sir. A child should not be used as a weapon of any type for any reason."
Simon was left expressionless in disbelief to the confession he just heard. "Well," he breathed out and inhaling another breath to state, "that was unexpected."
"For what it's worth, I feel better." Jacobs nodded like a child who just admitted to breaking something of his parents' and hiding the evidence. "Like I can go to my grave peacefully with a clean conscious after getting that off my chest. It's been killing me since the day I pulled that little baby out of the test vat."
"Why are you just now telling someone about this?"
Jacobs shrugged. "I was already seen as a disappointment in Mr. Hammond's eyes after I ruined his hopes of creating the first ever Velociraptor. Robert hated me and the ground I walked on and I was already regarded as the number one enemy at Animal Kingdom. If anyone knew the real reason for Pet's creation," he shook his head, "I would have been tossed in prison for sabotage with malicious intent."
"Isn't that what sabotage is, Doctor? An action of malicious intent?" Jacobs' mouth pursed and eyes darted to the side in embarrassment. "What's to say I don't call security and have you arrested, now, for what you just told me?"
The geneticist thinned his lips into a grim frown. "I wouldn't blame you. Ever since Pet's creation, Mr. Hammond never trusted me to work on projects with scientific breakthrough potential ever again. I was fired immediately after she was created and while I was greatly upset by this, I couldn't hate Mr. Hammond for his decision. He hired me back shortly after, but only with the understanding I would never be allowed to work with genetics within his company, again. My primary purpose would be to monitor and document Pet's health and intellectual progress." Simon's eyes fell back on the disk case.
Jacobs saw the shift in attention and also looked at the case. The scientist continued. "When rumors started circling around InGen about her being dead to a Tyrannosaur during the big Jurassic Park fiasco, I felt like I let her down somehow. I was charged with her health and wellbeing. I was her doctor for the fourteen years she resided in Kenya under Robert's care."
"Yet, there's reason to believe she's still alive, somewhere out there. I don't know if she's still on the island or somewhere else." Simon had the case in hand, again, and was tapping a corner of it on his desk. "I've been trying to get in contact with the names both you and Mr. Stevens provided me, most of which have not had contact with the her since their last encounter on either of the two islands. For three of the names, it seems they have…disappeared. No one, not even family members, have heard from them in some time."
"Let me guess," Jacobs began, his expression holding that of no surprise, "Robert is one of them."
"His nephew, too, along with a man named Terrence Mitchell. It's my reason to believe they know where she is."
Jacobs snorted a laugh. "Terrence hated that girl with a die-hard passion and he was not one to dislike anyone for any reason."
"I see." Simon tapped the case's corner on his desk once more. "I have reason to believe everything, or at least almost everything, I want to know about I-10HY is on this disk. Mr. Hammond also told that only a few extreme people know the password." Jacobs intently studied the matte case and swallowed the bitter taste of bile surging into the back of his throat. "And that I would also know the password when I find her. I have been trying like crazy to locate this particular individual, Dr. Jacobs, and have gotten nowhere in the year I have been trying. I sense she was very important to Mr. Hammond or else whatever is on this disk would not be so secured. Would you, by chance, happen to know or even have a clue what the password might be?"
Jacobs was going to throw up, right there in front of one of the richest men in the world. He swallowed another surge of bile and cringed uncomfortably. "Mr. Hammond told me nothing of the disk or even anything that-" he stopped mid-sentence remembering something Hammond told him. It was shortly after the events of Jurassic Park. The old man was distraught and needing someone to talk to. So, he stopped by his office for a chat informing him of what happened and that Pet wouldn't be returning. He started laughing, as though trying to cheer himself up. "'Would you believe it?' he asked, 'That one of the park visitors gave her a name? Yes, yes he did. The lad named her, he did. He was telling me about it on the helicopter ride back to the mainland.'" Jacobs realized his recalling the memory was being vocalized. He was retelling the story without realizing it! Jacobs searched the billionaire's eyes for what, he wasn't sure. "There's only one thing I think the password might be."
Simon opened the case and placed the disk in his computer's CD/DVD drive and closed it. Jacobs got to his feet, knees wobbly and on the brink of collapse, as he stared down at the computer's keyboard. "May I?"
Simon slowly nodded and pushed the keyboard towards the other man. He then turned the monitor just enough for the scientist to see, as well. The disk drive buzzed and the password screen that Simon had seen too many times to care for popped up. With sweaty and trembling hands, Jacobs slowly typed out 'Veronica Renee Hammond.' The password's popup screen disappeared, something that never happened before. A split second later, a new screen appeared and littered with tiles of different media types; small audio and video files as well as text files.
Jacobs looked at the monitor in heart stopping fear. He fought back the urge to be sick a third time and knew he couldn't fight it back too much more. "Excuse me, sir," he mumbled, "I'm not feeling so well," and quickly fled the office.
He didn't care who he bumped into or shouldered past in his retreat to the men's restroom. He couldn't hold it any longer and threw himself over a sink. Thank God no one else was present or he would never get over the humiliation of being seen throwing up in one of the executive floor's restroom sinks.
Jacobs turned on the water to flush his mess out of his sight. He rinsed out his mouth and spit out what he could of the after taste. It was no use. The taste of his potentially grave mistake lingered. "What have I done?"
Inb4: ermergerd but InGen is the one who wanted the vicious hybrids! MY take on it will be explained later in the story…
