ADAPTATIONS

29 – Progressively Getting Worse

Where to begin, where to begin. There was no immediate decision on where to start in reviewing the disk's files. First, there were tiles of audio files listed in numerical order based on when they were recorded. The first audio file was listed as 19730126. A mouse pointer was drug on top it and clicked. The disk drive buzzed and the computer's media player popped up. The voice was that of Jacobs. Simon sat back in his office chair and listened to the audio diary entry.

"January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy-three. My name is Doctor Albert David Jacobs and I serve as the head geneticist for a research and experiment section at John Hammond's zoo, Animal Kingdom, in Nairobi, Kenya. My primary purpose has been concerning the successful cloning of small animals and experimenting on recreating extinct animals. I stress has because as of today, I am to lead my team into a new field of research and experiments; recreating an extinct animal using prehistoric DNA obtained from a mosquito trapped in fossilized amber. Another science team discovered the DNA to be that of a Velociraptor and are also working to see what it'll take to bring this once magnificent creature back to life."

The audio file finished, Simon selecting the next. There were currently twelve of the audio files, all of which were fairly close in size. Once he was finished the audio files, he would start on the video files and then the text files. He planned to go through every file, no matter how long it took. He already expected it to be something that would take some time. He couldn't completely neglect the other work that needed to be done regarding his company.


Sites of a rifle settled down on a red soda can located down range roughly seventy-fives yards from a Remington 750 rifle. Thankfully there was no wind to knock over the can sitting on top of a refrigerator box. Pet's clawed finger lightly flexed around the trigger as she breathed as shallow as possible.

In a loud explosion, the can disappeared from the site's immediate view as it flew into the air. Pet lowered the rifle to stare wide eyed at the flying can. "HEY!" She glared over in Roland's direction, snorting in annoyance.

He lowered his Nitro Express, paying her no visual attention. "You were taking too long."

Pet snorted again. "Bastard."

"I can be," the man replied flatly. The can hit the ground in a clattering of metal now chewed up from the rifle's 900 grain projectile.

Derek, lounged back in a canvas camping chair, pointed to a bag of cans sitting nearby. "Your turn to set up targets, Pet. I've done it the past three times."

The hybrid shook her head. "Not until I shoot something." She re-shouldered the Remington and aimed at the refrigerator box. "See that A in caution?" She fired the rifle. "Now you don't."

Grant picked up a pair of binoculars sitting on an ammo can and studied the box. Sure enough, the A was shot through. "But which A in caution were you referring to?"

Pet slimmed her gaze down on the man. "How many As are in caution, Alan? I can only think of one..."

"But there's two cautions on that side of the box." He was sneering at her, teasingly.

Derek chuckled, watching the disgruntled hybrid storm down range with a can bag in tow. "Make sure you set up enough for the entire class to shoot at, this time!" All he got in response was a middle finger in the air. He laughed again.

The group of men watched the hybrid start to build a meticulous pyramid of cans. Muldoon studied his nephew. "Well, you did say she needed to set out more."

"Yeah, but not the entire bag of cans! Now we'll run out of cans sooner than expected!"

Terrence looked over at the museum's brown Ford truck's tail bed loaded down with many more bags of cans. It took leaning over in his seat to see the Jeep parked on the other side of it. "Oh, I think we have enough for a little while."

Pet returned with the empty bag and wadded it up, throwing it at Derek. "Is that good enough for you, shit wad?"

"Smart ass," he chided, throwing the bag back at her.

After a couple more hours of shooting, the fifteen bags of cans had been condensed down to eight, seeing how many of the cans had been crushed down post being shot up. Muldoon sighed. "Well there just went a shit ton of money's worth of ammo, today." He began placing the empty ammo cans in the back of the truck.

Pet assisted, smiling. "It was worth it, though."

"I'm not saying it wasn't," he laughed out. "Just saying that was a lot of money shot down range."

The hybrid snorted a scoff. "You're sitting on millions of dollars, Rob. I think you'll be okay."

Derek loaded up the cooler into the back of the Jeep as Terrence followed behind with the collapsed down canvas chairs. Pet and Derek rode back with Grant to the dig site as the others rode back in the Jeep.

Pet was quiet in the passenger seat the entire ride and it was bothering Derek. He leaned forward from where he sat in the backseat and inquired. "What's bothering you?" The woman shrugged. "Don't give me that shit, Pet. I can see something is going on in that head of yours, so what is it?"

"I'm scared, okay? What if Masrani is out there still looking for me? What if he finds me? What will happen to me? Will he send a heavily armored team to take me in?"

Derek gave a gentle squeeze to the woman's shoulder. "Try not to think about it."

Pet laughed in disbelief. "How can I not? For years I've been hunted down and wanted dead. Just when I think everything is good to go, here comes this new guy calling around and looking for me." Pet sunk into the seat and leaned her head back. "I'm tired of running, tired of hiding...tired of looking over my shoulder for fear of finding InGen right there."

Pet wasn't about to let herself cry. She refused to. Her raptor eyes closed and she released a labored breath. The warmth of a calloused hand closed around her smaller one and while surprised by it, didn't say anything. There was something about his touch in that moment she didn't want to ruin.

Grant spoke. "It'll be okay, Nica." Derek saw the heartwarming gesture from the senior scientist and gave the hybrid a subtle smile.

"Easy for you to say," Pet said. "You're not the one being hunted down."

Grant sighed. "Try being in my shoes when going to colleges to give a seminar on paleontology, feeling like a piece of prey being circled by a flock of crazed college fan girls."

Pet huffed a laugh. "Next seminar you go to, bring me along. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

Derek chuckled. "I can see it, now. News at eleven. Human-raptor hybrid turns classroom of fan girls into minced meat." Pet shot him a sly smile. Derek continued. "I'm curious…"

"I'm afraid to ask what about."

"Flavors of meat. How different does a dinosaur taste compared to a deer or a gazelle…or human."

Grant's eyes widened at the mention of human. While he knew the hybrid had attacked and even killed some of her mercenary attackers, it still bothered him to hear or even think about.

Pet shrugged. "Deer tastes like deer…a Gallimimus tastes kind of like turkey, in a way and human…it's bitter. Too bitter for my liking. Not that I went all Hannibal Lector on someone, just saying from the times I bit someone." She didn't have to look at Derek to see he was scowling at her. "You asked."


The afternoon gave way to evening, the sun setting on the horizon. The excavations monthly bond fire and BBQ was about to start, the last kabob skewer loaded up and sat off to the side. Terrence glanced around at the collection of people inside Grant's trailer and noticed Pet absence. "Anyone seen Pet?"

Derek tossed a piece of chopped carrot into his mouth and nodded. "Yeah, she's supposed to be cooking baked beans in Quarantine. Said she'd be over when done."

Billy bit the end of one of the cooking mitts and pulled it off to check the time on his watch. "I don't think baked beans take this long to cook. It's been almost two hours."

"Maybe she's making potato salad, too?" Derek shrugged. "She did mention possibly making some if there were enough potatoes..." Derek sat down the knife he had been using to chop vegetables for kabobs and poked his head outside. Standing in front of a grill billowing smoke was Muldoon and Roland. "Hey Uncle Rob, seen Pet around?"

"She's back at the trailer, cooking." Muldoon reached for a pair of tongs hanging on a hook mounted to the grill's wooden shelf. "Why?"

"Nothing. I just figured she'd be here by now."

Grant stepped past the bounty hunter and proceeded to the other men at the grill. Muldoon accepted the plate of prepared hamburger patties being handed to him and started to place them on the grill.

Roland spoke up. "Since you gents seem to have this under control, I'll go check on Veronica. Make sure she's not trying to burn down the trailer down, again."

He strode through the joyous dig site residents mingling about the excavation and to Quarantine. When he went inside, he instantly knew something was different with one look at the sweaty hybrid leaning over the kitchen sink. Her face and even her entire body looked flustered as strands of sweat logged hair clung to her face, neck and chest.

Roland instantly went to her and felt of her face. She was burning up. "Veronica are you-" but her passing out cut off his words.

Her illness couldn't be flaring up again could it? The last time he witnessed her illness making a scene, he paid very close attention to how the situation was handled. First things first, he remembered, was getting her in a cool bath and giving her three teaspoons of ibuprofen to help bring down the temperature.

Roland gathered her in his arms and carried her to the bathroom. He sat her down on the floor and started the water, making sure it was lukewarm so as not to be too cold nor too warm in temperature for her. Lastly, he laid her in the tub, wearing only the essentials, and to the bunkroom for the first aid kit.

When he went to return to the bathroom, he found a very pissed off Derek staring back at him. "What do you think you're doing going through everyone's shit?"

Roland didn't have time for the other man's ego issues. "Veronica," he answered, pushing past him to exit the bunkroom. "She's sick." He then went into the bathroom to find the water level dangerously high in the tub and turned off the water. He took one look at the unconscious, fever flustered woman and opened the kit. Given her obviously having a fever, Roland didn't bother with the reptile thermometer. Instead, he went for the standard one and popped off its protective top. He spoke as he sat down to check Pet's temperature. "If you're going to continue standing around, then make yourself useful and fill the syringe."

Roland felt helpless as he watched the hybrid start to wake. Her groggy eyes lazily looked around until they fell on Derek seated on the toilet by the tub. She hoarsely spoke, "Get up" and lunged for the toilet. The man barely moved out of the way in time before the hybrid became ill.

Derek was officially worried. "Shit. She's never thrown up with this shit before."

Roland held the woman's hair back and frowned. "Maybe it's not her illness, then. She might've picked up a stomach bug from somewhere."

"I need to go get Uncle Rob incase this isn't some stomach bug."

Derek ran back to where his uncle was, still grilling burgers and talking to Grant and Terrence outside the senior scientist's trailer. Terrence saw the little annoyance running towards them and dropped his smile. "Uh oh, this can't be good.

Both Muldoon and Grant glanced behind them just as Derek came to a stop in front of them. "It's Pet and it's not good. Cue Ball thinks she just has a stomach bug but I don't know. She's sitting in the tub at the moment with a fever."

Muldoon was the first back at Quarantine. To the bathroom he went, seeing his close friend tending to the hybrid. "What is it?"

Roland ran a wet rag over Pet's face and shrugged. "Derek thinks it's her illness. I can't say for sure. She threw up a minute ago, something I recall never being a symptom of whatever she was recreated with. Everything else suggests it's her illness."

Muldoon shook his head. "It happened a few times when she was a child, but that was because she had cereal shortly before the fever spiked. Dairy on a feverish stomach equals no good." His saddened eyes stayed focused on her bloodshot, weary ones. "So, what brought that on?"

Pet weakly shook her head. "I felt lightheaded and nauseous. Probably from post my passing out."

"That could be another possibility," stated Roland.

Pet weakly turned her head to look at the man and squinted her in puzzlement. "What are you doing here?"

"I was here when you passed out. You looked right at me beforehand."

"Oh. I don't remember."

Muldoon looked at the open bottle of Motrin and the quarter full syringe. "Did you feel this coming on?" Pet nodded. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I thought it was going to be another allergy attack or something. I didn't think it'd be this!" She winced in pain at her body aching all over.

Grant stepped into the trailer and knocked on the inside of the open door. "Nica? Is she all right?"

Muldoon tried to hide his own fret, but there was no denying it when approaching the newcomer. Derek questioned his uncle. "Well, is she?"

The man hung his head low, not wanting to verbally admit what he had been wanting to deny. "I think she's getting worse."

Billy was the last to join the others after realizing something wasn't right. "What? What is it? What's going on?"

Terrence took it upon himself to answer. "Veronica...her illness has spiked again. It's worse, this time."


Everyone in the trailer sat eerily quiet following Muldoon's briefing. Curled up in her bed and tucked snuggly beneath her blankets was Pet. Had it not been for the sedative she was given some time before hand, she would most likely be in pain. Just getting her out of the tub was a task on its own because any time she was moved, she would whimper or cry. She had been placed in dry clothes and sent to rest, Muldoon staying by her side until the sedative kicked in. Even then he barely left her side, choosing to stand in her bedroom's doorway to say what he had to. Anytime the hybrid would whimper or cough in her sleep, the man was right back at her side to make sure she was fine. He would feel of her face and know, even without a thermometer, she still had a fever.

After hearing the news, Grant felt sick to his stomach. There was no doubt the hybrid's illness was getting worse, which had been predicted to happen by the geneticist to who helped create her. It had been guessed that the illness would come to take a toll on the hybrid, her body shutting down as a result of its eventual intensifying, unless a cure found.

Derek, head planted between his hands propped on his knees, questioned from where he sat hunched over on the couch. "Is there anything...anything... that can be done for her?" He looked up with teary brown eyes to his uncle leaning against the kitchen cabinet. "Antibiotics? Anything? Surely, InGen and its whack job science geeks can't be Pet's only hope to overcome this."

Muldoon pressed out a thin frown. "The geneticist who had been charged with tending to her had been doing research and experiments on a hopeful cure. Of course, that was ended after her transfer to Jurassic Park. From there, another team of scientists was charged in finding a cure before..." The man trailed off, remembering all too well her being left behind. "Well, after Hammond thought it best she remain on the island after the incident." Grant, too, remembered that and frowned. He looked to the floor, jaw clenched in anger and fists balled tightly in his pockets.

Derek sighed. "He can still cure her though, right? That…Jarod person?"

"Jacobs," Muldoon corrected.

"Whatever. I mean, he helped create her. Can't he help cure her, too? That is, if he continued his research on a cure?"

Uncle and nephew stared deeply at the other. "I don't want to take the chance of contacting him should he be in favor of seeing her destroyed. For all I know, he'd go running off to InGen and lead another team of executioners right to her."

That didn't settle too well with the younger man. "So, you're just going to let her lay there and be sick every time this shit happens? What about the next time she's sick, hmm? If this is getting worse, how much longer do we have before she's beyond any help at all?" Derek clenched his jaw and rubbed his face with his hands. "You just don't want that Jacobs guy around, is all."

"Damn right I don't!" Muldoon growled. "I didn't trust him then and I don't trust him now!"

"Either way..." Derek got to his feet to be better eye to eye with his uncle. "He's our best bet should we need his assistance. What's more important, your issues with Jacobs or Pet's wellbeing?"

"Should that time ever come about, I'll be the one to make the final decision. Technically I'm still responsible for her until I die or she gets married. Whichever happens first."

As much as Muldoon didn't want to think so negatively of the hybrid, he couldn't see her getting married. While she was an incredible person with a bleeding heart on her shoulder, it was other people. There seemed to be this discomfort of dating or even being romantically involved with a genetically created half human, half prehistoric animal. But, there remained that small sliver of hope for her after she was involved with Billy for as long as she was.

"Well, you are getting kind of up there, Uncle Rob." Derek jokingly stated. Unnerving grey eyes flared with growing anger. "Alright, alright, fine! Your call..."