A plump Korean lady stood in the doorway, hands trembling as she held the flashlight.

Her white labcoat hung open, displaying an Akira t-shirt and capri pants.

I raised my claws like a suspect in a cop show. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She did a double take. "You...can talk?"

"I can do other things too." I showed her the badge.

The woman paled. "Oh my God, you ate a temp!"

"No no no!" I cried. "I got this from a garbage can! It doesn't even work right!"

She...didn't look like she believed me.

Sighing in frustration, I got up from the couch, pushing past her. "Excuse me."

A weird little shuddering scream came out of her. I thought she'd faint. "W-where are you going?"

"Out. you know how long I've been stuck in that cage?"

I froze at the sound of a T-Rex roar. Although very faint, I could tell the creature seemed...strangely agitated. Throughout my stay at the compound, I'd never quite heard it so...vocal.

The fluorescents hummed and snapped back on. I kept walking.

Sterile, white walled place, vaguely hospital-like in its design. A floor buffer had been parked by a doorway.

The sound of floppy shoes clapping on tile indicated I had a `tail.' Although shaking in fright, the girl kept following me.

I turned to face her. "Do you know what's going on with the power?"

She shook her head. "I was thinking about going to the control room and asking someone about it. If other cages are open, we're going to be in trouble." Then, to herself, "You stupid corn dog! Why are you talking to a dinosaur?"

I glanced at her name badge. "Cynthia...My name is Albert..." I offered a claw.

The woman hesitantly grabbed it, shook once, and backed away.

The area I explored did not offer much in the way of entertainment, just more labs, computer rooms, libraries of identical looking binders. I thought about going back and watching The Prisoner, but figured I'd be a prisoner if I kept hanging out there.

I descended a hollow glass and metal staircase to a landing with more labs.

A narrow, pencil necked guy came up from the staircase below, calling to my companion. "Cindy, you gotta get to the bunker! There's a Category 3 coming our way!"

I stared at the man's dampened white shirt and crooked tie. The little brown shock of hair atop his head dripped with rain water. Mud clung to his lumpy khakis.

The man's eyes, already possessing a natural bulge, bugged out further. "Good Lord! What is that thing doing out of its cage!"

I waved to him. "Hello."

The stranger's eyes rolled to the back of his head as he fell in a dead faint.

Sighing, Cynthia grabbed him by his ankles, dragging him in the direction of a little green room containing a couch and colorful beanbag chairs.

She seemed to be having difficulty, so I threw the man over my back. The woman let out that weird almost screaming noise again, but after I'd gone a couple steps, "P-put him on t-the couch."

I eagerly obliged.

Another break room, not as well furnished as the other. The presence of children's toys and books indicated it might at some point have been used to appease children of staff members.

Cynthia frowned at a set of closed circuit televisions along the wall, half displaying static. "That...doesn't look good."

One monitor showed an overturned Range Rover and the corner of a fizzing road flare. Another, obscured by wildly blowing jungle foliage, displayed a frilled reptile dragging around a human body, clad in yellow rain slicker. I don't think Cynthia noticed the latter, she kept staring at the unlit fence lights.

Not something I could control.

At the other end of the room I found a Nintendo. Excited, I pushed Power and grabbed a controller.

Zelda 2?

I watched the opening crawl with amazement, pressed start and typed in my name.

Cynthia gawked at me. "Do you...know how to play that?"

I shrugged, trying my best.

Not a fun game. I didn't last more than a few minutes before seeing the game over screen.

Cynthia laughed, checking on her friend. "Bryan. Hey. Wake up."

"W-what?" the man groaned. "Wait, is that thing playing Zelda?"

"Seems like it."

He sat up, pointing to the screen. "If you go to the cave up top, you can get a candle."

I tried a couple times, but the monsters kept slaughtering my elf. I growled in frustration and hurled the console into the hallway. My companions flinched like I intended to disembowel them.

"Yeah," Bryan stammered. "Yeah. That game sucks...Next time you should probably just throw the cartridge, though. Just a thought."

Cynthia frowned. "We should get to the control room anyway. The fences are down. We need to talk to someone about that."

"Already did. Apparently Nedry from I.T. went AWOL a few minutes ago. Nobody knows where he ran off to. I was going to check the vending machine upstairs."

"I didn't see anyone." The woman cocked a thumb in my direction. "Unless this thing ate him."

I shook my head. "I only saw Cynthia. Did...Nedry work in one of the labs up there?"

Bryan furrowed his brow. "He's I.T. why would he be in a lab?"

"What is I.T.? A movie?"

He chuckled. "You're thinking of E.T. I.T. is Information Technology. Computers."

I vaguely recalled someone mentioning a Nedry in regards to my own personal computer, but i thought it had been a brand name, like IBM.

Bryan got up from the couch. "Okay, so he's not upstairs. Guess we'd better hurry down to the bunker and wait for the storm to blow over."

The two marched to the door, but froze when they noticed me following them.

"What's a Category 3?" I asked.

They spun around, frowning at me.

"A hurricane. A really bad one. Very dangerous. Things can fly around and kill you."

"Oh." I tensed up just thinking about it.

Bryan crossed his arms. "What are we going to do with Al here?"

Cynthia put her hands on her hips. "We can't take him down in the bunker. What if he eats somebody?"

"He didn't eat us."

"Maybe he's not hungry."

"I can understand English," I said. "I'm not going to eat you. By the way, I'm female."

"And you're a pretty female." He was just saying that because he was scared. "Just out of curiosity, how can we as humans, um, tell which one of you guys, I mean, ladies—"

"Bryan, how long have you been working here? They're all female. They're cloned that way."

"Well...that...makes it easier, doesn't it?"

He stared at me, Adam's apple bobbing. "You're right. This thing is going to scare the piss out of everybody."

"So what do we do with him, I mean her? (Dammit, Bryan, now you got me saying it!)"

"(Hey, you were saying it too!)"

"(I was scared. What's your excuse)?"

"(Her name is Albert)."

"(I don't get it either, but it's just a name. I'm telling you they're all female)."

Bryan shook his head. "I...guess...one of us is going to have to find a H-A-N-D-L-E-R."

I growled a little. "You do realize I can spell?"

Cynthia lowered her voice to a whisper. "Then who the hell is going to babysit this thing?"

"You're the one who brought it up, you do it."

"No way! I'm not going to do it. You're the Zelda coach, why can't you do it?"

"Zelda's smashed up on the floor, that's why!"

"Well, go into the tool room and teach the dinosaur a valuable trade!"

"Cynthia, my degree is in chemistry, not electronics. I can't even fix my VCR!"

"Well do something with her. I'm going to get help."

"I don't want to go back to my cage," I said.

Bryan rolled his eyes. "I know you don't, buddy, but there are safety concerns."

"What about my safety? What if the `Category 3' hits my cage while I'm in it?"

"Umm, you're a dinosaur. Your bones aren't nearly as small and crunchy as ours are."

"Don't say crunchy!" Cynthia hissed. "You trying to make him hungry?"

"What!" He pointed a finger at her. "Ah! You said him!"

"Shut up." She cast me a nervous glance. "Okay, enough talking. I'm—"

Cynthia marched down the hallway.

"Hey!" Bryan called after her. "Cynthia, wait!"

She whirled around, walking backwards, further away from him. "Jeez, Bryan, man up! I'll be back in a few minutes!"

Bryan squeezed his fists, but let her go.

He cast me an apologetic glance. "So, Albert...uh...do you like Galaga?"

I growled. "You are trying to trap me."

The man paled. "No no no! I was only going to show you the game!"

Maybe he would, but I didn't like the expression on his face. "You are a bad liar."

Bryan swallowed. "Okay, maybe I am." He immediately rebounded with, "Hey, how about I take you on a tour? I bet there's lot of places you haven't seen before..."

I bared my teeth. "Not upstairs!"

Bryan's eyes bugged out like Don Knotts. "Yes sir, ma'am! It's...boring up there anyway."

He led me down the corridor, showing me some rooms with bunk beds. "This is where we're supposed to sleep, once we start getting regular park visitors. Right now, we kinda put bids in for them, like, say for example, we have a good performance rating, or, in my case, your room gets infested with bedbugs..."

Next door to these rooms stood a gymnasium. "So, this job is kind of a sweet gig. I go in here from time to time to work on my quads." He flexed his scrawny arms, demonstrating his lack of musculature.

I wandered in. Two large treadmills, three stationary bikes, a lat pulldown, and a collection of weights. Exercise balls, a couple gymnastics mats.

"Okay, so it's not Bally's. In fact, one time I asked about a rowing machine and they directed me to the lagoon. I guess we do have canoes, but it's not the same muscle action. Visitor gym is still under construction. They haven't even opened the boxes down there. I offered to help assemble everything, but when I asked, they just gave me more lab work to do..."

As he told me about the walking trails, I picked up a couple 150 pound dumbbells and seated myself on an exercise bike. Well, tried to. Although the seat had been lowered all the way down, I had a problem.

"I don't think you should—" Bryan began, but before he could finish, the seat snapped off the post, and I fell to the floor.

"Umm...on second thought, maybe you don't need to bulk up. You look pretty buff already. Let's...go somewhere else."

He showed me unfinished rooms with bunk beds, sans mattresses, then offices with boxes piled up everywhere - you could barely see the desks. In one office, an electric fan dangled precariously at the edge of a file cabinet surrounded by stacks of cardboard containers.

"They'll get this place cleaned up eventually, right now they're focused on making it pretty for the guests. In fact, we're required to make the beds and do general housekeeping like a maid or we lose our hotel privileges. One thing you learn about every corporation is that they're like mullets - all business up front, party in the back."

We passed some locked office doors, nearing a staircase. "The HR and administrative guys use these ones..."

Boom boom boom. The sound of heavy boots echoed through the corridor.

An Aussie slouch hat emerged from the lower floor, followed by a long, stubbly, sourpuss face, then a lean, but muscular body draped in leather vest and khakis.

Wiry hands clutched the stock of a heavy rifle, reminding me strangely of The Terminator (the sequel, of which, I might add, I have never been allowed to watch).

"Oh thank God!" Bryan cried.

The stranger stomped up on the carpeting, beady eyes fixing me with a sinister glare. His face twitched like a western gunslinger.

He raised the barrel of his gun, chambering rounds with a menacing ka-chunk.