Notes
Hypothetical casting:
Characters introduced in the previous story:
Michael Papajohn as Edward Torres.
New characters:
Lili Mirojnick as Jocelyn Hodgson
Soundtrack suggestions:
Claire and Owen on the pontoon:
- Train to catch - Jerry Goldsmith, The Ghost and the Darkness.
- Yes, I Do... - Mikolai Stroinski, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
-o-
On the first day of June, the couple, along with Elijah and the DPG, went to the YouTube channel of a Costa Rican news agency to watch InGen's press conference live, held at San José's convention centre. The purpose of this conference was to explain the unfolding of the end of the operation in Costa Rica and to discuss InGen's withdrawal from the country.
The press conference was hosted by several InGen executives. As the corporation's spokesman, Alistair Iger had of course travelled to San José and next to him, Claire recognized three other people. There was a small brunette with shoulder-length hairs and a little younger than her and Owen, none other than Jocelyn Hodgson; Pedro Merced, regional director, a middle-aged Costa Rican with olive skin and shoulder-length, swept-back hairs; and finally a fiftyish bald man with a goatee, Edward Torres, who became director of the security division following the death of Victor Hoskins, his predecessor. Torres previously commanded the Security Division's forces and was also present on Isla Nublar during the Fall, and had narrowly escaped from the island with Henry Wu after being chased by the insurgent Grey Guards.
The couple felt uncomfortable seeing him again, as they suspected him of having taken over the military dinosaurs project, of which the Indominus had been a foretaste and they knew that they had to be on his radar since they had access to some of Henry Wu's secret data, data which were contained in a flash drive that had ended up in the maw of Masrani's Bane along with Claire's forearm. Thus, they apprehended the idea of possibly having to collaborate with him during the operation.
The conference began with a retrospective by Iger on InGen's history in Costa Rica, from John Hammond's overflight of Isla Sorna in the early eighties to Operation Fallen Kingdom, including Jurassic Park, the dry period after Hurricane Clarissa, the 2000s comeback and the golden age in the first half of the 2010s. Like the couple expected, the spokesman omitted or skimmed over some of the most controversial points of that history and Iger claimed that InGen had listened to the Costa Rican people and that the decision to leave the country was a result of that listening.
"We have understood you," he said during that part.
Of course, many in the chat linked to the video were aware that it was all an outright lie, but InGen had done worse things than lying.
Once Iger's retrospective was over, the conference continued with a provisional assessment of Operation Fallen Kingdom and an inventory of the Farm, presented by Jocelyn Hodgson, who showed photographs of the operation, the Farm and the animals rescued from Nublar. She also revealed the number of animals currently housed at the Burgo Nuevo facility: Seventy-nine species, three hundred and thirty-nine animals, approximately one-third of the prehistoric inhabitants of Jurassic World at the time of its fall. Among these, many were individuals of small species and juveniles.
Next, it was Edward Torres' turn to speak and he talked about the unfolding of the remaining part of the operation.
The bulk of the animals were scheduled to leave on the first day of July, and InGen intended to send them by rail to its port facility near Puntarenas. Between the Pacific coast and the vicinity of Burgo Nuevo in the mountains of Ismaloya, a century-old railway line stretched on approximately sixty-six kilometers, and once transported logs and ore to Puntarenas. InGen had leased a disused mining train station and this was where the animals would be loaded onto the train. It would then follow the rail, descending from the mountains through the Celeste River Gorges, and once at the port facility, the animals would be transferred aboard the Arcadia, an amphibious transport dock which InGen and Masrani Global bought together to the United States Navy years earlier. Finally, traveling on the same ship on which they left Isla Nublar, the animals would spend a week at sea and land only in Eureka, just over sixty kilometres south of the Lockwood estate.
However, not every animal would be put in the Arcadia and the smallest but also the largest of them, such as the sauropods, the shantungosaurs or the acrocanthosaurs, were going to be sent to the United States by cargo plane, since a long transport of these by boat posed too many constraints.
Edward Torres added that the operation's security would be handled by his division, but in the chat, mocking messages appeared, calling InGen's security division a joke and some began to bet on where and when the operation would go wrong.
Once the director of the security division had finished his part, Pedro Merced spoke about the operation's aftermath and the gradual withdrawal of InGen from Costa Rica. Since the corporation will no longer have anything of value in the country, the various facilities and properties were going to be sold and to the employees who would end without a job as a result, the regional director promised that they would receive financial compensation but there again, chat participants were sceptical. When the conference drew to a close, some of them ironically relayed the hashtag #MIGA, MIGA being the initials of the Make InGen Great Again slogan, created by some internet users.
"Do you have any questions?" Alistair Iger asked the audience.
Many hands were raised but the spokesman was in no way surprised.
"Does anyone have a question that is not related to the attacks in the Nicoya Peninsula..."
A large number of hands went down.
"Nor to the sightings of prehistoric marine creatures in Pacific waters and pterosaurs in the countryside?"
Other hands went down, leaving only part of the hands that were originally raised.
"Yes?," he said, pointing to one of the remaining hands.
Once the conference was over, Elijah had a video call with the couple and Alexander Singer to discuss it and the revealed information about the operation.
Later the same day, Claire and Owen learned that a protest had taken place in front of the convention centre during the conference and on a video, one could see a line of policemen holding back the protestors and those chanting slogans hostile to InGen or outright calling them a company of crooks and murderers, and Alistair Iger's refusal to answer questions about the animals on the loose did nothing but add fuel to the fire.
The weekend before they left for Costa Rica, the couple returned to the Lockwood estate to tour the enclosures and the associated facilities. Like Lockwood had told them, and as they had noticed on the plans, most of these enclosures had been built in a depression beyond the ridge that overlooked the manor. Stretching along a north-south axis and longer than it is wide, encompassing an area of more than ten hectares, the depression was surrounded by the thick forest of conifers that covered most of the estate and the flatness of its bottom had pushed Benjamin Lockwood and InGen to choose it as the location of the enclosures where the animals would spend a quarantine period before being sold.
Coming from the manor, Claire and Owen, guided by Elijah, approached the depression from the southwest and came in sight of some kind of camp that was being set up in a clearing. They saw old trailers being parked and a crane putting prefabs on the grass and Elijah explained to them that these trailers and prefabs were going to be used as kitchens, food stores, veterinary block, and sleeping quarters for the keepers, veterinarians and guards throughout the stay of the animals while the largest of the trailers would also house the terrariums and the cages of the smallest animals.
They walked past this camp and a collection of cages and aviaries of various sizes, and following the dirt road which they had followed thus far, they descended into the depression and, when the ground flattened, they crossed a large metal sliding gate, tall and wide enough to let transport trucks take it, and the couple began their tour of the enclosures.
Occupying the entire bottom of the depression, those had been organized along a grid plan, with rectilinear transverse aisles which separated different islets of enclosures of rectangular or square shape, a large central lane which started from the large gate to the south to stop at two large grassy paddocks in the heart of the depression and a peripheral lane, which ran along a large fence erected just at the base of the embankments, except at the level of the northeast corner where this lane passed in front of the high concrete walls of enclosures designed to contain the largest carnivores, enclosures which were built against a cliff. This peripheral lane and the central lane were also wide enough for the transport trucks to drive through and manoeuvre to unload the animals in their respective enclosures.
The couple walked past several different types of enclosures, each suited to different categories of species. There were for example small enclosures with simple chain-link fences, intended for small species such as Hypsilophodon, Unenlagia or Pelecanimimus; larger ones with sheet metal walls topped by a walkway, evoking miniature versions of the achillobators' paddock in Isla Nublar but instead of Blue, they would accommodate the Baurusuchus, the dimetrodons as well as the dilophosaurs, whose ability to spit venom had forced the couple to assign them to one of those pits where the crested dinosaurs wouldn't be able to spit on their neighbours; others delimited by palisades or cable fences similar to those of pachyderm paddocks in many zoological parks and which would of course accommodate large herbivores such as ceratopsians; while the two largest enclosures in the heart of the depression, each the size of a small soccer field and whose fence had a concrete base and steel bars, were to be those of the apatosaurs and the hadrosaurs. Carnivore and herbivore enclosures were not mixed, with the former occupying the northernmost part of the camp.
Given the intended purpose of those enclosures and their expected duration of occupation, they were often limited to a square or rectangle of grass or dirt, sometimes with bushes or a water hole to quench their thirst or cool off, and whereas the enclosures of the small and medium-sized animals had shade from a few trees spared by the construction, the larger enclosures were often treeless, with the only notable exceptions being the two large enclosures in the heart which had one or two trees in their centre.
The whole place was not without reminding Owen of a military or prison camp, a comparison reinforced by the presence of a few watchtowers along the peripheral fence and the large dimensions of the latter, similar if not identical to some of those from Jurassic World. Thus, should an animal ever escape from its enclosure, it would still remain contained inside the camp, unless it was light and agile enough to climb the fence. The keeper just hoped that InGen and the estate would take security very seriously since they were no longer on Nublar but on the mainland. Tracking down a dinosaur on an island and recapturing it was already a difficult thing, doing the same in a whole county, state or even an entire continent... would be even harder.
After their tour, the couple and Elijah return by the manor, where Claire spoke with the manager of the Lockwood Foundation about the Operation's logistics within the estate as well as the auction's organization, which she had to take care of after their return from Costa Rica, while the animals would be in quarantine. Elijah also showed them the big marquee where the estate usually hosted various events when the weather allowed it, usually during the spring and the summer, and when everything was in order, the couple took their leave and he wished them good luck in Costa Rica.
"Luggage's check-list, done… Plane tickets, check… Transport, check… The hotel, check… The rendezvous with the Farm's folks, check… And Sigurd is going to stay with his grandmother," Claire summarized.
She looked over her shoulder, towards the meadow dimly by the lights of the cabin, where Cait was taking care of Sigurd.
The couple was sitting on the edge of the pontoon, drinking beers while dipping their legs in the water and gazing at the starry sky on that beautiful and warm night of mid-June.
"I think we're almost ready," she concluded. "Tomorrow, we pack."
Owen raised his beer.
"To the animals," he said.
"To the animals," she answered, raising hers.
They toasted and finished their beers, then set the empty bottles behind them, near the lantern they had brought.
While he was looking at the moon, Owen remembered one of their dates on Isla Nublar, where they had gone for a midnight swim in a small lake at the base of a cliff, a remote place in the middle of the jungle. He could never forget the vision of her beautiful alabaster body, similar to that of a goddess, rising above the water under the moonlight while drops of water trickled down her bust and her stomach. He remembered the bewitching look she had given him while he was slowly stepping into the lake to join her…
Claire noticed his dreamy look and as if she knew where his mind was wandering, she looked down at his crotch and bit her lip.
"The water is good tonight," she said, swinging her legs slightly. "And it's hot… Perfect for swimming," she said suggestively before taking off her tank top shortly after.
He watched her take off the rest of her clothes and then slide into the lake and disappear underwater. Her head and neck resurfaced shortly after a little further and she turned, returning to the pontoon. She put her hands on Owen's lap.
"You're coming?" She asked him lasciviously.
While undressing, he replied:
"I'd follow you anywhere."