Notes

Soundtrack suggestions:

The group arrives at Site D:
- Journey to the Island - John Williams, Jurassic Park (From 07:41 to 08:03).
- A Walk in the Park - Don Davis, Jurassic Park 3.

The Shantungosaurus and the paddock:
- Gyrosphere of Influence - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World (Up to 00:44).
- Nostalgiasaurus - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

-o-

The exit leading to InGen's Site D was three kilometres from town, before the hilltop from which the group had first seen the latter. The exit was indicated by a large sign with InGen's logo and its slogan, We Make Your Future, almost hidden behind the tags and insults in Spanish and English that covered the sign. Among these, the group saw two sets of numbers followed by an exclamation point: Those were the number of victims of the fall of Jurassic World as well as the number of victims directly and indirectly attributable to InGen, a total which took into account all the incidents that had taken place since the corporation's arrival in Costa Rica more than thirty years earlier.

"For how long have you worked for InGen, Mr. Taylor?" Claire asked their driver as they passed the sign to take the exit that led down into a wooded valley.

"Almost three years. Before working at the Farm, I was in Isla Nublar. J-SEC. You're unlikely to remember me though, Mrs. Dearing, and I only saw you for the first time five minutes ago."

Claire, and Owen as well, didn't remember Valentine, but that was no surprise, since Jurassic World had several thousand employees and the J-SEC between one and two hundred men at the time of the Fall. The park was so big that it was considered by some as a quasi-independent microstate, and its organization so complex that two employees from different sectors could never met, even if they worked on the island for several years. For Claire when she was director, Valentine must have been just a number in a spreadsheet, while for him she had been just a name and a face from public photos, both associated with the tower of the administrative building which overlooked Burroughs from its promontory, and whose orders were relayed by several intermediaries.

"So you were at Jurassic World when…?" The DPG founder started.

"During the Fall?" Valentine finished. "Yes. But before you asked me, I was not on the front lines. When the pterosaurs attacked Burroughs, I was evacuating the Cartago Valley and when that thing and the raptors slaughtered those defending Hammond Plaza and then invaded the Palace, I was affected at the ferry terminal. Had it been otherwise, I'm not sure I would be here today..."

The road flattened and on either side, a tall fence stood while ahead, a gate blocked their way.

Valentine stopped the minibus in front of it for a moment, while a security camera was directed towards them, and then the gate began to slide. As they passed it, he waved to thank his colleague in the adjoining sentry box, a security guard in navy blue pants and short-sleeved shirt.

At a crossroads a few meters further on, they went straight ahead, following an oak-lined driveway which led to what looked like a large house. Behind the oaks, two large meadows stretched out and beyond the one on their left, the group saw several farm buildings while on the opposite edge of the one on their right, several bungalows lined up.

Probably housing for the workers, built when the estate was a big farm, years before InGen bought it, Claire thought.

Her gaze then turned towards the hacienda at the end of the driveway. It was a beautiful building, built on two floors, with white walls, a tiled roof and organized around a courtyard, hidden from view by a wall covered with climbing plants.

In front of the door to the courtyard, built in the centre of the wall, a young Hispanic woman was waiting for them instead of Jocelyn Hodgson. Judging by the dress and the sandals she was wearing, Claire assumed she had to be someone from the Farm's administration, probably a secretary or even a simple intern.

Valentine stopped the minibus near the young woman, let them get off with their bags, and then drove off, following a track that passed near what looked exactly like a horse paddock and seemed to lead to the farm buildings they had seen, located more than a hundred meters from the hacienda.

"Hello," the young woman told them in English with a smile. "Mrs. Hodgson asked me to tell you that she'll be ready soon. Let's wait for her here."

But the sound of tree foliage being shaken and branches snapping, coming from beyond a thick grove to the left of the hacienda, caught the group's attention and Zia was the first to follow the direction of the noise, taking advantage of the fact that the employee had turned her back on them to chat with a colleague who had just exited the courtyard.

She found the entrance to a path that crossed the grove a little further and followed it, quickly arriving in front of a tall fence with thick steel bars and strong posts with wide bases. Behind, dense vegetation prevented her from seeing anything but having guessed what the paddock contained, the veterinarian quickened her pace while her excitement grew. There was another rustle, and to her left the grove ended to make way for the same horse paddock that Valentine had passed on the other side with the minibus when he drove away from the hacienda. However, said paddock housed animals different from horses and Zia would have realized that soon enough had her eyes been looking in the opposite direction. When the vegetation on the side of the tall fence thinned out, the vet stopped abruptly, speechless, and the rest of the group arrived soon after, joining her in her contemplation of the animal on the other side of the fence.

It was a dinosaur, with a dark brown body and white-striped legs, and it was gigantic, more than fourteen meters long and four meters high at the hips. With its slightly flattened beak, it plucked leaves from the lower branches of a tree and then chewed them while watching the group. Above its nostrils, a red-streaked blue skin flap swelled slightly and then deflated as it breathed.

Alexander and Franklin moved closer to Zia, leaving the couple further back by the wooden fence of the paddock behind them.

"A Shantungosaurus," she said in wonder. "I thought I would never see one alive."

"He's so huge," the IT technician said, impressed by the dinosaur's size.

"She," Owen corrected him. "It's a female."

The giant hadrosaur then stood up on her powerful hind legs and put her forelegs, shorter and frailer-looking than the hind legs, on the tree's trunk in order to reach the crown's leaves.

Once she had torn off several loads of leaf, she put her forelegs back on the ground and moved away from the fence and the group to instead head for the paddock's interior. Stepping out of their field of vision, the shantungosaur revealed a meadow and other dinosaurs.

There were two other female shantungosaurs, an adult and a juvenile, and a larger, scarred, ebony male with a silvery back, whose name was known to anyone who worked at Jurassic World as he was one of the park's star animals: Bucephalus, the fratricidal shantungosaur; a little more than half a dozen bipedal feathered dinosaurs with powerful legs, long necks which ended with a small head, brown and orange bodies and whose size varied among the individuals, with a few emu-sized juveniles and one of the adults being eight meters long and three meters high: Gallimimuses; and finally, the group discerned two ceratopsians at the opposite end of the paddock, where they were quenching their thirst at a waterhole. Said animals were between six and seven meters long, had a relatively short nasal horn similar in appearance to that of a rhinoceros, and their bodies were moss green with a cream-coloured belly as well as orange and cream markings on their curved frill, which had small forward-curved horns which made it look like a crown. Those were Sinoceratops and whereas Alexander had never seen them in the flesh as they had become part of the park's collection only after his departure, Owen and Claire had been able to see them on a few occasions, in the Jungle Cruise attraction.

While the couple and DPG members observed the herbivores, the young employee came to join them.

"Mrs. Hodgson will be soon ready. Please follow me."