Notes
Soundtrack suggestions:
In the security offices:
- Eye to Eye - John Williams, Jurassic Park (Up to 04:15).
Our protagonists found out that someone let the Pegomastax escape:
- The Radio Tower of Power - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
- Containment failure - Jeremiah Pena, Jurassic World: Evolution.
- Indominus Wrecks - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World (from 01:43 to 02:12, and from 02:24 to 03:15).
Blue's attack:
- Double Cross to Bear - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Up to 00:49).
- A broken promise - James Horner, Mighty Joe Young (Up to 02:24).
-o-
Calm returned to the road between the train station and Site D, and at the same time, Owen and a few others finally managed to get Blue into her transport cage and it was hoisted onto a truck's bed. But as the latter was about to leave for the station with Owen, who stood in the bed next to the cage, one of the guards came to fetch the Raptor Whisperer.
"Owen. Mrs. Dearing wants to see you," he told him. "She said it was urgent."
What does she want? And why didn't she come directly? The former head of the IBRIS program wondered cautiously.
After letting out a sigh, he knocked on the side of the truck's cab to get the driver's attention.
"Wait for me, please," he asked him.
He then jumped out of the bed but hardly had he walked a few meters that he turned to the driver.
"You're not leaving without me. Understood?"
"Yes, yes," the driver replied absently.
He growled and left the Predators' Camp behind as he headed towards the old farm area, where she had gone earlier. He found her team soon enough, at the enclosures just north of the Ark, and Owen saw the latter putting the Mussaurus into their transport container, but he was surprised to not find his girlfriend among them. He then asked Pasqual where she was and he replied that she went to lend a hand to Horatio's and Vinny's team. He went there, looked for said team for a while before finding some of them by the Asian Plain's barn. Horatio and a few others, including Claire, were crowded around the bed of a transport truck, on which rested a container where a Sinoceratops had just entered. The container's back door was lowered, locked, and soon after Horatio indicated to the driver he could leave.
"Good job everyone! We just have to finish the Swamp and then we'll go help Nala and Judd with the triceratops and the last animals of the Cretaceous Plain," he told his team. "But first, let's eat," he added after looking at his watch.
While Horatio informed Vinny by walkie-talkie, Claire noticed the presence of her boyfriend.
"Hey…" she said.
"You wanted to see me?"
She raised her eyebrows.
"I was going to tell you we were going to eat, but you're already here," she replied.
"I was told it was urgent," he added in a slightly annoyed tone.
"Urgent? But there is nothing particularly urgent on my side. Who told you that?"
"One of the guards. He arrived at the Predators' Camp and told me you wanted to see me urgently."
"But I didn't ask anyone to fetch you."
Owen's eyes suddenly widened.
"Shit!" He swore before running away.
"Owen?"
Worried, Claire followed him to the Predators' Camp.
"Where the hell is it?!" Owen cried angrily shortly after, noticing that the truck carrying Blue's cage was gone. "I told him to not leave without me!"
"Austin told him to leave," Allison said. "He said we couldn't afford to wait for you."
"And is there someone with the driver?" Owen asked her.
"No," the blonde keeper replied in a weak voice, intimidated by her ex-colleague even though she knew he wasn't mad at her.
Owen kicked the grass.
"The trip better go well for him," he said. "Otherwise, I'm going to smash his face in. Let me know when she'll be at the station."
"Let's get something to eat," Claire suggested to him, gently touching his arm. "You can check if she's okay later."
Owen nodded weakly and the couple went to the canteen tent to pick up their lunch. But while they were eating and Claire was telling her about her confrontation with the reporters from earlier, Meyers, the ACU trooper, ran to them. They looked up at her.
"Owen. Blue escaped," she warned him.
"What?!"
"How did she escape?!" Owen asked Austin curtly.
"When the truck headed for San Ramón's road instead of going north, the guards blocking the exit stopped it. When they found out he was an undercover agent and was planning to take Blue away, probably to San José, he turned and fled. They chased the truck for more than a mile but cornered, the driver got out of the cab and opened the cage door. The Achillobator leapt out and disappeared into the jungle before the guards could do anything."
"And when did that happen?" Claire asked him.
"More than half an hour ago."
"Meyers told us there was nobody at the monitoring station when she saw that Blue wasn't on the way to the train station," Owen told her.
"Why weren't we told right away and only found out through her?" His girlfriend added.
"You wanted us to trigger panic inside and outside the site? You reproaching me for this decision is a bit strong, Claire, when we know how you handled the Indominus' escape..."
Claire didn't answer and just glared at him. Owen was staring at two large screens above the desk next to them.
On the right screen, a satellite map of Burgo Nuevo and its surroundings was displayed. Claire looked at it carefully.
Site D, Burgo Nuevo, the nearest villages as well as the most notable geographical features appeared on it, and certain locations were even clearly indicated. To the west, she saw the Celeste River and a line she guessed was the railroad. Following it to the northwest, she arrived at a large concentration of red dots four kilometres from Burgo Nuevo, by the mine's station. Between the latter and Site D, a few other red dots moved along the road that skirted the town from the west, crossed a bridge in the middle of the woods a little less than a kilometre from the abandoned house, and circumvented Site D by the west and then the south, to join the road to San Ramón. Within Site D, there was still a noticeable concentration of dots, and Claire noticed a lone moving dot in the jungle south of Site D, which Owen was following intently.
In one corner of the screen, the characters VISHNU were visible. Without that Masrani Global satellite, they would have been unable to track the animals in a relatively large territory such as the Burgo Nuevo canton.
As for the screen on the left, it displayed a black and blue map of Site D. The buildings and enclosures were delimited by thick lines and the locations of the different animals indicated by dots.
"Where's the driver? I'd like to talk to that son of a bitch for a minute," the keeper asked.
"I'm afraid that's impossible, Mr. Grady," Edward Torres replied. "I had him taken to Alajuela for questioning. He's already gone."
The couple turned around and saw the director of InGen Security walking with Jocelyn and Wheatley into the ACU and security offices, located in the Ark's "bow".
"I need a vehicle. I'll get her and the ACU better follow me," Owen said. "No one here wants Blue to run into civilians."
"My men are overwhelmed with the animals' containment and transport!" Austin replied. "We'll see when I can send them."
"It's an emergency, dammit!" The keeper insisted angrily. "I'll go alone if I have to!"
"You can't do that, it's too dangerous!" Jocelyn pointed out.
"Go capture her alone if you think you can do it, Mr. Grady," Torres said. "We're not holding you back."
"He won't be alone. I'm going with him," Wheatley informed him as he stood away from the InGen executives.
"Mr. Wheatley," Torres began in an annoyed tone, "I need you and your men to secure the convoys."
"I will only take a small team with me," the mercenary replied. "If you need the rest for specific tasks, ask Mickey, my second in command."
"I'm coming too. Blue could be hurt," Zia suddenly said as she and Franklin joined them by the desk.
"Miss, things could go awry out there," Wheatley told her.
Zia turned, walked over to him, and grabbed one of the darts from his bandolier. She showed it to the mercenary as he looked down on her.
"Those are powerful sedatives. One too many and she could have respiratory failure."
She put the dart back in his bandolier.
"Besides, I'm not as weak and stupid as you think."
Wheatley said nothing and pulled out his cell phone to gather a squad.
As she didn't want to stand idly by while others helped her boyfriend, Claire took an ear piece and a small tablet from a nearby shelf.
"Owen. I'll stay here and guide you by radio, okay?" She proposed, handling them to him.
"Okay," he replied before grabbing the items.
"You aren't going with him?" Torres asked the fallen park director. "Surprising."
"He'd rather have me safe her, especially since Blue doesn't like me too much," she replied. "You know, daughters and stepmothers… And I think I will be more useful within the walls of Site D."
"So be it," the director of InGen Security said in an odd tone, which sounded almost like disappointment to Claire's ears.
While pouting, Jocelyn scanned the security offices. Aside from them, there was no one else, as Austin sent Meyers to help her comrades outside while the guards were all busy elsewhere.
"You can't be left unattended in this room, Claire," Site D's manager said. "I'll stay with you."
"But you don't know how the system works, Jocelyn," the ACU commander pointed out.
He turned to Franklin.
"Mr. Webb, can you manage on your own with that?"
The DPG IT technician walked up to the desk, looked at the screens, and began typing on the keyboard under the watchful eye of the commander.
"Yeah, it should be alright...," he replied slightly hesitant while he was getting to know the system.
"Can you isolate the raptor?" Wheatley asked him.
Franklin quickly found the menu where the animals' list could be found, but when he clicked on "Achillobator" and wanted to have only the dot associated with Blue displayed on the screen, a query appeared, asking him to enter a code. Since he didn't knew the codes associated with each species, he looked at Austin.
"A-9," he said.
Franklin entered the code and all the dots except Blue's vanished from the right screen.
"It seems you're doing alright," the ACU commander noted with satisfaction.
"Alright, I'm staying to act like a chaperone," Jocelyn sighed.
Ignoring her, Austin pointed to a black notebook on a corner of the desk.
"The codebook is right there if needed."
"You don't need me anymore?" Torres asked them impatiently. "I should go, I have other fish to fry. Joel, could you come for a moment?"
Austin followed his superior up to the room's exit.
"Go with them," the director of InGen Security ordered the ACU commander in a low voice. "I want someone trustable like you in their company. Miller should be able to manage your unit while you're away."
"As you wish, sir," Austin replied in a neutral tone. "Does Iger know about this escape?"
"No. And let's not bother him with that. He must soon leave for Puntarenas. Keep me informed about the evolution of this... situation."
Torres then left the room and the commander turned back to the group massed near the desk. He noticed Wheatley looking suspiciously in his direction.
The mercenary leader then turned to the desk and the screens.
"Is there any dwellings near her location?" he asked.
Franklin zoomed in to the area where Blue was. Since she was heading south, running down a slope, Franklin moved in that direction as well and they noted that soon after the base of the slope, the jungle gave way to more open areas of varying size and separated from each other by more or less thick and straight corridors of trees. Meadows, maybe even pastures. The only infrastructure they saw was a road linking the village of Zapotal to the west to that of San Antonio to the southeast, not far from the junction they had taken the day of their arrival, just before driving up to Burgo Nuevo. Along the way, the road twisted, sometimes in the middle of the pastures, sometimes among the groves and even crossed the jungle at one point.
"I see a village to the west and another to the southeast, but there seems to be only jungle and fields between.
"Good," Wheatley said.
"I think there are only farms around there," Jocelyn added. "And I heard that many were abandoned..."
Halfway between the two villages, which were about four kilometres apart from each other, the road crossed a strip of forest that meandered southwards from the jungle at the foot of the slopes. Owen knew it was a gallery forest there and that there had be a stream under it, a stream whose source had to be somewhere in the middle of the area of the jungle currently crossed by Blue.
"If we could intercept her before she reaches them…" he mumbled.
Hearing someone running towards the room's door, he turned his head and saw that the keeper he had approached on the way a few minutes earlier had arrived with a small plastic box, which contained pieces of meat.
"Ah, there you are."
Owen took the box from him, thanked him and then sent him away. He turned to the others.
"Come, we've wasted enough time."
Before he left the room, Claire called out to him:
"Owen."
He stopped and looked at her.
"Good luck," she said in a slightly worried voice.
He retraced his steps and took her hand.
"I'll be fine…" he replied.
"Let's go Beefcake!" Zia told him over her shoulder.
Claire nodded and he joined the DPG veterinarian, the ACU commander and the mercenary.
"Why are you helping me?" Owen asked the latter. "I know you're not doing this out of goodness of heart."
"Indeed. I wanted to have a stroll and see the area. And the less I see Torres, the better."
"I understand that feeling."
Taking a staircase, they descended two levels and reached the ACU garage. In front of its door, one of InGen Security's armoured personnel carriers was waiting for them with a squad of six mercenaries, which included Theo, Fanny and Danny. A hastily summoned replacement driver joined them there a moment later, they got into the vehicle and drove off, leaving the estate through the nearby western gate before turning left.
They arrived soon enough in sight of the transport truck immobilized in the middle of the track and after crossing a stream, frightening a group of coatis which came there to drink, they parked on the side, near the truck and its cage, whose door was wide open. Whereas the driver went to close the cage door before climbing into the cab, Owen, Zia, Austin and the mercenaries regrouped on the side.
"Look alive, stay alive," Wheatley told his men. "We've got your back, buddy," he said to Owen.
"Yeah yeah," the latter answered without conviction.
Leaving the APC behind them, the tracking party moved into the dense vegetation, making their way through ferns and foliage. Quickly, their clothes started to stick to their skin because of the ambient humidity and the heat of the afternoon did not help. As he held in one hand the small tablet Claire had given him earlier, occasionally glancing at the screen where Blue's direction was indicated, Owen noticed that Wheatley was looking at the device with contempt. Owen didn't like depending on technology either, but this was an emergency. If they took too much time, Blue could have a bad encounter with a hunter or a farmer determined to fiercely defend their land and livestock, no matter if the animal facing them was a dinosaur and not a jaguar, puma or a stray dog.
"If we didn't have to depend on that stuff, I wouldn't use it," the mercenary leader said. "It takes the fun out of it."
Owen looked at Wheatley seriously, knowing he was talking about hunting.
"I don't get any pleasure out of that sort of thing."
"Tracking animals is the oldest sport in the world. It's true, it's in our DNA. Aim, run, teamwork. Virtually everything we like to do outdoors has something to do with our original hunting instincts."
Zia looked at the mercenary leader in annoyance.
"You do realize we're not hunting that animal, do you?" she asked him.
"Hunting. Tracking. It's the same."
Shortly after, a gap in the foliage faced them and offered them a choice panorama of the surroundings. To their left was nothing but jungle-covered slopes, but the rest of the landscape was much more interesting to them. They noticed that the ground sloped relatively gently toward the southwest, toward a valley crossed by the creek that Owen had glimpsed on the map. Two kilometres in that direction, the jungle began to give way to pastures, verdant in this wet season, and on the other side of the valley, more than four kilometres from their position, the ground rose again, dramatically, and they knew that the Celeste Gorges were just behind. Looking south, they could see the coastal plain on the horizon and they were high enough in altitude to see as far as the Pacific Ocean, about thirty kilometres away as the crow flies.
In one of the meadows on the edge of the jungle, they saw several dark spots and looking at them through a pair of binoculars, Owen noticed that they were sheep.
"There are sheep in this pasture," he described.
"You think that she might attack them?" Danny inquired.
"She is an animal born in captivity and accustomed to humans. If she is hungry, she'll go after the easiest prey. Back on the island, our farm animals were decimated by starving carnivores in the days that followed the park's fall."
They then heard a roar in the distance and realized soon enough that it was that of a helicopter. Looking towards the Celeste's gorges, he saw a white helicopter with blue stripes flying south, towards Puntarenas.
Iger, Austin guessed.
"I know you don't give a damn about InGen's problems and all that matters to you is getting paid well," the ACU commander added, "but if Mr. Grady's former protegée slaughters those sheeps, we all risk having trouble."
"She's moving in that direction anyway," Owen said after looking at the tablet.
The keeper turned to Wheatley.
"I suggest you take your men, go back to the vehicles, take Zapotal's road, and deploy at the edge of the jungle. I'll continue on foot."
"You're sure? I think you could use some help."
"It's too dangerous. I need to approach her from a certain angle to prevent her from detecting my scent. If there are people with me, she might run away before I even reach her."
Wheatley nodded slightly.
"If you say so," the mercenary replied with a touch of reluctance.
He looked at Austin who responded with a shrug and didn't object.
The ACU commander, the mercenaries and Zia thus turned around while Owen began to descend the slope, heading towards the creek he had glimpsed on the map.
"Claire. I'm going to track her alone. The others returned to the vehicles in order to wait at the edge of the jungle, about halfway between the two villages, near the westernmost creek. I need you to be my eyes. Do you copy?"
"Copy that."
Claire put the radio back on the desk and looked at the satellite map, following, with Franklin, Blue's movements as well as those of the animals being transported to the station.
A little later, a radio placed on one of the shelves in the room began to sputter. Believing at first that they were given news of the track, Claire and Jocelyn approached the radio but the first noticed that the frequency displayed was not the one used by the tracking team but the one usually used by the keepers and other Site D employees. Alex, one of the two keepers in charge of the animals housed in the Ark, was heard:
"Folks, we've got quite a problem! Some moron opened the door of Caerbannog's cage as well as the kennel. And that quilled bastard is gone!"
"An animal escaped?" The manager realized in a voice that mixed annoyance and stress.
Jocelyn wanted to ask Alex more details and took the radio. She tried to communicate with Alex but he didn't answer her, even though they heard other keepers were talking to their colleague.
"Alex, do you copy? Alex, do you copy?!" She repeated.
Claire, who had just rolled her eyes, took the radio from her, pressed a button and spoke into it:
"Claire's speaking. You said that Caerbannog is not in his cage?"
"Affirmative," Alex replied.
"Caerbannog? Which one is it?" Jocelyn asked after sighing in irritation.
"Caerbannog? Like in Holy Grail. The rabbit…," Franklin thought aloud. "It's the Pegosomething!"
"Find its code in the notebook, Lowery," Claire instructed.
Franklin grabbed the notebook, opened it and looked for said code.
"Lowery?" He repeated.
"Oh sorry, Franklin," she corrected herself. "Old habits… He was the control room's chief technician at the park…"
Luckily, the animals were listed in alphabetical order and Franklin fairly quickly found the one associated with the Pegomastax. He entered it into the computer and another dot appeared, highlighted, on both maps, within Site D and specifically in the Ark itself. The DPG IT technician tapped on the keyboard for a moment and a map of the building appeared on one of the screens, with a slowly moving red dot in the centre.
Jocelyn took the radio from Claire's hand and informed the keepers of the animal's location.
"He's still in the Ark. At the heart of the building."
"Which level?" Alex asked.
Which level? The manager repeated in her head while looking at the Ark's map.
"Can you try to find out at which level he is?" She asked Franklin.
He turned to her and said:
"I'm afraid that's not possible. The satellite can only give us longitude and latitude, not altitude."
Franklin then pressed a key to display the plans of the Ark's four levels.
"The Pegomastax' cage is in the kennel's second level," he said, pointing to a part of the kennel on Level 2's map. Logic would dictate that he wouldn't be far from it. We're on the same level, I hope the door is closed..."
"If he got away like twenty minutes ago, he could have gone up or down a level already," Claire assumed.
"Jocelyn?" Alex asked.
"We... We don't know...," the manager stammered.
There was a silence and then the keeper said:
"I started searching Level 2. I asked for the others to be searched as well. Benito will arrive shortly to check the CCTV footage. Whoever let Caerbannog escape will hear from me!"
"Copy that, Alex."
Jocelyn put the radio down and massaged her sweaty forehead.
Benito soon arrived at the security offices and headed for a small room next to that of the ACU monitoring station. Inside, there was a desk with a whole array of screens where footage from Site D's CCTV cameras were displayed in real time. Jocelyn followed the security guard, as did Claire, who asked Franklin to keep an eye on Blue's movements, and the two women came to position themselves behind the security guard, sitting at the desk and looking for the kennel cameras' footage. When he saw that one of them was no longer showing anything, he frowned and checked the camera's location on another screen, where it was indicated on a map with a code associated to it. Said camera was located in the western half of the kennel, on its second level, where the Pegomastax' cage could be found. Wondering if the person who freed the animal also touched to the camera, Benito rewinded until something suddenly stuck to the lens.
"What is that?" Jocelyn wondered. "Paint?"
Oh no, not again…, Claire thought.
The mention of painting had brought back a bad memory from the Fall, that of the treason and death of Zara Young, her assistant. During the Long Night, they had discovered that she had broken into Wu's office to steal sensitive data from his computer, data which she would have sent to one of InGen's rivals if a Harpactognathus had not made her fall in a flight of stairs on the way back. To avoid being detected by the cameras, Zara had used a paintball rifle and shot on the lenses.
"Shit," Benito swore.
Even though he had rewound a bit more, he couldn't see the whole saboteur on this camera's footage. All he saw was a vague silhouette as well as a leg, an arm and the torso. He then searched through the footage of the cameras in the nearest corridors.
"Bingo!" He exclaimed a few moments later. "I got you, you fucking asshole!"
Claire and Jocelyn then looked at the screen he was staring at, where the saboteur, a young man with short hair, an ascetic-like physique and Caucasian features, appeared relatively clearly.
"Who's that guy?" Jocelyn wondered, not recognizing what was one of the temp veterinarians, a taciturn named Connor.
"I think I saw him yesterday in the camp," Claire said.
"He's not one of the employees from here anyway," Benito added.
"Probably one of the temps. I have to talk to Stella about it," the manager director declared, taking out her phone to find the number of the temp's coordinator. "If he is a saboteur, maybe there's others among them?" She added shortly after, as her voice became more and more stressed. "Could they be undercover agents sent by Biosyn, Grendel, Mantah or God knows who? Or even eco-terrorists? Oh, God…"
"And temporary workers aren't the only one concerned. I would recommend you to also be wary of those who have been working here for months or even more…," Benito suggested gloomily.
"By botching its recruitment campaign for the operation's relaunch, InGen invited wolves into the sheepfold…," Claire noted.
For her, there was no doubt. If she was in charge of an organization hostile to InGen and her objective was to sabotage Operation Fallen Kingdom through undercover agents in Site D, she would have ordered to one or several agents to respond to the offers shared on internet and to falsify their CVs if necessary to maximize their chances of getting recruited. In their haste, InGen's human resources department must not have taken the time to check the candidates' backgrounds and make sure they had good intentions. Once again, InGen's negligence threatened its own survival and innocent people were going to pay the price...
Meanwhile, Owen was still moving through the jungle. While following Blue's implant signal on the tablet's screen, he frequently looked at the ground, partly to look for clues of the Achillobator's passage and partly to avoid stepping on a snake or foolishly tripping over an obstacle. He was far from the road and if anything happened to him, he wasn't sure the others would find him in time. His eyes also scanned the surroundings, though the vegetation was too dense to make out anything beyond a stone's throw or two, and he listened for any significant noise. At one point, he heard flapping wings and looking above him, he saw parrots flying over him. A good half hour had already elapsed since he had found the creek and he was following it downstream.
Continuing straight as he seemed to be getting closer to Blue according to the tablet screen, he soon put his foot in the stream and walked into it, moving slowly to avoid making too much noise and startling the raptor. Suddenly he heard bleating, probably from the sheep they had spotted earlier. He was close to the edge and the pastures.
At a bend, he left the creek, as the signal was leading him away from it and the impression he had was confirmed when he noticed that the trees were becoming a little more scattered and that the luminosity was increasing. This allowed him to spot a footprint on the ground, a didactyl footprint as big as his hand, if not larger. He took out his radio.
"Austin, Wheatley. I found a fresh track," he told them. "What's your situation?"
"We entered the pastures," Austin replied. "We'll soon be at the edge, near her location."
"Okay. Wait for my signal."
He continued and about an hour after he separated from the rest of the group up the creek, he stepped into a small clearing where he was surprised to find the overturned and rusted carcass of an old car. As it resembled some of those which could be seen in films whose plot took place during the 1930s or 1940s, or even to a Citroën 2CV, Owen thought that this car must have been rotting there for decades and that it may have dated from the Civil War. Straight ahead, he noticed that the daylight penetrated more into the woods between the trees and he knew that the edge was near, and so was Blue. According to the tablet, she was less than a hundred meters from him and knowing that she must be hidden in the surrounding thickets, he moved forward. He heard a rustle in the bushes behind the car and stopped for a moment before moving forward again.
"Here you are," he said quietly in a low voice.
Suddenly, an opossum emerged from the vehicle, running towards Owen. As he watched it pass him and disappear behind, he suddenly jumped when he heard the carcass creak. A familiar hiss sounded the next second and turning his head, Owen saw that Blue had leapt out of the vegetation and was standing on top of the car.
"Hey gorgeous. Did you enjoy your walk?"
The Achillobator jumped from the vehicle and approached him. She stuck out her black-spotted white chest and spread her arms.
"Easy. Hey! Hey."
She growled and he pulled a piece of meat from one of the pockets of the sleeveless leather jacket he wore over his T-shirt.
"I brought you something."
Blue hissed while her keeper handed her the piece but she showed some semblance of interest in it.
"Here you go. That's it."
He threw the piece at her, but it only crashed against the Achillobator's snout before falling to the ground. She snarled, and on the back of her skull, a crest of black feathers similar to that of the Crowned Eagle (*) (although proportionally shorter) bristled, forming some kind of small crown. This was a sign of irritation and Owen was well aware of that.
"Okay."
Stretching her neck forward, Blue got closer as Owen showed her the open palm of his hand. In the other, he held a clicker and his thumb pressed on it, making clicks that made her hiss.
"Look at me."
The Achillobator moved her head back while she looked at her keeper. She moved closer, adopting a calmer attitude than before.
"Yes, that's it…"
As Owen's hand nearly caressed the top of the Achillobator's snout, the latter's nostrils flared and her body tensed. She had picked up a new scent, one of a potentially hostile newcomer. He also tensed.
Don't tell me that Wheatley...
Suddenly, a gunshot rang out and Owen heard the bark of a tree trunk to his left split, crack and shards being projected. Someone had just shot in their direction.
Just as surprised as he was, Blue let out a shrill sound and spun around to face the threat but in doing so, she made Owen fall when her tail stuck his legs.
"For fuck's sake!" He roared furiously, thinking that Wheatley had betrayed them and decided Blue would be a prime target.
He straightened up immediately and actively sought out the shooter while Blue snarled. They heard the dense vegetation at the top of an embankment to their right rustle, the shooter came out and Owen widened his eyes in surprise but also in fear because he was not afraid of the shooter himself, but feared for the latter's life. It wasn't Wheatley or one of his men, but a frail old man in stained clothes, pointing a simple shotgun at Blue. Owen surmised that it must be the farmer who owned the sheep in the pasture and who, sensing that his animals were in danger, had ventured into the woods to seek out the threat and remove it. Despite the fear that inhabited him, the farmer dared to brave Blue's gaze and seemed determined to confront her.
"Don't come any closer!" Owen warned him, speaking in Spanish.
The shivering farmer then mumbled something unintelligible to Owen, who wondered if he was speaking in some sort of local dialect. However, he recognized the word Cordero, which meant lamb, and quickly scanning the area, he saw a small body lying in the distance, half hidden under a bush. A delicate little body whose coat was stained with blood: The lamb the farmer was talking about. Owen noticed that its throat had been bitten off and part of its belly had been torn away, exposing the flesh and viscera above which gnats were already flying.
Blue, what have you done?
"Stand back," he told him softly. "I won't be able to stop her if she decides to attack."
The old man then looked at Owen and spoke to him in an aggressive, accusatory tone. Did he believe that Blue was a trained animal and that he ordered her to go after the herd of sheep? Whatever he thought, how did he hope to emerge alive from a confrontation with a predator six meters long and as tall as an adult man, taller than most modern land carnivores, an animal he knew almost nothing about? If he missed his shot, Blue wouldn't give him a chance and the raptor, already provoked and on edge following the first shot, sensed his aggression towards Owen and grew even more irritated, hissing loudly and making her crown of feathers bristle again. The farmer noticed this and his index finger pressed gently on the gun's trigger.
"No, don't shoot!" Owen begged.
But having no weapon on him and unable to control Blue in any way, the keeper could do nothing but watch helplessly the scene which took place before his eyes.
Blue quickly moved away from the line of fire and the bullet only grazed her back, making her screech, and flew away in the woods. While the old man realized he had missed his shot again, she disappeared into the nearest thicket and he heard the sound of her footsteps on the forest floor, a sound that was getting closer, and fast. Instead of charging in a straight line, she was going to flank him.
Knowing that he wouldn't have time to reload his rifle and that his current position so close to the dense vegetation was precarious, he abandoned the top of the embankment and began to descend it, towards a fallen log. Knowing the place well, he knew that it was hollow and big enough for him to take shelter inside. He would reload his weapon there and fire at the animal when it would try to dislodge him. The next moment, Blue emerged from the vegetation, all claws out, leaping in his direction and he let out a small frightened cry as his legs threatened to trip.
Having miscalculated her leap, Blue only landed a few meters from him and by the time she regained her balance, the farmer reached the bottom and threw himself with his weapon inside the trunk, starting to crawl towards the opposite end while the smell of rotting wood rose through his nostrils and his heart raced.
"Blue! Stop!" Owen shouted.
Reaching the middle of the trunk, the farmer stopped crawling and laid on his back while the dinosaur growled outside. He feverishly searched his pockets for his last bullet, managed to find it, but as he inserted it into the magazine of his rifle, something landed on top of the trunk, something heavy, and in the next moment, a whole section of bark collapsed on its lower body and the clawed feet of the predator landed on its legs. Instinctively, the farmer tried to back away, but the animal's sheer weight, equivalent to that of a tapir or a zebra, pinned him to the ground. He felt his muscles and bones put to the test and he began to ache, but the pain was nothing compared to the one he felt next, when the iconic sickle-shaped claws of this family of predatory dinosaurs dug into his flesh like butcher hooks into a carcass, causing him to scream in pain.
"Stop!" Owen repeated.
Blue retracted her claws and stepped back. At first the farmer thought she had finally obeyed the long-haired man he had seen with her but that hope was short-lived as her jaws closed on his calf and she began to drag him out of his fragile shelter. He wanted to kick her with his free foot but he could barely bend his leg, as if all the strength it had was dwindling due to the inflicted injuries. Aware that he would soon be out in the open, he clutched his rifle against him with both arms and waited for a shooting opportunity. Ironically, this one showed up as soon as there was no more bark above his torso to act as an obstacle. He then raised his torso, aimed the barrel of his rifle at his attacker's fluffy chest, but a sudden pain within his chest distracted him, making him move the rifle's barrel to the right. As Blue was about to rush on his throat to rip it out and kill him, the farmer's fingers squeezed the trigger and the gun fired.
Under the appalled gaze of her keeper, Blue screamed, staggered to the side, out of the burst trunk, and collapsed on the ground, hit in the side. The farmer struggled to his feet, limped out of the trunk, looked at his bloody legs, then at the downed dinosaur, and finally at Owen. But suddenly, he put a hand on his chest while moaning and also collapsed, victim of a heart attack.
With panicked eyes, Owen looked at the dying farmer and then at his badly injured raptor.
"Shit… Shit. Shit!"
He rushed to the farmer, put his arms around his waist and pulled him away from Blue. Once at a respectable distance from the latter, he laid him on his back to start giving him a cardiac massage. He did several series of chest compressions but he got no positive reaction from the old man.
"Come on!"
While Owen attempted to save the old man's life, Zia, Austin and the mercenaries, alerted by the gunfire, rushed to the scene and the DPG veterinarian was shocked to see the Achillobator lying on the ground, growling in pain, and her keeper kneeling beside the farmer, with his back facing her. Blue being her priority, Zia cautiously came closer to look at her wound while Wheatley's men set up a security perimeter.
When she saw Owen striking the ground with his fist in defeat, as the farmer let out his last breath, Fanny Oven murmured:
"Fuck... Blunder..."
She noticed that Theo, then a few feet away, had heard her and was giving her a severe look.
"Sorry Theo," she apologized. "I tend to forget that I should avoid using the B-word in your presence…"
"I don't think blunder is the right word for this situation," he said.
Overseeing the whole thing, Austin turned back to the edge, where they had left their vehicles.
"Bring the MVU (**) closer!" Austin ordered the driver over the radio.
The ACU commander then went to join Wheatley and Owen by the farmer's body. Unable to do anything more for him, Owen returned to Blue, letting Austin stare at the victim in silence for a moment. Austin then took out his phone and called Torres:
"It's me. We found the Achillobator. She's injured and there's been a civilian casualty. An old farmer."
"She killed him?"
"No. Though she wounded him, I think he died of a heart attack."
"Put me on speakerphone," InGen Security's director said.
While the truck finished backing up and Blue was being prepared for the transport, Austin motioned everyone to be quiet and then pressed the speakerphone button.
"All of you, listen to me! What just happened is a tragedy and all my thoughts are with the victim's loved ones of the victim…," Torres began.
"Of course," Whealtey growled in disbelief.
"LOL, like if we believed that," Fanny added in a low voice.
"However," Torres continued, "I'm asking you all to keep this incident quiet for the time being. If you inform the authorities, they'll want to launch an investigation. But who says investigation, says delay. Who says delay, says annoying complications and in the end, we'll all be in a disadvantage."
"So what do we do?" Owen asked while helping Zia tranquilize Blue and administer first aid.
"The asset must be returned to Site D for medical treatment. It would be highly regrettable to let such a specimen die. Instead of taking the train and the Arcadia as originally planned, it will be sent to the US by plane. Mr. Wheatley, I'll task you and you men with escorting it to the site with Joel."
"And what about the victim?" The mercenary leader inquired in a neutral tone.
"He died because of Mr. Grady's pet, didn't he? It's therefore up to him to dispose of the body."
"How?" Owen asked in a tight voice.
"You'll sort it out," Torres replied.
"But it's a crime!" Owen protested.
"What's this madness?!" Zia exclaimed, flabbergasted.
"It's called a Tuesday in the business," Fanny told her.
"You're afraid of being accused, Mr. Grady? Come on, the farmer was old. The same would have happened if he had come across a ferocious jaguar or a particularly intimidating sheep stealer. The day the authorities will discover that you were here when he died, you'll be far from here. Believe me…"
"I refuse to do that. Go to Hell!"
"Mr Grady! If you ever pull the wool over our eyes, I promise I'll have you be the one responsible for this mess! And you can try to persuade Mr. Wheatley to side with you. I'm paying him, not you!"
"I'm sorry, but he has a point," the mercenary leader whispered to Owen.
"Do we have an understanding?" InGen Security's director asked.
Owen sighed in defeat.
"Yes…," he replied weakly.
"Good. I'm going to hang out. You have much to do…"
On the other end of the line, Torres hung up and Austin put his phone back in his pocket.
"This guy is such an asshole!" Zia cursed out loud.
"You said it," Wheatley told her.
"You heard him? So hurry up!" The ACU commander urged them. "We have to leave as soon as possible!"
He then turned to Owen, who was still by Blue's side.
"Mr. Grady," he said. "Miss Rodriguez can handle her. Instead, hide the body somewhere in this wood. Make sure to protect it from scavengers. The better you hide it, the less you'll be likely to have problems. We're leaving. We'll pick you up later."
Disgusted by what he was being asked to do, Owen put his hands on his knees and sighed.
"Hey," Zia said to him softly. "I'm taking care of her. She'll be fine, I promise."
"Thank you, Zia."
He got up and went to take the farmer's body, carrying him on his shoulder. Wheatley watched him head for the opposite direction of the edge. He hailed one of his men:
"Stan."
A handsome man with a pleasant face and chestnut hair replied:
"Yes sir?"
"Help him. We'll pick you up at the same time as him."
"Understood."
Keeping his weapons, Stan went to catch up with Owen deeper in the woods.
-o-
Notes
(*)Stephanoaetus coronatus
(**) Mobile Veterinary Unit.