Notes
Hypothetical casting:
Steve Toussaint as George Lambert. He already dubbed that character in the two installments of Jurassic World: Evolution.
Soundtrack suggestions:
Guillaume's walk on the second day:
- Une Clairière près de Gaunes — Alexandre Astier, Kaamelott : Premier volet.
-o-
On Friday, July 25th, Guillaume left San Francisco before noon and arrived in Orick between five and six o'clock. When he reached the manor and parked his car, he saw that Elijah Mills was waiting for him.
"Mr. Vuillier!" He greeted him. "I hope you had a good trip."
"Good evening, Mr Mills. The road was good, thank you," the WDMC director replied.
"Please call me Eli. It is a pleasure to host you at the manor."
Guillaume looked up at the manor's storeys.
"So all the rooms are taken with the operation?"
"Yes, InGen has more or less reserved the estate for a month and a half. But when your assistant contacted us, we hastened to free a room for you. Mr. Lockwood and I hate to break our promises."
"And I thank you for that."
The manager of the Lockwood Foundation saw that their host was carrying a backpack and a suitcase.
"Do you want me to call someone to carry your luggage?" he asked him. "It's included in the price."
"Thank you for your concern but I'll be fine," Guillaume assured him, adjusting his backpack.
"As you wish."
"It's high season. You're not afraid of an important impact on the hotel activity?"
"We made arrangements with InGen. And in Mr. Lockwood's eyes, those losses mean little compared to the good of the operation."
Arriving at the base of the stairs which led to the manor's entrance, Eli stopped and invited their host to take them.
"I'll let you check-in and go to your room. See you here in ten minutes for the camp's tour."
The WDMC director nodded, disappeared into the manor and came out a little less than ten minutes later. Taking the path that led up the ridge, he and Eli first came to the village of caravans and prefabs that had been set up in the meadow near the basin and there they saw several keepers, vets and guards, as most of them had just finished their working day. At the entrance to this ephemeral village, a man in dark clothes and wearing boots was waiting for them. Middle-aged, he was a tall, athletic black man whose serious face sported a goatee of greying hair. Eli introduced them and Guillaume learned that the man, an InGen Security executive named George Lambert, was in charge of the site's security, as Edward Torres returned to Palo Alto as soon as the last animals arrived at the estate.
The trio then walked towards the basin's large entrance gate, which was then open, but just before it, two guards subjected Guillaume to a search and asked him to put his phone in a bow, where he would retrieve it after his tour. He was not surprised because Eli had told him about this when they had exchanged by email on the terms of his stay. He had told him that InGen prohibited any photography of the camp and the animals for safety reasons. Once this formality was over, the guards gave way to them and the WDMC director finally entered the camp.
Guillaume had never seen so many dinosaurs and other extinct animals in one place, and he saw for the first time some species, which could only be encountered in Jurassic World when it fell. At first, he was amazed by the diversity of InGen's menagerie, but this sense of excitement was short-lived and quickly gave way to some concern and bitterness. Although he knew this was a temporary situation imposed by US law and its quarantine rules for imported animals, he was indeed a bit sad to see the animals in the somewhat basic enclosures of this austere gloomy-looking camp which, seen from the sky, must have looked like an ugly sore in the middle of the woods. The dirt and dusty paths were rutted in places, trees and shade scarce, the ground became muddy around the troughs or waterholes in the enclosures, and many animals spent their time sleeping for lack of available activities outside feeding times, some individuals of social species had even been dispatched in several enclosures. Guillaume noted that several seemed to show cases of stereotypy (*): Several Pelecanimimus kept grooming themselves; the Metriacanthosaurus paced back and forth, always repeating the same path; One of the Acrocanthosaurus frequently nodded; and one of the stegosaurs swayed from side to side, in a manner similar to some circus elephants… While George Lambert told him about the security measures they had taken, the WDMC director wondered what the team of the Dinosaur Protection Group thought of all this because he felt almost guilty for asking about that visit. He reassured himself a little by remembering that it was mostly out of professional duty that he had asked to see the animals, and not for personal pleasure.
Once they had toured the camp and the adjoining village, Guillaume and Eli went back down to the manor and stopped not far from the refectory tent where the operation's participants were already entering. As the Frenchman didn't book a dinner at the manor for the evening of his arrival and being too tired to take his car, leave the estate and look for a restaurant in Orick or even in Trinidad and Eureka, the manager of the Lockwood foundation told him that he could dine in the refectory tent if he wished and Guillaume accepted. They took leave of each other and while Eli walked away, the WDMC director heard him grumbling about his shoes and the bottom of his pants who got stained during the tour.
A quarter of an hour later, Guillaume sat down alone with his tray at a free table in a corner of the tent and dined in silence, unable to stop thinking about the animals in the basin. Drinking slowly from his plastic cup, he looked around the tent and recognized the bald head of Alexander Singer a few tables away. The founder of the DPG was seated with his two colleagues which Guillaume had seen in the presentation video on their website, but as his back faced him, he did not notice the presence of the Frenchman and when he left his table and then the tent, he didn't even see him. On the one hand, Guillaume let out a "Phew" of relief, as he didn't want to have a discussion similar to the one they had at the reception a few months earlier, but on the other, he wouldn't have been against a talk with the DPG about the animals' housing conditions.
Once he had finished eating, he entered the manor and went back up to his room, located on the second floor in the southern wing, with a window overlooking the tents, the large lagoon they overlooked and the ocean beyond. Before going to bed, he stayed in front of his laptop for a while, checking the latest news from Costa Rica.
A few days earlier, the Unidad Especial de Intervencion, the elite commandos of the Costa Rican Public Force, had carried out raids on several properties of the Joséfian businessman Sebastián Bonel, who was suspected of being at the head of the traffic of a new type of drug, Unicorn Candy. In one of the buildings owned by Bonel, they had not only found a clandestine laboratory, a stash of unicorn candies, but also the source of this drug's key ingredient: Forty-nine Compsognathus. Bonel had been arrested, and the stash and the animals seized. There were adults but also juveniles and the first were each kept in an individual cage no larger than those used in industrial chicken coops. According to the Public Force's representatives interviewed by the media, Bonel's men collected the dinosaurs' saliva and the venom it contained by making them bite some kind of small stick, on which the saliva flowed before falling into a container, a method of harvest similar to the one used with venomous snakes in the context of scientific studies or the creation of antivenom, but much more intensive. Then, the venom was isolated in order to be incorporated into the chemical mixture that would end up becoming Unicorn Candy. All this enterprise was not without impact on the well-being and health of the Compsognathus, which had outright been exploited in horrible conditions. Some had wounds, others were found sick and one had even been found dead in his cage.
The forty-or-so survivors were now in charge of veterinarians and after care and a stay in quarantine, they were going to be, like many animals seized by the authorities during anti-criminal operations, given to a wildlife park or a zoo, probably the Parque Zoológico Nacional Simón Bolívar in San José. InGen had remained oddly silent about the whole affair because it was rumored that it, or at least one of its employees, had given several Compsognathus to Bonel.
The article also mentioned special consultants who had advised for a sterilization of the animals in order to prevent a proliferation of Compsognathus in the area should one of the animals ever escape. Although the Public Force had not disclosed the identity of those consultants who had provided them with valuable assistance, Guillaume knew them. Two and a half weeks earlier, he had received an email from a man named Rodrigue Santagar, who claimed to be an employee of the Costa Rican government and who apparently made a deal with Claire Dearing and Owen Grady. It was she who had suggested him to contact the WDMC director in order to inform him of InGen's schemes.
Thus, Guillaume Vuillier knew not only about the relationship that linked InGen to Bonel and the Cascabels, the gang he led; the assassins hired by Edward Torres; and the clandestine research pursued for a time in Burgo Nuevo by Henry Wu, research which had resulted in the birth of a creature named Indoraptor, the heir of the Indominus rex. Aware of the world in which he was, he knew that he had to tread carefully while trying to learn more.
The next morning, Guillaume took his breakfast fairly early in the dining room usually dedicated to the manor's guests, as the Lockwoods and their close entourage had their own private dining room. As they had mentioned the day before, he was the only outside person and he assumed that the other guests then present, a small dozen, were employees of the Lockwood Foundation or InGen, since the only person he recognized was George Lambert, who greeted him with a polite nod when he arrived. Seated not far from the WDMC director, was a trio of thirty-something persons and a tall, athletic fortyish woman with long dark hair tied in a ponytail. Actually, the latter was Maya Harris, Owen Grady's former comrade from the United States Navy's marine mammal program, but since he didn't spoke to her during the reception in March, he did not recognize her and thus paid no attention. The trio of thirtysomethings was made up of a skinny guy with emaciated features; a woman with jaw-length black hair, an average physique and a sloppy appearance; and a second man, of North African or Arab descent, with thick curly hair and glasses. When Guillaume heard the latter's voice, he was surprised to hear a hint of a French accent in it.
Probably a French or someone from a French-speaking background. Jurassic World and InGen employees aren't just American and Costa Rican after all.
But the WDMC director decided not to approach this possible compatriot. On the one hand, he wanted to leave on time to hike as he had planned, and on the other hand, the trio looked like death warmed up and spoke in low voices. Guillaume did not know what their job was but it seemed to exhaust them greatly.
Shortly after, he returned to his vehicle, put his backpack in it, and left the estate to explore the area's redwood forests. That part of northern California was famous for the latter and in addition to being home to remarkable flora and fauna, the spectacular and primitive setting they provided had attracted many film and television productions. Thus, Guillaume knew that the filming of the scenes set in the forest moon of Endor in The Return of the Jedi, as well as that of certain segments of the BBC documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, had taken place in the region.
The WDMC director only returned to the Lockwood estate at the end of the afternoon and after leaving his backpack in his room, he came out of the manor, as he desired to stay outside a little longer. Following the main path, he crossed the bridge over the ravine and reached the crossroads where he turned right. Passing through the woods north of the manor, he crossed shortly after another bridge spanning the ravine, of more modest design and appearance than the first, and at the next intersection he kept to the right, knowing that the driveway on the left was probably going down to the estate's northern gate, a secondary entrance which led almost directly to Orick itself. The right driveway also descended a little but flattened a little further, and on Guillaume's right, the vegetation became sparser and a large gravelled area appeared.
That surface extended in front of an unloading bay, which was rather spacious for a manor in the WDMC director's opinion. He then noted that beyond the bay, a large jagged roof rose and on noticing that it was made up of a succession of gabled roofs of with different pitches, with the shortest facing north and fitted with a series of panes, he knew that it must originally have housed some sort of factory, built on two levels against the very side of the small plateau on which the manor rested. From the sky, this old factory almost jutted out from the house following a north-south axis and its roof was located at the same level as that of the maintenance tunnels and the cellars under the manor's ground floor.
In the shadow of the unloading bay, Guillaume saw a man smoking a cigarette and judging by the dark uniform he wore, he knew he had to be one of the estate guards. Continuing to walk straight, he nodded to him, but the guard didn't answer and just stared after him suspiciously.
Turning southeast, the path began to climb and another intersection appeared soon after. Knowing that he would eventually reach the path leading to InGen's "village" if he continued straight, Guillaume turned left, following another winding path as he climbed the wooded ridge. When he was almost at the top of the ridge, he heard a child's voice calling:
"Joseph! Joseph!"
Intrigued, the WDMC director continued and after a bend, he saw that a young girl with chestnut hair was standing further away, not far from an old wooden cabin which stood on the left of the path.
Having heard Guillaume, the girl turned to look at him. Believing she was playing hide and seek with a friend, he slowed down.
"Hello," she said to him when he came closer.
"Hello," Guillaume replied with a reassuring smile. "What are you doing?"
"I'm calling Joseph."
"Joseph?" It is a friend?" he asked.
She nodded. They then heard a rustle in the vegetation near the cabin.
"Hush…" she said.
Between the path and the cabin, were plenty of bushes, ferns, and shrubs, along with a log or two.
The girl suddenly pointed to a bush near a corner of the cabin.
"There."
Guillaume looked in that direction but even his sharp former Interpol agent eyes did not see the shadow of a person, not even that of a child.
"I don't see him," he said in a low voice.
"Lower," she replied in the same tone.
"Lower? Is Joseph a gnome or a korrigan?"
"What is a korrigan?"
"A kind of goblin."
She laughed softly.
"No. Joseph is neither a gnome nor a korrigan," she told him.
The bush started to rustle and that is when a ball of salt and pepper fur appeared. When the animal began to run along the front of the cabin, Guillaume chuckled as he realized that Joseph was not a young boy but a raccoon, but he chuckled to laugh at his own naivety and not to make fun of the young girl. Joseph stopped and turned his head towards the two humans watching him, sniffing their scent. He recognized the girl but the man was a stranger to him, making him to be suspicious.
"Ah, I thought this Joseph was a friend of yours," Guillaume said.
"But he is.'
"I meant…one of your school friends, a cousin or the son of one of the estate's employees, not a raccoon."
Joseph did not linger and disappeared again into the vegetation.
"Even though he is a Raccoon, Joseph is one of my only friends," the girl said, looking at the bushes. "I don't have any outside of the estate."
"Not even at school?" Guillaume inquired, taken aback.
"I don't go to school. Grandfather and Iris make teachers come to the house."
"Ah, okay."
It was then that he remembered having seen his interlocutor before, when he first came to Lockwood Manor.
"Are you a guest of Grandfather or Eli?" she asked him.
"Yes. What is your name? Someone told me but I don't remember."
"Maisie. I turned ten last month."
"Did you see the dinosaurs, Maisie?"
A gleam of excitement appeared in the girl's eyes.
"I went to the paddocks shortly after they arrived. Iris was too scared so Eli took me there," she said. "I saw you at the reception a few months ago," she said after a silence. "You were with the red-haired lady with the purple dress and the white mask."
He then remembered that he and Claire had seen Maisie on the museum's mezzanine, heading towards one of the book shelves before retracing her steps and disappearing after seeing Claire.
"We saw you too. Were you looking for a book in the library?"
"Yes."
"What scared you? Claire… I mean Mrs. Dearing?"
"If she is the lady, yes."
Guillaume nodded and stroked his goatee.
"You shouldn't judge a book by its cover," he said. "You have already met her. She told me that you and your grandfather came to the park once."
"But I was so young, I don't remember everything, and especially not her mask."
"She got it after the park fell. She had a terrible accident during it."
"She still scares me. And I heard things about her..."
"What kind of things?"
"That she was mad and evil. A bit like the queen in Snow White… or Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty."
"Who did you hear that from?" Guillaume asked in a slightly inquisitive tone, as if the dormant investigator in him was supplanting the director on leave.
"Ah, there you are," the voice of an elderly woman said suddenly. "Where have you been?"
They turned to the voice's source and the WDMC director recognized Iris, the housekeeper.
"I was paying a visit to Joseph," Maisie replied.
"I hope you haven't fed that filthy beast?" Iris asked.
"No, Iris. Me and the man just watched him. That's all."
As the housekeeper joined them, Guillaume greeted her:
"Hello."
"Hello," she greeted him back. "You are?"
"Mr Vuillier. Guillaume Vuillier," he replied, holding out his hand.
"Ah, Eli's and Benjamin's guest!" She remembered before shaking his hand. "Are you having a good stay?"
"I can't complain about the service or the food if that's what you want to know," he informed her, giving her an amused smile. "And the surroundings are beautiful."
"I see you've gone hiking," she observed. "Did you toured the estate?"
"I only did part of it."
"Maisie and I are going to walk around the basin and come back by the camp in the meadow. Do you want to join us?"
"Gladly."
-o-
Notes
(*) Stereotypy: A type of abdnormal behaviour where movements are repeated without any apparent reason. Stereotyped behaviours are often associated with stress and a lack of stimulation.