Once in his, Guillaume locked the door and went to sit down, pensive.
Wu lies like he breathes! No but I have a trained eye, man. It's not the first time that I've been taken for a fool! He was honest only about his colleagues: Like everyone else, he believes that it was a madman who killed Strahovski, Sheen and Karpyshyn. No, but five hours to do the eighteen-kilometre trail to Prairie Creek? Bullshit yeah! It took more than six and I'm a good walker. And his dark circles! I don't know how he spent his nights, but he's not having holidays here. And Mills and his salamalecs! Colgate smile but two-faced like you wouldn't believe! Macron's secret brother! I have a better hearing than he thinks. As luck would have it, there is work going on this summer in the conference room in the basement! Surprise, surprise, the bunker/lab is closed! And that's not to mention the guard at the loading bay who looked at me askance! No, but there's something going on down there and Wu and Mills are involved. I'm sure the first one is working on that Indoraptor Santagar told me about! According to Claire and her boyfriend, one seems to have been created in Burgo Nuevo but where did InGen send it? Let's continue to play tourists tonight and tomorrow morning. I would most likely be invited to the sale, so they can show me that everyone is beautiful, everyone is nice, but things will be different there. First, I need a strategy.
Guillaume then took out his laptop and opened a virtual mapping software. He entered the manor's address and as soon as the window showed the estate, he looked at the terrain and the paths and roads visible. He knew the bunker was the key but how to get there? The unloading dock was probably guarded day and night, as were the doors leading to it inside the manor.
If Mills was telling the truth earlier about this resistance base story, the bunker must have a secret entrance, away from the manor, in order to allow the evacuation of its occupants inland should the estate be overrun by an enemy force coming from the coast. A tunnel, large enough to allow vehicles to use it. But where?
He stared at the screen, looking at the geography.
We can already cross the west out. South? No, because beyond the tents, the terrain descends too steeply. To the east? Neither because the ground is ascending there. North then?
Guillaume looked at the wood north of the manor. He saw the secondary access road leading directly down to Orick and the basin to the east. He also spotted the cabin near which he had met Maisie and he remembered their walk.
But wasn't there a blocked path nearby? With a restrictive access?
Following the one he had walked earlier, he found the closed entrance of that path. Although it quickly disappeared under the trees, its presence could be guessed as some parts appeared between the treetops. It descended west for just over five hundred meters, bending as it went to follow the slope, before stopping at what looked like a dead end. Guillaume marked the spot then looked around the rest of the estate and when he realized that this dead end was the only tangible lead he had, he wondered if that wasn't the tunnel's entrance by any chance.
Taking a sheet and a pen from his bag, Guillaume began to draw a map of the estate and indicated the location of the dead end.
The next morning, Guillaume got up earlier than planned. As the dawn broke, he pulled out a bag of biscuits originally intended for the road and nibbled on them before exiting his room, dressed in jogging pants and sneakers. He walked silently through the long deserted hallways and down to the entrance hall. He let out a small sigh of relief when he saw that the door was open, and he walked outside, only beginning to jog once he was past the bridge.
Like the previous day, he turned right and quickly disappeared into the misty wood. When he passed the unloading bay and the old factory again, he was reassured to see no guards and continued, sparing his efforts as he began to climb the ridge while in the basin, hadrosaurs let out resonant calls.
He reached the path with the closed entrance a little later and stopped in front of it, partly to catch his breath after his run but also to make sure he wasn't being followed or spied on. When it was done, he slipped under the beam and trotted along the path, following it to the dead end he had spotted in the aerial images. He stopped and looked around. In front of him, trees; on the right, trees; behind, the path and more trees; on the left, a rock wall covered with climbing plants and half a dozen meters high.
A wall?
Guillaume observed it and noticed that the ground was flattened and the dirt compressed at the base of the wall, as if this portion was an extension of the path. He walked to the wall and peered between the leaves and stems, looking at the rock. At first glance, it seemed to have the same appearance all over the wall, but on closer inspection, the WDMC noticed that the texture was strange in the centre, that it was too clean. As he was about to put his hand on that part of the wall, a fierce roar startled him. A second roar answered the first and Guillaume sighed as he realized they were being made by predatory theropods at the camp. From the zippered pocket of his sweatpants, he pulled out his map and pen, unfolded the former, and drew a circle at his current location.
He jumped again when he heard a branch crack nearby. He stepped back and scanned the surroundings with alert eyes, fearing that he was not alone in that part of the estate. Sure, the dinosaurs were locked up, or at least they were supposed to be, but they weren't the only large animals around. There were also those native from the area. Guillaume had read that a hiker had been attacked by a cougar in the region and these felines being capable of extraordinary leaps, they could enter the estate without any problem, especially since its perimeter was not entirely delimited by walls or fences and that at the level of these breaches, only a "Private property" sign indicated that one was about to enter the estate. The estate and InGen had sent guards there to secure them, but a cougar could easily escape their vigilance. The cougar(s) in the area must have learned to avoid the immediate surroundings of the manor as well as the basin and the smell of dinosaurs associated with it, but this restricted path was at a certain distance from them, and not only Guillaume was alone, but he had told no one that he was going there or even that he was going for a morning jog. Anything could happen to him.
Putting the map and pen back in his pocket, he saw fit to not linger and to get back on the walking path before he could be seen hanging around that area. Should he be caught, he considered pretending to have gotten lost when he went deeper into the woods to urinate. Either way, he found what he came for.
While watching the surroundings, he went up the path without incident and after listening carefully for any noise of footsteps or running, Guillaume advanced, passed the beam and returned to the walking path. While he stood by the side, resting for a bit before resuming his jog, he heard people running and talking. The WDMC director turned around and saw two other joggers behind him on the path. He recognized them. It was Elijah and the athletic, dark-haired woman he had seen at breakfast the previous day.
"Mr. Vuillier!" The businessman hailed him. "Don't stop. You were doing great." He said without stopping.
"I was just having a break!" Guillaume replied.
He greeted them when they passed him and waited a little longer before resuming his jog.
"C'est ça, fais le finaud… Tôt ou tard, toi et Wu allez passer à la casserole," he muttered while looking at Eli.
As planned, Guillaume left Orick in the middle of the morning, in order to be back in San Francisco by early evening. As he drove south, he couldn't help but think back to the animals' housing conditions and Wu's attitude. He grimaced when he reminded that he hadn't the chance to ask the geneticist if he knew things about Lockwood's and Hammond's argument in 1993, the one mentioned by Iris. He might had a negative answer but he would have at least tried.
On one hand, he had been a little relaxed and rested by that weekend, but the latter had also been instructive. Something was going on under the manor and the WDMC director had to know what. The Bethany investigation was going to have to wait a bit, as there was much more urgent, especially since he was currently at a standstill and feared that it would come to nothing should the research carried out by Michaela proved fruitless.