Notes

Soundtrack suggestions:

Mills and Eversol :
- Don't oversoll the marchandise — Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Maisie cross the lab and takes the dumbwaiter:
- Wu didn't like to know - Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

-o-

Mills opened the door to the office space and invited his visitor to enter first.

"We have used animals in battle for centuries. Horses, elephants… The Soviets even used disease-carrying rats against the Germans at Stalingrad," the manager of the Lockwood Foundation said.

"Yes, but you're still not going to make me believe that dinosaurs would have a place on a modern battlefield with tanks, helicopters, fighter planes, drones and missiles," Eversol replied. "The idea is absurd."

"It is, we agree on that. But we do not intend to use them in open battlefields where they will be exposed to a whole array of lethal weaponry. Don't think that these animals will replace tanks or attack drones. No, think of them more as a new form of auxiliary troops, which will be deployed in environments where heavy vehicles and aircrafts struggle to operate or be effective. Jungles and other dense forests, mountains, tunnels, cities whose streets are too narrow or congested..."

"Adequate for asymmetric conflicts."

Mills nodded and led Eversol to the side of the meeting table.

"Indeed. And we're not only considering military use. We think law enforcement would also be interested."

"Do you want to turn them into sniffer dogs or into the praetorian guard of some rich and powerful?" The auctioneer asked sarcastically. "They better be well trained..."

The manager of the Lockwood Foundation grabbed a remote from the opposite end of the table and used it to turn on the screen mounted on the partition behind him.

"That's the whole purpose of our research here."

The screen then displayed a three-dimensional representation of the Indominus rex, accompanied by that of a human being to give the scale. The measurements and the mass of the monster appeared: Sixteen and a half meters long for more than five meters in height and ten tons.

"Simon Masrani's bane...," Eversol recognized.

"Yes, the monster which brought down Jurassic World."

The auctioneer then saw a whole series of scientific names appear around the creature, and he guessed that the Indominus was a genetic hybrid of all these species. Each of these names was associated with one or several physical or behavioural features of the animal:

Giganotosaurus carolinii (Base Genome):
- Large size.
- Elongated and moderately narrow snout.
- Lacrymal crests.
- Crenelated teeth.

Megaraptor namunhuaiquii:
- Sickle-like claw at the hand's first finger.

Carnotaurus sastrei:
- Horns.
- Lower jaws' curve.
- Bulbous scales on the body.

Majungasaurus crenatissimus:
- Elongated neck.
- High snout.
- Bulbous scales on the body.

Proceratosaurus bradleyi:
- Long and prehensile arms.
- Pheromons (control of submitted proceratosaurs).

Tyrannosaurus rex:
- Immune system.
- Position and orientation of the eyes.
- Widening of the skull at the back.
- Rugosities on top of the snout.

Neoraptor athertonii iroquoii x tigris:
- Longer claw on the second toe.
- If it learns their vocalizations, it can communicate with neoraptors.

Eudyptes chrysocome:
- Short but sharp beak at the end of the snout.
- Spines on the palate and spiny lingual papillae.
- Red eyes.

Melanerpes carolinus:
- Extensible and flexible tongue with a barbed tip.

Kaprosuchus saharicus:
- Fangs.
- Keratinous snout widened at the front.
- Crocodilian armor.

Boa constrictor:
- Extensible jaws.
- Curved back teeth.
- Viviparity.
- Parthenogenesis.

Bothriechis schlegelii:
- Eyelash-like scales above the eyes.
- Heat-sensitive organs on each side of the head.

Smaug giganteus:
- Crown of spinous scales at the back of the head.
- Elongated caudal scales.

Phrynosoma cornutum:
- Horns.

Gonocephalus liogaster:
- Dorsal spines.

Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni:
- Thermal camouflage.

Acomys percivali:
- Autotomy.

Pan troglodytes:
- Intelligence.
- Prehensile hands with opposable thumbs.

Sepia officinalis:
- Visual camouflage.
- Accelerated growth.

"Imagine this animal, smaller," Mills began. "Deadly, intelligent, able to hide from the most advanced military technologies. A living weapon such as we have never seen. Our geneticists have created the direct descendant of Henry Wu's masterpiece. Its DNA forms the architecture of a totally new creature..."

He pressed the remote control again and the representation of the Indominus disappeared and was replaced by that of another creature, smaller, seven meters long for a height of two meters and a weight of more than three hundred and thirty kilos. Eversol was immediately struck by the presence of a melon above the jaw and the relatively small size of the eyes, which gave the animal a truly strange and creepy appearance… almost alien-like even.

"Every bone and muscle was designed to hunt, kill… or just subdue," the manager of the Lockwood Foundation continued. "Thanks to Owen Grady's and Maya Harris' respective research, it can obey orders. We named it Indoraptor."

The animal was the adult version of the black baby dinosaur Maisie had seen on Maya's computer, and seemed to be the opposite of the Indominus in many ways.

Where the latter was tall and had natural armor, the Indoraptor had a slimmer body which looked smoother and more aerodynamic, sacrificing armour for more speed and agility; the crocodilian cuirass inherited from Kaprosuchus, the horns and other ornaments had mostly disappeared; the snout was thicker and the jaws more robust and straight in appearance; and the claws were more uniform, with only those of the feet's second toe being sickle-shaped. If the Indominus was a colossus clad in plate armour, a tank with claws and fangs which rushed into the fray to slaughter its enemies with brutality, then the Indoraptor had to be a ninja in comparison, a ground-based biological drone which struck in the blink of an eye before disappearing into the shadows and waiting before attacking its next victim.

The depicted Indoraptor had its four limbs resting on the ground, a stance which its arms even longer proportionately speaking than those of the Indominus allowed, so much that it had to be more quadrupedal than bipedal. The front of its body was lowered towards the ground, making it look like a stalking big cat, and Eversol thought it looked like a dinosaurian panther with the head of an orca. Another astonishing fact, the hands, still equipped with an opposable thumb, had five fingers and not four like the Indominus.

As with the latter's representation, an array of scientific names and features appeared around that of the Indoraptor:

Neoraptor athertonii iroquoii (Base genome):
- Sickle-like claw on the second toe.
- If it learns their vocalizes, it can communicate with neoraptors.

Tyrannosaurus rex:
- Robust jaws.
- Immune system.

Majungasaurus crenatissimus:
- Bulbous scales on the body.

Eudyptes chrysocome:
- Spines on the palate and spiny lingual papillae.
- Red eyes.

Panthera pardus:
- Ability to climb.
- Pads under the feet for quiet movements.

Tursiops truncatus:
- Melon and echolocation.
- Large field of vision.

Pan troglodytes:
- Intelligence.
- Prehensile hands with opposable thumbs.

Bothriechis schlegelii:
- Prehensile tail.
- Heat-sensitive organs at each side of the head.

Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni:
- Thermal camouflage.

Ambystoma maculatum:
- Autotomy.

Sepia officinalis:
- Visual camouflage.
- Accelerated growth.

After letting Eversol study the representation for a moment, Mills turned off the screen and led him out of the room. But instead of returning to the elevator or going to the lab, they took the opposite direction.

"The profits from this sale will be used to finance the last stage of the research. As soon as we fix a few small flaws, we'll start to mass produce them..."

"Small flaws you say?"

"Genetic research involves a lot of trial and error. But be assured, the individual we have is fit to be shown."

They entered a small control room, set up in the jutting glassed room, crossed it and disappeared from Maisie's sight when they passed through a door at the back of it.

As Eli and his guest just left, Maisie thought of coming out of her hiding place and rushing to the elevator to finally leave the bunker while she had the chance, but the trio of geneticists, who had the laziness to take the stairs, called the elevator just at this moment, blocking the young girl's escape route. She looked for another way out. There was none, there was the laboratory itself, but its door was locked. Unless…

Maisie grabbed the doorknob and as she pulled it down, she sighed in relief when she noticed she could push it. Indeed, when the trio had entered there earlier, they had unlocked the door with a key but had not closed it when leaving. Maisie rushed into the lab and hid behind a working station just before the geneticists arrived.

"Did you know Iger got humiliated by Charles Dance?" Giles asked Karim.

"Charles Dance? The Charles Dance?

"Yes, Tywin Lannister. Iger flipped out because of the latest Godzilla's viral promotion. In the movie's universe, Charles Dance's character apparently sold us some Kaiju DNA and we used it for the Indominus. Iger accused the filmmakers of defamation but Dance replied that us dealing with terrorists is very realistic."

"Oh, that's just some stupid lore detail for a shitty blockbuster. No need to make a big deal out of it!"

As Karim, Giles, and Nicole had to work with the sample they had just taken, they went deeper into the lab, forcing Maisie to head for the other door, the one leading to the mezzanine, going from one hiding place to the other in order to avoid detection.

"I'm sure he doesn't give a damn about the movie, but in the meantime he's exciting the Lannisters' fanboys and those started to harass Iger," Giles said. "Those assholes must be singing The Rains of Castamere. I hope they don't divert a river, blow up a dam or provoke a mega tsunami to drown us like rats in this basement."

"The last thing we need is the sale to end up like the Red Wedding..."

"Fucking Lannisters fanboys! I'm a pro-Greyjoy anyway. We do not sow."

"It must also be said that all the conspiracy theories which appeared after the fall must have inspired the screenwriters a lot," Nicole intervened.

"Like the one which claims the Indominus has human DNA?" Karim raised.

"El famoso," Giles chuckled.

"No but lol. Dearing, that ungrateful bitch, must have posted this anonymously on a forum just to piss us off," Nicole theorized.

"Yeah well, there are things that only Henry and Ivan know," Karim pointed out. "I'm just saying..."

Maisie finally reached the door and taking advantage of the fact that they had their backs turned and were busy talking, she gently half-opened it and slipped out of the lab. Remaining crouched, she turned left, heading for the stairs.

"But we worked with DNA from a female Chimpanzee," Nicole said. "They told us that. Don't you remember?"

"Yes, but I'm skeptical. It was because of that DNA that the Indominus became as white as Maureen O'Hara's ass and I noticed back then that she had a low production of eumelanin and secreted pheomelanin instead, responsible for the red coloration of hair in mammals. How many ginger chimps do you know though?"

As quietly as possible, Maisie descended the spiral staircase. Once downstairs, she planned to walk along the cells on this side of the room and reach the elevator. But again, she had to change plans because she heard someone open the door at the back of the control room. If she stayed on this side of the room, then someone was going to see her, and if she went the other way, the geneticists were going to spot her before she could even get into the elevator. The girl then turned to the metal door near the stairs, the one the trio had taken earlier. She did the same and immediately closed it behind her just before Elijah exited the control room. Darkness had fallen all around her, and light entered this part of the bunker only through a small rectangular window in the upper part of the door. She stood on her tiptoes to look through it. Elijah, who was alone, had his head oriented towards the lab, most likely watching Karim, Giles, and Nicole. When he turned his head toward the stairs and the door, Maisie recoiled, as if she was afraid he would see her eyes and forehead in the small window. She backed up, crossing that dark room and noticing that she was passing through a wide doorway, she looked left and right and saw that she could hide behind the walls. She did so, stepping back to her left, but in doing so, and she did not notice it, she crossed a red line drawn on the floor and stopped just in front of the steel bars of a cell. As she stood still and silent, even holding her breath and fearing to hear the pull of a doorknob, something slipped between the bars of the cell. It was a large, black, scaly hand with five clawed fingers which slowly approached Maisie's skull before spreading when they reached her ponytail, as if to grab it, with the creature to which they belonged being intrigued by this type of hairstyle.

But Maisie, feeling very uncomfortable in her current position, stepped forward and the hand, unable to catch her hair, withdrew inside the cage, like a gigantic spider which just missed the opportunity to rush on its prey. Looking to her right, the young girl discerned a small corridor, which ran along the cell (which she had not yet seen) and stopped in front of another metal door. Feeling like a breath in her back, which she presumed to be a draft or even a ghost haunting the place, she had goosebumps and preferred to move away. She walked quickly past the doorway, then pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and used it to light her way. On either side, there were only concrete walls, but further on, the corridor described a bend to the right and by the latter, she saw a large rectangular panel in the wall. It had a handle, like those of the large dumbwaiters a few levels above.

Is it a dumbwaiter? If I'm correct, I must be under the tower where Grandpa has his room. Is it the same?

Maisie walked over to the panel, and after she lifted it, looked inside the dark cage it concealed, and pointing her flashlight upwards, her eyes lit up.

Eureka!

The cage stretched upwards, more than fifteen meters if not more. She knew it must be the same one they used to bring food or drinks to her grandfather's room from the ground floor. She then began to pull the rope, in order to bring the tray down to her level. The dumbwaiter being probably by one of the manor's floors, the process was going to take a bit of time but it was her best escape way, perhaps the only one even, as Elijah could still be on the mezzanine or nearby. Using it didn't scare Maisie that much. The dumbwaiter was spacious enough for her to sit cross-legged on it, and sure, it was dark there, there were probably webs and nasty spiders, and the damp, rotten smell which prevailed at this level was not pleasant, but she had taken the habit of using the dumbwaiters as secret passages, sometimes to drive Iris crazy.

While she pulled down the dumbwaiter, she heard someone open the front door of that dark part of the bunker and walk towards the doorway.

He's going to hear me. Quick!

As soon as the dumbwaiter was at her level, Maisie climbed onto it, closed the panel and pulled the rope up. She went up two meters, then four, passing in front of a second panel, located at the laboratory's level. But as she passed a third panel, a little more than half a dozen meters above the second, someone opened the fifth panel on her way, the one that should have allowed her to exit on the ground floor. Maisie recognized the individual as one of Eli's guards.

"But... it's the girl!" he exclaimed, surprised.

He gripped the rope firmly.

"Wait, kid. Don't…"

The man being stronger than her, Maisie knew he would win at the tug of war and bring the dumbwaiter back to him no matter how hard she tried. She had to get out of the cage and now. She opened the panel in front of her and threw herself out as the guard began to tug on the rope while begging her to stay still.

Maisie landed face down on the tiled floor, got up quickly and closed the panel before leaning back against the wall, panting and while her eyes watered. The guard was going to inform Eli about it, who would in turn tell her grandfather about it and it would be a safe bet that her intrusion would be punished. She figured the punishment would be less severe if she went to see her grandfather or Iris before Eli and confessed that she went to the bunker just because she was curious.

Having counted the panels she saw on the way, she knew she was on the second basement, where the large conference room, once a ballroom, was, a level where she had been forbidden to go, on the pretext that it was too dangerous because of the renovation works in progress. Her plan now was to find a staircase that would lead her back upstairs, hoping there was no locked door or guard in the way.

She set off, going to her right. She quickly came to an intersection, beyond which was a closed door. Maisie pressed the doorknob. It was locked. Backing into the intersection, she turned right, followed a hallway for a moment before turning left, following another hallway before turning left again, down a long corridor. When she got to the middle, she realized she had to be walking around the conference room and wanted to turn around. It was then that she heard voices, men's voices, coming from some adjacent hallway behind her and approaching. Left with no choice, Maisie continued straight ahead, accelerating her pace, and when she spotted a door to her right at the end of a smaller hallway, she took her chance and rushing on it, she saw its was open. She was relieved to find that it was not locked and crossed it before immediately closing behind her, hoping that the men had not heard her. Maisie looked around the room she had entered.

Once, the offices of the old factory were there and the majority of the partitions which separated them had been removed, creating two large rectangular rooms. On the wall opposite Maisie, curtains hid the bay windows which overlooked the factory-turned-gymnasium. Maisie's eyes widened in surprise when she saw what the first of those rooms contained.

A whole panoply of crates and other bulky objects, covered with large white sheets, were stored there. Curiosity overriding her initial desire to get out of the basement as quickly as possible, Maisie tugged at the sheets to see what was hiding underneath. The first crate she uncovered contained teeth and claws of various sizes and shapes, ranging from index finger-sized carnivore teeth to the gigantic claws of therizinosaurs; the second contained pieces of black cuirass, those of an Ankylosaurus; the third, plates and spines of stegosaurians; the fourth, horns; the next one, various scaly or feathered pelts; others, stuffed heads, including that of an ankylosaur with asymmetrical squamosal horns. At first Maisie had thought they were new exhibits for the museum above, but the specimens looked too real…far too real, and she shuddered in horror at their sight, realizing that those were probably poached specimens. With trembling hands, she approached another white sheet, which covered not the top of a crate but a single large object. She tugged at the sheet and gasped when she saw that it hid the stuffed bust of a Sinoceratops. She suddenly jumped when she heard voices in the corridor, the same as before, and realizing that they were approaching, she panicked, fearing that the men would find her in this room. It was then that she saw a door near the Sinoceratops bust, the one between the two rooms that had formed the offices. Maisie had no choice but to take it, and she closed it behind her before turning around. The content of this second room turned out to be just as shocking, if not more, than that of the first.

Against the walls, cages and terrariums were lined up, each containing one or more live animals. Some greeted her with chirps or hisses. She saw a dozen Compsognathus, Caerbannog the Pegomastax, a pair of white-faced and ring-tailed Purgatorius (1), two Beelzebufo (2), a Yi qi (3), and a variety of other small species. These were the animals stolen from InGen during their transfer from San Diego to Orick.

So, the animals weren't stolen by InGen's rivals but by Eli's men? Maisie wondered, shocked by her discovery. I thought the foundation was on InGen's side. Professor Wu and his team are even working down there! Is Eli acting behind their backs?

In addition to the stolen animals, the girl saw a few others that had not been part of the convoy. In one of the larger cages were a few young dinosaurs, no longer than a cat and pale grey in colour with irregular black dorsal stripes. Maisie slowly approached their cage to look at them. They were slender bipeds, with a long tail, an elongated neck, a red throat, and a narrow, elongated head whose whiteness evoked that of a skeleton. Unlike many of the related species that populated Maisie's books or once lived in Jurassic World, they were nearly entirely naked, with only a row of protofeathers on the back of the skull, the back, and the tip of the tail. The eyes, however, were large and bulbous, reminiscent of those of an owl or an aye-aye. They were animals of the Troodontidae family, pectinodons to be precise, the same ones that InGen had created almost thirty years ago before condemning them to oblivion in the depths of Nublar, in the darkest caves where their race even ended up forgetting the memory of sunlight. Those who had only resurfaced after the eruption during which Jurassic World collapsed, after having fuelled for years a sinister legend about the island's underground.

The young pectinodons saw Maisie approaching their cage, and chirped for her attention. Taking pity on their situation and softened by their gentle look, she approached her fingers to the cage… It was then that the door opened, letting Elijah enter with a bang. A shocked expression appeared on the businessman's face when he saw the girl so close to the pectinodons. He rushed forward.

"Move away!" He ordered her before grabbing her firmly by the arm.

He stopped her further, leaned over her and pointed at the young dinosaurs.

"They're venomous!" He clarified. "Seasoned soldiers died in horrible ways because of those… things."

He let out a heavy, sad sigh, and then asked:

"What are you doing Maisie? You went all the way down didn't you? We saw you using the dumbwaiter. You weren't allowed to go in the basement, remember? I will be forced to..."

"What's all this, Eli?!" She exclaimed, pointing to the cages and the animals. "Why are they here?! Why are there stuffed dinosaurs in the other room?!"

Unmasked, Elijah nodded, sighed again, got up and took her arm again without giving an answer. They left the basement and he took her to her room, at the very top of the western tower.

"Stay here, Maisie. You're punished!" He declared sternly before closing the door between them.

Having learned that he had found Maisie in the basement, Iris came to join him outside the door of the girl's room.

"Ah, here you are, Iris…" he said. "Make sure she stays in her room, lock the door if necessary."

"Do you want to keep her locked up?"

"Yes."

Iris crossed her arms and asked him:

"May I know what she did before I agree to your injunctions?"

"She went where she shouldn't have," Elijah replied with a shifty look. "She could have been injured, or worse…"

"I see. You won't mind if I ask her to tell me that incident."

"Do as you please," he replied irritably, before heading for the stairs. "It's up to you to believe her story or not... That girl has a lot of imagination."

-o-

Notes

(1) Purgatorius: Small mammal from the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. It looks like a squirrel or a treeshrew but is actually related to primates.

(2) Beelzebufo: Large batrachian from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar.

(3) Yi qi: Tree-dwelling dinosaur which has a very elongated third finger and membranous wings similar to those of bats.