Notes

Soundtrack suggestions:

The commando's attack :
- The Assassin's dagger — Ramin Djawadi, Game of Thrones: Season 1.
- Village Ambush — Rupert Gregson-Williams, The Legend of Tarzan (Up to 01:20).

-o-

Claire and Owen arrived at his mother's house around 10 p.m., when it had started to get dark. Caitriona lived in a small wooden cabin on the outskirts of Hope, almost in the middle of the woods, and the nearest dwellings were a hundred meters from it, beyond the trees that surrounded the house and its immediate surroundings. When the couple parked just past the mailbox, a woman in her sixties with long greying brown hair, dressed in a tank top and jeans, opened the front door and waved to them with a warm smile. Caitriona was happy to see that her son and daughter-in-law, as she liked to call Claire, were safe. She kissed Owen tenderly and hugged Claire when they joined her on the porch and then invited them inside, to chat a bit over a glass of whiskey at the dining room table before going home with their son. Entering the living room, the couple saw that Sigurd was sleeping soundly on the couch and they didn't dare wake him up, just kissing his forehead.

As the couple recounted the ordeals they went through in Costa Rica, Caitriona suddenly heard a noise that caught her attention, as it came from outside and sounded like footsteps. She thought at first that an animal was prowling near the house then there were other similar noises, too regular to be those of a black bear which decided to visit the place in its search for garbage bins to raid. Cait looked at her son. He too was listening.

"I'll check. Act like if you didn't hear anything," she whispered to them.

The couple resumed talking at the same volume as before, but knowing that they weren't out of the woods yet with their situation with InGen, they couldn't help but look at the couch and their son. Meanwhile, Caitriona went in the hallway and from a cupboard, she pulled out a rifle and some cartridges. As discreetly as possible, she inserted them into the weapon, then approached the door, advancing slowly with the barrel pointed forward and the ears attentive to the slightest noise. No sound was heard. Perhaps the prowler, man or beast, was gone. But Caitriona did not lower her vigilance, having a bad feeling.

Suddenly there was a banging on the front door and it was kicked open, revealing the presence on the porch of a hooded man dressed in black and holding a firearm in his hands. Seeing that this intruder was armed, Caitriona didn't think and fired first, aiming for the man's chest. Under the impact, he was thrown backwards and was only saved by the bulletproof vest he was wearing.

"The crone is armed!" another man yelled a few feet away.

"I request permission to open fire!" Added a third a little further, holding a phone to his ear.

It was Hawkes, the same one who had spoken to Margaretha earlier.

"No, I want them alive!" Edward Torres' voice replied firmly.

Seeing more silhouettes of soldiers on the porch, Caitriona prepared to fire again.

In the living room, the couple had picked Sigurd up as soon as they heard the first knocks on the door. While Claire hugged Sigurd close and searched for anything that could be used as a weapon, attackers broke down the door leading to the terrace behind the house and entered the living room soon enough. From the entrance hall, other soldiers arrived and the couple knew that they must have surely neutralized Caitriona. Trapped, they couldn't get out of the house and the only place they could fall back and resist, even for just a few minutes, was the kitchen. Desiring to buy time for his girlfriend and their son, Owen grabbed a chair and threw it at the nearest soldier. He took it in the face and the next moment, the keeper was on top of him and began to beat him, hoping to take his weapon. But another soldier took aim at Owen with a pistol and a dart slammed into his chest, cutting him off in his tracks.

"Owen!" Claire cried, fearing the worst.

Her boyfriend recoiled, staggered, and collapsed like a heap.

"The buck is down!" Hawkes announced as he witnessed the scene.

Claire narrowly avoided a dart by ducking in the middle of her rush to the kitchen. She dived into it, put Sigurd on the ground in front of a cupboard and just before the first soldier on her heels could shoot her, after passing through the doorway and around a piece of furniture, she drew a butcher's knife from its rack and sent it straight to his head. The soldier screamed in pain as the knife dug into his shoulder and he fell backwards.

"I'm hit! The bitch threw a knife right in my shoulder!" The wounded moaned.

One of his comrades ran to drag him into the living room and away from Claire before she decided to hurt him further or kill him by throwing a second knife or any other sharp utensil. From the same rack as the butcher's knife, Claire grabbed the chopper and came to stand in front of her son, ready to strike the next attacker.

"Come closer if you dare, you damn dogs!" She challenged the soldiers.

Hawkes replied:

"Surrender, Claire! Or we kill your man!" He ordered her.

Remaining covered behind the cabinet and the doorway's frame, Claire ventured a look into the living room and saw that the squad leader was pointing the barrel of his pistol at Owen's temple, whose tranquilized body was kept kneeled by two of the soldiers.

"And his mother too if that's not enough!" he added.

Claire let out a heavy sigh of defeat and made the chopper slide on the floor, in order to make it appear in the doorway and signal the squad that she was surrendering. When several of the soldiers entered the kitchen, they found her sitting on the tiled floor, her face flushed and teary, clutching Sigurd to her chest while she glared hatefully at Hawkes' men. One of them, a woman judging by the silhouette, came and took her son from her arms.

"Don't touch him, you whore!" Claire hissed.

But she was exhausted and despite her best efforts, the soldier managed to grab Sigurd and take him away from his mother's outstretched arms while his cries redoubled.

"If you hurt my son, I swear I'll send you to the worst parts of Hell!" She screamed furiously.

"Shut up!" One of the soldiers said before hitting her with the butt of his weapon.

Claire's unconscious body slumped to the side and Hawkes looked at the soldier who grabbed Sigurd.

"Take the bastard to his grandmother. Maybe that'll calm his crying a bit," he ordered.

The soldier nodded and then he picked up his phone.

"The Doe is down!" he announced.

"Good. Load them up!" Torres ordered them.

Hawkes and his men obeyed.

"I've been waiting for this moment ever since I joined the J-SEC," said the one who had knocked Claire out.

"Yeah, she deserved it after everything she caused," another soldier said. "If it was up to me, I'd send her to the gallows."

"Jesus, her gash makes her look ugly! I wouldn't touch her, even with Mapa gloves," a third added in a half disgusted, half mocking tone while looking at Claire's face.

While Caitriona and Sigurd were forced into a black SUV, the unconscious bodies of Claire and Owen were carried out of the house and placed in the back of another of the squad's vehicles. Hawkes then instructed two of his men to turn off the lights and close the doors as best they could, to make any passers-by believe that Caitriona had left her home for a few days. Once this was done, the squad and their prisoners left the scene, heading away from the Sierra Nevada in the depths of the night. At daybreak, they arrived at their destination.

That day, Guillaume Vuillier did not go to the WDMC and left his home between eight and nine in the morning, taking with him a suitcase, a backpack and his invitation to InGen's auction. Expecting to arrive at the Lockwood estate shortly after three o'clock, an hour before the auction's beginning, he drove quietly.

While waiting for his lunch at a diner he had stopped at on the way, he pulled out his phone and opened the app Jeff Rossiter had told him about at the Perth Castle Pub a month ago, the one associated to the tracker they stuck to him at Berkeley. On a map of California, he saw a dot displayed near the coast in the northern part of the state, not far from the border with Oregon. The day before, before going to bed, Guillaume had also opened the application and the point was then in the Sierra Nevada, to the west, an expected position unlike the current one. The WDMC director zoomed in on the map and his eyes widened when he saw the name of the nearest town: Orick. The point was south of the town, by the ridge just east of Lockwood Manor, right next to the basin and its enclosures.

All roads lead to Lockwood's estate, he realized.

He sighed, thought for a moment, then closed the app and wrote a message for Peggy.

When she received it shortly after while she was eating in the WDMC's relaxation room, she opened it immediately but the next moment she dropped her fork in her lunch box as worry overcame her. Her boss had indeed written:

If I don't return from Orick, tell the cops and call Michaela. She'll explain everything.