Notes
Soundtrack suggestions:
- The Austrian Way — John Williams, Indiana Jones and the last Crusade (Up to 00:33 and then from 02:05 to the end).
-o-
When Claire woke up, she felt her face pressed against boards and began to cough because of the layer of dust which covered them. Opening her eyes, she saw that she was in a medium-sized, rectangular room, with daylight filtering through the floorboards blocking the only window she saw in the dark. A yard or two from her, she saw Owen lying on his side and snoring softly. Reassured that he was alive and with her, the fallen park director patted herself down and let out a sigh of relief when she saw that she still had her clothes and her prosthesis on. Shortly after, she started coughing again, which woke up her partner. She came to lean over him.
"Honey, tell me we're at home or at my mom's and that this raid was a nightmare…" he whined.
"I wish I could tell you that..."
Leaning on his elbow, he noticed that she had a big bruise on her face, right where the InGen soldier had hit her with the butt of his weapon. He touched it gently.
"If I catch whoever did that to you…I'll cut off his balls and feed them to the coyotes…" he growled. "I hope they didn't..."
"They did not. I checked," she reassured him.
Letting out a sigh, he struggled to his feet, still feeling the effects of the tranquilizer in his body.
"They have Sigurd and Cait…" Claire added in a low voice.
"Where are they?"
"I don't know. Besides, where are we?"
Owen started to sniffle.
"I smell resinous," he replied after studying the smell. "And we seem to be in an old cabin, within some wood..."
"But where? How many cabins does InGen have?"
Their eyes having become accustomed to the low ambient light, they noticed that there was not only no furniture in the cabin, but also not the slightest item. Outside of them there was only dust and cobwebs.
It was then that a rather familiar long resonant call sounded outside.
"Am I dreaming or that was a hadrosaur?" Claire asked.
"No, you're not dreaming."
"Dinosaurs... Resinous... Don't tell me we're at the Lockwood estate..."
"I can't think of anywhere else in the United States where InGen currently keeps hadrosaurs."
"Why were we taken here and not to Palo Alto or somewhere else?"
Owen got up and walked to the door of the cabin, which he tried to open, in vain. Hearing a noise behind, he knew there was someone nearby. He started pounding on it.
"Open!" he protested. "Open or we'll smash your face in!"
"Shut up!" Someone told him.
Unable to break down the door, Owen groaned in frustration and went back to sit next to Claire.
More than two long hours later, they heard a jingle of keys and the door opened, letting two InGen soldiers enter. The couple considered running for the door in a desperate attempt to escape, but when they saw the cattle prods in the soldiers' hands and the pistols at their belts, they changed their minds.
"Don't move!" One of the soldiers told them. "Or you'll regret it..."
He and his colleague came to position themselves in front of them, with their prods pointing in their direction.
"You can come in!" One of the soldiers shouted over his shoulder.
Two other individuals entered the cabin and closed it behind them. The couple saw soon enough that they were not soldiers but simple security guards, like those of Site D. One of them was none other than Valentine Taylor.
"Ah, Valentine! A friendly face, finally!" Claire exclaimed with a hint of relief. "Could you tell everyone we're being held here against our will?"
"You believe in Santa Claus?" the Texan asked scornfully while he and his colleague approached.
Carefully passing the two soldiers, they put two plastic bags at a respectable distance from the couple.
"It's the canteen extra," one of the soldiers said to the latter. "You're lucky…"
Claire and Owen grabbed the bags and slid them towards them.
"Do you even know why we're here?" The Raptor Whisperer asked Valentine.
But one of the soldiers turned to the two agents.
"Hey, you're not here to chat with them," he reminded them rather dryly. "Just go."
"No, it's alright" the other said, looking at the couple. "Let them know that their situation is hopeless..."
With a nod, he allowed Valentine to answer.
"Last night you were caught roaming near the estate's limits, spying for InGen's enemies..."
"What a bunch of bullcrap!" Claire exclaimed.
"That's what we were told."
"Who told you that?" The fallen park director asked. "Torres I guess… How can you still believe his lies?"
"It's funny because Benito asked me the same question the day before the incident in Burgo Nuevo. And it turned out later that he betrayed us. To say that I could have died because of the information he provided..."
"And you and everyone else on the train were saved by our action," Claire told them.
"We weren't here last night, but at home in the Sierra Nevada," Owen added. "Torres ordered Hawkes and his crew to kidnap us. They are holding our son and his grandmother."
A troubled expression appeared on Valentine's face and they noticed it.
"Valentine, we're not spies," Claire insisted.
The guard looked away.
"Then why did I see you snooping around at Site D? Why...why did you push Jocelyn into Toro's jaws? She had discovered your little secret, hadn't she?" He asked in an increasingly inquisitive tone.
"I didn't do that! I was able to flee but Jocelyn reacted too late, that's all."
"That's all?" Valentine repeated, shaking his head. "How can you be so callous, Claire? Does human life have no value in your eyes? Those who slander you are right… You are the Queen of Ashes but not even a tragic character like Daenerys. No, you're as megalomaniac and sly as Cersei."
The door opened again, this time letting in Torres and an athletic thirtysomething with close-cropped hair in a soldier's uniform. The latter was Hawkes, the one who led the squad who kidnapped them, but as they never met him before, the couple did not recognize him.
"Gentlemen. Leave and stay away from the cabin for five minutes," the director of InGen Security ordered Valentine and his colleague. "I must have a private talk with them."
"Yes, sir."
"Where is my son? Where is his grandmother?" Claire asked suddenly in an insistent tone.
While his colleague was already out, Valentine stopped to look at her but Torres waved him out.
"Come on, Mr. Taylor. Don't listen to her," he told him in an annoyed tone.
The guard nodded and Hawkes closed the door behind him. Peering between the planks at one of the windows, Torres watched him walk away.
"Answer me!" The fallen park director barked at him while Hawkes and the other two soldier looked at her contemptuously.
The director of InGen Security turned around.
"Somewhere safe," he replied calmly. "They're at the motel in town. One of my employees is with them. You will reunite with them once all this is over. Not before. See it as a guarantee."
"You bastard!"
"So what? After trying to have us murdered in Costa Rica, you intend to let us go tomorrow like if nothing happened? What will prevent us from denouncing you? The Costa Rican government is aware of your ties to the local mob, Torres," Owen said.
"Except we're not in Costa Rica anymore, and I don't intend to return there...," the director of InGen Security retorted. "Maybe you've made friends in its government but they can't help you. You can shout at the authorities and the press that we are monsters and so on, no one will believe you if you don't have real proof. People will laugh at you."
He took out his phone and, under the watchful gaze of Hawkes and the other two soldiers, he approached the couple in a carefree manner. If they dared to raise their hands on him, his subordinates would be ready to retaliate.
"See how they see you Claire...," he added.
He then showed them the screen of his phone, on which was displayed a cartoon originally published in the press. On it, Claire stood behind a monstrous colossus clad in grey guard armour and armed with a bloodied sabre, and with a mad, hateful look, she pointed at Victor Hoskins, who stood between the fallen park director and a armchair on which was written "park director". While the couple thought the cartoonist had misinterpreted the Fall, Torres swiped his finger across the screen to show them more images. In one, Claire was shown seated on a throne and dressed in the same clothes as Emperor Commodus from Gladiator; in another, her eyes were red and she had the Indominus horns on her head, making her look like a devil. Finally, he showed them an illustration he had found on the internet. It depicted Claire surrounded by flames in a cavernous room resembling an ancient temple: the Discovery Center's rotunda. Above Claire was the head of the Indominus, but instead of leaning towards the park director as if to devour her, the monster was staring straight ahead, just like Claire below, and the dinosaur's eyes seemed enshrouded in flames. The couple noticed that the arms and chest of the Indominus were not visible and that the lower part of its neck was almost transparent, ghostly. It was as if the creature was an emanation from Claire, or even that they were one being. Looking more carefully, they saw that she was wearing a long black dress, a spiky crown on her head and a silver ring on her left index finger. As for her gaze, it was both empty and terrible, like that of a possessed woman in a horror film.
An evil queen, she observed.
Torres turned off his phone, put it away, and took a step or two back.
"Many think your place is in a prison or an asylum. I'm sure you'll get there one day, and the sooner the better. Without the support of the Lockwood Foundation, the probability is high."
"Without the support…" Claire began to repeat slowly.
"Yeah, you heard me right," he cut her off. "Since you failed to complete your missions and are officially suspected of trying to sabotage Operation Fallen Kingdom, your agreement with the foundation no longer stands."
"What lies did you tell them?! When we'll get out of here, we'll tell Lockwood everything!"
"Didn't you hear the news?" He asked them sardonically. "Mr. Lockwood has been poisoned. He's at the hospital. We're afraid his days are numbered. If you have a problem with the foundation, you will be dealing with Mills and no one else. You know, he's disappointed in you, Claire. Very disappointed."
Eli is disappointed by me? That's not what our last email exchanges indicated… He seemed to believe us, Claire recalled. Someone is lying...
"If you are certain that captivity awaits me," she said, "why did you waste time and money in planning an assassination?"
"I'm not the one behind the idea and the money wasn't mine or my division's," the InGen Security director replied with a shrug. "Others thought that leaving you alive was too risky."
"Others? Who? Wu? Lynton? Silverman? Who is the coward who uses you as an intermediary? Could they have the decency to show themselves!"
"I did not oppose their opinion because your case would have been settled once and for all. A new chapter in InGen's history will begin tonight. You will be history, just like the IBRIS program."
He turned to Owen.
"Turning your achillobators into biological drones was Hoskins' pipe dream. I don't share it and I don't care about Blue. For me, she is a dinosaur like the others and she will be sent soon to some zoo. Besides, we have much more promising assets than her," he added.
"The Indoraptor…" the Raptor Whisperer guessed.
"That's it…"
Torres then looked at his watch.
"I should go," he said. "The first guests will arrive soon. I will come again tomorrow to bring you good news…"
He and Hawkes came out of the cabin and with his cattle prod, one of the two remaining soldiers pointed at the plastic bags the couple had not yet unpacked.
"Hurry up and eat," one of them growled. "We've got other fish to fry..."
Outside, Hawkes called Valentine's colleague back and he came to stand guard in front of the cabin. As he watched the squad leader disappear by a bend in the path, he heard the bushes to his right rustle. He got up, ready to draw his taser and call the two soldiers in the cabin if necessary, but immediately relaxed when he saw who was advancing between the bushes.
"It's me," Valentine said.
"Where were you?"
"Taking a piss."
The guard nodded.
"Okay"
Valentine joined him and lit a cigarette. As he smoked, he thought about what he had just learned. Hidden behind the cabin, between it and the trees, he had been listening at one of the windows. He had overheard all the conversation his boss had with the couple. He took a long breath.