Notes
Soundtrack suggestions:
Maisie goes in her grandfather's room:
- Where do they go – Abel Korzeniowski, Penny Dreadful: Season 1.
Iris is fired:
- Wilting Iris — Michael Giacchino, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Elsa's fate:
- Adar Lord-Father – Bear McCreary, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Season One, Episode Four: Father Figures) (From 00:56 to 03:15).
-o-
Having found a staircase that led down to the lower level, Claire and Owen had taken it and reached the hallway that surrounded the conference room. Following the sounds of the conveyor, they had almost reached the one where the latter was. They stopped at the intersection of the two corridors, using the angle described by the walls to discreetly watch the Indoraptor being transported to the opposite end, where there was another door large enough to let the cage through. Along the conveyor, they saw several guards, all armed with at least one pistol. The couple only had one and wondered how they were going to be able to stop the Indoraptor from leaving the estate. They might manage to neutralize a guard or two, but they would be stopped by the others before they reached the conveyors' controls. It was with great frustration that they watched the monster being carried away.
Not only were the odds not in Claire and Owen's favour, but in the same hallway as them, a guard had appeared and was quietly approaching, intending to surprise them while they were busy watching the conveyor. When he was close enough, he raised his pistol, aiming it at Claire's neck. Just as he was about to tell her to not move and surrender, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, his vision blurred and he was gently slumped to the ground, preventing his colleagues to hear his fall. But closer, the couple heard him and turned around. Above the stunned guard stood, Guillaume stood.
"Oh ... Thanks," Claire said.
"You're welcome."
The WDMC director moved closer to the corner and observed the guards near the conveyor. At the other end of the corridor, the door had opened, letting the Indoraptor enter some sort of elevator shaft.
"Between the ones there and those in the room, we are outnumbered. If we attack them, at least one will succeed in raising the alarm and we will be surrounded," he warned them.
"And what do you suggest then?" Claire asked him in a slightly dry tone. "We have to stop this!"
"I agree, but we can't rush headlong," the former Interpol agent retorted. "Let's go to a safer area."
Taking the unconscious guard with them, they moved away from the conference room, went up to the first basement and reached a corridor on the periphery. Seeing a door on the side, Guillaume pressed the handle and noticed that it opened in a small empty room, probably a cellar; they rushed in and pushed the door back, without closing it completely however. After dropping off the guard, Owen remained close to her, peeking occasionally through the gap to watch the corridor. They removed their hoods for a moment out of convenience.
"We have to act in a place with as few guards as possible," the keeper said. "But where?"
"They'll try to ship it tonight. I suggest we intercept them when they leave the manor."
"We're going to the old factory's platform?" the keeper asked Guillaume.
"No, I don't think they'll load it there. It's not discreet enough. There is another access, an old tunnel built during the Second World War. I think I found one of its ends during my stay here. The other end is by the bunker…"
"The one where they had a lab in the early eighties? They must have reopened it recently to continue the Indoraptor's research," Claire guessed. "It makes sense. And Wu must surely be there! Where is the exit you mentioned?"
From his backpack, the WDMC director took out the map he had made, protected by a plastic sleeve.
"I marked it on this map," he said, handing it to them.
They took it and once they had just spotted the tunnel's exit, he pointed out a portion of the path between it and the basin.
"I suggest you lay out an ambush there. They shouldn't expect that."
"And you? What are you going to do?" Owen asked him in a slightly inquisitive tone.
"I'm going to infiltrate the bunker," Guillaume replied as he began to undress the guard.
"He has better skills in that field than us," Claire pointed out to her betrothed. "He's an Interpol veteran after all. Besides, there might be people we know down there... We'll go there, but later..."
"And if I'm caught, you'll still have a chance to escape the estate and find your family."
Guillaume put on the guard's uniform, took his badge, radio and gun, gave Owen his own pistol, and completed his disguise with a black cap he had taken from his bag. The couple also saw him take out a vial of mercurochrome and some cloth, which he put in his pocket, and in addition to giving them his bag, he handled them a headset and a disposable phone.
As soon as they were ready, they came out of the cellar, leaving the guard there, and split up. While the couple left the manor, Guillaume returned to the conference room. It was then that he heard Maya Harris' voice.
"You lied to me, Eli!"
Being close to the ventilation gallery where they were previously, the ex-Interpol agent returned there and spied on the trainer and the businessman. Aside from them, two security guards and Sophie, the room was empty, as the other security guards and Eversol were escorting the other buyers to their vehicles outside.
"I thought it was a presentation for potential investors! Not an auction!" Maya exclaimed, outraged. "I won't let them take Elsa!"
"Calm down, Maya," Mills said softly. "I didn't lie, we found an investor. Her employers," he added, looking at the DGSE agent.
"And who are they?" A company of mercenaries? A terrorist group? A mafia?" The ex-soldier coldly asked.
De Mafart moved towards her.
"None of that, Mrs. Harris. I work for the French government. Our intentions for Elsa are benevolent," she said with a big friendly smile.
"Don't worry, Maya. We're not going to separate you," Mills added. "We know she only obeys you... You're just going to move out. This is not a punishment but a promotion. You will be placed at the head of a research team and act as a liaison officer, a very enviable position which Owen could have obtained only in a dream. And Elsa can't stay confined to this manor forever. They can give her a better home, a place where she can see daylight…"
The trainer remained silent for a moment, pensive.
"And Henry? He still needs us," she reminded Mills.
He let out a disdainful little laugh.
"Don't worry about him. He'll manage with the data you'll send him."
"My family is in San Diego. What do I tell them? That I'm going to be in France for an indeterminate amount of time and that I don't know when I will see them again?"
"All in good time. Start packing while we prepare the transport… Take only the bare necessities because you are leaving in an hour. Mrs. De Mafart, Mr. Eversol, Susan, Edward and I will have a drink in my office in half an hour. It would be nice if you could join us."
Maya tilted her head slightly and sighed.
"Okay."
Without saying another word, she left the room and at the same time, Guillaume went back down to the second basement to look for an access that would lead him to the bunker under their feet.
While Mills, De Mafart and the two guards accompanying them headed for the elevator, one of the buttons on its control panel lit up, indicating that someone was using it. Its doors opened and Wu, texted by Maya, came out, looking furious. Mills looked at the guards.
"Take Mrs. De Mafart upstairs," he ordered them. "I will join you soon."
The DGSE agent and the guards entered the elevator, pressed the button for the ground floor and disappeared behind its doors.
"What have you done?!" The geneticist exclaimed. "This animal was not for sale!"
"If you want to create an addict, you have to know how to give them a taste," the businessman replied.
"She's a prototype."
"This "prototype" sold for six hundred million dollars! Relax, we'll do more."
"Your new friend's employers too."
"Certainly, but not without our consent."
"Our consent? That of InGen you mean? Let me remind you that you are not a part of it."
"A simple detail which shall be soon settled."
Wu looked around the conference room, as if looking for Maya. He and Mills ignored it but Guillaume was right behind the south wall. The WDMC director had stopped when he heard the geneticist's voice and was listening to their conversation.
"If Elsa leaves, so does Maya. It will hamper our research."
After rolling his eyes, Mills walked to the elevator and called it. Seeing that he wished to avoid him, Wu insisted.
"You don't seem to understand what we're trying to accomplish. Are you aware of the complexities of creating new life forms?!"
"I know how much it costs," the manager of the Lockwood Foundation said irritably. "And your research tends to take time."
Mills entered the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. Wu sneaked inside just before the doors closed.
"It's not a sprint, Eli. It's a marathon," he said as they went up. "And your decision to sell Elsa might slow us down."
The doors slid open, revealing the museum. Mills walked out.
"Just do what you're ordered to. Damn, you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes!"
He turned back to the geneticist who hadn't left the elevator yet.
"You're on edge, Henry. You haven't stopped working lately. Why don't you relax a bit? Go join your team downstairs. I heard they planned to have a shindig in the gym. I don't care as long as they don't cause trouble and clean up after."
Standing by the control panel, Mills then pressed the button for the third basement, sending Wu to the bunker. Tired and powerless, the latter let the doors close and the elevator take him to the laboratory.
When he exited, he saw that the large door at the opposite end of the bunker had been raised, revealing a loading platform that lay beyond, in another underground room. Also built during the Second World War, its purpose was to shelter the bunker occupants' vehicles and was connected to the outside by the secret evacuation tunnel, which had only really been used for the first time when Wu and his team had returned from Costa Rica with their creation, bringing it under the mansion unbeknownst to most of its occupants. Now a forklift was pushing Elsa's cage toward a truck parked perpendicular to the platform, with its back doors wide open, ready to greet the cage. Armed guards ensured the operation's safety while a man watched the cart and the cage's occupant, telling the driver to go easy. It was Alf Herriot, Project Giger's veterinarian and the human being the Indoraptor trusted the most after Maya. Just like the predator and her trainer, he was also going to France and Wu started thinking about a new veterinarian to replace him.
Brice Le Goff? No, I don't trust him. Eugene Hawthorne? Busy with the Ellis project.
Those two were the only other vets he knew. The rest had either resigned, been fired, or killed during the Fall or Operation Fallen Kingdom.
Lynton and her successor better put the company back on track now it's saved.
The geneticist watched the cage being put into the trailer.
If only we had been sent to Site H… We wouldn't have had to put up with Eli, that asshole!
Wu took to the right, taking the walkway which ran alongside the office and relaxation area, heading towards the control room. Actually, consoles and computers only took up part of the room, and walking through it, the geneticist also passed dummies and cabinets containing the rest of the equipment used in Elsa's training sessions. He walked through the back door, around a spiral staircase, down another door, and ended up in a long hallway where a double-door could be seen on his left. The geneticist began to hear music, a disco piece from the seventies. Wu walked through the open double-doors and into the gymnasium, heading towards his subordinates and colleagues.
They had taken some old furniture from the manor's storage room and placed them in one of the corners. There were several sofas, chairs, a low table with plates of appetizers and cookies and other cakes, a taller one on which displayed a whole assortment of bottles as well as plastic cups. Right next to one of the sofas, on another coffee table, was the loudspeaker from which the music came, and nearby, a cardboard box contained various masks. Wu also saw an artificial smoke machine, which had not yet been activated. As for the rest of the gymnasium, the revellers intended to use it as an improvised dance floor. Ivan, Karim, Giles, Nicole, the other geneticists as well as two of the guards assigned to them, about twenty people in total, had taken their places on the sofas, the chairs or even on the floor. They were busy eating appetizers or passing around a joint while chatting light-heartedly. All were eager to forget about work and just relax.
Earlier, they had received good news about the official auction and thought that InGen was saved. Wu also thought that, but despite the high spirits in the gymnasium, he found it hard to relax. However, he didn't want to spoil the little party by announcing that Mills had sold Elsa to the French. And it was already too late to say goodbye...
Seeing his sullen expression, Ivan got worried and got up, joining him. He affectionately placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You're okay, Henry?" he asked.
His boyfriend smiled weakly and replied:
"I'm fine."
He then walked over to the table, picked up one of the goblets and poured some vodka into it. He then lifted the goblet to his mouth and downed its contents.
I'm fed up with this shitshow.
His colleagues having made room for him on one of the sofas, he went to sit there, greatly desiring to relax and forget his worries.
When the elevator closed and took Wu and Mills upstairs, Guillaume resumed his journey through the second basement. Down the hallway south of the conference room, just before an intersection, he found a door on his left. The latter not opening onto the large room according to his estimates, Guillaume was taken with curiosity and decided to open it delicately. Seeing a stairwell beyond, his eyes widened slightly. He saw steps leading to the first basement and others leading down.
To the bunker, he hoped.
The WDMC director entered the stairwell and walked down the stairs. When he stumbled upon a door with a badge reader, he knew he had found it and took out the guard's badge and inserted it into the reader. The door opened and Guillaume walked into a dark and relatively narrow hallway. Turning right, he almost immediately reached an opening that led to a changing room where lab coats hung. Crossing the changing room, he looked to his left and noticed that the darkened laboratory was deserted.
I'm in the bunker. That's a start.
He continued to the exit of the changing room and pressing himself against the doorpost, he ventured a glance towards the heart of the bunker and its western end. At the loading platform beyond the doorstep, he saw guards, a vet, and the transport truck. Just before the truck's back doors were closed, he had time to see the Indoraptor inside.
"What does a mother dinosaur tell to her baby?" One of the guards asked his colleague.
"I don't know," replied the other.
"A prehistory! The first specified before laughing.
Oh God, it's lame! Guillaume thought.
The guard's colleague, which had similar thoughts, laughed in an embarrassed manner.
"Yeah, very funny..."
"Another joke like that and I'll feed you to the acrocanthosaurs," the vet said to the joking guard.
While thinking of a plan that would allow him to infiltrate the convoy, Guillaume watched them and waited for an opportunity to present itself.
At the same time, Maisie left her room to go to her grandfather's. Finding no guards outside or near her door, she figured Eli needed them and after her misadventure the previous day, she was aware that he must have posted them outside all the entrances leading to the basement. The girl and the businessman hadn't spoken since her return, and he hadn't even joined them for dinner, which hadn't been too bad for Maisie and Iris.
After taking several deserted corridors, avoiding the heart of the manor and its museum, she arrived at the southern tower and entered her grandfather's room. For the sake of his investigation about the latter's sudden attack, Eli had ordered the servants to not touch anything and thus, the bed was still unmade.
Maisie had come to find information about her mother, or at least memories of her. She searched the desk and the drawers, looked in the shelves but saw nothing related to her mother, not even a photo… Discouraged, the young girl gave up looking for a moment and wandered aimlessly in the room.
When she passed by the Jurassic Park model, she grabbed the tyrannosaur figurine and distractedly walked it around the plain and near the Visitor Center. Not in the mood to have fun, she dropped the figurine on the Center's stairs and turned away from the model, looking at the bed.
It was then that she saw a sort of book under the bed. She crouched down to grab it and saw that it was the scrapbook her grandfather liked to look at from time to time. At first she wanted to put it in one of the shelves or on the bedside table but having always wondered what it contained, the young girl sat down on the edge of the bed and opened it.
Leafing through the first few pages, she saw photos of her grandparents when they were younger, then those of a baby. Having finally found memories of her mother, Maisie smiled and had a burst of hope. She continued to leaf through the book.
The pictures of the baby gave way to one of a little girl with long brown hair and with pictures of herself in mind when she was about the same age as the girl in the pictures, Maisie couldn't help but notice that they were very similar.
Continuing, Maisie saw a photo taken in Isla Nublar and in which her mother, then nine years old according to the caption, appeared. She was seen from behind on a lookout as she was busy observing a group of Triceratops through binoculars while the sun set. Turning the page, she saw more photos of her mother at that age, and what Maisie saw shocked her so much that she froze and let the scrapbook slide from her hands and knees, and fall down on the floor.
Slowly, she got up, left her grandfather's room and headed for hers, walking in a dazed way, as if she had just seen a ghost.
She managed to get back to her room without a hitch, but once inside, she closed the door behind her before slipping into bed without even taking the time to take her shoes off. She had great difficulty recovering from the shock she had felt on discovering certain photos and their implications, and the emotion she felt was so strong that it exhausted her and made her fall asleep.
"Let's toast!" Mills suggested.
He, Eversol, Lynton, Torres and De Mafart raised their champagne glasses. Maya, who had just joined them in the office of the Lockwood foundation's manager, also raised her glass, but with less enthusiasm than them.
"May this be the beginning of a long and happy collaboration between International Genetics and the government of the French Republic," Lynton declared solemnly.
Then they clinked their glasses and began to drink. On the conference table, were signed contracts as well as a briefcase containing wads of cash, the advance that one of De Mafart's colleagues, a bespectacled man in his mid-fifties, had brought before leaving immediately.
"How much have you done back home?" InGen's CEO asked to the DGSE agent. "I heard your victory in the basement was guaranteed."
"We've acquired land and begun construction," De Mafart told them. "We will soon have an entire team..."
"Where?" Torres asked her out of curiosity.
"Top secret. I could be accused of treason if I revealed it to you without my superiors' approval," the Frenchwoman replied with a slight smile.
While finishing their drinks, they continued to discuss and when they left the room, Sophie approached Maya.
"I've heard that Gevaudan (*) is beautiful at this time of year," she whispered suddenly in a low voice, so that only the trainer could hear her. "You will like it. Both of you. I am certain of that…"
Whereas the trainer went back up to her room to get her belongings, Mills, Lynton, Torres, Eversol and De Mafart went down to the ground floor, heading for the front door. As they walked through the entrance hall, the manager of the Lockwood Foundation spotted Iris in the hallway to their right.
"I have something to settle. I'll join you in two minutes," he said to InGen's CEO, the security division director, and the auctioneer.
Accompanying the DGSE agent, Lynton, Torres and Eversol left the mansion. Mills hailed the housekeeper:
"Iris."
She joined him in the hall.
"Yes, Elijah?"
The businessman took a deep breath.
"I had the doctors on the phone. Benjamin's situation is worrying. They are not sure if he could ever return here. They don't even know if he's going to wake up. It's the beginning of the end for him," he said gravely.
The housekeeper nodded, aware that Benjamin's days were numbered.
"What a tragedy," Eli added. "I guess you'll look for a new job once he's gone."
"Why?" She asked in a somewhat brusque tone. "I was already working here when your parents were middle schoolers. I don't intend to leave."
"Don't you think you deserve to retire after all those years of loyal service to the Lockwood family?"
"I can't. Maisie is still young. She needs me."
"I'm her guardian now. You no longer need to worry about her."
"You don't understand her. I do," Iris said while her attitude grew increasingly defensive.
"I understand her importance."
"I refuse to leave my position. Period!" The housekeeper declared in a severe tone.
As the gentle way just failed, Mills decided to use the hard one.
"You know…" he began after an awkward silence. "I started a little investigation about Benjamin's sudden heart attack. I discovered traces of Belladonna in his cup. He was poisoned, by someone with a great knowledge of plants and the poisons they can contain."
Realizing that he was accusing her of his own crime, Iris clenched her fists and her face flushed.
"Vile snake… I knew you couldn't be trusted. I knew it from the start..."
"I'll offer you a deal, Iris: Accept to be released from your service and you won't be bothered. But if you haven't left the estate before dawn, or if you try something with Maisie, I'll report you. She will be terribly appalled when she'll learn that her dear Iris poisoned her beloved grandfather, all because of a mistake he made in his youth, a mistake for which you resented him until the twilight of his life."
"She's a smart girl, she won't listen to your lies. I'll stand in your way. I will tell the police that it was you who poisoned Benjamin."
Mills grinned.
"What proof do you have? Uh? It's a waste of time, Iris..."
"I won't let you use Maisie like a puppet. I won't let you dishonor the name of the Lockwoods and steal their fortune."
"The Lockwoods have never been a very honorable family. The one who built this manor got rich at the expense of the region's natives while Benjamin... You know what he did. How can you be so loyal to him? He's not a saint, he also committed crimes, sins even. He has blood on his hands..."
"And you? You criticize him but you are much worse. Your actions are driven by greed and nothing else. Those of Benjamin, as debatable as they were, were committed out of love..."
The businessman chuckled.
"Oh stop wasting your time. Just pack your belongings. The clock is ticking," he told her before heading for the door. "The clock is ticking… Goodbye, Iris."
Come on! Clear off, you Mummy!
Convinced that he had just cleared another obstacle in his path, Mills confidently exited the manor and went to join InGen's management in the marquee while the official auction was still undergoing. On her side, De Mafart had been taken to the estate's southeast gate, where she would await the arrival of the truck carrying Elsa. As for Eversol, he had found a place among the audience, as Mills and Lynton had invited him to stay for the little party that would follow the end of the official auction.
"So Eli… how was your counter-evening?" Silverman asked the manager of the Lockwood Foundation.
"Wonderful, Dominick. The worst is behind us..."
Around 8:30 p.m., Maya Harris went down to the bunker with her luggage and joined the transport truck. Alf and two guards were waiting for her at the loading platform.
"Is everything alright, Alf?" she asked the vet.
"She's a little nervous, but she should be fine. The trunks are inside. All you have to do is put your stuff."
The trainer opened the back doors and stepped inside. Elsa greeted her with a kind of coo and Maya put her suitcase in one of the trunks stored on the side. As instructed, the armour, the main training tools, Elsa's toys, and a small stock of meat had been put in the other trunks. The ex-soldier then turned to Elsa and remained by the cage for a moment, whispering sweet words to the Indoraptor to reassure her.
When she laid down, Maya got out of the truck and one of the guards came to close the doors. Taking her backpack with her, the trainer then went to the cabin, and she and Alf sat there. The driver, one of InGen Security's men, stuck his arm through the open window of his door and signalled to his colleagues with a thumbs-up that they were ready to go. Shortly after, they were given the all-clear and the truck drove off, leaving the platform and heading for the entrance to the evacuation tunnel.
The two guards on the platform announced the truck's departure to Torres and Mills, then one returned to the bunker, pretending to have an emergency to attend to. He instructed his colleague to close the bunker's gate but while the truck followed the tunnel, the remaining guard saw an item abandoned on the concrete at the base of the platform, just where the vehicle was parked. Descending from the platform, he approached it and saw that it was a black cap. He bent down to pick it up and inspected it carefully to see if there was any clue about its owner's identity. There was none and the guard remembered that just before the truck arrived, there was absolutely nothing on the parking spot. Surprised, he wondered who it might belong to. He thought for a moment of the presence of an intruder but quickly dismissed that theory, thinking it was ridiculous. He, his colleague and he may have moved away from the parking area and the dock to get the trunks from a room on the upper level, but they had only been gone for a few minutes. An intruder would not have had time to go down to the bunker, reach the truck, drop his cap and then leave and disappear before their return. Maybe the cap belonged to the driver, Maya or Alf and was forgotten just before they left.
The guard should have considered the intruder hypothesis more seriously because while he was thinking about that, Guillaume Vuillier was hanging under the truck's chassis, praying that his presence would not be discovered and also that his muscles would hold until the ambush, which the couple was supposed to be finalizing after receiving a message from him on the disposable phone. The tunnel being sloping and forming a curve, the WDMC director had to struggle so that his feet did not fall out of their grips and start dragging on the ground. If he let go, he was going to have to chase after the truck and the risk of being spotted or getting stuck in the tunnel would increase dramatically. Grimacing, he suffered in silence.
Arriving at what at first appeared to be a dead end, the truck stopped and leaving the engine running, the driver got out, opened a panel fixed to the rock wall, revealing a button which he pressed before closing the panel. The wall in front of the hood suddenly began to move and a faint light entered the tunnel. Dusk light. The cul-de-sac was gone, giving way to the tunnel exit and the barely discernible path leading into the woods outside. The driver climbed back into the cab and the truck started moving again, exiting the tunnel to follow the path. Behind it, the tunnel's gate automatically closed, and soon it was concealed again in the middle of the rock wall it had been built into.
Almost halfway between the tunnel and the basin, Maya and Alf saw thanks to the headlights that a large stump laid across the path. The driver stopped the truck and began to grumble:
"I thought the path had been cleared! Damn, we can't trust them!"
He opened his door and got out. Seeing that the stump seemed heavy, Maya and Alf decided to go and help remove it, leaving the cabin doors wide open and the engine running. Taking advantage of the noise made by the latter, Guillaume gently dropped to the ground, drew his pistol and as he crawled silently under the truck, a male voice thundered:
"Hands up!"
Although it was a little deformed by the hood worn by the man, Guillaume recognized it, as did Maya.
She, Alf and the driver had instinctively obeyed the hooded individual who had suddenly appeared from a bush on their left, pistol in hand. As he closed in on them, keeping his barrel aimed at the driver, Maya studied him carefully and the man's silhouette matching that of her former colleague and friend, she knew her ears hadn't failed her.
"Maya?" He asked quietly, in a shocked tone, as if surprised by her presence.
A second bush, located to the trio's right, began to rustle as a second hooded individual, smaller than the first, emerged from it.
"No dirty tricks!" Her deep voice hissed.
Maya turned to the woman and seeing that the hand holding her gun was a prosthesis, she immediately guessed her identity.
Like many, the trainer had heard that Owen and Claire had betrayed InGen, that they were dangerous and untrustworthy, and that the Costa Rican authorities had released them after a period of detention despite the crimes they were accused of. However, she was unaware that the couple had been abducted and taken to the estate. Meeting them at the exit of the tunnel while they transported Elsa was a huge surprise. She even went so far as to think that someone had told them about the operation.
"Drop your weapons and phones! Empty your pockets! Now!" Owen hissed, half growling.
The InGen employees complied, unaware that behind their backs, Guillaume was approaching them silently, like a beast on the hunt. He had his pistol put away, but in his hand he held a piece of cloth, soaked in chloroform. The noise of the engine helping to drown out that of his footsteps, the trio didn't hear him until it was too late and before they could react, he lunged at Maya and stuck the cloth over her mouth and nostrils.
"Hey! Leave her alone!" Alf protested, worried.
He and the driver wanted to help the struggling trainer but Claire threatened them, moving the barrel of her gun sideways.
"Don't move! Or I'll make you dance!"
The chloroform having got the better of her, Maya collapsed in the arms of Guillaume, who dropped her, and the ex-Interpol agent then dealt with Alf and the driver, whom Owen overpowered while the vet was being tranquilized. When they too were on the ground and unconscious, Guillaume and the couple hastened to gag them, tie them up and retrieve the contents of their pockets, including the keys to the Indoraptor's cage. Seeing Owen staring at Maya for a long time with a strange look, with an expression that mixed guilt and shock, the WDMC director asked him:
"You know the trainer of that monster?"
"We were together in the Navy's marine mammal program and we both applied for the position in the IBRIS program."
"Everything makes sense now…"
"Prehistoric whales, huh? My ass!" Claire suddenly exclaimed, remembering their meeting with the trainer at the reception.
Owen didn't react while they finished binding their prisoners.
"She has to be aware of what happened with the Indominus and my raptors," he finally said after a long silence. "How can she willingly participate to those damn research?"
"Welcome to the club," Guillaume told him with a sigh, thinking of Sophie.
He then turned back to the truck. As he imagined what it transported, dread gripped his heart.
"Well, what do we do with that thing?" He asked the couple while he wiggled his aching arms. "We don't have all night..."
"Taking it out of the estate would be very stupid," Claire reminded them. "It shouldn't have even left the manor."
"And leaving it alone here would be too risky," Guillaume realized. "All it takes is for some moron to pass by and decide to open the cage..."
"We don't have the choice. It must be killed," Owen said darkly.
The keeper opened the truck's back doors and Elsa, then lying in her cage, looked up curiously. When she saw Owen climb into the truck, she growled, not recognizing him. She wondered who this stranger was and what he wanted to do. He was followed by his betrothed and finally by the WDMC director, who looked fearfully at the caged Indoraptor. Sensing his fear, stronger than Owen's or Claire's, the predator growled at him and stood up.
After staring at it for a moment, Owen pointed the barrel of his gun right at Elsa's head, aiming for her melon. Feeling threatened, the Indoraptor let out an intimidating hiss. While also looking at the monster, Claire slowly approached her betrothed as doubt took hold of her.
"Owen, are we making the right choice? This thing is certainly a monstrous hybrid… but it remains an animal. And if it's like its…mother, it's also sentient," she said to him softly after clearing her throat. "Wu, Torres and Mills are the real culprits, not it. We don't have to kill it..."
Surprised by her words, Owen and Guillaume turned to her.
"I'm aware of that, but if it escapes, innocent people will be injured, even killed. I won't let Blue's incident happen again here," the Raptor Whisperer said. "All of this is bigger than us and it… We have to act with the common good in mind, even if it means alienating an old friend."
Weighing the pros and cons, Claire sighed.
"You're right. We can't take risks," she admitted. "What would people think of me if I let the horrors of Isla Nublar happen again."
She then turned to the predator and they looked each other in the eyes.
"I'm sorry," the fallen park director muttered very quietly.
As the increasingly agitated Indoraptor tried to reach them by passing her arm through the bars, Owen took a deep breath, then, as he exhaled, he pulled the trigger. The bullet flew between the bars and disappeared into the Indoraptor's head, which immediately collapsed on its side before freezing. Owen, Claire and Guillaume approached the cage and saw a crimson trail flowing from the bloody hole that had just appeared in the middle of the animal's melon.
Owen then shifted to the side, in order to face the animal's side, and fired again, puncturing the dinosaur's chest, where the skin was more fragile than on the top of the body. Blood flowed from this new orifice and after looking at the dinosaur's frozen eye, the keeper let out a heavy pained sigh, having taken no pleasure in this act.
-o-
Notes
(*) Former southern province of France. Its territory roughly corresponds to present-day's Lozère département.