CHAPTER 94

Dianna swiped her access card and entered the control room. Ms. Murdock happened to be leaving as she was coming in. Dianna held the door and Joan scarcely made eye contact as she breezed by. Dr. Johnson let the door clang closed behind her. There was a solid clunk as the lock engaged.

The control room had several work stations with two to three computer monitors at each. On a wall in front of them was an eight foot screen that was currently scrolling through images of the operations compound's perimeter. Presently only one of the stations was occupied. Dianna crossed the room and came up behind the woman at the desk. Her name was Carrie Bolton, the voice that had been crackling over the radio the entire time they'd been venturing Isla Sorna.

"Has anything come up?" Dianna asked.

Carrie leaned back in her office chair with a creak. A large steaming thermos was in her hand. The oder of strong coffee wafted around Dianna as Ms. Bolton answered, "I was just explaining to Ms. Murdock, if you have some time it's easier just to see for yourself." Carrie stretched her arms and sipped at her coffee. A pair of thick framed glasses rested on the verge of sliding right off her nose. She pushed them up with a crinkle of her cheeks and ruffled a hand through her shoulder length hair.

"Sure." Dianna reached for a chair. "Aww." She noticed that Carrie was not in fact the only one in the control room. At a work station to her left a man in his mid twenties was sprawled over his keyboard and snoring with his cheek smashed flat against a glazed donut. "Poor Guss."

"Let him sleep," Carrie yawned. "Him and Phill have been gabbing about comic books all day. I swear I work with a bunch of nine year olds. Now I finally get a little break."

Dianna noted whose workstation she was pulling her vacant chair from. "No Dennis?" she said as she brushed crumbs and crinkled candy wrappers off the seat. The wheels of the chair snagged on a pile of loose trash that was overflowing from a waste bin next to its desk. Kicking the refuse aside Dianna freed the chair and sat down.

"No. Not for a few days, thank God. He's an absolute pig. You know, I bribe the janitors to clean out his workstation every time he hops islands. It kinda pisses him off, but I don't care." She shrugged.

Carrie started punching buttons on her keyboard, and the large screen on the wall changed to a feed from the motion sensors. All along the perimeter of the operations compound there were small groups of dots. Some were moving. Some were stationary.

"There. You see that?" Carrie pointed. "That's them, our rogue velociraptors. They've been there ever since you guys got back."

Another man entered the control room and slapped a Spider Man comic down on the desk next to Guss' head. "Here, I'm done with it," he proclaimed.

Guss straightened up in his chair. He looked more confused when the donut peeled off his face and dropped in his lap.

Carrie sighed, "Damn it, Phill. I had actually gotten him to go down."

"He's not an infant, Carry." Phill plucked the donut off Guss' lap. "If I have to stay up, so does he." Phill turned to Guss and pointed at the donut. "You're done with this, right?" He moved to a nearby workstation and plopped down in front of it. Patting his belly he said, "Ah. I feel about ten pounds lighter."

Guss was squinting at his glasses as he wiped donut glaze off the lenses. "Hey, did you bring this comic in the bathroom?"

"Yeah. I had to make room for the donut." Phill shoved the whole thing in his mouth at once. His boyish face puffed out as he crammed the tail end past his lips. Bits of hardened glaze sprinkled down the front of his Captain America teeshirt as he fought to chew and swallow.

Carrie muttered to Dianna, "It's a wonder he's not as big as Dennis."

"What the hell, Phill. That's disgusting. I told you not to do that," Guss began to whine.

"Right, that's why I waited till you were asleep."

"You're a total ass wipe, Phill."

As the two of them continued to bicker Dianna turned her attention back to Carry. "What have the raptors been doing?" She leaned forward in her chair.

"Mostly just watching, keeping their distance, but look." Carrie started pushing more keys, and she spoke as she did. Her tone had changed. It was quiet and regretful. "You know, I feel partially responsible for what happened. Here I thought Shelly and I were spending some quality mother and daughter time together every time she'd come and watch me work. In reality she was just memorizing all the blind spots on the cameras." Carrie started to tear up. "And then Dallas…" She swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks and kept typing. Her focus had recovered quickly. She didn't give Dianna much of a chance to respond to what was being said, and by that point a clunk at the door divulged that someone else had entered the room.

Ms. Murdock had returned with a paper cup full of black coffee. She came up beside Dianna blowing the steam off the top. Guss and Phill were still arguing, and they were getting loud. Joan barked at them, "knock it the hell off, you two."

Carrie motioned to the large wall screen. "Here we go."

The screen split into two images. On the right was a zoom in of three dots on the motion tracker. On the left was a camera's eye view of the same area. The image was black and white as all the cameras switched to infrared in the dark. It showed the forrest floor, tangles of foliage, and one velociraptor staring up intently at the surveillance device.

"Just watch." Ms. Bolton used the arrows on her keyboard to reposition the lens.

As The camera panned around two other velociraptors came in and out of view. They too were fixed on the camera. As Ms. Bolton continued to rotate the camera the raptors fell in step with the lens and remained in frame. Carrie held the camera still and the raptors stopped walking. Although there was no audio they were visibly vocalizing at the surveillance equipment. Working the arrow keys Carrie nodded the lens up and down. The raptors in turn began to bob their heads and make more vocalizations.

Ms. Murdock made a short grunt and sipped at her coffee. It was hard for Dianna to tell what she was thinking. Dr. Johnson herself found it quite concerning.

"There's more." Ms. Bolton switched camera locations.

As the new image shifted it revealed more raptors staring at the cameras. Again she switched cameras, and again it revealed the same thing. "They've been circling the perimeter for hours and nosing around the cameras and motion trackers just like this."

"Have they approached the fences?" Ms. Murdock continued to drink her coffee.

"Yes. Several times, early on. But only in the areas that were lacking manpower. Every time I alerted the jeeps on patrol, and they would redistribute to those locations. In turn the raptors would retreat."

"Their looking for weaknesses in the perimeter. They know we filled the holes, so they have to find another way in." Ms. Murdock's eyes were focused on the large screen.

"Well, there is no other way in." Carry spoke the statement as more of a question. "Right?"

"Sure." Ms. Murdock kept sipping at her coffee. Her tone was anything but convincing.

There was a silence for the next several minutes as the three women continued to watch the screen. Dianna couldn't help thinking that the velociraptors had made a correlation between the cameras and the men in the jeeps. It was painfully obvious, and she felt that Joan was thinking the same thing. The idea that they knew exactly what the cameras did was certainly far fetched, but it was clear they had recognized a pattern. Now Dianna found herself wondering what was going to come of it.