Dr. Wu had made it out of the thick of Jurassic World. And the more he watched the news, the more he lamented the loss of his greatest works. The Indominus Rex was gone; many of the original animals he'd made were loose, never to be captured by human hands again. It was a pity.
And this was all because he didn't take the time to really learn about and study his new creations. The Indominus Rexes were meant to be the cornerstone to new genetic technology research. Their very existence had been of significant importance to the world, showing that not only hybridization, but the very notion of sapience, could be created.
Henry thought bitterly about it though. He only did it because he could, and because he could, it meant that he should, lest someone else do it and take credit for what would have been groundbreaking work. Morals meant nothing in the realm of discovery; all that mattered was who got to the punch first.
"Can I get you somethin' hun?" the waitress asked. The diner that Dodgson wanted to meet at was "cute" and "homey". Dr. Wu missed that feeling greatly, but he didn't miss the idea of meeting with Dodgson.
"Just water." She nodded and walked off, leaving the doctor to his thoughts. He wished he had copied his research on a flashdrive. The information on his computers would've probably sent him to prison if it weren't for the disaster there. He was basically starting from scratch if he was to go forward with Dodgson's "proposal."
'Speak of the Devil,' Henry mused, watching the man walk in without any sort of disguise. At least Dr. Wu had messed up his hair and chose to wear something less "formal": a hoodie, a t-shirt, and some jeans.
"Henry, good to see you." The way that he said his greeting filled Dr. Wu with both dread and annoyance. The man acted so flippant as to give his identity freely.
"You shouldn't say my name." Lewis looked around, as though amused by something before he decided to make clear just how little he actually cared.
"Henry… Henry Wu! We have Dr. Henry Wu here!" Other patrons in the diner looked over to their table briefly, disgruntled it seemed by the outburst before returning to their meals without issue. Dodgson only grinned in response.
"No one cares… at the very least you could've had some class, rather than dressing like every kid in the Los Angeles area."
"That would defeat the purpose of this meeting, wouldn't it? To be covert?"
"Covert about what exactly?" Lewis questioned, leaning back in a relaxed manner. "We have nothing to hide… we have nothing to worry about. InGen isn't Big Brother, after all." Henry rolled his eyes at the flippant disregard. If Dodgson was as good as he implied on the island at stealing the secrets of others… why was it that he wasn't being careful in the slightest?!
"You say that like we didn't just —"
"Ah-ah." Henry raised a brow at that, before seeing that his waitress was returning.
"There's your water hun… anything I can get for you, sir?"
"I'll have a bacon cheeseburger, some iced tea, no pickles or mustard."
"Anything else?"
"Doctor?" Wu felt completely exposed, only shaking his head. "Oh come on, live a little Henry! This place has some of the best burgers!"
"It's true sir. I can attest." Wu gave a single chuckle, something that sounded almost bored again. He didn't care about the food.
"With all due respect… I'm not really that hungry." Dodgson's smile faltered a bit, the doctor gesturing to the waitress as she wrote down the rest of Lewis' order.
"Suit yourself hun." The waitress walked away, clearly disgruntled by Henry's flippant attitude towards the food. Lewis tsked to the doctor in response, a cheeky grin on his face. His glasses still obscured whatever Wu could gain from looking him in the eyes — not that he particularly wanted to stare at this man for too long.
"Listen Henry… loose lips sink ships, and we weren't on any ships near Costa Rica when everything went downhill. We left before the disaster… am I clear?"
"Video cameras would prove otherwise."
"Do you think anyone is going to go to the island and comb through security footage of the park's interior at the time?" The doctor thought on this… people were unobservant… but even Nedry had been caught by the actions he took with the system he made; it was a shame that the man had been long dead by the time they had managed to find him.
"That's what I thought. Now Henry, we don't need to think about what happened, we need to think about the future."
"And what future is that?" Wu asked tiredly. Lewis watched as the waitress returned with his iced tea, the man taking a few experimental stirs with his straw before he laid his cards out on the table.
"Doctor Henry Wu: the greatest scientific entrepreneur since Thomas Edison, a man with more conviction than Robert Oppenheimer. You were the man who unlocked deextinction. And now, you have unlocked something else for humankind." The flattery was very obviously geared to Wu's ego… pathetic.
"And you want?" Wu asked.
"I don't just want something, doctor. I want your brilliant mind doing good for humanity. In all realms"
"You don't even have a genetics startup," Henry accused.
"Not yet," Lewis admitted. The answer took Henry by surprise, and he listened more closely now. "See… when I worked with BioSyn, they were more concerned about the legal costs than they were about the light of discovery. I have connections everywhere… connections that could get you that genetics startup that you want. Mantah Corp., as an example."
"Mantah?" Henry felt dirty just thinking about the company. The Japanese-American genetics company was little more than an overglorified pharmacy for cosmetics.
"Yes… is there a problem?" Henry thought hard on the matter before shaking his head.
"No… not any at all."
"Doctor Wu, what do you want?" Henry watched as the waitress brought out Dodgson's meal. Henry had lied when he said he wasn't that hungry; he just didn't enjoy the idea of Dodgson lording this meal over him as an expense.
"I am not selling it to the highest bidder."
"Then what will it take for you to tell me what exactly you were doing with Hoskins?" Wu's brow raised as the man took his first bite.
"You wish to know what kind of experiments I was running with the InGen Security chief?"
"The man is dead. His obituary was confirmed today. I saved you from having to face legal consequences from your actions."
"Freedom." Dodgson's brow canted at that, stopping his meal as he eyed Wu with a hint of confusion. "I am not here to be lorded over or threatened by a petty thief, and I'm not here to be threatened for information that InGen will no longer have access to. If you want my brilliance… you cannot simply bribe me or take it. What do you have to offer?" Dodgson looked dangerously to the geneticist, thinking hard on the matter before he began to chuckle.
"Damn Henry… and here I thought that you were going to be simple and just want money."
"This was never about money for me, Mister Dodgson."
"Is that why you let me take the embryos in exchange for your safety?"
"I thought we weren't speaking about such things. Loose lips sink ships, after all." The doctor grinned wryly to the man across from him, who was now eyeing a french-fry with an almost bored expression before dipping it into a side of ketchup.
"Then what is this about, Doctor?" Henry leaned in across the table, expression as neutral as he could muster before he gave the man his answer.
"Discovery. Pure and simple discovery of what we can accomplish. I will be starting from scratch, and I want the freedom to pursue my path to discovery without bureaucracy or scope of purpose to limit me." Dodgson grinned lightly at this, tapping another fry into his condiment as he considered Henry's proposal. For the doctor, such was a long shot to hope for. The man was a crook, unable to understand the meaning of discovery if it hit him in the —
"Alright. I can do that." Henry's eyes bulged as he listened to Dodgson. "But if you want that, you have to foot the bill."
"You mean I have to find investors?"
"No," Dodgson said simply. "The bill here." Now Henry was beyond confused… just 20, 30 dollars?!
"That's it?"
"That's it." Henry almost thought it was too good to be true as Dodgson took another bite of his burger. The offer was right there, dangling in front of his face. Dodgson had already gotten what he wanted first and foremost: the ability to clone dinosaurs. He had the embryos… he could do as he pleased with them. Dodgson had kept to his word. This wasn't a matter of being partners, and it was as the man had said already. Only he could do more with those embryos than clone dinosaurs.
"Afternoon Charlene," Ed greeted.
"Afternoon Ed. Are you here for the board meeting?"
"No… I'm here to report to Mister Masrani as soon as he's done." Ed Regis had been collating everything he could, using remote servers and cloud databanks to get as much as he could off of the events that transpired at Jurassic World. Masrani Global was going down the toilet. Investors were pulling out, and the other Jurassic Parks had been forced to cut prices in half to make ends meet.
It still wasn't enough. The shareholders were now talking to Masrani on which assets were going to need to be sold to cover the legal costs of this catastrophe. Well over 250 people dead or severely injured. The costs were already well into the double-digit millions; by the end of today, they would be in the triples.
"Alright Ed. If you want to head on up, they should be finishing up soon. Joseph will buzz you in when they're done." The ginger nodded, already walking over to the elevator. It was only as the elevator started going up that he remembered the baseball cap he was still wearing. Taking it off, Regis sighed as he looked over the documents he had on hand.
The man wasn't nervous. In fact, he was almost giddy. Not for the lives lost, or for the closure of Isla Nublar to the public, but for the fact that he was now doing something worthwhile in this business. But it didn't shake the knots his stomach had been turning in since that night a month ago. He'd gone over it in his head myriad of times. Should he expose what Wu was doing? Should he keep it secret?
The answer was never clear cut. It was the ethical and responsible thing to do, yes, but the idea would poison any developments that InGen could've made for the betterment of mankind forever… let alone any other genetics company. It wasn't even that Dr. Wu's experiments were simply bad. They were unethical, but had real beneficial applications to the realm of scientific discovery.
And then there was the hybrid… he knew that it was still alive out there, and all Ed could do was cringe in thought. It was alone, with only the animals… it'd likely be alone forever, unable to be understood by humans. After what he saw that night, Ed had considered reporting it to Masrani here. But then the question reared its ugly head again. What would the long–term consequences be?
His thoughts were torn away from the matter as the elevator dinged. Opening up, Ed walked toward the office doors. The secretary, Joseph, was currently on the phone with someone, likely downstairs. His curled hair with the light blue streak only made Ed feel at odds with how little Masrani cared for personal wear beyond it looking presentable. Looking back to his hat, Ed put it back on, showing his support for the San Diego Padres while he waited in the chair. At least in the moments of quiet, he could check his phone to see if he got any messages.
"Oh, Mister Regis," Joseph said with a grin. "Charlene said you were coming up. The board just finished their meeting. I'll let Mister Masrani know you're here." Ed merely gave a simple thumbs up in response, opening up the manila folder to look at its contents: pictures of the pteranodon attack, a few pictures of the younger Indominus Rex, records regarding the existence of one Douglas Francis… and a flashdrive containing the security footage of him and Dr. Henry Wu.
Wu. The name pissed Ed off more than anything now. Yeah, the man was a genius and the Moses of the Genetics world with him setting the bar so high… but even if he found Dr. Wu's research to be unethical, what was worse was that he had worked with Francis to —
"Alright. Simon's ready for you." Ed stood up with a stiffness as he walked through the office door and past several cubicles. The conference room they were meeting in was just down the hall, and every step made Ed feel more like lead. He could see several people outside the room, investment suits it looked like, before he even entered. When he did open the door, he couldn't help but pity Simon.
The man was still in a cast, it seemed, from the disaster at the park. It was elevated on the table, and Simon looked just about ready to jump out the window behind him with how heavy the bags under his eyes were. The Indian man's exhaustion was clear as soon as Ed Regis entered the room, but his smile was still warm and his tone inviting as he gestured for him to take a seat.
"Mister Regis… it's a pleasure to see you again," he greeted. "Hopefully the drive wasn't bad?"
"Bus was fine today," Ed sighed. "Look, Mister Masrani —"
"Simon," he interrupted. Ed raised a brow at the correction before Masrani clarified. "I'm sorry… I thought it would be better if people didn't call me a 'mister'. I certainly don't deserve that much respect for how Jurassic World panned out." Ed's lips pursed at that. He couldn't blame Simon for blaming himself for all that'd happened.
"Mister Masrani… I don't think there was any way a disaster was unavoidable."
"Oh stop that nonsense. You sound just like Doctor Malcolm," Simon guffawed. "The man's been on an 'I told you so' tirade with the news since everything came out."
"Well… that's just it… he did tell us how it was unavoidable, didn't he?"
"No. Doctor Malcolm had never made clear how best to avoid these kinds of situations, only pointed out that they were always inevitable." Ed nodded in understanding, though he didn't really believe the CEO. Simon seemed like he was grieving, and didn't push it further.
"Look… Simon, we have quite a bit to get through, and… well… I think you should be aware of just how bad the situation at Jurassic World actually was." Simon clapsed his hands together, listening as Ed continued. "You know the lawyer, Douglass Francis, right?"
"Yes. I did. Never met him until that week."
"Well… that's because Francis was never an employee of Masrani's legal department. I went combing through everything I could find. InGen, Masrani, everything. There never was a Douglass Francis." Ed moved to quickly start shutting the blinds to the conference room before gesturing to the projector. Simon nodded, letting the man set it up to show what he knew.
"Through the entire week he was there, you said that Douglas was inspecting paddocks. To be entirely frank, I don't think that the security footage shows that at all." Said footage was security of the Innovation Center after hours. There was a clear figure slinking through the halls of the Hammond Creation Labs, and in the light, the unmistakable blonde hair and squared jawline told very clearly who it was.
Ed shifted the view to another day. Back in the Creation Labs, around the same time. He was looking in, very clearly searching for something. On the day before, he shifted to another feed. He could see the man with Claire Dearing. Ed couldn't help but feel a pang of upset for Claire. None of the security footage found a body. She went into the Old Park with Grady, and didn't come back out. It was obvious what had happened.
"Do you think he was a corporate spy?" Simon asked, watching as the "lawyer" eyed the paddock that they were looking at. It was a carnivore paddock, somewhere in the Restricted Section. But he seemed less interested in the walls itself, or the way the paddock was designed. His gaze was firmly on the gates and the numpad keys.
"I can't say for certain if he was alone or not… but given the last footage we have of him was alone, with Dr. Wu? I can tell you that you had your own Nedry situation." The footage in question came up. The good doctor was on the phone with someone, seemingly agitated. In the bottom left hand corner, there was the sleezeball, just watching. He came in only a few seconds after the call had ended, and was looking over his monitor. Wu looked mortified by something. Given what Ed knew, it was clear that the doctor had been caught in conversation with Hoskins.
Simon looked devastated as he watched the footage, showing Wu leaving with the man, heading over to the asset coolers with a thermos. He watched as both Wu and "Francis" stole from them, taking the embryos that they had collected and disappearing. It wasn't difficult to assume that they were long gone at this point, their trail covered.
"Does… Mister Regis… how did we not catch this sooner?"
"I don't know, sir… that's what I'm here to ask you about… and about what we do next." Ed could feel the pain that Simon had. But that pain quickly turned to calm fury, very clearly upset by the betrayal of a man that he'd saved the skin of.
"I want his doctorate for this, and I want him prosecuted."
"I can get this shuffled to the legal department for that, sir."
"No!" Ed seemed taken aback by the way that Simon's fist clenched at that. "Fool me once, shame on me… fool me twice, shame on you… I do not intend to delegate my actions. I will be talking to his alma mater about this personally. Mister Regis… you've done a great deal for me this past month. Is there anything else that you need to tell me about?"
Ed shook his head simply, sighing as he responded. "N-no sir. Just some basic details over the disaster, and what we're doing about InGen."
"InGen? What do they have to do with this?" Ed had debated this long enough with himself. The ethical implications would most certainly break the company's trusts… but it was the right thing to do.
"The Indominus Rex… Dr. Wu had… he had a very clear goal in mind with it. Hoskins and Wu both." Simon seemed interested, though no less hurt by the additional betrayals. He couldn't, he wouldn't let the doctor get away with everything. "I would be remiss to say that Hoskins and Wu were intending to use it as a means of securing additional revenue through military contracts."
"Is there anything to suggest this?"
"Internal records," Regis replied simply. He opened the folder and tossed to Simon what information was disclosed through his recordkeeping. InGen was likely to go defunct after this… but at the very least, Ed's conscience would be somewhat clear… were it not for what he was hiding in the fridge at home.
Ed couldn't help but feel only somewhat guilty about keeping much of Dr. Wu's more… questionable works under wraps. But seeing the hurt that Simon had, and the way that he was going to affect the company's profits? It was hard to say that what he was doing was the right thing. By the end of their discussion, Ed felt frazzled, tired even. The ride back home was even worse.
Ed Regis felt like he was a ghost among people, forever unable to touch the lives of everyone around him. Some talked about sports, others their next meal, others argued over the phone and more simply scrolled their phones, waiting for the inevitable end of their journeys. Meanwhile he alone had the knowledge of something truly remarkable… and something horrible.
Stepping into his apartment, Ed pulled off the baseball cap he was wearing, bringing his hands to pull at his eyelids. He was beyond tired. Stepping deeper into the apartment, Ed Regis looked around for a few minutes, trying to remember the events of their conversation.
Simon had tasked him, personally, with cutting and trimming fat from InGen. The Jurassic Parks that were operated in Europe and Japan were going to be staying open… but now, control would be exercised directly by Masrani Global onto the entertainment group. Isla Nublar was to be sold off, given back to the Costa Ricans as a nature preserve.
Ed couldn't help but snicker at the thought. History had repeated itself with Isla Nublar as it did with Sorna. The island was a free paradise for the dinosaurs that roamed it now, and the more he thought about it, the more he remembered what he was told by the technician at the console.
'it's time we stop thinking about this place, and start thinking about the people.'
The words stuck with Ed long after that night… and even more so now that he was the one in control. But he wasn't… he wasn't really in control. Some other time, one of the other islands would end up exactly like Jurassic World, like Isla Nublar.
And that was a lot of pressure. Ed Regis had been with the company as long as he could remember, had been with InGen, had been with the Jurassic program. And now, every time he thought about it, he could only think about what was likely to happen. Dr. Malcolm had been right when he said it back then. Control could never be exerted like this… it never should've been exerted like this.
He walked over to the freezer, opening it and looking at the contents of the back: a small vile, innocuous, almost like a child's science experiment. But every time that he looked at it, Ed could only see the smoking gun now.
'God creates dinosaur… god destroys dinosaur… god makes man… man remakes dinosaur… man becomes dinosaur…' The thought ran through itself many times, and each time, the outcome was the same. God destroyed man and dinosaur, and the Earth was inherited by animal.
There was nothing that Ed could do safely about Wu's ichor. The innocuous vial was too dangerous to just throw in the trash, and he couldn't trust anyone to keep it safe. It was only him.
And that thought terrified him beyond measure. He took the vial out, looking at it with an utter terror in his heart that he hadn't felt since that night. Part of him was curious, wondered how it worked. How did man become dinosaur? It defied all that he knew, defied all he could control.
It was only the phonecall he heard on the landline nearby that pulled him from the existentialism of it all. Maybe focusing on something else would help him think. Wu's ichor could wait in the back of the freezer with all the ice cream and single meals that he could muster to hide it behind. He'd find a way to deal with it later.
Author's Note
Good morning, afternoon or evening to you, dear reader. If you are reading this, I am happy to say that this project has only just begun. The amount of support coming from seeing all the favorites, all the follows, and all the reviews make excited to keep going with this story and move onto the next part of a trilogy. With that in mind, I want to give a rundown of why I did this story, and the context of Jurassic Park itself and why it's so important to this story.
For some background on me, I grew up with The Land Before Time. Jurassic Park as a movie, let alone as a book, never crossed my mind until I was well into my middle school days. I always remembered the human connections in The Land Before Time, and heartwrenching story that unfolded. When Jurassic Park came into the picture as a movie, however, I found myself interested in something beyond the mere excitement of seeing dinosaurs with childlike glee.
I saw dinosaurs as something to explore a variety of different narratives. Action, horror, comedy, heart, you name it. Jurassic Park hits every bit of these, especially the original. The original JP is something special, something beyond what words can describe. The talented crew that Stephen Spielburg worked with, and the amazing original story by Michael Chrichton served to create what was and still is, in my opinion, cinematic perfection.
But let's be real. We never cared for the actual heart and meat of the original story. We just wanted to see dinosaurs, doing dinosaur things at a theme park on and island: a veritable lost world that humans only really stumbled on. When writing this story, I decided to go a step further beyond what most Jurassic Park fanfic writers probably would. I went back to the source. At the time, I was working nights, and had a lot of free time on my hand between my nightly tasks. I used that time to listen to both the audiobooks of Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park and Michael Chrichton's The Lost World.
These penultimate stories tell very similarly to the Jurassic Park film — at least in the case of the original novel; the Lost World is a wildly different story with only minor storybeat similarities. But the difference between the books and the movies? It wasn't necessarily the characters. It wasn't necessarily the dinosaurs. It was always the message. The message of the original Jurassic Park film is that the dinosaur theme park was a bad idea from the start, and it was a bad idea because we tried to control what wasn't really meant to be controlled.
This message follows the same pattern in both The Lost World and Jurassic Park as novels. However there is a fundamental difference: the focus is squarely on the role of humanity as a whole playing God, rather than just the people at InGen. In the introduction of the first book, we get a clear insight into what Chrichton thought of the revolution of scientific discovery and patenting that had become so common through the 20th century, now made even more poignant with the 21st and pharmaceuticals.
The message changes: it was never about simply playing god to entertain and inspire. It was about doing so, in the end, for greed, for power, and for recognition. Dr. Henry Wu and John Hammond die in the original novel, never to be remembered for the power they wielded as a good for mankind. The island burns at the end of the original novel, not to be a lost world, but a cautionary tale about what happens when men driven by ambition alone take godlike power and wield it without measure in order to appease their own egos or monetary values that they put on it.
The Lost World's message is similar in that regard, but unlike the original, it focuses less on the nature of human error, and more on the nature of the consequences of playing god in such a manner, far–reaching and short–sighted. Lewis Dodgson returned in the 2nd novel as the antagonist, fulfilling the same role that John Hammond had in the original: wanting the dinosaurs and the Lost World that InGen had unintentionally created made for greed. But the main protagonists and deuteragonists go to Isla Sorna for differing reasons. Dr. Richard Levine went to Sorna to prove Malcolm wrong and appease his own ego, but he grew to respect the terrible power that these animals wielded when it became clear why the island's ecosystem seemed so... young, fragile even.
He lives at the end, becoming a better man for it. Dr. Ian Malcolm serves as Chrichton's voice in both books, pointing out the obvious as a narrative tool that can be ignored or heeded at the leisure of the other characters. Unlike Hammond and Wu, whose last moments were perpetuated by terror and childlike awe respectively at their creations, Dr. Levine changes in the story, realizing that his very presence affects the world in sometimes subtle, or otherwise massive ways, and that the consequences could have been extremely dire for his part when he was bitten by a Procompsognathus.
These elements of the scientific horror of Jurassic Park, and the human error of Jurassic Park, are elements that I hopefully explored and gave you thought to consider in similar depth here; I find more appreciation for the elements of the original novels and how they tie to the movies' messaging. Jurassic World: Genesis, and the sequels that people will inevitably read intend to continue this format, of pointing to human hubris and showing just why we don't do these things for evil reasons. We do these because we see value in what we are exploring, but some matters of discovery should remain hidden, lost.
Once again, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this story, and for reading the sequels to this story. While you wait for the inevitable sequels, and both the cool dinosaur stuff and horrors that await, please, don't only reread with this newfound context that I have given you, read Michael Chrichton's novels with this context in mind. Think heavily on the themes that Chrichton himself explored in the original novels, and compare them to my work. I would love to see reviews that ask questions, that critically eye the differences between what Chrichton wanted to explore versus what I attempted to explore here.
Or, don't. Above all, enjoy this fanfic for what it was: an exercise in retelling the events of Jurassic World as the story that I personally think it was meant to tell.