Don't know if anyone's going to see this diary. I did a bunch of journaling at Hammond's place because Cynthia saw me writing on the fridge markerboard, and she thought it was cute, so she grabbed one of Hammond's blank diaries. A little awkward, you know, because of the claws. When I got tired of writing, she found me a tape recorder, so some of what you've read or heard actually came off that.

The thing is, as you'll probably find out in a little while...wasn't always able to get the story down until later, for various reasons. The recorder's batteries went out, the pen would stop writing, or someone would take my writing instruments away, and/or drop them into a body of water, in which Cynthia would be left with a bunch of soggy pages filled with soggy, half unreadable text...And she's the one who actually corrects my grammatical and spelling mistakes.

For example, I didn't know the difference between `to' and `too,' the placement of `was' versus `were,' where to put periods and commas, and so forth (she laughed at how I used `yore' in a sentence). Anyway, kinda had a delay `writing' this part because I had to find a new cassette tape (okay, maybe I also played a few games and did other stuff in between).

Ahem, back to the subject at hand (or claw). It may not sound exciting, but...deserted island, nobody around for miles, and here comes...this weird boat. Pretty shocking, unless you've heard the story before...

Salty ocean air wafted into my nostrils, accompanied by the damp of fog. Unidentifiable jungle scents drifted in from the other direction. Salady plant aromas...and I think Heffalump fluffed a couple times, so kind of a zoological manure-y smell blended in there too...That and Cynthia's suntan lotion - that stuff positively reeked.

I wiggled my toes around in soft beach sand. "Who do you think is out there?"

Cynthia frowned, staring through the binoculars. "I dunno, it's too dark. I can barely see the boat."

"¿Quién es ese?" Heffalump asked.

I could only shrug. "Yo no sabo...Cynthia, do you think maybe Mister Arnold or someone called them?"

"Uh...anything's possible, but you'd think he would have told me something. I just got off the phone with him this morning."

I looked through her binoculars (to me, they're technically monoculars) but couldn't make out too many details. Not enough to confirm whether they were friendly or not. "Should we...follow them, and see who it is?"

Cynthia frowned. "That's a really good way to break my neck, or get attacked by a dinosaur."

"You got a flashlight and a Coleman lantern."

"Yeah? We still don't know where the T-Rex went to, and if she sees us waving around a flashlight in the dark, we'll be ringing the dinner bill. At least when the sun comes u p, and this fog is gone, we'll be able to see her big ass coming.

"Da miedo en la oscuridad," Heffalump agreed.

"Yeah, but by then the boat will be gone, and we won't know where they went."

Cynthia blew a raspberry.

I shook my head. "Fine. I'll scout ahead."

Cynthia appeared to give it a thought, but only for a second. "No. I'm your keeper, so I'll be held responsible for any injuries you may incur while...investigating."

"I'll be careful."

Zelda smiled, indicating that she agreed wholeheartedly in raptorese.

"Thank you, sweetie."

Cynthia, though, only groaned. "I know you'll be careful, Albert, but there's always a chance you might accidentally stub your toe on a rock and plummet down into another Mesoamerican tomb...or get eaten."

I scoffed. "Cynthia! You know I can handle myself around other dinosaurs."

"Yeah, but you could get hurt, plus we don't know who's in that boat. If it's not our guys, you could get poached. Even if it's our people, if you go by yourself, you'll probably scare the crap out of them and get shot."

"So you're saying you want to come along."

"Well, yeah, but not right now, in the middle of the night!"

"What do you mean by `poached?' Like, eggs Benedict? Firm whites with a runny yolk? Can they do that to a grown dinosaur?"

She rubbed her face in annoyance. "Were you being funny just now? Because that's not really—"

I paused and thought a minute. "You mean like when they take the claws and pelts off elephants and tigers and stuff?" I glanced down at my body and shivered. "You think they'll really want...raptor parts?"

"Elephant claws," she groaned. "Honestly, Albert, I don't know. I mean, everybody's following protocol, nobody should know there are any dinosaurs here, but, say, for example, some poachers came by the island to hunt jaguars and monkeys, and they just happened to find you." She spoke in a low falsetto. "`Hey look guys, I just bagged a dinosaur!'"

I swallowed hard. "So we're talking pelts and claws and stuff, not just capturing dinosaurs."

"Albert, I don't think you'd even want to be captured by a poacher. You ever seen shows about crappy zoos, or like Dumbo or anything? Not everyone is going to give you a Nintendo and room service, you know."

When Heffalump got an explanation en Español, he shrank like a spider before a match. "¡No me acercaré a ese barco!"

"Wait, do we know if they're heading toward this island?"

"They're within visible range. Where else would they be going?"

"I dunno, like scuba diving? Deep sea fishing, perhaps?"

"Albert, they're moving closer."

"It could be nothing. I mean, remember those rich people and that little girl?"

"It doesn't look like nothing to me. That's some serious safari equipment for regular vacationing."

"People do take safari vacations."

"What are you getting at, Albert? You want to go meet these guys or something?"

"Well...not exactly meet them, but I think we should at least scope them out...like I said, if we wait until dawn, we won't know where they landed. If we travel by shore, we'll be able to find them and spot Rexy and other dinosaurs..."

"Yeah, but then the boat will also see us."

"Okay, so stay within the bushes, but still keep along the shore, in case there's trouble."

Cynthia sighed. "Damn, I hate it when you make sense."

I snickered, glanced back at our fire. "Should we put that out?"

She put her hands on her hips as she stared at it. "It was dying out anyway. Plus it's on a beach, and not close to anything flammable. I had a hard time just keeping the sucker lit."

We walked. The sand beneath my toes turned to earth and gravel, damp in spots, dry in others.

I dimmed the lantern, marching through the foliage, Cynthia following close behind with her flashlight. Webby rode on my back, Heffalump noisily rustling his way through the brush and so forth deeper inland, where, he presumed, humans could never see him. Buttface trailed along too, but she...kept finding stuff to eat or smell, or pee on, and she'd wander off.

For a moment, Heffalump kept lagging behind.

"You wanna hang back by the fire or something?" I asked.

"No, solo necesito un momento."

What transpired afterwards...I found myself both amazed and disgusted.

Projectile spray pooping. Cynthia said she'd seen a similar thing at hippopotamus exhibits at the zoo. You know how people say `Shit hits the fan'? Well, Heffalump's tail acted as the fan. Feces everywhere - on the bushes, trees, small animals...

"You all right there, Heffalump?"

"Como?"

"¿Estás bien?"

"Sí, mucho mejor."

Needless to say, we hurried away from the...devastated area.

We crossed a ridge, entering a more...picturesque setting.

For a moment, the mysterious boat drifted into a fog bank. We stopped in our tracks.

"Damn! We lost them!"

Cynthia kept searching with the binoculars.

"How are you going to see anything out there, with the fog and the dark?"

"The boat has lights on it. Duh!"

Then, after a long wait, "I see where it's going. C'mon."

We continued our pursuit.

Zelda purred and uttered soft growls at she walked beside me, raptorese for, `A walk along the beach at night...Isn't this romantic?'

I grinned, grunted yes, but kept looking ahead to make sure we didn't miss the boat.

A looong, only semi-moonlit walk, in a fog, adjacent rather than directly on the beach, so we didn't get the full romantic effect. Still, a nice evening for a walk, even though sticks crunched beneath my heels from time to time. I hummed as I walked along.

"What are you humming?" Cynthia asked, annoyance clear in her voice. "It sounds...oddly familiar."

I smiled and sang. "Capture the dinosaur...that spongy chewy dinosaur...It's a dinosaur hunt, Chef Boyardee...Dinosaur..."

"Ugh! Forget I asked! Commercial jingles...do they not care what they put into that human brain of yours?"

Some kind of squishy bug rolled underfoot with the soft dirt. "Uh...yes and no. It was on the Ninja Turtles tape." I wagged my tail in excitement. "Are you going to school me? Because that'd be awesome. I've never gone to school...What do you do there?"

I could hear the annoyance rising in her voice. "Oh? Reading, writing, arithmetic." She swore under her breath about `suddenly becoming a school marm.' "Didn't they teach you anything while you were...in captivity? You can read..."

I hit a pleasant section of soft dirt. Felt like something out of a bag of high grade potting soil. "Well, sometimes Mister Hammond would read to me, or Mister Wu would come by and make me wear a fancy spaghetti strainer on my head and we'd play `Guess the Card' for a couple hours."

"Guess the card?"

"Yeah, like if had wavy lines or a circle or a triangle on the other side. He'd show me the back of the card and make me guess what it was. I think he called them Zenu cards. To me, it's just silly, I watched Columbo...Is that what they do in school?"

"...No. Why did he have you wear a spaghetti strainer?"

"Uh...I don't know. It had some fancy gadget on it. I guess he was trying to measure my brain patterns or something."

"Hmmm." Cynthia took a deep breath. "In school you sit in desks and listen to the teacher, take notes on stuff, read out of a book and take tests...or a bunch of books you buy yourself if you're in college..."

She paused again, to observe the boat.

"What's it doing now?"

"It's found an inlet. Looks like they're coming in for a landing."

I got a good look myself. "It looks like...a fiord."

Cynthia scoffed. "Oh my, aren't we fancy."

We followed the boat. As the sun cracked on the horizon, the whole jungle seemed to awaken, monkeys and jungle birds filling the air with noise.

"So...you study a lot of books in school?"

"Yeah, that's more than half of it. Professors are kind of a dick about them, too. They think you're made of money and it's okay to force people to buy a textbook nobody actually wants to read, just because they wrote it themselves and they're a dick. In highschool you read raggedy old textbooks that have been there for ten years, especially if it's math or Spanish where it doesn't matter if it's new."

"What's in a textbook?"

"You've seriously never seen a textbook?"

"No, I read regular books."

"They're...like a regular book, except there's all these questions and fill in the blank and problems at the end of every chapter. And they love Gary Larson."

"Hey, I love Gary Larson."

"Ugh, well, he's okay, I guess..."

We froze as someone (likely a dinosaur) roared loudly in the distance.

"Any guesses about who that could be?" Cynthia hissed. "And don't tell me it's Gary."

"Uh...I have one guess...It should be fairly obvious."

"Rexy, you mean? Damn. Let's hope she's...not close."

We searched the trees nervously, continuing onward.

"You know what, maybe I can get you a bunch of those yellow homeschooling books, like my mom kept getting me when I was a kid around summertime."

"Yellow...?"

"Yeah. They teach you math and stuff. They're workbooks. Trust me, you'll hate them." She giggled at the thought. "Passing my bad childhood onto you...Seriously, though, don't know what use you'll have with all that information, not like you'll ever have a job where you handle money..."

"You never know..."

She spoke in a funny dinosaur voice. "`Hi, I'm Albert. Welcome to McDonald's, home of the Big Mac. What would you like from our menu? By the way, I'm a dinosaur, you see, we're an equal opportunity employer.'"

"McDonald's...that's the one with the clown, right?"

"You would know that one — Whoa! Shhhh!"

We'd reached a lagoon, shrouded by broad leaved jungle plants. At its borders, yellow gas that smelled like rotten eggs puffed out of the ground, bleaching the outlying plants a sickly white color. Three toed dinosaur tracks all around (not mine or my friend's, apparently).

Since flat grassland composed most of the area, Cynthia hissed and frantically waved me back into the trees. We extinguished our lights and crouched low, staring as people removed tarps from the vehicles, disembarking from the beached watercraft.

As soon as everything had been driven up on dry ground, the boat pulled away. I and Cynthia stared at each other in shock, nonverbally asking each other why they didn't need a boat.

Cynthia got a closer look with the binoculars. "I don't see any guns. These guys do not look prepared at all."

"Hey, maybe they're scientist types, and they're going to do a picture safari."

She handed me the binoculars/dinosaur telescope. The trucks and Jeeps they'd brought along...it reminded me of equipment from The Park, with the cute logos and stuff removed...with the addition of sciency tools, and that green mobile home thing.

Speaking of that mobile home: Weird design. A Mercedes Benz All Activity Vehicle, with two long trailers hooked up to it. Tempered glass windows, reinforced by wire mesh. An accordion-like tunnel connected the two trailers. Completely impractical, but I guess it made it easier to tow them at the same time?

Only one gun among the...very small group of people.

I recognized someone. "Hey! There's that dude again!"

"What dude?"

"The book author guy. He was in the Jeep with Cassie's dad when Hammond and the other people left."

She looked through the lenses again. "The goofy looking guy with the black hair?"

"Yeah?...I think..."

"Come to think of it, I recognize that blonde chick, too."

"Blonde chick?"

"Yeah, you know. She had those kids with her? And that guy with the hat?"

I looked through the binoculars. Clad in a baggy white blouse and little denim shorts, a woman squatted over a set of dinosaur tracks, snapping pictures.

Sure enough, I did recognize her. We briefly met in the Visitor Center, when Rexy had been tearing the place apart.

With the rising sun came 80-90 degree temperatures. Not a great time for wearing clothing, as I could tell from Cynthia's obvious signs of discomfort, and dampened shirt. She wiped sweat from her face. "Huh. Guess they're not poachers, then."

"Should we go talk to them?"

Cynthia frowned at me. "Actually...I think you should stay back with your friends for a few moments, just until I talk to them..."

She picked up Webby for a moment, paused, and put her back down. "Nope, that'd probably still freak them out. If that's the same guy, he'll probably never want to see another dinosaur as long as he lives."

"Then why's he even here?"

"Uhh...that's actually one of the questions I want to ask."

As she marched toward the lagoon, however, Buttface popped out and scurried along beside her. She tried to make her stay, but the Proceratosaurus kept following her.

Cynthia looked at me, giving this face like `You see what I have to deal with now?' But she only petted Buttface on the head and kept walking.

I sat down and waited with the binoculars.

Author Guy did freak out a little when Cynthia came with her pet, but she talked with him and he cooled down. I don't know what they discussed, I don't know how to read lips that well.

The blonde lady, overhearing them, stopped what she'd been doing. Upon sighting Buttface, she jumped to her feet and spoke to Cynthia, petting the Proceratosaurus on the head.

A beefy guy with a box haircut stood smoking at the end of the trailer, poking buttons on a handheld game.

"¿Que pasa?" Heffalump asked.

"No se." I handed him the binoculars.

At first he didn't know how to use them, turning them upside down and backwards until I instructed him. "No confío en ellos."

I don't think Heffalump trusted anyone. "Por eso ella los está revisanado."

Cynthia and the guy talked for some time. She kept pointing back at us. The man shook his head no, he did not like Velociraptors. I don't think he saw Heffalump because Heffalump had been hiding behind a tree and bushes.

A few yards off, I spotted a guy setting up some cage-like mechanical contraption in the trees. Not sure of the function. As far as I can tell, it just flashed blinking lights.

Grinning, the blonde looked in my direction and said something. Author Guy said no, but she came marching my way.

Author Guy trailed her at a cautious distance, probably uttering warnings, but I couldn't hear him.

"¿Que pasa ahora?"

"Creo que estamos a punto de conseguir un visitante."

"No gracias. Me voy ahora."

"Espera, es solo una persona y está desarmada," I protested, but Heffalump had already rushed away into the foliage somewhere.

The woman neared our hiding spot, bringing out her camera. Frightened, Webby hid behind a log. Zelda snarled and jumped in front of me. "I will protect you!"

"Whoa, wait!" I pointed. "Camera! See? Like Cynthia had at our wedding?"

Zelda stared at me. "Uuu...webbing?"

"Wed-ding." I pointed to my rubber washer ring.

She purred and rubbed against my neck. "Ooo-ebbing."

"Yeah. It's okay." I stepped out into the open, giving the woman a cautious wave.

The woman snapped a picture of me. The moment Author Guy spotted me and my wife, he shouted, "Hey! Get back from there! It's not safe!"

The woman only scoffed. "That woman said we're safe, and she's not dead."

His Adam's apple bobbed. "Yeah? Then why were we running for our lives earlier? Cardio?"

She stiffened somewhat at the comment, becoming more cautious in her approach.

Cynthia stood a few paces behind them, watching me and Zelda with a face like `Please be a good puppy and don't nip the nice lady!'

"Hi! I believe we've met before, but we haven't been formally introduced."

The woman covered her mouth, stifling a giggle. "Oh my God, it actually talks!"

"I'm a he, actually. Long story. Anyway, yes I can talk. I an also do Kung Fu. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?"

She chortled, barely containing her mirth. "Sarah Harding. If I get close enough to check you for hidden microphones, are you going to bite me?"

I rolled my eyes. "What, you don't believe I actually talk?"

I spread my arms like, `Do your worst.'

The woman cast Zelda a nervous glance. "I nearly broke my neck trying to get away from you guys. What changed?"

"Ummm...I got married?"

She burst out laughing. "There's got to be a microphone."

By this time, Author Guy had caught up with her. When he saw her reaching for my neck, he cried, "Sarah, don't! I know it...appears to be talking, but you know how deadly those things are!"

Ignoring him, Sarah poked me around the neck, prodded me in a couple other places.

I squirmed as she poked me in the ribs. "Hey! That tickles!"

Her eyes widened in amazement. "Language function! Human-like thought processes! Ian, do you realize the evolutionary implications of all this?"

The man crept closer, gaping at me. "It certainly would explain a few things."

I cleared my throat. "Actually, I disagree. Hammond's people put human brain cells up here." I tapped my skull. "Also, I'm a Christian."

"Well, nobody's perfect."

Sarah frowned. "This is completely unethical."

Ian didn't look surprised. "He already fills gaps in the genetic sequence with tree frog DNA. I always compared the man to Doctor Frankenstein."

I cleared my throat. "Be that as it may, I'm happy with the arrangement. I like the brain matter God gave scientists to fiddle with. I've learned about the Ninja Turtles, met some interesting people, made friends, got married..."

"Personally, I would have stopped at the `made friends' part," Ian groaned, barely audible. Then, in a louder tone, "Congratulations. And may your marriage be a long and happy one. I can only hope that, as a dinosaur, your partner isn't a selfish, greedy individual with unrealistic expectations, and—"

Sarah elbowed him. "What he means to say is: He's happy for the both of you, but he's jealous because he's divorced."

"Anyway, I imagine it's got to be easier because dinosaurs don't have jobs, so the wife has less reasons to shop around."

"Are you saying that a dinosaur can't suddenly find someone else prettier, and begin spending suspicious amounts of time away from the nest?"

Ian opened his mouth to say something, but Sarah interrupted him with a squeal. Webby had chosen that moment to creep out of hiding. "And you must be Webbigail! Hi, cutie!"

She petted our baby on the head, picked her up and cuddled her. Webby loved the attention. "Oh aren't you adorable?"

Zelda cast me a nervous look, like `Can we trust her with our baby?' But I just shrugged.

"God has blessed us with this infant," I said. "We're raising her as our own, but I and Zelda are hoping to have one of our own sometime."

"So humanlike!" Sarah whispered.

She and Ian exchanged puzzled glances.

"Uh, Sarah, did John Hammond...seem...very religious to you?"

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Not...that I'm aware of, though honestly I didn't spend that much time with him. We ate ice cream when the power went out, and he told me some story about how he used to run a flea circus..." She shrugged, and they both stared at me like I were defective.

Ian pointed at Zelda. "Oh that's cute, they both got little rings. What, are those rubber washers?"

I nodded. "So...Sarah. What brings you to the island?"

Her eyes darted back and forth, as if she had a secret to tell, and didn't know if I could be trusted. Then...Oh yeah, you're a Velociraptor. "Well, I've been told this place is full of dinosaurs, where they run free in their natural habitats instead of zoo enclosures like...the park. We've got a special cage set up to observe them from the trees...Have you seen any dinosaurs around here?"

I furrowed my brow ridge. "Could you...be more specific?"

She got this `kid in a candy store' look on her face. "That many, huh?"

"Uh...honestly, I've only seen weird ones." I opened my mouth to mention One Eye and the undersea tunnel with the golden condor, but decided against it.

Her eager expression turned to slight disappointment. "What do you mean by `weird ones?'"

I told her about the Angistorhinus monsters, Cthulhusaurus and Heffalump.

Ian smirked. "His, uh, imagination is very humanlike."

Sarah grinned at me. "I think it's cute that he has an imaginary friend."

"I guess you would lose your mind and make up invisible friends if you're in the jungle all day with no one to talk to."

"He doesn't have to be crazy!"

"Yeah? It certainly helps!"

"Doctor Malcolm, don't tell me you've never had an imaginary friend."

"Actually, I had a dog. He just loved the sound of my voice. I used to pretend I was a school teacher and give him lessons."

She scoffed. "Explains a lot."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Zelda squawked at them.

"Are you...the only one who speaks?"

"In English? Yes."

My wife growled, "Saaay...rawr...Harrrggrrrng."

"We're working on it."

The woman grinned. "Hey, we found some interesting tracks back that way..." She pointed toward the mobile home thing. "You think you might be able to identify the dinosaur who made them, or lead us to it?"

I wagged my tail. "That depends...Do you have a deerstalker hat?"

Ian fought down a laugh. "Excuse me, did you just make a Sherlock Holmes reference?"

"Why?"

A definite incredulous look appeared on the man's face. "You actually...read Sherlock Holmes."

"I got the whole collection in my room. I read a lot of stuff. In fact, Heffalump just introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons."

"Wow, that takes me back to my college days! Remind me to mail you a couple manuals when this is all over...Guess that explains the monsters, and the Lovecraft reference."

"Anyway, I'm partial to The Hound of the Baskervilles, but I thought the one about the guy transcribing encyclopedias to hide a bank heist was pretty good, too."

This brought the man even more amusement. "Wow, never thought I'd get to meet a literate dinosaur. Again, highly unethical, human cloning is already illegal, and Hammond's been doing...brain transplants? Do you know what cadaver they took yours from?"

I shook my head. "They only told me it said `Abbey Normal' on the jar."

For a moment, the man appeared to believe me, silently mouthing `abnormal,' staring at Sarah...But then, "Oh God, did you just crack a joke? You just referenced Young Frankenstein, didn't you?"

I rolled my eyes. "I got a jillion of them. I've actually had this same exact conversation before..." I explained the thing with the cloned human brain cells.

"Aha! I was about to say, the old scalpel and suture method: Scientifically implausible, even with a baby fetus."

A little balding guy in a green jacket approached Cynthia, muttering something to her. It seemed fairly serious, because he had a shiny silver rifle in his hands, making gestures in our direction.

She marched up to us. "I see you guys are getting along great together!...Hey, uh, Albert? Can you and your wife come with me to that trailer thingy real quick? We gotta take care of something, it's kinda important."

I swallowed. "Any particular reason you can't do it here?"

She shook her head. "I dunno. Anyway, it'll only take a minute."

Cynthia growled a similar request to Zelda in raptorese.

Ian snickered. "Geez, someone call the exorcist!"

When Zelda obeyed, though, Sarah's eyes bugged out. "You have got to show me how to do that!"

"It's all in the way you roll your R's."

The interior of the mobile home...very sciency. They had a place for dissecting stuff and examining it under video microscopes, a bunch of computers, and a place with radio and phones, with some kind of digital weather map."

"Cynthia," I muttered as I wandered further in. "You mind telling me what this is about?"

"Just a little security precaution. You'll just have to trust me on this one."

"It's kinda hard to trust when you're acting sketchy—"

I'd been walking backwards this whole time, staring at all the neat stuff, so didn't notice the muscular, cigarette smelling body in a denim jacket until I bumped into it and knocked a plastic game device out of its hands.

"Sorry." I glanced at the carpet. "Hey, is that a Game Boy?"

"That's mine." The man with the box cut suddenly gaped at me. "Wait, what the fudge?"

He stared me when I picked up his Game Boy and played Kwirk.

The balding guy stepped into the compartment. "Tell them to take a seat...anywhere...preferably on the floor...Is that thing actually playing Tetris?"

"It's Kwirk," I corrected, not looking up from the screen. "Please don't call me a thing, it's rude!"

Ian joined us in the lab. "See? I told you they exist."

I just had to get a dig at him. "You sure I'm not just your imaginary friend?"

I guess I should have been paying more attention, and not playing the Game Boy, because a moment later, Cynthia's slipping a scary dog collar around my neck.

I glanced down in alarm.

A nasty looking thing, with spiky prongs on the inside like a dog training collar, plus a black box (some kind of electronic device) and a compartment for what appeared to be tranquilizer darts. "Cynthia, what the hell!"

"I'm sorry, Albert. Eddie says this is the only way he'll allow you to hang out with us."

"And what does Eddie know?" I growled. "You've been with me for days and I haven't touched a hair on your head...except for that one time I licked it...Plus, Sarah and Ian...they like me!"

She sighed. "I know, Albert. I didn't say I didn't trust you, but this guy is the team lead, and these guys are connected to Hammond, and my job. They don't know you like I do. The one thing you gotta know about humans is that trust has to be earned."

I wiped tears out of my eyes as she fastened a lock on the torture device. "I thought you were different."

"I know. Life's not fair sometimes."