Chương 22: Indominus Rex (22)

How long can an animal hold a grudge? Asset's answer was simple: until one of them died. Humans who suffered humiliation, injury, oppression, or injustice often found countless reasons why they "had no choice" but to let go. They forced themselves to forgive, to accept what had happened, and to make peace with it on their own. Animals were different. They were not bound by laws or morality. They obeyed only the law of natural selection.

As long as they possessed the strength, they would repay anyone who hurt them twice over. If they could take revenge on the spot, they would never wait until the next day. A full-grown brown bear might pursue a tigress with cubs, only to be hunted down by the male that very night and become his meal. African elephants could remember which lions had threatened their calves; the moment one dared approach the young again, they would summon the herd and trample the entire pride.

Repaying harm in kind was an animal's idea of justice. Paying it back twice over was the law beasts lived by. Asset was no different. She could still picture those crimson slit pupils with perfect clarity. She would never forget the agony of having her belly torn open, the wound that had required thirty stitches, or the brutal fight she had barely survived— All of it had been inflicted by her counterpart. Time would never erase those wounds.

Sharing the same origins did not make them sisters, and nothing it had thought or done deserved her forgiveness. Blood ties were a human invention. They meant nothing in the animal kingdom. Even offspring born in the same litter became either rivals or allies once they matured. There was nothing else between them. Asset remembered being disemboweled, just as it undoubtedly remembered her jaws closing around its throat.

Their hatred twisted around itself like a double helix, each strand wrapped inseparably around the other. Only the death of one could bring it to an end. Asset had always known that day would come. Now, at last, it was close. Early 2015. Asset was eleven years old and had entered the subadult stage one year earlier. After a year of explosive growth, the various measurements of her body had begun to stabilize and no longer fluctuated dramatically.

By the end of February, she was a massive carnivore measuring forty-nine feet long, eighteen feet tall, and weighing fifteen tons. The humans had never conducted a comprehensive assessment of her abilities. They had not measured her bite force, running speed, tail-strike velocity, or reaction time. Judging by how easy hunting had become, however, Asset was certain that her strength had at least doubled. She simply lacked an opponent capable of confirming it.

She would have liked the humans to release another dinosaur into her enclosure so she could test herself. Instead, under the pretense of "reducing aggression," they fed her frozen meat for an entire month. The absurdity almost made her laugh. When she had been small and vulnerable, they had insisted on dropping a full-grown Triceratops into her enclosure. Now that she was a subadult, they stubbornly refused to provide living prey. Every meal consisted of dead meat.

At this rate, they might as well start feeding her human corpses. Asset could not understand how the human mind worked, just as the humans had no idea what she was truly capable of. That day, her keepers delivered a Brachiosaurus that had died from disease. It was not fully grown, but it still weighed fifteen tons and gave off a foul odor. Asset did not mind. By now, no dinosaur disease, however troublesome, could overcome her iron stomach. That was one of the qualities the lightning had beaten into her.

Lowering her head, she effortlessly lifted the carcass—which weighed as much as she did—and carried it toward the electric fence. When her jaws closed, her teeth sliced straight through its neck. The tough cervical vertebrae shattered with a series of sharp cracks. The sound of her chewing was deeply unsettling. The two keepers shuddered and hurried out of her territory. Only after climbing into their Gyrosphere did they finally relax and begin chatting about whatever came to mind.

"She bit through that Brachiosaurus's bones as if we were eating potato chips. How can it be that easy for her? I've only ever seen that kind of bite force in a feeding Tyrannosaurus. It has to be at least forty thousand newtons."

"I honestly admire Susan. How does she sit there so patiently and watch this thing eat? That demonic crunching—God, it sounds as if she's chewing my bones and loving every second of it!" One Gyrosphere departed, and another slowly entered the old sector. Susan's legs were no longer steady. She walked with a slight limp as she entered the lift cage, pressed the button, and slowly ascended. By then, Asset had eaten enough to take the edge off her hunger. She raised her head from the Brachiosaurus's open belly.

The moment she caught Susan's familiar scent, she immediately abandoned her food and walked toward her. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Susan was old now. Something appeared to be wrong with her legs, and she could no longer remain standing for very long. Asset could not keep her waiting.

"Good afternoon, little tyrant." Susan was not even wearing protective equipment as she reached through the bars.

"How did you get food all over your face? Was lunch that good?" Conversations between humans and dinosaurs were usually one-sided. Asset, however, possessed a certain sense of courtesy. She would often answer by breathing blood-scented air over Susan or giving a few disdainful snorts to indicate whether something was "good" or "bad." Before long, Susan was covered in dinosaur mucus. She shook her head and laughed, then patted one of Asset's teeth and turned to the reason for her visit.

"Thanks to you, I'll have to take a bath today. Once, I went to see the Velociraptors while carrying your scent. You frightened those four little ones half to death." A low rumble rose from Asset's throat. She lifted her forelimbs and excitedly raked her claws across a pair of trees, stripping the bark from both. She almost seemed to be laughing at the Velociraptors for their fear and cowardice.

"Little tyrant, my good girl…" Susan sighed.

"I came to tell you that there's something wrong with my knees. I need treatment at the hospital in the visitor center, so I won't be able to visit as often."

"And the company issued an announcement yesterday. They've decided to put the Indominus rex on public display this June and fully open every sector of Isla Nublar. They're reviving the Jurassic Park plan that collapsed twenty years ago." Twenty years? When Asset had first heard about that plan, the researchers had called it an incident from ten years earlier. Somehow, another decade had passed in the blink of an eye. No wonder Susan's health seemed to worsen by the day.

From her perspective, twenty years had already gone by.

"June. Three months from now," Susan calculated.

"The company has already started advertising, but your counterpart… It isn't some obedient herbivore that will stand inside an enclosure and let people stare at it. It isn't like you. It's hostile toward humans."

"They're putting everyone on a single island at the beginning of storm season. If anything goes wrong, it'll be a disaster. Humans aren't particularly capable creatures. Drop them into the Jurassic period, and they'd be nothing more than dinosaur food." Susan did not stay long. In the end, the pain in her knees forced her to leave the old sector. Asset watched her Gyrosphere disappear into the forest. She remained silent for a long while before returning to her meal, but by then she had lost her appetite.

For reasons she could not explain, the thought of the approaching June filled her with foreboding. Those crimson slit pupils flashed through her mind. She recalled every detail of her counterpart's appearance and repeatedly reviewed the methods and patterns of its attacks. An apex predator's sense of danger never stirred without cause. Asset understood that. On June 8, 2015, a limited number of tickets to see the Indominus rex went on sale.

They drew enormous crowds of humans, many of them accompanied by their entire families. The service areas were packed almost beyond capacity. The park increased the volume and frequency of its announcements. From morning until night, the broadcasts repeated safety instructions, listed lost property, and helped careless parents locate missing children. The mechanical voice echoed through the air again and again, carried far into the distance by the wind.

The tourists might have been enjoying themselves, but the dinosaurs' orderly lives were gone. It was unbearable. Asset buried her head beneath a pile of fallen leaves, but even that could not block out the announcements. She was not the only one suffering. Every dinosaur capable of hearing them had gone days without a full night's sleep. If this continued, they were all going to lose their minds. From far away, Asset heard dinosaurs roaring one after another.

Trapped inside their enclosures, they had no other way to express their displeasure. Only around midnight did the announcements finally stop. The dinosaurs gradually fell silent, and Asset at last drifted into sleep. The following morning, the thunderous beating of rotor blades woke her. Irritated, she raised her head. The electric grid divided the sky into countless squares, and a black helicopter moved slowly through the gaps overhead.

It hovered above her enclosure for a long time, apparently searching for somewhere to land. But the electric grid covered too wide an area. To avoid an accident, its occupants eventually landed farther away and approached on foot. There were four of them: two familiar keepers, Claire—whom Asset had met once before—and a heavily bearded man she had never seen. Claire called him Simon. Simon? Strange. Had Asset heard that name somewhere before? It sounded familiar, but she could not remember why.

Had she encountered him during her time in the laboratory? While she was still thinking, the group reached the enclosure. They put on protective gear, entered the lift cage, and rose to meet her. Asset understood what they had come to see and had no intention of disappointing them. She did her best to appear less imposing, slowed her steps, and pushed through the trees until they could see her clearly. The distance was perfect. She could hear every word they said. Simon stared at her in confusion.

"This is the second one? How did it get so big?" Claire paused before putting on her professional smile.

"Simon, you only saw it once, shortly after it hatched. That was ten years ago." Simon Masrani was the man who controlled the company that owned Isla Nublar. He was also the famously wealthy employer who provided Dr. Wu with unlimited funding without asking too many questions about what, exactly, the doctor was creating. Fortunately for him, he rarely interfered. His capable subordinates kept everything running smoothly, and Isla Nublar generated an enormous fortune.

But when an uninvolved owner suddenly decided to involve himself, matters had a way of becoming complicated. For reasons known only to Simon, he had abandoned his comfortable life in New York and come to inspect the island shortly before the Indominus rex exhibit opened. Officially, he was here to "verify the safety of the exhibit."

To accommodate him, Claire had been forced to leave her responsibilities with her assistant and personally escort him to the old sector to inspect the Indominus living in the outdoor enclosure.

"It looks impressive," Simon said.

"Silver-gray hide, beautiful muscle definition. It's a little frightening, but it doesn't seem particularly aggressive. Why aren't we exhibiting this one?"

"I once thought the same thing," Claire replied.

"But I have to admit that its lack of aggression is its greatest weakness."

"Simon, we need a dinosaur so terrifying that everyone who sees it has nightmares. The second one is too emotionally stable. Visitors would forget about it soon after seeing it, and I don't want videos appearing on YouTube accusing us of false advertising." Simon had no response to that.

"All right. We'll look at the other one tomorrow." Before leaving, they inspected the surveillance equipment outside the electric fence. Once they had confirmed that everything was functioning normally, they boarded the helicopter and departed. Faintly, Asset heard Claire speaking.

"… Rest assured, Simon. The enclosure holding the first asset is completely secure. My two nephews are coming to the island tomorrow to see the exhibit. I would never gamble with their lives." Nephews? Did that mean family? Asset exhaled through her nose, almost like a sigh. Claire was still too young. Susan had done everything she could to keep her family away from the island, yet Claire had personally invited her nephews to visit.

Did she truly believe an island filled with captive dinosaurs was a suitable place for them? Nothing had happened yet. That was all.