Chương 23: Indominus Rex (23)

At eight o'clock on the morning of June 9, San José time, only one day remained before the Indominus rex exhibit opened to the public. Simon had never been one to worry much. After seeing Indominus No. 2 the previous day and confirming that it was "safe," he had assumed Indominus No. 1 could not be all that different. It might look more terrifying, but surely it would not regard the humans inside the lift cage as food.

So he had spent the night enjoying everything the island had to offer, trying every attraction before finally attending to business the following morning, still only half awake. He regretted that decision almost as soon as he entered Indominus No. 1's viewing facility. The two hybrids were profoundly different, and that difference had nothing to do with the color of their skin or eyes. It was something deeper—the overall impression each one gave him.

Perhaps because the second had spent most of its life outdoors, it possessed the wildness of nature and the composure of an animal secure in its place at the top of the food chain. It was a powerful predator, but not a deranged killer. Its presence reminded him of the guardian spirits of the forest found in Indigenous folklore: immovable and awe-inspiring, yet not inherently frightening. In short, it was a stable, resilient, and peaceful animal.

Like mountains and lakes, ancient stones and towering oaks, it did not demand attention, yet gave the impression that it would endure forever. The first asset was different. When it emerged before Simon, revealing pale gray hide and bloodred eyes, he found himself facing a giant much like the one he had seen the day before. Yet all his former composure deserted him. A chill rose from the soles of his feet and crawled up his spine like a snake, leaving his scalp prickling.

He stared at the deathly pale creature and realized for the first time how close he stood to death. It felt as though he were dancing in Death's embrace. He had never seen anything like this… thing. It felt blank. Hollow. Like a ghost draped in white, it had spent its entire existence trapped inside a lightless prison, a genie bound forever inside its lamp. Simon was a man of wealth and power who had met every kind of person. He had learned to read emotions in their eyes.

The eyes were the windows to the soul, revealing a person's inner state, and the same was true of animals. But all he saw in the creature's eyes was bloodshed and violence. It did not know what it was or where it belonged. Bloodshed and violence were the only language through which it understood the world—and the colors it would ultimately paint across it. Simon understood then that something inside it had been twisted beyond recognition. It looked like a dinosaur, yet felt nothing like one.

The contradiction triggered an unmistakable sense of the uncanny.

"You never told me it was white," Simon said. Claire refused to accept the blame.

"You never asked." Simon fell silent. He had known Claire was formidable, but he had not expected her to speak so sharply even to her employer. Still, he was her superior. Even after losing the first exchange, he retained the final authority.

"It's terrifying. Terrifying enough to give nightmares to anyone who sees it. But Claire, this creature is not fit for public display. It is the most vicious and horrifying thing I have ever seen. It doesn't feel like a dinosaur." Claire shook her head.

"The exhibit opens tomorrow, Simon. Please don't make this any more difficult than it already is." Simon had no choice but to compromise. He instructed Claire to bring in a "dinosaur expert" to assess the first asset's safety. If the expert agreed with him, they would change the exhibit at the last minute and display the second asset instead. Simon refused to yield on that point, so Claire had no choice but to comply.

She collected her two nephews and left them with her assistant, then drove off to find Owen and ask him to evaluate the exhibit's safety. Neither of them knew how suddenly everything was about to change. The first asset deceived them. It escaped its enclosure. And it ate people. At eleven o'clock, San José time, the old sector remained peaceful and undisturbed. Asset had enjoyed a rare full night's sleep. When she awoke, the air was fresh and the sunlight pleasantly warm.

She shook the dead twigs from her head, scattered the dust clinging to her face, and released a long yawn followed by a thoroughly bored growl. She rose, drank from the stream, and washed her face. A keeper's Gyrosphere entered the old sector, towing a load of recently thawed dinosaur meat. Mealtime again. Stale meat again. Asset was not particularly fussy. She waited quietly while the keepers secured the meat, put on their protective equipment, and entered the lift cage.

The mechanism raised them until the food was within her reach. She gently pulled the meat free without causing the cage to sway too violently. The two keepers steadied themselves against the railing and carefully watched her eat. Once they had confirmed that her teeth were intact, with no cracks or visible wear, they finished their routine notes and prepared to leave. Before they could, an employee radio crackled to life.

The transmission played through the external speaker, adding a little noise to the old sector's dense forest. But there was something deeply unsettling about this particular noise.

"Alert! Alert! This is not a drill!" The tense voice carried the promise of an approaching storm. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Indominus No. 1 has escaped! No. 1 is out! All personnel in the field are to return immediately and begin evacuating guests!" The transmission ended. The two keepers stared in shock. Even Asset, who had been eating with her head lowered, froze in confusion. Wait. What had happened? Indominus No. 1 had escaped? Indominus No. 1? As if to confirm her suspicions, a distant announcement carried over from the visitor areas while the keepers' expressions gradually turned to terror.

"Ladies and gentlemen, due to technical difficulties affecting several park facilities, certain areas of Isla Nublar will be temporarily closed today. All Gyrospheres are being recalled. We apologize for the inconvenience." So it was true. Her counterpart had escaped. Asset quickly accepted the situation and searched her memory for everything Mr. DNA had taught her about the island's layout and the park's routes.

As far as she knew, the visitor Gyrospheres generally operated inside the herbivore zone and were not permitted to leave the designated safe area. But an announcement recalling every Gyrosphere meant that the safe area was no longer safe. Asset suspected that her counterpart was moving toward the herbivore zone. And what territory bordered the herbivore zone? The old sector. Apparently, it was coming for her. Good.

It was better for the creature to come to her than for Asset to waste time and energy hunting it down. She might as well take another nap while she waited. Humans truly were timid creatures with remarkably slow reactions. Asset had already understood what was happening, yet her two keepers still looked incapable of accepting it.

"The first one escaped? How? Weren't we told that nothing could get out of that indoor paddock unless someone was stupid enough to open it?"

"Well, clearly someone was stupid enough to open it! Stop talking and get out of here! Headquarters has recalled the Gyrospheres, which means it's heading this way."

"But…" One of the keepers looked toward Asset.

"What about this one?"

"Come on, man, think! Its chances of surviving are obviously better than ours. It's behind an electric fence. Even if the other one comes here, it still has to get through the fence first. Now move!" The lift cage descended, and both men sprinted into the Gyrosphere. They drove out of the old sector at maximum speed. Most people might not have understood what the escape of Indominus No. 1 truly meant, but these two worked with Indominus No. 2 every day. They understood exactly what the hybrids were capable of.

They were not ordinary dinosaurs. They were ultimate organisms combining immense strength with advanced intelligence. They had already reached the subadult stage. They could run at sixty kilometers per hour and exert nearly forty thousand newtons of bite force. If the keepers did not run now, they would become dinosaur food.

"Faster! Go faster!"

"Shut up! This is as fast as it goes!" The Gyrosphere rolled rapidly out of the old sector. Asset watched it disappear from the corner of her eye, then calmly settled beside the stream to wait. She waited for her counterpart to arrive. She waited for the chance to settle everything between them. Asset did not fear a fight to the death. Whether she killed it or they destroyed each other, the outcome would be best for her, for it, and for the humans. The battle had to remain inside the old sector.

The casualties had to be kept to an absolute minimum. Only then would Susan remain beyond its reach. Asset knew that Susan was receiving treatment in a place called a hospital. She also knew that something was wrong with Susan's legs and that walking had become difficult. If disaster consumed Isla Nublar, the elderly Susan would be unable to run or escape. She would be trapped somewhere beyond Asset's sight, waiting to die, with no hope of surviving long enough to leave the island. Susan… you have to live.

Animals had no concept of caring for their elderly. An aging lion king would be driven from his pride and eventually disappear into the jaws of hyenas. An old elephant would leave its companions behind and quietly die in its final resting place. An aging whale would separate from its pod and sink alone into the depths. All living things were born from nature and returned to the earth when they grew old. To animals, death was not truly death. It was gratitude offered back to the land that had sustained them.

But Asset did not see it that way. Even as Susan aged and the scent of decay gradually settled over her body, Asset did not believe she had reached an age at which she was supposed to die. Asset wanted her to leave the island alive and return to the homeland she missed. She would not allow Susan to grow old and die in the wilderness beside her, only to be given back to the island that had imprisoned her for the better part of her life. Yes, Asset hated humans.

But she would defend an entire island for the sake of one. For no other reason than that Susan was worth it. Asset would remain here, immovable. She would destroy every threat that came near until Susan had safely left Isla Nublar. The cries of dinosaurs rose from the herbivore zone. The wind carried the heavy scent of blood, telling Asset that her counterpart had begun slaughtering everything in its path. Asset lived by the law of survival of the fittest and felt little concern for the lives of herbivores.

But even in nature, killing had limits. Big fish ate little fish, and little fish ate shrimp. Predators could hunt to survive, but they did not massacre prey simply for amusement. Killing far more than one could eat merely because one possessed the strength was not natural selection. It was waste. Asset refused to leave even a scrap of frozen meat uneaten. Faced with such an appalling disregard for food, she found her counterpart's behavior increasingly intolerable.

Before she could decide to break through the fence, however, two uninvited visitors stumbled into the old sector. They were two boys, one older and one younger. The older one was nearly grown, while the younger appeared to be twelve or thirteen. Whatever had happened to them, both were soaked to the skin and covered in mud. They ran blindly into the depths of the old sector until they were nearly at the electric fence.

"Zach! Zach!" the younger boy shouted.

"I—I can't run anymore! Is it coming? Is it still coming?"

"Keep going, Gray!" As the older brother, Zach looked around desperately.

"There's an electric fence and surveillance equipment. Someone has to be here. Hey! Hey! Is anybody there? We need help!" Gray hurriedly covered his brother's mouth.

"Please, don't shout! It'll hear you. Trust me, it can hear you! Dinosaurs have better hearing than owls. They can detect distant prey by sound." Zach had no choice but to fall silent, though he could not resist muttering, "How do you know everything? You're making me look like an idiot, and I'm supposed to be the older brother." Then he smiled.

"All right, that's my brother. You're amazing, Gray." Gray smiled as well, relaxing slightly. But the terrible danger behind them had not disappeared, and his nerves soon returned. Wasn't the herbivore zone supposed to be safe? Why had a carnivorous dinosaur appeared there? Weren't Gyrospheres supposed to be nearly indestructible? Why had theirs lasted less than a minute beneath the claws of that pale dinosaur? They had escaped by sheer luck and fled in search of help.

Now, with the creature pursuing them through unfamiliar terrain, they had run straight into a dead end. They had lost their phone and could not contact Aunt Claire. If they had known Jurassic World was this dangerous, nothing could have persuaded them to visit the island. But regret would not help them now. They were already in trouble. The two boys followed the electric fence, occasionally shouting for help at the surveillance cameras. Unfortunately, the cameras could not speak back.

The brothers did not have employee radios either. Even if someone saw them, there was no way to tell them to remain where they were while a helicopter was dispatched to rescue them.

"Zach, is there something inside this enclosure?"

"Stop looking. There's nothing in there." Unless a predator chose to reveal itself, its prey would never discover it. Asset remained concealed among the broad leaves, with only one slit-pupiled eye exposed as she watched the boys. The electric fence was all that separated them. They passed so close to her that they nearly brushed against her tail, yet neither noticed anything unusual. A moment later, Zach spotted the ruins of the old Jurassic Park visitor center—an abandoned building that had stood empty for years.

He was about to lead Gray toward it in the hope of finding working communications equipment. But they had already lingered beside the fence for too long. Indominus No. 1, having just slaughtered a team of mercenaries, had found them. It emerged outside the electric fence, pale-skinned and red-eyed, its teeth stained with blood. Like Asset, it had grown into a colossal beast. It was fifty-two feet long, twenty feet tall, and weighed nineteen tons.

It appeared slightly larger than Asset, and everything about it radiated brutality and cold aggression. Perhaps it had become intoxicated by the killing. At first, it failed to notice Asset. Its full attention remained fixed on the two boys as it released a triumphant roar.

"ROAR!" Its breath washed over them, reeking of blood. The boys screamed. With nowhere left to run, they backed toward the electric fence, seconds away from touching the high-voltage wires— Asset had no choice. She pushed her head through the vegetation and took a single step forward. From the other side of the fence, she unleashed a commanding roar at the intruder.

"ROAR!" What are you looking at, you idiot? I'm right here. How did you fail to notice me? The roar exploded like thunder across level ground. It seized her counterpart's full attention and frightened both boys into leaping away from the electric fence.

"Aaaah! Zach! You said there was nothing in there! Why is there another one?"

"How was I supposed to know?"