JUR ▲ SSIC WORLD ¹ × ¹

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When morning crept about, Donald awoke when the announcement system on the crew ship heralded the vessel’s docking. He scrambled to collect his belongings, largely documents written in his drunken stupor during the cruise. Families from all demographics filed onto the gangplank; children were anticipating the attractions and, predominantly, the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, Donald made the rookie move of hastily booking his ticket. Mistakenly he reserved a hotel room on the main island, the generic tourist attraction and general hub of the underwater trams. Traffic was irritatingly high and there was a sufficient lack of alcohol, adult vacation services and women scantily clad enough to make him do so much as turn his head. Upon disembarking, he was flanked by two security guards. One of them, evidently an ex-cartel member as Donald derived from his jaw tattoo, grappled him by shoulder. Donald, surprised, involuntarily jerked his arm away, but his assailant was persistent. “Donald Churches?” Donald exhaled sharply. “Not if I owe you money. Or fucked your girlfriend. In no particular order.” The security guards bristled, each roping his arms while escorting him well away from the crowd. He passed through some of the tourist attractions, continually being buffeted by his escorts as they encroached on either side. After a long walk, a ride in a tram and an exceptionally lengthy sojourner in a questionably new Ford, he was chaperoned into the depths of a facility that, much to his chagrin, was strangely familiar. Not nearly as familiar, however, as the woman standing in the shadows of a whirring metal console in the niches of the room. She was commiserating with a shorter fellow; he was stout, stern, and mustachioed. When he glimpsed Donald through a pane of glass he slid the door open, gave him an acknowledging nod and vanished behind a massive door. “Omorose? Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Donald freed himself from the security guards, rubbing the stiffness from his shoulders as his comrade eyed him with her strikingly light, hazel eyes. They were littered in flecks of gold, but however enticing they were, she had an insidious air about her that was the antithesis of inviting. “I don’t think the chaperons were necessary, nor was this entire show. You were never one for theatrics.” He pushed the frames of his spectacles high up onto the bridge of his nose. Much to his immediate aggravation, the woman replied with silence. “Listen. I’m really not in the mood for your ventriloquist act, Om. What is this all about? Why, all of the sudden, are you guys hiring the Terminator and fucking … Robocop as security guards?” He could hear the hushed chuckles from a column of security surveillance personnel hiding behind their computer monitors. “It was a necessity.” Omorose's voice was low, sweet and sonorous, heavily redolent of her South African heraldry. She was approaching six feet tall as quickly as she was approaching three decades in age. Where Donald was fair complected Omorose was swarthy; her entire face was littered in handsome, sandy freckles, from the corners of her lips to the full arch of her eyebrows. She was fully outfitted in security gear and was all too happy to tote around a six-round SPAS-12 on her back. “Never understood why you carried around a shotgun. Awfully red-neck for a Capetowner, eh?” Donald scrutinized her with the utmost indignity as he loosed the dirt from his glasses with the hemline of his shirt. The incessant rubbing only seemed to make the glass foggier; he sighed. “What do you want. I’m here meeting someone.” Truthfully, Donald never understood Omorose's motives. She was ceremonious, exceptionally well disciplined and an anomaly on her own. They befriended each other in Cape Town—he was situated there doing archaeological research for his genetics thesis whereas she was partaking in something else that he loosely translated as criminal, but regardless, she, too, was enrolled in academic workings. “You’re here, that means there’s something under wraps that they’re working very hard to keep a secret. I’m not just a pretty face,Om.” Omorose chuckled darkly. “You had me fooled.” “Fuck off. But seriously, Omorose, you think I'm stupid? You’re like the fucking harbinger; the heavy guns. They don’t call you in for no reason and I’m well aware that you’re no cheap whore. You’re a high-class hussy. You don’t spread your legs for an 8-ball and a pretty prick. What’s in this for you?” There was a lapse of silence. Omorose looked longingly at the door. “Nice to know you’re still cryptic as all fuck. Just send me to meet the doctor I’ll lay into you later. I know he's the one who sent for me.” Omorose flashed him an insidious grin and vanished, leaving Donald to throw his middle fingers up in a rude gesture as she departed. When Dr. Wu entered he mistakenly thought the gesture was directed at him, much to Donald’s embarrassment. Shortly after, Omorose's employer, Vic, requested that she and her team escort him—and oversee—the presentation at the raptor cages. During their journey through the broad roads sweeping through the valley, Omorose could make out the etchings a magnificent blue sphere through the early afternoon fog. It was miles away, several islands down the chain and she had never once been there. It was a new attraction years away from even being released to the press or acknowledge as a potential attraction. It was a new biome, a technology erected for, likely, unscrupulous use. She deigned not pay too much attention to it, but the mere shadow of it on the horizon was haunting. She led the caravan on a slender, obsidian-black motorcycle with Vic riding in Humvee behind them. Their arrival at the raptor cage was heralded by Barry, a co-worker of Omorose's. She swung a leg over her vehicle, greeting him cordially with a handshake. He beamed from ear to ear, flashing his almost blindingly white teeth in a friendly welcome, but his smile waned when he saw Vic waltz into view. He muttered something to her in Afrikaans and she rebuked with a low, frown. "So that's your new boss. My sincerest condolences."

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[lady vri]

“Ehnt!” The guttural grunt caught the attention of the large raptor, her amber eyes turning towards the sound. Now she faced the palm of a large hand, its owner moving slowly and deliberately. He stood on the catwalk above the paddock, staring down at her. The two squared off. It was always a fight for dominance between them. Despite the imprinting and hand raising, the beast inside the eldest raptor at Jurassic World could not be fully tamed. Every inch that Owen Grady got her to give him was hard won, something he wasn’t keen on letting anyone forget.

“That’s it Blue…” Characterized by the blue dorsal stripe, the pack beta chattered softly, toothy maw hung open slightly as her eyes locked with Owens. The man smiled, applying pressure to the clicker with his thumb to reward Blue for giving him her attention. Knowing he wouldn’t hold it for long but wanting to test her, Owen kept his hand up, pushing the raptor’s patience. They were highly intelligent creatures, more than any other animal he’d ever worked with, but they ran short on patience which was key when training. At first the reward system had worked beautifully and it still did, but Blue liked to push back as much as Owen liked to push her. It was their own little game.

“Good girl,” the hand disappeared and immediately Blue raced off into the brush to join her sisters. When they weren’t working they prefered the relative seclusion than the trees and ferns offered, hiding from prying or curious eyes. Owen had insisted the raptors be given some sort of privacy; though not necessary for survival, he wanted to raise them as closely as he could to what they would have in the wild… 65 million years ago of course. Their instinct demanded it. They needed that enrichment or else all of this training and experimentation would be for nothing.

Owen stuffed the clicker back into his pocket and took a deep, ragged breath, leaning against the catwalk railing and enjoying the gentle breeze that floated into the valley from mountains. It was a damn hot afternoon on the island chain and all he felt like doing now that the training day was officially done was getting an ice cold beer and taking a lazy afternoon nap in the hammock outside his place… But a motorcade was slowly rolling up the path, the roar of engines garnering his attention and snapping him upright once more.

Fucking Vic…

Barry was already on the ground, heading to meet the uninvited guest. Owen frowned and followed suit, though he was much less friendly as he approached the group of InGen mercenaries. Though technically his boss, Owen disliked nearly every word that came out of Vic’s mouth and still couldn’t believe that he’d agreed to work for the man.

“You know Vic, you don’t have to check up on me every month.” Another gust of wind ruffled the soft curls on top of Owen’s head. The man was shorter than Barry but stood eye to eye with the intimidating leader of the InGen private security force. Broad shoulders were pushed back and his jaw set tight, his displeasure unhidden.

“Well I wouldn’t have to stop in so often if you’d just send in the damn reports.” Vic gave him a sickening grin, his thumbs hooked in the belt loops on his trousers. “Besides, I just wanted to see how my favorite raptor project was coming along.”

“It’s the only raptor project.” The trainer rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he walked back towards the paddock. “And it’s going as well as could be expected.”

“So then you’re finally ready for a field test?”

Owen sighed. Vic and his damn field tests… “No way. They are not even close to being ready.”

“It’s been two years Owen-”

“So? This shit takes time Vic. It can’t be rushed.”

“Well then what about a demonstration? Could I at least have that?”

Owen grumbled something incomprehensible under his breath, glancing at the several imposing and armed figures accompanying Vic. The woman was new… He’d never seen her before. Owen disliked Vic’s tendency to bring new people around the paddock… That’s when the trouble usually started.

“If it’ll shut you up, fine.” He waved to Barry. “Get the pig. We’ll play hide’n’seek.”

 

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After depositing her gear into one of the cage’s lockers, she ascended into the rafters with Vic who was seen grinning from ear to ear. He invited himself to watch Owen Grady demonstrate the contributive abilities of his velociraptors. Omorose remembered working with one pack but only briefly. Vic had them put down for ripping the stomach from one of his subordinates. Truthfully, she was hurt by it; she and Barry developed a bond with them. Although Barry trained them, she worked diligently to see that they were protected and grew fostered an almost matronly bond with them. Much to Omorose's chagrin, she was pulled away when she noted a trio of men skulking around the raptor cage. There was nothing special about them—they were American, in their early twenties and inebriated. They staggered, slipping their cans of beer in through the bars, sequentially spilling the brews all over the pulpy growth inside of the cage. The smell was virtually a lure to some dinosaurs. Unfortunately for the boys, the cage they chose to deface belonged to a small group of compsognathus. Though petite and relatively harmless, they were a threat in groups. One of the drunks thrust his hand through the cage to pet one and that was when Samosa intervened. She jerked one back by his collar and gave the second a quick buffet to his stomach with her foot. “Hey! Lady!” they shrieked, earning the attention of one of the workers participating in Owen’s demonstration. The boys exchanged two uneasy looks as the third attempted to make his getaway, but Omorose's comrades thwarted his escape. “What the hell is going on?" Vic snapped. He careened over the platform's mezzanine, bristling so hard his jowls nearly jiggled. "Omorose. How did this happen. How - " He stopped, curtly, having glimpsed Omorose's gunmetal glare. "I'm going to make something perfectly clear," she began. Her voice was particularly ominous in tandem with her Afrikaans accent, "My purpose here is to oversee your well-being, and that of those working under you. I am in no way, shape or form obligated to protect the park's patron's or general staff." Initially, Vic was abhorred that one of his employees would bark at him, but he was in the same very manner impressed with her dedication. "Well, alright then. With all of that out o the way - yes, let's place. By the way, Owen, I'm not sure if you've been acquainted with my new security team. Bagged a real spitfire from Capetown - I feel like she's a good addition to the team." Vic smiled sheepishly as Omorose threw up her middle finger. "Yup. She's a gem."

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