"Sigh..."
I can still... hear that sigh (misty eyes).
"I'll tell you about Brooklynn."
Outside a secluded forest cabin with a small vegetable garden, Kenji's father stood holding a watering can. He was facing off against Darius and Kenji, who were standing about five meters away.
Not long ago, a certain hybrid weapon (DG-3273) had nearly wiped out all his assets. In response, he had dragged those mad scientists down with him in a desperate, mutually assured destruction. Because of that stunt, he was rewarded with a prison sentence, though for a man of his immense wealth, describing this house arrest as a boring vacation was probably more accurate.
This was his place of confinement. His daily routine consisted of nothing more than growing vegetables and watering flowers. His only son had distanced himself over past conflicts, showing zero interest in inheriting the family fortune. And now, the boy had actually shown up on his doorstep to interrogate him over his late girlfriend who had been eaten.
Sigh...
Being a dad is hard.
"She came to ask me about illegal dinosaur activity. Buying, selling, trading... given my past, I suppose she assumed I might still be connected to those circles."
Kenji's father, Mr. Daniel Kon, stopped watering his plants. He raised his head to look at the two young men in front of him.
Darius and Kenji exchanged a quick glance. Darius remembered the messages Brooklynn had sent him before everything happened, making him certain that Mr. Kon's words were at least eighty percent true.
"And what did you tell her?"
"It wasn't so much what I told her... but what she told me."
Mr. Kon's gaze shifted from the tight-lipped Kenji to Darius, who was taking the initiative to ask questions. His own son really had been pampered too much in his youth; had he lived alone for so long that he didn't even know how to steer a conversation anymore?
"She said she wanted in. I believe her exact words were... 'I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.'"
"Brooklynn would never say something like that!" Kenji shot back immediately, his brow furrowed deeply. He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to have a manly showdown with his own father.
Darius remained silent, looking at Mr. Kon. Clearly, he didn't buy it either... but why did the older man's expression seem to grow even more sorrowful?
Though he could understand the boy's grief, the moment Kenji opened his mouth, Daniel realized his son was exactly the same as before, completely incapable of controlling his emotions during a serious conversation.
I am a successful businessman with a net worth in the hundreds of millions. Why is my son so disappointing?
"Listen... son. When she came to see me, she felt different. Almost..." Mr. Kon stopped expecting his son to have completely transformed after a few years of roughing it out in the real world. He finally got straight to the point. "...dangerous."
"I just don't think she would be stupid enough to get herself eaten..." Kenji's expression shifted, a flicker of hesitation crossing his face. He had actually broken up with Brooklynn long before her death, and he couldn't say for sure what she had become afterward.
Slap!
Darius slammed his left hand onto Kenji's right shoulder, jolting the latter and drawing everyone's attention.
"Listen..." Darius looked up at the sky. Having dealt with dinosaurs so frequently, his instincts were sharper than his conscious reactions.
Dead silence.
"I... I don't hear anything?" Kenji didn't notice anything amiss, and neither did Mr. Kon. But sometimes, a total lack of disturbance is the biggest red flag of all.
"Exactly." Darius kept his eyes on the sky. The setting sun painted the clouds a fiery red, casting a beautiful, serene portrait across the amber horizon.
But the question remained: why would a bustling, life-filled jungle suddenly fall completely silent without warning?
"We need to lea—"
"Aunnng-roar!"
Before Darius could finish his sentence, an Atrociraptor leapt onto a massive water storage tank nearby, letting out a low snarl at the group.
There are usually only two reasons animals go completely silent: they are sleeping, or they are hiding from a predator.
"Run!"
Hobbled by the ankle monitor strapped to his leg, Mr. Kon couldn't run fast. With his son's assistance, he stumbled out of the vegetable garden. Darius brought up the rear, using a closing iron gate to slam hard against the lunging Atrociraptor!
Their immediate instinct was to seek help from the "prison guard" stationed outside. After all, the guard had weapons designed to repel dinosaurs…
"Aok!"
A second Atrociraptor stepped over the guard's lifeless body, slowly closing in on the trio.
Silently taking out an armed guard wasn't difficult for an Atrociraptor. Lest anyone forget, Charlie had nearly wiped out an entire tactical squad back on Isla Nublar.
"Roar—"
A third Atrociraptor materialized, joining its packmates to completely surround the three humans. It had been hiding behind the vehicle Darius and Kenji had driven in, seemingly aware that this was their only means of escape.
Why didn't they bring weapons again?! Why are they always unarmed at the critical moment?! Why?!
Darius's customized shock prod had been useful during their very first encounter with the Atrociraptors, but it had been completely offline ever since. Come to think of it, where did that shock prod even go?
Achoo!
Ben, who was currently driving, let out a loud sneeze. He reached over and placed Darius's forgotten shock prod in a spot where he could easily grab it at a moment's notice.
"Are you okay?" Sammy asked caringly, looking up from her map.
"I'm fine. The D.P.W. people are corrupt. They wouldn't attack us for no reason—it probably has something to do with those Atrociraptors that were hunting us before."
After picking up Yaz, Ben's group had found themselves caught in a pincer attack between a Concavenator and a D.P.W. patrol. Fortunately, the merciful Concavenator decided that humans without a metal box protecting them were much easier to eat, so it bypassed the kids and devoured the D.P.W. agents instead.
A world where nobody important gets hurt achieved (allegedly).
"You guys were hunted by Atrociraptors too?" Yaz hadn't heard about this yet. She felt like her world had ended, restarted, and then ended all over again.
It had a certain poetic beauty to it, just like being back on Isla Nublar.
"Yeah... I wonder how Darius and Kenji are holding up."
Thud.
Kenji's dad tripped and fell to the ground because of that damn ankle monitor. One of the Atrociraptors glared down at him with predatory intent, looking like it wanted to have a real heart-to-heart with him.
A sharp, lilting whistle.
A sound that absolutely did not belong in the forest rang out, causing the Atrociraptor to pause for a moment and drawing the attention of all three humans.
A woman with short hair and straight-cut bangs climbed down from a massive truck. As for why she looked a bit uncanny... it was because her features were almost unnaturally rigid.
The Atrociraptor that had been preparing to dive into Mr. Kon suddenly snapped its head up. It looked toward Darius and Kenji, bypassing the older man entirely to advance on the two teenagers.
This was wrong.
Darius finally realized what was happening. Dinosaurs had long since been turned into human weapons, exactly as Vic Hoskins had envisioned. Even though Hoskins was dead, his concepts of weaponizing raptors, his grand plan, were still being replicated on other species.
Low growl.
The Atrociraptor closed the distance to Kenji, lowering its body to pounce! Suddenly, a heavy force slammed into its side, sending it rolling across the dirt.
"Dad?"
"Run!"
The Atrociraptor lunged to attack Kenji again, but seeing this, Mr. Kon threw himself forward and locked his arms around one of its hind legs, pinning it in place.
"Aunnng-roar!"
Their weaponized conditioning wasn't entirely perfect yet. Seeing their packmate trapped, the other two Atrociraptors abandoned their hunt of the teenagers and rushed to help their own. In their eyes, the safety of the pack still overrode the elimination of the targets.
The reinforcing Atrociraptor leapt forward, kicking Mr. Kon away, while the third immediately moved in to pin him down.
"Kenji!"
Crunch.
A heavy taloned foot pressed down on Mr. Kon's head, its large, scimitar-shaped sickle claw raised high in the air.
His face was pinned hard against the grass. Forcing his one free eye open, he took one last look at his son.
"Run..."
The scimitar claw came down, accompanied by the distinct sound of fracturing bone.
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