Assets Out of Containment |1| Nublar Seven Series

Happy Birthday, Eddie

Warnings: mention of violence and death.

We had been walking in the jungle for a while, without a clock or a phone to tell the time, it could've been minutes or even hours going through bushes, tall grass and mud, but no park in sight. We walked in silence, tense and on the alert for any dinosaur, but none had showed itself. We jumped at any noise the jungle made, a sudden gust of wind, bugs- CRACK!

We all spun around with the loud noise. "Sorry, I stepped on a twig." Ben cowered from our gazes.

"Ugh, come on, man!" I groaned.

"You almost gave me a heart attack!" Sammy had her hands over her chest.

"I should step on you!" Kenji aggressively said.

"It's ok, Ben." Darius said. "We're all on edge."

"And lost." Yasmina added.

I scoffed. "If we had stayed on the road like I said, we wouldn't be lost!"

"We've been over this; it's too out in the open." Yasmina rolled her eyes at me.

"Well, I would know if we're heading in the right direction if I still had my phone, because it has GPS, a compass app and is also a phone!" Brooklynn approached Sammy.

"Sammy didn't steal your phone!" Yasmina got between the two, putting her hand on Brooklynn's shoulder and raising her voice. "No one stole your phone. Can we please stop talking about the phone?"

"You guys! You guys, you guys, you guys." Ben interrupted them, his voice was insistent but low at the same time. "Could you all yell at each other quieter, please?"

"My fellow campers, chill!" Kenji said loudly. "What we need here is someone who can make the hard call on what to do next." He walked over to me and Darius. "Since I'm obviously leadership material... I'll do this. And my first decree as leader is for everyone to stop talking and just listen to... Darius." Kenji placed his arm around him.

I just looked at him dumbfounded. The 12-year-old dino-nerd as a leader? He was good with speeches, I'd give him that, but leading us through a dinosaur infested island? I didn't think so.

"Huh?" Darius' eyes went wide.

"Just go with it, plus I can blame you if anybody gets eaten." Kenji whispered in Darius' ear, and gave me a wink, which made me face-palm. Of course, that was his line of thinking. Never mind we were on a run from a deadly dinosaur, he only cared about his own skin and who was to blame. "So, which way, Darius?" Kenji finally asked, giving Darius space.

Darius blinked at us, confused. Someone had to step up. Darius was nice and all, but I wasn't betting my life on a kid. I glared at Kenji, who had the brilliant idea in the first place... nope, I was not wasting my energy on the likes of him. I took this opportunity to look around at our surroundings, but in the jungle, everything looked the same. The patchy tall grass... the huge trees... some rocks here and there... a tree with its trunk bending like a spiral...

'Wait, what?' That looked oddly familiar. If I was not mistaken, we had passed this tree coming from Toro's paddock the other day. I remembered this tree in particular because Darius had almost tripped on its exposed roots.

"Please, you're just trying to cover up the fact that you're lost, too Mr. VIP." Brooklynn scoffed at Kenji. "None of us know where we are."

I glanced at Darius and he looked at me, lost. "Maybe not entirely lost." I chuckled and pointed at the tree, and his face lit up in realization.

"We're by the Carnotaurus paddock!" Darius beamed and took off running. "I thought this place looked familiar."

'Oh, of course he does.' I huffed.