Secrets and Lies

Losing the Plot

 
        The two exes sat across from one another in the booth of the little pub-like bar they'd entered in Pacific Grove, California. It had been nearly twenty years since they'd seen one another, let alone sat anywhere near the other; now though, they shared a drink, the tension thick between them, though not the way James had often hoped it would be.

   His blue eyes dodged between the pictures in the file she had passed him, the destroyed camera, and Christine's face with its new scar. He wanted to ask her about it, how she'd come to have it; all his brain could truly focus on though was the images in the dossier she'd given him. Flipping through the images of Skull Island, it was as if his mind had been yanked down a dark corridor for a stroll down memory lane. James can't help but smile wistfully as his eyes settle on a photo of him, Bill Randa, Houston, his wife San, and Mason Weaver... Now there was a name he hadn't thought about in a few years. He almost wished he could have said the same about Christine.

   "Where'd you get this?"

   Christine keeps her face blank as he lights up a cigarette in front of her. "Does it matter? I have them or had them, now they're yours. You're welcome."

   James fought the sigh he felt coming on. He didn't want to keep fighting with her, but he couldn't ignore all of the years of pain that sat between them accumulating like baggage on a seven-forty-seven. "Why do you have them?"

   "Because you were brought up by way of those photographs; because they believe that you'll be willing to help me- help InGen because you... still love me." A soft sigh left Christine's lips, the kind of sigh where if you didn't listen closely, you'd miss it. It was the kind of sigh that carried so many meanings, yet the ones James longed to hear within it seemed to be nonexistent.

   "Is that what they tell you?"

   "It's what a young photographer claims."

   That explains the pictures, he internally muttered. "Mason Weaver..."

   "Yes, Mason Weaver; American," James could almost swear he heard a hint of bitterness, or was it jealousy? "Pretty too... Those pictures won her a Pulitzer; they're not bad."

   He lifted one photograph from his time in South Africa three years after he had been forced to join MONARCH. It was the first mission after Skull Island he had been sent on, one that this time he made sure the focus of was on protecting the irradiated dinosaur called Anguirus. The most unnerving thing to him about Christine having these photographs was what the company she worked for was hoping to do. Creatures like Anguirus in particular would be the kind they'd want to get their hands on the DNA of.

   "Mason told you that I still loved you, huh?"

   "No. She told a man by the name of Ed Regis, the newly appointed human resources manager of InGen." Christine took a sip of her old-fashioned with a sigh, swatting the smoke from James' cigarette out of her face. "He, in turn, told Benjamin Lockwood, John Hammond's business partner, who told Regis to reach out to me and well, we know how that went from there."

   "They recruit her too?" It was a calculated question, one meant to figure out just how deep the potential rot went within MONARCH regarding what James felt was shady activity by this new bioengineering company.

   Christine shook her head, watching as he took another drag from his cigarette. "They wanted to. She refused; said she wouldn't be caught dead around you. Why is that?"

   James just shrugged. His short-lived relationship with Mason wasn't exactly something he wanted to discuss with his former flame. Christine sighed. She moved to grab the camera and the file to put both back in their purse only to have James lay his hand over his atop the battered and bloodied camera. "Don't. I have more questions about this."