Abstraction ➳ Owen Grady

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ALLY EYED HER redheaded friend as she straightened her blouse. There was an unhidden look of discomfort that had come over Clear Dearing's expression. "Claire," she greeted.

"Ally," was the countered response that came with a clipped tone. "Mr. Grady!" She called. Owen stood from where he had been crouched down at the bike, wiping his hands on his pants this time. Ally looked between the two with a raised brow as it was obvious that Claire didn't want to be here. "We need you to inspect the paddock for our newest asset."

Jurassic World had the best structural engineers and a clean record over the years of its operation, it seemed odd that suddenly they'd want Owen to inspect a paddock. Regardless, Ally trailed along behind Claire and Owen, slipping into the backseat of the SUV.

Briefly, the park operations manager explained that attendance had been in a slow and steady decline, so to reinvigorate interest, the company had unanimously decided to move ahead with genetic engineering and hybridization. It seemed an obvious answer considering that kids were no longer impressed with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Ally leaned forward onto the center console from the backseat. "You genetically engineered a dinosaur?" She asked, not quite believing that she had heard it right the first time. It seemed like a pretty dumb idea given that there were still numerous dinosaurs that they could bring back.

"The park needed a new attraction," Claire reiterated as if the answer were really that simple.

Dr. Alysanne Sattler pinched the bridge of her nose, "That's not the point, Claire. You threw together some DNA and didn't even think about the repercussions that come with hybrids!" Some of her colleagues were geneticists and biological engineers. She had read a dozen of their papers pointing to the fact that hybrids were often unpredictable. But now there was a carnivorous dinosaur hybrid to be dealt with. "Did someone ever stop you along the way to say 'hey, maybe this isn't a good idea? That just because we could doesn't mean that we should?'"

"Alysanne," Claire started, hands tightening on the steering wheel, "I'm going to be quite frank and just tell you I'm not in the mood for this."

Alysanne Sattler glared at the redhead. Owen remained oddly silent. "And I really don't care, Claire." Some things needed to be said. "You've been playing God here at this park, eventually the Devil's going to try to sneak back in."

Owen Grady glanced back at Ally and then over at the redhead. "She has a point," he added with a small shrug.

✹✹✹

Paddock eleven was a monstrosity that was only growing larger. It offered none of the luxuries of the raptor paddock. The walls were easily over forty feet tall and construction continued to make them taller. It was made solely for containment. The three of them stepped out of the white SUV and walked toward the observation tower. Ally glanced over at Owen as he looked up at the walls with unease, but regardless they both followed Claire up the steps.

Ally looked into the dense jungle foliage of the paddock but saw nothing. No trace that a massive carnivore was living within the steel reinforced walls. She walked to the other end of the observation tower, but there was nothing there either. At the opposite end though was something that made her breath catch. "Owen," Alysanne tugged on his vest then pointed to the wall of the paddock. His eyes widened, "shit."

Claire's face paled as she looked at the deep scratches on the paddock wall. The thermal readings from inside the paddock came back negative. "She has an implant in her back, I can track it from the control room." Then she was gone, zipping down the stairs and into the driver's seat of the white SUV. The tires spun in the loose gravel as she sped away back toward the main park.

Owen glanced between Ally and the computer. "Can you go through the files and footage, make sure no one's tampered with them or the system? Two sets of eyes are better than one." She nodded.

Before he could step out of the observation tower though, she gripped onto his wrist and swallowed the lump in her throat. "You really think she got out?" Owen didn't really know how to answer that question. "Depends on what the lab's cooked up."

Scans of the computer's hard drive and time-lapse footage didn't show anything of interest at the paddock within the past week. The doors remained shut and the only people that were often present were those that were building the wall higher. Unless someone had managed a way to sneak out a nine-ton dinosaur without the camera's detecting it in broad daylight, she didn't know what had happened to the hybrid.

A static and panic filled voice came on over the speakers in the observation room and in the paddock. Ally looked away from the computer screens and into the thick vegetation out of the thick window. The voice came through again, garbled. Vivian. Alysanne slammed her hand down on the intercom button once she caught a snippet of what had been said. "Get out of there now!"

The monitoring room rattled as the containment gates failed. Alysanne raced to the door but stopped herself short of the opening it. Apprehension washed over her. She was just a paleontologist, a geologist, she didn't know the first thing about survival when it involved a fucking dinosaur. Sure, she had heard the stories from Ellie but nothing could have prepared her for this. Ally's hand shook on the door handle, she bit down on her lip, hard, when the hybrid let out a roar that sounded more like an airplane's engines.

Owen, she thought and panic seized her chest. Heavy footsteps were fading into the thick rainforest. Ally raced down the stairs, taking two and three at a time, her gaze never straying from the destroyed trucks. "Owen?" She called out. There was a strange feeling in her gut that made her feel sick.

It faded in an instant when she saw him pulling himself out from under one of the service trucks. "Owen!" Ally raced over to him, gripping his forearms while looking over his face over for any severe wounds. The only thing that was out of place was that he smelled like gasoline. "You're alright."

He nodded, but there was a distant look in his eyes that she had never seen before. Owen pulled her toward a four-wheeler left unscathed by the incident. "We've got to get to Control." Alysanne climbed on behind him, her arms secured around his torso, heart thudded in her chest at every sound. Somehow, this maelstrom felt like Déjà vu.