Project Orpheus: A Tale of Blood and Feathers

Chapter 26: The Eye

The group had all gotten back together - or at least, what was left of them. Noh took a look over them all from the computer, and turned on the speaker system. She wasn't about to send video feed to where Chester was, he'd find out about her bunker and she was going to hold that off as long as humanly possible.

"Alright, glad you're all in one place. And most of you are in one piece."

Chester finally entered, and upon seeing his wife being loaded onto the stretcher his skin once again went pale as a sheet. Noh couldn't help but feel every so slightly sorry for him, in the way she felt sorry for a rat that greedily grabbed food loaded into a trap.

"What happened!?" He spat. "What happened to my wife?!"

"She got in the way of a Giganotosaurus." Michael said. His voice was surprisingly calm, for how freaked out he'd been when he first got here.

"Got in the w-got in the way?! Who was with her?! You should have been protecting her!"

"It doesn't matter," said Noh, "we have to get this sorted out."

Chester ran over to the medics. "Is she going to be okay? Please tell me."

The medic closest to him looked up, a stern look on her face. "I don't know. It's bad. Real bad. We'll do our best sir, but I...I can't make any promises."

Chester collapsed on the floor, a heaving wreck.

"Well okay, he's useless." Noh said.

"Don't you ever call another human being useless, you...you witch!" Myrtle snapped.

Noh rolled her eyes, glad no one could see it as she popped on over to the island map with the radar trackers on it. Every loose dinosaur was flashing in bright red, while all the others were yellow. They should be green - that meant contained. Yellow meant security was done and escape was possible, red obviously meant outside their geofence.

Thankfully Orenda's orders had done their job and most of the dinosaurs had eyes on them. But there was still the matter of the ones that were loose.

"Well what's he going to do? Cry at them? It'd be more cruel for me to send him out to capture them, rather than letting him grieve as he needs to."

Myrtle scoffed, "that still doesn't give you the right!"

"She's right," Orenda said. "We need to stop this. Noh, what have you got for us?"

"Okay, well we have two very big problems that need to be solved. The first is the power. I just remoted into a laptop in the hallway down there. Take it to the Generator Building and plug it into the network cable there. Click the program on the desktop called reroute.exe and it'll take care of the rest."

Derek laughed, "what, not leaving the programming up to chance?"

"Absolutely not, are you crazy? None of you have any idea how this all works. The program will reroute the power from the main generator to the back up, and that will solve that."

"The other problem is the dinosaurs." Orenda said, almost as if she were taking over from the doctor. "What's your plan for them?"

"So, since I last updated you, Kitta got out. Just thought you ought to know. She's currently exploring the area by the Security Center, and is moving in random directions - seems to be avoiding the other animals though."

"That's not a plan." Orenda noted.

"Easy there. That means we currently have 7 Deinonychus, 1 Dienocherius, 1 Triceratops, 1 Giganotosaurus and 1...thing, on the loose."

"Thing?" Michael asked, his eyes going every so slightly wide.

"Yes, Specimen 421 is...not really anything. We're better off leaving it for last, if possible."

"Use the Terminus Contingency." Chester suddenly said.

"Absolutely the hell not!" Noh snapped. "There's no reason to! I don't want to hear that suggestion, not when we have alternatives."

"Alternatives like what?" Derek asked, "you keep talking about taking care of them but you haven't actually told us how."

"Your guns." She said. "The tranquilizer. We have a few more standard tranquilizers here, and we also have a truck outfitted with the Electrosuppressor as a turret."

"Electrosuppressor?"

"The gun you have on your back, Derek. The one normal people can't lift." Noh said.

"Alright, so who does what?" Michael asked.

"Well, I'm leaving that to you guys. I need to stay here and keep an eye on the trackers so I can tell you where they've gone and run off to. Some of you need to get that laptop to the Security Hut. Some of you need to get in the Jeep and hunt down the escaped dinosaurs. I also need some of you here to help me with any manual adjustments to Central I need to make."

"...manual adjustments?"

"Like the blast shields. For some reason, I can't put those up from here!"

"Just...just shut up." Chester wheezed.

"I'll go to the Security Center. I was already there, I saw the damage. I think I can figure it out." Derek volunteered.

"I have to go and protect the animals." Orenda said. "As Game Warden, it's my responsibility to oversee their return to their cages."

Anise looked around the room, and then at her hands. "I know a lot more about these things dead than I do alive, but I feel like I know some things. I'll go with Orenda, maybe I can be of some use there."

"I'll stay here," Myrtle said, "I'm not really a good fighter, and I don't really understand technology all that well. I also don't think I won't be able to make proper choices about all of this...there's a lot here and I'd rather stay and be helpful here."

"I'll stay here, too." Michael said. "I'll be honest, if I see another dinosaur on the loose I'm going to wet myself and that'll just make more problems."

Silence for a moment.

"Man, you guys are just full of honesty today." Derek said.

"You realize if you go with Derek, you're just as likely to see dinosaurs then if you stay here?" Noh asked.

"...good point." Michael pointed to Derek, "I'm going with the strong guy."

Derek rolled his eyes.

"I'm staying. Obviously." Chester said.

The Paramedics were just finished patching up her wounds and were getting ready to carry her off to the ER for proper treatment.

"I'll go with Orenda," came another voice from nearby. Noh turned her attention away from the tracking to see who it was - it was that Kevin guy who drove Chester's car all the time.

"I'm a good driver. And I want to clean this mess up."

Orenda looked at him for a moment, then gave a nod and a smile. Chester looked a bit confused, but just nodded.

"Good. Everyone, head to the garage and grab some walkies. Let's get this done."