Project Orpheus: A Tale of Blood and Feathers

Chapter 28: The Contingency

Myrtle could only watch as they carried off Alexandra to the medical center.

"Please, you have to let me go with her!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Daniels. The doctors are going to need to focus - you should stay here. I promise to let you know how it's going."

Charles seemed to know there was no point in arguing. He quietly walked over to the nearest chair and sat himself down. Myrtle felt she should have gone with the others, if only to spare herself this misery, but she knew she could help here, too. Maybe a distraction would help?

"Doctor, Chester mentioned a...Terminus Contingency? What exactly is that?"

Dr. Noh's voice came from over the speakers a moment later, distracted as always. "So, we knew there was the possibility of escape and havoc and yadda yadda. So to make sure we had the ability to keep things from getting out of hand, we implemented the Terminus Contingency."

"You implemented it." Chester corrected. "And I still think you're a monster for it."

"With a name like that it does sound quite monstrous."

Noh chuckled, "Well it is, but so is any and all potential ecological destruction that may occur if anything in here got out."

"You still haven't answered the question." Myrtle noted.

"It's simple, really. When the dinosaurs develop enough, we install a sort pacemaker in them. That pacemaker is rigged up to a satellite that mon-you know what all that doesn't matter. What does matter is that the whole entire island is an inclusive geofence that functions independent of anything here in the park. If any one of the dinosaurs goes off the island, the pacemaker activates, disrupting their heart rhythm."

"But...but that would kill them." Myrtle pointed out.

"That's exactly the point." Noh said. "This island has been built from the ground up to safely house these animals and keep them from getting sick or otherwise having...issues. That also means it must remain separate from the rest of the world. We simply can't have anything escape this island, who knows the damage it would cause."

"But to kill them?"

"Weren't you the one saying they should all be put down?" Noh asked. "Which, by the way, I can do. The Terminus Contingency can also be activated manually for individual dinosaurs, to prevent them from hurting anybody if things get especially dire."

"You just...have a kill button? On every single one of them?"

"Yes." Noh said. "But there's a reason it's called a contingency - it's a last resort. It's only to be used when human lives are in danger or ecological stability is threatened."

"So why didn't you use it when the Triceratops impaled Ashton?! Or when the Compsognathus ate Steven?!"

"Why don't you ask Chester that question." Noh said, in that little sadistic voice of hers.

"I...I didn't allow her to have remote access to the Contingency. It can only be used from the Security Station...they probably weren't aware of what the trike was doing to Ashton, it's outside the camera field."

"Which, I told him to put cameras outside the Generator Building."

"...and...and when they started to attack my son...I was...I was the only one in the security center."

Myrtle raised an eyebrow. "Then why didn't you activate it!?

"I wasn't thinking! I was trying to...I was trying to do something else. By the time it started I just...I froze! I didn't know what to do, all I could think of was the horror!"

"Then why didn't anyone else activate it!?" Myrtle snapped, her anger rising again.

"Nevermind, it doesn't matter, what's done is done."

"Because he sent the others out of the room." Noh answered. "So he could turn off the alert to cover his ass."

Myrtle may have been angry at Noh, but she was positively furious with this run down, beaten up, terrible specimen of a human being. How absolutely dare he! As awful as the Contingency was from a moral standpoint, the fact that it's intended function had so obviously been butchered!

"I can't believe you! This system was in place to prevent this exact sort of thing, and you couldn't use it? Not even to save your own son? And the reason you didn't have back up is because you didn't want this black mark on your record?! Your own maleficence has caused all of this, it's unforgivable!"

"As much as I appreciate you chewing him out - and believe me, I really appreciate it - we may have to save it for later." Noh said.

"What, why?" Chester asked.

"Because 421 is coming your way, and I'm not 100% sure what it's capable of."

As Noh said this, thick iron curtains began to slide out and down around the windows of Central.

"421? A number? The dinosaurs are only numbers to you?!"

"Must you chew me out for everything?!" Noh snapped. "Specimen 421 is not really a dinosaur. It is its own unique form of life at this point, and we've still got a lot more to learn about it before we even give it a species name, much less a personal identifier."

"So it's a freakish experiment of yours."

"Sure fine whatever. But that freakish experiment is coming right for you, it seems very angry, and I'm not sure what kind of forces it can produce."

"So what do we do?" Chester asked.

"Batten down the hatches. Get ready to run if needed."