The Imprint (JW Fanfiction)

Prologue.

I had officially hit rock bottom. Or at least, I was about to.
I stood at the edge of my apartments roof. Seven stories below, I could see the nighttime traffic rushing past.
What had brought me to this point..? Oh. Right.
The Marines.
After boot camp, I was thrust straight into an antiterrorism unit. I hadn't even known they existed, but I proved decent at it.
For the first time, I had some camaraderie with other human beings.
I served with them for seven years. They were like my brothers.
But, like all things, it came to an end.
A violent end.
We uncovered a new terrorist cell in New York. They called themselves the Suns, and they wanted to destroy an entire city.
We managed to destroy most of their plans, but one of their bombs went off and caught my squad in the blast.
The others were killed instantly, and I got a huge shard of metal in my knee.
I was in the warehouse for three days until somebody found me. I was rushed to the hospital, but they were unable to remove the shard from my knee.
And after four years, I had had enough.
Hence my suicide.

I dragged myself to the ledge of the building and, just before I jumped, my phone went off.
"Shit."
I tapped the 'accept call' button and put the damn thing up to my ear.
"Is this Jack Corey?" A female voice asked from the other end.
"Yep. I am Jack."
The phone dispensed a little shuffling sound, like the woman was adjusting her grip. "Good. I am Claire Dearing, from Jurassic World. We are here to discuss a job opportunity for you here at our park. You will have an excellent salary, a fun job, and best of all, it's entirely risk-free!"
I contemplated for a few moments. My suicidal thinking was stemming from my lack of money, socialism, and trauma. A good paycheck could end my money troubles. A social workspace could bring new people into my life. Risk free. Wouldn't fix my trauma, but it could at least prevent extra.
"I'm in."
I got the feeling I would regret that.

I waited at my local international airport with a small suitcase filled with all my personal belongings.
I had been instructed to get there at two AM. I had been waiting for four hours.
At last, I saw the lights of a jet approaching.
It landed and taxied over to the gate.
I boarded it, along with a couple other weary-looking soon-to-be Jurassic World workers.
The captain was a cheery-looking British man named... Cod. Yes. He introduced himself as 'Cod'.
I got into my seat beside a young college kid. He was friendly, chatty, and... Kind of fat. Sorry. He was nice. Most people tend to kind of shy away whenever I'm around, but this guy decided to talk with me.
He introduced himself as Nate Greene. He lived in Chicago. He was a computer genius (he was modest about that last one). He was going to be designing code for, as Claire Dearing had instructed him, cages.
I asked him, "What sort of cages?"
He shrugged and said, "I don't know. She just said, 'cages'."

Before I knew it, the plane touched down on a dirt runway. Cod said, "Welcome to Costa Rica."
I unloaded my things and trudged down the runway to the helipad.
I was greeted by a man named Smith, who was 'to be our second pilot today'.
I sat down, again, next to Nate.
We chatted about meaningless things such as, why do plants use photosynthesis and animals don't, how many semicolons are in Google's code, why the cages needed to be the size of houses, why the amusement park had so many fences (Nate made a joke about how it was to keep the humans contained, but then realized it could actually be true.)
After a moment of mildly horrified silence, Smith called that we were approaching the island.
Nate said, "Why is it an island? What are they trying to keep inside?"

The copters blades spun down behind us as we followed Smith through the metal detectors.
When I passed through, it started shrieking like the god of all hamsters.
Some security guys walked up to me with those weird x-ray sticks that they like to put dangerously close to... Certain areas of the human anatomy.
This time, they managed to restrain themselves and not shove anything (organic or otherwise) near... Certain areas of my human anatomy.
I pulled up my pants leg to show them the huge shard of metal shoved under my kneecap. Judging by their expressions, they had not wanted to see anything of the sort.
You don't want to know what they had wanted to see.
After a few brief words with some other guides, Smith had us split up.

My guide didn't tell me his name. All he said was, "Welcome to your workstation."
It was literally a giant cage with a box attached.
I gave him a questioning look.
"Oh. Shit. I'm so sorry. I was supposed to bring you to the lab first. So you can meet Wu, I guess."

The lab was huge, white, and, above all, hideously cold.
My guide walked me down to a separate part of the lab. It was hot, humid, and wonderful. Not cold. I hate cold.
There was a bunch of tables spread around the large room. They were covered in thick fog, but poking through the top layer I could see the curved dome of an egg. A fuckin' massive egg.
I walked straight over, despite my guides frantic protests.
I tentatively tapped the top of the egg. As soon as I touched the damn thing, it shattered.
I yelped and stumbled backwards. The egg had produced what appeared to be an Ankylosaurus. I was amazed I recognized it, considering the years that had passed since my teenaged dinosaur phase.
Then I remembered what I had heard about the Jurassic Park incident.
"Welcome to Jurassic World," a voice told me from behind.

Henry Wu brought me through the many stages of genetic reproduction and cloning. I was not listening, and was instead watching a young baryonyx tear a pig carcass apart.
Wu finally looked back at me and said, "I see you aren't listening. That is Jin. He's the older brother of your animal."
I jolted my gaze from the baryonyx to look at Wu.
"I'm sorry, my animal?"
Wu gestured for me to follow him.

He took me to the hatchery again, but brought me into a slightly warmer side room.
The eggs on the tables were black, with pale beige veins around the top portion.
Wu, without hesitation, brought me straight to a back table with a sign reading 'B-330' on the side.
He said to the tech guy, "Open the glass."
The glass viewing window slid up into the ceiling, and I took it as a signal to pick one up.
As soon as my finger brushed it, a claw poked through the shell.
It tore through the membrane and in seconds, I was looking at a tiny, perfectly formed baryonyx.
The infant looked at me and squeaked. I saw the distinct intelligence in its eyes. It looked very human.