Tales from Jurassic World

3- Project: 24

Ian seems to have completely disappeared, I can't find him anywhere near the cars and I don't see any footprints leading off.
"Where did he go?" Owen asks.
"I don't know, hopefully he had someone airlift him or he's walking through the jungle right now."
"I'd think that would give him some PTSD, you know... wandering through the forests you were once chased by dinosaurs through. That's not something people just get over."
"I'm sure it's not that bad."
"Let's get done what we came here to get done alright?"
"Yeah."
We walk back inside and tap on Emily's door.
"Can we come in?" I ask out of politeness.
"Yeah... come on in."
I push the door open and she seemed to have been crying.
"I can come back," I say.
"No, no I'm alright," she says with a sniff.
"Well I'm going to create a new project."
"What?"
"I cannot tell you the details, but I wanted to tell you before Claire came in asking why millions of dollars are going to something named 'Project: 24'."
"Why are you keeping it a secret?"
"That's what I want it to be, only me and others I'm not mentioning will know what's going on. I just wanted to warn you."
I walk out, but stop before I close the door. I turn to her and say, "Also don't try spying on me please, it's suppose to be a wonderful surprise."
She nods her head and I shut the door.
"That went well," Owen says.
"We'll see, you got something fun to occupy our time with? We've got a couple weeks."
"I got a game with a heavy sense of irony."
"What?" I say nervously.
"Come on, check it out," Owen motions for me to follow him. He hops on his motorcycle and I follow him in my truck.
He leads me to a small lake just outside the boundaries of the park. On the side of the lake sits a house. Across the lake from the house I can see the hotels from the park over some trees.
"Welcome to my house," he says with he arms wide open.
"Looks really small."
"It's home to me, plus you live in a hotel room."
"Point taken."
He runs inside and I hear crashing as he does something. I hear the clanging of metal.
"Just a second."
BANG
"Ow!!!"
Soon he comes out with a board game looking box.
"This is a game called Apex. I found it online. You play as some Apex predators and try to kill the most stuff. This one is the Park Edition that adds humans as Predators and Prey."
"You weren't joking."
"Which class you want?" He says after opening the box to show all the labeled classes.
"They have Carnotaurus? I'm picking that."
"Alright I'll go Utahraptor then."
We sat down on the raised floor around the house and played. It was a long game, we played for nearly 2 hours. Maybe that was because I am a new player and the game is actually quite complicated.
After he kicked my ass we played again, but it still took longer than an hour to finish up the game, I was catching on quick though and beat Owen this time.
Over the next week or so we played the game. We practiced with many of the workers around the park when we got bored.
"Boom, Quadruple kill!" Owen shouted throwing down 4 cards named after his own raptors.
"Dammit, I wanted that Titan you shit," a tour guide said to him.
"It's mine now."
"Watch this," I say before playing the Queen T.Rex card.
"Oh god dammit," Owen says.
I played a couple of hatchlings with her, pull from my ambush point and also get a Quad kill with 2 Titans on the field. "Hahaha," I laugh at them while buying 2 eggs and a Rapid Incubation from the evolve pool and hatch another Queen Rex.
A car drives up on the road next to the Cafe. Claire steps out, but we pay no mind to her. It seems she is here to see us though.
"What this project you two idiots are working on?"
"It's a secret, shhhhhhh."
"Don't you shush me."
"I'll do what I want, I'm the owner around here."
"Tell me what it is," she demands.
"Only if you can best us at a game of Apex."
"I'm not playing your dorky card game."
"Too bad, so sad. I'm not telling you anything."
She scoffs and considers her options while the Tour Guy hunts 2 Big Game Creatures.
"Alright, alright, but you'd better tell me."
"Only if you beat us."
We restart the game and Claire picks Therizinosaurus.
About an hour passes and the Tour Guy is getting destroyed. Claire learned how to play fast and was doing well, but Owen always went before her so he did everything in his power to kill off the good creatures before it was her turn.
"Don't you give me that shit eating grin. I already know you're going to kill the Titan."
"You bet I am," Owen said before playing 4 Apex cards and his Veteran Alpha Utahraptor.
"I hate you."
"You know you love me"
"In. Your. Dreams."
"It's nice to see you in something other than a stuck up kind of mood," I say in a condescending tone.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean."
Another half an hour passes before we're at the battle royal finale. It's down to the bone, but after a very slow and painful final turn by everyone I pull out a win.
"Hahahaha, YES! I don't have to tell you anything," I dance around like a doofus.
"Best 2 out of 3," she demands.
"If you say so."
We continue to play and at the last match, which was the 5th game that day, it was past midnight and there was 7 of us all playing at once. Claire had become as good as me and Owen. She had won 2 matches, all she had to do was win this last one and she'd finally get what she came for.
"Quad kill, 3 Titans," she said smugly.
"Luck," I say knowing I might lose.
Finally we move onto the battle royal and tense doesn't describe the final turn. Owen gets taken out basically and it's up to me to win the match. As the final cards fall in line she thought a little farther ahead than me and managed to win.
"YEAH!!! Woo hoo! Now you have to tell me. Haha!" she's practically dancing.
"Alright, but not in front of these guys," I say pointing at the staff who had joined us.
They left and the three of us go to a quiet spot where no one is around.
"We're building an aquatic park. The same way we turned the island park into a new park we're going to use the ruins of the old one to make a better one."
"Guess that explains a lot, but why keep it so secret?"
"We don't know if it's going to work out."
"Yeah so if you could NOT tell everyone about it that'd be great," Owen said.
"You don't even know where I live on this island."
Owen contemplates that for a bit until he responds, "Guess we can trust you to keep the secret then."
"You've got nothing to worry about."