Welcome to the Jungle

Chapter 12: The Dark Side of the Jurassic Park

"Oh my God!"

Mike bolted upright from his tired nap at hearing Winn's distressed call afraid something was attacking them. "What? Where? What is it?" He scrambled to his feet and reached for his tranquilizer blindly.

"Dude! Mike! Come and see this!" Winn beckoned Mike while his eyes were glued to the screen in front of him. At first Mike considered rejecting him, but it must have been something really serious, otherwise, Winn wouldn't have reacted that way. At least most of the time he wouldn't, unless it was about the next the Star Wars movie or Warcraft.

"What am I looking at here?" Mike asked Winn after stifling a yawn, already bored with the dark screen filled with small font size lines.

"Mike, this is huge!" Winn gave him an awestruck look.

"Winn! I don't get it! What is it?" Mike pressed him to talk, growing impatient.

"This is what Maxwell Lord was talking about dude! The secret military project!" Winn explained and typed something that caused pictures to appear one after the other, showing three dinosaurs. Three, very weird looking dinosaurs Mike didn't recognize and that was impossible because he knew all of them by heart after years of working with them.

"What is this?" Mike squinted at the unfamiliar anatomy of the dinosaurs, trying to find an explanation. "Project Worldkillers?!" Mike read the folder name, his heart dropping in dread. That name was evident that this wasn't any peaceful project.

"Purity, Pestilence and Reign." Winn read out loud the three names, each hitting Mike with a colder ominous feeling.

"They don't look like any dinosaurs I know!" Mike told Winn and he nodded with wide eyes.

"Yes, that's because they aren't any normal dinosaurs! They are Hybrids! Genetically modified and bioengineered creatures created by L-Corp!" Winn opened another window fast, this time showing the genome of the dinosaurs, their DNA sequence. Their double X chromosomes indicated they were all female and Mike exhaled in disbelief when he noticed all three were part Raptors. They did seem to share their anatomy to some level as a result. Pestilence had longer claws though and Reign was three times bigger than any Raptors. Mike knew the reason why they had used Velociraptor DNA. Raptors were proved to be among the most intelligent kind and trainable. As Mike scanned the list he realized they had mixed the factor of intelligence with the deadliest features. More muscles, longer fangs, paralyzing shrieks and venom. All to create monsters capable of ending lives with a single blow. But these weren't any normal weapons. They were uncontrollable killing machines that had been stripped of their origin and identity. They were aliens.

Mike felt he was suddenly overtaken by terror and had to lean his weight to the table for a moment to gather his wits. His heart pounded as worry blossomed and spread in his chest like cancer.

"Winn, please tell me these are just graphic simulations!" Mike begged Winn to prove him wrong for once and discard his greatest fear.

"No, they are real." Winn answered apologetically in a quiet voice. "There are records of their growth from ten months ago when they've hatched."

"But that should mean they are still very young right?" Mike hopefully asked, taking into account the time scale of two years which a Raptor needed to become a fully grown adolescent.

"No, ehm...Mike... this says the aging gene has been deliberately altered to accelerate their growth to half of a normal Velociraptor."

"Where are they being kept?!" Mike frantically skimmed the page to find a location. Winn was faster and pulled open another folder to browse.

"They are being kept at the facility called Cadmus. Do you know where that is?"

Mike shook his head, clueless at the whereabouts of the place. "I pray to God it's not on this island, because if they are loose, none of us will make it alive out of here!"