Had someone been spying on him just a moment ago?
Carlo didn't bother waiting for the meager shade of the canopy to shield him from the glaring light anymore. Instead, he stood up and strode over to a gentler slope in the creek meadow.
He raised his head, sniffing the air carefully, but found no trace of humans... Well, actually, there were some lingering scents left by Owen and his group, but he automatically filtered those unfortunate souls right out.
Finding nothing, he tilted his head and gazed toward the direction of the BioSyn facility.
Hmph... It must be you spying on me, then!
To some extent, Carlo shared something with Dodgson: neither of them could stand this kind of underlying sense of crisis.
Those humans certainly couldn't threaten him, but the safety of Dad and the others had to be guaranteed.
Though Carlo genuinely wanted to spend a bit more time with his family, now that his mind had wandered this far... maybe he should just go tear up some human architecture first?
"Roar…!"
No sooner thought than done. Carlo let out a low rumble, summoning Katyusha, who was inexplicably busy helping Giga Dad collect sand, to inform her that he would be disappearing for a while.
"Roar?"
Though puzzled, Katyusha still rumbled a quiet assent.
The boss used to pop in and out of nowhere all the time, so why is he giving a heads-up today?
The sun gradually dipped toward the horizon, painting the edge of the sky in fiery hues, as if portending something ominous to come.
Katyusha watched as Carlo's massive silhouette vanished into the treeline. The strange part was that the moment his huge frame was completely swallowed by the forest, it was as if he had ceased to exist entirely.
The sound of footsteps, breaking branches, the swaying rustle of the woods, all of it vanished. If not for the heavy, overlapping footprints left behind in the soft soil, it would have been as though he had never been there at all.
"Roar…"
Where did the boss go?
Awakened from his sleep, Kafka let out a soft rumble, interrupting Katyusha's train of thought.
"Roar…"
He'll be back.
For reasons she couldn't quite explain, that was the reply Katyusha gave.
She wasn't worried about Carlo's safety. Ever since she hatched, Carlo had always been as unshakable as a mountain. She had once thought that one day she would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him just like the others, but now... that seemed impossible.
It was as if Carlo possessed one more brain than the rest of them combined. Even though they had grown up under his subtle, pervasive influence, they could never truly comprehend what went on in his head.
Katyusha had always yearned for the day she could fight side-by-side with Carlo, even if, in Carlo's eyes, she already was.
She didn't know what heavy burdens Carlo carried entirely on his own shoulders, but she knew what she had to do.
"Roar…!"
The low rumble echoed across the creek meadow, drawing the attention of Dad and Karl.
"Roar…"
We need to go hide.
She offered no further explanation, but the Giganotosaurus family trusted her judgment and melted into the forest right alongside her.
From this moment on, Carlo would have zero distractions.
…
"I heard the alarm. Everything's fi—"
Ramsay hurried into the control room, acting as though he had just finished dealing with matters at hand, but before he could even finish, Dodgson cut him off.
"Fine, fine, everything is fine."
His tone was far from steady, reeking heavily of self-deception.
Right on cue, Malcolm calculated his timing down to the second, slipping into the control room just behind Ramsay. He knew Dodgson would care enough about his corporate image to avoid throwing a tantrum in front of Ramsay, leaving him free to poke and prod a sitting duck.
"You wanted to see me?"
He took the initiative, his tone dripping with unconcealed provocation, as if saying, Go ahead and hit me if you've got the guts~
"Great, Dr. Malcolm, you're fired."
Dodgson didn't flinch, though there was a hint of evasion in his voice, clearly hoping to keep Ramsay and Malcolm from dragging this conversation out any further.
"What?!"
Ramsay knew the ins and outs of the situation better than anyone, in a sense, he was Dodgson's true boss, yet he still put on an innocent act as if he knew nothing at all.
"Please hand over your wristband... assuming you still have it."
Dodgson wanted to hustle the man out as fast as humanly possible, but this guy was like a stubborn plaster, utterly fond of dancing on the tightrope. Malcolm strolled leisurely around the control room, looking for all the world like he was pondering which of Dodgson's unspeakable secrets to expose next.
"The Hyperloop train has stopped in the Amber Mines."
Suddenly, a staff member's report shattered the focus of both Malcolm and Ramsay, making them tense up instantly.
That was the exact train Grant and the others were riding.
"Well, looks like someone's having a rough day."
Dodgson scored a petty counter-point, though it was hard to tell whether he was talking about himself or Malcolm.
"Grant and Sattler are on that train. Send out a security team immediately—"
Ramsay slipped up. True, he could have verified the passengers' identities via the train's internal cameras, but the monitor screens were a good two body-lengths away from where he stood.
Fortunately, Dodgson had a splitting headache of his own and didn't catch the slip, merely answering out of sheer reflex:
"Of course we will... You don't need to meddle in this, leave it to me... Escort the Doctor out."
Dodgson made to leave; just to be safe, he needed to go destroy some evidence. But Malcolm... didn't seem willing to let him off the hook quite so easily.
"Just like that? Nothing else?"
"I don't much care for your tone... It's time for you to leave."
Malcolm was about to start his performance, while Dodgson... well, his attack stats left something to be desired.
"Mmm-hmm, but first, I owe an apology to everyone in this room."
Malcolm raised his volume.
"I'm the one who vouched for this company, making everyone think BioSyn wasn't entirely rotten to the core."
"Enough, Ian."
Dodgson's face flushed slightly; shame, presumably?
Years of public speaking had given Malcolm's voice an indescribable, infectious gravity, compelling everyone in the room to involuntarily tune out everything else and hang on his every word.
"That's how they mislead you, fast-tracking your promotions while stunting your critical thinking."
"Shut up."
"Some doors remain locked, some things get ignored, but him? He's exploiting your obsession with dinosaurs to milk you dry."
Malcolm didn't even spare Dodgson a glance, yet every single word struck like a razor-sharp blade.
Not only that, he actually had the leisure to pull out a red sheet of origami paper and start folding a paper Brachiosaurus.
"Are you genuinely concerned, or do you have some mental—"
"It's you. You're marching humanity toward extinction and you couldn't care less."
Malcolm abruptly shifted gears, cutting Dodgson off and forcing him to swallow his whining, petulant insults back down. A fresh wave of red visibly crept up Dodgson's neck.
"You know exactly what you're doing, and yet you refuse to stop. You can't even if you wanted to... You poured every ounce of your power into this, and you still can't handle a single dinosaur."
Malcolm finally landed a critical hit on Dodgson's weak point! Ever since Dodgson had kidnapped the Giganotosaurus, Carlo had been steadily chipping away at his self-confidence, piece by piece.
Dodgson couldn't even buy himself a moment to stall. What he was doing didn't even qualify as playing the stock market, he was literally trying to stay warm by burning stacks of cash. And yet, even that pathetic little flame had been stomped out in an instant when Carlo dove off a cliff.
"You! You... I thought you'd be different from all those mediocre fools with their short-term vision and narrow minds, thinking everything is driven by sheer greed and trying to paint me as some kind of evil Prometheus! Right?!"
"You're certainly no Prometheus, but you're all going to end up getting pecked to pieces, aren't you? You greedy little rat."
Talk about an absolute mismatch in verbal combat.
Dodgson's high-speed emotional output couldn't hold a candle to the casual parting shot Malcolm dropped as he strolled out.
"Ramsay, show our guest out."
Dodgson, currently baked to a medium-rare finish, chose retreat. Malcolm didn't linger either; if he dragged this out any longer, Grant and the others were going to be done for.
"We've lost tracking on the monster!"
A staff member suddenly screamed at the top of their lungs, causing Malcolm to pause in his tracks before hastily bolting down the stairs.
"What the fuck is it this time?!"
Dodgson, his body heat still radiating, whirled around and came straight back. This time, he completely lost his grip.
"Just now... all of our cameras lost track of the monster, and the seismic sensors aren't picking up anything either. Its last known trajectory was heading toward... the Dinosaur Health Monitoring Center?!"
"Pull up the chip data for all four Giganotosaurus! Give them a ping, order them back to the base!"
"Understood, connecting now… wait, the signal failed?! Hold on, what's going on? The signal's being jammed, we've lost them completely!"
The sudden turn of events froze Dodgson in his tracks. A sudden emergency? How could it possibly be this coincidental? Who was responsible for installing the chips in those Giganotosaurus in the first place anyway?!
A moment later, his head snapped up, his expression twisted and ferocious, yet his eyes cleared as if he had understood everything all at once.
"HENRY WU?!"
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This fanfic is now complete! If you want to read the whole story ahead of everyone else, head over here ——— pa-tre-on.c-om/AlexandrusTL [remove the hyphen for normal access]