Note: I don't know what is Sanguinoraptor here. The raw says 太武血戮 which lit. means supreme martial blood slaughter dragon. It might be a dino that they've created for war. So, I named it Sanguinoraptor. I might change it if it appears again and is not a raptor at all.
…
The pressure is off the charts, my bro.
Some people might wonder: what is the absolute stress limit of a human being? Dodgson has a few thoughts.
As the head of the world's largest dinosaur protection corporation and the supreme director of the dinosaur ecological zone, he must be swamped with work every single second, right?
"Sir, the juvenile Sanguinoraptor you intercepted earlier has arrived at the medical examination room. The department is requesting your presence to negotiate its ownership..."
"Not now! Let Ramsay handle it!"
Dodgson bluntly cut off his secretary's report, striding rapidly toward the underground laboratory while tossing out one final instruction over his shoulder:
"Go recruit as many mercenaries as you can, desperadoes preferably. Hurry!"
That sounded like a rather dangerous directive, didn't it?
Then again, having suffered consecutive defeats where several capture teams were routed by Carlo, followed by Carlo casually smashing down several of their outposts, racking up total losses exceeding nine figures and still climbing, it made a certain twisted sense.
Their dinosaur containment system in Europe had collapsed, and personnel were in desperate short supply. Not to mention, the target had now breached BioSyn's crown jewel: their oversized ecological zone. If the beast decided to sit down for a hearty meal, it would instantly wipe out hundreds of millions more.
Demolish a building? A few million.
Wreck a laboratory? Tens of millions.
Storm the headquarters? Well north of a hundred million.
Dodgson's risk-budget system had long since flatlined. As a businessman, he could stomach a bad quarter, and he could accept property loss from unforeseen accidents, but he drew the line at having his financial lifeline severed.
The first two fell under standard operational hazards, while the latter... was essentially a death sentence for his wallet.
And as if to rub salt in the wound, after he went out of his way to kidnap a clone, when America looked the other way and the UN stayed silent, the kid's adoptive parents showed up to make it their personal business.
He just couldn't wrap his head around it. Why on earth did two people manage to cost him a reliable business partner? Why did two people have the sheer audacity to fly a plane straight into his headquarters? And why did he have a nagging, dreadful premonition that those two weren't dead yet and were about to drop a massive bomb on him?
Though, to be fair, Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, whom he had personally recruited, were already in the middle of dropping a massive bomb on him.
Speaking of which, the locusts had apparently mutated as well. His grand master plan to monopolize the global food market was receding further into the horizon.
"Hoo…"
He took a deep breath, silently reassuring himself:
It's fine. It's totally fine. As long as Dr. Wu successfully synthesizes a Giganotosaurus genome using that brat of a girl, everything will turn out alright.
Once that happened, all his problems would melt away. Yes, absolutely.
"What the actual fu—"
His expression froze almost instantly, a muttered curse slipping past his lips before he could stop it.
Because he discovered that Dr. Wu was sitting leisurely by the desk, sipping coffee while casually showing a computer screen displaying classified files to Maisie.
Why did it feel like... the entire corporation had only one person actually working, and it was the boss?
Tap, tap...
He gave the glass door two sharp raps, drawing the attention of the pair inside the laboratory.
Whether intentionally or not, Dr. Wu left his access wristband right there on the table, stood up, and strolled out through the glass door.
"What do you think you're doing? Showing her classified files could land both of us in federal prison, and she'll cease being our asset."
Dodgson opened with a sharp reprimand, causing Dr. Wu to frown slightly. He thoroughly despised the way the man referred to people as mere "assets."
It looked like it was time to argue... wait... why did it feel like every single boss who finished arguing with Dr. Wu ended up kicking the bucket?
After arguing with Masrani, Masrani crashed his helicopter.
After arguing with Mills, Mills got eaten.
So, as for Dodgson...
…
Sub-Level 6, Restricted Zone.
[She used engineered DNA to fill the genetic gaps, then deployed a pathogen to deliver the repair sequence into every single cell; if I can adapt her methodology, I can cure the locusts as well. Maisie and Blue hold the missing data I require...]
Dr. Wu's experimental log broadcasted continuously from the computer. Seated at the desk, Maisie had zero interest in listening.
She roughly grasped what Dr. Wu was driving at: he intended to use a viral vector to spread the antidote through every locust swarm to cure them. But right now...
Heated sounds of argument.
Dr. Wu and Dodgson were going at it hammer and tongs outside the door. The glass effectively muffled their voices, giving Maisie a sudden stroke of inspiration.
Aha! I've got a plan!
Maisie snatched the wristband off the table, bolted over, and crouched down beside Beta's iron cage.
"Hey, do you want to get out of here?"
Sound of a lock clicking open.
Though she phrased it as a question, she gave the creature zero room to deliberate, directly unlocking the cage door.
"Aok!"
Beta let out a crisp, lively chirp, attempting to summon her pack-mates. The slender vocalization pierced straight through the hull, causing the two arguing men outside to freeze mid-sentence.
"What the hell..."
Dodgson muttered a curse. Catching sight of Maisie sprinting away down the lab's escape corridor, he didn't even bother giving chase, simply watching her retreat in numb disbelief.
"Maisie..."
Dr. Wu stepped leisurely back into the laboratory, spotted Maisie scurrying down the long escape ladder, and didn't harbor the slightest intention of pursuing her, merely watching her depart.
Dodgson arrived a step behind, unable to even catch a glimpse of Maisie's retreating back, his expression twisting into an even uglier grimace.
Bro, did you seriously think that if you yelled her name, the runaway girl would just magically turn around and trot back?
As a side note, he had also just received word that the Giganotosaurus cloning project's current progress was stuck at 'Creating New Folder'.
Seriously, what the actual fu—
"Aok!"
Sound of shattering glass flasks.
Rather than bolting straight for the exit, Beta hopped frantically around the laboratory workstations, careening about in a chaotic frenzy and smashing a rack of chemical reagents alongside hyper-expensive analytical instruments.
If Dodgson were playing a video game right now, there would undoubtedly be a floating text header above his head reading: [Asset -10,000] on a continuous loop.
"Aok?"
Seemingly picking up on some distant cue, Beta abruptly ceased her chirping and erratic darting, standing completely still to sense her surroundings for a moment before making a beeline toward a specific exit and bolting.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Dr. Grant and Ellie had just finished securing their samples when a shrill, ear-piercing klaxon shrieked to life. Grant was still holding a massive locust in both hands. Glancing around as the surrounding swarm grew increasingly agitated, he blurted out on pure instinct:
"Oh... damn it."
In a split second! The locusts erupted into a frenzy! The entire cultivation crate filled with a dense cloud of writhing bodies, and the specimen in Dr. Grant's hands broke free, taking flight!
The pair scrambled toward the exit in a panic. Several locusts latched onto their clothing, frantically attempting to chew through their fabric!
Hiss—
Bursting through the first set of doors, a heavy cloud of sterilization spray hissed into the air all around them, sealing off the two humans from the bulk of the swarm while instantly blinding them with stinging fumes.
The disinfecting gas was utterly noxious, burning their eyes, but it successfully drove off the locusts that had planned to treat them as an on-site buffet.
Bang!
Dr. Grant crashed against the outer security door, frantically fumbling with the wristband reader until he finally managed to line up the access code.
Beep—
The heavy doors slid open. Unable to keep their footing, the pair tumbled flat onto the floor just as the bulkheads slammed shut behind them, sealing the remaining swarm away.
Huff… huff… huff…
The two slumped in the dirt, peeling off their surgical masks and hoods to greedily gulp down fresh air.
As a paleontologist and a paleobotanist, being crushed by a boulder or poisoned by a prehistoric plant was still a thousand times better than being eaten alive by mutated locusts!
That was the unanimous conclusion running through both of their minds at that exact moment.
"Ugh..."
Noticing two humanoid figures sprawled across the floor right in front of her, Maisie froze dead in her tracks, locking the two doctors into an instantaneous freeze-frame of mutual shock.
"Dr. Grant... Dr. Sattler?"
Hm? She knew who they were? Well, naturally, after all, when they watched those behind-the-scenes promotional clips of the Primeval Ecological Zone during construction, those two faces had popped up everywhere.
———————
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over here ——— pa-tre-on.c-om/AlexandrusTL [remove the hyphen for normal access]