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Chapter Text

Ile Saint-Hubert has, since the late 1700s, sat devoid of human presence. For millennia, a mix of Indigenous tribes had settled here, with an unknown contingent of transient Mayan settlers, Taino fishermen, and Arawak explorers having seemingly settled the island in waves. The Mayans, the most recent peoples, had the most visible impact and footprint, though influences of the other two peoples remained in what is believed to be an example of cultural diffusion. They had lived there, constructing their own settlements and a great city. Whilst many of the older stone buildings had fallen to ruin over the years as the natives scattered over the island, their dilapidated and overgrown state proved important to their animist society. Whilst how and why these various tribes and groups got there, possibly mixed or spread their cultural ideas to one another and how the original city-builders may have disappeared or become inactive remains an archaeological and anthropological mystery, the island-born natives had dwelt in peace in the land of their wandering ancestors until the arrival of European colonization in the 1600s. In the years since, the natives had been in conflict after conflict with them, and the French, in 1764, had delivered a final blow to the island’s sovereignty: a wave of French colonists attacking the villages, burning them down and frantically digging up the island in search of gold and plunder. The once-great villages were razed, the overgrown yet maintained ruins and temples left to crumble. The natives that weren’t slaughtered were captured and sold off as slave labor to the mainland as the French took control and established a plantation. However this plantation was not to be, for the island sat in a particularly volatile area prone to strong storms, and the French settlers wastefully abandoned it, though desiring to return someday. That someday would never come, and Ile Saint-Hubert would lie in French colonial control for many years after.

That was until 1987, when International Genetic Technologies, or InGen, purchased it from the French government for none other than the Jurassic Park project, created to allow the world to see dinosaurs, resurrected by the power of genetic engineering. Years prior, they had acquired Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna off Costa Rica as key locations for the project, with Nublar being the ‘showroom’, the park’s location and main site for visitors, and Sorna being the ‘factory floor’, where new assets were cloned, hatched, raised to maturity, and transferred over to the main park. But InGen feared that corporate espionage (especially from their tenacious rival company, Biosyn) would reveal Sorna’s importance as to where their newer cloned species originated, and so selected Ile Saint-Hubert as a far-off location where new genomes would be created and new assets would be cloned. The island’s location on the other side of Central America was perfect to throw off any spies searching for where InGen made the newest dinosaurs. Early planning for facilities was underway, but in the process many of the island’s verdant forests and ancient ruins were bulldozed to make way for a new facility. However, this project abruptly ceased when the 1993 incident on Isla Nublar occurred. InGen entered Chapter 11 proceedings and the project on Ile-Saint Hubert was stopped indefinitely, and once again the island lay abandoned.

After the 1997 incidents in Isla Sorna and San Diego, the restriction of Isla Sorna from outside travel, and the death of InGen founder John Hammond, the island would be acquired through some underhanded and illegal means by none other than Biosyn, who developed their own advanced facility atop the open spaces InGen intended to develop. This would remain there for years and kept secret thanks to bribery of government officials and other shady tactics, and all this time Biosyn attempted to crack the code of what made InGen’s dinosaurs and genetic technology tick. However, soon InGen would be purchased by the Masrani Global Corporation, with the newly-revitalized company having their intentions fully realized, having on Isla Sorna begun the Amalgam Testing program that gave rise to the species involved in the 2001 incident,
and Ile-Saint Hubert would once again be in the spotlight. Thanks to Masrani’s influence and further government connections, Biosyn’s dubious ownership would be revoked and return to InGen, with the former’s advanced technology and facility left to InGen’s hands. Further developing the facility and having been dealt a huge boon by Biosyn’s equipment, Ile-Saint Hubert would once again host a sizable InGen presence, this time fully completed by 2006.
Known as ‘Site C’, this location’s construction and equipment was a mix of old and new, remnants of technology from the 1990s, newer technology from the present time, and even equipment designed by outside contracted companies like Koepp Micro-Optic, Amagasaki, Design Associates Computing, Inc., and more, all contributing technologies that would boost InGen’s already skyrocketing goals. The facility was headed by Norman Atherton, a man who proved pivotal to Dr. Henry Wu’s involvement at InGen. Originally his university professor, the two grew to close colleagues, and it was through Atherton’s connections that Wu would be recruited for InGen, and subsequently, Jurassic Park. Years later under Masrani and after his tenure came to an end, Atherton found himself in charge of a new wing of development. His orders from the higher-ups was to continue what InGen originally planned; to act as a birthplace of new ideas, genomes, species, and prototypes. While the true hybrids planned for the eventual Jurassic World wouldn’t come until the late 2000s and early 2010s, Ile Saint-Hubert’s labs were abuzz with new creations. Whilst many were never planned for public display at the new park, the scientists were hard at work experimenting with new technology, new sequences, and new strategies to push the envelope in developing such organisms. Atherton’s direction encouraged the creation of many creatures, whose appearances, behaviors and natures would otherwise get the company shut down or investigated if publicly displayed or disclosed. But just as things peaked, it went silent. After 2010, the facility was abandoned once more. Whilst Jurassic World wouldn’t fall until 2015, Site C was already left to rot. And soon, while dinosaurs were spreading around the world, and in this new age, Ile Saint-Hubert sat by its lonesome, the dinosaurs cloned there left to their own devices, and among them, abominations, crossbreeds, and mutations not seen anywhere else. From its beginnings as a home for intrepid tribal explorers to its recent events as a home for arguable crimes against nature, Ile Saint-Hubert led a turbulent existence, and this existence would reach a peak of chaos on one fateful day in 2010.

Chapter Text

ILE SAINT-HUBERT
SITE C
226 MILES OFF FRENCH GUIANA

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Desanto knew right away it wouldn’t be a good morning. As if the usual routine wasn’t enough, now her workload included euthanizing an asset. That was challenging and terrible enough, but to have her and some others involved don’t make it easier. After all it was Atherton’s mistake, why clean it up?

After getting ready and buying a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich to get her going, she headed across the vast facility site to her workplace: Research and Development, Lab 03. It was a sunny day, breezy and warm. Everyone else seemed to be in high spirits; the gossipy janitor whose quarters was down the hall from hers, the keepers on their way to feed the new Titanosaurus, the vet towing a sick pterosaur to quarantine, the cashier and deli staff at the Qualtech Gas Station she got her breakfast from. But they didn’t work in the main lab, where the nitty-gritty of goings-on always took place. They didn’t have to smell formaldehyde and ethanol all day long. They didn’t have to spend hours poring over whole genomes the computers read out, and then poring over them again to double or triple-check. They didn’t have to worry about a new batch of assets coming out wrong. They didn’t have to entertain Dr. Atherton’s ideas and ramblings. At least the latter was no longer a worry. While Desanto wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone, she had to admit it would definitely be better going forward to come to work without him spouting nonsense every five minutes. While now all his messes were their problem now, at least the lab would be rid of a particularly troublesome asset.

Donning her specially-made hazmat suit, she walked into the lab. It was a vast, clean space housing a little bit of everything that made Site C’s labs run, and being the biggest one in the facility, featured quite a lot of equipment and assets. Among the standard fare of desks, monitors, drawers, and workstations were other hallmarks of these labs; vials of DNA, smaller containers of fetuses and stillborn hatchlings, larger specimens preserved in formaldehyde ‘coffins’, and most visibly, large, imposingly tall incubator units. These units were designed to incubate and hold species in stasis for long periods of time, and more often than not the latter purpose was the desired one, given the facility’s history of bizarre and often grotesque failures of specimens. Desanto knew some by now: the miraculously-healthy two-headed Triceratops, the Pteranodon with oversized wings, the young Maiasaura with gastroschisis, and who can forget the recent addition: the pterosaur-raptor hybrid they called the Mutadon, with its two heads, distorted spinal column, seven polymelic limbs and four wings? Fewer recent additions included mock eggshells provided by the plastics supplier for testing durability, papers documenting current versions of newest assets, and even a young dead Quetzalcoatlus on a table preparing to be dissected. Overlooking it all to the left was an elevated security area complete with a map of the island. Ahead in the vast room on another elevated platform was a set of large, steel-rimmed windows and a massive door. Desanto sighed seeing the orange-colored LED-lit label on it: D-REX V. 23.111.

“Of course the old man’s gotta leave us with his cleaning up his mess,” said a voice to her left. It was Williams, a colleague of hers, donning his own hazmat gear and setting aside a Snickers bar on a nearby table. “Nobody eat that, that’s mine. Saving it for when we’re done.” Around them were four other people, all in the same hazmat suits, making their way to the great door. “You know, I’m surprised,” said one of them, a blond-haired man by the name of Larry. “InGen wants no asset, no matter how ugly or malformed or whatever, terminated. Better for a tax write-off or whatever. But why make an exception for this big guy?” He asked, pointing ahead to the windows. Desanto shrugged. “Guess they had enough. Even something like this gets on their nerves eventually. Plus you know how Atherton was like with it, weirdly protective. Wouldn’t let anyone else near it. Like a weird mutant dinosaur crazy cat lady. Must’ve decided enough money was enough money.” She seized a hold of a heavy-duty rifle and walked over to a technician on his way to the elevated security area. “You guys got the gas? The cyanide-based chloroform?” He nodded. “Yup, just say the word, and we’ll release it. Hopefully you don't lift a finger on your trigger there.” Desanto led the charge, going to a keyport and passcode panel to the left. Entering the code and inserting the key, she waited for the technician to sit and insert his. A green light came on and with a pneumatic hiss, the door slowly opened. “Alright, let’s make this quick. Open the airlock!” They made their way in, and the door behind them closed.

The airlock ahead opened, and behind that was another. Even in the dim lighting, she could still see it. Big, bulky, monstrous. The mammoth form of the Distortus rex paced around in its cage. Standing at over 25 feet tall, this creature was perhaps the most mutated among Site C’s assets. While Desanto didn’t quite know what the exact makeup or genome of it was, what was evident was that it was meant, on some level, to be a Tyrannosaurus rex. The resemblance was slight in the face, the pair of two-fingered arms hanging from its chest, and even the color pattern seemed to match one, but that’s where the similarities ended. For one, its head was boxy and compact, taking the typical tyrannosaur head and smushing it inward, the result being an indicator of brachycephaly. As if that wasn’t enough, an enormous bulge on its head extending from above the snout to the beginnings of the neck was indicative of hydrocephalus and possibly incomplete fusion of skull bones as the animal matured. It would jiggle as it moved and was somewhat translucent, with the right light seeing through, liquid can be seen inside. One of its eyes was slightly higher up than the other, the leftmost eye being the higher one, the right eye somewhat lazy and slightly immobile. The tiny arms characteristic of tyrannosaurs hung limply from its chest and were largely immobile apart from minor, rudimentary movements, and it was believed that this was the result of polymelia. The real functional forelimbs were massive and long, ending with the typical two-fingered structure of a tyrannosaur hand. It would alternate between knuckle-walking like a gorilla or with the whole palm on the ground, plantigrade-style. These seemed capable of grasping and holding, but Desanto never witnessed it. The animal’s right hand was covered in warty yet bony bosses and cysts, and it seemed like it was injured from a past event and it didn’t heal right. These abnormal front limbs were complimented by the fairly typical back legs of a tyrannosaur, as well as a long tail that seemed to bend and sag under its weight, resulting in it dragging on the floor, conjuring the image of an outdated dinosaur depiction with a similarly dragging tail. The unusual arrangement of its limbs resulted in strange locomotion, with both halves working seemingly on their own, resulting in the Distortus rex walking and running with an almost alien gait.

It didn’t seem to notice them yet, staring down at the floor, chuffing. Every now and then, it would look up to the right, where a now-inactive observatory was. Desanto frowned. It used to be Atherton’s little lookout, gazing down at his prized creation. The fact that it seemed to look up expecting to see him made her heart sink. She was interrupted when her radio went off: “Putting in the gas now.” Without hesitation, huh? Didn’t even ask? They must want that thing dead bad. From the vents on either wall came clouds of gray gas. Despite their gear the group stepped back a few feet; better safe than sorry if there was a with the gear. It sniffed and raised its head up to stare at the vents. Its telltale labored breathing and practically shrunken head reminded Desanto of a pug, and added all the more reason to put it down. A minute went by as they watched the animal hopefully succumb to the gasses. It didn't; it simply stood there, shaking. But then it abruptly lowered its head, and part of it crumpled, one forelimb gave way as it partially collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily. Larry took out a flashlight, hoping to see if the animal’s eyes had dilated or not as a result of the gas. But what followed none of them were expecting. As soon as its eye caught the light, it widened and the animal shot straight back up, roaring and bellowing in a manner not too dissimilar from a wounded T. rex. But then the head and neck started shaking aggressively, the eyes rolling back, spit flying and the animal groaning and screaming as it seemed to enter a seizure-like state. “Control, we’re having an issue here! I don’t think it’s the gas doing this!” Desanto yelled into her radio. Then one forelimb punched the ground a few times as the head shaking stopped and its head jerked down, spit freely spilling out and its tongue lolling. It’s head went up as a gurgling sound left it’s mouth before it proceeded to vomit, leaving yellow-red bile spilling out of the cage near the team’s feet. Then the eye turned to face them. With a sharp turn of it’s head and a loud roar, it swung its claw and punched a hole in the fence.

The group ran, but the furthest member, Nichols, was knocked down by a large piece of metal, dislodged from the fence. Desanto turned to help, but suddenly the *D. rex's forelimb came crashing down, and crushed the metal piece right into Nichols’s spine. He stopped moving immediately, and it roared as it pursued them. Two others, Robyn and Crowley, ran ahead and aimed their guns at it, before opening fire. Running away while simultaneously ducking for cover, Desanto saw as the bullets and cyanide darts fired either bounced off or didn’t slow it down at all. If anything it only made it angrier. Robyn was closer, and as she frantically fired, its massive claw swung, sending her into the wall with a crunch. She tried to crawl to her gun, but its massive tail swung too, sending her higher into the air, this time into a steel column, and when she fell she didn’t get up. Crowley screamed as he tried to hit its eyes. It grabbed ahold of his head in its hand and lifted him slightly into the air. His frantic movements were cut off as its claws closed, crushing his head like a soda can, before tossing his body away. The remaining three, Desanto, Williams and Larry continued to run, and as the gas continued to spread, the reasonably dark room began to be lit by red-orange alarms, their klaxons echoing across the vast space accompanying the Distortus rex’s roars. They ran through the second airlock, but one claw swipe sent Larry into the wall. Williams turned around to help him up, turning his head around to face Desanto. “Get to the door! I’ll be right there, let me get him!” To her horror the door was closing! Someone must’ve shut it during the evacuation. Desanto shook her head as she ran to the door, and managed to throw herself out at the last second, landing on the cold, hard floor. To her shock, the lab was deserted, and the intercom blared with news of a containment breach. The door shut behind her, and she looked through the door’s massive windows in the hopes of seeing them both running up. Her hopes were diminished when Larry’s scream was heard, and only Williams ran up to the door.

Upon seeing her, he reached into his suit pocket and retrieved a key. If the control panel guys left, it’s up to me now, Desanto thought as she retrieved hers. Running to the key panel on the left of the door, she waited for Williams. When he was ready, they made eye contact, held up their fingers, and counted to three. Williams inserted his, but as Desanto inserted hers, she froze. In the red-tinted gas behind him, the shadowy form of the Distortus rex was drawing closer. Williams repeated his countdown, but Desanto didn’t reply. Then, she took the key out, and stood there in horror as it closely approached him. Williams realized it too, and his eyes widened as he saw it was right behind him, growling and snorting. “Please, just turn the key! Please, let me out!” He begged, pounding on the glass. For reasons unknown to her, Desanto couldn’t do it. If she let him out, would it follow? She was choked up; never in her five years of working at Site C did she think she’d have to make a call like this. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears running down her face. The animal’s claw came into view, stroking and wrapping around Williams’s suit. He started to cry too, and he continued to pound on the glass. “Please, open the door for me!” Then it lifted him up, and rotated him against the glass, his head facing down as he began to cry out. It seemed to be curious, inspecting or perhaps toying with him. “I’m sorry,” Desanto cried as she saw Williams begin to scream as its claws penetrated deep into the suit, drawing blood. He exchanged one last look at her, in his eyes a look of pure terror as he begged her to help. Then he was quickly deposited into its jaws, and his screams got louder as it jaws started to tear him apart. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’M SORRY!” Desanto screamed as she watched in horror as the jaws clamped down one more time, splitting him in half. She fell to her knees, sobbing as she heard it chew and rip at him. Then, it stopped and the sound of it sniffing was heard before a loud roar, before the door was slammed into. The impact sent her flying back, and to her horror, it was slamming into the door, cracking the glass! With every hit, the door began to loosen, and she knew it was only a matter of time before it broke out. She turned to the exit, only to see that; per the automatic lockdown protocol, all exits were shielded off with shutter doors.

Running up to the elevated security area, she tried to find a way to override the system, but just as she entered the system, the door gave way completely, flying across the room with a thud. She ducked under the desk, peeking out from the fence-like barrier next to it. As the gas poured out, the Distortus rex sniffed and examined this new space. It looked around before tentatively placing its hand down before quickly retracting it. A few seconds passed before it slowly entered the room. The beast was so huge that its head and back were inches away from hitting the overhead lights. Despite its earlier aggressive behavior (and the blood dripping from its mouth), it took on the temperament of a curious youngster. It sniffed at the dissected young Quetzalcoatlus before it snapped it up, swallowing it whole. It then peered into the incubator units, cocking its head as it examined the two-headed Mutadon, even pawing at the glass with its hand. Desanto hoped to take advantage of its distraction by slinking away, but just as she crawled backward out from under the desk, the large screens in the console areas suddenly flashed and were accompanied by an automatic voice: “Attempted manual override detected. Please continue console use before you are logged out.” In the otherwise silent room, the voice was deafening, and of course it caught the D. rex’s attention, which looked straight at her. Bellowing, it charged, running between the Pteranodon and Maiasaura incubators and on a beeline to the elevated area, knocking over and crushing desks and chairs and sending papers and other materials flying as it went. Desanto ran for her life, just dodging a claw swipe as it destroyed a computer terminal. To her horror, the monstrously-large animal was pushing itself into an increasingly smaller space. It ripped apart screens, terminals and other equipment, and as it got closer, Desanto, amidst her panic, hatched an idea. Behind her was the shutter door, and given the strength of the Distortus rex, it should give way easily. It swung its clawed forelimb and it collided right into the shutter, resulting in it getting caught in the metal. It growled and barked trying to free itself, before both the shutter and the door behind it were torn off. As it tried to remove the doors stuck in its claws, she ran out the room into the outside corridor. She was going to do it, she was going to escape! Then the wall behind her gave way, knocking her down as wires and concrete shards fell. The primary console and screens were all but destroyed, and Desanto noticed that the lights were flashing. It seemed to set the D. rex off, as it roared, rapidly shook its head, and swung its claws around, sending live wires to the floor. Desanto was too late, for one wire landed on her, and before she knew it she was unconscious.

She awoke in pain, and her lungs burned with every breath; electrocution has no doubt taken its toll. To her relief, she was in a stretcher being carried across the open plaza of the facility. As her vision adjusted, she saw that the calm, happy-go-lucky mood of earlier that day was instead replaced by chaos, as workers ran for their lives and sirens sounded. She was being brought to a helicopter as two armed security guards shot at things she couldn’t see. As she was brought inside, she saw one of the guards get brought down by a Mutadon, which snapped its neck with its toothed beak. The door shutting and the rotors roaring to life scared it off, as the helicopter rose into the sky. Desanto sat up to see that Site C was in a severe state of disarray, and a few dinosaurs were on the loose. A Triceratops charged through walls and impaled poor workers on its horns. A flock of Compsognathus swarmed injured victims. A pair of Quetzalcoatlus were snapping up security guards trying to shoot them down. Another medevac was underway, with the injured screaming in pain due to his right leg being gone and stomach cavity torn open. She shuddered and breathed heavily as she processed everything, including what went down in the lab. One of the people next to her put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re bringing you to a hospital in Cayenne. You’re gonna be just fine.” She shook her head as the helicopter slowly began to leave Ile Saint-Hubert. The escaped pterosaurs were being distracted by other helicopters, but Desanto doubted they would survive long, just like her team. The last thing she saw before the helicopter flew off was the telltale leviathan form of the Mosasaurus making its way out of a river canal and out into the open water. Chaos will evidently not remain caged for long.

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“With all the present conversations about genetic power and the rush to create the best ‘consumer biologicals’ to be had, it should also be noted that discussion on such unabashed ignorance cannot exclude accidents and byproducts. Ever since the first dinosaur blood was extracted from an amber-trapped mosquito, there has since been an ever-present possibility (or dare l say, threat) of something else tagging along. The process of making a dinosaur is often made out to be streamlined and easy, as the tour at Jurassic Park once showed. However, any geneticist can tell you that such processes are never easy, especially when considering something as novel as resurrecting dinosaurs. There are bound to be faults, bound to be errors, bound to be unintended consequences. Such advanced genetic engineering is arguably still in its infancy, and with that comes a greater deal of risks and challenges, things that cannot be patched out or fixed so quickly or easily. Consider such triumphs like Robert Briggs and Thomas King’s work on frogs in the 1950s, or more recently and most appealingly, Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell with Dolly the sheep. Triumphs as they are, it took years of trial and error to get there, and of course we don’t see the failures or missteps. But perhaps we should also note that these prior experiments did not deal with resurrecting extinct species, and while they undoubtedly had their problems, at least those scientists, on some level, knew what they were doing. Not like InGen’s, who brazenly hacked away at a fertile tree trunk ready to collapse and topple right above their heads. In such a project like Jurassic Park, risks don’t just include bringing back species Nature intended to keep extinct. Risks also include bringing back diseases Nature intended to keep in the past, parasites intended to remain gone, genetic and anatomical abnormalities that were erased and replaced from the genetic soup for generations. If Jurassic Park ever opened, how likely would it be that some small parasite would live undetected among some small, docile herbivores, and when a family comes by for the park’s petting zoo, for the parasites to jump ship and find a new host in these humans? Or for an unknown and new disease to live in the gums and saliva of a carnivore, and when that carnivore bites an employee, that spreads and persists despite the concurrent disease protocols? All these possibilities are tied to the meddling of genetic engineering, and in bringing a new wonder to the world do we also risk bringing a new scourge with it. While it may be too early to say, I fear that if things persist at their current pace, we might have some serious problems lurking over the horizon. Whatever those are, all I hope is that that they don’t make us pine for the days of being chased by T. rexes and raptors.”

- Dr. Ian Malcolm, God Creates Dinosaurs, 1999