Video Log, June 11, 2009

11:35:25

The camera turns on, showing Hopkins adjusting the camera housing.  He is inside the little used office to the velociraptor enclosure, the shrieking raptors and Owen’s yells clear in the background.  “So, what, I just, uh, talk to it?” Hopkins asks, looking over to someone out of frame. 

“Yes,” Barry replies, his thick French accent clearly audible.  “Just talk to it, and you’ll get in the habit of recording your findings.  Unlike some people.” 

Hopkins grunts and shrugs as he looks into the camera.  “Ooookay then…, well, uh, this is Hopkins entry number one for the ‘development and training of secondary velociraptor pack for Jurassic World.’  Sweet fuck, that’s a mouthful.  And… hey Barry, aren’t the girls primarily Utahraptor or something like that?” 

“Yes, why?” 

“Then why the fuck do we call them velociraptors then?  I mean, they sure as fuck ain’t turkey sized.”  Hopkins shakes his head at Barry’s off-screen nonverbal answer.  “Well, moving on.  Okay, so, um, while my clutch of eggs is currently incubating in the labs, I’ve begun watching how Owen… I mean,” Hopkins corrects himself sarcastically, “’Behavioral Specialist Grady,’ has been raising his girls.  I’ll be honest, I don’t think he’s getting paid nearly enough for the shit he’s going through with them.  Hell, had it been anyone else, they would have all been put down and the whole project scrapped years ago.” 

Hopkins sighs as he leans back in a chair.  “It’s obvious that the girls know they’re intelligent, which I think is part of the problem when Owen’s not around… and when he is around.  They’re like little hell lizard cats with severe ADD, always in need of stimulation… that, or somewhere in their genes, a researcher fucked up.  Now, my thoughts on the girls… .”  Hopkins lets loose a deep sigh. 

“Blue is the pack beta, which means she’s a piece of paranoid work.  Nothing happens around that paddock without her investigating and making everyone know where she stands on it.  Thankfully, most of the pack likes her as beta.  Echo on the other hand….

“I’ll be blunt, Echo is a bitch.  No, wait,” he stops to think, “That would be an insult to bitches, because I think even they know when to stop.  Echo is just… fuck, I don’t think I know how to describe her really, she just hates everyone.  Owen slightly less.  She tried to scare the shit out of me my first day around her.  She failed, and then I told her to piss off.  She took offense to that, and afterwards, some of the crew offered to buy drinks at Margaritaville.  Weird right? 

Hopkins now smiles as he goes on.  “Now, out of the four of them, I honestly have to say that Charlie is the least hostile of them…, which isn’t saying much for a quartet of hyper aggressive demon birds.  She adores Blue and Owen, and she’s not afraid to show her affection to them either.  Delta’s pretty laid back.  Owen may be the Alpha, but I think I know someone who might be wrapped around her little toe talon,” he adds, grinning as he looks at Barry off-screen. 

“For that, you earn yourself pig duty!” Barry retorts.  Hopkins looks at the camera hopelessly. 

“Welp, shit.  Time to feed the girls the pig,” he says, pausing as he starts to stand up. 

“…

“That poor little fucker.” 

June 17, 2009

19:22:56

The camera turns on, showing Hopkins, obviously tired and sweat stained.  The most alarming thing is the blood on his vest.  It is close to dusk, judging from the light coming in the window. 

“Training today was… eventful,” Hopkins states, the statement clearly an understatement.  “Morris got too close to the bars as Owen was training the girls to follow him, and Echo decided to be a snide little shit stain. 

A minute passes as Hopkins composes himself.  “Morris is okay, as far as I know,” he continues, “Only three lacerations extending down his left arm.  He got on the first MEDEVAC to San Jose.  I think that Morris should be able to recover some functionality in his arm, given time.  Good thing he’s a righty.” 

A few minutes pass as Hopkins ruminates.  “What the hell was I thinking, getting into this gig?  Owen’s the best at what he does, and his girls barely listen to him on a good day.  I throw my… condition into the mix, and God alone knows what’ll happen,” he says in a rush, agitated.  “I have just over a week, at best, to learn the basics from Owen and so far, it looks like an unholy mixture of herding cats and clearing chrysallid hives.”  Hopkins shudders. 

“I need a fucking drink.” 

June 18, 2009

09:33:25

Hopkins is in view, holding his head and groaning in pain.  “FUCK.  TEQUILA.  Two bottles of that shit ain’t worth it!  Owen you dumb fucker, tequila is not a vital part of the food pyramid you -!”

June 21, 2009

21:14:55

“Egg watch!”

June 23, 2009

22:53:42

Hopkins is clearly inside a lab, the sterile white walls glaring under the white lights.  Physically, he seems exhausted as he handles a bundled pair of towels and shirts under his left arm.  “Hopkins, entry twelve.  Beta-Two hatched on schedule, weight three point nine pounds, clear vocalizations,” he reports.  “Echo-Two followed soon after, weight three point five pounds, also clear vocalizations.  Subjects Charlie and Delta-Two, after twenty-four plus hours… did….”

The bundles squeak in agitation.  Hopkins pauses to reassure them with soft words, an almost invisible, violet glow flowing down from his right hand to them.  “Sorry,” he says after quieting the hatchlings, “They’re uh, really sensitive to my emotional state right now.  The other two didn’t make it.  I haven’t had any coffee in over forty-eight hours, and these two need attention, like, constantly.  Christ, when Mom said my kids would raise hell, I don’t think she meant it quite like this.”

June 25, 2009

08:12:11

Hopkins is resting in a chair, a single wrapped bundle in his arms, squeaking much like a baby bird.  “Echo-Two died in her sleep last night,” he announced.  “Beta-Two here is the last of her clutch,” he added, looking down at her in worry.  “I can’t introduce her into Owen’s pack, I know Echo would rip her apart in a heartbeat before Blue could intervene.”  Hopkins sighed.  “Hoskins and Dearing are convinced that this is going to fail.  They… I just finished our little conference call a little while ago.  Well, if they think that this little one doesn’t deserve to live, well, fuck them.”  Hopkins looks down at his sole remaining charge, a faint smile on his lips.  “And as for you, well, I can’t be calling you Beta-Two forever now can I?”  The raptor chirps.  He chuckles as he strokes her head, still hidden by the bundle he has her in. 

“I think I’ll call you Ada.  A friend of mine has a character with that name, she was a total badass,” he says, hand brushing the towel away, showing a small raptor hatchling with soft, downy feathers framing her head. 

“Just like you’ll be.”

[][][]

Owen watched through the cameras as Hopkins interacted with his newly hatched raptor.  “See anything different?” Barry asked, stepping into their small, shared office to wash his hands.  He had just gotten done filling the girls’ water, and Barry wasn’t going to risk giving them some kind of flu.  Owen shook his head slowly, eyes not leaving the screen. 

“Not yet, but it might be too early to tell,” the former SEAL admitted.  “All my girls hatched within twenty-four hours and survived, I don’t know what could have killed two in the egg and one within twenty four hours of hatching.”  Behind him, Barry sighed. 

“And we won’t know until autopsy.”  Owen mumbled incomprehensibly as he saw an almost exact match of Blue when she was a hatchling as a hatchling poked her head out of the ‘nest’ Hopkins had made with his various sheets, towels, and clothes.  Hopkins leaned into frame, a chunk of ground beef in his hands.  Owen nodded in agreement as his younger counterpart fed the infant slowly, taking care not to get nipped by the needle sharp teeth. 

The still fading bite mark from Blue’s first two days of eating itched. 

Ignoring the bite mark for now, Owen furrowed his brow.  Pushing the pause button, he rewound a few seconds and watched, frame by frame, eyes trained by some of the best in the world at Coronado and experience seeing, analyzing, and deconstructing the images on screen. 

Hopkins had said he had been in the Army.  Owen was now pretty sure that that was a complete and utter pile of bullshit. 

[][][]

Ada was now a month old, and she was clearly bored.  And as Hopkins had painfully learned in that month, a bored, genetically engineered Utahraptor was a very dangerous raptor.  The boredom was also a sentiment that he shared as he spoke with Dr. Wu over the phone.  “All I’m saying is that keeping Beta-Two cooped up in here won’t be beneficial to her growth,” Hopkins said, looking over his shoulder to see Ada crawling out of her nest, chirping in annoyance at the small, stuffed Dilophosaurus sitting a few feet away from her. 

She noticed her parent looking at her, and cooed plaintively, her eyes widening.  Hopkins rolled his eyes.  “No, I’m not getting it for you,” he told her.  “You want it, you drag your happy little tail over to it,” he added, pointing at the stuffed toy.  “I know procedure in cases like this is to keep the survivors isolated, slowly integrating them into the existing pack structure when they’re mature enough, but I cannot in good conscious send Beta-Two into Owen’s pack.  Echo is a hell raiser, and God knows what she’ll do to an infant that doesn’t smell like pack. 

Hopkins sensed Wu’s hesitation as the latter spoke.  “I see.  However, I am sad to say that the replacement clutch will not be ready for at least seven months,” Wu explained slowly, earning a tense sigh from Hopkins. 

“Dr. Wu, at that, Beta-Two may already be set in her territorial behaviors, I want to nip any problems in the bud before they spiral out of control.” 

“There… may be an alternative.” 

Hopkins looked over at Ada again.  The little raptor had leaned over the edge of her nest, her back legs quivering, and then… she fell over forwards with a startled cheep before landing softly on her back, limbs dangling up in the air.  Ada looked over at him and squeaked, head tilted cutely.  “Okay, I’m listening.” 

“We are currently planning on a new exhibit, opening hopefully by late two thousand and fourteen,” Wu stated.  “The base genus will be Tyrannosaurus, but everything else is, at this moment, classified above your security clearance.”  That immediately raised alarms inside Hopkins’ head as he narrowed his eyes. 

“Wait, waitwaitwaitwait, let me get this straight here,” he said, beginning to pace.  “You’re making an entirely new animal, one based on one of the biggest land predators that Jurassic World has ever managed to successfully clone, and you’re telling me that you’re adding more to it than it already has?!  I understand needing to fill in the gaps in the genome due to degradation, but just creating a genetic recombinant without any consideration of what the resulting genetic structure will dictate is just asking for a hellstorm!” 

“Mr. Hopkins, at this moment, you do not need to know what exactly is in this asset,” Wu said simply before Hopkins, after a month of pent up frustration, snapped. 

“BULLSHIT!” he roared, furious.  “Doctor Wu, when Jurassic World, and by proxy, you, hired me, I was given access to Asset Containment protocols and procedures, and I was given Level Three clearance!  Now, my first and foremost duty Doctor, is to ensure the security and safety of every civilian on this island at any given time, and their safety relies on my knowledge of what we have on this island!  If you won’t tell me what this asset of yours has in its genome, then perhaps you should brush up on your bioethics!” 

Stunned silence filled the air.  For Hopkins, it was a moment for him to realize that he had, without a doubt, damned himself to a fate worse than death.  For Ada, it was a simple matter that she had never, in her young life, seen or felt her parent-Alpha so furious, and Wu was simply quiet on the other end of the phone. 

“…I’ll… I’ll prepare Beta-Two for processing,” Hopkins said quietly, his thumb inching close to the red button on his phone before Wu cut it. 

“Mr. Hopkins, I cannot tell you over the phone what this asset has,” Wu said in an even tone.  “There are security measures that are in place to deter biomedical espionage.  I can, however, elect to have the files in question delivered to you.  And I will make sure that the paperwork for your… ‘Ada,’ goes through.  Once the paperwork is complete, you are free to take her home.” 

Hopkins blinked.  And then he slapped himself in the face to make sure he wasn’t asleep.  “I’m sorry, but, uh, can you repeat that?” 

“Your raptor will be ready to take home in four hours Mr. Hopkins,” Wu said simply.  “And perhaps we can sit down and discuss business over a meal if and when you aren’t quite so… busy.”  Hopkins looked over at Ada and gulped. 

“Umm, sure, uh, I’ll see when my next opening is,” he commented.  “If, uh, that’s all…?” 

“You will not be facing disciplinary charges at this time Lieutenant,” Wu said.  “I hope you have a good day.” 

Hopkins lowered his phone as he looked at Ada.  “Well then, how about we get you ready to get the hell out of here, eh?” he asked her.  Ada chirped as she lunged at her toy, and started chewing on it.  “…I’ll take that as a yes.”