Jurassic World: I Am Simon Masrani

New Herbivore enclosure

The Pachy herbivore enclosure was finally quiet.

There was no buzzsaws, no surveyors, no Carlos shouting about slope angles or irrigation pipes. Just the sound of warm morning wind, pushing through cut grass and a few last trees that hadn't yet been marked for removal.

The space felt different now.

Carlos stood just outside the fencing line, one foot up on a crate, coffee in hand, watching as the last of the narrow pines along the west ridge were pulled out.

"You know," he muttered, "we build everything like a jungle first, and then now this animal wants it cleared again."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why is that a problem?"

"Not really." He took a long sip. "Its just ironic. We spent like two weeks designing terrain cover, hiding elevation changes, planting all these cute little shrubs… and now Marin says all of it needs to go, are we babysitting this bulldozer with legs now."

Marin, walking up from behind with her field tablet, gave him a look. "Its not a bulldozer. Just a deeply misunderstood animal with very specific spatial preferences."

Carlos nodded toward the open enclosure. "We gave that little runt, three acres of custom mulch and a personal jogging track."

"And also a shallow water patch," she added, tapping her tablet, "with shade cover, in case he starts overheating."

"Great, it has its own Hydration system and landscaping," he muttered. "We've basically built him a wellness retreat."

Marin smiled faintly, the way she always did when she won an argument with science. "Pachycephalosaurs use space like it's a language. They need room to posture, circle, and display their feelings to the herd. They won't run unless they feel like they have enough room."

"And why the leaf litter?" I asked.

"For comfort and behavioral stability. It softens their steps and gives them somewhere to dig."

I nodded slowly. The layout made sense now.

New Viewing Gallery

Claire was already on the gallery when we arrived, pacing slowly along the railing, with her earpiece still connected to the ops channel.

The new east-facing platform overlooked the wide central run of the new pachy enclosure.

"The Structural load's still within range," she said, eyes on the screen. "Emergency lift systems are responsive, and all the required failover protocols are also in place. But I still don't love the idea of this animal having, this much exposure before we've tested the asset in a live habitat."

She stopped walking as we approached. "The viewing galleries are good, But they're also vulnerable. And we're not dealing with a known species template anymore."

Avery stood nearby with her arms folded, scanning the fence perimeter through her sunglasses. She didn't say anything, but the tension in her posture was obvious.

"This enclosure stays off-limits for now," I said. "Its for Internal staff only, No VIP tours, press or board visits. Not until we've logged a full behavioral baseline."

Claire nodded slowly. "That's Good then, because Good containment buys us more time while the Public exposure takes it away."

She looked down toward the clearing, where Carlos' crew had just finished the last bit of fence reinforcement and then back at me.

"And time is the one thing we don't get back if something goes wrong."

Her tone had shifted, it was Less corporate polish and more realism.

She was still managing everything, still planning ten steps ahead, but the idealism in her was thinning.

It was being replaced, maybe, by something stronger, by Experience.

The Pachycephalosaurus Hatchery

The shell cracked slowly.

Not all at once, just a thin, split down the top.

Then something gave a tiny push from inside, just enough to flex the crack wider.

A soft beak peeked through, followed by a flash of movement from inside.

For a second, all everyone saw was a blinking eye. A Big, Black and Curious Eye.

Then something small wiggled inside the egg.

A second later, the egg fell apart in two halves, and the little Pachycephalosaurus tumbled out.

'It is smaller than I expected.' Simon thought.

The baby Pachy was Rounder and Almost too cute for a dinosaur.

Its head was oversized, the dome still soft and a little squishy, covered in thin fuzz.

Its limbs were short but sturdy, toes splayed awkwardly as it stood.

It blinked a few times, then let out a tiny sneeze that made Jia gasp from behind the glass.

And then slowly it stood, on its own.

It stood Wobbly for maybe half a second, but then became steady eventually.

The Little pachy lifted its tail for balance, then tilted its head one way… then the other… like it was trying to understand what kind of world it had just landed in.

It sniffed the soft padding under its feet, gave it a curious nudge, then turned in a slow little circle.

Then it chirped. Just a small squeaky one, like a rubber toy buried under a blanket.

Carlos, who was leaning against the far glass, burst out laughing.

"Oh come on," he said. "That's not a dinosaur. That's a puppy in disguise."

The hatchling kept turning, stepping in slow, careful loops, its big feet making soft squeaking sounds on the floor. Then it spotted one of the warm heat lamps in the corner of the chamber and waddled over, and gently curled up beside it like a sleepy house pet and gave a tiny yawn.

It was just a tired little dinosaur that looked like it had already decided the world was pretty nice.

Claire, standing behind me, whispered, "...That's illegal levels of cute."

And for the first time in a long while, no one said anything else.

We just stood there, watching this impossible little creature, be completely at peace.

It felt Like maybe, just maybe, we'd finally done something right.

Genetics Lab – Late Morning

Kamal sat hunched over a workstation, scrolling through protein signature patterns, while Jia leaned over the adjacent terminal with a microscope unit pushed forward and locked in.

She didn't say anything for a while. Just stared through the lens, her brow slowly furrowing.

"Did you find something?" Kamal asked without looking up.

Jia didn't answer right away.

Then she exhaled, quietly, like she didn't want to spook the slide beneath the glass.

"I think this one's different."

Kamal finally turned, interest flickering. "Different how?"

"Look at the cross-vein density," she said, sliding the microscope toward him. "Not just its preservation, it's the way the blood film fossilized around the insect's proboscis. The organic residue is still embedded in the resin's oxygen chamber."

Kamal squinted into the viewer and after a moment, he leaned back, surprised.

"This isn't a mosquito."

Jia nodded, smiling faintly now. "Yes its a midge. The entire amber strand was collected by a field team near the Ankaratra volcanic shelf, in Madagascar. It wasn't even an excavation site, it was there when a field scan team was mapping terrain for geothermal access. They triggered a ground collapse and found an entire vein of sap-covered midges in a volcanic fracture zone."

"Lucky drop, I guess," Kamal muttered.

"Its more than lucky," she said. "The mineral density sealed them faster than traditional amber, It's like a natural vacuum chamber."

She paused.

"One of the midges had blood traces, It was Uncoagulated. We ran a molecular match scan on it through Wu's old baseline archive."

Kamal blinked. "And?"

She looked over at him.

"It's Velociraptor mongoliensis."

For a second, the room went completely still.

Then the door behind them hissed open.

Wu entered, coat folded neatly over one arm, his posture calm, it was the same face they'd seen a dozen times over video feed, only now in person.

For a second, both Kamal and Jia froze.

Now he was standing three feet away, eyes already locked on the sequencing terminal.

"Did you run it through the machine again, just to be sure?" he asked.

Jia nodded. "Three times in total. There were No mutations. No data drift, just a clean sample."

Wu stepped up beside the terminal and looked down at the rotating DNA string on-screen.

Then at the sequencing readout to the left.

His eyes flicked quickly, scanning base pairs, cross-maps, and protein chain markers like someone reading music.

He didn't say anything for a while.

Then finally:

"That's impossible."

Kamal raised an eyebrow. "And yet…"

"It shouldn't be this complete," Wu said. "Even mosquito vectors are usually incomplete by the time they're this fossilized. And this isn't a standard recovery channel. It bypasses most of our archived dig templates."

Jia folded her arms. "And yet here it is."

Wu stared at the data a little longer.

Then his tone shifted, just slightly.

"Send it to the replication queue," he said. "High-priority flag. I want to pre-screen the degradation path before anything moves forward though."

Kamal frowned. "High priority? You sure."

Wu didn't look up from the screen. "Yes and we are to proceed very carefully. If this is what it appears to be, it's not just a genetic template. It's a control variable. Something we can't afford to get wrong."

5 days later

Late Afternoon, Ranger Post

The A.C.U. team arrived just after lunch, two transport trucks, a mobile command trailer, and eight personnel in black tactical uniforms, each moving like they'd trained for a war.

They didn't even stop to talk to anybody.

They unloaded methodically, while speaking in tight clipped phrases, and hauling gear I recognized from containment manuals but had never seen in person, they had tranquilizer rigs, net launchers, high-frequency disorientation canisters.

This wasn't the usual ranger gear that we had and thats why we had to call them.

Avery met me near the platform overlooking the Gallimimus range.

"They're mainly here because we've hit critical mass," she said without preamble. "16 animals across two enclosures. we have Paras, Gallimimus, now Pachycephalosaurus and more species on the way. My Rangers are stretched thin. And they're not trained for what's coming."

I didn't argue. I didn't need to.

She continued. "The original ranger model works when you've got a few herbivores and wide eyes. But we're on the edge of bringing in animals that are smart, they can also coordinate and hunt. and when that happens, speed and discipline matter more than familiarity."

I nodded once. "Are you talking about the Raptors?"

"Yes, I heard from Dr. Wu, They're the reason why I pulled the trigger and called the ACU," she said. "They change the whole game."