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"Owen, right?"
Owen Grady looks up. He is sitting in the lobby of his hotel waiting for Claire, Maisie, and the boys. They had planned to go see the sights today, but it was proving hard and tedious to convince the children to come along still.
"Yeah," he nods at the brown-haired man standing next to him. "You're Billy, right?"
Billy Brennan laughs, taking one of the empty seats at the table. "Yup, that's me."
"We didn't get to talk much at the dinner last night." Owen leans back in his chair.
"Eh." Billy waves his hand dismissively. "There were a lot of people." He smiles at the former raptor-trainer. "Anyway, glad I found you this morning. I just gotta say: I'm a big fan of what you did on Isla Nublar. You know, during the World incident. And the raptor training." He shakes his head. "I would never be able to do that. Especially not after Sorna."
Owen shakes his finger at Billy. "Yeah, that reminds me. How do you know Dr. Grant? I mean, everyone knows Lex and Tim Murphy from the original Jurassic Park. And Kelly was on Nublar, but also was in the news with the San Diego incident. Then Eric made it pretty clear he was on Sorna. But I have to say, I've never really heard of that second Isla Sorna incident."
Billy shrugs. "I know Eric is pretty upset that it didn't get more coverage, but I honestly don't think it had a major impact on anything. Everyone was pretty used to dinosaurs running around by time we went there."
"So you were on Isla Sorna with Eric?" Owen has tried all morning to find old news about this second Isla Sorna incident that Eric talked about. According to Eric, the military was called in! Yet he is finding nothing about this incident.
Then again, dinosaur news is everywhere now. It isn't too surprising that it is so hard to find information from almost 25 years ago. Dinosaurs have become old news through the last three years - as common as bison, lion, and shark attacks.
"Oh yeah." Billy exhaled forcefully, seemingly deflating into the chair. "See, Eric had gotten trapped on Isla Sorna after some sort of parasailing accident with a family friend. His parents decided to hire Dr. Grant, incorrectly assuming he'd been to that island. Grant told me I had to come since I got him mixed up with the Kirby's. The rest is history."
Owen chuckles. He waves his phone before tossing it lightly onto the table between them. "A history I can't find anywhere online."
Billy shrugs. "Well, it wasn't some dinosaur breakout, and it wasn't some big theme park gone south. It had already happened twice by then and there wasn't much in the way of big-company consequences. Not like what happened with Ingen or the Masrani Corporation - definitely not like BioSyn."
"To have gone all the way to a dinosaur infested island, you must've really loved dinosaurs."
"Yeah, I guess. It was more like I wanted to be clued in to what Dr. Grant had experienced."
"You must really admire him. You were his student once, right?"
The man nods. He is quiet for nearly a minute, just staring off into nothingness. A sadness comes into his eyes. "Yeah. I did admire him. I mean, I do." He sighs. "It's hard to explain."
Owen sits up a little straighter. "Something happen on that island?"
"I just did something stupid. When I got out of the hospital, I tried going back to the site and to the classes, but he just seemed so distant when I was around. I couldn't take the disappointment. So, I kinda just," -he shrugs again- "left."
"Hey, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life. One of 'em was to think I could train raptors."
"From what I understand you had those raptors almost literally eating out of the palm of your hand," Billy laughs.
Owen laughs too. "I did. I really did. I had a little too much respect for them to get that far, though. But there were a few times that I thought about it."
"So," Billy leans forward. The sadness seems to drain from his face, though Owen can feel its presence still. "What got you into dinosaurs?"
"Well, funny story." Owen can just imagine what Grant would do if he knew this story. He told Grant he was a fan because of his book when, in truth, he was a fan because of him. "Grant's the one who got me into dinosaurs."
"No kidding?"
Owen shakes his head. "I was just a kid and, for some reason, my class or my parents decided to go on a field trip to one of his dig sites. This was before Isla Nublar, mind you. They had just used their imaging device to locate the complete skeleton of a baby raptor and Grant was talking about it. Like the dumb kid I was, I opened my mouth and said raptors were just giant turkeys."
"No!" Billy starts to laugh.
"Oh yeah." Owen nods, chuckling himself. Here was one of those stupid things he'd done. "Grant had this," -he holds his hands up, trying to imitate the raptor claw he is describing- "life-size raptor claw that he carried around. He terrified me with that thing when he told me how raptors hunted and were likely to start eating you when you were still alive. But I never forgot when he said, 'So you know, try to show a little respect.'" He taps his finger against his temple. "Never forgot that little bit of wisdom. Came to me every day I was in the pen with my raptors."
Billy smirks. "How'd Alan react when you told him?"
"I didn't tell him, actually…" Owen rubs the back of his head. He has trained raptors, he was in the military, but it felt a little too awkward to tell the old doctor he was a fan because the doctor had scared him witless with his talk of how dinosaurs hunted you. It felt especially awkward to tell him this while being hunted by dinosaurs - and they had just never gotten back around to it. "I told him I was a fan because I read his book."
"Fair enough," Billy laughs.
Owen sits back again, feeling a little better about his choices. "I wonder if Grant still has that raptor claw?"