Chapter Text
It was a dark and stormy night.
Well, most nights here were. Perhaps deciding on a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean wasn't the best place for a laboratory, let alone a park, but it would pay off. It had to. This was going to be the greatest park in the entire world, if they could at least get it off the ground. Lord knows it hadn't been easy so far. Finding an island for sale was actually the easiest part of the entire endeavour - when money was involved, adding a few extra zeros always seemed to smooth out any rough edges on those crusty old businessmen. He could deal with businessmen. Building the park wasn't all that bad either. Zoos and amusement parks already existed - it wasn't hard to find someone to design and build it all for him. Even the weather, as bad as it was, didn't phase him tonight. The thunder and wind could crash against the windows as hard as it wanted to. What mattered was inside the building. The rest of the world could wait.
John Hammond sat in front of the nesting table, eyes locked on the single lonely egg that lay there. The science had been the hard part of all of this. Getting it to catch up to be able to create the vision he had in his head... Henry Wu had seemed like a miracle when he signed on. Figuring out the genome sequencing, the strategies on embryo transfer, the proper conditions for incubation, that was Wu's job. All of that was controllable. The only thing in this park that they never had any control over, despite all of the trial and error and efforts and money, was if it would work. The only thing they could never guarantee was if it would hatch.
The egg gave a loud peep and rocked once. A small crack extended from the hole that had been pipped two days before. Hammond clenched his fist, not daring to look away. The thunder crashed again.
The first few tests were total failures, as with any new scientific experiment. Nothing grew. Three dozen eggs in, one finally started to show veining. Then it quit two days later, the veins falling into a blood ring. Even though that egg had died, that was the egg that started it all. That's when Hammond knew it was all possible. All of this would pay off. A few months after that the first one would actually hatch - a puppy-sized Triceratops. He had hoped for something smaller to be the first, but it had worked. The whole thing wasn't an experiment anymore. It was real.
Unfortunately with genomes, you never really know what you get. Henry Wu could make the sequence, put it in the eggs, but they were never able to know what was growing until it hatched. Each one was a surprise, and each time he would be here, at the table, as eager as a child waiting for Christmas morning. This was a completely new dinosaur. What would it be? Would it be small? Big? Herbivorous? Would it survive? Would it be a dinosaur they even knew about yet? The desire to find out was torture. He wanted to rip apart the shell and find out faster, but he had to be patient. He always had to be patient.
"Anything yet?"
Hammond started and looked up as Wu walked in, two cups of coffee in hand. Goodness, he hadn't even heard the door open. He sighed and shook his head, leaning an elbow on the table and putting his chin in his hand. "You would think after all this time it would be easier to wait it out."
"Well, she is taking longer than I had expected. Most of the time it's only a day or so between pipping and zipping." Wu passed one of the coffee mugs to Hammond, hauling up a chair to take a seat beside him. He leaned forward and peered at the egg just as it shuddered again. Another crack appeared. "Looks like she's starting to zip now."
"What did the x-rays show?"
"Theropod for sure. She's in good position. But the limbs are overlapping the skull so I can't see what species. Not a dromaeosaur, there's no sickle claw." Wu sat back, taking a sip of his coffee. Hammond did the same. "You might as well relax, John. You can't rush these things."
Both men sat in silence for the next hour, eyes trained on the egg. Every so often it would shudder, peep and the crack would spread a few more millimetres. It took close to an hour for the zip to spread fully around the egg, and when the crack finally met itself it stilled. Hammond leaned forward, unable to keep himself from grinning ear to ear. It was time.
"Come on, little one. Just a bit further. Come on."
The egg wriggled and a few more very excited peeps came from it. Another moment or two of silence and then with one big stretch, the little beast broke free of the shell and wriggled her way out. Hammond's grin vanished, a look of utter shock coming over his face. Wu's expression mirrored him, leaning in and moving the shell away to get a better look. There was no way. There was no way. Surely with all of the hardships and difficulties they had faced so far this had to be a trick. There was simply no way on Earth that he could have gotten this lucky this early on. It was impossible. It had to be. Hammond reached forward with one hand, gently stroking the hatchling's head. She was wet, her downy feather coat soaked through, but she was warm. And she was alive. He couldn't believe it. The touch roused the baby into action. It took a few moments of peeping, rolling and stretching to get her legs out of the shell properly. That seemed to tire her out, and she had to take a quick rest. Still, both men were silent. The hatchling rolled herself onto her belly and sat up, stretching her mouth wide with a yawn and blinking up at the humans. She peeped, yawned again and lay her head back down.
Hammond finally let out a breathy laugh and leaned back in his chair, bringing his hand to his forehead. Even though she was tiny, and not at all what he would have expected, the shape of her head was unmistakable. His other hand came up and he covered his face for a moment. Amazing. Another breath and then he started to laugh, letting his hands fall and looking over at Wu's grinning face. This would change everything. This single tiny dinosaur was going to change the entire park. It really was going to all work out.
The sound of their laughter made the hatchling jerk awake, peeping excitedly along with them. She did her best to stand up, staggering in the nest and flopping back down a moment later. Hammond felt tears on his face. Usually he managed to remain composed, especially in front of employees, but this was too big of an event to bother worrying about appearances and reputation. He picked up the baby in his hands. She was lighter than he expected, despite being about as big as a large chicken. She seemed calm and curious, nibbling lightly at his hands and then her downy feathers. Hammond shook his head in disbelief.
He looked at Wu.
"We have a T. rex."
Within an hour of hatching she had dried off. Her downy coat was a gorgeous brown with lighter stripes running through it, similar to the other theropods when they first hatched. By the time Hammond and Wu had finished celebrating and fussing and examining her, she was walking around the table and tried to jump off of it. They placed her in one of the nursery rooms, where she settled down for the night in a comfy little straw nest all of her own. Hatching out of an egg is exhausting. The first day was a cycle of sleeping, grooming, pecking at things around the room, rinse and repeat. When the nursery staff came in and were introduced, they affectionately nicknamed the hatchling Rexy.
The first few weeks were a celebration. There was a total re-branding of all of the logos, an overhaul in the park plan. Now that they had this, they had to make it the main attraction. It would have been ridiculous not to. When you have a miracle like this, you take every bit you can get to make it work for you. This is one of the most famous dinosaurs ever! They had to use this to their advantage.
The hatchling, of course, had no idea the fuss that everyone was making over her. She was more preoccupied with figuring out the usual baby things. Walking she figured out right away. Grooming was easy. Running took some trial and error but by the end of the second day she was doing excited little zoomies around the room. The third day she started to get hungry, tugging at the staff's clothing and squeaking adamantly. At first, thawed rats and pieces of beef or pork worked great. But a new problem rose by the end of the first week.
All of the animals in the park were designed with an accelerated growth rate to allow them to reach adult size fast enough to display, but Rexy grew faster than anyone expected. She doubled in size within her first week. By the end of the month she was almost as long as the room was wide and had to be moved to a larger room with an outdoor run to start acclimatizing her to the outdoor temperatures. When she was about six months old, she was moved to a fully outdoor enclosure. At this point she was over ten feet long from nose to tail, but her temperament didn't grow with her. Rexy stayed friendly and amicable with the nursery staff for most of her first year, enjoying their attention and affection. At six months she came past their waists, able to stand up tip toe to nuzzle their chins and tug playfully at long hair.
It was when she turned a year old that her behaviour began to shift. It was subtle at first. The playful nips and nibbles began to get rougher, and she started to try and wrestle with the staff. This didn't pan out well, considering she was already fifteen feet long and close to 400lbs. It was when she got overexcited and accidentally bit off a hand that the decision was made to limit staff contact for their own safety. They would still come around and talk to her and play however they were able with a fence between, but no one was allowed into her enclosure without someone else with them. Even if she didn't mean any harm, she was simply too big and too rough.
Rexy adjusted well, all things considered. In her full enclosure she was able to roam the jungle forest and chase birds and smaller wildlife to her heart's content. In hindsight, cutting off direct contact when they did was a good decision. Rexy grew extremely fast after her first year. While in nature a Tyrannosaur would grow to full size in roughly 18 years, she did so in only five.
And it was in her fifth year that the visitors came to the park.
The high-pitched whirring of the vehicles coming down the track woke her from her sleep. Rexy lifted her head from the forest floor, watching through the ferns as the green jeeps pulled up to her enclosure fence and stopped. A low rumble echoed from her throat as she pushed off and stood up. Forty feet long. Almost nine tons. Standing thirteen feet tall and armed with sixty serrated teeth, some almost a foot long, glinting in the sunlight as her jaws spread wide with a yawn. The jeeps didn't move, and neither did she, watching them from her concealed spot in the treeline.
The queen of the dinosaurs was awake.