PANIC ROOM • KENJI KON

V. Gollum Makes A Guest Appearance In The Form Of Eva

Eva kept her hands close to herself as she entered the room. If she were to break anything, hell, she may as well just not return home.

"It's so shiny in here!" Sammy exclaimed.

"This is a rare window into the park's inner workings," Roxie said. "Not just anyone can come here, you know."

"Yep, this is where the magic happens," Dave agreed. He turned his attention to an asian man with dark hair and a bitter face. "Doc Wu-Wu! Guess who's ready to have a blastocyst from the pastocyst? The mitosis with the mosisis! We're ready for some chromosomes, my bro-mosome. Wu, there it is!" Dr. Wu hurried away from him. "I can do more."

"Please don't," Roxie begged.

Eva turned to the others, who had spread through the lab. Brooklynn was videoing some woman as she worked, Sammy was playing with a chunk of amber, and Yaz and Ben were overlooking one of the egg incubators. Eva zoned in on a large eyeball sitting in a petri dish.

Fuck, she wanted to touch it, but her higher powers would not let her act on her impulse thoughts.

She noticed a few feet away, Brooklynn had begun to video Dr. Wu as he talked about the process of creating dinosaurs.

Sammy came up behind Eva, gasping. "Woah, eyeball! Ooh!" She ran up to the monitors on the wall, "Dr. Wu, what's that?"

"Tree frog DNA. Unfortunately, I—"

Sammy gasped again as a cart of bones was wheeled past them. "What's that?"

"Siberian mammoth remains extracted for—"

Sammy ran over to a window, pressing herself against it. "Ooh, what's down that hall?"

Eva bit her tongue, slowly backing away from Sammy.

Dr. Wu approached her, "My private office. It's restricted."

Eva gave one last curious glance to him before heading over to an egg incubator. One of the eggs began to rattle.

Dave called the others over, "Guys, come look! I think one of these eggs is about to hatch."

The other campers gathered around, watching as the egg developed a crack that ran around the top.

"That's not possible," Dr. Wu said. "That ankylosaurus has only been incubating for ten weeks."

The dinosaur pushed the bottom of the shell out, revealing a slimy tail.

"Ohhh! Oh, ew, ew, ew!" Ben cried. He jumped when a bit of the goop from the egg landed on his arm. "Ew, get it off me! Get it off me!"

Glistening blue-green emerged from the egg. The top of the shell still covered its head, and it rolled off the table and into Ben's hands. Ben removed the shell, revealing the cutest baby dinosaur Eva had ever seen. Seriously, her view for favorite dinosaur was being rivaled by this baby ankylosaurus.

"Cool! One of its head bumps is bigger than the other!" Brooklynn zoomed in on the baby dinosaur.

"Asymmetry? In my lab?" Dr. Wu approached them.

"She's fucking adorable!" Eva muttered in her Gollum voice.

"She's so... tiny."

"But she won't stay tiny for long, right?" Roxie asked Dr. Wu.

"That's the idea. All the dinosaurs go through an accelerated growth cycle. They're supposed to incubate for thirteen weeks with no noticeable defects, but apparently this one slipped through."

"Is it really a defect if she's fucking adorable?" Eva asked. She glanced up from the ankylosaurus to see Dr. Wu staring at her. "S-sir." Eva lowered her head.