man destroys god || i. malcolm

18

Their leader quickly took over and began treating their small group as his own subordinates. Aria didn't like that one bit.

Just another idiot egomaniac to treat her as lesser than. She decided not to listen to him at all.

"Our communication equipment's been destroyed."

Aria and Nick's doing, which she was proud of.

The man, Roland, continued. "And if your radio and satellite phone were in those trailers..."

"They were." Nick answered, gritting his teeth.

"Then we're stuck here, and stuck together, thanks to you people."

"Alright, it's not our fault you messed with the ecosystem and brought the Rexes away from their habitat to our base camp." Aria shoved past Nick and got in the man's face.

"Yeah, we came here to watch," Nick added. "You came to strip-mine the place."

More men started to argue with them, men that Aria couldn't bother with figuring out the names of. She recognized one of them as Hammond's nephew, Peter Ludlow.

"It's a looter mentality, all you care about is what you can take. You have no rights."

Nick, always the environmentalist. Aria could've smiled at her best friend's passion if she wasn't just as fired up.

"Extinct animals have no rights. It exists because we made it. We patented it. We own it."

"Who the hell is we? If I recall, the credit for this hellhole is John Hammond, not his goddamn nephew. Inheriting InGen doesn't make it your idea." Aria growled.

"Are you looking for a problem?" Nick asked, as a man approached him, getting right in his face.

"And I found you, didn't I?" He responded, smirking slightly.

Nick shoved him, catching him off guard. Everyone sprang into action, pulling the men off of each other. Roland got in between them, frowning. "I know you." He pointed at Nick. "You're that Earth First bastard. With your little Greenpeace girl."

"Earth First, what's that?" Another man asked.

"Professional saboteurs."

"As if you aren't." Aria lunged, but Ian grabbed her arms.

"Two fights in one minute isn't exactly what we're going for," He whispered in her ear. He didn't let go, even after she'd calmed down. He moved his arm to her shoulders, pulling her to him protectively. He had Kelly's hand in his other.

"Knock it off!" Sarah ran in between Roland and Nick, stopping their argument. "Moving the baby to our camp may have changed the adults' perceived territory. We have to move right now."

"To where? Our boat, their airlift?" Nick asked snarkily. Aria patted his shoulder in warning. He was too riled, they were never going to get these guys to let them stay together.

Peter Ludlow spoke up, taking a map out of his pocket. "All right. There's a communications center here near the old operations building. Everything ran on geothermal power. It was never meant to need replenishing. If we can get here, we can send a radio call to the airlift."

"How far is the village?" Aria cut in as they discussed the radio frequency.

"A day's walk, maybe more," He parted from the group and crouched down to pick something from the ground. "That's not the problem."

"What is? What is the problem?"

"Velociraptors."

Aria groaned. Of course there were velociraptors here as well. The main problem of the Nublar incident. She'd not encountered one then, and she didn't plan on it now.

"Their nesting sites are in the island's interior, which is why we planned to keep to the outer—"

"Wait, wait, wait. What's a... veloc..." A man asked, clearly on his way to being drunk. The only thing Aria had seen him do so far was be stupid and drink from his flask.

"You people really know absolutely nothing, don't you? You're not prepared, you have zero knowledge on the creatures of this island!" Aria's voice grew louder towards the end of her outburst.

The man who'd spoken started to walk towards her, not exactly happy with her words. "You little..."

"That's close enough." She reached a hand out to stop him. He didn't stop until he'd bumped into her hand. She shoved him back. He wasn't about to back off, so Ian stepped in front of her. "She's not kidding."

The rest of the group was trying to ignore the skirmish, and had already defined what a Velociraptor was and the dangers behind them. Sarah added the T-Rexes to their list of potential predators, and InGen's resident cowboy paleontologist argued with her. As if he knew anything about Tyrannosaurus Rex habits.

"I say we head for the village," Ludlow interrupted.

"We could, uh, head back down to the lagoon." Ian offered, keeping his hand on Kelly's shoulder.

"And do what, sit out in the open, next to a heavily used water source?"

Roland obviously shot down the idea immediately. Aria wasn't sure she'd leave the island without shooting the man herself. God, he was horrible.

The group walked all night, through the rain. Nick was an instigator, always had been, so he left Aria's side to go bother Roland.

Aria hovered by Ian and Kelly. She wanted to be in the company of the only other person here who truly knew her (save for Nick, who was busy). And maybe she was hoping he'd kiss her again. She liked it when he did that.

The rain soaked through her clothes, her bag, and her camera was surely waterlogged by then. Damn. She pushed her wet hair out of her face and behind her ear. She also stuck by Ian because she worried that if she talked to any of the InGen men she'd probably end up hitting one of them.

"I genuinely can't believe how stupid these guys are," Aria muttered to Ian, who laughed quietly. She looked up, her face falling slightly as she locked eyes with him. The mischievous sparkle had left his eyes long ago, a sign of his recent depression.

Kelly was eyeing Aria cautiously. Aria paused, trying to puzzle out why. She'd met Kelly a number of times, so why was she suddenly acting different?

Sarah called out to Ian, conveniently drawing him away from the other two.

Kelly, ever like her father, spoke her thoughts clearly. "You broke up with my dad. Why?"

Oh, boy. This was not a conversation Aria wanted to have with his daughter, and the reasons were less than appropriate for a middle-schooler to hear. 'I was having a good time dating and fucking him, but then he started talking about our future. With his legal issues and our age difference, I wasn't really sure I wanted to be an ex-Mrs. Malcolm.'

Yeah, right. No way she'd tell Kelly that.

"We were at different places. I'm younger than him. It wasn't going to work." Aria tried to condense it as much as possible, but Kelly was a smart kid, she'd work it out either way.

"Then he kissed you. Which was gross, by the way. Why'd he do that?"

Wow, this girl was too curious. Aria took a deep breath. "I don't know, Kelly. I hadn't spoken to him in two years before this week."

Kelly smiled mischievously. "I think he likes you. Still."

Aria fought a smile, gently pushing Kelly's shoulder. "Whatever."

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me when kelly is an icon and the moment