THE WORLD IS DYING.
Global warming, lack of resources, and the collapse of authority across all seven continents has caused worldwide strife. People are willing to do anything to survive.
The solution? Project ERAA, humanity's last effort to...
Of course, that was only outwardly. Inside, Ichabod would've happily disposed of Xeon and his idiotic comrades just like he'd done so with Amelia and that doctor, Royson. Temporarily, he reminded himself. But then he wouldn't have a workforce, and all his hard work and planning would be for nothing.
Yes. My planning. Even if Robert wouldn't admit it, Ichabod'd been the one to plan this special investment.
"Get me into the ERAA mission, daddy dearest, and you'll become a billionaire the second we step into the Jurassic."
"You do understand the stakes of this mission, yeah?" Ichabod adopted a more casual tone, feeling his façade beginning to seep deep inside. That was good. Let him store away the anger — just for a little while — and release it when it was truly needed.
Xeon shuffled, and the eight marines who had gone after him like headless chickens looked just as awkward. It had been easy to win them over; that Jacobs guy less so. Ichabod could respect that, though.
He did like a challenge every once in a while; but not one that would ruin everything that the Institution Of Knowledge had trained him for.
Nothing personal, he reminded the stupefied American faces before him internally. Just politics.
"By the end of this," Ichabod declared, believing in it with every fiber of his being, "all of you will be rich beyond compare. You'll be able to live in places like New England, where life is well as long as you can pay your way."
While Xeon looked reinvigorated, Ichabod moved closer, a few inches shorter but feeling the swell of confidence in his veins. They were almost eye-to-eye.
"But only if you do your job," Ichabod uttered quietly.
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"We'll be safe here," Lale declared, his voice sapped of energy. Climbing up to the pan where the waterfall fell from had been draining, and had given him too much time to think.
The what-ifs were infinite, and there were too little solid facts. Lale wanted to cling to what he knew, but their presumed safety was not one of them.
One; Ichabod had betrayed them. After the shock of nearly dying had worn off, he remembered what had previously niggled at him — that all the marines that had started shooting had been a part of Ichabod's lunch meeting before.
Meaning Ichabod had tried to recruit me, before the launch. Lale had realized with a chill across his spine.
The water above the thermal vent was quite cold, but the air was clammy with the surrounding heat. The other recruits were exhausted, even though it was just little more than an hour since they had arrived at the lake in the first place.
