Jurassic Park: The Lord of Sorna (Amalgam'verse)

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Early 1994, 333 Kilometers from Costa Rica, Isla Sorna
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Dr. Henry Wu recoiled away from his workstation and rubbed at his eyes. Inevitability, that was something that seemed to frustrate and antagonize him more than anything. No matter how hard you work, no matter what precautions you take, some things will just always happen. The sun will rise, rain will fall, and things die. Right now though, the worst part about it was seeing a slow death. He looked out of his window at the embryonic compound as the memories all flooded back to him.

He’d seemed to have been on such an upswing since the 1980s. Prodigy undergraduate thesis at MIT, direct apprenticeship under Dr. Atherton, letter of recommendation from Dr. Shirigami before his passing, noticed by the leader of a mass mega corporation for an astounding project.

Wu always liked John Hammond, shrewd a businessman as he was. The old man carried such a drive, such an energy and good will that one couldn’t help but smile at him even as he talked about doing the impossible. And yet, they did it. After an initial plan in San Diego, location scouting found them not one, but two splendid islands in the Pacific.

Isla Nublar was grand as it was proud as it basked in the cloud covered shade of Mt. Sibo, but Isla Sorna was the real monument. Nublar made for a lovely showroom for the main attraction, Jurassic Park; whereas ‘Site B’ as it was labeled would be the research facility and factory floor. And ever since the late 1980s he’d been toiling and working. Through multiple failures before a momentous first success, containing and negating a prison outbreak that could have spoiled it all, devoting time and energy into reinventing and improving on past versions. It took him months to finally patch up the Deinonychus genome such that the result wasn’t some scaly freak driven half-rampant by Carnosaur genes, and instead producing in a feathery, dark creature favorably compared to a saurian or avian black panther.

In the back of his mind in 1993, Wu wondered if the Nublar incident wouldn’t have been as horrific if he had managed to work with Muldoon on getting the scaly, insane raptors put down and replaced with the more controllable versions. Unfortunately the one thing Wu didn’t like about John was his stubborn refusal to see any of his creatures harmed, even if they were mutated butchers. But, alteration or not, people died and Jurassic Park did as well. Isla Nublar was overrun with the prehistoric within a few hours and abandoned within a few days. He could feel a twinge of regret despite having initially felt some small measure of satisfaction in knowing that that annoying, condescending, misanthropic witch Sorkin was done in by her own hand. But, as much as he hated to admit it, he found the lab work to be lonely without her. And the lab work continued for another year on Isla Sorna.

Why? Wu wasn’t really sure.

Maybe there was some hope Isla Nublar could be resettled, maybe the aging Hammond was in a holding pattern while in talks with the like-minded but much younger Simon Masrani, or maybe the now rapidly aging, on account of stress, old man was just trying to make sure his creations on Isla Sorna were taken care of long as he could with a fully staffed Site B.

The answer finally came when he got a message from Hammond. At face value, it was a simple inquiry about the health of the animals.

But Henry read between the lines.

Hammond was conversing with naturalists and ecologists, asking Wu about the dietary intake of the species. Animals need only two things to survive in the wild, adequate food and water, and mates. Wu was already well aware of the latter part being true from Alan Grant, one of the survivors of Isla Nublar’s incident, telling him about finding a wild nest in the old raptor enclosure.

There was only one logical reason Hammond would be asking about diet, let alone giving Wu an enthusiastic response when Henry told him how the island’s native and imported feral crops were used to feed the herbivores in abundance: The dinosaurs were going to be turned loose, set up their own ecosystem on Isla Sorna like they had on Isla Nublar but on an even bigger scale. Making this place, once it was abandoned by man, a lost world right out of a Conan Doyle book.

One way or another though, Wu saw the writing on the wall. Sooner or later, Isla Sorna would be abandoned. There was only one problem with Hammond’s wish. One Wu was reminded of when he heard a roar he could never forget bellow out from one of the paddocks outside.

Tyrannosaurus rex.

Over six tons of muscle, bone, and killing instinct. Isla Nublar only had one. It was voracious for sure, but it was still only one. That meant only one Tyrant Lizard to avoid, only one to feed, only one to eventually die of disease, prey, falling, or old age. Isla Sorna was much larger than Isla Nublar, but they had cloned several Tyrannosaurus. Discounting the one shipped to Isla Nublar as a star attraction and the one juvenile one that had its own shipment canceled, that still left five healthy, fully grown, sexually mature superpredators to roam about. Even though they couldn’t check, Wu was already speculating two of the five which had taken on a more greenish coloring and had started to grow a throat waddle for a deeper roar were females transitioning to males thanks to that blasted sex changing frog DNA he filled in the genome with. Males that, after spending weeks able to smell the females close by, would immediately do what males and females do to propagate the species. And given the huge genetic diversity between versions and specimens, inbreeding would hardly be a problem even with a small population size.

He ran through the math again.

Two Tyrannosaurus could potentially lay up to five eggs. Assuming even just two of those eggs survived to maturity, they’d go from six Tyrannosaurus to ten in a year. Factoring in their heightened growth rate, as well as the necessary function to get them ready for Isla Nublar quick as possible, those offspring would be able to propagate in about three years. By 1997, they could have tripled, maybe even quadrupled the Tyrannosaurus population count. At that point, even one or two dying from natural causes or disease would be negligible. The island would be overrun by a superpredator within a decade, and that wasn’t even factoring in the harsh population pressure the herbivores would be under from the other carnivores species. Carnotaurus, Allosaurus, Deinonychus, Coelophysis, Dilophosaurus, Ceratosaurus, the damn list just kept going!

Wu smacked a fist on the table. They had been designing a theme park, not a nature preserve! The public largely didn’t want to see multitudes of herbivores outside of some star players, and while InGen had kept the new species they cloned on Sorna regardless of if they fit the wow-factor mold or not; they hadn’t produced large numbers of them. Park goers would want the equivalent of lions and wolves with the occasional elephant and rhinoceros, not deer and horses. And in their quest to fulfill Hammond’s and every child’s dream, they’d cloned far too many carnivores!

The ecosystem would not balance, it would crash. Isla Sorna would be a place of slaughter for several years before it burned itself out. And with Isla Nublar already a tenuous ecosystem due to smaller species population sizes, the dinosaurs had a very real chance of going extinct again.

All his work, all his effort, struggle, toil, all his genius; it’d be for what? A few deaths, millions in losses, wasted years, and self-destruction to his own creations? Wu snarled as his eyes burned. Never, he could never leave a legacy like that! It all had to be for something lasting. Isla Sorna could support a population of dinosaurs, it had the flora, space, and habitats to do so, he just had to do something about keeping the blasted superpredators from exploding on the onset. Keep their numbers from swelling to such a degree they’d outpace the herbivores long enough for everything to stabilize.

Wu growled and gripped at his hair, wincing as he struggled to think of some way towards salvation. The frog DNA, the God Damn frog DNA had both given his creations longevity he hadn’t predicted and now seemed poised to destroy them. He needed something, something to control and contain the carnivores to kill off some and give them competition, just enough until the herbivore populations had built up. He could try to mass produce more herbivores in the time he had left, but that wouldn’t be enough. A safeguard needed to be in place, something that could halt even the superpredators. But there was nothing! Nothing in the fossil record that dined on flesh that could compete with and kill a T.rex! There was news of that other new big meat eater from Argentina, Giganotosaurus, but they hadn’t gotten any amber from that zone so it was out of use and even then it wasn’t a guarantee. From what he'd gotten to study, the super sized Carnosaur would be less a trump card against Tyrannosaurs and more an even 50/50, plus adding yet another predator that specialized in land based prey just make the situation worse! He growled as he thought back to the frog DNA and how something seemingly so innocuous could have caused so much mayhem. If they had just bred an extremely small number of males naturally they wouldn’t be in this situation. If he had just not spliced it in he could ha-......

Wu froze as the second hand of the nearby clock ticked. He heard over six hundred ticks before he finally moved, slumping back into his desk chair.

Splicing.

He’d been splicing in genes of different animals into new genomes for years. None of the dinosaurs were 100% pure of breed but the splicing he’d done thus far were just taking mostly complete dinosaur genomes and patching up a few spots with modern animal genes. If he could do that with modern animals into the ancient and had mapped out the genome to know which genes could go where, he could do whatever he wished to. He could control the outcome, control nature and engineer what he needed. Henry Wu shot up from his chair with a renewed vigor.

One particularly irksome guest Hammond brought to Nublar once said to him how life cannot be controlled and contained. Wu optimistically objected. He was a year older and a good many years worth wiser. And Dr. Henry Wu didn’t deal in absolutes. Control nature or not, he could steer it. Dr. Malcolm would not have the last laugh after all…..

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With the increasingly skeleton crew manpower on Isla Sorna over the last few months, Wu’s last project was kept secret extremely easily. All he had to do was work a few weeks late in the lab with no oversight, bury his progress in a myriad of data entries on mass producing more herbivores so no one would find it and risk objecting to it; and keep the species off the official list. But then, after several failures who either never made it past the divide in the embryo stage or even failed the hatch, it finally seemed to have worked.

It was late at night, storming. Thunder rolled outside, but thankfully Wu was content that the power remained undamaged from the storm on account of its geothermal nature. Rain pinged off the roof as he stayed alone in the hatchery, careful to swipe the egg and replace it with a dud Suchomimus egg when the security camera was looking away. He carried it off to a small, cart mounted structure composed off a glass dome and metal grill surrounding an illuminated artificial nest. A backup incubator he’d pilfered from the storehouse, the egg was nestled cleanly inside. He made to sneak it off to one of the quarantine pens where it would be out of sight by the other geneticists and only tended to by the worker joes who wouldn’t ask too many questions. He did not want this leaking. Merely log it as an ‘accident’ left behind in the future if any noticed was gained, which could be interpreted as anything, and leave it be. After all, he doubted he’d be on Sorna much longer. Hurricane season was coming.

However, fate took an unexpected turn. The dark, speckled egg shook and started to show signs of imminent hatching. Instantly Wu cringed and gauged how quickly he could get to the quarantine pens, especially with the storm outside.

“Damn it!” he cursed when he realized he couldn’t make it in time, let alone risk the survival of the hatchling in the cold rain right out of the egg.

He looked to any other place he could go, but the nursery was out of the question. Too much exposure and if his modifications took, the biologist and veterinarian teams were sure to notice something! With great reluctance and much effort, Wu shoved the kart and incubator, artificial nest and all, into the elevator leading up to his residence. His quarters were large in comparison to the other workers, a living room, small kitchen, guest room that was never used, and his own bed and tiny bathroom. About the size of a hotel room or small apartment, but it was larger than the other worker residence if mostly just by merit of him insisting on being close to his lab resulting in the uppermost level that would have been a storage room being refitted for his use. Aside from jaunts to Isla Nublar before 1993, he’d been effectively living here for almost a decade. And evidently, at least temporarily, something else would too.

The quarters were dim, only lit by some wall lamps and the occasional flash of lightning outside that illuminated through the small window. Placing the incubator in the living room, Wu rushed off to the guest room and started throwing things out of the way to clear it enough so he could stash the incubator inside for at least a day or two. He’d just grabbed an arm full of plastic bins and pillows before he heard it. A crack of an egg shell.

Wu froze as he listened.

Another crack.

Then another.

A tiny, almost pitiful chirp.

Memory of a man he admired flooded back, recalling the last time he truly saw John Hammond happy. It was on Isla Nublar a year ago, when the guests were going to their tour and a Deinonychus egg started to hatch right on time. The elderly billionaire was quick to throw on a pair of sterile gloves and rush to the incubator. He said something Wu was keen to remember, having seen it played out time and time again every time they had a major hatching on Isla Nublar or Sorna.

-”I insist on being here, when they’re born.”-

There was that glow to Hammond again, same one he had when he toured the facilities and always insisted on calling his employees by their given names unless under stress. Dr. Henry Wu could count the times his employer called him anything but “Henry” with one hand. The flash of memory at seeing John eagerly help the baby Deinonychus out of its shell, surrounded by Dr. Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm was as vivid as the dim room before him.

-”They imprint on the first creature they come in contact with.”-

Hammond’s words echoed with the thunder and the weak, scared chirps. Wu had intended to be as hands-off as possible, let nature take its course and fuel his apex predator. But as the seconds wore on, he felt his grip on his cargo loosen after he let it to the ground. Swallowing into his dry throat, Henry Wu slowly walked back into the living room. With a shaking hand, he gripped the top of the incubator.

-Hammond insisted on being present. Those were his dinosaurs, his legacy. I just built them.-

His body tensed, fighting for its own decision.

-This is my legacy.-

He opened the incubator and witnessed a slender snout poke through the shell and squeak. Fitting on a pair of gloves, Wu gently pried a piece of stubborn eggshell aside. He gazed into a pair of tiny lime green eyes that looked back. The chirp was sounded again and the infant fought to free itself of the egg even more, spilling out as a slimy mess on the artificial nest. Gentle hands wiped the embryonic fluid off it, pausing only when it started to sniff at his exposed wrist. Content to just poke at the curiosity, it curled up closer to the extremity for warmth. Feeling its steady breath against his palm, Wu picked the kitten-sized creature up and ignore its surprised wriggling until it finally went still in his hands. He studiously looked it over, inspecting for any deformity, any shortcoming that would make it unsuitable for its mission.

Tyrannosaurus was a mighty beast, but Wu was privy to a little known fact. Dubious new rival in South America aside, there was one predator whom might just have a chance to exceed the Tyrant King. Only the fossils were destroyed some thirty years after their 1915 discovery in Egypt. The species was cataloged but no major study or follow-up specimen could be recovered, leaving it in obscurity. It just so happened they had an amber sample from mid-Cretaceous North Africa that was coming up as relative to the Baryonyx but distinct from it, one whose genes indicated adaptation for supporting great weight. Weight of a superpredator. He took his gamble, but it was worth it for the goal.

A massive, strong creature that would prioritize hunting in the water and make use of the abundant fish in the region without putting as much pressure on herbivores; yet still put the pressure on the carnivores and stunt their growth in numbers. Combining it with a close relative, a seemingly African Baryonyx sample that would later be reclassified as Suchomimus years later for massive arms, modern saltwater crocodile for jaw strength and further focus on marine prey, Allosaurus genes for larger claws, common raven for intelligence and cunning, and a myriad of other genotypes except frog DNA; he’d made a Frankenstein’s Monster in his own thunderstorm. If the natural creature from Egypt stood a chance of defeating a Tyrannosaurus, Wu’s modifications guaranteed it.

But as he gazed upon his sail-backed creation as it held onto his thumb and regarded him curiously, Wu did not feel Viktor Frankenstein’s disgust. He felt awe, excitement, and pride. The creature, a male and the first one Wu ever made on purpose, was totally free of deformity, taking to the modifications and splicing process without flaw. It was perfect. The beast was brown in color overall, with a slight bluish beige color across its neck and back, and crowned in a deep red on its top jaw, face, and sail. It was clearly something entirely new. A bipedal theropod with a crocodilian-like snout, it nevertheless sported a pair of large arms that could reach all the way to its knees and already sported impressive power in how they gripped Wu’s hand so their talons could poke into his glove. The tail swayed as the tilting head’s eyes studied him, clear signs of intelligence beyond mere instinct. Right out of the egg and he could tell it was already bigger than the Tyrannosaurus. Right out of the egg, and it already showed the greatest of promise.

Wu’s pulse quickened and he cracked a elated smile. He’d done it! The control mechanism for the coming Lost World, a beast to grow and rule Isla Sorna as its apex predator and stabilize it in its reign as a keystone species. Even tyrant kings answered to an emperor.

He held his greatest creation aloft, letting the light above wash over it as it gazed at the human holding it.

Sorna would have it’s emperor. Big things had small beginnings. He couldn’t help but think of another famous tale of a rising ruler, even if his final success would not bear that name in time.

“And as for Caesar, kneel down, kneel down and wonder...”

The modified Spinosaurus, the first and only one of its kind, raised its head and chirped as it gazed out the window, catching a glimpse of its future throne, Isla Sorna’s jungles, in the flash of lightning. For now the world was tiny, as was he. And while his infant brain wouldn’t remember it clearly, for his world was tightly focused on just his nest and bizarre looking father; instinct told him all would grow in time.

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Two weeks later and it was time. Wu’s creation, now the size of a large dog, voraciously scarfed down a shipment of fish, throwing his head back to wolf it down before his nostrils picked up a familiar scent. It peered up from the quarantine pen it had been housed in, a zoo-like enclosure with some plants and a pond. Standing on the railing above was his creator, the one instinct and scent told him was a mammal but imprinting identified as his father; despite that connection ebbing away with growth.

Wu sighed and checked his watch, responding to the beeping on his PDA that sounded for one of the final evacuation notices. The hurricane he predicted was on its way, a great big category five wrath of God. Even without the kill switch for the power, the storm was sure to tear into the facilities and free the masses of prehistoric beasts within. The time of man on Isla Sorna was at its final hours.

Wu sighed, “Looks like our time here is over.”

The Spinosaurus tilted its head, more perplexed at human speech than understanding a word he said. It still sounded so bizarre to him, why did his father look, act, smell, and sound so wrong?

“Hurricane is due in the next four hours, I’ll leave the door open for you to get out early. Try not to get eaten out there, I designed you to carry out your purpose at the size of a whale, not the size of a wolf. Even with the grow accelerant, you need to stay in one piece for three years.”

Henry Wu shrugged, uncertainty and even, dare he say some fear stinging at him. In the back of his mind he’d try to figure out some way he could cart the hybrid off site to raise it to maturity and then release it, but the logistics were impossible. Not to mention he had to make sure its aggression would be to suitable levels, something he couldn’t guarantee or might even hamper if he raised it in captivity. He did consider trying to ship it off to Isla Nublar and have it grow there with comparatively tamer wilds, but then there was the problem of recapturing it as an orca sized subadult, much less a humpback whale-sized adult. He couldn’t just trust it to follow him and do as commanded. Most dinosaurs went feral around their keepers eventually, even the more docile ones. He’d need a whole team to pull that off, something he could never keep secret. And Hammond was far too attached to his Tyrannosaurs to ever support knowing Wu built something to counter them.

He’d have to leave it here, on the most dangerous island on the planet, alone and being the only person to know it really wasn’t a weird looking Baryonyx. He was afraid for it. Wu tapped at the controls to the paddock and a mechanical whirl caused the Spinosaurus to jump back in surprise. Machinery shifted and the gate to the enclosure started to open. Henry Wu sighed as he took one last look back at his creation as it eyed the opening gate curiously before looking up to him.

“Keep Sorna balanced and stable, or else the predators will overrun the place before the numbers can stabilize. Do as you were built for, born for; at least ‘til we come to put the lights back on or whatever else Hammond has planned. Until then-”

He departed with only hope in hand as he headed for the evacuation chopper.

“Grow strong, grow mighty, and make this island your own.”

The Spinosaurus ticked once before looking to the now fully opened gate. When it was first conscious, the world was tiny. Then it broke free of its shell once it was big enough. Then the world grew until it was his father’s guest room, until he was able to stand above his odd parent’s ankles. And now, the world seemed vast and enormous as he beheld it with wide eyes. He’d have to grow to match it. Sorna’s future emperor stepped out into his domain and let out his first roar, one Wu heard and briefly turned to before running towards the chopper.

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Late 1997, Isla Sorna
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It was drizzling through the light cloud cover as Dr. Henry Wu stepped out of the helicopter after it touched down on the roof of the Embryonic Compound to help the expedition team aboard. Composed of Richard Levine, Randy Archer, Bill Stewarts, and Gary Paladecki, their task had been to catalog Isla Sorna’s species and document the island’s ecosystem so InGen and Masrani Global could get the UN to label the island a biological preserve. It was a success, but not for lack of struggle. A BioSyn invasion, loss of their trailer base, and far too many close calls to count had run the team ragged by the end. By the time the rescue chopper was approaching, there was word some BioSyn doctor had conjured up some nightmarish beast that was threatening to rip the facility apart. The radio had been clogged with static during the flight, but it did keep transmitting. Sound of several Deinonychus, shouting, gunfire, a Suchomimus bellow, some ungodly roar of whatever they were fighting; and falling rubble. But through it all, Wu heard something.

Through the static he heard it. A fantastic crash, one he would later find was something ramming the perimeter fence down, followed by a very familiar roar that wasn’t a Tyrannosaurus’, but bore an equal volume. It was deeper than memory, but he recognized it. He hurried to join the chopper in getting the team to safety and in the back of his mind, hoping he might see what he sought.

In the present, after helping agent Hallie We'en get an injured Dr. Levine into the chopper, Wu paused when he heard a low huff of breath. He paused and approached the edge of the roof to look to the source. That’s when he realized, in the low light and moody gray of the rain and fog, one mound of rubble wasn’t all debris. When an insane misanthrope had released a creature to destabilize Isla Sorna, the current leadership gave a strong rebuttal.

Shaking off a deluge of debris that had fallen onto it during a final blow, a broad sail emerged above the edge of the roof. Thirty feet away, a titanic form stood up and looked over. They were now the size of softballs, but that familiar pair of lime green eyes beheld Dr. Wu. He was marred in cuts and riddled with bite wounds from a titanic battle the humans and Deinonychus had helped him win, but the creature the team called ‘Snoke” stood tall and let a slow exhale of mist pour for his nostrils. Below him was an equally large corpse obscured by the fog and rubble, but Wu thought he could make out a pair of fanged jaws suited for a Tyrannosaurus and the snapped stump of a brow horn akin to those of a Triceratops. One of Snoke’s arms was covered in red, and had Wu arrived some minutes earlier he’d true clash of titans. Summoned by the call of his mate, Sorna's Lord had arrived on the scene of the revived InGen laboratory and his timing couldn't have been better. A horrific hybrid, one that would favorably compare to the Indominus of later decades, had been set loose by its insane creator with the express purpose of butchering all upon the island. The wounds upon his mate and threat to his domain that far exceeded any Tyrannosaur were all the motivation Snoke needed. Henry Wu's greatest creation fought the most horrid monstrosity of Dr. Atherton in a battle that tore the compound asunder. Through shattered buildings and broken streets, the final blow came when an exhausted and battered Snoke rammed his forelimb, talon-first, into a pre-existing wound upon its rival’s chest after smashing it into the side of the same building that gave them both life. The hybrid died, impaled on the Lord of Sorna's claws.

Wu and Snoke watched on, creator and creation regarding each other for time. Snoke slowly turned away and started to walk off into the mild downpour of rain , the Spinosaurus set to take some much deserved rest. Wu watched his beast turn before he did the same, departing without a word said. None were needed for duties done.

The helicopter departed Isla Sorna minutes later, rousing many of the animals to call out in confusion and stress. They were silenced by their emperor’s roar, order reasserting itself upon the lost world.