Chapter Eight: Chaos Begets Chaos

            A small gathering of Compsognathus scattered as soon as they heard a heavy humming, grinding noise. Some curiously looked back to see what caused it, terrified to see a black rectangular solid materialize in the spot. It was mountainous in size from their miniscule statures. Not able to understand it, they fled further along the jungle.

            Zoe was the first to step out as soon as the T.A.R.D.I.S. doors were opened.

            She nearly had an attack when a brontosaurus passed right by their location; its footsteps thundering beneath her feet.

            “Did we travel back to prehistoric times?”

            “More like prehistoric times have come to us,” said Chanley, emerging from the T.A.R.D.I.S. with Neas, Al-Lee, and Jane. “Welcome to Isla Nublar – otherwise known as ‘Jurassic Park’. But now it’s the site of the newest attraction: Jurassic World!”

            “Thanks for the tour guide info,” Neas derided, still distrusting her. “You’ve yet to tell us why you brought us here.”

            “It’s where Missy is,” Chanley told him.

            “And, apparently, the Doctor, too!”

            Zoe’s enthusiastic claim was drawn by the mysterious presence of a blue police box that was parked not very far from Neas’s Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S.

            “What is that doing there?” a baffled Jane asked.

            Neas inquiringly frowned at the police box. “It’s the Doctor’s T.A.R.D.I.S.”

            “Looks a lot different from yours,” Al-Lee noted.

            “Well, mine doesn’t have a chameleon circuit, for one thing. Plus, his is an older, out-of-date model, whereas mine was fresh out of the factory.”

            “If he’s here right now, I can go back to my own time,” Zoe beamed.

            “And we can recruit his help in saving Daddy,” Chanley stated.

            “Let’s get to it then,” Neas remarked.

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            “If you ask me, this is one of those moments we’ll all look back on and laugh.”

            It amused Bradlee how little the Doctor’s sense of humor changed over a few regenerations. There they were, standing handcuffed and detained in the Jurassic World control room, and he somehow managed to make light of it.

            “We’re not laughing,” grumbled the Head of Security, Vic Hoskins.

            He was joined by other personnel, including Park Operations Manager Claire Dearing and Velociraptor trainer Owen Grady, the latter having come to the aid of Bradlee and the Doctor earlier in the raptor paddock.

            Realizing humor was a poor choice, the Doctor tried his hand at flattery: “Well, I must say your facility is rather sophisticated, despite a few minor flaws.”

            He laid it a little too thick on the criticism.

            In fact, it garnered him a backhanded slap across the face from Hoskins.

            Dearing and Grady were surprised by such an unprofessional gesture from their Head of Security.

            “Vic, that’s uncalled for,” Claire belittled.

            “Yeah, man,” Grady acknowledged. “This is an interrogation, not a torture scene!”

            “They are company spies, stealing our research,” Hoskins accused. “Remember Biosyn? Remember how they sent Dennis Nedry to smuggle dinosaur embryos right under John Hammond’s nose?”

            Bradlee bravely stepped forward and reassured them, “Trust me, this park has no secrets we’re willing to die to get.”

            “Then what were you doing in the server maintenance room?” Claire questioned.

            It was an inquiry that Bradlee himself was curious to know, having discovered the Doctor there. If there was anyone who had some explaining to do to the Jurassic World personnel, it was him.

            When he saw that all eyes were on him, he confessed:

            “Alright, I did hack into the mainframe to learn the park’s secrets, but only to know if I was truthfully in a dimension where the real Jurassic Park once existed.”

            Bradlee miserably groaned. “We’re dead.”

            The Doctor’s confession not only perplexed the Jurassic World personnel but made him and Bradlee look even guiltier.

            “Maybe we should’ve got straightjackets instead of handcuffs,” Owen figured.

            Before the fate of the interlopers could be decided, the security alarm sounded.

            “We have another breach,” Hoskins exclaimed.

            As they saw on several control room monitors, all the dinosaurs were being released from their paddocks.

            While the chaos unfolded throughout the park, Claire’s personal phone rang.

            Answering it, she urgently told the caller, “Karen, this is not a good time.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry. Afraid I’m not ‘Karen’, dearie. But I would like to talk to the beanpole in the trench coat, if it’s not too much trouble.”

            The voice belonged to a Scottish woman.

            Claire checked the caller I.D., which she neglected to do before pressing the onscreen “call” button, and saw that it read as “Unknown.”

            “Who is this?” she asked the Scotswoman. “How did you get my number?”

            “Is this really the time to ask questions, when all of your paying customers are now scurrying dino chow? PUT THE DOCTOR ON THE PHONE!!!”

            The sudden change in her tone startled Clare into complying.

            She immediately turned to the Doctor, holding her phone towards him. “I-It’s f-for you,” she stammered.

            Not having expected to receive a call, especially not one from someone else’s phone, the Doctor briefly shared in a curious glance with Bradlee before accepting Claire’s phone. “Who is this?” he asked the shadowy caller.

            “Someone you’ll get to know very well in the future.”

            “Are you the reason for what’s happening right now?”

            “Maybe. Maybe not.”

            “Whoever you are, you have caused a great deal of trouble just to get my attention. Stop this now!”

            “Dear me. I forgot how feisty this regeneration of you was.”

            Her knowledge of his Time Lord background momentarily caught him off guard. “Regen—seriously, really, who are you?!”

            “Oh, you’ll find out in a couple more lives. For now, you can just call me ‘Miss’.”

            “Alright, Miss. What is your plan here? Why am I so important to you?”

            “It’s not you that I’m after, Doctor. It’s that pretty boy standing to your right.”

            The Doctor looked to his right, which was where Bradlee had been standing the entire time they were in the control room. How the female caller knew his exact position in the confined space unsettled the Doctor. His first assumption was that she had installed a hidden camera somewhere in the room.

            “What do you want with him?” he asked the caller, his anger rising.

            “We both know who he is, Doctor…the Gladiator of Gallifrey.”

            “I don’t know what you plan on doing to him, but I can already tell it’s not good.”

            “It’s more ‘good’ than you realize, Doctor. I’m doing what Rassilon could never do: preserving the legacy of our people.”

            “Our people? You’re a Time Lord?”

            “Time Lady, if you please.”

            “Ah! I get it now: your whole plan, your twisted sense of salvation, and your flare for theatrics. I know who you are!”

            “Yes, Doctor?”

            The caller’s voice sounded hopeful on the other end, as if anticipating the Doctor to specifically identify her by a name only he would know after all the clues she laid out for him.

            The Doctor exuberantly blurted out his conjecture: “You’re the Rani!”

            Disappointed and disgusted, the caller said, “Okay, this conversation’s over.”

            A dial tone followed thereafter.

            The Doctor stared at Claire’s phone in bewilderment. “She hang up on me. Didn’t even bother to say ‘goodbye’.”

            “Who was that?” Hoskins furiously asked him. “Your associate?”

            “You have to release us,” the Doctor pleaded to him.

            Hoskins scoffed at his request. “Not a chance, buddy.”

            “Your kingdom has fallen,” the Doctor yelled. “Now’s the time to evacuate while you still can!”

            “I just about had it with you.”

            Hoskins suddenly pulled out a sidearm, aiming it for the Doctor’s head.

            The act alarmed everyone around him, suspecting the unhinged Head of Security to execute the Doctor in front of all the personnel; hardly any of them had ever seen a killing up close.

            Thankfully, the execution was canceled just as something busted through the control room doors: a huge, gauntleted fist with a star motif at the top and base of it. It punched and knocked out the nearest security guard before tearing down the door.

            Hoskins was stunned to see what appeared to be a tall, muscular woman with scarlet-colored skin and a cube-shaped afro storming her way in.

            He fired a few shots at her, but she deflected each one with her powerful gauntlets.

            The conflict ended before it even started, with the woman knocking out Hoskins from a single punch.

            Bradlee was relieved to see Garnet coming to his rescue.

            Unfamiliar with the Crystal Gem, the deeply fascinated Doctor uttered, “Who is she? And please tell me she’s on our side!”

            “I’m on the side that’s good and just,” Garnet told him.

            “Oh, I like her,” the Doctor smiled.

            Following Garnet’s explosive entrance was Amethyst, Pearl, and Steven – each of them ready for battle, only to find that Garnet had taken care of everything.

            “Where are all the bad guys?” Steven asked.

            “Yeah, there’s nothing here but a bunch of nerds,” Amethyst observed.

            “There was only one bad guy, I’m afraid,” Bradlee indicated the unconscious body of Vic Hoskins sprawled across the floor.

            Noticing Bradlee handcuffed, Pearl freed him and the Doctor with her spear.

            “Bradlee, are you alright?” she asked.

            “I’m fine, now that you guys showed up,” Bradlee said. “How on earth did you all know where I was?”

            “They helped us,” Steven answered, gesturing towards the busted entrance.

            From there appeared five figures: one tall African American gentleman, three Caucasian women, and one teenage girl.

            Bradlee recognized them all, definitely the tall African American gentleman.

            “Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Things must be bad if a past version of me is here.”

            Hearing Bradlee address him as such arose interest in Neas: “You’re one of my future regenerations? Which number are you?”

            “Twentieth.”

            Neas’s eyes enlarged in awe. “How many of us will there be?”

            “Is he here?” Zoe asked, her eyes excitedly searching about the control room. “Is the Doctor here?”

            Seeing her among them, the Doctor was none too happy.

            “Zoe?! What are you doing here?!”

            She puzzlingly glimpsed at the trench-coated stranger, offended by his tone. “Who are you talkin’ to, fella? Do I even know you?”

            “I’m the Doctor. But presumably not the one you were expecting.”

            Zoe had in fact expected to see a curly-haired man with a long, colorful scarf; it was the only version of the Doctor she knew of from her point in the timeline. To see the handsome, suited young character in front of her, claiming to be that same man, was underwhelming to say the least.

            “We’ll explain it later, Doctor,” Neas hurriedly said. “We need to get back to the T.A.R.D.I.S.”

            “Yours or mine,” the Doctor queried.

            “Both,” Neas verified. “Yours will piggyback within the dimensional proportions of mine.”

            They were just about to leave the control room before Owen stopped them.

            “Wait! One of you wanna tell us what’s happening here! Who are you people?!”

            The Doctor brazenly approached the raptor tamer that saved his life.

            “I’m the Doctor. And he’s the Gladiator. We’re Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. And we’re going to save the multiverse from whomever or whatever it is that caused the chaos your park is experiencing just like the one before it. So I suggest you stop asking questions, get everyone off this island, and never ever repeat the same mistakes again. Got that?”

            Owen tentatively nodded. “Y-Yeah. S-Sure.”

            “Now that that’s settled, there’s just one thing I have to say to you, Mr. Grady.”

            “What’s that?”

            “ALLONS-Y!!”

            With that exclamation, the Doctor departed with the two Gladiators and their companions, braving the dinosaur rampage across the Jurassic World amusement park on their way back through the jungle.

            As he was the last to board his Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S., Neas felt a slight sting on the back of his neck, reactively slapping it and plucking what he figured to be a tiny stinger.

            “You O.K.?” Al-Lee checked on him, having detected his reaction.

            “Yeah,” Neas said. “Just these darn bugs, that’s all.”

            What he and the others failed to see in their departure, however, was a woman dressed in plum-colored Victorian garb standing within the foliage and holding the very blowgun she had just used on her target: Neas.