Many things happened in very quick succession. One moment, Fred Burns from CS was telling her about vets and complaints, and the next, history’s greatest monster was on its way to its ‘stage,’ accompanied by repeated metallic clicking from inside the tube. Marks assumed it was a child hitting the metal wall with a toy, but something was wrong. The goat ran off, which was definitely [i]not[/i] in the game plan, and led the T-rex right into the tube.

What happened after that was chaos. The tube pitched down, dumping its contents haphazardly to the containment floor, the occupants screaming and shouting and tripping over each other. Marks recovered quickly, jumping to her feet and wincing from the jarring of having landed on her hip and the sting of Fred yelling in her ear. 

[i]“MARKS! I’m getting mad errors on my end what’s going on?!”[/i]

She searched the ground for her radio - nearly kicking some children with her prosthetic as she went - and scooped it up, holding it to her mouth. 

“Fred! Jesus Christ, the whole tube is busted! Rudy slammed right into it, after the damn goat got free! God damn that maintenance guy, he’s gonna get an ass full of- [i]fuck!”[/i] 

Her sentence was interrupted as she was nearly run down by a mother, running to retrieve her child from a tall woman. If it wouldn’t have been for the earpiece and the staff lanyard, Marks would have mistaken the girl for a visitor. She vaguely recognized her as a handler, as the handlers tended to share some warehouse space, but couldn’t quite place her. It didn’t matter, she along with some stragglers were running for the exit, and that was a bigger problem. The T-rex  may have been the ultimate predator, but it wasn’t all-powerful. It wasn’t meant to hunt large groups, instead preferring to hunt solitary animals or dinosaurs that had been separated from their herds. As strange as it may seem, the people running to the door were in more danger there than here, with a group deeper inside the containment. 

She tried to yell at them to stop, but above the din, it was hopeless. Panic hadn’t quite set in to her yet; her mind was running a mile a minute, thinking over all of the things this group was doing wrong and how she could possibly fix the issue. Pulling up her radio, she ran to a high point (a comparatively small fallen log) and climbed up onto it, shouting, “Tatsumi! Yet over here, I’ll need your crowd control skills.”

Turning to the crowd, Marks put two fingers into her mouth and whistled, a piercing sound loud enough to cut through the din and quiet the crowd. Some of the runners stopped in their tracks, perfectly willing to give their trust to professionals. 

“Alright, listen up people! Stay together! Rudy here isn’t a herd hunter - if you’re alone, you’ll be dead!” 

Marks had never been known for her social tact. Some children began screaming. 

“And another thing! We have to be quiet! A T-rex relies heavily on its other senses; it may not be able to see you very well, but it can sure as hell hear you! It smells us enough already-don’t give it anything more to go by!”

After a moment, during which the crowd packed closer together (safety in numbers, of course) Marks spoke again. Her voice was lower, little more than a speaking tone, but the crowd had fallen silent. Searching through the crowd for the other staff member she’d seen, she caught her eye and waved her up to stand with her and Tatsumi. 

“We will get you to the exit. Remain calm and follow our instructions to a T.” To comfort the people further, she introduced herself and the other staff. “You can trust us; You may recognize me, I’m the one-legged raptor trainer from across the park.” A few in the crowd chuckled, but silenced themselves immediately. “I’ve worked with carnivores for many years, I know what I’m doing."

Marks gestured to Tatsumi. “Tatsumi here is with Asset Containment. She’s specially trained to handle the dinosaurs in the [i]unlikely[/i]-“ she emphasized the word, “-event of an altercation.”

Looking over to the other girl, she gestured to her, trying to tell her to tell the crowd who and what she was. This crowd management crap was a waste of precious time, as the group of terrified humans had been stinking up the containment with their pungent, warm-blooded scent for long enough already, but it was necessary. Frightened people were like sheep; they needed to be led and follow their leader, or they’d simply mull about and get themselves killed. Still, the time ticking away was killing her.