The convention center rented out for the science fair is no state of the art Arch facility, but Tim finds himself enjoying the atmosphere more, despite the focus not being on his subjects. Part of that, he’s sure, is just by being there with his best friends, but there’s more to it than that.

  Small children of all ages dart around from exhibit to exhibit, playing with the innumerable interactables set up just about everywhere. Tim smiles and nudges Jane, pointing to a little boy dragging around a girl, explaining all the facts he knows about each exhibit, and the teenagers giggle at the reflection.

  Poor families, even from Tim’s neighborhood, walk together and eat the free food provided by Jones Corp, laughing and talking amongst each other. Groups of friends from different schools mingle and forge new bonds of friendship, an older man walks around on his cane, stopping to admire art pieces designed to teach about the effect different colors have on the brain.

  Arch was grand and exclusive, but this?

  “This feels much more like what science should be for.” Lance steals Tim’s thoughts right from his brain.

  Tim nods, grabbing bags of popcorn and handing them to each of his friends.

  “Not that grander events, like Arch’s field trip, don’t have their place—”

  “But this feels much more nurturing, doesn’t it?” A woman nearby cuts in.

  She wears a business casual dress, a nice one, but it pales in comparison to the gentle smile on her face.

  Despite the aura of kindness she puts off, after two weeks of constantly needing to look out for an electrical ding dong, Tim can’t help but pick out a few things.

  Several men in suits all around, watching her, and anyone near her, intently. Whoever she is, she must be important.

  Tim glances at Lance, his expression is almost impossible to read, as usual, but his heart rate increased, definitely someone important.

  “Nurture, it's something I think the big names in the sphere forget to do. Sure, they’ll take on an apprentice or two that they see potential in, but they forget where that inspiration starts.” She gestures around, “This is where kids get inspired, where they find out who their heroes will be. So, who’s your hero?” She directs the question to the group, but looks at Tim and Lance.

  Another glance at Lance, and this time he meets Tim’s eyes. She’s singling them out, and obviously using the word hero deliberately. She must know who they are.

  Tim goes on edge, extending his senses to encompass the whole of the convention center, listening for anything that might indicate this is some kind of ambush. Lance puts a hand on his shoulder, and shakes his head, earning a raised eyebrow from Jane and Alex.

  “Your family is certainly amongst those I look up to.” Lance says. “I’d say this event is helping your ‘nurture’ goal along nicely.”

  “I have done an excellent job, haven’t I?”

  She did an excellent job?

  “You’re Rebecca Jones?” Tim asks.

  The woman snorts and covers her mouth, trying to hold back a laugh before it finally escapes.

  “That’s flattering, no, Becca is my daughter, I'm Raegan Jones. It's very nice to meet you all.” She holds out her hand for them all.

  “Oh shit.” Jane whispers and nudges Tim’s elbow.

  Tim’s the last one to receive a shake, and Raegan holds his gaze as they do. “So, your hero?”

  “Uh,” Tim pulls away, but Jane, Alex, and Rowan all push him forward.

  Damn it, they don’t know how dangerous this could be.

  “Doctor... Doctor Ophelia Moore.”

  “Shocker.” She says as soon as the sentence ends with a teasing smirk.

  “Tim here is going to be the best paleontologist in the world.” Jane pulls him down and pats his chest, “she’s like the big deal, show off a little.” She whispers in his ear.

  As dangerous as Tim thinks this might be, Jane’s right, this is a huge opportunity. He’s not sure if Arch is secretly evil yet, but whether they are or not, whether he can work for them or not, Raegan Jones is a surefire way to get any job. Having her on a resume would probably make most people do a spit take, and besides, Lance isn’t giving off any signals to not keep going.

  “Well, paleontology is just my main interest. Biology, zoology, phylogeny, genetics, I do them all.”

  “Tell her about the essay.” Jane pulls at the bottom of his shirt.

  “I’m getting to it.” He winks to her, and Raegan giggles. “I actually won a seat on the Arch field trip with an essay I wrote.”

  “Oh, very impressive, tell me your name and I’ll get a copy to read from Grant.”

  Grant? She’s on a first name basis with Doctor Connors then? That can either be really good or really bad.

  “Timothy Chapman.”

  “It's very nice to meet you Mr. Chapman, and the rest of you?”

  After everyone else shares their names, Tim hears Raegan Jones’s phone go off, and she pulls it out to check a text.

  “Duty calls, I hope to talk to you all more today.” She smiles. “Lance, my daughter is here today, you two should talk, oh and Tim, Ms. Moore and Grant also happen to be here today. Opportunities abound.”

  They’re here? Their names weren’t on the guest list.

  “Grant is the CEO of Arch isn’t he?” Jane asks as Raegan walks away.

  “Yeah.” Tim watches Raegan as she leaves, tempted to keep his senses honed on her, but his friends pull his focus.

  “That’s lucky.” Alex says, “especially if he was a part of the selection process for the essays.”

  “No way, CEOs are way too busy to do anything like that.” Rowan says.

  “And yet.” Alex gestures to the last glimpse of Raegan.

  “Even if he doesn’t, you can impress him, and that Dr. Moore. Tell her all about CRISPRs, feathers, and colored cells, all that junk.” Jane grins.

  Tim looks up to Lance, and he nods.

  “A good opportunity.”

  Tim nods back, his nerves calming. In their short friendship, they’ve already been through a lot together, and if Lance is thinking it's safe, then it must be.

  “Come on.” Jane looks at a posted map. “We got a lot of places to hit, Rowan made me have to redo the whole plan for his vain—”

  “Streaming is the future Jane!” Rowan huffs, “and I have the perfect face and personality for it.”

  “You have lots of personality alright.” She rolls her eyes.

  They head the entertainment section first, Rowan listing off facts about social media, algorithms, before they’re told the information by various internet celebrities that Tim has never heard of before. Social media can be fun, he has accounts on YouTube and Facebook, he’s even put up a few videos with Rowan, but it's nothing Tim’s particularly interested in. What he is interested in, is how happy it makes his friend, so he listens intently, Jane taking the lead in asking questions.

  Rowan and Jane throw ideas back and forth for videos he can do, her taking more of an interest in where to put the cameras and where to film than any algorithmic whatever's, as they make their way to the next wing.

  This one is more about physics, and Lance takes up talking in this wing, and the next one, and the next. Tim can go back and forth with him a little, when it comes to chemistry, but half the time it feels like Lance’s mind works on a whole other dimension.

  Tim likes to think he and his friends are pretty smart, but if they weren’t left in the dust before they definitely are once they hit the engineering showroom. The amount of new vocabulary on hard and software overwhelms even Tim’s enhanced brain. He’s never really thought about just how smart Lance is, but he’s manipulated Williams tech, broken in the Jones information network, and they’re considered the smartest people in the world. So, Lance must be one of them as well.

  “Though, I’ve heard where Rebecca Jones is truly remarkable is in energy.” Lance says as they pass the same next generation mech they saw at Arch. “It's even... rumored she’s discovered new energy sources.”

  “Sources? Like, something close to solar?” Alex asks.

  “In a sense, though it can’t be converted into electricity efficiently, so, she’s done research into how said energy behaves and has designed all new hardware around harnessing it.”

  “She’s kind of cute.” Rowan says as he approaches a wall with the family's history across it.

  She’s young, seventeen or eighteen by Tim’s guess, and she looks a lot like Raegan, same jet black hair, same almost grey eyes, but with a leaner build. As evidenced by a photo of her in her own mech made from car parts, has always been beyond gifted, and Tim can’t help but wonder why Lance isn’t sitting on top of the world like she is.

  He looks to his friend, and expects to see his eyes flicking rapidly to read all the information across the display, but finds the fixated on a single photo. Rebecca Jones, with her Raegan, her father, and two sisters.

  “You agree huh?” Rowan nudges Lance.

  “I have no opinion, but I do long to have a conversation with her.”

  “Hm.” Alex looks over her childhood pictures, then to her teen years.

  “She’s too old for you.” Jane leans on his shoulder.

  “Look at the way her posture changes over time.”

  “He’s doing it again.” Rowan rolls his eyes.

  Whatever Alex is noticing is subtle, Tim definitely didn’t notice at first glance, but he’s definitely right. Her posture gets stiffer and stiffer as she grows up, but then suddenly gets much more relaxed.

  “She experienced an incident that gave her agoraphobia when she was three.” Lance explains.

  “Really?” Rowan asks.

  “Yes, while the details aren’t publicly available, it was an attempted kidnapping to hold her for ransom.”

  Tim facepalms, and half expects Rebecca Jones to walk up and say, “say you’re the one who hacked me in any less words,” and much to the detriment of his stress levels they’re nearly met.

  He has to get over the habit of keeping his senses retracted by default, because Rebecca Jones’s weight hits his shoulder and leans on it.

  “Hey Prehistoric Kid, that mech was expensive, you owe me money.” She whispers in his ear, snickering.

  There is no such thing as a relaxing day for Tim anymore, apparently. The Jones family knows who he is, but at least Raegan had the courtesy to just hint at it and not outright say anything, hushed tones or not.

  “What the hell? What’s with celebrities approaching us today?” Rowan looks in disbelief.

  “Mom told me about the “world’s best paleontologist” and his friends.” Rebecca says as she smushes her face against Tim’s. “Had to come meet you.”

  She smells like grease, oil, burned ozone and... weed? It's masked, masked well, but Tim definitely picks up marijuana. He knows all the studies on marijuana, read papers on how it's harmless, even beneficial, but despite himself, he can’t help but feel his opinion of the girl genius plummet.

  “Touchy much?” Jane narrows her eyes.

  “Aw, cute.” She takes her way off of Tim and pushes her knuckles on his cheek before striding towards Jane. “But you don’t need to be jealous, wrong equipment. You’re beautiful though.” She winks.

  “I-I’m not—”

  “Gay or jealous?” Rebecca sticks her tongue out at her and moves onto Lance, leaning against her family wall.

  “Ms. Jones.”

  “Becca, Mr... Mom didn’t get your last name.”

  “I have a habit of not sharing it, Lance is fine.”

  “Mysterious, he’s so mysterious.” Becca winks at Tim. “You,” she points at Alex, “how old are you?”

  “Fourteen.” He says politely.

  “Little young to be psychoanalyzing people.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “He gets that a lot.” Tim, Jane, and Rowan say in unison.

  “Huh, creepy.” She looks back up at Lance, and snorts. “You’re tall.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we have a lot to talk about Lance.”

  “Correct.”

  “Come with me then.” Becca nods towards the backrooms.

  “Not yet.”

  “You know I’m not exactly—”

  “After the convention, for now, I’m spending time with my friends.”

  Becca blinks, her cheeks puff out and she lets out a laugh that makes all the voices in the convention seem quiet. She laughs until she wheezes and tears build in her eyes, putting her weight against Lance as she tries to catch her breath.

  “You’re a funny guy Lance. Whelp, if you don’t find me, I’ll find you.” She pats his chest and walks off, blowing a kiss at Jane as she goes. “By beautiful, by Dino-guy, by creepy kid... by other one.”

  “What the hell?” Rowan frowns.

  “Guess you didn’t leave an impression.” Alex shrugs.

  “Fuck! I should’ve asked her for a selfie!”

  “What is even happening today?” Jane rubs her temples.

  “Your gay awakening.” Rowan jokes.

  “So what? We can’t joke about being gay to your brother but the minute it's one of us—”

  “Sorry.” Rowan frowns.

  Jane sighs, “It's whatever dude, no big deal.”

  “Still...”

  “Apology accepted.” Jane holds out a pinky, and Rowan realizes she’s serious and takes it.

  “I'm going to have an aneurysm.” Tim takes a turn to rub his temples.

  At this point, all he wants to do is pull Lance aside and talk about everything that’s just happened, but Jane has a plan, and so the show must go on.

  As they cross into the next section, Tim supposes there’ll be plenty of time to talk later, since they’re in the paleontology section now. It's not as grandiose as Arch’s, but it makes up for that in spades with variety and immaculate vibes.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  A CRISPR sits by an indoor petting zoo populated by tortoise species one thought extinct, along with a rooster and chickens with a tail and teeth. Documentaries from different eras of media play along awhile, showing the evolution of the understanding of dinosaurs from dumb, slow lizards destined for failure, into one of the most successful lineages of all time.

  Kids sit in a sand pit and dig up replica fossils, bringing them to attendees who stand in front of the real things and bombarding them with a slurry of questions. Tim giggles at the display, and then is dragged over to an old Jurassic Park arcade shooter.

  “We have some time before the big stuff happens.” Jane says.

  “But these things are only five players, we should find something we can all do.” Rowan says.

  “It is fine, I don’t mind sitting out.” Lance offers.

  Rowan shakes his head, “There has to be a newer game around that’ll let us—”

  “It's modified for up to ten players.” Alex says, reading a sign.

  “Huh? How does that work?”

  Alex shrugs, “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah cause I wanna know.”

  “Just ask some geek when we’re done.” Jane shoves him into the booth. “I’ll help you find some programming nerd, nerd.” She sticks her tongue out at him, then turns and grabs Tim’s hand, “Come on!”

  Now this is a video game that Tim’s powers will help with, his enhanced reaction speed letting him react to the dinosaurs appearing on screen faster than anyone else. He smirks at Alex, who keeps pushing himself father and father to try and get ahead in points, to the point where he and Tim are taking each and every kill, Jane setting her gun down and giving up with a pout.

  “You didn’t used to be this good.” Alex wipes sweat off his brow.

  “I practiced.” Tim twirls the gun and blows on it with a wink.

  “”I bet if it was balanced for five players the rest of us could've done something.” Rowan takes out his phone and pulls Jane into a selfie, her quickly putting up a peace sign as he snaps a photo.

  “Why would they make it hard, dumbass? They were obviously expecting the metric fuck-ton of kids here.” Jane rolls her eyes. “Let me see the photo.”

  Rowan hands his phone over, Jane frowns, and hits delete.

  “Hey!” Rowan snatches his phone back.

  “Didn’t like the angle.” She shrugs.

  “Whatever, I looked great.”

  “Oh well.” She taps Tim’s shoulder. “Come on, it's almost time.”

  What it's almost time for, Tim doesn’t actually know. Jane offered to lay out her whole plan for him during the weeks leading up to the event, but he had decided it’d be more fun for them both if she kept it all as a surprise. So, while he did look at the guest list, he didn’t look at any of the events, and now his anticipations for whatever Jane’s schemed it reaching a climax.

  Tim sees some convention hall doors open in the distance and people start filing out, is this it? He zooms his vision onto those who’re making their way to the show floor, and he recognizes some of them. Zoologists and biologists, a scattering of geneticists and geologists, and—

  “Oh shit, that’s Doctor Moore.” Tim says.

  “Didn’t know about her, but all those other paleontologists?” Jane smiles.

  “So what? You want me to just walk up to her?”

  “Don’t be a dummy.” She knocks on his forehead. “Like I’d need a whole plan for that.”

  “So...”

  “Just wait.” She looks up to the ceiling, and smiles when the lights dim.

  Lager doors that lead to the ‘backstage’ of the center swing open, automated spotlights turn on and swing towards them, a woman walking out, mic in hand, and dinosaurs behind her.

  Animatronic ones, of course, ones that Tim recognizes. The first time he saw them was at Rowan’s and Alex’s when they were watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when they were little, and Tim lost his mind. They just looked so real back then, like if he got to pet them, he’d feel every individual imperfection on their hide, feel them breathe. For the rest of that day when the boys played pretend, they were dinosaur keepers, taking care of these exact ones.

  There was also an alien invasion, of course, that they teamed up with the dinosaurs to stop, but that’s besides the point.

  Honestly, despite both becoming and fighting dinosaurs, Tim’s wonder for these bots remains intact. He’s always wanted to see them, at a show or up close, but whenever they’ve been in San Diego his family’s been broke or homeless.

  Jane knows that of course, but how does seeing these factor into setting him up? He turns to her and the rest of his friends, Rowan pointing at something, and all of the shoving Tim towards it.

  They stop near Doctor Moore, who looks on in amusement as an animatronic sniffs and huffs at a kid. Tim raises an eyebrow at Jane, and she meets it with a grin.

  “Can’t keep expecting celebrities to walk up to us Tim.” She whispers, then clears her throat. “Aw man, why do these dinosaurs have feathers? Who decided that anyways?” She yells over the crowd.

  Tim snorts, looks to Dr. Moore to confirm her attention has been caught, and he takes a step forward.

  “Well miss, no one decided it.” Tim raises his voice and steps to the front of the crowd. “We discovered it, thanks to a few remarkable specimens like Archaeopteryx and Sinosauropteryx. Back when Archaeopteryx was first discovered, with the preserved imprints of its feathers, paleontologists debated for more than a hundred years whether it was a bird or a dinosaur, until the little ring tailed Sinosauropteryx helped to confirm what they were already starting to expect, that they were one in the same.”

  “Ring tail? What do you mean?” Rowan calls out.

  “Yeah, I thought we didn’t know dinosaur patterns or colors!” Alex calls out.

  Tim shakes his head and smiles at them, Jane snapping her hand into finger guns and putting it under her eye with a wink. Tim mouths weeb to her and carries on.

  “Well you see, by examining the imprints of the exceptionally well preserved feathers in the rock, we can see the shapes of their melanosomes. You see,” He kneels down to some children paying close attention, “Those are little cells in animals that shape are linked with colors, thanks to those, we know Sinosauropteryx’s oh so fluffy tail, was tinged with white and a reddish-brown. You ever see a ring tail lemur before?” He asks the kids.

  “Yes! At the zoo!” One of the kids squeals. “They’re my favorite!”

  “Maybe you’ve found your favorite dinosaur then.” He winks and stands back up. “Ring tails have a lot of ways they communicate, and one of them is to raise their tails up, flick them around, signaling different messages to their troop. So, scientists think Sinosauroptyx might’ve done the same thing.”

  “So,” Jane taps her chin, “when did dinosaurs evolve feathers anyways?”

  “A good question, and while we don’t know for sure yet, evidence is pointing us towards that dinosaurs aren’t the ones to evolve feathers, it's their ancestors. We find more and more early dinosaurs with some kind of feather like structures, from Psittacosaurus to Kulindadrameus, and while its possible all these different lineages of dinosaurs independently evolved them, that’s called convergent evolution,” He tells the kids, “we’ve discovered things even older than dinosaurs with feathers.”

  “Oooo.” Jane giggles.

  “Aaaah.” Rowan and Alex laugh.

  Tim grins and rolls his eyes, then kneels back down to the kids, “They’re nicknamed ‘monkey lizards,’ but they existed before lizards too, they had mohawks of feathers on their backs.” He fans out his hand and puts it on his head, making a funny face to make them laugh. “You know what that means, yeah?”

  “That they turned into dinosaurs!” One yells.

  “Or that they um... con-con...” Another one starts.

  “Convergently.”

  “Convergently evolved them!”

  “That’s right, we just don’t know yet, but maybe with you guys help, when you’re big, we’ll find out.”

  The kids ask Tim a bombardment of questions before he’s able to pull himself away and back to his friends.

  “You were supposed to show off to the nerds, not kids.” Jane giggles.

  “It had the desired effect, regardless.” Lance nods towards Doctor Moore, who’s keeping her eyes on Tim as she wraps up a conversation.

  “Thank you guys.” Tim pulls them all in for a hug.

  “Eh, it was all Jane.” Rowan shrugs. “Somehow.”

  “Fuck off.” Jane laughs.

  “Lance, Ro,” Alex says, “let's go another round in the shooting gallery.”

  “Huh? Why?” Rowan asks.

  “Very well.” Lance quickly agrees.

  “Come on.” Alex urges his brother to come along, and smiles at Tim.

  Tim narrows his eyes at Alex as they leave, but shrugs, and turns back to Jane.

  “So, all you huh?”

  “Yeah, well, Alex and Ro helped a little bit.”

  “Well it worked, I really need to work on returning the favor, finally give you what you want.”

  “Y-yeah?” Jane pushes her hair behind her ear.

  Oh god what is this? Tim feels like he’s about to vomit so many butterflies it’ll cause the ecosystem to collapse. Has he actually come to the conclusion he loves Jane in that way? Is he actually going to do something about it right now?

  “Jane I—”

  “Oh fuck.” Jane grabs Tim and turns him around, Moore walking towards them.

  “I’m not interrupting anything am I?” She asks, pushing down her thick rimmed glasses.

  “I- I um, no no, Ms- Doctor! Doctor Moore.” Tim stammers, his brain a mess.

  She chuckles, “Where’s all that bravado from before, hmm? What’s your name, young man?”

  “Timothy, Timothy Chapman.” He recovers, clears his throat, and holds out his hand.

  “Ah, I don’t suppose you wrote an essay for Arch?” She shakes.

  “You read it?” Tim blinks.

  “And pushed it through, but, fyi, you’re lucky I was the one to review it. The... language you picked was a breath of fresh air for me, but unprofessional. Most others would’ve decided you weren’t taking it seriously by the third joke.”

  “Um, noted.” He rubs the back of his head.

  “Good, you know, I was hoping to run into the essayists today, most have shown up, but none decided to give a lesson in front of a crowd.”

  “Well, honestly it was to try and show off to you, but...” He looks over to the kids, watching videos on Sinosauropteryx, “Better to nurture and inspire.”

  “Hmm, you mind if I steal him away?” Doctor Moore asks Jane.

  “Oh no, go ahead, I think I hear my friends calling me anyways.” She smiles to Tim then runs off.

  “Walk with me, Mr. Chapman.”

  “Of course.” Tim falls inline beside her.

  “You know, it wasn’t that long ago that it wasn’t like this.” She says, reaching up to fiddle with a shard of opal dangling from her earring. “Sure, you’d see crowds of kids like this at a science center on free weekends, field trips, some holidays? But this?” She shakes her head, “Teens, whole families? It just didn’t happen, not until scientists started becoming celebrities. Rebecca Jones, Dexter Williams, Grant Connors.”

  “You.”

  She laughs, “No, not me. Your head must be nearly as buried in the rocks as any other paleontologist. I’m just famous in the sphere.”

  “I’d like to think my essay proved my head isn’t buried, most paleontologists seem to forget real animals exist and f- mess each other up. Pachycephalosaurs didn’t headbutt because they’d hurt each other, like bighorn sheep don’t.”

  “You should tone down those... call outs as well.”

  “Noted.” Tim nods, “As to you being famous, the Opal Treasures made worldwide news.”

  “Yes, they did, a career-defining find.” She smiles. “But the bones are famous Timothy, not me.”

  “Maybe, but, when you clone them?”

  She chuckles, “There’s a chance then, but, it's much more likely that the public will only see Connors and, again, the bones, but this time with all their meat.”

  Tim opens his mouth but she shakes her head.

  “You’re, clearly, one to prop others up, but I don’t need the fame. How much of the public know the names of Mary Anning? Jack Horner? Roy Chapman Andrews? Caught that, by the way.”

  "If only my name was Roy, it’d been perfect.” Tim chuckles.

  “If only, but the point is, I don’t need to appear on talk shows, or get a million followers on Instagram. I’m very comfortable with the recognition from my peers, and the up and coming.”

  “Words to live by.” Tim agrees. “By the way, your ear ring—”

  “A little shard from the opalized Daspletosaurus.” She nods. “The odds of those fossils even having come into existence, so many species all made out of some of the most beautiful mineraloids on Earth.”

  “They’re definitely an anomaly.”

  Her heart skips a beat, and Tim gets the impression he shouldn’t have let the A word slip.

  “I don’t suppose you can give me a hint on how you guys are even working towards cloning dinosaurs? I have so many questions.”

  “It's not something you’d be able to wrap your head around unless you witness it, study it. Can’t give you anything other than that I’m afraid, not unless you’re buried by as many NDAs as I am. Which can be arranged.”

  “Really?”

  “Like I said, I'm the one who pushed your essay through, and I’ve been shopping around for an apprentice.”

  “I mean, wow, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing yet, it all needs to be approved first, which is why I had you follow me, Mr. Chapman.” Doctor Moore says as she approaches a man. “Doctor Connors, I’d like you to meet someone.”

  Tim decides, again, that he really needs to break the habit of keeping his senses closed by default, as Grant Connors turns towards him and smiles.

  “Is that so?” He asks in his southern drawl. “Who might you be son?”

  “Timothy Chapman.” Tim holds out his hand, “Aspiring paleontologist sir.”

  “Ah, Ophelia did take a liking to your essay.” He clasps Tim’s hand firmly and gives it a hearty shake. “Don’t suppose you have a gift for genetics too?”

  “Working on it sir.”

  “Judging by this, hoping to work at it at Arch?”

  Tim’s hairs stand on end, this is it, this is the chance. But, if the Jones know who he is? Does Connors? What about the Phantasmaraptor?

  “Best place to do it sir.” Tim settles on, it's a gamble, but he can handle whatever the outcome.

  “Good man.” Connors chuckles and pats Tim’s shoulder.

  “Grant...” A familiar man says from his left. “We were in the middle of a conversation.”

  “Simmer down Eric, it's looking like Ophelia wants me to give an impromptu interview.”

  Eric? Like Eric Silverline? It is him, and as soon as Tim notices, he hears the crack of thunder.