Chapter 111: Escape

"Uff! For a moment I thought it was jumping out of the fence!" "Damn! It seemed crazy!" "Are there therapists for dinosaurs? This one is completely out of its mind!" "I understand why they built an enclosure so big. This guy is a psychopath!" "I am reading the comments and I am really outraged. How can you say such things? I would like to see how you would act if you would be locked in a cage!" "Here we go, another animal rights activist has arrived..." "However, he's not completely wrong. That's a wild animal, it's not used to captivity. Will it be safe to keep it in a cage?" "I don't know and I don't care. I just want that it stay there!" The controversy was raging on the web. Most of the comments were obviously stupid, but some showed some spark of intelligence. The challenge among these people was whether or not it was appropriate to keep the animal in a cage. Many thought it was right to do so, but some were against it, not wrongly. Keeping a wild animal in an enclosure wasn't like keeping an animal that lived in captivity since its birth. Since they have lived most of their existence in the wild, they understood that they were prisoners and they wanted their freedom back. Accidents caused by wild animals captured and confined in zoos weren't uncommon; often, either the animal was injured enough to kill itself, or it injured one of the attendants. Sometimes there were even human casualties. The spinosaurus' enclosure was equipped with automatic feeders to avoid human contact with the animal as much as possible, but if by chance the spinosaurus had managed to get out of the fence many people would have been injured. It was a very delicate and dangerous matter. Unbeknownst to the humans, this was exactly what Sobek wanted them to think. Since he wanted to avoid humans realizing his true intelligence, he acted as if he was an animal who was extremely annoyed by his current situation. In the eyes of humans he looked just like a frightened, anxious and stressed beast. No one would have been surprised when he decided to run away. Perhaps they would even have agreed with him... Sobek headed for the artificial pool and dipped his snout inside. While Roland and his men had given him water, he hadn't really drank decently in a month. Then he went to the manger and began to swallow large shreds of meat; if he was going to give people a show it was better to be in full strength. As he did so, he checked his fame points. Since thanks to the power of technology practically the whole world was watching him, within minutes they had already shot up to 370 million. Of course Sobek wasn't going to evolve in front of everyone, but he was pleased to see so many fame points. Once he returned to the forest he could have evolved again; he also predicted that his fame points would have reached 700/800 million in the next few days. Once the manger emptied, he looked up and stared at the stage. Ludlow was still talking, trying to get the audience's attention even more. Sobek was tempted to laugh: the stage was 'only' twelve meters high. For Sobek, who was 9.3 meters tall, it was basically only slightly elevated. Indeed, in fact, the entire 15-meter high fence wasn't that high from his point of view. Compared to the point of view of an average human being, it was like a wall no more than three meters high. Tall, but not absurdly tall. "According to the studies conducted, the jaw strength of this creature exceeds all imagination. The one of the tyrannosaurus rex is just a quarter of its! We are talking about enough force to crush a truck as if it were tinfoil" Ludlow was continuing to say. "Furthermore, this dinosaur's skin is practically impenetrable, hard as steel, and almost indestructible. If there was a t-rex in this enclosure now, it wouldn't last more than five or ten seconds against the new king of the dinosaurs..." Ludlow realized that the spinosaurus was staring at him. He felt a strange sensation in his spine and instinctively stepped back. Even though the stage was more than twelve meters high, he didn't feel safe staying on the edge. Suddenly the spinosaurus lowered its tail and folded on all four legs; it also began to scrape the ground with its forelimbs. It also moved its hind legs back and forth, as if it were doing gymnastics. This strange behavior could only confuse the spectators and, of course, the web. "What is it doing?" "I don't know! Is it preparing for a marathon?" "Maybe it's trying to flatten the ground. Tyrannosaurs do this when they are looking for a place to sleep" "Do you say that it is preparing a bed? Shouldn't it go near the trees? Predators generally don't like being outdoors" "I doubt such a large predator would have to worry about being attacked in their sleep" "Yes, I want to find the crazy animal who would even dare to think of getting close to it!" The spinosaurus continued with its unusual behavior for a while. Eventually, almost everyone lost interest in it. All except one. "Mr.Ludlow" Roland's voice reached the tycoon through the earphone. "There is something wrong. In the forest, that dinosaur never did that. I advise you to get away, and immediately!" Ludlow felt his blood run cold, and he hastened to follow Roland's advice. He continued to back away, looking for a good way to end with a flourish: "Well, ladies and gentlemen. I would say that, since the new king of the dinosaurs wants to sleep, it is better to leave it alone, so I withdraw and give it its spaces. From your positions you can..." Suddenly the spinosaurus snapped and ran towards the stage. It accelerated more and more, reaching the speed of a car shot in gear 2, then, as soon as it was a few meters from the fence, it flexed its hind legs and jump. Normally, any dinosaur would have bumped into the wall in that situation, but Sobek was a special case. His agility attribute now exceeded 70,000, an unusually high figure for an animal of that size. His muscles were on a whole other level than a normal dinosaur. He'd noticed him several times in the forest when he pounced on his prey, and listening to Sarah and Ian as they studied him and talked about his extraordinary physical characteristics had only confirmed his suspicions. Any creature, if it has the right control of its muscles, can do things normally beyond its means. In Sobek's case, his extremely muscular hind legs allowed him to leap about only one meter, because no matter how agile they were, they still had to support more than fourteen tons of weight. But if he added the right preparation, a good start, a powerful acceleration and a right position, then that number could be almost tripled. And since Sobek was already nearly ten meters tall, that was enough to reach the stage. It was extremely tiring, but it could be done. Of course only his head could get there, but that was enough: his mouth tightened on the edge of the stage and he didn't let it go. Now that he had a good footing, he managed to reach the stage with his front claws as well, sinking them deep into the floor. Then he waved his tail several times and finally, with a tug, he managed to bring his hind legs to the stage as well; after all, he now had the agility of a contortionist. He had to use all of his energy to be able to lift his weight like that, but after all he'd spent an entire month conserving every ounce of energy he got, so he couldn't be more ready than that. Ludlow quickly ran away to see the spinosaurus come within a few meters of him. He was certainly not the only one to be frightened: the spectators jumped from their chairs and some fled. Several people were crushed and those who managed to get out early would have preferred not to have done so, but luckily many of them kept common sense and remained safe in the viewing galleries. "Impossible! How did it do it?" "Can a dinosaur of that size jump that high? Isn't that a little too OP?" "My God! But how could it move like this? Does it have bones?" "If it continues in this way, it will come out! Where are the guardians?" The problem was that even if the guardians had intervened they couldn't have done anything against Sobek. Unless they showed up with rockets, they would have never scratched his [Reinforced skin]. If they dared to appear, Sobek wouldn't even have noticed their presence, and if he had he would have swept them away with a single wave of his paw as if they were flies. Once on the stage Sobek looked at the edge of the wall; he could now easily see beyond as it was only five meters tall. He had to hurry: even if the stage was solid he could hear it creaking under his weight, clear sign that it was only a matter of time before it collapsed. He planted his claws on the edge of the fence and sank them into the concrete, after which he began to pull himself completely up. Five meters was nothing to him: he just had to put in some effort to reach the edge of the fence with his hind legs. At that point, he was completely out! From high on the edge of the fence, Sobek let out a roar. Even though the humans couldn't know it, he was yelling 'now' to the whole zoo. "I hate being right all the time" Ian murmured.