About ten minutes into the drive Ellis was forced to turn the headlights on as the dense foliage of trees, ferns and god only knows what else almost completely blocked the sun's rays from filtering down and illuminating the dirt track she was currently driving along. The Land Cruiser she was driving paved a pathway for itself through the branches and for a moment Ellis forgot about the mortal peril she presently found herself in and found herself admiring the view – or lack thereof.

She'd always known Isla Nublar was a beautiful island, she'd known it the moment the fog had lifted the day she and Masrani took the ferry from the mainland, she'd known it when they'd driven to the Hammond Centre via the maintenance roads that were closed off from the public and gave an even closer up view of the animals. Somehow, today, it looked even more magnificent than ever. She was surrounded on all sides by black jungle and driving fast – probably too fast – but she was still able to distinguish the various types of ferns and flora that she sped past, some very rare, others very poisonous and she made a mental note to tell her pseudo aunt Ellie Sattler all about them when she got off the island, if she ever got off the island.

In truth Ellis wasn't really worried about her own safety as she sped through the trees, she had a rifle on the spare seat and enough magazines to put up a damn good fight should she need to. That, and Ellis Grant had survival in her blood. Her father, Alan, had survived worse than this, not once but twice. Alan Grant was notorious for his ability to get out of dangerous situations, Billy had once told her about the time her father had been lost in the Montana Badlands for four days after a cliff gave way and he and his Jeep fell over one hundred feet into a ravine. He'd broken his leg in the fall, had no water or rations to speak of and still he walked back the four days back to camp. Ellis smiled at the thought of her father, and felt comforted by the knowledge that his blood ran through her veins. She was a Grant, she'd survive this. The kids that she was looking for however...

The crackle of the radio that was still holstered to her jean shorts dragged her from whatever dark thoughts she was about to have about Zach and Gray Mitchell and she took one hand off the wheel to turn up the volume.

"E...Ellis?" The all too familiar voice of Lowery Cruthers crackled through the radio. The static noise was loud and distorted his words, but she'd know that voice anywhere and a smile spread across her face at the sound of it.

Unclipping the small handheld radio from her shorts she brought it up to her lips and holding down the transmit button on the side she grinned. "Yeah, yeah you got me."

The radio crackled again and Ellis took a quick moment to check she was tuned into the right frequency before deciding that the poor signal was due to the dense forest she currently found herself driving through and not through a fault of her own. "Oh thank god..." Lowery's voice flooded out of the small speaker again. "Barry told me you're not at the paddock, where are you?"

"I'm uh...driving."

"Where to? To the paddock?"

"No, no..." Ellis sighed heavily, "I'm helping Claire and Owen look for Claire's nephews, their gyro went missing in the valley."

"You're with Owen, that's okay I guess. The last ping on the cameras of the I-Rex was somewhere in the forest so steer clear of there."

Ellis eased up a little on the accelerator, suddenly becoming all too aware of how much noise the Jeep was making as it thundered through the blacked out forest. "I'm not with Owen, he went to the valley with Claire to look for the boys."

"Ellis." Lowery's voice turned serious, something that was rarely heard and something that sounded altogether very wrong. "Where are you." It was more of a demand than a question.

"In the forest."

A number of expletives came blasting out of the radio in her hand and with a frown Ellis turned the volume down a fraction. In the back of her mind she made a sarcastic comment that went something like 'if you don't want me to get eaten so bad then maybe try shutting the hell up' though she didn't voice these thoughts, she knew Lowery was only concerned for her safety.

"Listen Lowery, I'm fine. I'm safe. I can handle myself; I don't need a man to get me through this. I'm going to find these damn kids and then I'll come straight back, you just concentrate on getting all the civilians off this god damn island. Okay?"

In the control room Lowery Cruthers sat back in his chair and huffed out a sigh, he knew she had a point, he knew she could hold her own but that didn't make him feel any less terrible about the situation that his not really girlfriend currently found herself in – especially given that he could have prevented it by keeping tabs on the gyrospheres in the valley like he had supposed to have. Pressing a couple of buttons on his keyboard Lowery brought up a number of camera feeds, he punched in another command, one that would bring up any video feet that showed movement within the forest. It was a programme he'd created when he first accepted his job in the control room and the Ankylosaurus' had gotten into the habit of wandering off the grid, and it was the perfect tool for finding Ellis in the vast forest that spanned across the majority of Isla Nublar. On his screen a number of video feeds flashed up, he minimised a couple almost instantly when it became obvious that the motion being detected was that of a herbivorous dinosaur and not the girl he'd been kissing no less than an hour ago but after some rifling through various feeds he finally picked her Jeep out and expanded the image. Grabbing hold of a plush dinosaur toy from atop of his desk Lowery gave it a quick squeeze as he frowned at the screen, he could just about make out Ellis' face on the other side of the windshield as she sped through the dense forest and the more he watched her the more he found himself infuriated by the fact that he ever let her leave the control room in the first place.

"Okay." He finally agreed with her after a moment's silence. Ellis smirked in silent victory and in the control room Lowery rolled his eyes, having seen the whole thing. "You know you spend too much time with Owen..." Lowery mused over the radio, in the car Ellis glanced at the radio in her hand but otherwise kept quiet. "They're just people, visitors really, civilians makes it sound so military and regimented."

"Please help get the visitors off the island." She corrected before shaking her head and raising the radio to her lips once more. "No that wont do, now it sounds like aliens have invaded and I'm asking you to help them phone home."

On the other end of the line Lowery laughed and beside him Vivian offered him a puzzled look, he waved her off before continuing to speak to Ellis. "We can figure out what to call them when you get back, be...s..fe..Elle."

"What was that, Lowery you're breaking up?"

"I s...be...sa..can..y-you...h...me?"

Ellis knocked the radio against the steering wheel a couple of times but nothing happened, eventually the static crackling even stopped and she was met with a deafening silence.

"Lowery?" She spoke once more before giving up and tossing the radio onto the passenger seat where her rifle lay. She had barely even noticed how deep into the forest she'd driven, it was near enough pitch black and the foliage was so thick that she wasn't really surprised that the signal had finally given up the ghost.

Placing both hands against the wheel Ellis hunched forward, squinting her chocolate brown orbs in an attempt to get a clearer view of the dirt track ahead of her. Even with the headlights on full beam she could only see a metre or so in front of her and so when she finally caught sight of a fallen tree she was forced to slam on the breaks so hard that her seatbelt went ridged, knocking the wind right out of her as it did it's best to stop her body from flying forward and going straight through the windscreen. Catching her breath she leant back into the seat, rubbing a hand gingerly over the exposed skin that was now sporting a pretty impressive looking belt burn, just another injury to add to the list.

She sat that way for a moment, patting herself down to assess if any further damage had been inflicted thanks to her near collision, thankfully everything seemed to be in working order and her only real problem was the fact that she was going absolutely nowhere in this Jeep – not unless she developed superhuman strength and shifted the entire tree that was blocking her path, which wasn't looking so likely. Ellis cut the engine and grabbed the rifle from the passenger seat, deciding that going it on foot was her only option; she had to find Zach and Gray, or at the very least a road that led back to the main park. She half considered leaving the small radio on the seat where she'd tossed it a few minutes ago, after all it was not like she could get a decent signal under such a thick canopy but the realisation that not taking it would mean that she was completely and utterly alone made her feel uneasy and so she grabbed it and holstered it once more on the belt of her jean shorts before clambering out of the Jeep.

Climbing over the tree was the first obstacle Ellis found herself up against, with one of her arms all but useless after her run in with the Indominus earlier that afternoon she was forced to take a running jump and simply hope for the best. She prayed silent thanks to all the gods that she didn't believe in what the tread of her trusty walking boots gripped the bark of the tree with ease and she was able to climb up and over using her one good arm. On the other side she dropped expertly to her feet and a smug smile spread across her pretty, if not completely filthy, features – this was gonna be a walk in the park.

For a long while she trudged through the seemingly endless forest without seeing a single living thing, she could hear birds in the distance but hadn't seen one in the hour it had been since she left the Jeep behind. Keeping a tight grip on the rifle that was secured across her shoulders she pressed onwards, making mental notes of any noticeable landmarks, ensuring that if she found herself turned around in the labyrinth that was Isla Nublar, she would hopefully be able to find her way back eventually – hopefully. It was only when she took a moment to actually sit down and rest did she see anything of any actual note. Half sitting half leaning against the stump of a tree Ellis unclipped the radio from her belt for the second time that day, flicking through the frequencies in the hope of picking something, anything, up. She knocked it against the trunk of the tree she was leaning against in frustration when nothing, not even static, could be heard out of the small speaker on the front of the black rectangular device before grumbling irritably and holstering it once more. With nothing better to do with her time whilst she regained her energy Ellis's chocolate brown orbs flickered aimlessly around her surroundings, stopping only when something not too far from the tree she found herself leaning on caught her attention.

Pushing herself to a stand she made her way towards the thing that was half buried under the dirt and leaf debris, had anyone but herself seen it poking up out of the dirt it would almost definitely go unnoticed. Not many people knew what a velociraptor claw looked like, not unless they were palaeontologists like her and her father, or had worked face to face with raptors like her and Owen. Dropping to her knees Ellis used her hands as shovels to dig out the claw, before leaning back on her heels and inspecting it once she'd unearthed it completely.

"Oh my god..." She said, to no one besides herself, turning the find over in her hands a few times. A small smile danced upon her lips as she looked at it, but was immediately wiped off her face the moment someone's voice startled her and she dropped the claw to the ground.

"What is it?" The voice asked, Ellis' head whipped around to find the source only to be greeted with two absolutely soaking wet, mud covered young boys.

Getting to her feet Ellis laughed softly, not quite believing that she'd somehow stumbled upon the Mitchell boys, or rather that they had stumbled upon her. Retrieving the claw from the ground she passed it to the younger of the two, the one that had asked her. "It's a velociraptor claw."

"A real one?" Gray Mitchell asked, reaching out an arm from his slightly concealed position behind his elder brother to take the claw from her.

"Yeah, it's kind of amazing actually. That claw is thousands of years old, it's fossilised...so it didn't come from any of the raptors that have ever lived on this island. My dad used to have one just like it..."

Zach cleared his throat, pushing his little brother to one side and standing up straighter so that he was almost as tall as Ellis. He ran a hand through his wet hair in a way that Ellis assumed he thought looked attractive before pouting ever so slightly and giving her a small nod. "Hey..." He spoke, doing his very best to make his voice as sultry and appealing as ever. Beside him Gray rolled his eyes, even now when they'd literally just jumped to their deaths to get away from a dinosaur, Zach Mitchell was still trying to pick up a girl. "I'm Zach."

Ellis laughed again, before raising a brow and shaking her head. "...and I'm about six years older than you." The roar of the Indominus Rex somewhere in the distance was enough to put an immediate stop to any further joking and or flirting and Ellis nodded in the opposite direction to the one where the sound had come from. "We should get going."

"Who are you?" Gray asked as Ellis ushered him and Zach out of the clearing they found themselves in. He wasn't entirely sure that this blood covered girl with her serious eyes, rifle and raptor claws wasn't a figment of his imagination. She was like a prehistoric Lara Croft and he was pretty sure he was in love with her.

"I'm Ellis Grant, now get a move on."