Chapter 10: SSR

  The air in the office smelled like salt and expensive coffee. The ocean air clung to everything in Honolulu, whether you wanted it to or not. The building was modern, glass-fronted, and perched high enough that the water could be seen from almost every angle. Boats looked like toys from up here. The sky was wide and blue.

  Joshua Jacob Muldoon felt content.

  JJ sat behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, collar open, staring at a stack of folders he hadn’t touched in an hour. Search patterns. Weather reports. Helicopter maintenance logs. The boring pieces of heroism no one put on magazine covers. A rescue company wasn’t built on dramatic moments; it was built on endless paperwork and decisions made on too little sleep.

  His desk phone buzzed.

  He ignored it.

  It buzzed again. Then a third time. JJ reached over and pressed the button.

  “Yeah.”

  Hector’s voice crackled through, tinny and rushed. “Boss. You gotta come out here.”

  JJ sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing. “You finally crash the damn simulator and set something on fire?”

  “Worse.” A pause. “We caught something.”

  JJ’s hand stilled. “Caught what?”

  Hector hesitated. “A distress call.”

  JJ didn’t move. “From where?” he asked, voice calm.

  Hector didn’t answer right away. The pause stretched long enough for JJ to feel his patience start to snap.

  “Hector?”

  “It’s from… uh…” Another pause. “It’s from Isla Nublar.”

  The words hit like a gunshot.

  JJ stood so fast that the chair behind him rolled backward and bumped into the filing cabinet with a hollow thunk.

  “No,” he said, but it came out quieter than he meant.

  Hector’s voice sharpened. “I’m not messing around. The comms suite picked it up on Longwave. It’s weak as hell, but it’s real. Come listen.”

  He was already moving. He walked out of his office and into the main floor of Soaring Star Rescue’s operations wing, open workspace, large screens, radio stations, weather monitors, and a handful of men and women who all looked up at the same time.

  They could tell something was up.

  Hector stood near the comms station with a headset slung around his neck. He was a compact man with tired eyes.

  “I told you,” Hector said. “It’s bad.”

  At the comms station, one of JJ’s assistants, Taryn, sat hunched forward, fingers hovering over dials and knobs. The speakers emitted faint static.

  “Play it again,” JJ said.

  Taryn looked uncertain. “It’s hard to hear. Might not even be the same message.”

  “Play it,” JJ repeated.

  Taryn hit a switch.

  Static flooded the room.

  Then, faintly, a voice emerged through the noise. Young. Female. Tight with fear.

  “…Isla Nublar… Communications Post… we need help…”

  JJ’s chest tightened.

  The voice wavered in and out, swallowed by interference. But he caught enough.

  Two survivors. Five dead.

  Then the transmission collapsed back into static.

  Hector shifted his weight. “We’ve been monitoring the usual bands, yeah? You know, storms, fishing boats, tourists doing something dumb. This came in on a frequency nobody uses anymore.”

  JJ stared at the speaker like it might start talking again. “Run it one more time,” he said.

  Taryn played it again. The voice cut through static.

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  “…two alive…”

  JJ heard something else this time, something under the words. A tremor in her words. The girl was terrified. She was doing her best to control herself, but he could hear the edge of panic in her voice.

  JJ’s jaw clenched. Behind him, footsteps approached, slow and measured. One of his partners, Kimo Hasegawa, came out of a side office. Kimo looked like he belonged on a sailboat with a rum in hand, but his eyes had the hard clarity of someone who’d spent years cleaning up disasters.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Kimo asked.

  JJ didn’t turn. “Yes.”

  Kimo’s mouth tightened. “That place is supposed to be abandoned.”

  Hector let out a humorless laugh. “Tell that to whoever’s calling from it.”

  Another voice joined them, older, sharper. Naomi Price, his other partner, strolled in holding a folder and a pen like she’d been waiting for this moment. Naomi wasn’t military. She was worse: logistics.

  She took one look at JJ’s face and sighed like a woman watching someone walk toward a cliff. “That’s Isla Nublar?”

  JJ nodded once. “It is.”

  Naomi glanced at the comms unit. “How long ago was the message sent?”

  “Hard to tell,” Taryn said quickly. “It could be recent. It’s repeating at intervals like a beacon. But the signal strength keeps fluctuating like it’s being obstructed. Heavy foliage, terrain, storm…”

  “The sender is still alive,” Hector said, cutting in. “Or the transmitter’s automated.”

  JJ’s eyes flicked to him.

  Hector scratched the side of his neck, suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m just saying. It could be.”

  “It wasn’t automated,” JJ said.

  Silence settled.

  Naomi watched him carefully. “You’re sure?”

  JJ stared at the static. “Nublar’s been abandoned for a decade. If it were automated, we would have heard it before now.”

  Kimo exhaled slowly, rubbing his jaw. “We can’t go to Nublar. Not without authorization. Not without a government contract. The last time anyone was there…”

  “People died,” JJ finished.

  Kimo’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly.”

  JJ didn’t speak. His gaze drifted to the far wall of the operations wing, where a framed photo hung, old, sun-faded.

  A man in khakis. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. Weathered face. Calm eyes. Standing beside a fence line with jungle behind him.

  Robert Muldoon.

  JJ didn’t keep the photo out of nostalgia. He kept it out as a reminder of his mission and purpose.

  Naomi stepped closer, voice gentle now. “JJ. You don’t have to do this.”

  JJ shook his head. She was wrong. He did.

  Hector said, quieter, “Boss… if it’s a kid…”

  JJ turned to face them. All three of them. Hector. Naomi. Kimo.

  “You know what happened there,” JJ said.

  No one answered. He didn’t need them to. A story everyone had heard, but none knew fully. The story that the government silenced and corporate lawyers had reshaped. The Sandiego incident had brought more to light, and those gagged into silence had spoken about their time there. But JJ knew because his father had died there.

  Naomi’s voice softened. “If you go, you’re not just risking yourself. You’re risking the company. You’re risking all of us.”

  JJ nodded slowly. “I know.”

  Kimo frowned. “Then why are you standing here as if you've already decided?”

  JJ looked back at the comms unit. The static still hissed quietly, like ocean foam against stone. Because somewhere out there… someone had called for help.

  JJ swallowed once, then spoke. “Because this is what we do. We help people. Hector, prep the Challenger. Naomi, call Senator Gutierrez. Time to call in that favor. Kimo, prep the team.”

  Naomi stepped forward. “JJ…”

  “I’m not asking,” JJ said. “We intercepted a distress call. That makes it our problem. That’s what we do.”

  Kimo’s jaw flexed. “This company does humanitarian extraction. For a price.”

  JJ looked at him then. Really looked. The entire room felt smaller.

  “You ever seen a kid drown?” JJ asked.

  Kimo’s face didn’t change.

  JJ continued. “Not on TV. Not in a report. In real life. You ever look in their eyes while it happens and realize the only thing between them and death is whether you move fast enough?”

  Kimo didn’t answer.

  “We’re going,” JJ said. “Hector, get Loni and Little Bear.”

  Hector grinned despite himself. “Hell, yes.”

  Naomi shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass. Hector immediately shut up.

  JJ turned back toward his office, already reaching for his jacket. “Get fuel. Load the LCU. Bring the all-terrain kit. And find me every map we’ve got on that island, even if it’s a rumor scribbled on a napkin.”

  Hector nodded, already moving. “On it, jefe.”

  JJ paused at the doorway for half a second and glanced again at his father’s photo. A man he barely remembered, but whose legacy he tried to live up to. Outside the glass wall, the ocean glittered, and the clouds floated out to sea.