The shadow got closer, and the grunting grew louder outside the door. The shadow itself was blurry and unclear, but to Grace, it looked to be the size of a car. The duo kept their rifles fixated on the door, and were caught off guard by a juvenile dinosaur bounding in. The calf was about the size of a labrador but looked like it weighed as much as a baby rhino. Its head was frilled, with little spikes that lead to three symmetrical, longer spikes at the peak. One of the middle spikes had a notch, like a dent, and was irregular. It had a large head and a beak, with a small nub of a horn at its nose and two smaller bumps above the eyes. The frill was adorned with two patches that looked like a predator’s gaze, and white spots lead down the snout from them like teeth. It made a baby squeak towards them, shaking its tail in a limited horizontal motion, and jumped around more before it ran back outside.

Adam lowered his gun a bit and glanced at Grace, “Maybe its mother isn’t here, heh.”

“You can’t be fucking serious, right?” Grace retorted.

Almost as if it was on cue, a bellow came from behind the door and the edge of a lance horn came from the side of the door. It grew to about three feet long before the head peered in through the door frame. The mother was the size of a rhinoceros and looked like it had the power of one as well. Its frill spikes were as long as the horn, almost hitting the top of the frame. Its frill was adorned in a similar pattern to the calf’s, spreading its eye and down the head to its beak. Its body was blanketed by a forest green, as was its head, mind the display pattern. Under its head was a spiky dewlap, indifferent from an iguana.

The calf was right by it, nudging its mother’s face lovingly. The large dinosaur returned the affection before it walked into the indoor space, calf in tow, and approached Grace. She raised the rifle to it, aiming for the forehead, but lowered the weapon when the mother started gently nudging her feet with its gargantuan head.

Grace looked to Adam, who had put his gun on his back and was patting the creature’s scaled back, silently and visibly in awe.

“Uh, Adam?” Grace asked, confused.

“This is like a dream!” he responded enthusiastically, making Grace even more puzzled, “This is a Styracosaurus, a ceratopsid that lived around Alberta in the early Cretaceous. It’s my favorite dinosaur!”

“Ah, so that explains how it hasn’t charged us?”

She moved around the mother, to where Adam was standing and squatted down to inspect its eyes. The pupils were slanted, like a goat’s, but also kind of rounded with a more visible sclera. Grace waved her hand in front of its eyes, watching expectantly.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Seeing how good its vision is.”

She saw as the mother followed her hand and moved its head to nudge her again. Grace stood up before it did and turned to Adam.

“I thought its eyes would be blurrier and more circular, like a rhino, but it’s not. Quick question, do you know why rhinos charge everything?”

“Yeah, something with their-”

“They have poor eyesight, so they can't tell a person from a tree from a lion.”

“So, they’re hard of sight with trust issues, and you thought Styracosaurus was the same?”

“It would make sense; both are grazing megafauna with large nasal horns.”

Grace moved away from the animal and through the metal bar fence, gesturing to Adam to come with her, both taking out their flashlights. He patted the styracosaur again on the forehead and went with her. They could hear the mother trot back outside, and assumed the calf went with her. The metal bars were littered everywhere, random yet orderly, obscuring the rest of the building like the pine forest Grace had ventured into mere hours earlier. But this felt colder, not only because it was, but because of the barely lit warehouse’s confining darkness and artificialness. It felt almost claustrophobic, and Grace hadn’t felt it before. On the ground were many long and pitch-black tarps. Each was at the edge of a fence, or in between, and each time on one of the posts were two little bolts, at the top and the bottom. Sometimes the tarps were still attached to the bolts, torn and barely hanging on. Soon, after squeezing through the numerous poles, they made it to an open area. Clipboards and papers lay on the desks, unchanged from the places people had put them down on.

The two divided and started inspecting the papers. Many of the papers Grace picked up were shipment logs, each with several hundred pounds of ferns, cycad leaves, and more to feed the former residents of the concrete pens. One pile were several logs of Tonnes of “araucarites branches” being delivered every week.

“Where did they even get the amount of food necessary?” pondered Grace.

She looked inside the drawer of a small filing cabinet under a desk, finding a moldy bound booklet. The cover was barely legible, but through smudged letters, it read “Avetoro Operation: Central Facility Specimen Catalogue,” and was dated to 2012.

“Huh, now we’re getting somewhere,” she muttered silently, grinning a bit as she started to flip through the pages.

The catalogue was small and thin, barely larger than a notepad, and the inside contained two-page spreads of species. The pages detailed the number of species, the diets of each, small notes made by the caretakers of the prehistoric creatures, and worn, dull pictures of each. There were only two clear photos, one was of a species labeled Microceratus ateles, looking identical to the small, frilled creature Grace saw in the reeds back at camp.

“But Ateles is a genus of mammal, why name a species of dinosaur that?”

The other was of the styracosaurus, looking identical to the mother. The note, however, caught Grace’s attention;

“Styracosaurus albertensis is probably the most ornery species cloned,” it read, “Their poor eyesight, the result of either the resurrection process or a natural trait similar to rhinoceros, makes them extremely untrusting and will cause them to perceive near any moving thing as a threat. This includes other species, but mainly humans. The only approachable specimens are the four individuals produced in the C.A.B. Trials. Keep all information regarding these individuals confidential.”

“I was right. That mother must have been one of those four! And the baby must be the offspring,” she thought, before calling to Adam, “I found something useful!”

“Me too, I found a file labeled ‘S. albertensis Experiments.’ I skimmed through it but the only parts I could make heads or tails of were the paleontological parts of it. Most of it are genetics of some of the styracosaurs.”

“Let me see them then, I’ve only got a degree in zoology, but I can understand genetics to a degree.”

A call came through the building as he was about to hand over the file. A call that was deep and almost bird-like, freezing the two and darting their heads in the direction of the door. A heavy breath followed, and so did two echoing clicks, almost like the ornithomimus had. They crouched and snuck behind the desk. The call came again, followed by more clicks and vague breathy growling. To Grace, it sounded communicational, that there were two animals.

The metal bars started making sounds, like the sounds made when you hit them. The dinosaurs were moving through the bars, and the sounds were getting closer. The bangs became split into different parts of the building, Grace thinking that the two separated, and one of the sources stopped right by the open study area. The clicking started again, except this time it was clearer, and she could hear the rustling papers on the floor from the animal's feet. It was on the opposite side of the desk they were hiding behind. Grace edged her head ever so slightly to look at it.

Her first thought was “Velociraptor” from the giant sickle claws. It was surely the size of the beasts from Jurassic Park, and they almost looked like them, but its coverage of dark redwood feathers edged with a silk color, from its head to the tip of its tail made it near indistinguishable from a large bird of prey. Its breast spread like wings from its chest to its shoulder blades, with the cream feathers of its underbelly. Its arms were winged, two sharp claws sticking out, and its eyes had a dead stare like an eagle’s. The back of its head was raised in a feathered crest. Its tail ended in a tail fan, wider and finer than the ratite-like dinosaurs, looking like it could be better for gliding rather than running. It was visibly underweight, and on the scaled part of its face, it had claw scars running down its snout.

It clicked with its keratinized jaws and breathed heavily, at the ground and to the air, which is when Grace turned back around. She turned to Adam and gestured to sneak to the bars. He nodded back and they crawled and quietly headed for the bars. They make it halfway when a squeak comes from right behind them. They turn their heads in a jolt to see the juvenile styracosaur, which had been hiding by a separate desk. The carnivore’s head pops up and focuses on them. The predator called again, and the banging from the other started to approach their direction head-on, faster than before.

“Run!” yelled Adam, as the two got up and took off to the maze of metal bars, Adam grabbing the calf under arm. The raptor squeezed through the bars from it to their left, calling aggressively towards them and clicking to its partner. Grace barely caught a look at it, but it was also malnourished. Its feathers and around its eyes were also infested with ticks. The duo book it through the bars, the predators following closely behind. They were slowed down by the bars but still gave chase. Every second the bangs got closer, and closer, almost reaching them before they moved to a different corridor, and it stopped for a split second only to continue with more ferocity.

“Why did they have to make raptors!” breathed Grace as they ran.

“Those aren’t Velociraptors, they’re Achillobators!” responded Adam.

“Now is not the time!”

The crack of sunshine made it through a gap in the bars. The door was just ahead. The three go through the last bar and sprint out the door, to be met with the calf’s mother. It bellows aggressively towards them and shakes its head. Adam dropped the calf and they moved to avoid it when the scarred achillobator came through the door as well. It pounced, sickle claws first, at Adam, landing on his back and biting at his shoulder.

Adam screamed in pain as the predator mauled him, the claws stuck into his back. The raptor let go of his shoulder and aimed for the neck, but the mother styracosaurus charged it. It hit the carnivore with the force of a car, knocking it back several feet into the facility. The other tick-infested predator came out and immediately went to the aid of its partner, before running at the large herbivore. Grace grabbed Adam’s hand, with him grabbing the calf again, and rushed out of the pasture. They stopped at the gate and watched as the prehistoric animals fought.

The achillobators were large, about the same size as the mother, but the styracosaurus was stronger. The infested one aimed to jump onto its back, but the styracosaur knocked it away before it could. It scraped up before the mother could impale it, backing away before trying again. The starved predators were desperate, slashing the mother with their winged claws while still trying to jump onto her, getting back up as soon as they were hit by her horn. The mother backed away, toward the gate, as the two continued to try and hunt her. The scarred one ran around it, barely dodging its opponent’s head, and finally managed to pin itself to the animal. The styracosaur was caught off guard and knocked over, as the raptor was also trapped under its weight. The infested one dove to its neck, latching its jaws to her and scratching at it. The mother let out a bellow while kicking and struggling, trying to knock the achillobator away, but it wasn’t letting go. The herbivore slowed its struggle, and the predator jerked at the neck, stopping its movement altogether.

It released its clamp on the lifeless creature and shoved it with its head. It only moved limply, and it limped to help get the other achillobator out from under the corpse, only to find its body as well. The other raptor leaned down to nudge its partner gently, clicking for it to respond. It came back up and turned to eat the styracosaur.

Grace wasn’t too fazed by the scene. After all, this was just nature, and these were just animals. The surviving raptor would probably die because of the injured leg, eventually. She looked at Adam. He had placed the calf down and was covering his mouth, his eyes wide with shock and face still jolting with pain. He was still holding his wound, but he seemed pained from more than just the bite.

The calf squealed and ran towards its fallen mother, easily shaking off Adam’s attempts to hold it back. It nudged at its mother’s head, shoved at it, but it only fell back limply. The calf squealed for its mother’s attention, still nudging at it, but it had no response. The surviving achillobator cocked its head up and snapped towards the calf with bloody jaws, which scared it away, and it continued to eat.

The calf came back to Adam, leaning on his legs. He looked down at the baby gloomily and walked away with it, walking back to the ATV as it followed. Grace looked back at the pasture, the two bodies, and the successful predator, before joining Adam. He was silent, sitting on the seat covering his shoulder with a towel. The calf was on the back of the vehicle as it lied down with its head in its front feet.

“Can I see your shoulder,” asked Grace.

Adam responded, “Yeah, yeah it’s fine. There's some water bottles and soap in that bag. Pour the water on then clean it.”

Grace moved the towel and inspected the wound. The achillobator had avoided the vest and had bitten him just below his left shoulder. It was a serrated wound, still bleeding, and cut clean through his shirt. The dinosaur’s bite nearly severed a chunk out of him, it's a miracle that it was still attached. She reached for the bag he said and got a bottle, the soap, and bandages out, as well as a stapler.

“It almost looks like a great white bite,” noted Grace mentally, “Usually they produce wounds as deep as this. That thing’s bite force has to be in the leagues with a shark or a lion to make a bite like this.”

She put the towel back on, slowing the bleeding. As it slowed and stopped, she added the antibiotic.

“Why bring the soap from camp?” Grace asked.

“Just in case something injures us like this.”

“Ah, good,” she pauses, “You might want to hold something.”

"Why, what're you-"

She pressed the stapler to the wound and sealed it.

"Ah, damn it!"

"All done, just need to wrap it."

She bandaged the wound and put everything back in the bag, save for the water bottle, which she gave to Adam.

"So, do you still have the file?"

He moves his other hand to a pocket on his vest and pulls out the scrunched manilla folder

“Good, and I’ve got mine,” she said as she pulled out the catalog from her back pocket and gave it to Adam, “It’s got six species in it, and notes on all of them.”

Adam’s face lit up a bit as he scrolled through the small bundle of paper, “This is where they held hadrosaurs and the argentinosaurus! And a Microceratus ateles?”

“I found it strange too. Ateles is the genus spider monkeys belong to.”

“And the fact Microceratus isn’t a thing anymore. It looks more like a Graciliceratops, and if it was it is wildly out of proportion.”

Adam showed Grace the picture of the weird dinosaur again, and she examined it closer. Its mouth was opened threateningly, which contained teeth looking akin to a spider monkey. Its back was covered in hair leading down to its primate-shaped tail. Its arms were also long and lanky, nearing unnaturality.

“So you're saying the species was tampered with?” she asked.

“Certainly, this might not be the first, too. We should keep an eye out.”

Grace nodded.

“Also, can you check my back? Those sickle claws felt like they got past the vest.”

He got up and in the back of his vest were the two large punctures, one from each toe claw, going so deep it revealed his skin.

“They did, but they didn’t puncture you. You're fine.”

Adam sat back down, and she moved her attention to the juvenile styracosaurus. It was laying on the back seat of the ATV with its face in its front feet. Grace started petting its forehead, which made it lift its small head towards her.

“What are we doing about him,” she asked Adam.

“What do you mean?” he confusingly responded

“What do you think, should we let him back out to the island?”

“It’s obvious what we do, we keep him.”

“The fuck is he thinking?” she thought.

“What I’m thinking is we keep him and make sure he’s safe. He’s only a calf, and he’s obviously grieving.”

His response caught Grace by surprise before she realized she accidentally blurted it out.

“It’s not wise to care for something we don’t know how to sustain, hell! We don’t even know if this thing will survive! For all we know it’s still on its mother’s crop milk!”

“I mean, didn’t we just get a catalog of this species? We know how it eats, how it behaves, and how it matures. And also, what is crop milk?”

She sighs, “Y’know what, fine. Let’s keep it. But Adam I swear to whatever god there is if you get attached and name it- “

“I won’t! No promises but I’ll try not to.”

They stopped arguing when they saw the achillobator limp out of the paddock with a chunk of meat in its jaws and toward the hole in the gate. It had stopped and stared at them, cocking its head. It started again and wandered out, toward the mountains in the distance.

“Okay, what’s our next plan of action?” asked Adam.

“Well, we came for answers and shelter, didn’t we? We got answers and we found out how effective the other is, so we still need shelter. I know that Darla’s station is more up north, maybe we make a detour there and see how that place has held up.”

“Sounds like a good idea, and hey, if it isn’t standing then we could use the materials to build a shelter.”

“Let’s just see if the place is still there.”

Adam moved out of the driver’s seat and to the back with the calf. He placed it on his lap in between him and Grace in the driver’s seat. She started the engine, which caused it to backfire again, scaring the calf and causing Adam to comfort it.

“So one more question,” he said a bit loudly over the engine.

“What is it?”

“Who is Darla?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

She revved the throttle and started the vehicle towards the northwest. They spotted the achillobator in the distance, still wandering towards the mountains, alone.

* * *

The drive away from the facility was a shorter time than getting to it. Grace’s old memories from the island were brought back as she neared Darla’s station, ironically spotting another nesting ground of ornithomimus when they got close. Another forest came up, but not another nest of skinny pines. It looked a bit akin to Marabou, a wall of trees, but thicker and solid.

Grace continued driving, curving right to ride the tree line to find the old path she knew led directly to the station. The path, as she remembered, was a gravel road just wide enough to fit a Jeep. It was a straight shot along the eastern coast of the island, passing Kelvin and Carl’s station as well as the rocky cliffs in the bay the former had studied at. It had also led by a lake, breaking the forest open to the central plain right before it reentered the forest to the station.

She sped past the barrier of trees, roaring with the sounds of chirping crickets and whooping birds and the dinosaurs that almost definitely lurked within. The calf had fallen asleep, gently napping on Adam’s lap. Adam was already attached to the calf, or at least Grace assumed, and baby-talked to it the entire way across the grand plain when it was awake. Grace scanned the area ahead of the ATV, looking for where the trees broke and led to the lake, but the forest curved right in front of them.

She curved with the wall and kept driving, and driving. She did, at least, before the trees sunk in on themselves to the lake she had been searching for. The body of water was a pleasant sight to Grace, as the now-setting sun darkened the area around it and highlighted every wave as it peaked. She noticed they weren’t alone, as the sun also underlined two titans towering over the lake. She recognized the giant silhouettes as Argentinosaurus, one of the dinosaurs in the pamphlet at the destroyed camp, their several-story bodies supported by muscular column legs. Under their yard-long necks, colorful wrinkly sacks of scaly skin were draped almost similar to an anole. The ground was shockingly silent with every step of their feet; nail-less, fleshy ‘hooves’ with a large spike facing inward. One let out a deep bellow, just high enough to be heard, shaking Grace’s inside from the mere vibration of it. From behind them, she could barely make out a tiny llama-sized juvenile trailing behind the two. In front of the massive long necks, the mixed silhouettes of a small herd of frilled dinosaurs traveled. Two large horns grew out just above their eyes and curved down, with an infinitely smaller nasal horn following the same direction as the larger ones. Their heads were also huge, almost taking up a third of their length. The group looked to have 6 members, with the largest leading the herd and two calves trailing behind their mothers.

“Triceratops, right?” Grace guessed, watching the bus-sized animals trek across the lake.

“Looks like it, probably a porosus judging by the brow horns,” Adam responded.

Grace squinted, trying to look across the lake without the setting sun blinding her. She looked past the sun and then saw a small amount of glistening coming from on the ground in little specks. She instantly recognized them as the gravel path. It was just across the lake! It was in front of the herbivores, they just had to wait for them to pass. She slowly wheeled down and around to the edge of the lake, looking to go behind the large creatures. A roar cut through the trees before she stopped, and Grace froze before blacking out.

She was back at the garage of the research station, in the car. But she’s sitting in the driver's seat. She saw the door was open and without age, really so was the rest of the space. She remembered where she was and started breathing. And breathing. She blinked and the door was closed, debris and rust flicking in and out of view. The door was gaining more and more dents, and her breathing sped up. Breathing heavier, and faster. She saw the door ripped through in blinks, never constant.

“Grabahdjd!…”

The voice got smudgy at the end, and Grace couldn’t understand. She felt wet now, from the rain outside? But it’s not raining! She didn’t feel the rain, at least. Was it raining? When she blinked again the Carkylonyx was in front of the Jeep, staring through her. Why did it look human? Its head was smudgy too, but she still saw through it and saw the predator. A man's face flicked through then blurs. The garage door was gone, ripped open like in the blink. What was past it in the jungle? They were blinking in and out too. The Carkylonyx squinted and rammed its head into the car at an impossible speed. Grace screamed and held her arms out, bracing for the pain, and felt the shards, but didn’t? A gunshot powered over the sound of the glass shattering, and she was back on the ATV.

“Grace! Drive!”

She hit the pedal without thinking, and the backfire snapped her back completely. She knew it was Adam and looked up the hill to see a Carkylonyx harassing the trike herd up ahead, now in a circle of horns and frills with the juveniles in the middle. She stomped on the pedal again, spitting up dirt from behind, speeding off into the tree wall behind them to hide. She shut off the engine and wiped her forehead. Sweat, but it was colder than it was in the heat. They kept their eyes locked on the sound of the creatures, blinded by the wall of bushes, and both hoped the trikes didn’t bring it their way. The Carkylonyx’s roars were always the same, threatening, as was the massive bull trike closest to it. Its roars got less frequent and distant before it stopped making sound at all. The only sound it heard were defeated hisses and breathy growls heading away, towards the large central plain.

The silence after was near deafening, getting filled up by the birds and dinosaur calls.

Adam was the one to say anything first after what Grace felt like an eternity, “Are-”

“Yes I’m fine!” she exclaimed, before quieting herself, “Let’s just get to the station. It’s just on the end of that old path.”

Adam only nodded with a face of concern, and looked down to the now-awake calf, its eyes locked on Grace. She rolled the ATV just out of the trees and surveyed. She saw the figure of the Carkylonyx walking away, now joined by the other two, on the infinite-looking grassland. The trike herd, along with the argentinosaurs, had trotted into the trees. Grace wheeled out and drove to where the path was, the sun’s rays shining harshly. She started to follow the path once she reached it as it led around the lake and into the trees. Inside the forest, it wasn’t as dense as it seemed on the outside. It was a shadow inside, like Marabou, but it was more open. The scattered trees were as tall as the argentinosaurs, possessed trunks as thick as a small building, and had a canopy like an umbrella, shielding any and all light. The underbrush was scarce, if there was any, with the bases of the trees teeming with fungus and moss. Almost every plant was a bromeliad, teeming from the night-like lighting of the forest. From underneath grew low and small ferns, barely visible like a weed growing out of stone.

“Flashlight?” Grace asked after a minute of entering the damp jungle.

Adam took out one and shone it ahead. Once the light blinked on, she could see the several graciliceratops scattering out of the way and running up the colossal trees. The path was more worn out in the forest, with no gravel left and only the outline of the beaten road remaining. It did not take long to reach the research station, only feeling like ten minutes. The station looked similar to the other, decrepit. The garage door was on the ground, rusted with plants sprouting from the bottom. The building itself was cracked and grungy, with even the glass already shattered.

She stopped once it was in view, and the smell of rot snuck up Grace’s nose. The smell was new, and not at the Marabou station.

“Augh! That’s putrid!” Adam said from behind, and the calf grunted as if it agreed.

“Yeah, it’s almost-” she paused with realization, “Almost… like the ornithomimus corpse.”

Grace turned and extended her hand for the flashlight. He handed it to her, and she stepped off the ATV. She walked towards the building, the smell getting more intense. She stepped inside the garage, where the smell reeked and nearly killed her. She shone it all over and found the maggot-infested corpse of an ornithomimus inside. The feathers were mangled around its neck, and several chunks were taken out of the body. Right by it was a nest. It was made of twigs, no, tree limbs, and in it were sleeping baby dinosaurs. They were light brown, with short faces, shorter arms, and a tail contending with a snake's. Above the eyes were little bumpy horns. But over the nest lied their father, the size of a pick-up truck and the color of fire. Rosettes covered the meat-eating bull's body, and above the eyes were a pair of menacing horns, like the babies.

“Oh no,” thought Grace, as she backed up, remembering what the dinosaurs were.

She ran out of the garage, towards the vehicle and Adam.

“Start the ATV! It’s a nesting site!”

“For what!” yelled Adam in response. The sounds of the trees started ringing with the alarm calls of the graciliceratops.

“For the Carn-”

Something large rammed into Grace, sending her flying. She flew into the bromeliads and onto a tree root, as she braced herself. Her head slammed onto it, and everything went black. The only sounds she could hear before going unconscious were a roar, Adam yelling, and the calls of the small dinosaurs from the canopies, echoing.