Chapter 2.

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The suffocated scavenger's body hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. He had been the final one blocking Joel and Ellie's path to the top floor of the office building where their backpacks were being held, and the pair breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that their weapons and supplies hadn't yet been extracted from them.

Joel unwillingly allowed a contented grunt to escape as he slipped the worn bag onto his back.

"Feels good to have some weight back on your shoulders, huh?" said Ellie as she reclaimed her own pack.

Both quickly searched through them to ensure nothing had been taken. Joel immediately found the picture of he and Sarah. The faded photo contained more emotions than could possibly be conveyed through words. Joel stared at the image for a long time. He glanced up at Ellie and smiled. He may have lost a daughter in 2013 but right now, 21 years later, he still had one.

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Sullivan had seen and done many things throughout his years. Yet nothing quite compared to covering his friends with a sniper rifle while they fled aimlessly through the grounds of a chateau, pursued by droves of vicious dinosaurs. He and Chloe crouched on the chateau roof, firing shots at any creature that tried to attack Drake or Cutter. But for every velociraptor that slumped to the ground with blood oozing from a bullet wound, another emerged from the bushes to join the fray.

"Nate! Get to the goddamn tower!"

"Charlie, come on!" cried Drake, making a run for the short structure that was situated nearby. The pair made it to the tower, despite narrowly avoiding death several times thanks to the masterful efforts of Victor Sullivan.

However, after dashing through the tower entrance, Drake and Cutter found themselves in a predicament: the wood that had once made up the tower's various platforms and staircases had worn away and accumulated into detritus at the base of the building. Unfortunately for the duo, the tower extended a level further down than the floor they had entered, causing them to adopt a bizarre human centipede manouevre to avoid falling to their deaths, with Nate hanging from the doorway and Cutter dangling helplessly at his feet.

The situation was not improved by the raptor that entered the tower a floor down, which promptly began leaping up in efforts to reach Cutter. A second raptor managed to make matters even worse by approaching the doorway, a lust for blood evident on its features.

"Shit! Charlie! Charlie, shoot it!" yelled Drake.

"I lost my gun somewhere outside!" shouted Cutter, barely managing to dodge the attacks of the other raptor.

Nathan gritted his teeth before relinquishing the grip of his right hand, his muscles screaming as the left arm alone struggled to lift them both.

"Stop moving!" he cried, fumbling for his holster.

"It's gonna get me, Nate! It's gonna get me!" was Cutter's only response as his attacker began scaling the debris towards him.

Drake drew his pistol, shooting the raptor in the head mid-leap, before calling "catch!" and dropping the pistol down to Cutter.

Which he naturally missed.

And then naturally caught with his feet.

The raptor reached the highest position and prepared to leap as Cutter struggled to retrieve the gun. The dinosaur jumped... only to be clocked in the head with the pistol. It fell to the ground unconscious.

"We need to get to the chateau wall and find a way up" said Drake.

"Let's go" responded Cutter, dropping down neatly to the tower floor and allowing Nate to scramble up. On exiting the tower, Nathan promptly tripped over a loose floor tile, sprawling helplessly on the ground as a raptor charged. A sniper rifle fired just as the animal leapt.

The bullet missed.

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Ellie rifled through her backpack; everything seemed to be in place. She briefly examined Sam's robot, replacing it before she got emotional. Whenever she thought she'd recovered from Sam's death it hit her again like a punch in the gut.

"You got all your guns an' ammo?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, yeah... it's all here. Close enough, anyways."

Ellie turned but saw Joel looking away, displaying an expression she had never seen on him before. He was dumbstruck, at a complete loss for words, transfixed even.

"What the hell is that?" he mumbled as they regarded the surreal sight before them. Ellie stepped towards it, an arm outstretched, and with eyes filled with curiosity and intrigue.

"Holy shit."

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Drake snatched up the loose tile behind him and swung it, clubbing the incoming raptor in the face. As he got to his feet, another leapt at him. Nate parried its claws with his AK-47 before kicking the creature hard, sending it flailing along the floor.

Meanwhile, Cutter had reached the chateau wall, retrieving his gun in the process, but now found himself trapped, with dinosaurs converging on all sides and a solitary bullet left in the chamber.

"I need a weapon!" he yelled.

Hefting a nearby propane tank, he managed to eliminate most of the approaching raptors with a well-placed throw and a precise shot with his final bullet. One lone raptor survived the explosion and launched a killing leap.

Cutter caught the sniper rifle that Sully dropped down for him and lifted it up just in time to impale the airborne creature on the barrel. With a dead raptor swinging from his gun, Cutter shot all of the nearby predators before discarding the heavy firearm and beginning to scale a crumbling section of the chateau wall.

Drake sprinted for the building, slotting his machine gun into its holster before launching himself forwards, latching onto the wall a metre up and scampering upwards like a monkey. With his characteristic blend of both aptitude and fallibility, he caught up to Cutter in no time and together they gained entry to the chateau via a damaged window. Moments later, Sully and Chloe had descended the wall and clambered through the window to join them.

"What the hell were those?" panted Drake.

"Velociraptors" said Cutter darkly. "What? Don't look at me" he added as the group stared. "Jurassic Park? Classic Spielberg film? Groundbreaking innovation of special effects? Truly, I'm wasted with you lot."

"So what's the plan now, boys?" asked Chloe, her eyes sparkling with excitement in the face of danger.

"We get out of this bloody place!" exclaimed Cutter.

Chloe ignored him.

"You're awfully quiet, Nate. Any ideas?"

"Well, I don't know about you guys" interjected Sullivan. "But I thought I was getting too old for this shit even before the killer lizards showed up. I know this whole thing with finding the Atlantis of the Sands is important to you, kid. But I don't have a clue what the hell's going on around here. If we keep going at this, we're just gonna get ourselves killed. We need to get as far away from this place as possible."

Drake was still slightly shell-shocked but he nodded his agreement.

"But there's no easy way out of here" said Cutter. "And you realise there's bound to be some nasties inside this place too?"

"We can get out through the front of the chateau" suggested Nate. "We didn't come across anything when we were in the woods so it's likely the infestation is only in the chateau and its grounds."

"And where are we right now?" enquired Cutter.

"The... back... of the chateau" responded Nate wearily.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" said Chloe cheerily, rubbing her hands together briskly. "Let's get going!"

The quartet set off together down the corridor to begin their harrowing and dangerous journey through the crumbling, dinosaur-infested chateau. Unbeknownst to them, there were two others currently occupying the building.

As these two people walked cautiously through a dark room, their flashlights cast upon the wall the shadows of a large man and a teenage girl.