Site One

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THIS IS gonna be hard. Amelia tapped her fingers to some unknown tune to relieve some anxious tension as she scanned the area from her position behind a large, cone-like palm.

The moon looked larger and more luminous than ever before as its light glinted off of the white of the TimePods; Amelia swallowed as she thought of the people inside. Maybe frightened. Probably terrified.

Between the man-made orbs were the less noticeable mounds of feather and muscle; the Tanycolagreuses were sleeping, or at the very least dozing, and the nearest one was so close she could count its yellowed teeth — though Amelia wasn't sure she could want to, as the stench of carrion was enough to make her pass out if she got too close.

This is a bad idea. She flexed her knees, getting ready to run nevertheless. It had never been on her bucket list to intentionally get meat-eating dinosaurs to chase after her (for the third time that day!) but the plan, however horrible, called for it — and it was the only option they had.

In the swirling gloom (I hate jungles) she spied a sun-darkened arm waving back and forth from behind another collection of parts a few hundred yards to her left. Her cue.

Amelia exhaled quickly, pumping herself up and trying to banish the negative thoughts she'd been having seconds before, before she grabbed hold of the wooden torch at her side, vaguely recognizable from video games placed in medieval times.

The wood was wet with fat and other horrid stuffs she didn't let her mind browse over; the piece of cooked meat — "They have a taste for that," Bradley had told them — speared onto its pointed end would hopefully save her life, if the predators went for the meat instead of her. Hopefully.

The other end of the torch was wrapped in chemical-smelling moss and algae, which was incredibly flammable, according to their ever-faithful Jurassic Period Tarzan.

Amelia immediately felt bad for thinking of poor Bradley like that, and held the smoldering piece of the coal he had allocated to her to the moss. Maybe she should've been better prepared for the whoomph and rush of flame; the flickering red singed her fingers and she would've released a scream if a bunch of carnivores hadn't been nearby.

Clutching her burnt hand to her stomach, and inquisitive (yet thankfully drowsy) screeches and squalls behind her echoing in the dark, Amelia ran with just as much vigor as before, her feet kicking up mulch and dirt. Her head pounded with too much adrenaline to do anything else but review what she had to do.

"There's a peat bog alongside the marsh we're in right now," Bradley had told them, pointing to his crude map drawn in the mud alongside the hut-on-stilts. "And, if you didn't know, peat sticks fast. That'll keep 'em occupied while we move the eggs and start opening the TimePods."

"Which one will we do?" Lale had interjected, staring at the map in interest. "Open the TimePods or move the eggs?"

Amelia had answered, assuming that same authority as before. "We only move the eggs if we can't help it. Dinosaurs could be sensitive to different scents around their young, and could abandon the eggs. Like birds."

"Wouldn't you just adopt them like Fido up there?" Bradley had motioned to the hut-on-stilts, where she had left the egg, mouth twisted in something like a smirk.

"That's besides the point." Amelia had folded her arms with a glare, wondering how anyone could be so childish while lives were at stake. "The point is, try not to move the eggs."

After they'd discussed their various roles in their expedition, which had taken a while of debating stealth versus strength, of which they decided to compromise with Amelia being the runner (why they thought she was good at running, she had no clue). Lale, Bradley, and the EEG would deal with any Tanycolagreuses who had stayed on guard at the nest, as well get the TimePods open.

They had set off thereafter, armed with the stake-like pieces of wood; "What, we're hunting vampires now?", Bradley's bow and arrow, and the lump of meat.

Last-minute advice was given and rough directions were indicated as they had trekked through the marsh and Bradley had shown them a less precarious path up the silty ridge that gave way to the plateau — she had been envious of the EEG, who hovered above the muck of the marsh and precarious incline with a soft hum that indicated to the anti-gravity proximiters in its metal — where they would find their foes, though Amelia was reluctant to call them that.

Perhaps one would call it respect, but she understood that they — the humans —had ventured onto the dinosaurs' turf. And if they weren't careful, then the Homo sapiens would gladly be wiped out, only to be reborn by whatever means eons later.

The cycle was endless, and it made Amelia's head hurt to try and think about breaking it. 2039 to more than one hundred and thirty-five million years before that; were they truly the first expedition to try and cultivate the Jurassic? Or were they going to be wiped out, presumably like the failed missions of before?

She stumbled, her foot slipping across the trailing leaves of a fern. Amelia put her burnt hand out to stop her fall, and pain shuddered up to her shoulder and down her spine. Sweat stung her eyes and tasted salty on her lips.

How long had she been running? Amelia didn't know, and she waved the torch's flame around again, which once more sparked excited chirps from her pursuers. Glinting feathers kept pace with her, and she tried not to let it bother her that their movements almost seemed lazy. Her frantic sprinting was a jog to them. Well, I'm not stopping now.

And then she didn't have any more time for thoughts, because she was on the ridge and she skidded down with an ease she hadn't had before. Amelia hit the bottom running again, sticking to the edge of the marsh instead of running through it, though her legs still grew wet and heavy with accumulating mud.

Her own consolation was the fact that the dinosaurs giving chase were probably having the same problems as her, and she gave herself a moment to look back.

The blow ploughed into her side like a wrecking ball.

Amelia's feet flew from beneath her as she was tossed into the marsh, the cold water quick to invade her open mouth. Pain invaded every fiber of her being as the throbbing of her reawakened back wound kept in time with her elevated heartbeat.

She coughed as she looked up and out of the water, noting only distantly that the fire from the torch was sizzling out — her mind was on bigger things, like the Tanycolagreus heading right for her.

Her stuttering mind could only come up with the fact that the predator had probably lunged at her from her left. After the spanning of the ridge, there was only dense vegetation and a half ton of killer that had spread out from the main pack.

They played me, Amelia realized, the thought as frigid as any mossy-tasting cold water. She grabbed for the torch just as the Tanycolagreus picked up speed; head slung low with an open maw filled with sharp glinting teeth.

Terror raced through her as she tried to scramble back and give herself time to work out what to do, but the Tanycolagreus' claws jammed down on her ankle, and then it was standing over her, anchoring her into the water with nowhere to go. Her breaths were coming thick and fast as she held the torch in her burnt hand, the pain enough to make her scream.

The meat-eater's small yellow eyes narrowed down on her, and it released a screech loud enough to spur her into frenzied action.

Like a twenties' javelin competitor, Amelia forced her singed fingers to spread across the shaft of the wetted torch, and, with an unearthly scream of grief and frustration and fear — anger that she had to kill one of the creatures she thought so beautiful — she jammed the smoldering edge of the torch right into and through the beast's breast plumage.

Its jaws slowed their descent down into her neck, and the Tanycolagreus jerked, as if surprised. Amelia blinked back the burning in her eyes as the soft magenta-colored dinosaur keeled to the side, its head dropping down right next to her shoulder, a small pink tongue poking out between deadly fangs and a leering grin.

With a groan (three places were aching, including her newly-awakened back wound), she shoved the dinosaur away and climbed shakily to her feet, hissing between her teeth as she saw the bloodied mess that was her foot above the water. But it's nothing compared to the death beside you, a traitorous thought slid in.

She turned her eyes to the shore of the marsh and used the action to turn away from her guilt, which was slowly climbing in her chest and threatening to choke her.

To her surprise — and selfish relief — the other Tanycolagreuses were gone, probably grown bored with the loss of the flame to show them where their prey was. She glanced back at the dead one at her feet.

"Sorry, boy," was all she said, almost blank with exhausted emotion, before she grabbed the torch and tugged it out of the corpse's chest, setting off resignedly back to the TimePods.

With luck, Amelia reflected — but since when had they ever had luck? — the rest of the pack hadn't yet returned to the nest, and Lale and Bradley, and the others, were safe.

That limp hope was extinguished, however, and she ignored the throbbing in her foot as she picked up the pace, this time running back to the ridge and the screams she could hear echoing through the still air.

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