Site One
1 AR (After Relocation)

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AMELIA AWOKE to a screeching that dug right into her skull; the scraping of chalk against a blackboard and nails being drawn down a metal side.

Her eyes snapped open in the gloomy half-darkness, a harsh green light that distorted the walls of the Pod and made everything seem far more cramped than it already was, which wasn't very reassuring. I'm awake. I'm awake. Those thoughts made her heart lurch in her chest. Does this mean I'm in the Jurassic Period?

She glanced around, seeing nothing out of place. A cylindrical wall encasing her, and all four of her limbs, with the additional five digits on each. Amelia released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and then undid her spider-belt, taking in a deep breath of filtered, almost mechanical, air.

If she was truly in the Jurassic Period — if all had gone well — then that would be Amelia's last ever lungful of the air of the past. Air of 2039. It took her moment for that to sink in it. Another for her to realize that she didn't feel mournful about it.

This is my new life. No going back.

Amelia stood, however hunched over, before the Pod shuddered, and a hitched yelp escaped her as she saw the walls tilt. She recalled Avery saying that the chair in itself would always remain upright and tried to ignore the fuzziness of the memory, collapsing back into the seat as the walls shuddered again. The trembles traveled through the metal chair and into her spine.

Amelia felt her knuckles flare up in pain, and she relaxed them from their unconscious iron grip on the seat's armrests. Don't jump to conclusions, she tried to reassure herself, even as she felt a bead of sweat run down her neck. The air in the Pod suddenly seemed to harden in her chest. Maybe it's just a quake. You know that the geology here was wacked. It did not seem to make her feel much better.

Another screech filled the air, and Amelia had to clap her hands over her ears in order to preserve her eardrums. "Dag!" She could barely hear herself over the din, and the world tilted crazily again — the chair remained upright, but the TimePod spun in a lazy circle that threatened to throw her off her seat.

A rumbling filled the air, something Amelia could feel rather than hear. Punctuated with short huffs, the young woman sunk deeper into the upholstery, wishing she could disappear.

A dinosaur — and a large one at that, it seemed — was investigating her Pod. "No no no." Amelia shut her eyes as she envisioned an allosaurus circling her white sphere; testing its boundaries and searching for weaknesses.

She could only hope that it would grow bored and leave her alone, but the rasping only continued. Scraping shook the interior. Sounds of gnawing twisted her insides with worry as she shut her eyes and waited for what seemed like centuries (ironic, really) before there was a bellow from the dinosaur, and a shaking of the earth as gigantic footsteps picked up speed; further and further away from her Pod.

Amelia couldn't even exhale in relief before the lid released a hiss of pressurized air, and suddenly she was blinded by sunlight unfiltered across short leaves that immediately reached into the machine. Her terrified mind tricked her into believing — just for a moment — that they were coming for her, before she realized 'duh'; leaves were not sentient beings, even in the Jurassic Period.

A terrified dinosaur scream prompted her to hurry up as she pulled herself up and over the Pod's wall, and she dropped shoulder-first down into the dark, cloying soil. Grit flew into her mouth, and she spat with a disgusted curse. Only a few seconds into the new world, and it's already going horribly.

Her hair pricked against her damp neck, and it felt like she was sweating buckets as she tried to dust herself off, squinting around for any traces of meat-eating dinosaurs. Sweaty on the outside, and unbelievably thirsty on the inside, Amelia swept her gaze to the ground, eyeing the huge prints made by her captor. Definitely a carnivore, by the size and blatantly bipedal movements.

She swallowed before turning her gaze to the Pod, somewhat surprised that it wasn't worse damaged; a few metal scrapes and dents here and there, but not much else. Whatever it was, it wasn't that hungry. And thank goodness for that. Amelia glanced at the sky, for no particular reason other than she just wanted the comfort of openness after being cooped up in the machine, but found herself glued to the sight of so much more blue than she could've ever imagined.

The sky was never this blue before ... She gaped for a solid minute before turning back to the task at hand; finding her fellow recruits. Amelia shook her head, berating herself for forgetting what her objective was in the first place.

She peeked around the TimePod cautiously, gently swatting a large, yet short fern-plant out of her way. The sight before her filled her with relief that quickly dried up into horror.

TimePods flooded the area, orderly in rows. She could barely imagine that space as a warehouse like it would have been more than two million years into the future; but that was perhaps also due to the fact that Tanycolagreuses, feathered and brutal, patrolled between the egg-like contraptions.

We landed right in a nesting ground. Amelia's blood ran cold, giving her a feverish feeling as her face only warmed in the humidity. As if her terror had alerted them, one of the duller-colored of the predators released a trill and snapped its head in her direction.

"Oh dank — " with a speed Amelia hadn't realized she possessed, she powered to her feet and fled as more tetanurans released triumphant screams, followed by the thump-thump-thump of clawed feet chasing a kill.

As she ran, flailing like a man on fire through ferns and leaves and dirt, Amelia caught flashes of terrified thoughts racing through her mind. Questions she didn't know whether or not she would live through to answer. There are no trees to climb! It's all moss and ferns! Will I ever see Daryl again? Or Zoey? Or Lale? Each stabbed her in her heart as she fled.

And then she was falling, her feet catching on the earth in a mistake that would almost certainly result in her death. She didn't even have time to scream before one of them was on her, claws puncturing her grey suit and digging into the flesh of her lower back and igniting her body in flames.

The Tanycolagreus roared, loud enough to deafen her next to her head, as if mocking her puny efforts to escape. Amelia tasted tears on her lips — or maybe that was sweat. Hope I taste good, she thought, almost groggily, as her vision tunneled and she waited for a killing bite ...

That didn't come. A thud, followed by a crack and screech, made the weight on her back vanish, though the pain remained. Feathers thumped to the ground beside her; a toothed, leering grin that smelled of rotting meat lay in her face.

Just as terrified as when the raptor-like beasts were chasing her, Amelia lifted her face out of the soil, blinking sweat out of her dark eyes. A silhouette offered a hand to her, and she took it, recognizing the broad shoulders.

"We've gotta go." A familiar voice said as she was lifted to her feet. Lale met her eyes, his own sharpened with disgust. He kicked the feathery corpse. "Ugly and Uglier can't be far off."

"Thank you," was all she could croak. He shrugged and picked up a large grey stone, spotted with blood. "Weapon," was all he said, before he took her hand again and started pulling her on. "Come on."

"Wait!" Amelia pulled back, glancing back at the dead Tanycolagreus. Despite what Lale said, she couldn't see the creature as 'ugly'. It was beautiful, with a dark russet plumage and black beak. Probably a male, if the duller ones she'd seen back at the site were females.

But her attention didn't rest on the dead meat-eating theropod for long; rather, it traveled to the things that had tripped her up in the first place.

Eggs.

Lale tugged at her wrist again, though she shrugged him off. "I came here with a job to do," she spat, her eyes dancing from the marine back to the eggs. Living, but not yet breathing, specimens of Jurassic life. "And I'm gonna do it."

She grabbed the closest smooth white orb; almost elliptical in shape, and tucked it under her arm, ignoring Lale's scoff. "Dinosaurs lose their eggs all the time. In order to start living with them, we need to learn more about them." Despite her near-death experience, she felt something close to elation as she turned back to the marine. "Aren't we going?"

Before too long, Amelia was utterly puffed out — and irritated that Lale wasn't even breathing too hard. "There was a map in my Pod," he told her, unraveling a piece of paper she didn't even know where he could've kept. "I guess they did their best in mapping out the ancient layouts."

I wonder how successful that was. She eyed the darker spots, which the key stated were plateaus, and then gazed across the land ahead from the small ridge. More or less. For miles in front of them, sparse ferns and even rarer taller trees coated dark green and brown areas. "It's a marsh." Amelia shifted the egg from arm to arm, the humidity soaking through her suit.

"Think it'll be safer there?" Lale looked back the way they had come, eyes darkening. "We need to regroup. Find a way to get those raptors away from the site."

They're not raptors. She didn't tell him this, however, and for the first time it struck Amelia how unfair the situation was. The dinosaurs were there first, and now they were the ones getting pushed out. She stifled her indignation, feeling Lale wouldn't appreciate her thoughts.

"I'm sure it'll be — " she was cut off by a roar. A familiar one. Amelia turned, her mouth dropping in an 'o' as she gawped at the familiar nose crest and bright colors; simulated almost perfectly by the JEE lessons.

"Dilophosaurus. Run!"

Another sprint, this time down a sloping hill of silt and earth, was initiated as the predator screamed after them, footsteps shaking the earth as Amelia fell, got up with some of Lale's tugging, and continued running. The ground flattened, yet grew soft and mulchy under their feet, sucking the energy out of them with every step. Amelia was facing death for an innumerable time that day, and this time, there was nobody else to save them.

"Here!" Lale pulled her behind a palm-like tree with a bulbous trunk, and she nearly sank to her knees at the impossibility of escaping alive. Lale kept his grip on her arms as they pressed themselves against the tree. No rock would be big enough to take down the theropod, and it was so close Amelia could smell it; death on its tongue and closing in on them — fast.

"Lale!" Amelia twisted to look at him, even more terrified at seeing him terrified, before she opened her mouth again. But what words were there to say? What could comfort them in their last moments? He locked eyes with her, his own light slate ones panicked and stinging, before the dilophosaurus bore down on them with a swish and a thwack!

But that wasn't right. Amelia shut her eyes, then opened them again. They weren't dead. The dilophosaurus was roaring in a higher pitch, as if in pain. Another swishing of air — the whizz of something brown flying by.

The predator expressed its rage once more, before the sound of its footsteps faded. Silence fell, interrupted by their breathing. Staring at Lale, their eyes read the same question: What just happened?

"Glad to see you guys are up." Someone dropped from the top of another palm-like tree, his — it was a guy, Amelia was sure — voice full of warmth. Amelia blinked at the stranger, and it felt like she was speechless for the tenth time that hour.

A scraggly-bearded man stood in front of them, clothed in dirty grey and muddied unidentifiable materials, carrying a crude bow and arrows across his back. His smile touched on the edges of her memory; but there was no way that that guy could be this one —

"Bradley?" Lale sputtered, his face white despite the heat she knew was reddening her own. "Wha — how?"

It immediately clicked; the ugly burnt skin of an originally pale man, the cheery smile that somehow seemed smaller. His eyes flickered between them like a flame, not revealing anything.

"If you're real, follow me." Bradley motioned over his shoulder. "Or feel free to be eaten." Without another word, he turned and ventured further into the marsh.

Sharing a glance, Amelia and Lale followed.

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near-death experience after near-death experience ... you can't say they didn't have a warm welcome!

a specimen of the Tanycolagreus specie mentioned above!