The glow of the laptop screen finally faded. The last flickers of artificial light surrendered to the pale, hot haze of the daylight bleeding through what was left of the lab's collapsed roof.
Four years.
Even one year felt like death on a timer. But four? That was extinction.
I couldn't wait.
I couldn't hide in a cabinet for a year. Couldn't play statue every time a claw scraped a tile.
I needed a plan.
Something.
Anything.
So I stood. Quiet. Careful. Listening again. Then I started moving. Not frantic. Not aimless. Deliberate. Searching the ruins for anything that wasn't rotting or broken or buried.
The first thing I found was the net.
It was balled up under a counter—probably part of some containment kit, now long-forgotten. Heavy stuff. Coarse weave. Not the fishing kind. The trapping kind. Military-grade or close to it. My fingers sank into it, caught against rusted hooks and old dried mud. But it was intact.
I dragged it out and laid it flat across the center of the floor.
Next, I needed a way to use it.
Not just drape it over something. I needed to make it move. Make it spring.
So I searched again.
And this time, luck smiled just a little.
Coiled in the back corner, under a collapsed rack of lab coats and sample trays, was a length of rope. Actual rope. Frayed on one end, but thick. Real weight to it. Probably used for hauling or pulley systems once upon a time. It smelled like mildew and old grease, but I didn't care. It wasn't broken.
That made it gold.
I sat with the net and the rope for a while. Tried to visualize it. Where the tension would go. How to make the trap trigger. My hands moved without me thinking. Tying, looping, checking for slip-knots, strength points.
I wasn't an engineer.
But I'd built tree swings. Rigged up bucket traps on doors in high school. I understood leverage. And I understood desperation.
It took me nearly an hour to get it right.
I tied one end of the rope to a heavy support beam that hadn't crumbled. Fed it through a twisted loop of rebar I jammed into the ceiling support. From there, it ran down over the net, which I arranged on the ground and partially buried under dust and broken tiles.
Then the pull cord—short, coiled in my hand. One sharp yank would draw the rope tight, the net would lift, and whatever was standing on it would be off its feet.
Would it hold a raptor?
Probably not.
But if I caught one by surprise?
If I slowed it?
That might be enough.
I tested it twice—once slow, once sharp. It worked both times. The net jerked up fast, dragging with it leaves, tiles, even an old lab tray.
Not perfect.
But it was something.
A start.
My first weapon in a place where everything else had claws.
Still crouched near the net, I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. Sweat stung my eyes. My shirt clung to my ribs.
"Okay," I whispered. "Trap—check."
Next—distraction.
I stood and looked around the lab, eyes scanning for anything with a speaker, anything that could make controlled noise. A phone. A walkie. Hell, a kid's toy with batteries.
Nothing.
What tech wasn't destroyed by time was long dead. The few devices still intact were sealed, rusted, or stripped of parts.
The laptop could chirp on startup, sure—but it was tied to a login screen. No access. No files. No soundboard I could play with.
No good.
I dug through boxes. Kicked through cabinets. Tore through old drawers where vials once lived and now only spiders remained.
Still nothing.
No speakers.
No sirens.
Just old machines that breathed dust.
So I adjusted.
Fine.
No automatic distraction. No remote noise.
But that didn't mean I couldn't make one.
If I could set something up to fall—or swing—or break—when the rope yanked, it might buy me seconds. Draw eyes one way while I moved another.
But that was a plan for later.
Right now, the trap had to be enough.
I stepped back, checked the setup again.
The net lay buried in dust and debris, disguised well enough to fool even me. The rope lay coiled at the corner, wound around a chunk of old table leg I could use as a grip.
Ready.
Ready-ish.
I stood there in the wrecked silence of the lab, heart ticking slow but steady, and let it sink in.
I had done something.
Not survived.
Prepared.
For the first time since waking up here, I wasn't just reacting. I was acting.
That didn't make me safe.
But it made me dangerous.
And on this island?
That might be enough.