(A/N: Roll call! But instead of names, it's GIFs. Send me something dumb, my brain feeds on chaos.)
---
His appearance was a mess—clothes soaked, sand crusted in his hair, and seaweed clinging to his shoelaces like nature's insult.
But beneath it all, his face still had that baby-soft look.
The kind that made strangers guess his age wrong and aunties pinch his cheeks uninvited.
East Asian? Southeast Asian? A bit of both, probably.
His name was something like "Feng-something," but after moving overseas, no one even tried to pronounce it right.
So eventually, everyone just started calling him Felix.
And...
He spat out a mouthful of grit and groaned. "Fuck."
It was the first thing that left his lips as he lifted his face off the sand.
The word felt dry in his throat, salty in his mouth.
Saltier than he was, even.
He coughed, gagged, then spat again to clear away the sand stuck to his tongue—and also stuck to his cheeks, his lashes, and somehow even inside his ears.
Dragging himself upright, he squinted around at the half-shoreline, half-nightmare beachscape they'd landed on.
"Yuni!? Yuni!? Mr. Smith!?" he shouted, his voice cracking like cheap speakers. "Where are you?!"
The sea wasn't kind about it either.
His throat still burned from nearly swallowing a gallon of it during the chaos earlier. His limbs ached.
And all he could remember was the yacht rocking hard, people screaming, and a whole lot of water where there shouldn't have been.
Then came a sound—just a few feet away.
"Ugh..."
Felix turned toward it and spotted someone—a kid—sprawled face-down in the wet sand.
A little younger, blond, Caucasian, and definitely just as wrecked.
A neon-orange life vest clung to his body like a wet burrito wrapper.
"Hey!" Felix scrambled over. "You okay?!"
The kid groaned again, this time rolling halfway onto his back. "Where's my phone?"
"Seriously?" Felix blinked. Out of all possible first words, that was the one?
He gave a weak chuckle, more out of disbelief than amusement. "Uh, well... you'll get a new one. Probably. Just—c'mon, get up, will you?"
As he helped the boy to his feet, Felix tried to remember his name.
Definitely Yuni's younger cousin.
He remembered the introductions at some point back on the yacht—something short, maybe started with a J? Or was it a C? Crap.
Being introverted was like having a brain full of foggy Post-it notes.
He made a mental note to just call the kid "little dude" until someone reminded him.
Then a voice cut through the air like a rescue flare.
"Lixy!"
Only one person called him that. Not Feng. Not Felix. Just Lixy.
"Yuni!?" he shouted back, head snapping toward the sound.
In doing so, he accidentally let go of the boy's arm.
Thud.
"Gahk!?"
Face-first, straight back into the sand.
"A-ah—sorry!" Felix winced, both hands hovering awkwardly like he'd just knocked over a priceless vase. "My bad. Seriously."
But in the next second, relief flooded him like a second wave—this one warm and almost too much to handle.
There she was. Yuni. A few feet from the waterline, wading toward them, soaked from head to toe and gripping a tattered life vest like it was her last shred of dignity.
Mr. Smith limped beside her, hair plastered to his scalp and glasses hanging off one ear.
They all looked like hell.
But they were alive.
---
"They're Not Dinosaurs."
Jonathan Smith had devoted his life to bones.
He'd brushed the dust off ancient fossils in the badlands of Mongolia, pieced together tyrannosaur teeth in dimly lit labs, and lectured in packed university halls about evolution and extinction.
His name was etched in paleontology journals and science magazines alike.
But none of that compared to the moment he first saw a dinosaur move—really move.
It was the summer of 2030 when Dino Kingdom Theme Park opened its gates to the world. The headlines were absurd:
[Real Dinosaurs! Prehistoric DNA Recovered From Amber! Science Defies Time!]
And Jonathan had believed it. Who wouldn't?
A mosquito trapped in amber—preserving ancient blood, ancient life.
It was the kind of thing he used to sketch in the corners of his notebook as a student.
A fantasy made real.
When the park's first images aired on live television—T. rex roaring at a tour tram protected by tall metal fences, a herd of Triceratops grazing in a golden valley—Jonathan's hands trembled.
He bought tickets that night.
For himself and for Yuni, his daughter.
She was just finishing high school, bright and curious, always asking about "the monster bones" in his lab.
That summer, under the blazing sun, they entered the park like it was Disneyland for scientists.
He remembered gripping the brochure so tightly it wrinkled, his eyes scanning the list of attractions until they landed on a name that made his heart skip.
Velociraptor.
The very creature he'd been researching before the park's announcement.
He'd been weeks away from publishing a paper—one he had since abandoned, tossed into a drawer like yesterday's mail.
Why bother, when he could now see one in the flesh?
But what he saw in the paddock stopped him cold.
"This... this isn't right," he murmured.
Yuni looked up from her popcorn. "Dad?"
He didn't answer.
The creatures darting behind the foliage bore the name Velociraptor, yes—but they looked nothing like the feathered, birdlike predators he'd come to understand through fossilized quills and advanced skeletal modeling.
These raptors were sleek, scaly reptilian.
More like miniature T. rexes than their avian cousins.
Scaly, bipedal, hunting in packs.
"Where are the feathers?" Jonathan whispered.
"Why are they this size?"
Even the brochure descriptions were oddly sensationalized—talk of "high-intelligence apex hunters" and "hunt in packs."
It sounded more like a Hollywood script than scientific documentation.
Still, he had smiled for Yuni, snapped pictures, ridden the safari tram, and laughed during the animatronic show.
But something gnawed at him long after summer ended.
A year later, he submitted his credentials, his research history, and all the acclaim he could offer. And he got in.
A Lead Paleontologist at Dino Kingdom's central research facility.
It wasn't until then—sitting behind the mirrored glass of a sterile laboratory—that he finally uncovered the truth.
It was not cloning.
There was amber.
There was DNA.
But the strands were incomplete, shattered by time.
The corporation had filled in the blanks with computational predictions, AI-generated genome bridges, and animal DNA "scaffolds."
In other words, they guessed.
And then, they shaped the flesh to match the skeletons.
But a skull can lie.
A hippopotamus skull, taken out of context, looks like a dragon to someone who's never seen one.
The Velociraptors—they had been modeled not after fossil record consensus, but after public expectation.
These dinosaurs that felt more like wolves, with behavior patterns mimicked from domesticated animals.
"How outrageous!"
He slammed a fist on the desk.
But the lab was silent.
The NDA he had signed was ironclad.
Speaking out meant lawsuits—millions in damages. He could lose everything.
The house. His research. His reputation. Worst of all, his daughter's future.
Yuni had just started college.
She wanted to become a biomechanical engineer.
He had co-signed her scholarship loans.
And so, he sat in silence.
The truth became bones he could not exhume.
He works for the frauds, so he is one too - that was the conclusion he came to.
But even as a fraud, he is one of the executives who supervises the lab, too despite not getting involved with it too much.
So he knew...
He knew that the very island they're stranded on right now, is bad news.
"We got to get out of here!" Mr. Smith's voice cracked through the thick silence like thunder.
The kids froze mid-motion.
Felix blinked. "Uh... yeah, I mean—sure," he mumbled.
"That's... generally what people do when stranded on a mysterious island, right?"
"Excellent observation," Yuni added, deadpan, brushing wet hair away from her face. "Someone give Dad a medal."
Mr. Smith turned toward them with blazing eyes, jaw tight—but the rest of the group just stood there, bedraggled but far too calm for his liking.
Yuni crossed her arms under her soaked grey jacket.
It clung to her form, heavy with seawater, sleeves bunched near her elbows.
Beneath it, a glimpse of her turquoise bikini peeked through whenever the wind shifted the fabric.
Her legs were scraped, her hair dripping, but her expression? Casual. Almost amused.
"You guys okay?" she asked, eyes darting between Felix and the boy beside him.
Felix straightened, trying to swipe the sand off his shirt in some vain attempt to look less gross.
"Yeah, I'm good. Still have sand in places I didn't know had places, but... yeah."
His eyes flicked toward her, just a little too long.
Yuni noticed.
So did Lucas.
Felix didn't.
Just as he was about to ask something else, a victorious shout burst beside him.
"YES! Still alive, baby!" the blond boy hollered, triumphantly holding up a black smartphone like it was Excalibur.
"Water-resistant for the win!!"
Felix blinked. "Deary..."
"You're celebrating your phone?" Yuni scoffed. "Not your lungs, limbs, or, I don't know, your life?"
"Hey, it's the newest model!" the kid shot back, his voice rising with the sort of reverence usually reserved for mythic weapons.
"Snapdragon 8 Elite, custom-cooled, three-nanometer chip! You know how fast that is? It runs Genshin at max settings without even breaking a sweat!"
"Oh yeah," Felix said flatly. "That's... incredibly useful with our situation right now." Then added quickly, "She's still right though, obviously."
The boy turned to him with a slow, unimpressed glare, the kind that said you are spiritually bankrupt and possibly allergic to joy.
"Why are you agreeing with her like a sidekick?"
Felix tried to shrug it off. "I mean, she's got a point."
"You didn't care this much at the seafood place," the kid muttered.
"You spent the whole time playing Sudoku on a phone that can barely open the calculator app without lagging."
"Okay, first of all—" Felix held up a finger. "—it was Kakuro. More advanced. Second—look, if you're talking about yesterday, I'm just saying you should socialize more. Even if there's no one your age, like, try, y'know?"
Lucas looked at him like he'd just grown a second head. "Socializing? From you? Do you even remember my name?"
"Of course I do!" Felix said, eyes darting. "It's... uh... It starts with a J...?"
"L," the kid snapped. "It starts with L. Say my name. I told you during lunch."
Felix hesitated, suddenly very aware of how loud the waves were.
"Right, right, right! It's an L. Pshh. I knew that. It's... uh..."
He looked off into the trees as if divine inspiration might descend upon him.
"Le... L... Legolas?"
Yuni raised an eyebrow.
The boy didn't even blink. "...Lucas."
Silence dropped like a stone.
Felix coughed into his fist. "Yeah, I was just mocking you with that nickname. Haha, you stop playing with your gadgets Legolas~"
Yuni gave him a baffled look.
Lucas stared straight ahead like he was mentally ejecting himself from the conversation.
Then—
"You punks, listen to me!"
Mr. Smith's voice exploded across the sand, snapping them all back to attention.
Even Lucas dropped his phone back into his soaked pocket without argument.
"None of you understand the situation we're in," Mr. Smith growled, his voice raw, desperate.
"You think this is a joke? This isn't a tropical misadventure. That island—this place—isn't supposed to be on our trip."
Felix and Yuni exchanged a look. Lucas kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Smith.
"I need all of you to listen. We don't have much time. We need shelter. We need communication. We need to get out of here. If you have questions—keep them for later."
No one spoke.
Mr. Smith took a breath, then began issuing orders like a general.
"Yuni," he turned to his daughter, pointing back toward the beach where scattered debris from the yacht littered the surf.
"There should be a bright red waterproof case in the emergency storage. Inside it, there's a handheld beacon—orange top, with a pull tab and a blinking green light. That's the EPIRB. Next to it, you'll find red flare tubes with twist caps. Grab as many as you can carry."
Yuni gave a sharp nod. "Got it."
"Felix, go with her," Smith continued.
"Search the main deck and storage hold. Look for an inflatable boat—bright yellow, packed tight like a suitcase. Grab emergency flashlights, dry packs, anything that looks useful. You remember where the gear lockers were?"
Felix nodded. "Yeah. Starboard side, near the kitchen."
"Good. Go now. I'm staying here because of this damn leg. That means I'm counting on you two."
"Understood," Yuni said, already turning.
Felix followed, trailing her at a fast walk.
As they broke into a jog, he called out, "Wait, are we close to the yacht? Like, really close?"
Yuni glanced back, her wet jacket flapping with each stride. "Yes. Follow me."
They disappeared into the trees, feet kicking up wet sand.
Lucas lingered behind, kicking a stone. Then finally looked up.
"What about me?"
Mr. Smith didn't raise his voice this time. Instead, he held out a hand.
"Give me your phone, boy."
Lucas hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen.
Smith's gaze didn't waver.
Reluctantly, Lucas pulled the device from his pocket and placed it in Mr. Smith's waiting palm—his expression sour, but compliant.
"This isn't just a survival trip," Mr. Smith muttered, turning the phone over in his hand, eyes scanning the signal bars.
"You'll understand soon enough."
And far off in the jungle, something moved.
But none of them noticed.
Yet.
---
It was Jonathan Smith's prestige as a paleontologist that had opened the gates to DynaBio, a bioengineering titan worth billions, with a research budget larger than most countries.
The company behind Dino Kingdom Theme Park.
But it wasn't his credentials alone that got him in.
It was a phone call.
One made by someone with more power than a Nobel Prize—his younger brother, Gregory Smith.
Where Jonathan's life was shaped by dust, bones, and quiet discovery, Gregory's was sculpted from steel, numbers, and expensive suits.
He wore his Rolex like it was armor and called million-dollar deals "afternoon errands."
Jonathan had confided in him once—just once—after finding out the truth about the fabricated dinosaurs.
"They're not real," he had said, voice tight. And drunk. "They're just puppets built for tourists."
Gregory didn't even blink. He swirled the ice in his scotch glass and tilted his head.
"Now that's a problem," he said. "Guess you won't be making money off that paper of yours, huh?"
Jonathan stared at him.
"You think this is about money?"
"What else would it be about?"
There had been no anger in Gregory's voice. No sarcasm. Just genuine confusion—as if the idea of knowledge for its own sake was a foreign language.
In this hyper-materialistic society? Of course everything should be about money. At least, to Gregory, that's how he thinks.
Jonathan didn't bother arguing further. It was like trying to teach a shark to care about the coral reef.
But Gregory had smiled then, too wide and too smooth.
"You know what we need? A trip. Just you and me. Our families. It'll be good for Yuni. For Lucas too. You'll get to relax for once. Don't worry," he added with a wink. "It's all on me."
The ocean had been beautiful then.
Two yachts cut through the water like kings among peasants.
The larger vessel gleamed like a floating palace—Gregory's. It carried investors, guards, and wealth so dense it made the waves seem cheap.
The smaller one was more modest, but still luxurious. That was Jonathan's, stocked with just enough room for their two families and a pilot.
Then came the storm.
Now
The emergency radio crackled.
"MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY—this is—" static "— One—we are taking—coordinates—"
The message cut off.
Gregory reclined on a sunbed at the helm of the second yacht, at glance, crystal cocktail glass resting between his fingers, lime wedge balanced on the rim.
Though truthfully, it's just an iced syrup. For someone with fancy appearances, he thinks alcohol clouded his exceptional mind to print money.
His legs were crossed. His sunglasses reflected the pale sky.
"Sir..." A subordinate stepped forward, headset in hand. "It's the yacht. The one with your son and Mr. Jonathan. Should we—?"
"Ignore it."
The man blinked. "Sir?"
Gregory turned his head slowly, like a lazy predator eyeing a mouse.
The wind tousled his slicked-back hair. He took a sip—ice clinked gently in the glass.
"Just do what you're told."
The silence that followed was louder than the radio static. Seven men stood on deck now.
The drinks and beach shirts from last night were gone, replaced by black tactical vests, earpieces, and hard eyes.
Their smiles had vanished. The yacht's private bar was closed; their hands now gripped rifles instead of martinis.
Gregory stood, the sea behind him stretching blue and endless.
The last of the investors had been dropped off hours ago.
No witnesses.
No distractions.
Only professionals now.
He looked at them—his men—and offered a smile.
A genuine smile.
It wasn't even a smirk, or The Joker's smile, but a serene smile as if he was engulfed with happiness.
Though, that's exactly what makes it scary.
"Come now," he said softly. "Time to do your job."
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(A/N: 2877 Words)