Beep—
Accompanied by the chime of a warning indicator, the massive iron cage on the truck's flatbed slowly ground open. A Concavenator, the effects of the tranquilizer not yet fully worn off, struggled to its feet and blinked into the incoming light.
"Aunnng-roar!"
"Holy shit!"
Catching sight of two human figures standing at the threshold, it snapped its jaws wide and lunged forward with a sudden burst of aggression, attempting to swallow them whole!
Zzap!
These two Department of Prehistoric Wildlife (D.P.W.) capture agents were clearly cut from a far more professional cloth than the bureaucrats who only knew how to handle tranquilizer guns. Letting out a sharp gasp, they instantly thrust their stun batons into the Concavenator, forcing the beast back.
Bzzzt...
As the electrical current surged through its body, the Concavenator let out a pitiful whine. Shaking its groggy head, it took two retreating steps away from the crackling batons.
For a medium-sized carnivore like this, a stun baton was significantly more effective than one might expect, with the glaring exception of Atrociraptors, of course.
Zzap!
Using this precise rhythm, the two D.P.W. agents relentlessly prodded the disoriented Concavenator, herding it step by step into an adjacent containment unit.
Clank!
The iron cage slammed shut behind it, but the gate on the opposite side immediately began to rise. Left with no other choice, the Concavenator could only trudge forward.
"Why exactly are we here?"
Behind a building not far away, three heads poked out stealthily. Ben and his group had tracked the D.P.W. personnel all the way to this location, a spot completely unmarked on any map.
"The D.P.W. is dirty. They sent people to hunt us down, and we have to figure out exactly who is behind this or why they want us dead."
Ben answered Sammy's query, his gaze tracking the two D.P.W. agents as they moved back toward the truck bed.
Perhaps because of their survival ordeal back on Isla Nublar, the Camp Cretaceous crew possessed a streak of sheer ferocity that set them apart from regular people.
While an ordinary person might react to a murder attempt by panicking and yelling, "Someone's trying to kill me! Police, help!", the Camp Cretaceous crew tends to handle things very differently. If someone wants them dead, their response is less about seeking help and more about confronting the threat head-on: "You want to kill me? Why? That's your reason? Well, how about I just take you out first."
"Alright, but we should really inform Kenji and Darius. We found the ones who were hunting us..."
"Aunnng-roar!"
Another Concavenator inside a flatbed cage wailed in distress, its tail violently thrashing against the iron bars. Unlike the first one, this one was still deep in its drug-induced slumber. Such severe external stimulation was bound to cause cognitive trauma to its brain.
"Hey! Gerard! Jason! What do you think you're doing?!"
Dudley Cabrera, still sporting his signature white cowboy hat, stepped forward and pointed an accusatory finger at the two agents.
"There's absolutely no need to agitate it like that while it's sedated... Get it to the staging area completely unharmed!"
In the past, he might have overlooked such reckless behavior. But after witnessing a Giganotosaurus snap out of its sedation without warning and go on a catastrophic rampage, he had learned to be cautious.
"He just loves throwing his weight around..."
Zzap!
One of the agents muttered a quiet complaint as their boss walked away. Completely unfazed, he thrust the stun baton into the Concavenator once more.
Ben took one last look toward the workers, preparing to use the cover of darkness to slip back to their van. Sammy pulled out her phone, intending to patch through to Darius and Kenji.
"Aunnng—"
Thud! Clang!
The sudden, distinctive call of a herbivorous dinosaur echoed through the air, causing Ben and Sammy to freeze instantly. They knew that voice intimately. Exchanging a wide-eyed look, they turned in unison toward the source of the sound.
"Bumpy?"
[19:00]
Thoom—
Right on schedule, high-powered searchlights automatically flared to life, instantly illuminating the compound and leaving Ben's group completely exposed.
Yasmina immediately scanned their surroundings, but it seemed no one had spotted them yet. If this place was a transit hub for dinosaurs, how could there be so few personnel on duty?
Her gaze shifted to where the workers had just transferred the Concavenator, and a soft, barely audible gasp escaped her lips.
Familiar fencing stood in a massive ring, forming a miniature ecological zone. It featured a sizable lake, but the overall space was incredibly cramped, forcing all the dinosaurs to huddle tightly together.
Among them, a pale white figure seemed highly averse to the glare of the searchlights. The moment the beam hit, it hurriedly shrank back into the depths of the herd.
For a moment, the three of them were flooded with memories of the past. Shaking themselves awake from the sudden wave of nostalgia, they finally caught the sound of approaching footsteps.
"Hey! Civilians aren't allowed in here!"
Tonight was destined to be anything but peaceful. The air grew stiflingly humid as a light mist began to roll in, obscuring the silhouette of the approaching figure.
"Phew… did we lose them? Are we clear?"
Using the combined cover of the rising fog and the night sky, Darius and Kenji had successfully evaded their pursuers. Although their car was running on fumes, the Atrociraptors were thankfully nowhere to be seen.
"Kenji?"
Darius glanced at the passenger seat. Tears were still welling in Kenji's eyes. It made sense; after all, his last remaining family member had just passed away.
"Tosan..."
Great, he's processing in Japanese now.
Darius patted his friend's shoulder, stepped out of the vehicle, and began surveying the area.
The good news: there were lights. The bad news: this was definitely not a town.
Where on earth did I just drive us?
Blare—
A ship's horn echoed from the direction of a distant cluster of buildings. Darius frowned. Though his phone was missing, preventing him from checking a map, his long stint tracking the one-eyed Allosaurus had made him incredibly familiar with the region... and he didn't recall any port being nearby.
Through the thickening fog, the port's searchlights were reduced to blurry pinpricks of overlapping red and white beams, casting an unsettling tension over the docks.
"Where are we..."
"Shh…"
Kenji seemed to regain his composure, slowly creeping up to Darius, who was observing from the shadows, but the latter cut him off with a sharp gesture.
"What is it?" Kenji lowered his stance, whispering.
"Something's not right."
Darius murmured back. At this point, he didn't dare underestimate those weaponized Atrociraptors. His mindset was rapidly shifting into something resembling Ben's paranoia.
What if the Atrociraptors had intentionally herded them here? What if they were only pretending to lose their trail?
Vrooom...
Right then, a heavy transport truck cut through the mist, pulling up toward the port's security checkpoint.
"A D.P.W. transport? What are they doing here?"
Thud! Clang!
"Roar—!"
The chilling, elongated bellow of an Acrocanthosaurus echoed through the fog, sounding deeply menacing and causing Kenji and Darius to shudder in their hiding spot.
"This is getting weirder by the second."
"This way!"
Weaving through a maze of shipping containers, three figures moved in a swift, single-file line.
Just moments prior, Sammy had executed a flawless sweep-kick that sent Dudley Cabrera crashing to the dirt. Ben had slickly lifted the man's keys, while Yasmina made off with his security baton.
Flawless teamwork.
Using the containers as cover, they paused briefly to scout the enemy's positions and pinpoint Bumpy's location.
"Is this Cabrera guy orchestrating the whole thing, or is he just terrifyingly efficient at his job?" Yasmina asked, seizing the quiet moment to piece the puzzle together.
"Either way, we can't trust him... though he really is an idiot," Ben muttered, his deeply ingrained paranoia on full display as he jingled the stolen keys. "With these, we should be able to break into an office or something. Maybe we can finally find out why the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife is hunting us."
"I'll message Darius and Kenji," Sammy offered, being the only one whose phone had survived their ordeals.
"Aunnng—"
Thud! Clang!
Vrooom...
"Over there!"
Sprinting past the final row of containers, the trio reached the perimeter exit of the compound. Through the haze, they spotted a flatbed truck carrying a massive shipping container slowly rolling into the dense fog.
Judging by the vocalizations and the frantic thumping inside, it was highly likely their missing Ankylosaurus, Bumpy.
"Bumpy! No!"
Ben let out a heartbroken cry. He was about to vault the perimeter fence and sprint toward his van hidden in the woods, but the sudden commotion that followed froze him dead in his tracks.
CRASH!
A cataclysmic impact resonated from within the fog, an impact far too heavy to have been caused by Bumpy hammering against her container.
Blood-curdling human screams and the frantic crackle of gunfire erupted immediately after! Muzzle flashes illuminated the mist for a fraction of a second, casting the terrifying silhouette of a titanic, gaping maw.
Within moments, the fog swallowed the noise, returning the night to a suffocating silence. The distinct, horrific sounds of snapping bones and wet swallowing traveled clearly to their ears, sending a sickening chill down their spines.
Under the shroud of night, a subtle breeze seemed to ripple through the heavy mist. A colossal tail flickered in and out of view, slicing through the black backdrop like a heavy curtain, momentarily dispersing the fog before vanishing back into the gloom.
Screeech—!
The agonizing, ear-splitting sound of tearing metal tore through the air. A shredded fragment of the shipping container came hurtling out of the mist like a massive shuriken, slicing the security outpost right next to them clean in half!
"Holy shit..."
Time was officially up.
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