The roar of an engine.
A blue pickup truck traveled through the rural wilderness, turning down a narrow dirt path that led into a farmstead.
The skull of an unidentified animal was tied to the wooden fence as an ornament, and golden wheat fields swayed gently in the wind. Unfortunately, dark clouds blanketed the sky, casting a bleak, somber tone over the entire landscape. Otherwise, it would have been an absolute picturesque view.
Click...
The pickup pulled to a stop beside a barn. As the door swung open, a woman with long, golden hair and sunglasses stepped down. Her skin, figure, and even the texture of her hair were impeccably maintained. Judging by her silhouette alone, it was impossible to guess that she was a middle-aged mother whose child was already in college.
Dr. Ellie Sattler, a legendary figure in the field of paleobotany. Though, the most thrilling entry on her résumé would undoubtedly be surviving Jurassic Park.
She waved at the farm's owner, who returned the gesture with a weary smile.
"Thanks for coming out. We didn't know who else to call."
Ellie shut the truck door and casually tossed her backpack, which was stuffed with high-tech instruments, onto the hood as she listened to the farmer's briefing.
"The authorities picked up signals matching prehistoric frequencies... look, I don't understand any of that, but I know for damn sure these aren't dinosaurs."
"Yeah... they're really throwing their weight around these days," Ellie replied sympathetically.
The government was so consumed by the upcoming election that they were practically ignoring everything else, leaving a mountain of messes for ordinary citizens to clean up themselves.
A young man and a young woman stepped out of Ellie's truck. At the same time, Ellie pulled a rectangular electronic casing from her pack and instructed them, "Take agricultural samples every hundred meters."
With that, she stepped forward to walk alongside the farmer.
"Are those your students?"
"Hmm? Oh, yeah. I'm studying the environmental impact of industrialized agriculture. Well... it is my specialty, after all."
After exchanging pleasantries, the farmer finally cut to the chase.
"They've decimated sixty farms. Has anything like this ever happened before?"
With her sunglasses on, Ellie's expression was hard to read, but she froze visibly for a fraction of a second before shaking her head.
"No... never like this. They've completely chewed through the Midwestern farmlands. Some of these corporations tried to eradicate the pests first, and now this happens..."
As Ellie spoke, she climbed onto a parked tractor to get a better vantage point of the fields. But the sheer devastation reflected in her sunglasses made her words cut short.
The chilly wind whipped through her hair, revealing the faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She pulled off her sunglasses, exposing a pair of striking blue eyes, but her expression remained completely paralyzed.
Gazing out into the distance, the golden ocean of wheat was nothing but a facade. The center of the fields had long since dried up, leaving behind a barren, blackened expanse of earth.
"Are those your fields over there too?" Ellie asked, pointing into the distance.
She keenly noticed that the boundary line between the two farmlands was unnaturally neat. Locusts don't have obsessive-compulsive disorder; the fields they ravage are always jagged and irregular. Yet that specific zone... even if it wasn't as sharp as a sheet of paper cut with scissors, it was absolutely sheared with meticulous precision.
"No... that's Bennett's cornfield. The locusts didn't touch it."
"Are you using the same seed?"
As a paleobotanist, Ellie's immediate instinct was to approach the problem from the perspective of the plants rather than the locusts. She didn't wonder why the locusts refused to eat those crops; she wondered what made those specific plants immune to being eaten.
"No, we're independent farmers. We buy our own seed. They use BioSyn seed."
The farmer seemed to have a decent relationship with his neighbor. Thanks to Ellie's line of deduction, she had successfully managed to catch a vital clue out of thin air.
"I bet they do... I think you said you caught a live one?"
…
Deep within the snow-dusted forests, two adult Velociraptors and one juvenile lowered their bodies, treading stealthily through the trees.
To be perfectly honest, this manner of stalking only minimized the noise they made; it did absolutely nothing to conceal their physical forms. There weren't many bushes around, and none of them possessed snow camouflage.
"Aok..."
Echo let out a soft chitter to alert Blue before splitting away from the group. Blue watched her glide off like a shadow without offering a response. She tossed her head toward Beta, signaling the juvenile to keep moving.
They were teaching the young raptor how to hunt, or rather, how to stalk. Echo's call just now was to warn Blue that the scent of prey was incredibly dense nearby; the target was close.
Blue was well aware of this, but ever since giving birth to Beta, her attention was constantly divided. Echo, being overprotective, felt the need to chime in anyway.
The crunch of stepping on snow.
What about Delta, you ask? Ever since the last time she babysat and snuck over to Owen's cabin to swipe his radio, Blue had thrashed her so hard she was stripped of her babysitting privileges. Right now, she was probably holed up inside the abandoned school bus, cuddling that radio.
The scratching of snow.
A white snow hare dug furiously into the powder, likely trying to unearth a scrap of food from the thick drifts. It was completely oblivious to the fact that Blue and Beta had advanced to within ten meters of it.
How on earth have you survived until now.jpg
The bunny was adorable, and Beta loved it. Her eyes locked onto the hare as her predatory instincts urged her to strike.
"Aw-woof!"
Suddenly, a small black wolf burst from the brush, snapping its jaws around the snow hare and ripping it apart instantly!
Sensing her prey had been stolen, Beta let out an uncontrollable, guttural hiss. Rage flooded her senses, and before Blue could even react, the juvenile lunged forward!
Pouncing onto the black wolf, Beta's tiny claws showed their terrifying potential for the first time. She latched onto the wolf's torso and clamped her jaws around its throat. The black wolf let out a pathetic whimper and died instantly.
Talk about a prehistoric dimensional strike on the local wildlife.
BANG!
A gunshot shattered the silence of the wilderness. The bullet slammed into the snow right next to Beta, kicking up a spray of white powder! To think a tiny snow hare had been targeted by three different species at once... wait, no. Perhaps the two men carrying hunting rifles had been gunning for the raptors all along.
Seeing their shot miss, the hidden poachers rapidly pivoted their barrels toward Blue, intending to neutralize the high-threat target first... though why they hadn't aimed at her in the first place remained a mystery.
Verdict: terrible aim, but loves to play dangerous games.
Click-clack...
The distinct tapping of a claw against the frozen ground echoed behind them. The hunter turned his head in sheer bewilderment, locking eyes with a thoroughly "amiable" Echo.
Clever girl.
"Aaaegghhhh!!!"
Huh?
Up on the mountain slopes, a Yutyrannus raised its head. Did something out there just scream louder than me?
Back at the cabin, Owen, who was busy tuning up his beloved motorcycle, paused his movements. He and Claire, who was boiling water nearby, simultaneously turned their gazes toward the forest. Inside her room, Maisie sat on her bed holding the photo album left behind by her grandfather, looking out the window.
…
"I tracked Grady to his place. You were right, the raptor has an infant."
"And... I found the girl."
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