"Bert, would you fucking quiet down?" Faron snarled over his shoulder. The damn dinosaur was crashing through the brush like a parched elephant spotting a pond for the first time. Bert stared back at him with those unnerving red eyes and cocked his head like a giant dog before squawking indignantly.

Faron glared at him for a moment, then sighed and readjusted the gun slung across his back. Leave it to him to get saddled with the one genetically modified raptor that came out a little funny. Bert wasn't just funny—he was dumb. And Faron would argue that until he was blue in the face.

He didn't know another raptor in the bunch that had nearly walked off a cliff trying to chase a bird. Watching Bert leap and snap at it, while the handler desperately tried to hold onto the saddle, had almost been enough to make Faron quit right then and there.

He shifted the rifle again and pushed through another thicket, Bert stomping after him. So much for quiet. Not that it mattered, really. What Bert lacked in brainpower, he made up for in speed. Damn bastard was fast—and that, at least, was the only reason Faron kept him. Or so he told himself.

Faron's orders were simple: come to Cretacea and retrieve the ProtoCore from the ruins of the park. What did it do? He didn't have a clue, and that was far beyond his pay grade. He just did what he was told. His steel-gray eyes swept the abandoned husk of the park. It had all started with the Herrerasaurus.

Inspectors had supposedly warned Hudson, PredaCore's CEO, that the fencing was cheap and wouldn't hold back the beasts. Maintenance crews had done little to reinforce the weak points, and the barriers hadn't held up well against the elements either. The Herrerasaurus must have sensed this and broke through.

That breach sent the entire park into chaos. The predators smashed into other enclosures, freeing more dinosaurs and tearing apart infrastructure. Panic erupted, the park was evacuated, and the dinosaurs were abandoned. For PredaCore, the fallout was catastrophic. The company immediately shut everything down and shifted into damage-control mode. And that was when Faron was brought in.

Now he walked through the wreckage, careful not to snag himself on broken wires, crumbling concrete, rust, and shattered glass. Normally, he lived on the far side of the island with the other mercenaries in the last operating base. PredaCore actually did care about that base—packed with manpower and bristling with the "big fun guns," as Richie, another merc, called them.

A grunting screech from Bert froze him in place. Faron turned and saw the raptor sticking his head into what looked like an abandoned bathroom, snorting and huffing.

"Bert, get out of there," he snapped, marching over and tugging on the reins dangling from the beast's side to haul him back.

That's when he heard it—something inside.

Cursing under his breath, Faron yanked his rifle forward and stepped inside. The mirror was shattered, stalls busted in, toilets overrun with vines and grime. But that wasn't what stopped him cold.

A woman sat curled in the corner, trembling—or maybe trying to look braver than she felt, he couldn't tell.

"...Son of a bitch," he muttered, lowering his gun as he stared at the figure before him.