Chương 1: Indominus Rex (1)

She had a dream. It was long and tangled, dark and full of noise. A crowd of panicked people. A bridge on the verge of collapse. Cracked, broken ground. Cars plunging into the sea one after another… Screams rang in her ears. The smell of blood brushed past her nose. Death advanced with its scythe raised high, and she heard her own ragged breathing. Run! She scrambled onto the roof of a car and raced along the line of vehicles, leaping from one to the next without stopping.

Who knew a person could find such strength when her life was on the line? She had never been athletic, yet here she was, moving with an agility she hadn't known she possessed. Faster. Faster! There's no time! Concrete and steel collapsed behind her. Cables snapped ahead. She was racing death, and she dared not look back or hesitate. One wrong step and she would join the mangled bodies below. Then the bridge gave way. Her stomach lurched. Before she could react, she fell with everyone else into the sea.

Water surged in from every direction, cold and choking. She reached toward a blurry patch of light above her, but it was no use. She only sank farther from the surface. Gradually, she stopped moving. Her limbs went numb, and her thoughts began to fade. A few bubbles escaped her mouth. The last of the air was squeezed from her lungs. Facing death, she found her wishes had become very simple.

Her life had been painfully short, and since she couldn't hope for a peaceful death, she could at least hope for a proper burial. All she wanted was for the rescue team to recover her body and send it home, rather than bury her in a foreign country. Her eyelids drifted shut. Through the haze, she caught sight of a pair of golden eyes with slit pupils, and her fingertips brushed against a speck of warmth. In an instant, light and shadow burst into color. It felt as though she had returned to her mother's arms.

Her brow smoothed, and a smile touched her lips. Perhaps she imagined it, but deep in the dark water, she heard a voice. Forget your true name. Abandon your human form. Seal away your memories. Live like a beast until you… Until I what? Could you finish the sentence? Are you really that pressed for time? She woke. Her mind was muddled, and her eyelids felt too heavy to lift. Little by little, her thoughts cleared. She tried to feel her hands and feet and summon her returning senses.

After fumbling for some time, she realized she was trapped in a cramped space filled with sticky fluid. Where am I? She couldn't turn over or stretch out. All she could do was struggle and twist as best she could. Instinctively, she used her body to gauge the size of the space, then pushed and struck at the walls holding her in. In her muddled state, she decided she was trapped in a cage. And the cage didn't seem very sturdy. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Who liked being confined? Following her instincts, she strained to spread her body, pressing harder against the walls. She scratched and clawed, determined to break free. She must have made quite a racket, because a clamor rose outside. Wary, she went still. Something's coming… She lay motionless, as if she had never stirred. But after a while, whoever had come did nothing. They didn't touch the cage. They didn't interfere. They simply watched in silence.

As the strange standoff dragged on, she began to feel oddly safe. She became convinced that the outsiders meant her no harm. So she tried breaking out again, this time with more force. The cage rocked wildly, and excited murmurs sounded just beyond it. They were close. They spoke in a language that felt both familiar and foreign. How strange. She was certain she ought to understand them, but somehow she couldn't. Their voices grew louder as they talked over one another, chattering without end.

The noise made her head ache—and stirred an unfamiliar aggression in her. She raised a "hand" and struck the wall in front of her, claws digging in hard—"Congratulations, Henry. Our second 'asset' is about to hatch."

"To be precise, the second asset of the second generation." The middle-aged Chinese man smiled gently, his tone modest even as his words left no room for argument.

"It's too early to celebrate. I need to be certain it's as perfect as its 'sister.'" He stepped closer to the incubator and watched the egg shake.

"I think you understand, Simon. They aren't purely products of nature. They're miracles we created with our own hands. Humanity may outwit nature once, but nature can defeat us a thousand times over with a single accident."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. What do you mean by 'accident'?" The man sighed.

"For a creature made through technology, hatching may be the end of its life rather than the beginning. Its first breath of air, the first bacterium it encounters, its first bite of meat, its first drop of water—any one of them could kill it. That's what I mean by an accident. It's how nature maintains its balance."

"These creatures went extinct long ago. We've brought back something that shouldn't exist. Do you think nature will let that pass?" As he finished speaking, the shell cracked. A silver-gray claw sliced through from within. Slick with egg fluid and shell fragments, it tore the opening wider. A moment later, the creature inside moved toward the light. Its eyelids quivered, then finally opened. Its eyes were yellow-brown, with vertical pupils. They looked like a viper's eyes: cold and dangerous.

Without warning, the humans found themselves staring straight into them. The pupils narrowed slightly, fixing on their "enormous" figures. After a brief silence, the creature in the egg looked down at its "hand." A hand? No. That wasn't a hand. It was a sharp, strangely shaped claw, the claw of an apex predator. Fragile as the creature still was, it had already pierced a shell seven millimeters thick. The newborn did not pause for long before resuming its work. It didn't bare its teeth or roar at the humans.

Its temperament seemed a little better than the first one's. But when it finally crawled out, dripping with egg fluid, and they saw it in full, the onlookers grew visibly excited. There was something unusual about this hatchling. They had used the same set of genes and the same editing method, introducing no new variables. In theory, it should have looked almost identical to the first—like an identical twin. Instead, though their overall appearance was similar, the details differed.

"Yellow eyes. I'm sure the first one's were red."

"And the coloring's different. The first was grayish-white; this one's silver-gray. What went wrong? A mutation?"

"Quiet. It's starting to breathe." Whether their new "asset" survived depended on its ability to adapt to the present-day environment. This was the first test. If it couldn't even breathe, they would have to start over. Fortunately, the hatchling was robust. After coughing egg fluid from its airways and lungs, it quickly adjusted to breathing. There was no adverse reaction. Next, it tried to push itself up on its hind legs. It rose shakily in the slippery fluid, only to fall again—and again.

After several attempts, it somehow learned to use its tail for balance and finally managed to stand. Then it stopped moving. Perhaps it was afraid of slipping again. Perhaps it was curious about its own body. It stared at its hind legs and foreclaws, trembling faintly all over. At last, it used a foreclaw to "wipe" the fluid from its face, then seemed to trace the shape of its features. Its yellow-brown eyes lifted toward the humans gathered around it and held their gaze.

Though it had to look up at them, they had the unsettling impression that it was looking down.

"What's it staring at?"

"Your carotid artery, mate. It's a carnivore." Whether the hatchling was startled by their voices or sensed a threat, it suddenly let out its first cry: a sharp, forceful call, like the warning of a bird deep in the rainforest, edged with menace. But the humans didn't understand what that cry meant. To them, it meant only that their "asset" had healthy lungs, a strong constitution, well-developed vocal cords, and an aggressive instinct. Raise it properly, and funding for the laboratory would follow.

The genetic project would move forward. The major awards were practically theirs already…