"Clear! Over!" Regina muttered into her comms. "Roger that. Over and out," Rick's voice crackled back over the radio. "All the base doors are wide open, and there isn't a soul in sight." "Sounds like you've walked into an ambush," Rick chuckled darkly on the other end of the line. Regina didn't smile. "Was the mission compromised from the start?" S.O.R.T. was a special operations unit under the Situation Room; only a handful of people knew of their existence. If information had been leaked, the situation could be critical. "Still no signal from Cooper?" "He can take care of himself, even in that damn jungle." Moving in a standard S.O.R.T. two-man formation, Regina and Rick advanced through the metal corridor. They encountered no resistance—or to be precise, not a single living soul. Regina switched on her flashlight, its narrow beam illuminating a dark corner. Overturned chairs, documents scattered across the floor, and monitors left running... they didn't even have time to take the files, something had definitely happened here. After searching the entire corridor with no results, they reached the rooftop. There, Regina finally found a trail—a gruesome, wide swath of blood smeared across the floor in a horrifying arc, looking as if it had been dragged by a mop, leading toward an open utility shaft. The path of the blood was a chaotic mess of destruction, as if a tornado had passed through; the surrounding electric fencing had been twisted into a mangle by some unknown force. Regina signaled "Cover me" to her partner and descended into the shaft. The shaft was unexpectedly deep. A draft blowing from the bottom carried a thick, pungent stench, forcing Regina to hold her breath. "God, what is that smell? I've never smelled anything like it." This time, Regina's complaint went unanswered by one of Rick's dry jokes. Instead, a burst of static hissed through her earpiece. "Rick, are you still there?" Before she could finish, something plummeted past Regina, nearly striking her head. "A gun stock?" Regina wasn't sure what it was. It took several seconds for the deep echo of its impact to rise from below. "Rick?" she shouted into her mic in alarm. Silence. A large drop of liquid landed on her shoulder, leaving a long streak across her body armor. Then came another drop—but this one was red. She snapped her head up. Through the opening of the shaft, she witnessed a horrifying spectacle: silhouetted against the moonlight was the underside of a colossal, brown head. Every feature screamed "reptile," with razor-sharp teeth protruding from its jaws. Its massive, rectangular lower jaw loomed more than ten meters above the shaft entrance—and Rick's legs were dangling there, swinging limply with every bone-chilling crunch. More blood gushed down. The monster threw its head back, its throat expanding and undulating. Rick's lower body vanished with a sound like a mouse being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. She could see its tiny, malformed claws curled against its chest stretch out in satisfaction as it swallowed. "No!" Regina screamed, a chill shooting down her spine. Years of rigorous training could not numb her to this nightmarish scene. But the Tyrannosaurus raised its head and let out a deafening roar at the moon, easily drowning out Regina's scream. The Earth had not heard the roar of its ruler for sixty-five million years.