The jungle was thick with silence, the kind that made your ears ring. Every rustle felt too loud. Hidden beneath an uprooted tree, the campers pressed into the dirt, scraped, bruised, and breathless.

“I can’t hear it anymore,” Brooklyn whispered, her voice trembling. Her hoodie was torn at the shoulder, a shallow cut just beneath. “Is that worse?”

Darius peeked through the roots. “Way worse,” he muttered. “It means it’s thinking.”

Kenji shifted beside him, hissing from a sore ankle. “Dinosaurs don’t think, dude. They chomp. Big difference.”

Yaz glanced back at them, sweat dripping down her temple. “This one’s different. You saw what it did to the fence. It wasn’t just breaking through—it was…testing it.”

Ben clutched Bumpy’s side, heart pounding. “It knew we were watching. I swear it looked at me.”

“It’s not like the Indominus,” Darius said quietly. “Or the Scorpios. This one didn’t roar. It didn’t even chase us.”

Sammy swallowed, wiping dirt off her scraped elbow. “It stalked us. Like it was herding us somewhere…”

They all went silent.

A branch cracked.

Close.

Too close.

Brooklyn’s hand shot out, grabbing Darius’s wrist. “Tell me you have a plan.”

“I did,” he whispered. “Then it stopped making noise.”

Ben looked up slowly. “What if it’s already here?”

The roots above them shifted, just barely. Not broken. Not snapped. Parted. As if something massive but precise had moved past… or stopped.

“We can’t stay here,” Yaz said. “We’re sitting targets.”

“And we can’t run,” Kenji added. “That thing’s huge and fast. One wrong step and we’re done.”

Darius nodded once. “Okay. We split up—only a little. Zig-zag, stay in cover. Head for the ravine. It’s too steep for it to follow.”

“And if it does?” Sammy whispered.

Darius looked her dead in the eye. “Then we find out how smart it really is.”

They slipped into the trees, one by one, hearts in their throats.

Behind them, the jungle breathed.