Dinosaur World 6 Chapter 1

I didn’t expect things to get any stranger during the dinosaur apocalypse. We had travelled across England, defeated too many horrifying creatures to count, and had our fair share of blood-splattered, near-death moments over the span of just a few weeks.

Now, I stood with my three beautiful lovers inside a spaceship that had crashed outside our castle hideout, and we stared silently at the woman who lay at our feet.

With lilac skin, silver hair, and slight scar-looking gills on her neck, there was no doubting she was some kind of alien.

Even with everything we had seen on our journey, this was a lot to take in.

“So… she’s a bloody alien,” Becka scoffed. The gorgeous blonde oozed confidence and had become a kick ass dino fighter in only a few weeks. She stared down at the alien with a wrinkled nose, and her soft, brown eyes were wide.

Hae-won stood with her head tilted as she took in the scene. The raven-haired Korean had proven herself to be a certified badass, with incredible skills in shooting, mechanics, and general dino slaying. Despite her petite frame, she was one of the best fighters I could have dreamed of, and she was not to be messed with.

Kat had one eyebrow raised, and her messy dirty-blonde curls fell onto her shoulders as she slowly strode around the spacecraft’s control room. The corporal had risked her life to leave her military post and track us down. Her training and experience in warfare had saved our asses on more than one occasion, and she had quickly become a vital member of our team.

I loved all three of these women, and I had fought tooth and nail to protect them.

We had just defeated a bloodthirsty giganotosaurus, and as part of our victory celebration, I’d made love to all of my women in our new deluxe suite, but then the massive spacecraft crashed into the hillside of Raven Hall.

Now, we stood over the unconscious pilot of said spacecraft while she lay on the floor. The alien woman had a large wound in her thigh, and even in the dim light that the buttons of the control panel gave off, I could tell her injury needed urgent attention.

“Yeah…” I said eventually, and I tried to think of how to answer Becka’s question. “Well, I’m going to go ahead and guess that yeah, she’s an alien.”

“These look like gills,” Hae-won said and crouched down next to the lilac girl. “They open and close slightly every time she breathes.”

“Brilliant.” Kat nodded as she folded her arms. “I was actually just thinking the whole ‘dinosaurs roaming the Earth’ thing wasn’t complicated enough. Glad we’ve thrown something new into the mix. Like an alien-super-model-spaceship-pilot.”

“We should help her,” I said as I looked down at the woman. “She has to be pretty busted up from the crash, and her leg looks bad.”

“Help her?” Becka hissed. “Are you bananas? Jason, she’s a purple woman in a tin can that just fell out of the sky. She might be here to blow our brains out!”

“She’s very pretty, though.” Hae-won shrugged.

“Uh-huh,” I agreed.

The woman had a slim frame, and as she lay on her back, we had a clear view of her sharp, silver-freckled cheekbones, her elegant figure, and her long, silver hair strewn around her.

I dragged my eyes off the beautiful alien and looked around the dimly lit room of the craft, and I tried to make sense of my surroundings. It seemed like we were in the control room of the vehicle, and it looked way more “Mighty Morphing Power Rangers” than the tight cockpits I saw on the movie “Top Gun.” There was a silver desk covered in small buttons and dials that curved along the sleek metal wall beside me. The driver’s seat sat behind a square-shaped bar, which I assumed was some kind of steering wheel. The large front window had a pale blue hue to it, and there were multiple doors that lined the far back wall of the room.

“We can’t just assume she’s an enemy,” I said. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. I mean, not to us, anyway.”

“It does look like she tried to crash a spaceship into the castle,” Kat said.

“Why would anyone want to crash?” Hae-won asked.

“I don’t know,” Kat huffed. “You have a good point.”

“So, if we do move her,” Becka slowly added, “then we should tie her up. Just in case?”

“She doesn’t appear to be armed,” I said as I leaned over and inspected her hands. Her pale purple fingers were empty, and I couldn’t see any weapons on her steel-gray uniform.

“The noise will have attracted some dinos,” Hae-won said as she stood up and glanced out of the front window into the darkness. “We should get back inside soon.”

“What the hell is going on?” Debbie suddenly screeched, and I could hear her scrambling through the doorway of the craft.

Then Becka’s mum hurried into the control room with her collection of kitchen knives clinking as they dangled from her crystal-studded belt. We had travelled to Ravenscar to save her, and it had quickly become clear that Debbie was not a woman who really needed saving, although it had all been worth it to reunite Becka with her mother.

“Well,” I said to the beautiful, older blonde. “It looks like we have a visitor.”

“Holy shit,” Debbie gasped beside me. “What are you all doing standing around gawking at her? Get that poor lass up on those strong shoulders, Jason.”

“But, Mum,” Becka whispered. “We don’t know who she is or what she wants.”

“I don’t care,” Debbie scoffed. “We are not leaving the poor thing lying on the floor for some big old lizards to come and chomp on her. Jason, get going. Let’s bring her inside, at least.”

“On it.” I immediately crouched down and carefully slid my arms under the woman’s back and knees, and she didn’t even stir when I hauled her up and kept her tight against my chest. I tried not to disrupt her leg injury, but without her being awake, I wasn’t sure if the hold hurt her or not.

“She’s out cold,” Kat said. “She might be in a coma.”

“Well, if she is, we’ve got the doctor inside to take a look,” Debbie said while she led the way to the entrance of the craft.

“You’re being awfully calm about this, Mum,” Becka mumbled. “Considering Jason has an alien cradled in his arms.”

“The world’s gone to shit, dearie,” Debbie sighed. “Dinosaurs, aliens, who cares anymore? I’m not leaving a pretty, young thing out here to get trampled or mauled to death. I’m sure she’s got a purple mother out there somewhere who’s worried sick!”

Hae-won carefully peered out of the craft while she held her rifle across her chest, and there was a distant roar before she nodded the all-clear.

We hurried over the grassy hilltop, away from the crashed spacecraft, and to the entrance way of Raven Hall. Dark gray clouds rolled above us in the night sky, and it looked like we would soon be in for a good old English rain storm.

We jogged over the gravel to the staff entrance at the side of the building, and the lilac woman’s legs flopped around as I ran. There weren’t any dinos around Raven Hall at the moment, but I knew it wouldn’t be long until something came to investigate the noise of the crash.

Hae-won pulled open the side door into the castle, and we piled into the pantry.

Once we were all inside, Debbie and Kat hauled one of the large freezers in front of the door as a barricade.

“Let’s bring her into the hall,” Debbie said. “Well have Harris take a look at her.”

“I’m not sure a doctor will be much help,” Becka snorted as we made our way out of the small room. “He probably didn’t cover aliens in medical school.”

We walked through the grand corridor of Raven Hall, and into the main hall that was usually used for weddings and expensive parties. The group of locals who had set up camp in the hotel had all gathered in the middle of the room, and they stared with wide eyes and dangling jaws as I carried the unconscious, lilac woman into the room. There were about thirty locals in total, and most of them had lived in Ravenscar when the portals started to appear. It had been Debbie’s idea to set up camp in the castle-turned-hotel, and they had welcomed us with open arms, but I was certain this next addition to the group wasn’t what they expected.

“What in God’s name is that?” Gerald hissed as he broke off from the group and hurried forward.

The Raven Hall worker was paler than usual, and he flinched as I started to gently lay the woman down on one of the white-clothed tables.

In the light of the hall, I could properly see the wound on her leg. Her steel-colored uniform had a large rip on the right thigh, and her purple skin was torn open. Blood seeped all over her leg and the fabric of her uniform, and I noticed it looked slightly darker than human blood. She breathed slowly and showed no signs of waking up any time soon, but we needed to slow this bleeding quickly.

The doctor’s son was the next to hurry forward, and he nervously tugged at his ginger curls as he stared at the lilac girl.

“Is she an alien?” Joey whispered as the locals started to edge forward to examine the new arrival.

“I think so.” I nodded, and the small boy’s eyes widened like flying saucers.

“What the hell is going on?” A middle-aged woman asked nervously from the middle of the group. “Are we under attack from aliens as well, now?”

“Well, she didn’t attack us,” I clarified since I didn’t want the whole of Raven Hall to descend into a panic.

“She almost crashed right into the hall,” Harris said as he stepped forward and pulled his son back. “She must have been aiming right for us!”

“We don’t know that,” I said as I stared at the lilac woman. “It looked like a pretty bad accident to me, I’m sure if she was actually aiming for us, she wouldn’t have missed. Besides… why attack our group? It’s not like the pope or the queen are here.”

“Maybe she’s here to help us,” Joey piped up enthusiastically. “To fight the dinosaurs!”

“Maybe.” I smiled. “For now, I think she needs to be examined.”

I looked over at the doctor, and he recoiled further into the group.

“The wound looks pretty bad,” Kat said as she bent over to examine the damage. “We should clean it as soon as possible, and it needs stitches.”

“We can set her up in one of the empty rooms,” I decided. “And maybe Harris can give us a hand with the injury. Right, Harris?”

The red-haired doctor stared at me with an open mouth, and he gripped his son’s shoulders tightly.

“I-I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Harris said eventually. “We have no idea what this creature is capable of, should we really be trying to fix her up? This could be quite dangerous.”

“I agree,” another man called out from the group. “What if we stitch her up, and then she attacks us all? She might be faking it.”

“Faking what?” I snorted. “The giant gouge in her leg, or the head injury any accident that size would inflict?”

No one responded, and as Harris intentionally avoided eye contact with me, I got the feeling that doctor Harris wasn’t keen on joining in in the rescue mission.

“Throw her back outside,” one older man suddenly growled. “We’ve survived this long, and we don’t need some purple alien invading the castle. She’s dangerous.”

“She’s unarmed,” Hae-won sighed as she glanced at the unconscious alien. “We can’t just leave her outside like this. She will be eaten.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.” The old man shrugged. “We need to focus on keeping our own kind safe right now. Not helping out creatures from who knows where.”

“I would be inclined to agree,” Gerald sniffed as he folded his arms. “My job is to take care of Raven Hall, and having this ghastly creature bleeding all over the hardwood is quite repulsive.”

“What if she has toxic blood?” the old man yelled. “She’s here to kill us all with her demon blood.”

“Oh, come the fuck on,” I groaned as Becka snorted. “Nobody is going to be killed by demon blood, whatever that means. But if nobody else is going to help her, then we will.”

“That’s the spirit, Jason.” Debbie nodded with approval. “Glad to see some people haven’t lost their humanity. And Eddie, shut up, you old wanker.”

“So, we have to figure out how to help this space chick,” Becka sighed as she planted her hands on her hips. “What exactly are we meant to do?”

“Kat can do stitches,” I said, and the curly-haired soldier nodded. “Harris should have the right supplies, and if we can get her leg fixed up, then that’s a start.”

“You want us to sleep in the same building as that thing?” A young woman asked, and she looked to be the mother of the other kid in the group. “I don’t feel safe having it in with us.”

“Look,” I said and rounded on the group. “I know you all want to protect each other, and that’s great, but we can’t just leave an innocent, uh, woman to die out there.”

“But we need to protect ourselves,” the young woman insisted as a small girl clung to her knee. “If it’s a choice between our safety and that thing, we need to prioritize ourselves.”

“That thing?” Hae-won scoffed. “She’s not a thing she’s… well… fuck, I don’t know what she is. Don’t be an asshole!”

“What if we keep her door locked?” I offered. “That way we can help her, but she can’t freely wander the castle until we figure out what’s going on. Gerald, I’m sure you have a means of locking a hotel room door from the outside, right?”

There was a murmur of discussion from the group, and plenty of nervous looks over at the alien on the table. Then Gerald managed half a nod.

“If you take a manual key rather than a keycard you can do that,” the Raven Hall worker replied. “There are some behind reception in the grey box.”

“We need to get her leg cleaned soon,” Kat said. “I don’t know how alien biology works, but it could get infected or even bleed out if we leave it much longer.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We should set her up in a room close to ours so we can keep a close eye on her.”

“I’ll go grab a key from reception.” Hae-won nodded, and she hurried out of the hall into the lobby.

“Okay,” I said as I held my hands up to the crowd. “We’re going to go and get her cleaned up. I know this is a new challenge for us all, but we can handle it. Nobody panic.”

I turned away from the group while their chatter became louder and more urgent, and I exchanged a few loaded glances with the girls and the older blonde around me.

“They don’t look happy about this,” Kat muttered under her breath.

“Yeah, well, we really should keep a close eye on space babe,” Becka whispered with a frown. “I don’t think we should abandon her, but we literally have no idea if she comes in peace.”

“We’ll be careful,” I assured the pretty blonde. “All of us are well-armed, so let’s just get her somewhere secure, and we can do more crowd control once she’s stitched up.”

“You take her upstairs.” Debbie nodded. “I’ll talk to this lot. You’re a good man, Jason, looking after the poor purple dear, and all. I see why your girls love you.”

“Thanks, Debbie,” I chuckled. “We’ll let you know how it goes.”

I reached down to pick up the alien again, and gently held her against my chest as I tried to avoid her injured thigh.

Hae-won waved a key from the doorway of the hall, and we started to head away from the grumbling crowd and into the lobby.

“Keep your eyes open!” the old man shouted after us. “I bet she’s just waiting to get you alone before she pounces.”

“Eddie was old and mental even when I was a kid,” Becka sighed. “He lived near us and muttered to himself all the time. Glad to see he’s only gotten more paranoid as the years went on.”

“Room forty-five,” Hae-won said as we reached the lobby. “It’s pretty close to our bedroom. Do you think she’ll wake up when we fix her wound?”

“I dunno,” Kat said. “She hasn’t woken up from any of the noise or movement so far, it looks like she’s down for the count.”

“I wonder if any dinos have come to inspect the ship yet,” Becka said as we started to head up the red-carpeted stairs. “I thought the sky had fallen down when that thing crashed.”

“The dinos won’t be the only ones,” I said. “If this thing came plummeting down from space, we won’t be the only ones who know that she’s here.”

“What do you mean?” Becka asked.

“Well,” I sighed. “I know the world is falling apart, but someone must have tracked her when she came into our atmosphere. Some kind of governmental body must still be monitoring stuff like that.”

“It’s true.” Kat nodded over her shoulder at me. “I don’t know how much of the government is still functioning, but I know there are some bases protected by hordes of military personnel. Down in London, there are hundreds of soldiers set up to protect the MI5 bases.”

“Shit,” I sighed. “I’m really not in the mood to deal with the MI5.”

“Why not?” Kat asked. “They’re just honest workers doing their jobs.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered, but I didn’t say anything else. Granted, I didn’t know how the UK handled things, but something told me any government might end up in a fucking uproar over something like this.

With dinos roaming the Earth, I felt like things had gotten complicated enough already.

“Well, there is so much going on anyway,” Hae-won said. “Maybe no one even noticed the spacecraft, what with all the portals and dinos appearing.”

“I doubt it,” I said grimly as we reached the first floor and headed for the next staircase. “There’s no way that thing crashed down onto Earth and wasn’t noticed by somebody.”

“Do you think they’ll come here?” Becka asked. “Even if some important government people did track the crash, it’s so risky to travel anywhere, and they’ll want to keep the government folks safe.”

“Maybe,” I muttered.

I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as we reached the next floor. I knew the world had gone to shit, but an alien spacecraft would be worth the risk of travel for any high-up officials. Anything could happen once all of them got involved, and my palms began to sweat just thinking about the chaos this could snowball into.

Maybe it was just my apocalypse brain flaring up, but I couldn’t help wanting to protect the lilac-skinned woman.

At least until we got some answers and figured out what the hell she was doing here.

“Here we go,” Hae-won said as we reached room forty-five.

The Korean beauty pushed open the door and led us into an elegant double bedroom. It was much smaller than our deluxe suite, but it was still a beautiful space with cream walls and deep maroon bed sheets. I carried the alien over to the bed and gently laid her down so her silver hair fell over the satin pillowcase.

Her high cheekbones seemed slightly bruised and swollen beneath her silver freckles, and her breathing was still slow and deep.

Damn, she was gorgeous.

“I’ll grab some supplies from Harris,” Kat said. “ I imagine he’ll be willing to share if it gets him out of alien duty. See if you can get her trousers off so I can get to the wound.”

“Uhh… yeah,” I said with a blank nod. “Okay.”

The curly-haired soldier hurried out of the room, and I stared down at the alien’s uniform. The material of her clothes looked thick and protective, but strangely supple at the same time, and the steel-colored fabric glistened under the light.

“Soooo, who wants to undress the unconscious alien?” Becka asked with a nervous laugh. “Not a sentence I thought I’d be saying today, but there you go.”

“I’ll try,” Hae-won said. “It should probably be a girl, in case she wakes up.”

“I’m sure that will make her feel right at home,” Becka giggled. “As long as it’s a girl undressing her, then everything will seem fine.”

“Hae-won has a point,” I agreed. “If you woke up to aliens taking your pants off, you'd want it to be a girl, right?”

“That is the weirdest thing fucking thing you’ve ever said,” Becka said as she shook her head. “But fine, let’s get those weird silver jeans off her.”

I watched as the two girls started to carefully remove the alien’s boots, and then they shuffled the alien’s pants down her body and slowly pulled them past the gaping, bloody wound. The lilac woman’s eyes stayed closed, and she didn’t even stir when the girls pulled the silver pants down and off her ankles.

To my surprise, her feet and toes were the same as any woman I’d ever seen, but obviously lilac-colored, and I couldn’t help but notice her legs were very fit in a willowy way.

Then I noticed the alien had a sleek pair of silver panties on, and I promptly averted my gaze to her gaping wound, instead.

Kat returned with a bundle of medical supplies and crouched down beside the alien’s leg.

“I can’t believe I was right about aliens,” I muttered as Kat started to dab at the wound with alcohol and a white cloth. “I don’t know what role they play in this, but we were right about not being alone in the universe.”

“Do you think they know about the portals?” Becka asked. “Maybe they came here to tell us how to stop them?”

“Or to ask for help,” Hae-won suggested. “Maybe her planet has a dino problem, too, and they want to team up.”

“Or maybe they caused the dino problem,” I pointed out. “And how many more spacecraft crashed today? Why would they just send one if this was an attack?”

“You really think we should keep her here?” Kat mumbled as she cleaned dark red blood from the alien’s lilac thigh. “I’m all for maintaining our humanity, and I know protecting women sort of comes naturally to you, Jason, but we have no idea what she is capable of. What if she really is here to fight, and we’ve stitched her up and given her a luxury bed to regain her alien strength?”

“Our first priority is to protect Raven Hall,” I said. “The people here out-number her, so if anything happens, I think we’ll be okay. Either way, we need to wait until she wakes up before we can have any idea what’s going on, and until then, we treat her like anyone else in the apocalypse.”

“We can still keep the door locked, too.” Hae-won nodded. “She came here alone, so she will be really confused when she wakes up and sees she’s in a completely different surroundings than her spacecraft.”

I walked over to the window and peeked behind the red velvet curtains to look out on the hillside. The spacecraft was wedged into the ground, and although there were no dinos there yet, I could see a large dino-shape move around near the edge of the woodlands.

“I guess I should go and grab some food for her,” Becka said, and I turned back to the girls. “Now that we’ve got enough to spare, the locals can’t get mad about sharing.”

“Especially since it was us who risked our lives to gather it all,” Hae-won agreed.

“Good idea,” I replied. “Get some water, too. Who knows what fuel she needs to survive.”

The blonde Brit nodded and made her way out of the room.

Kat finished cleaning the wound and put the bloody cloth into a plastic bag before she pulled out a surgical needle and thread.

“That is going to hurt,” Hae-won shivered. “Especially with no pain killers.”

“She’s still out cold,” I said as I stepped toward the bed and leaned over to check the alien’s breathing. Her gills rippled steadily, and I ended up staring at the strange slits for a minute. “Hopefully, she’ll just sleep through it.”

As Kat got to work with the stitches, I examined the seven gills on the alien’s neck more closely. They fluttered open and shut with each breath, and they lined the top of her collarbone like a strange necklace. They were remarkably delicate-looking, and I found myself wondering if they felt like silk, since they gave off a subtle sheen.

“Do you think she can breathe underwater?” Hae-won asked when she saw me studying the gills.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “They could be so she can breathe in our atmosphere, though. I have no idea. I have a million questions, and I don’t even know if she’ll be able to understand us when she wakes up.”

“Maybe she speaks Korean,” Hae-won snickered.

“That would be convenient.” I smirked.

Kat carefully stitched up the wound, and the alien only stirred slightly as the skin was pulled together.

Then Becka returned with a large glass of water and a sandwich.

“Hope she likes ham and cheese,” the Brit said as she placed the food down on the bedside cabinet. “They’re all still discussing what to do down in the hall. They sound more scared than angry, though. I don’t think they’ll be bringing pitchforks to the door or anything.”

“Understandable,” I said. “If I hadn’t already suspected some alien involvement in this apocalypse, then this would have been more of a shock.”

“What do you think will happen to her ship?” Kat asked. “It’s just lying there in the open. Surely, it’s going to get crushed by the first dino that makes its way past.”

“And it's just waiting to be examined by the government,” I added. “We can’t exactly pretend we haven’t seen any alien crafts appear when it's right in our fucking front yard.”

“You really think Men in Black are going to come looking?” Becka asked with an amused grin. “Maybe there’s been loads of crashes, and they didn’t even notice this one.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I vote that we say the craft was empty, if anyone does turn up.”

“Jason, we can’t smuggle an alien!” Becka scoffed.

“We’re not smuggling anything,” I countered. “She landed here on her own, and she’s done nothing wrong yet. If the government does show up to haul her away to some fucked up lab, we’ll probably never hear of her again. Don’t you want some answers?”

“She must know something,” Kat allowed. “This is way too much of a coincidence that aliens have visited just as the dinos have taken over.”

“And after we spoke with Amir, I’m twice as convinced this woman would know more than we’ve learned so far about these portals,” I told the girls. “Amir said the portals were tied to some band of the radio spectrum that we don’t even use on this planet. What if this woman knows how the portals are being opened to begin with?”

“Or how to close them?” Hae-won offered.

The blonde soldier pursed her lips at the thought as she plunged her needle into the last bit of loose lilac skin, and she pulled the thread tightly before she cut it.

“That will do for now,” Kat said as she stood up. “I’m sure Harris could have done a neater job, but it might be a while before he works up the guts to perform alien first-aid.”

“Looks great,” I said and studied the soldier’s work. “Hopefully, she appreciates the effort.”

“What now?” Becka asked as we stood around looking at the unconscious woman. “Do we just leave her to sleep?”

“We could try and wake her up,” Hae-won suggested. “Spray water in her face or something like that?”

“I don’t want her to wake up angry,” I chuckled. “Let’s give her a few hours to wake up on her own. Who knows if she even will?”

“She got pretty lucky,” Becka said. “Out of all the places she could have crashed, she picks a luxury castle hotel.”

“Do you think she came through a portal?” Kat asked. “Or crash landed from outside the atmosphere?”

“Could be either,” I said. “If it was a portal, then maybe nobody noticed her coming through. Unless the government is tracking every single opening that appears.”

“I doubt it,” the curly-haired soldier replied. “How would they even manage it? There’s more appearing each day, and they don’t seem to have any ideas about keeping tabs on the portals so far.”

“Well, maybe we should watch her in shifts,” Hae-won suggested. “Two of us at a time. We can’t all just stay here forever waiting for her to get up.”

“And it’s getting late,” Becka yawned. “Jason wore me out good earlier, and looking at her all cozy on that bed is making me even sleepier.”

“I’ll stay a while,” I said. “You guys should go and rest. It’s been a long ass day.”

“And we need to start training tomorrow,” Kat said. “If we’re adding aliens into the mix, the locals are really going to need to up their fighting game.”

“As long as they don’t show up in here with guns blazing,” I snorted.

I watched the slow rise and fall of the alien’s chest. She looked so peaceful as she lay on the maroon sheets, and I was desperate for her to wake up so I could find out where she had come from. I knew she might not be able to speak English, but if she had the technology to travel to our planet, she must have had some way of communicating. Maybe she arrived here for the sole purpose of communicating with us.

Maybe she was our lilac knight in space armor and silver panties.

“Go grab a few hours of rest,” I said as I pulled a sheet up over the woman’s bare legs, and I sat down at the end of the bed. “When you wake up, come and swap places with me, and I’ll have a couple hours of sleep before we train.”

“I can stay, too,” Hae-won offered. “I’m not sure any of us should be alone with her, even you Jason.”

“That’s sweet.” I smiled. “But I don’t think she’ll be up to much with her bad leg anyway, and I’ve got my radio and rifle if I need help.”

“If you’re sure,” Becka yawned again. “I am happy to say goodnight to this weird ass day. We can resume alien investigation duties in the morning after I’ve slept off the whole giganotosaurus attack and those crazy shark-dinos tearing into its flesh.”

“Sounds good.” I grinned. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

“I’ll set an alarm for about five.” Kat nodded.

“Five?” Becka groaned. “That’s gross, can we make it ten?”

Kat was about to reply, but she was interrupted by a loud, ear-piercing scream. It sounded like it resonated from a whole other frequency than I’d ever heard in my life, and I clamped my hands over my ears as I shot up from the bed.

Then I spun around to see the lilac woman was bolt upright in the bed, and she stared at us with wide, green eyes.