“Looks like paradise,” said Captain Marcus Harlan, leaning back in his seat with a grin. His sun-battered leather jacket creaked as he shifted, the kind of man who’d flown everything from crop dusters to cargo planes in war zones. “But we all know paradise usually has teeth.”
Eliza gave him a wry look. She had spent her career digging fossils from arid deserts, painstakingly reconstructing skeletons that had lain buried for millions of years. The invitation that brought her here was cryptic: a letter from billionaire adventurer Victor Kade, claiming he had discovered something that would “rewrite history itself.”
Along for the journey were others, each with their own expertise. Dr. Simon Ortega, a botanist whose enthusiasm was as unruly as his curly hair, scribbled notes in a leather-bound journal while muttering about rare flora. Claire Bennett, a documentary filmmaker, fiddled with her camera, already rehearsing how she would frame the first shots. And then there was Lieutenant Daniel Cho, a quiet ex-special forces soldier who said little, though his sharp eyes missed nothing.
The seaplane dipped lower, circling a volcanic island wreathed in mist. Waterfalls spilled like silver ribbons down sheer cliffs into a lush jungle. White sands ringed the shore, broken only by jagged black rock.
“Welcome to Isla Nubl—” Marcus began, but Eliza shot him a glare.
“Don’t you dare.”
He chuckled.
They landed on a sheltered lagoon where Victor Kade himself waited on the dock, dressed in khaki and wearing a wide, triumphant smile. His handshake was firm, his eyes alight with the zeal of a man convinced he held the future in his pocket.
“My friends!” he boomed. “You’ve come to witness history. What you will see here will shake the foundations of science, of belief, of the very order of nature itself.”
“Big claims,” Eliza said cautiously. “Care to elaborate before the theatrics?”
Victor only grinned. “Soon. Tonight, we feast. Tomorrow, I will show you wonders that should not exist.”
That night, beneath the glow of torches and a sky spattered with stars, they dined on roasted fish, tropical fruit, and spiced rum. The surf whispered beyond the beach while Victor spun tales of an island untouched by time, of life that should have died millions of years ago.
Claire rolled her eyes behind her camera, but Eliza noticed how Daniel’s hand never strayed far from the knife strapped to his belt. Marcus drank deeply, but his gaze lingered on the dark treeline.
The jungle was restless. Calls echoed from its depths—low, guttural sounds that did not belong to any bird Eliza knew. Something moved out there, just beyond the firelight.
And when a roar thundered from the shadows, shaking the very ground, Eliza’s heart froze.
Paradise, she realised, indeed had teeth.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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