Isle of the Extinct

Prologue

"WE HUMANS HARNESSED ELECTRICITY AND BUILT SKYSCRAPERS SO GREAT, BUT LIKE THE DINOSAURS BEFORE US, EXTINCTION IS ULTIMATELY OUR FATE."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_________________________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                  <>ISLE OF THE EXTINCT<>
Extinct they were, evolving they are.

Three centuries before 2030

"Glamanz."

Upon hearing the bellowing bark of his superior, Glamanz's cyanic blue fingers tightened, and he all but dared to steal the slightest glance behind him. In a split-second, a thick, oppressive heat rammed into his shoulder, and he could feel a pair of hard, scrutinising eyes boring into him.

"Yes, boss?" His voice was meek and strangled.

"I would be most pleased if you could prepare the remaining dromaeosaurs for nano-transportation to the Sphere," his boss grunted. "The last of the current batch have been successfully cloned, and the team is on standby for transportation to commence. Please ensure that all members of the batch are healthy, and that they have not contracted any...unsightly diseases during their quarantine period. Maintenance in those cells has been rather sloppy lately, and I dare not imagine what bacteria lurk in them."

"Affirmative, boss," Glamanz replied, eager to please.

"However, I digress. How is the current progress on species recruitment? We still have two large predator niches still open from the current ecosystem drafted up."

At this, Glamanz perked.

"Yes, Boss, I was about to arrive onto said topic. So far, we have looked over roughly fifteen time epochs, mostly from the Mesozoic," he rambled on, jabbing away at his holographic screens. "As of now, we have about ten possible candidates, mostly dinosaurs, although we've considered those from other clades. And thus I bring to you to our newest subject: Carnotaurus Sastrei. A large, bipedal predatory dinosaur, and a most unusual one as well."

With that, Glamanz drummed his fingers on the control panel, before pressing down on a small, emerald-green button. Instantaneously, a hologram fizzled into existence on a pad just above the control panel, pixels swirling about in a maddening hurricane to form the resulting virtual image.

The image of a dinosaur.

"This is what we have been working on bio-engineering for the Sphere. A magnificent beast, no?"

The hologram was merely a rough outline of the resultant animal's form, but already it was enough to intimidate. The dinosaur was to have a short, compact head, with a pair of great horns sprouting from above each eye. The jaws were to be lined with fences of lacerating fangs, and the entire head was balanced on a lengthy, well-muscled neck. Its build was slim yet strong, and the fingerless stubs it were to have for forearms were to be contrasted with a pair of long,  powerful legs. This was how most would describe Carnotaurus should they live to tell the tale. Overall, the animal had the build, the musculature and the weaponry to be a hardwired, hard-biting predator. Ruthless and tenacious, a reptilian assassin. Some would call it deadly, others would say it ravished them. To Glamanz, it was a priceless asset for the Sphere.

"Fortunately for us, the fossils found of this animal back on Terra Aquarius, or rather, Earth, were almost complete, including several skin impressions. Thus we have a splendid idea of how it would have looked in life," Glamanz said. "Instead of the standard chicken or hoatzin egg for the coelurosaurs, we experimented with the usage of cursorial, flightless birds, such as the Australian cassowary. Tweaking their genes to give the general theropod frame was less daunting than it seemed."  Glamanz took a moment to catch his breath. "We fused it with horned ungulate genes that control horn growth, as well as the genome of a crocodile; this asset had large feature scales when alive."