All was silent on the abandoned Isla Tocano as a Cessna soared overhead. It wasn't landing; just passing through. No human had set foot on the island for months, and the superstitions about the small island kept most potential explorers and thrill-seekers away. Those brave enough to land anyway- they lost contact with all humanity sooner or later, and were never heard from again.
As the plane hummed away into the distance, the life under the tropical canopies of the island sprang into action again. Birds called, and were responded to by other, more primitive, screaming voices. Wings pounded in the trees, sending showers of rainwater to the sediment covered forest floor, shaken from the cuplike leaves above. The droplets pattered against the stone below- a strange phenomena, the trees and other plants sprouted from cracks in the volcanic stone, and sediment deposits from ash polluted rainfall formed small stalagmites among the trunks and fronds.
An enormous dragonfly fluttered through the abundant plant life, its foot long wings glistening green and blue in the humid air. It perched precariously on a fern frond, making it bow slightly under the surprising weight. Suddenly, a pair of jaws snapped out from the grassy tufts below, snapping shut on the dragonfly's body. The creature emerged, pulling the struggling insect with it into the open. The green and brown camouflaged bird-like creature used its smooth and scaly forelegs to rip the enormous wings off its quarry before tearing at the fleshy body of the bug with tiny needle teeth.
There was a rumbling growl from the distance, and the compsognathus abandoned its kill with a shrill squeal, running away from the noise. Several more of its kind leapt from the brush to join it, and they were gone. A pair of microraptors glided in the branches above, leaping and soaring from branch to branch, squawking and squabbling with each other, using their peculiar leg wings to speed up their short flights. When they arrived at an old abandoned building and ran out of trees, they swooped to the ground, and bunching their hind leg feathers up against their shins, they trotted into the weathered building, still twittering back and forth.
Nobody could deny, the forest had reclaimed the land. Vines and ferns had broken through every crevice of the building and grown as large as they could. Bits of the metal roof material had rusted through, and beams of misty sunlight pierced through in patches, illuminating the large, single room.
A dozen outdated computers sat on metal and plastic desks. There were chairs at some of the desks, but at others, it seemed a curious creature had knocked them across the room, where they sat rotting in the sunlight.
The desks themselves were a mess. Moss and vines had conquered them, and the CD cases and papers were tossed about everywhere. The computers themselves were old and boxy, with cracked dingy white plastic shells and enormous towers with cables leading to a side wall, where a slightly faded marking on the floor and wall suggested that a supercomputer once sat there. A few of the cracked and dusty screens miraculously still glowed.
In the back of the building sat a row of damaged incubators. Their glass roofs were smashed in and shattered. Half of their contents, countless gray and black mottled eggs with teal speckled, were cracked open and had long since decomposed. The others had frozen to sterility in the chilly nights.
A single egg stirred in the dim light, wobbling where it sat upright on its skinny end in its egg shaped depression. It was sheltered and protected from scavengers and the cold by dozens of papers bearing its DNA sequence that had blown in the breeze from one of the desks and into its incubator. The egg wobbled again, shifting the yellowed papers. Muffled chirps pervaded the incubator, but there was no mother to help this egg hatch.
Finally, after countless minutes, a dark snout punched a triangular hole in the shell of the egg. Shoving fractured shell bits out one by one, a young velociraptor struggled his way into the world. Distorted green striped covered his near black body, terminating by the time they reached his pale gray belly. He fell onto the metal floor of the incubator a few inches below, and the rest of the egg fell apart. He struggled to his feet, blinking his large green eyes curiously. He took in his new world with only mild interest- he was hungry. He licked the remaining egg white off his forelimbs first, before turned his gaze onto the first thing in sight: a sterile, and no doubt spoiled, egg, sitting intact beside him. He clumsily leapt at it, until he knocked it sideways and it cracked open, spilling its foul smelling contents onto the incubator. He gave a squeak of delight before eagerly devouring the mess, not thinking twice about its foul taste and stench.
When his small stomach was full, the raptor crept to the edge of the incubator and peered down the three foot drop with a cocked head. He blinked once, twice, then made a flying leap off the edge, landing splay legged on the racked and mossy linoleum tile below. His tiny claws skittered and clicked as he struggled back to his feet. Carelessly whooping and chattering to himself, he bounced to where the door once was (it had been torn from the hinges and tossed into the forest long ago), looking out into the bright green landscape. He squealed in delight. His home!