Disclaimer: I do not own Jurassic Park. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only and meant to honor and expand Michael Crichton's vision.

Prologue: The Beach

Cameron crept across the beach, his eyes scanning the inky line where the grey sand hit the jungle. The crash of the waves on the shore, the plush sand beneath his heels, the wet cargo shorts stuck to his thighs—he ignored all of it and focused of his attention on the trees and brush swaying in the wind, looking for anything that seemed to move out of rhythm.

He jumped when his brother's meaty hand landed on his shoulder. "What's the matter, Cam?" Robby yelled over the roar of the beach. "You scared?"

Behind him, Cameron's friends cackled, their hats turned backwards, their polo shirts flapping like sails. He turned to glare at them, but instead stared out at the black ocean, the yacht bobbing just off shore, the sky still glowing, though the sun set hours ago.

"Honestly," he said, "yeah, I am a little freaked out." He turned back to the tree line, to the thrashing palms and shuttering shrubs.

"Stop being such a pussy, Cam," Matt said.

"Yeah, man," Robby said, massaging his little brother's shoulders a little too forcefully. "I thought this would be a cool place to take you for your bachelor party, you know? You were so obsessed with it when we were kids."

"It is, it is. It's just..." Cameron's voice trailed off as he tried to listen for any sounds over the wind weaving between them, any roars.

"Come on, man. You know as well as I do that they bombed the shit out of this place in 1989." Robby paused, waiting for Cameron's response, before yelling, "There aren't any dinosaurs on this island!"

The beach looked grayscale to Cameron, like something photocopied. The silver sand beneath him shimmered dull beneath the blinding moon and stretched for hundreds of feet on either side of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw something down the beach dart from the water to the swaying shelter of the jungle, but he knew he was just being dramatic. It was probably a bird if was anything other than his imagination.

"No, you're right," Cameron sighed, allowing the breeze to rip his anxiety away from him.

A smirk stretched between Robby's chubby cheeks. "Alright, then. We've got the beach to ourselves! Let's fucking party, boys!"

Every one of Cameron's groomsmen howled in tandem like something wilder than wolves. A cooler creaked open and Devon started passing forty ounce bottle of beer to each of the boys, except Robby, who tugged a handle of vodka from his backpack.

Cameron had to admit, it was a pretty cool idea—to camp out on Isla Nublar the night before his wedding. He remembered when he was ten and his dad had cut an article from the newspaper that commented on InGen's supposed dinosaur amusement park. Cameron was obsessed with dinosaurs at the time, knew everything there was to know about them, so the prospect of real dinosaurs existing somewhere on the planet sent literal tremors of excitement through his extremities. He devoured anything he could read about the so-called Jurassic Park, including books well above his reading level. He even talked his dad into letting him attend a lecture by Dr. Ian Malcolm, who claimed to have survived the incident. Hell, Cameron agreed to finance a destination wedding in Costa Rica solely because of its proximity to the island—though would never admit that to his fiancé. As soon as he let himself relax a little, Cameron laughed, took a sip of his beer, and shook his head at the absurdity of his situation.

He was on Isla Nublar. He was at Jurassic Park.

"I gotta piss," Matt blurted, dropping his empty bottle onto the sand.

"Me too," Cameron said, chasing after him. They walked together toward the jungle, then split ten or so yards apart to give each other privacy.

As he unzipped, he heard Matt's piss batter a broad leaf at his feet. "Is this cool or what, bro?" Matt yelled.

"Pissing on Isla Nublar?" Cameron laughed. "Yeah, pretty cool." He sighed as he felt the pressure fade behind his hips, felt the urine slip from his body and thud onto the sand along with his anxiety, his nervousness, his dread about tomorrow's ridiculous day.

Matt's high pitched squeal, chopped by panicked breaths, interrupted this peace. Cameron cut his stream short and tucked himself back into his cargo pants, then ran toward the silhouette of his friend flailing in the moonlight. Leaden fear wove between his ribs and strangled his heart as he thought of his friend might have come face to face with—a pack of procompsognathus, or even velociraptor. "What?!" he screamed, his alarm rivaling Matt's. "What happened?!"

Matt backed away from the tree line and uttered syllables between labored breaths. "Big... fucking... spider..."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Cameron shouted. "You asshole! I thought you saw a dinosaur!"

"Shut up, you pussy," Matt said, taking control of his breath. "There aren't any dinosaurs on this island."

When he first heard the sound—harsh and sharp, like violin strokes of steel against steel—Cameron was more confused than afraid. He looked toward his brother and groomsmen, thinking they and found something to play with on the beach, but only saw a cloud of kicked-up sand and motion against the crashing waves. The screams followed, the anguished and wild screams of someone in too much pain to breathe.

Cameron froze against the jungle and watched his friends scatter. Through the settling sand, he spotted a stiff tail bouncing in the breeze, bobbing in time to the rhythms of its occupied other end, glistening in the moonlight. Only then did he realize what was happening: This was a raptor, and it had pounced on his brother.

He tried to suppress his thoughts—that it seemed larger than he imagined, more like a utahraptor than the goose-sized velociraptor—as he turned to run into the jungle, hopping over downed palms and thickening brush. He heard Matt's footsteps and foul mouth running parallel to his, though he could no longer seem him between the trees. The noises were interrupted by screams somewhere down the beach, inhuman screams that shot from human lungs, and more of those metallic squeals.

Cameron felt knots tighten and tense in his abs, but he didn't know what else to do but run—splash through trickling streams, shoulder into tree trunks, blast between shrubs. But he stopped in his tracks as soon as he heard a playful, tickling purr above the jungle's hush. He looked around, but saw nothing but black trees leaning against the black night, the moon peeking between the flickering foliage as if he wanted to watch. The jungle smelled alive, like soil and rain, but also dead; the sudden smell of rotten flesh, in fact, was so powerful that he nearly gagged.

Before he could consider running again, Cameron felt something leap onto his shoulders, something so heavy that he gave in, didn't squirm or scream. His last cognizant thought before he was cut off by that steely squeal was not of his fiancé or wedding, or even of his brother bleeding on the beach, but the realization that they had been tricked, driven defenseless from the beach into the jungle.