I don't own Primeval or its characters. Duh.

*Pre-credits scene*

Gerald Loughlin was not a bad person. Sure, he liked to run shirtless, but he had the decency to do so out on the most barren areas of Dartmoor, where few people could see his less-than-stellar physique and carpet of unattractive hair. Sure, he occasionally got perhaps a little more drunk than was socially acceptable at his local bar, but he usually remembered to pay for the inevitable damage in a reasonable amount of time. In any event, he did not deserve the relatively slow and agonizingly painful death that he was about to suffer.

Gerald was on his Saturday morning jog (eternally trying to lose those fifteen pounds that somehow crept up on him over the years), humming along to a Billy Joel song on his iPod while running shirtless on a particularly out-of-the-way trail, when he saw the thing. It was only a meter long, and a good half of that was its preposterously long, feathered tail, but that was unusually large for a British bird, and anyway this wasn't like any bird that Gerald Loughlin had ever seen before. It was sleek and elongated, with a rigid, bony tail with long, hairlike brown feathers fringing the edges. Its legs were long, and its gait bouncy, like that of a leaping animal such as a kangaroo. Its arms were long, clawed, and featherless, like some monkey from hell's grasping limbs. Its head, however, was the most striking part. A single immense scale covered the upper side of the animal's head, with two holes around the alert eyes with their constricted pupils. Some sort of hooklike protrusions grew from the bottom rear corners of the animal's lower jaws, and Gerald was sure that the creature had teeth. Two fangs, each easily two and a half centimeters—huge, for such a small animal—protruded from its upper jaws, ending a centimeter or so below the bottom edge of the lower jaws. Two ivory points stuck up through twin holes in its snout—were those teeth, too?

"What the heck are you?" said Gerald, pulling out his earbuds and crouching for a closer look. The animal jumped back, skittish, but tentatively sidled forwards when Gerald offered his hand to sniff.

Gerald heard a rustling in the heath. He realized that the harsh, irregular chirping that he had been hearing was not birdsong, as he had unconsciously assumed, but something else.

He looked up. There were easily a dozen of the creatures now, about half of them as big as the one in front of him, the rest perhaps eighty centimeters in length. He was surrounded. The creatures closed in slowly, flicking their tails and chirping at one another.

"Where did you lot come from?" said Gerald, trying to ignore the prickling feeling of worry in his gut.

The animal in front of him raised its tail sharply, bending it near the base. All movement and chatter stopped immediately.

Uh-oh.

The lead animal dropped its tail. The pack surged forwards as one.

Gerald had a brief moment of shock, and then pain exploded across his body as the animals flung themselves at him, grabbed on with their arms, opened their jaws impossibly wide, and latched themselves to his flesh. Their stabbing fangs, accompanied by a row of fangs in their palates, secured their jaws loosely, while the tiny hind teeth, as sharp as obsidian, shredded Gerald's skin and muscular fascia.

Gerald screamed and thrashed, and about half the pack leaped off to avoid his flailing arms. The lead creature chattered a quick, screeching phrase, and the rest of the pack abandoned ship.

Gerald was pouring blood, his muscles showing in places and at his left femoral artery punctured in at least two places. He stumbled away from the silent semicircle of death and broke into a lumbering run along the trail, hoping against hope that he could outrun the monsters. His car was only two miles back…come on…come on…

The creatures loped along with their curious bounding gaits. One jumped, and tore a good-sized piece of flesh off of Gerald's back. He screamed again and swatted at it, but it was too nimble.

Gerald had lost multiple pints of blood already. His femoral artery, punctured by creature fangs, was hemorrhaging blood, the shredded remains of his torso skin hanging, weblike, over his torn fascia and still-mostly-intact muscles, his ruined capillary network leaking blood and plasma.

Another creature; this one hit one of the ligaments in the back of his knee. Gerald buckled, but forced himself to stay upright.

He could feel himself going numb, the shock starting to grab hold of his body.

Gerald's foot hit a root, and he tripped. The pack screeched and struck as one.

Nobody heard Gerald's screams.

Act 1:

A room in a mysterious building:

The room was dark, but the woman didn't mind. She didn't recognize the man whose infrared signature she saw in the chair, but she didn't mind that, either. She was an assassin, after all, and the man was a representative of her employers. This was the way they did things, and she frankly didn't care.

The man, who was reading from a tablet computer with a soft backlight, clearly designed so as to let him read without revealing himself, spoke up, skipping introductions entirely.

Not for the first time, the woman laughed internally at her employers' paranoia.

"Well, I can see only a few issues with your report. Our research has confirmed that you followed your instructions to the letter. A pity about Maitland getting in the way, but at least you kept your cover. Of course, you had to fake your death after your little fall, but we needed to retire Miss Leonard anyway. The only major issue here is the New Dawn device."

"Yeah, the physics of it was off or something. You fools are going to need to go back and check your math."

Anyone else would have been disappeared for a statement like that. The woman merely received a snide laugh.

"Yes. Apparently we do. On the plus side, we managed to snag some potentially useful creatures from the Convergence event."

"Oh, joy. Have fun with your new pets."

"Can we stay on topic, please? Your mission is as follows: Infiltrate and destroy the Anomaly Research Centre. Every agent on their alpha team, their entire administrative leadership. Make Lester's and Anderson's deaths especially painful. If possible, kill Temple in front of Maitland. Clone and destroy every piece of software, destroy their weapons and other technology, delete all records—saving us some copies, of course—get us all of their captive creatures, and destroy whatever is left."

"Maitland has a pet flying lizard, and Temple has some irritating dicynodonts. They most likely aren't worth weaponizing. What should I do with them?"

"The dicynodonts might be useful if mircochipped. They are burrowers, yes? The lizard—we don't care. Use it for one of your sick experiments, if you like."

"Sick? This coming from the guys who tortured Agent Gull for three hours straight? With the stick with the fishhooks and everything?"

"Moving on. Be as fast and efficient as possible. Once you are done with the ARC, we can worry about the Americans and the Russians."

"A good thing you guys moved the base to Turkey, huh? Now your biggest problem is a bunch of amateurs."

"What do you know about our recent moves?"

"Oh, just what June told me while we were having a little three-way chat with a Russian spy named Tatiana Sholoshkova. I took her identity, by the way. She's useable now that June's done solidifying "her" background. She screamed so nicely when June cut up her…"

"Please. We are not interested in hearing about your pathetic sadistic exploits with Number Six. We would also suggest therapy for your persistent psychological issues."

"Hah. You and I both know my…love of pain makes me more effective. And that's quite rich, coming from the guy who just told me to kill a guy in front of his girl."

"Perhaps. Now, I would advise you to prepare. You leave in three hours. Do you need to get anything before you go?"

"Just some lunch. I'm starving," she said, slipping into a thick Russian accent from somewhere north of Baikal. "What do you have in this dump's mess hall?"

The man sighed.

"Fine. But be fast, April. Remember, we didn't spend a billion dollars on you and your…alterations for slow or sloppy work."

"You know how effective I am—Minister Hypocrite. Should've had a lackey brief me for you, dumbass."

She lived for that little sharp intake of breath from surprised people. It was always the most fun when she killed the surprised person immediately afterwards, of course, but killing her employers was not a very good idea under the best of circumstances. And besides, someone might miss the new Defense Minister.

Anomaly Research Centre.

Captain Hilary Becker was worried. Extremely worried. More worried than he had ever been when the only loves of his life had been guns and explosives.

Now, Jess, he thought, is much harder and more dangerous to handle—but so much more rewarding.

Right now, though, he was in a little bit of trouble with Jess, because of the relatively minor mistake of forgetting their one-month dating anniversary. Seriously—a one-month anniversary? He had to remember that, plus birthdays, plus holidays, plus yearly anniversaries now? Plus getting little things at other random moments for bonus points? Seriously?

Anyway, he was pretty sure that Jess was not entirely serious with her banishment of him from her sight for the entire week. Of course, Connor assured him that it was all over now, but then again Connor's idea of a hot date was watching a Doctor Who marathon on a couch with Abby. Not exactly Mr. Romance, or a good person to go to for relationship advice. Matt was new to this, too, so he was useless, going to Emily or Abby would be too embarrassing, and Lester—no. Just…no.

So Becker was in the armory, lovingly polishing a Heckler-Koch G-36 assault rifle that he'd picked up a month or two back, soon after the Kings Cross anomaly incident and the Convergence, when the anomaly siren blared. Always a man of action, he grabbed an armful of EMDs and ran for the car park.

Connor Temple was enduring his own relationship issues—these surrounding his "brilliant plan" to have a dinosaur-themed wedding in the ARC. Not only was Abby not amused, but Lester had overheard Connor enthusiastically detailing his plan to Abby and had blown a gasket about the sheer number of breaches of protocol that the plan entailed. Ten minutes of his boss's yelling had left Connor thoroughly cowed.

Connor had never been so happy to hear the anomaly siren in his life.

Matt jogged into the hub from somewhere in the corridors.

"Talk to me, Jess."

"Locating now…it's in Dartmoor. In the middle of nowhere, too—there's nothing but a few jogging trails out there. Downloading the coordinates to your black boxes now."

"'Scuse me, Lester," said Connor, ducking down towards his lab to grab his dating calculator and earpiece (as to why he took it out in the first place…best not to ask). He nearly ran in to Becker as he reached the elevator.

James Lester stopped himself in mid-rant, coughed lightly, muttered a choice remark about amateur staff, and poured himself a drink from his office's shiny new water cooler. He then closed the door, booted up his computer, activated his brand-new voice message software, cleared his throat, and mentally steeled himself.

"Minister; I hope that this doesn't reach you at a bad time. We have another one, in Dartmoor. Our team is on their way. I will notify you if backup is needed."

Lester sent off the message to the Minister's email address, hit the "close" button on the voice message software perhaps a tad harder than was absolutely necessary, and voiced a few rather harsh thoughts about new requirements, demeaning software, new-fangled annoyances, and executive meddling.

James Lester was obviously not a fan of the Minister's new obsession with being constantly updated by voice or video message. He was (rightly, as it would later turn out) certain that the whole thing was for some ulterior purpose.

Lester looked at his itinerary, and groaned. Not another day of keeping those snooping reporters from finding out where all of their videos and photos from the Convergence event had gone. He could have been an ambassador by now, and instead he was leading some pathetic tabloid monkeys on a wild goose chase.

Dartmoor. Three hours later.

"So…Matt."

"What, Becker?"

"I need help with my relationship with Jess."

Matt laughed softly. "Trust me, if I wasn't fumbling my way through the romance jungle, too, I'd give you all the advice I could muster. But I'm just winging it myself. Sorry, mate."

Becker chuckled. "Yeah. It was a long shot anyway."

They turned the microphones on their earpieces back on.

"Connor, what've you got?"

Connor's voice came through the earpiece along with a considerable amount of wind-induced static.

"Just some tracks. They look a little like bird tracks—like a long-toed pheasant with no rear toes. There are a lot of them—five sets, six, seven, more than ten now. They mill around here, and then split up again…"

"Right. We have the anomaly. We're setting up the locking device now."

"Roger that, Matt. What do you have on the age rating?"

Becker kept watch while Matt locked the anomaly and took a reading.

"It says about fifty million years in the future. That's odd—I didn't think that Earth could sustain life after the event that created the future predators."

"Well, we've probably averted that future…"

"Then how do you explain the predators we got last week? We stopped New Dawn, but the future event still happened somehow."

"Yeah, but—oh, crap."

"What?"

"Blood. A lot of it. Here on the trail. The tracks are all over here. Oh, my god. There's a guy here. He's been torn to bits. It's fresh. There's flies and stuff and…not much flesh on the top side. Whatever killed him picked him clean up there, but it could come back. Abby, check out his legs; see if you can tell why there's so much blood there."

"Connor, his legs have been shredded. Whatever did this literally flayed his skin and ripped it off."

"So what are we looking for?"

"Some sort of bird, judging by those tracks. Maybe a small dinosaur? A raptor, or maybe a small terror bird."

"But the anomaly's from the future," interjected Becker. "And we haven't met birds or anything like them from the future yet."

"Well, whatever it is, it's small but fast," said Abby. "And there's probably more than one. Emily, have you brought the Special Forces squad?"

"On my way. I'm about halfway to Matt's position right now."

"Good. Connor, come on. Let's get back to the others, quick. I don't want to spend too much time near a recent kill."

"Abby?"

"What?"

"The grass over there, on that hill—isn't the wind blowing south?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So why are there furrows in the grass going east to west?"

They shared a look. Then Abby spoke.

"Run. Now."

They ran. Abby could hear the chirps and shrieks of something behind them, to either side, and even slightly ahead of them, getting ever closer and tracking every change in direction with the eerie precision of advanced pack hunting animals. They were a mile from Becker and Matt. There was no way they would make it…two EMDs would have to be enough…but judging by the number of creatures she could hear, they wouldn't.

Creature POV:

The spinetail alpha had no trouble tracking the big, multicolored mammals. They were clumsy, despite their moderate size, and made no effort to be stealthy as the pack pursued them. They would make good food; the one that the pack had killed earlier had been quite tasty, if a little stringy. These two were leaner, and seemed to be even less furry, except on their heads. That was new—food without fur. It made the spinetails' hunting strategy even more effective than usual, as the multicolored things that the mammals had instead of fur put up a little resistance.

The first one had had some sort of thick spiderweb and a shiny rock tangled in its strange…fur? Pelt? Hide? These two did not, but they seemed to be holding some sort of shiny metallic things instead. That was odd. Bipedal mammals that could hold things. The alpha's normal prey was considerably larger than these creatures, could not hold things, walked on all fours, and had tusks. Huge tusks. These creatures showed no sign of tusks.

Suddenly, a spinetail on the left flank screeched in pain. The alpha called out a quick signal, and the pack converged on the fallen animal. More of the mammals, one multicolored and four with black hides, stood over the pack's third-youngest hunter, which was twitching softly. The alpha twitched an attack signal. The pack moved in, but one of the black-shelled mammals noticed. It gave a bugling alarm call, and pulled up its shiny thing, as did the others as they saw what was coming for them.

Blue pulses, like lightning, struck from the shiny things with whining noises. More whining noises came from behind, and the alpha realized that the mammals that the pack had been hunting were now the hunters.

The alpha shrieked a retreat pattern, and the pack broke off, down three members.

The alpha cursed her luck. She had had a nagging suspicion from the start that going through the glowing light was a bad idea. She really needed to trust her gut more.

Creature bio: Spinetail.

The spinetail is a pack-hunting future crocodile with some features (such as a bipedal gait and Stage 2 protofeathers) reminiscent of birds and some dinosaurs. As intelligent as modern humans, spinetails are equipped with a terrifying array of teeth and a set of (relatively) huge hand claws. Their tails are fringed with venomous protofeathers as a defense mechanism against larger, scarier predators. The venom causes excruciating pain, and most animals know better than to try eating spinetails.

Creatures that will be used later (in no particular order):

Dilophosaurus wetherelli

Fleshreaver (description later—this one's going to be a "special treat")

Sinusonasus magnodens, together with Beipaosaurus and Microraptor zhaoianus

Dinornis maximus (giant moa) together with Harpagornis moorei (Haast's Eagle)

Propleopus oscillans (flesh roo) and Thylacoleo carnifex (drop-bear)