Midafternoon on Isla Nublar. Tourists crammed Main Street, tacky merchandise in hand, kids shouting and running. In the distance, the voice of an announcer was audible, narrating the action of some great prehistoric beast reduced to entertainment. Lowery Cruthers tried to block it all out—after all, he was on break, and it wasn't all that often that he was able to get some time out of the cold, corporate environment of the control room.

He leaned back in his chair, facing away from the windows out to the packed street. Sipping his coffee—grown from Pleistocene coffee plants, naturally—he relaxed, letting himself daydream about his plans for later that night. Today had been a stressful day, and he figured he had earned the right to treat himself.

Lowery Cruthers did not live in the residential hotel like the other employees at Jurassic World. He had been assigned a room, but as far as he was aware it was exactly the same as the day he had arrived. Lowery lived in the northern region of the island, where visitors were not allowed to go, with the natives of Isla Nublar called the Tun-Si. The ancient tribe had been removed from the island in the eighties, but Isla Nublar's new owner, Simon Masrani, had been moved to allow their return. Lowery had bumped into one of the tribe's members the day he arrived on Isla Nublar, and when he was brought to the reserve in the north where they lived, he'd fallen in love with the native culture instantly.

The northern sector was also home to the last "wild" dinosaurs on the island. He thought the word "wild" in air quotes, because those dinosaurs still were restricted by modern technology—electric fences were a thing of the past on most of the island, but the "wild" dinosaurs' tracking implants conditioned them to stay away from buildings, vehicles, and people by giving them an electric shock when they got too close to something they were supposed to avoid. Like a disobedient pet dog, he'd thought (but not said out loud) when the new technology was being implemented a couple years ago. But those dinosaurs did have more free-roaming privileges than the ones in the park, at least. They weren't bothered by gawking tourists, and the only vehicles that disturbed them would pass by quickly enough.

Generally employees weren't supposed to go into Sector 5's wilds unless they worked in behavioral research, but Lowery figured it was on his way home anyway, and no one would care if he just happened to bring some binoculars and climbing gear with him. He'd done it a few times before. The jungle was safer now, with the raptors exterminated; Masrani had at least had the sense to do that when Owen Grady's genetically-modified breed proved tamable. Now, Sector 5 was mostly populated by herbivores, and Lowery knew how to avoid the remaining predators.

"Lowery?" A voice snapped him out of his reverie. He swiveled in his seat to see a tan-skinned woman in shorts and a yellow tank top, roughly his age, looking anxious. Her name was Atlanta Cruz; she was one of Lowery's friends from the Tun-Si reserve.

"What's up, Atlanta?" He put down his coffee. Atlanta tended to get herself worked up often enough, but this looked different.

"I...think the island is in danger," she said. Lowery was silent. He knew she wasn't just commenting on the corporate intrusion. "It's the mountain. Sibo is restless."

Lowery's eyes widened. The volcano had been dormant for decades. "You're sure? There haven't been any—any geomagnetic storms, or, or anything."

Atlanta nodded. "I came to you because I don't think anyone else from InGen would listen. You won't see anything coming because this...isn't a normal event." She took a deep breath. "Our people used to believe that this island was placed here supernaturally, and that when its time was up, Sibo would take the island back. I had always thought it was just a story, but now, I am not so sure."

"I'm listening," said Lowery.

"There are old murals in a cave under the mountain," Atlanta explained. "At first I thought they were just art. But what they show...I looked at it again and saw references to history that the original artists could not have known." She reached into her pack, withdrawing a stack of papers. Lowery was impressed at the scope of her research.

She placed the first paper down. It showed a photograph of part of the mural, and she had drawn comparisons to other Bribri artwork and written a number of notes. "The first part of the mural shows our ancient mythic history—the island being placed here by Sibo, the animals of the world raising the mountain, and the spirits in the sea being pushed aside so the Tun-Si tribe could reach the island in safety. It goes on to show a strange man in a ship speaking to our ancestors." She pointed to another photograph she had taken. "That is 1525, when Europeans first discovered Isla Nublar. The artists would have known about this, maybe even lived during that time. But what they show afterward, they could not have known."

She put down another few papers, including more photographs and some copies of old legal documents. "This part shows an old man telling the people to leave Isla Nublar. I believe that is meant to be Hammond, buying the island from Costa Rica. But the interesting part is that the mural's scale changes here. Now the illustrations are separated by regular intervals of about five inches—one gap of that size for every year that passes. Hammond leased Isla Nublar in 1985, but he had actually considered using it already in 1981. That year was when my mother and I had to leave. All of us were gone by 1987. These three years are represented on the mural, the three stages of our resettlement, and the gaps between the illustrations are all exact to the number of years between each stage."

"But—but how could they have done that?" Lowery asked.

"I don't know," Atlanta said. "But it goes on...here, the next one. 1993. It shows a Tun-Si woman coming back to the island—my mother, I think—and causing creatures to come up from the soil and chase InGen away. In real life, the same night she went back to the island, the dinosaurs—creatures brought back from extinction, pulled up from the earth—were released and forced InGen to abandon Jurassic Park."

"And it's still shown in the right year?" asked Lowery.

"Exactly," confirmed Atlanta. "1999, it shows Sibo erupting, driving back many of the dinosaurs. In real life the mountain erupted in 1999, which was what made it safe for people to return. Again, 2002. Another man comes to the island after the dinosaurs have been alone on it for a long time. That, I think, is meant to be Simon Masrani. It shows him telling the dinosaurs to stay back from the volcano, and he protects an area near it for the Tun-Si to return. In real life, he did exactly that. We were given our new home by Sibo's foothills, where the dinosaurs cannot go. And here—2005. More and more people, not of our tribe, flood the island. In 2005 Jurassic World opened to the public."

"Making it look like the island isn't really owned by you at all," realized Lowery.

"Which means our time is running short," agreed Atlanta. "2013, it shows the mountain beginning to awaken. In real life, there was a geomagnetic storm in 2013 that damaged the park."

"Ooh, I remember that one," muttered Lowery. 2013 had been a tough year for him. The servers are down, Lowery! We need to get the satellite map working, Lowery! Find a way to turn communications back on, Lowery! Another tracking implant failed, Lowery! Scratch my back, Lowery!

"The final one is strange. It corresponds with 2015, but there are two of them, and neither one good."

"What are they?"

Atlanta put down her final papers. "The lower one shows a giant white creature emerging from the ground, killing many people. It doesn't resemble any creature from our stories."

Lowery looked more closely at the photograph. He recognized the creature immediately. "Oh, my god, that's Indominus," he said in disbelief. "It's recorded in this? Are they saying—are they saying it's going to escape, that it's going to kill?"

"Maybe not," said Atlanta, and her tone indicated that this alternate possibility wasn't necessarily something to be relieved about. "The upper part for this year shows the volcano erupting and the island lifting up from its outline in the lower illustration, rising out of existence."

"And you think we're living the upper part?" asked Lowery.

"The lower part is faded," explained Atlanta, "and not with age. It was painted that way. It's meant to show that time splits apart this year, with a shadow of this island and its inhabitants remaining in the world while the real thing moves somewhere else. I think it will happen soon."

"Um. How soon?"

"We need to get these people off of the island. As soon as we can."

Lowery gulped. His boss wasn't going to like this. "I'll head back to the control room. Claire needs to know. I'm—I'm not sure if she'll listen to me, but if she won't, I'll find someone in authority who will. We've gotta get this island evacuated!"

He looked around, noticing that they had been attracting a bit of attention from the other patrons of the coffee shop. Lowery awkwardly met their gaze.

"Yeah, you should all, like, go home," he said, suddenly unable to muster the same confidence he'd had a moment ago. "Things are gonna get weird around here, we might all die, so you need to...um...leave, like soon."

"You wanna get out, or you're hanging around for the apocalypse," Atlanta said loudly, hands on her hips. "Not my problem if you do. But if you wanna make it out, beat it."

Taking a moment to appreciate her help, Lowery darted out from the coffee shop, weaving through the crowded street toward the Innovation Center. From there it was a quick ride to the Control Room, where he desperately hoped his boss Claire Dearing would bother to take him seriously. In truth, he didn't have much hope for that, but trying was better than nothing.

So much for tonight's plans.