Note: Two documents from the game made it into this chapter, marked by boldface type. It's getting close, people! This novel's nearing its end!

Chapter Eleven: Emergence of Truth

Initial Location: Habitat Support Facility

He was lying face down in the damp earth, not unconscious, but just resting his body up. He was thoroughly soaked from head to toe, his blond hair matted to his head, his blue eyes bloodshot. Every muscle in his body was sore, each one screaming for oxygen, running solely on anaerobic respiration. After trying to fight the fast-moving current of the river for a considerable amount of time, his body, tired and weakened, just gave up, and he went wherever the river took him.

Some time passed, whether it was minutes or hours. All he knew now was that he was alone—David was dead and Regina was at the Patrol Ship, last he recalled. She was probably searching for him right now, or maybe not. All he wanted was some answers, some closure, and getting the hell out of here didn't seem like a bad idea also. He slowly rose to his feet, amazed that his shotgun was still hanging around his body, not getting lost in the current. When he lifted his head, he saw her again—that girl they had on the ship, the girl who fought with the helmeted one back in Edward City, that same mysterious girl. Her blond hair seemed neat, her eyes looking inquisitive.

A puzzled look showed on the T.R.A.T. soldier's face. "You again?"

She just stared at him, her face relaxed, not panicked at all. "Ho…home…" she uttered, trying to reach out to him.

He took a step forward, his face still showing confusion. "What? What are you trying to say?"

She pointed behind her, down a path, leading to somewhere. "Home…"

"I don't understand," he said. "Do you want me to come with you?"

She turned around and began to walk away, down the path. Dylan ejected the soaked, nearly empty magazine from the weapon. He opened an ammo pocket on his flak jacket, took another wet clip and placed it in the gun, locking it in place. With the girl walking away from him, he began to pick up the rear, his shotgun armed and in hand, his guard up. Wherever they were going, it looked like they were going through a jungle area first, the lush trees and plants that lined the path giving off a light wind which was a welcome. With the high, hot sun beating down on him, drying him off, air wasn't a bad thing. The path went over a small stream before turning to the right around a large stone. As the two turned again, Dylan could see a very large, odd-looking door. From the looks of it, there was no handle, no button to open it with. At the door, the girl stopped, and raised her wrist to the door. Out of it, a small device emerged, and entered a small hole in the door. Dylan could hear the sounds of small gears working, then heard a louder set of mechanics as the door itself opened, revealing a new section of unknown territory.

Dylan and the girl walked in this new area, the area surrounded by jungle, but something about this place seemed odd, too modern for this time period, seeming out of place. A gray stone path led to a large, circular opening with a small pit in the center. The girl walked ahead, stopping to get occasional glances of the curious soldier. She walked quickly, as if she knew where she was. As Dylan walked to the center circular section, he saw six pillars, arranged in a circle around him. On each one was a plaque of sorts, each one moving in chronological order in a counter-clockwise direction. Dylan started reading the plaques, and realized that these six pillars was some sort of a commemoration to something. Starting from the first one on his right and going around, they read:

The First Commemoration Monument: Dr. Edward Kirk. In commemoration of the Third Energy Theory.

The Second Commemoration Monument: To the Republic of Bolzinia. In commemoration of the government who changed clean energy to a weapon.

The Third Commemoration Monument: Spacetime Meteorite. In commemoration of the Overdrive, the end of the Cretaceous.

The Fourth Commemoration Monument: Timegate. In commemoration of the transformation from weapon to the Timegate.

The Fifth Commemoration Monument: Paradise. In commemoration of the establishment of the same environment as the late Cretaceous.

The Sixth Commemoration Monument: Noah's Ark. In commemoration of the human race who came to this world and created a "Paradise."

After reading those, Dylan found himself even more baffled.

Noah's Ark? Overdrive? Just what exactly was the plan for the Third Energy? And the Overdrive, the end of the Cretaceous…does that mean that the history we've come to know, the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, is totally null and void? Did humans come back and somehow transport the dinosaurs via Third Energy to another time, to this "Paradise"? What's going on here?

The girl was way ahead by now, and as Dylan left the display of commemoration monuments, he climbed up a ladder, and he could see another of the odd doors ahead. At the door, the girl stood, waiting for Dylan. As he arrived, she turned and raised her wrist to the door, inserting whatever object it was into the small hole. With a loud click, the door slid open, revealing yet another strange area. When the two entered, she suddenly ran ahead, sprinting almost.

"Wait!" he called, but to no avail. A couple hundred feet away, she climbed up a short ladder, and stopped at a control panel just in front of four large laser beams going across the walkway, blocking access. She pressed some buttons, and in a few seconds, the beams were gone. She walked quickly to the door, and then disappeared, gone through. Dylan walked slowly here, his eyes taking this new, bizarre sight in. The path opened to a wide area, and he saw four tall towers, two on either side of him, possibly power controls, he didn't know. Each tower was a different color—from left to right, red, green, yellow, blue. Each one stood upon a raised platform.

Something about this whole place doesn't seem right at all. First of all, this place is the only area that doesn't have that abandoned, left-for-dead look. There is no ivy, no moss or any signs of neglect anywhere. Second, the girl seems to know exactly where she's going, what she's doing. This area seems too modern, advanced, looking like something out of a futuristic science fiction show.

He climbed up the same ladder the girl went up, and when he got to the top, he picked up his pace a little, and as he approached the large door, it slid open, and Dylan found himself indoors, and suddenly he was in a totally different world, unlike anything he'd ever come into contact with. The square room was silent, except for a low ambient hum. Blue lights were set into black and gray walls, and the floor was a metallic gray, with lights set into the floor around the outside perimeter. He walked to a railing and looked over, saw nothing but black. He felt as if he'd walked onto a spaceship. Ahead, an opened doorway led to a narrow bridge, to another door. In the center of this room was a large computer, its surface, which was also its screen, was flat. On it, the display was broken up into grid form, and Dylan recognized it as a map of this world, or at least, the explored areas, outlined in green, set to a black background. In the dead center, a single sheet of paper sat, as if someone deliberately placed the paper there. Dylan picked it up, noticing the typed face of the words, and read the document, entitled "Superintendent's Will."

I knew it would all come to this. There are no way humans and dinosaurs could ever coexist. But if we sacrifice our lives now, we would leave a chance for the existence of the human race. The irony is that this whole facility which we are trapped in was built to sustain a suitable environment for the dinosaurs.

I am the superintendent of the facility and I'm the only one left. I don't belong here. There is no future for this world. The children hurt by the dinosaurs have been put inside life-support chambers. I trust that the people of the "past" will take care of them. The life-support chambers are almighty. It should be able to heal any wound, no matter how critical they may be. Also the life-support chambers will feed knowledge and teach them about this world. However, the chambers were originally designed for the growth of dinosaurs. Thus the knowledge fed will be limited to the knowledge of coexisting with the dinosaurs. The tragedy is that the children will eventually lose their speaking ability. But instead they will have been inputted the instincts to protect the dinosaurs.

Today I have recorded my message for the man who will definitely come here. With this I have nothing to regret.

Something went off in Dylan's head, something screaming clarity in his mind as a major piece of the puzzle clicked into reality.

So THAT'S who those helmeted people were! That's who that girl is! They were children of the people living here, and that's why she can't speak well. They attacked us because they viewed us as a threat to the dinosaurs of which they were trying to protect—which meant that the child I saw in the Research Facility would've ended up being one of them too...and so they only know how to protect.

However, his mind was not fully clear.

And which man is this person referring to? Me? Is that where this girl is taking me?

With answers not coming, he put the paper back down and walked through the doorway, and slowed his pace quickly as he walked over the narrow bridge, only wide enough for one person. One slip and he'd fall into the bottomless blackness. Dylan looked down, and could see his reflection on the blue, translucent tiles which served as the bridge. The door ahead slid open quickly, and he found himself in a narrow hallway, industrial gray on all sides of him. Some thirty feet ahead, the walkway opened into a large room, a huge monitor display on the wall straight ahead of his position. In the center stood another one of those flat displays, and connected to it, a long stretch of computers and control panels went for a few feet, then branched off in a T formation along the wall just under the display. Gray was everywhere. Swivel chairs sat empty in a few spots, and Dylan saw some words on the display, nothing important. Something caught Dylan's eye, and he noticed yet another sheet of paper on the flat panel display, as if someone once again was here and deliberately arranged it, knowing that someone was going to be passing through this area. Again, he picked it up and read the typed words:

Year 2009

It all began in Bolzinia, a small republic in the southern sea. The first "Overdrive" was the beginning of everything. During transportation something went wrong and it resulted in a crack in the space-time which skewed history after the Cretaceous Era. To investigate the skewed biological history after the Cretaceous, an extensive experiment was conducted in a global scale. The result...devastating. The "Spacetime skew" would take its effect on all living organisms. The Earth's history would change dramatically and the change would wipe the human race from ever existing. That was the conclusion of the experiment. The plan was to transport the living organisms of the Cretaceous through the Timegate to a world with similar environments, far into the future. After the crisis had passed, the organisms would then be returned to their original time. We called this the Noah's Ark Plan. This was the only plan that would leave any chance for the existence of the human race. We hope that this plan is successful and we shall declare execution of this plan.

WAPP Central Council

This only drove Dylan to further confusion, and he began to question mentally what was what—just what was going on here?

This is what happens when the government decides to play with new toys without reading the instructions first…they're talking the demise, or rather, the nonexistence of the human race? This doesn't make any sense…only thing to do is to press on.

Behind him, an open door led to a small hall, a door at the end. Walking quickly, he got to the door, and opened it, leaving the large room behind him, many questions on his mind.

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It was the honorable thing to do in a situation like this—then again, this was a situation that usually never surfaced itself. Never did she think she would have had to clean up after a dinosaur attack which left a soldier dead, or more specifically, mutilated. After the Allosaurus killed the cowboy, David Fork, the reptile let him drop, his body totally bloodied, large tooth-shaped punctures all throughout his body, making him appear almost perforated. The dinosaur didn't stay after that—it had done what instinct had told it to do, and rather than eat it or go after Regina, it just turned and went back the way it had come, as if nothing happened. She felt that even though she didn't really much care for the female-loving soldier, she couldn't just leave him there for the Pterodactyls and other scavenger creatures to get to the decomposing body. Even though he looked the appearance of chewed gum, he wasn't split into any pieces. She picked him up by the legs and dragged him across the soft, brown earth toward the moving river, his blood smearing the ground as he was moved toward the river. She took a couple steps down the short slope, and his body naturally slid into the water, gravity taking over.

She took a couple steps into the water, carefully taking his body and placing it in the clear, cool river. Water seeped into his clothes, and the still-flowing blood swirled and mixed with the water, diffusing with it. She placed her arms on his chest, and gave him a gentle push toward the center of the river, where the current moved fastest. She saw him drift slowly out, away from her, and the lifeless body began to move downriver. Regina walked back onto dry land and saw his helmet some feet away. She walked over, and picked up the hat slowly, almost as if this was a sort of ritual. In a way, it was—she was sending him off into the unknown. She walked back to the edge of the river again, and his body was already a ways out, becoming smaller and smaller. She brought her arm toward her, as if she was going to throw a Frisbee.

"Goodbye, David," she said softly, solemnly. She threw the blood-stained hat into the air, watched it spinning outward, descending, then landing in the water, where gravity and the current would take it wherever the river ended up. The soldier stood there for a few minutes, the cool air blowing in her face, tossing her short, straight red hair back a bit, some falling into her eyes. As the last of David faded from view, her next move was clear—she had to find Dylan. He was alive, she knew it, and she couldn't just carry out the rest of the mission herself—she had no idea where to even begin. She walked back out onto the deck of the Patrol Ship, and when she got back into the cockpit, a somber silence provided a strange ambience. She was alone, all alone. The realization of this hit her, and her skin broke out in goose bumps, as fear briefly shot through her veins.

I have to find him. There's nothing I can do.

As she slowly sat in the driver's seat, one very important question came to mind:

Where do I even begin? Just go downriver, I suppose, hope I find something.

The craft had already been running, so she pushed a lever, and the ship began to move slowly. She didn't want to move fast—the river was wide enough to accommodate the ship, but it could possibly narrow, and she'd have to travel by foot if it came to that.

She was trolling downriver, her eyes scanning the surrounding areas for a bridge, another gate, a path somewhere, anything possible for Dylan to wash up on. She had no doubt in her mind that he was around—his body was strong, and drowning seemed highly unlikely. It wouldn't take her long, maybe ten, fifteen minutes at most for her eyes to find a small, open space to her right, a couple hundred feet away. She slowed the craft down, and turned it to the right slightly, riding closer to shore. Suddenly, the ship rocked briefly as Regina hit the shore, catching her off-guard, almost sending her out of the chair. As the ship came to a stop along the edge, she shut everything down. It was in a section of river that was calmer, and the anchor would keep the thing in place. She stepped off the ship, onto the damp earth below. Looking down, she could make out footsteps imprinted in the moist earth, and a dark, rectangular object on the ground. She reached down and picked it up, and instantly recognized it as a shotgun clip, meant for a shotgun capable of firing off several rounds without having to reload each time.

Something like Dylan's…could he have ended up here?

With nothing else possible to go on, she decided that she'd investigate here, see where it ended up. What did she have left to lose?

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A knot was forming in the pit of the soldier's stomach. Again, he walked into a world totally unknown to anyone. He walked into a huge, multi-level room, two sets of stairs leading down to the lower level. He was surrounded by large glass tubes, stacked three or so high, and going back to the walls in an unknown number. There must have been maybe twenty, thirty, maybe forty of these large tubes, and as he looked around, awe-struck and totally amazed, he could make out the silhouettes, shapes, and figures of humans inside each tube. Pipes and wires branched out to and from every tube, providing maybe some life support?

Why are people inside the tubes? What purpose was this for?

The confused, yet fascinated soldier took each step slowly, his blue eyes wide with wonder, and as he went down each step, all he could do was choke out a simple, "wow…" Now this really looked like something out of a science fiction show, getting weirder and stranger by the minute. Faint sounds at the bottom level caught his attention, and he could hear the sounds of clacking keys over the soft hum of machinery, or something like it.

Incredible…

The walkway gave way to a clearing, surrounded on all sides by computers and display screens, all of them showing what seemed to be vital signs and various statuses of those in the big glass tubes. Along the corners of the room, small projection screens were placed, but nothing was showing now. In the center of this open area was a tall, square machine, with a bright blue light emanating from the top. A few feet of space separated it from an upper section, with structural support and wiring running up its length, blue light coming from its bottom. Judging by the looks of it, perhaps computer simulations were run on this machine, holographic images of sorts. Some feet straight ahead was a clear, translucent gate, and he could make out something behind it, probably a door.

He could see the girl typing away on one of the keyboards, her facial features showing a sort of determination, if you will. From the looks of it, she knew what she was doing, and a few seconds later, a bright white light came from the center of the machine, and as Dylan looked into it, an image came into view. As it came into clearer focus, Dylan noticed that it was a holographic image of a man. His physical appearance gave the look that he was in his fifties, maybe sixties, his hair and mustache gray. He looked very fit for his age, his shoulders broad, the chest muscles outlined through his blue shirt, with dark blue pants to match. It was a military uniform, but Dylan didn't recognize what organization or branch of the U.S. Armed Forces it came from.

Who is he?

"Welcome, Lieutenant Morton," he began, his voice firm and resolute.

"Huh?" Dylan asked, his face surprised. "You're a hologram…how do you know my name?"

"There's not much time left," he answered. "So I'll explain it, short and simple. On August 10th, 2055, the Noah's Ark Plan became successful."

He took a couple steps toward the hologram, raising an eyebrow. "Year 2055?! What are you talking about?"

"To save the dinosaurs, we transferred the dinosaurs to this time—three million years ahead of our time," the hologram continued.

Dylan's eyes grew wide in disbelief, and he turned his back to the hologram, walking toward the girl. "What?! Three million years?" He turned to the girl, something clicking in his head. "Then you're from…"

"However," the hologram continued, "There was another accident when we were about to go back. The gate disappeared, and we were stranded in this time."

He turned and looked at the hologram. "So this…this is the future," Dylan said softly.

"There was no way for us to survive in this world, where dinosaurs now rule," he continued. We, the remaining survivors, hurried to recover the gate. But it's too late now. My wife, Julia, was killed by the dinosaurs. And my loving child, she was hurt...badly. Paula…Paula."

The girl lifted her head, turned it toward the hologram. Her bright eyes reflected the pale blue light emitted by the hologram. "Paul…Paula…Paula…" Dylan turned, and saw an image on one of the projector screens—it was a girl, smiling, her hair short, blond, looking almost identical to the girl now here. She looked young, smiling, wearing an orange long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans.

"Paula?" Dylan asked, looking at her. "Paula? Is that your name?"

Her eyes remained fixed on the hologram. "Papa…" she uttered, reaching out a hand toward him.

Is he her father?

"My only mission now is to protect my group," the hologram resumed. "I have kept Paula and the other children safe by placing them in life-support chambers, which are what all these glass tubes are. They were made to withstand anything."

Dylan turned behind him, and noticed that the one closest to him had been opened.

"I ask this of you, Lieutenant. Please, take the children back to your time, to 2010. And now I think I should introduce myself. I am former Special Forces T.R.A.T. member, Colonel Dylan Morton."

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End of Chapter 11. Yep…if anywhere in this novel and/or game anywhere gets lost, it's here. Hopefully I've provided enough of the documents and dialogue to attempt to alleviate that confusion, but if you have questions, email me, , with the subject line "DC2 story question," so I know it's from a reader. Now, looking ahead to Chapter 12, if you played the game, you know what happens. Just letting all of you know—this novel is getting very close to the end. It looks like I'll write Chapter 12, then the Epilogue, which will end the novelization. Hope you like it so far, and I want reviews. Chapter 12 is up, so read on.