Prologue

Dr. Sharp sighed as he stared out of the window at the raging thunderstorm that had overtaken the small hospital. It had been raining relentlessly for several hours, the sound of raindrops hammering against the rooftops reverberated throughout the facility as the sun set. Lightening cracked in the distance, momentarily illuminating the dense jungle of the Cabo Blanco Biological reserve to the south. When sharp had arrived in Costa Rica two weeks ago he had been looking forward to helping the local people. But he hadn't anticipated this, he had expected non-stop sunshine. But had he done his homework he would have known that storms were frequent at his time of year in the tropics. He clicked his pen out of boredom in the relative gloom of his office. The door opened behind him and Roberto walked in, his enthusiastic assistant fresh out of Medical School.

"Excuse me Dr. Sharp, I'm leaving for the night. Martha is tending to Ms. Gillian", said Roberto from the doorway. Martha was the local midwife and Ms. Gillian was overdue by almost a week now. Her contractions had started that morning.

"Ok Roberto, see you in the morning", said Sharp with a forced smile.

"Goodnight Doctor", breathed Roberto and closed the door.

Sharp listened distantly as Roberto's footsteps died away, turning back to the window. He hated night shifts; it was always boring as hell. Lightning cracked again, illuminating Roberto's figure running out into the rain with his arm shielding his head.

Half an hour passed uneventfully. Eventually Sharp got up to go and get another coffee when something caught his eye. A pair of lights had appeared in the distance between the trees; headlights. They were hardly visible through the storm, but they were definitely there. He squinted through his spectacles. The lights steadily grew stronger, now only a few hundred meters away. But now they appeared to be swerving erratically. Slowly the drone of an engine came to his attention, roaring under great strain. It was heading directly for the hospital at a dangerous speed, considering the treacherous conditions. The vehicle did not slow as it approached the building, until it was lit by the hospital's halogen lampposts. It was an open top truck, the reliable type of off-road vehicles. Inside, the driver frantically threw on the brakes; the truck was sent skidding through the mud for several meters. As it came to a screeching halt the driver jumped out and ran to the rear of the vehicle where he dragged out a bedraggled limp figure, looking heavy and lifeless. It was a man. Throwing the man over his back, the driver slowly trudged towards the entrance. Sharp ran to his phone and picked it up.

"Tara we have a patient coming in, get a stretcher and meet me in the reception", he shouted and grabbed his stethoscope as he ran for the door.

"Help! I need help here!" shouted Mike Bakker as he burst through the doors of the hospital. Dr. Sharp came running down the hallway with Tara and a stretcher in tow.

"What's the situation?" asked Sharp.

"This guy needs help, I found him unconscious on a beach and he started swelling up", panted Mike as he helped Sharp and Tara heft the man onto the stretcher.

The man was soaked as much as Mike from the long drive in the storm; he was shivering from the onset of hypothermia. His eyes fluttered for an instant, he gave a guttural groan and then with a twitch he fell unconscious once more.

"Let's get him upstairs, quickly please!" said Sharp as they pushed the stretcher towards the lift.

"Who are you, are you a relative?" he asked.

"Erm no, my name is Mike Bakker, I'm not related. I found him staggering on the beach around 20 miles away in the reserve."

"How long ago?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps an hour."

"Did anything bite him?" Sharp asked with a hint of urgency.

"I didn't see; his footprints stretched quite a long way."

"Ok, please wait in the reception while we take care of this", said Sharp as they entered the lift.

Mike nodded silently and began to walk slowly back towards the entrance, the events that had just transpired finally unraveling in his mind. He had found the man staggering up the beach shortly before it began raining; the storm clouds were beginning to grow angry. He had packed up and was driving along the beach front, heading towards the makeshift track that headed inland. It was then that a staggering figure had appeared on the horizon. By the time Mike had reached the man he had fallen in the sand and was muttering to himself, his face already had red patches forming. Mike had crouched beside him and attempted to rouse him. The man became conscious for a moment, he pulled Mike close to him and whispered "The ca...cam...camera".

He had pushed a small disposable camera into Mike's hands before his eyes rolled back into his skull and he collapsed. The drive back had been one of the most frightening experiences of his life. Mike had driven at almost insane speeds, trying to remember the location of the hospital while navigating the rough terrain. The man was shouting from the pain in the back of his truck and the red swelling spread over his body. What was happening to him was beyond anything Mike had ever seen. What could have happened that caused this? And what was so significant about that camera that could have taken priority in such a situation? Now in the reception Mike sat down and waited for how it turned out.

"Doctor his pulse is getting weak," Tara said, tapping the button on the lift repeatedly with one hand, and keeping two fingers on the man's neck with the other. Such situations were never anticipated during the night, this hospital had opened only months ago and wasn't yet fully staffed.

"Tara, I need you to get to my office and call Roberto, get him in here as soon as possible", said Sharp.

"But, Doctor, won't he be asleep by now?" she asked anxiously.

"Then you have to wake him!"

Tara nodded. Her eyes were darting around. The doors of the lift finally re-opened and Sharp steered the stretcher towards the new surgery theater. The man was now beginning to shake violently, a constant guttural shriek emanating from his throat.

"Oh god", sighed Sharp. "Tara, move it!" It was assumed that sharp would be able to deal with any problem that may arise within the local population, but this was a serious medical emergency. Nobody had yet come in with a problem from the reserve. However, he had heard rumors of some mysterious green lizards that had bitten villagers all over this area, igniting many new forms of folklore.

Sharp ran the stretcher into the theater and grabbed his pen light, shining it into the man's eyes to check his reflexes. He was worried by the extent that his pupils had dilated, and his eyes were extremely bloodshot, almost bulging from the pressure building from the swelling in his head. The red patches had now spread through most of his body. As Sharp shone the light into the man's eye there was only a slight contraction of his iris. This man was in serious trouble, yet Sharp still had absolutely no idea what had happened. He was going to find it very difficult to help this man if he didn't know what was wrong with him. To Sharp it looked like an allergic reaction of some kind.

The man was now beginning to have trouble breathing, his chest was heaving with each breath. The air rasped as it entered his lungs, his airways were closing.

"God damn it!" grated Sharp as he opened the man's mouth the check for obstructions. Nothing. Roberto came running into the room, his hair matted down from running through the rain, wearing a raincoat over his pajamas. He was panting heavily and he bent over for a second to catch a breath.

"I came over as soon as Tara called me", he managed to say between ragged gasps. Sharp breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank god, some good news. Get over here and help me hook up the heart monitor", he said. Roberto hurried over and connected the leads to the man's chest. The room was filled with a steady electronic beeping. The man's heart was already beating at twice its normal rate, his blood pressure was falling. Suddenly he gave a high pitched scream and every muscle in his body tightened, his back arching off of the stretcher. The electronic beeping of the heart monitor was becoming faster by the second; a trickle of blood began to ooze from the man's left nostril.

"He's hemorrhaging!" Sharp said "Get get him on his side!". He and Roberto attempted to roll the man, but he began thrashing around and continued to scream in pain.

"Get me some Valium", said Sharp. By now they both knew that there was little that they could do for the man with such limited information on his condition, resources and manpower. All that they could do was to try and make him more comfortable. As Roberto injected the Valium the man hardly had enough energy to make more than a quiet whimper. Roberto and Sharp shared a look of complete helplessness. With a final jerk the man lay still and the electronic beep that had filled the room was replaced by a single constant ringing; the man's heart had stopped.

"Doctor, should I?" Roberto asked, glancing towards the defibrillator a few metres away. But he already knew that it was too late, there was nothing that they could do, he was gone. Sharp shook his head and clicked off the heart monitor.

"Time of death; one-thirty am," he murmured.

Mike Bakker sat in the waiting room with the now rusting disposable camera in his hands, clutching to it for support. He had to know what had happened; they had whisked him away around ten minutes before. It was then that a tall man with graying hair entered the room, his shoulders slumped. He approached Mike and extended his hand in greeting.

"Hello Mr. Bakker, I'm Dr.Sharp," he said. Mike stood with a smile spreading across his face.

"Hey Doc, how did it go?" he asked, but by the look on Sharp's face he knew that it couldn't be good.

"We did everything that we could, but I'm afraid that he didn't make it."

Mike put his hands over his face and sat down.

"We need to know what happened to this man. Now, were they any animals or plant spores around him when you came across him?" Sharp asked.

Bakker shook his head, "No, I told you. He had staggered quite a long way when I found him. Anything could have happened," he said.

"We're going to run some tests on his blood work to see if that gives us any clues," said Sharp. He left Mike alone in the reception. Mike sat for a moment considering what he had just been told as he clutched the camera. Then something occurred to him. The camera. There must be something about it for that man to put that over everything else. Mike headed for the door, towards his truck.

The next morning Dr.Sharp walked into the hospital with a grim look on his face. After what had happened last night he had called his friend in San Jose; Dr. John Sampson, one of the leading scientists on diseases in Central America. Sampson had said that never had something such as this been reported. He said that it was unusual that the symptoms had developed so fast, also the nature of these symptoms in themselves were almost unheard of occurring in sequence. He noted that it was more than likely that this was some kind of metabolic reaction to some form of previously undiscovered toxin. Sharp had then taken blood samples from the deceased man and sent them for testing at a local university. He had then packed up and headed for home at the end of his shift, yet he found himself lying awake and unable to sleep, turning over the events in his mind. After only half an hour of tossing and turning and he found himself up again and began searching for previous occurrences of symptoms that the man had suffered. After several hours he had made an unnerving discovery. A decade ago there were several reports of unexplained deaths in the area lying around the Cabo Blanco reserve. These reports also coincided with the appearances of carcasses of strange lizard-like creatures washing up on the beaches. According to some accounts the creatures disappeared after the encounters. But most of the information that Sharp found was vague and some had been erased. And all of the accounts were reported within a few years. Apparently nobody had found any more of these carcasses for a long time. Sharp could only hope that the man hadn't stumbled across one.

Now Sharp entered his office to find a small package lying on his desk. A confused expression crossed his face and he walked over to the children's ward, where Roberto was inspecting a small girl who had come in earlier that morning complaining of abdominal swelling and severe headaches.

"Roberto, when did that package on my desk arrive?" he asked.

"Erm, about an hour ago Doctor", said Roberto distantly, concentrating on the infant.

"Right. Any idea what it is?"

"Yeah, it's the results from the blood samples that you sent to the university", Roberto answered.

"Wow, that was fast."

"Yeah, I said it was urgent", murmured Roberto, shining a light down the girl's throat.

Sharp broke the seal on the brown envelope and pulled out a stack of papers. He leafed through and found the summary, pulling on his spectacles. The man's blood contained elevated levels of Serotonin, common in most poisons of lizards. Yet there were no evident bite marks on his body. But, during a post postmortem analysis he had found a small slashing abrasion on the man's index finger. Also, the white blood cell count was severely diminished. Whatever killed that man was very strange indeed. Sharp frowned and turned towards the door.

Mike Bakker drove his truck furiously down the dirt track, cursing with frustration as the sun began to rise. He pushed the engine to its limits, but the rough terrain threatened to snap the axle as he rocketed over potholes. Driving was taking all of his concentration. The previous night he had rushed out of the hospital and had headed for the nearest place where the film from the disposable camera could be developed. Unfortunately Cabo Blanco was in the middle of nowhere, the local village was fairly privative; providing only the essentials. He traveled north through the night towards Villarreal, where his hotel was. It was the closest place that he knew would have the necessary facilities. He had been in Costa Rica for only a few days and didn't want to go hunting around. God knows how long that would've taken. He had been lucky enough to find a small shop that remained open twenty four hours a day, which had a film developing section. By then it the sun had almost started to rise, and Mike was tired as hell. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw when the clerk showed him the results of the developing process. His jaw had dropped as he picked up one of the images, his hands began to shake. The clerk had freaked out and started shouting in his native language. Mike had ignored him and ran towards his truck with the first image that he could grab, leaving the clerk shrieking in the shop. His fingers had fumbled with the ignition, and then he had roared off. He had to get back to the hospital.

Now the image sat on the passenger seat beside him, fluttering from the wind that rushed in through the open top roof. Mike glanced at it uneasily, shivering as the reality of what he was seeing began to sink in. He hadn't slept now for over thirty six hours, and keeping his eyes open was becoming increasingly difficult, which was now proving to be dangerous. Sometimes he swerved dangerously close to the jungle that lined the edge of the road and now through the trees he could see that the jungle only continued for a few meters until the floor disappeared. He was driving along a cliff edge. Mike wiped the sweat from his forehead and gripped the steering wheel harder. In his frenzied state he hadn't noticed the black Suburban that had been following him distantly. It had been gaining on him over the last few minutes, but Mike remained oblivious until it was only ten feet behind. He glanced into his rear view mirror at the large vehicle creeping up behind him. Assuming that the driver wanted to pass Mike pulled slightly to the side to make room for the Suburban on the slim road. The car sped up behind him, but instead of moving over to the side it kept its course behind him. Mike frowned, trying to keep his truck on the road so close to the jungle. The Suburban's engine roared suddenly and it slammed into the rear left corner of Mike's truck. The truck screeched forward and banked helplessly as the tires began to lose traction. Mike yelled in surprise as the tires gave out and the truck span in a circle, still sliding forwards at dangerous speeds. Inside Mike span the steering wheel in the opposite direction desperately but he already knew it was too late. The truck skidded across to the side of the road, towards the jungle. The Suburban carried on past the truck as if nothing had happened. Mike gave up on trying to regain control of the vehicle and braced for impact. The impact was bone shattering. The front bumper struck the trunk of a large tree and was crumpled as if tin foil and an overhanging branch cracked the windshield, forming a spider web pattern and turned the glass opaque. Mike was thrown against the roof of the truck and his mouth filled with blood as the truck plunged into the foliage. Another tree loomed out of the sea of greenery and slammed into the driver's door, crumpling it in on him and breaking off the top hinge. This caused the truck to tip over onto its side and it began to roll. Mike's screams could barely be heard over the crunching of metal all around him. The truck finally came to a sudden stop, hanging on two wheels. Mike sat wild eyed for a few seconds then looked out of the window. His heart skipped a beat. He whimpered quietly and closed his eyes, trying desperately not to move. The truck was hanging suspended over the edge of the cliff, creaking loudly from the wind in the sudden silence. Looking up Mike saw that it was two vines that had snared around the axle which were preventing the truck from falling several hundred feet onto the sharp rocks below.

"Oh god, please," he cried hoarsely.

He began hyperventilating and desperately crawled over to the passenger seat, crumpling the image carelessly, trying to get out of the window. The truck gave a load creek and he heard a load twang! He looked up saw that one of the vines had snapped, the other was now straining, slowly stretching out. It too would snap in mere seconds. Mike shouted wordlessly in surprise and dived for the window. With a final load crack the truck fell freely into space, throwing Mike back into the truck. He screamed at the top of his lungs as the truck plummeted and the ground rushed up towards him.

Dr.Sharp stood motionless at the base of the cliff, stunned. In front of him were the charred remains of Mike Bakker's truck, a rescue and salvage team clambering over the wreckage. The accident had been reported by a passing tourist yacht earlier in the day, but it had taken several hours for the authorities to arrive. Sharp had received a call requesting him to come down, but he would have never expected this. A dark skinned man bearing a bushy mustache approached him, clambering over the sharp rocks.

"Dr.Sharp?" the man asked.

"Yeah, that's me," Sharp murmured.

"I'm Chief Allen, I'm in charge here," said the man.

"What the hell happened?" breathed Sharp, not taking his eyes off of the truck.

"As far as we can tell he must've been driving too fast and lost steering as he came around a corner. Although, we did find fragments of black residue of the rear bumper."

Sharp watched as several men walked past them carrying a field stretcher with a black tarpaulin draped over it, the shape of a body bulging underneath. He closed his eyes tightly for a second, trying to eliminate the disturbing mental image that had just appeared in his mind. He took a deep breath and turned to Allen.

"Why did you call me?" asked Sharp, suddenly confused.

Allen's eyes darted away for a moment; Sharp sensed that he felt uneasy. Allen steered Sharp away from the wreckage and took him to one side, away from the rest of the salvage crew.

"When we searched the surrounding area, we found this," Allen whispered.

He handed Sharp a small piece of paper, the edges burned and curled. Written on it was a scribbled message that had been burned off. It read "To...delive...Dr.Sharp...cam...ults". Sharp frowned at the message, as it was it made no sense.

"I saw your name and made some phone calls to some friends, turns out you were only a few miles away," said Allen.

"Why would he drive so fast? I didn't even know where he went last night." It made no sense.

"So you know who he is?" asked Allen.

"Not well. His name is Mike Bakker; he brought a patient in last night during the storm."

"Well, thank you for your cooperation, Sir. We'll take it from here," called Allen clearly, so that everybody would hear. He clapped Sharp on the shoulder, and as he passed he whispered discreetly into Sharp's ear, "Turn it over."

He left Sharp standing there, alone. He turned over the piece of paper. On the other side was the remains of what had to have been a photograph printout. It struck him; the camera. That's why he was in such a hurry. Sharp's eyes widened as he examined the image. In fuzzy light the image showed a cold, dead eye. And teeth. A dragon like creature. But Sharp knew what it was. He looked up. Catching Chief Allen's eye from a distance, they shared a look. Sharp nodded, and then turned to run up the beach.

It had begun.