Wearily, Tristan opened his eyes. His vision was slow to come into focus, but as it did, Tristan found that everything around him was...strange, to say the least.

Where once there had been desert, now there was a sterile environment. Walls and floors that wouldn't be out of place in the park's labs surrounded him. Doors lined the walls, a few left open, though there were no occupants inside.

Wait, was he be dragged? By who?

Looking forward, Tristan wished he hadn't asked the question.

There, dragging him by his pack, was one of the creatures from the previous night.

With the lighting in the hallway, the creature's features were now mostly visible to him. IT was a long, spindly limbed hunter, with a notably hunched over back. It seemed reptilian in appearance, yet the skin looked more mammalian. A cursory glance at its hands and feet revealed it to be the predator that had made the strange tracks he had earlier observed - the feet ended in three toes each, while the arms ended in two fingered hands with bony spines on the wrists - likely vestigial pinky fingers. Its face, however, was still an enigma, and frankly, Tristan didn't want to know what that looked like.

Now, how to get out of this mess? True, escape looked impossible, but the minute you assumed that to be true, it became true. The first step to escaping was to believe escape was possible. After that came the hard part: actually finding an escape root.

Also, was that buzzing in the distance?

…Apparently it was. And it sounded as if it was getting closer.

The creature seemed to notice, as it suddenly stopped and began looking around. Yet at that moment, the buzzing stopped, and after a few moments of scanning, the predator continued onward.

The buzzing soon returned, now growing more intense. Once again, his attacker stopped, trying to locate the source of the noise, and again, the buzzing subsided. After a much longer period of searching, the carnivore continued on its way.

The buzzing returned once more. This time, though, the creature had enough. Releasing Tristan for a moment, the creature let out a ferocious cry and charged down the hall, tackling and destroying every door it found, ransacking every room it could find, and even demolishing the crawl spawn above the roof in an effort to find the source of the buzzing. The floor was ignored - it was far too thick for any normal animal to bore through.

When its assault revealed nothing, the predator returned to Tristan (who had the common sense to play dead), and dragged him until it reached the end of the hall, before laying him down and preparing to shoulder charge the door.

Said door burst open as something slammed into the carnivore, sending it flying down the hall and flipping Tristan over. Surprised, Tristan turned his attention down the hall, where the new arrival was fighting the predator. The lights in this hall were either dying or dead, only allowing a few fleeting glimpses of the dueling predators, but it did reveal one thing: somehow, the new assailant was a giant variety of insect. Perhaps it was a beetle, a wasp, or a mantis (or at least one of their kin), but somehow, despite the relatively low oxygen content, this insect had gotten bigger than a human, and was now battling the predator.

The two dueled with ferocity in the extreme. The mammalian carnivore would slam the insect into the wall, only for its carapace-covered counterpart to take to the air, grab the four limbed creature, and throw it further down the hall. Said fight lasted for about a minute, before the bug finally had enough and bit into the mammal's skull. A sickening crunch followed, and the carnivore collapsed, dead.

Victorious, the bug grabbed the carcass and flew back through the door, taking only a moment to stop and hiss at Tristan before vanishing from sight. Bewildered, the boy was left frozen for a few moments, before the sound of a machine turning turned his attention to a corner.

There, a camera looked down on him.

Tristan thought nothing of it, until the camera turned to look down the hall the predator had been slain in. Further down the hall, a set of lights turned on, gradually illuminating the end of the hallway, and with it, a door.

Confused, but unwilling to wait until another carnivore stumbled upon him, Tristan made his way down the hall, careful to watch for any intruders. Once he was at the door, he pushed on it - sure enough, it was unlocked and open.

On the other side , Tristan saw another set of lights coming on.

"...Well, I guess this is how it goes."

XXXXXXX

Through the cameras, Tristan's unknown watcher guided the boy, while also noting where the various creatures inside the facility were going. It seemed they were still interested in only their individual nesting sites. Unsurprising, really - most were rather territorial.

The boy progressed through the facility quickly, evading most of the predators with ease, owing in part to their laxity in observation. The few that were more observant fell prey to other hunters in the area - predators did like to eliminate competition.

Now came the hardest part, though - the boy would have to meander his way through the decontamination chamber. And that room was a...rather grisly sight. Even after all this time had passed.

XXXXXXXXX

Tristan found himself standing before an imposing door. The words "Decontamination Center" stood out plainly on the adjacent wall. Taking a deep breath, Tristan walked up to the door and allowed it to open.

He regretted this upon seeing what lay inside.

There were...skeletons. So many skeletons, from various different ages - none that were particularly small, but Tristan assumed that many, many people had died in here. And with how some of the bones were strewn about, and the presence of claw marks on the walls, it was clear they had not died peacefully. Tristan felt his breakfast start to rise up to his throat, but after a moment of concentration and calm, measured breathing, the bile went down, though it did leave a bad taste in his mouth. Then, with some reluctance, Tristan stepped inside, and let the door close behind him.

Decontamination soon followed, and once the process was complete and the inner door opened, Tristan stepped inside.

Within lay an utterly pristine room, with computer hard-drives line the area, and, oddly enough, robotic drones flitting about. What really caught Tristan's attention, though, was what appeared to be a projector in the center, which whirred to life, creating an image that could best be described as a blue version of Destiny's servitors.

What happened next, though, left Tristan stunned into silence.

"Hello."

"..."

"...hello?"

Tristan shook himself out of his stupor. "Hello, I'm Tristan. Who are you?"

"You may call my Pythagoras."

"I see. Are you an...AI?"

"Yes, I am. How'd you know?"

"Best guess based off of movies."

"I see. Strange."

"I know. Um, where am I?"

"Answer me one question first: how did you get here?"

"...You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

"...Time travel?"

"Yes."

"Which was invented by your father, using magnetic holes in space and time."

"Uh huh."

"And which he initially tried to use to change history, and when that failed, he decided to use it to rescue extinct species, which would then be brought back to the present and given a second chance. And any plants brought back would also be used in medical research."

"That's the gist of it."

"...That is a pretty far fetched explanation...but I believe you."

"Wow. Didn't expect that."

"Alright, now I believe I owe you an explanation."

"Yes, please."

"I now. This facility was built to study the native organisms in this area and how they evolved in absence of human presence for seven million years."

"...Wait, I'm seven million years into the future?"

"Give or take a millennia, I presume."

"Yeah, yeah, is that all?"

"Not exactly. The secondary goal of this facility was to study unexplained magnetic anomalies that have begun appearing all over the world, as this was the closest region available for the mission budget."

"Where exactly are we?"

"Arizona, or what used to be it, at any rate."

"Ah, home. So, what happened to this place?"

"Approximately three weeks into the mission, an unknown variety of giant insect that defies many known factors of arthropod biology began to show up around some of the magnetic anomaly sites. Most were killed due to extreme aggression toward our personnel, but one group was successfully captured and moved to an internal biodome for study."

"Did they break out and kill everyone?"

"No. A month after the creatures were captured, a sandstorm struck the facility. All non-essential personnel were placed into stasis, with the admittedly still large remainder working on projects that could be monitored remotely."

"Roughly three hours after the storm concluded, a mammalian carnivore of the same type as the one that dragged you here was reported outside of the facility. Five minutes later, a massive pack of them broke through the doors/ I believe I do not need to say what happened next."

"Please don't. And don't show me anything, either."

"I will not. However, I am faced with a dilemma."

"Let me guess, you need to wake up the people in stasis, but don't want them to become monster food."

"Yes. I would use different wording, but yes."

"...Do you have any portable generators?"

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"How about we make a deal: I save your charges, and you give me a generator?"

"...I request one additional provision for my charges."

"And that is?"

"...Please take us to the past with you."

"What? Why?"

"Due to going dark after the dust storm subsided, no help is coming, and our communication systems were destroyed. Our 'home' believes us to have been swallowed by the desert."

"...Alright, fine."

'This is going to be an absolute pain to explain later...'

XXXXXXXXXXXX

AN: This chapter went through some rewriting and this is the version I am happiest with. I apologize for any lack in quality.

Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!