The Allosaurus thing's roaring meant, "You damn tiny little...things! How dare you pop out of that dark corridor and scare me like that! I'm going to bite all your heads off!"

I raised my claws. "Sorry! Sorry! I didn't know you'd be here either!"

"Oh, and you can talk too?" The monster's tentacles stuck out straight like a frightened cat. "Now I'm really going to mess you up!"

We all backed away from the weird monstrosity.

Well, except for Webby, who hurled insults in Parasaurolophus about me `kicking its tail.'

"That's...definitely not in any damn science book I've ever seen," Cynthia muttered. "Seriously, what the fudge?"

I nervously eyed the mutant Allosaurus's companions. "I got a theory. You ever watch Doctor Who at all?"

"What the hell's Doctor Who?"

"Never mind, look. So on the show, there's this guy, Davros, who clones a bunch of these little mutants with tentacles, he puts them inside killer robots called Daleks, and—"

The Allosaurus stomped closer, frowned at the stone Quetzalcoatl, trying to figure out a way to squeeze past it.

The Dilophosaur crept toward Cassie. The little girl quickly donned a pair of sunglasses to shield her eyes, drawing the fish scaling knife from her belt. I imagined she'd grow to be a badass freckly dinosaur hunter, if she lived through this.

Cynthia grabbed her by the shirt, pulling her back. "Albert, can we skip to the point, please?"

"Okay, so he makes a few mistakes with his cloning process, and instead of incinerating them, he just drops them all into a big cave, as sort of a security system..."

"So we're in a big genetic waste dump! Great! Let's get the fudge out of here."

We rushed back through Coaticue's legs, to the waterlogged staircase. Up ahead, a steel cable dangled into the underground lake, a life ring hooked to the end. "We got a winch set up. We'll all take turns — oh shit."

Three scaly shapes emerged from the water. Crocodile things, but not like any you'd find in the Nile river.

20 feet long, face weirdly structured with the nostrils above the eyes, big lumpy `bulla' at the end of a narrow snout shaped like a nutcracker. Cassie could fit inside its head if she lay inside it sideways.

"Those...don't belong to the Amazon, do they?"

The crocodiles flexed their mandibles as they snapped giant pincers attached to a second pair of arms.

"If they do, I'd ship them back as defective."

The nearest one lashed out at me with an oversized scorpion tail.

Some modification of an Angistorhinus, apparently. I suppose it could have been worse if they'd cloned, say, a Sarcosuchus, but to have these mutant prehistoric crocodiles in multiple...also not good.

I and Cynthia looked at each other.

"What are you thinking?"

"Uh, go forward and get eaten, or go back and get eaten? Maybe...my Velociraptor friend kicks some ass, or at least takes a bite out of one of these guys?"

I frowned at the bulb nosed reptiles...and their enormous crab pincers. "Too many GMOs."

"C'mon, Albert," Cassie urged. "You can take them. They're just—"

The nearest Angistorhinus snapped at me, damn near took my head off.

Then two more of them came bubbling out of the water.

"Shit." Cynthia retreated from the steps. "Let's take our chances with Cthulhusaurus."

"Seriously?" I glanced back. The Allosaurus hybrid still couldn't figure out how to navigate around the Quetzalcoatl statue. Perhaps Rexy had gotten all the smarts? "Yeah, okay. Maybe if we run by her real fast..."

"You go first."

"Y-you sure? I mean, you could become Angistorhinus food!"

"Not if you move your scaly tail!"

"Right." I hurriedly crept back up the hall of wrestlers, keeping close to the wall, behind all the statuary.

Obviously One Eyed Willie and...Frills McRapperson knew where we were. We'd run away from them, and they had a (semi) clear view of the corridor, so not too shocking, then, when three Proceratosauruses suddenly blocked my path: Willie, a limping stranger with rickrack patterning on her rust orange-green flesh, and a weirdly two toned one, light on one half, dark on the other, along a straight line.

"Hello again!" I gave Willie a nervous grin. "Funny how we keep running into each other like this."

Willie just snarled.

"Yes, you've said that before."

Frills McRapperson came around the nearest statue, blocking me from the side. "You ate my friends, but I got away! I said if I found you, I'd make y'all pay. I brought some new homies, and one gigantic friend, I'm tellin' `ya sister, you're nearing the—"

Chomp. The scaly body, frills and legs disappeared into the giant maw of a mutant Angistorhinus. I stared wide eyed as the pointy teeth chewed through uncooked bloody meat.

Cynthia yelped as a second crocodile thing came snapping at her. She and Cassie came rushing past me...and the Proceratosauruses facing me.

The running humans didn't register with Willie and her companions, though, because they could see the Angistorhinuses too, and had also turned to run.

"Oh! I love those things! They're delicious!" Cthulhusaurus growled with pleasure as more crocodile creatures advanced.

The tentacular Allosaurus monster shoved past Quetzalcoatl, obliterating centuries old sculptural work. And then...she jumped.

I and my friends ran quickly in the opposite direction.

When those massive feet crashed down, earthquake level ground tremors.

Honestly, don't understand what happened next. It seemed like solid ground. Maybe the ancient Mesoamericans had built on top of a natural cavern, and over time the cavern roof had weakened.

Whatever the reason, half the floor collapsed, and the Allosaur fell howling into a chasm.

The collapse took half the statuary. The rest remained standing on narrow islands framing the seemingly bottomless crevasse. Water from the other chamber flooded over the edge, giving it a cascading waterfall effect.

I stared down the hole. Dark, seemingly bottomless. No sign of our immense enemy.

I looked up. The giant had taken an important section of the hallway with it. I could see no feasible way of getting back across.

It appeared as if the mutant Allosaurus had taken down a few Angistorhinus with her careless jump. Only two remained, staring at me from the opposite side of the hole.

Cynthia joined me at the edge, gawking at the damage. "Daaamn!"

Cassie, clutching Webby in her arms, leaned over the side of a second, then, with eyes bulging, quickly scuffled back.

Willie and her friends, not saying a word, joined us in staring down the hole. The noises they made...it kinda sounded like "Daaamn!"

Cynthia kept eying the section of floor on the opposite side. "Hey, Albert. If those alligator things go away, you think you might possibly be able to jump across that pit?"

I looked down into the abyss. "I, uh, don't know, Cynthia...It's not exactly close..."

"I know that! But I've seen you guys jump. I bet if you get a running start..."

Another section of flooring collapsed. The Angistorhinuses retreated.

"Well, maybe not now..."

A radio crackled. Cynthia dug it out of the yellow backpack she wore. "Hello? Mister Arnold?"

A very faint signal. "...Yu? Can...hear me?"

"Just barely. You do realize we're underground?"

The static cleared up. "This any better?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm standing above that underground pool. What the hell is going on down there?"

She explained the situation in raptor tongue by mistake.

"In English, Miss Yu. I may look it, but I'm not literally a dinosaur."

"Sorry, Mister Arnold. These are weird times. "Uh...we found where InGen's been dumping their defective dinosaurs. A T-Rex thing just did a cannonball through the floor."

"Allosaurus," I corrected.

"Whatever, Albert!"

A pause on the other side of the radio. "Say that again?"

"What, about the mutant Allosaurus cannonball, or the dinosaur disposal dump?"

Static answered her.

"Mister Arnold, are you still there?"

"Yeah...Miss Yu, is that your can of shaving cream I found in the back of the boat?"

Cynthia wrinkled her brow. "Kinda, why?"

"Answer the question, Miss Yu. Is it or is it not your can of Barbasol?"

"Sir, I found it in the mud near Nedry's vehicle. I just wanted to shave my legs, I'm getting kinda woolly. Is there something wrong with it?"

"I'll say. There's a billion dollars worth of dinosaur chromosomes hidden inside its false bottom. Thank God the coolant in there..." At this point the radio reception broke up.

Cynthia clicked the button. "Sir?"

No answer. She put the radio away.

We stood behind the busted Quetzalcoatl head, at the edge of an ancient Ollamalitzli court. Boundary lines carved in stone, two (also stone) donut shaped goals at either end.

Kinda dark in there. Cynthia switched on a big powerful flashlight and an electric lantern from her pack to help us see.

Fascinating bas reliefs, depicting how they played the game: Bouncing a hard rubber ball (no air pumps) off portions of their lower anatomy, almost like soccer, loser gets decapitated at the conclusion of the match.

Again, a smoky place. Now beside the ancient bleachers, I could clearly differentiate between the scents: Burning rubber and plastic, ozone, like something electrical, plus...rotten meat. Cthulhusaurus had apparently been a messy eater, leaving half eaten legs, torsos and whatnot of various GMO dinosaurs, to decay on the paving stones. She must have gotten big and healthy eating the other factory rejects. I detected sounds of a fire alarm, but the noises sounded faint and far away.

Cynthia wrinkled her nose. "What is that, a trash fire? Guess that's better than all this..." The woman coughed, waving a hand in front of her face. "Wooh! Never mind." She dug some Vic's Vapo Rub out of her backpack, smearing it on her nostrils.

Cynthia offered the substance to Cassie. "Want some? You won't be able to smell anything."

The girl glanced at me. "Only if Albert does."

I sniffed. "I think I smell food...burnt food."

Cassie sniffed the air to confirm this, but only coughed and held out her hand for the Vapo Rub.

I climbed the steps to the Ollamalitzli arena. "I'm going to check—"

At this point, Willie suddenly remembered why she hated me, and attacked. A missing eye will do that to you.

I struck her with a...Stegosaurus ulna (...or maybe radius?) Probably another GMO creature. In addition to the suction cups, cartilage held the bones of a turkey's wing to it.

Willie countered with a nasty bite and vicious clawing attack.

Cynthia aimed a flare gun at my foe, but Willie's two toned friend bit her in the leg and the shot went wild.

Cassie shrieked, but I didn't have the luxury of seeing what transpired.

In a misguided attempt to protect me, Webby went all Scrappy Doo and bit down on Willie's butt, but it did nothing, my enemy just flicked her tail and dunked her through a goal like an Ulama ball.

I bopped Willie with the (fresh) dinosaur bone again, but she bit my claw and I dropped the weapon.

Outside the court, Cassie and Cynthia scuffled with Willie's friends. Couldn't see what they did behind the walls.

I had my own fight to deal with. I could have sworn I heard ghostly Aztec or Mayans cheering, glimpsed specters of half naked individuals in gold and feathers, waving around rattles and stuff.

I punched Willie in the face, jumped back from her, but then...Tina Two Tone jumped off the boundary wall of the playing field, and we went rolling down the steps.

Somehow, with all that wrestling, we kept going until we crashed into the Quetzalcoatl.

The stone thing rocked a couple times, crashing facedown on the floor...which couldn't stand the weight. Quetzalcoatl and all that stonework dropped noisily into the chasm.

I lay on my back, head and neck hanging over the abyss, staring up at the weirdly symmetrical face. "Hey, weren't you on Star Trek one time?"

Two Tone just growled at me.

"Hey, look. We just barely met. I haven't done anything wrong to you, other than a little wrestling. I actually have a good Proceratosaurus friend. We call her Buttface. What say we stop fighting and go our separate ways?"

Two Tone just snarled at me and sunk her teeth into my neck.

"Okay, fine!" Still not sold on the whole `Killing-Her' thing, I didn't use my disemboweling claws, I just kicked with my feet and threw her off me...which, unfortunately, did happen to be in the direction of the chasm.

As Two Tone fell shrieking over the edge, she somehow grabbed a hold of me, and I also fell shrieking over the edge.

At the last second, my claws caught on stonework, and I hung dangling above the pit...with Two Tone latched onto my leg. "C'mon, dude, really?"

Interesting cavern system down there. Saw some water, a few islands of metamorphic and sedimentary rock, and a whole lot of inky darkness...still no sign of Cthulhusaurus...I felt my claws slipping.

It got...really quiet up top. I feared my human friends were no more.

You know how there's all these movies where the hero and the bad guy are dangling from a building or something and he kicks the bad guy in the face and all that? Well, that would be super mean, I mean, Tina hadn't really bitten me that hard.

Plus...well, she wasn't fighting me, she just had this terrified look on her face, like `Help me!'

Okay, at one point she did bite me, but the notes she fluted through her nasal crest seemed to imply, `Sorry, my arms are tired.'

I looked up and found Willie and her rickrack patterned friend staring down at me.

If this had been a movie, they...probably would have stomped or bit my claws, sending me screaming into the pit, but...

Willie, noticing that I hadn't kicked her friend...downstairs, gave Ms. Rickrack a fluting whistle and a reluctant nod in my direction.

The two of them closed their mouths around my wrists, but in that gentle way they'd pick up a baby Proceratosaurus. By the nape of its neck. The two reared back with all their might, in desperate attempts to yank me upwards.

I'm...not exactly light, and I had Tina hanging from my lower torso, so they ended up slipping closer to the brink themselves.

"Oh gosh, you guys..." I couldn't see Cynthia, but I could hear the happy sob edging into her voice. "Okay, Cynthia, keep it together..."

So now she's grabbing onto their tails and pulling, and Cassie's helping, Webby's got her beak latched onto Cassie's leg...

They still slipped a little, but at last my upper body rested on paving stones, and as an act of good faith, I dug my claws into the cracks in the stonework, stretching my legs at an angle, allowing Tina to use my body as a ladder. My tail and disemboweling claws made for good...climbing objects.

We all helped Tina to get back up top.

I expected, in fashion similar to a movie, for Willie to bite me, stomp my claws, and shove me over the side like a piece of garbage. I mean, why not? Her friend was safe, right?

Instead, she attempted that carrying-a-kitten thing on the back of my neck, Rickrack and Two Tone lending additional support, my friends joining in.

At last we all lay tired and gasping on the paving stones.

Cassie reached out and petted the Two Toned one. Tina snarled a little at first, but tolerated it after discovering all the girl wanted to do was run hands over her scaly head. Cassie didn't pet Willie, though. I mean, after the biting incident in the park earlier...

Cynthia whistled thank you in Proceratosaurus (she probably picked that one up from Buttface after mealtime).

Willie stared, growling in Proceratosaurus, `You sound like a Food Bringer. I don't like Food Bringers but I like their food."

Cynthia shrugged. "Sorry, guys. No food."

The Proceratosauruses grumbled to each other about her not having food. "Let us go find food elsewhere."

The Proceratosauruses whistled thanks to me and departed down a corridor, Willie a bit grudgingly.

The ball court area branched off in two directions. Cynthia put her hands on her hips, looking around. "Which way to go?"

I glanced to my left. "If we go that way, we'll meet up with Willie and her friends."

"Oh, c'mon. You're friends now. Plus they must know a way out of this place, if they made it in..."

"Kinda friends. Anyway, I think we need to follow that smoke. There might be a fire somewhere, but there could also be a factory, food, and hopefully some kind of exit."

Cynthia tsk'ed. "Always thinking with your stomach."

"Yeah? I still say there's an exit, you know, modern building, I assume?"

"If the stairs and stuff haven't collapsed."

I frowned. "How do you know there's stairs?"

"I don't. I'm just saying, if there are some, we might not be able to use them. Fire collapses things."

"Yeah, well, I'm still thinking the exits to this...Mesoamerican...building are probably all closed, on account of nobody knowing this place exists."

"Guess you got a point. You lead the way."

I stepped forward, then froze. "Wait, I almost died back there. What if the floor caves in again?"

"It was your idea to check out the fire...If we go the other way, your new friends might help you out of the hole. Just a thought."

"They're probably just getting lost over there, because they recently left a human building."

"If that's the way out, why are they leaving?"

"I don't know, Cynthia, why do you want to go exploring places that have probably been closed off for centuries, when there's probably an exit around the corner?"

"I just don't like the idea of walking into an inferno, that's all. Lead the way."

I marched ahead, passing through an archway decorated with carvings of winged serpents, pug nosed dudes and jaguar heads.

The chamber beyond...not much brighter than the ball court, though again with my night vision I could detect a few things: A floor, benches (for the players, I suppose), ritual bowls...a lot of stuff, like pottery, tools and weapons, had been crushed by Cthulhusaurus. Plus, of course, you had the rotting dinosaur and GMO meat all over the place.

Only half of it looked like dinosaur debris. Other discards included a manatee thing with deer legs, a Segnosaurus with the body of an oversized caterpillar, and a Staurikosaurus with a pelican's head.

What I didn't expect: A glowing figure appearing in the center of the chamber.

An otherworldly blending of human and dinosaur, dressed as an Inca...or Aztec.

Slender, scaly, her face a beautiful melding of Triceratops and human.

But those ferocious eyes!

The moment I stepped into the chamber, the loincloth wearing creature raised a spear and screamed as she threw the weapon at my head.