Trapped: Cretaceous Dawn

Chapter 2: Headquarters

The morning sun crept up from its watery grave and stared into the windows of the now finished KNEG building. The complete conference room now had a large aquarium with prehistoric-looking fish slowly swimming around. Logan sat near the tank, staring into it in somewhat of an awed look on his face. Ralph and Barry Evans, identical twins and the muscle of Logan's old personal squad, sat a few chair lengths away from him. Vanessa and Grayson sat at the right end of the table, arguing inaudibly although Logan could tell they were having another sibling argument. Logan, however, was more interested about what swam before him. Before getting deployed, he was studying to become a paleontologist. The fish he read about matched the similarities to these down to the teeth. He was looking at living fossils that have been around for millions of years.

"A blast from the past." A voice said from the door as three men walked to the table and sat down. The one who spoke wore glasses and a lab coat while the other two wore business suits. "Nice to officially meet you," the scientist continued. "My name is-."

"We know who you are." Logan interrupted, feeling slightly curious. He nodded to the scientist. "You are Professor Thomas Clifton, brilliant scientist and engineer. You're responsible for creating the Mark III exo-suits for interstellar missions. You're also responsible for saving Station One from entering the Earth's atmosphere and crashing into the Atlantic." He then turned his attention to the older gentleman to Thomas' left. "You're Admiral Marcus Cannon, one of the military leaders of the militia. I never got to thank you for your help on Titan."

"It was my pleasure, Captain." Marcus nodded with a smile on his face. They heard a snort come from the other man in the suit.

"I haven't forgotten about you, Mr. Hunt." Logan's mood changed as he made eye-contact with the bulky short-haired man. "Jason Hunt, CEO of KNEG and co-founder of Stacker Industries. You personally had no involvement what-so-ever with our team and didn't even provide us with the best gear. Did I miss anything, Jason?"

Jason grumbled, looking outside towards the sea. "That's no way to talk to a former employer and partner." He turned back to the others and forced a smile on his face. "I bet you're wondering why you're all here. My colleagues and I have need of your abilities in your respected fields of marine biology, zoology, and paleontology. We've decided to forgive you all for the incident you caused to our facility years ago. I just have one question: why were you on site?" The group became rigged, looking a bit guilty and nervous. Logan, however, just turned around and stared back at the aquarium with an unreadable look on his face.

He finally spoke after a long pause, his voice carrying a dark tone. "We got a call from this genetics company wanting us to visit one of their unfinished facilities. When we got here, no one was around so we went exploring. We found something weird, a portal I'm guessing, and went through it. Before we knew it, we were in a desert. For an hour, we searched for that portal. We ended up stumbling into some creatures that haven't been seen in millions of years. I guess you all were working on time travel. We all didn't make it back from that by the time security got us." Logan hung his head low as the memories flashed back in his mind.

"Do you mean Justin Todd?" Thomas asked, cleaning off his glasses. The group turned to him with a mixed look of confusion and joy.

"Excuse me," Logan turned back around to Thomas with a raised eyebrow. "How do you know that name?"

"I didn't at first," Thomas admitted. "Not until our Sgt. Rivera told me after seeing a familiar boot print a few days ago."

"What we're trying to say is," Marcus finally spoke up. "Your friend may still be alive and well."