Jurassic Park: The Rise of the Eater

Chapter 17: CHAPTER 17: Apex Protocol



The ground shifted beneath him before the roar reached his ears. It came not from the throat of hunger, nor the lungs of fear, but from a calculated, territorial surge, a sound meant to declare ownership of all that lived within hearing.

Narakul stood still, high on a basalt ridge overlooking a clearing dense with ferns and broken trees. The light bled orange through the canopy, thick and wet, casting harsh silhouettes over the forest floor. The air trembled. Birds did not return. Nothing moved.

Then, a ripple.

His dermal vibration sensors picked it up first. A pattern of compressed air pockets, the same as before, but faster. Closer. He dropped low, slipping beneath a tangle of exposed roots, exhaling softly through his gill-like slits to muffle scent. His pupils adjusted into thin vertical slits. Vision flickered, visible light faded into a veil, replaced by thermal bloom, then polarized ultraviolet. Every speck of moisture lit up like stars on the forest floor. Something massive was coming, but its heat signature flickered unnaturally.

It was cloaking.

Not like him, his camouflage was passive, structural. This… this was active manipulation. She, the white one, had mastered her own thermal invisibility.

A deception. A trap.

She emerged slowly from the treeline like a god forcing her way into the world. White scales shimmered like mercury, refracting glints of light into dazzling arcs. She was longer than she had been described in ancestral memory. Taller. Her body carried wounds, burns, bullets, and deep lacerations, yet none slowed her. Regeneration was in her too.

Narakul rose.

Not fully, just enough that his silhouette became distinct to her on the edge of her vision. A challenge. He remained still, offering her the first move. Her tongue flicked from between rows of jagged teeth. She did not charge. Not yet.

She was measuring him.

So he returned the gesture. Data. Weight, limb length, probable muscle density. Her hands, dexterous. Her claws, extended past the curve of natural need. Her spine, augmented with density ridges. She had been built for more than survival. She had been built to break things.

The wind shifted.

She moved.

A blur of impossible mass, the Indominus rex leapt forward. Narakul ducked and lunged to the side, rolling beneath her strike. The claws raked a section of tree behind him clean in half. His back arched, muscles coiling like steel cords, and he launched upward, landing on a curved branch and clinging to it with microscopic setae in his palms and feet.

She roared and charged the base of the tree. He leapt again, higher this time, then vanished.

To her, it looked like he had simply blinked out of existence.

Camouflage.

Narakul dropped from above, silent and precise, claws outstretched like blades. He raked her across the shoulder, gouging through scales and leaving steaming black blood.

She screamed, not in pain, but in rage, and whipped her tail. It caught him midair. The impact folded the trees around him as he was hurled into a boulder. The world blurred. He felt ribs crack.

And then… real pain. Nerve-pure.

His breath stuttered.

She advanced.

He rolled to his feet, cracked bones already knitting beneath his flesh. Regeneration, slow but sure, flushed through him like ice in his blood.

He backed into the shadows, sensors active. The vibrations through the earth told him more than sight. She circled, feet silent, gait precise. A hunter. But she didn't account for what the jungle remembered.

Narakul stepped back, deliberate.

Then paused.

Three seconds later, she lunged through a cloud of mist, claws extended to crush him

but something was wrong.

She was intercepted mid-air.

A blur shot from the canopy, striking her shoulder and knocking her slightly off course. Another blur followed, raking her across the back. She spun, confused. Not prey. Not from her memory.

And then the jungle came alive.

From the tall grass, from above the branches, from the shadows between trees, they emerged.

Velociraptors.

Sleek, mottled, and eerily coordinated. Eyes glowing faintly under polarized light. These were not wild.

She looked around, snapping and snarling, trying to assess the pattern. The raptors didn't attack all at once. They moved in concentric arcs, cycling their assault in overlapping intervals.

Controlled.

Commanded.

And standing behind them, Narakul rose again, blood-slicked but whole, one arm lifted, fingers splayed in a spiral gesture that vibrated through the air.

The raptors reacted to his signal, closing in.

She bellowed, and the ground shook.

The largest of the raptors leapt at her throat, she caught it mid-air with her jaw and crushed it instantly.

But two others lunged beneath her. One slashed across her underbelly while the other leapt and clung to her side, digging in.

Narakul charged.

He used her moment of distraction, his claws glowing faintly with stored venom and slashed across her exposed side. The toxin wouldn't kill something her size, but it would burn, slow, and disorient.

She thrashed.

In a frenzy, she rolled, crushed one raptor under her weight, and tossed another against a tree, where it lay still. But they had bought time.

Narakul had circled behind her again.

He moved in silence, jumped, and this time drove his claws into the exposed vertebrae beneath her shoulder.

She roared and threw herself backward, smashing him into a tree. Bark exploded. But he held on. She rolled again, but he shifted, gripping her back with setae like a spider on glass.

Then, he did something new.

With his free hand, he placed three fingers against her skull and inhaled, not air, but the subtle electromagnetic residue trailing across her nervous system.

Not control.

But understanding.

He saw images.

A lab. A man in white. A steel pod. Screams. Her first breath was not in air, but in silence. A world without a mother. Without warmth. Just glass. Needles.

And then the urge: to kill anything.

He paused.

In that moment of contact, Narakul saw her not just as an enemy, but as kin. Not born. Forged.

She twisted violently and threw him off.

He landed hard, breathing ragged, blood in his mouth.

The surviving raptors regrouped around him. They hissed, but he raised a claw and they paused.

The Indominus rex backed away, flanks heaving. Her wounds were shallow but numerous. She did not fear pain. But something about this moment, about him, it unsettled her.

This was not prey.

This was not a test.

This… was a mirror.

She bared her teeth in a final, desperate snarl, blood trailing from her wounds, limbs trembling, her breath coming in erratic shudders. Her eyes locked onto Narakul's.

And then… she paused.

There was something in his stance. In the way the raptors flanked him, not wild, but obedient. In the way he stood upright, intelligent, eyes burning not just with instinct but with purpose.

She knew.

She felt it.

In his scent, in his movements, in the silent language etched into the bones of predators, he was one of them.

He was more than them.

Her head dipped slightly, the bloodied jaws relaxing, not in defeat, but in recognition. Submission.

He was the superior predator.

The apex was not a title earned by size or savagery. It was decided by control, by evolution, by the ability to command the chaos of nature and shape it with will.

And Narakul had done just that.

The Indominus let out a low, guttural rumble, not a roar this time, but a reverent sound. A primitive salute.

Then she lowered herself to one knee-like forelimb, never breaking eye contact.

Narakul stepped forward, to acknowledge, his breath steady now, vision flickering back to natural light.

And in that silent exchange beneath the watching canopy, the balance of the jungle shifted.

He was no longer just a predator.

He was the law.


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