The wind began to pick up, and the hot sun had already fallen behind the horizon, in the moment that The Adventurer became aware of the mistake he had made. The sky was exuding something extraordinary, so beyond beauty that it made The Adventurer’s fatal situation feel slightly improved: orange on the bottom, yellow on top of that, a sudden explosion of the palest blue, stroked by wispy clouds of purple, pink, grey. 

Everything about it was perfect, so perfect, that of course it was damned, The Adventurer thought. There he was on The Island, standing in the forest in the mountains, overlooking the land, the sea. 

He had been studying The Island for six years now, sharing his findings with his following on YouTube. He had very damning evidence that here, on The Island, is where The Government was running genealogy tests on top predators from each vertebrate and invertebrate of the animal kingdom: mammals, insects, arachnids, birds, reptiles, amphibians, all of it. The only problem was that he didn’t have hard evidence, as in, nothing that would earn him acknowledgement, no credibility in academia, nothing really beyond recognition in his YouTube “community.”

As the orange at the bottom of the sky began to dim, and the pale blue began to deepen, The Adventurer knew it was far too late for him to turn back now. Because he had been studying The Doctors, The Tests, and which animals were being mutilated and bred in labs, he knew he was doomed. He knew this because he knew that The Doctors were no longer there, and that The Tests were no longer being conducted, because The Animals had all gotten out of their labs one night, and the bodies of The Doctors were never found. He knew that The Animals, who were most active at night, were now living in The Forest, and that he had stayed out far too long, far far far far far too long, and that once the pale blue in the sky had turned black, the last night of his life would begin. 

The Adventurer sat and tried to feel everything as much as he could: the air on his skin, the sound of the birds in the sky, the dissipation of the purple, pink, grey wisps. Then, the fermenting of his own blood, which was quickly onset, as instead of his life flashing before his eyes, six years of research began to play back in reels, like a movie, and he remembered, what exactly was waiting for him in that forest behind him.

The Adventurer wondered: what was going to get him first? 

There was the 12-legged spider, genetically altered to be the size of a cat with the strength and speed of the North African Cheetah. The Adventurer knew that upon his abduction, the spider would paralyze him with her venom, but she would not kill him. She’ll keep him alive, because she’ll need to use his body as an incubator for her eggs. She’ll pick a proper fleshy area, like his thigh or his stomach, to carve out a cozy nook for her sack, and once the babies hatch (in 42 to 48 hours) it is him who will be their first family meal. 

The orange and the yellow were gone, and the pale blue was now dark purple.

In the bushes or in the trees behind him, he could not figure out which, he heard both a buzzing and a clicking. This could be one of two things, The Adventurer thought, or with his luck, maybe it was both: scorpion bats or komodo-dragon rattle snakes. The bats, a breed between the Indian red scorpion and giant golden-crowned flying fox, harnessed with potent venom and a six-foot wing-span, mutilated to swarm their prey like wasps. The komodo-dragon rattle snakes, a crossover between the strongest flesh-tearing lizard and precise hunter, breeded together to maximize their speed, venom, and general killer instincts. With the body and tail of the snake, but the jaw, arms, and legs of the dragon, this could run or slither after you, whichever mode proved best, depending on the terrain. 

The Adventurer looked out onto the now dark night and laughed at the irony of his situation. For years, he existed in the liminal space between intellectualism and professionalism, had nothing but his own work and his own belief to prove that The Animals on The Island existed. He had no hard evidence yet, and as a believer in the scientific theory himself, meant that perhaps there was a chance he would leave this island alive, that he was wrong all this time. But no, The Adventurer thought, I must not dismiss myself in this way. To comfort himself and say Everything will be alright, it’s all in my head, would be to abandon and disrespect himself completely. So, he accepted his fate, and thanked The Island for one last beautiful sunset, and he–wait, he thought–footsteps? 

What he had not considered was the leading scientist of The Island’s mission. The man who pitched his ideas to The Government, who concocted The Labs, hired The Doctors, who was omitted from all of The Islands research by the other scientists because of his rapidly declining mental health (too many days away from civilization). 

The Adventurer turned behind him and saw The Scientist, standing seven feet tall, with spider legs bleeding out of his abdomen, the vertebrae of his spine poking out through his skin, stitched together with a scorpions tale. From his shoulders, wings, broken and bloodied, but twitching at the site of The Adventurer. With all of his mutilations The Scientist still had the brain of a Man Gone Mad, the intelligence of a highly achieving researcher, the moral emptiness of someone who could come up with this plan. 

I had not considered The Scientist, thought The Adventurer.