Bayu remained completely still inside the rocky cavity as the massive shadow outside stopped moving.
He didn't dare activate the Temporal Displacement Unit. Even the faint glow from its screen was enough to make him nervous.
Heavy breathing came from behind the vines covering the entrance, occasionally accompanied by the sound of something large scraping against the ground.
After a while, the shadow began to move away.
Bayu still waited.
He counted silently to more than one hundred before finally allowing himself to breathe again.
Slowly, he crawled toward the entrance and peeked through a gap in the vines.
Nothing.
The creature was gone.
Bayu wiped the sweat from his forehead and returned to his seat.
Only now did he have a chance to examine his hiding place more carefully.
At first, he had assumed the cavity was simply a natural gap between the rocks.
But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, several sections of the wall appeared far too straight to have formed naturally.
Bayu frowned.
He raised a hand and touched the surface beside him.
Cold.
But the texture was different.
It wasn't stone.
There was a hard layer beneath it, something resembling metal that had been buried beneath soil and minerals for countless years.
“Could it be…”
Bayu immediately activated the device's passive scanning mode.
A faint blue light emerged from the cracked Chrono-Core.
PASSIVE STRUCTURAL SCAN
ARTIFICIAL MATERIAL DETECTED
Bayu froze.
He directed the device toward the wall.
The scan results became clearer.
COMPOSITE ALLOY
ORIGIN: UNKNOWN
ESTIMATED AGE: >100,000,000 YEARS
Bayu stared at the numbers in disbelief.
“Impossible.”
He brushed away the dirt covering the wall.
Little by little, its true shape began to emerge.
Beneath the layers of soil was a metal panel heavily damaged by corrosion, yet several sections still retained their original form.
There were seams.
Bolts.
And in the center was a symbol almost completely covered in mud.
Bayu wiped it clean with the sleeve of his laboratory coat.
Then he froze.
Words appeared across the surface of the panel.
EDEN-0
Bayu's heart began beating faster.
“So this isn't a coincidence…”
He stood up and began examining the rest of the cavity.
The opening he had thought was merely part of the rock formation was actually an entrance leading into a much larger chamber.
Soil and rocks covered most of the passage, but there was still a narrow gap large enough for a person to squeeze through.
Bayu activated the small light on his analysis device.
Its beam swept across the dark passage.
Several meters ahead stood another metal wall.
Something on the floor made Bayu stop.
A small rectangular object.
Bayu picked it up.
The object was almost completely destroyed, but its shape was still recognizable as an electronic device.
It wasn't technology from his era.
It was older.
Much older.
“Who left this here?”
He turned the object over.
On the back was a barely legible inscription.
EDEN-0 BIOLOGICAL MONITORING UNIT
Bayu stared at it for several seconds before placing it inside his bag.
He then discovered several other objects.
Remnants of cables.
Broken glass tubes.
Pieces of metal containers.
A swollen cylindrical battery.
And most surprisingly, a thin plate that still retained part of its writing.
Bayu wiped the surface clean.
The writing wasn't in some foreign language.
It was written in a language he knew very well.
PROJECT EDEN-0
Beneath it was a sentence that had survived only partially.
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: PREHISTORIC BIOSPHERE...
Bayu stopped reading.
For a moment, he simply stood in the middle of the dark chamber, the ancient plate still in his hand.
All the mysteries from the laboratory resurfaced in his mind.
A secret project.
A prehistoric ecosystem.
Creatures with anomalous genetics.
A temporal signal from three years in the future.
And now, a man-made facility that should have been impossible to exist in this world.
He wanted answers.
But then his stomach growled.
Bayu looked down.
The silence was immediately broken by the small sound.
He sighed.
“All right. The mystery of this world can wait.”
Bayu slipped the plate into his bag.
“My stomach can't.”
For the moment, he decided to put Project Eden-0 aside.
No matter how important this discovery was, he still had far more urgent problems.
He had no food.
His water supply was almost gone.
He had no idea how long he would have to survive in this place.
And he had absolutely no idea whether he would ever get the chance to return to the future.
Bayu climbed back out of the cavity and chose a higher position from which to observe his surroundings.
The sun had already begun to move across the sky, stretching the shadows of the trees farther across the ground.
He opened the analysis device.
ENERGY RESERVE: 16%
Bayu sighed.
He had already consumed too much energy since arriving in this place.
If the device shut down, he would lose his analysis tool, map, biological scanner, and possibly the only piece of technology capable of helping him understand the temporal anomaly.
However, when he inspected the back of the device, a small indicator appeared.
Bayu enlarged it.
SOLAR CHARGING SYSTEM: ONLINE
His eyes widened.
“Seriously?”
He immediately carried the device into a patch of sunlight.
A thin panel that had been almost invisible on its surface unfolded automatically.
A few seconds later, new text appeared.
SOLAR INPUT DETECTED
CHARGING: 2.7 W
Bayu almost laughed with relief.
“Thank God the scientists of the future remembered to install a solar panel.”
The charging process was painfully slow, but it was more than enough to calm him down.
As long as he could find an open area and get enough sunlight, the device could be used again without relying entirely on its limited battery.
Bayu then began making a list of his needs.
Water was the first priority.
Then food.
Then safer shelter.
And finally, something he could use to defend himself if he encountered another predator.
He activated the environmental scan using low-power mode.
A simple map appeared.
WATER SOURCE — 623 M
EDIBLE PLANT CANDIDATES — 17
LARGE PREDATOR ACTIVITY — HIGH
Bayu studied the location of the water source.
Six hundred meters wasn't very far.
But the problem wasn't the distance.
The problem was what might be waiting for him there.
He enlarged the biological data on the detected plants.
Several species showed similarities to modern plants, but most weren't present in the database.
Bayu wasn't willing to take the risk.
He had studied botany and biochemistry, but knowledge of modern plants didn't guarantee that plants from millions of years ago were safe to eat.
Evolution could produce entirely different defensive compounds, even among plant groups that appeared similar.
“I need water first.”
Bayu took an empty bottle from his bag.
Then he looked around.
An idea came to him.
He didn't necessarily have to go straight to the river.
If it rained, he could collect the water.
But the sky was still clear.
He needed another option.
Bayu returned to the hidden chamber and began searching through the remains of the Eden-0 facility for anything that might still be useful.
If humans had once used this place, there might still be supplies left behind.
He opened a metal box that was almost completely buried in the ground.
The hinges were rusted.
Bayu used a rock as a lever.
Creak.
The box opened.
Inside were several damaged objects, but one transparent pouch was still completely sealed.
Bayu picked it up.
EMERGENCY BIOLOGICAL FIELD KIT
The writing was almost faded away.
He carefully opened the pouch.
There wasn't much inside.
Several empty tubes.
A small knife.
Synthetic thread.
Two sheets of water-filtering material.
And a cylindrical fire starter.
Bayu looked at the items with a faint smile.
“This is much more useful than I expected.”
He packed the equipment away.
For the first time since being thrown into the prehistoric world, Bayu began to feel that he might actually have a chance of surviving.
But that feeling didn't last long.
When he stepped outside the hiding place, he noticed something on the ground.
Footprints.
Not from an Allosaurus.
These tracks were much larger.
Bayu crouched down and compared one of them to the size of his own foot.
A single footprint was almost as long as his entire lower leg.
He followed the direction of the tracks with his eyes.
They stopped directly in front of the entrance to the Eden-0 facility.
Bayu slowly stood.
The creature that had left those tracks had been here.
And if the tracks were still visible, there was a good chance it hadn't come through very long ago.
Bayu looked back at the dark passage behind him.
The place he had initially considered nothing more than a simple hiding spot was actually part of a secret facility that had survived for millions of years.
He had just discovered a place that might provide him with shelter.
But it could also be the lair of something far more dangerous.
Bayu tightened his grip around the small knife he had just found.
“In that case…”
He stared at the vast forest before him.
“I need to learn how to survive before I find out who built this place.”
Bayu waited until the analysis device had absorbed enough energy from the sunlight before placing it back into his bag.
He didn't know it yet, but behind one of the deepest walls of the facility, a system that had been dormant for millions of years had just received power from his device.
And a small indicator slowly began to glow.
EDEN-0 SYSTEM
REBOOTING...
TEMPORAL SUBJECT DETECTED.