Hannah Dundee: Dino Heroine by Jade Gretz

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Hannah Dundee: Dino Heroine ANIMATION

The Waterborne Menace

Beneath the phosphorescent bloom of City in the Sea’s fungal-lights, the dock stank of salt, rust, and fresh blood. It pooled black under the massive carcass of a cargo-whale, its blubber ripped open in great parallel furrows.

Hannah Dundee knelt, her fingers not quite touching the brutal wound. “Not a scavenger’s work. This was targeted. The belly was torn first, the softest part, before the throat was crushed.”

Jack Tenrec shifted his weight, the leather of his bomber jacket creaking. He spat into the oil-slicked water. “Rex. Big one. Got a taste for easy, tethered prey.”

“Too easy, Jack.” Hannah stood, her silhouette against the neon haze both elegant and taut as a bowstring. “This is the third attack in two weeks. Always the best-stocked vessels, always at high tide when the dock is least manned. A regular T. rex is a force of nature, a tornado of teeth. This is… surgical.”

A shadow detached itself from a stack of leaking barrels. Hermes, his mechanical eye whirring softly as it refocused from the corpse to the surrounding rooftops. “Surgical and smart. It leaves no trail. The patrols hear nothing until the screaming starts. And the screaming stops very, very quickly.”

“So we’re hunting a ghost with six-inch teeth,” Jack grumbled, hefting his wrench. “Fine. Let’s go shake the jungle. Find its nest.”

“It doesn’t nest in the jungle.” Hannah’s voice was a whisper, her gaze fixed on the water lapping the dock’s pilings. “It comes from the sea.”

They followed her pointing finger. Embedded in the thick wood, just above the high-tide mark, was a single, serrated tooth. It was the size of a dagger. And it was not alone. Others formed a faint, irregular line along the docks, like macabre stepping stones leading from the wharf into the labyrinth of flooded avenues and half-sunken towers that comprised the city’s lower districts.

“It’s marking a route,” Hermes breathed. “Territory?”

“No,” Hannah said, a chill creeping into her bones that had nothing to do with the sea mist. “It’s being shown a route. This is a hunting run. Someone is guiding it.”

The trail led them not inland, but deeper into the city’s aquatic heart, to the Drowned Cathedral, a place of skeletal spires piercing the water’s surface. Inside the vast, flooded nave, the only light came from bioluminescent algae clinging to the ribs of the vaulted ceiling. Their boat drifted silently.

“This is a fool’s errand, Hannah,” Jack whispered, his eyes scanning the dark water. “A Rex can’t be trained. It’s all instinct.”

“You train any predator the same way,” Hannah replied, her hand resting on the pistol at her thigh. “With pain, and with reward.”

A low, resonant vibration thrummed through the water, a sound felt in the chest more than heard. It was answered by another, from a different direction within the cathedral. Then a third.

“Three,” Hermes said, his voice crackling with static. “Three separate individuals. Minimum.”

Terror, cold and precise, closed around Hannah’s heart. A pack. Tyrannosaurs did not hunt in packs.

From the inky water ahead, a shape rose. It was a head larger than their boat, water streaming from a maw lined with teeth like ivory scimitars. Eyes the size of dinner plates reflected the ghostly algae-light with a chilling, knowing intelligence. It did not roar. It regarded them.

Another head broke the surface to their left, and another behind them. They were silent, coordinated, cutting off escape.

“Someone,” Hannah said with deadly calm, “has been very, very patient.”

A fourth figure emerged, not from the water, but from a crumbling balcony above. Human. Cloaked in sleek, scaled hide. Valerius, a minor guild lord whose ambition was only outweighed by his cruelty. He held a strange, box-like device with a glowing antenna.

“Beautiful Hannah Dundee,” his voice echoed, slick and triumphant. “I’d heard your curiosity was as legendary as your beauty. A fatal combination.”

“You’re controlling them.” It wasn’t a question. Hannah’s mind raced, piecing it together. “The attacks on the docks. You eliminate your competition, and everyone blames a rogue dinosaur.”

“Control is such a crude term,” Valerius purred. “I… condition. High-frequency emitters cause them exquisite pain. Reward signals, coupled with the scent of blood and blubber from the docks, guide them to their targets. They’ve learned. They’ve
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