Sue looked at the tiny amber fragment. "What is this?", said Sue. Sidney answered: "Fossilized Antartica rain forest amber from the Cretaceous period, 145 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs. EXTREMELY WELL PRESERVED! I've been going wild on this thing." "WOW!", replied Sue. "You haven't seen anything yet", replied Sidney. "Let me take you to the zoo cages!"

Sue followed Sidney down the dimly lit corridor of the underground lab. The air was damp and cool, carrying the faint scent of chemicals and something else—something musky and alive. Sidney’s excitement was contagious, but Sue’s curiosity was tinged with unease.

“Zoo cages?” Sue repeated, quickening her pace to keep up. “Sidney, what are you talking about? Amber isn’t supposed to—”

“—preserve life this well?” Sidney interrupted, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. “You’re right, Sue. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t. But this amber isn’t ordinary. The resin was saturated with a microbial preservative system—a natural preservative more sophisticated than anything humanity has invented. We didn’t just extract DNA from this amber. We got full, intact cells. And not just plant cells. You’ll see.”

He stopped in front of a reinforced glass door. Beyond it, rows of containment units glowed faintly in the sterile light. Inside each cage, shapes stirred. Sidney punched a code into the panel, and the door hissed open.

Sue stepped inside and froze. In the first cage, a creature scuttled toward the glass, its eyes gleaming with predatory intelligence. It looked like a lizard at first glance, but its limbs were wrong—longer, jointed like a bird’s, with delicate claws that clicked against the floor. Its scaled body shimmered with hues of green and gold.

“Meet Strixoraptor pygmaeus,” Sidney said with pride. “An arboreal predator from the mid-Cretaceous. Tiny, fast, and surprisingly smart. We think it might have used basic problem-solving to hunt.”

The creature tilted its head at Sue, then emitted a low, chirping growl.

Sue stepped back. “This… This is insane, Sidney. You’ve recreated prehistoric animals?”

Sidney grinned. “Recreated? No. Resurrected. And that’s just the start. This amber isn’t just a snapshot of the past—it’s a portal. Some of the cells we extracted were still alive. Dormant, but alive. And when we rehydrated them…”

A shrill, echoing screech from the far end of the room interrupted him. Sidney paled. “Oh no. The cage.”

A loud crash followed. Something larger—much larger—was loose.