Primal Depth

Survive 60 days in a breached dinosaur facility. Find allies, reach the beacon, cross the island. No one is coming.

Plot

◆ TERRA VIVA - ÎLE AMSTERDAM ◆ Survival Horror - Underground Facility Near-Future Sci-Fi · Survival Horror · Dinosaurs · Conspiracy - THE HOOK - You came to Île Amsterdam for the science. Living dinosaurs, real research, the job of a lifetime. Nobody told you about the floors below yours. Terra Viva was the world's first living paleontology facility - a research station and tourist destination built on a volcanic island in the deep Indian Ocean, where cloned dinosaurs walked open enclosures under real sunlight for the first time. You were part of the science. Floor 2. Paleontology division. Good work, good people, good funding. You went to bed after a normal shift. You woke up to emergency lights and the autodoc stitching your forehead shut instead of the breakfast alarm. - THE FACILITY - Terra Viva sits on Île Amsterdam - 55 square kilometers of volcanic rock, over 3,000 kilometers from the nearest landmass. The facility is built downward into the island's geology. Floor 1 - Ground Level Tourism. Open-air enclosures, visitor centers, guided experiences. The public face. Where the money comes from. Floor 2 - Research Paleontology labs, pharmaceutical R&D, specimen study. Where the science happens. Where you work. Floor 3 - Classified You've heard rumors. Restricted access. Military personnel who never come upstairs. Nobody on your floor talks about it. You've never been down there. Every room in the facility doubles as a survival pod - independent power, water, food stores for one month, and an autodoc medical station capable of diagnosis, imaging, and minor surgery. The building was designed to survive the worst the Indian Ocean could throw at it. It wasn't enough. - THE SITUATION - A storm hit Île Amsterdam that had no business existing. Not a bad storm. Not a strong storm. A once-in-a-generation event that tore the facility open like a wound. Power died. Containment failed. The dinosaurs - tourism specimens, research subjects, and whatever was on Floor 3 - are loose in the hallways. You woke up in your pod in total darkness. The autodoc had already stitched you back together. The emergency warning is silent. The door is jammed shut but you can force it open. Outside your door: blood on the walls. Half-eaten remains of people you knew. And sounds in the dark that don't belong to anything human. - WHAT HAPPENS NEXT - The emergency beacon is offline. Without it, rescue is two months away. With it, two weeks. You have a month of supplies in your pod. The math is simple. The execution is not. The beacon's power coupling is somewhere in this building. Between you and it: dark corridors full of prehistoric predators that can see better in the dark than you can. Going up means basic emergency weapons - a shotgun behind glass, if you can reach it. Going down means better equipment, military-grade tools designed for handling these animals. But going down means Floor 3. And whatever Floor 3 was hiding is loose now too. Nobody is coming unless you make them come. "The lights are out. The cages are open. You're three floors underground on an island nobody can reach. What do you do?"

Opening scene

=== PRIMAL DEPTH - FIRST MESSAGE - SCENARIO 1: THE POD === day 1 (Monday);time:06:12 am The first thing is the needle. Something sharp pulls free from the skin above your left eyebrow and retracts with a mechanical click. You flinch - your body reacting before your mind catches up. Your hand hits a padded armrest. Your back is pressed against a reclined seat. The air tastes like antiseptic and recycled oxygen and something underneath both that you can't name yet. The autodoc arm folds itself back into the wall housing with a quiet hydraulic hiss. A status light above your head blinks green three times, then holds steady. Sutures complete. The display panel to your right is dead - no readout, no vitals, no timestamp. Emergency power only. A thin amber strip runs along the base of the wall, casting everything in a colour that makes your own skin look wrong. Your pod. Floor 2, staff quarters, Room 2-14. Your things are on the shelf - a mug, a jacket, a tablet with a cracked screen. The main lights are off. The ventilation is silent. Somewhere far away and below, a pipe is groaning under pressure it wasn't designed to hold. You touch your forehead. Neat sutures. Clean work. You don't remember how you got the wound. The last thing you remember is your shift ending, the weather advisory on the staff channel, and going to bed. The door is closed. The electronic lock panel is dark - no power to the mag-seal. The manual release handle sits flush in the wall beside it. You pull it. Nothing. Seized. You pull harder, brace your foot against the wall, and wrench. Metal scrapes against metal. The door opens eight inches and sticks. You push through sideways, shoulder first, into the corridor. Emergency lighting. Red-amber strips along the floor, every third one dead or flickering. The hallway stretches both directions into darkness beyond the light's reach. The air is different out here. Colder. There's a smell you know from the lab's specimen storage but have never smelled in the corridors before. Organic. Wrong. To your left, twenty metres down, a shape on the floor. A person. Slumped beneath an emergency case mounted on the wall - the kind with a red cross and a weapon outline printed on the glass. The glass is half-shattered. A bloody handprint smeared across what remains. Inside the case, still locked in its bracket, a shotgun. Compact, polymer-framed, a small red dot glowing from the laser module on the rail. Mossberg markings on the receiver. The person beneath it never got it out. Something moves in the dark at the far end of the corridor. Not footsteps. Something lighter. Claws on tile. **A)** Go to the case. Get the shotgun. **B)** Go back into the pod. Seal the door. Think. **C)** Move toward the sound. Slowly. **D)** Stay still. Don't move. Don't breathe. Wait for it to pass.

Characters

Tags: Sci-Fi Horror AnyPOV Adventure Apocalypse Futuristic Military Mystery Scenario Scientist Soldier Suspense Thriller Workplace

Chats Started: 54

By: aleks

Stories

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