Baxter sat on the old wooden bench, the paint peeled from years of the blazing heat and the weathering from the sand blown by the harsh wind. The wood on the bench had long been rough and falling apart, it would have been extremely unlikely for anyone to have used this bench in almost a hundred years now. The heat was simply too much and the surrounding was far too dangerous for anyone to take a moment to sit. Even then the bench was so coarse one would almost certainly prefer citing in the sand. Bax didn't mind the bench's state, however, thanks to his long, tough leather overcoat. While he was used to the heat from years of wandering the deserts in that very outfit, it didn't bother him now, in fact, a cool breeze caressed his face. With his eyes closed and his typical emotionless look on his old, weathered face, Baxter sat, breathing in and out. He was at peace, or so he thought.

A mere few feet in front of him the sand ended abruptly, being replaced by dark soil and dense greenery. It was like a tiny rain forest, not that any of the modern locals would know what that would look or feel like. Reaching out to almost a minor mile to each side in front of him, and a poor 3 miles ahead of him, the sight from above made the greenery seem laughable. Like a tiny island of green in a sea of sand. Since they had landed Baxter had come to appreciate it much more for the breeze and beautiful view it provided. His partner appreciated it for... other reasons.

Deep from within the trees a tall, dark skinned woman came stomping through the mud into view. The bottles and phials that were hooked onto her lab coat clinked together as she moved. Her large backpack bounced up and down while her hands rested on the straps just as a large grin rested on her face. Baxter's expression remained emotionless as the young woman approached him.

"I thought that you got lost, Anabell." He said dryly.

"You wish!" She responded as she knelt down and unrolled a rubber sheet onto the bench. "The stuff I found in there is way too good to waste on a scientist clumsy enough to get lost."

"I thought you were s'posed to be lookin' for signs of the Ambassador."

"Well, I was, and I think I might have found... something" She said defensively. "While that's simply baffling in its own right, this is simply AMAZING!"

Anabell thrust a bottle into Baxter's face, barely leaving any room for him to observe it. He did not flinch, he actually remained completely unamused. Crawling inside the bottle was a small, scaled, brown creature with tiny beady black eyes, black stripes down its back, tiny legs, and a tail.

"Its a skink."

"Its a TINY skink! Even the hatching skinks in the desert are twenty, maybe thirty times bigger than this! Further more, my testing implies their basic DNA has undergone NO significant changes, meaning that whoever did this was trying to set up a habbitat for this creature and possibly other Last Era animals. There's even an expansive irrigation system capable of keeping the habitat alive, which is NUTS considering-"

"Anabell, did you find any sign of this lunatic or the ambassador?"

"Well..." She said hesitantly before producing a phial full of black powder from her pocket. "I did find the Ambassador..."

After a moment of both of them just staring at the phial, Baxter spoke up.

"It isn't."

"I'm afraid the tests suggest that it is."

"How exactly does a two hundred and forty pound man get turned completely to ash?" Bax said in a rare example where he actually expressed any sort of feeling, in this case confusion.

"Well, actually it was only one hundred and twenty pounds since I found bits and pieces of his lower half scattered about the environment."

Bax stared at her, speechless, but only for a second.

"So one, A jungle pops up over night in the middle of the desert, two, the N.E.U. ambassador just so happens to wind up dead in the exact same area. Only a week after a village of artificial humanoids pop up over at ground zero, a hundred miles away, this same, villiage was responsible for tearing apart another ambassador. Are there any odds these things aren't related?"

"Its highly likely that they are, but unless you know of any paramilitary factions with highly advanced scientific knowledge and perfectly functioning Last Era tech than we have nothing to go on."

"What kinda- wait." Bax stopped suddenly as if remembering something. "Have the scientists at the N.E.U. pick up on your work from here, I'll call the car out."

"Where are we going?" Anabell asked.

"One of the prewar military bases in Utah housed the apprentices to the greatest scientists the Last Era had to offer. If someone got a hold of the information and technology there..."

"They could perform borderline miracles."

"Pack up your gear." Baxter said in a determined tone. "We're heading west."
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High all! This is the first draft of chapter one for a project I'm working on.
Any and all feedback is appreciated since this is a very early version.