The Fossils Live - Carrie Ray

One minute, fourteen-year-old Robert was in his room, the blue light of his PlayStation fading as he drifted off to sleep with his favorite hunting knife on his nightstand; the next, he wakes up in the sweltering, high-stakes reality of the Cretaceous period with no explanation other than a lingering static in the air. This first-person survival thriller follows Robert, a skilled hunter and self-taught mechanic, as he realizes he has been dropped into a "hardcore mode" reality where the predators have lethal, instinctual AI and there are no save points. The narrative focuses on Robert's mechanical mind as he uses 21st-century logic to stay alive, employing his serrated blade and his knowledge of torque and tension to engineer primitive traps and pulley-system shelters. Instead of panicking, he uses his hunter's intuition to mask his smell and navigate the waxy fern forests, calculating every move with the precision of a strategist to outsmart a world of ten-ton apex predators that are very much alive.