Crocodile -2000- (2026)

He settled back onto his mudbank, the one he had guarded for two thousand years before this moment. He closed his bad eye.

Hunger. That was all that was left. The oldest, stupidest, strongest thing in his brain.

Two thousand pounds of muscle exploded from the mud. The man from the disc had time to whisper, “But you’re just a—“ crocodile -2000-

But somewhere, in a timeline that would never exist, a team of scientists stared at a blank screen and whispered: “What happened to Unit 7?”

K’tharr, the river’s oldest crocodile, was not a beast of myth or magic. He was just old. Older than the mud he napped in. Older than the village built from reeds. He had seen pharaohs who were not yet called pharaohs rise and fall. His left eye was a milky white cataract, his hide a mosaic of scars from hippo tusks and rival jaws. He was two thousand pounds of patience and hunger. He settled back onto his mudbank, the one

He was not a guardian of history. He was not a hero. He was just a crocodile, doing what crocodiles do.

Then the disc went dark.

K’tharr’s jaws, strong enough to crush a turtle’s shell, strong enough to hold a drowning ox, closed around the man’s middle. The white suit cracked. The clear helmet shattered. The stick flew into the water, hissing impotently.

The man looked into K’tharr’s one good eye. “You don’t… understand. I’m from the year… 3000 AD. You were supposed to be a specimen. Just a… crocodile.” That was all that was left