While Decker watched he saw Harry’s expressionless face start to palpitate. One of his unblinking eyes started to slide – not the pupil, but the entire organ – across his face, to now be situated on his temple. It stared unblinking at the goat. Another eye formed and popped open, this one on Harry’s cheek, before the head started to slowly turn.

The goat’s legs started to tremble, and its head dropped. It bleated constantly as it backed into the farthest corner of the room.

In the next second, Harry opened his mouth, wide, then wider than was humanly possible. From that dark hole, an explosion of black tendrils shot at the goat. The animal screamed in a voice that was too human for Decker’s liking.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, narrowing his eyes as if to try and shield himself from the horror.

The goat was dragged toward Harry, who started to grossly inflate into a mass of writhing and squirming blackness as the Shoggoth finally revealed itself. Perhaps it couldn’t maintain the pretense while it was focused on capturing its food, or needed to be in its primary shape to feed at all. Regardless, the thing now resembled a giant thrashing blob of putrid black flesh, with tentacles that were a mix of tendrils and muscular trunks. Some thrashed in the air, others pounded down on the ground, like elephantine legs. All the time, new organs formed and unformed over its bloated body – ears, eyes, mouths, not all human, and not all even from creatures the watching soldiers recognized.

A giant orifice formed on its side, and opened stickily. The goat was dragged across the cell and then stuffed inside. The hole closed over it. The animal’s shape could just be made out inside the Shoggoth’s form, and its screams were still loud over the speakers. Ford quickly reached out to shut off the sound just as the screaming turned into a wet crunching.

“Shit.” Decker couldn’t drag his eyes away from the horror. “Can it get out?”

Ford’s mouth turned down and he shook his head. “The room is a level-9 containment cell – reinforced, blast-proof walls, ceiling and floor, and nonporous to even liquids and gases. Harry isn’t going anywhere.” He folded his arms. “We need more time to study it. This thing is the true primitive, but we know it has some level of intelligence.”

“Intelligence?” Decker sucked in a deep breath, and blew it out hard, as if to expel the vision. He turned to the scientist, talking through clenched teeth. “I don’t care if it’s fucking Einstein; you just find me a way to kill them.”

PART 2 – Rise Up The Ancient Gods

Chapter 15

It was just ten-fifty pm when the two teams walked across the warm tarmac and headed for the square three-story cream building. Matt was in the lead team with Abrams, Tania Kovitz and Adira. The plane had been crowded but as it was continuing on to Cairo, only about fifty people disembarked in Alexandria – still, it was enough to give them cover, as there was a good number of Westerners in among the returning local businesspeople.