'I'm really sorry.'

His voice was so barely above a whisper that I almost didn't hear him as I got swallowed by the silence of the vast hallways. 'What?' I returned.

Nick was ahead. He had a torch in one hand, and his tranq gun in the other. Every so often the beam of the torch light shone through the glass cases, projecting shadows up onto the wall and he would twitch, pulling up his gun in readiness before he realised it wasn't a creature.

I still had the P.H.D; after we'd checked the immediate vicinity we'd go down to find the anomaly because we didn't want to get ambushed by a predator before we'd had the chance to set up a secure perimeter. Of course, the creature could have already gone back through– a part of me hoped that was the case and we wouldn't have to worry about any more deaths, but we were never usually that lucky.

'What happened back there,' the captain continued. 'And, what happened back at the A.R.C, I know it was really weird… I hadn't meant it to come out like that– I'm not usually like this–'

I looked at him over my shoulder, my lips unable to keep from curling up into a semblance of amusement.

'Oh what?' he said.

'Nothing,' I replied, 'it's just you're funny, you know.'

'You're laughing at me,' he pointed out, 'not with me.'

'Exactly.'

'I saw you in the window, alright!' he returned more firmly, in his whisper, 'and I noticed you. Last thing I want is everyone thinking I'm some sort of creep, on my first day.'

'Even me?' I returned.

He rolled his eyes and quickly said, 'especi–' He cut himself off like he hadn't meant to say it out loud.

His eyes darted nervously to me and I tried not to show the surprise in my face.

'Are you–' But I stopped too, suddenly unsure if I'd read the situation right and not wanting to look stupid if I hadn't. 'Um, you should know… I'm sort of… well.' I didn't know quite how to say in a way that didn't allude to my suspicions so I paused, thought for a second before I stated quite simply 'I'm engaged.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'Oh,' he returned with nod. 'Right.'

'Oh,' I echoed with a sudden second additional thought, 'and pregnant.'

His eyes slowly widened and dropped down to my stomach before he brought his gaze sharply up to my eyes like he wasn't sure if he should have looked or not. '…really?'

I flattened my baggy jumper over the small bump that had finally started to show in my tummy. 'Mmm hmm.'

'Oh, woah, um, congratulations.'

I just raised an eyebrow at him.

'So you're… pregnant and unarmed,' he finally continued in realisation.

I smiled. 'I'm not unarmed,' I informed him. He opened his mouth, his brow furrowed, but before he could question what I meant, I'd slipped my hand under my backpack and pulled out the 9–inch jawbone blade. 'See?'

'Where the hell did you get that?'

'… I'm telling you it's all in my file…' I answered.

A sound followed after, a rumbly sort of clanging and the captain immediately lifted a hand to his ear, spoke into his radio, and lifted his gun up to his shoulder.

Nick turned back to us. 'What was that?' he asked.

I just turned to look in the direction it had come from, not far from where we'd found the body which –because we'd circled through the exhibits– was now somewhere in front of us.

I was so used to being the first one to run towards noises in situations like this, that when the Captain streamed past me with even less hesitation for his own safety as I had, my eyes widened. Wait–what?

I followed quickly after him, turning the corner and running down the stairs into the corridor with a big sculpture in, just as Connor and Jensen appeared somewhere at the other end.

'Stay where you are,' Connor said, as a woman turned around from locking the doors, and walked straight into the gun.

She panicked, spinning around in our direction and taking a step before she even saw us. The captain raised his own gun, unknowingly repeating Connor's words, and the woman threw up her hands in surrender.

I tutted slightly, under my breath, and took a couple of steps towards her to block anyone's line of fire. 'It's alright,' I said calmly, 'who are you?'

'Dr Page,' she replied. She eyed everyone again before her attention fell back on me. 'Who are you?'

'Anna Havisham,' I said. 'You can– you can put your hands down were not gonna shoot you.' When she blinked back at me in confusion, I put my hands over my heart as though to convey my sincerity. 'No, no I promise,' I assured her.

'Okay,' she replied, slowly lowering her hands, 'um… I'm guessing you're some kind of… thieves.'

I glanced briefly over my shoulder to share a wide eyed and excitable look with Connor, before, grinning, I turned my head back to her. 'No, though that's cool, um… I'm a doctor too actually.'

'Of archaeology?'

'Medicine,' I said. 'Um… this is gonna seem weird… but have you seen anything.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Oh, you'd know if you had,' I told her, gently, 'bright lights, things moving in the dark… things with teeth.'

She shook her head. Her eyes moved off of their own accord down the hallway and she took a couple of steps back into the Egyptology section.

I followed, people filling around behind us trying to get in front of the body before she saw it, but it was too late.

She gasped. 'Marian…'

I whipped my own head back down to the body, in some sort of respectful way because it was like she had an identity now, and I sighed slowly. 'Oh, god, I'm sorry… did you know her?' When I looked back to my side, expecting an answer I suddenly realised she was gone. 'Doctor Page!' I called out after her, legs moving off as I broke into a run. If the creature was still out there it could just as easily eat her–or kill her just for the sport– and the more she ran the more likely it was going to notice her.

I thought I'd lost her once I reached the other side of the sculpture room, but I heard her footsteps skittering down the stairs through one of the entrances and I followed.

I hadn't realised I'd lost the group–or at least I thought I had– when I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and saw the familiar yellow whiteness of the light shining out from an anomaly trapped within the Sun Cage.

I heard Doctor Page's voice calling out and ran up to the doors to the loading dock. They rattled, but they didn't open. So I stood back, lifted my leg and kicked. My own momentum carried me inside.

Doctor Page was flattened against a wall of crates, eyes wide and staring up over the top of the boxes piled up opposite her. She whipped her head around to me, the noise of the doors slamming back against the wall echoed through the room and she gasped in fright.

I moved quickly towards her. 'There's something there!' she cried. My hand closed around her arm and I pulled her back towards the door.

'This way.' It would be easier to defend ourselves in front of somewhere to escape to. More than that it would be better if we could somehow force the creature to go back through the anomaly.

I pulled out my knife, glancing back to where I'd just come from to find Captain Becker in the doorway. He must have been right behind me the whole time, but he was stiff, unresponsive, as he stared at the anomaly wide eyed and terrified.

So he wasn't going to be very useful. I sighed. 'Stay behind me.'

She stood back, trying to make herself as small as possible when finally, from behind the crates, the creature rose up.

And it was beautiful. It had a head not unlike a crocodile but larger, with bluey green scales and these huge lateral eyes that found us quickly and kept us firmly in its gaze.

The captain jumped, reeling around to aim his weapon. 'The hell is that thing?' he asked.

I saw a diagram in my head. An anatomy of a crocodile. I knew the best way to kill one was to stab down through its brain just behind its eyes.

My grip on my knife tightened; just in case the captain wasn't ready to shoot yet and it came for us.

But, from across the loading dock came a noise, a sharp beep before a thunderous rumble sounded overhead and suddenly early-morning daylight was streaming through from the outside.

The creature turned it scaly head.

'No,' I said, 'no, hey! Down here! Come on, come and eat me!' But like I thought, it just wasn't hungry. It had caught sight of the pale blue sky and it jumped down off the top of the crates towards it. I knew I had to follow it.

By the time I'd run through the docking bay to the door, the creature was already outside. I ducked under the bay door and chased it out across the concrete, but it was much quicker than me and not interested in me, so I couldn't keep going after it or bring it back. I slowly came to a gradual stop and groaned in frustration.

When I got back to the loading bay, everyone else was only just coming through the doors there. I ducked back inside beneath the bay door and jogged over to Doctor Page. I put my hand on her arm. 'Are you okay?' I asked. She stared back at me, not blinking, like she hadn't even heard me. 'Okay…' I answered myself, 'I guess not. And you?' I continued, somewhat fearfully, as I turned my attention to Captain Becker.

He swallowed slowly, before he managed a nod. 'So-so, it's all true?'

Not having time for it, I nodded. 'Yes,' I said simply.

'What happened?' Nick asked.

'There was a… a creature,' the captain answered. 'It tried to-'

'It didn't do anything,' I explained, interrupting, 'it wasn't all that interested in us, not really, it was like it was waiting for us to do something. And it wanted to be outside, as soon as the doors opened it was like it didn't care about us at all. I tried to follow it, but its fast.' Faster than me– the woman who had once outrun a raptor. 'It was heading south, down the bank.'

'What was it?'

'It was the goddess,' Doctor Page said. 'Ammut.'

I couldn't help the way my gaze shifted, my eyes sharing a look with Nick of something crossed between disbelief and concern, and apparently she must have seen it, because Doctor Page finally straightened, my hand fell from her arm and she took a step forward towards the anomaly.

'I know what I saw,' she affirmed, 'okay? And it looked like that.'

I followed her finger, my mouth opened, as though to say something before my gaze fell on the stone carving she was pointing at.

'Look,' Nick returned, 'I believe you saw something Doctor Page–'

'Nick,' I interrupted. I blinked at the stone head a few more times before I finally nodded in agreement. 'Actually, that's pretty fucking close… What if that is her? We said right at the beginning, ancient civilisations all have their versions of monsters and creatures. Dragons, sea serpents, Egyptian gods... It looked like the depiction.'

'It was like a crocodile,' the captain added. 'But bigger.'

'Taller,' I agreed, 'but, um, it was both biped and quadruped. It was part of the lore that she walked both like beast and man.'

Connor waved his hand in the direction of the Sun Cage and pointed at the hieroglyphics, 'is that what this is about?' he asked like I could read it. 'What does it say, A?'

I glanced at him in confusion. I don't know where he got that idea from, I'd never studied any ancient language. Frowning, I replied 'I'm not Michael Shanks.'

He bobbed his head, 'Spader did it better,' he returned blasphemously.

'That is a fucking lie and you know it,' I said.

Jensen looked up from his phone. 'I've got to get back to the A.R.C,' he said.

Doctor Page stared right back at me in confusion. 'The Ark?'

'Not that one,' Connor replied nonchalantly.

'I've got to brief Lester,' Jensen continued. 'Becker, can you secure the area?'

I turned to face him before he could move away. 'You okay?' I asked.

He gave a nod. 'Yeah,' he said, 'I think so.'

I passed a brief smile and let him walk away to carry out the order.

'Connor,' Nick continued, 'stay here and see if you can work out what period the anomaly is linked too. And find out what Doctor Page knows about the Sun Cage. Anna…'

'We're going after it, aren't we?' I asked even though I already knew it was what would need to be done. We couldn't let it loose out there; it was central London, it was always busy and the creature would get hungry again eventually, and I had an inkling the creature didn't eat bamboo.

'I need your tracking skills.'

We headed off in the direction I'd seen it running and followed the road all the way down to an underpass. It seemed strange– off almost– that we'd come so far already and not seen a single sign of it.

We came up at the other side of the road, crossing quickly down Buckingham Street to head towards the river.

Logically, that was the best place to start.

Nick went through first, and catching a hold of the railing as leverage I swung round after him and started coming down the steps before I realised there was something smudged across my hand.

'Nick.' I came to a sudden stop.

He turned around. 'what is it?'

I held up my hand to show him the blood. 'How do we know? How do we know this is it? We're in central London anyone could have been stabbed round here last night.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'Did it injure itself, back in the museum?'

I shook my head. 'I don't think so.'

'So, it's a revenge killing in the doorway of a newsagents, or…'

'It's killed again,' I finished. A car alarm started to screech up ahead, and I turned sharply around to it.

'Come on.'

We continued down the steps, jumping off onto the next street where the source of the noise was coming from. Just as we were closing in on it, my phone started to ring in my pocket.

I quickly pulled it out and answered. 'Connor, seriously, it's not a good time right now.'

I could barely hear what was happening on the other end, and I had to put my other hand over my ear to block out any other noises. 'Why, you busy?' he returned. 'Thought you'd want to know, I just took a reading from the anomaly, I think whatever came through it is at least 55 million years old.'

'Eocene?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay, we've gotta know what it is! Search the databases. Let me know. We're heading south still, following a trail, think we've got it.'

'Action man said he's coming.'

'Alright.' I hung up, pushed my phone back into my pocket and went on towards the noise.