Exhaling a breath, she took a moment to take stock: her ribs, arm, and knee had all fallen quiet. Her arm and knee were both slightly elevated, and her ribs were supported by Clark’s broad chest. His arms were tenderly encircling her, and she could feel the steady rise and fall of his breath against her back. No, she realized, she wasn’t uncomfortable at all. The overwhelmed feeling fell away, surprise and gratitude rushing in.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“I translated for you at the hospital. I know everywhere it hurts. I just took the pressure off all those points,” he said, his voice somewhere between sleep and something that sounded suspiciously close to bliss. Then he leaned forward a little and kissed her temple again before falling back into position. “Goodnight, Lois.”
Feeling herself relax fully into him, she replied, “Goodnight, Clark.”
She chastised herself for doubting him. Honestly, what was she expecting, a scene from Ivory Tower? She tallied another point in Clark’s favor as evidence of his deserving the benefit of her doubts. In the tomb, with stone crumbling around them, he’d told her she knew him better than anyone else. And she was starting to feel like she really did.
Assuming she’d be too distracted at their proximity to really sleep, she started recounting mentally where everyone was during the mummy sightings.
But she hadn’t even gotten past Dr. Weeks’ whereabouts when she drifted into a peaceful, deep, healing sleep.*****
On the way to breakfast, they’d swung past Rupert’s tent, but he hadn’t been there. Lois had looked at Clark worriedly, but he’d said “Let’s see if he’s at the campfires,” and she’d anxiously set out on that path.
Even though it was early, the blazing Egyptian sun had already taken up residence high in the sky, heating the air and glinting off the sand.
It also helped make it easy to see, with only a brief look, that Carnahan
wasn’t eating with the excavation crew.
“He’s not here,” she said as soon as they’d approached the campfire area.
“Maybe we just missed him,” Clark replied. “The tents are a labyrinth. He could have taken a different path back.”
But she was sure that she’d taken the most straightforward route here. And she hadn’t heard anyone moving around them on the walk, either.
“Let’s get some food,” Clark suggested, walking her over toward Abo.
Abo was glad to see her and heaped her plate high. She smiled at him gratefully and turned to Clark. “Can you thank him for me?”
Clark looked at her, a cross between surprised and wary, and she rolled her eyes at him. “We both already know you can speak Arabic.”
He looked inexplicably trapped, and she asked, “Please? He’s the one that carried me away from that hole yesterday. He literally held me up when I couldn’t stand. He looked nearly as worried as Dr. Weeks had.” She didn’t say that he’d looked as worried as Clark, because no one had even come
close to that.
Clark’s face softened, and he turned to speak rapidly to Abo.
Abo placed his hand over his heart, said a few animated words to Clark, then spoke to her directly.
When he was through, Clark translated. “He said to tell you that he was happy he could help. He says you remind him of his sister, who is–the best translation I have for this is
opinionated–” Clark editorialized with a smile, “who he loves and looks out for. He says that she wouldn’t have liked it if he hadn’t done everything he could for you. He says he’s glad to see you looking better.”
Moved, she mimicked Abo’s gesture of her hand over her heart and repeated what she’d told him when he’d helped her. “Shukran. Shukran, Abo.”
He inclined his head and said a few words before turning back to whatever smelled so good on his grill.
Clark translated again. “He blessed you.”
They started the short walk from Abo’s cooking station to the campfires.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had offered her words that were so meaningful to them, and Abo had just freely given them to her.
But it seemed like the desert held many surprises for her.
Two days ago she couldn’t remember the grillman existed, and now she was already regretting that she hadn’t asked him his sister’s name. She made a mental note to get Clark to ask at dinner.
And as for Clark, she already knew that he would be her very favorite surprise from this trip.
“How about over there?” he asked, motioning to where Zaid sat.
“I think we should strategize a little. Is there anyone here you know doesn’t speak much English?”
Clark led them over to the far campfire where the two men who had been singing at dinner the other night sat together. Catching their attention, Clark gestured toward two overturned crates and the men both made welcoming gestures until Lois and Clark had both sat.
She dug into another round of Abo’s mouth-watering cooking.
One of the men had a little, stout-bottomed guitar with a bent neck that he plucked at effortlessly while eating. It reminded her of Gamal, the introverted artist who could paint the wind in a horse’s mane, but who couldn’t sell a painting in Egypt. These men, too, were clearly attached to their art. She hadn’t seen this man without his ornate little guitar by his side unless he had a bucket in each hand. Watching her breakfast mate’s fingers dance lightly over the strings, it seemed like he was terribly talented. He’d sounded good at dinner, but she knew that he likely wouldn’t be working
here if he’d been able to make a living playing his instrument. Maybe there would be an interesting human-interest sidebar piece here once they’d caught up with their mummy.
It seemed like an injustice that deserved attention that such talented people weren’t appreciated.
“Some of the men are talking about Dr. Weeks’ new order last night.”
Her eyes flashed over to Clark’s as he took a casual bite, as if he weren’t eavesdropping on a conversation at the next fire over.
“How can you even hear them?”
He seemed to ignore her question, in favor of listening in. “I guess after the cave-in, Dr. Weeks decided that we’d all been taking too many risks. He told everyone to pair up and not lose sight of their partner for anything but sleep and necessities."
“There
were two of us when we ended up in that cave-in,” she pointed out.
“Some of the men have also mentioned that,” Clark said wryly. “But others think they’ll have better luck up against the mummy in pairs.” He shrugged. “Dr. Weeks has to do something to try and make people safe; this is better than nothing.”
“I guess so,” she agreed half-heartedly. Then her mind jogged along to another query. “Where did you learn to speak Arabic so well, anyway?”
“The photographic memory helps,” he mumbled, his eyes on his plate.
“Sure it helps, but I can’t imagine you speak much in Metropolis. And I can’t tell the difference between how you speak and how they speak. It sounds exactly the same. You’re obviously practicing somehow.”
He shrugged, and she pressed on, not understanding why he wasn’t answering her about this.
“You sound like you’re
fluent. Are you not telling me that you were secretly born in Egypt or Yemen or something?”
He coughed, choking on his food, and she patted him on the back heartily.
“Thanks,” he said, when his throat was clear.
“Sure,” she said, and then went right back to it. “So?”
“I wasn’t born in Egypt or in Yemen,” he answered succinctly.
“Okay, so how–”
“Lois–” he started, but didn’t seem to have anything to follow it.
“Don’t you speak Chinese, too? You read that fortune from the cookie that time. The one about the horse.”
“That was Mandarin,” he said awkwardly.
“Okay, so Mandarin, Arabic, English. Can you speak anything else?”
His eyes were cast down, and he didn’t look like he was going to answer her.
“Clark,” she said with exasperation, “how many languages do you speak?”
When he finally looked up at her, the intense expression on his face was not what she expected to see. She’d imagined this was a skill being underplayed, or maybe leftover childhood trauma from a nerdy kid getting bullied for liking languages and books more than sports and cartoons. But this wasn’t that. This was something else. For him, it was something big, she could tell.
And he still hadn’t said anything.
“Clark?” she questioned more gently.
“I’d like to tell you the truth,” he said.
“Okay…” she encouraged, still stymied by his reaction.
“But I think it’s a longer conversation and one I’d rather have when we don’t have so many people nearby.”
Her curiosity was immediately piqued and she felt her reporter’s instinct come online
hard.
“I know,” he chuckled bleakly. “That’s like dangling a steak in front of a starving dog, but…could we talk about this later?”
“When ‘later’?” she asked immediately.
“Once we’re back in Metropolis,” he said. “The first day we’re back that nothing crazy is happening.”
“What could be happening?”
He shot her a knowing look. “You seem to have a way of finding yourself in…situations.”
“It’s called ‘chasing leads’!”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, you have a way of ‘chasing leads’ that lands you on a space shuttle set to explode or tied up in front of an incoming tsunami or trapped beneath a stage and hypnotized or hiding a fugitive in your apartment or running from your murderous doppelganger or–”
“Okay, I get it!” she cut him off sternly. “And why can’t you tell me now?”
His face dropped into a fretful pose again. “Because I’m nervous about sharing this part of myself. And because I don’t really want to tell anyone else,” he said, eyeing the other people around them.
He looked so earnest. And he clearly was nervous, his body language somehow both open and tense at the same time.
So she let him buy himself some time. “You have a week. And then you’re telling me no matter what’s happening. If it’s two o’clock in the morning and we’re trapped at the top of a pyramid still chasing this mummy, you’re telling me.”
“I don’t want anyone else to overhear this,” he reminded her, negotiating, even though it didn’t
feel like that’s what he was doing.
Maybe it was because he
wasn’t negotiating, not the way she would have been. He was just stating his needs. Because if there was something that had Clark this worked up, something that he felt was so valuable to protect that no one else could be around when he told her, then it was surely something worth keeping quiet.
“The first time we’re alone this week, then,” she amended. “And no running off to avoid being alone with me.”
“I would never
want to avoid being alone with you,” he said, his voice a little rougher, his cheeks suddenly a little flushed.
She felt his words land on her, cascading across her skin and pleasantly down her spine. But even as that new sensation built, an older anxiety surfaced.
“Clark,” she started, and he looked up at her, his gaze warm but alert to her tone. “The last time I was…
with somebody…and they weren’t telling me something, his secret was that he was the cause of basically all major crime in Metropolis. Just…” She paused, internally rolling her eyes at herself. Clark was a
good guy. She knew that. He was probably one of the
best guys. “Just tell me this isn’t that.”
“This isn’t that,” he assured her quickly, seeming to understand where she was coming from. Then his eyebrow quirked. “It’s sort of the opposite of that.”
What could be the
opposite of
that?!
“One more question,” she stipulated.
He nodded.
“The steak in front of the dog…was I the
dog in that scenario?”
He chuckled again, a mischievous look in his eyes. But he said, “How’s your knee feeling today?”
She wanted to play along, but her baggage wouldn’t let her rest.
“It’s really nothing terrible?” she asked, looking for a final reassurance.
He shook his head slowly. “I think it will shake you up, surprise you, probably make you mad at first, but… I truly don’t believe that you could think it’s an inherently bad thing.”
Clark had proven back and forth that he really knew her.
And she really did know him, even by his own admission.
He was a
good guy.
So whatever this was about him being a secret polyglot couldn’t be that bad, no matter how vulnerable and worried it seemed to make him.
She’d been right about giving him the benefit of the doubt so far.
So she’d extend that courtesy again.
“My knee’s better. Still stiff and still sore, but I can move on it. It’s not just throbbing anymore.” She decided to take another little leap of faith, flicking her eyes back up to his. “Probably because it was elevated all night.”
“Good,” he said, the look in his eyes quickly deepening into a smoldering affection that she had the urge to lean into. “I’m glad I could help.”
Just then the two men from across the campfire stood, taking their plates with them. The man who played the little pear-shaped guitar waved at them and pointed toward the tomb.
Lois looked around and realized that most of the other workers had roused themselves and were heading back toward the tomb.
She nodded back to the two musicians in thanks and gave Clark a self-conscious look.
He made a face that acknowledged their poor timing and stood, offering her a hand up, which she gratefully took.
But when he pulled her up, he stepped closer, landing her close to him.
Very close to him.
Her breath caught in her chest at their sudden proximity, and she wondered if he knew what effect he was having on her.
He winked and stepped back, picking up their plates.
He knew
exactly what he was doing.
“To the tombs?” he asked, mischief still in his eyes.
She didn’t know whether to kiss him or clobber him.
So instead, she turned and stepped past him, heading in the same direction as the men. “To the tombs,” she agreed, leaving him to deal with their plates.
She heard him chuckle as she outpaced him.
*****
A few minutes later, she looked around the group of men, clocking that Rupert Carnahan wasn’t here, either.
“Okay, now I’m worried,” she said, turning to Clark, who was in his usual spot beside her. Or maybe he was standing just a little closer than usual, she realized giddily.
He seemed to instinctively zero in on what she was talking about, looking around himself.
“He’s not always on-site,” Clark suggested. “He told us last night that he’s been tracking down books at different libraries.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, fighting a feeling of foreboding.
Clark’s head tilted as he looked at her. “Lois?”
“I just have this feeling that something happened to him.”
“Let’s head straight to chamber three, then. We’ll see if his statue is there, and then we’ll decide what to do.”
She nearly did a double take. “You believe me?”
“Your instincts are usually right,” he said, lightly shrugging.
When her face only registered more surprise, he nudged her shoulder a little. “We’re both looking for ways to be a better partner, right?”
“Ye– Yeah,” she stuttered.
“Okay,” Clark said. “So let’s see if we can find Dr. Weeks and get right in there.”
She turned to find Dr. Weeks walking up to the group, and she pivoted to stand immediately outside the tomb entry, waiting to intercept him before he went in.
He stopped a few paces out, turning back to the gathered men. Addressing the group per usual, Dr. Weeks only got a few sentences in before he gestured back toward the tombs and saw Lois and Clark waiting, expressions grim and eyes on him.
Dr. Weeks stopped speaking and sighed.
“Actually, I think I’d better check in with our resident mummy-hunters before we plan the day,” he told the group.
Walking over to them, he said in a low voice, “Well?”
“Have you seen Dr. Carnahan this morning?” she asked without preamble.
“No, not since last night,” Dr. Weeks replied.
“What time last night?” Clark asked.
“Oh, around eight o’clock or so. Just after dinner. Why?”
She flicked a quick look at Clark. They were the last ones to see Carnahan.
“Does he usually tell you if he’s going off-site?”
Dr. Weeks considered. “Usually. But then, he went into Luxor one night last week without saying anything about it, so maybe not.”
“That was to call his friend Perry, our editor, to ask for help,” Lois explained.
“So probably a unique circumstance,” Clark finished.
Dr. Weeks eyed them. “Are you telling me Rupert’s gone missing?”
“That’s probably premature,” Clark said quickly.
“But it’s probably worth us taking a look in chamber three before you let anyone else in,” she finished.
“You’re not going alone,” he said. “The tomb can’t take another cave-in.”
“Hey!” Lois protested immediately. “That wasn’t our fault!!”
But Dr. Weeks had already turned toward the men and called for Zaid and Bashir. He spoke to the group in Arabic, and more than half trudged off toward the enormous spoil heap of discarded rock. A handful of men sat where they'd stood, obviously on an impromptu break.
When Bashir and Zaid joined them, Dr. Weeks explained, “We’re going to check inside first today, then we’ll bring the men in.”
Zaid nodded, but Bashir asked, “Have you learned something?”
“No,” Dr. Weeks answered slowly. Then, slanting a quick glance back toward Lois, he asked Bashir, “Have you seen Rupert today?”
“No. I thought he was at the library.”
“Did he tell you that?” Dr. Weeks asked quickly.
“He did not tell you?” Bashir asked. Dr. Weeks shook his head. “It is not usual for him to leave without telling someone.” Bashir sounded as worried as Lois felt.
“Let’s head in,” Dr. Weeks said. “Grab flashlights in the first chamber,” he added for the reporters.
They followed him in, and Lois beelined over to the basket with flashlights she spotted in the corner. Rifling through quickly, she looked for the brightest light she could find. She was sick of being surprised in the dark down here. And her instincts were telling her that she would need better tools for this trip into the tomb. She came up with a newish looking Maglite and palmed it. Finding another hefty flashlight, she tried it out as well. Deciding it was brighter than the one they’d ended up with yesterday, she handed it up to Clark just as he came to stand beside her.
Her mind zig-zagged to another thought that her instincts had been pressing on her.
“Hey,” she said, clearing her throat as she stood. “One last thing before we jump back into mummy chasing and cave-in evading and whatever else Ancient Egypt has in store for us today.”
“Sure, Lois,” he said, catching her nervous tone.
“Last night, when Carnahan told us that Superman was here…”
He adjusted his glasses briefly, but kept his eyes steady on her. “Yes?”
“When I said that I was sorry I missed him, I didn’t mean that I was sorry like I would have been sorry last year.”
His brows climbed in response, and she tried to explain things more clearly, even as she felt herself falling into the classic spiral of the patented Lois Lane babble mode.
“I just mean that he and I are friends–and you and I are also friends–and I know that, as a friend, I’ve told
you that I’ve had feelings about
him that are in the realm of more-than-friends, but now that you and I
are more than friends, I’m not thinking about him as more than a friend.”
Don’t breathe, she told herself,
just get this out and get past it. “So when I said I was sorry to have missed him, I just meant that it would have been nice to see a friend while we’re so far from home. I just wanted to, um,
clarify that.”
She nearly shook her head. Clark hadn’t been scared off by her yet, but in moments like this, she honestly wondered
why.
“Thanks for making that clearer,” he teased, and she shot him a dirty look.
Then again, Clark could fend for himself.
She turned on her heel to catch up to Bashir and Zaid, who seemed to have taken their time coming in when he caught her hand.
Looking back at him, she saw that his smile had turned affectionate, and the feeling transferred over to her.
“I’m glad,” he said, holding her in place with the impossibly serious look in his eyes.
“Good,” she replied lightly, still arrested.
He gave her hand a little squeeze and gently released her.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said, moving toward the rest of the group as they crossed into the next chamber, pondering the conversation she’d just had.
That hadn’t gone as badly as she’d thought it would. She’d been fighting off the need to say something to him about Superman since Carnahan had brought it up last night.
Now she just had to fight off the escalating Lois-Lane-curse of her boyfriends being suspended, exiled, arrested, and worse.
Pushing away that morbid thought, she told herself to focus on the task at hand.
From the second chamber, she could see that the lights were already out again in the chamber beyond.
“Damn it,” she cursed.
Crossing her fingers that it wouldn’t be Carnahan, she trudged forward, overtaking Zaid and Bashir. About to cross the threshold into the third chamber, she remembered her earlier promise to Clark and stopped cold. But she hadn’t realized he’d been keeping pace with her, and she looked back just in time to see him nearly crash into her.
“Sorry,” she grinned unrepentantly.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely, clearly indicating he’d understood why she’d paused.
With Clark right behind her, she followed Dr. Weeks into the third chamber and cast her light right where she knew the statue would be.
Her masquerading mummy bandit hadn’t disappointed her.
Or rather, he
had.
“Oh, no,” she breathed.
“What?” Dr. Weeks asked.
“It’s a new statue,” she said sadly.
“How do you–”
“It’s in a different position.”
Dr. Weeks popped his head back into chamber two and asked Bashir and Zaid to stay put.
A thought suddenly occurred to her from the last time this had happened.
“Clark,” she whispered. “Come here.”
Dr. Weeks had taken several steps toward the statue.
“Dr. Weeks,” she whispered, as loud as she dared. “Come back.”
Clark was already at her side by the time Dr. Weeks returned to them.
“Listen,” she said. “We think that when we found Gamal’s statue, they were watching us through the rocks. Clark, do you think you can get around the near side of that rubble without your flashlight? The same way you did when you were chasing me?”
“I think so,” he said easily, looking at the path he’d taken before.
“Okay, here’s the plan. Dr. Weeks, order us back to chamber two. When we reach the door, we’ll kill our lights and creep around toward that peep hole. In the meantime, Dr. Weeks, you slowly make your way over to the statue with your flashlight on. Move your light around, cough, gasp when you see the statue, anything to keep their attention on you. But do not look at that buried column, even if you hear a noise. Got it?”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Dr. Weeks asked.
“It’s an opportunity to catch them. We’re just going to have to hope they don’t have any more dynamite on them. Now, order us out of the chamber.”
Dr. Weeks took a step back from them and spoke more loudly. “You’ve done enough. I want to see this one myself. Go back to Bashir.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Weeks,” Clark said, and they turned back to the door.
A few steps later, their lights were out.
Feeling his hand grasp hers in the dark, she heard him say, “Be careful.”
She squeezed his hand back and shot him a confident look and a quick “Good luck!” before dashing off toward the right. Keeping her footsteps light, she tried to make it around the long side as quickly as possible. She just had to make it to the set of doors with the broom and the broken light before the mummy impersonator did.
Dr. Weeks’ light had been guiding her, but as she turned the first corner and started down the path along the back of the rubble pile, the darkness strained her eyes. Even through the rock, she could hear Dr. Weeks calling out in a tentative voice, “Is that a statue? Or is someone there?”
For an academic, he wasn’t half bad at this kind of thing.
She came upon the first door, the one that never had any footprints in front of it, and saw that finally…it did. And that made sense, since so many people would have had to traverse it to dig them out when the floor caved in. It would call a lot of attention to it now if it were suddenly clear again.
But the important thing was that she’d gotten to the door before whoever might be watching at the peephole in the pillar.
That meant that if someone else was here, they were right in front of her now. She hefted her unlit flashlight in her hand, testing it as a weapon. It was heavier than the flashlight the mummy had knocked out of her hands with the shovel, and the grip had some kind of cross-hatching to make it less slippery. Less chance of this one going flying like the old one!
“If you’re not a statue, turn around and face me,” Dr. Week said in a tremulous, but raised voice. It sounded like he was advancing across the room at a snail’s pace.
She was coming up on the second corner, which should put the door with the broken light in sight, when she heard footsteps.
This was the same place she’d run into Clark last time.
She slowed her pace, creeping along the wall, and then took a fighting stance right at the edge of the corner, her feet as firmly grounded as they could be on sand, weight shifted off her injured knee. If the mystery mummy man was about to turn that corner, she wanted to be ready! But if it was Clark again, she didn’t want to catch him in an attack. He couldn’t get lucky enough to dodge her twice, right?
“Lois, is that you?” came a whisper in the dark.
She relaxed, stepping around the corner. “You didn’t see anybody?”
“No,” Clark said.
“They must know that we were on to them last time,” she reasoned. “There’s nothing here. Let’s get back to the statue.”
She went to move past him, heading in the direction he’d come from, but he snagged her softly around the waist and murmured, “It was still a good plan. And it doesn’t have to be a total loss.”
When she looked up at him to see what he’d meant, his hand came up to frame the curve of her jaw, and she felt herself blush, not expecting the sensation of sneaking around behind the camp counselor's back.
He kissed her, standing there in the dark, behind the fallen wall of an ancient civilization, and for just a moment, she forgot Egypt, forgot the investigation, forgot her aching knee and the men that were still after her.
For just a moment, there was only Clark.
He pulled away too soon, and she opened her eyes, not realizing that they’d fallen closed.
“To make up for the missed moment at the campfire,” he told her sweetly. His hand brushed along her jaw, and then he stepped back, holding out an arm, letting her proceed him back toward Dr. Weeks, who had stopped talking to the darkness.
She fought to tear the grin off her face as she rounded the last corner near the pillar and Dr. Weeks came into view.
But as her eyes fell upon the newest statue, she didn’t have to fight at all.
It was unmistakably Rupert.
But this time, the terror written across his face wasn’t the scariest part.
The sculptor had carved Dr. Carnahan’s right elbow bent.
His right arm was clutching his left.
And in that context, it was clear that his face wasn’t just afraid.
It was held in a rictus of pain.
She felt Clark stop just behind her as she flicked her flashlight back on, supporting the light Dr. Weeks had trained on the statue’s face.
“There wasn’t anyone there this time,” Clark reported to Dr. Weeks, who was still and staring.
“Thank you,” Dr. Weeks said in a rough voice. Then he called out, “Bashir! Zaid! Join us, please?”
The two men crossed the room in record time, and Bashir gasped when he saw the statue’s face and posture.
“Who knew that Dr. Carnahan had heart issues?” Lois asked pointedly.
“I did,” Dr. Weeks confirmed. “He had to disclose it on his onboarding forms when he started here. It wasn’t supposed to be serious.”
“I knew,” said Bashir. “He has pills. He takes them with his food.”
“So anyone who ate with him could have known?” asked Lois.
“Excuse me,” Zaid piped up uncharacteristically. “Dr. Carnahan eats in his tent. Many of the men would not have seen him eat.”
“So none of them would have seen him take the pill,” Clark completed the thought.
“So either Dr. Weeks or Bashir is the mummy,” Lois scoffed, frustrated, knowing that wasn’t right. “It doesn’t matter that both of them were standing right in front of us when it appeared the second time, I guess.”
“What if he had an episode?” Clark interjected. She looked up at him and he continued, “What if they’re carving people the way they look when they get taken? Maybe that’s why they look so scared and it looks so realistic; because the artist has a fresh memory of their face when they're afraid. What if Dr. Carnahan had some kind of a—a coronary episode, and they carved it?”
Her mind jumped ahead. “I didn’t see this statue in the room with the others, did you?”
Clark looked it over, “No.”
“That means they would have had to have carved it
after the cave-in, and maybe even after they took him. Bashir–”
But the other man was already examining the statue. “Yes…” he said, pressing a finger into it.
“Check the face, and the hand clutching the arm,” she suggested. Whether or not this statue had once been meant for someone else, those would have been the last details changed.
Bashir pressed lightly on the face, and she held her flashlight up for him to see it better, Zaid and Clark following her lead.
“Maybe eight hours,” Bashir said, still sounding worried. “Maybe six hours. But much of the rest of the statue, longer. Maybe twelve or sixteen.”
“We saw Carnahan close to midnight,” she recalled, doing the math. “So if this was carved to look like him after he was taken, it’s possible that he had an episode that they saw, and added it as proof that they really had him.”
“Oh, my friend,” Bashir murmured sadly.
“I think this might have just turned from a kidnapping story to murder,” Lois said in a low voice.
Zaid made a gesture, his hands cupped, palms facing upward, and said something in Arabic.
“I don’t think that a mummy is what we need to be saved from, Zaid,” Dr. Weeks replied bracingly.
Zaid shook his head, gesturing to the statue. “But the curse–”
“The curse isn’t kidnapping people,” Lois argued. “Another
person is doing that. And they’re the one stealing gasoline and knocking over ladders and causing cave-ins while dressed in rags. They’re dangerous, but they’re not magic, and they certainly aren’t a god.”
Barshir interjected politely, “I thought that Wahid and Gamal both left the Project after the mummy–” at Lois’ venomous look he amended his words, “after the person dressed as the mummy frightened them.”
“Actually,” Dr. Weeks said, “after we found Gamal’s statue, Zaid and I went to retrieve the men who had left, and I went to Wahid’s home.”
“What did you find?” asked Zaid anxiously.
Dr. Weeks shook his head. “His mother and sister said that they hadn’t seen him for two days.”
“Which aligns with when we thought he was taken,” Clark tracked.
Zaid hung his head, as if in mourning for his friend.
“If the main question is
who is doing this, I think there is another question to consider,” Bashir said thoughtfully. “What will it take for them to
stop?”
“We don’t need them to decide to stop; we need to catch them!” said Lois.
“No, Ms. Lane, I think Bashir’s point is well offered,” Dr. Weeks said resignedly, and Bashir tipped his head in recognition. “What else will happen before you’re able to stop them? If they don’t kill you first.”
“They haven’t been able to kill me, yet,” she said stubbornly.
“That’s true. But how many more rooms will we lose while they try?” he asked. “These chambers have survived for millenia, but they’re being destroyed because of us.”
“We aren’t the ones destroying them!”
“No, but we can
stop their destruction.” He gestured to himself and Bashir. “We’re conservators. The Project is here to preserve history for generations beyond. If we stay, we go against the Project’s mission. If we let this monster–even if he’s not a reanimated mummy, he is
still a monster–if we let him continue to chase us, we risk history itself. Not to mention endangering the lives of historians and preservationists and even the descendants of the people that are entombed here if I ask them to continue on.”
Dr. Weeks shook his head, his voice wavering. “I can’t do it.
He looked at Bashir, then resignedly back at her. “I think we need to shutter the Project, at least temporarily, until we can be sure that we can complete the Project’s mission.”
“But…won’t that mean you’ll lose your funding?” Lois asked.
Bashir looked to Dr. Weeks, but the man didn’t look back at him; he seemed unable to answer and unable to look up at them. Bashir’s face fell, his gaze moving to the ground, as well.
“What happens if you lose your grants because of this? Does the Project end?’
“It may not come to that,” Dr. Weeks said, but his voice was unsteady. But he took his bucket hat off and ran his hands through his hair; a sure sign that he didn’t have an answer.
So she pressed him. “Dr. Carnahan thought it would. He thought that just
rumors could shut you down permanently. If three people are missing and you have to close down before we find them, will you ever be able to re-open the Project?”
Dr. Weeks finally looked up at them, his eyes so laden with grief that it felt like there had been a death right in front of them.
“It would be unlikely,” he managed.
“Dr. Carnahan wouldn’t want that,” she argued.
“We don’t know what Rupert would have wanted.”
“We do!”
“It’s true,” Clark supported her. “He told us on the day we met.”
“He said that the Project
cannot be shuttered. He said it was too important. He would want us to try to do everything we could to try and save it. It’s why he had our editor send us here!”
“What would you propose we do, Ms. Lane?” Dr. Weeks asked, sounding at a loss. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
“Well, is it safe to leave all this stuff here underground to be lost for another hundred years? With another hundred years of floods and tour buses on top of it and grave robbers chasing it and whatever other crazy things happen around here? What else will history lose?”
This time Bashir edged back into the conversation. “Ms. Lane, do you have a way to save the Project without costing more lives?”
She took a breath, grounding herself. “You’re right that this isn’t safe anymore. The crew is being picked off one by one. But every time this happens, we’re surprised by it. We’re on the defensive. I think we need to go on offense.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think we should split into groups and search the tombs. Clark and I thought they were hiding out here before, and we were right. They obviously lost their setup and their main hideout, but I doubt they went far. They were evidently able to get enough materials to make a whole other statue and drag it in here again. I bet whoever it is is still somewhere in the tomb.”
“If they can take Wahid, they can take any one of us,” Zaid said timidly.
“But all signs have pointed to this being just one person. If we go in groups, we can take them!”
“Someone like this is dangerous. We do not have weapons,” Bashir reasoned.
“Neither do they! Think about it. They’ve mostly been using scare tactics. When I fought him, he had a shovel. And he ran from me! Then he led us into a trap with dynamite. He doesn’t have any real weapons. He’s using things he’s finding on-site.”
“Wait, wait,” Dr. Weeks interrupted. “When you
fought him?”
“We chased him in here before the cave-in,” Clark explained.
“We followed his path all the way into the tomb, just one room away from where you found us,” she took over.
“There were supplies there: chisels and quick-dry cement. He attacked Lois when she was looking at the unfinished statues.”
“And he wasn’t the best fighter, either. He was bigger than me, and he caught me by surprise. But he was a slow fighter, too. And it didn’t seem like there was anyone around to help him.” She paused, looking at them each in turn. “We can do this.”
Dr. Weeks looked at Bashir. Bashir gave a slight shrug, but his eyes were brighter than they had been a moment ago.
“I think you may be right, Ms. Lane,” he acquiesced.
“I’ll bring in the other men for the search,” said Zaid, taking his cue from Dr. Weeks.
But Bashir stopped him. “No.” Zaid looked at him questioningly. “If this is someone on the Project, that will create opportunity.”
“You’re right,” agreed Dr. Weeks. “If we bring in everyone, it will be chaotic. Anyone could slip by or slip out or sneak away to hide things.’
“So just us, then,” she said. “We’ll pair up.”
“It’s an uneven number,” Dr. Weeks reminded her.
“I could bring Abo?” suggested Zaid.
She looked at Clark, thinking that Abo seemed like a safe addition. Clark read her face and nodded back.
“We’re fine with that if you are,” she said.
“Abo is a good man,” agreed Bashir.
“I will go and bring him,” said Zair.
“Now, hold on everyone,” Dr. Weeks ordered. “We’re going to organize this. Zaid, once you get Abo, check the chambers along passage seven. I know we’ve been working in there a lot, but maybe that’s part of what started this. Bashir, let’s take passage twenty-one. Wahid and I were in there on the day this mummy-person showed up, so maybe that’s what triggered him to escalate things. And you two,” he said, coming back to Lois and Clark. “You’re going to take passage five. It looks to have had the least amount of flooding, so it should be relatively safe. But please,” he impressed, “please be careful.”
“We’ll be very careful,” Clark assured him.
“Which one is passage five?” she asked, eager to start.
“Do not go into passage twelve,” Dr. Weeks continued. “That’s the passage that leads to the caved-in section. You’re taking the path that’s on the next wall, over there.” He gestured behind the pillar buried in rubble.
“The passage with the broken light,” she said. “Got it.”
“One of the lights is broken?” Dr. Weeks asked, frowning again.
“It went out after Wahid’s statue was placed in there. Maybe they didn’t see it in their path?” she suggested.
Dr. Weeks’ frown deepened. He turned to Zaid. “I think we should take an inventory of the lighting throughout the tomb when all this is over. We should turn them all on before we get back to business.”
Zaid nodded.
“Good,” said Dr. Weeks. “Is everyone clear where they’re going? Not toward the cave-in,” he reminded Lois pointedly.
“Passage five,” she agreed, turning on her flashlight.
“Alright, then. Good luck, everyone. Be alert. Call out if you find anything,” Dr. Weeks said.
They all agreed, they split up, and then they ventured into the depths of the tomb.
The hunt was on.
