I do not own The Mummy...only Joan.
Alex and Joan O'Connell stood overlooking their excavation site. Alex, twenty, and Joan, eighteen, both playing hooky from their Harvard and Yale educations, stared steadily at the colossus bust of Emperor Er Shi Huangd. Joan cocked her head to the side and stared into the stone eyes of the Emperor.
"Do you suppose the Emperor's real eyes were that cold?" She asked her brother. Alex smiled and patted his sister's shoulder, not answering her question but acknowledging it at least.
Alex, a husky, handsome youth, and Joan, a feisty, blossoming young woman, both shared their mothers heart shaped face and their fathers lopsided smirk. But these were the only common traits they shared. Alex had their father's steel-blue eyes and unruly brown hair. Where as Joan had their mothers dark brown eyes, wavy brown/black hair, and full lips. Neither sibling looked like a evy league college students, especially dressed in their current attire. Alex wore a brown leather jacket over an olive green shirt, and khaki trousers with brown boots. Joan wore a black leather jacket over a fitted white shirt, tight black trousers (much to Alex's annoyance) and black boots that reached her knees. Each carried a satchel of archaeological tools (Alex's slung over his shoulder. Joan's, around her waist.) And their respective weapons at their hips. (Alex, a Browning nine mille-meter, and Joan, a pair of Smith and Wesson Model 10's.)
Alex's had a five-day growth of beard that gave him a more authoritative look then most twenty year old's. Though Joan would never allow him to order her around, this he knew all to well. They had agreed upon the start of the project that they would be equal partners.
From time to time, Alex would refer to pages in a battered, leather bound journal. As Alex did this, Joan watched over the crew of Chinese diggers. The other crew had discovered a pair of stone stairways that indicated a structure was buried under the colossus. With a generous amount of TNT, they had cleared both stairways in a matter of hours.
Looking up from his journal Alex called down, in Mandarin, "Chu Wah, have you found the door to that tomb yet?" The digger, who was not much younger then Joan herself, looked up and called back, also in Mandarin, "No Boss! Still looking!"
From behind them echoed a distant voice: "Alex and Joan O'Connell…!"
"Great!" Joan groaned under her breath. "Wilson's back!"
"Be nice, Joan!" Alex chided his sister. It was no secret that she didn't trust Professor Wilson. Not even Joan, herself knew why, she just didn't. But she wasn't going to let Alex go off to China with Wilson without her as backup. Unbeknownst to her, Alex also had an ulterior motive for bringing her along. He wanted her there of course, but he also didn't want her to rat him out to their parents.
Joan rolled her eyes and called down to the workers in Mandarin as well. "The 'Professor' will pay one hundred U.S. dollars to the man who discovers the entrance!"
Alex chuckled under his breath at the cheers that came from the workers.
"And what if Wilson doesn't have said 100?"
"Alex…" Joan said in a soothing voice. "Just look at how motivated they are now!"
Alex shook his head and nudged her shoulder. "Just pray that the guy who finds it doesn't get killed." The siblings smiled at each other and walked off to meet Roger Wilson.
Wilson, a balding, white-haired man in his early sixties, wore a white shirt with suspenders and chinos, and he too was layered with the dust of these near desert like conditions. He received a warm hug from Alex, patting him on the back and smiling. Wilson then turned to Joan with outstretched arms. Joan accepted the hug reluctantly, putting on a convincing façade of warmth and care like her brother.
"What a relief you are here." Alex grinned at his sister and Wilson, grateful that she wasn't being rude. "You're a couple of days late, Professor- we were beginning to think you'd run into bandits."
Joan looked over to Alex with a look that dripped 'if only we where that lucky.'
"I appreciate your concern, dear boy," Wilson said "But it was nothing so glamorous- we simply had some minor difficulties lining up proper supplies."
"Oh what a shame." Joan said with a frown. Wilson thought she had meant she was sorry he had difficulties, but Alex knew what she really meant and shot her a glare.
Alex handed his mentor a canteen and the man gulped from it, then the professor's eyes took in the excavation that had been made in his absence. "Very good, you two. Fine work indeed."
"Thank you, sir" Alex said proudly. Joan just nodded.
Wilson put a hand on each O'Connell's shoulder. "You know, when I saw you both standing on that mound, surveying your kingdom, so to speak…" He chuckled. "…I thought for a moment there I was looking at your parents. You are definitely Rick and Evelyn O'Connell's children."
Joan couldn't help but grin; she loved it when people said that she looked like her mother. But of course Alex had to go and ruin her moment of pride by saying, "Let us hope after this discovery, they will be known as Alex and Joan O'Connell's mother and father."
"What a powerful gaze our friend has…" Wilson said as he looked at the exposed head of the Emperor. "…My colleagues at the museum were of course thrilled when I told them you'd discovered the Er Shi Huangdi Colossus, but they have the, uh, well, usual questions expected from those who fund such expeditions."
Alex smirked. "They want to know when we are going to find the tomb." Joan carried on where Alex left off. "They want us to get in there and find the good stuff for them."
Wilson smiled at the sibling's frustrations, both not realizing that the professor found it amusing when they spoke idiomatically like their father in the cultured accent of their mother.
"Dear boy… and girl," Wilson began placing a hand on their shoulders, "you can't let the bureaucrats get you down. Not if you want to last in this game…you'll find the entrance, I know you will. I have the utmost confidence in both of you."
Alex grinned. "Thanks, Professor. You believing in us, well…it means a lot. Right Joan?"
Joan smiled a convincing smile. "Of course."
Alex and Wilson's eyes met and Wilson smiled at his protégé. Alex wondered why his own father didn't treat him with this kind of respect or warmth.
The moment was broken by a shout from below. Joan pulled Alex's arm so that they could see into the pit and saw Chu Wah looking up excitedly as he pointed to the tomb's entrance, at the bottom of the cliff of earth they'd excavated below the partially exposed Colossus.
"Boss!" Chu Wah yelled in Mandarin. "I found the door boss!" Then in English: "I get the hundred smackers, right?"
Joan and Alex laughed. "Indeed you do, Chu Wah!" Joan yelled down to him.
"Grab the dynamite!" Joan told Wilson "They've found the entrance…and by the way, you owe Chu Wah a hundred bucks."
"I do?"
"You do."
Alex chuckled and shook his head at his sister. "You are horrible."
"At least I know how to motivate a man." Joan said quietly enough for only Alex and Wilson to hear. This caused both men to explode with laughter.
Joan smiled to herself, grabbing her satchel before charging off, leaving Wilson to ask Alex how he had incurred this debt, not having been there.
"Professor, do you really have to ask?" Alex said placing his journal into his satchel and smiling after his sister.
"No, I suppose not." Wilson chuckled as Alex raced after his sister.
Within minutes the O'Connell's were back, and moved Wilson to a safe position, and advised him to cover his ears, which he did, as did Joan and Alex. Then a huge explosion sent dirt and rock spewing upward.
Both O'Connell's grinned at each other, before Alex looked to the professor. "You ready to make history, Professor?"
Wilson chuckled. "Indeed I am. I have waited a very, very long time to make it…"
And they walked toward the stairs that had been installed over two thousand years before, by slaves whose bones had become one with the earth the modern-day diggers had just disrupted.
Both Alex and Joan held flashlights in their hands, Alex and Joan led the way into the tomb with Wilson just behind them, followed by Chu Wah and a pair of Chinese diggers. Daylight slanted in through the deadfall of beams and structure caused by the blast. Despite the dynamite-created clutter, the space was too large and too dark to see much of anything. No one had set foot in here for many centuries…
…So why did both Alex and Joan sense something was wrong?
"Move!" Joan said, but Wilson froze, and Alex had to grab him by the shirt and yank him forward, just as two wooden arms, each affixed with a spiked plate, swung down from the ceiling, smacking together like huge cymbals right where the professor, his prize pupil and his prize pupil's sister had been standing.
Alex looked at Joan who blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Apparently the Emperor wasn't big on houseguests." Alex said causing Joan to smirk. "Really? You think?" She said before Alex went on to say, in Mandarin, "Stay together!"
They cautiously descended a long, wide stone stairway with many massive stone beams at landings every dozen steps or so. Alex had Joan stand so close next to him; one would have thought they were conjoined twins. Ahead of them Joan saw a shadowy figure, mostly hidden by a beam just below them, who seemed as if it were standing waiting for them, positioned to pick them off. Joan nudged Alex and nodded to the figure. Alex stopped the rest of the party with an upraised hand.
O'Connell's removed their sidearm's and Alex called, "You can come out now. We see you."
No answer.
Joan looked to the others and motioned them to stay put. Then Alex and Joan went down to the pillar. Joan and Alex cocked their guns; the sharp sounds seemed defining in the silent room. Alex motioned for Joan to go around one way while he went the other. With their guns leading the way, both could see the figure standing there, but slumped; and then their flashlights showed them who-or what- there one man welcoming committee really was: a corpse. Upon seeing it, Joan gasped. The skelington head was bowed under a safari hat, the very old corpse was stuck to the beam, impaled by an Oriental throwing knife. On the rotting khaki shirt were initials: CB.
Alex went over to Joan and hugged her to him. "It's all right!" He called, his voice echoing, and the others joined them by the pillar. Alex looked over at Wilson, who was patting Joan's shoulder. "It's Sir Colin Bembridge, I am almost certain."
Wilson frowned. "How in God's name did he get in here?"
"I don't know. Must be a way in we don't know about."
The head of the Bembridge Scholars was known to have gone searching for the tomb of Er Shi Huangdi, making several expeditions, the last one some seventy years ago, from which he never returned.
"Well," Wilson said, nodding toward Alex's satchel, "you can thank the old boy for that journal of his."
Alex nodded, if he hadn't discovered the long forgotten book in the archives of the library at Harvard, this expedition wouldn't have happened.
"Thanks." Alex said softly to the corpse before holding Joan out to him at arms length. "You alright to go on?" He asked. "Do you want me to have Chu Wah take you back up top?"
Joan looked up at him and shook her head. "No, I am fine." She smiled, "your not getting rid of me that easily, brother dearest."
Alex chuckled before going on, "somebody left him here," Joan and Alex's gut's wrenching with sympathy for the poor bastard, "as a warning."
"Unfortunately for Sir Collin," Wilson said, "he's not the dead man we're looking for. He won't make us rich and famous…Let's keep moving, shall we?"
Joan didn't like Wilson's lack of sympathy for Sir Collin. If she didn't hate him before, she did now. 'Cold heartless basted' she thought to herself.
Alex nodded, but his next step depressed the floor tile, setting something strange and wonderful into motion: dumping accumulated sand, skylights slid back one by one, allowing shafts of sunlight to cascade down, thanks to the dynamite clearing away so much of the roof of the mausoleum.
Now the awestruck group got a sense of the enormity of their find. The space was vast and entirely covered by terra-cotta warriors, many with terra-cotta horses, standing at attention and lined up on wooden-plank floor to stretch into the dimmest recesses of the tomb. Oddly, the soldiers seemed to face a large open space at their center…
Beside Alex and Joan, Wilson looked from terra-cotta face, to terra-cotta face. "Incredible…" he said in awe, "…no two faces are alike. Can you imagine how long it must have taken to cast all these? What sort of artist they must have had!"
Joan shook her head. "Not artist, if the ancient legends are to be believed- more like sorcerers." Alex nodded in agreement.
"Surely the two of you don't believe that."
But they did. They had reason to. Alex said, "They weren't cast, Professor- trust me, they were cursed."
Wilson snorted a laugh. "Don't tell me you both actually believe such poppycock! What sort of tales did your parents tell you at bedtime? Oh, don't remind me- I've heard the wild stories flying around Cairo about your parents, and mummies being raised from the dead to walk among us."
They did more then just walk, Alex and Joan thought simultaneously. They had both been there- the had been Imhotep's prisoners, and they had fought side by side as children of eight and ten, with their father, to defeat the Mummy and his minions. But in their minds they could see their mother, with her finger to her lips in a shush fashion: "Family secret, you two. Family secret…"
"Professor," Joan said, "You have really got to stop reading our mummy's mummy book's." Alex laughed once, sometimes it frightened him how often they where on the same wavelength.
Wilson, giving the girl an annoyed glance, moved ahead, and both Alex and Joan fell in with him, the Chinese trio behind them. The party walked down the rows of terra-cotta soldiers and horses.
They walked on in complete silence, until Chu Wah stepped on another tile, triggering a blast of green gas that shot up from the floor and into his startled face. He began to choke and gag, and his skin blistering horrifically.
And then he collapsed.
"Chu Wah!"
Alex and Joan ran quickly to their loyal crew captain and knelt. Alex checked for a pulse, looking up to Joan he shook his head. Joan turned away and tried to hold back her tears. "Oh my god." She said to herself. Alex went to her side and held her against him.
"Poor bugger." Wilson said frowning.
None of the party could see, nearby in the shadows, an ancient seismograph with bronze balls resting delicately on its lids. The commotion Chu Wah made dying had shaken the lid and the balls thereon, which were now rolling to fall off and into a bronze frog's mouth…
A ratchet sound echoed in the chamber.
Alex rose with Joan from Chu Wah's corpse and looked around as the grinding sound continued. Joan looked up at her brother "That can't be good."
And then it stopped, crossbow bolts thwacked as hundreds of arrows flew from the darkness like machine-gun fire. Alex and Joan where right in their path, and Wilson yelled for them to run, and Alex did, Pushing Joan in front of him, but the digger behind them was nailed by the arrows and pinned to the floor, the sharp arrows ripping through him, killing him before he could even cry out.
High in the dark recesses of the chamber, racks of crossbows on gimbals sent arrows raking blindly to kill any living thing that dared trot the aisles below. Alex ran, Joan several feet ahead. Both knew she was the faster runner, but right now, the adrenalin kept Alex right at Joan's heels. The arrows seemed to be chasing them, flurries of them landing just behind Alex as he ran forward into the darkness. Wilson was running, too, along with the surviving digger.
Then the arrows seemed to have stopped.
But another ratcheting noise announced another volley, this time of razor-sharp throwing disks.
Alex called "Duck!"
Wilson dove behind a terra-cotta warrior, who was decapitated in short order. The remaining digger caught a star deep in the chest, and fell back, dead before he hit the floor. Joan ducked and rolled under a nearby terra cotta horse. At the same time, Alex dove as one of the buzz-saw-like disks flew almost close enough to give him the shave he needed. Alex slid next to Joan and tucked her beneath him.
Again the tomb fell quiet.
No one moved for what seemed like an eternity. Finally Wilson peeked out cautiously. He, Alex, and Joan where the only ones left alive, and Alex who had Joan still tucked beneath him, was hidden under a terra-cotta horse.
Alex rose to his feet, pulling Joan with him, and strode out and over to the final of the diggers, on his back with that disk sunk into his chest, blood spreading on this tunic around the steel star. Alex knelt next to the man, and checked his pulse just to bee sure.
"Like I said…" Joan said breathlessly, "…not good at all."
Wilson came up. "He's dead, son. There's not a thing in the world you can do for him."
Joan and Alex stared at the man. They remembered seeing him laughing and drinking with his fellow diggers the night before, vital, alive. "He's dead because of us, Professor. All three are dead because of us." Joan said hugging Alex's shoulders.
Alex got to his feet and punched the nearest terra-cotta worrier in the face, crumbling its head.
Wilson took the distraught young mans shoulders and faced him, motioning for Joan to come closer, which she did. Wilson looked at the two sternly. "Danger of this sort comes with the territory. You know that better then most."
Both nodded, swallowing their guilt down so they could get back to the work at hand.
Wilson clapped his hand on Alex's shoulder. "Now! Let's find the crypt, and make sure these poor sods didn't die in vain." The word sod got Wilson a particularly dirty look from Joan who gritted her teeth, trying hard not to lash out at him. Instead she turned away from him, letting her long brown- black hair whip his face.
The three walked into the open central space, the bare area that the terra-cotta warriors were lined in rows to face the center.
Alex walked in a large circle. "They look as if they are waiting for an order from the Emperor."
"Agreed" Wilson, said nodding. "But then…where the bloody hell is he? There's no statue, no coffin. Or did some grave robbers beat us to the prize?"
"I doubt it." Joan looked down as she stepped to the middle of the circle and wiped away the sand with her foot. "He's still here" Joan said, excitement evident in her voice as she knelt down and pulled out an archeological brush. Alex mimicked her movements and the two started to dust off the floor, revealing bowls carved into the floor surrounded by Chinese figures, all inset in a circular stone.
"Ingenious!" Joan announced a huge grin plastered to her face. "They locked the bastard in using the five Chinese elements…" She pointed to each bowl one by one. "Water, Earth, Fire, Metal, and Air!" She looked up to her brother who smiled at her before looking to the Professor.
"It's configured like a compass…" Alex said, giddy as a child in a candy shop.
"A fang shui one!" Joan said slapping her brother on the back laughing.
"Professor, please, shine your torch this way." Alex asked smiling.
Wilson held his flashlight so that the O'Connell's could look at Alex's own compass. "This is true north, but the compass is set in the opposite direction."
"We need to realign it." Joan said looking at Wilson.
Using the bowls for handholds, the three strained to turn the stone. Finally, when the stone clicked into place, an ancient mechanism rumbled…and the entire circular floor split apart like a giant trap door.
Wilson managed to roll off and save himself, but the O'Connell's both fell into the crevasse, Alex taking a nasty hit on the rump of a bronze horse, Joan managed to land in the arms of an impressive bronze statue.
Alex, who had slid off the rump, found himself, looking into someone else's face, someone who had been dead a long time.
Pushing the mummified corpse away, and getting to his feet, Alex looked around hurriedly looking for his sister. His flashlight, landed first on three, seemingly female mummies, intertwined in an embrace. "Bastard had his concubines buried with him." He said under his breath before he heard a moan from behind him. Looking up he saw his sister in the bronze arms of the Emperor. Alex couldn't help but laugh at the sight, "and it looks like he just found himself a brand new one."
"Oh do shut up Alex!" she groaned trying to wriggle out of the Emperor's arms unsuccessfully, causing Alex to laugh even harder. "Will you make yourself useful and get me out of this bastards arms!" she hissed at him, as he made his way up onto the chariot, which held the Emperor's statue, and a crypt.
"Yes, yes, keep your panties on, my dear sweet sister."
Joan glared at Alex; "I would so love to hurt you right now!"
Alex picked his sister out of the statue's arms and smiled. "I love you, too!"
Wilson called down. "Are you both alright?"
"Fine!" Alex chuckled as he set Joan on her feet.
For the first time the O'Connell's got a good look at their find. "Oh…my…God!" they said together.
"What is it?"
"Nothing much Professor." Alex said ginning wide, pulling Joan into a one armed hug. "Just the greatest discovery since our grandfather found King Tut!"
The ceremonial bronze chariot, drawn by four beautiful bronze horses, stood connected to an even larger wagon on which rested an ornate sarcophagus. Commanding the chariot was the slightly oversized statue of the Emperor. Er Shi Huangdi's face radiated a cruelty that caused Joan to shiver slightly.
Above them they could hear Wilson muttering to himself. "Finally…I found it!"
Joan looked over at Alex angrily, "he found it?"
"You know what he means Joan!" Alex hissed as he walked around the sarcophagus.
Joan rolled her eyes. Oh, she knew what he meant. He meant that he was going to give them little, if any, credit for the find. As she fumed, she felt that she and Alex where being watched. No, that wasn't the right word…they were being hunted! Joan spun around, her guns at the ready. Nothing. Alex noticed the quick movement and asked what was wrong.
"Nothing, I guess. Thought I saw something."
Alex placed a hand on her shoulder. "You probably just saw Wilson's shadow or something."
"Yeah," Joan nodded, unsure of herself. "Probably." Bull shit! Joan's subconscious screamed. You KNOW that something else is in here!
"Wilson?" Alex yelled up to the Professor. "Are you coming down or are you too stunned to climb down?" Joan looked up but saw no sign of the old man. Wilson didn't answer.
"Wilson?" Joan called up, slightly worried. She may not like the man, but she doesn't want him to die in this place either. Still, no answer. I swear if he ditched us! Joan turned to ask her brother where Wilson could be, and found instead saw a masked man kicking Alex in the stomach.
"ALEX!" Joan screamed as the masked man turned on her. "Oh shit!" she mumbled under her breath as her guns where knocked from her hands. The man took a swing at her, only to be blocked by Joan grabbing his arm and flipping the man. Joan tried to ran to Alex's aid, but was pulled to the ground by the man, who kneed her in the stomach before pulling out a blade. Joan grabbed the man's wrist as he aimed for her heart. The man was an equal match for her, skill wise, but he was just a bit stronger then her. The blade he held grazed her throt.
From behind her, Joan heard Alex growl in anger as he tackled the man headlong and knocked him against the bronze horse's leg. The man jumped to his feet with amazing speed and swung his blade at Alex, who ducked just in time, the blade cutting a rope instead. Joan tried to get up but fell again as the sunken platform begain to rise. She looked around for Alex and saw the stranger holding Alex's head over the edge of the platform. Looking up she saw that a stone brick would cut his head off any moment. Jumping to her feet she swung herself over the horses and grabbed her gun from the floor. Jumping just behind the man, she cocked the gun and placed it at the back of the man's head. "Get. Off. Him. Now." Rolling off of Alex, (who rolled the opposite way,) The man jumped up and turned to Joan. Joan's eyes widened when she saw that the man's mask had fallen away to reveal a woman not much older then her. "Holy crap!" The two women stared at each other for a moment when a gunshot rang out from above. Looking up, Joan saw Wilson aiming his gun at the other woman. Wiping her head back around, Joan saw the woman disappear into the terra- cotta worriers.
Joan pushed aside the event and ran to her brother's side. "Alex, are you alright?" Joan pulled his head onto her lap and checked his head for any major injuries.
"No bone's broken" Alex coughed. "How about you?" He grabbed his handkerchief and put it to Joan's neck. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine, just a nick. You get them all the time."
"Yes, but I nick myself shaving." Alex sat up a little and looked at his sister's face. "Well, I guess it could be worse."
"Oh my God!" Wilson cried as the platform came to a halt. "Are you two alright?"
"Perfect." Joan said
"Fine." Alex nodded. "Are you ok Wilson?"
"Never better my boy. Never better." Wilson looked up at the statue with awe.
Getting up and dusting themselves off, Joan and Alex looked at the statue and smiled to each other, pushing the masked woman into the back of their minds.
"Well, what are we waiting for boy's?" Joan smiled clapping Alex on the back. Alex smiled down to her and pulled her into a one armed hug.
"Let's get a move on Professor." Alex said giddy as a schoolgirl. "We've got a lot of work to do."
A/N: Ok so as you probably can see...I did some corrections and I am very sorry for any confusion! That's what I get for writting at 3 am I guess. LOL! I am also sorry that it is takeing me so long to write the next chapter. I do ALOT of resurch before I write anything add that to work, college, homework, and extra cerricular activities...well I hope you understand that it may take some time. BUT I AM WORKING ON IT. I also have to remember a whole lot of crap from the movie and that isn't to easy...LOL! Hope all is well with everyone and thank you all so much for the reviews! Hugs to you! Twilight1890