I don't own anything besides my OC, Jack. The Mummy (2017) wasn't my favorite movie, but it was funny and it had Sofia Boutellla in it, so yeah. Also I've had this in my head for a while now. This story will keep with a lot of the events in the movie, and a few more, and will continue on long past the movie's ending. The main storyline will begin after the conclusion of the movie. I won't be able to update this as frequently as my other story, this is a side project for me. But I'll be writing it when I have free time. Enjoy.
Also, this first chapter is huge, but it's just the prologue to the 'real' story. The other chapters will almost definitely not be quite so huge.
OOOOOO
Jack didn't know how she'd gotten to this point. Alright, maybe that was a lie. She knew the events that had led her here, but not the reasons behind them, nor the logic that backed anything that had happened in the last few days. Nothing could logically explain her stabbing herself with a magical dagger to save her brother's life.
It had started as it always did with Nick. He'd dragged her out to the middle of the desert in Iraq on another one of his 'get rich quick' quests for treasure.
Now, Jack was all for a little treasure hunting, don't get her wrong. Ever since she'd seen tomb raider with Angelina Jolie, she'd been hooked on the idea of ancient civilizations and hidden treasures. Playing all of those Uncharted games hadn't done anything to quell the desire for adventure, either.
No, Jack's problem lies with Nick's incessant need to get them ass-deep in every kind of trouble he can find. And it was always the life-threatening kind. If it had just been some angry old man yelling at them to stop trespassing in the Louvre past open hours, Jack would have shrugged it off with a laugh. But no. People were shooting at her. Again.
"Slip in, slip out. Just like we always do." Ha.
Jack slid around the corner of the building, Nick and Chris on her tail.
"You son of a bitch!" Chris echoed her thoughts as a wave of bullets followed them.
Nick grabbed Chris from the ground and shoved them both forward, shooting over his shoulder at the men following them.
"Are you kidding me?" Chris yelled at him. "Slip in, slip out?!"
Jack broke down a door with her shoulder in front of them, and the three collapsed just inside the broken frame. Chris was still yelling at her brother, and Jack had never related to him as much as she did in that moment, but now wasn't the time for this.
"Stairs! Just run! Run!" Nick yelled at them, and Jack once more took the lead, sprinting up the winding stairs of the building as fast as her legs would carry her. Halfway up, Chris tripped, and Jack had to stall for a moment to drag him back up and before continuing with their retreat.
The men behind them were gaining on them, and Jack had finally reached the roof of the building – Chris was right behind her, and Nick followed in the back – when Nick pulled out a grenade and chucked it down the steps behind them.
"Grenade!" Her brother shouted, and Jack hit the deck, kicking the back of Chris's knee to bring him down with her when he didn't get down fast enough.
The explosion rocked the building, and a wave of sand and dirt that had been clinging to the walls rose up for a moment, clouding her vision, before settling back to the ground. The staircase was trashed. Nobody would be getting through it now, but that didn't stop them from shooting up at them from all around the base of the building.
They took shelter behind the small ledge that lent them a bit of cover, and Chris turned to look at Nick.
"I never wanted to come to this country!" He shouted, his voice breaking a bit with the strain, and even with the chaos all around them, Jack had to let out a laugh.
"Let me think! Just let me think." Her brother shouted back, his eyes wild and searching for some last-minute plan that he could pull out of his ass to save them from this shit show. Chris didn't let him get the chance, and a moment later he was yelling into his communicator.
"If anyone is listening, this is L-26, RMJ Hot! Request dynamic precision strike at our mark!"
Oh shit. Jack turned to look at Chris, her mouth gaping open, ready to scream at him, but her brother beat her to it.
"You did not just call in an air strike!" Nick yelled incredulously. Chris stared back at him defiantly.
"Oh. Yes. I. Did." He may have been a ridiculous asshole, but Jack had to respect the guy. The moment was ruined by a wave of rubble falling on their heads from the most recent round of gunfire, and Nick jumped up, grabbing her arm and running toward the ledge to jump onto the next building. Chris brought up the rear yelling "Where are you going! Don't leave me!"
They continued running on the roofs, jumping from building to building and dodging bullets and explosions like some kind of Michael Bay movie until they reached a building with nowhere left to go. They were surrounded.
"Oh god, we're gonna die!" Chris started to get hysterical as the three of them fell to their stomachs, army crawling across the roof to peer over the ledge to find a way out.
"Just let me think, Vail!" Nick shouted back at his best friend, the stress of the situation getting to him.
"We're gonna die because of you!" Chris responded, and the hopelessness of the situation started to hit her.
They'd been in awful situations before – the kind were the odds are slim and the way out nigh impossible to reach – but this scenario seemed to take the cake. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and honestly outsmarted. There was nowhere to go, and death was closing in fast. Jack had never been much of a religious person, but at that moment, she wished she'd been paying attention when her mother had sent them both to Wednesday school. She didn't even know the words to use to pray.
"Just let me think!" Her brother didn't give up.
"Think about what, Nick? Think about what?" Chris yelled over the harsh sounds of bullets ricocheting all around them.
"I'm thinking..." he trailed off.
"What!"
"I'm thinking…"
"What?! What are you thinking?!"
"I'm thinking…we are probably gonna die here." Her brother continued at last, and Jack sagged to the side into a pile of rubble, defeated, as Nick rested his head in his hands. Chris was quiet for a moment before he started yelling.
"I knew it!" His fist hit the ground as he raged. "I KNEW IT!"
An explosion rocked the earth, and Jack was blinded. Sand flew up into her eyes, and even as she registered the screaming of the men below and the sudden lack of gunfire, she was wondering if she hadn't needed the words to get through to Him after all. Then a drone flew over their heads and reality set in.
As her view cleared, she joined her brother and Chris as they army crawled over to the edge again, this time not greeted with gunfire, but with silence and a massive crater in the ground from the air strike. Chris let out a wheeze of breath that slowly turned into laughter and screamed to the sky in triumph.
"I am still alive!"
The next second the building started to collapse beneath them, and just before they started to tumble down, Jack turned to him accusingly.
"Way to jinx it!"
They hit the dirt, and Jack thought the worst of it was finally over, but apparently Chris wasn't the only one to jinx the situation, because the ground under them started to shift and move, sliding toward the crater that was becoming more of a hole than just a divot in the ground.
"Nick!" Chris yelled as he went over the edge of the hole, reaching out toward his best friend who was too far away to reach him. A moment later, the ground settled, and Jack and Nick looked at each other with shock on their faces, waiting for the next onslaught of bad luck to hit them.
Nick got to his feet slowly, favoring his left side, and Jack followed him up. She hadn't taken that bad of a hit with the fall, so she reached the edge of the pit first in her haste. A quick look stole a relieved breath from her lungs as she made eye contact with Chris, just a foot down on a small outcropping that held him up from the drop below.
With that weight taken from her shoulder, she allowed herself a real look at what had become a gapping chasm in the earth, and her eyes went wide at about the same time she could hear a sharp gasp from her brother beside her.
Embedded in the ground was a giant statue looking Egyptian in origin. Its face glared up at them from the other side of the pit.
"Haram." Nick breathed out, and Jack didn't know if she wanted to slap him or hug him as she saw a smile creep onto his face.
OOOOOO
The chopper had just landed, carrying one pissed off superior officer. Jack followed behind the three men as her brother spouted some bullshit about hostages and going in alone to protect civilians. Chris and Jack shared a glance behind their backs, both used to it at that point, but Colonel Greenway didn't look impressed, giving a mocking sound of understanding.
"Let me run another scenario of mine." The Colonel spoke as he stared in front of them at the damage the strike had caused.
"Sir?" her brother spoke cautiously.
"One in which three assholes from long range reconnaissance – that would be you – run all over northern Iraq, just one step ahead of the enemy." He marched up to them, putting his face right up to Nick's. "Except, instead of hunting for the enemy…you hunt for antiquities. Stealing whatever isn't nailed down and selling it on the Black Market. Meanwhile, these fanatical insurgents, trying to erase 5,000 years of history, unwillingly cover your tracks." He looked over at Jack for the first time. "It's a pretty good scam."
Why did everyone always think she was the brains of the operations? Maybe sometimes she was, but she didn't get them into shit like this! This was all on Nick.
"Sergeant Morton!" A woman's voice from behind them prompted them to turn, and when they saw the owner of the voice, Jack and Chris let out identical sighs as they rolled their eyes.
Of fucking course the woman Nick had slept with had been someone important. Of course she was somehow connected to all of this. It had been suspicious how Nick had suddenly pulled a map out of the blue for this place.
The woman stomped up to Nick and slapped him across the face, and Jack let out a snort. The woman only paused for a second, her eyes glancing at Jack as she registered the sound, before turning back to her brother.
"Where is it?" She demanded. Knew it. He stole the damn map.
Her brother was usually good at lying, but Nick's voice went a little high as he responded. "What? Where is what?"
Her brother and the blond woman, Jennifer, argued for a while longer, but Jack's focused was once again pulled back to the pit behind her and to the statue almost guarding the entrance. It's, or rather her, mouth was open in a scream, and Jack couldn't help but wonder what was the cause behind the scream. Was it a cry for help? Or a warning?
"You've got two hours, then we're moving out." The Colonel broke her from her musings by pointing his finger in Nick's face. "You're getting in the hole with her." What? Oh shit, what has he gotten us into now?
OOOOOO
The descension down into the hole was daunting. Jack wasn't usually afraid of the dark, but it was a long way down and she was being lowered into complete darkness.
When they hit the bottom, Jennifer immediately pulled out a recorder and started talking into it, detailing their surroundings. A few moments in, part of the wall on the side of the whole crumbled and dirt and sand rained down on Jack. She could hear her brother's frustration on her right at the intrusion. And Chris started whispering angrily to her brother, the only word she caught was 'treasure'.
Jack might not have been an archeologist, but she had always held a deep fascination with all things ancient. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, she loved it all, the older the better. Her interest forced her forward, looking at the hieroglyphics on the walls that Jennifer had been recording earlier.
"The litany of Ra." Jennifer's voice came from her left, and she turned from her inspection of the symbols to stare at the woman who was looking back with a shared glint of interest in her eyes. The only thing they really had in common was Nick, but Jack could tell that this woman shared her passion for the old and undiscovered.
"What is that, Mercury?" She heard Chris behind her. Nick was holding up his hand, catching drops of silver liquid in his hand. Jennifer stalked over to them, taking her brother's hand and studying the contents.
"The ancient Egyptians believed it weakened evil spirits." She spoke under her breath, talking more to herself than to inform any of them.
They all followed the trail of mercury that was dripping from the ceiling into holes in the ground. When they'd set up the lights and illuminated the cave before her, Jack just barely managed to stop her jaw from dropping. In the middle of the room sat a pool of mercury, metal bindings all along the edges and hanging from the ceilings. There were statues all around it, all facing the pool, and bodies of long dead people covered in jewels lay by them.
Jack could see her brother's attention, along with Chris, went to the gold and other valuables strewn about along the edges of the pool, but her interest, and the interest of the woman beside her, lie with the abnormalities of the beautiful yet morbid scene.
Jennifer started to set up a recording with the camera that the boys pulled out of the bags, but Jack was once again stopped in motion at the sight before her. She could barely hear the blond talking in her periphery, too focused on the strange draw she felt toward the pool. It was a beautiful glistening silver, the light from the cameras and their flashlights reflecting in small ripples across its surface, making it seem like a lake of metal.
Jack knew better. Some things, no matter how pretty, are the most dangerous of all. And she knew that a dip in that pool would be the death of her. But still, she couldn't help but feel that strange pull that caused her to take a few steps toward the pool, getting to the line where the chain stopped her.
"There isn't a single provision made for someone's journey into the underworld." The blond spoke, catching her attention. "No Canopic jars, no Shabtis. To be buried in a place like this…would have been a fate worse than death." She paused for a moment while noting the statues and glancing back at the pool. "Whatever's in there, those chains aren't for bringing it up…They're for holding it down." Her next words were whispered so quietly that even standing right next to her, Jack had a hard time hearing her. "This is not a tomb. It's a prison."
Her words set in with a note of finality, and suddenly everyone started moving. The Colonel's voice came in over their walkies, informing them of bogies inbound, but the blond refused to leave.
"I'm not leaving until I see what's in that pool!" She argued with Chris as he tried to convince her to get out before they were surrounded by more combatants. Nick pointed his flashlight up, following along the chain as it led around the cave and down into the pool. Jack could see that it was all that held whatever was down there in place, and her glance towards Nick confirmed his agreement.
She pulled out the pistol that was strapped to her thigh, and motioned for her brother to stand back. He put his arms up in a mocking gesture of surrender, and stepped away from the chain and she raised her pistol.
Her shot hit its mark perfectly, and the chain snapped, silencing the argument in the corner as it started to unwind, lifting something from the pool.
From the silvery depths emerged a sarcophagus, an image of a woman screaming on the front slowly uncovered as it rose, and a stream of mercury poured from her mouth. Jack stood directly in front of the sarcophagus, with her brother behind her, and she looked into the empty eyes on the front as the rest of the group gawked around the pool.
Before too long, their staring was interrupted by the scratching sound on the cave walls, and a quick flash of light showed hundreds of spiders creeping up and all around them. Jack had never been a fan of spiders, and her reaction of shivering and smacking them away from her seemed appropriate, but Chris had a gun, and he seemed to think that firing it all around the cave was a better idea.
"Stop! Chris, stop!" Jack yelled, and her brother echoed her shouts as the bullets began to ricochet around the room.
"Stop! They're just camel spiders! They're not poisonous!" Nick relayed.
"It bit me!" Chris responded, a whine in his tone, but the majority of the spiders had already vacated the area, and his argument fell short, leaving Jack to return her gaze to the pool and what had emerged from it.
The darkness in the hollow of those eyes drew her in, and Jack stared into them, entranced. She could feel the strangest sensation of hot wind on her face, and the smell of fresh, clean air all around her. The sounds of Chris still yelling in the background faded away, and for a moment Jack thought she went blind as her vision shifted.
Before her, there was a vast desert of red sand stretching out in every direction. A flash of white caught her attention, and before she could turn her head, a woman was walking toward her across the sand, her feet bare and wearing a white dress that hung off her curves. Her black hair hung loose, dancing with the wind, and Jack's gaze was dragged down her shoulders to her hands that bore intricate golden rings and were stained blue as the very tips.
It was her eyes that held Jack to the spot, though. Those deep dark browns, lined with kohl and a blue paint underneath captured her attention. Those eyes never strayed from her own, even as the woman finally reached her, reaching her arms out toward Jack's frozen form.
"You have freed me." The woman's rich voice rolled down her spine in a language that Jack had never heard before, but somehow understood. A gentle hand caressed her cheek before cradling her face, keeping her gaze locked on the eyes in front of her as the woman slowly closed the distance between them until only an inch separated them. "My Chosen."
Their noses brushed, and Jack stayed stock still as the final distance was breached and the woman before her lightly brushed their lips together, the warmth and subtle pressure sinking into her like an embrace, and her eyes fell closed almost against her will and she sank into the feeling.
It only lasted a second before Nick was suddenly in front of her, calling out her name like he'd been doing it for a while and was started to get worried. He looked her over for a second, giving her his best 'are you okay' stare that she could barely even acknowledge in her state, before he turned back to Jennifer at her command to speak to the Colonel.
A shivery sigh left her lips as she gazed up at those dark eyes in the sarcophagus. What the hell was that?
OOOOOO
The sarcophagus was lifted and brought into an airplane just as the rest of them were rushed on board to escape the freak sandstorm that had come out of nowhere. Jennifer, now asking everyone to call her Jenny, was securing it into the straps herself when the soldiers around her weren't handling the 5,000-year-old 'priceless artifact of ancient times' with the proper care. Jack agreed with her honestly, they weren't even trying to be gentle.
Most of the flight was smooth sailing – Chris had fallen asleep only an hour or so in, and after flirting with Jenny for a bit, her brother, the hopeless man, followed suit. Jack herself was settling in for a bit of rest when Jenny approached the sarcophagus and started looking over the hieroglyphics on the sides.
"The hieroglyphs are definitely New Kingdom." The blond began. "It appears that the wife of King Menehptre died in childbirth, leaving a sole heir to the throne." The smell of hot sand was back, and Jack looked around confused at the pressurized airplane they were in. "A girl…" A sound reached her ears, like wood hitting wood, and Jack could almost see the sand around her again. "…called Ahmanet."
A flash of two figures fighting on the sand flew past her eyes, followed quickly by a naked woman, her back turned to Jack as she walked and knelt down. Another flash and Jack saw her slicing open her palm with a knife, the blood dripping down into a bowl of some white liquid. Then the woman again, the woman who had kissed Jack back in the tomb, her face a picture of fear as some gnarled creature approached her from behind. Another flash and the woman was on the lap of a man, their smiling faces gazing into each other's eyes.
Jack didn't even have time to feel uncomfortable about encroaching on the obviously intimate moment before her vision flashed once more, and suddenly she was there under the woman, in the place of the man. The woman above her dragged down her body slowly, a knife in one hand that she lightly scrapped down Jack's bared chest. She knew she should feel fear, but an irrational calm had taken over, and Jack knew she was experiencing the feeling of the man from before.
The woman rose above her then, the dagger pulled back in the air above her head as she spoke. "My Chosen." And thrust the blade down toward Jack's beating heart.
Jack's eyes flung open as she shot up from her prone position, her heart racing and the fear in her chest finally showing itself. She took a look around the plane, trying to slow her breathing and calm herself from what had obviously been some weird nightmare.
"Corporal, what in the living hell are you doing, son?" The Colonel's voice echoed back at her, and she turned just in time to see Chris plunge a knife into the chest of their superior officer.
OOOOOO
Nick had shot Chris. Jack didn't know what the hell was going on, but her brother had been forced to shoot his best friend twice before he went down, and an extra time for good measure. Something had been seriously wrong with him – the Chris they knew and loved lost somewhere as his milky eyes had gazed upon them and he swung the knife wildly.
Her brother was taking it hard, she could tell from his heavy breathing, but they weren't left much time to mourn before the plane tipped sideways. A look out the window showed an engine had gone up in smoke, and her brother raced to the front of the cabin to check on the pilots.
Jack could only hold on for dear life when, a moment later, gravity shifted, and then plane plunged from the sky.
Nick flew past her, his arm reaching out as if to grab her, but his fingers missed by inches and he latched onto Jenny instead. Jack could just barely make out him putting a parachute on her and himself before he tried once more to reach her, their fingertips just brushing before he, too, was torn from the plane.
Jack stared out the window across from her as the plane spiraled down, her screams caught her lungs as death approached.
OOOOOO
Jack woke up in the morgue.
The body bag around her restricted her movements, but she managed to tear her way out and grab the nearest lab coat to wrap around her body before she turned and saw Chris there, staring at her.
Her heart jumped in her chest, and she clutched at it as she just barely caught the screech that tried to tear its way out of her throat.
"You," Jack gulped down another large lung full of air, "You scared the shit out of me."
"We need to talk, Jack." His one sightless eye didn't seem to hinder the effect of his glare, only heighten it, and Jack looked away from the sight, taking in the other body bags around her.
"What's happening?" She asked.
Chris gave her the sad smile he always used when he was about to say something that he knew would hurt her.
"You know what's happening."
She gazed into his eyes, too shocked by her situation to let his appearance deter her question.
"Am I…dead?" The whisper slipped past her lips, and the look Chris gave her made her want to rescind the question before he could give her an answer, but she was too slow.
"Dead? No." Chris leaned toward her, and she'd never been afraid of the ridiculous goofball before, but now she leaned away from the grotesque sight. "But you're gonna wish you were."
The doors behind her slammed open, and when she turned around, she only had a moment to register the look of pure shock on her brother's face before she was swept up into a crushing hug.
OOOOOO
She was released soon after that, her brother's slightly limping gait walking beside her as they went and settled down at the first pub they could find. Jenny had tagged along, looking searchingly over Jack's face every few seconds, like she was waiting for something to happen.
Nick and Jenny talked back and forth about the crash, and some of Nick's theories barely registered to her in her zoned-out state, but she tried not to shiver at them when Jenny mentioned angering the gods. Her eyes went to the bar, searching for the tender to ask for another drink, but her gaze was pulled to Chris, looking back at her even more decayed than before and waving her over to the bathroom.
"Hey guys, I gotta hit the ladies room real quick." She mumbled out, and Nick spared her a parting glance before continuing on with Jenny, leaving Jack to stumble into the bathroom, looking around at the empty stalls before turning to the mirror clutching at the sink in startled fear as Chris was once more before her.
She struggled to keep his stare as the rotting flesh caught her attention, and she had only just glanced away when he spoke.
"Look at me. Look at my face." She met his eyes. "I'm cursed, Jack, and you're cursed too." Jack let out a heavy breath as her suspicions were confirmed, but Chris continued on. "And there's only one way to break it. You are going to do exactly what she wants, or this is gonna get a lot worse for both of us." Her silence gave him room to speak, and he didn't waste it.
"Setapai. You know what it means." My Chosen. The whispered words from the woman, Ahmanet, once more called forth a shiver down her spine that Jack tried to ignore. "She's got plans for you, Jack." His gaze nailed her to the ground. "You can't run. You can't escape."
She could damn well try.
Jack took off out the back door.
OOOOOO
Okay, so maybe that had been a bad idea, or no idea at all really. Jack hadn't gotten more than three feet before the figure in the alley started toward her and the rats overran her. She was just glad her brother had seen her hasty escape and followed after her. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if her vision hadn't been interrupted.
Jenny and Nick were arguing again, Nick saying he wanted to find the damn sarcophagus and prove that this was all in their heads when they opened it up and found a dead body. She didn't know what he'd said that managed to convince Jenny, but soon enough they were on their way toward the crash site.
The taxi dropped them outside an old abandoned church, and Jack started up the hill toward it, to the protest of both her brother and Jenny.
"The crash site isn't this way, where are you going?" Jenny stage whispered to her, but Jack couldn't respond, instead walking forward toward the run-down building, almost in a trance as Nick started the millionth argument with Jenny in the background.
Their words once more faded as Jack stalked ahead of them, the distance growing without anyone paying attention. Before long, Jack spotted a cathedral in front of her, the doors creaking open, and the figure of a woman standing in the doorway.
Her vision flashed again, and all Jack could see was Ahmanet standing there, reaching out toward her, beckoning her closer. "My Chosen."
When her sight returned, Jack was inside the cathedral, and she glance around confused at her sudden displacement. She started backing up toward the doors, when a noise to her right distracted her.
"Nick?" She called out for her brother as her feet continued backward. She hit something behind her, and Jack felt cool breath hitting the back of her neck, prompting her to spin around just as strong hands grabbed her arms, forcing her forward toward the alter.
Groaning sounds to her sides registered, and Jack saw zombie-looking creatures stumbling out of the dark around her, and she began to struggle against the arms tapping her to what she knew to be another undead behind her. Whatever strength her years of running and fighting with her brother had earned her, it was no match for four undead creatures, and they gently but firmly lifted her up, guiding her onto the alter and holding her down there.
She shifted her eyes around to each of them wildly as she tried to get out of their hold. They held her down against the cool stone without giving her any leverage to move, and soon she opened her mouth to try to let out a yell for her brother, but she was halted by a sudden weight on her lap.
As she turned, she came face to face with Ahmanet, but this wasn't the woman she'd seen in her visions. It was part of her, but Jack could tell something was missing, besides part of the flesh on her face. Eyes split by two pupils stared down at her, and cold hand pushed down on her chest, stopping her struggles.
She gazed up in shock at the decayed Egyptian princess above her as she ran her hands over her face gently, almost examining her, before those cool hands drifted down her neck, along her sides and reached the bottom of her shirt, lifting it up. When her abdomen was exposed, foreign fingers trailed along her muscles, hard earned and appreciated, digging into the crevices between her abs and mapping the surface of her skin. Ahmanet slowly lowered her head down, leaning it against her stomach as she started to speak, more of a chant than a conversation.
"Powerful Set, I welcome you into this mortal body." The statue above her head was broken in a rush of falling shards, and Ahmanet grabbed something just out of her sight that she brought down over her head, letting Jack catch a glimpse of the dagger.
Ahmanet dragged the dagger down her stomach, and Jack remembered from her visions that this was the Dagger of Set. The one she had tried to use to summon Set into the mortal world in the body of her lover by…stabbing him in the chest. Jack's panic overtook her, and she didn't even register that the words she was speaking weren't in English.
"Please don't." She whispered brokenly, and, surprisingly, the woman above her paused, casting curious eyes at the struggling woman pinned beneath her and catching sight of the terrified look on her face. One bandaged hand left the dagger for a moment, coming up to cradle her face as she spoke in an almost comforting tone.
"You need not worry, My Chosen. This dagger will not kill you. You will merely welcome Set into your body, becoming his host on this plane." The words were spoken softly, but the context caused another wave of fear to go through Jack.
"He is not welcome in my body. I'm not big on sharing." The last bit of defiance in Jack roared to the forefront, blazing through her eyes into the surprised ones staring back at her. A husky chuckle broke free from the woman above her, and at any other time, Jack would have indulged in the feeling that swept through her body at the sound, but in the current situation brought more terror.
"You will not share, My Chosen. You are merely a host. The mighty will of Set will overpower you, and he will take control of your body." Ahmanet's gaze turned soft for a moment, almost pitying, before they hardened once more, and the dagger was once more brought above her head.
"That sounds an awful lot like killing!" Jack shouted as the dagger came down sharply, slicing through the air, and her eyes closed as she awaited the blow. A few moments went by, and when no blow came she opened her eyes to see Ahmanet above her, holding the dagger inches from her flesh, staring at the top of it.
The gem. Part of the dagger was missing, and she couldn't complete the ritual without it. Even with the mummified woman still atop her, Jack let out a relieved breath that was interrupted by the slamming open of the cathedral doors.
"Jack!?" Nick bust through, dragging a shocked Jenny behind him.
"Nick. Run!"
OOOOOO
After the fight in the cathedral and the ambulance ride from hell, Jack ended up waking up being dragged into some secure site that no one was probably supposed to know existed. A brief introduction from Dr. Henry Jekyll later, and she was brought to her brother, waiting inside a large room with Jenny and many other people she didn't know.
In the center of the room, hooked up to various tubes that contained silver liquid flowing through them and chained down, kneeled the woman who had been haunting her for the past few days, Ahmanet.
Her head was facing down as Jack was brought in, but when she entered the room those eyes and all four pupils zeroed in on her. The sounds Ahmanet was making betrayed her pain – the little whimpers and cut off breaths – despite the look of resolve in her eyes, and Jack couldn't help but to step toward her.
Behind her, Dr. Jekyll was speaking to her brother. "Welcome to Prodigium, Mr. Morton. From the Latin: Monstrum Vel Prodigium. 'A Warning of Monsters.'"
Their conversation continued behind her, and when Nick eventually approached from the back, Jack kept her eyes on Ahmanet's pain filled ones, even as her brother stepped up beside her. "What are you doing to her?" Nick asked the question on her mind, and the cold answer he received was no comfort. They were treating her like a lab rat, or some specimen to be dissected, and that didn't just bother her.
Jenny and Dr. Jekyll argued, but Nick was still beside her, whispering quietly. "You okay, Jack?" She gave the slightest nod, her eyes still on the woman kneeling on the ground, and he turned to the Egyptian Princess as well.
Ahmanet's eyes lingered, boring into hers as Dr. Jekyll spoke to her brother, saying that he'd been selected as the vessel for the ultimate evil. That registered to Jack, and she was pulled from her trance for a moment to glance at her brother, and she saw his sharp look urging her to be quiet as he spoke with Dr. Jekyll.
He was pretending to be the cursed one, and it only took Jack a moment to figure out why. These people, whoever they were, saw Ahmanet as a threat, and Nick, as the so called 'cursed one' as the chance for the end of the world. He was protecting her, not from the woman who had been chasing her around the world to stab her with a magic knife, but from human beings who wanted to destroy her to save the world. Why are big brothers always so ridiculously protective?
Nick came back beside her for a moment, turning his back on Dr. Jekyll, and Jack's eyes return to Ahmanet's like a moth to a flame.
"You cannot change your fate." She spoke, less tauntingly and more like a promise. Like Jack should be honored at the idea of some dude taking over her body and destroying the world with it. "The curse will never be broken. My chosen was murdered. You will take his place." Jack understood the words perfectly, but she could hear Jenny whispering the translation into her brother's ear to her left. His jaw clenched as he looked at the woman, and Jack could see his worry for her out of the corner of her eye.
"But if you chose him, why were you going to kill him." Her brother asked, and Ahmanet's eyes drifted to him for a moment, before answering in her native tongue, and Jack got the feeling the answer was directed at her, despite the fact that everyone seemed to be watching her brother.
"I was not going to kill him." There was almost a desperation in her words, a plea for understanding, and the glance of Ahmanet's eyes over to her for a split second before they returned to her brother's showed Jack who the plea was directed at. "I was going to give him eternal life."
Another vision entered Jack's eyes, and she could see Ahmanet in that same chamber as before, straddling that man with the knife raised above her head. "Make him a living god." The vision ended, and Jack could hear Nick grinding his teeth.
"You murdered your father." He spoke.
"I loved my father with all my heart. I only wanted his love in return." Ahmanet retorted.
"You killed his wife. Their child." Nick argued.
"They were different times." The woman spoke again, and Jack could feel the argument fall flat. She knew she didn't have much room to judge a time period in which slaves were common, but killing a child was something that she just couldn't understand.
Before Jack could add her voice to the argument, she was swept away by another vision. The endless sand surrounded her once more, and Ahmanet, returned to her former glory, stood in front of her. "The day of awakening will soon be upon us. You will become Set." The words seemed to echo all around her, and Jack wanted to argue back, but she couldn't move, couldn't speak.
All she could see was flames for a moment, and the voice continued, whispering to her. "The world will fall to your desire." She could see Ahment walking before her in a stone chamber, her hand waved over a pool of dead flowers as she spoke, and they bloomed once more. "You will have power of life over death."
The room shifted once more, and all Jack could see was Ahmanet.
"And…you will have me."
The white silky robe that had just barely preserved her modesty dropped, and Ahmanet walked toward her, unashamed at her nudity, and pressed her down into a bed that appeared behind her, her palm applying just a hint of pressure before Jack caved.
"I will be your Queen." Ahmanet crawled over her, her eyes once more the deep chocolate brown from her human life, and she settled over Jack, tilting her head to the side as she gazed down at her.
"Just give in."
Jack could faintly hear Jenny whispering her brother's name, and wondered what was happening, but she was too focused on the woman above her.
Ahmanet's hand glided up her neck and cupped her chin as she leaned down, her face stopping just before her, and her tone suddenly urgent.
"They will kill you..." The princess spoke, and it seemed to change her tone entirely, a more sincere worry peering through. "Just as they killed my chosen before you." Her blue stained thumb glided over Jack's bottom lip, and Ahmanet lowered further, tilting her head to the side at the last second to put her mouth near Jack's ear.
"It burns." She whispered, her breath ghosting over the shell of Jack's ear, causing a shiver to go through her despite the confusion that came as she registered the words. Ahmanet reared back then, her head thrown back as she screamed.
"It BURNS!"
The yell tore through the trance she'd been put under, and Jack flinched back as the woman in chains started to wail. Her brother was there then, yelling at the men around them.
"Stop it!" his eyes leapt from Ahmanet to Jack. "Stop it!" And Dr. Jekyll was examining her brother like a science experiment.
"Fascinating." He whispered under his breath.
Jekyll took her brother away, and Jenny stepped up to Ahmanet, talking with her briefly, but Jack couldn't comprehend the words from her place in the back. After a moment, Jenny raced away, and Jack brought her gaze back to Ahmanet to see her eyes still on her as well.
With a deep breath to steel herself, Jack walked forward, kneeling down in front of the woman, and Ahmanet's eyes widened a bit in what Jack could only interpret as surprise.
"Why?" Jack spoke in the woman's language, somehow feeling more natural than when she spoke her own, and the woman tilted her head at the question, so Jack elaborated. "Why did you kill them?"
Ahmanet looked almost disappointed at the question, but she answered nonetheless. "They would have taken everything from me." She almost hissed the words in Jack's face. "I was trained since birth to take the throne, and someone else would get to take it from me simply due to his being born a boy?"
Jack paused a moment, letting the words sink in before she brought her head even closer to Ahmanet's as she spoke once more. "Someone tried to take what was yours, so you fought with everything you had to keep it?" She asked the question slowly, choosing her words with care.
Ahmanet nodded, her head moving just a fraction, but Jack saw it, and she saw something in her eyes that she almost thought was relief, some kind of hope for understanding shining through. She only gave a moment for the woman to look back to her face before speaking again.
"So, what would you do if you were me?"
Her question seemed to shock the woman, her double eyes narrowing and a crinkle forming in her brow.
"What would you do if someone tried to take your life away from you? If some man, no matter who, tried to take over everything you had created, saying that it was his to do with as he pleased? That you were no longer allowed to make your own choices, that he would take over?"
Ahmanet let out a shuddered breath, gazing at the woman before her, but she did not speak an answer as they stared into each other's eyes. Jack clenched her jaw a moment, glaring at the supposed 'evil' that kneeled before her.
"How dare you do to me what has been done to you."
With her final parting words, she turned on her heel and sped away, feeling the gaze burning into her back as she left.
OOOOOO
The world had gone to shit.
Moments after Nick had left Jekyll's office, grabbing her arm and speeding across a ramp far above the princess, the lights started flickering and the shouting started. They just barely managed to slip out before the windows shattered around them, and a cloud of glass dust swept over the city.
Chris had led them down into the tunnels below, and after a fight with way too many undead, Jack landed herself in the situation she was in now.
Ahmanet had dragged Nick under the water, and Jack had followed after them with a desperation she'd never felt before. The woman could fuck with her head as much as she wanted, but if she hurt her brother…
She'd emerged in a cavern, the undead around her swarming. Jack had just barely managed to fight her way through, peering around a chainmail covered corpse to see Nick.
He wasn't moving.
Nick lay there in the water, his eyes closed, and Jack could feel it. She could feel the life leaving him. She could feel the moment when there was no bringing him back. No amount of drugs and hospitals and defibrillators could touch him where he was.
The fight left her, and Jack sunk to her knees, and the undead around her held her shoulders to keep her down. They didn't need to, there was nothing left for Jack to fight for. Nick had been her only family in the world, their parents long having departed. He'd been there for her through everything, and their adventures were the light of her life, especially after they found Chris and he joined their dysfunctional little family.
She was done. And Ahmanet knew it.
"Don't blame yourself." The woman appeared before her, her eyes looking down at Jack with something that looked like pity. "He was always doomed."
The dead in the room seemed to melt away, crumbling to dust around her, but Jack's eyes never left her brother.
"There are worse fates than death." Ahmanet spoke, and Jack finally managed to tear her eyes from her brother's body for a moment to look at the woman who had turned her life into the hell she was currently in.
A rage entered her then, slowly filling the gaps that had been hollowed out over time by the deaths of her friend, Chris, and now her brother. Jack's eyes fell to the dagger in Ahmanet's hand, and the woman noticed her gaze.
"Come to me." She whispered softly, a plea to end this. Jack lifted herself off her knees slowly, the anger tinting the room red as she looked at Ahmanet.
She charged her.
Jack didn't have much of a plan, and the fight that ensued which was basically Ahmanet throwing her around the room showcased that, but she didn't give up. Running after the woman over and over, reaching out for anything she could hurt to make the woman regret what she'd done to her. Eventually Ahmanet seemed to grow tired of the fight, and the woman grabbed her by her throat, lifting her into the air.
"Give in." The woman's voice was sweet, sugar coating a knife. "Give in." this time lower, throatier, a demand instead of a question. "When it's over, you will thank me." She whispered to Jack, and even struggling for air as she was, she had to respond to that.
"Did you thank your father for casting you aside and replacing you?"
Jack's words struck a nerve with the woman, and she was once more airborne, landing with a 'thud' against a large tombstone, curling her body around it. When she turned back over to face Ahmanet, the woman was looking down at her empty hand, and a pained grin crept over Jack's face as she surveyed the dagger now in her grip.
"Thief." Ahmanet whispered, disbelieving.
Jack didn't give the woman time to regroup, and she brought the dagger down, smashing it against the floor and cracking the stone attached to it. Ahmanet let out a shocked gasp, jolting forward and stopping when Jack's glare rested back on her, a threat. She raised her fist, intent on ending it, when Ahmanet spoke.
"Wait!" Not a command this time, almost begging, and Jack's hand stopped just before it reached the ground. She looked up at Ahmanet, and the woman was, for once, looking scared. "Destroy the stone, and all is lost."
Jack knew what she meant. It wasn't like the world wouldn't be better off without this dagger, it was that all would be lost for her. Ahmanet had sacrificed everything to get to this point. She'd been cast aside by her family. She'd been forced into a pact with a god intent on the destruction of the world.
She'd put everything she had on this, and Jack was about to destroy it.
Jack didn't know if Ahmanet could see what she was thinking, but she saw her obvious indecision, and slowly reached a hand out toward Jack, her words meant to persuade.
"You will be a living god."
Jack registered the words, and the hidden message underneath them that Ahmanet was trying to gloss over in. She could see the pure desperation in Ahmanet's eyes, and the dagger was lifted almost against her will, slowly crossing the distance between them.
Maybe she could do this. She could give Ahmanet the dagger, give the woman what she wanted, and be granted what she wanted in turn. She would have the power of life over death, as the woman said. She could bring her brother back. Hell, she could bring Chris back. Even if it meant becoming the host of all evil, that was worth it to her.
Jack halted when it was halfway there, the woman's words from earlier ringing in her head.
You will not share, My Chosen. You are merely a host. The mighty will of Set will overpower you, and he will take control of your body.
She gritted her teeth, fire burning in her eyes as she stared into Ahmanet's eyes. And her words were spoken aloud, but she wasn't talking to the woman.
"He can fucking try."
Jack plunged the dagger into her own chest.
OOOOOO
Holy shit and that's it. That's the prologue. Now onto the main event.
Sorry about the double posting, just had to fix some errors that were pointed out to me.