Carl had made it to his Mustang and, after finally kicking the crate off of his foot, made a hasty retreat and sped through the maze of alleys before heading back to the main roads. He knew where he had to go now—he had to find out more about Sutekh, and then attempt to stake out the museum to see what exactly those cultists—and Sutekh—wanted from the museum. They'd mentioned something about keys, and a limit involving the full moon… But that could mean just about anything.

He made it back to the INS office in time to hear Tony complain about everything that had happened that morning.

"Carl, I hope you've got a really good reason as to why you ran in and out of here this morning!"

"Tony, look, I think I've finally got a big break in this story!" Carl said. "I overheard a bunch of cultists talking to a guy who claimed that he is behind the coma patients! …Well, not so much claimed as threatened to put someone else in that state, but you get the idea. He's claimed responsibility."

"What!?" Tony exclaimed. "Oh, great—is it another one of those guys? The ones who claim to be these powerful mystics and have a boatload of followers to do whatever dirty work they want!?"

"Possibly," Carl said. "But there is an off chance that he really is as powerful as he claims. Does the name Sutekh mean anything to you, Tony?"

"…Suit heck!?" Tony asked, mishearing.

"Sutekh, Tony—Sutekh!" Carl corrected him.

"Sutekh?" a third voice chimed in. Both Carl and Tony turned to see Ron Updyke looking over at them. "Sutekh, also known as Set, was one of the ancient Egyptian pantheon—the god of the desert, disorder, and, some say, destruction. He was infamous for having killed his brother Osiris. He's supposed to be the father of Anubis and Wepwawet—the two jackal-headed members of the pantheon."

"Thank you for that input, Ron," Tony said, and he turned to Carl. "Your prime suspect thinks he's an Egyptian god. This guy is really messed up, whoever he is, and I want you to stay away from him!"

"Tony, he's got something planned!" Carl exclaimed. "You can't expect me to sit idly by while he has his way!"

"Force yourself," Tony insisted. "Now, I'm going to call the police; they'll pick this guy up and we'll all rest a little easier."

"Tony, it's never that simple!" Carl protested. "For one thing, he could be anywhere by now since I left him in that alley, and assuming he is Sutekh—"

"Carl, I'm going to stop you right there," Tony said. "It is impossible for an Egyptian deity to be wandering around the alleys of Chicago."

"There's only one way to find out!" Carl countered. "Tony, you know I've seen all sorts of things in my career; can't you, for once, admit that there is a possibility that the unexplained might actually occur?"

Tony gave him a long stare.

"I don't care who or what this guy is," he said at last. "This guy is dangerous no matter who he is, and if you go near him, you run the risk of… I don't know what he'd end up trying to do to you!"

"I shall take that risk, Tony!" Carl declared, as he got onto his computer to do more research until the museum closed. "After all, no one else will!"

Tony gave up, retreating to his office. He knew Carl well enough to know that no amount of coaxing or shouting would get him to change his mind.

"I really wish there was some other guy that would deal with that stuff," Tony muttered. "I really do."


Unbeknownst to Tony, there was, indeed, someone else trying to deal with it—two people, in fact. The Doctor, still using Jamie as a telepathic amplifier, was trying to track the source of the great mental power.

He had managed to track something—a large mental presence in a warehouse in a back alley.

"I think I've found it, Jamie!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Just concentrate a little more—I want to see if I can tap into that thing's thoughts…"

There was a split-second vision of an assembly of people in violet robes, and the Doctor and Jamie heard a voice speak—

"Wait until nightfall—move under cover of dark. Should anyone be in the museum aside from us, we will deal with them in my usual way."

They were then shut out from any further vision; the being swore in an ancient tongue, and the Doctor gasped as snapped out of the vision, trying to catch his breath.

"What was that!?" Jamie asked, also harried from the immense amount of mental effort it had taken just for that one peek.

"That was it, Jamie—whatever it is!" the Doctor said. "My word—the moment it sensed me trying to take a peek, it practically threw me across its mindscape. I absolutely had to get away from there!"

The Doctor shuddered; it was something that he hadn't seen since he witnessed his future self engaging in a mental duel with Omega—only that time, he had merely watched it; this time, he had felt it.

"Who were all those people in that vision we saw?" the piper queried. "I only saw them for a moment, but they looked… evil."

"Evil?"

"Aye, they looked like a coven of witches," Jamie said, wrapping a hand around the blessed pendant that his father had given him long ago.

"Well, I don't know about them being witches, but they are certainly looking as though they are working with this entity," the Doctor said. "Whether willingly or not remains to be seen. I suppose then we'll be able to see if they are truly evil or not."

"Aye, but that's later. What happens now?" Jamie asked, quietly.

"That is an excellent question, Jamie, and I'm trying to work out the answer to that," the Doctor admitted. "You heard him mention something about the museum—after hours? They're planning something—and it must be the Field Museum—that's the most well-known of the Chicago museums."

Jamie saw the look in the Doctor's eyes and knew exactly what he was planning.

"We're going t' that Field museum," Jamie realized.

"Well…" the Doctor mused. "I was thinking more along the lines of you waiting in the TARDIS while I went to the museum."

Jamie froze.

"I don' like that idea," he stated, flatly.

"No?"

"No," Jamie agreed. "Ye'll run into some sort of trouble in there, I know it. And more than worrying about Chicago, my conscience willnae let ye deal with that alone."

"I should be grateful for that, I suppose," the Doctor sighed. "Very well, Jamie—you may come along. But mind that you stay close to me—don't go wandering off."

"That would defeat the purpose of going with ye; I won' wander," Jamie promised. "But what will we do now? It's barely midday—those witches won' be sneaking aboot the museum until nightfall."

"Oh, we're going to spend the remainder of the day there," the Doctor said. "We'll have to familiarize ourselves with as much of the museum as we can—the public areas, at least. I'll use the Stattenheim remote control to bring the TARDIS to the museum around closing time—I'll make her invisible, and we can hide in there and have an early supper while everyone leaves. Then, we'll wait for our, ah… coven to arrive."

Jamie pondered over this.

"Aye, I suppose I can go along with that—on one condition."

"What's that?"

"We tuck in to a big lunch now—if I have t' go until evening withoot eating, then I want t' make sure I'm full."

The Doctor smiled.

"Alright, Jamie. Lunch, it is."


Carl had also deduced that it was the Field Museum that Sutekh had been referring to—there was an impressive collection of Egyptian artifacts there, and there was probably something there—or in storage—that was the key that he was looking for. Hopefully, he could find the keys before Sutekh did.

Reading up on Sutekh had Carl stumble upon an article written by a Miss Sarah Jane Smith, telling tale of an alleged incident in 1911, involving the death of an archaeologist and his brother in England, slain by Sutekh, whose grand designs for being freed from entrapment within a pyramid on Mars were thwarted by man she referred to as "the Doctor." The article went on to suggest that the Egyptian gods were once real beings—powerful aliens from another world, known as the Osirians—that had been seen as powerful deities by the ancient people. Sutekh had been an Osirian who had ill intentions for the galaxy—and thus had been imprisoned for the safety of all.

Carl stared blankly at his computer screen. Of all the explanations he had been expecting, that certainly hadn't been it. He would have to contact this Sarah Jane Smith and get some more answers; but that would have to wait—Carl would have to go to the museum before Sutekh got there.

He bid Miss Emily a good evening as he got up from his desk, and he paused before going out the door to give a cursory farewell to Tony.

The weary editor just sighed and nodded—not that there was much else he could do about it. All he could do was just sit by his phone and wait for a call that would come later that night—and hopefully, it would be Carl making the call, and not a policeman informing him of the unfortunate fate that he was worried would befall him.

Carl, for his part, certainly hoped that it would be him calling Tony later, as well. Indeed, he was often wondering why he always seemed to be the one to run into these oddities that almost always turned out to be full-fledged monsters. If he could pass the buck to someone competent, he'd gladly do it—but that someone competent had yet to manifest themselves. Until then, it was his thankless task. But Carl was not without contacts and allies. He had a friend who worked on the museum staff who, after much wheedling and coaxing, had lent him a key to the museum, as well as giving him the codes to the security cameras so that he could turn them off and on as he needed to. His friend had only done this with the agreement that it could only happen in case of an emergency, but as far as Carl was concerned, this qualified.

It was 8PM by the time Carl made it to the museum—three hours after closing time. The first thing he noticed while unlocking the side door, however, was that someone had already deactivated the security cameras. The lights were off inside; Carl used a flashlight to guide himself through the hallways of the museum. There didn't seem to be anyone else around as he made his way to the Egyptian exhibit. His flashlight beam came to rest upon a withered mummy, causing his heart to skip a beat. Exhaling, he brought the beam upwards in an arc around the room—and froze in his tracks as the beam, reaching its highest point, reflected off of two glowing red eyes that were peering out from behind an ancient column.

A cry of fright left his lips—and also did so from the glowing-eyed being. As Carl turned and ran, he was vaguely aware of someone yelling something—

"Run, Jamie, run!"

He didn't stop to figure out who Jamie was or what was that thing with the glowing eyes; he had to get to some place of relative safety!

He heard footsteps behind him—running in the opposite direction. If it hadn't been for the fact that the voice was different than any of the ones he had heard in the warehouse earlier that day, he'd have suspected that the glowing-eyed being was Sutekh. But he hadn't heard this voice before—whoever it was seemed to be sneaking in the museum independently of Sutekh.

Carl caught his breath under the towering form of Sue the T. rex; after that incident, perhaps his best bet was to leave, he knew—but he had to stop Sutekh from accomplishing whatever it was he was looking for. He would have to go back to the Egyptian exhibit, glowing-eyed creature or not…

A commotion elsewhere in the museum distracted Carl; something was going on in the Grainger Hall of Gems—something violent, by the sound of it.

"It's them!" Carl realized aloud.

Abandoning any further thoughts of the happenings in the Egyptian exhibition, Carl dashed towards the Hall of Gems as the struggle continued. He arrived in time to see someone—a museum janitor, judging by his uniform—being held in place by the purple-robed cultists. One man stood glaring at him, holding up an Egyptian medallion around his neck.

The man pressed the medallion to the janitor's arm; the moment it touched his skin, the janitor went slack, falling into a wide-eyed, completely unresponsive state.

"Does he know where they are, Lord Sutekh?" one of the cultists asked.

"No," the man wearing the medallion hissed. "He knows nothing. But you said they were not in the Egyptian exhibit last night. This is the only other place they can be—"

The lights suddenly went on all over the museum—and the alarm started sounding. The man cursed and motioned for the cultists to flee.

And Carl, at the entrance of the room, suddenly realized that there was no way he could run ahead without being seen.