The Afterward is a go!
Thanks a bunch for your patience!
-Ravyne
(Disclaimer: I DO NOT own the 'MUMMY' movies or any of their characters. Just my characters Katherine and Bastet belong to me.)
Life Forsakes Her
Afterward:
"Do you always keep your house so disorderly?" Jonathan gaps from the doorway where they all huddle like slack jawed children just given the keys to the biggest candy store in the world.
"No," she responds just as dumbfounded.
Kat had pushed open the ajar door not a minute before to reveal the chaotic mess of her apartment within. The dirigible had landed in Cairo about thirty minutes ago, Izzy was nice enough to bring them all a bit closer to the main airfield that would allow for passage home for Rick and his family, only for one of the pilots on duty at the airfield to come running up asking for Kat O'Connell. She had accepted the urgent message from him when he told her that some woman had been there an hour ago to wait impatiently for her arrival only to finally give up and leave.
Kat had read the message, a short one with only two lines, and it was enough to send her weapon bag to the ground and her rushing off the airfield with the men following after her in alarm.
The message had been from one of the other tenants of the building who she had become friends with since moving in there. The woman had offered to keep an eye on her apartment while Kat was gone.
Well, she'd done her job. Kat just hadn't been back in enough time.
Now the insides of her apartment lay in ruin before her as she gazes through the doorway at the mess. She reaches up and taps the gun still in the holster at Rick's side, "You should be pulling that out right about now."
Her words barely leave her mouth as she pulls out her knife from her belt and feels the sharpening of her gaze as her eyes begins to swirl. Kat takes one step through her doorway and immediately starts taking note of anything that may be missing. What few books she has are thrown precariously off the shelves and across the floor, paperwork and folders jumbled randomly along with it from their previous place on her desk nearby. Her couch and arm chair have been tilted over, a few pictures off her walls have been tossed, and even her small kitchen—if you can call it such—has been run through.
"Anything missing?" Rick asks as the men step lightly through the chaos of the main room.
Kat's eyebrows pull together, "Weirdly enough…no. That's what's got me so confused. Nothing's gone, none of my books, none of my information from my desk…" She kicks the bottom of her arm chair and a yellow envelope drops out of a hidden slot underneath. She picks it up and holds it out, "They didn't even take my emergency money. And I didn't even hide it that well."
"How much do you have?"
Kat shoves Jonathan's greedy hands away without throwing a single look his way, "Go check the kitchen."
"Right."
"So why would they break in?" her brother wonders.
"Maybe they thought I was here," she shrugs. Ardeth's eyes instantly jerk to where she stands and she grins sheepishly, "Just a thought."
"If they were after you, they wouldn't have wasted all this energy to destroy your house. Maybe this is a vendetta kind of deal. Have you peeved anyone off lately?" Rick pokes around what remains on her desk absentmindedly.
"I just sleep here," Kat rolls her eyes. "I don't talk to anybody except the nice lady down the hall on this floor."
"Would anyone hold malice towards something you or your brother did in the past?" Ardeth asks, looking up from where he kneels on the floor flipping through one of the tossed books.
Kat runs her fingers over her head with a shrug, "I don't keep up with every wrong doing my brother's ever done—shut up, Rick—and if I've done anything it wouldn't warrant any of this… I guess maybe the only other thing is that maybe they thought this was someone else's place or…" Her eyes have trailed off down the dark hallway towards her room and she finds the door wide open.
Something she's never done.
Her eyes widen in terror as she grasps the situation, "Oh no."
"What?" Rick and Ardeth leap to their feet, each one pulling out a weapon.
"Oh no, no, no!" Kat takes off down the hall and skids to a stop in her room. Across the way, past the only dresser she has, a picture she had framed about five years ago hangs weirdly from the wall like a door, revealing an open safe behind it in the wall. She grabs her head in panic, "Shoot!"
"Language! What's wrong?" Rick and Ardeth pause on either side of her and follow her gaze. "A safe behind a picture, Kat? Can you be any more predictable?"
"Shut up!" she goes to the safe, pushing the picture and the door aside so she can get better access to the inside. Only a few pictures from her past with Rick and Alex and Evie sit inside, all else is gone. Of course, there hadn't been but one other item inside before the intruder broke in. They obviously knew what they were after.
"What'd they get?" Jonathan asks around a mouthful of stolen sandwich from Kat's refrigerator, skidding to a stop behind Rick and Ardeth.
"Not sure yet. Kat?" Rick ushers.
Kat slams the door shut and the picture back over it angrily only to stop mid-rage. There is a knife stuck through the picture of her, her brother, and their mother from years ago when Kat was still very young. The knife itself is stabbed directly through her face in particular, where her younger self stands by her mother's knee and grasps the woman's hand.
A piece of paper is held to the picture with the knife and she rips it off. Unfolding it, she stares down at the black and white photo in her hands. The words written on it stand out perfect like blood on sand: you should've left it buried.
"Well, at least I know who took it," she snarls as she passes the picture to her brother.
"I thought this guy died in Ahm Shere? We saw the Scorpion King rip him apart, remember?" he hands the picture back to Kat who is shaking his head.
"Remember when I told you he had a twin? Ardeth, do you still have that picture you showed us before at Rick's house?" The madjai reaches into his robes and pulls out the one in question and Kat places them side by side for them to see, "Hafez had a twin. He was the one I mentioned before…only…I don't think it was Hafez who was killed by the Scorpion King."
"What?" Jonathan's jaw goes slack. "But he was leading those cult members."
"I think he had traded places with his brother right before they found Imhotep at Hamunaptra so that Hafez could take care of…something else. Now that I think back on it, maybe he knew I was on to him and that's why he brought in his double," Kat sighs.
"What was he after, Kat?" Rick pushes the pictures she holds up in the air down so he can face her directly.
Kat grins sheepishly as she turns towards her dresser drawers beside her. Throwing the pictures on top, she pulls open the top drawer, empty of any contents, and starts messing around with the wood panel at the bottom.
Rick glances in curiously, throwing his sister a suspicious look, "You have a dresser but you don't use it?"
"All my stuff is packed in a duffle bag under my bed. Speaking of which can you grab that for me?" Kat says as she works to lift the panel. Rick reaches under the edge of the bed and sure enough he finds a bag already packed beneath.
"Why do you have this?"
"I'm always ready to leave at a moment's notice," she explains. "And after all this, I think it's best if I move to a new location since some bad people know where I am now. Ah! Here it is." Kat pulls out a small, narrow book from under the panel and starts fiddling with the strap binding it closed, "You remember that story mom used to tell us as kids, the one about the legendary stone? The Killing Stone?"
Rick tosses her bag over his shoulder before narrowing his eyes in skepticism, "You mean the bed time story?"
Kat presses her lips together, turning one side up, before flipping through the book and stopping on a certain page. Turning it around for all of them to see, she steadies her gaze, "Not just a bed time story."
Rick's eyes finish scanning the page and the photo taped at the end, his expression becoming more shocked with each line he reads, before looking back up at his sister.
"Yeah," she nods. "I found it."
~THE END~
Author's Note:
For real this time! LOL
Thanks everyone for reading. Love you all so very much! If you have the time, please leave a review and let me know what you think.
-Ravyne