Chapter Six: Mission Improbable

"What if we set a fire, just a small one, in one of the other wings to distract the staff. We could get in and out before they put it out."

"No, Jonathan."

"We could put ourselves in a box and have it delivered to the museum! It worked for the Romans, I don't know why it wouldn't work for us."

Bianca buried her head into her hands as she listened to Jonathan's babbling. It had been over an hour since they were thrown out of the museum and most of that time had been spent thinking of ways to get back in. The most vocal member of their party was also turning out to be the one with the worst ideas.

"What happens when they open the box and find us instead of a Chinese urn?" Rick asked from his seat on the sidewalk.

Jonathan shrugged. "Well, I don't hear you coming up with any ideas."

"That's because you haven't stopped talking long enough for any of us to get a word in." Bianca snapped at the man. Listening to him for that long had dissolved any resolve to be civil. "If you haven't been too busy listening to the sound of your own voice, you would notice that absolutely nothing that you've suggested has made a bit of sense!"

The look on Evelyn's face made her regret saying anything almost immediately. She knew that the whole group was on edge, but she had been the first to snap. Bianca stood up from the bench, ignoring the stiffness of her leg and walked a few feet away from their road side pow wow. She could hear whispering voices from behind her and did her best to block it out. She was sure that she heard her name mentioned a few times during the hushed conversation between the British siblings. She sighed. 'Maybe you should try to get that temper in check. You could stop and think before letting words outof your mouth. Maybe then you might not be the third wheel, just getting in everyone's way all the time.'

Ricks voice cut through the awkward silence that descended onto the group. "What if we did use a distraction of some kind. Not a fire, but something to get the attention of the guards and staff at least long enough for us to get in."

Eager to prove herself one of the group once again, Bianca spoke up, "What kind of distraction do you have in mind?"

"It would have to be something that draws attention." His wife cut in. "Something...boisterous and alarming."

Rick looked like he had an idea. "Yes, something that isn't so out of the ordinary that the authorities would be involved, but enough of a spectacle that people would want to watch."

It seemed as though Evy had caught on to what he was dancing around saying. "Yes, maybe something like an argument. A very loud, heated and passionate argument. One that would almost be over dramatic. One involving a certain two people that I know."

Bianca's heart seemed to sink as she realized what she was being roped into doing. "You don't really want us to...Me and him? Are you sure that's the best idea?"

She winced as she felt Jonathan drape his arm around her shoulders, leaning so heavily on her that she almost lost her balance. "What's the matter, love? You don't think you're up for the job?"

Shrugging him off of her and gently shoving him away, Bianca said, "I'm not saying that I can't do it. I'm just saying that it might not be enough to get the attention of the entire building. I mean, we aren't that much of a spectacle."

Evelyn looked at the two with a sly smile and a raised eyebrow. "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Bianca peered out from behind the pillar at the museum before ducking back and facing the rest of the group. Evy and Rick, dressed all in black like a pair of common burglars, were speaking in hushed voices to one another. Jonathan on the other hand, seemed to be in the process of getting absolutely and totally sloshed. She knew that it might work better for their part of their part of the job, but the idea of putting up with an intoxicated Jon really wasn't one that she liked.

"Now, Bianca, are you sure you have all the details? We can go over the plan again if you want." Evy said. She seemed to be losing the collected demeanor that she had maintained up until that point.

Bianca smiled at the woman. "I'm fine. You've already gone through the whole thing fifty times since noon. I think I'll still remember all the details when I'm eighty."

"We're going to do fine, Evy. Just relax and everything will just go along like it should." Her husband said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her even closer.

"Right, unless one of the million things that could go wrong does, we should be just peachy." Jonathan mumbled, earning himself a glare from the rest.

Bianca pulled her pocket watch from her skirt and glanced down at the hands. "It's almost nine. The night guards should be relieving the day ones sometime soon."

"Right. Well, I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Shall we get this started?" Bianca wished that she could share some of the woman's ability to put on a brave face. Most of the time, anyone could tell exactly what Bianca was thinking and how she felt about it from one look at her.

Rick and Evy left the safety of their hiding place first. They slipped out into the shadows, staying just close enough to the building that they could see everything that was happening and have time to react quickly enough. The two were out of sight within moments, leaving the other duo to start the show.

At first, Bianca hadn't believed that they would be able to pull it off. She knew that she herself was a horrible actor and she doubted that Jonathan would be any better. But now, after going over and over it, she felt that they could at least get the guards to look the other way for a moment, even if it was just to kick the two off the front steps of the museum.

She took a few deep breaths as she went over what she was going to say one last time. 'Just go by the script. Just follow that and you'll get through this. All you have to do is yell a bit, stop your foot and then you can high tail it out of there.'

She jumped as she felt Jonathan's arm slither into the crook of her own. The smell of gin wafted off of the man and for a moment she thought that he must have taken a bath in the alcohol for it to be that strong. "Just remember, love, go along with what I say and everything will be coming up roses by the end of this."

That was definitely not what they had agreed upon. They had a script, they had practiced exactly what they were going to say and the best way to make it as big and obnoxious as possible. They were going to be missionaries, a role that Jonathan had apparently used to escape trouble a few times before. They were going to argue about whether or not they should go back to England since their work wasn't going anywhere. Going along with what ever happened to spill from the drunkard's brain was not part of the script.

Unfortunately, before she even had a chance to open her mouth and tell him that he was dead wrong, he was tugging her by the arm from the side lines and onto their stage of a side walk.

"Jonathan. Jonathan what the hell are you doing?" she hissed as she fought not to fall over as he pulled her along. She saw the guards posted outside the building looking in their direction with interest and knew that it was too late to go back now.

"Now look!" The man slurred, stumbling slightly and nearly bringing her down with him. "If you had just listened to me in the first place, we never would have missed our train out of this backwater city."

Rage began to bottle within her, urging her to simply blow up and finally put the man in his place. "What? That isn't- This isn't-" Bianca sputtered, her brain hardly able to for complete words let alone sentences. She could feel the gaze of the guards boring into her back. 'I'm going to kill him.'

"How the hell is it my fault? You're the one that took ages finding your ticket, which turned out to be in your coat pocket if I may remind you." She said, much louder than necessary to ensure that the guards would hear them. One of the two men began whispering to the other; she assumed that he was translating what was being spat back and forth. She thought she saw the glimmer of a smile on Jonathan's face before it morphed back into his pretend scowl.

"Oh, so it's my fault that you put my ticket somewhere ridiculous!"

"It's not ridiculous if it's a place that makes perfect sense! Besides, you weren't even looking that hard. You just stumble around with that damned flask all day, muttering bad ideas to anyone who has the little brains to listen to you." Bianca had to admit that getting into the acting wasn't nearly as hard when she wasn't even acting. She could already feel her cheeks getting their familiar burning as her voice got unintentionally louder and louder.

"Well you weren't much help either. Lounging around like the bloody queen of Shiba while the rest of us do all the work just like every other day." She had just thought up a very clever come back about his lack of enthusiasm as well when he continued. "I swear, Bibi, every other day your leg seems to be too stiff or too tired or too gimpy for you to do any work at all."

It wasn't even a conscious decision to swing out and hit him with her cane. She hardly even realized she had done it until he leapt away from her, cradling the arm that had been wounded. "Jesus, Bi! Are you trying to kill me?"

"How dare you?" Bianca screeched. She was sure that everyone in the city could hear her by that point, but at that moment she really didn't care. "You have no idea, do you? You have no idea what it's like!" Bianca took a deep breath to calm herself down. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two guards starting to walk slowly down the steps of the museum and towards to argument.

It was at that moment that she remembered what they were actually supposed to be accomplishing with their fighting. Two figures darted from the shadows and through the doors to the museum before Bianca could even get a good look at them. 'Alright. They're in. We did it. Now we just have to not be arrested for disrupting the peace and we're in the clear.'

"Is there something wrong here, Miss?" the guard asked her, obviously struggling to form the words in his nonnative language.

"Everything's fine, officer." She said, trying as hard as possible to look like she hadn't just been screaming her head off. It was obvious that the man didn't buy it.

"Oh, don't worry about us, chaps." Jonathan said. He leaned towards the security as if sharing some kind of great secret. "We're on out honey moon, you know. It just hasn't been working out like we hoped. Marital bliss just isn't really working out for us so far. Right, Bibi?"

Bianca was almost too ruffled by his statement to respond. She managed to nod dumbly as the guard's demeanor turned about 180 degrees. "I know how that is. It is all fun until the knot gets tied." The older of the two men said.

The other nudged him a bit and said something that Bianca's mediocre skills couldn't translate fast enough. The elder nodded before telling the two, "We have to be back at our post. Just keep it quieter next time."

Jonathan let out a strangled sigh as the men marched back to the doors they were supposed to be guarding. "That went well. didn't it?"

If Bianca could have, she would have hit him again.

The entire building was silent, as if there wasn't a single life form inside, as Rick and Evelyn crept towards the hallway. The dim lighting and shadows seemed to mask them, but they pressed against the wall as much as possible and moved at a snail's pace just in case. Every single breath they took seemed to be as loud as a siren and every carefully place footstep was a bomb.

Faint footsteps sounded from behind them. Evy grasped her husband's sleeve and tugged lightly to make him stop. They turned to face the noise, their hearts hammering away in their chest and their throat tightening at the prospect of being caught. They both let out a sigh of relief when the sound faded off into one of the other exhibits. From skulking around the museum all day they knew that there was a very limited number of guards on patrol; they had only ever seen the two posted at the front entrance and three patrolling the halls.

They passed through the flora and fauna room, filled with stuffed lions and crocodiles, the European crusades exhibit and the Ancient Egyptian room before they reached their destination. Evy yearned to say something, anything really, to her husband, but the rational part of her mind told her to shut it until they were absolutely sure that no one could hear them.

Rick eased open the small, wooden door that lead to the storage room and slipped inside. Evy took one last glance around before she followed him. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the almost total dankness. When they did they could barely make out the rows and rows of crates that filled the room. "It could be in any of them." Rick said, exasperated.

"But, we don't have the time to look through them all. There could be hundreds here." Evy began pouring over the boxes looking for any sign of where they came from or what they held, while her husband began taking the opposite approach. He yanked off the lids and rustled around the contents before jumping to the next one, beyond caring about the level of noise that they were producing. Evelyn rolled her eyes at her husband's actions and continued her search.

After fifteen minuted of finding every artifact under the sun except for the ones they were looking for, Evy yelled out, "Rick, I think I found something!"

He was by her side and prying open the box in seconds. They peered inside the container and squinted into the darkness, trying to determine if the second clue was really in their grasp.

"This must be it!" Evy reached in and gingerly grasped the small clay pot that rest at the bottom of the box, surrounded by a cushion of wood shavings. She held it up and brushed off some of the dust that still coated its surface. Her finger traced one of the lines of hieroglyphics that covered the pot, scanning for any clue that it was in fact the item that they were looking for.

Both their heads shot up at the sound of heavy footsteps and barely hushed voices coming from outside the door. "Well, it better be, because I think our hosts know that we're here now." Rick said, starting to push his wife towards the door. "You just hold onto the clue and get ready to run."

"Run? I can't run with this! Do you have any idea just how fragile something like this is?" Despite her protests, Evy wrapped the pot tightly in her arms and followed after her husband to the exit.

"You ready, hun?" Rick asked light heartedly. She met his eyes and nodded.

With a solid kick from her husband, the door was flung open and the guards were started, giving them just enough time to dart past. The shouting of the men coupled with the pounding of their own feet filled the corridor as they sprinted towards the main lobby. Evy could have had a heart attack when Rick knocked over one of the cases showing off a papyrus reed mat, but her own adrenaline and the weight in her arms urged her to just keep running and scold him later.

Time seem to slow down to a near halt. What should have been a one and a half minute sprint seemed like an eternity of ducking around platforms and dodging columns. Finally, the double door that lead to the outside world was in view. They burst through and jumped down the steps three at a time. A chorus of "Stop them!" rang out from their per suitors, but by the time the outside guards had a chance to react, the two had disappeared down one of the countless ally ways that wound through the city and were gone.

Iason had never seen Apophis show as much anger as he did standing in the empty, dark tomb. The most emotion he had ever shown was the twisted smirk that came over his face or the slight twitch of his lip that signaled that the man was displeased. Never before had he cursed or stormed about. And Iason had never been as frightened.

Some of the workers had actually fled for fear of Apophis' anger. They simply bolted out into the unforgiving desert that stretched on for miles, seeming to prefer their chances with the unrelenting heat than with him. If he didn't know that there was a slight chance that he would be spared, Iason would have readily joined them.

"Why is it not here?" Apophis hissed, not even turning to look at his second in command.

Iason wondered for a moment if it had been a rhetorical question before he asked, "Sir?"

Apophis paced around the small, empty space as if the clue was still there and all he hoped he could still stumble upon it some how. "They couldn't have gotten here before us. It is impossible." He muttered as he ran a hand through his slicked back hair. "Even with that woman's help, she couldn't have deciphered the stone so quickly. We would have seen them; the scouts were searching every second. Gods damn it."

Iason took a few timid steps away from the man. The shadows caused by the lone torch cast deforming shadows over his comander as he muttered to himself and paced feverishly back and forth. Suddenly, he stopped. "Iason, gather the men together and be ready to set out again."

Iason gathered his courage and asked, "Where should I tell them we are going?"

Apophis simply resumed his pacing in silence.

Sorry this chapter took so long to get out! It gave me a lot more trouble than it's worth. Comments and critique is always a great thing to get!

My computer seems to be erasing random quotation marks now when I transfer the file from my computer onto the document manager so if you notice any mistakes that I missed, I would love it if you could let me know. Thank you!