You had a friend in high school who was really into those awful drugstore romances, the ones with rugged, shirtless men on the cover, and taglines like "Her soulmate had a dark secret." Inevitably, the "dark secret" was that the protagonist's soulmate was incredibly wealthy, but his parents were kind of assholes. Sometimes there was lycanthropy involved. Not that you'd know anything about this firsthand, because clearly you'd never stoop to read such filth.
Anyway.
You think you wouldn't mind a werewolf soulmate. You like dogs. And as for a rich yet disapproving family… well, you can deal with some skeletons in the closet.
…
Oh, fucking hell.
The ringing in your ears nearly drowns out the click of a door opening. You focus on the slants of light coming through the office's window blinds. Footsteps approach to your left.
"Are we on speaking terms yet?"
You let your silence answer.
There's the sound of a heavy chair dragging over carpet. You don't look up. Pressed trouser legs enter your view as weight settles into the chair now opposite you. The legs cross, ankle over knee, and you study the argyle socks and brown leather loafers with a critical eye. The man continues, undeterred.
"I won't try for that "we got off on the wrong foot" nonsense, but you should know that I never intended for you—or anyone else—to get involved with this." A sigh. "This is what comes of hiring thugs, I suppose."
If you weren't under a self-imposed vow of silence, you might laugh.
Actually, no, wait, you're laughing.
"Ah, I didn't expect amusement to be your first reaction. I won't complain; smiling makes you look less tragic."
Oh, fuck this guy. You weren't even laughing at him. You're still hung up on "skeletons in the closet."
Your shoulders are still shaking—are you crying or laughing? You'd touch your cheeks to check, but your hands are tied. Literally.
Again.
You've been through hell today—you're pretty sure you're still there, actually, dragging yourself back to the surface by your nails—and though you haven't exactly come out singing, you think you're doing okay. For a certain value of "okay." You look like you belong in a battered women's shelter and you're going into hysterics, but you haven't lost your sense of humor. Such as it is.
"I'd offer you a tissue, but I was warned to keep well clear of your mouth." Grandpa Clothes sounds amused. "Yates suggested a muzzle."
And, god, doesn't the name "Yates" just slot in neatly with the setting. You're not sure if Yates is the bald white guy you sassed loudly—and explicitly—on the way in, or the bald white guy that you probably sent to the emergency room with a spectacular impression of your pearly whites. You think your bark is probably about as bad (or at least as annoying) as your bite, so it could be either.
You look up, finally, because the silence ship has sailed, and this smug bastard isn't going to get the satisfaction of hearing his own smarmy words echo back to him in a silent room.
Monologue this, bitch.
"Oh, fuck you, dude! I go from a clean kidnapping record to being abducted twice in a twenty-four hour period, and you're sitting there in fucking loafers lamenting my involvement?" If your hands weren't tied to carved mahogany or whatever-the-fuck these chair arms are made out of, you'd have some choice gestures. "I wasn't involved before your goon squad tossed me into a truck and bounced me through half of the goddamn city. I was on my way home! I was going to count my tips! I was going to get some god-forsaken sleep!"
Christ on a six speed bike, you're tired. Like, bone-weary, craving-a-swift-death tired. Tired enough to consider crawling into someone else's closet and taking a little (long. eternal.) siesta.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
How does this keep happening?
It happens like this.
When Marisol said that you'd talk later she probably didn't mean for you to call at six in the morning, babbling and semi-hysterical, but she rolls with the punches in true New Yorker fashion.
"Breathe, honey. Shhh." Any sleep-cloudiness is gone from her voice now. "What happened?"
There's a muffled voice on the other line. You hear Marisol mutter something—you think you hear your name in the jumble—and she makes a shushing sound. You'd apologize for interrupting your friend and her soulmates again, but all you can do is make little aborted gasps into the phone.
Are you dying? There's a light somewhere ahead. Although, at second glance, it's probably a flashing billboard. You should probably sit down.
"Are you at home? Can we come get you?"
"N-no. Stepped out," you wheeze. "Soulmates… fucking… suck."
You can't feel your limbs. Are you going into shock? What, exactly, does shock feel like? Like your world is ending and also kind of like that time you ate two week old pizza from the back of the fridge? It does feel like the phantom of that supreme meats special is about to make a surprise reappearance on the sidewalk outside of your building. You swallow shallowly a few times and sink onto the building steps.
"What did that boy do." Marisol's voice is flat, not even rising in inflection.
Well, you see, first he seduced me in the back of a delivery truck, and then he totally annihilated some guys who had it out for us, and then he had the audacity to stop at second base when we were making out.
Oh, and then he up and died in my closet.
An early school bus stops at the end of the street. You forgot that today is a school day. Looks like your nine o'clock class is a bust. And, if you're being honest, the whole day is going to be a bust. You are exhausted down to your very marrow—and fuck, doesn't that just make you think of bones, which makes you think of—
Ahkmenrah.
He was so evasive, but there was going to be time to talk, he said, time for answers—
Well, you have a lot of fucking questions, and it didn't look like he'd be answering any of them when you fled the apartment a little while ago.
"Are you still there?" Marisol prods you back into the present.
"Yeah," you say vaguely.
You don't have any shoes on, you realize. You're huddled on the bottom step of your apartment building, pressed against a brick ledge, at—what time is it? six? ish?—in the morning, and you're barefoot.
"My shoes are in the closet."
"…Are you talking to me?" Marisol asks. There's a shuffling sound like she's getting out of bed.
You're about to say something stupid, something like, "my dead soulmate is on top of my sneakers," but a shadow falls across your hunched form, and your already tenuous train of thought is interrupted.
"Good morning."
There's a police officer in front of you. Your tongue pushes the words "I HAVE A DEAD MAN IN MY CLOSET" to the back of your mouth. Your phone is still against your ear.
"M-morning," you say. Casually. With the air of someone who has never seen a shriveled corpse (oh god, oh god), much less harbors one in her bedroom amongst her scattered bras and t-shirts.
"Hello?" Oh, right. Marisol. "You're scaring me."
"I'll call you back." You hit 'end call' against her protests.
The officer isn't in the standard uniform. It looks like he's half in street clothes, badge on his belt, side holster peeking out from his windbreaker. He's big enough that you'd be nervous being approached by him on any given day, but this morning it's almost too much. You regret your decision to hang up on Marisol. You'd spring for any excuse not to engage with the police on this particular morning.
"How's the other guy?" the officer asks, like you weren't already heading towards cardiac arrest by his greeting. He leans against your ledge, further throwing you into shadow.
You blanch.
"What other guy? There is no other guy. Just me." You're a natural at this evasion thing. "Smooth Criminal" plays when you walk into rooms.
The officer raises an eyebrow, staring pointedly at the lower left half of your face.
Oh, right. He was commenting on your impressive array of bruises, not questioning you for murder.
"Oh, you mean—yeah, haha, funny story. He has a broken jaw."
The officer's attention snaps from the car about to illegally park beside your building and focuses back on your face. You hold up your hands.
"It was self-defense."
The car slides in next to a fire hydrant. The officer pays it no mind.
"Well that sounds familiar. I'm here following up on a kidnapping charge. Of the two men being charged, one of them has a fractured jaw." He reaches into his jacket. "You were abducted outside of your workplace earlier this morning, correct?"
"Uh. Yeah." That's a bold fucking SUV. You hope the driver gets a fat ticket. You can't see a face through the tinted windows, but you bet it's a guy in a polo and boat shoes. "I was gonna come down to the station this morning to file a report."
"No need, actually," the officer says. His hand whips out of his windbreaker and you get an eyeful of his sidepiece in the milliseconds before he's smothering your face with a rag.
Your ears have been ringing for the last quarter of an hour, but now it's morphed into incoherent internal screaming.
Oh, for CHRISSAKES, you think. For one wild second you want to laugh. Instead, you try to lunge towards the fake officer, aiming for a head-butt. You collide painfully—probably more so for you, considering prior damage—before he tugs you in more securely. You didn't know hugs could be evil, but here you are.
You try to pull back from the man's almost-embrace, but he's no slouch, and his forearms are corded and immovable. You assume whatever he's doused the rag with is meant to knock you out—and you do feel lightheaded, because your initial reaction was to inhale sharply like a complete idiot—but this is the city. No way are you going to get kidnapped in public twice in a twelve hour period. Once is a fluke. Twice is a fucking conspiracy.
One of your last fleeting thoughts as Officer Cuddles bundles you into the idling SUV at the curb—and motherfucker, you knew something was off with that asshole—is that the illuminati are real, and you're going to fight some Nicholas Cage-looking bitch.
Square up, you meme-faced bastar—
One time, in first grade, you heard a boy say the words "rather worried" in passing, and being the mature six-year-old that you were, you decided that he was your soulmate. You were a pretty good reader, and you knew generally what the words on your hip said. Not many six-year-olds use phrases like "rather worried." It seemed like a winning deduction to you.
Clearly, no one had bothered to explain the specifics of soulmate discovery at that point in your life.
Little Eduardo was just as clueless as you, and by the time lunch was over, half the lunchroom had been invited to your impending wedding, and you were pretty sure Abby Dwyer was going to be your maid of honor and possibly Eduardo's best man, too. (No one had explained the specifics of weddings, either.) The teachers were pretty well-versed in spotting childhood soulmate false alarms, but no one could convince you that Eduardo wasn't The One, and you held his hand happily for about two hours, at which point Miss Sawyer told you to "please release Eduardo's hand, he needs to work on his vowel worksheet."
Miss Sawyer had no sympathy for the new love of six-year-old soulmates and would probably die without finding her I dig the sexy librarian look.
In hindsight, you feel pretty bad for the unfortunate placement of her words, as well as the words themselves. Imagine getting a teaching degree with that trailing over your neck like a bad nineties choker.
Unfortunate soulmarks aside, hearing from your mother—who was, at that point, your human Encyclopedia Britannica—that Eduardo, the love of your life, the stars in your eyes, the square pizza to your Friday lunch, was not, in fact, your soulmate was crushing. It remained your most devastating soulmate-related memory up until this morning, when your real soulmate (who doesn't have a sweet batman sticker book, but you think you could love him anyway) turned into one of those bizarre tabloid-style mysteries. You can imagine seeing the headline as you wait for the self-checkout: "The Talking Dead: Mum(my)'s the word on whether or not local woman made-out with corpse soulmate."
If curses are real—and all signs are pointing to 'yes'—you should probably see about finding someone to remove yours, because this level of bad luck has got to involve some magical intervention.
Yer a wizard, fucker.
Chloroform has a taste, and it's death. Death and flowers to be more accurate. The chemical sweetness wraps around the back of your throat like a hand. You can still taste it when you release a juttering breath.
Grandpa Clothes doesn't seem particularly impressed by you or your rant.
"I can understand your distress, believe you me."
Believe you me. Ugh, you wish you had a camera to stare into when this guy speaks.
"Clearly," you say. Your voice is so flat it would give the week-old coke in your backpack a run for its money.
The man ignores your pointed stare.
"Your sarcasm does you no credit."
You snort. Despite his apparel, Grandpa Clothes is no Grandpa. At most, he could be a DILF—dad you'd like to fucking defenestrate—but he can't be older than forty, and even that's pushing it. You're not sure why he feels the need to adopt the "disappointed dad" tone, but it's kind of giving you hives.
"Oh, did I miss the part where you'll let me go for good behavior?" You're tugging at your tied wrists as though that will do anything but chafe. "I admit, I tuned out some of your initial speech."
You do kind of feel like a badass, mouthing off to some suited villain while tied to a chair. Of course, instead of a towering kingpin, this guy just looks tired.
Well, you're exhausted too, and it's his fucking fault, so he can suck it up.
The man runs a hand through his hair. It's a dusty brown, like blond that hasn't seen the sun in a few years. You squint against the sunlight glancing off his cufflinks. His fashion is a personal affront to you on many levels.
"It's not likely to endear you to me, but I truly have no desire to keep you detained," he says. Honestly, he speaks so precisely you're starting to wonder if he's not a man, but a mildly evil robot. (A truly evil robot wouldn't be going after such small fish, after all, and you're pretty much a guppy.)
"You're right; every time you mention how much you don't want me here, my blood pressure rises. At this rate, I'll have a stroke before noon."
"That would be… regrettable." He leans forward. It must be nice to have the freedom to change positions. "You see, I think we can help each other."
"I swear, if you offer me money for my help with something—"
He glances away, clearly uncomfortable.
"—I am going to seriously consider it. I'm very poor."
His eyes snap back to yours. They're blue.
"You—" He barks out what could be a laugh, but it's a little dusty in the room, so it could be a cough. "I admit, that was not the response I expected."
"Have you kidnapped many college students?"
"I don't really kid—" He sighs. "No."
"Well then."
You stare at each other. He, a bit mournfully, and you with a certain level of smugness. You wonder if he can see your left eye beginning to twitch. You really need a nap.
"Do you even know why you're here?"
"Nah, but I'm hoping you aren't in dire need of an heir for your fortune 500, because there's a limit to things I'm willing to do for money."
Because you're sure this has nothing to do with your mysterious soulmate and his probably-not-a-curator job, and the chunk of gold that he totes around like a security blanket. Those are just quirks. Funny quirks that you're all going to laugh about when the camera crew jumps out and declares this episode of Punk'd a success.
The look Grandpa Clothes gives you is disappointed. Then again, you haven't seen many other expressions but disappointed on this man, so it could just be his default look. Some people have resting bitch faces, GC wants the world to know that he expected better of it.
"You may not have all the pieces, but I know you've at least glimpsed some of the bigger picture here. You seem very quick witted," he says. "Try again."
You're really flying blind here, and you have no idea how much this guy knows, what his "bigger picture" is, or how much you can reveal. Does he know Ahkmenrah is your soulmate? Does he know he's… well. He probably doesn't know Ahkmenrah is in your closet. That seems like a pretty safe assumption.
Unless he's behind Ahkmenrah's… circumstances?
Your head hurts. If you think any more about closets you're going to cry again. Also you have to pee.
GC seems to take your silence as a deliberate one instead of the dazed stupor of a sleep deprived waitress being presented with puzzle metaphors.
"I suppose a little transparency is needed from both sides," he says. "My name is Erik Bishop, and I work in… real-estate." Uh-huh. "Recently I stumbled—quite by chance—upon an answer to a problem that has plagued me for the past three years." He gains momentum as he speaks, growing more animated. "You see, three years ago, my wife passed on. It was sudden, senseless. I was—I am—devastated. She was my matched, and you can't imagine the pain, the lengths to which I was willing to go—"
Irony abounds. And yet, you're not laughing.
"—tried everything to bring her back. Science. Mysticism. As you might imagine, nothing worked. Death is absolute. A guarantee. Money can't buy a miracle." He looks a little manic now. "But then, then—as hopelessness set in, as I considered ending my own life in a desperate bid to rejoin my wife, I encountered the most whimsical thing."
Is this the part where he reveals his newfound taxidermy hobby? You're a little nervous. Also, confused as to how this story winds up with you tied to a chair in Erik's "real-estate" office.
"Do you recall a publicity stunt in Central Park some time ago, one ostensibly to generate interest in the Museum of Natural History?"
"Is that the one with the caveman memes?" You can't be blamed for not remembering the specifics of the actual event. Memes have a longer shelf life.
Erik doesn't seem to be interested in your input.
"I thought nothing of it at first; I didn't even watch the footage. But there were whispers in some of the groups was monitoring, the factions that dealt less in reality and more in the... surreal. I knew some of the individuals were highly educated, if derided for their beliefs. They spoke excitedly of a relic coming to light in that night, a tablet forged millennia ago in ceremonies lost to time."
He's talking about Ahkmenrah's tablet.
Oh, shit. He thinks a gold paperweight is gonna bring his dead soulmate back to life.
You're going to play it cool, keep a blank face and let the sad, deranged guy finish, but it's just so funny. Your dead soulmate is currently clutching the tablet that this poor bastard thinks is going to revive his wife.
Hahahaha—oh, honey.
Out of the two of you, he's going to need the more intensive therapy.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but it's just—hahahaha—oh, man." You'd wipe your eyes, but alas. "Tell you what, if you let me go and pay for my college, I totally won't press charges. Honestly. It's like we're both doing a charity."
In hindsight, not the best phrasing.
Erik née Grandpa Clothes doesn't look particularly happy to be the punch line of your joke.
"You saw the tablet—those incompetent imbeciles gave me a preliminary report before everything went to hell—" Oh, he's shaking things up with some spicy language. "I assume you spoke with its owner as well."
Yes. You also touched his butt.
"Had events gone according to plan, neither of you would have been involved last night. However, this mix-up may actually offer me more insight. If my sources are to be believed—and I have compelling evidence in support of their theories—the man who was in the truck with you last night is dead."
Everything stops.
The man who was in the truck with you last night is dead.
The closet door opens.
He's dead, Jim.
The crazy thing about crazy things—and crazy people—is they seem less so when you're running mostly on adrenaline and spite. A person might even begin to believe that their soulmate is a dead pharaoh with a life-giving tablet if the circumstances are weird enough and said person is tired enough.
It is, hypothetically, a Thing That Could Happen.
However, even if all those variables are true, a nap can really change a person's outlook.
"Hey. Hey! If you're there, God, it's me, the prisoner you forgot in the locked room." Actually, you don't know if it's locked, but you'd like to assume that they've taken precautions against your razor-sharp intellect and barred the door despite your bound limbs.
The door opens. You don't hear the sliding click of a deadbolt, which is a bit disheartening.
Flunky number two appears in the doorway. He and Officer Cuddles—who is probably the illustrious "Yates"—seem to be more put together than the first guys who nabbed you. If there was a "rate my kidnapper," you'd give these guys at least three stars. They have that hired muscle and bald lackey aesthetic.
"You need the head?"
"Um. Are shoulders, knees, and toes an option?"
"You need to piss or not?"
Well why didn't he just say so.
"Yes," you squeak. They let you toddle to the bathroom earlier, after Sadguy Erik finished his diatribe and left you to think it over. If by "think it over" he meant "fall into a coma," then he should be happy with the results.
The bathroom is clean and single stalled. The upside of this is that the guard doesn't follow you in. The downside is your extreme lack of escape routes. Your hips may not lie, but they also won't fit through that tiny air vent.
"Two minutes," says a voice from the door.
Oh, good. Two minutes should give you just enough time to stare blankly at your own reflection and fling silent curses into the uncaring Void. There might even be enough time to wash your face.
It turns out to be just enough time to do your business, wash up, and also decide that the drying problem in your closet probably can't be fixed with a humidifier. Whether or not the desiccated corpse of your soulmate was caused by some really poorly thought out magic, or some other, more nefarious means, you're not sure, but you're also reasonably certain that intensive moisturizer isn't going to give you back the brave, sly man that said your words. Now you've just got to decide whether to tell Erik that surprise! Ahkmenrah is your soulmate and is also conveniently located with his tablet in a private, unsecured area, or whether you should continue to let him operate under the assumption that Ahkmenrah marched right back to the museum last night, miraculous tablet in tow.
You could also tell him that the tablet doesn't appear to have any magic, life-giving properties, but it's probably best to let him figure that out on his own.
And if you don't let him retrieve the tablet, what on earth are you going to do with Ahk's body?
You try not to get caught up in a morbid, Weekend at Bernie's themed daydream while not-Yates leads you away from the bathroom, but you keep imagining a mummy in sunglasses. It's not doing great things for your state of mind.
"Um. If I asked you where we're going, would you answer?"
Not-Yates takes you to an elevator instead of back to your office prison. You hope this is one step closer to free hands and free college.
"Garage."
You'd pester him about the details, but you're too groggy to really give him hell.
"What time is it?"
"Dinner."
You could point out that "dinner" isn't a time, but holy hell, you slept the whole afternoon. In an office chair. No wonder your neck feels like the curved end of a cane.
Yates and Erik are both standing by the SUV when the elevator doors slide open. Yates has a bandage around one hand.
You smile, all teeth.
Chloroform doesn't last forever, asshole.
"I hope you've had all your shots, buddy." You don't say "for both our sakes," but you remember the taste of his blood in your mouth and cringe a little.
Erik looks jittery, unable to stop fidgeting with his hair and his phone.
"We should aim to arrive just after dusk," he says. "This time we're planning for the pharaoh, however. Can you handle that with your injury?"
Yates looks unamused.
"Isn't he dead?"
"Not after sunset," Erik says. He sounds like he's trying to remain unaffected, but his excitement shines through.
And this is the part that really trips up your skepticism. The whole "alive until sunrise" business. According to Erik, any being affected by the tablet experiences rejuvenation at night, but who the hell designed it that way? And why? It sounds like a bunch of far-out, internet mythology shit, but you saw Ahkmenrah just before sunrise. He was genuinely horrified. He was also blessedly alive.
You settle for keeping the "seeing is believing" mentality for your own sanity. If you can't see it? Doesn't exist. Object permanence is for squares.
You've been to the AMNH before—once—but it's markedly different at night. There's the obvious difference of no patrons, but the lights are all off or on low, and the exhibits cast ghastly shadows on the glass and walls. Every movement echoes.
"Didn't you say this place comes to life at night?" you whisper. Sure, you guys are sneaking in the back way and dodging main hallways, but surely there would be some sign of activity? Some glimmer of hope that elsewhere in the city, your soulmate is waking up amidst your unironed blouses?
Honestly, you're not even supposed to be here. Erik decided to come along at the last moment—he's not nearly so precise now that what he wants is so close (he thinks)—and he doesn't trust just one of his guys to take out the ancient being that took out two full grown men, no sweat. Of course, you can't stay in the car alone because you might pee on the seat or tear up the upholstery or lay on the horn until help arrives, so that means all four of you are playing Mission Impossible.
Yates made very clear what would happen if you tried to run or make a scene, and you've demoted him to two stars on the kidnapper scale.
Erik doesn't answer your question, but his shadowed body language says "stressed and doubtful, but rocking it."
The Egyptian wing is empty.
Well, obviously not empty empty—there are display cases and statues and a pretty rockin' sarcophagus—but there's no sign of life, and most disappointingly for everyone, no Ahkmenrah.
Erik is looking straight ahead at the conspicuously empty tablet display.
Oh, did I forget to mention that I last saw it among my unmentionables? My bad.
You don't know what time it is, but it was full dusk on the trip over, and you're hoping security makes its rounds in this wing very soon. You have an unbelievable sob story ready for whoever rescues you from these assholes.
"No. It has to be here." Erik has his hands on the sarcophagus, which you're pretty sure is frowned upon. Then again, this is the same guy who dabbles in kidnapping and assault (by way of shitty lackeys, at least), so you keep that etiquette tidbit to yourself.
"Want us to open it?"
Wait. What.
"Yes, thank you, Barrett," Erik says, stepping out of not-Yates's way.
"What, you think he's going to be in there?" you ask, shrill.
"Where else would a mummy be?" The "idiot" is implied.
You have several answers to that, actually, and none of them are "a tomb." The mausoleum of a museum has made you doubt, though, and you don't think you can stand to watch them pry the lid off of the box without hyperventilating.
What if…?
Nope, object impermanence. It's Schrödinger's mummy. In there or not. Dead or not.
Wait. If they're busy with the sarcophagus, then they're not watching you. You back up once, bare feet silent on the marble. No one twitches in your direction. You turn and edge past a giant Anubis, breath hanging suspended in your chest.
Come one, come on, just step… out… of… the room—
The Anubis blinks.
The breath in your chest solidifies, chokes you.
Hoooo my god—
"They won't harm you."
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, there's a heaving crash as the sarcophagus lid falls to the floor. You stare, eyes wateringly wide, in the opposite direction, where your soulmate stands feet away, wreathed in light from his tablet. Behind him, there's a motley assortment of historical figures, and one nervous-looking guy in a guard uniform. A monkey sits on a wall fixture.
"There is much to discuss," Ahkmenrah says in the moment of ringing silence as all of the room's occupants notice each other. You can't look away from his smooth, completely unblemished skin. He's here. He's alive. Your bound hands are shaking.
Ahkmenrah crooks the fingers of his free hand, and it is as if you are tugged inexorably into his orbit. You cross the few steps to his side, unblinking, as though the mirage will dissipate. His hand, warm, present, and very real, cups your jaw. You lean in.
"But first," he mutters, your gazes locked. His posture is tense, a whip frozen midstrike, but his fingers are the softest pressure on your cheek.
He barks something over you, eyes snapping, still boring into yours.
You don't need to speak ancient Egyptian understand the meaning. Stone drags on stone as the giant guards lunge.
Get them.