Chapter Fourteen:

Turn of Events

There were no special tricks. There were no amazing moves, or anything like that. It was just a simple thrust, and that was the end of it. The Senator and I had passed each other, but I knew that one of us hadn't missed.

In fact, neither of us did.

The Senator's sword had torn through my abdomen, while my nodachi went straight through his heart. He stumbled for a moment before whispering something totally inaudible, and then died. His body hit the floor about a second afterwards.

I guess at the angle that my body was, nobody could see I was wounded. This is bad… I thought. My powers don't work here! I can't heal!

I dropped my nodachi, finding no strength to carry it anymore. I felt hands on my shoulders and absently wondered who it could be.

And then I remembered that inscription.

The one when we were just going into the Sphinx, with two warriors, and seven people standing behind the first. It ended in the deaths of both.

Please, don't let that be what's going on!

"Joan?" Lance was right beside me. "You did it! You won!"

I found I couldn't say anything. I was losing blood, and it was only a matter of time before they realized that.

"Holy crap…" Cole's voice echoed through the chamber. "What I miss?"

"One hell of a party," was Dana's curt reply. I could imagine she went to Alec's side. "You guys okay?"

"Yep," Alec said. "My pride went down a ton, since I got my ass handed to me by an old man…"

"They're still unconscious," Cole said. "C'mon. We should get outta here. Alec, help me out with these guys."

"I will help," Osiris offered. "There are three. It will be easier with three to carry them."

I felt arms wrap around me and pick me up. I knew it was Lance, and I knew that he'd seen the wound. I was looking right at him, so why couldn't I hear his voice? Why couldn't I hear anyone anymore?

The room started shaking violently, most likely an aftershock of the bombs that the Senator had planted. The next thing I knew, I was moving fast. Through the door. I expected myself to feel better as soon as we got through, but I wasn't. If anything, I was getting worse. My vision was fading in and out, and it was getting harder to breathe.

No, dammit! I have to keep breathing! I have to! Don't give up! Just wait a while longer!

I felt a pull in my abdomen, but it wasn't a, "Yes! I'm getting healed!" kind of pull. It was more like a, "What the hell? This friggin' hurts!" kind of pull. Those weren't the good pulls.

I screamed in pain and held my abdomen. I felt like I was losing more blood, which was not the best thing I could feel at the time.

"What the hell's happening?" I heard Lance's voice, which made it comforting and painful at the same time. "She's not healing!"

"What kind of a weapon was the Senator using?" Cole demanded.

"It was a bronzed quicksilver blade," Horus explained. "During our time, the people who believed us to be Gods created those weapons in secret. Sehkmet's weakness was quicksilver, but she managed to escape from the people who imprisoned us. She needed the book they used to free us, and so told us that she was going after it. We didn't hear of her afterwards."

"Quicksilver? That's Joan's weakness too!"

I grabbed the collar of Lance's shirt. "I'll… be fine! Just… keep running!"

Lance held me tighter and continued running with everyone. We barely escaped the collapsing chambers and made it into the Sphinx, where the falling debris stopped. Lance placed me against the wall and quickly got his mother to look me over.

"If we can get to a hospital within the hour, then she'll be fine," Helen concluded. I couldn't imagine what she was going through, with her supposedly dead husband actually dead now. He barely even looked at her during the time she was captured, like she didn't exist. "Joan, hold out until then!"

I nodded and painfully tried to stand. Lance grabbed me and picked me up. I guessed that he really didn't want me to over-exert myself.

"I promised I'd wait for you," he said. "Now promise me that you're going to live."

I smiled and chuckled. "Promise…"

"I swear, I'm never watching The Mummy after this shit," Lance muttered. "Not even the third one."

The time passed quickly, but we miraculously made it to a hospital in the nick of time. I could hear lots of people whispering about our new, strange companions, and I heard the latter chattering excitedly about the things that we thought were so simple (cars, vending machines, streetlamps, etc.).

I was in the ER immediately. Helen herself led the surgery to get the quicksilver out of my system, since I wouldn't trust anyone else with it. It was a long hour before it was all out, and even then I had to have bandages wrapped around the wound.

When Lance came to visit me with Kayce, he also brought our new friends. It was entertaining, to say the least, and I was already feeling better.

"So, you dressed them in modern clothing?" I asked Lance.

"I bought it," Lance explained. "They picked out what they wanted. I thought they'd like to fit-in a bit more."

I laughed. They all looked like I would've pictured, from supermodel to biker-dude.

"We just wanted to let you know that we will be searching for the ones who escaped the Humans," Anubis said. "It is time we all came to know this modern world."

I nodded. "That'd be best. But don't use your powers in public unless something bad's happening. People still aren't really used to Conduits these days."

They all nodded, and we parted on that note. Kayce was constantly attached to me, and would rarely leave my side. When I got out of the hospital, we all took the Senator's private jet; the one we came in on. That way we wouldn't have to explain why we didn't have passports.

Our home was already rebuilt by the time we got there. Apparently, some weird-looking guys had done it, and I could only conclude that it was our Egyptian friends. I had to remember to thank them when I saw them again, though I wasn't so sure how they knew where we lived.

Connor, Three and Five (or Taylor and Levi, respectively) were back to normal. Now, they had to get used to being Conduits. I gave them a quick tutorial, but the rest they'd have to figure out for themselves.

Within a few weeks, everything was back to normal. (By the way, Dana had picked up my nodachi. I almost lost that thing, but was glad I didn't.) And yes, normal also meant that I'd gotten a job where I could safely use my powers.