Three Americans and Some Guy Named Imhotep

Gretchen had never been to the Museum of Antiquities before; she'd never really had any reason to go. She didn't care about modern Egypt--and she certainly didn't care about the country in its ancient prime, either. The entire building smelled old and musty, and her stomach turned at the thought of all the mummified corpses that must have been contributing to the stink. As she mounted the steps behind Jonathan, she did her best to keep her focus. Outside, there had been proof enough to make her a believer in curses.

The streets and tenements smoked from an onslaught of fiery hailstones; people cowered in doorways with wide, fearful eyes. Another plague.

Jonathan's words on their walk to the museum haunted her, also. I was just now thinking of it, love. All the water downstairs had turned to blood. Why didn't your bath? And Gretchen didn't have an answer for that. But something about that revelation sent a chill through her body. At the very least, she'd gotten clean...but if it had happened everywhere else--why not in her tub?

An oblong pool carved out of marble, steam wafting from the soothing water. She can almost smell it: exotic, heavy, sensual...

Gretchen blinked hard, trying to clear her head. The image buckled and blurred out of her vision, but did not fully fade from her memory. She glanced up as their company froze in a doorway, and the click of revolvers greeted whatever had surprised them. Gretchen looked up, catching the calm, dark depths of Ardeth Bay's eyes. She couldn't read their expression, and that strangely set her on edge. She felt her mouth hanging open stupidly, but Evelyn intervened for her:

"What is he doing here?"

Another man, older and rather staunch, lifted his eyebrows. "Do you really want to know, or would you prefer to just shoot us?"

Gretchen couldn't look away, even as the guns were holstered again and they began to file into the room. She leaned awkwardly against the wall, glancing at the floor when Ardeth turned his attention to the rest of the group. Her stomach dropped in a way that surprised her, and she only half-listened to the curator's explanation of the Med-Jai. The word caught a gasp in her throat. Ghazi was a Med-Jai, which meant that this whole ordeal involved him, too. She wasn't entirely certain that that made him useful, but she figured it was something to keep in mind.

"...to stop the High Priest Imhotep from being reborn into this world."

Imhotep. The name echoed in her head, and the image of the pool strengthened in her mind. She imagined Meela's smile of a sudden and attempted to blink it away, but the woman's form only sharpened.

Meela steps to the edge of the pool and unties a robe. She tests the water with her hand, and a small smile tugs at her lips. She's thinking of a man. A handsome, haunted, powerful man, who is as beautiful as he is dangerous. He's the sort of man who pulls a woman down by her heart and never lets her back up for air.

Gretchen sucked in a deep breath, her eyes wide. She couldn't understand her mind, and it frightened her. She noticed Ardeth's eyes on her, but couldn't find it in herself to look up. She squeezed her eyes shut against this strange feeling--this hard, overpowering feeling in her head that felt at once like a migraine and a high--gritty, but surreal. She saw Meela in the pool, but she felt the presence of thoughts. She couldn't see the man she was thinking of, but she knew his impression.

Letting out a loud sigh, she shoved the scene from her head with a force that throbbed. Pulling her eyes up, she focused with all of her strength on the matter at hand. The mummy. They were talking about the mummy. And Henderson was talking:

"By killing everyone who opened that chest--"

"And suckin' 'em dry, that's how!"

Gretchen swallowed uneasily, remembering the cryptic retelling of Mr. Burns' corpse. The man had not simply been killed, but sucked completely dry. She'd had trouble understand the concept, and the Americans were agitated and impatient story-tellers. He looked like a mummy, Henderson kept saying. He looked like a fuckin' mummy...

"...He called me Anck-su-namun--"

Gretchen's stomach clenched. She felt chills crawling up and down her spine, and a warm breeze, like a wordless whisper, tickled her earlobe. The image of the tub returned with a bludgeoning power, and she could only barely make out the voices of the people in the room through the vision in her head.

"It was because of his love for Anck-su-namun that he was cursed."

Her head surfaces from the water; someone has beckoned her. Who? Someone important. Someone powerful. Someone who fills her with an overwhelming sadness. She is degraded. She is lowly. She is only as valuable as she is beautiful.

"Perhaps he will once again try to raise her from the dead."

Meela's eyes, but not Meela's eyes, kept flashing in her head. They were darker, deeper, and somehow...less hard. Tragic, even.

It is a dirty business.

"Are you alright?" a voice like light broke through the fog, and the image evanesced.

Gretchen glanced up through the fading scene, noticing Ardeth's still unreadable gaze focused on her. She shook her head dismissively, the attention of the group setting her slightly off-balance.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

He watched her, some unnamed emotion in his dark depths. But as the sunlit room was enraptured in unnatural darkness, all eyes shifted to the window. Gretchen blinked, watching the bright, whitehot orb go eerily black. Her stomach twisted in wonder, but her heart was strangely unsurprised. She attempted to swallow the dryness in her throat, driving off this supernatural feeling.

"'And He stretched forth His hand towards the heavens, and there was darkness throughout the land of Egypt.'"

She sighed, glancing at Jonathan. Her voice shook a little, even as she attempted nonchalance. "Another plague?"

The curator nodded grimly. "Another plague."

"His powers are growing," Ardeth murmured. Gretchen swallowed uneasily. A fearful silence enveloped them; the minutes ticked by like an eternity.

"So now what?" Jonathan's plaintive voice finally ventured.

Daniels heaved a sigh. "I don't know about you folks, but I'd feel a helluva lot safer at the fort."

Gretchen watched Ardeth glance down, hopeless words on his lips. He closed his eyes, his mouth open to speak. She could about guess the warning he never said. There is no safety. There is no place to hide. But nobody wanted to hear that just then.

O'Connell nodded. "I'm with you."

The curator glanced at Evelyn before turning his eyes to the desert warrior. "We'll remain here. Perhaps some ancient texts in our storage can provide the answers."

"Would you like my help?" Evelyn asked meekly. The curator's gaze was sharp, but his voice was weary:

"You've done enough."