Hi! I hope I had you all intrigued by the ending of the last chapter. Well, expect more on it in the chapters to come. But for right now, enjoy this next one.
Read and review!
Chapter Forty-Three
I Want My Mummy
Temple of Bennu-3:00 AM
Constructed thousands of years ago at the behest of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, the Temple of Bennu shone brilliantly under the light of the full moon as inside, an archaeological expedition was nearing completion.
Two men, one old the other young, stood over an ark in the middle of the temple, carefully lifting the lid upward while their guide aimed his flashlight over the scene. After much effort, the lid came off to reveal the object of their search: a golden scarab that glistened in the darkness of the chamber.
Awestruck, the older man picked up the scarab and stared at it like spring in a desert with no water in it for miles.
"It's more beautiful than I ever dared to imagine!" he said excitedly.
A low rumbling noise echoed through the temple as the party looked up.
Up above them, the ceiling was splitting apart to reveal a massive stone slab lowering itself from a trap door. And from the looks of things, it was in a prime position to crush them.
As all three men jumped out of the way, the chamber was filled with a cloud of dust so thick that all present feared they would suffocate. When the dust settled, the younger man looked to where his boss had been... only to find an empty space.
"Professor Elliot?!" he called out, worried.
But there was nothing but silence in that dark temple.
Beverly Hills High School-8:47 AM
Sean exhaled as he and the girls walked through the school courtyard, looking forward to what they assumed (or hoped, anyway) would be a normal day. And after their most recent assignment, anything else could only be exciting.
"Well, that was a bust," Sean complained. "A million crises in the world, and Jerry sends us on that?!"
"Tell me about it, Sean," Alex agreed from beside him. "Saving penguins from melting glaciers was, like, the worst mission ever! I mean, for such nicely dressed birds, they were totally rude!"
"Yeah," Sam added. "If it wasn't for that little shopping mall we stopped at on the way back from Antarctica, the mission would have been a total washout!"
"Isn't that the truth?" Clover said holding up her left hand. "I just can't wait to show everybody my new mood ring that I bought in that cute little chalet jewelry shop."
"Yeah," Sean said, shooting a glare at her. "With my allowance."
Clover threw up her hands in defense.
"How was I supposed to know that store wouldn't take credit cards?!"
Sean just groaned. "All I'm saying, Clover, is that you had better pay me back."
Before Sean and Clover could start another of their trademark arguments, Alex and Sam stopped in their tracks and dragged their friends to a position to look at the banner that hung above them. The banner was purple and had the words "M.C.T. Contest" painted on in gold letters.
"We missed the Most Charitable Teen Contest!" Clover groaned.
"But at least we're back in time for the Charity Dance," Alex said happily.
"Is it me or does this school have more dances than classes?" Sean asked no one in particular.
The girls pondered this for a bit, but then shrugged it off.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?!" Clover asked excitedly.
"Another thinly-veiled popularity contest for overachievers?" Sam offered dryly.
"No! I'm thinking it's the perfect opportunity to show off my new mood ring!"
Sean rolled his eyes as Clover paced away from them.
"I'll have to go into super showoff mode right away."
"And I thought she was already in it," Sean whispered to Sam and Alex, prompting them to laugh.
"Actually," Sam said. "I think she's always in it."
The three friends laughed, much to Clover's annoyance.
"You know I can hear you!" she shouted to them. "Now, let's see. What color dress would best access my ring?"
"Well, at least some things never change," Alex said.
"Attention all students," the principal's voice rang out over the intercom. "The winner of this year's Most Charitable Teen Award is... Mandy Luxe."
The four friends froze in shock.
"Mandy?!" Sean asked in confusion. "But that makes no sense!"
"We're gone for one weekend and the entire world goes insane?!" Clover ranted just as Mandy herself walked up, flanked by Caitlin and Dominique.
"The only one who's insane around here is you," Mandy sneered at Clover. "For thinking I wouldn't walk away with this contest hands down."
"What did you do?" Sean asked her. "Bribe the judges?"
Mandy glared.
"Very funny, Sean. The fact is, I happen to be the most giving person at Bev High!"
Has she even met herself?! Sean thought incredulously.
"Of course," she continued, holding up her left hand. "Promising to donate my new, genuine, ten-carat ruby ring didn't hurt my chances either."
The ring in question was gold with with lozenge-shaped ruby embedded in the center. The glare of the sun off the stone shone brilliantly and forced the four teens to squint their eyes.
"Does that thing come with a dimmer switch?" Sam asked.
"Brilliant," Mandy went on. "Isn't it? I guess you'll just have to show off that trinkety little mood ring somewhere else, Clover!"
"Please!" Clover exclaimed, pretending not to care. "Like I really care about some pathetic contest or your gaudy ring!"
Mandy scoffed in disbelief.
"Then how come your mood ring is glowing bright green with envy?" she asked.
Clover looked down at her hand and saw that it was indeed the case.
"See you losers at the dance," Mandy taunted before walking off, leaving Clover fuming at her.
"As if Mandy needed another thing to hold over our heads until graduation," Sean said.
Later that afternoon, at soccer practice, Sean hoped that Mandy would be less of a pain than that morning. His hopes were soon to be dashed.
The soccer coach blew her whistle, and Sean kicked the ball over to Alex and Clover, who struggled for it briefly before Alex kicked it toward the goal.
At the other end, the goalie tried to intercept but quickly fell over, watching as the ball bounced off the edge of the goalpost and over the edge of the field. The ball came to a stop in front of the wall that separated the field from the stands.
"I'll get it!" Clover volunteered before Mandy zoomed out in front of her.
"No," her nasally voice insisted. "I'll get the ball. After all, I am Beverly High's Most Charitable Teen!"
As Mandy walked off, her arch-rival growled in frustration.
Clover sank to the ground as Mandy got further away.
"I know I'll never hear the end of this charity thing!" Clover lamented as her friends came to her side. Then she noticed something golden glittering the light of the afternoon sun.
She looked down further with interest, as did Sean, Sam and Alex. They could easily see what had Clover so intrigued.
"Look!" Clover said. "It's Mandy's ring!"
"She must have accidentally dropped it while she was running," Sean hypothesized.
Alex looked behind the group to see that a shed that had previously been on the other side of the field was now two feet away from them.
"Hey guys," she tried to point out. "Wasn't that equipment shed on the other side, like, on the other side of the field five minutes ago."
None of the three paid it any attention, for they were too busy trying to talk Clover out of what was sure to be another terrible idea from her.
"Clover!" Sam said disapprovingly, as the blonde was putting Mandy's ring on her finger. "What are you doing?!"
"I don't see any harm in just trying it on real quick!" Clover argued.
"Well, if Mandy catches you with it," Sean warned. "I think you will see the harm in it."
Clover waved her hand flippantly. "So sue me!"
"Considering Mandy's rich enough to hire a lawyer, that's a distinct possibility."
"Uh, guys," Alex said urgently but the shed doors opened and a wind tunnel vortex sucked the four friends in and down a metallic chute. They knew it could only mean one thing: another spy mission.
"Couldn't you have pointed that shed out a little sooner, Alex?!" Clover screamed as she and her friends plummeted toward the end of the ride.
Soon enough, they were sitting on the fuchsia cushion in Jerry's office again.
Jerry stood at the other end of the room, looking at a watch.
"Oh, excellent," he said. "Right on schedule for your latest mission."
Then he began to laugh, having pronounced schedule with its British pronunciation, saying "shed" at the beginning of the word.
"Get it?"
The spies looked up, confused.
"Schedule?" he offered again.
"Yes," Sean said, facepalming in exasperation. "Unfortunately, we get it, Jerry."
Jerry snapped his fingers, and the screen behind him showed footage of the dig in Egypt, right up to the moment where the professor disappeared.
"I don't think I've seen this flick," Alex said.
"Well," Jerry said as the footage stopped playing. "There you have it."
"Talk about your cliffhangers!" Alex exclaimed.
"Hey, Jer," Clover interjected. "If we knew this was a movie party, we'd have brought popcorn and pillows..."
"...and better movies," Sam added.
"Oh, this is not a movie, spies," Jerry corrected. "It's actual footage from the Temple of Bennu; an ancient mummy's tomb."
The screen then showed an image of the professor in the video. He was an older man with a short gray beard and wore glasses.
"And the professor you saw has really vanished. At least that's the story, according to his assistant, Ian Flemish when we found him wandering the desert mumbling about a curse."
"Like a real curse?!" Alex asked, scared. Then she looked to Jerry nervously, then her friends and back again. "Do our gadgets even work against curses, Jerry?"
"Don't worry, Alex," Sean said, trying to ease her anxiety. "There's no such thing as a real curse."
"Yeah," Sam concurred. "Remember? We're spies. We deal in fact, not chasing after missing Easter Bunnies!"
"Yeah, right," Alex said, calming down a little. "Wait, the Easter Bunny's missing?!"
Sean, Clover and Sam could only stare at her in shock.
Alex laughed. "Just kidding guys! I know the Easter Bunny is tucked away safe in his little toadstool house up in the fjords of British Columbia."
The others sweatdropped.
"She really needs to stop reading those tabloids," Sean whispered to Sam.
"And on that illuminating note," Jerry cut in. "If you four will follow me, I'll give you your gadgets."
Jerry's desk opened up to show the assortment of gadgets to be given to the four teens.
"To help you find the missing professor, you'll be supplied with Laser Lipsticks, Tornado In a Can of Hairspray, and a brand new item, the Turbo Shovel 2.0."
As he put the shovel down, he picked up an old book with Egyptian hieroglyphics on the cover. "Oh, and I almost forgot: this book on the mysteries of ancient Egypt."
He tossed it to them, where it was caught by Clover.
"Ew!" she exclaimed, barely touching it. "Why is it so old and crusty?!"
"It was mine in college," Jerry explained awkwardly.
At that, the spies laughed.
"Now that's a funny joke, Jerry," Sam said, catching her breath.
Jerry's face was stone-hard.
"That wasn't a joke."
All laughter immediately ceased.
"Oops," Sam admitted, embarrassed. "My bad."
Saying no more, Jerry pressed a button on his desk and sent the spies down a trapdoor into a roller coaster-like car that sped off through a tunnel at an insanely high speed.
Oxford University-10:15 AM
One of the oldest schools in the world, Oxford was known for its top-notch research library and its prestigious research programs. One of which, Egyptology, was currently of great interest to the spies.
Having changed into the school's uniforms to blend in better, they descended the steps into the wing of the library where Professor Elliot's assistant Ian had agreed to meet them.
"Is it me?" Alex asked on their way down. "Or does the air pressure in the W.O.O.H.P Subatomic Jet make anyone else's ears ring?"
"Speaking of rings," Sean reminded. "Clover, you'd better call Mandy and tell her you found hers. She may be a pain, but it's the right thing to do."
Clover sighed, relenting. "I guess you're right, Sean. But doing the right thing can sometimes be so annoying!"
She took out her Compowder, calling Mandy with the audio only option.
"Hello, Mandy," she said into the speaker reluctantly. "It's Clover. I just called to tell you that I found your-"
"Clover?!" Mandy's voice shrieked on the other end. "I don't know why you're calling me, but could you please not tie up my line right now?! I am in the middle of a crisis! MY RING IS MISSING!"
Mandy shouted the last sentence so loud that it startled Clover, causing her to drop the device over the handrail and into a fish tank beside the staircase.
"Oh, great!" Clover said sarcastically. "Now how am I gonna finish telling Mandy off?!"
"You can tell her later," Sam said as Clover fished her Compowder out of the tank. "Right now, let's get out of here."
The library's Egyptology wing led to a door that opened up to Professor Elliot's office. The room was an old one, lit by only a shaft of sunlight that beamed in through a narrow window on the right. And it was cluttered with books, papers, miniature obelisks, canopic jars, statues of falcons, jackals, and cobras, and there was even a sarcophagus that Sean secretly hoped was empty.
Evidently, Professor Elliot was the kind of archaeologist who never left the field, even when he had to do work in the office.
"Whoa!" the spies all exclaimed in amazement as they walked in. But Alex soon lost what little interest she had.
"Ew!" she cringed. "What a creepy place!"
"Yeah!" Clover agreed. "Who's his decorator? Dracula?"
"I'd go with King Tut," Sean said, disagreeing. "But yeah, it is pretty creepy."
"Good afternoon," a voice called out from somewhere behind them.
The spies looked around to see a young man with a blond buzz cut and aquamarine eyes step out from behind the sarcophagus.
"Sorry if I startled you. I was just looking for my cufflink. It must be around here somewhere."
Getting over the initial shock and her fear of her surroundings, Alex fixated her gaze on the man, obviously lovestruck.
"Maybe we can help," she offered dreamily as her friends zoomed over to her side.
"We're the spies from W.O.O.H.P," Sam introduced. "I'm Sam, and this is Sean, Clover, and Alex. You must be Ian."
Ian nodded. "Welcome to Oxford. From what Jerry has told me, you're just the people to help me find the second Scarab of Isis."
The spies blinked in confusion... well, all but Alex, anyway. She just kept her adoring gaze on Ian.
"The second Scarab of Isis?" Clover asked. "We thought we were supposed to help you find the missing professor."
"Yes," Ian said regrettably but also in a way that struck Sean as suspicious. "But unfortunately, I'm afraid Professor Elliot is beyond finding. You see, he fell victim to the curse of Amun-Ra."
This, it seemed, snapped Alex out of her trance.
"The curse of Amun-Ra?" she asked nervously.
Sean wasn't buying it, though.
"Can you tell us exactly how the professor disappeared?" he asked Ian.
"I couldn't really say," Ian answered. "You see, one moment he was standing next to me and the next... he was gone."
"See guys?" Alex said, clinging to Clover's shoulder in terror. "I knew curses were real!"
"Yeah!" Clover exclaimed, disagreeing. "Real phony! Now, if you could just show us where you last saw the professor, we'll take it from there."
Ian smiled.
"Certainly," he acquiesced. "If you four will excuse me, I need to prepare for our trip to the desert. And please be careful not to touch anything in this room. Several of these items are cursed."
He walked out of the room leaving the spies behind to ponder his words.
"Don't you just love the way he's so dark and mysterious?" Alex swooned.
"I can't believe an educated person would actually believe in curses," Sam said, rubbing her finger under her chin skeptically.
"Yeah," Sean agreed. "That sounded less like a warning and more like trying to scare us away. I'm not falling for it."
"Totally," Clover agreed, walking over to the sarcophagus and opening it. "I mean, as if something bad could happen just by opening some old armoire."
She looked inside. Instead of the usual mummy, the spies could only see dozens of clustered black, solid, indiscernible shapes.
"Please! There's nothing in here but some black socks!"
Sean peered over Clover's shoulder, curious as to why someone would keep socks in a centuries-old artifact. Then he saw that the shapes were breathing. And staring. And judging by the look's on Sam's and Alex's faces, they noticed it too.
"Uh, Clover?" Sean said nervously. "That's not an armoire."
"And those aren't socks," Alex added, just as scared.
Disturbed by the sunlight pouring into the room, out of the coffin flew a swarm of at least a dozen bats. Not stopping to ask how they got in there, the spies ran from the room as fast as they could.
"Quick!" Sam shouted over the other's screams. "Let's get out of here!"
Egyptian Desert-11:50 AM
The R.A.T.V.A.T, which Jerry had provided for the spies and Ian once they reached Cairo, sped along the desert sand at a leisurely pace. Sean, Sam, and Alex sat below while Clover and Ian sat on the roof, their legs hanging through the open hatch. Since they left England, the spies had told Ian about Clover's incident with the sarcophagus.
"Sorry about the bats, Clover," Ian said, trying not to laugh. Then his voice turned serious again. "But I trust you've learned these curses are not to be taken lightly."
He pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the desert.
"Yeah, right!" Clover said dismissively, putting on a pair of sunglasses. "Like I'm really cursed. Whatever!"
"So," Alex said shyly, addressing Ian. "How long do curses usually last, Ian?"
Ian's gaze was still fixated on the desert around them.
"It depends upon the curse," he explained. "Some for only a day, some for an eternity."
"And this curse lasts how long?" Sean asked, deciding to humor him for a while.
"Supposedly, 3000 years. Or was it 4000? Some of the hieroglyphics were pretty worn when we found them."
"Why are the scarabs cursed, Ian?" Sam asked.
"To keep them out of the hands of evildoers," Ian answered, his eyes never leaving his binoculars. "You see, when both scarabs are put together like a puzzle at the base of the Temple of Isis, they will give whoever possesses them eternal life and power."
Sean, Sam, and Clover had a little trouble believing the story, but Alex seemed impressed.
"Wow," Alex said, awestruck. "I guess we'd better make sure the second scarab doesn't fall into the wrong hands."
"Yeah," Clover said sarcastically. "Eternal life and power! Right."
Even so, Sean thought. He seems to be pretty obsessed with those scarabs. He even made finding the second one a priority over finding his boss. He doesn't seem worried about him. I better not let him out of my sight.
"There it is," Ian announced, pointing off to a faded-white building in the distance.
"Buckle up, spies," Sam addressed the others. "We're heading offroad."
Equipped with flashlights, Ian lead the spies into the chamber where he and Elliot had found the scarab... and where Ian had last seen him.
"This is where Professor Elliot disappeared," he informed.
The spies looked around the room, looking for any sign, any clue to as to what happened to the professor. But there were no visible hints to be found.
"Sean, Sammy?" Clover asked. "You guys can explain this, right?"
Sean thought it over, kneeling down. According to Ian, they had lifted the lid on the ark in the center of the chamber, the ceiling opened up, letting a stone slab fall and Ian and their guide had rolled out of the way just in time. But when they had looked up, there was no sign of the professor... dead or alive.
He pressed down on the floor, hoping to trigger some kind of mechanism but nothing happened. Then he reached up and pulled out the circular buckle on his bungee belt, extending the cable attached to it.
"It said in the book Jerry gave us," he said, aiming it at a rafter above him. "That these tombs are often filled with hidden booby traps."
He launched the cable, attaching the buckle to the ceiling and then propelling himself upward.
"But there's nothing up here!" he called down to the others.
"This is ridiculous!" Clover exclaimed, making her way to the far end of the chamber. "There's gotta be a clue around here somewhere! The problem is we're obviously not looking in the right..."
As she searched the wall, she accidentally pressed on a panel, allowing it to sink further in and open a trap door.
Sean leapt down from the rafters to join Ian and the girls in rushing to the scene.
"Clover?!" Alex asked, concerned. Clover was sitting at the bottom of a pit filled with sand, looking annoyed but otherwise no worse for wear. From what the others could see, she had landed in a tunnel that appeared to stretch for miles.
"Wait to go, Clover!" Sam congratulated. "You found our first clue!"
"Maybe the second," Clover said as the others slid down. "Seeing as how I fell on this."
She held out her hand. In it was a gold cufflink engraved with an open book surrounded by three crowns.
"It's a cufflink with the Oxford seal on it!" Sam exclaimed. "It must be Ian's."
Ian just shook his head.
"Impossible," he denied. "I've never been in this tunnel before."
"Maybe it's Professor Elliot's, then," Sean suggested. "He must have fallen down here."
"And that would explain how he disappeared!" Clover caught on. "See? I knew there was a simple, non-curse explanation for all this."
Alex shone her flashlight on the floor.
"So, Clover," she said nervously. "What's the simple explanation for why the ground is slithering under your feet?"
Against her better instincts, Clover looked down and saw a snake creeping its way over her feet and several hundreds more slithering out of the darkness.
"Simple," she said, the shock not registering yet, apparently. "I'm standing in a nest of snakes."
When those words were said, Clover's calm demeanor disappeared and she and the others screamed and climbed out of the pit as quickly as possible.
As soon as they were out, Sean looked back into it.
"Asps," he said. "Very dangerous."
"Maybe there is something to this curse thing after all!" Clover shrieked.
Temple of the Moon-1:10 PM
After making a beeline for the temple's exit, the spies and Ian climbed back into the R.A.T.V.A.T to discuss their next move. According to Ian, the best way to find the professor or at least find out what happened to him was to locate the second scarab. The spies, save Alex, were unsure of the logic, but whoever kidnapped the professor was sure to go after the next scarab. Maybe if they found it first, they'd draw out whoever was behind all this.
Ian had obtained a small, golden, ankh-shaped magnifying glass from an earlier expedition. When held up to the sun and pointed at a map of the desert, the ankh would zero in on the exact location of the scarab.
They now stood on a ledge overlooking the site of another decrepit temple.
"The talisman says that the second scarab is somewhere here," Ian explained, pointing at a location on the map. "In the ruins of the Temple of the Moon."
"That talisman thingy couldn't have been more specific, could it?" Alex asked.
"Alex has a point," Sean said. "Digging up this place could take forever."
"Not with the Turbo Shovel 2.0," Clover countered, holding up the gadget in question.
"Uh, Clover?" Sam asked nervously. "Are you sure you know how to use that thing?"
Clover didn't even seem concerned. "What's to know? It's a shovel with a button. What could be more simple?"
Or so she thought. As she pressed a button near the blade of the shovel, it began to spin like it was more of a giant drill than a shovel. It spun so forcefully that it almost wrenched itself out of Clover's hands.
"I can't hold on much longer!" she yelped as the shovel finally broke free and spun off into the desert, creating a miniature dust storm in its wake.
The resulting dust storm left the spies and Ian buried in sand.
"Like, gross!" Clover exclaimed as she and the others poked their heads up.
"So much for the Turbo Shovel 2.0," Sam commented. "Maybe the Turbo Shovel 3.0 will be better."
"Looks like we're gonna have to find that scarab the old fashioned way," Sean said, dusting sand off his shoulders.
After digging themselves out, the group went further into the ruins to look for any clue as to the second scarab's whereabouts.
"So what do we do now?" Clover asked, as Alex looked through a pair of W.O.O.H.P binoculars.
Then she saw something off in the distance.
"Hey!" she exclaimed, pointing. "Maybe the writing on that stone box can help us!"
Sean took the binoculars from her and could see what she was talking about. In the center of the temple's courtyard was a stone ark that looked very familiar.
As they got closer, he could see why.
"That's just like the ark in the tomb where Professor Elliot disappeared!" he said, kneeling down to inspect it while Alex and Ian lifted the lid off of it. Inside was a golden scarab beetle that matched Ian's descriptions of the first.
"It's the second scarab!" Ian said with awe.
Alex knelt down and held the scarab up to her hair, posing.
"Ooh!" she said excitedly. "Wouldn't this make, like, the hottest hairclip?"
The others looked at her, unsure. If anything, it wouldn't be that attractive considering it was a golden bug. But that was just Sean's opinion.
A loud rumbling then erupted above them, prompting them all to look up. The remnants of the temple above them were beginning to crack. The cracks in the stone above them expanded until they could no longer support such a heavy structure.
"It's the curse!" Alex cried as they began to move. Sean, Sam, and Clover took off toward a stone wall by the R.A.T.V.A.T while Alex and Ian went in the opposite direction.
When the tremors stopped, the trio looked on the other side of the wall they had hidden behind. A stone pillar had collapsed and crushed their ride, and the whole place looked even more desolate than it had when they arrived.
But the first thing Sam noticed was a large, square hole that had opened up in the sand.
"Sean, Clover!" she exclaimed. "Look!"
She dragged them out to it and by looking inside, Sean could see that it opened up into a tunnel like the one in the Temple of Bennu.
"These tunnels must run throughout the entire valley," Sam guessed.
Clover's attention, however, wasn't on the tunnel but on the ruins. And Sean knew why.
"Alex and Ian are totally missing!" she said. "Now we have to find them and the missing professor."
Sean furrowed his brow, concentrating.
"Girls," he said. "I've been thinking. Don't you think it's a little weird that Professor Elliot disappeared and not Ian?"
"You're right," Sam agreed. "And then we found his cufflink in the tunnel where he said he'd never been before."
"But why would Ian lie to us?" Clover asked.
"I don't know," Sean responded. "But I noticed he's a little fixated on these scarabs. Like you are with Yves Mont-Blanc boots. And that mood ring you just had to have."
Clover glared at Sean as he took out his wallet phone.
'I'm calling Jerry to see if he has any info on this guy."
But when he finally made the connection, he only got an image of a hot cup of tea on his screen and a recording of Jerry's voice.
"Hello," the answering machine said. "You've reached Jerry at W.O.O.H.P headquarters. I'm having high tea right now, so please leave a message."
"The English are so weird," Clover commented just a few seconds before the tone.
"We need more info on Ian, Jerry," Sean said. "Call us back."
And he hung up.
"Any other ideas?" Clover asked her two friends.
Sam looked down the hole that had just opened up, her face alight.
"How about we find out where this tunnel leads?" she suggested, with Sean nodding emphatically.
"Yeah, I guess," Clover said reluctantly. "But honestly, I was hoping you two would wanna try to find a mall instead."
"We're in the middle of the desert, Clover," Sean said dryly. "The nearest mall's about 400 miles away from here."
Defeated, Clover sighed and followed Sam and Sean into the hole.
Pulling out their flashlights, the three remaining spies explored the tunnel for what felt like hours. And there was no end in sight so far. Making matters worse was that they couldn't find a single clue as to what made these tunnels.
Then Clover let out a shriek.
"Ew!" she cried out in disgust. "Tunnel gunk! That's the last time I wear designer boots to the desert."
She turned off her flashlight to free her hands up to take off her boot, relying on her friends' flashlights to get a better view.
"Wait a second," Sam said, curious. Taking out pink, cylindrical tool used for collecting samples, she wiped the bottom of Clover's boot and smeared the sticky, black substance onto her Compowder's scanner.
"What is it?" Sean asked as the results came up.
"Apparently," Sam answered. "Our mysterious curse needs axle grease."
Before anyone could question what machine could have been big enough to make these tunnels, a familiar rumbling echoed through the walls around them. The tunnel itself began to shake.
The trio looked behind them to see the source: a large, metallic cylindrical shape barreling towards them at breakneck speeds.
"What is that?" Clover asked, afraid.
"I don't know," Sean said. Then he saw the turbine in the front of the machine, which could have easily passed for its mouth.
The spies ran through the tunnel, but they didn't think they could outrun... whatever it was that was chasing them.
When the spies looked back, they finally got a good look their mechanical pursuer. It was about the size of an army tank, reddish-brown in color and resembled a worm... albeit one that Sean had only seen in a science fiction novel he'd read two years before he met the girls.
"I can't believe I'm about to become worm food!" Clover cried out in fear.
Sam suddenly froze in her tracks, then turned in the opposite direction.
"What are you doing?!" Sean asked.
"We can't outrun it!" she shouted back. "We're gonna have to jump in!"
"Huh?!" Clover and Sean uttered in surprise, but Sam just urged them onward.
"Go!"
After a brief moment of hesitation, Sean took off after Sam. Clover, however, just took a deep breath to prepare herself.
"Here goes nothing," she said with resignation and dove after her friends.
The three threw themselves into the turbine's open hole and were pleasantly surprised to see that they made it inside unharmed.
From their small vantage point, they could make out a hatch above them. Sean turned the wheel to open the hatch and the spies climbed through the roof into the upper level of the worm.
The room they were in now could only be the cockpit of the worm. But it was also, apparently, the only room on that thing because it was stuffed to the brim with dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts from from statues to scrolls to pottery.
"Looks like someone's been busy stealing ancient artifacts," Sean deduced as his wallet phone went off.
He answered it and Jerry's face filled the screen.
"How's the mission going, spies?" he asked.
"Great," Clover answered. "Except that we temporarily misplaced Ian and Alex and I'm officially cursed."
"Oh... bummer. Well, I'm pulling up Ian's file as we speak."
Jerry looked down at his computer screen, reading it carefully.
"Let's see. Nothing much really here. Other than that he's extremely ambitious and looks to be in line for Professor Elliot's job."
"In line for Professor Elliot's job, huh?" Sean pondered. "Thanks, Jerry."
He hung up and turned to the girls. "Are you two thinking what I'm thinking?"
Sam nodded in agreement.
"Yes," Clover said, rubbing her head. "If we don't get out of this worm thing soon, the humidity is going to like, permanently frizz out our hair."
"No," Sam disagreed. "What Sean's saying is that Ian kidnapped the professor so he'd be promoted. It all totally makes sense!"
But a pair of muffled screams that came from behind them soon told them it wasn't that simple.
"Um, that's great guys," Clover said, pointing to the back of the room. "But then you'd have to ask yourselves why Ian would tie himself up."
Following Clover's finger, Sean and Sam saw Ian and Alex at the other end of the room, their backs against they wall and wrapped up tightly in gauze like mummies.
"Ian?" Sean asked, confused. "Alex?"
They approached the captive duo and pulled the gauze off their mouths.
"I don't get it," Sam added.
"So, if Ian isn't behind the disappearance of Professor Elliot," Clover said. "Then who is?"
"One guess," a smooth, British-accented voice said from behind them.
The spies looked back and saw the same man they had been trying to find standing before them.
"Professor Elliot?!" Clover exclaimed.
The man nodded in confirmation and pressed a button on a remote.
Three pairs of robotic hands lowered from the ceiling and grabbed the spies by the wrists and ankles before wrapping them up in gauze the same as Alex and Ian.
All five glared at Elliot in anger as he laughed with triumph.
Desert Sand Quarry-2:13 PM
Elliot's worm brought him and his captives to an abandoned quarry not too far away from the Valley of the Kings. He had assembled them below a giant metal chute that had once been used to fill trucks with sand.
"You're never gonna get away with crazy scheme, Professor!" Sam spat from her position beside Sean. "By the way, what is your crazy scheme?"
In glee, Elliot held up the two scarabs.
"When I place these two scarabs with the final scarab at the base of the Temple of Isis," he explained. "I will gain eternal life and power. Any other questions, silly girl?"
Sam had none, but Clover had a thing or two on her mind as always.
"Terrific!" she exclaimed. "Another villain with delusions of grandeur!"
"Seems to come with the territory," Sean said.
"And now," Elliot interrupted. "I must bid you all farewell. Don't worry, though. Perhaps someday an archaeologist will dig you up."
He walked over to a jeep he had parked nearby and hopped into the driver's seat.
As he drove off, he pressed the button on another remote.
"What do you think he meant by that?" Sean asked.
Then the chute above them rattled before dumping out a continuous torrent of sand on the five. At the rate the sand was being released, the spies and Ian would suffocate within five minutes.
"I had to ask," Sean coughed before turning to the young man on his left. "Sorry I suspected you, Ian."
"That's all right, Sean," Ian reassured.
"Enough with the apologies!" Clover exclaimed. "Please tell me one of you has a plan."
"Nothing comes to mind right now," Sean answered her. "Sam?"
"I'm working on it," the redhead told him as the sand continued to cascade down on them like a waterfall.
While Sam and Sean tried to think of a way out of their predicament, on the far side of them, Alex squinted her eyes.
"Could you move your hand, Clover?" she asked. "The reflection off of Mandy's rock is beginning to melt my face."
"Alex, that's it!" Sam exclaimed.
"What's it? Melting my face?"
"No," Sean said, catching on. "If we can heat that sand enough, it should turn to glass and stop trying to bury us."
"And how do we do that?" Clover asked.
Sam reached into her back pocket as best she could.
"Try to reach your lipstick lasers," she instructed the girls.
After much effort, Sam was able to pull hers out followed by Alex and Clover. Sean and Ian, who had none, just struggled against their bindings, hoping to get free just in case the girls failed.
The girls fired the lasers at the stream of sand. But so far, it had no effect.
"Just a little longer," Sam reassured them.
After about two minutes, the combined heat from the lasers melted into glass which wedged itself in the chute.
"It worked!" Alex exclaimed happily.
"Now," Sean said, managing to stand up in spite of his current condition. "Let's get to the Temple of Isis and stop the professor."
"Hey," Clover said, looking at the giant mechanical worm behind them. "I say why walk when we can ride?"
After getting free from their gauze prisons, the spies and Ian climbed back into the worm and quickly located the controls.
"So," Clover said, taking what appeared to be the driver's seat. "How do we get this oversized, metallic cocktail wiener moving?"
"Look," Ian said, pointing at the screen to her right. "There's a list of all the ruins in the valley on this dial."
"Cool!" Alex said. "We can just turn the dial to the Temple of Isis and press 'autopilot.'"
She did so and the worm burrowed underground once again.
Temple of Isis-2:45 PM
In a state of both glee and insanity, Elliot pushed off the lid of the sarcophagus, which had belonged to the high priest that had created the scarabs and vowed to take one to his grave for fear of it ending up in the wrong hands. Inside, he found his prize, golden and shining brighter than the sun.
"The final piece of my puzzle," he said, satisfied and walked over to other side of the tomb. There stood a statue of the Egyptian goddess Isis. On the statue's chest were three ovular slots that the scarabs were perfectly molded to fit inside of. One by one, he placed them in.
Elliot took two steps backward. According to legend, he was supposed to stand there until the scarabs glowed together and the light hit him. Then he would be immortal, all-powerful.
Although, it was taking longer than his research had suggested.
"Come on, come on," he said impatiently. "I don't have all eternity. Well, at least not yet."
Finally, the moment he had been waiting for arrived. The scarabs glowed simultaneously, flooding the chamber with golden light. A beam of energy formed around the collected scarabs, then fired at the professor, enveloping him in an electric blue aura.
After a brief yell of pain, Elliot quickly felt the power flowing through him.
"Yes. Yes, it's working! Soon, I will be invincible! No more lectures or grading poorly written term papers!"
His rant was cut off by a familiar rumbling. He looked behind him to see what the problem was. In a minute, he regretted it.
The wall behind him crumbled into dust as his tunneling worm broke through. He had no time to wonder how it got there before the hatch on top opened up, letting out four certain teenage spies.
"What do you say we send the professor back to school?" Sam said as she and the others jumped down in front of him.
"Say, for about five to twenty semesters?" Sean offered.
Elliot smiled maniacally as the four charged at him. But the intense energy around him bounced them back.
"Okay," Clover said, sitting up quickly. "That was a little disturbing."
"Now what do we do?!" Alex asked.
Ian had climbed out of the worm by this point and ran over to the scene.
"You have to remove the scarabs from the statue and separate them," he informed, pointing to the statue. "It's the only way to reverse the power."
Sean looked behind the empowered professor at the statue in question, eyeing the scarabs in their slots. There was a chance they could get to them if someone could distract Elliot.
"Sam, Alex," he instructed. "You two keep the professor busy. Clover and I'll take care of the scarabs."
"Alright," Sam agreed as she and Alex extend their belt buckles. "Okay, Alex. Let's see if we learned anything in gym."
The two girls fired their buckles and the attached cables at the ceiling, swinging forward to the back wall then propelling themselves backwards at Elliot, delivering a kick that knocked him over while Sean and Clover rushed over to the statue, trying to wrench the scarabs free. They pulled three times and on the fourth, the beetles came free, still connected to each other by their mandibles.
Clover and Sean looked at each other victoriously, but noticed that nothing had changed with their opponent.
"Wait a minute!" Clover exclaimed. "I don't get it! How come Elliot's still glowing?!"
"You have to separate them!" Ian said as he rushed over as all three grabbed a scarab and tried to pull them apart. But to no avail.
"What did he do?!" Sean complained. "Super glue them together?!"
Further away, Elliot had recovered from Sam and Alex's attack and was now looking red with fury.
"You four are becoming a nuisance," he said menacingly. Then he raised his arms. "Servants of the tomb, cause chaos and disaster! Arise from sleep and defend your master!"
The spies and Ian gasped in horror at what came through the doorway beyond as a result of Elliot's incantation: at least a dozen mummies freshly risen from the dead.
"Uh, Sam?" Alex said nervously. "I don't know what's scaring me more. The rhyming or the mummies."
One of the mummies roared as the undead army drew closer to them.
"Okay, I'm pretty sure it's the mummies."
"Come on, Alex!" Sam urged. "We've gotta hold off the mummies!" And she charged at them.
"I was so hoping you weren't gonna say that," Alex whined as she ran off to help her friend.
Sam punched one mummy in the stomach while kicking another one down in the waist. Off to her left, Alex punched the face of one, knocking him (or her) backwards. Even Ian was able to tackle one to the tomb floor.
While their friends were fighting the mummies, Sean and Clover continuously tried in vain to separate the scarabs. Apparently, whatever made them give Elliot immortality also welded them together.
"Damn it!" Sean swore. "It's no use! They're too strong!"
"Just keep pulling!" Clover insisted, though she didn't know who she was kidding.
Even so, they continued to strain while their friends struggled for their lives against an army of soldiers that couldn't die and the master of said army laughed with diabolical ecstasy.
"We can't hold them off much longer!" Alex despaired.
Once again, Sam was struck by inspiration at her friend's words.
"You've done it again!" she said, congratulating Alex.
"What's 'it?''
Sam smiled as she pulled out her buckle again. "What these mummies need is a little extra hold. Come on! Let's get out of here!
She grappled up to the ceiling, along with Alex and Ian who held on to the latter. Once they were as far off the floor as she thought possible, Sam tossed the Tornado In a Can of Hairspray down toward the mummies. The resulting whirlwind sucked them inside and tangled their gauze wrappings together.
Sam, Alex and Ian landed back down on the floor to witness the mummies wrapped up together in a giant ball.
"That'll hold them," Alex said, relieved.
A sound like a jackhammer echoed behind them and the Turbo Shovel 2.0, which Clover had lost control over in the desert earlier, spun into the room. The three had to duck in order to avoid being hit with it, but for Sean and Clover, this was an opportunity. For when it spun over to the statue where the two continued to try to pry the scarabs apart, Clover gripped it, an idea flashing across her face.
"Hello old friend!" she said happily as Sean helped her aim it at the center of the combined scarabs. The two jammed the spinning blade into the center and the scarabs finally came undone, much to Elliot's horror.
"We did it!" Sean celebrated.
"Another job well done," Clover said, letting the shovel go. "Be free, my friend!"
As the shovel got away from them, Alex pointed to a figure on top of the worm.
"Sam!" she exclaimed. "Elliot's getting away!"
"Not so fast, Professor!" Sam exclaimed, activating her belt again. Once again, she zoomed upwards, ricocheted off the back wall, kicked the ball of now lifeless mummies and sent it flying toward the disgrace professor, who was unable to evade it in time and was pinned to the floor just as Jerry walked into the crypt with two W.O.O.H.P agents flanking him.
"Nice shot, Sam!" he congratulated as he came over. "Excellent work, agents."
"No time for thanks, Jer," Clover said as the agents dragged Elliot away. "We have to get to the Most Charitable Teen Dance and give this ring back to Mandy!"
She held up the hand with the ring in question, which Ian took notice of.
"I've been meaning to tell you, Clover," he said. "That is the finest faux ruby ring I've ever seen."
Clover widened her eyes as she looked down at the ring. Ian was an archaeologist, so he probably knew how to recognize the real thing. And if he said what she thought, then Mandy was looking less charitable by the minute.
"Faux? As in phony?"
Sean grimaced in disgust.
Mandy was going to donate a fake ruby? he thought.
Beverly Hills High School-8:00 PM
At long last, the Most Charitable Teen Dance arrived. And with it, the opportunity to return Mandy's ring. Well, sort of. Truth is, Clover just snuck it into Mandy's purse when she wasn't looking and Mandy assumed it was there the whole time. And there was one other thing that Clover decided to keep a secret as well.
"I don't get it, Clover," Sam said as she and the girls were over by the punch bowl (Sean had disappeared early on into the dance). "Why didn't you tell them that Mandy's ring was a fake?"
"I just didn't think it was the most charitable thing to do," Clover answered.
"We're proud of you, Clover," Alex said, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder before pointing at the bowl. "Hey. What do you say get some of that great looking punch?"
Before they could pour their first cups, the principal called Mandy up to the stage to accept her award.
But Mandy had no chance to even say the first line of her acceptance speech when one of the judges of the competition came up to the principal and whispered something in his ear. The girls had no idea what it was, but it made the pleased look on the principal's face turn to disappointment.
"Mandy, may I see your ring for a minute?" he asked.
Mandy looked nervous, but the ring was forced off her finger before she could even argue.
The principal dropped it to the ground. Inevitably for a glass ruby, it shattered.
"This is a fake!" he announced to the crowd before composing himself. "Uh, correction: Mandy Luxe will not be crowned this year's Most Charitable Teen. Instead, it will go to our first runner-up, Arnold Jackson for donating his exotic mold and fungus collection."
While the crowd applauded and Arnold walked up to the stage to accept the award, Mandy scowled in outrage.
"What?!" she shrieked. "But that is not fair! You promised me the award!"
As Mandy stormed off the stage, Alex looked at her friend.
"Happy, Clover?" she asked.
"Can you tell," Clover responded with a question of her own. "But what I wanna know is how did they know Mandy's ring was a fake?"
"Oops," Sean's voice said from behind them. "Was that supposed to be a secret?"
The girls turned to see him wearing a triumphant grin.
"You told them?" Sam asked him.
Sean just shrugged.
"Well," he admitted. "I thought it would be more... charitable to give someone else a chance."
He and the girls laughed while Mandy drowned her sorrows at the buffet with Caitlin and Dominique unable to console her.