REGENESIS

Chapter one
A hasty escape

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The sweet smell of ancient sand usually tickled her nostrils and gave her a surge of adrenaline, which was useful if she was to fulfill her quest. Something told her that she’d gotten used to having this reaction because of all the blazing adventures that her husband had helped her plough through- after all, it wasn’t exactly her fault if she was a modern reincarnation of some ancient Queen who seemed to take pleasure in scattering her royal problems throughout a decent number of millenniums.

The only thing that held Evelyn O’Connell back this time was the minor fact that she was half naked in the middle of the Karnack ruins, squatting painfully behind some fallen obelisk in a puddle of stinking wet sand next to the person she least expected to be with- no, not her abusively adored American, but the leader of one of the tribes of Medji, who was silently kneeling beside her with his trusted Thompson gun in hand.

Her hands were tied back behind her back and some ugly, reeking black cloth was gagging her around her neck, where her faithful friend had brutally yanked it down from her mouth. Well, it was technically her fault that he had almost been shot to death at least ten thousand times due to her lack of silence.

Yes, times like these were times when Eve wondered why oh why had she married Rick if their union automatically birthed heated adventures- and she was for some reason always the one that got kidnapped. It wasn’t logical- she was the smart one. Why wasn’t Jonathan kidnapped by crazed cultists all the time? It was more likely that he got caught, what with his natural magnetic ability for attracting problems and that I’ve-just-got-one-of-those-faces look about him.

Sighing, she kicked herself for being irrational. She couldn’t blame her brother, even if this was the second time she had been kidnapped by weird cultists driven by some ancient Egyptian myth. Or some ridiculous urge to take over the world. Well, it hadn’t been entirely obvious what her kidnappers’ motives had been this time- it had all happened very suddenly. One moment she was soundly sleeping in her mansion, if you please, and the next thing she knew some loud, scary looking people were stuffing her into a bug-filled sarcophagus, sombre rituals flowing from their mouths and obsessive glints setting their eyes ablaze. Maybe it was their idea of a party to kill random wealthy housewives, who knew?

“Psst, Ardeth. Psst!” she hissed a little too loudly, struggling with her roped hands. The dark Medji swung his head around to look at her urgently with his piercing eyes, as if to say ‘quietly!’. Ignoring him, she hurried on; “You don’t suppose you could, um, cut me loose here?”

Without a word, the black-clad man swiveled his gaze back to the ruins, his knuckles twisting on the gun handle, giving no obvious signs that he would do as she asked. Sighing irritably, Eve knocked herself against his shoulder to get his attention, very nearly losing her balance and tumbling over.

He turned once again to look at her, a scowl etched across his tattooed face.

“What is it?” he murmured, hastily grabbing her shoulder before she fell backwards.

“Can you please cut me loose? I mean it’s been about half an hour that we’re waiting here, freezing to death in this stinking sand, so why can’t you at least give me some thought? I cannot feel my wretched hands, Ardeth! Please!” Eve whisper-shrieked, not bothered that she was making noise. Being kidnapped a first time and almost getting roasted to death in a flame-infested sarcophagus was okay. But being kidnapped a second time and being stuffed in a sarcophagus full of pestering scarab beetles and getting her body mutilated by bullets to get all the stray little buggers out of her flesh was more than traumatizing. She still remembered that sickening feeling of bugs crawling between her veins, in and out of her flesh… she shuddered.

“Ardeth…” she tried again when said Arabian’s scowl did not soften in the slightest, knowing that she was whining like a little girl. He had never experienced bugs digging him up, so he couldn’t possibly complain at her behaviour- but then again, she was being ridiculously loud, which was hardly a fair thing to do when he’d saved her life and taken so many risks just for her sake.

“Evelyn, be quiet,” he hushed her, whipping out Rick’s pen knife all the same and sawing through her ropes. “Do not go running off again without telling me exactly where you’re going and what you plan to do. Is that clear?” He ordered, his brow still knitted together in an annoyed frown as he chucked away the mutilated binds.

“Do you honestly think that I’d go running off by myself, when I’m naked and unarmed and there are God knows how many cultists out there hunting us down?” muttered Eve, sheepishly tracing the shallow pink trench that encircled her wrist with a finger as Ardeth looked away again, ignoring her comment.

“Evelyn, be quiet,” she imitated him in a silly manly voice, then as she looked at him she was hammered to the ground by his death stare. “I-I’m sorry. It’s just the stress…I’m sorry.” She had to get a grip- shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself to stop her teeth from chattering as she recollected the feeling of bugs scouring her precious flesh. She found herself suddenly warming up to a certain mummy come to life- he had been trapped in a sarcophagus for years with those little scarabs devouring him till he died. Ugh, poor fellow.

Ardeth hung his head with an exasperated sigh, his expression softening a little, and took a tiny squatted step towards her to check on her arm wounds- he had had to shoot her several times (just skimming her skin with the bullets) to ram the beetles out of there before it was too late. She had several burns and dry, bloody holes up and down her arm, a few of them bandaged tightly by ripped strips of his own black clothes.

“I’m sorry about having to get rid of them so brutally,” he apologized, taking a quick glance over the obelisk before setting his gun down and taking her mutilated arm in his gentle, gloved hands. “How do your wounds feel?”

“What, after being eaten savagely by flesh eating bugs and then shot a million times by some whopping great machine gun? Yes, they feel absolutely fantastic, thank you,” Eve retorted, suppressing a little cry of pain as her friend’s fingers felt around the wounds to check if there were any remnants of bugs hiding under Eve’s skin. Alright, so the Medji knew what he was doing, but Eve still couldn’t just sit there with a man’s hands on her damaged skin without yearning for Rick’s care. Even if Rick’s care wasn’t nearly as calculated and careful as Ardeth’s. But still… she twitched under Ardeth’s fingertips, wincing as her bullet wounds seemed to come alive with a vicious fire.

Thinking of her husband, a wistful smile had appeared on her lips without her even noticing as Ardeth removed his black scarf that usually covered his lower face. She stared down at what he was doing, shaken back into reality- the two of them were alone in this ruin place, running from the cultists that had kidnapped her- well, what remained of them anyway. Ardeth had seen to the fact that they were now half their original number. Still, there were too many of them for him to take on alone.

Before she could tell him otherwise, Ardeth tore his scarf into three separate strips and began bandaging the wounds that had started bleeding again in their wild escape.

“I feel like I’m hearing Rick,” he remarked at her vocabulary, smirking under his tattoos without looking up from his work. “It seems he has been rubbing off on you lately…where did you learn such melee skills with your hands bound together?”

Eve managed to laugh. She remembered quite proudly when Ardeth had burst in and, in the heat of battle, his sword had been brutally whisked out of his grip- she had taken the chance and grabbed it as it spun in the air, using once again her ‘ancient skills’ to take down quite a few enraged cultist, all the while having her hands roped together.

Pretty skillful, if I can say so myself. But still, I was being self-drugged by adrenaline because of those darned beetles; even Alex could’ve done that.

She thought of her son, of whom she was so proud- after ten years of raising him, it seemed he had his father’s strategic thinking and strength, and a little bit of his mother’s emotional side. Just a little bit though, thankfully.

“Hum…it must have something to do with my lovely alter ego,” she reasoned, referring to Nefertiri in those wild Sais fights. By the Gods she couldn’t believe she had been as pretty and skillful as that before. On a side note, it was shame she hadn’t inherited that gorgeous black hair…instead she was dumped with dark brown curls that would never, ever get tamed. Herkane’.

“Yes, Nefertiri left quite a few of her talents to you,” admitted Ardeth, looking at her in a bit of an indiscreet way- as if he meant for her to understand something that he hadn’t yet spoken. Or maybe it was just that the man was a sacred warrior for God and anything that came tumbling out of his prickly mouth automatically bore some kind of importance, making you feel privileged to be the one he was talking to.

Not unlike Rick, she snapped back at herself, wondering why on Earth she was having these weird thoughts. It’s the beetles, the beetles and only the beetles.

Yeah, they must have eaten their way through a part of your brain, too. She scowled at herself.

“Heh, I wouldn’t say that.” She smiled pushing the compliment away as was in her nature. “She was royalty; beautiful, a talented Sai fighter, wealthy, caring a little too much for her own good…”

“And that isn’t how you would describe yourself?” Ardeth challenged her, a hint of amusement sparkling in his obscure eyes as he twisted the last of the makeshift bandages into an odd little knot, securing it around one of her wounds. “I think they have given up their hunt. It’s clear to go.” Even after saying that he handed his crooked sword to his partner anyway and got to his feet, his back hunched as he trotted along behind the obelisk. Eve gripped the sword’s smooth hilt in surprise and hurried to follow him.

They scurried along before breaking into a sprint and running across the large open space where incredibly tall pillars and obelisks towered over them at soaring heights, with a few shattered pieces of the fallen ones scattered on the sandy ground.

The two got to a place that could’ve been some kind of sanctuary in ancient times- wedged between some majestic pillars, a little rectangular pool of dark water was dug into the sand, and some broken pieces of a fallen pillar were bunched around it. Ardeth decided to stop here and look around again. Thirst had been drying up Eve’s throat since last night when she had been kidnapped, and what remained of it certainly resembled a dry parchment of papyrus of sorts. Falling heavily to her knees in front of the pool, she gave a happy cry and bent over to start drinking.

Then she suddenly heard Ardeth cocking his gun behind her. She stopped in mid-bend and look over at him inquiringly.

“Do not drink from that,” he commanded coolly, pointing the gun’s sleek muzzle at the water for some odd reason.

“Oh… but, I haven’t drank in two whole days! I bet you’re as thirsty as me. Come on- no harm ever came from drinking water.” She protested, her cupped hand still bathing in the cool, delicious water.

Ardeth almost burst out laughing. “For some reason I think that phrase has brought you much complications already, has it not?” He lowered his gun and offered her his hand to pull her up. “There are some bottles on my horse’s saddlebag, don’t worry.”

“Well I hope for your sake that they’re full,” said Eve with a vaguely menacing look about her, taking his hand and heaving herself up to her feet. He raised an eyebrow slightly, stepped back to give her some space- then suddenly they both jumped a mile as the water before them gave a loud, surreal gurgle-like sound. Evelyn’s hands unconsciously flew to the flimsy fabric that covered her breast, looking with a panicked eye at the sombre pool of water. It was churning and rippling, thought there was no wind. The dark Medji readied his gun instantly, pointing it at the waves.

For a moment, Eve thought she deciphered muttered whispers of Ancient Egyptian arising from the steam that the water made. As if by trance, she frowned at the pool, letting herself step towards the strange element.

“Evelyn,” called Ardeth nervously, wondering what on Earth she was doing. He made a grab at her. “Evelyn! Get away from there!”

Cocking her head to one side, the reincarnated Princess paid no heed to his warning. She walked towards the pool, one boot in front of the other, unconsciously dipping her head forwards to get a better view.

She was now sure of it- some deep, enchanting Egyptian voice was chanting some phrase of ancient language, beckoning her… she knew better than to just let herself be pulled in by its attractive demeanour, but it seemed that her senses were all switched to extreme-curiosity mode. They all demanded to know what that voice was. It seemed that all the cells in her body were simultaneously shrieking, what is it? what is it? And she felt this overpowering curiosity- she just couldn’t, wouldn’t say no to her instinct.

Something was there.

It is time…

“Evelyn, what are you thinking!?”

…come with me, my Princess…

“Come back!”

…let us succeed in raising your precious spirit once again…

Gunshots. Some yelled Arabic that suspiciously sounded like ‘shit!’.

…let us infiltrate it into the correct person, this time… into your body, so that your spirit will rule supreme over it…

“EVELYN!!!”

…and then our love shall know no obstacles…no boundaries…yes…come with me…

a&n:Well, welcome to Regenesis! So now that you've finished this chapter, you're probably wondering what the hell happened to the plot- it's going to take some time to develop, so you're probably gonna have to read on a bit to really get into it. ;) Review if that's what you feel like doing, it would be appreciated!
Oh, and if you were wondering... Herkane' is "forever" in ancient Egyptian... according to The Mummy Returns.
Hope 'twas to your liking.