A Night Spent at the Museum of Natural History (Completed✔️)

Suffocating in the Dark

"I think we're going to get there before them" Ahk announced.
I hoped he was right. I had to stop for a second to catch my breath.
"Wait a second then" he let me go and i bent double and coughed a few times, inhaling as deeply as possible.
"Ok, i'm good, let's go"
We were so close, it was the mere length of this corridor away and as we continued to run and I made the foolish mistake of allowing myself to think we could make it in time...

"Rebecca" Ahk cried out.
I turned and stopped running to see what was wrong. This time he was bent over, I had assumed he just needed to catch his breath as well. He straightened up and the look in his eyes was one of pure terror.
"What, what is it?!" I questioned rushing to catch him as he was swaying and looked like he might fall at any second. Sure enough he did collapse and I held him, unsure of what to do or what was going on.
"The tablet, the centre piece must be aligned or-" he gasped.
"Or?!" I urged frantically.
"Or we change... Back" he managed, breaths long and drawn out.
"Crap, this means they have the tablet..." I mumbled.
"Rebecca, p-put me down. Do you really want to be holding a mummified corpse any second?" He asked wincing from the pain.
I glanced at his face and was horrified to see that he had begun to waste away, his eyes were clouding over, gaining the strange milky pallor that only the deceased possess.
"Oh shit"
I laid him on the floor and turned away, not wanting to see what the later stages of this process looked like.

I tried my utmost not to freak out, but it was hard. I was now alone in a museum which was currently being looted by a group of criminals... Moreover, I figured to break into undetected and rob this museum successfully you weren't exactly going to be anything less than a bunch of particularly nasty criminals or mobsters. To make matters worse I knew I needed to get the tablet back from said people.

I ran to Ahk's exhibit and poked my head around the corner to see if they had left yet. I didn't look back because he was right, I didn't want to see my new friend in that state. I heard voices from within his tomb.

"This tablet, this is solid gold and worth a fortune on the black market, it's the main reason we are here my friends."
"What about the coffin?"
"No, it's too big, we can't get it to the van easily, besides it would be much harder to sell on without being noticed at some point. No, just the tablet and all of the jewellery in the other room"

I heard the glass cases being smashed as two of the three men, kitted out in all black, wearing balaclavas and carrying bags and flashlights, had entered the other section of the exhibit. Their boss, the one giving the orders, was holding the tablet. I glanced around in the hallway for something, anything. I was overjoyed to see that the neanderthal spear I had almost been stabbed with earlier was lying not too far away. I hastily grabbed it and took the one opportunity I had to get that tablet back.

I slipped into the tomb, hiding behind one of the towering jackal statues, now completely lifeless. From their frozen positions of attack I ascertained that they must have tried to stop the thieves but were unsuccessful in the darkness. I darted into the little room at the end and once more tried to conceal myself in the shadow of a pillar. I watched this man carefully. He had his back turned to me and was still clutching the tablet. Plucking up the courage to make my move, I leapt forwards and raising the hefty neanderthal spear, swinging it so that the staff part of it collided with his head. He cried out and stumbled unbalanced, I swiftly grabbed the tablet from him and hit him again, this time much harder. He slumped to the floor. I ran for the exit but was stopped dead in my tracks by his 'friends'.

"Where do you think you're going?" One said, dropping his bag and flashlight and grabbing the spear and prising it from my grasp.
"Stupid girl, what are you doing wandering round in the museum at night" said the other, grabbing the tablet and doing the same.
"What did you do to the boss?" One questioned suddenly seeing him slumped on the floor.
"I did you a favour" I protested.
One of them clearly didn't like this logic and he punched me right in the eye. I stumbled backwards, a tide of pain crashing through my body in protest at the blow he dealt.
"In, in the sense that you can leave him here to take the fall and get arrested whilst you two sell off all this stuff without him giving you a lesser cut" I said through gritted teeth due to the pain of my throbbing eye.
They were clearly thinking about what I'd said.
"She does have a point" muttered the one who hadn't just punched me in the face before adding, "alright, make sure he doesn't wake up for a long time"
The one who was clearly purely there for the muscle smacked his boss's head against the floor a few times for good measure. I hoped they hadn't killed him.
"Ok that's enough. What to do with the girl though..." He said eyes narrowing.
The other man looked gleefully at me, advancing, most likely ready to beat me to a pulp any moment now.
"I think I know what to do" he announced suddenly.
I tried to back away from them but there was nowhere to go and they had blocked the only exit.
"Lets lock her in this" he said gesturing to the sarcophagus.
Oh god no. I wanted to scream.
"No!" I pleaded.
"Do it" the other one yelled at the muscle guy.

I tried to run but was simply picked up off the ground, kicking and screaming and forced into place. I bit his hand and for this act of defiance he back hand slapped me across my face so hard it dazed me. This was a fatal problem, as I had made it easier for them to get the lid on now I wasn't struggling so wildly. My futile attempts to stop them were pointless as when one held me down the other managed to get the lid on. As soon as they had,  I heard them replacing all of the pins keeping it locked. I hadn't even managed to turn the centre piece and now I was trapped in here...
It was a darkness like nothing I had been surrounded by before and I could barely move at all. I was painfully aware of every breath I took, aware that soon it would probably be my last. I shuddered and tried my best not to think about the effect of sharing the same space as a mummified corpse, because that was what Ahkmenrah was, even if only during the day as well as how much oxygen I had remaining. I began silently to cry, numerous tears rolling sideways down my face.

Everything I could hear was muffled, aside from my own panicked heart beat, but I could make out their conversation, just about.
"She'll not be getting out of there any time soon... She's most likely going to die in there in fact, it will only take a matter of minutes"
"Let's get out of here,  I don't want everything to come back to life"
"Ah don't worry about that, we don't have to worry about that"

"Wait!" I yelled.
There was a silent pause.
"Whatever you do, don't turn the middle piece back into place!" I shouted frantically.
"Why's that princess?" He mocked.
"Because if you do, before you say the correct phrase in Egyptian, then everything in this museum will stay dead forever! Please don't kill everything permanently" I explained, channelling the desperation I felt to sound as convincing as possible.
"You idiot. Why would you tell me this? now we may as well ensure that we escape unhindered by doing just that. Turn the middle piece!" He barked.
"No, no, no, don't, please, no" I screamed.

I prayed that they had done it as I heard their footsteps receding... and then there was only the darkness and the sound of my erratic heartbeat. The frantic pounding of it echoed in my ears and I felt so utterly alone. It was the worst thing I had ever experienced, and was most likely about to be the last. I could feel each breath becoming less useful, catching in my throat slightly as my body replaced most of the oxygen with carbon dioxide repeatedly. Every time I took a breath It felt shallower. I started to shout and scream again, hoping that someone would hear me. Eventually I couldn't because I felt faint. My head was spinning and I started to tremble. I didn't have long now. I tried once more to cry out, the pain resulting in the only noise I was capable of making, howling in pain like an animal caught in a trap. It felt like I was being choked by now. I had run out of time and I was fading fast.