**Ch 15: Unfair Justice

By the next morning, I was up and ready to analyze the Pharaoh's body.

Firm knocking tapped outside my hotel door. I was puzzled about who it was until I found Tom outside it, holding a paper in his hand.

"May I speak with you?" he asked with an unhidden grin that reached his ears.

"Sure."

Being my boss, I didn't have much of a choice but to allow him in. Once I shut the door, Tom faced me and revealed when handing me this paper. "I'm not going to waste any time. Unfortunately, I have to let you go."

I was shocked when I read the paper to see I was terminated from work. Mr. Collin signed his signature to verify it.

"I don't understand!" I firmly retorted. "You're firing me, but if it wasn't for me. You would've never found the Pharaoh! You took my credit, Tom!"

"And now I have taken your career!" Tom snarled rudely. "You'll never work in this type of field again! Now pack your stuff! By tomorrow morning, you'll be leaving!" Pure evilness shone through his eyes. He opened my door and left almost slamming it shut. Tears swelled my eyelids before I burst out into a heavier rough cry.

~~~

Tom met everyone else in the lobby.

"Where's Victoria?" Donny asked, peeking around from behind him.

"She's been fired," Tom exclaimed harshly. "Nobody is to speak with her! Her flight leaves tomorrow, and she is forbidden from knowing what we do here." After his cold words, he pushed through everyone shouting. "Everyone in the van!"

Everybody, including Donny and Susie, felt horrible. Without a choice, they had to heed Tom's brash edict.

The team loaded into the van and then drove two blocks up the street. Once they reached the research lab where the body was kept, everyone got out and went to the lab. There, the Pharaoh's body lay on this silvery metal table bed.

"Let's start a CAT scan on him," Tom commanded, and they worked together doing just that.

They stood outside the room and allowed the professionals to do the CAT scan. Everybody watched the images on the screen, scanning his body.

Donny squints his eyes to notice something uncommon. "His body wasn't embalmed. All his organs and even his brain are still intact." He pointed out, and almost everyone was baffled by it.

"His brain and internal organs aren't shrunk to show that he has decayed." Susie voiced her observation, writing it down.

"The room must've been airtight," Tom refuted a more scientific answer over their observations.

Yet, Susie examined his jaw and teeth closer from the screen. Four canine teeth were impacted deeper into the jawbone. Each tooth had a pointier tip compared to anyone with normally-sized canine teeth.

"He has abnormally sharp canine teeth," she concludes, perplexed.

"It's a type of gum disease." Tom debunks it because he has seen this before.

After that process was done, they measured his body and wrote up every detail they could about him. Meanwhile, Tom pulled out the vial from his pocket.

"What is that?" Donny questioned him while he was writing up notes in full description.

Tom explained. "Something I was told to put inside the Pharaoh's mouth. Must be some kind of solution to better analyze him."

Donny nodded as he opened the attached lid to the vial. Dark red droplets of liquid dripped into the Pharaoh's slightly parted mummified lips. Several liquid drops splashed his lips before they entered his mouth. Other droplets rolled in like a bead. Once it was empty, Tom put the bottle back in his pocket, but when he looked down, something unfathomable occurred before everybody's eyes. They froze in place to see the Pharaoh's mummified eyelids snap open. A crusty dry crack was heard, and everyone in the lab was mortified to see it. Majestic red deadly-looking pupils stared up at the ceiling.

~~~

I was so distressed about the betrayal that I took a long soak in the jacuzzi inside my bathroom. Hours must've gone by because my skin was so pruney. I felt like my skin was going to burst with water. So I got out and dried my body. Next, I checked my phone to see it was pretty late.

After putting on my silkie short-length robe, I left the bathroom and got dressed in a tank top and a pair of jeans. Since it was my last night, I figured I could head to the bar and find something else less depressing to do.

Creak! I heard the sound of a door open from outside my bedroom door. My heart was racing to see an eerie strange shadow swoosh past the space underneath the door. Somebody was in my room! Swoosh! At a faster speed, I saw the shadow fly past it again.

"I swear, I will call the authorities if you don't get out!" I yelled from inside my bedroom.

Perhaps it wasn't a wise idea because that shadowy figure grew bigger toward my door. The knob jiggles, and I jump back, hyperventilating.

"S-squeaks!"

The doorknob squealed as it turned all the way to be open. Every tiny hair on my body stood straight up as the door moved off the latch. My voice was sealed shut and gasped in one breath.

Then it suddenly shut before I heard this loud swoosh again. Creak! I waited quietly and heard nothing but my shaky breath. Being brave or conceivably stupid, I went to the door and opened it. My eyes gaped to find the balcony glass doors wide open.

"Aaah!" I scream to spot blood on the handles and everywhere on the floor! I turned around to see even more blood on my bedroom's doorknob. I ran to the front door but I was stopped by a decorative stand that was up against another wall. Now it was set here, blocking the door. Whoever the intruder was, had placed these black roses on it with a note. Everything, including the roses and note, was smeared in blood.

Written in blood I read. "I will be back for you, my love," was written in the rare language that hardly anybody knew how to read, let alone write it! Shock devoured me, so I ran around the stand to find help. I need to get out of here! Boom! My door busted open, and the authorities flooded in.

"Thank goodness you're here!" I exclaimed in fluent Egyptian, but their eyes narrowed at the blood everywhere in my room.

"Arrest her for the murders!"

"What, no!" I averred my innocence tearfully as they detained me. "Somebody broke into my room!"

"Don't lie!" A man shouts. "Nobody came into the lobby. You're the only one who's been here."

"No, please listen, my boss knows I've been here the whole time," I pleaded. "Please, let me call my team to vouch for me."

They dragged me out of the room as I struggled. "Like you don't know your whole team is dead. After all, you're the one who murdered them!" The man holding my left arm retorted crudely.

Without a fair trial, I was thrown inside this dirty lonely cell. I was accused of murdering my whole team. I cried thinking about Susie and Donny. Donny has a wife and two sons in New Jersey.

Susie's husband stopped at my cell two days ago, gritting his teeth at me for killing his wife. Nobody believed me. I was told the blood in my room was from my team. It was enough evidence for the authorities to say I was guilty of the murders.

~~~

Weeks passed by, whenever I heard rumors from the talking guards that said others were disappearing and their bodies would be found later. Eventually, I was taken out of my cell for questioning about who I was working for, but I never answered since I knew I was innocent. Yet I'm being held responsible for murders I didn't commit. This was an unfair Justice, I felt.