The Forbidden Tomb

60

Jasmine sat in the center of the dungeon floor staring at the ancient door. The mere sight of it had once lifted her spirits, but now it taunted her. For all she knew, it was the only thing standing between her and freedom.

After spotting the body in the corner of her cell, she had gone back to her exploration of the room. The heavy chain attached to the shackles around her ankles had kept her from investigating the entire space, but she was determined to scour every inch that she could reach. Hindered by the lack of light, she had felt her way around the edges of the chamber until she found the door. The smooth texture of the wooden slab had been easy to distinguish from the rough masonry of the wall.

Finally, she had found the handle.

For a moment, it had given her hope.

Though the keyhole presented a much different challenge than the barrel locks of the handcuffs in the desert hut, Sarah had explained the function of tumblers in great detail during Jasmine’s training. By no means was she ready to take on Fort Knox, but she understood the basics of what she needed to do. With enough time and a healthy dose of luck, Jasmine was sure she could unlock the door.

If, and only if, she found something that resembled a lock pick.

So far, that had proven to be a difficult task.

Comically, it wasn’t until sometime later that she had faced the larger issue at hand. Even if she had been able to open the door, she was still chained to the wall. And the shackles around her ankles had no locks to pick — they were solid rings of iron that had been hammered into place.

Jasmine winced at the memory of her oversight.

It sounded like something McNutt would do.

She lay back on the floor and shifted her focus to the oil lamp that dangled above, strangely wishing that it had been a candelabrum. At least the melting wax of a burning candle would have offered her a sense of time. She knew it was an arbitrary sense since she had no way of knowing how fast a random candle burned, but at least it was a measurable unit. She would have been much more at ease knowing she had been trapped for three candles… or twelve… or two hundred.

Instead, all she had was the continuous flame of the lamp.

With nothing else to entertain her, she began to reflect on her predicament. She knew that her exposure to the events of the last couple of months had changed her outlook considerably. She also knew that much of that change was brought about by her growing relationships with the team, particularly Sarah. Before their adventure, she would have resigned herself to the inevitable, patiently waiting to be rescued. But the confidence she had recently gained meant she now understood the need to make her own fate.

Accepting her imprisonment wasn’t an option.

Jasmine closed her eyes and thought back to the events in the tunnel when the silence was shattered by a sharp grating noise that echoed through the cell. She couldn’t place the direction of the sound because of the acoustics in the room, but she wanted to be ready if she was about to have visitors. She tensed, focusing on the self-defense techniques that Cobb had insisted she learn before their last adventure. All of the repetition, all of the muscle memory — it had led to this moment. Or had it?

She heard the sound again.

This time, she was able to locate the source.

It wasn’t coming from the door.

It was coming from the grave.

Amazingly, the man in the corner of the room — the one she had assumed was dead — had suddenly come to life. As he emerged from his drug-induced sleep, he struggled to sit up on his own. Every time he tried, his chain rattled against the stone floor and he flopped over like a toddler learning to walk.

A moment passed before he spotted Jasmine in the center of the room, watching him from afar with a mixture of empathy and fear. His sunken eyes locked on hers as if pleading for his life. Eventually, he mustered the strength to ask a single question, one bathed in desperation and doubt.

‘Where… are… we?’