There were hands gripping her. Tearing her away from something.  She struggled, bare feet scrabbling  against smooth stone as she fought to break free, to reach out for her. Her hands grasping desperately across the space as she was yanked away. Fear choking her as she screamed. Screaming something. A name. 

"Ahkmanet! Ahmanet!" 

"-Ahmanet", Jenny's voice cut through Elijah's dream like a knife. The dark haired woman's eyes snapped open and she was sitting up with a suddenness that made Nick Morton jump in his seat. 

"Whoa. Elijah. You scared me. Nightmare or something?" The man huffed. 

Elijah could feel the pounding of her heart beneath her ribs. A sharpness of breath that had her unsteady for a moment. Her birthmark ached. The pain of it had grown ignorable but now it swelled sharply, like she had been stabbed. She pressed the palm of her hand to it, pressing on the fabric of her t-shirt as if she could reach through the two layers of materials and sooth it. "Yeah. Something like that", she muttered, phantom grips of hands grabbing her lingering in her mind. "What were you saying?" She turned to Jenny. 

The blond woman was standing at the sarcophagus. Her little audio recorder in her hand. "I was trying to decode the hieroglyphs", she explained, gesturing to the stone beneath her free hand.

Elijah stood up and wandered over to see what the woman was reading. A unexplained urge to see the sarcophagus close up suddenly filling her. Up close the stone was rough under her hands. The texture grating and almost sharp. It was clear even to her untrained eyes that the carvings were masterful. The lines smooth and defined against the heavy material. She could not read the hieroglyphs etched down the sides, but her eyes followed Jenny's fingers as the historian translated the words aloud for her audio recorder. 

"-the wife of king Menehptre died in childbirth, leaving behind a sole heir. A girl called Ahmanet"- 

"Ahmanet", Elijah mouthed the name silently as her fingers reached out to trace the little symbols of the name. The name sounding almost familiar. 

"-for her crimes Ahmanet was imprisoned for eternity", Jenny finished reading. There was a click as her audio recorder turned off and she moved around to a different area of the sarcophagus to examine something else. 

Yet Elijah remained where she was. Fingers tracing the little symbols of the name again and again.  The name replaying over and over in her mind interspersed by flashes of bare feet on hot sand, toes painted blue. The flowing fabric of a dress caught in the wind. Of dark eyes lined with lapis and a-

-voice coming from soft parted lips. Fingers reaching out to cup her face, smooth back her hair as Ahmanet leaned forwards. The princess' own hair lying across her bare breasts covering the dark writing that spilled across her skin in scripture that descended down under the soft cotton of her dress. Scripture covered fingers wrapped around a black dagger, metal glinting in the torchlight as Ahmanet raised it up above her head. Face tender, loving as a name was formed from smiling lips. 

"Shani. My wonder". The dagger came down. 

Elijah woke up for a second time with a jolt. She blinked at the familiar sight of the metal and straps of the plane, a momentary feeling of loss pulsing in her chest as her birthmark ached. She really needed to stop waking up like this. The stress on her heart couldn't be good. She wondered if she should see a doctor for the pain in her chest. It had never hurt like this before. 

"Vail!" Nick's shout cause her to turn. Vail was standing at the sarcophagus. The straps holding the stone to the floor of the hull were hanging loose, thick material cut through. Elijah half noticed the cut straps with surprise before her eyes trailed up to see Vail with a knife through Greenway's chest. The colonel frozen upright in the shock of death. 

She scrambled to her feet. Boots thudding on the floor as she stood, to do what she didn't know. What did you do when your comrade had just killed your commanding officer? There was a wet sound as Vail pulled the knife out. Greenway's body collapsing with a thud. Elijah's training kicked in and she had her handgun drawn from her belt in moments. The weapon aimed up at Vail's chest. "Vail!" Her voice was a yell. "Put that down! Put it down now!" 

"Whoa whoa! Elijah wait!" Morton yelped as he tried to put himself between her and Vail. 

"Do not shoot!" Jenny was commanding, hands up as Morton reached to Elijah's gun. She stepped back before he could disarm her, grip firm on the weapon. "This is pressurised aircraft Elijah!" 

"He just killed Greenway!" Elijah cried out, her heart thumping in her chest as Vail stepped closer. The man looked terrible. Skin ashen, almost grey and one eye completely white. He moved weirdly too, a sort of shuffling that was sending all sort of wrongs signals. He looked dead. "What the fuck is wrong with him?" She gestured with her gun, a combination of anxiety and training not letting her release the weapon yet even as she lowered it. 

Vail swung his knife lazily, as if he was a puppet on a string. The blade catching Morton's back and causing the man to jump away. "Vail!" 

"Nick", Jenny's voice was a concerned gasp as the man was forced to dodge yet another swing of the blade. He turned, all three of them backing away as Vail advanced slowly. Elijah raising her gun again. 

"Vail", she warned but something in that unblinking half blind stare told her that he couldn't hear her.  He gave to reaction to her voice either, still lumbering forwards with the blade outstretched. The blood dripping from it gleaming red in the light as it swayed to point at Jenny. "Vail. I will shoot. Don't make me shoot you Vail. Vail!" Elijah's voice rose as the metal wall between them and the cockpit hit their backs. Jenny pressed between her and Nick as the blade swung again. Sharp end almost catching on the blonde woman's clothes. 

The sharp crack of the gunshot made the three of them jump. Elijah stared, mouth open in a gasp as a hole appeared in the dirty grey of Vail's t-shirt. Thick red blood seeping slowly out and staining the material. The man barely seemed to glance at it, blade still outstretched as he moved closer. The second crack of a shot  caught him this time in the heart and the man dropped. Body collapsing to the floor like a doll. Unblinking eyes unseeing as the knife fell from his grip. 

"You shot him", Morton breathed. Elijah shakily flicked the safety back on her gun and lowered it. 

"Would you rather he stabbed us?" The words came out weak and breathless. 

Any reply Nick Morton might have had was disrupted by the plane suddenly shuddering, the movement almost sending the three of them off their feet. Elijah stumbled, scrabbling to the nearest window. Morton got there first. The man briefly glancing outside before running for the other side of the hull. Elijah reached the glass just in time to peer out at the wing as the engine burst into flames. 

"Oh fuck", she barely got the words out, moving towards the cockpit as the plane shook again. "What's happening?" She demanded as she burst through the door. 

The cockpit was full of the blaring beeping of alarms. One pilot shouting into his radio as the other turned to them. "Take your seat and strap in!" He shouted. "I don't know what's happening". 

"England?" Jenny repeated one of the words the first pilot was rapid firing down his radio. Elijah hadn't noticed the woman follow her in. "We're over England?"

A sharp crack made the two women flinch as something hit the glass window. There was a red streak that Elijah knew was blood and an impact crack that had luckily not broken through. "What-" Her question was cut off as the impact crack began to widen. Ahead of them, half blurred in with the grey clouds, was a black haze. Hundreds of black dots growing bigger as they approached. 

With horror, Elijah realised that they were birds. Approaching them rapidly, kamikaze style. "Fuck!" She turned, rapidly shoving Jenny back into the hold and slamming the door behind them just as the birds collided. The glass cracking as numerous bodies hit it at speed. 

"Jenny! Elijah!" Morton was across the room. The man strapped into a parachute. He was holding two more in his hands. 

Then the plane began to nosedive. Jenny shrieking in surprise as the rapid descent caused them all to float off the floor. Elijah grabbed the flailing blonde and kicked off the wall behind her to send them floating towards him. The man had grabbed on to the wall straps and was reaching out for them. 

"I don't know how to do this Nick", Jenny cried out in panic as the plane turned, sending them colliding into the wall. Morton managed to grab the blonde, folding her arms into the parachute straps as the plane turned again. Elijah grasped for the wall straps but missed, her body flying across the hull and into the other way sharp enough to make her gasp. 

"Jenny. You can do this! Listen to me. You can do this!" Morton was rapidly reassuring as he finished buckling Jenny in. He reached out for Elijah. "Come on Elijah!" He held out the third parachute desperately. 

Elijah was just about to kick back over to them when something clanged. Metal tore and the three of them were hitting the floor as part of the wall next to Jenny and Morton was ripped away. The whole plane spinning and sending them rolling around and around as they plummeted towards the ground. Elijah reached for the two of them just as something caught her ankle. She turned back to see a strap caught around her ankle. The material pulled tight and knotted. She couldn't reach it, fingers grasping for it blindly as the plane grew closer and closer to the ground. 

A scream made her turn back. Jenny was gone. Parachuted out through the hole in the wall. Morton was lingering. The man holding onto the wall as he reached for Elijah. "Go!" She shouted, aware that there was no time. She was going to die. Strangely, probably due to the panic of the situation, she wasn't upset by this. She was terrified, but that was half due to the plummeting feeling of falling and the adrenaline in her blood. 

"Elijah!" Morton called again. He was still holding a parachute for her. 

"I'm stuck!" She shouted back. "Go Nick!" Maybe it was the realisation that he couldn't save her, or the fact that she used his first name but the man nodded. Face grim as he let go of the wall and disappeared into the sky. 

Elijah reached out to grasp a strap of the wall next to her as the whistling wind grew louder. Her eyes catching on Ahmanet's sarcophagus as she squeezed them shut. Too much fear in her throat to scream. Then everything was silent. 

unedited 

please vote, comment, follow etc. Stuff is going to get fun from here on.