Chapter 8: The Middle Way
"Looks like we'll have to squeeze through here." I said as we go down the little pathway. "All right, you three go ahead. I'll help Charlie." Nate said. "All right." Sully said as we come up to this very narrow walkway. Then Sully, Chloe and I start to make our way through the narrow gap and up to a large room then we see another narrow gap. "Oh wait, there's another passage up ahead." Sully calls out to Nate. "Just go on. I've got him." Nate calls out. "We'll light the way for you!" I said and we light up the room and make our way through that narrow gap.
We walked ahead for a few minutes but then I realized that Nate and Cutter were taking forever. I head back towards the large room and see that Cutter had ahold of Nate by the neck. "Cutter!" I exclaimed as I run over to him and jump on his back. "Oh shit!" Sully said as Chloe runs over to Cutter and tries to get his attention.
"Charlie! Charlie!" She calls out and Sully goes to Cutter's side and pulls out his gun.
"What're you--"
"Get back." Sully said to Chloe as he aims his gun at Cutter's head. "Don't!" Chloe said then she grabs Cutter face and pulls it up to face her. "Charlie, you're killing Nate. Okay, you gotta listen to me. You are killing Nate. Charlie!" She pleads and he shoves me off of him and he let's Nate go. I go over to my brother and check on him as he coughs and gasps for air.
"Hey, hey, hey...." I said, softly, to Nate as I help him up to his feet. "I got you." I said to him. "I'm all right..." he said, his voice a little croaky. As Nate catches his breath, Cutter looks over at us with worry then said. "Nate. Nate, Nate, I'm really sorry." Nate walks over to him and pats his shoulder. "We're even." He said as he coughs some more and picks up his dropped torch and lights it up.
"Hold on--you weren't...you weren't gonna shoot me, were you mate?" Cutter asked Sully. Sully sighs and shrugs at this. "Like a rabid dog." He replied. "Wow..." Cutter said, astonished, as he looks over at Sully. "Let's try this again." I said. "I'll go first this time." Nate croaks. Then he goes over through the gap, Chloe and I follow him.
"Next thing you'll be putting a gun to the back of my head telling me about the rabbits." Cutter said to Sully as they come through the gap. "Hey, play nice, boys." I said to them. "Yeah, come on. You're almost through." Chloe assures them as Cutter gets out of the gap then Sully soon after him. "Come on, let's move it along. They'll be looking for us." Nate said and we walk through a tunnel and come upon a large room with a large round stone in the middle of the room.
It kinda looked like a large globe made out of stone. "Looks like this thing should spin, doesn't it?" I said as I point at the Earth stone. "This is more than just a crypt." Cutter said. "Yeah, the whole damn room looks like some kind of ancient device." Sully mutters.
"Where's my notebook?" Cutter asked. "You gave it to Talbot, don't you remember?" I said and he looks over at me, confused. "Wha? No I didn't." Cutter said. "Yeah, your gun too." Chloe said. "Ah, bollocks." Cutter grumbles.
"We need to figure out how to get it spinning." Sully said as he looks around the room. "Look at this channel." Cutter said. "It looks like they were meant for water." I said as I point at the channels around the room. "I found a stairway." Cutter said and Nate looks over at him and runs over to him and they head up the stairs.
"See anything up there?" Chloe asked Nate and Cutter as we see them up.on a floor above us. Then I see Nate goes over to a statue and lights it on the back and a light projects onto the stone Earth. "They look like some of projections. They're marking positions on the globe." I said. "Let's get the other ones lit." Cutter said and Nate starts to light up all of the statues and more light projections appear on the globe.
"The beams don't line up with the globe." I said as I see Nate and Cutter leaving the platform then we head over to the back of the room and see Nate and Cutter spinning a couple of the cranks, making water flow through the channels. "I hate getting wet." Cutter said as Nate dives into the water and swims over to us. "Oh don't be such a sissy." Nate said and Cutter swims after him.
"Okay, one more." Nate said as he and Cutter go over to the other two cranks and they turn the wheel and the water flows over to the globe. "It worked. It started to spin." Chloe said. "We should be able to rotate the globe now." I said. "Now we're getting somewhere." Cutter said, smiling. "Hey, it looks like those light projections might line up with the land masses." Sully said and I go over to globe and start to spin the globe around.
Nate comes up next to me and helps me align the globe to the projections. After we do that, we heard a rumble and we look up and see a large pillar start to lower down from the roof until it stops.
"Nice job, kids. You guys did it." Sully said as he was on the top floor. "Incredible." Cutter mutters. "That's gotta be the entrance to the inner crypts. Come on." Nate said and Chloe and I follow him up the stairs as we head upstairs to meet up with Sully and Cutter.
"Here we go." Cutter said as head inside that large pillar that had a staircase inside. We head up the stairs and enter the crypt. "All right, we're looking for a night's tomb, just like we found in France. Now if my hunch is right, he'll be buried with the other half of our amulet." Nate said and we walk deeper into the crypt and we find the tomb.
"Is that it?" Cutter asked. "Yeah, just like the one in France." Sully said. "Amazing..." Chloe said. "Yeah, brilliant. Let's get it open." Cutter said and he and Nate pick up the lid of the tomb and open it. "Here it is." I said after they set the lid to the side and I reach in and pick up the amulet. "What did I tell you?" Nate said to Cutter. "Let's see that other half." Cutter said.
"Yeah, about that....uh...Talbot has it." Nate said, awkwardly. "What?" Cutter and Chloe said, shocked. "Yeah, we told you how he ambushed us at the chateau. That's when he took it." I said as Nate pulls out his notebook. "Well, why did we even bother then?" Cutter asked, annoyed. "Hole on. Give us a little credit." Nate said and he opens his book and flips to a page where he looks at the page where he drew the other half of the amulet before Talbot took it.
I hand him the amulet and he puts it up against his drawing. "There. You see?" Nate said as he shows the page and amulet to Cutter. "Huh...and with the inscription complete...we know exactly where to go in Yemen." Cutter said. "Thank you very much." Nate mutters. "Nicely done." Chloe congrats. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the same. I think I'll hold into this one." Cutter said and Nate hands the amulet to him and puts his book away. "All right, let's get the hell out of here." I said and we start to head back where we came from but we heard voices.
"Ah shit." Sully mutters. "They must've followed us." Cutter said. "Well, we better hope there's another way outta here." Chloe said and I run over to the other side of the crypt and felt a wind blowing through. "Ah, there's a draft over here." I said as I come up to a bricked wall. "Hey, come here." I said and Nate and Sulky come up to the wall and they start to feel the wall.
"Yeah, I can feel the breeze." Sully said. "Awesome, please be an outside wall." Chloe said and Nate starts to push against the wall and it starts to give in. "It's got some give. Charlie, help me with this." Nate said and he and Charlie push down the wall. We walk through and see that the wall crushed one of Talbot's men. "Ah...thanks very much, I'll take that." Cutter said as he grabs the man's gun and we start to walk out, the sun was rising.
But as we walked out, Talbot and his men, on the other side of the ruins, run out and aim their guns at us. We, in turn, aim our guns back at them. "Drop your weapons." Talbot orders us. "Yeah, I don't think so." Nate said to Talbot as we still aim our guns at him. "Well, then. What a dilemma." Cutter said as he smirks. "We seem to be equally matched. Until the rest of my men show up, that is."
"We can wait." Sully said but I look over and see Cutter starting to freak out "Oh, no." I whispered as the others look over at him.
"Charlie--" Nate said as he walks over to him but Cutter raises his gun and aimed it at Nate, his hand shaking. "Oh, damn it." Nate mutters as he backs away from Cutter.
"Now that changes things a bit, doesn't it? Now drop your guns." Talbot orders. "Why don't you go--" I started to say but Talbot said. "Cutter, shoot him."
"No!" Chloe said.
"Wait! Just stop, okay?" Sully said and he throws his gun down then looks over at the rest of us. We, reluctantly, throw our guns down and Talbot's smile gets bigger. "Now that's better, isn't it? Shoot him and his sister." Talbot said and my eyes grow bigger.
"You son of a bitch." Sully growled.
"Cutter--pull the trigger." Talbot orders. "My pleasure." Cutter said then he turns the gun away from Nate and aims it at Talbot and shoots him in the shoulder. "Run!" Cutter said as he fires at the other men while Nate, Sully, Chloe and I run.
"Go! Go!" I shout and we run from the gunfire. "Why on earth did you guys drop your guns?" Cutter asked us as he runs behind us. "You might've given us a wink or something." Nate replied. "Well I didn't expect you to give up quite that easily, did I?" Cutter said as we run into a tower, up the stairs and get on the roof. We jumped on this little wooden walk way and started to run when Nate jumps on it and it collapses, leaving Cutter on the roof of the tower.
"Oh, shit." I said. "C'mon Cutter." Sully yells at him. "He can't make it." Nate said as he look at the huge gap between us and Cutter. "Okay, what can we do? What can we do?" Chloe asked. "Charlie." I said as Cutter turns around and said. "What the hell?"
"You didn't get very far, did you?" Talbot asked as he and his men walk over to Cutter.
"Hand it over." Talbot orders. "Piss off." Cutter said then one of his men uses the butt of his gun and hits Cutter in the back, making him fall to his knees. Nate and I start to run over to the tower but Sully and Chloe grab our arms. "There's nothing we can do, kids." Sully said to us and we stand there, watching helplessly. "Jesus, this is unbearable." Chloe mutters.
Talbot walks over to Cutter and grabs the amulet then walks away just as we see Marlowe walking up to him. "Oh, Cutter. I had such high hopes for you." Shd said and Cutter chuckles. "Yeah, right." He mutters back. "It's true--you had potential. Now...well, it's funny how things work out, isn't it? You betray my trust....and now we find ourselves here." Marlowe said as some of her men dump gasoline around Cutter.
"Oh no." I whispered as Marlowe said. "As if it were in the cards all along." Then a blaze of fire started to surround Cutter, who looks over at us in fear then back at the fire. "Charlie, don't." Nate mutters as Cutter turns and looks down at the ground then back to us. "No." Nate and I muttered and Cutter jumps off of the roof. "No!" We exclaimed and we began tor run down towards him.
"Charlie!" Nate exclaims as we run over to him. "Ah, shit! Bollocks!" Cutter exclaims in pain. "Don't move! Don't move!" I said to him as he tried to sit up. "Jesus! My leg!" Cutter screams as I go to touch his leg as it was in an odd angle. "DON'T TOUCH IT!" Cutter said. "It's broken!" I said to him. "I know it's broken!" Cutter growls at me and he takes some deep breathes.
"Just easy does it, mate. Hang on." Chloe said, calmly, then she looks at his jacket and pulls out a card. "Nate...(y/n).. look at this." She said as she holds up what looks like a card those fortune tellers use during there little shows. "Oh, what the hell..." Sully mutters.
"This way!" We hear one of Marlowe's men shouts. "Okay, we can't stay here." Chloe said to us. "Just leave me the gun, I'll kill those bastards!" Cutter said. "No way. We're getting you outta here." I said as Nate and Sully help him up to his feet. "Girls, cover us." Sully said as he and Nate carry Cutter and Chloe and I started to run in front of the boys and started to run and find out way out, encountering Marlowe's men every now and then but we easily take them out.
"Ahh... okay, okay." I mutter as we make it to the entrance. "The bus. We're taking ths bus." I said as I point at the bus just as tourists started to come in. "Well that won't attract any attention." Chloe said, sarcastically, as Nate and Sully carry Cutter towards the bus. "Morning. Not worth the price of admission, folks." Chloe said to the people as we get on the bus.
"Okay, here we go. One...two..atta boy." Sully said as he and Nate get Charlie on the bus and set him down on a seat. "All right, I got this." Sully said as he gets to the driver's seat while I look out the window and see some of the men running towards us. "Here they come." I said. "Sully, get us outta here!" Nate yells as Sully starts the bus and we drive off.
"Looks like we lost 'em." Nate said few minutes later. "All right--I'll find someplace to ditch the bus." Sully said. "Great." said Nate and I look over at Cutter, who had his foot propped up on the seat. "You doing all right?" I asked him. "Oh, fabulous." He said. "That was too close." Chloe said. "He'll be okay." Nate said.
"No, I mean the whole thing. It just isn't worth it, Nate. Let this one go." Chloe said. "No, no, no, no--you can't just give up. If you let these bastards win--after this--I will never bloody forgive you or your sister." Cutter said as he looks up at Nate. "Don't you worry, Charlie." Nate said as he pats his shoulder. "Yeah, there's no way we're letting them win." I said and Cutter smirks at us.
"What is it with you? What are you two trying to prove?" Chloe asked us, looking between me and Nate. "We're not trying to prove anything." Nate said and Chloe looks between us. "Right." She whispers in disbelief as Nate and I turn out backs to her and go over to Sully.
"So what's the plan, kids?" He asked us. "Guess (y/n) and I are going to Yemen. You up for it?" Nate asked him. "'Course I am." Sully said and we smile at him. "All right, we gotta find a quick way in. No hassles." Nate said and I think this over then I get an idea. "Think I might know a couple of people we could call." I said and Nate looks over at me. "Who?" He asked and I give him a knowing look.
"Oh, no. No, no, no." He said, laughing. "You got a better idea, Nate, I'm all ears." I said and he thinks it over. "What about--no...fine. Make the call." He sighs and I pat his shoulder. "You'll be fine, bro." I said and I pull out my phone and start to dial up a familiar number.
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