Chapter 2

Shantali grabbed her phone and stood. "My shift ends in two hours. I'm finishing it."

She strode past him, ignoring his sigh. In the corridor, she checked that he wasn't following before making a sharp turn toward the security monitoring room instead of returning to her patrol route. The night supervisor, Garcia, was on his dinner break—she'd have fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, to review the footage herself.

The monitoring room hummed with the soft electronic breathing of a dozen screens. Shantali slid into the chair and quickly navigated to the Egyptian wing's camera feeds, rewinding to 2:45 AM. She watched herself enter the frame, flashlight beam sweeping methodically across the displays.

Then she stopped, just as David had described. The camera angle showed her profile as she stood facing the canopic jars, her posture alert but not alarmed. No smoke visible. No cobra manifestation. Nothing but her, frozen in place while the timestamp ticked forward: 2:46... 2:47...

At 2:48, she saw herself jerk backward, hands flying to her head. Seconds later, David appeared from around the corner.

"Shit," she whispered, rewinding and playing it again. Nothing. Just her, standing like a statue, experiencing something the cameras couldn't capture.

She switched to the infrared feed, hoping for some temperature anomaly that might explain what she'd seen. The screen showed the familiar blue-green palette of the thermal imaging, cold surfaces rendering in darker hues. She watched her own figure appear as a warm yellow-orange silhouette, but as she approached the canopic jars, something made her breath catch.

There—a faint heat signature rising from the display case, barely visible against the cooler background. It lasted only seconds, dissipating just as her figure on screen went rigid. The thermal bloom was subtle, easily missed unless you knew exactly when to look, but it was there.

"Not hallucinating," she murmured, screenshotting the frame. Her hands moved quickly across the keyboard, checking the electromagnetic sensors next. The readout showed a brief spike at 2:47:23 AM—a pulse of energy that registered for exactly four seconds before returning to baseline.

The sound of footsteps in the corridor made her minimize the windows and pull up a routine patrol log. Garcia appeared in the doorway, unwrapping what looked like a gas station sandwich.

"Cross? You're supposed to be on sector seven."

"Just checking the perimeter alerts," she said, logging out of the system. "Thought I heard something in the Egyptian wing."

Garcia nodded absently, already settling into his chair with his sad dinner. "HVAC's been wonky all week. Maintenance keeps saying Thursday."

Shantali headed for the door, then paused. "Hey, Garcia? Have you ever seen anything... unusual on the night feeds? Atmospheric disturbances, temperature anomalies?"

He looked up from his sandwich, eyebrows raised. "You mean besides the ghost tours convinced we're haunted?" He chuckled. "Kid, I've been watching these screens for twelve years. You see patterns after a while—shadows that move when they shouldn't, cold spots that drift around. Old buildings are full of mysteries. Why?"

"Just curious."

"Piece of advice? Don't go looking too hard for answers to questions you're not ready to live with." His expression grew serious. "Some things are better left alone."

The weight of his words followed her back into the corridors. She had three screenshots on her phone now, proof that something had occurred, even if the cameras couldn't capture its true nature. But Garcia's warning echoed uncomfortably in her mind as she resumed her patrol route.

When she passed the canopic jars again, she slowed her steps, studying the cobra-headed vessels with new intensity. The brass nameplate read: *Canopic jar of Duamutef, Dynasty XXII, dedicated to the protection of the stomach and the goddess Neith.* Standard museum description, clinical and safe.

But underneath, in smaller text she'd never noticed before: *Discovered alongside ritual implements suggesting use in serpent smoke divination practices.*

Her pulse quickened. Serpent smoke divination—she'd never heard the term, but it resonated with something deep in her chest, like a key turning in a lock she didn't know existed.

‘I need to find that Cobra again maybe it can tell me more with more complete visions of who, when and where?’ She thought to herself.

She pulled out her phone and photographed the nameplate, zooming in on that small line of text. Tomorrow she'd research serpent smoke divination, but tonight she needed to finish her shift without David asking more questions she couldn't answer.

At 6 AM, as the day shift arrived and morning light began filtering through the museum's tall windows, Shantali clocked out with a plan forming in her mind. She needed to understand what had happened to her, and she needed to do it without David's well-meaning interference or Garcia's warnings about leaving mysteries alone.

The university library opened at 8 AM. She had just enough time to grab coffee and steel herself for what she might find in the ancient texts about Egyptian divination practices. The visions still pulsed behind her eyes—that hospital corridor, the man she'd been arguing with, the wedding dress, the autumn funeral. They felt like memories of a future she was destined to live, but only if she could decode the serpent's message.

As she walked past the canopic jars one final time, she whispered to the cobra-headed vessel, "I'll be back tonight. And next time, I'll be ready for what you want to show me."

The heating vents remained silent, offering no wisps of jasmine-scented prophecy. But Shantali felt certain that the cobra was listening, waiting for her return with the patience of something that had already seen how this story would end.

She headed home to her apartment as her phone chimed with a reminder:

Friday 8pm Dinner date with David at our favorite restaurant.

Shantali stared at the reminder, her thumb hovering over the delete button. David had made those reservations weeks ago—their eight-month anniversary, he'd said with that shy smile that usually made her stomach flutter. Now the thought of sitting across from him, pretending to care about appetizers and wine selections while visions of prophecy burned behind her eyes, felt impossible.

She deleted the reminder and immediately felt guilty about it.