Disclaimer: I own nothing besides my own characters. In no way, shape, or form am I making any profit and this is purely for entertainment purposes.
"Wake up, Ashton!" I hear Lara scream in my ear again. She had been trying for probably the past ten minutes. What can I say? I love my sleep, and no matter how much my best friend wanted lunch, she was going to have to wait a little bit. I jump as she slams the door shut, letting out a groan.
I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes in exhaustion. I run my hands through my messy hair, hoping that I would be able to tame the beast. I yawn as I get up slowly, dragging my feet as I walk to the bathroom. I strip off my clothes and get into the shower, quickly getting ready.
I emerge from the bathroom completely ready about an hour and a half later. "Ah, she lives!" Lara teases, poking me in the stomach and causing me to squirm away. I hated that she knew I was ticklish. She smirks at me before grabbing her purse and coat, and I grab mine before sliding on my shoes.
"Where are we going for lunch again?" I ask as we walk down the streets of California together. She rolls her eyes at me but smiles nonetheless.
"Some new sushi place that opened downtown. Sam says that it's really good; she and Alex went there last week." I nod, picking up the pace as I wanted to get there. I hadn't had breakfast due to the fact that I slept until lunchtime.
We get there and pick a table before sitting down. Our waiter hands us menus and leaves us to look at them. We tell him what we want and as soon as he left, my phone started to ring obnoxiously. I groan, leaning over to reach into my purse and answer it without even looking at the caller ID. I don't get many calls nowadays, so I don't believe it really matters all that much.
"Hello, this is Benjamin Gates." The voice on the other line says. Gates. Where have I heard that name before? Lara cocks an eyebrow at me and I just shrug. "May I please speak to Ashton Rooker?"
"This is she." I tell him, running my hand through my hair. Now I was even more confused than I was before.
"I would like to know if you would be interested in a job. You and, uh, Lara Croft, I believe." he says. This guy sounded like he was in his late twenties. What the hell is he doing calling girls that are fresh out of college to do a job for him? I knew we were pretty famous archaeologists, but I don't think we're that famous. In fact, I know we aren't.
"That depends. What does this job involve?" I ask him, putting the phone on speaker so that Lara could hear. She was offered the job as well, after all. He goes on to tell us the story of The Templar Treasure, and how his family was involved in all of this. He also told us how he had been trying to figure out the latest clue for a large portion of his life, which is the only one he has.
Ben said that he had some sort of idea to what it could be, and he was wondering if we would like to tag along to the Arctic Circle, our trip completely paid for by him. I had to admit that this sounded rather nice, and I could tell by the look on Lara's face that she agreed with me. He told us how much we would be paid, and we immediately agreed.
"Great!" he exclaims and you could practically hear the smile in his voice. "I've read that you two are great archaeologists and history buffs as well, so hopefully you will be a great addition to our team."
"Oh, I have no doubt about that, Mr. Gates." I confidently say before we end the conversation and I put my phone back in my purse. I smirk at Lara who had a big smile on her face, obviously happy. I was incredibly ecstatic as well. I mean, who wouldn't be? We had just been offered a pretty cool job, and it paid well too. Ben had said that there were five other people who would be joining us.
There would be Riley, Ian, Shaw, Powell, and Victor, along with Ben, Lara, and me. We finish up lunch quickly before heading back home to pack. He had told us that the flight leaves tomorrow at 5:30, so I knew that we had to be out of the house by five, so we had to wake up rather early, and that was something I was not happy about.
I wake up early the next morning at an ungodly hour. I get ready quickly and was practically falling asleep as we were waiting for our flight to be called. It was one of the first flights of the day, meaning that there really weren't that many people at the airport, which was great.
Our flight was called and I spent the next five hours asleep. I hated airplanes. I always thought that I would fall to my death in a fiery ball of explosion. The more time that I could spend unconscious, the better.
I awake to Lara shaking me. I groan at the bright sunlight. I don't even know what time it was in Washington D.C., but I did know that I wanted to fall asleep right then and there. Everything was a blur as we got our bags and stood around inside the airport until Ben came to meet us there so we could all get on another flight to the Arctic Circle together. That was an insanely long flight that I was not looking forward to.
"You must be Ben Gates." Lara says, leaning forward to shake his hand, and I follow suit. He nods at us as Lara speaks again. "I'm Lara Croft and this is Ashton Rooker." I look over to see five other guys walking up to stand behind Ben.
He introduces us to everyone, and I shake hands with everyone. "Alright, here are the tickets." He passes out the pieces of paper as I read mine. Lara and I didn't have seats next to each other. I bite my lip, wondering who I would be sitting next to for the flight.
I really hope that it wasn't the creepy looking guys. They had been off by themselves this whole time while Ben and Riley were speaking to us. When we had ten minutes until our next flight was called, I decide to pull Lara away and we walk to the bathroom together. "Those dudes off in the corner are really starting to freak me out." I tell her as soon as the door closes behind us.
"Same here!" she tells me, widening her eyes. If we came to the same conclusion, then there has got to be something fishy about them. It was almost like they weren't willing to work as a team. I had come across many people like that as I was an intern, and those were usually the people that ended up getting arrested for whatever reason.
We talk for a few minutes until we decide to head back out so that they wouldn't start to get suspicious of us. Our flight was called not long after, and I plop down in my seat, not even caring who would sit next to me at this point. I was starting to doze off until someone sat down next to me. "Hey, I'm Riley." I open my eyes to see a brunette boy that couldn't be more than twenty-five.
"Ashton." I say with a smile, leaning forward to shake his hand. I position myself to where my back was against the walls of the plane and I was able to look at him easily with my knees pulled to my chest and my arms wrapped around them. "So what do you do? Like what's your job on this team?"
He looks over at me before thinking for a moment. "I guess you could say I'm the tech guy. I handle all the technology stuff." He looks down at his Converse for a second before looking back up at me. "Sorry, that's probably really lame."
I roll my eyes, pushing on his shoulder lightly. "Oh, shut up." I scoff. "That's really cool actually. I wouldn't be able to figure that stuff out if you paid me a million dollars." I say with a laugh. He chuckles under his breath.
"Well, what about you? What skills did Ben call you for?" I smile at him. I absolutely loved to talk about what I could do. It's not that I was necessarily bragging, but I just loved to talk about the topic itself. Archaeology fascinated me to no end.
"I'm an archaeologists, so I know all about treasures, whether they are myths or not. Ben also thinks that I would be a great addition to the team since I am a history buff like him." He smiles at me, and we continue on conversation like this for a long while.
Before I knew it, we had landed and Ben took us to where we would be searching. The vehicles were insanely large and rather unattractive when compared to the fluffy white blanket of snow that we were driving over. Lara and I were in the back with Riley while Ben was driving with Ian in the passenger seat. Shaw, Powell, and Victor were in the other vehicle.
Riley's computer beeps, causing Ian to turn around in his seat to look at him. "Are we getting closer?" he asks him with a smug smile, and I just barely caught Riley's eye roll.
"Assuming Ben's theory is correct and my tracking model is accurate, we should be getting very close. But don't go by me, I broke a shoelace this morning." We all look at him with strange looks before he starts to explain himself. "It's a bad omen." I let out a small laugh at that.
"Shall we turn around and go home?" Ian asks sarcastically as I stretch my feet out to where they were propped up on the middle section.
"Or we could just pull over and throw him out here." Ben teases, smiling as he laughs and Ian does so to. I let a small smile peek through as he sarcastically laughs before his computer starts beeping like crazy. I lean over to look at the screen. A window had popped up that told us we reached our target. I smile as we all pile out, getting metal detectors to search for the ship.
"This is a waste of time." one of the men says to me, but I don't look up to see which one. I just knew that he had a heavy accent. "How could a ship end up all the way out here?" I finally look up, looking around at the vast white emptiness around me.
"Well, I'm no expert, but…it could be that the hydrothermic properties of this region produce hurricane force ice storms that caused the ocean to freeze and then melt and then refreeze, resulting in a semi-solid migrating land mass that would land a ship right around here." He looks at me in shock as I just smirk before walking away from him. I can see Riley following me out of the corner of my eye.
"How did you know all that stuff?" he asks me as he continues to search beside me. I shrug my shoulders, not really knowing how to answer.
"I guess I just learned in one of my classes, or maybe when I was an intern." He nods and we continue to search in silence. All of the sudden, Ben's metal detector started beeping, and I gesture over to him as Riley turns to look as well.
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