"Alright Lara, this is it. The chemical weapon, the infected Trinity soldiers, they're all coming from this old soviet compound. This is the place. I've got the operations manual you dug up, so I can translate the directions to shut down the facilities. If we can't shut down the machines, the toxin will drift into our valley within a day. Your girlfriend will keep us in the air, but we'll be nearby. Other than that, you're on your own down there."
Nadia's words came to a close as Lara slide the door shut, a resounding clang coming from the metal as Lara locked it in place. No way out. Not for Lara, or for the infected. With a small gulp, Lara clutched her bow and took a tentative step forward, snow crunching under her boot. She froze at the low growl coming from ahead of her, through the haze of snowfall. One of the infected Trinity soldiers. Lara stood as still as a statue as the soldier looked around, right at her, in fact, before he went back to digging through the snow, and Lara released a sigh of relief.
"Poor vision, but they can definitely hear me." Lara whispered to herself, taking lighter steps through the snow, notching an arrow into place. She slowly raised her bow, arrow aimed directly at the soldiers' head, as she breathed out to steady her aim.
"Shut down those towers, and then get the hell out of there." Nadia's voice came through loud and clear on the short range radio attached to Lara's belt, startling both her and the soldier before her. Lara quickly let loose her arrow, watching as it buried itself deep into the ex-soldier's face as he turned towards the sudden noise. Lara calmed her breathing, stepping back into the shadows of the doorway she came from, reaching for the radio to turn the volume down. "Sofia wants me to tell you to stay safe."
"Tell her I'll try." Lara replied, cutting the volume down to minimum after her reply. It was no longer safe to have the radio on, but communication with Sofia and the helicopter was vital for Lara to complete her mission, and she knew it. If Nadia wasn't able to tell her where the weapons caches and prisoners were, her mission wouldn't be complete. It wasn't just about destroying the toxin for Lara, it was about saving innocent people that didn't deserve to die for Trinity's fuck-ups.
Lara, crouched low, bow slung back over her shoulder, made her way towards a wooden crate, the shine of a gun catching her eye from the moment she entered. The gun would make far too much noise for her liking, but to have the gun as a backup, a weapon that didn't have a draw time, for those moments where the only thing she could do was to fight her way out of the horde, a gun would a hundred times more useful than her bow. She ran her hand along the snow topped crate, fingers clenching around the revolver, pulling it towards herself. A quick check of the ammo inside the gun and the ammo she knew she bought with her gave her just shy of 30 bullets. Enough to take out a horde if she found herself in one.
Scanning the area, Lara started to make a mental map of the train yard, already sensing several places she could be jumped if she wasn't careful. Her best plan of action was to use the trees to her advantage. Just like all throughout the mountains, the trees were her some of her best allies, a close second to Sofia. She couldn't have defeated Trinity without Sofia. So when Lara had heard that there was a toxin in the area threatening Sofia's people because Trinity once again tried to meddle their stupid money grabbing hands in something they didn't know about, Lara reached out to Sofia and Nadia, and told them of the plan. Now she's in the compound, she's starting to regret her insistence that she be alone. Sofia argued that point of the plan the most, but she couldn't let Sofia get hurt if she was unable to protect her. She couldn't live with another Sam, kidnapped, hurt and almost killed because Lara was scared. She already caused Jonah that pain. She even felt guilty for Ana.
Lara shook her head, didn't allow the tears to fall, and slammed the revolver into her holster, pulling her bow off her shoulder and notching her next arrow. As much as she was silent, so were they. She treaded lightly over fresh, crisp snow as she headed forwards, staying as close to the train as she could. Passing the body of the soldier, she yanked the arrow out of his face, putting it back in the quiver. Another reason to be pro-bows. Reusable ammo. A quick pat of his pockets came up empty, and Lara stepped back towards the train, and continued alongside it. When she heard a light scuffle coming from the doorway of the train car, Lara turned, jumping up and grabbing the roof of the train car, hauling herself up onto its roof as one of the infected soldiers came out to see what the noise was. She didn't even make a move to shoot him, she doubted there'd be spare arrows laying around. Trinity didn't use bows, and not all of her arrows came out whole of the body once she'd fired them.
Another quick scan of the area had Lara spotting a quick way up into the trees. A few simple branch climbs and she was leaping across to a platform, high in the tree, out of the view of any of the infected. She slumped down against the tree, sliding down the rough bark until she was sat on the platform, levelling out her breathing. It had been a long time since Lara had been this tense. Just the silence of the compound had her heart racing, knowing that there were infected out there, with weapons, big weapons. Yet everything, everywhere, was silent.
"Do you think Trinity knew what they were doing when they reactivated the facility?" Nadia again. Lara unclipped the radio from her belt and turned the volume up a fraction, pulling it up to her face.
"Hard to imagine anyone would do this on purpose… They must have been out here looking for The Source." Lara whispered back. She might have been out of their reach, but their hearing was spectacular, if the infested hearing the slight crunch of snow was anything to go by. Just looking over the edge of the platform gave her a view of the train yard, infected crawling everywhere. She sighed and leaned back against the tree, radio still in one hand, her other resting over the bow she had laid down next to her. "I need to shut down those towers…" Lara spoke, not into the radio, more for her own mental reminder of the task at hand.
"We're lucky the toxin doesn't seem to affect women." Nadia laughed down the radio, bringing a smile onto Lara's face as her voice came through. In the background she could hear Sofia laughing along to Nadia's joke too. It was hope and dreams though. It did make sense to Lara, of course. This was a cold War Soviet compound. If they were producing biological warfare weapons, it would be logical to alter males. Women weren't allowed to fight in the Cold War, there would be no use for it. Although, even that wasn't sound science. And couldn't be proved.
"Not yet, at any rate. I suspect it alters dihydrotestosterone production, which would explain the aggression, the rapid muscle growth, and why it affects men so quickly." Lara sounded flat, even to herself, but with what she was dealing with, everything was an unknown. It could be steroid based, something that alters testosterone and muscle growth, and can cause heightened levels of aggression, especially in men. But there was no way to be sure. Maybe I should have worn a gas mask.
"Yeah, that sounds… sure." Click. The end of transmission. She felt a bit guilty for shutting Nadia down so fast like that, but that was how her mind worked. She had to explain it. Nadia knew this, it was how Lara had been able to find Nadia's grandmother. The flowers were poisonous, they made an antidote, and Lara saved Nadia's grandparents. She didn't give into the illusions. She had to have a explanation. Although, Lara would consider herself more of a Mulder, her father's work and Yamatai changing her perception on this realm and others, magic certainly, after what happened to Sam, but she had to be part Scully. She had to keep herself sane. Mulder wouldn't be sane without Scully. Lara had to be both. She believed. Oh she believed more than anyone else could hope to, but she had to know why something worked. How something worked. Had to be both.
So she pulled herself to her feet, wiped off the snow that had settled on her shoulders, clipped the radio back to her belt and slung her bow over her shoulder. Pulling the map Sofia had sketched for her out of her pocket, Lara aligned the map to her position, making sure she was facing the first facility. She pushed the map back into her pocket and unclipped her climbing axe. Lucky for her, there was a rope that lead in the direction of the first facility. She hooked her axe over the rope, lifted her feet, and rode the line down to the roof of another train car, landing as soft as she could on the metal roof. She was now so much closer to the facility than she had been, the battle through the infected halted by travelling through the trees and above the ground.
"Sofia thinks she saw a weapons cache on our last fly by. Want to check it out?" Lara slammed her hand over the radio as soon as she could, frantically looking around to see if the radio had alerted any of the infected. Thankfully, she heard nothing, and lifted her eyes to the sky where Sofia shifted the helicopter light to shine over a small shack about 50 feet from her position. However, the shack was open and on the ground. Lara dropped down off the train car, crouching low and making her way slowly and softly over to the shack. It wasn't hard to get to by any means, but the low growling sound emanating from inside made her grip her axe harder. She took the steps slowly, climbing up them into the shack, approaching the infected from behind, as quiet as possible, before springing up and burying her axe into the man's spinal cord, ripping down through his neck and twisting, killing him instantly. She knew they used to be men, but so did the Solarii on Yamatai. These men used to be Trinity. There were never good. The at least deserved a quick death. She could give them that.
She very quickly switched out her old recurve bow for the compound bow that was laying on the table, before scrambling out of there and climbing up onto the shack roof. She was closer now, standing on the roof. Could clearly see the metal doorway blocking the entrance to the facility. Lara pulls an arrow out of her quiver, carefully attaching a stick of dynamite to the end of the arrow, striking a light and notching the arrow, quickly firing it off in the direction of the metal door, shielding her eyes as the door explodes in front of her.
"Damn. That's going to draw attention." Lara cursed, notching another arrow. A quick scan around the compound from where she was gave her the perfect opportunity to get to the facility. She raised her bow, aimed across the yard, and let an arrow fly, turning away as soon as she could, another big explosion rocking the compound as a barrel exploded, lighting up the night sky as it burned in a fireball high above the compound. All the infected in the yard ahead of her took their interest away from the small door, and towards the raging fire from the barrel, all running over towards the cacophony of sound. Lara took her chance, slinging her new bow over her shoulder and jumping off the roof. A carefully timed roll once she hit the ground allowed her to spring back up onto her feet, sprint across the yard and launch herself at the wall, scrambling once on the wall and hooking her hands over the ledge, pulling herself up over the ledge. Without turning back, she kept running until she was in the lift, slamming the button down and watching the blast doors shut behind her.
"Okay, there are four major systems in the facilities." Nadia's voice piped back up from Lara's radio, and Lara reached around behind her to turn the volume up again. "The good news is, they should be colour coded and well marked." Lara slowly made her way around the facility as Nadia explained what the four different pipes were for, blue for water, red for fuel, green for biological catalyst and yellow for radioactive waste. Once Lara had scoped out the area, she returned to the centre of the room and waited for Nadia to finish going over the colours and signs. "Alright, let's shut this place down. Here we go… Okay, I need you to count the pipes on the water filtration system. There may be at least one blue pipe in this tower. Do you see any?" Lara focused on the back wall, a wall with 2 blue pipes and 2 yellow pipes. Nadia's voice rang though as she walked over to the pipes on the wall. "If yes, then I need you to start up the generator for the… hold on... ah… the biological catalyst system. Should be green." Lara turned to the right, another wall of coloured pipes entering her vision. 2 yellow, 1 green and 1 red. "If not, then we need to pull down the lever on the water filtration system."
"Two blue pipes… So pull the green lever. This seems easy enough." Lara walked around the facility until she reached the stairs, carefully walking up the old metal stairs, looking around for the generator. The green generator. A few jumps over broken ledges, and Lara was able to jam her axe into the crank for the green generator, turning it was fast as she could. After a few seconds, the door to a nearby container sprung open, a cloud of fine mist puffing outwards. Once that was clear, Lara stepped back to check on her work, the three lights lit up the inside of the container, the first facility shut down.
"That's it Nadia, this tower has been shut down." Lara shook her head, blinking. The roof hatch opened up high above her, and Lara started heading towards it.
"Good. Now, it's going to vent all the remaining toxin to the central core. Once it's all in one place, we'll have to find a way to destroy it all. For now, find the exit on the roof and head back outside." Lara nodded to herself, pulling her axe out of the crank and heading over to the ladder. Half way to the ladder, Lara stopped and leant against the wall in the centre of the room, pausing to catch her breath. She closed her eyes and coughed a few times, bending over in the middle to cough painfully. Once it was over, she straightened herself opening in her eyes. She grunted and closed them again, rubbing her eyelids with her hands, slowly opening them again. "Lara? You okay? We haven't seen you reemerge yet."
"I'm fine Nadia. Got some dust in my eyes and throat. I'm fine, I'm on my way now." Lara ended the transmission, turned the volume down to minimal, coughed once more, and headed towards the escape ladder. She was going to stop this, no matter what.
Who else is in love with the DLC? You can probably see where I am going with this, but if not, this is based off of one of the cards you can get, Infectious. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I won't post what I am planning. However, you can follow me on tumblr, larasolarii, where I'll answer any questions or even ideas you have.
Thanks for reading!