(In honor of Doom trailer and ROTTR gameplay, have a chapter a day early ;))
Twelve Hours Ago
"Aliens," Sam said. She leaned over the tablet, a little camera on a headband on her head. It was small and compact but took amazing video. "I still can't believe it's true. I mean I heard the rumors and everything, but they keep it so hush hush back on Earth. Not that it matters. When Lara Fucking Croft goes to Mars, people start to talk." She sounded so proud of her friend.
"Radar and sonar indicate there are ruins underground all over the planet. Most of them seem to be concentrated along ancient shorelines. It's like earth." Lara's voice sounded excited, and Sam panned her head to record her friend. "Population centers around water. Trade routes and drinking supplies. And here's where it gets really exciting."
Lara gestured for Sam to come closer as she pulled up photographs on an LED screen. "I'll take you down to one of the sites tomorrow, but here are some pictures I've taken of the ruins."
"You did some good work, I've taught you well my young padawan."
Pointing at the screen, Lara lifted her PDA. "Compare this structure, with my discoveries on Earth." The designs on the pillars had a striking resemblance to what Lara had found when she'd unearthed Atlantis. The Atlantean pillars were shaped much like monoliths, while the Martian pillars were more rounded, but the pattern carved into them had noticeable similarities.
"Holy shit." Sam zoomed in, using a little control she had attached to a bracelet on her wrist. "But I thought Mars has been dead for like millions of years." Sam turned her head towards Lara. "Making these ruins really old."
"I believe Mars went through several periods of rapid decline. Most of the ruins under Mars City are tens of thousands of years old, but there are a few artifacts that are much, much older. My going theory is that as the Martian surface became uninhabitable, the people here went underground. At first, the other researchers thought they'd died out. But perhaps some evacuated to Earth."
"Are you telling me I could be part Martian?" Sam leaned over the table. "Because that would be awesome."
"Until someone finds something biological to test," Lara replied. "I can only surmise that they influenced at least one culture. But all of our cultures far younger than the ruins of this city. Even Atlantis, which is twelve-thousand years old."
"Did you ever figure out what destroyed it?" Sam flicked the camera off and sat in a chair next to Lara. "Atlantis. And isn't this getting awfully close to that aliens built all of our cool stuff bullshit?"
Lara smiled, resting her hand on Sam's head and absently playing with her hair. "No, I haven't. It collapsed into a cavern, much of it underwater but there were still plenty of areas with air pockets. And if Martians somehow influenced people on Earth, it was so long ago that all that was left was a memory of that pattern on those pillars."
The hand in her hair was nice. Distracting, but nice. Sam would be willing to stay like that all night but there was work to do. The camera light came back on. "How about the glyphs?"
Lara frowned. "The Martian glyphs share enough similarities with Atlantean writing to indicate a shared root. I've made some headway thanks to a few tablets we've found and my own records from the expedition. I'm so close to a breakthrough."
"Can I record them?"
"Of course." Lara grabbed the chair and pulled it, Sam and all, over to a case. "They're in here."
The lights flickered and went out again, and Lara sighed. She turned on a torch. "That's getting annoying.
Sam peered in, turning on a light on the opposite side of her headband from her camera. "These are fucking cool."
The tablets seemed to display a kind of scene, with figures approaching another figure on a raised object of some kind. Pieces were missing, but the glyphs along the edge reminded Sam of something. She had Lara show her the next one. "Lara. This is going to sound a little crazy. But a few months ago I was out in the Nevada desert. I was doing a project on the old nuclear waste dump. Outside the dump, carved into metal, were all these warnings. Like they weren't just in all kinds of languages. They were pictograms. For people far in the future when our languages change."
Lara leaned over next to Sam, then put an arm around her and squeezed her. She had to resist the urge to kiss her cheek. "Sam, that's it! That's what I was missing! I just needed a fresh set of eyes!"
"What? You think it's a warning?"
"I think that's exactly what it is." Lara shined her torch into the case, trying to get a better look. "The question is, what is it warning us from? We'd have known if there was radiation. Perhaps a plague?"
Sam snapped her head back and flailed away. Lara rolled her eyes. "We haven't even found so much as a bacteria, Sam. We're safe from any plague."
Light flickered back on, and Lara turned on the case light. "I really wish Amanda would tell me what the hell she's doing that's causing so many power surges."
Sam watched Lara look over the tablets. It was a familiar sight to her, and one she'd missed. "You're going to be at this all night, aren't you. I'm going to go get us some lunch."
"Sounds good." Lara looked up, and smiled broadly at Sam. "I'm really glad your here. I've missed you."
Sam kissed Lara on the cheek, then quickly left the lab. Lara stared after her, face turning red.
She rubbed the back of her neck, then picked up her PDA. She had a waiting message, so she opened it;
Lara, one of the workers discovered a new series of tablets. We're bringing them up tomorrow, but they took pictures and I've attached them so you can get a head start. Good luck.
Grimaldi
"Grimm you beautiful old coot!" Immediately swiveling in her chair, Lara logged into a workstation and pulled up her mail. As promised, the pictures of the tablets were attached. The lighting was absymal and she quickly messaged Sam to hurry up and bring lunch and her camera-magic back to fix the lighting. But she could make out enough of the glyphs to get an idea of what they were saying.
Lara's face twisted into disbelief. "Demons?"
Her comm beeped, and she flicked it on, not turning her gaze from the display. "Yes?"
Amanda's face appeared in the corner of her screen. "Settling in with your girlfriend?"
"Funny. You almost sound jealous."
She rolled her eyes, giving Lara a soft chuckle. "This isn't a social call. I wanted to give you a heads up that we're about to lose power for longer than usual. We're firing up a large test in a few minutes."
The tip of Lara's tongue stuck out between her lips, then she sucked it in. "About that… You wouldn't happen to be playing with teleportation, would you?"
"What? How did.. Alex." Amanda's expression soured. "He gave you access, didn't he."
"What? No, these tablets Amanda. We just found some new ones. They're a warning to not play around with portals." She finally looked at Amanda's face. "Warning for what, exactly, I'm still trying to figure out. You really should stop those tests for now."
"It's just ancient superstition, Lara. We've been doing this for weeks, there's nothing dangerous on the other side."
"Amanda," Lara warned.
The other woman cut her off. "Meet me for dinner after the test. Say nineteen hundred? Let me convince you this isn't dangerous."
"Is that all you're trying to convince me of?" Lara's lips curved up into a light smirk.
"You've never taken much convincing in the past, but we'll just talk business. Just give me a chance to show you what I'm doing. Deal?"
"Deal." Lara hung up the connection, and quickly printed out the pictures. She was folding them up to stow in her pack when the entire base shuddered violently. It was as though everything lifted up three feet and then dropped back down. It went completely dark, and Lara groped around for her torch to give her some light until the power or the emergency lights came on.
As soon as the light flashed on, she was startled by a ghoulish looking face. Lara stumbled back, but the apparition was gone. Heart pounding in her chest, she stood carefully. She grabbed her pack, and after a moment's hesitation took a pistol out of the locker and stowed it in her belt.
Light flickered on and then back off, and that's when she heard the screams. They seemed to be coming from everywhere. Men, women, and something unearthly, a shrieking straight out of humanity's primal nightmares. Lara didn't believe in demons or in ghosts, but the ancient Martians had left behind a warning for a reason.
She moved towards the door, the lights came on and she jumped but there was nothing there. "Jesus." She had to find Sam, and Alex, and Amanda. And Grimm. Make sure they were all okay.
When the lights went dead again, only some of them came back on. It cast the hallway in shadows. Some of the lights swung back and forth, causing the shadows to dance. Lara put her hand on the palm of her gun. "I really should have listened to Roth and gone looking for Yamatai instead."