I left Lara that night tucked under the covers of the only bed in the apartment, mumbling to herself in her sleep. We agreed she'd take the pills tonight; although she avoided being hindered in any way and those things knocked her out for a good ten solid hours, I could tell she wanted to be far away for –here- when I watched the recordings. She was scared. I kind of made me want to just delete everything and forget about it.
But I couldn't. Lara can't carry that burden alone, she can't survive under the pressure of a thousand secrets, a terribly guilty conscious despite her doing everything to save herself, to save us.
I hook up the usb and AV component cable from the camera to my rig at the back of the apartment, an elaborate set of analog computers, keyboards, and mics that I've called my home since we found our way back to London. I plug in the best headset I've got and adjust the settings to drown out white noise, like the fabric rustling and the noisy insects that plagued us at night. Sharpen everything else and equal out the sensitivity from background to foreground…there we go.
Alright. I slip into the giant earphones and push the volume up to emersion. I'm getting the full story here, but I won't be watching these twice. Go back to the island. Watch her. Watch her. Just this once.
Play.
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Rustling as she adjusts the camera against the base. She sits back nimbly on her toes and rubs her forearms in a tired, determined way.
"I'm headed up to the radio tower to try and get a better signal, broadcast an SOS. Alex tells me that there should be a control panel in the base that can get a message out to the coast guard, or a nearby craft. He's good with these things, so I'm hoping for once he's not a complete feather-head."
She chuckles genuinely and pushes her bangs to the side. The shadows lift from her complexion, revealing a fresh ornamentation of cuts along her cheek and lips. Her eyelids aren't hung as low as they were in the last video, and she seems a bit more optimistic with a goal.
"I left Roth at the camp. Hopefully he doesn't get eaten by wolves before I come back. Oh!"
She peels open the mouth of a small sack at her side, unclipping it from her belt. "Look at this. I found these scattered about the shanties under the cliffside."
She holds four golden coins out in the palm of her hand, nudging them carefully and turning them over. "This must have been a well-known destination in the 1800s. Considering that it's such a wreck now, that's kind of surprising." She hums to herself, studying for a full minute. "Oh, wait. This one is 16th century. Malaysian? That's odd. Must have come off of one of the wrecks…bronze, this one. The others are iron and silver ore, but this one is bronze."
She mulls them over for a few more seconds before depositing them back into the pouch. The exchange makes me smile ear to ear; even in this environment, she's that curious and starry eyed girl who had a constant love affair with the unknown.
"Okay, trek time. I have a feeling this is going to…I don't know. Terrible luck. Anyway, later now."
Cut.
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"Well, if Sam ever does get to watch these, I think she could appreciate this."
The camera pans as she holds it in front of her and up, and up, and up the side of a monolith of an iron rung tower. It's snowing, somehow, and the sky is dark and vague as the tower rises far into the clouds and becomes invisible. Wow. It's breathtaking. You could even make out the red lights blinking all the way at the very top, through the mists and strange weather.
"And I," she starts, turning the lens on herself, "Get to climb every rusty, swaying bit of it, all the way to the top." She gives me, or the camera rather, a very frustrated look. She's dirtier and bloodier than before.
"Stole some gloves off of one of the bodies. I've…It's become easier. Fighting." She looks at her red, red fingers for a second, flexing them in and out of fists. "Killing. These men, they want us all dead. I don't have a choice. Anyway, this is our best shot." She breathes once, and the screen goes black.
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The next is a heart stopping descent in which the lens of the camera is hanging from probably the loop of her belt, another video that looks like the power button had been accidently pushed. It starts as she kicks off the top of the tower with a sharp exhale; I can see down the side of her thigh as she near-plummets, a hard grinding sound overwhelming most of the audio. A zipline maybe? She's halfway to the ground, a terrifying two or three hundred feet, when she shouts and starts plummeting straight down. I grip the muffs of the headphones tightly, giving a panicked whimper of my own. Another wire passes by for barely two frames, and she whips up violently. The grinding noise rings back as the sliding rate begins again. This rhythm repeats three more times as she fast approaches the ground, until finally she let go and plunges underwater. Thank god I thought to spring for the waterproof model.
She makes it to shore, shakes herself off and starts jogging.
"Well, that's one way to get down."
It's a lot of jagged, choppy running for a bit, and though I can tell it's unintentional, I continue watching. She slows down, and the camera stops jumping enough for me to hear her talking to herself.
"Gas…perfect...I can start a signal fire."
More running, and some very close gunfire. Then, the booming crackle of an explosion. She chuckles quietly to herself.
"The plane, there it is!"
She jumps up and down and the camera body catches on an empty holster strapped to her thigh, turning the lens upwards. It's a remarkable stroke of luck, but I can actually see the plane flying in close and I can't believe this shot just happened by accident. If this were an actual movie, I think I would be breathing a sigh of relief. But this, I knew the plane never made it. Something terrible was about to happen.
Just as I think it, a flash of blue lightning cracks down from the dark clouds, clouds that I swear hadn't been there a moment ago, and collide with the monstrous, screaming machine. It focuses in as the cockpit and wings burst into angry flames, barreling in closer and closer and as I watch I hear myself whisper harshly, "Run!" as the fiery torpedo tumbles out of the sky.
She steps back once, twice, turns, and breaks into a desperate sprint in the opposite direction. The camera falls from its perch as she reaches the start of a vicious downhill roll, launching her into a bone breaking fall. Her frantic scream overtakes the sound of shrieking metal against rock for just a handful of seconds. The lens swings and I catch a glimpse of the avalanche of engine debris that practically chased her down, on fire and smashing up tons of earth like it was nothing.
The video crackles and fuzzes violently until the video cuts out for a second, then three, and goes black completely. Audio stays for a minute after, though all of it is screaming and terrifying explosions, smashing metal, and agonizing snaps that I hoped weren't her bones.
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The next three recordings are just audio of pouring water, birds, and static. In some of them, I hear Lara talking to herself again. Working out ideas and theories regarding the island, and my whereabouts. As she speaks, she stumbles on theories that I remember Mathias talking about. Transfering power, fire rituals. Hearing those words over again turns my insides into steel knots. She and Mathias arrived at similar conclusions, at least about the importance and manner of the rituals themselves and the history of the island.
She didn't talk about the horrific scene I'd just witnessed at all. Not to herself, and not in the thirty second audio clip I got of her talking to Roth. She mentioned the crash, but focused on the fate of the pilot. Nothing about her own wounds or the traumatic race to the bottom of the cliff. Typical Lara. Sometimes I think I don't know her at all, what with her blatant disregard for herself.
The following ten minutes are segments of wooden crashing, solarii interferences in audio, strange groaning and footsteps. I can't stop listening. Ten minutes is a long time for an audience to decompress from a stressful scene, but I felt like I needed every moment of it. I can make out the rhythm of her breathing too, if I listen close enough. Ragged, tired. She 'hm'ed to herself when she came across something interesting and swore under her breath when enemies were close. And she was almost always running; I could tell by her exhausted inhales and the beating of her feet on the rock and grass.
Then, screaming. Intense, fighting yells of frustration and terror. A lot of splashing, a lot of underwater gurgling and resurfacing, and the sound of a mountain of metal being thrown around like it was in a washing machine. Moments of silence, terrified gasps, glass cracking. More screaming. The wind being knocked out of someone, many times, rushing air. I cover my nose and mouth in the cup of my hands and will myself to keep the headset on. I couldn't in a million years guess what was going on, but I felt like I was listening to a person die. Lara. I was listening to Lara die.
There are three very distinct noises after a lifetime of that torturous drone. An impact, the flutter of a lot of fabric settling, and the recognizable sound of a body hitting the dirt hard. I lean further off my seat with every one, crossing my legs tightly in anticipation and crushing distress.
Finally, the camera's video kicks back on, and the giant monitor glows with the image of a grassy forest from the ground. There's a tarp of some kind fluttering in the background, bright green and impassive. It looks like maybe a parachute. Behind the feed, I can hear Lara's shallow, weak breaths. It stays that way for a long while, then, a hand spins the lens around sloppily, rocking the camera back and forth, and Lara comes into view.
I bark a strangled, drowning sob when I get a look at her, bottled-up tears filling my vision so fast I don't have time to stop them. Her temple is pressed to the ground still, unmoved since her apparent fall, body twisted up and face split in so many places, bloodied so thoroughly that I scarcely recognize her.
She stares at me, still; her eyes roll back into her head and her lids hang heavily over them as lips strain to open around exhales.
Brow furrowing slow, she turns onto her back and chokes on a cough.
I touch the monitor and bite down hard on my tongue. This isn't fair. I can't reach her now, I can't help her. I can't tell her that I'm alive, that I was okay and that she didn't have to do this. That I would rather die than force her through this torture. She's so still that beyond logic, beyond my brain knowing that Lara was asleep in the room on the other side of the apartment, I thought she'd died. She was pale enough, thin enough. She was battered enough. Beaten enough. Her eyes were dim enough.
She lays a hand against the ground, bites her jaw together with a hiss, and tries to push herself up right. A painful shout tears from the back of her throat as she gets onto her knees and collapses forward onto one arm. As she stands, she picks up the camera, drops it, and clips it back onto her belt. I don't think she's alive enough to realize that it's on.
I catch every fall, every weakened cry of pain, as she shuffles slowly through the forest and into another shanty town. Her feet drag along the dirt miserably, stumbling over themselves. She struggles to lift herself onto a platform against a metal wall, strains, and falls.
"I can't," she mutters, "I can't. Too painful."
God. I can't take this.
"Come on." She urges herself forward, legs shaking so bad I can see it through the grime on the lens. "Come on. Just get to the helicopter. Come on."
My heart sinks even farther into my gut. The helicopter. I know about the helicopter. Or, at least, I know what happens on the helicopter.
She struggles into the cockpit, feet against metal once again. Prescription bottles fall around her boots as she checks each first aid kit for pills, painkillers, anything.
"Fuck," she hisses raggedly. "Something. Please, something." Her breathing is heavy and choppy and short, sounding very unhealthy and very desperate. She lets out a frustrated cry as the last of the bottles bounces across the slanting floor.
The aperture struggles to adjust as she steps into a light patch towards the front of the plane. A bloody, yellow thigh comes into frame, the dead body of the pilot.
"Sorry," I hear her mumble. A rustle of thick fabric is followed by a defeated exhale and the crackle of a lighter being lit. I know what comes next. I dig my nails into my forearms.
I don't watch. I don't have to. Her screams are so horrific it crushes me, it makes me crazy. She sobs, for the first since this whole nightmare started, and she shouts and hisses and writhes under the cauterizing heat of the arrow tip.
The timer ticks away five minutes passed when her tearing screams shudder out into silence, and the battery light flickers. I'm not sure when it started, but the juice is nearly gone. She rises, soundlessly, and continues back out into the chilled light of the temple-side. Her radio buzzes. I feel dizzy.
Roth asks her if she's okay.
She says she is.
I pause the feed, remove my headset, and cry into my hands until I'm too exhausted to even move.
