Getting Wet
Oh, what I would do for radio silence, Lara pondered, gazing skyward. Her eyes then caught something; it was a throng of clouds forming high above. They were slowly but gradually moving, gathering in the sky. They weren't ordinary day clouds either; they were ashen-lined, broad, rain clouds. The sky itself had already begun to darken to a pale blue, preparing to storm.
"Getting worse by the minute, eh, Lara?" Zip said. "And now it's going to storm?"
After waiting another minute a sound of light thunder arrived. It rumbled, but no lighting could be heard crackling anywhere. She waited another minute, and by then the first sprinkles came down. She felt one raindrop hit her in the scalp, then vanish as it was absorbed into her hair. More, now, hit the floor around her and sprinkled her body. She now jogged over to her quick decision.
"Not that I mind getting wet…" Lara said suavely, then passing through the archway. But I would love a few minutes of radio-silence.
Static quickly rushed over the COM Link, and Zip's voice crackled over the line. His tone was partially worried, but then quickly transformed into a steadiness. The only instability of his words was the accompanying static on the communications link.
"Lara…lost…signal…" Zip's voice trailed out of audibility.
"Zip! Zip?" Lara's voice echoed in the tunnel.
His last words were something regarding her position, and then they faded and vanished into a cloud of static. Lara finally smiled with a sigh of relief. Silence, at last.
She peered forward and down a slanting stone slab in which she stood on. It was quite dark in here, so she was cautious with her steps. The first foot forward went smoothly, then she dragged it downward—and her sole felt a ridge. Stairs. She now easily walked her way down, but still careful because of the shadows she was engulfed by.
Seconds later she felt her feet hit leveled stone, and was balanced. Despite the darkness, she could see, though barely, her hands in front of her and vaguely the walls around. So Lara took her right hand and ran its palms down the length of the stone wall. It was cold, partially rough—smoothened out by the moss and algae. Then her fingers hit something irregularly cold and strangely rough. She halted, turned, and faced the object; she squinted, then realized it was some sort of metallic box. She knocked on it, felt the roughness again, and presumed it to be rust. She looked up, feeling with her fingers too, and realized that thin pipes led upwards along the wall.
Must be lights, Lara hoped. She felt doltish now for simply forgetting about bringing her miniature flashlight.
She returned to the object of which she presumed was a sort of control box, and tried to pull it open. Apparently it was stuck, or—locked. Lara figured she would have to break it open, and reached for the climbing axe. She took it in one clutch, then—turning face away—slammed it pick-first into the rusty box. She hoped that she would hit the lock—if there indeed was one—and in doing so, succeeded. She was a brief second of flying sparks accompanied by a cloud metallic clang—then all fell silent again. Lara slid her axe back into its strap on her utility belt, then started to fiddle around with what she had now uncovered. Instead of expected wires and such, there were buttons. And a lever. She gripped the sheath-handled lever and shoved it upwards. There was a sudden flicker of white light, and then at last the fluorescent ceiling lamps lit up. The tunnel was no longer shadowed by darkness, but instead clearly light—more radiance than outside.
"Ah, now that's better." Lara smiled, letting the control panel's metallic door hang open. She started down the heightened corridor of stone and ceiling lights, but of which was merely twenty feet down westbound. Before she knew it, though, she had turned the corner and started heading down a set of similar stairs—but only to arrive at the exit and thus the end of her temporary 'moment of silence.' There, as she stepped off of the last staircase stone step—her booted foot landed on emerald earth. The grassy soil was stiff and yet a couple feet in front of her was a shallow stream of water. "Hmm…"
Lara took a couple steps forward, finally arriving in the stream. The water was completely clear, surprisingly clean despite the location. It flowed calmly and easily, with little force pushing behind the smooth waves. A mere four inches deep, it didn't even wet Lara's skin; instead it flowed against her high boots and dampened the rise of her white socks.
Her bare ears caught a gurgling sound in the vicinity, so she glanced at her immediate surroundings for any sort of gutter. And there it was, incredibly noticeable, a large arching gutter with thick metallic bars lining its height. It was about twenty feet long and a good twelve high, despite the shallowness of the water in which smoothly surged past its bars. Lara raised an eyebrow and approached it. She dragged her feet smoothly so that she wouldn't have to get her socks and thighs soaked in water. She arrived, peering through the many bars but sighting only darkness; it seemed quite hollow within, still grassy at he sides though, especially with the low-level of water. She gripped two of the rusted metallic bars in her hands, clenching fingers around their circumference, and tautened her arm muscles as she pulled. She shook them in all ways possible, but they didn't even budge. She expected these, especially as rusted and ancient as they would be, to at least rattle in their loosened stone sockets. But no.
Lara managed to slip one of her slender arms through two of the bars, but only reached up to her bicep.
I probably could squeeze through—if only it weren't for… Lara gazed down at her 36D chest. She shook her head with a sigh and slight smirk. Lara withdrew her arm carefully from the rusted bars and turned her back to the arching gutter. She made way towards the path she had come from, then turned and began down the stream of which reached further into the compound on this lower level. She spotted, as she approached a wide entry out into the open, a broken stone pillar in the near corner. The thick rectangular pillar was about eight feet long, but because it was severed towards the bottom the longest piece leaned diagonally against the planted section. Lara stopped at point-blank range to the stone, which—unlike the walls around her—appeared quite clean. No algae, vines, or even moss coated its surface. She touched it, running her fingers along the façade of the fallen pillar. Her fingers rose-and-fell, rose-and-fell as they crossed engraved Aztecan designed. The design seemed to be the same for every cubical of the wide pillar. She peeked around one of its corners, which was rigid with broken stone fragments, and realized that the design was indeed identical to each façade of the pillar.
Lara pondered why she was finding all these things so fascinating; she knew that it would be the same with any other ancient civilization—even the Romans. But, of course, Lara Croft had an ideal interest in Aztecan history—especially their mythology. She noted that this design was of a humanoid figure seated in a sort of throne—with other figures at his feet, and one was reaching up to him. Since it was colorless, of course, and not highly detailed, she figured it was a mere portrayal of a king ruling over his people…or, more possibly, depicting the Aztec's infamous trails of human sacrifice.
She shook her head, turned, and began to step out of the roofed potion of this level which she had been in. This portion of the first level was about half the length of a football field—fifty yards stretching over a ten-yard-width—with the shallow stream about six feet wide making its path as far as Lara could see…back under a roofed area, and then turning the corner. At each of Lara's sides were flat green banks sprouting grass and pre-spring buds in the corners.
After many steps she suddenly halted in her tracks, the drizzle above gently landing on her.
To her left was a natural stone ramp which led up about fifteen feet to the 'original' second level; near it were stacks of stone cubes, and by the faint designs on the facades they were Aztecan. But that wasn't why she now stood frozen with feet planted in the water. Her gorgeous eyes peered up at something planted on the stone wall hanging overhead the path preparing to reenter a roofed area…something Lara pondered as 'beautiful.' It was a large rotund sort of badge, an Aztecan design no doubt, spreading across a pale-purplish colored stone. It didn't appear to protrude from the high stone wall at all, no more than an inch or so. The circular stone slab was engraved with high detail, not a square-centimeter left untouched by a kind of engraving. Lara's diagonal distance from her land position to its aerial was about thirty feet; she could tell its was a greatly detailed design, but couldn't quite make it out.
Still with her eyes flowing over the design at her frozen position, Lara's left hand groped for something on her utility belt. She retrieved a binocular device, which was actually a sort of camera. It was among many of Lara's gadgetry, called the ZoomCam, being basically a set of high-tech reconnaissance binoculars with the ability to take high-resolution pictures with ease and clarity—no matter the weather conditions.
Too bad it's not bulletproof, Lara remembered Zip remarking.
She put it to her eyes and adjusted the visual, then got a clear up-close-and-personal view of the large badge. She clicked a tiny button on the right underside of the ZoomCam and she saw as numbers flashed onto the view screen-lens—horizontal and vertical digits flipping up-and-down, as if it were a matrix scanning a CPU. Then finally they stopped, and on the screen-lens two sets of numbers appeared: on a barely-visible green horizontal (x-) axis lay aside the number 11.4 and along the vertical (y-) axis was up-top the same number 11.4. These were the measurements, in feet, of the object.
Lara was amazed, slightly, at how the stone badge was not only a perfect circle, but also admiring the detail of the design. She thought she has seen it before, the symbol of a kind of sun with a vast maze-like design circling it, and didn't doubt that she had—afterall, she does do her research.
Lara, still eyeing it through the ZoomCam, spoke into her headset: "Zip…" She waited a second. "Zip!"
Finally his voice returned to the COM Link, speaking speedily. "Yeah, yeah, what—what is it, Lara?"
Lara could hear him fumbling with tools and such over the line.
"I'm sending you a high-res shot of something I want you to look-up on…" Lara said, pressing in the shutter button up-top the ZoomCam. Within less than a split-second the picture was taken perfectly, and the digital photograph stored into the memory card of the device. She finally lowered the ZoomCam from her eyes, peered down at it, and flipped a switch on its left side; she waited a second and then held down a tiny button for three seconds. And, just like that, the image was digitally sent to Zip's desktop; it was already uploading as she spoke: "Oh, and Zip—"
"Yeah?"
"Get Winston to see if he recognizes it, will you?"
"No problem."
"Thanks."
"Mhm."
"Now," Lara said, returning the ZoomCam back to its pocket on her belt, "get on that image…and get back to me as soon as possible…"
"Sure thing."
Lara's right index finger hovered over the mute button on the side of her headset. "Zip—one more thing."
Zip sighed audibly over the line.
"A bit more of my 'quiet time,' will you?" And just like that she muted her headset; now, if or when Zip wanted to talk to her, Lara would here a quiet buzz in her ear. She nodded to herself with an internal smile, and then headed onward.
The sprinkle of precipitation still rained onto her, dampening her ponytailed her and streaming down her arms and legs. She hunched herself forward a bit so that no blobs of rain would enter her shirt. I hate it when that happens. Lara at last had removed her eyes from the eye-alluring badge design just now behind her—and was happy that she soon would be under a roof again.