Rebuilt Anew 1.3

By Asynca

Zip was absent at dinner, even though I'd not told him about Lara yet. I supposed Winston must have.

Afterwards, we found him in the techroom, pretending to be immersed in coding.

"Have you seen Single White Female?" Zip's eyes, all that was visible above the monitor he was slouched in front of, travelled suspiciously between us as we stood in the doorway.

I glanced at the other Lara. As far as I could tell, there was no possible way anyone who knew me could mistake us for each other. For all she had my face and figure, she was taller, paler, covered in veins and had redder hair. Additionally, unless she planned to join a vampire cult, no natural person was going to look into those gold pupils be anything other than unsettled. "I really doubt she's planning to kill and replace me." Lara looked amused by the suggestion.

"Just saying," Zip looked pointedly at her, and then back at me. "Winston's looking for you. Something about the insurance," he said dismissively. It was uncharacteristic of him.

I'd meant to try and reconcile Lara with Zip, but I could see it was going to be a tad more difficult than I'd thought.

"Would you excuse us?" I asked Lara, who nodded mutely and took off somewhere.

Zip watched her leave from under a heavy brow. The second she was out of earshot, he leaned toward me. "Are you insane?"

"Zip, she's not a slave anymore, she's free now." When his expression didn't change, I continued, "Killing Alister, shooting you, blowing up my house: she didn't make those choices."

He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "I don't like it, Lara. Something's not right about her. Those..." he made a gesture to his cheeks, referring to her visible veins, "it's not right. How do you know she's still not working for Natla or Amanda?"

To be perfectly honest, I didn't. "Just a feeling, I suppose."

"Exactly. Well, I have a feeling, too. My feeling says you should get rid of her." Zip pointed at me. "Before she kills us all."

He was speaking out of fear, because he wasn't making sense. "Look, Zip, if she meant to kill us she already would have. You know what she's capable of."

He didn't look convinced. "Maybe she's supposed to spy on you."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, because rebuilding my house is a top secret project of particular interest to megalomaniacs." When I realised I was raising my voice, I took a mental step back, exhaling and taking my hands off my hips. "I have nothing of interest anymore. Everything is destroyed but the thrall stone. There's very little else she could be here for other than what she says she's here for."

"Which is?"

Complicated, I thought, so I took a different angle. "Well, she has nowhere else to go, does she?"

He shrugged. "Has she tried a zoo?"

I could feel colour rising to my cheeks, but before I was able to yell at him, he threw up his hands. "Okay, okay. That was probably out of line. But you've got to admit, you're being sort of blasé about this. That thing was created by someone who wanted to kill you, for the purpose of killing you. She killed Alister, in case you've forgotten. It doesn't even matter who told her to or why. She's a weapon, not a person."

I remembered what Lara had said about being viewed as a monster, but bit my tongue. "You're just going to have to trust me on this one, Zip."

He shook his head with obvious disgust. "I sure hope you're right about this one, Lara, or we're going to meet up with Alister a lot sooner than we thought."

***

I found her in the new library.

"Lara?" She had spun the leather armchair toward the windowsill, and extended her legs up onto it, crossed at the ankles. I had done the same with a book on my lap quite often.

She didn't turn as I spoke to her. Instead, she said bleakly, "It seems I'm a rather polarising figure."

I approached her, but was distracted from her comment by the repair work in the library. I'd not been into it since the explosion, and it was surreal being surrounded by two stories of empty shelves. Given the difficulty the insurance company had been having replacing the rarer titles, I suspected they were dragging their feet, hoping that I'd reach the maximum sum insured purely on repairs so they wouldn't have to keep looking. It made me furious, but I had argued with them so many times that the staff refused to speak with me and communicated solely with Winston instead. Without the books it was still structurally my Father's library, but I felt like a stranger in it.

The refurbishments reminded me of what Zip had warned: I shouldn't try to forget that the very person who had taken my life and detonated it was seated comfortably before me, despite how benignly she presented. "How did Natla tell you to do it?

I'd meant to clarify what I'd said, not expecting her to fully understand. However, she needed no explanation. "Amanda gave me the order, not Natla. Amanda told me to get her Wraith Stone back, and not to worry about who I killed, as long as it wasn't you. She also told me to blow up the house, since I was here anyway."

My stomach knotted. "Amanda told you to do that?"

She inclined her head.

I walked past her and leant against the windowsill. "How did Amanda know to say Ohk Eshivar?"

"She didn't. Natla compelled me to do whatever Amanda wanted me to do."

I looked at her reflection in the glass. "You said you killed Natla," she nodded, "what about Amanda? I know if I were you, I would have wanted vengeance."

Lara slowly shook her head. "Amanda was just a pawn, wielded just as expertly as I was by Natla. As were you, to a large degree."

It was beginning to rain outside, and the newly exposed gravel glittered as the ash was washed into the soil. I was silent long enough to watch puddles form. "She's not the Amanda I used to know. I never would have expected her to go that far."

"She's a creature of her own suffering, but she's not that bad."

I turned around to face her, gesturing at the empty shelves. "She ordered my house to be blown up. She ordered you to kill people in my manor. If that's not 'bad', what is?"

Lara's face remained completely neutral. "Well, you took her Wraith Stone, and as you'd killed her partner and knocked her unconscious last time you crossed swords, I expect she didn't feel particularly compelled to sugarcoat her retrieval of it."

There were so many problems with what she'd just said, I couldn't even be bothered addressing any of them. "My point is," I told her, probably much louder than I needed to, "if I was wrong about her, what happens if I'm wrong about you?"

She watched me at length. At last, she took her feet from the windowsill. "You're under no obligation to house me. I appreciate your hospitality so far, but I will leave if I am not welcome." She stood, presumably with the purpose of leaving.

I grabbed her wrist. "Wait." She let me detain her, and although her face was typically difficult to read, I knew she was upset. "It's just..."

She interrupted me. "I know how I look to you. I know what I've done, and I don't expect to be able to compensate you for what you've lost. I'm not here for any purpose other than to try and understand myself. You can either trust that I'm telling you the truth, or not. The choice is yours, and I'm not going to force your hand." She looked very pointedly down at that hand, indicating I should let go of her. I did, surprised that she just hadn't pulled out of my grasp. "I'll return in a few days. If you don't trust me, call MI5. I'm sure one of forty special officers would fire a bullet that hits me."

With that, she opened the window and leapt cleanly out of it to the ground two stories below.

The knot in my stomach tightened as I watched her run across the yard she'd singlehandedly cleared for me. I remembered the gratification on her face when I'd thanked her for it. My cheeks flushed, I slammed the window shut with almost enough force to break it.

At least I knew where to find her.