Chapter Three
Unexpected Company
Cambridge, England
12:30 P.M.
Lara grabbed Eddington by the collar and jerked him down beside her, then turned the desk over to provide more cover. Everything was quite still, and with the exception of sparks emitting from the now-destroyed computer, there was no sound. She quickly returned her backpack into its original form and reached inside. Just as she feared: she had forgotten her headset in the charger at home. Worse yet, her pistols were still in the armory, leaving her with no defenses. "Bugger," she summed things up succinctly.
"Lara what the bloody hell just happened?" Eddington whispered fiercely.
"Somebody's shooting at us," she replied, pulling her backpack on. She quickly took off her heels and placed them carefully out of sight before her.
Splinters of wood blasted out of the desk near Lara's right ear. The shooter was guessing at where they were. "We're going to have to make a run for it," she said, quietly.
"Lara who's shooting at us?" Eddington asked with pain and confusion.
"When I say go," she ignored him, "I want you to open the door and sprint down the hallway. I'm going to distract him."
"But Lara…."
Another explosion from the desk was all Lara needed. "Go!" she said, and pulled the desk up vertically. She heard Eddington open the door and run out it as she pushed the desk forward. Bullets pierced the desk with a mammoth intensity. She hurled it forward and ran out the open door, slamming it on her way out.
Eddington was panting on a suit of armor, clutching a stitch in his side. Lara skirted forward and asked, "Are you alright?" Eddington nodded and panted. "Good," she said in confirmation.
No more sounds echoed from the office. Everything was unsettlingly quiet. Lara knew that there was more to this than the sniping. "We've got to go," she said after a moment. "My car's just outside. I can drive you to my home, you'll be safe there." Eddington's gold flashed with excitement, though his body was quivering.
"Come on," she said, and prodded him gently forward.
The Eddington manor was very, very old. At the moment, it was currently undergoing restoration. Scaffolds lined the hallways, tarps hung from walls where the molding was falling apart. Rectangular sections of walls stayed more brightly painted than the rest of the wall because of the tapestries that were removed. Even the outside of the structure was undergoing maintenance. As Lara and Eddington passed through one of these hallways, Lara heard footsteps. They froze. She heard the slow, muffled footsteps of booted feet making their way towards them. She motioned for Eddington to crouch down as she made ready to attack the approaching person.
A mercenary rounded the corner of the hallway. Lara grabbed his rifle and jerked it out of his hand. The mercenary, surprised, nearly fell down. She used this moment to ram the rifle into the mercenary's exposed face, breaking his nose and sending him unconscious to the floor. She pulled him out of exposure of the previous hallway and into the one occupied by herself and Henry. "It's one of Amanda's," Lara muttered. Eddington's face was white and his brow was sweaty. She pulled out the pistol in his holster and placed it inside her jacket. She then took a moment to inspect the rifle.
It wasn't an ordinary rifle. Rather, it seemed more of a pressurized kind. It was silver, with a scope on top that was used for hunting. Lara looked back at the mercenary and looked for ammunition. She found a small collection of tranquilizer darts, and knew what the mercenaries were here for. "They're coming to get you, Henry," she said with apprehension. She heard Eddington stop breathing for a moment. "That sniper tried to kill me."
"Oh my God," Eddington murmured.
"Don't worry," she said, turning towards him. "You'll be safe as long as you're with me."
"But they're trying to kill you, Lara," Eddington groaned.
"They tried that before but here I stand," she reassured him. "Just stay down and keep close to me. They still don't know where we are, and this tranquilizer gun is quiet enough to keep them from getting roused. As long as we stay hidden, we'll be safe. Now come on."
"But the police," he whined.
"What about them?" Lara said, slightly hopeful.
"Those bastards triggered the alarm. Look!" He pointed towards a small white box on the other wall, where a small red light was blinking. "Why can't we just wait for them?"
Lara pondered this for a moment, then sadly realized that these men were specially trained, and could easily take down the first band of police to come to the house. When she informed him of this, he moaned quietly and yielded.
They crossed into the hallway where the mercenary had been. Red paint from a fallen can was spreading on the ground. Lara made a signal to the old professor to avoid the paint and continued on. Yet, just as they were making to turn into the next hallway, another mercenary appeared. He fired his tranquilizer, and just missed Lara by inches. She pushed Eddington to keep him from danger, sending him stumbling backwards. She fired her rifle, and the dart landed just above the mercenary's collar bone. He slumped back into a tarp, pulling it down with him and revealing a portrait of Nikolai Tesla. She turned back and grabbed Henry by the hand. "Come on," she whispered fiercely.
They turned down a nearly undisturbed hallway. The next corridor would be the entrance to the main hall. When they entered it, they saw a small group of men standing in the middle of the hallway. From what Lara could see outside, an even larger group was standing guard around her car. "Damn it," she muttered. "We can't go out this way."
"Why not?" Eddington asked, completely at a loss to understand that, though Lara was tough and quick, she could not take all of the men.
"Are there any other exits out of here? Like a fire-escape, or a window closer to the ground?" For though they were in the main hall, they were still fairly high from the ground, and they couldn't jump without risking injury, especially with an old man like Eddington.
"There is the scaffolding, but we'll have to double-back to reach the window near it," said Eddington.
"Hold it!" said a voice behind them. Lara looked and saw five men with tranquilizers in their hands, all pointing at Lara and Eddington. A man with a yellow band on his arm seemed to have issued the command. He was rather short and stocky, but his eyes were malicious and gray, and the bulges on his arms betrayed a muscular figure under his uniform.
"Put down the gun, Croft," he said. His American voice seemed to match his eyes: cruel and icy. Lara heard boots run up the steps behind her as the group from the main hall rendezvoused with their captors. Lara, faced with no alternative, yielded to the yellow-banded man. A subordinate stepped forward and took the rifle.
"And the pistol," said the leader. Lara pulled out the pistol and handed it to the subordinate, who rushed back into the safety of the group. "Good girl," said the leader, "now just turn around and walk slowly forward." She turned, Eddington at her side, and slowly walked in-between the two groups of men. When they had entered the center of the main hall, Lara, out of the corner of her eye, saw the leader glance down at Eddington's paint-covered shoes that had betrayed their location and smirked to another mercenary.
It happened in a rush. She grabbed Eddington with her left hand and stole the leader's pistol with her right. She threw herself through the bewildered men beside the leader and let go of Henry, grabbing instead the leader and shoving him into the crowd of now completely confused mercenaries. She seized Eddington's hand again and sprinted with him to a random door in the side of the hall.
The white room had two tables in its center and cutlery hanging from the ceiling. Lara jammed a nearby chair against the doorknob to the kitchen. "That ought to hold them for a while," she said, out-of-breath.
"Lara… how… where…?" Eddington spluttered.
"No time for that, is there any way out of here?" Lara said, quickly.
"Yes, the dumbwaiter over here," he said, walking rapidly towards a small metal door. The elevator inside was larger than the average dumbwaiter, but still meant a tight fit. "Hurry," she said as the chair blockade began to break. She clambered hastily inside the shaft, and helped Eddington in afterward.
Lara thought correctly; it was a tight fit. She could barely reach her arms around to shut the door and pull on the ropes to lift them upward. Beneath the rusty creaking of the pulley Lara heard the kitchen door slam open and several gunshots. "The dumbwaiter!" she heard the leader scream. "They're in the dumbwaiter!" Thankfully, at that moment they had reached the top of the dumbwaiter. Eddington pushed against the door and fell out. Lara exited and helped him to his feet.
They had ended up in the attic of the manor. Various old knick-knacks and experiments surrounded them, but with the exception of the skylight, slanted against the drop of the roof, there was no window. "The ladder!" Eddington said, pointing to a ladder that led to a wooden hatch. "It goes to the roof!"
Lara ran to the old wooden ladder and climbed up it. She slammed open the hatch and climbed onto the roof. She reached down and helped Eddington to the top, then closed the hatch again. The wind was blowing hard, making Lara and the old man yell to be heard. "Where's the scaffold?" she called out.
"There!" he pointed to the left side of the roof. They ran over and saw the scaffold reach just the top of the roof.
"Ah!" Eddington let out a quick gasp and fell down, reaching behind his back, where a tranquilizer dart was currently residing. Lara spun around, pistol out, when a second tranquilizer got her in the chest. She stumbled, her right leg dropping clumsily to the surface of the roof. The serum in the dart worked quickly, and already the world was spinning.
She saw the leader step forward, felt him grab her by the arm and throw her violently down onto the scaffold. She heard him say to the others to take the old man to the truck before the cops arrived, then watched as his blurry face looked over the side. "Knock her down!" she thought she heard him say. Lara turned her head awkwardly and watched as a group of mercenaries on the ground destroyed the scaffold's supports. Then her stomach heaved as she was sent sprawling into the grove, twisted metal falling all around her. She remembered seeing a falling green leaf, and then no more.
