The Camera Loves You


By Asynca


I had never realised how much time Sam and I really spent together until I needed three minutes without her.

She had announced that she was going to take care of me until I was feeling better, reasoning that it was completely her fault I was torn up anyway. That wasn't the truth at all, actually. I'd be bleeding badly well before I'd needed to rescue her.

As the residual morphine slowly wore completely off, I discovered there were a whole lot of places I didn't even know had been cut. My left calf was really throbbing, and when I rolled up my cargo pants, I saw a series of deep bite marks that I'd forgotten about. Everywhere that hadn't been covered by cloth felt hot as if I had bad case of sunburn, but it was just hundreds of scrapes, scratches and cuts.

"You should really keep them clean," Sam told me, lifting my ponytail and peering down the back of my t-shirt. "Maybe we should put plasters on them."

"I'd empty my bank account buying enough of them." I lowered myself back into the bed she'd laid out again.

Sam helped me. "Probably for the best," she conceded. "Can you imagine taking them all off again? Youch!" Sitting cross-legged next to me, she considered my arms. "I can't believe you're taking it so well."

"I am?" I was lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, that didn't seem like 'taking it well'.

"I mean, I got lemon juice in a paper cut a few weeks back." I smiled at the image as she continued. "I think I woke up the dead." She looked quickly at me after making a reference to death, guilt apparent. It hurt to be reminded about everyone, but I wasn't going to make an issue of it. When it came to Foot in Mouth Disease, Sam was just as suited to be Queen as she was on Yamatai.

"Yeah," she tried to move the conversation along, "I'd be asking the doctors for everything that it's legal for them to prescribe."

"I have everything I need." It was true, but I hadn't entirely planned for it to sound so sweet. I immediately felt uncomfortable when I thought about the fact that it rather bordered on romantic. And now the protagonists kiss, I thought. I glanced at her lips and went red again. This was absolute rubbish; maybe the script I really needed was some anti-psychotics.

She had been smiling warmly at me, but looked stricken again when my face flushed. "My dad has this doctor that visits," she said. "Perhaps we can get him to come and write you something."

I shook my head, trying some slow breathing to get the blood out of my cheeks. "It's nothing, probably just from the morphine wearing off." I changed the subject. "I could really do with some tea, if you're offering."

Her face lit up. "Sure, is green okay? Yoko always has heaps."

An idea occurred to me. "I don't suppose I could have Builder's?"

Sam made a face. "Probably not, I'll ask but I know Dad doesn't really like it." Taking a deep breath, she yelled, "Yoko, do we have any English tea?" I always found it interesting to hear her swapping between English and Japanese.

Yoko appeared beside the partition, very polite but obviously not appreciating being yelled to. In some respects Sam wasn't at all Japanese, for all she could speak the language. Yoko confirmed what I already suspected, that there wasn't any in the house. "I can go and buy some later," she offered. "But I'm cooking your noodles now."

Sam looked at me. I made a show of looking stoic. "It's okay, I can't wait."

I already knew what she'd do. "No, the local supermarket has black tea. It's not Tetley's but it'll probably taste okay." She pushed herself off the floor. "If you think you'll be okay I'll just run down there and grab some."

I thanked her and then moved on to the next item in my plan. "Do you have Reyes' number in your new phone?"

She nodded. "Her old one, anyway. She might have kept the number." Taking her phone of out her jacket, she handed it to me. "I'll get you one while I'm down there."

She made towards the door and I could hear her pull her ankle boots on. "Back soon!" she called.

I waited until I could hear the mechanics of the gate opening and then quickly tabbed past Reyes' number and through the call register on Sam's phone. For a moment I just stared at the American's number. I could leave it, I thought, Sam's family would pay for whatever I wanted to do now that I'd found Yamatai. I was so stuck in a state of indecision about it and my thoughts were going around in such circles, I just bit the bullet. I selected the number and held it to my ear.

It only rang once. "You really make a man wait," said his voice.

"You're looking for Atlantis," I accused him. "Who told you about where I was going?"

"Hey, hey," he tried to calm me. "Let's just say a little bird told me told me you were on your way to Croatia."

Jonah, I thought. Well, both of them seemed to be in the same business, so perhaps they'd crossed paths. "What's your proposal?"

"Come meet me. I'll introduce you to my boss."

I imagined some slick mafia-style suit. I wondered if his boss was Japanese. "That's impossible. If you'd turn on the telly you'd see that I'm laid up at the moment."

That silenced him for a few moments. "You'll get a video call in a couple of minutes. You'd better answer it." He hung up.

I looked at the tiny screen of the iPhone, and then across to where Sam had left the iPad. Ignoring my stiff body, I crawled over to it and popped out the SIM card. I swapped it with the SIM card in Sam's iPhone and had the app store up to download something that could record calls when the call came through.

"Come on, come on…" I told the iPad, staring at the progress bar. In the end, I just had to answer the call before I could install the app.

FaceTime popped up, and I found myself looking at the head and shoulders of a professional blond woman. For a moment I was confused, until I realised this must be his boss. I rather liked that it wasn't a man.

God, she was beautiful though. "Miss Croft," she said, her perfectly sculpted lips and sharp jaw moving only slightly. "It's a pleasure to meet you, so to speak." She had an American accent, too, but it wasn't southern like the man's.

The neckline of her sky-blue shirt plunged a completely appropriate amount for an office. To counteract the appropriateness of her neckline, she had a necklace on that attracted the eyes and dipped directly into her cleavage.

She couldn't have been more than mid-thirties, I thought, but there was no question about how she became a CEO. She was really attractive, and she knew it.

"Allow me to introduce myself." She inclined her head slightly. Every movement she made was so confident, so professional. "Jacqueline Natla. Founder and CEO of Natla Technologies."

I recognised the corporate logo behind her as the same one from the embossed letter in the flowers. I'd never heard of her, though. "Are you new to the industry?" I asked her.

She chuckled. "Oh, nothing could be further from the truth." She smiled slightly at me. "Let's just say I prefer to keep everything about my research strictly confidential. Something I think you'll like about the way our arrangement will work."

I liked her already. "We don't have an arrangement yet," I said, perhaps redundantly. "And you haven't exactly made it clear why you want a fresh graduate to be a partner in your million-dollar exploration."

Her smile made my stomach flutter. "I've been watching you." I should have been alarmed by that, but I couldn't stop staring at her. She might as well have been swinging a pendulum in front of my eyes. "Besides," she finally took her eyes from mine, and it was a relief. "If you're anything like your mother and father, I have absolutely nothing to be concerned about."

It was a shock—she seemed so young. "You knew my family?"

She smiled, but didn't answer my question. "You'll be lead. I'll give you an accountant and a project manager for all the details if you wish. We also have a dedicated team of labourers and engineers. All costs are covered and we'll pay you a very generous salary." She let that sentence hang in the air for a moment, once again watching me. "And Lara," she said, enunciating my name in a way that made my heart race. "There's one detail that I just know you'll appreciate."

"Oh?" I managed to force out.

"No cameras—anywhere. All my staff sign strict confidentiality agreements."

Well, if I'd had a contract in front of me at that second, you can bet I'd have signed my life away on the dotted line. Just the thought of not having to worry about how I was going to get from A to B without journalists bothering me was enough to sell me on her offer. But going back to being basically anonymous without people speculating on who I was shagging – well, it seemed too good to be true.

"What's the catch?" I asked her.

"No catch," she said easily. "I just expect results."

It really was too good to be true. "I need to think about it," I decided. "You may have noticed I'm not in peak form just now."

"You look good to me."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. My blush returned. God, this woman.

She gave me ample time to flounder with that compliment before she spoke again. "Don't discuss my offer with anyone," she instructed. "You can call Larson when you're ready to proceed."

Larson, I thought. That must be the American.

Before she hung up, I spoke up. "Are you really looking for Atlantis?"

She smiled knowingly at me. "I've already found it."

I gaped at her.

There was absolutely no way I could refuse to be part of this, and her smile suggested she already knew my answer. "I'll be waiting for your call," she said, and then hung up.

I sat staring at the screen for several minutes, and it wasn't until I heard Sam's footsteps on the path that I snapped back to reality. "Shit!" I hissed to myself, frantically trying to switch the SIMs again before Sam returned.

I hadn't made it back to the bed before Sam trotted in, holding a box of black tea and Apple bag. She didn't even notice I was out of the bed. "You should see the people waiting outside!" she told me. "I practically had a flash mob following me around the supermarket." She wasn't relaying her experience like it was anything terrible at all. I would have absolutely hated it, and it really illustrated a big difference between us.

"Is this okay?" she asked, showing me the tea.

It had some obscure Kanji on it that I pretended to read. I nodded. She grinned and passed me the Apple box. "Here," she said, and then reached into her jacket and gave me a SIM pack, too. "It's a new number, I hope that's okay."

Since my old number probably had a full voicemail and a billion texts waiting, I welcomed a completely new one. I nodded.

"I'll put it together for you after I give Yoko the tea," she told me, rushing off to find the housekeeper. "You just stay in bed!"

I wasn't in bed, though. I sighed, staring at the box in my hands. For the first time in our entire friendship, I was going to keep a secret from her. She didn't even know – she just busy running around for me. My stomach hurt again.

She came back. "Your tea will be ready in a minute," she said. "So, how is she?"

I looked up quizzically at her, for a second terrified she must just somehow know who I'd just spoken to. I realised my mistake when she frowned at me. "Reyes. You said you were—"

"—oh, oh, right." I interrupted her, feeling awful. "I didn't manage to speak to her."

Sam lowered herself to the floor and crawled over to me, taking the Apple box. "I guess she got a new number, too," she said, clearly not suspecting anything. I watched her pull the box open and peel the screen cover off my new phone, feeling like absolutely the worst person in the world. I totally adored Sam, why was I keeping this from her? Wouldn't it be worse if she found out later than if I told her now?

"Come here," I told her, beckoning her closer.

She looked up from the phone.

"I'm not feeling that good," I told her. "I could use, I don't know…" I actually didn't know.

She grinned and put the box on the floor. "Okay." She scooted right up behind me and wrapped her arms around my middle, carefully avoiding the wound. "Does this hurt?"

"Not as much as it helps," I said quietly, leaning back against her. She pressed her cheek against the side of my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to relax.

I only opened them again when Yoko arrived with my tea, placing it very carefully beside me without looking at us at all. It was her averted eyes that made me wonder what this must look like. I didn't think we'd crossed any sort of line, but on some level I recognised that we were a lot more physical than other friends I'd had. I used to attribute it to Sam being part Japanese – Japanese girls were always holding each other's hands. What I couldn't ignore was that Yoko was Japanese and she clearly thought we were doing something that she should give us privacy for.

I wondered what Roth would have had to say about the whole thing. He was pretty easy going about many issues but in this respect I didn't know how much of him was still a marine. Had been, I corrected myself, he had been easy going.

I closed my eyes over the tears forming in them. I had no idea what to do, whether to ignore everything and whether it was completely normal to be a total mess after an ordeal like I'd had on Yamatai. I just had no idea what I thought, or what I wanted, or anything, and on top of that a zillion people probably had their cameras pointed directly at the house, waiting for me to embarrass myself. I'd have pulled the covers over my head and slept for a year if I thought I could.

"Oh, Sweetie, is it that bad?" Sam had noticed my tears. She hugged me more tightly, and I cried silently with the back of my head resting against her collarbones. "Maybe we should call Dad."

"No," I told her. "No, it's just—" I tried to explain without actually explaining, "—I am sore, but it's not that."

"Oh," she said quietly, and kissed my temple. That made me cry even more. She had nothing to say about Roth, or whatever she guessed I was upset about. I felt awfully guilty letting her assume that it was only Roth's death that was upsetting me, because I did miss him, awfully. But there was so much more than that.

"I feel like I'm going mad," I said honestly. And yet, someone was going to trust me to lead an expedition into the most famous lost city in all the history books. I didn't feel fit to run my own life, let alone something as important as this.

"I know how that feels," Sam said beside my ear, and then changed the subject. "Can you smell that? Lunch is nearly ready. You sure you're not hungry?"

I wasn't sure about anything.